“ I’vebeen tracking you,” she said. “Once I had identified the connection between Semid Abdul-Qahhar and Severus Domna, I knew our paths were going to cross. Your false name didn’t fool me; I’d seen your photo and matched it to ones we have in our files.”
“So you didn’t care that I ran out on you.”
“Frankly, I expected it.”
“I owe you for the check.”
She grinned. “My treat.”
“Now that I’m taking you in with me.”
She laughed softly. “Everything my superiors think they know about you is wrong.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” he said.
Within twenty minutes, they had reached the area around the El-Gabal complex. Lights were blazing inside, though it was after 2 AM. Bourne, crouched in shadow, observed the uptick in both activity and guards. The loading dock and surrounding area were crawling with armed men. Trucks had not yet pulled up, but the first of them was rumbling down the street. He had less time than he had thought, an hour at the outside, probably less.
Rebeka, crouched in the shadows beside him, said, “You’re sure you can get us inside? The building is crawling with armed guards.”
Bourne unzipped the duffel. “Watch me,” he said.
Boris sat at an all-night café with his left leg up on a chair. The doctor he had gotten out of bed to clean and dress his wound insisted on an outrageous sum of money, even though he knew Boris from previous visits. Boris was beyond caring.
When he had left the synagogue, he had spent a dizzying and unsuccessful half hour scouring the maze of surrounding streets in Bab Touma for Beria. His heart was a black pit in which he wanted to bury the SVR director. Then, like a switch being thrown, something changed. Most likely it was the pain, which had become so severe he could hardly stand on his left leg, and, with the adrenaline draining out of him, he felt overcome by exhaustion. Beria could wait; he needed to take care of himself.
Now, sitting with a cup of thick Turkish coffee laced with cardamom and a small plate of sticky sweets, he popped pills in his mouth—a painkiller and an antibiotic—and, with a grimace, swallowed them dry. He sipped his coffee, which warmed him heart and soul, and watched the intermittent comings and goings on the street.
After some consideration he thought that breaking off his pursuit had little to do with pain; he had endured much worse and kept going. He sensed that his change of heart stemmed, instead, from his reunion with Jason Bourne. That brief encounter had brought home that his life—his and Jason’s—did not have to be predicated solely on a chain of affronts and retributions. There could, in fact, be a human element, and, after all, it was friends like Jason, even if Jason was the only one, who made this life bearable. Briefly, he thought about Jason, wondering where he was. It didn’t matter; Boris was in no shape to be of help to him. Besides, Jason worked best when he was on his own.
Boris sighed and took a bite of a sweet, holding it in his mouth while the paper-thin layers of pastry dissolved and the honey melted on his tongue. He did not want to turn into a modern-day Ahab. He had made promises to himself, true enough, but their fulfillment could wait for another time, another place.
Wasn’t revenge a dish best served cold?
Removing the length of electrical wire and the pickax from the duffel, Bourne attached the haft to one end of the longer coil of rope. He stood up, moving several paces away from Rebeka. They were both well in the penumbra of shadow cast by a stand of royal palm trees. The west side of the El-Gabal building was in front of them, the palms behind them and, beyond, a bank building, dark and brooding. Security lights blazed on either corner of El-Gabal, but there was a narrow stripe of shadow down the center of the building’s side.
As Bourne began to swing the rope with the pickax at its end, Rebeka saw what he was about to do. “There may be guards on the roof,” she said.
When Bourne said, “I’m counting on it,” she shot him a quizzical look.
Bourne waited until the throaty roar of the trucks’ exhaust rose through the night, then whirled the pickax over his head and let it go, watched it as it rose up into the night and landed on the roof. Whatever sound it made was masked by the burble of the trucks. Tugging on the rope, he pulled the pickax toward him until its curved head caught in the crack between the roof and the low parapet wall. He strapped the duffel across his back, and, without another word to Rebeka, began his ascent of the strip of shadowed wall.
When he was halfway up, she took hold of the rope and hauled herself up after him. The noise from the trucks had ceased, making them hypervigilant about any noise whatsoever. Bourne reached the parapet, grabbed hold of it with one hand, and rose up high enough to peek over the top. Two guards were visible. One was standing in the center of what looked like an enormous target painted onto the flat roof. Outlining its circumference were a series of small blue LED lights, which burned very brightly. The second guard was at the rear of the roof, his hands on the parapet as he leaned over, staring down at the increased activity on the loading dock.
Bourne launched himself over the parapet and crouched down onto the roof. A moment later, Rebeka joined him.
“They’ve got a helipad up here,” she whispered in his ear. “The lights are on so they must be expecting a helicopter.”
He nodded. “It looks like this is the way the real Semid Abdul-Qahhar is going to make his exit.”
To one side of the helipad was a glass-covered hatch, large enough so that both men and matériel could be taken from inside the building to the helicopter, or vice versa. It was a neat solution to arriving and leaving quickly. Bourne signaled Rebeka to take the guard at the rear while he handled the one at the helipad.
The roof, made of a gravelly substance, was dotted with risers, water tanks, vents, and elevator and HVAC housings. He crabbed his way from one of these to the next. This was the easy part because he could keep to the shadows cast by the structures. The circle of light cast by the LEDs was another story entirely. As he came to rest behind the elevator housing, he picked up a loose piece of gravel and threw it so that it hit the side of a water tank twenty feet to his right.
The guard turned his head instantly and, unstrapping his AK-74, came cautiously toward the spot where the gravel had struck the tank. He walked around the tank. As he turned his back on Bourne’s position, Bourne sprinted across the intervening space, leapt onto the guard’s back, and, wrapping his arm around the guard’s neck, snapped it. He lay the limp body down and took the automatic weapon from nerveless hands.
Scuttling back around the water tank, he made for the rear of the roof. He saw the second guard sprawled on the gravel. Above him was Rebeka, but she wasn’t alone. A third guard, one hidden from both of them until now, was creeping up on her. Not wanting to fire his weapon, he ran toward her, but the instant the third guard was within arm’s length, she whirled, struck away the muzzle of his AK-74, drove her fist into his gut, and grabbed him by the throat. The guard arched back, straining to fire his weapon so as to alert the guards on the loading dock. Rebeka was forced to relinquish her grip on his throat in order to pry open his hold on the assault rifle. As it clattered to the rooftop, something flashed in his hand and drove inward. Rebeka slipped her arm through his, twisted sharply, fracturing his elbow. The guard groaned, his knees giving way, and she slammed the heel of her hand into the base of his nose, jamming the cartilage back into his brain. He keeled over, dead before his body hit the gravel.
Bourne was at Rebeka’s side. She grinned up into his face, then her eyes went out of focus and she slid into his arms, her head flung back, her face to the starry night. He saw the slick blackness, felt the warm flow of blood coming from the knife wound in her side. She was panting, her lips parted.
He lay her down and began to part her clothes in order to see the extent of her wound.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “You have a deadline to make. I won’t be the reason you don’t make it.”