The Bourne Sanction

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Professor, it’s all over,” Moira said. “We won’t let the tanker dock until we have the software patched.”

  Sever smiled. “A good idea, but it will avail you nothing. Do you know the damage that much liquid natural gas will do? Five square miles of devastation, thousands killed, America’s corrupt, greedy way of life delivered the hammer blow Semion and I have been dreaming of for decades. It’s my one great calling in this life. The loss of human life and physical destruction is icing on the cake.”

  He paused to catch his breath, which was shallower and more ragged than ever. “When the nation’s largest port is incinerated, America’s economy will go with it. Almost half your imports will dry up. There’ll be widespread shortages of goods and food, companies will collapse, the stock exchanges will plummet, wholesale panic will ensue.”

  “How many of your men are on board?” Bourne said.

  Sever smiled weakly. “I love you like a son, Jason.”

  “You let your own son be killed,” Bourne said.

  “Sacrificed, Jason. There’s a difference.”

  “Not to him.” Bourne returned to his agenda. “How many men, Professor?”

  “One, only one.”

  “One man can’t take over the tanker,” Moira said.

  The smile played around his lips, even as his eyes closed, his consciousness fading. “If man hadn’t made machines to do his work…”

  Moira turned to Bourne. “What does that mean?”

  Bourne shook the old man’s shoulder, but he’d slipped into deep unconsciousness.

  Moira checked his eyes, his forehead, his carotid artery. “Without intravenous antibiotics I doubt he’ll make it.” She looked at Bourne. “We’re near enough New York City now. We could touch down there, have an ambulance waiting—”

  “There’s no time,” Bourne said.

  “I know there’s no time.” Moira took his arm. “But I want to give you the choice.”

  Bourne stared down at his mentor’s face, lined and seamed, far older in sleep, as if it had imploded. “He’ll make it on his own, or he won’t.”

  He turned away, Moira at his side, and he said, “Call NextGen. This is what I need.”

  Forty-Four

  THE TANKER Moon of Hormuz plowed through the Pacific no more than an hour out of Long Beach harbor. The captain, a veteran named Sultan, had gotten word that the LNG terminal was online and ready to receive its inaugural shipment of liquid natural gas. With the current state of the world’s economies, the LNG had become even more precious; from the time the Moon of Hormuz had left Algeria its cargo had increased in value by over 30 percent.

  The tanker, twelve stories high and as large as a village, held thirty-three million gallons of LNG cooled to a temperature of –260 degrees. That translated into the energy equivalent of twenty billion gallons of natural gas. The ship required five miles to come to a stop, and because of the shape of its hull and the containers on deck Sultan’s view ahead was blocked for three-quarters of a mile. The tanker had been steaming at twenty knots, but three hours ago he’d ordered the engines into reverse. Well within five miles of the terminal, the ship was down to six knots of speed and still decelerating.

  Within the five-mile radius to shore his nerves became a jittery flame, the nightmare of Armageddon always with him, because a disaster aboard the Moon of Hormuz would be just that. If the tanks spilled into the water, the resulting fire would be five miles in diameter. For another five miles beyond that thermal radiation would burn any human to a crisp.

  But those scenarios were just that: nightmares. In ten years there’d never been even a minor incident aboard his ship, and there never would be, if he had anything to say about it. He was just thinking about how fine the weather was, and how much he was going to enjoy his ten days on the beach with a friend in Malibu, when the radio officer handed him a message from NextGen. He was to expect a helicopter in fifteen minutes; he was to give its passengers—Moira Trevor and Jason Bourne—any and all help they requested. That was surprising enough, but he bristled at the last sentence: He was to take orders from them until the Moon of Hormuz was safely docked at the terminal.

  When the doors to the cargo bay were opened, Arkadin was ready, crouched behind one of the containers. As the airport maintenance team clambered aboard, he edged out, then called from the shadows for one of them to help him. When the man complied, Arkadin broke his neck, dragged him into the deepest shadows of the cargo bay, away from the NextGen containers. He stripped and donned the man’s maintenance uniform. Then he stepped over to the work area, keeping the ID tag clipped to it out of full view so that no one could that see that his face didn’t match that on the tag. Not that it mattered: These people were here to get the cargo off-loaded and onto the waiting NextGen trucks as quickly as possible. It never occurred to any of them that there might be an imposter among them.

