dropped it, kicked it along the floor. He tried to get the knife blade inside Bourne’s defense, but Bourne broke the attacks, not fooled by the feints the gunman used to distract him.
Tarkanian sat up, slid off the gurney. He found it difficult to talk, so he slipped to his knees, crawled across the cool linoleum to where the gun lay.
The gunman, one hand gripping Bourne’s neck, was working the knife free, prepared to stab downward into Bourne’s stomach.
“Move away from him.” Tarkanian was aiming the gun at the two men. “I’ll have a clear shot.”
The gunman heard him, shoved the heel of his hand into Bourne’s Adam’s apple, choking him. Then he moved his upper body to one side.
Just as Tarkanian was about to squeeze the trigger Bourne rabbit-punched the gunman in the kidney. He groaned and Bourne hauled him between himself and Tarkanian. A coughing sound announced the bullet plowing into the gunman’s chest.
Tarkanian cursed, moved to get Bourne back in his sights. As he did so, Bourne wrested the knife away from the gunman’s limp hand, threw it with deadly accuracy. The force of it lifted Tarkanian backward off his feet. Bourne pushed the gunman away from him, crossed the room to where Tarkanian lay in a pool of his own blood. The knife was buried to the hilt in his chest. By its position, Bourne knew it had pierced a lung. Within moments Tarkanian would drown in his own blood.
Tarkanian stared up at Bourne. He laughed even as he said, “Now you’re a dead man.”
Ten
ROB BATT made his arrangements through General Kendall, LaValle’s second in command. Through him, Batt was able to access certain black-ops assets in the NSA. No congressional oversight, no fuss, no muss. As far as the federal government was concerned, these people didn’t exist, except as auxiliary staff seconded to the Pentagon; they were thought to be pushing papers in a windowless office somewhere in the bowels of the building.
The plan was simple, as all his plans tended to be. Other people might like bells and whistles, but not Batt. Vanilla, Kendall had called it. But the more that was involved, the more that could go wrong was how he looked at it. Also, no one fucked up simple plans; they could be put together and executed in a matter of hours, if need be, even with new personnel. But the fact was he liked these NSA agents, perhaps because they were military men. They were quick to catch on, quicker even to learn. He never had to repeat himself. To a man, they seemed to memorize everything as it was presented to them.
Better still, because of their military background, they obeyed orders unquestioningly, unlike agents in CI- Soraya Moore a case in point-who always thought they knew a better way to get things done. Plus, these bad boys weren’t afraid of rendition; they weren’t afraid to pull the trigger. If given the appropriate order they’d kill a target without either question or regret.
Batt felt a certain exhilaration at the knowledge that no one was looking over his shoulder, that he wouldn’t have to explain himself to anyone-not even the new DCI. He’d entered an altogether different arena, one all his own, where he could make decisions of great moment, devise field operations, and carry them out with the confidence that he would be backed to the hilt, that no operation would ever boomerang on him, bring him face- to-face with a congressional committee and disgrace. As he wrapped up the pre-mission briefing, his cheeks were flushed, his pulse accelerated. There was a heat building inside him that could almost be called arousal.
He tried not to think of his conversation with the defense secretary, tried not to think of Luther LaValle heading up Typhon while he looked helplessly on. He desperately didn’t want to give up control of such a powerful weapon against terrorism, but Halliday hadn’t given him a choice.
One step at a time. If there was a way to foil Halliday and LaValle, he was confident he’d find it. But for the moment, he returned his attention to the job at hand. No one was going to fuck up his plan to capture Jason Bourne. He knew this absolutely. Within hours Bourne would be in custody, down so deep even a Houdini like him would never get out.
Soraya Moore made her way to Veronica Hart’s office. Two men were emerging: Dick Symes, the chief of intelligence, and Rodney Feir, chief of field support. Symes was a short, round man whose red face appeared to have been applied directly to his shoulders. Feir, several years Symes’s junior, was fair-haired, with an athletic body, an expression as closed as a bank vault.
Both men greeted her cordially, but there was a repellent condescension to Symes’s smile.
“Bearding the lioness in her den?” Feir said.
“Is she in a bad mood?” Soraya asked.
Feir shrugged. “Too soon to tell.”
“We’re waiting to see if she can carry the weight of the world on those delicate shoulders,” Symes said. “Just like with you,
Soraya forced a smile though her clenched jaws. “You gentlemen are too kind.”
Feir laughed. “Ready, willing, and able to oblige, ma’am.”
Soraya watched them leave, two peas in a pod. Then she poked her head into the DCI’s inner sanctum. Unlike her predecessor, Veronica Hart maintained an open-door policy when it came to her upper-echelon staff. It engendered a sense of trust and camaraderie that-as she’d told Soraya-had been sorely lacking at CI in the past. In fact, from the vast amount of electronic data she’d pored over the last couple of days it was becoming increasing clear to her that the previous DCI’s bunker mentality had led to an atmosphere of cynicism and alienation among the directorate heads. The Old Man came from the school of letting the Seven vie with one another, complete with duplicity, backstabbing, and, so far as she was concerned, outright objectionable behavior.
Hart was a product of a new era, where the primary watchword was cooperation. The events of 2001 had proved that when it came to the intelligence services, competition was deadly. So far as Soraya was concerned that was all to the good.
“How long have you been at this?” Soraya asked.
Hart glanced out the window. “It’s morning already? I ordered Rob home hours ago.”
“Way past morning.” Soraya smiled. “How about lunch? You definitely need to get out of this office.”
She spread her hands to indicate the queue of dossiers loaded onto her computer. “Too much work-”
“It won’t get done if you pass out from hunger and dehydration.”
“Okay, the canteen-”
“It’s such a fine day, I was thinking of walking to a favorite restaurant of mine.”
Hearing a warning note in Soraya’s otherwise light voice, Hart looked up. Yes, there was definitely something her director of Typhon wanted to talk to her about outside the confines of the CI building.
Hart nodded. “All right. I’ll get my coat.”
Soraya took out her new cell, which she’d picked up at CI this morning. She’d found her old one in the gutter by her car at the Moira Trevor surveillance site, had disposed of it at the office. Now she texted a message.
A moment later Hart’s cell buzzed. The text from Soraya read: VAN X ST. Van across the street.
Hart folded her cell away and launched into a long story at the end of which both women laughed. Then they talked about shoes versus boots, leather versus suede, and which Jimmy Choos they’d buy if they were ever paid enough.
Both women kept an eye on the van without seeming to look at it. Soraya directed them down a side street where the van couldn’t go for fear of becoming conspicuous. They were moving out of the range of its electronics.
“You came from the private sector,” Soraya said. “What I don’t understand is why you’d give up that payday to become DCI. It’s such a thankless job.”
“Why did you agree to be director of Typhon?” Hart asked.
