Winter Bourne

Chapter Four - "Interim"

Jason

Jason made a second sweep of the office he'd broken into to make sure he'd erased any sign that he'd ever been here. He'd twitched a sleeve of the pink sweater to make it hang straight on the chair back. It was unlikely that its owner would miss the few snacks he'd used. He stepped back. Yes, it was clean. After stuffing the last damp paper towel into a trash bag, Jason shut off the lights. He stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark.

The compulsion to move, to get away, had pulled him out of his uneasy sleep long before his battered body had had enough rest, long before his alarm had gone off. Fighting the compulsion would make his headache, the same pounding, queasy thumper that had made so many of his days miserable, worse. Instead of fighting it, Jason used it to energize him. Every hour that passed meant that the authorities were closer to finding him. He had to get out of the area before daylight. While the dark wouldn't hide him from infrared, the CIA couldn't be everywhere, and he'd be shielded from less well-equipped observers.

When his eyes adjusted, Jason slipped out of the building. He carried the trash a mile before tossing it into a dumpster. Inside it was his wet coat. Not even putting it directly on a heater had been able to dry it. His shoes were as damp as the coat, but he couldn't walk barefoot. He'd protected his feet by putting his dry socks back on, then stepping into plastic trash bags and taping them to his ankles. A temporary measure that would work until he could replace them. Despite the cold seeping through the shoes, the cold was bearable now that the rest of his clothes were dry.

By daylight, Jason mingling with other early morning commuters at the 23rd Street subway station, warming his hands with a cup of hot tea. He'd bought travel sized toiletries from a 7-Eleven and used them in a groddy bathroom at a twenty-four hour diner to shave and spruce up. Concealer helped with the worst of the cuts and bruises on his face, neck and hands. The beat-up blue coat he was wearing had come from the lost and found box at a McDonalds. It hadn't been hard to come up with a generic description for a men's jacket. The staff didn't care when he claimed a navy jacket rather than the black one he'd said he'd lost. Now he was just another guy on his way to work.

A forty minute subway ride, a ten minute walk and Jason was standing two blocks away from his long-term rental. It was another hour before he was satisfied that the area wasn't under surveillance. The apartment was fully furnished, with a kitchenette and a washer and dryer. He'd found it on the Internet and paid the first month's rent while in Tangiers. Yesterday, before he'd called Landy, he'd stowed his luggage here and gone shopping for essential supplies.

Jason's hands were shaking from exhaustion when he hung the "Do not disturb" sign up and locked the door. The markers he'd put in place told him that no one had opened his suitcases. The seals on the food he'd bought were untouched as well. After an examination of the rest of the apartment, Jason unpacked and installed a cheap set of sensors on the windows. He secured the door with a metal bar wedged under the doorknob. He slit a hole in a window curtain, and duct-taped a wireless camera to the curtain rod to give him a view of anyone standing in front of the door. He slipped the palm-sized monitor into his pocket where he could check it anytime he needed. All of this would buy him only a few seconds warning, but it was better than doing nothing. As a last precaution, he tied a long rope ladder to the bed in the smaller bedroom. The room's single window was big enough for him to climb out, and the one most protected from any sightlines.

Now Jason felt safe enough to take care of himself. He opened the smaller suitcase with its cornucopia of drugs and medical supplies. Treadstone had taught him a lot about drugs. He'd rest here, let his abused body heal.

Delays. He hated the necessity of it. He knew what he wanted to do, what he needed to do, but there were too many unknowns for him to factor into a decent plan. He needed a lever, a way to change the odds against him.

Pamela Landy might be one of those levers. He didn't give her great odds of surviving Blackbriar's fallout, but if she did – if she did, they might be able to help each other.

Pamela

Pamela was watching Jason Bourne's demolition of Vosen's men in the back halls of Waterloo station. Again. She wasn't the only one who had a copy looped for endless replay. She'd lost track of the number of times she'd watched it. Now she was able to break the fight into discrete steps. She'd had Tom time the intervals between each CIA operative's appearance and Jason's immediate reaction, including the causal way he'd flung Simon Ross out of harm's way. Of course, Jason had had surprise on his side, but by any measure, it was an impressive fight. The one man who could have taken Jason down with a shot to his back had hesitated. Reasonable, because Jason was grappling with his partner, and a shot would have most likely taken out both men. That hesitation had cost him. With an economy of movement, Jason had disposed of the first man, then disarmed and taken the second man down. Pamela restarted the video to watch this part of the fight again.

"What do you think of his fighting technique?" Tom asked from behind her.

On the monitor, Jason's arm raised and fell, cracking the gun against the skull of man already down. Pamela pressed the button to freeze the image.

"Efficient. Precise. Brutal."

"Brutal?" Tom sat down beside her. "I don't know. He could have killed them. He killed the guy in Tangiers. Strangled him. So why didn't Bourne kill these guys?"

"It'd be a guess, but perhaps he did it to protect Nicky? Maybe Bourne realized that any Blackbriar operative would be just like him. He wouldn't stop, so he figured that Paz wouldn't stop either." Pamela tapped the monitor. "Maybe Bourne felt that these men didn't pose any long term threat to him."

"Maybe." Tom gave her a curious look. "Why are you watching this so many times?"

Tom was smart. Loyal. She couldn't have asked for a better assistant. Yet there was something missing in the way he looked at the world. He didn't have that critical analytic ability to see past what was on the surface. "Play it again. From the beginning."

Tom restarted the fight. They watched in silence. It didn't take long.

"What does this fight tell you about Bourne?"

"That he's good at fighting."

Pamela gave him a level look. "That's it? Doesn't it raise any questions?"

