around.
“Stay here,” Bourne whispered to Kirsch.
“What is it?” There was a slight quaver in Kirsch’s voice, but he looked stalwart enough. “Is Arkadin here?”
“Whatever happens,” Bourne warned him, “stay put. You’ll be safe until I come get you.”
As Bourne moved around the far side of the Egyptian twins, the man entered the gallery. Bourne walked to the side opening and into the room beyond. The man, sauntering nonchalantly, took a quick look around and, as if seeing nothing of interest, followed Bourne.
This gallery held a number of high display cases but was dominated by a five-thousand-year-old stone statue of a woman with half her head sheared off. The antiquity was staggering, but Bourne had no time to appreciate it. Perhaps because it was toward the rear of the museum, the room was deserted, save for Bourne and the man, who was standing between Bourne and the one way in or out of the gallery.
Bourne placed himself behind a two-sided display case with a board in the center on which were hung small artifacts-sacred blue scarabs and gold jewelry. Because of a center gap in the board, Bourne could see the man, but the man remained unaware of his position.
Standing completely still, Bourne waited until the man began to come around the right side of the display case. Bourne moved quickly to his right, around the opposite side of the case, and rushed the man.
He shoved him against the wall, but the man maintained his balance. As he took up a defensive posture he pulled a ceramic knife from a sheath under his armpit, swung it back and forth to keep Bourne at bay.
Bourne feinted right, moved left in a semi-crouch. As he did so, he swung his right arm against the hand wielding the knife. His left hand grabbed the man by his throat. As the man tried to drive his knee into Bourne’s belly, Bourne twisted to partially deflect the blow. In so doing, he lost his block on the knife hand and now the blade swept in toward the side of his neck. Bourne stopped it just before it struck, and there they stood, locked together in a kind of stalemate.
“Bourne,” the man finally got out. “My name is Jens. I work for Dominic Specter.”
“Prove it,” Bourne said.
“You’re here meeting with Egon Kirsch, so you can take his place when Leonid Arkadin comes looking for him.”
Bourne let up on his grip of Jens’s neck. “Put away your knife.”
Jens did as Bourne asked, and Bourne let go of him completely.
“Now where’s Kirsch? I need to get him out of here and safely on a plane back to Washington.”
Bourne led him back into the adjoining gallery, to the statue of the twins.
“Kirsch, the gallery’s clear. You can come out now.”
When the contact didn’t appear, Bourne stepped behind the statue. Kirsch was there all right, crumpled on the floor, a bullet hole in the back of his head.
Semion Icoupov watched the receiver attuned to the electronic bug in Bourne’s passport. As they approached the area of the Egyptian museum, he told the driver of his car to slow down. A keen sense of anticipation coursed through him: He’d decided to take Bourne by gunpoint into his car. It seemed the best way now to get him to listen to what Icoupov had to tell him.
At that moment his cell phone sounded with the ringtone he’d assigned to Arkadin’s number, and while on the lookout for Bourne he put the phone to his ear.
“I’m in Munich,” Arkadin said in his ear. “I rented a car, and I’m driving in from the airport.”
“Good. I’ve got an electronic tag on Jason Bourne, the man Our Friend has sent to retrieve the plans.”
“Where is he? I’ll take care of him,” Arkadin said in his typical blunt way.
“No, no, I don’t want him killed. I’ll take care of Bourne. In the meantime, stay mobile. I’ll be in touch shortly.”
Bourne, kneeling down beside Kirsch, examined the dead body.
“There’s a metal detector out front,” Jens said. “How the hell could someone bring a gun in here? Plus, there was no noise.”
Bourne turned Kirsch’s head so the back of it caught the light. “See here.” He pointed to the entry wound. “And here. There’s no exit wound, which there would have been with a shot fired at close range.” He stood up. “Whoever killed him used a suppressor.” He went out of the gallery with a purposeful stride. “And whoever killed him works here as a guard; the museum’s security personnel are armed.”
“There are three of them,” Jens said, keeping pace behind Bourne.
“Right. Two on the metal detector, one roaming the galleries.”
In the vestibule, the two guards were at their station beside the metal detector. Bourne went up to one of them, said, “I lost my cell phone somewhere in the museum and the guard in the second gallery said she’d help me locate it, but now I can’t find her.”
“Petra,” the guard said. “Yeah, she just took off for her lunch break.”
Bourne and Jens went through the front door, down the steps onto the sidewalk, where they looked left and right. Bourne saw a uniformed female figure walking fast down the block to their right, and he and Jens took off after her.
She disappeared around a corner, and the two men sprinted after her. As they neared the corner Bourne became aware of a sleek Mercedes sedan as it came abreast of them.
Icoupov was appalled to discover Bourne exiting the museum in the company of Franz Jens. Jens’s appearance told him that his enemy wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Jens’s job was to keep Icoupov’s people away from Bourne, so that Bourne had a clear shot at retrieving the attack plans. A certain dread gripped Icoupov. If Bourne was successful all was lost; his enemy would have won. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
Leaning forward in the backseat, he drew a Luger.
“Pick up speed,” he told the driver.
Bracing himself against the door frame, he waited until the last instant before depressing the button that slid the window down. He took aim at the running figure of Jens, but Jens sensed him, slowed as he turned. With Bourne now safely three paces ahead, Icoupov squeezed off two shots in succession.
Jens slipped to one knee, skidded off the sidewalk as he went down. Icoupov fired a third shot, just to be sure Jens didn’t survive the attack, then he slid the window up.
“Go!” he said to the driver.
The Mercedes shot forward, down the street, screeching away from the bloody body tangled in the gutter.
Thirty-Two
ROB BATT sat in his car, a pair of night-vision binoculars to his eyes, chewing over the recent past as if it were a piece of gum that had lost its flavor.
From the time that Batt had been called into Veronica Hart’s office and confronted with his treacherous actions against CI, he’d gone numb. At the moment, he’d felt nothing for himself. Rather, his enmity toward Hart had morphed into pity. Or maybe, he had thought, he pitied himself. Like a novice, he’d stepped into a bear trap; he’d trusted people who never should have been trusted. LaValle and Halliday were going to have their way, he had absolutely no doubt of it. Filled with self-disgust, he’d begun his long night of drinking.
It wasn’t until the morning after that Batt, waking up with the father of all hangovers, realized that there was something he could do about it. He thought about that for some time, while he swallowed aspirins for his pounding head, chasing them down with a glass of water and angostura bitters to calm his rebellious stomach.
It was then that the plan formed in his mind, unfolding like a flower to the rays of the sun. He was going to get his revenge for the humiliation LaValle and Kendall had caused him, and the real beauty part was this: If his scheme worked, if he brought them down, he’d resuscitate his own career, which was on life support.
Now, sitting behind the wheel of a rented car, he swept the street across from the Pentagon, on the lookout for General Kendall. Batt was canny enough to know better than to go after LaValle, because LaValle was too smart to make a mistake. The same, however, couldn’t be said for the general. If Batt had learned one thing from
