The Bourne Retribution

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Ouyang Jidan journeyed to Beidaihe by private train. He was accompanied in the plush car by Cho Xilan, Deng Tsu, and Kai. Naturally, there was also a large security contingent. The red silk seats, the tinkling miniature chandelier, the pair of cast-silver foo dogs all served to give the interior the appearance of a Party conference room or a hotel lobby.

  These three men were the last people Ouyang had imagined as his traveling companions to the Party Congress, and after the confrontation in Deng Tsu’s limo, he made the 185-mile journey on edge, not knowing what to expect or whom to trust. Not that he wasn’t going to get his revenge on Cho and Deng for making him relinquish his hold on Maricruz. The agent of this revenge was even now on his way from Moscow.

  Rageful though he was at his core, he showed none of his bitter enmity to the men in the train carriage. He was still coming to terms with the reality of never seeing his wife again. It seemed to him an absurd impossibility, an unimaginable loss that had altered his life forever. There would be hell to pay, of this he was absolutely certain.

  “Now that we’re all together, snug as dung beetles in a rug,” Deng Tsu said, “I’d like to discuss the situation vis-à-vis Israel.” He crossed one leg over the other, Western-style. “Jidan, I believe you’re best qualified to start us off.”

  So this is what it boils down to, Ouyang thought. This is what it’s all about: Israel.

  “What would you have me say, Patriarch?”

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Deng Tsu said easily.

  “You remember Brigadier General Wadi Khalid, don’t you, Jidan?” Cho Xilan interjected.

  “Khalid was my contact inside the Syrian government.”

  “Oh, he was more than that,” Cho said, relishing each word. “You were the architect behind what came to be called the Torture Archipelago; you taught Khalid everything he knew about torture. And you know so much, Jidan, so very, very much.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, Cho, but this is old news.”

  “And yet it’s the genesis of your personal animus toward Israel and the Mossad, in particular.”

  This from Deng Tsu, which caused Ouyang to listen carefully to not only the words but also the intonation.

  “True enough,” Ouyang said, nodding. “But the Israelis were a thorn in our side even before that. Reuben Yadin, then the Director of Mossad, first spearheaded the electronic surveillance of entities in Africa and Southeast Asia controlled by us, then masterminded the first virus attacks on our military computer cores. His son, Eli, has only built upon the foundation his father put in place.”

  Deng Tsu shifted uneasily in his seat. There were times when his aging bones discomfited him.

  “Mossad has been using a more sophisticated form of the Stuxnet worm used to periodically shut down Iran’s nuclear project generators,” Ouyang concluded.

  “And you can’t stop it,” Cho Xilan said smugly.

  “On the contrary, we not only have stopped it, but we have launched our own cyber counterattack against Israel. We’re currently at a stalemate, but if history is any guide, that won’t last long. We need more programmers, which,” Ouyang emphasized, “is why I was in Shanghai.” He shook his head. “What puzzles me is why Cho Xilan did his best to impede my recruitment. Don’t you want us to succeed against the Israelis?”

  There was silence between the men as the train rocketed along, the wheels tick-tocking over the tracks like a clock, the carriage swaying gently. Ouyang noted Kai’s gaze flicking back and forth between Cho and himself. Was he trying to assess the winner in this battle, or had he already been ordered to take a side by Deng Tsu? Impossible to say.

  “That question is unworthy of you,” Cho Xilan said. “So far as I know, we all want the same thing.”

  “Then why send your people to Shanghai to spy on me?”

  “Is this true?” Deng Tsu said.

  “Of course not, Patriarch,” Cho Xilan said.

  “He’s lying.”

  Everyone turned to look at Kai, who had spoken.

  “Cho Xilan sent a young woman named Yue, along with one of his men, acting as her husband, to Shanghai.”

  Cho Xilan clucked his tongue. “It was a fact-finding mission, nothing more.”

  “Then,” Kai said, “how to explain the death of your man and the disappearance of Yue?”

  Cho Xilan remained as still and silent as the seat on which he sat.

