Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception - Страница 53

Never.

His knuckles were split and bloodied but he scarcely noticed. As he systematically pummeled the man beneath him he was overcome with images of his childhood, of the young ashen-faced boy he‘d once been, who‘d been terrorized by his mother, locked in her closet for hours, sometimes for days with scurrying, avid rats that had finally eaten three toes off his left foot. Lev Antonin‘s boy had put his faith in Arkadin and now he was dead. This outcome was unconscionable, and the only possible redemption was Oserov‘s death.

And he would have killed Oserov, too, without remorse or consideration of the consequences of beating to death someone owned body and soul by Dimitri Maslov, head of the Kazanskaya. In a murderous rage, Arkadin cared nothing for Maslov, the Kazanskaya, Moscow, or anything else. All he could see was that face in the closet upstairs. Whether it was the boy‘s or his own he could no longer tell.

Then something hard and heavy hit him in the side of the head and everything went black.

23

MOIRA LIVED in a Georgetown town house of red-brown brick on Cambridge Place, NW, near Dumbarton Oaks. More than a home, it was her sanctuary, a place where she could curl up on the chenille sofa, a snifter of amber brandy in her hand, and lose herself in a good novel. Traveling almost constantly, such nights had become rarer and rarer, making them, when they did come, all the more precious.

Now, as twilight gave way to a glittering evening, she was haunted by the thought that someone was watching her house. Which was why she circled the block twice in a new rental car, because if the house really was under surveillance a second drive-by would surely arouse suspicion. As she went by the second time, she heard a car start up and, checking the rearview mirror, she saw a black Lincoln Town Car pull out of its parking spot almost directly across from her house and take up position several car-lengths behind her. She smiled to herself as she wove her way through Georgetown, whose maze-like streets she knew intimately.

She‘d left Bamber at Lamontierre‘s house. He‘d offered to come along even though he was clearly scared to death. -I appreciate the offer, she had said in all seriousness, — but you can help me most by staying safe and sound. I have no intention of allowing Noah‘s people anywhere near you.

Now as she took the Town Car through a series of evasive maneuvers she was doubly glad she‘d made him stay away, even though this plan would have been far easier to execute with someone else driving the car. They could have left her off and driven on, leading the Town Car away while she doubled back to her house to fetch her Black River laptop. But nothing came easy in life, at least not in her life and not in anyone else‘s she knew, so why bother complaining about it. Take the hand you‘re dealt and then finesse it, that was what she‘d always done, that was what she‘d do now.

Night closed in as she drove down streets that became narrower and narrower as they approached the canal. Finally, she wheeled around a corner, made another left, braked to a halt, and, with the headlights still blazing, got out of the car in time for the driver of the Lincoln, its headlights off, to catch a glimpse of her as it nosed around the corner.

It came to an abrupt halt just as she ducked into a doorway, and two men in dark suits got out and jogged down the cobbles toward the spot where she‘d disappeared. They discovered a metal door deep in the shadows, and drew their snub-nosed sidearms. The one with a shaved head pressed his back against the building‘s brickwork while the other one tried the knob. Shaking his head, he raised his right leg and kicked the door open so hard it slammed back against the inside wall. Weapon at the ready, he stepped aggressively into the stygian blackness. As he did so, the door swung hard into his face, breaking his nose. His jaws clamped shut, his teeth snapping off the tip of his tongue.

His howl of pain was short-lived. Moira drove a knee into his groin and, as he reflexively bent double, brought her joined fists down onto the back of his neck.

The bald man heard a muffled metallic clang, and without further hesitation, he stepped into the open doorway and fired three shots pointblank into the blackness to center, right, and left. He heard nothing, saw nothing, and, in a tense crouch, made his run into the interior.

Moira slammed the spade-shaped end of the shovel she‘d stumbled over into the back of the bald man‘s head. He pitched headfirst onto the bare concrete floor. As she picked her way through the darkness and out into the gathering night, she heard the sound of police sirens. Doubtless, someone had heard the shots and called 911.

