“What is this?” he said, his voice cracking in fright. “What do you want?”
The men said nothing. The one on his right clamped him with a fearsome strength that made him wince. He was too much in shock to cry out, but even if he had had the presence of mind to do so, the incessant clangor of the club would have drowned him out. As it was, he sat petrified as the man on his left jabbed his thigh with a syringe. It was over so quickly, done so discreetly under the table that no one could possibly notice.
It took but thirty seconds for the drug Molnar had been injected with to take effect. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and his body went limp. The two men were prepared for this, and they held him up as they rose, maneuvering him to a standing position.
“Can’t hold his liquor,” one of the men said to a nearby patron. He laughed. “What can you do with people like that?” The patron shrugged and, grinning, returned to his dancing. No one else gave them a second look as they took László Molnar out of Underground.
Spalko was waiting for them in a long, sleek BMW. They bundled the unconscious Molnar into the trunk of the car, then scrambled into the front, one behind the wheel, the other in the front passenger’s seat.
The night was bright and clear. A full moon rode low in the sky. It seemed to Spalko that all he need do was reach out a finger and he could flick it like a marble across the black velvet table of the sky. “How did it go?” he asked.
“Sweet as honey,” the driver replied as he fired the ignition.
Bourne got out of Tysons Corner as quickly as he could. Though he had deemed it a secure place for his rendezvous with Deron, security for him was now a relative word. He drove to the Wal-Mart on New York Avenue. It was in the belly of the city, a busy enough area for him to feel that he would have some anonymity.
He pulled into the lot between 12th and 13th Streets across the avenue and parked. The sky had begun to fill up with clouds; it was ominously dark on the southern horizon. Inside, he picked out clothes, toiletry items, a battery charger for the cell phone, along with a number of other items. Then he searched for a backpack in which he could easily stow everything. Waiting on the checkout line, shuffling along with everyone else, he felt his anxiety mounting. He seemed to look at no one, but in reality he was keeping his eye out for any untoward attention directed his way.
Too many thoughts crowded his mind. He was a fugitive from the Agency with what amounted to a price on his head. He was being stalked by a strangely arresting young man of extraordinary talents who just happened to be one of the most accomplished international assassins in the world. He had lost his two best friends, one of whom appeared to be involved in what was clearly an exceedingly dangerous extracurricular activity.
Thus preoccupied, he missed the chief security guard walking behind him. Early this morning a government agent had briefed him on the fugitive, handing him the same photo he’d seen last night on TV, asking him to keep an eagle eye out for the perp. The agent had explained that his visit was part of the dragnet, him and other CIA agents going around to all the major stores, movie theaters and the like, making sure the security people knew that finding this Jason Bourne should be their number-one priority. The guard felt a combination of pride and fear as he turned right around, went into his office cubicle and dialed the number the agent had given him.
Moments after the guard hung up the phone, Bourne was in the men’s room. Using the electric clipper he had bought, he shaved off almost all his hair. Then he changed clothes, pulling on jeans, a red-and-white checked cowboy shirt with pearl-tone buttons and a pair of Nike running shoes. At the mirror in front of the line of sinks, he pulled out the small pots he had purchased at the makeup counter. He applied the contents of these judiciously, deepening the skin tone of his face. Another product thickened his brows, making them more prominent. The contact lenses Deron had provided turned his gray eyes a dull brown. Occasionally, he was obliged to pause as someone entered or washed up, but mainly the men’s room was deserted.
When he was finished, he stared at himself in the mirror. Not quite satisfied, he gave himself a mole, prominently displayed high up on one cheek. Now the transformation was complete. Donning his backpack, he went out, through the store, heading toward the glass-encased front entrance.
