“My fellow citizens of the world,” he began in the strong, declarative voice honed at many a successful primary race, smoothed of any remaining rough edges by numerous press conferences and richly burnished by intimate speeches in the Rose Garden and at Camp David, “this is a great day for world peace and for the international fight for justice and freedom against the forces of violence and terrorism.
“Today, we once again stand at a crossroads in the history of the world. Will we allow all of humankind to be plunged into the darkness of fear and neverending war or will we band together to strike at the heart of our enemies wherever they may hide?
“The forces of terrorism are arrayed against us. And make no mistake, terrorism is a modern-day hydra, a beast of many heads. We have no illusions about the difficult road ahead of us, but we will not be deterred in our desire to move forward in a single concerted effort. Only united can we destroy the many-headed beast. Only united do we stand a chance of making our world a safe place for each and every citizen.”
At the end of the president’s speech there was great applause. Then he yielded the microphone to the Russian president, who said more or less the same things, also to great applause. The four Arab leaders spoke one by one, and though their words were more circumspect, they too reiterated the burning need for a united effort at stamping out terrorism once and for all.
A short question and answer period ensued, after which the six men stood side by side for their photo op. It was an impressive sight, made even more memorable when they grasped one another’s hands and raised their arms aloft in an unprecedented display of solidarity between the West and the East.
As the crowd slowly filed out, the mood was jubilant. And even the most jaded journalists and photographers agreed that the summit had gotten off to a sterling start.
“Do you realize that I’m on my third pair of Latex gloves?”
Stepan Spalko was at the scarred and blood-stained table, sitting on the chair Annaka had used the day before. In front of him was a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, for which he’d developed a taste during his long convalescence between operations in the United States. The sandwich was on a plate of fine bone china, and at his right hand was a stemmed glass of finest crystal filled with a vintage Bordeaux.
“No matter. The hour grows late.” He tapped the crystal of the chronometer on his wrist. “It occurs to me now, Mr. Bourne, that my marvelous entertainment is at an end. I must tell you what a wonderful night you’ve provided me.” He barked a laugh. “Which is more than I did for you, I daresay.”
His sandwich had been cut into two equal triangles, exactly to his specifications. He picked one up and bit into it, chewed slowly and luxuriously. “You know, Mr. Bourne, a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich is no good unless the bacon has been freshly cooked and, if possible, thickly sliced.”
He swallowed, put down the sandwich and, grasping the crystal glass, swirled a measure of Bordeaux around in his mouth. Then he pushed back his chair, rose and went over to where Jason Bourne sat strapped into the dentist’s chair. His head was lolled on his chest and there were blood spatters in a two-foot radius around him.
Spalko used a knuckle to lift Bourne’s head. His eyes, dulled with endless pain, were sunken into dark circles and his face appeared drained of blood. “Before I go, I must tell you the irony of it all. The hour of my triumph is upon us. It doesn’t matter what you know. It doesn’t matter whether you talked or not now. All that matters is that I have you here, safe and unable to act against me in any way.” He laughed. “What a terrible price you’ve paid for your silence. And for what, Mr. Bourne? Nothing!”
Khan saw the guard standing in the corridor beside the elevator and went cautiously back down toward the door to the staircase. Through the wire-mesh reinforced glass panel he could see a pair of armed guards talking and smoking in the stairwell. Every fifteen seconds one or the other would glance out through the glass panel, checking the sixth-floor corridor. The stairs were too well defended.
He reversed himself. Striding down the corridor at a normal and relaxed pace, he drew the air gun he purchased from Oszkar and held it at his side. The instant the guard saw him, Khan raised the air gun, shot a dart into his neck. The man collapsed where he stood, rendered unconscious by the chemical in the dart’s tip.
Khan broke into a run. He began to drag the guard into the men’s room when the door opened and a second guard appeared, his machine pistol aimed at Khan’s chest.
“Hold it right there,” he said. “Throw down your weapon and let me see your empty hands.”
