Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (15 page)

Brick, one hand on Popa’s shoulder, looked up at him. “Bugger off, mate. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Peter nodded solemnly. “Okay, then. I’ll leave you to muddle through on your own.”

As he began to make his way back through the boxwood, Brick called out.

“Wait a sec. Who the bloody hell are you and who do you work for?”

Bourne reached into the fire, grabbed a burning log, and hurled it at the intruder.

The firebrand hissed and flickered, one end of it bursting into sparking fury when it struck the intruder’s shoulder. He half-spun, flung up one arm to bat the burning log away. Thus engaged, he was poorly prepared for Bourne’s hurtled body. Behind him, Bourne could hear a mad scramble as Rebeka dragged Rowland out of harm’s way.

The intruder chopped down on Bourne’s back, arching him backward, hauled him off, and delivered a blow to his solar plexus. He grabbed Bourne by the collar and threw him against the wall. Bourne ripped a print off the wall, smashing it as the intruder bullrushed him. The glass shattered. Bourne, grasping a long, slender piece, and ignoring the cut in his palm as he grasped it, struck downward.

He had aimed for the intruder’s neck, but missed, the point of the glass shard burying itself, instead, in the intruder’s back. The momentum of the bull rush took both men down to the floor. Seemingly ignoring the glass shard, the intruder flicked out a knife, stabbing down with it. Bourne rolled away, and the knife point buried itself in a narrow gap between the ancient floorboards. Instead of wasting time trying to pry it free, the intruder simply let it go, freeing another weapon.

Rebeka recognized Ilan Halevy immediately. The moment Bourne engaged the Babylonian, she busied herself dragging Weaving back around the corner into the shadows of the kitchen cupboards.

With a whispered, “For the love of God, stay put,” she drew a pair of scaling knives out of their wooden holder, slipped one into her waistband and hefted the other as she reappeared around the corner, just in time to see the Babylonian, a shard of glass protruding from his bloodstained back, stab brutally down with a folding dagger.

She moved swiftly and silently, the scaling knife held in front of her. It had a wicked-looking gut-hook on its top edge. If she could bury it deep enough and then jerk back on the hilt, she could do the Babylonian some serious damage.

Both his strength and his stamina were legendary. She knew he hardly felt the glass shard in his back, wouldn’t feel the scaling knife, either, unless she was lucky enough to hit a vital organ, or skillful enough to bury the gut-hook in his viscera and then pull backward. The resulting gush of blood would give even him pause.

But despite her stealth, he sensed her attack, and at the last instant, turned his body sideways to her, in the process absorbing two heavy blows from Bourne. His left hand whipped out, his fingers like tentacles as they clasped her, twisting viciously, grinding the bones in her wrist against one another. The breath went out of her as flashes of light exploded behind her eyes. In that instant, the Babylonian wrenched the scaling knife from her and slashed it at her. He’d meant to open her throat from side to side, but her reflexes saved her from the lethal blow. The blade slit open her sweater and shirt, opening a horizontal bright-red bloom across her chest, just above her breasts. She gasped and fell backward.

When Harry Rowland—for he was absolutely certain now that was his name—heard the grunts, thumps, and hard exhalations of handto-hand combat, something clicked inside his brain. Completely ignoring Rebeka’s order, he slithered around the corner of the kitchen. In an instant, his measured, professional gaze took in the chaotic situation. Something peeled away. He felt as if, after having been cast adrift in a hazy dreamworld since awakening in the clinic in Stockholm, everything now had become sharp and clear.

Without further conscious thought, he scrambled to his feet, ran to the fireplace, and snatched up the fire tongs. Deftly avoiding Rebeka, he stepped to where Bourne and the intruder grappled in lethal hand-to-hand combat. He regarded the two of them, one after the other. Everything seemed to move in slow motion except his mind, which, having flickered to life, was now racing at a fever pitch. Memories were surfacing, flashing like schools of silvery fish lifted from the depths. They came in rapid succession, but now in their proper order. So many things unknown he now understood, like a thick curtain being pulled back, revealing, layer by layer, his life before being shot. Not everything was there—the tapestry still had holes, missing pieces, curious dead ends that puzzled him, fish slipping through his fingers, returning to the unfathomable deep. Some thoughts still didn’t make sense, but certain imperatives did, and these drove him to decisive, galvanic action.