Martin Lindros was in Alexandria, picking up the pieces of the botched termination at Lincoln Fine Tailors when he had gotten the call from the chief security officer at the Wal-Mart on New York Avenue. This morning he had decided that he and Detective Harry Harris would split up, canvassing the area with their respective squads. Lindros knew that Harris was a couple of miles closer than he was because the state policeman had checked in not ten minutes ago. He was in a diabolical quandary. He knew he was going to catch six kinds of hell from the DCI because of the Fine fiasco. If the Old Man found out that he had allowed a state police detective to arrive at Jason Bourne’s last-known location before him, he’d never hear the end of it. It was a bad situation, he thought as he gunned his car. But the overriding priority was to get Bourne. All at once he made his decision. To hell with interdepartmental secrets and jealousies, he thought. He toggled his phone on, got Harris on the line, gave him the Wal-Mart address.
“Harry, listen carefully, you are to make a silent approach. Your job is to secure the area. You are to make sure Webb does not escape, nothing more. Under no circumstances are you to show yourself or try to apprehend him. Is that clear? I’m only minutes behind you.”
I’m not as stupid as I look, Harry Harris thought as he coordinated the three patrol cars he had under his command. And I’m certainly not as stupid as Lindros thinks I am. He’d had more than adequate experience with federal types and he had yet to like what he had seen. The feds had ingrained in them this superior attitude, as if the other police forces were clueless, had to be led around like children. This attitude was like a bone stuck in Harris’ craw. Lindros interrupted him when he had tried to tell him of his own theories, so why should he bother to share them now? Lindros saw him as nothing more than a pack mule, someone so grateful to be chosen to work with the CIA that he would follow orders unfailingly and unquestioningly. It was clear to Harris now that he was totally out of the loop. Lindros had deliberately failed to inform him of the Alexandria sighting. Harris had only learned about it by accident. As he turned into the Wal-Mart parking lot, he decided to take full control of the situation while he still had the chance. His mind made up, he grabbed his two-way radio, began barking orders to his men.
Bourne was near the entrance to the Wal-Mart when three Virginia State Police cars came barreling down New York Avenue, sirens blaring. He shrank back into shadows. There could be no doubt, they were heading directly for the Wal-Mart. He’d been made, but how? No time to worry about that now. He had to work out an escape plan.
The patrol cars screeched to a halt, blocking traffic, causing immediate irate shouts from motorists. Bourne could think of only one reason why they were out of their jurisdiction. They had been recruited by the Agency. The D.C. Metro Police would be livid.
He pulled out Alex’s cell phone, dialed the police emergency line.
“This is Detective Morran of the Virginia State Police,” he said. “I want to speak to a district commander pronto.”
“This is Third District Commander Burton Philips,” a steely voice said in his ear.
“Listen, Philips, you boys were told in no uncertain terms to keep your noses out of our business. Now I find your cruisers showing up at the Wal-Mart on New York Avenue and I—”
“You’re in the heart of the district, Morran. What the hell are you doing poaching on my jurisdiction?”
“That’s my business,” Bourne said in his nastiest voice. “Just get on the horn and pull your goddamned boys out of my hair.”
“Morran, I don’t know where you get your shit attitude, but it won’t play with me. I swear I’ll be there in three minutes to tear your balls off myself!”
By this time the street was sw
arming with cops. Instead of retreating back to the store, Bourne, keeping his left knee rigid, limped calmly out along with perhaps a dozen other shoppers. Half of the contingent of cops, led by a tall stoop-shouldered detective with a haggard face, quickly scanned the faces of the dozen, Bourne included, as they rushed inside the store. The remaining cops fanned out in the parking lot. Some were securing New York Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets, others were busy ensuring that newly arriving patrons remained in their cars; still others were on their walkie-talkies, coordinating traffic.
Instead of heading for his car, Bourne turned to his right, went around the corner toward the loading dock at the rear of the building where the deliveries came in. Up ahead, he could see three or four semis parked, in the process of being unloaded. Diagonally across the street was Franklin Park. He set off in that direction.
Someone shouted at him. He kept on walking as if he hadn’t heard. Sirens screamed and he glanced at his watch. Commander Burton Philips was right on time. He was halfway down the side of the building when the shouts came again, more commanding. Then there was a welter of harsh voices, raised in heated expletive-laden argument.