  “This matter,” Deng Tsu said, “illustrates the time and energy wasted on this rivalry.” Suddenly he sat forward. “I’ll have none of it. Do you hear me? It appears to me that neither of you took to heart what I told you before we left Beijing. This distresses me greatly.”

  So this is to be a contest of sorts, Ouyang thought. Will one of us be among the two members of the Politburo Standing Committee ousted at the Party Congress to whittle the committee down to seven?

  The Patriarch bent over, opened a briefcase, withdrew a slim dossier. Its cover was crimson with three diagonal black stripes in the upper right-hand corner. Top secret, highest priority. It contained a single sheet of onionskin, which Deng Tsu perused before he spoke.

  “What annoys me, Cho, is that you spoke up when you should have kept your mouth shut.”

  Ouyang could not resist the tiniest of smiles as he registered the effect of the direct rebuke on his rival’s face. If he was right about the contest, then surely he was winning. However, his elation was short-lived, because now Deng Tsu speared him with his unwavering gaze.

  “Cho Xilan was wrong when he said this affair began with Brigadier General Wadi Khalid, isn’t that so, Ouyang Jidan?”

  Ouyang’s heart seemed to freeze in his chest. It was a very bad sign when the Patriarch addressed him by his full name. He looked to the silver foo dogs, who grinned at him mindlessly, then back to the gaze that seemed to penetrate to the core of him.

  “Well,” Deng Tsu said authoritatively, “we are waiting for an answer.” Though no further emphasis to his words was needed, he plucked the sheet of onionskin out of its jacket and held it aloft.

  “No, Patriarch.” Ouyang had to pause to clear his throat, which was as clotted as his emotions. “It began with Sara Yadin.” He looked around the rail carriage at each man in attendance. “The Mossad agent known as Rebeka.”

  50

  The man who boarded the plane at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport was shaped like a bullet, said not a word to anyone, and had a small reinforced metal case chained to his left wrist. That he was FSB was indisputable. Ambassador Liu eyed him with ill-concealed terror. Bourne merely observed. He had met many men like him; he’d even known a few.

  The FSB operative looked at no one, stared straight ahead. Just before takeoff, the attendant made the mistake of asking if he would like something to drink. The FSB agent regarded him with a look that backed the attendant off as if he had been scalded by boiling water. Bourne continued to observe.

  The operative wore a gray, worsted suit that fit him well but was made of inferior materials. A thin white line where the left sleeve was attached to the body of the jacket attested to a strip of mis-sewn padding.

  Half an hour after takeoff, when the plane had achieved cruising altitude, Bourne unstrapped himself, walked up the aisle to the galley, got the attendant to pour him a container of coffee, and plunked himself down into the seat next to the operative. He smelled of camphor and cheap tobacco. His cheeks were blue with stubble but his scalp was as shiny and smooth as a bowling ball.

  “How’s the weather in Moscow?” Bourne said in Russian.

  Nothing.

  “Hot or cold, it still stinks there. But at least the girls put out for people like us, eh, comrade?”

  No reply.

  “So how’s my friend Boris?”

  The operative stared at him with the same dead-fish eyes that had terrified the flight attendant.

  “General Karpov,” Bourne said. “Boris Illyich Karpov. Short, roly-poly fellow with an unerring political sense. Surely you’
ve met him.”

  A faint flicker in those dead-fish eyes. Then a slight smile that showed feral incisors. “Please.”

  “He’s your boss, isn’t he?”

  The operative went back to looking at nothing.

  “If he’s not, your career is screwed.”

  “And you would know that how?”

  “I told you.”

  The operative grunted. “Man like you, you have no friends.”

  “I think,” Bourne said, “you’re talking about yourself.”

  Now the operative’s eyes engaged his fully. “Fuck you, comrade.”

  “Boris and I last worked in Damascus. We were after the same terrorist, Semid Abdul-Qahhar, the head of the Munich—”

  “I know who Semid Abdul-Qahhar is.”

  “Was. Boris and I took him out.”