Tom made a helpless gesture. "No. I mean, what questions? They were after Ross, and he stopped them. What else is there to figure out?"

She was proud of herself for not sighing or making any other obvious sign of exasperation. "Why wasn't Bourne armed? He took down two other men right before this, but he didn't take their guns. He knew that we had other people inside Waterloo station. Wouldn't it be reasonable that he'd arm himself again them?"

"I'd have definitely taken their guns."

"Me too." Pamela turned to the screen again to watch the grainy picture again. "But we're not Treadstone. How can we figure out what Bourne will do next if we can't even figure out why he did this one thing?"

"Why don't you ask Dr. Hirsch?" Tom smiled at her. "I'm sure he'd love to talk to you."

"Very funny. Though I'd love to get my hands on Blackbriar's training manual. If such a thing exists. Or at least interview the other graduates."

"Why can't -" Tom's question was cut short by the office phone. "Yes, sir. Okay, I'll tell her." He turned to Pam. "Sloane wants you in his office. Now."

Pamela smoothed her tan jacket sleeves back down over her arms, swiped at the crumbs on her skirt. "Guess this is it."

"Good luck."

"Well, Pam. Did you enjoy your meeting with Basnight?" Director Sloane asked. He pointed to a padded chair sitting at an angle near his desk.

Pamela sat down. She kept her tone dry as she answered, "The way it ended was interesting."

"Interesting? I like your style, Pam. Though you're going to be expensive to keep around."

It was so unexpected that Pamela stared at Sloane for a long moment. She wasn't being exiled to some make-work desk job? Pamela was surprised at the queer sensation in her gut, the way her heart started racing. She hadn't let herself dwell on how much it would hurt to get tossed out. Then she replayed his statement. Expensive to keep? She nodded. It was the bald truth. Her televised appearance before Congress had outed her as CIA, and destroyed the cover business in New York. Compromised every person she'd worked or spent time with for the last twenty years. She'd fallen asleep each night wondering how many of her agents she'd exposed. Then her eyes narrowed. These kind of reprieves came with a price attached. She wondered how long it would be before she found out what the price would be.

"At least you warned the New York office in time for them to sanitize it," Sloane continued. "We got all our people and equipment out before the press could find it. That was a big point in your favor."

"Thank you, sir."

"About the meeting today." Sloane changed the subject. "It was necessary for a number of reasons."

This vague explanation set Pamela's hackles up. She thought she could smell the stench of inter-agency politics. Sloane had used the meeting with Basnight to accomplish his own agenda. She kept her annoyance to herself. "It wasn't a very long meeting. Nothing was resolved."

"An interesting collection of people came to the meeting." Sloane gave her a bland smile. "And the questions, or rather, accusations that were repeated were interesting as well. Very interesting."

Pamela decided that she wasn't meant to know more. She acknowledged it with a nod.

"Tell me how you found out about the newspaper story on Treadstone," Sloane asked. "I do appreciate that you had Conti sent me a copy first."

"We needed to know how Bourne found the reporter, Simon Ross. Vosen found Ross only because he'd mentioned the word Blackbriar and a telephone screening program picked it up." Pamela shrugged. "Without any apparent personal connection to Bourne, it seemed logical to assume that it was Simon Ross had written something that had captured Bourne's attention."

Discovering Ross's series on Treadstone and on Bourne had shocked the hell out of Pamela. If it had effected her so strongly, she could only wonder what Jason had felt to see that the Bourne identity made public. What it must have felt like to see his own face staring back at him from an international newspaper. Bourne might have been planning something nasty to happen to Ross as a payback after he'd gotten what he wanted from the reporter. Or not.

"Interesting timing. Bourne showing up just when Vosen finds Ross."

"Unfortunate timing for Ross." Pamela crossed her arms. "Vosen didn't even bother to try to talk to him. Just ordered the trigger to be pulled."

The older man focused his attention on the wall behind her. Pamela waited. When he refocused on her, his face was tight with some repressed emotion. "We all fear different things. Vosen feared what Bourne and Ross might tell each other."

Inexorable, Pamela went on. "If Vosen had waited, Ross would be alive and Vosen could have used Bourne as a stalking dog to find Ross's source."

"Do you think it would have ended any differently? While interesting to speculate what would have happened if Bourne had found Daniels first, don't you think that Bourne would have still found his way to 415?"

While she might personally despised Vosen and what he'd done, she couldn't say that the outcome would have been any different. "Probably."

"What do you think Bourne will do now, Pamela?" Sloane asked. At her deliberately telegraphed look of surprise, he continued, "I'd prefer not to make any assumptions about Treadstone personnel. Particularly this man. You don't believe he's dead, do you?"

"Three days and no body?" Pamela shrugged. "My money's on Bourne being alive."

"We'll play it as if he were. Do you think he'd try to go after the rest of Blackbriar's people?"

Sloane was an expert on keeping people off-balance. Pamela had had certain expectations on the course of this conversation and leading a hunt for Bourne had played no part in it. She kept her reservations to herself and recovered. "I've read his personnel and mission files. That doesn't make me an expert. Anyway, you don't need me. You have access to Blackbriar trainers. Hell, you've got Blackbriar agents. Ask them."

"What makes you think we haven't?" Sloane sat up.

"Then, again, you don't need me for this."

"If you want back in, find Bourne for us." Sloane held up the copy of Ross's articles on Treadstone. "Bring him in. We can't ignore him anymore, not after this. His continued existence is an ongoing threat to this agency."

The sick feeling was back in Pamela's stomach at what Sloane was so careful not to say. Now she knew the price tag for getting her own life back.

Pamela had to kill Jason Bourne.