Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(70)
Turning, Bourne saw Arthur Lee, staring at him, slack-jawed, from behind the wheel of his vehicle.
“Get out of here, Arthur,” Bourne said, lifting a hand in a loose salute. “Stay away from the great house and everything will be fine.”
He heard the engine start up, and Lee’s vehicle rumbled away toward his small house near the western edge of the estate. Bourne stripped off his clothes, replaced them with Baldy’s, zipping up the jacket to cover the bloodstain on the shirt. He found the electronic ID key card in the back pocket of Baldy’s pants. Looking around, he saw only the crows, who had returned to their perch, regarding him with their glassy black eyes as he loped back up the track toward the great house.
—
There was a meeting in progress. Bourne could hear multiple voices bleeding out of the half-open door to the library. Someone was being teleconferenced in from D.C.—DoD or the Pentagon. Bourne could see at a glance that the layout of the first floor hadn’t changed since he had last stolen inside.
Once, he had to duck away so as not to be seen by someone passing down the hallway. Reaching the locked door to the back stairs, he fitted Baldy’s key card into the reader at the side of the door, pulled it open, and proceeded cautiously down the stone steps.
His previous reconnaissance had revealed the interrogation cells to be in the basement, where, in happier times, before the NSA got hold of it, the wine cellar had been; the air still held a whiff of wine must. In typical NSA fashion, the space had been recreated into a strictly utilitarian area with five “holding rooms”—like all government services, the NSA was hooked on euphemisms—all of which abutted observation chambers outfitted with one-way glass panels inserted into the common walls. Farther along was the “laboratory”—another euphemism for a very nasty section containing three rooms, each one equipped with the paraphernalia necessary for the kinds of articulated interrogation that was now illegal and which high-ranking members of the NSA swore before various Congressional subcommittees they absolutely, unconditionally no longer tolerated.
The NSA psych team assigned to Crowcroft had names for these three rooms: My First Experience, Nothing To See Here, and The Drowning Pool. In the first the uncooperative client, as the prisoners were called, was softened up with grueling sessions of incessant questions, interspersed with periods of unexpected explosions of static, a hundred voices talking over one another, death-metal rock shrieking, sudden bursts of blinding light or total darkness; in the second the client was subjected to sensory deprivation; in the third the waterboarding was the centerpiece, although by no means the only extreme measure available to the interrogator.
It was said that no one survived what was known as The Whole Nine Yards intact. Though that might well be the kind of hyperbole the NSA traded in, it was just as possible it came very near the truth.
Since the door was key-coded, there were no guards at the bottom of the stairs. Bourne did, however, have to be mindful of the psych staff, two members of which he spied on his way to the cells.
A quick recon revealed that General MacQuerrie had been graduated out of My First Experience. He must be in the sensory deprivation tank.
The connection corridor between the first and second interrogation chambers was so dimly lit Bourne had to pause to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Once he did, he advanced to the closed door ahead of him and slid the key card through the reader. Opening the door, he hung back, waiting, looking for any movement of shadows, but there was nothing.
Stepping in, he closed the door behind him. Before him was a shallow float tank of perfectly calm water. He knew it would be set at precisely the same temperature as the client’s body temperature. Peering through the dimness into the water, he could just make out the outline of a figure floating in the center, tethered, unmoving. A mask was over the general’s face, fitted with a breathing tube. MacQuerrie looked like he’d already lost weight as a result of the shock tactics in My First Experience.
Shedding Baldy’s too-tight shoes and gabardine jacket, which contained Bourne’s sat phone in one pocket and a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills in the other, Bourne slipped into the water, untethered the client. His hand was on the breathing mask, but before he could pull it off, the overhead lights blazed on, momentarily blinding him. When he could focus he saw the third guard, built like a boxer, the one he and Lee had left behind at the front gate. He held his 9mm sidearm out in front of him, pointing it at Bourne.
“Ed and Marty are MIA and you’ve been using Ed’s key card all over the place, you miserable little shit.” When he spoke his voice had a weird dead sound, devoid of echo, due to the state-of-the-art soundproofing in all three rooms. His forefinger slipped inside the trigger guard, balanced on the trigger itself. “Now you’re gonna pay.”
26
He made a deal with the devil,” Dima said.
“Who?” Savasin asked. “Karpov?”
Ekaterina laughed, but her father’s hand slicing through the air cut her off.
“No, not Karpov,” Dima said with a glint in his eye. “Your brother, Konstantin.”
The three of them—four if one counted Cerberus—had repaired to Ekaterina’s large kitchen, where they sat around a central table while the moving mountain served them food and drink, silent as usual. The food was excellent and plentiful, the drink Iron Mountain black tea from the hinterlands far from Moscow. It was very strong and very good.