The Bourne Deception

9





WILLARD WATCHED Ian Bowles as he exited Firths surgery. Hed marked him the second time hed showed up at the compound and, as with every other of the doctors patients, hed made inquiries. Bowles was the only one about whom nothing was known locally. Willard hadnt spent the last three months simply training Bourne. Like all good agents, hed immediately begun to acquaint himself with his environment. Hed become friendly with all the key people in the area who, de facto, became his eyes and ears. The advantage of being in Manggis was that neither the village nor the surrounding area was highly populated. Unlike Kuta and Ubud, only a smattering of tourists found their way to the area, so it wasnt difficult to identify the patients who came to see the doctor. By this homespun method, Ian Bowles stood out like a sore thumb. However, Willard wouldnt act until Bowles revealed himself one way or the other.

Ever since hed been released from his undercover duties at the NSA safe house in rural Virginia, Willard had pondered long and hard how he could be of best use to the clandestine service, which functioned as his mother, father, sister, and brother. Treadstone had been Alexander Conklins dream. Only Conklin and Willard himself knew Treadstones ultimate purpose.

He went about this work with extreme caution because he was laboring under a handicap Conklin never had to deal with. In Alexs day the Old Man had signed off on Treadstone. All Conklin had to do was to fly below the CI radar, to make good on the goals hed promised the Old Man, while working on his own agenda deep in the shadows. Willard did not have the advantage of such support. As far as Veronica Hart and CI were concerned Treadstone was as dead and buried as Conklin himself. Willard was far too canny to believe Hart would allow him a restart, which meant that he had to work clandestinely within one of the worlds largest clandestine organizations. The irony wasnt lost on him.

As he followed Bowles out of the compound and down a deserted lane he reflected on how fortuitous Moira Trevors phone call had been, since this remote island off the CI grid was the perfect place to begin the resurrection of Treadstone.

Up ahead of him, Bowles had stopped beside a motor scooter, parked beneath the shade of a frangipani tree. Bowles took out his cell phone. As he pressed the SPEED DIAL key, Willard unfurled a thin metal wire with wooden handles on either end. Stepping quickly up behind Bowles, he whipped the wire around the others throat and pulled so hard on the handles Bowles was lifted onto the tips of his toes.

The New Zealander dropped his cell, reaching around behind him to make a grab at his unseen assailant. Dancing out of the way, Willard maintained the lethal pressure on the wire. Bowless gestures became more frantic. He tore into the flesh of his own neck in his frenzy to breathe, his eyes bulged in their sockets, red threads mottling the whites. Then there was a sudden foul stench and he collapsed.

Unwinding the wire, Willard scooped up the cell and, as he walked briskly away, checked the number Bowles had been dialing. He recognized the first digits as those of a Russian cell phone. The call had failed, and he walked into Manggis to a spot he knew to be cell-receptive and hit REDIAL. A moment later a familiar male voice answered.

Willard, momentarily stunned, nevertheless gathered himself and said, Your man Bowles is dead. Dont send another, then hung up before Leonid Danilovich Arkadin could say a word.


When Moira left Stevenson she walked opposite the direction she needed to go. She spent twenty minutes following circuitous routes, checking in car side-mirrors and plate-glass windows, looking for a tail, and when she had assured herself that she wasnt being followed, she walked back to where the car was waiting for her three blocks west of the Fountain of Poseidon.

The driver saw her coming and got out of the car. Not looking at her or acknowledging her in any way, he walked toward her. They passed each other close enough for him to hand off the keys without stopping or even breaking stride.

She went past the parked car, crossed the street, and stood looking around as if unsure which way to go. In fact, she was scrutinizing the environment, breaking it down into vectors, which she inspected for anyone in the least bit suspicious. A boy and a girl, presumably his sister, played with a golden Lab under the watchful eye of their father. A mother wheeled her baby carriage; two sweaty joggers dodged in and out, listening through in-ear plugs to iPods attached to armbands.

