The Bourne Objective

Book Three


21


ANTONIO SLUMPED IN the furious darkness of the convent’s hearth, a darkness so thick and black it seemed to obliterate not just light, but life itself.
Soraya took several steps toward him, peering into the gloom.
“He’s not your pool boy,” Arkadin said. “That’s clear enough.”
She said nothing, knowing that he had begun to bait her in order to gain information. This, in itself, was a hopeful sign, indicating that Antonio hadn’t talked, despite the beating he’d received.
Deciding that outrage was her best course, she turned on Arkadin. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
When Arkadin smiled it was like a wolf appearing through pine trees. “I like to know who my prospective partners are.” His smile lengthened, like knives being unsheathed. “Especially ones that fall into my lap so conveniently.”
“Partners?” She laughed harshly. “You must be f*cking dreaming, my Russian friend. I wouldn’t partner with you for—”
He grabbed her then, pressing his lips against hers, but she was ready for him. She folded herself against him and slammed her knee into his groin. His hands on her trembled for a moment, but he did not let her go. His lupine grin never faltered, but there were tears glittering in the corners of his eyes.
“You won’t get me,” she said softly but icily, “either way.”
“Yes, I will,” he said, just as icily, “because you came here to get me.”
Soraya had nothing to say to this, but she was hoping he was making a stab in the dark, because otherwise she was blown all to hell. “Let Antonio go.”
“Give me a reason.”
“We’ll talk.”
He massaged his groin gently. “We already talked.”
She bared her teeth. “We’ll try another form of communication.”
He put a hand on her breast. “Like this?”
“Untie him.” Soraya tried not to grit her teeth. “Let him go.”
Arkadin appeared to consider her request. “I think not,” he said after several moments of tense silence. “He means something to you, which makes him valuable as leverage.” Reaching into his pocket, he produced a switchblade. It snikked open and, pushing her away, he advanced on Antonio. “What should I cut off first, do you think? Ear? Finger? Or something even lower down?”
“If you cut anything off…”
He turned to her. “Yes?”
“If you cut anything off you’ll never be able to sleep while I’m lying beside you.”
He leered at her. “I don’t sleep.”
She had begun to despair for Antonio’s life when her cell rang. Without waiting for Arkadin to give her permission, she answered it.
“Soraya.” It was Peter Marks.
“Yes.”
“What’s happened?” Intuitive as ever, he’d picked up on the tension in her voice.
She stared into Arkadin’s eyes. “Everything’s hunky-dory.”
“Arkadin?”
“You bet.”
“Excellent, you’ve made contact.”
“More than.”
“There’s a problem, I get it. Well, you’ll have to find your way out of it and fast, because our mission’s become urgent.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“You need to get Arkadin to the following address within seventy-two hours.” Then he recited the address Willard had given him.
“That’s an impossible order to fill.”
“Obviously, but it’s got to be done. He and Bourne have to meet, and that’s where Bourne will be.”
A pinpoint of light appeared in the darkness ahead of her. Yes, she thought, it just might work. “Okay,” she said to Peter, “I’ll put a rush on it.”
“And make sure he takes his laptop with him.”
Soraya let out a breath. “How d’you propose I do that?”
“Hey, that’s why you get the big bucks.”
He rang off before she could tell him to go to hell. With a grunt of disgust, she pocketed her cell.
“Business problems?” Arkadin said in a mocking tone.
“Nothing that can’t be solved.”
“I like your can-do attitude.” Mocking her still, he brandished the switchblade. “Are you going to solve this problem?”
Soraya put a thoughtful expression on her face. “Possibly.” Walking past him, she went into the hearth, where Antonio watched her with the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. She was shocked to find him grinning at her.
“Don’t mind me,” he said in a hoarse voice, “I’m having fun.”
Without Arkadin being able to see, she put her forefinger to her lips, then pressed it to his. It came away bloody. She turned back to Arkadin. “It all depends on you.”
“I don’t think so. The ball’s in your court.”
“Here’s how this will work.” She emerged back into the flickering candlelight. “You let Antonio go and I’ll tell you how to find Jason Bourne.”
He burst out laughing. “You’re bluffing.”
“When it comes to someone’s life,” she said, “I never bluff.”
“Still, what does an importer-exporter know about Jason Bourne?”
“Simple enough.” Soraya had already worked out her answer. “From time to time, he uses my company as a cover.” This was a plausible enough story to give him reason to believe her.
“And why does an importer-exporter think I care where Jason Bourne is?”
She cocked her head. “Do you?” This was no time to back down or show weakness.
“And what if you’re not what you say you are?”
“What if you’re not what you say you are?”
He waggled a forefinger at her. “No, I don’t think you’re an importer-exporter.”