Khan did as he was ordered. As he held out his hands for the guard to inspect, he touched a hidden spring-loaded sheath attached to the inner side of his wrist. The guard clapped one hand to his throat. The dart felt like an insect bite. But all at once he found that he couldn’t see. That was the last thought he had before he, too, sank into unconsciousness.
Khan dragged both bodies into the men’s room, then hit the call button on the wall panel. A moment later the two sets of doors opened as the elevator cab arrived. He got in and pressed the button for the fourth floor. The elevator began to descend, but as it passed the fifth floor, it jolted to a halt, hanging suspended. He pressed several floor buttons to no avail. The elevator was stuck, no doubt deliberately so. He knew he had very little time to escape from the trap Spalko had set for him.
Climbing up onto the handrail that ran around the cab, he stretched upward toward the maintenance hatch. He was about to open it when he stopped and peered more closely. What was that metallic glint? He took out the mini-light from the kit Oszkar had given him, shone it on the screw in the farthest corner. There was a bit of copper wire wrapped around it. It was booby-trapped! Khan knew that the moment he tried to take off the hatch it would detonate a charge placed on top of the cab.
At that moment, a lurch dislodged him from his perch and the elevator cab, shuddering, began to plummet down the shaft.
Spalko’s phone rang and he stepped out of the interrogation room. Sunlight spilled through the windows of his bedroom as he walked into it, feeling the warmth on his face.
“Yes?”
A voice spoke in his ear, the words accelerating his pulse. He was here! Khan was here! His hand clenched into a fist. He had them both now. His work here was almost done. He ordered his men onto the third floor, then called the main security desk and ordered them to begin a fire drill that would in short order evacuate all normal Humanistas personnel from the building. Within twenty seconds, the fire alarm shrilled and all through the building, men and women left their offices and proceeded in an orderly fashion to the stairwells, where they were escorted out onto the street. By this time Spalko had called his driver and his pilot, telling the latter to ready the jet that had been waiting for him in the Humanistas hangar at Ferihegy Airport. Per his instructions, it had already been fueled and inspected, a flight plan logged in with the tower.
There was one more call he needed to make before he returned to Jason Bourne.
“Khan’s in the building,” he said when Annaka answered the phone. “He’s trapped in the elevator and I’ve sent men to deal with him if he manages to escape, but you know him better than anyone.” He grunted at her response. “What you’re saying isn’t a surprise. Deal with it as you see fit.”
Khan hit the Emergency Stop button with the heel of his hand, but nothing happened, the elevator continued its precipitous descent. With one of the tools from Oszkar’s kit, he quickly pried open the display panel. Inside was a nest of wires, but he immediately saw that the wires to the emergency break had been disconnected. Deftly, he fitted them back into their receptacles, and at once with a squeal of sparking metal the elevator cab lurched to a halt as the emergency brake kicked in. As the cab hung, stalled, between the third and fourth floors, Khan continued to work on the wiring with a breathless intensity.
On the third floor Spalko’s armed men reached the outer elevator doors. Employing a fire key, they manu
ally pried open the doors, exposing the shaft. Just above them, they could see the bottom of the stalled elevator cab. They had their orders; they knew what to do. Aiming their machine pistols, they opened fire in a massed fusillade that chewed up the bottom third of the elevator cab. No one could survive such massed firepower.
Khan, spreadeagled, hands and feet pressed hard against the walls of the elevator shaft’s setback, watched the lower part of the cab fall away. He was protected from the ricochet of bullets both by the doors of the cab and by the shaft itself. He’d rewired the panel to allow him to open the cab doors just enough to squeeze out. He’d been squirming into position in the setback, climbing to approximately the height of the cab’s top when the hail of automatic fire began.
Now, in the echoing aftermath of the percussion, he heard a buzzing as of a swarm of bees loosed from their hive. Looking up, he saw a pair of rappeling lines snaking down from the top of the shaft. Moments later two heavily armed guards in riot gear came down the lines, hand over hand.
