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Spotting nothing suspicious, she unlocked the car and slid behind the wheel. It was a late-model silver Chrysler that her own mechanics had customized with a muscular turbocharged engine. Finding the laptop and the burner beneath the seat, she ripped off the burner’s pristine plastic wrap. Burners were disposable cell phones loaded with pre-paid minutes. As long as you didn’t use them for too long, you were safe talking on them, and no one could use the SIM to triangulate your position as they could with a registered cell.
Fighting an urge to fire up the computer right there, she turned the key in the ignition, put the car in gear, and nosed out into traffic. She was no longer comfortable staying in one place too long; neither did she feel safe going back to the office or even her home.
Heading back across into Virginia, she drove aimlessly for close to an hour, after which time she could no longer control her curiosity. She had to find out what was on the thumb drive she’d lifted off Jay’s corpse. Did it hold the key to what was going on between NSA and Black River that, according to Stevenson, held all of the DoD in thrall? Why else would Noah and the NSA come after Jay and now her. She had to assume the DC motorcycle cop was bogus—that he was, in fact, either NSA or Black River. Stevenson had been terrified. The whole scenario chilled her to the marrow.
Passing through Rosslyn, she suddenly became aware that she was famished. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, apart from whatever they’d given her this morning in the hospital. Who could eat that stuff? More to the point, what kind of chef could concoct such tasteless, overcooked mush?
She turned onto Wilson Boulevard, drove past the Hyatt, and pulled over into a parking space several car-lengths from the entrance to the Shade Grown Café, a place she knew inside and out and thus felt safe in. Taking the laptop and the burner with her, she got out, locked the car, and hurried into the steamy interior. The smells of bacon and toast made her mouth water. Slipping into a well-worn cherry-colored vinyl booth, she gave the plastic-wrapped menu a cursory once-over before ordering three eggs over easy, a double portion of bacon, and wheat toast. When the waitress asked if she wanted coffee, she said, “Please. Cream on the side.”
Alone at the Formica table, she opened the notebook so that the screen faced her and the wall behind her. While it was booting up, she bent down and extracted the thumb drive from the underwire section of her bra. The tiny electronic rectangle was warm and seemed to beat like a second heart. Using her thumb on the special reader, she logged in, then answered her three security questions. Finally on, she plugged the thumb drive into one of the USB ports on the left side of the computer. Switching to My Computer, she navigated to the portable drive that had appeared there, then double-clicked on it.
The screen went black, and for a moment she thought the drive had crashed the operating system. But then the screen started scrolling in lines of what looked like gibberish. There were no folders, no files, just this ever-scrolling series of letters, numbers, and symbols. The information was encrypted. That was just like the careful Jay.
At once she hit the escape key and was back at the My Computer screen. Accessing the C drive, she opened the wireless access connections wizard. Either the coffee shop was Wi-Fi–enabled or someplace close was because the wizard detected an open network. That was both good and bad. It meant she could get on the Web, but there were no network encryption safeguards. Luckily, she’d had all the Heartland laptops fitted with their own mobile encryption package among a host of other security measures, which in this case meant that even if someone hacked her ISP address they wouldn’t be able to read the packets of information she sent and received; nor would they be able to locate her.
She pushed the laptop aside when her breakfast arrived. It would take some time for the proprietary Heartland deciphering software to analyze the data on the thumb drive. She uploaded the encrypted data and pressed the enter key, which started the program.
By the time she’d mopped up the last of the third egg yolk with a wedge of buttered toast and the last of the bacon, she heard a soft chime. Almost choking on her final bite, she swigged down a mouthful of coffee and stacked her plates at the edge of the table.
Her forefinger hovered over the enter key for the tiniest of moments before depressing it. At once words began to flood across her screen, then marched down as the entire contents of the drive were revealed.
pinprickbardem, she read.
