Hummer wasn't going anywhere until a CI tow truck hauled it back to HQ for forensics.
"All right!" Soraya shouted. "Out of the vehicle, all of you! Out of the vehicle now!"
As the agents closed the circle around the Hummer, Bourne could see that they were wearing body armor. After Hytner's death, Soraya wasn't taking any chances.
They were within ten meters of the Hummer when Bourne felt his scalp begin to tingle. Something was wrong with the scene, but he couldn't quite put his mental finger on it. He looked again: Everything seemed right-the target surrounded, the approaching agents, the second helicopter hovering above, the noise level rising exponentially...
Then he had it.
Oh, my God, he thought, and viciously twisted the handlebar accelerator. He yelled at the agents, but over the noise of the two copters and his own motorcycle there was no chance they could hear him. Soraya was in the lead, closing in on the driver's door as the others, spread apart, hung back, providing her with a crossfire of cover should she need it.
The setup looked fine, perfect, in fact, but it wasn't.
Bourne leaned forward as the motorcycle sped across the rotary. He had a hundred meters to cover, a route that would take him just left of the Hummer's gleaming flank. He took his right hand off the handlebar grip, gesturing frantically at the agents, but they were properly concentrated on their target.
He gunned the engine, its deep, guttural roar at last cutting through the heavy vibrational thwup-thwup-thwup of the hovering copter. One of the agents saw him coming, watched him gesturing. He called to the other agent, who glanced at Bourne as he roared past the Hummer.
The setup looked right out of the CI playbook, but it wasn't, because the Hummer's engine was ticking over-cooling-while it was still running. Impossible.
Soraya was less than five meters from the target, her body tense, in a semi-crouch. Her eyes opened wide as she became aware of him. Then he was upon her.
He swept her up in his extended right arm, swung her back behind him as he raced off. One of the other agents, now flat on the ground, had alerted the second chopper, because it abruptly rose into the spangled night, swinging away.
The ticking Bourne had heard hadn't come from the engine at all. It was from a triggering device.
The explosion took the Hummer apart, turned its components into smoking shrapnel, shrieked behind them. Bourne, with the motorcycle at full speed, felt Soraya's arms wrap around his ribs. He bent low over the handlebars, feeling her breasts pressing softly against his back as she molded herself to him. The howling air was blast-furnace hot; the sky, bright orange, then clogged with oily black smoke. A hail of ruptured metal whirred and whizzed all around them, plowed into the ground, struck the roadway, fizzed into the river, shriveling.
Jason Bourne, with Soraya Moore clinging tightly to him, accelerated into the light-glare of monument-laden D.C.
Chapter Four
JAKOB SILVER and his brother appeared from out of the dinnertime night, when even cities such as Washington appear deserted or, at least, lonely, a certain indigo melancholy robbing the streets of life. When the two men entered the hushed luxury of the Hotel Constitution on the northeast corner of 20th and F Streets, Thomas, the desk clerk on duty, hurried past the fluted marble columns and across the expanse of luxurious carpeting to meet them.
He had good reason to scurry. He, as well as the other desk clerks, had been given a crisp new hundred-dollar bill by Lev Silver, Jakob Silver's brother, when he had checked in. These Jewish diamond merchants from Amsterdam were wealthy men, this much the desk clerk had surmised. The Silvers were to be treated with the utmost respect and care, befitting their exalted status.
Thomas, a small, mousy, damp-handed man, could see that Jakob Silver's face was flushed as if in victory. It was Thomas's job to anticipate his VIP clients' needs.
"Mr. Silver, my name is Thomas. It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," he said. "Is there anything I might get for you?"
"That you may, Thomas," Jakob Silver replied. "A bottle of your best champagne."
"And have the Pakistani," Lev Silver added, "what's his name-?"
"Omar, Mr. Silver."
"Ah, yes, Omar. I like him. Have him bring up the champagne."
"Very good." Thomas all but bowed from the waist. "Right away, Mr. Silver."
He hurried away as the Silver brothers entered the elevator, a plush cubicle that silently whisked them up to the executive-level fifth