  In this way, Arkadin worked his way to the open bay doors, onto the loading lifts with the container. He hopped onto the tarmac as the cargo was being loaded onto the truck, then ducked away beneath the wing. Finding himself alone on the opposite side of the aircraft, he walked away at a brisk, businesslike clip. No one challenged him, no one even gave him a second look, because he moved with the authority of someone who belonged there. That was the secret of assuming a different identity, even temporarily—people’s eyes either ignored or accepted what looked correct to them.

  As he went, he breathed deeply of the clear, salt air, the freshening breeze whipping his pants against his legs. He felt free of all the leashes that had bound him to the earth: Stas Kuzin, Marlene, Gala, Icoupov, they were all gone now. The sea beckoned him and he was coming.

  NextGen had its own small terminal on the freight side of the Long Beach airport. Moira had radioed ahead to NextGen headquarters, giving them a heads-up and asking for a helicopter to be ready to take her and Bourne to the tanker.

  Arkadin beat Bourne to the NextGen terminal. Hurrying now, he used the badge to open the door to the restricted areas. Out on the tarmac he saw the helicopter right away. The pilot was talking to a maintenance man. The moment they both squatted down, examining one of the runners, Arkadin pulled his cap low on his forehead, walked briskly around to the far side of the helicopter, and made himself busy there.

  He saw Bourne and Moira emerge from the NextGen terminal. They paused for a moment and he could hear their argument about whether or not she should come, but they must have had it before, because the fight was hammered out in brief, staccato bursts, like shorthand.

  “Face facts, Jason. I work for NextGen; without me you won’t get on that copter.”

  Bourne turned away, and for an instant Arkadin felt a foreboding, as if Bourne had seen him. Then Bourne turned back to Moira, and together they hurried across the tarmac.

  Bourne climbed in on the pilot’s side, while Moira headed to Arkadin’s side of the copter. With a professional smile, he held out a hand, helping her up into the cockpit. He saw the maintenance man about to come across, but waved him off. Looking up at Moira through the curved Perspex door he thought of Devra and felt a lurch in his chest, as if her bleeding head had fallen against him. He waved at Moira, and she lifted her hand in return.

  The rotors began to swirl, the maintenance man signaled for Arkadin to come away; Arkadin gave him the thumbs-up sign. Faster and faster the rotors spun, and the copter’s frame began to shudder. Just before it lifted off, Arkadin climbed onto the runner and curled himself into a ball as they swung out over the Pacific, buffeted by a stiff onshore wind.

  The tanker loomed large in the passengers’ vision as the copter sped toward it at top speed. Only one other boat could be seen, a commercial fishing vessel several miles away beyond the security limits imposed by the Coast Guard and Homeland Security. Bourne, who was sitting directly behind the pilot, saw that he was working to keep the copter’s pitch at the correct angle.

  “Is everything okay?” he shouted over the roar of the rotors.


  The pilot pointed to one of the gauges. “There’s a small anomaly in the pitch; probably the wind, it’s gusting up quite a bit.”

  But Bourne wasn’t so sure. The anomaly was constant, whereas the wind wasn’t. He had an intuition what—or, more accurately, who—was causing the problem.

  “I think we have a stowaway,” Bourne said to the pilot. “Take it in low when you get to the tanker. Skim the tops of the containers.”

  “What?” The pilot shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

  “Then I’ll take a look myself.” Unstrapping himself, Bourne crept toward the door.

  “Okay, okay!” the pilot shouted. “Just get back in your seat!”

  They were almost at the bow of the tanker now. It was unbelievably big, a city lumbering through the Pacific swells.

