A Tale of Two Agents

A/N: The idea for this fic came to me just after I finished watching The Bourne Legacy. I apologize in advance for the length. This story is set before The Bourne Identity.

Cairo, Egypt

Aaron Cross entered the crowded bar in one of the seedier localities of Cairo and was greeted by the suffocating stench of sweat and the cacophony of raucous drinkers, locals and foreigners alike. He made his way to the counter and ordered a beer, sat down on a stool at the corner of the cafe and slowly sipped his drink meditatively, instinctively scanning his environs and vetting his fellow patrons.

The rendezvous he had planned wouldn't take place until close to midnight, but he had arrived at the exchange point three hours earlier, to ensure that the location was completely clean. He'd posted men all over the nearby streets; freelance 'watchers' he'd paid handsomely to ensure that his contact wasn't being followed to the bar.

His contact was a highly placed member in a Cairo-based terrorist group responsible for a slew of attacks against American military targets all over the Middle East. When Aaron had first encountered the man a few weeks ago, he had sensed that he was not a man with strong convictions about his cause. And his instincts had paid off. Fifty thousand dollars, US, and assurances of protection should he be blown, was all it had taken for the man to provide Aaron with detailed plans of the group's next major attack. The information in the flash-drive Aaron would shortly receive was worth millions, but Aaron had also judged, again rightly, that this was not a man willing to play the odds to rake in a fortune. This was merely a soldier disillusioned with his cause, prepared to casually betray it only so far as to scrap together enough extra money for himself without arousing undue attention or far worse, notoriety. He wasn't looking for a way out...he was simply willing to trade away his loyalty from his safe nest to make it more comfortable. And having done so once, he could be induced to do so again. In short, he was perfect for Aaron's, and the DOD's, purposes.

The man called Abdul Karim Mustafa was one of Aaron's first significant coups since he'd joined the program and been put into the field. Byer would be pleased. And the more satisfied Byer was with his results, the longer he'd stay in the field. Which meant, more pills to keep him stronger and sharper than he ever could be otherwise, more missions to demonstrate his newfound skills, and, which mattered to him the most, more opportunities to continue serving his country as he never was able to before.

His cellphone suddenly started buzzing, interrupting his brief reverie. Cross glanced at the screen. It was one of his 'watchers'. He responded instantly.

ooo

"Target is approaching the start of the street. Estimated time of arrival at bar is approximately ten minutes, sir", said the watcher in Arabic.

"Good. Keep me posted if there are any sudden changes", replied the man, the American, on the other end of the line, also in Arabic, before hanging up.

The watcher waited a few seconds and, after a brief hesitation, dialled another number and spoke to another of his 'clients'. The American had paid him well, but this particular 'watcher's' loyalty was perpetually up for sale to the highest bidder...and he was scarcely above serving two masters at the same time! This second man, a Frenchman he believed though the stranger could also have passed for American, had however paid him substantially more and his instructions therefore would be of higher priority.

"Target approaching his contact point", he reported, in French this time. He then revealed the positions of the other three watchers in the surrounding area who were keeping track of Abdul Karim Mustafa. He didn't know what was so unique about the target that caused the unfortunate man to attract the attention of not one, but two, Westerners, but he didn't care. His was not to reason. "Further instructions?" he asked.

ooo

"Your job's done. Get out of there", said Jason Bourne to the 'watcher' he'd bought the previous night. "Go to the front desk of the hotel, talk to the night clerk...you'll get the rest of your payment, as we agreed". Jason then hung up and called the conduit through whom he'd arranged to pay the watcher. He then stepped out of the darkened alleyway he'd concealed himself in and made his way onto the streets. Having ascertained there was no one to observe him, he broke into a slow run. Every second counted with this operation.

Bourne had arrived in Cairo three days ago. His target-a ranking member of a local terrorist group, named Abdul Karim Mustafa. According to the brief contained in the envelope Nicky had given him, Mustafa was the mastermind behind several attacks against US military targets in the Middle East. His termination was therefore a priority.

After two days of combing through Cairo's dirty underbelly in the guise of French journalist 'Nicholas Lemannisier', Jason had finally hit upon a lead. A look-out man, a 'watcher', who styled himself as a freelance spy, who, with a little financial inducement, had admitted to Bourne that he knew exactly where Mustafa would be the following-at a secret rendezvous, making an illicit deal of some sort. This didn't surprise Jason in the least. From what little he'd gathered about the terrorist, the man was far from a dedicated follower of the cause and wasn't above making secret deals behind the backs of his masters. In fact, this piece of intel proved intensely valuable to his mission-it provided him with the ideal scenario for the kill, and the ideal strike-point. He could take out Mustafa swiftly and in the dead of night and leave his body behind conspicuously; for its discovery by the authorities or anyone else would only serve to point the finger of blame at the terrorist cell he belonged to. A traitor to the cause had been dispatched to hell...it was the perfect cover for the assassination! And Jason decided to seize the opportunity.

