Tati took a drink from the water bottle on her nightstand. Unlike most of her scientist colleagues, she had no weakness for vodka or wine. An academic mind needed focus. She was a vegetarian, too, which had been a challenge in Vostok, where there was almost no fresh produce and the researchers ate thousands of calories in meat to stay alive.
Before she went back to her tables of numbers, Tati checked her phone. It was almost midnight, and Vadik still wasn’t back. He’d been out late every evening since they got to the city. He’d told her he was walking, or drinking, but she knew her husband well enough to realize that he was hiding something from her. Often in Moscow, it was the same. He’d disappear for a weekend and say he was in a cabin with his friends, but that was a lie. At first, she’d wondered if he had a mistress. Tati didn’t really care if he did, but no, that wasn’t it. Something else was going on.
Finally, she heard the key in the lock, and the door opened.
Vadik came in, looking solemn, the way he always did. His black hair stuck up in tufts. He wore the same white mesh shirt he’d worn for days, and it was becoming gray and smelly. When he saw that she was nude, he kicked off his shoes and began taking off his clothes. He climbed into bed next to her and shoved her hand between his legs. Her fingers got an immediate response.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“A pub. I met some other scientists.”
“Oh, yes? Who?”
“You wouldn’t know them. A couple of Dutch guys from Utrecht. Statisticians like me.”
“You don’t smell like liquor.”
“I took some mints.”
“Okay.”
He was already ready for sex. She brought up her knees as he climbed on top of her. He put himself inside her and then leaned close to her face and whispered. “Stop asking me questions, Tati. You know people are listening.”
“So?”
“So don’t make it sound like you don’t trust me.”
“I’m sorry.”
But Tati didn’t trust him.
She glanced at the television in the apartment and wondered if that was where the camera was. Or maybe it was in the light fixture over the bed. Whoever was spying on them was probably playing with himself now as he watched her get fucked. It also occurred to her for the first time that maybe the surveillance wasn’t really about her. At home. At work. Wherever they went. She’d always assumed it was directed at her because of who she was, but maybe it was really about her husband.
She lifted her head from the pillow and murmured in his ear. “What are you up to, Vadik?”
8
On Sunday morning, Jason awoke early. He sat by the window ledge with a cup of coffee in his hands. He was in Nova’s apartment, a third-floor flat on a side street near Tower Hill. There was nothing personal about the apartment, no photos, no pictures on the wall, no mail, no way to identify the person who lived here. When she left the country, he suspected that she had cleaners come through to sanitize the place to remove fingerprints and DNA. He did the same thing every time he left Paris.
Never leave a trail for someone to follow. Treadstone.
They’d spent half the night talking. It felt awkward, because they had to ignore the things they really wanted to talk about. Their past together. The plans they’d made with each other. The two years they’d spent apart. The life that might have been. Every question they wanted to ask, they left unspoken.
Instead, Nova shared what Interpol knew about Lennon, which still didn’t amount to much. Lennon was as much a mystery as he’d been three years ago in Tallinn. On the rare occasions when Interpol had captured an operative alive, they were mostly hired guns who only knew their one small piece of the puzzle. The others they worked with were strangers with code names. Yoko. Sean. Pete. Stuart. Elton. Ringo. Even the people with code names didn’t stay the same. When one of them died, another took his place, like a new actor taking over a role in a movie series. Lennon ran his network by hiring specialists and then cutting them loose when he didn’t need them anymore.
Cutting them loose typically meant a bullet to the brain.
From the window, Jason watched Nova sleeping. She lay on her stomach in bed, her mussed black hair covering her face. They’d slept next to each other, but their only touch was when the warmth of their skin had grazed against each other. She must have felt him watching her, because she stirred and rolled onto her back, her eyes open, her bare skin a mural of tattoos. Her gold necklace lay across one breast. He couldn’t help but feel a jolt of arousal, seeing her that way.
Her pose delivered a silent invitation. Come here, make love to me. But he stayed where he was.
Finally, she got out of bed, covered her body with a silk robe from her closet, and poured coffee for herself. She came up to Bourne at the window.
“It’s been a long time since I woke up to your face,” she said.
“Same here.”
“You look good, Jason. I didn’t say that yesterday, and I should have.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean, you’re still haunted. That never changes. You’re always waiting for the next betrayal, aren’t you? But you look good.”
“So do you. You look incredible. That never changes, either. I noticed a couple of new tattoos.”
“I saw you looking,” she said pointedly.
“A black cat. A raven. You’re still the dark lady.”
“I guess I am.”
He looked away, breaking their stare. Otherwise, he would have wrapped her up in his arms and taken her back to bed. He suspected that was the whole point. “Cafferty will be landing soon.”
“Are you worried that Lennon will go after him today?”