  “Hang on!” the pilot shouted as he took them down far more quickly than normal. They could see members of the crew racing across the deck, and someone—no doubt the captain—emerged from the wheelhouse near the stern. Someone was shouting to pull up; the tops of the containers were coming at them with frightening speed. Just before they skimmed the top of the nearest container, the copter rocked slightly.

  “The anomaly’s gone,” the pilot said.

  “Stay here,” Bourne shouted to Moira. “Whatever happens stay on board.” Then he gripped the weapon lying astride his knees, opened the door and, as she screamed his name, jumped out of the copter.

  He landed after Arkadin, who had already leapt down onto the deck and was scuttling between containers. Crew members rushed toward them both; Bourne had no idea whether one of them was Sever’s software engineer, but he raised a hunting crossbow and they stopped in their tracks. Knowing that firing a gun would be tantamount to suicide on a tanker full of liquid natural gas, he’d had Moira ask NextGen to have two crossbows in the copter. How they procured them so quickly was anyone’s guess, but a corporation of NextGen’s size could get just about anything at a moment’s notice.

  Behind him, the chopper set down on the part of the foredeck that had been cleared, and cut the engines. Doubled over to avoid the rotors, he opened the copter door and looked up at Moira. “Arkadin is here somewhere. Please stay out of the way.”

  “I need to report to the captain. I can take care of myself.” She, too, was cradling a crossbow. “What does Arkadin want?”

  “Me. I killed his friend. It doesn’t matter to him that it was in self-defense.”

  “I can help, Jason. If we work together, two are better than one.”

  He shook his head. “Not in this case. Besides, you see how slowly the tanker is moving; its screws are in reverse. It’s within the five-mile limit. For every foot we travel forward, the danger to thousands of lives and the port of Long Beach itself grows exponentially.”

  She nodded stiffly, stepped down, and hurried along the deck to where the captain stood, awaiting her orders.

  Bourne turned, moving cautiously among the containers, in the direction he’d glimpsed Arkadin heading. Moving along the aisles was like walking down the canyons of Manhattan. Wind howled as it cut across corners, magnified, racing down the aisles as if they were tunnels.

  Just before he reached the end of the first set of containers, he heard Arkadin’s voice, speaking to him in Russian.

  “There isn’t much time.”

  Bourne stood still, trying to determine where the voice was coming from. “What d’you know about it, Arkadin?”

  “Why d’you think I’m here?”

  “I killed Mischa Tarkanian, now you kill me. Isn’t that how you defined it back in Egon Kirsch’s apartment?”

  “Listen to me, Bourne, if that’s what I wanted I could have killed you anytime while you and the woman slept aboard the NextGen 747.”

  Bourne’s blood ran cold. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Listen to me, Bourne, Semion Icoupov, who saved me, whom I trusted, shot my woman to death.”

  “Yes, that’s why you killed him.”

  “Do you begrudge me my revenge?”

  Bourne said nothing, thinking of what he would do to Arkadin if he hurt Moira.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Bourne, I already know the answer.”

  Bourne turned. The voice appeared to have shifted. Where the hell was he hiding?

  “But as I said we have little time to find Icoupov’s man on board.”

  “It’s Sever’s man, actually,” Bourne said.

  Arkadin laughed. “Do you think that matters? They were in bed together. All the time they posed as bitter enemies they were plotting this disaster. I want to stop it—I have to stop it, or my revenge on Icoupov will be incomplete.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Listen, Bourne, you know we haven’t much time. I’ve avenged myself on the father, but this plan is his child. He and Sever gave birth to it, fed it, nurtured it through its infancy, through its adolescent growing pains. Now each moment brings this floating supernova closer to the moment of destruction those two madmen envisioned.”

  The voice moved again. “Is that what you want, Bourne? Of course not. Then let’s join together to find Sever’s man.”

  Bourne hesitated. He didn’t trust Arkadin, and yet he had to trust him. He examined the situation from all sides and concluded that the only way to play it was to move forward. “He’s a software engineer,” he said.

  Arkadin appeared, climbing down from the top of one of the containers. For a moment, the two men stood facing each other, and once again Bourne felt the dislocating sensation of looking in a mirror. When he stared into Arkadin’s eyes, he didn’t see the madness the professor spoke of; he saw himself, a heart of darkness and pain beyond understanding.