Nothing seemed out of place, which was precisely what worried her. NSA agents on the street or even in passing cars she could deal with. It was the people who might be placed behind building windows or on rooftops that concerned her. Well, there was no help for it, she thought. Shed done the best she could, now it was put one foot in front of the other and pray that shed slipped any surveillance that might have been attached to her once the two NSA agents had left her at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

As an added precaution, she pried the SIM chip out of her phone and ground it beneath the heels of her shoe. She kicked it into a storm drain in the gutter, then chucked her cell in after it. She had the key in her hand as she approached the car from across the street. She crossed in front of it and dropped her handbag. Kneeling down, she dug out her compact, used the mirror inside to check the underside of the car as best she could. She checked under the rear as well. What was she expecting to find Nothing, hopefully. But there was always a chance that a passing NSA agent had left a bug on the under chassis.

Spotting nothing suspicious, she unlocked the car and slid behind the wheel. It was a late-model silver Chrysler that her own mechanics had customized with a muscular turbocharged engine. Finding the laptop and the burner beneath the seat, she ripped off the burners pristine plastic wrap. Burners were disposable cell phones loaded with pre-paid minutes. As long as you didnt use them for too long, you were safe talking on them, and no one could use the SIM to triangulate your position as they could with a registered cell.

Fighting an urge to fire up the computer right there, she turned the key in the ignition, put the car in gear, and nosed out into traffic. She was no longer comfortable staying in one place too long; neither did she feel safe going back to the office or even her home.

Heading back across into Virginia, she drove aimlessly for close to an hour, after which time she could no longer control her curiosity. She had to find out what was on the thumb drive shed lifted off Jays corpse. Did it hold the key to what was going on between NSA and Black River that, according to Stevenson, held all of the DoD in thrall Why else would Noah and the NSA come after Jay and now her. She had to assume the DC motorcycle cop was bogusthat he was, in fact, either NSA or Black River. Stevenson had been terrified. The whole scenario chilled her to the marrow.

Passing through Rosslyn, she suddenly became aware that she was famished. She couldnt remember the last time shed eaten, apart from whatever theyd given her this morning in the hospital. Who could eat that stuff More to the point, what kind of chef could concoct such tasteless, overcooked mush

She turned onto Wilson Boulevard, drove past the Hyatt, and pulled over into a parking space several car-lengths from the entrance to the Shade Grown Café, a place she knew inside and out and thus felt safe in. Taking the laptop and the burner with her, she got out, locked the car, and hurried into the steamy interior. The smells of bacon and toast made her mouth water. Slipping into a well-worn cherry-colored vinyl booth, she gave the plastic-wrapped menu a cursory once-over before ordering three eggs over easy, a double portion of bacon, and wheat toast. When the waitress asked if she wanted coffee, she said, Please. Cream on the side.

Alone at the Formica table, she opened the notebook so that the screen faced her and the wall behind her. While it was booting up, she bent down and extracted the thumb drive from the underwire section of her bra. The tiny electronic rectangle was warm and seemed to beat like a second heart. Using her thumb on the special reader, she logged in, then answered her three security questions. Finally on, she plugged the thumb drive into one of the USB ports on the left side of the computer. Switching to My Computer, she navigated to the portable drive that had appeared there, then double-clicked on it.

The screen went black, and for a moment she thought the drive had crashed the operating system. But then the screen started scrolling in lines of what looked like gibberish. There were no folders, no files, just this ever-scrolling series of letters, numbers, and symbols. The information was encrypted. That was just like the careful Jay.

At once she hit the ESCAPE key and was back at the My Computer screen. Accessing the C drive, she opened the wireless access connections wizard. Either the coffee shop was Wi-Fienabled or someplace close was because the wizard detected an open network. That was both good and bad. It meant she could get on the Web, but there were no network encryption safeguards. Luckily, shed had all the Heartland lap-tops fitted with their own mobile encryption package among a host of other security measures, which in this case meant that even if someone hacked her ISP address they wouldnt be able to read the packets of information she sent and received; nor would they be able to locate her.