She couldn’t believe it. Her eyes traveling over the scrolling lines read pinprickbardem over and over. The lines came to an end and she checked again. The entire drive had been filled up with these fourteen letters. She broke down the letters into the most obvious words: Pin Prick Bar Dem. Then another: PinP Rick Bar Dem. She wrote down: Picture in Picture (on a digital TV?), Rick’s Bar (?), Democrat.
Online, she ran a quick Google check. There was a Rick’s Bar in Chicago and one in San Francisco, an Andy & Rick’s Bar in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, but there was no Rick’s Bar anywhere in the district or the environs. She scratched out what she had written. What on earth could those letters mean? she wondered. Were they yet another code? She was about to run them through the Heartland software program again when the sudden presence of a shadow at the periphery of her vision caused her to glance up.
Two NSA agents were staring at her through the window. As she slammed down the laptop’s screen one of them opened the door to the coffee shop.
Benjamin Firth was riding his bottle of arak with a vengeance when Willard strode into the surgery. Firth was up on the table, head bowed, swigging great mouthfuls of the fermented palm liquor with grim precision.
Willard stood looking at the doctor for a moment, remembering his father who drank himself into dementia and, finally, liver failure. It hadn’t been pretty, and along the way there were serious bouts of the kind of lightning Jekyll-and-Hyde personality split that afflicted some alcoholics. After his father had bounced his head off a wall during one of these fits Willard, who was eight at the time, taught himself not to be afraid. He kept his baseball bat under his bed and the next time his father, stinking of booze, lunged at him, he swung the bat in a perfectly level arc and broke two of his ribs. After that, his father never touched him again, neither in anger nor in affection. At the time, Willard thought he’d gotten what he wanted, but later, after the old man died, he began to wonder whether he’d injured himself along with his father.
With a grunt of disgust, he crossed the surgery, ripped the bottle out of Firth’s hand, and shoved a small booklet into it. For a moment the doctor looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes as if he was trying to place Willard in his memory.
“Read it, Doc. Go ahead.”
Firth glanced down and seemed surprised. “Where’s my arak?”
“Gone,” Willard said. “I brought you something better.”
Firth snorted noisily. “Nothing better than arak.”
“Want to bet?”
Willard opened the booklet for him and the doctor stared down at the passport photo of Ian Bowles, the New Zealander who’d been masquerading as a patient, who was blackmailing him into taking photos of Jason Bourne. This was why he had been getting stone-cold wasted. He couldn’t bear to think of what he had to do or what would happen to him if he didn’t.
“What…?” He shook his head, confused. “What are you doing with this?”
Willard sat down beside him. “Let’s just say Mr. Bowles will no longer be a problem for you.”
Firth sobered as if the other man had thrown a bucket of cold water in his face. “You know?”
Willard took the passport. “I heard it all.”
A shiver ran down the doctor’s spine. “There was nothing I could do.”
“It’s a good thing, then, that I was here.”
Firth nodded despondently.
“Now I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything,” Firth said. “I owe you my life.”
“Jason Bourne must never know this happened.”
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“None of it?” Firth looked at him. “Someone suspects he’s here, someone is after him.”
Willard’s face was impassive. “None whatsoever, Doctor.” He held out his hand. “Do I have your word?”
Firth gripped the other’s hand, which was firm and dry and somehow comforting. “I said anything, didn’t I?”
10
AS MOIRA LAUNCHED HERSELF out of the booth, she pulled the thumb drive out of the USB slot. By this time she’d taken off through the coffee shop, down the narrow, dingy hallway that led to the toilets and the kitchen.
Turning left into the kitchen, she was engulfed by a surge of heat, steam, and raised voices. She was heading for the pantry when the delivery entrance at the rear burst open, and an NSA agent came through the doorway. As he did so, she pressed her thumb into the reader twice in succession even though the computer was still on. Then she threw it at him. He raised his arms reflexively to catch it and she raced into the small pantry cubicle. Kneeling, she pulled the ring on the trapdoor. As she was raising it from its mount flush in the floor, she heard the laptop’s incendiary device explode. Shouts and the confusion caused by a fire in a confined space came to her as she slipped down the ladder, closing the trapdoor behind her. The device was a last-ditch security measure she’d had her techs install in all Heartland laptops. Pressing the thumb reader twice while the laptop was on activated the device on a ten-second delay.