“Not likely. He’ll be blanketed by security, and there are no strangers on his meeting list. No, tomorrow’s the best bet. Hundreds of people crowding around him at the Naval College, and we don’t have a clue what Lennon will look like. The assault will be over before we even know it happened.”
“Why would they make him such an easy target if Lennon is active?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe they want Cafferty dead.”
“I thought about that, but then why bring me in? Unless they want deniability again. Someone to blame. Like in Tallinn.”
“So what’s the plan?” Nova asked.
“We have one day to turn up something that will give us an advantage. Or at least a way to level the playing field. Lennon will be in the Painted Hall tomorrow. We need to know what to look for.”
Nova shook her head. “We’ve been after him for three years, and we still have no photographs, no history, no background. No one who can describe him.”
“Except Gunnar thinks he may be leaving a trail this time. Lennon likes to use extremist groups as cover to divert attention away from himself. He may be manipulating some of the protesters in town at the same time that he’s planning for an assault on Cafferty. If we can track them, then we may be able to track him, too. CCTV. Witnesses.”
“We’ve tried that angle before. He’s never made that mistake. I call him the vampire, because he doesn’t show up on film.”
“This time he’s on a deadline,” Bourne reminded her.
Nova pursed her full lips. “Okay. I have a friend over at MI-5. I’ll reach out to him and see what they know about the groups that are on the ground this week and whether there have been any unusual developments in the last few days.”
“Good.”
She reached out and brushed his cheek with her hand. “I’m going to take a shower. Want to join me?”
“You know I do.”
“But no?”
“No.”
“We can have sex without it being anything more than that,” she said.
“I don’t think we can.”
Nova stared at him with a l
ook that said she’d known that all along. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She headed for the bathroom, but then she stopped before she got there. Her face was creased with an unhappy frown, and she fingered the belt on her robe. “Hey, Jason? Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Who’s Abbey?”
“How do you know about her?”
“When I was in your apartment in Paris, I saw a box of Quebec maple candies in the kitchen. There was a note with it. Tell me you’re alive. Abbey.”
“I met her last year. She’s a Canadian journalist. She helped me expose the Medusa conspiracy. I gave her a mail drop she could use if she ever needed to reach me. Occasionally she stays in touch.”
“She’s in love with you,” Nova said.
“You get that from her note?”
“A note asking if you’re alive? Yes.”
“I haven’t seen her in a year,” Jason said, “and I don’t plan to see her again.”
Nova’s lips flickered upward, but it wasn’t a smile. It was something sadder than that. “Oh. I get it. You’re in love with her, too.”
“What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “Everyone you love, you push away.”
* * *
—
Nova leaned against the railing of the Millennium Bridge that stretched across the Thames. A flat-decked barge slurped through the water below her. She stared upriver at the sleek geometric profile of One Blackfriars tower. On her left was the Tate Modern museum, and on her right was the stately dome of St. Paul’s. Pedestrians crowded the bridge around her and filled the walkways by the water.
This was London. This was her city. In the same way that Jason always went back to Paris, Nova went back to London.
She’d long ago given up thinking of Greece as her homeland. The villa near Corinth where she’d grown up was just a faraway place now, populated by a few mental snapshots of wandering through the ancient ruins or splashing in the bay at Milokopi Beach. They were the memories of a completely different person, blurred by time and defiled by death. To her, Greece was no longer about olive trees or myths or moussaka. It was about blood. The blood that had changed her life. The blood of her parents.
Anthony Audley of MI-5 arrived for their meeting on time. He had a white raincoat draped over his arm, although there was no rain in the forecast. He was tall, with flat, greased blond hair and sallow skin. His face was long and narrow, and he sported a boyish smile that made him look younger than his forty-five years. They’d known each other since Nova’s early days at Treadstone. For the past year, they’d also been sleeping together whenever she was in London. That wasn’t something she’d admitted to Jason.
For her, the relationship was no more than a physical release, an antidote to stress. She didn’t know how he felt about it, and she didn’t ask. Anthony was pleasant to look at and charming in his very British way, which was all she wanted or needed from a man. But he wasn’t Jason. The last twenty-four hours had proven that. Seeing Jason again had stirred up emotions so intense that they scared her.
“Lovely as always, my dear,” Anthony said, taking up position next to her at the bridge railing.
“Thank you.”
He read her tone like a smart spy, which he was. “Cool voice. Distracted. No eye contact. Everything all right with you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Ah, you’re fine. What a persuasive reply. Then again, you do run hot and cold, don’t you? I confess that I find myself yearning for the hot. I wondered if I’d see you last night. My bed felt empty without you.”
“I was busy.”
“Lennon again?”
“Yes.”
“You really need to catch that man, if only so he doesn’t take up so much of your discretionary time.”
Nova felt impatient as she stared at the river. “I’m not in a mood to flirt, Anthony.”