He turned, saw the stoop-shouldered detective, his service revolver out. Behind the detective came running the tall, imposing figure of Commander Philips, silver hair shining, his heavy-jowled face in high color from exertion and rage. In the fashion of dignitaries the world over, he was flanked by a pair of heavyweights armed with scowls as big as their shoulders. They had their right hands on their sidearms, apparently ready to blast to smithereens anyone foolish enough to intervene in their commander’s wishes.
“You in charge of these Virginia troopers?” Philips called.
“State police,” the stoop-shouldered detective said. “And, yeah, I’m in charge.” He frowned as he saw the D.C. Metro uniforms. “What in hell are you doing here? You’ll muck up my operation.”
“Your operation!” Commander Philips was apoplectic. “Get the hell out of my swamp, you fucking hick bastard!”
The detective’s narrow face went white. “Who are you calling a fucking hick bastard?”
Bourne left them to it. The park was out now; having come under the detective’s scrutiny, he needed a more immediate means of escape. Slipping to the end of the building, he went down the row of semis until he found one that had already been unloaded. He climbed into the cab. The key was in the ignition and he turned it over. With a basso profundo rumble, the truck started up.
“Hey, where ya think you’re goin’, dude?”
The driver yanked open the door. He was a huge man with a neck like a tree stump and arms to match. As he swung up, he grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from a hidden berth above his head. Bourne slammed a balled fist into the bridge of his nose. Blood flew, the driver’s eyes went out of focus and he lost his grip on the shotgun.
“Sorry, dude,” Bourne said as he delivered a blow designed to render even a man of the trucker’s oxlike size unconscious. Hauling him into the passenger’s seat by the back of his studded belt, Bourne slammed the door closed and put the semi in gear.
At that moment, he became aware of a new presence on the scene. A youngish man had come between the two law-enforcement antagonists, pushing them roughly apart. Bourne recognized him: Martin Lindros, the Agency’s DDCI. So the Old Man had put Lindros in domestic charge of the sanction. That was bad news. Through Alex, Bourne knew that Lindros was exceptionally bright; he would not be so easy to outfox, as evidenced by the tightly designed net in Old Town.
All this was technically moot now because Lindros had spotted the semi moving out of the parking lot and was trying to wave it down.
“No one leaves the area!” he shouted.
Bourne ignored him, depressed the accelerator. He knew he couldn’t afford to have a face to face with Lindros; with his field expertise the man might see through his disguise.
Lindros drew his gun. Bourne could see him running toward the galvanized steel gates through which Bourne would have to pass, waving and shouting as he went.
Up ahead, responding to his screamed orders, two Virginia state cops stationed there hastily shut the gates, while an Agency vehicle plowed its way past the blockade of New York Avenue, on an intercept course with the semi.
Bourne jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, and like a wounded behemoth, the semi lurched forward. At the last moment, the cops leaped out of the way as he barreled through the gates, ripping them off their hinges so that they spun high in the air, crashed down on either side of him. He downshifted, turning hard to the right, heading up the street at an ever-increasing speed.
Glancing in the driver’s oversized side mirror, he could see the Agency car slowing down. The passenger’s door popped open and Lindros leaped in, slamming the door shut after him. The car took off like a rocket, gaining on the semi with little difficulty. Bourne knew that he could not outrun the Agency car with this lumbering beast, but its size, a drawback as far as speed was concerned, could be an asset in other ways.
He allowed the car to tailgate him. Without warning, it accelerated faster, coming up on his side of the cab. He saw Martin Lindros, his lips compressed in a line of concentration, holding his gun in one hand, his arm locked, steadying it with the other. Unlike actors in action films, he knew how to fire a gun from a speeding vehicle.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger, Bourne swerved the semi to the left. The Agency vehicle slammed into its side; Lindros put his gun up as the driver fought to keep the car away from the line of parked cars on the other side.
The moment the driver was able to swerve back into the street, Lindros began firing at the semi’s cab. His angle was not good and he was being jolted incessantly, but the fusillade was enough to make Bourne turn the cab to the right. One bullet had smashed his side window and two others had penetrated the backseat, lodging in the trucker’s side.