He did not know what deal Mustafa was making, and with whom. The watcher claimed not to know anything about the man who'd hired him and others to keep an eye on Mustafa in the streets before and after the exchange. That didn't matter though; the identity of the man Mustafa was dealing with wasn't relevant to Bourne's scenario. Jason's plan was to let the exchange take place and execute the target while he was departing from the rendezvous point. This would minimize the chances of Mustafa's 'business partner' discovering that something was amiss, which would be the case if the man didn't turn up for the rendezvous. However, as a precautionary measure, Jason decided he would have to neutralize the other watchers keeping track of Mustafa; to prevent them from alerting the unknown other party to the terrorists' disappearance.

Jason glanced at his watch and then quickened his pace. Three men to neutralize...and every second counted...

ooo

Aaron had managed to procure a private table for himself in one of the shadowy corners of the bar by bribing one of the bartenders to throw out some of the rowdier drunks who were occupying said table; and the bartender was only too keen to oblige!

It was five minutes to eleven when Abdul Karim Mustafa entered the bar, dressed unobtrusively, and somewhat uncharacteristically, in a dull brown business suit. Aaron's watchers had informed him that Mustafa hadn't been followed...he was completely clean. Yet the man looked nervous, as was his nature, Aaron had decided.

Cross waved the contact over to his table. The man sat down in the seat opposite him. Cross extended his hand for the flash-drive. Mustafa wordlessly handed it to him. "It's got everything you need", he said in a voice barely above a whisper, in Arabic which he knew his 'client' spoke with reasonable fluency. "Target location...logistics...personnel...schedule...everything!"

"I'll be the judge of that", Aaron said, as he stuck the drive into his laptop, which he had extracted from his back-pack the moment he'd entered the bar. He swiftly perused the contents of the drive; his cognitive enhancements courtesy of the blue pills allowing him to process the information rapidly...or at any rate, enough of it for him to ascertain the intel was reasonably authentic. "Looks like you get your money", he said, as he closed the laptop and replaced it in his bag, pocketing the flash-drive. From his jacket pocket, he extracted a large, thick envelope and handed it to Mustafa. "Fifty thousand, US. As we agreed", he said.

"If you need anything else, you know how to get in touch with me", the terrorist said, as he swiftly counted his treacherously earned money, before stuffing it back into the envelope which went into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. "You can be sure of that", said Cross. Mustafa gave him a brisk nod, and then walked out of the bar.

Aaron waited five minutes, then called the first of his watchers on the street. He had to ensure that Mustafa departed from the area as safely as he had arrived; that the man hadn't been compromised.

There was no response.

He tried the second watcher. And the third. Again, no response.

Aaron was getting concerned now. Something was wrong...something had gone off the radar somewhere. He could sense it.

He called the fourth watcher. The phone rang four times...five times...six times...

And then it was answered.

ooo

The first two had been childishly simple. The third man, who was perched in an abandoned apartment on the second floor in front of a window that offered an expansive view of the street below, put up the hint of a fight. But Bourne was swiftly able to take him down. These men were amateurs after all, not lethal fighting machines trained by Treadstone.

Barely had the man's unconscious body dropped to the ground that his cellphone, which had fallen across the darkened room during the fight, started to buzz. Jason froze for a moment and hesitated. Should he or should he not take the call? It was always the little things, he rued, that ruined otherwise airtight operations...

The phone had rung four times. Whoever was on the other end, thought Jason, was sure desperate to get in touch with the man. It took him but a split-second to realize that this must be the other man, the one dealing with Mustafa! And the man was frantically trying to get in touch will the other watchers, to ensure that his 'business partner' hadn't been compromised on the way out of the rendezvous point. The other three obviously hadn't responded, since one had been turned and the other two were unconscious, nursing injuries that would put them in a hospital for days...and if he got no response from the fourth one, he would assume something had gone off the wire, and the mission would be compromised...

Jason scooped up the phone with the sixth ring and responded.

"What the hell is going on there?", a voice demanded frantically in Arabic.

"Nothing. Target is safely down the street", Bourne replied, putting his rudimentary knowledge of spoken Arabic to the test.

"What about the others? Why haven't they responded?" asked the other man.

"I don't know", Jason said, glancing out the window as he did so. Mustafa was at the very end of the street. Time to move!

He ended the call and threw the phone to the floor after swiftly wiping it for prints. He then made his way out of the apartment and raced down the stairs to the street, in pursuit of his target.

ooo

Even as the watcher cut the line, Aaron sensed that something was off somewhere. And even as he made his way to the exit of the bar he knew what it was. The watcher's voice. Aaron had sub-consciously memorized the voices of all the watcher's, and he knew that the man he had spoken with wasn't the watcher! The voice...the speech pattern...it was different. Someone else had answered the call! It explained everything...the silence of the other watchers...they'd been taken down! Which meant the mission was compromised...Mustafa was compromised!

