The Bourne Objective jb-8

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “If I could. But unlike what the screenwriters allowed Superman to do in the film, if I couldn’t, well, at least… at least I’d understand what the bloody hell to do with this grief.” She tried to take a deep breath but succeeded only in choking on her tears. “I feel weighed down, as if I have an anchor tied to my back, or Tracy’s body, cold and stiff and… never moving ever again.”

  “That feeling will pass,” Bourne said.

  “Yes, I suppose it will, but what if I don’t want it to?”

  “Do you want to follow her down into darkness? What about Scarlett, what will happen to her then?”

  Chrissie got red in the face and jumped up. Bourne followed her as she stalked into the bedroom, where he found her staring out the French doors at the pear tree, flooded now in silvery moonlight. “Bloody hell, Trace, why are you gone? If she were here now I swear I’d wring her neck.”

  “Or at least make her promise to have nothing more to do with Arkadin.”

  Bourne hoped injecting Arkadin’s name back into the conversation would lead her back to a memory she might have overlooked. He sensed they might be at a crucial juncture. He had no intention of leaving, as long as she didn’t throw him out. He didn’t think she would, he was her only link with her sister now, he’d been there when Tracy had died. That meant the world to her, he sensed that it brought the two of them closer, made Tracy’s sudden death a bit more bearable.

  “Chrissie,” he said gently, “did she ever tell you how she met him?”

  She shook her head, then said, “Maybe in Russia. Saint Petersburg? She’d gone there to have a look at the Hermitage. I remember because I was all set to go with her when Scarlett came down with an ear infection, high fever, disorientation, the works.” She shook her head. “God, what different lives the two of us have led! And now… now it’s come to this. Scarlett will be devastated.”

  Then she frowned. “Why did you come here, Adam?”

  “Because I wanted something to remind me of her, because I had nowhere else to go.” He realized, a bit belatedly, that it was the truth, or at least as much of it as he was prepared to share with her.

  “I didn’t, either,” she said with a sigh. “Scarlett was visiting my folks when the call came. She was having a grand time, still is, judging by our last texts.” Her eyes were on him, but again her attention was fixed somewhere else. “Of course you can have a look around, take whatever keepsake you want.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  She nodded absently, then turned back to her contemplation of the mews and its budding pear tree. A moment later she gave a tiny gasp. “There they are!”

  Bourne rose and joined her at the window.

  “They’ve returned,” he said. “The house martins.”

  Arkadin woke at dawn, climbed into swim shorts, and went out for a run in the surf. The sky was filled with cormorants and pelicans. Greedy gulls walked along the sand, plucking at the remnants of last night’s drunken parties. He ran south until he reached the outskirts of one of the big resort clubs, then turned around. After that he plunged into the water and swam for forty minutes. When he returned to the convent there were more than twenty messages waiting for him on his cell phone. One was from Boris Karpov. He showered and dressed, then chopped up fresh fruit. Pineapple, papaya, bananas, oranges. He ate the sweet chunks with a large dollop of yogurt. Ironically, he was learning to eat healthily in Mexico.

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he took up his phone and made his first call. He was informed that the most recent shipment from Gustavo Moreno’s pipeline had not reached the client. It had been delayed, or possibly it had gone missing. At the moment, he was told, it was impossible to say. He ordered his man to keep him informed, then disconnected.

  Reflecting that he’d have to deal with the missing shipment himself and, if warranted, dole out harsh punishments, he punched in Karpov’s number.

  “I’m in LAX,” Boris Karpov said in his ear. “Now what?”

  “Now we meet face-to-face,” Arkadin said. “There’s a late-morning flight to Tucson. Call ahead, order a rental car-a two-seater convertible, the older and more battered the better.” He gave Karpov instructions and driving directions. “Approach with the top down. Be prepared to wait at the rendezvous point for an hour, maybe more, until I determine that you have fulfilled all the terms of our meet. Is that clear?”

  “I’ll be there,” Karpov said, “before sundown.”