  “Sever told me there was only one man, but he also said we wouldn’t find him, and even if we did it wouldn’t matter.”

  Arkadin frowned, giving him the canny, feral appearance of a wolf. “What did he mean?”

  “I’m not sure.” He turned, walking down the deck toward the crew members who had cleared the space for the copter to land. “What we’re looking for,” he said as Arkadin fell into step beside him, “is a tattoo specific to the Black Legion.”

  “The wheel of horses with the death’s head center.” Arkadin nodded. “I’ve seen it.”

  “It’s on the inside of the elbow.”

  “We could kill them all.” Arkadin laughed. “But I guess that would offend something inside you.”

  One by one, the two men examined the arms of the eight crewmen on deck, but found no tattoo. By the time they reached the wheelhouse, the tanker was within two miles of the terminal. It was barely moving. Four tugboats had hove to and were waiting at the one-mile limit to tow the tanker the rest of the way in.

  The captain was a swarthy individual with a face that looked like it had been deeply etched by acid rather than the wind and the sun. “As I was telling Ms. Trevor, there are seven more crewmen, mostly involved in engine room duties. Then there’s my first mate here, the communications officer, and the ship’s doctor, he’s in sick bay, tending to a crewman who fell ill two days out of Algeria. Oh, yes, and the cook.”

  Bourne and Arkadin glanced at each other. The radioman seemed the logical choice, but when the captain summoned him he, too, was without the Black Legion tattoo. So were the captain and his first mate.

  “The engine room,” Bourne said.

  At his captain’s orders, the first mate led them out onto the deck, then down the starboard companionway into the bowels of the ship, reaching the enormous engine room at last. Five men were hard at work, their faces and arms filthy with a coating of grease and grime. As the first mate instructed them, they held out their arms, but as Bourne reached the third in line, the fourth man looked at them beneath half-closed lids before he bolted.

  Bourne went after him while Arkadin circled, snaking through the oily city of grinding machinery. He eluded Bourne once but then, rounding a corner, Bourne spotted him near the line of gigantic Hyundai diesel engines,
specifically designed to power the world’s fleet of LNG tankers. He was trying to furtively shove a small box between the structural struts of the engine, but Arkadin, coming up behind him, grabbed for his wrist. The crewman jerked away, brought the box back toward him, and was about to thumb a button on it when Bourne kicked it out of his hand. The box went flying, and Arkadin dived after it.

  “Careful,” the crewman said as Bourne grabbed hold of him. He ignored Bourne, was staring at the box Arkadin brought back to them. “You hold the whole world in your hand.”

  Meanwhile Bourne pushed up his shirtsleeve. The man’s arm was smeared with grease, deliberately so, it seemed, because when Bourne took a rag and wiped it off, the Black Legion tattoo appeared on the inside of his left elbow.

  The man seemed totally unconcerned. His entire being was focused on the box that Arkadin was holding. “That will blow up everything,” he said, and made a lunge toward it. Bourne jerked him back with a stranglehold.

  “Let’s get him back up to the captain,” Bourne said to the first mate. That’s when he saw the box up close. He took it out of Arkadin’s hand.

  “Careful!” the crewman cried. “One slight jar and you’ll set it off.”

  But Bourne wasn’t so sure. The crewman was being too vocal with his warnings. Wouldn’t he want the ship to blow now that it had been boarded by Sever’s enemies? When he turned the box over, he saw that the seam between the bottom and the side was ragged.

  “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” The crewman was so agitated that Arkadin slapped him on the side of the head in order to silence him.

  Inserting his fingernail into the seam, Bourne pried the box apart. There was nothing inside. It was a dummy.

  Moira found it impossible to stay in one place. Her nerves were stretched to the breaking point. The tanker was on the verge of meeting up with the tugboats; they were only a mile from shore. If the tanks went, the devastation to both human life and the country’s economy would be catastrophic. She felt useless, a third wheel hanging around while the two men did their hunting.