The Bourne Betrayal by Robert Ludlum, Eric Van Lustbader Read Free Book Online Page B

the subbasement had been exiled to an annex.
    On his way out of the DCI’s office, Bourne briefly stopped by Anne Held’s domain. Armed with the names of the two case officers who had eavesdropped on the conversation that had sent Martin Lindros halfway around the world on the trail of transshipped TSGs, he took the private elevator that shuttled between the DCI’s floor and the sub-basement.
    As the elevator sighed to a stop, an LCD panel on the left-hand door activated, an electronic eye scanning the shiny black octagon Anne had affixed to the lapel of his jacket. It was encoded with a number invisible save to the scanner. Only then did the steel doors slide open.
    Martin Lindros had reimagined the sub-basement as, basically, one gigantic space filled with mobile workstations, each with a braid of electronic leads spiraling up to the ceiling. The braids were on tracks so they could move with the workstations and the personnel as they relocated from assignment to assignment. At the far end, Bourne saw, was a series of conference rooms, separated from the main space by alternating frosted-glass and steel panels.
    As befitted an agency named after a monster with two hundred eyes, the Typhon office was filled with monitors. In fact, the walls were a mosaic of flat-panel plasma screens on which a dizzying array of digital images were displayed: satellite chartings, closed-circuit television pictures of public spaces, transportation hubs such as airports, bus depots, train stations, street corners, cross sections of snaking highways and suburban rail lines, metropolitan underground platforms worldwide-Bourne recognized metros in New York, London, Paris, Moscow. People of all shapes, sizes, religions, ethnicities walking, milling mindlessly, standing undecided, lounging, smoking, getting on and off conveyances, talking to one another, ignoring one another, plugged into iPods, shopping, eating on the run, kissing, cuddling, exchanging bitter words, oblivious, cell phones slapped to their ears, accessing e-mail or porno, slouched, hunched, drunk, stoned, fights breaking out, first-date embarrassments, skulking, mumbling to themselves. A chaos of unedited video from which the analysts were required to find specific patterns, digital omens, electronic warning signs.
    Lerner must have alerted the case officers to his arrival, because he saw a striking young woman whom he judged to be in her midthirties detach herself from a view screen and come toward him. He at once knew that she was or had been, at any rate, a field agent. Her stride was not too long, not too short, not too fast, not too slow. It was, to sum it up in one word, anonymous. Because an individual’s stride was as distinctive as his fingerprints, it was one of the best ways to cull an adversary out of a swarming pack of pedestrians, even one whose disguise was otherwise first-rate.
    She had a face that was both strong and proud, the chiseled prow of a sleek ship knifing through seas that would capsize inferior vessels. The large, deep blue eyes were set like jewels in the cinnamon dusk of her Arabian face.
    “You must be Soraya Moore,” he said, “the senior case officer.”
    Her smile showed for a moment, then was quickly hidden behind a cloud of confusion and abrupt coolness. “That’s right, Mr. Bourne. This way.”
    She led him down the length of the vast, teeming space to the second conference room from the left. Opening the frosted-glass door, she watched him pass with that same odd curiosity. But then considering his often adversarial relationship with CI, perhaps it wasn’t odd after all.
    There was a man inside, younger than Soraya by at least several years. He was of middling height, athletic, with sandy hair and a fair complexion. He was sitting at an oval glass conference table working on a laptop. The screen was filled with what looked to be an exceptionally difficult crossword puzzle.
    He glanced up only when Soraya cleared her throat.
    “Tim