  At this point, the operative looked at Bourne as if in an entirely new light. “If that’s true—”

  “It is true.” Bourne went on to describe the incident in detail, leaving out only Rebeka’s role in it. When he was finished, he said, “What are you doing on this flight? Delivering your package to someone in Beijing?”

  “I’m going all the way to Beidaihe. You?”

  “I’m taking the ambassador there,” Bourne said. “Orders from Minister Ouyang. If you don’t mind my saying I’m surprised a Russian is being allowed into the seaside inner sanctum.”

  The operative leered at Bourne with his yellow teeth. “You know something, comrade, you talk too much.”

  Eli Yadin’s daughter, Reuben Yadin’s granddaughter.” The Patriarch waved the sheet of onionskin back and forth like a flag over a battlefield. “With these people it’s family—always family. Isn’t that so, Ouyang Jidan?”

  “That is my experience with the Mossad, Patriarch.”

  “And yet you managed to entangle yourself in that family. Please enlighten us as to the circumstances of your error.” He waved the onionskin more vigorously. “And please do not omit your reason for doing so.”

  Ouyang stared up for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts from the curved ceiling. He began his narrative in a voice that harked back to his past. It was a lighter voice, less crusted with cynicism, less hardened by time. “Rebeka came to my attention almost by accident. Reading through daily intel on Syria, Iran, and Oman, I came across an item that, though brief and sketchy, piqued my interest. One of our operatives reported a rumor that military secrets were being stolen from Syria. Who was doing this? Was it, in fact, being done, or was it simply a rumor, one of thousands that drift through intel reports every day of the week?

  “In any event, I was intrigued. If Syrian military secrets were being stolen I wanted them. I ordered this operative to investigate further. Within a week, he reported that he had discovered proof that the rumor was true. I ordered him to send me the proof, but I never heard from him again. Whether he was killed, abducted, or thrown into a Syrian prison remains an impenetrable mystery.

  “I set another operative onto the case. Two weeks later, he informed me that the secrets were being transported from Syria to Oman. Where were they going from Oman? I asked him. He did not know, but he was determined to find out. Again, nothing. No follow-up, no news, no body. Nothing. He had followed the first operative into oblivion.”

  “That doesn’t say much for your operatives, Ouyang,” Cho said.

  “Must I?” Deng Tsu said, turning a wrathful face to him.

  Cho subsided, trying his best to become invisible.

  “Please continue, Jidan,” the Patriarch said in an altogether different tone of voice.

  Ouyang gave the old man a deferential nod. He was determined not to look at Cho Xilan at all.

  “For us, the disappearance of one operative was unusual enough. Two was unheard of. As a result, I determined to take matters into my own hands. I flew into Oman under diplomatic cover, with a legend worked up by one of my people.

  “All I had to go on was a name: Fisal. Fisal was a bedouin, an itinerant merchant who traveled from country to country, buying and selling all manner of goods, legal and illegal. He knew everyone in every city in which he did business.

  “It was Fisal with whom the second operative had made contact in Muscat. Fisal was still there when I arrived in the capital. Gold and diamonds were his specie of choice. Forearmed, I had plenty of both.

  “It was through Fisal that I learned about Rebeka. She was a flight attendant on a regional airline, on the run from Damascus to Muscat and back again. It was she, Fisal believed, who was the courier.

  “But who, I asked him, is this woman working for? Through his contacts at the airline, he had discovered her nationality to be Saudi, so she was probably working for them, though, he admitted, it could just as easily be the Americans. ‘All sands shift,’ I remember him saying. ‘None more so than here.’

  “I asked him to find out for me. He was reluctant, knowing the fate of my second operative. I showed him more diamonds and we struck a deal.”

  For a time, Ouyang fell silent, until Deng Tsu prompted him. “And?”

  By way of reply, Ouyang stood. Shrugging off his suit jacket, he folded it carefully on his seat. Then he took off his tie.

  When he began to unbutton his shirt, Cho Xilan said, alarmed, “What are you doing?”