“All the more intriguing then.”
He nodded. “I confess I like mysteries, especially when they bring me closer to Bourne.”
“Why do you hate him so?”
“He’s responsible for the death of someone I loved.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You never loved anyone.”
He took a step toward her, but whether it was a threat or simply to get closer to her was difficult to tell.
“You use people, and when you’re finished with them, you crumple them up like a used Kleenex and throw them in the garbage.”
“And what of Bourne? He’s exactly like me.”
“No,” she said, “he’s not like you at all.”
His smile broadened, and for the first time it was without even a hint of menace or irony. “Ah, finally I have a useful bit of knowledge about you.”
She almost spit in his face, but she realized that would make him even happier, because it would indicate just how close he’d come to the bone.
All at once something seemed to change in him. He reached out and ran his fingertips along the line of her jaw. Then, indicating Antonio with the tip of the switchblade, “Go ahead, untie the stubborn f*cker.”
As she entered the hearth one last time and knelt to free Antonio, he added, “I don’t need him anymore. I have you.”
This is how it happened.” Chrissie was standing in the kitchen, facing the window over the sink. There was nothing to see, except the grayness of dawn creeping through the treetops like gauze. She had said nothing when Bourne walked into the room, but she started when she felt him beside her.
“How what happened?” Bourne said into the silence.
“How I came to lie to you.” Chrissie turned on the hot water and, placing her hands in the stream, began to wash them as if she were Lady Macbeth. “One day,” she said, “a year or so after Scarlett was born, I looked in the mirror and said to myself, You have a body that’s been abandoned. Perhaps a man can’t understand. I had abandoned my body to motherhood, which means I had abandoned myself.”
Her hands moved in the water, washing, washing. “From that moment, I began to hate myself, and then, by extension, my life, which included Scarlett. Of course, that was something I couldn’t tolerate. I fought against it and immediately fell into a dreadful depression. My work began to suffer, so obviously that the department chair suggested and then gently but firmly insisted I take a sabbatical. Finally, I agreed, I mean I hadn’t a choice, had I? But when I locked my office door behind me, when I drove out of Oxford, drowsing like Avalon in the mist, I knew something drastic had to be done. I knew it was no coincidence that I had locked myself away in a place that never changed. Like my father, I was safe in Oxford, where everything is pre-planned, pre-ordained, even; where there’s no possibility of even the slightest deviation. That’s why he reacted to Trace’s life choices the way he did. They terrified him, so he lashed out at her. It wasn’t until that day, leaving Oxford behind, that I understood that family dynamic and how it had affected me. It occurred to me that I might have chosen my safe life for him, not for myself.”
She turned off the water and dried her hands on a dish towel. The backs were red and raw looking. “I need to get my family out of here.”
“As soon as a friend shows up we’ll leave,” Bourne said.
“Scarlett.”
“She’s with your father.”
She looked back, almost wistfully, through the doorway into the living room. “Scarlett, at least, loves my parents.” She sighed. “Let’s go outside. I’m finding it difficult to breathe in here.”
Through the kitchen door they emerged into the dewy morning. The air was chill, and when they spoke little puffs of steam emerged from their mouths. The bases of the trees were still black, as if the roots were holding on to the dead of night. Chrissie shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.
“What happened?” Bourne said.
“Nothing that made sense, it was simply blind luck that I met Holly.”
Bourne was startled. “Holly Marie Moreau?”
She nodded. “She was looking for Trace and found me instead.”
Everything in this puzzle seems to return to Holly, he thought. “And you became friends?”
“More than friends, and less,” she said. “I know that doesn’t make much sense.” She shrugged. “I went to work for her.”
Bourne frowned. He felt like a miner inching along a tunnel without lights, but nevertheless knowing by instinct which way to turn. “What was she doing?”
Chrissie gave a little embarrassed laugh. “She was what she euphemistically called a stocker. Now and again she traveled to Mexico for two or three weeks at a time. At a client’s request, she’d stock a narcorrancho. Narcorranchos are shell estates owned by the Mexican drug lords out in the desert somewhere, usually in the north, in Sonora, but sometimes in a more southerly state like Sinaloa. Apart from a caretaker and maybe a guard or two, no one lives in them full-time.
“Anyway, she took me to Mexico City, to the after-hours clubs, the brothels, where she chose from a list she kept updated weekly, like a calendar or a day planner. We took the girls to whichever narcorrancho was owned by the current client. There were only a handful of Mexicans there when we arrived, some peons, and heavily armed soldiers who sneered at us even while they drooled over the girls. My job was to spruce up the interior and settle the girls in their various bedrooms. The peons did the heavy lifting.