  Bourne was still up, listening to the sounds of the flat, the building, the neighborhood, listening to London itself inhale and exhale as if it were a great beast. He turned his head when Chrissie appeared in the living room. An hour before, close to four, she had gone into the bedroom, but by the bedside lamp and the dry rustle of pages turning, he’d known she hadn’t fallen asleep. Possibly she hadn’t even tried.

  “Haven’t you gone to sleep yet?” Her voice was soft, almost burred, as if, in fact, she had just woken up.

  “No.” He was sitting back on the sofa, his mind still and dark as the bottom of the sea. But sleep hadn’t come. Once, he thought he’d heard her sigh, but it was only the city breathing.

  She came and sat down at the other corner of the sofa, tucked her legs under her. “I’d like to be in here, if it’s all right.”

  He nodded.

  “You haven’t told me anything about yourself.”

  Bourne said nothing; he didn’t feel inclined to lie to her.

  Outside a car passed, then another. A dog barked in the silence. The city seemed stilled, as if frozen in ice, not even its heart beating.

  The ghost of a smile played across her wide lips. “Just like Trace.”

  After a time, her eyelids grew heavy. She curled up like a cat with her head on her arms. Now she did sigh and, within moments, was fast asleep. A short time later, so was he.

  You must be insane,” Soraya Moore said. “I’m not going to seduce Arkadin for you, Willard, or anyone else.”

  “I understand your concern,” Marks said. “But-”

  “No, Peter, I don’t think you do. I really and truly don’t. Otherwise there would be no but.”

  She got up and walked to the railing. They had been sitting on a bench down by the canal in Georgetown. Lights glittered and boats lay still and sleeping in their berths. Behind them, young people strolled by, drinking and nuzzling. Occasional bursts of laughter erupted from a scrum of teenagers some distance away who appeared to be texting one another. The night was blessedly mild with just a hint of clouds scudding across the filthy-looking sky.

  Marks rose and followed her. He sighed, as if he were the aggrieved party, which further antagonized her.

  “Why is it,” she said hotly, “that women are so devalued, men only use them for their bodies.”

  It wasn’t a question and Marks knew it. He suspected that a good deal of her anger stemmed from the fact that it was him-a good and trusted friend-asking this of her. And of course that had been Willard’s scheme. He knew this assignment would be offensive to Soraya, more so than, perhaps, to other women who had a less positive self-image; he knew that Marks was the only person who would be able to sell it to her. Indeed, Marks was quite certain that if Willard had given her this assignment directly she would have told him to go fuck himself and left without a backward glance. And yet, as Willard must have foreseen, here she was. Though visibly fuming, she hadn’t told him to fuck off.

  “For centuries, as women were systematically held down by men, they devised their own unique ways to get what they wanted: money, power, a decision-making position in a male-dominated society.”

  “I don’t need a lecture on women’s role in history,” she snapped.

  Marks decided to ignore her comment. “Whatever else you might think, the indisputable fact is that women possess a unique ability.”

  “Would you please stop saying unique?”

  “An ability to attract men, to seduce them, to find the chinks in their armor, and to use that weakness
against them. You know better than I what a potent weapon sex can be when applied judiciously. This is especially true in the clandestine services.” He turned to her. “In our world.”

  “Jesus Christ, you are the little fucker, aren’t you?” She leaned on the railing, fingers enlaced, as a man might, with a man’s confidence that was typical of her.

  Marks pulled out his cell, brought up a head shot of Arkadin, handed it to her. “Handsome sonovabitch, isn’t he? Magnetic, too, so I’m told.”

  “You disgust me.”

  “That sort of outrage doesn’t become you.”

  “But screwing Arkadin does?” She thrust the cell back at him, but he didn’t reach for it.

  “Fight against it all you want, the fact remains that espionage work is what you do, this is what you are. More to the point, this is the life you chose. No one ever twisted your arm.”

  “No? What are you doing now?”

  He took a calculated risk. “I haven’t given you an ultimatum. You can get up and walk away anytime.”