At the bottom of the ladder, she found herself in the basement, where bulk deliveries were stored. She felt above her head until she found the cord and pulled it. A bare bulb illuminated her surroundings in chiaroscuro starkness. She saw the metal doors leading to street level and opened them. There was a metal ramp used to slide the cartons of canned goods into the basement. She scrambled up this, bending almost double to hold on to the sides so as not to slip on the smooth surface. To do this, she had to slip the thumb drive, which she’d been clutching for dear life, into her pocket. As she did so, the back of her hand brushed against what felt like a stiff card. Gaining the street, she found herself directly to the right of the entrance to the coffee shop, where people were piling out like boiling water. As she walked away she could hear the klaxon call of fire engines. She walked away from the melee, her hand in her pocket to check that she still had the thumb drive, and she felt again the presence of the card. Drawing it out, she saw that it had the EMS logo on it and Dave’s name. Below, he’d handwritten a cell phone number. Then she remembered him brushing by her and knew he’d slipped her the card then. Any port in a storm, she thought. Flipping open the burner, she punched in the number.
Just then, glancing over her shoulder, she saw one of the NSA agents spill out of the entrance and she walked faster. But he’d already spotted her and took off after her.
Rounding the corner, she put her phone to her ear.
“Yes?” She was relieved to hear Dave’s familiar voice.
“I’m in trouble.” She gave him her approximate location. “I’ll be at Fort Myer Drive and Seventeenth Street North in three minutes.”
“Wait for us,” he said.
“Easy for you to say,” she replied and raced around the corner onto North Nash Street.
Watching Maslov and his slope-shouldered Neanderthals climb back into their vehicle and head out, Arkadin suppressed a spasm of murderous rage. It was all he could do to stop himself from grabbing a semi-automatic off one of the stacks and spraying the vehicle with bullets until all four people inside were dead. Luckily, what was left of the rational part of his brain prevented him from making such a foolish move. He might feel better for the moment but in the larger scheme of things he would regret Maslov’s premature demise. As long as the head of the Kazanskaya was useful to him he’d allow him to live.
But not a moment longer.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Maslov he’d made with Stas Kuzin, the mob boss in Nizhny Tagil he’d partnered with, then killed. In those days Arkadin was young and inexperienced; he’d allowed Kuzin to live too long. Long enough to torture and kill the woman Arkadin was sleeping with. Of course, the young Arkadin hadn’t considered what would happen in the aftermath of Kuzin’s death and the death of a third of his depraved crew.
With the rest of Kuzin’s murderers out for his blood he was forced to go to ground. Since they had all the avenues out of the city covered and had turned all the terrified citizens into informers, it was imperative to find a haven as quickly as possible, which unfortunately meant inside Nizhny Tagil, somewhere they’d never find him, where they’d never even think to look. He’d shot Kuzin in the building he and Kuzin owned jointly, where Kuzin had his headquarters, where he kept the young girls Arkadin had swept off the streets for him. Of course, he found the perfect spot, one even Dimitri Maslov wouldn’t have been clever enough to think of.
Abruptly Arkadin’s mind switched gears to more immediate concerns. The phone call from Willard was very much on his mind as he walked back to where his Black Legion recruits were waiting for him outside the tents erected on the edge of the Azerbaijani plain. He’d relied on that idiot Wayan, who had recommended Ian Bowles. Hiring Bowles clearly had been a mistake.