“Goddammit, Lindros,” Bourne said. Dire as his circumstances were, he did not want this innocent man’s blood on his hands. He was already heading west; George Washington University Hospital was on 23rd Street, not that far away. He made a right, then a left onto K Street, thundering along, sounding his air horn as he went through traffic lights. A motorist on 18th, possibly half-asleep at the wheel, missed the warning, slammed head-on into the right rear of the semi. Bourne slewed dangerously, fought the truck back to center, kept going. Lindros’ car was still behind him, stuck there because K Street, a divided thoroughfare with a planted median, was too narrow for the driver to creep up his side.
By the time he crossed 20th Street, he could see the underpass that would take him beneath Washington Circle. The hospital was a block away from there. Glancing behind him, he saw that the Agency car was no longer behind him. He had been planning to take 22nd Street down to the hospital, but just as he was about the make the left, he saw the Agency car come speeding toward him on 22nd. Lindros leaned out the window and began to fire in his methodical manner.
Bourne tramped on the gas and the truck leaped forward. He was now committed to going through the underpass, coming around to the hospital on the far side. But as he approached the underpass, he realized something was wrong. The tunnel beneath Washington Circle was completely dark; no daylight at all showed at the far end. That could mean only one thing: a roadblock had been set up, a fortress of vehicles set across both lanes of K Street.
He entered the underpass at speed, downshifting, stamping down hard on the air brakes only when he was engulfed in darkness. At the same time, he kept the heel of his hand on the air horn. The screaming noise ricocheted off the stone and concrete until it became deafening, concealing the shriek of the tires as Bourne turned the wheel hard to the left, rolling the cab of the truck over the divider so that the vehicle was turned at right angles to the road. He was out of the cab in an instant, sprinting the north wall behind the protection of the last car to come barreling through in the other direction. It had stopped for a moment as the driver rubber-necked the acciden
t, then as more police arrived it had taken off. The semi was between him and his pursuers, stretched from wall to wall across both lanes of K Street. He scrabbled around for the steel maintenance ladder bolted to the tunnel wall, leaped up it and began to climb just as floodlights were switched on. He turned his head away, closed his eyes and kept climbing.
A few moments later he saw the lights illuminating the truck and the roadbed beneath it. Bourne, almost to the curved top of the underpass, could make out Martin Lindros. He spoke into a walkie-talkie, and floodlights came on from the opposite direction. They had the semi in a pincer grip. Agents were running toward the truck from both ends of K Street, guns at the ready.
“Sir, there’s someone in the truck’s cab.” The agent moved closer. “He’s been shot; he’s bleeding pretty bad.”
Lindros was running, his face bursting into the floodlit field, lined with tension. “Is it Bourne?”
High above them, Bourne had gained the maintenance hatch. He slid back the bolt, opened it, found himself amidst the decorative trees that lined Washington Circle. All around him, traffic raced, a relentless procession of blurred motion that never ceased. In the tunnel below him, the wounded trucker was being taken to the nearby hospital. Now it was time for Bourne to save himself.
Chapter Nine
Khan had accumulated too much respect for David Webb’s skill for vanishing to have wasted time trying to find him in the swirling mass of people in Old Town. Instead, he had concentrated on the Agency men, shadowing them back to Lincoln Fine Tailors, where they met with Martin Lindros for the sorry debriefing following the botched termination. He observed them talking to the tailor. In accordance with standard intimidation practices, they had taken him out of his own environment—in this case, his shop—stuffing him into the backseat of one of their cars, where he had been detained without explanation, squeezed between two stone-faced agents. From what he had gathered from the conversation he overheard between Lindros and the agents, they had gotten nothing of substance from the tailor. He claimed the agents had arrived at his shop with such speed that Webb had had no time to tell him why he had come. As a consequence, the agents recommended cutting him loose. Lindros had agreed, but after the tailor had returned to his shop, Lindros had posted two new agents in an unmarked car across the street just in case Webb tried to contact him a second time.