Cross ran down the street towards the small building where he knew one of the watcher's was stationed. He burst into the apartment only to find the man lying bruised and beaten, unconscious on the floor.

"Oh Christ", muttered Aaron under his breath. He glanced out of the window. There was no sign of Mustafa.

Aaron brandished his Glock pistol from his hidden shoulder holster. Every second counted. He needed to find whoever had knocked out his watchers, and take him out before he got to Mustafa. He simply couldn't afford to lose such a valuable source!

ooo

Even as Bourne raced down the alleyways he'd studied earlier in the day in preparation of the op, he couldn't but help reflect on the voice of Mustafa's 'business partner'. Though the man had spoken Arabic, Jason's practised ears had sensed that the man's accent didn't remotely seem Middle Eastern once the language was ignored. In fact, the accent almost seemed...American?

Jason stored away the fact at the back of his mind. It didn't matter now who the man was...all that mattered was the mission!

He stood in the dingy alley, distinctly hearing the sound of footsteps. He slipped on gloves and took the cheap but effective switch-blade knife he'd purchased earlier in the day. He tested its grip for a few moments, then stood poised, ready to strike.

The moment Mustafa passed the corner of the main street and the alley, Bourne grabbed the man with his left hand and in one swift motion dragged him into the alley. In the next instant, wielding the knife in his right hand with surgical precision, he slit Mustafa's throat, using his left hand to stifle the cry of pain. He dragged the body deeper into the alley and lowered it against a dumpster.

Jason searched the corpse meticulously and found an envelope stuffed with money. So the unknown second party had bought something from Mustafa. Information of some sort, most likely. It didn't matter. The important thing was that Mustafa was a traitor to his terrorist group, who would be deemed by the authorities to have been killed by his fellow members for his transgressions. It was up to Jason now to create the necessary effect.

Three minutes later, he stepped back and surveyed his work, not with pride, but with the precision of a technician. The corpse of Abdul Karim Mustafa was heavily scarred, with multiple deep lacerations all over his face and his chest, visible through the business suit which had been ripped apart. Fifty thousand dollars worth of his blood money was pouring down his corpse, the crisp bank-notes stained with the blood dripping from his many post-mortem wounds. The switch-blade knife which had been the instrument of his death and his mutilation was lying in his unclenched and lifeless right hand. And on his lap, on a small sheet of paper, was ornately inscribed, the Arabic word for 'TRAITOR'.

His task accomplished, Jason removed his gloves and slipped out the back end of the alleyway. Four hours from now, he'd be on a plane back to Paris, with not a shred of evidence to identify Mustafa's brutal death as a CIA-sanctioned hit...

ooo

Aaron stared at the grisly scene in front of him.

He'd killed several times in the field...but the sheer brutality, the bestiality, of what had been visited upon the late Abdul Karim Mustafa was almost nauseating to him!

It was obvious what had happened, he thought. Someone in Mustafa's terrorist cell had discovered his illicit dealings, had learnt about the meeting, had followed him here, neutralized the watchers, and then killed Mustafa for his betrayal.

The more Cross thought about it, the more he realized that the unknown assassin must have penetrated his specific operation. There was no other explanation for how he'd known of the watchers and their locations. How much had the assassin known? Had he known what Mustafa had been selling? Was the information contained in the flash drive Aaron had just purchased soon to be rendered worthless? His source was dead...he needed to now ascertain, beyond all doubt, if the intel he'd gathered was dead was well...

But he had no leads. Apart from the assassin. The man he'd spoken to on the phone when he'd called the watcher. If he found out who the killer was, he might be able to determine the level of damage done to his operation. After all, there was always the possibility that Mustafa had been killed for some entirely different reason, unconnected with his betrayal of his terrorist cell!

And the only lead he had to the assassin was the watcher who had been turned. These men were freelancers; their loyalty owed to the highest bidder. He'd obviously been out-bid by someone, and now he would find out who...

ooo

Two days later

Even as the man peered through the peephole, trying to determine who had knocked on his door at the ungodly hour of four in the morning, the door crashed open, knocking him to the ground. Through his bloody haze, he stared at the American, the man who'd set up the meet with Mustafa, towering over him, a gun in hand.

"You honestly thought I wouldn't find out what you did?" the man said in English, before lifting him off the floor and slamming him into a wall. Bits of plaster, loosened due to the impact, rained down on him.

"Please...it was just business", the watcher protested in Arabic, then in broken English.

"Well you're going to make it your business to answer my questions honestly", said Cross firmly in Arabic. "Or you lose your neck".

The man whimpered in pain. Cross delivered a powerful blow to his kidneys, causing him to squeal in pain.