She walked back to her car at a brisk pace, an absorbed look on her face, as if she were late for a dinner rendezvous. It was crucial now to appear normal, to blend into the heavy traffic on M Street, until she lost herself amid the cobbled streets, shining in the light of old-fashioned street lamps.

Another ten minutes brought her back to her block, which she circled warily, on the lookout for another car with the lights off, someone in it, a sudden movement inside so he wouldn‘t be seen. But all appeared normal and serene.

She parked and took another look around before mounting the steps to her front door. Turning the lock, she opened the door and, drawing her Lady Hawk from its thigh holster, stepped inside. Closing the door softly behind her, she double-locked it, then stood for some time with her back against it, listening to the house breathe. One by one she identified the homey sounds of the hot-water circulator, the refrigerator condenser, the heating fan. Then she sniffed the air to see if there was the trace of an odor that didn‘t belong to her or her things.

Satisfied at last, she flipped the switch and the entryway and hallway were flooded with a warm, yellowish light. She let out the long breath she‘d been unconsciously holding in. Moving silently through the house, she checked every room, every closet on the ground floor; she made sure the door to the basement was securely locked. Then she ascended the stairs. Halfway up, she heard a noise and froze in midstep, her heart hammering in her breast. It came again, and she identified it as a branch scratching at the rear wall, where a narrow alley ran behind the row of town houses.

Resuming her climb, she took the staircase step by step, counting down from the top to make certain she bypassed the one tread that creaked. At the top of the stairs, something happened. The hot-water circulator cycled off, and the resulting silence seemed to her eerie and ominous. Then, like an old friend, it returned, reassuring her.

As she had on the ground floor, she moved from room to room, turning on lights, checking behind furniture, even, she thought, idiotically, under her bed. There was nothing and no one. The window to the left of her bed was unlatched, and she slid the semicircular tab home.

Her Black River laptop was on the back shelf of her closet, under a line of shoe boxes. Picking her way across the room, she turned the doorknob, pulled the door open, and stepped in, leading with her weapon. She swept one hand across her hanging clothes, dresses, suits, skirts, and jackets all familiar to her, but which had now taken on a sinister aspect as curtains behind which someone could hide.

No one jumped out at her, causing her to expel a small laugh of relief. Her gaze moved upward to the line of shoe boxes on the back shelf above her hanging clothes, and there was the laptop just as she‘d left it. She was reaching up to grab it when she heard the sharp crackle of breaking window glass and the dull thud as someone landed on the carpet. She whirled, stepped forward, only to have the closet door slam shut in her face.

Her hand went to the doorknob and pushed, but something was keeping the door shut, even when she put her shoulder to it. Stepping back, she fired off four shots at the knob. The sharp scent of cordite tickled her nose, and her ears rang with noise. She pushed the door again. It was still firmly shut, but now she had other things to think about. The light filtering in from the tiny gap between door and frame was systematically vanishing. Someone was taping up the gap.

And then, down at floor level, the slightly wider gap began to go dark, except for a space that was soon filled by the open end of the crevice attachment of her vacuum cleaner. A moment later a portable generator coughed to life and, with a mounting horror, Moira sensed the oxygen in the closet being sucked out. Carbon monoxide was being pumped in through her own vacuum cleaner attachment.

When Peter Marks found the Metro police report on Moira Trevor he was dumbfounded. He‘d just returned from the White House, where he‘d had a tenminute evening interview with the president regarding the vacancy at the top of CI. He knew he wasn‘t the only candidate, but no one else at CI was talking. Still, he assumed the other six heads of the CI directorates were in line for similar interviews, if they hadn‘t already answered the president‘s summons. Of them all, he figured Dick Symes, the chief of the Intelligence Directorate, who was the interim DCI, would get the post. Symes was older, with more experience than Peter himself, who had only recently risen to the hallowed level of chief of operations under Veronica Hart‘s tragically short tenure as DCI. She hadn‘t even had time to vet candidates for deputy director, and now she never would. On the other hand, unlike Symes, he‘d been handpicked and trained by the Old Man himself, and he knew the reverence in which the president held the longtime DCI.