“Gradually, the cars would come—Lincoln Town Cars, Chevy Suburbans, Mercedeses, all with blacked-out windows, wallowing under their armor plating. The security forces would set up a strict perimeter as if we were in an army bivouac during wartime. Then the provisioners would arrive with fresh meat, fruit, cases of beer, crates of tequila, and, of course, mountains of cocaine. The barbecuing of beef and the spit-roasting of whole pigs and lambs would begin. Salsa and disco music blared louder and louder. The roasters stank of sweat and beer so you couldn’t let them near you. Then the bosses arrived with their bodyguards and it was like the Day of the Dead, a festival beyond all festivals.”
Bourne’s mind was racing at a pace that dizzied even him. “One of Holly’s clients was Gustavo Moreno, wasn’t it?”
“Gustavo Moreno was her best client,” Chrissie said.
Yes, Bourne thought, it had to be. Another missing piece of the puzzle.
“He spent more than any of the others. He loved to party all night long. The later it got, the louder and wilder the partying.”
“You were a long way from Oxford, Professor.”
She nodded. “A long way from civilization, too. But then so was Holly. She lived a double life. She said she’d had plenty of practice growing up in Morocco because her family was very strict, very religious, devout, even. A woman had few rights, a girl even fewer. Apparently her father broke away from the rest of the family—which was led by his brother, Holly’s uncle. According to Holly, they had a terrible falling-out. He took her and her mother away to Bali, a place that was the opposite of their village in the High Atlas Mountains. She told no one else about her secret life in Mexico.”
Untrue, he thought. She told me, or I found out, somehow. Which must be how the laptop ended up in Gustavo Moreno’s hands. I must have given it to him. But why? In this puzzle, he thought, there’s always another blank to fill in, another question to answer.
Chrissie turned to him. “I take it you knew Holly.”
When he didn’t reply, she said, “You must be shocked by what I’ve just told you.”
“I’m sorry you lied to me.”
“We lied to each other.” Chrissie couldn’t keep an edge of bitterness out of her voice.
“I have too much experience in lying.” He had a feeling that he’d asked Holly to take him to Mexico on one of her trips. Or had he coerced her into it?
“Why did you quit?” he said.
“You could say that I had an epiphany in the Sonoran Desert. It’s not surprising we hooked up. She and I were both running away from our former lives, from who we were. Or, rather, we had lost our way in our lives, we no longer knew who we were or who we wanted to be. We were intent on rejecting who we were expected to be.” She stared down at her reddened hands as if she didn’t recognize them. “I had thought that the life I’d left—the cloistered sanctuary of Oxford—wasn’t real. But after a time I realized that it was Holly’s life that wasn’t real.”
The sky had lightened further. Birds called from the treetops, and a slight wind brought the smell of damp earth, of living things.
“One night, very late, I wandered into a spare room, or that’s what I thought. And there was Holly on top of Gustavo Moreno, grinding away. I watched for a moment, as if they were two strangers acting in a porno. Then I thought, F*ck, that’s Holly. You could say that I woke up.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think Holly ever did.”
Bourne didn’t think so, either. Sad, but true. Holly had been many things to many people, none of them the same. Those multiple identities had allowed her to burrow deeper into herself, to hide from everyone, when it was her uncle he was certain she feared most.
At that moment Scarlett poked her head out and said, “Hey, you two, we have visitors.”
Inside, both Ottavio Moreno and Peter Marks stood in the living room, eyeing each other warily.
“What the hell is this?” Bourne said.
“Here is Ottavio Moreno, the man who knifed Diego Hererra,” Marks said to Bourne. “And you’re protecting him?”
“It’s a long story, Peter,” Bourne said. “I’ll explain it in the car on the way to—”
Marks turned to Moreno. “You’re the brother of Gustavo Moreno, the Colombian drug lord.”
“I am,” Ottavio Moreno said.
“And the godson of Don Fernando Hererra, the father of the man you knifed to death.”
When Moreno said nothing, Marks continued. “I’ve just come from Don Fernando. He’s heartsick, as you can imagine. Or maybe you can’t. In any event, he doesn’t think you murdered his son. The police, on the other hand, are certain you did.” Without waiting for a reply, he whirled on Bourne. “How the hell could you let this happen?”
Then Ottavio Moreno made a tactical mistake. “I think you’d better calm down,” he said. He should have kept his mouth shut, but possibly he’d been stung by Marks’s words as well as his tone.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Marks said heatedly.
Bourne had half a mind to let the two men come to blows, if only to relieve the built-up tension of the last couple of hours, but there was Chrissie and her family to think of, so he stepped in between the two. Gripping Marks at the elbow, he steered him out the front door, where they could talk without being overheard. Before he could say a word, though, Moreno came storming out.
