The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,139

on the verge of another identity and, in consequence, losing the people around him. Death was always and ever around him, the other side of Shiva, who was the destroyer as well as the harbinger of resurrection.

All at once Tracy gave a great shiver in his arms, as if she were exhaling for the last time. ?Jason, I don?t want to be alone.?

Her plaintive words thawed his icy heart. ?You?re not alone, Tracy.? He bent over her, his lips touching her forehead. ?I?m here with you.?

?Yes, I know, it?s good, I feel you around me.? She gave a sigh, akin to a cat?s purr of contentment.

?Tracy?? He took his lips away so he could look into her eyes, which were fixed, staring at infinity. ?Tracy.?

29

IT?S COMING THROUGH!? Humphry Bamber said.

?How much of it?? Moira asked.

Bamber watched the numbers scrolling across his screen as the download bar registered the illicit transfer from Noah Perlis?s laptop.

?All of it,? he said as the green bar reached the 100 percent level. ?Now to get under the hood and see what?s going on.?

Her adrenaline was running high, and she lost patience with the minutes ticking off, pacing around the perimeter of his work space, which smelled of hot metal and spinning hard drives, the scent of money in the twenty-first century. The room was in the rear of the office, its dusky north light forming wan pools in between the shadows thrown by the stacks of electronic equipment, whose fans and motors whirred and hummed like a menagerie. The only two spaces on the walls not filled with instruments or shelves overloaded with computer peripherals, containers of blank DVDs, and USB and power cords of all lengths and descriptions, were taken up by a window and a framed photograph of Bamber at college in full football gear down in a three-point stance. He was even more handsome then than he was now.

When Moira?s circuit of the room took her past the window, she paused, staring out across the street onto which the building backed. In the facing building, fluorescent lights were on, revealing an office filled with filing cabinets, hulking Xerox machines, and identical desks. Middle-aged people rushed back and forth, clutching files or reports the way a drowning man clutches a piece of driftwood. On the floor above that living death, she saw through high loft windows into an artist?s atelier, where a young woman was throwing paint onto a massive canvas propped against a dead-white wall. Her concentration was so intense, lost within the vision she was trying to reproduce, that she appeared unaware of her surroundings.

?How are you coming?? Moira asked as she turned back into the room.

Bamber, concentrating as intensely as the artist across the street, needed a bit of prompting to answer. ?A few more minutes and I?ll know,? he mumbled at last.

Moira nodded. She was about to continue her anxious perambulation when a sudden movement brought her attention back to the street. A car had drawn up near the end of the block and a man had emerged. Something about the way he moved set off alarm bells in her head. He had a way of turning his head in minute increments, as if he was looking at everything and nothing, that made the hair stir at the nape of her neck. When he reached Bamber?s building, he stopped. Keeping close to the rear door, he took out a set of picks and inserted one, then another in the lock, until he found the right one to simulate the hills and valleys of the key.

Reaching down, Moira drew her Lady Hawk out of its thigh holster.

?Almost done!? There was a defiant note of triumph in Bamber?s voice.

The door opened and the man entered the building.

Noah Perlis seems to be the nexus of this crisis,? Peter Marks said. ?He engineered Jay Weston?s death, he pulled the rug out from under the Metro police, and he?s infiltrated Moira?s new organization and got her on the run.?

?Noah is Black River,? Willard said. ?And as secretive and powerful as that band of mercenaries is, I very much doubt that even they have the muscle to accomplish all that without questions being asked.?

?You don?t think Perlis is behind this??

?I didn?t say that.? Willard rubbed the stubble on his cheek. ?But in this case I have to believe that Black River had major help.?

The two men were facing each other in a brown tufted Naugahyde booth in a late-night bar, listening to a mournful Tammy