One of them saw him and swung his machine pistol toward him. Khan fired his air gun, and the guard’s weapon dropped from his numbed fingers. As the second guard aimed his weapon, Khan leaped out, grabbed hold of the unconscious man, who by dint of his rappeling harness was held fast to the line. The second guard, faceless and anonymous in his riot helmet, fired at Khan, who swung his line companion around, using his body as a shield to stop the bullets. He kicked out, snapping the machine pistol out of the second guard’s grasp.
They both landed atop the elevator cab together. The small pale square of deadly C4 explosive was taped to the center of the maintenance hatch where it had been hastily wired to set the booby trap. Khan could see that the screws had been loosened; if either of them inadvertently struck the hatch plate, dislodging it even a little, the entire cab would be blown to pieces.
Khan squeezed the trigger on his air gun, but the guard, who had seen how he’d incapacitated his partner, dived out of the way, rolled and kicked upward, knocking the weapon out of Khan’s grasp. At the same time he grabbed his partner’s machine pistol. Khan trod down hard on his hand, grinding with his heel in an attempt to dislodge the weapon from the guard’s grip. But now there were bursts of automatic fire from the guards on the third floor, who were firing up the shaft.
The guard, taking advantage of the distraction, smashed Khan’s leg sideways and wrested the machine pistol from him. As he fired, Khan leaped off the cab, sliding down the side of the shaft to the place where the emergency brake was extended. Moving back from the hail of gunfire, he worked on the brake mechanism. The guard on the roof of the cab had followed his progress and was now stretched out on his belly, aiming the machine pistol at Khan. As he began firing, Khan was able to release the emergency brake mechanism. The elevator cab plunged down the shaft, taking the shocked guard with it.
Khan leaped for the nearest rappeling rope and clambered up it. He reached the fourth floor and was applying the AC current to the magnetic lock when the elevator cab impacted with the bottom of the shaft in the sub-basement. The shock dislodged the maintenance hatch and the C4 detonated. The explosion shot up the shaft just as the mag lock circuit was disrupted and Khan tumbled through the door.
The fourth-floor vestibule was clad entirely in café-au-lait marble. Frosted-glass sconces provided soft indirect lighting. As Khan picked himself up, he saw Annaka not five yards from him, fleeing down the hall. Clearly, she was surprised and, quite possibly, he thought, not a little frightened. Obviously, neither she nor Spalko had counted on him making it to the fourth floor. He laughed silently as he set off in pursuit. He couldn’t blame them; it was quite a feat he’d performed.
Up ahead, Annaka went through a door. As she slammed it shut behind her, Khan heard the lock click into place. He knew he needed to get to Bourne and Spalko, but Annaka had become a wild card he couldn’t afford to ignore. He had a set of picks out even as he reached the locked door. Inserting one, he finessed out the grooves of the tumbler. It took him less than fifteen seconds to open the door, hardly time enough for Annaka to have made it to the other side of the room. She threw him a frightened glance over her shoulder before she slammed the door shut behind her.
In retrospect, he should have been warned by her expression. Annaka never showed fear. He was, however, alerted by the ominous room, which was small and square, as featureless as it was windowless. It appeared unfinished, freshly painted a dead white, even the wide, carved moldings. There was no furniture, nothing at all in the space. But his alarm arrived too late, for the soft hiss had already begun. Peering up, he saw the vents high in the walls, from which a gas was being discharged. Holding his breath, he went to the far door. He picked the lock, but still the door wouldn’t open. It must be bolted from the outside, he thought, as he ran back to the door through which he’d entered the room. He turned the knob only to find that it, too, had been bolted from the outside.
The gas was starting to permeate the barred room. He was neatly trapped.
Next to the crumb-spattered bone china plate and the stemmed glass in which remained the dregs of the Bordeaux, Stepan Spalko had arrayed the items he had taken from Bourne: the ceramic gun, Conklin’s cell phone, the wad of money and the switchblade knife.