But now even Bowles was driven out of his mind as he addressed his troops. They were not nearly as well prepared for a coordinated raid as he’d hoped. But then these men had been trained and used in solo missions. Many of them had been waiting for the orders to strap on their C-4 vests, infiltrate a market, a police station, or a school, and press the detonator. Their minds were already halfway to Paradise, and almost immediately Arkadin understood that it was his job as well as his duty as the head of the Eastern Brotherhood, the Black Legion’s legitimate umbrella organization, to shape them into a unit, men who could rely on one another—sacrifice for one another if need be—without a second’s hesitation.
The group of men—hardy, physically and mentally fit—stood arrayed in front of him, uncomfortable because he’d ordered them to shave their heads and their beards, both of which were against both custom and their Islamic teachings. Not a one of them wasn’t wondering how on earth they were going to infiltrate anywhere in the Islamic world looking as they now did.
One man, Farid, chose to voice their concern. He did it forcefully, believing he was speaking for the other ninety-nine recruits, not just himself.
“What was that?” Arkadin’s head snapped so hard a vertebra in his neck cracked like a rifle shot. “What did you say, Farid?”
Had he known Arkadin at all, Farid would have kept his mouth shut. But he didn’t, and there was no one in the godforsaken land to teach him. So he repeated his question.
“Sir, we’re wondering why you ordered us to shave the hair that Allah dictates we must have. We’re wondering what your motive could possibly be. We demand an answer because you have shamed us.”
Without a word, Arkadin pulled out the baton from his belt, slammed it into the side of Farid’s head, driving him down. As he knelt, swaying with pain and dismay, Arkadin drew his Colt and shot Farid point-blank through his right eye. The man was driven back, his knees cracking, and there he lay in the sandy dirt, mute and inert.
Just around the corner Moira stopped and pressed herself against the wall of the office building. She raised her right elbow and, as the NSA agent came racing around the corner, slammed it into his chest. She’d been aiming for his throat but missed, and though he rocked back against the wall, he immediately came at her, threw a punch that she blocked.
But it was only a feint and he grabbed her left arm from the underside and applied pressure in an attempt to break it at the elbow. Moira, pinioned, trod hard on his instep, but his grip didn’t loosen. He applied more pressure until a yelp of pain escaped her throat. Then he came in with the heel of his hand, a blow aimed at the point of her nose.
She let him commit himself completely to the blow, then dodged her head to one side. At the same time, gathering all her strength into her lower belly, she jammed her flexed right knee into his
groin. His arms opened wide, his grip on her began to slip, and he went down.
Moira snatched her arm away, but he managed to grasp her wrist, bringing her down to him as he fell to his knees. His eyes were watering and he was clearly struggling not to pant, to deepen his breathing, work through the excruciating pain. But Moira wasn’t about to let him. She drove her knuckles into his throat and, as he gagged, she freed herself. Then she struck the left side of his head, slamming it against the building’s stonework. His eyes rolled up and he slid to the pavement. Quickly she took his weapon and his ID and took off through the growing crowd of gawking people, drawn to the scuffle like dogs scenting blood, saying, “That man mugged me. Someone call the police!”
On the corner of Fort Myer Drive and 17th Street North she brought herself up short. She was breathing heavily, her pulse rate accelerated. Adrenaline was burning through her like a river of fire, but she managed to slow to a walk, moving against the tide of people who were following the sound of the sirens on the police cruisers, quickening from more than one direction. One was coming directly at her, but, no, it was an EMS ambulance.
Dave had arrived, not a moment too soon. The ambulance slowed and she saw Earl behind the wheel. As the vehicle came abreast of her the back doors banged open and Dave leaned out. As he grabbed her left hand to swing her aboard she gasped. When she’d navigated the metal step Dave, lunging past her, swung the doors shut and said, “Go!”
Earl stepped on the gas. Moira swung around as the ambulance hit a corner at speed. Dave put his arms around her to steady her, led her to one of the benches.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, but winced as she bent her left arm.
“Let me see that,” Dave said, pushed back the sleeve of her blouse. “Nice,” he said and started to work on the bruised and puffy joint.
