pig blood Arkadin‘s bullets had ripped open. He said a silent prayer to the spirit of the pig who‘d given its life to spare his own, and could not help seeing in his mind‘s eye the great carved pig at the pool in Bali.
He unstrapped the Kevlar vest and buckled up, but his gaze never left Karpov‘s prone form. He looked deathly pale, there was blood all over him, and for the first time in Bourne‘s spotty memory he looked truly vulnerable. Bourne found himself wondering whether he‘d looked like that to Moira after he‘d been shot in Tenganan.
As they began to roll down the runway, he had the presence of mind to call Soraya on his sat phone and tell her what happened.
— I‘ll get to General LeBowe, who‘s commanding the allied forces, and tell him to stand down, Soraya said. -He‘s a good man, he‘ll listen. Especially when I tell him that by tomorrow morning we‘ll have enough hard evidence to prove it was Black River, not Iranian terrorists, who fired the Kowsar 3.
— A lot of people in the US government are going to have egg on their faces, Bourne said wearily.
— With what we have, I‘m hoping more than egg for some of them, Soraya said. -Anyway, it wouldn‘t be the first time and it sure as hell won‘t be the last.
He heard three huge blasts from somewhere outside. Looking through the Perspex window he saw Perlis‘s parting gift: the Black Hawk had fired missiles into each of the wells. They were now all on fire. Doubtless this was his way of ensuring that, even if he survived, Arkadin wouldn‘t get his hands on them.
— Jason, you told me Colonel Karpov will be okay, but are you all right?
Bourne, sitting in the cabin of the jet that was just now airborne, had no idea what to say.
The moment Moira ripped open the package Soraya had sent her and pulled out the titanium tags, she knew she had the last piece of physical evidence to take Noah and Black River down. The tags were Black River, all right. After she had decoded them, had gotten the names and serial numbers of the four operatives, she took the tags and Humphry Bamber‘s laptop with Bardem to the only person she knew she could absolutely trust: Frederick Willard.
Willard accepted her evidence with a controlled amount of glee and, it seemed to her, a curious equanimity that spoke of a degree of foreknowledge. In due course Willard presented the evidence against Black River to a multiplicity of sources, to ensure the evidence would not somehow be deliberately mislaid or otherwise disposed of.
Soraya and Amun Chalthoum returned to Cairo. Despite the fact that Soraya‘s people had gathered compelling evidence on the identity of Chalthoum‘s enemy, it was not a happy time for them personally. Soraya knew that he‘d never leave Egypt, that he felt comfortable only in his homeland. Besides, he still had political battles to fight here, and she knew that even if she hadn‘t helped him, he‘d never run away from them. She also knew that she‘d never leave America to live here with him.
— What are we going to do, Amun? she said.
— I don‘t know,
She laughed and shook her head. -You know I wouldn‘t be happy here.
— But think how beautiful our children will be,
She laughed again. -Idiot! She kissed him on the lips. She‘d meant it as a friendly kiss, but it turned into something else, something deeper, something ecstatic, and it lasted a long time.
When at last they broke apart, she said, — I have an idea. We‘ll meet once a year for a week, a different place each year, or wherever you wish.
He looked at her for a long time. —
— Isn‘t this enough? This has to be enough, you must see that.
— I see very clearly. He sighed and held her tight. -We‘ll make it enough, won‘t we?
Three days later the Black River scandal hit the Internet and newswires with the force of a hurricane, overshadowing even the disbanding of the allied forces on Iran‘s borders, which had already been parsed to death by the news media‘s talking heads.
— This is it, Peter Marks told Willard, — both Black River and Secretary Halliday are going down.
He was surprised when Willard gave him an inscrutable look. -I hope you‘re not eager to back out of our deal, princeling.
That cryptic remark became clear when, hours later, Secretary of Defense Bud Halliday held a press conference condemning Black River‘s role in what he termed — a stupefying abuse of power that goes so far beyond the parameters of the company‘s stated mission that steps are being taken to dismantle it. I‘ve spoken personally to the attorney general, who confirmed to me that both civil and criminal charges are at this moment being prepared against members of Black River, including the principals. I want to make perfectly clear to the American people that the NSA hired Black River in good faith on the basis of that organization‘s assurances that they had met with and had come to an agreement with leaders of a pro-democracy group inside Iran. Documentation was provided as to dates, times, names of the principals, and issues discussed, all of which I have turned over to the attorney general as evidence against Black River. I want to assure the American people that at no time did I or anyone in the NSA know that this was a total fabrication on the part of Black River. To that end, a blue-ribbon panel is at this moment being created to investigate the entire matter. My pledge to you today is that the perpetrators of this unthinkable plot will be punished to the full extent of the law.
Not surprisingly, no link was ever discovered between the NSA, let alone Halliday himself, and Black River other than the one he publicly described. And to Marks‘s astonishment, the principals charged by the attorney general were Kerry Mangold and Dick Braun. Nowhere was there a mention of Oliver Liss, the third member of Black River‘s triumvirate.
When Marks asked Willard about this, he received the same inscrutable look, which sent him scrambling to Google stories on Black River. What he discovered, after an exhaustive search, was a small article buried in