  Ouyang made no reply. Instead, he finished unbuttoning his shirt. As he took it off, he turned his left side to them so they could see the three-inch scar between his second and third ribs. It was nasty looking—discolored, ropy, and raised from the rest of his flesh, as if it had been treated hastily and incompletely in the field.

  “This,” Ouyang said, “is where the Mossad agent Rebeka knifed me the third time we met.”

  51

  There was this one girl,” Bourne said in a confidential tone of voice. “Her name was Olga. Blond, blue-eyed, from the Caucasus, in sight of the Caspian.” He gave the FSB operative, who had at last confessed his name was Leonid, a knowing grin. “A robust girl, if you know what I mean.” He shook his head. “Boris and I had some memorable nights with Olga and her friends. Maybe you remember her?”

  “They all tend to run together, those girls,” Leonid said. “Interchangeable as cogs, and about as memorable. Their intense neediness makes them ugly. All of them are steeped in poverty and ignorance, all of them think you’re their ticket out. For them, you’re nothing more than a rung on the ladder out of the cesspit.”

  That was the most Leonid had spoken at once since the plane had taken off from Sheremetyevo. For Bourne’s purposes, it was a major breakthrough.

  “There is that,” he said now. “The problem: too many beautiful girls.”

  Leonid nodded grimly. “All wanting the same thing.”

  Bourne glanced down at the container he was holding. “This coffee is terrible. Tea suits me better.”

  “Tea would be welcome.”

  “A generous pour of first-rate vodka would make it perfect.” Without waiting for a response Bourne rose and went back down the aisle to the galley to give his order.

  The attendant brought out a large tray of small bottles, then set a pair of china cups and saucers out on the narrow counter. “Here,” he said, “take your pick of vodkas while I find the tea.”

  On his first trip to the galley, Bourne had noted the medical cabinet that all such planes carrying dignitaries had on board. While the attendant knelt down to fetch the tea canisters from a lower drawer, Bourne rummaged through the cabinet until he found a sedative powder. He poured some into one of the cups, then added the contents of one of the small vodka bottles, stirring it with his forefinger until the powder dissolved.

  “English Breakfast or Oolong?” the attendant asked.

  “No Russian Caravan?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “English Breakfast will be fine,” Bourne said.

  Moments later he brought the teas back to Leonid, but when he handed him one cup, Leonid, looking up with a wolfish smile, said, “I’ll take the ot
her one.”

  Bourne handed him the cup he indicated, then sat down and began to sip his tea. Leonid, keeping his eyes on Bourne, put his lips to the rim of the cup and tasted the tea. He wrinkled his nose. “English Breakfast.”

  “Not Russian Caravan,” Bourne said, “but at least it’s brewed strong.”

  The two men sat in companionable silence for a time, until Bourne set aside his cup. Pressing a button on the side of his seat, he lowered the back, crossed his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes. His breathing soon slowed.

  Beside him, Leonid’s eyelids began to droop, his eyes losing focus. He set his cup and saucer on the seat tray and, as Bourne had done, lowered the seat back. His lids flickered closed and he was out.

  Bourne counted to one hundred to be certain Leonid had succumbed, then checked the lock on the case affixed to his wrist. It was one of those that could be opened only by a key that could not be duplicated. He set about searching Leonid for the key.

  It took him some moments, but at length he found it in a thin leather case strapped to the inside of Leonid’s left ankle. He was reaching for it when Leonid stirred. Bourne waited, patient, until he was certain Leonid was still deeply asleep.

  Extricating the key, he fit it into the lock, turned it to the right. There was an odd sound, not of lock tumblers opening but of a mechanism arming. Bourne froze. He had encountered locks like this before. They were triggers for a booby trap set inside the case—a fail-safe mechanism to destroy the contents before it could fall into unfriendly hands.

  In his experience, there were two ways to disarm the mechanism. The first was to pull out the key and reinsert it; the other was to turn the key to the left. The problem was if it was the latter, removing the key would detonate the fail-safe. Crouching down, Bourne peered more closely at the lock. He had seen one of these before—in fact, Boris had showed it to him. It was a favorite of the FSB.