"Who was it? Who paid you? Who?" Aaron asked, shaking the man.

"The-the Frenchman", the watcher gasped.

"Frenchman?" Aaron echoed quizzically.

"I...don't know. He spoke French. Could have been...American...like you", the watcher muttered.

Aaron froze. "An American? Are you sure?" he asked again.

"Yes. Said his name was...Nick. That's it...'Nick'. Said he wanted the Abdul Karim Mustafa...he paid well. More than you", the watcher said, looking fearfully at Cross, almost as though he expected to be hit again for that comment.

"How much did you tell him?" Aaron asked.

"Not-not much. I didn't tell him anything about you...Mr...Carson isn't it?" the watcher gasped.

"Knowing my name isn't going to help you save your neck", Aaron replied firmly.

"I told him about the meeting...at the cafe. About the other people watching the target and where they would be. Nothing more...I swear...please", the man squealed in terror again as Aaron twisted his man and pulled it, nearly dislocating it.

"If I find out you've lied to me...you'd better find a deep enough hole to bury yourself in before I find you" said Cross, before he knocked the man out with a blow to the temple and walked out of the room.

ooo

National Research Assay Group

Washington DC

One week later

Colonel Eric Byer stared at the report of Aaron Cross' post-mission debriefing, forwarded to him by Lt. General Paulsen from the DOD. Bad enough that they'd lost a valuable source, Byer rued, worse still; it appeared that he'd been eliminated by an American. A mercenary-for-hire? A Western convert to a jihadist cult? Such things weren't unheard of...

And yet, something seemed off. Cross certainly seemed to think so, per his debriefing, and in the short time Outcome Number Five had been in the program, Byer had learnt to trust his instincts. The manner of Abdul Karim Mustafa's death and the discovery of his body clearly indicated that he'd been eliminated by a member of his own terrorist cell, who'd uncovered his illicit dealings. But the fact that the assassin was most likely an American called into question the circumstances of Mustafa's death. Indeed, upon closer examination, they seemed odd in themselves. Why would a member of Mustafa's own terrorist cell take the effort to tail him to one of his illicit rendezvous'? To obtain evidence of his guilt, surely, but then, why bother executing Mustafa in the streets and leave his body for the authorities to find, when he could have been killed far more covertly, say at a clandestine meeting of the group!

No, it seemed to Byer that an impression had been created and planted at the scene-the impression that Mustafa had been executed by his own organization as a traitor; when in fact, he was the target of someone else entirely. An American assassin. A professional. A specialist not only in dispatch, but in infiltration and misdirection.

A thought suddenly struck Byer like lightning, almost causing him to flinch. An idea that seemed so ridiculous, so fantastic...too ludicrous to possibly be true! And yet, stranger coincidences had occurred in the murky shadow world of covert operations...

In any case, he decided, there wouldn't be any harm in checking it out. It was the only lead he had after all.

So he picked up the phone, dialled the number, and said, "Get me Ward Abbott please".

ooo

"Unbelievable!" Byer said, exasperated.

It was nearly an hour later. He and his associate, Mark Turso, were seated in one of the empty conference rooms at NRAG headquarters. Byer had just finished briefing Turso about what he'd discovered from his conversation with Abbott; about a certain Treadstone operation in Cairo the previous week...to eliminate one Abdul Karim Mustafa.

"The CIA takes out the DOD's source", scoffed Turso. "Talk about inter-agency rivalry".

"Paulsen and his friends at the Pentagon know nothing about this. Neither do Abbott or Conklin. I want to keep it that way", said Byer.

"Why'd the bloody CIA want Mustafa dead anyway?" Turso asked.

"Apparently...the Agency hired his outfit a couple of years back. Some kind of failed op involving Russia. Mustafa was the one who dealt with the Agency contacts. Lately he's been trying to blackmail them for some extra cash...threatening to expose their op to the Russian government. Knowing how trigger-happy guys are at Langley, he pretty much signed his death warrant when he tried to pull that stunt", explained Byer.

"Jesus", Turso muttered. "And Cross and this Treadstone agent...what's his name...?"

"Bourne", said Byer. "Jason Bourne".

"Cross and Bourne actually came into contact on the field?" Turso asked incredulously.

"Well...there was a phone conversation according to both their respective debriefing reports", said Byer. "Thankfully, neither of them knew who the other was. And I hope to God it stays that way".

He paused and continued, "We're playing with fire here Mark. These programs are a ticking time bomb as they are. When their fuses start to get tangled up...we're looking at a minefield that could potential blow us out of the skies".

"But couldn't we do something...facilitate better communication..." Turso began, but Byer cut him off. "No", he said firmly. "Treadstone and Outcome stay isolated. For the sake of everything we've spent the last few years of our lives building...for the sake of this country and its security...let us hope and pray that Jason Bourne and Aaron Cross never meet".