Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Objective

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Forget him,” Karpov said. “I’m the one standing between you and bleeding out here in this cesspit.”

  Bukin swallowed heavily, then gave up the names of three men inside FSB-2.

  “Thank you,” Karpov said. He stood up and shot Bukin between the eyes.

  Then he turned to Cherkesov and said, “What’s to stop me from killing you or taking you in?”

  “You may be incorruptible, Boris Illyich, but you know which side of the bread is buttered, or will be.” Cherkesov took out a cigarette and lit up. He did not once look at his fallen lieutenant. “I can clear the way for you to become head of the FSB-2.”

  “So can President Imov.”

  “True enough.” Cherkesov nodded. “But Imov can’t guarantee that one of the other commanders won’t drop polonium into your tea or slip a stiletto between your ribs one night.”

  Karpov knew very well that Cherkesov still had the power to identify and sweep away any of his potential enemies inside FSB-2. He was the only one who could clear Karpov’s path.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re proposing that I take your job?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what of you? Imov will want your head.”

  “Of course he will, but he’ll have to find me first.”

  “You’ll go into hiding, become a fugitive?” Karpov shook his head. “I don’t see that future for you.”

  “Neither do I, Boris Illyich. I am going to the seat of a higher power.”

  “Higher than the FSB?”

  “Higher than the Kremlin.”

  Karpov frowned. “And what would that be?”

  Cherkesov’s eyes glittered. “Tell me, Boris Illyich, have you ever heard of Severus Domna?”

  22

  MARKS GRABBED HIS left thigh, grimacing in pain. The unseen sniper continued to pepper the area. Bourne darted out, took hold of Marks, and dragged him to safety.

  “Keep your head down, Peter.”

  “Tell that to your pal Moreno,” Marks said. “My fucking head is down.”

  “You’re welcome.” Bourne inspected the wound, determining that the bullet hadn’t severed an artery. Then he ripped a sleeve off Marks’s shirt and used it as a tourniquet, tying it around his thigh above the wound.

  “I’m not going to forget this,” Marks said.

  “No, only I do that,” Bourne said with such a sardonic edge that Marks had to laugh, albeit drily.

  Bourne edged around the front of the Opel. He breathed easily and deeply as he scanned the thick line of trees. He’d been up in one of them not so very long ago, and he used his eidetic memory, honed by his Treadstone training, to reconstruct the best possible places for a sniper to secrete himself. By the way both Ottavio Moreno and Marks fell he had a clear idea of where the shooter must be. He put himself in the sniper’s head: Where would he put himself that both had a clear view of the front door and was deeply sheltered?

  He heard Chrissie calling, and from the level of anxiety in her voice realized that she must have been shouting to him for some time. Crawling back to the other end of the Opel, he called, “I’m okay. Stay inside until I come get you.”

  Scuttling back to the taillights, he sprinted out of cover, hurling himself into the tree line. A volley of shots smacked into the Opel’s front end. From the beginning of the attack, he’d counted the shots. After the last flurry, he’d calculated that the sniper needed time to reload. A couple of seconds was all he needed to reach the protection of the trees. Now he went hunting.

  In among the pines and oaks, perpetual shadows clung to the thick jigsaw of branches. Here and there, light filtered through in tiny diamonds, winking and glittering as the wind stirred the woods. Bourne, in a semi-crouch, picked his way through the underbrush, taking care not to crunch down on twigs or pinecones. He made no sound. Every five or six paces he stopped, watching and listening as a fox or a stoat will, alert for both prey and enemies.

  He caught sight of a small flash of black-and-brown, blurred, winking out almost before it had a chance to register. He headed toward it. Briefly he considered taking to the trees, but was concerned that dislodged debris would give away his position. At some point he changed direction, veering away, circling to come upon the sniper from the side. As he continued, he repeatedly checked behind and above him for any sign of the sniper.