Lifting the fire tongs over his head, Harry Rowland brought them whistling down toward the top of Bourne’s skull.

WE LIVE IN A world where information is constantly flowing, through servers, networks, intranets, the Internet.”

Charles Thorne, typing notes on his iPad 3 as an app recorded every word Maceo Encarnación uttered, nodded.

“We are fast becoming a cloud-culture,” Encarnación continued. “Each hour of each day the amount of information grows exponentially, and all of this expanding tsunami of information—all of it— exists in some form or other that can be read and understood by outsiders—by overhearing, bugging, or hacking.”

Thorne, sitting with Encarnación in the offices of
Politics As Usual
, felt his mobile buzz against his thigh as it lay in his pocket. He ignored it, nodding encouragingly at Encarnación. It had taken him months of complex negotiations with a succession of underlings to get Encarnación, the president and CEO of SteelTrap, to agree to be interviewed. SteelTrap, the world’s largest Internet security firm, was an anomaly in the world of business—so large, so influential, so successful, yet privately held, therefore beholden to no one. Its internal structure was entirely opaque.

In the end, Thorne had lucked out. Encarnación, on his way from Paris to Mexico City, where part of his vast staff maintained one of his palatial residences, had agreed to the interview while his private jet was being refueled. He had insisted that no photos be taken of him. This hardly surprised Thorne since, as part of his research for the interview, he had discovered a curious fact: there were no photos of Encarnación anywhere online. He was a bear of a man, curiouslooking owing to the fact that he was entirely hairless. Thorne found himself wondering if this was a deliberate deforestation or the result of a congenital condition. Another curious thing that he typed into his iPad: Encarnación had not once looked directly at him. His eyes were restless things, like caroming marbles, in constant motion.

“These days,” Encarnación said, “no scrap of information, no matter how small or well hidden, is safe. All of it can be, and is, hacked. This is an indisputable fact. Every hour of every day, encrypted sites behind so-called firewalls are hacked. The latest and most devastating form of terrorism. To counteract these cybercrimes is something of a divine calling. This is my business. This is what I do.” He paused to absorb everything in the office with his colorless eyes. He held his sunglasses between his thumb and forefinger, as if ready to don them at a moment’s notice. “In the Internet age, this is how fortunes are made.”

Thorne’s mobile buzzed again. Ignoring it, he said, “Tell me, Mr. Encarnación, how you first became interested in Internet security.”

Encarnación produced a thin smile that Thorne found horribly disquieting. “I lost everything, all the money I had made trading in equities online. My account was hacked, my hard-earned money stolen.” That mysterious smile again, signifying an apocalypse, as if Thorne were looking into the face of a large, hungry carnivore. “It vanished into the colossal void of Russia.”

“Ah, I see.”

“No,” Encarnación said, “you don’t.” He rocked his sunglasses back and forth. “I fought my desire to go to the place that swallowed my money, to find the person or people who had stolen what was mine, because I knew that if I went to Russia it would eat me alive.”

Thorne pursed his lips as his mobile vibrated insistently for the third time. “What precisely do you mean?”

“I mean that if I had gone to Russia then, ignorant as I was, I would never have returned.”

Thorne could not help a small chuckle. “That sounds a tad, oh, I don’t know, melodramatic.”

“Yes,” Encarnación replied. “Yes, it does.” The smile returned, insistent as the buzzing of Thorne’s mobile. “And yet, it is the absolute truth. Have you been to Moscow, Mr. Thorne?”

Thorne did not want this to turn into an interrogation. “I have.”

“Done business there?”

“Uh, no. But I’ve heard—”

“You’ve heard.” Encarnación threw his words back into his face. “If you haven’t
been
to Moscow, haven’t engaged in business there, you have no idea.” He shook his completely bald head, which Thorne could not now help thinking of as a skull. “Money, corruption, rotten politics, coercion. This is Moscow.”

“I suppose you could say that about almost any big city.”