She pushed the laptop aside when her breakfast arrived. It would take some time for the proprietary Heartland deciphering software to analyze the data on the thumb drive. She uploaded the encrypted data and pressed the ENTER key, which started the program.

By the time shed mopped up the last of the third egg yolk with a wedge of buttered toast and the last of the bacon, she heard a soft chime. Almost choking on her final bite, she swigged down a mouthful of coffee and stacked her plates at the edge of the table.

Her forefinger hovered over the ENTER key for the tiniest of moments before depressing it. At once words began to flood across her screen, then marched down as the entire contents of the drive were revealed.

PINPRICKBARDEM, she read.

She couldnt believe it. Her eyes traveling over the scrolling lines read PINPRICKBARDEM over and over. The lines came to an end and she checked again. The entire drive had been filled up with these fourteen letters. She broke down the letters into the most obvious words: Pin Prick Bar Dem. Then another: PinP Rick Bar Dem. She wrote down: Picture in Picture (on a digital TV), Ricks Bar (), Democrat.

Online, she ran a quick Google check. There was a Ricks Bar in Chicago and one in San Francisco, an Andy & Ricks Bar in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, but there was no Ricks Bar anywhere in the district or the environs. She scratched out what she had written. What on earth could those letters mean she wondered. Were they yet another code She was about to run them through the Heartland software program again when the sudden presence of a shadow at the periphery of her vision caused her to glance up.

Two NSA agents were staring at her through the window. As she slammed down the laptops screen one of them opened the door to the coffee shop.


Benjamin Firth was riding his bottle of arak with a vengeance when Willard strode into the surgery. Firth was up on the table, head bowed, swigging great mouthfuls of the fermented palm liquor with grim precision.

Willard stood looking at the doctor for a moment, remembering his father who drank himself into dementia and, finally, liver failure. It hadnt been pretty, and along the way there were serious bouts of the kind of lightning Jekyll-and-Hyde personality split that afflicted some alcoholics. After his father had bounced his head off a wall during one of these fits Willard, who was eight at the time, taught himself not to be afraid. He kept his baseball bat under his bed and the next time his father, stinking of booze, lunged at him, he swung the bat in a perfectly level arc and broke two of his ribs. After that, his father never touched him again, neither in anger nor in affection. At the time, Willard thought hed gotten what he wanted, but later, after the old man died, he began to wonder whether hed injured himself along with his father.

With a grunt of disgust, he crossed the surgery, ripped the bottle out of Firths hand, and shoved a small booklet into it. For a moment the doctor looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes as if he was trying to place Willard in his memory.

Read it, Doc. Go ahead.

Firth glanced down and seemed surprised. Wheres my arak

Gone, Willard said. I brought you something better.

Firth snorted noisily. Nothing better than arak.

Want to bet

Willard opened the booklet for him and the doctor stared down at the passport photo of Ian Bowles, the New Zealander whod been masquerading as a patient, who was blackmailing him into taking photos of Jason Bourne. This was why he had been getting stone-cold wasted. He couldnt bear to think of what he had to do or what would happen to him if he didnt.

What He shook his head, confused. What are you doing with this

Willard sat down beside him. Lets just say Mr. Bowles will no longer be a problem for you.

Firth sobered as if the other man had thrown a bucket of cold water in his face. You know

Willard took the passport. I heard it all.

A shiver ran down the doctors spine. There was nothing I could do.

Its a good thing, then, that I was here.

Firth nodded despondently.

Now I need you to do something for me.

Anything, Firth said. I owe you my life.

Jason Bourne must never know this happened.

None of it Firth looked at him. Someone suspects hes here, someone is after him.

Willards face was impassive. None whatsoever, Doctor. He held out his hand. Do I have your word

Firth gripped the others hand, which was firm and dry and somehow comforting. I said anything, didnt I