  The glint of metal up ahead pushed him onward at a more rapid pace. Peering out from behind the bole of an oak, he could see the right shoulder and hip of the sniper. He knelt behind a dense patch of underbrush, then scuttled around behind him. A narrow gap between two pines afforded him an excellent view of the front door and driveway. Bourne caught a glimpse of Ottavio Moreno on the ground in a pool of blood. Marks was hidden behind the flank of Moreno’s Opel. Bourne supposed the sniper was waiting for someone to move. He seemed bent on shooting to death everyone who ventured outside the house. Was he NSA, CI, or a soldier of Severus Domna? Only one way to find out.

  Bourne approached slowly and cautiously, but at the last moment the sniper must have sensed him because he drove the wooden stock of his Dragunov SVD back into Bourne’s midsection. Then he whirled, swinging the barrel of the Dragunov against Bourne’s shoulder. He was a slim, flat-faced man with small black eyes and a pushed-in nose.

  He battered Bourne to his knees and then, with another blow of the Dragunov, onto his back. He pressed the rifle’s muzzle against Bourne’s heart.

  “Don’t move, don’t say a word,” he said. “Just hand over the ring.”

  “What ring?”

  The sniper swung the muzzle of the Dragunov into Bourne’s jaw, drawing blood. But at the same instant Bourne smashed the sole of his shoe into the man’s knee. It bent inward, the bones cracked, and the sniper gasped. Bourne was rolling away even as the sniper squeezed off a shot. The bullet plowed into the ground where Bourne had been lying, splitting an old, rotting board full of long carpenter’s nails.

  From one knee, the sniper began to wield the Dragunov like a club, swinging it back and forth to keep Bourne at bay while he caught his breath. Finally, with a concerted effort, he staggered to his feet. That was when Bourne lowered his shoulder and drove it into him. They went down. At once, the sniper tried to maneuver Bourne onto the nails sticking wickedly out of the board. Bourne twisted away, and now the two of them struggled for possession of the Dragunov. Until Bourne lifted an elbow, jamming it into the sniper’s Adam’s apple. He began to choke and Bourne drove a fist into the side of his head. The sniper’s body went limp.

  Bourne checked his hands but found no ring. Then he went through his pockets. His name was Farid Lever, according to his French passport, but that told Bourne nothing. The passport could be real or a fake, he had no time to scrutinize it. Lever, or whoever the hell he was, had on him five thousand British pounds, two thousand euros, and a set of car keys.

  Emptying the Dragunov’s magazine, he flung the rifle into the woods then slapped the sniper back into consciousness.

  “Who are you?” Bourne said. “Who do you work for?”

  The black eyes looked up at him impassively. Reaching down, Bourne squeezed the sniper’s ruined knee. His eyes opened wide and he gasped, but not another sound came out of his mouth. It soon would, Bourne vowed. This was a man who had shot two people, one of them dead. Prying open the sniper’s mouth, he shoved his fist in. The man gagged, arching up. He tried to twist away, to move his head from side to side, but Bourne kept a firm grip on him. As his hands came up, Bourne slapped them down and pressed harder, pushing his fist in deeper.

  The sniper’s eyes began to water, he coughed and gagged again. Then his gorge rose up uncontrollably and he tried to vomit, but there was nowhere for it to go. He began to asphyxiate. Terror flooded his face, and he nodded as vigorously as he was able.

  The moment Bourne extracted his fist, the sniper rolled over on his side and vomited, his eyes tearing, his nose running. His body shook all over. Bourne took him by the shoulders and turned
him onto his back. His face was a mess; he looked like a kid who’d gotten the worst of a street fight.

  “Now,” Bourne said. “Who are you and who do you work for?”

  “Fa… Fa… Farid Lever.” Understandably, he was having trouble speaking.

  Bourne held up the French passport. “One more lie and this gets stuffed down your throat, and I promise you I won’t pull it out.”

  The sniper swallowed, wincing at the sour taste in his mouth. “Farid Kazmi. I belong to Jalal Essai.”

  Bourne took a shot in the dimness. “Severus Domna?”

  “He was.” Kazmi had to stop either to regain his breath or to get more saliva in his mouth. “I need water. Do you have any water?”

