Marta jolts upright on the futon, her nerves taut when she hears the insistent buzzing of a phone. She squints in the dark at her digital watch – it's been an hour since Aaron left.
She hears the phone again.
Aaron! Is something wrong? Why is he calling her?
She grabs the mobile from the coffee table beside her, staring at it in bemusement. The screen is dark. It's not ringing. But she hears the vibration of a silenced phone. Throwing aside her cashmere blanket, she gets up and switches on the small lamp. She listens for the repeated buzzing – homing in on the backpack on the dining room table.
Unzipping it, she finds Aaron's burner phone.
No!
Then she recalls with a sick feeling: she was hovering near him as he was packing earlier. She'd grabbed his phone when she was trying to get his attention. In his haste and his worry, when she told him to go, she'd dropped his phone in the wrong backpack. Now it's here and he's without it; and it's ringing insistently.
But who is calling?
Marta bites her lip. She hesitates, uncertain as she watches the screen light up, the phone pulsate, and the word "Unknown" flashing on the screen. Could this be Aaron, realizing he's left his phone behind and calling her to tell her so? But Mitte ist 20 minutes by car – why didn't he return to retrieve his phone? Or could he not leave?
But what if it's not him? She's never handled his phone – she doesn't know who has this number.
Marta takes a breath and hits the ANSWER button on the screen. She holds the phone to her ear, but says nothing. If it's Aaron – he'll tell her immediately; if it's not, she'll hang up.
The voice is male, but it's not Aaron.
"What the fuck is your plan?" shouts Jason Bourne's enraged voice.
"How did you get this number?" Marta gasps.
There's a pause as Bourne registers it's not Aaron on the phone. "Where is he?"
"Aaron left –"
"No names!" interrupts Bourne.
Marta winces. Of course, of course. Operational security. "He went to meet the guy. He was in a hurry and left his phone."
"What did she agree to do?"
"I don't know all of it," Marta replies. "She was supposed to create a diversion –"
"Yeah? Well they've got her," Bourne says grimly.
Marta's eyes widen.
Does this change Aaron's plan? What do they do now? Aaron has to be told!
"Does he have a back up plan to get her out?"
"I-I don't know. Parsons was supposed to come here to Berlin tomorrow—"
"Shit!" Bourne yells, then the line goes dead.
"Shit!" Marta echoes, pressing the END button with her thumb, her hand shaking. She just violated Aaron's first rule of operational security – she revealed names and their location. If someone is scanning phone calls for key words – she's just exposed herself – and Aaron.
Idiot! she castigates herself.
Looking wildly around the room, she quickly pulls on her puffy jacket and a wool cap, trying to cover as much of the auburn color as she can. Racing through the apartment, she emulates Aaron's earlier frenzied packing, tossing what's necessary into the backpack. There is no gun in this backpack; it's in the bag Aaron took. Marta scans the room, considering what else she needs: she grabs the cashmere blanket from where it fell on the floor and shoves it into the backpack. The bag is stuffed, difficult to zip.
Slipping her arms through the straps, Marta turns off the light, and looks out the window. It's dark and quiet outside – no one is moving about. Going to the door, Marta looks through the peephole before opening the door cautiously. Poking her head out, she looks left and right; the hall is empty. She steps out, closing the door gently and locking up with the spare key. Padding across the worn out carpeted floor, she bypasses the elevator and makes her way to the stairs.
The aged building that houses Aaron's flat is utilitarian – a square block, part of a line of row buildings attached to one another. The façade is a buttery yellow, five stories high. The lowest level houses storefronts and a delicatessen. The four floors above it are residential. Rectangular balconies jut out in front on either side of the building, the marigold cinder blocks saved from being just serviceable by the whimsical arched detailing around the windows on the fourth floor.
Across the street is Boxhagener Platz, a green park which spans an entire city block. Marta exits the edifice, glancing at her watch. She curses softly. It'll take an hour to walk from their flat to the Reuters building in Mitte; at this time, taxis are sparse and the U-bahn is closed. The night buses operate continuously all night, marked with the "N" designation, but they run in 30 minute increments. She's already missed the N40 which picks up at Boxhagener Platz. Its next stop is on Simon-Dach Straße, a five minute walk away. She heads west on Krossener Straße, her pace brisk.
Though she keeps her head down, she's keenly aware of her surroundings: it's dark in an urban area, and she is an unarmed woman walking alone. Marta is so attuned to the potential dangers at every corner of the barely lit streets that when her phone rings, she utters a jarred shriek. She's so rattled she answers the phone immediately, heedless if it's her phone that's ringing or Aaron's.
"Do not say one word about where you are or who you're with," comes Bourne's irritated voice.
"I can't talk right now. I'm trying to get to him and it's an hour walk to where he is."
"You're out in the dark? Is that safe?"
"It might be safer if I weren't distracted and situationally unaware because I'm on the phone with you," she responds tartly. "How did you get this number anyway?"
"I saw her dialing it earlier," he says shortly. "Are you being followed?"
Marta considered the dimly lit road, the barely populated streets. "No. But that could change. It always does."