  “And then what? I’ll have nothing, I’ll be nothing.”

  “You can return to Cairo, marry Amun Chalthoum, have babies.”

  He said this not unkindly, but the concept itself was unkind, or rather despicable. In any event, this was how it struck her. And all at once the full realization of how thoroughly M. Errol Danziger had fucked her dealt her its last, worst body blow. She was done at CI, which was bad enough, but he had made sure that she couldn’t get a position at a competing government agency. One of the private risk management firms was also out of the question; she wasn’t about to get involved with an organization of mercenaries like Black River. She turned away and bit her lip in order to hold back her tears of frustration. She felt the way she imagined women had felt down through the ages when they had ventured into a man’s world, taking orders, biting back their opinions, hoarding secrets revealed in the whispered aftermath of sex, until the day came…

  “This guy isn’t unknown to you,” Marks said, careful to keep the urgency he felt out of his voice. “He’s as bad as they get, Raya. This playing up to him, it’s a good thing you’ll be doing.”

  “That’s what you all say.”

  “No, we all do what needs to be done. That’s the beginning and the end of it.”

  “Easy for you to say, you’re not being asked to-”

  “You don’t know what I’ve been asked to do.”

  She turned away again. He watched her staring out at the canal, at the smears of lights on the water. Off to their left, the kids burst out into a rolling wave of laughter that seemed to gain in intensity as it circled the group.

  “What I wouldn’t give to be one of them now,” Soraya said softly. “Not a care in the fucking world.”

  And Marks breathed a silent sigh of relief, knowing now that she would swallow the bitter pill he offered. She would take the assignment.

  Curious. Very curious, indeed.” In the warm light of the morning sun Chrissie was studying the engraving on the inside of the gold band Bourne had taken from Noah Perlis.

  “I know linguistics,” Bourne said, “but this isn’t a known language, is it?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say. There are some characteristics of Sumerian, possibly Latin as well, though it’s really neither.” She looked up at him. “Where did you get this?”

  “It makes no sense, does it?”

  She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t.”

  She had made coffee while Bourne rooted around in the freezer. He came up with a pair of crumpets, though judging by the ice crystals clinging to the bag they had been in there for some time. They found some jam and ate standing up, both of them filled with nervous energy. Neither of them mentioned last night. Then Bourne had showed her the ring.

  “But that’s only my opinion and I’m far from an expert.” She handed the ring back to Bourne. “The only way to find out for sure is to take it up to Oxford. I have a friend who’s a professor at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents. If it can be deciphered, he’s sure to know.”

  It was after midnight when Lieutenant R. Simmons Reade tracked his boss down at an all-night squash court in Virginia, where the DCI worked out for two strenuous hours with one of the resident instructors three times a week. Reade was the only one inside CI who could deliver bad news to DCI Danziger without a qualm. He had been Danziger’s prize pupil when Danziger was briefly teaching at the NSA’s clandestine Academy for Special Operations, which the Old Man, who had contempt for everything the NSA stood for, used to call the Academy for Special Services, so he could jokingly refer to it as ASS.

  Reade sat through the end of the last game, then made his presence known to the DCI by walking out onto the court, which was hot and smelled of sweat despite the fierce air-conditioning.

  Danziger tossed his racquet at the instructor, wrapped a towel around his neck, and walked over to his adjutant.

  “How bad?” No preliminaries were needed; the fact that Reade had sought him out at this hour, that he had chosen to come in person rather than through a phone call, was enough to clue him in.

  “Bourne has neutralized the extraction team. They’re either dead or in police custody.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Danziger said, “how does Bourne do it? No wonder Bud needed me to take over.”

  They walked over to a bench and sat. No one else was on the court, the only sound came from the hum of the air-conditioning vents.

  “Is Bourne still in London?”

  Reade nodded. “As of this moment, yes, sir, he is.”

  “And Coven is there, Lieutenant?”

  Danziger only called him by his rank when he was truly pissed off. “Yes, sir.”

  “Why didn’t he intervene?”