  “Those two men you shot needed water, too. One of them is dead, the other isn’t, but neither is getting any,” Bourne said. “Continue. Jalal Essai…”

  “Jalal was a member of Severus Domna. He has broken away from them.”

  “That’s a very dangerous course. He must have a damn good reason.”

  “The ring.”

  “Why?”

  Kazmi’s tongue came out, trying to moisten his dry lips. “It belongs to him. For years he thought it was lost, but now he knows that his brother stole it from him years ago. You have it.”

  So Jalal Essai is Holly’s dreaded uncle, Bourne thought. The puzzle was at last taking shape. Holly the hedonist on one side, and her uncle Jalal the religious extremist on the other. What if Holly’s father had left Morocco to protect her from his brother, who would surely have clamped down on Holly’s natural tendencies, stifled her, killed her, in a manner of speaking? And then, after his death, who had stood between Holly and her uncle? But in a blinding flash of memory he knew: It was him. Holly had somehow recruited him to protect her from Jalal Essai. He had done that, but the curious relationship among Holly, Tracy, Perlis, and Diego Hererra—a relationship she had failed to tell him about—had undone her. Perlis had found out about the ring from her and had killed her to get it.

  “I was to get the ring at all costs,” Kazmi said, bringing Bourne back into the present.

  “No matter how many lives it took.”

  Kazmi nodded, wincing with pain. “No matter how many.” Something lurked in those black eyes. “Jalal will get it, too.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  A look of serenity bloomed on Kazmi’s face and Bourne lunged for his mouth. But it was too late. His molars had ground open a fake tooth, and the cyanide inside was already shutting down his systems.

  Bourne sat back on his haunches. When Kazmi had breathed his last, he rose and headed back toward the house.

  * * *

  Peter Marks lay on the ground, keeping as still as possible. Moving only caused a further loss of blood. Though well trained, he had never before been wounded in the field, or anywhere else, had never even experienced an accident like falling off a ladder or missing a stair tread. He lay as if dead, hearing his breath sawing in and out of his mouth, feeling the blood pulsing in his leg as if it had developed a second heart, but a heart that was malevolent, black as night, a heart that was close to death, or in whose chambers death had inveigled itself like a thief.

  Marks felt his life was about to be stolen from him prematurely, as it had been from his sister. How close he felt to her at this moment, as if at the last instant he had snatched her from the doomed plane, holding her close while they soared through the clouds. This abrupt awareness of the tenuousness of his own life did not frighten him so much as change his perspective. He lay, helpless and bleeding, and watched an ant struggle with a freshly fallen leaf, a new leaf, a luminous green, until moments ago bursting with life. The leaf was clearly too big for the ant, but the insect was undeterred, tugging and pulling, dragging the recalcitrant leaf over pebbles and roots, the huge impediments of its world. Marks loved that ant. It refused to give up no matter how difficult its life had become. It persevered. It abided. This, too, Marks resolved to do. He resolved to look out for himself and for the people he cared about—Soraya, for instance—in a way that he could not have imagined, let alone foreseen, before he had been shot.

  And so he lay for some time, hearing nothing but the occasional soughing of the wind through the woods. Which was why, when he heard Chrissie’s voice calling, he said, “This is Peter Marks. I’ve been hit in the leg. Moreno’s dead, and Adam went after the sniper.”

  “I’m coming out to get you.”

  “Stay where you are,” he shouted back. Dragging himself forward, he struggled to sit with his back against the Opel. “The area isn’t secure.”

  But a moment later she appeared at his side, crouched down behind the safety of the car’s bullet-ridden flank.

  “Stupid move,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  It was the second time someone had said that to him today and he didn’t like it. In fact, he didn’t like much of anything in his life at the moment, and he became momentarily disoriented, wondering how in the world he had allowed himself to get into this sorry state. He loved no one and so far as he knew no one loved him, not currently, anyway. He supposed his parents had loved him in their gruff overriding way, and surely his sister had. But who else? His latest girlfriend had lasted six months, just about par for the course, before she got fed up with his long hours and inattention, and walked out. Friends? A few. But like Soraya, he used them or they used him. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach and shuddered.

