The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric Van Lustbader Page 0,43

her current destination.

“Bring a laptop and a burner,” she said before flipping her phone closed.

It was only when she exited the taxi that she felt aches and pains spring up in all parts of her body. She felt a massive post-trauma headache coming on. Digging in her handbag, she took three Advil, swallowing them dry. The day was mild but overcast and dull, no break in the gunmetal sky, no wind to speak of. The pale pink cherry blossoms were already trampled underfoot, tulips were blooming, and there was an unmistakable earthy scent in the air as spring advanced.

Stevenson’s text message, PERRY, referred to Roland Hinton Perry who, at the tender age of twenty-seven, had created the Fountain of the Court of Neptune sculpture on the far west side of the entrance to the Library of Congress. It was on the pavement level, rather than at the elevated level of the porte-cochere main entrance. Set into three niches of the stone retaining wall that was flanked by the entryway staircases, the fountain—with its twelve-foot bronze sculpture of the Roman god of the sea as a fearsome centerpiece—emitted a raw and restless energy that contrasted dramatically with the sedate exterior of the building itself. Most visitors to the library never even knew it existed. Moira and Stevenson did, however. It was one of the half a dozen meeting places scattered in and around the district they had agreed upon.

She saw him right away. He was in a navy-blue blazer and gray lightweight wool trousers, his shoulders hunched up around his brick-red ears. He was facing away from her, staring at the rather violent countenance of Neptune, which meant that his head was slightly thrown back, his bald spot coming into prominence.

He didn’t move when she came up and stood beside him. They might have been two totally unconnected tourists, not the least because he displayed an open copy of Fodor’s guidebook to Washington, DC, the way a pheasant announces its presence by spreading its tail.

“Not a happy day for you, is it?” he said without turning in her direction or even seeming to move his lips.

“What the hell is going on?” Moira asked. “No one in DoD, including you, is taking my calls.”

“It seems, my dear, that you’ve stepped in a great steaming pile of shit.” Stevenson flipped a page of the guidebook. He was one of those old-school government functionaries who went to a barber for a shave every day, had a manicure once a week, belonged to all the right clubs, and made sure his opinions were held by the majority before he voiced them. “No one wants to be contaminated with the stink.”

“Me? I haven’t done a damn thing.” Except piss off my former bosses, she said to herself.

She thought about the trouble Noah had gone to in order to get Jay’s cell phone and to have her detained. Because she worked that part out on the way over here. The only reason for the NSA agents to say they were taking her in for tampering at the accident site and then let her go without charging her was that for some reason Noah needed her out of commission overnight. Why? Maybe she’d find out once she downloaded the files on the thumb drive she’d found sewn into the lining of Jay’s jacket, but for now her best strategy was to pretend she knew absolutely nothing.

“No.” Stevenson shook his head. “What we have here is something more. I think someone at your company trod on a nerve. The late Jay Weston, perhaps?”

“Do you know what Weston dug up?”

“If I did,” Stevenson said slowly and carefully, “I’d be roadkill by now.”

“That big?”

He rubbed his immaculate red cheek. “Bigger.”

“What the hell is going on between the NSA and Black River?” she said.

“You’re a Black River ex-employee, you tell me.” He pursed his lips. “No, on second thought, I don’t want to know anything, not even speculation. Ever since the news of the jetliner explosion hit the wires, the atmosphere at DoD and the Pentagon has been shrouded in a toxic fog.”

“Meaning?”

“Nobody’s talking.”

“Nobody ever talks up there.”

Stevenson nodded. “True enough, but this is different. Everyone’s walking around on eggshells. Even the secretaries seem terrified. In my twenty years of government service I’ve never experienced anything like it. Except—”

Moira felt a ball of ice form in her stomach. “Except what?”

“Except right before we invaded Iraq.”

9

WILLARD WATCHED Ian Bowles as he exited Firth’s surgery. He’d marked him the second time he’d showed up