  “The site was too public, there were too many witnesses for him to try to snatch Bourne off the street.”

  “Other options?”

  “Woefully lacking,” Reade said. “Shall I do something about that? I can reach out to our people at NSA for-”

  “In time, Randy, but for now I can’t shake the tree and bring in my men wholesale, not politic, as Bud is quick to remind me. No, we have to make the best of the hand we’ve been dealt.”

  “Judging by his kill record, sir, Coven is damn good.”

  “Fine.” The DCI slapped his thighs and stood up. “Set him loose on Bourne. Tell him he has a free hand, whatever it takes to bring Bourne in.”

  [8]

  AFTER PETER MARKS had given her the assignment to find and attach herself to Arkadin, Soraya Moore had returned to Delia Trane’s apartment where she had been holed up. For the last two hours she had been on her plugged-in cell phone with a number of her field agents at Typhon. Though Typhon was no longer hers, the same could not be said for the people she had hired, trained, and mentored for the highly specialized jobs monitoring and infiltrating the various Sunni and Shi’a cadres, insurgent groups, jihadists, and extreme splinter politicos in virtually every country in the Middle and Far East. No matter what their current orders were or who was now in charge of Typhon, their loyalty was to her.

  Currently she was talking to Yusef, her contact in Khartoum. Arkadin was well known in that part of the world now that he supplied the majority of the armament.

  “Arkadin isn’t anywhere in the Middle East,” Yusef said, “or holed up in the mountains of Azerbaijan, for that matter.”

  “And he’s not anywhere in Europe, Russia, or Ukraine, I’ve already made certain of that,” Soraya said. “Do you know why he’s gone to ground?”

  “Dimitri Maslov, his old mentor, has taken out a fatwa, or whatever the Russians call it, on him.”

  “I can understand why,” Soraya said. “Maslov hired him to get the arms business from Nikolai Yevsen, which is what he was doing in Khartoum several weeks ago. Instead he made off with Yevsen’s entire client list, which was stored on a computer server.”

  “Well, the word is that Maslov caught up with Arkadin in Bangalore, but was unab
le to either kill or capture him, so now he’s vanished.”

  “In this day and age,” Soraya said, “no one can vanish, at least for long.”

  “Well, at least now you know where he isn’t.”

  “True enough.” Soraya thought a moment. “I’ll get someone to run through immigration security tapes in the Americas, maybe Australia, too, and see what they come up with.”

  David Webb had been to Oxford University, the oldest institution of higher learning in the English-speaking world, twice that Bourne could recall, though, of course, there could have been more visits. In those days the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents had been located in the university’s Classics Centre at the Old Boys’ School in George Street. Now it was housed in a new home, the ultramodern Stelios Ioannou School for Research in Classical and Byzantine Studies at 66 St Giles’, as incongruous to the study of ancient languages as it was to Oxford’s stately eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings. This part of St Giles’ was in the center of Oxford, an ancient city whose charter had been enacted in 1191. The center was known as Carfax, a word derived from the French carrefour, meaning “crossroads.” And indeed, the four great thoroughfares of Oxford, including High Street, met at this juncture, as famous in its own way as Hollywood and Vine, and with a whole lot more history.

  Chrissie had phoned her friend, a professor by the name of Liam Giles, before they started out from London. Oxford was only fifty-five miles away, and it took them just over an hour to get there using her old Range Rover. Tracy had given it to her when she started traveling so much.

  The city was precisely as he remembered it, transporting all who arrived there back in time to an age of top hats, robes, horse-drawn carriages, and communications by post. It was as if it and all its inhabitants had been preserved in amber. Everything about Oxford belonged to another, simpler age.

  By the time Chrissie found a parking spot the sun had begun to peer out from behind voluminous clouds, and the day had begun to warm, as if it might really be spring. They found Professor Liam Giles ensconced in his office, a large space set up as a workroom-cum-laboratory. Shelves were filled with manuscripts and thick hand-bound books. He was bent over one of them, scrutinizing a copy of a papyrus with a magnifying glass.