  “You’re going into shock,” Chrissie said, understanding him better than he could imagine. “We’d better get you into the house and warmed up.”

  She helped him to stand, balanced on his good leg. He put his arm around her, and she helped him toward the house. He moved shakily and, stumbling over a rock or a root, almost sent them both tumbling over.

  Christ on a crutch, he thought wildly, I’m full of self-pity today, and was even more thoroughly disgusted with himself than he had been a moment ago.

  Her father, who had emerged from the house, rushed to Marks’s other side and helped her with her burden. The old man kicked the door shut when they were inside.

  Bourne came upon the woman almost without warning. She was half buried in crisp, dead leaves. Her face was turned away from him, eyes closed. Her long hair was streaked with blood, but from the way she lay, it was impossible to tell whether she was dead or alive. A neighbor out walking, it had been her bad luck to stumble upon Kazmi. Beneath the fall of leaves, he could make out bits and pieces of her red-and-black-checked flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. Leaves appeared to have been kicked over her with considerable haste.

  He needed to return to Peter Marks and to the people in the house, but he couldn’t bypass the woman until he found out whether she was alive and, if so, how badly she was injured. Creeping closer, he put a hand out to find the pulse in her carotid artery.

  Her eyes snapped open, her hand rose up, clutching a hunting knife by its handle. The point stabbed out toward his chest and, as he moved, sliced through his shirt and across the skin covering his breastbone. She sat up, coming after him. Leaves fell away from her like freshly turned earth from an animated corpse. Bourne grasped her wrist, redirecting the knife away from him, but she had a second knife in her other hand. Struggling with her, he saw it very late, and took the point on the bone of his shoulder.

  She was well trained and surprisingly strong. She scissored her legs, catching his right ankle, taking him off balance. He fell backward and she was on him. He had control of one wrist, but the knife blade scythed in to slit his throat. Using the carpenter’s nail like a push dagger, he slapped his hand against the side of her neck, puncturing her carotid artery.

  A fountain of blood arced out, pulsing with each slackening beat of her heart. The woman toppled over into the leaves that had covered her. She looked up at him with Kazmi’s enigmatic smile, that smile that made him believe that Jalal Essai wasn’t finished with him, that had put him on alert, that had caused him to kee
p the carpenter’s nail hidden in his left hand. Were Kazmi and the woman working together? Had she been his backup? It seemed so to him, a diabolical scheme that made of Jalal Essai a formidable enemy with whom he had a difficult and shadowed past, a man who doubtless nursed a blood grudge against him.

  As Chrissie and her father sat Marks down in a chair, they heard rifle shots. Chrissie gave a little gasp and ran to the door, pulling it open against her father’s shouted warning. Still in the shadows of the doorway, she peered out past the driveway and the Opel to the woods beyond, but she could see nothing, even though she strained with every ounce of her strength to penetrate the foliage, to spot a sign that Bourne was still alive. What if he was wounded and needed help?

  She had already made up her mind to go after him, as she imagined Tracy would have done in the same circumstances, when she saw him emerging through the branches. Before she could take a step, someone flashed past her, down the steps.

  “Scarlett!”

  Scarlett raced down the driveway, skirted the dead man, passing around the trunk of the car, and flung herself into Bourne’s arms.

  “This is real blood, your blood,” she said a bit out of breath, “but I can help you.”

  Bourne was about to brush her gently away, but her obvious concern changed his mind. She genuinely wanted to help, and he couldn’t take that away from her. He knelt down beside her so that she could check his cuts and bruises.

  “I’ll get bandages from Granddad’s kit.” But she made no move to leave him, digging in the dirt with her fingers as children will when they’re embarrassed or at a loss for words. Then she put her face up to his. “Are you all right?”

  He smiled. “Imagine tripping over a rock.”

  “Just scratches and bruises?”

  “That’s all.”

  “That’s good then. I—” She held something up for him to see. “I found this just now. Does it belong to Mr. Marks? This is where he was lying.”

  Bourne took it and rubbed the dirt off. It was a Severus Domna ring. Where had it come from?