“I see that. Very well. Normally, I’d assume I did something to offend you, but we haven’t talked in a month, so that seems unlikely. Of course, I recognize those are the terms of our relationship. Or should I say, your terms. We come and we go, as it were.”
“Can we get down to business?”
“Absolutely. I’m all business. What do you need?”
“I want to know about the extremist groups in town for the WTO,” Nova said.
Anthony sniffed and rubbed his long nose. “Well, where to begin? There are lots of bad little boys and girls in town. We have the anarchists and the communists and the socialists and the neo-Nazis and the greens and the anti-nukes and the save-the-whales and anyone else who’d like to see us living naked in the woods and hunting with rocks. You wouldn’t think there would be enough smelly young hooligans in the world to populate all of these groups, and yet they keep finding more.”
“Threats?”
“Constantly.”
“Real ones?” Nova asked.
“Well, you’ve seen the riots. We’re under siege. Fires, vandalism. If we let down our guard, they’d be inside any of our government buildings in a minute. These things are never organic. They’re organized and well funded.”
“I’m not talking about property damage. I mean assassination plans.”
Anthony glanced at the tourists on the bridge. He lowered his voice. “Do you have a target in mind? Because the WTO is certainly ripe for that sort of thing.”
“Clark Cafferty.”
“Naturally. I’ve heard CIA whispers that Lennon has Cafferty in his sights. So that’s what brought you to town. I assume you think Lennon may be planning a bit of misdirection involving some of our mostly peaceful protesters?”
“That’s the idea. Do any groups come to mind?”
“Well, if we’re talking about Cafferty, then presumably we need to focus on climate warriors. Right Angle Capital is all about green energy. The thing is, why would Lennon want us looking at them? Cafferty claims to be an ally for the global-warming types.”
“Maybe they think Cafferty is profiting off climate change.”
“Which he is. They all are. Thank God for carbon offsets. Where would the super-rich be if they couldn’t plant a few trees in upstate New York to make up for their private jets?”
“I need a name, Anthony.”
“Have you heard of the Gaia Crusade?”
“I’ve heard of them, but that’s all.”
“Yes, they’re relatively new. A few cells have been springing up in the larger cities. They’re crude and ruthless and not particularly discriminating, but that’s what makes them dangerous.”
“Including here in the UK?” Nova asked.
“Definitely. They’re decentralized, which would work well for Lennon, since he operates the same way. However, the main concern is their philosophy. They don’t disrupt power plants and oil platforms and big infrastructure associated with fossil fuels. Their targets are people. CEOs, ministers, oil and gas execs, finance types, the ones that make the energy industries tick. If an executive feels unsafe going to work, so the thinking goes, then they’ll get out of the sector. Seed the campaign with a few high-profile hits, and you’ll begin to cripple the human capital of dirty energy.”
“Is it all talk? Or have they actually carried out any of their plans?”
“Oh, they’re not all talk, no indeed,” Anthony told her. “A senior VP for Nottingham Gas was ambushed in the parking lot outside his office in January. Throat cut. Three weeks later, a deputy energy minister in Poland was shot, along with his whole family. Last month, a North Dakota fracking entrepreneur burned to death in his lake home. We suspect the Gaia Crusade was behind all of those. You really never know who they’ll hit next. The randomness is what makes them hard to stop. It could be a high-profile target, or it could be some poor plant manager in Liverpool.”
“Are they here
at the WTO?” Nova asked.
“We think so. Actually, there have been a couple incidents in the last few days where their name came up.”
Nova felt her curiosity rise. “What incidents?”
“We found the body of an Indian news vendor in Hackney. Throat slit and—oddly—his arm had been cut off up to the elbow. We’re not sure what’s behind that. But when we checked his phone records, we found he’d exchanged a few calls with a burner phone that was found near the body of that Nottingham Gas exec. His family says the newsboy wasn’t a climate nut, but he obviously had some connection to the Crusade.”
“Anything else?” Nova asked.
“We pulled a body out of the Thames on Saturday morning. Bloke was hung, and then somebody dumped him in the river. We got lucky in making an ID, because his mother was actually in a Met Police station reporting him missing when the call came about the body. Mum says he worked at a Bloomsbury pub that’s come up in chatter a couple of times as a meeting ground for the Gaia Crusade. We think the manager’s part of the cell.”
“You talk to him yet?”
“Not yet. He’s on our list for follow-up. You may find this shocking, my dear, but with the WTO in town, our cups runneth over.”
“What’s the pub?” Nova asked.
“The Lonely Shepherd near Russell Square.”
“Can you get me info on the body? And the name of the manager?”
“For you, my dear? Anything.”
“Thank you.”
Nova kissed Anthony on the cheek, trying to make up for her surly demeanor. She squeezed his hand and then turned away to cross the bridge toward St. Paul’s, but Anthony didn’t let go of her hand.
The Bourne Treachery Page 8