"Are you in danger?"
"Not right now. There's a bus stop five minutes away. I can catch the bus."
"Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?" The urgency remains, but his voice has inexplicably gentled.
Marta doesn't even think about it. "No."
There's something comforting about knowing there's another human being connected to her in some manner, but Bourne's in Paris. What can he do if something were to happen? She has to be alert, to be aware of her surroundings.
"You need to tell him that they've got her. Whatever he's doing, he has to make sure it's going to get her free."
"Is she…is she – "
"She was unconscious when they took her. I followed them." There's a thread of suppressed violence in Bourne's voice. "I'll check back in with you in thirty minutes."
The line goes dead and Marta hurries to catch the bus.
The thing about getting your lights knocked out is how much waking up again sucks, Nicky decides as consciousness returns along with the mother of all headaches. She keeps her eyes firmly shut and stays still, trying to get her bearings.
She's on an uncomfortable bed, the mattress too thin to be anything but a cot. There's no pillow to speak of, and she's covered with what feels like a regulation issued light wool blanket. She's still dressed, her clothes are still damp and she stinks of the Seine. Her skin feels sticky and her hair is grimy.
Gross.
She hears nothing in the room but the soft whir of a central air unit, but that doesn't mean she's alone. She's not shackled, which means they have her in a secure location. Escape won't be possible.
Adding all the pieces together yields that she's probably in a containment room.
With that, Nicky opens her eyes and takes in her cell. It's painted grey (of course), approximately six feet in width by nine feet in length. The room is windowless, lit by harsh fluorescent lights overhead, which makes it impossible for her to discern what time it is. Her watch is gone – of course it is; it's the first thing they would have taken away. Depriving her of sensory input is the first step in breaking her. Air is forced in through a vent overhead, and the solid metal door directly in front of her most likely uses a magnetic lock since there no door knob on the inside. She can't see the cameras but she knows she's being watched. To her left is another room, without a door. She can make out a toilet and judging from the room's juxtaposition, it appears there's a shower in there as well. Next to the cot is a metal chair, bolted down to the floor, on which rests a set grey pajama-like bottoms and a long sleeved white cotton shirt. Undergarments consist of cotton panties and a tank top. Everything is serviceable and plain. In short: prison garb.
Nicky sits up and swings her legs over the side of the bed, dropping her head and wincing at the hammering in the base of her skull. Her body aches from the hard tackle that took her down, but nothing feels irretrievably damaged or broken. She gets up slowly and grabs the clean clothes, heading into the bathroom where she finds a utilitarian toilet and a tiny shower stall. A bar of soap and clean white towels rest on the sink. Sometimes, kindnesses are a way to break you, too.
Thirty minutes later, after a hot shower that eases some of the soreness from her body, her hair and body scrubbed clean, Nicky is dressed in the loose pants and shirt, her river-soaked clothing discarded in a corner. Her head is still pounding but there's nothing she can do about that.
Returning to the main room, Nicky sits down on the chair, hands resting on her knees, palms up. She knows what's expected of her; after all, she used to be on the other side of that door.
She has no way of ascertaining what time it is, but she knows fifteen minutes passes before a metallic click on the other side of the door signals that it's been unlocked. She knows because the entire time she's sitting there serenely, she counted off time in her head.
Slowly, the door opens.
Marta is worried.
One of the passengers seated in the middle of the bus is staring up at the wide rearview mirror over the driver's head. From her vantage to the driver's right, Marta can't see what the male passenger is looking at so intently. She's been careful to keep her face turned away, looking out the window; from the corner of her eye, she can observe him in the reflection of the front windshield. He keeps tapping on his smartphone, looking at the screen, then up at the mirror.
Despite hurrying, she didn't make it to the bus pickup at Simon-Dach Straße in time; she had to wait another twenty minutes for the next bus to arrive.
It's a twelve minute ride to the transfer station at Spandauer Straße and Marienkirche – named for the red-roofed brick Gothic church of St. Mary's which is located on Karl-Liebknecht Straße in Central Berlin.
When she boarded the green nachtbus, its double decks screened in with dark, smoky glass, she took an empty seat closest to the door. There were few travelers at this hour: on this level, six other people are scattered along the length of the bus.
The man was seated halfway to the rear of the bus, and is in his mid-thirties. He's a professional looking sort in a nicely tailored dark coat. Marta can see his eyes looking between the phone and the mirror, his smooth visage considering and suspicious. Slowly, he lowers the phone and dials.
If it feels wrong, it is wrong.
She hears Aaron's warning in her head and tries to be smaller, tries to keep her face down. Up ahead, she can see the Gothic steeple of St. Marienkirche rising above the red roofline.
The bus pulls to a stop.
The phone in her pocket vibrates.
She's bringing the phone to her ear when she hears the wailing pitch of sirens in the distance.
The man watching her is on his phone – and meeting her gaze directly in the reflection. Marta gasps.
"Run!" roars Jason Bourne's voice in her ear.
The bus doors open slowly and Marta sprints from her seat, dashing out before they're even fully open.