Bourne, battered and bloody, had been deep in delta meditation for hours now, first to survive the waves of agony that had rippled through his body at every new twist and jab of Spalko’s implements, then to protect and conserve his inner core of energy, and finally to throw off the debilitating effects of the torture and to build up his strength.
Thoughts of Marie, Alison and Jamie flickered through his emptied mind like fitful flames, but what had come to him most vividly was his years in sun-drenched Phnom Penh. His mind, calmed to the point of complete tranquility, resurrected Dao, Alyssa and Joshua. He was tossing a baseball to Joshua, showing him how to use the glove he’d brought from the States, when Joshua turned to him and said, “Why did you try to replicate us? Why didn’t you save us?” He became confused for a moment, until he saw Khan’s face hanging in his mind like a full moon in a starless sky. Khan opened his mouth and said, “You tried to replicate Joshua and Alyssa. You even used the same first letters in their names.”
He wanted to rise out of his enforced meditation, to abandon the fortress he’d erected to protect himself against the worst of the ravages Spalko was visiting upon him, anything to get away from the accusatory face, the crushing guilt.
Guilt.
It was his own guilt that he’d been running away from. Ever since Khan had told him who he really was, he’d run from the truth, just as he’d run from Phnom Penh as fast as he could. He thought he’d been running away from the tragedy that had befallen him, but the truth was he’d run from the burden of his unsupportable guilt. He hadn’t been there to protect his family when they’d needed him the most. Slamming the door on the truth, he’d fled.
God help him, in this he was, as Annaka had said, a coward.
As Bourne’s watched out of bloodshot eyes, Spalko pocketed the money and took up the gun. “I’ve used you to keep the hounds of the world’s intelligence organizations off my trail. In this you’ve served me well.” He leveled the gun at Bourne, aiming for a spot just above and between his eyes. “But, sadly, your use to me is at an end.” His finger tightened on the trigger.
At that moment Annaka came into the room. “Khan made it onto the floor,” she said.
Despite himself, Spalko registered surprise. “I heard the explosion. He wasn’t killed by it?”
“He somehow managed to crash the elevator. It exploded in the sub-basement.”
“Luckily, the latest delivery of weapons was shipped out.” At last he turned his gaze on her. “Where’s Khan now?”
“He’s trapped in the locked room. It’s time to leave.”
Spalko nodded. She’d been dead on when it came to Khan’s skills. He’d been right to encourage the liaison between them. Duplicitous creature that she was,
she’s gotten to know Khan better than he himself could’ve hoped to. Still, he stared at Bourne, certain his business with him was not yet finished.
“Stepan.” Annaka put a hand on his arm. “The plane is waiting. We need time to leave the building unseen. The fire-circuits have been activated and all the oxygen has been pumped out of the elevator shaft so there’s no chance of major damage. Still, there must be flames in the lobby and the fire wagons will be here if they’re not already.”
She’d thought of everything. Spalko looked at her admiringly. Then, without any warning, he swept the hand that held Bourne’s ceramic gun in an arc, slamming the barrel into the side of Bourne’s head.
“I’ll just take this as a souvenir of our first and last encounter.”
Then he and Annaka left the room.
Khan, down on his belly, dug furiously, using a small crowbar from the tools he’d requested from Oszkar, at a section of the molding. His eyes burned and teared from the gas, and his lungs were near to bursting from lack of oxygen. He had only a few more seconds left before he passed out and his autonomous nervous system took over, allowing the gas into his system.
But now he’d pried off a section of the molding and immediately he could feel the draft of cool air coming from outside the room he was in. He stuck his nose into the vent he’d made, breathed in the fresh air. Then, taking a deep breath, he quickly set up the small charge of C4 Oszkar had provided. This, above all the items on his list, had told Oszkar the extent of the danger he was heading into, prompting the contact to give Khan the escape kit as added protection.
Putting his nose into the vent, Khan took another deep breath, then he replaced it with the packet of C4, wedging it as far in as he was able. Scrambling to the opposite side of the room, he pressed the remote.