Encarnación’s gaze made Thorne feel small and, worse, weak. “Moscow is different. Special. This is why. Having money is not nearly enough. These people with whom you are forced to do business want more from you. Do you know what that something is, Mr. Thorne? They want to be able to shine in the eyes of the president. They curry his favor so badly, so absolutely, that if negotiations do not go the way they want, they will not hesitate to have you shot in the back of the head, or, if their need to be amused is such, to have you poisoned with plutonium long after you have left the rat’s nest of Moscow behind.”

“Plutonium poisoning christ almighty!”
Thorne wrote on his iPad.

Encarnación did not blink an eye. “I decided then and there to find a way to retrieve my money. The authorities were worse than useless; in those days, they had even less knowledge about hacking the Internet than they do now.”

Thorne felt as if he were in the presence of a reincarnated Baron Munchausen, the legendary teller of tall tales, except that he had the distinct impression that everything Encarnación was telling was the truth. “Then this is how SteelTrap came into being.”

“That’s correct.”

“And that was...”

“Seven years ago.”

“Did you ever recover your money?”

Encarnación’s expression turned infernal. “With interest.”

Thorne was about to ask for details when his mobile went off for the fourth time. He frowned, but at this point his curiosity overrode his annoyance.Excusinghimself,hesteppedoutoftheofficeashepulled out his mobile. Four text messages from Delia Trane. He had met her several times. He’d had dinner with her and Soraya twice, and he’d been grateful that she had agreed to be their cover for the evening.

Call me ASAP

His frown deepened. One text from her he could ignore, not four. Scrolling through his phonebook, he pressed in her number, put his mobile to his ear. She answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?”

“Where d’you think I am?” His annoyance flared into renewed life.

“Dammit, Delia, I’m in the middle of—”

“Soraya’s in trouble.”

At the mention of her name, he looked around the corridor. People were striding by. Minions who knew nothing about the impending FBI investigation. He went into the empty conference room. “Charles?”

She never called him Charlie, as Soraya did. He closed the door behind him. He was in darkness.

“What kind of trouble?” He had his own troubles to worry about.

The last thing he needed was—

“She’s in the hospital.”

His heart skipped a beat. “Hospital?” he parroted stupidly. “Why?

What’s the matter?”

“She was hurt in Paris. A concussion. Apparently, flying home made it worse.”

“What? Delia, for the love of God—!”

“She has a subdural hematoma. Her brain is bleeding.” Thorne felt the sudden need to sit down.

“Charles?”

“How...” His voicebox seemed to have shut down. He cleared his throat violently, swallowed convulsively. “How bad is it?” 

“Bad enough that they needed to do an emergency procedure.” 

“Is she...?” He couldn’t say it.

“I don’t know. I’m at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, but she isn’t out of surgery yet.”

He found his thoughts drifting back to Maceo Encarnación, who even now was cooling his heels in his office, while Delia was further complicating his already overcomplicated life. He wanted to forgive her, but could not.

“They have to relieve pressure in her brain, stop the bleeding,”

Delia was saying now.

 “The procedure is normally fairly straightforward, but in Soraya’s case there’s a complication.”

Christ, there’s more?
he thought. “What...complication?” 

“She’s pregnant, Charles.”

Thorne started as if jolted by a surge of electricity. “What?”

 “She’s carrying your child.”

As Harry Rowland brought the fire tongs down toward the top of his head, Bourne raised an arm.

His hand, grasping the fire tongs, redirected them down onto the intruder’s shoulder. Immediately, Bourne kicked out, connected with the intruder’s knee, then rolled away. Rowland struggled, refused to loosen his death grip on the fire tongs. Bourne connected with the point of his chin, snapping Rowland’s head back, his teeth clacking together. But Rowland continued his grip on the impromptu weapon, and Bourne couldn’t turn away. The intruder’s leg swept out, connecting with Bourne’s ankle, and he went down, pulling Rowland with him.

Rebeka figured she must have blacked out for a moment because when she roused herself, wiping blood off her face, she saw Bourne and Rowland tangled up with the Babylonian. Staggering to her feet, she ripped the tongs from Rowland’s hand, grabbed him by the collar, and jerked him backward, away from the other two men.

“Idiot!” she spat. “What d’you think you’re doing?”