He headed straight for Marks, but before he was halfway there a shot from the trees stopped him in his tracks. Even as he staggered backward, even as the second shot took part of his skull off, Bourne had flung himself behind Moreno’s Opel. As Marks followed him, another shot cracked through the stillness of early morning.
Marks stumbled and fell.
Boris Karpov accompanied Viktor Cherkesov into the construction site on ulitsa Varvarka. They passed through a gap in the chain-link fence and descended via a ramp into the dead zone. Cherkesov kept them going until they were deep in the heart of the morass of rusting steel girders and cracked concrete blocks; evil-looking weeds sprouted everywhere like tufts of hair on a giant’s back.
Cherkesov stopped them as they approached the bashed-in side of a derelict truck, which had been stripped of tires, electronics, and engine. It was canted over to one side like a ship on its way to the bottom of the sea. The truck was green, but someone had artistically covered it with obscene graffiti in silver spray paint.
Cherkesov’s mouth twitched in an imitation of a smile as he turned away from contemplating the graffiti.
“Now, Boris Illyich, please be kind enough to tell me the gist of your impromptu meeting with President Imov.”
Karpov, seeing no other recourse, obliged him. Cherkesov did not interrupt him once, but listened thoughtfully as Karpov outlined what he had learned about Bukin and those moles under his command. When he was finished, Cherkesov nodded. He produced a Tokarev TT pistol but didn’t aim it at Karpov, at least not exactly.
“Now, Boris Illyich, the question for me is what to do next. First, what shall I do with you? Shall I shoot you and leave you to rot here?” He seemed to spend some time contemplating this option. “Well, to be honest, that would do me no good. By going directly to Imov you have made yourself invulnerable. If you are killed or disappear Imov will initiate a full-scale investigation, which will sooner rather than later wind up at my doorstep. As you can imagine, this would inconvenience me greatly.”
“I think it would do more than inconvenience you, Viktor Delyagovich,” Karpov said without inflection. “It would be the beginning of your end and the triumph of Nikolai Patrushev, your bitterest enemy.”
“These days, I have bigger fish to fry than Nikolai Patrushev.” Cherkesov said this softly, contemplatively, as if he had forgotten that Karpov was there at all. Then, all at once, he snapped out of it, his eyes refocusing on the colonel. “So killing you is out, which is fortunate, Boris Illyich, because I like you. More to the point, I admire your tenacity as well as your intelligence. Which is why I won’t even bother to bribe you.” He grunted, a sort of laugh gone bad. “You might be the last honest man in Russian intelligence.” He waved the Tokarev. “So where does that leave us?”
“Stalemate,” Karpov offered.
“No, no, no. Stalemate is good for no one, especially you and me, especially at this moment in time. You gave Imov the evidence against Bukin, Imov gave you an assignment. We both have no choice but for you to carry it out.”
“That would be suicide for you,” Karpov pointed out.
“Only if I stay on as head of FSB-2,” Cherkesov said.
Karpov shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Cherkesov had a miniature two-way radio to his ear. “Come down now,” he said to whoever was on the other end of the line.
There was a smirk on his face that Karpov had never seen before. He took a step toward the colonel and, in a moment, gestured. “Look who’s coming, Boris Illyich.”
Karpov turned and saw Melor Bukin picking his way through the rubble.
“Now,” Cherkesov said, slapping the Tokarev into Karpov’s hand, “do your duty.”
Karpov held the Tokarev behind his back as Melor Bukin approached them. He wondered what Cherkesov had told him, because Bukin was totally relaxed and unsuspecting. His eyes opened wide when Karpov brought out the Tokarev and aimed it at him.
“Viktor Delyagovich, what is the meaning of this?” he said.
Karpov shot him in the right knee, and he went down like a smokestack being demolished.
“What are you doing?” he cried as he clutched his ruined knee. “Are you mad?”
Karpov advanced on him. “I know about your treachery and so does President Imov. Who are the other moles inside FSB-2?”
Bukin stared up at him wide-eyed. “What, what? Moles? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Karpov calmly and deliberately blew his left kneecap to smithereens. Bukin screamed and writhed on the ground like a worm.
“Answer me!” Karpov commanded.
Bukin’s eyes were bloodshot. He was pale and trembling in shock and agony. “Boris Illyich, doesn’t our history mean anything? I’m your mentor, I was instrumental in bringing you into FSB-2.”
Karpov loomed over him. “All the more reason that I be the one to clean your dirty house.”
“But, but, but,” Bukin sputtered, “I was just following orders.” He pointed at Cherkesov. “His orders.”
“How easily he lies,” Cherkesov said.
“No, Boris Illyich, it’s the truth, I swear.”
Karpov squatted by Bukin’s side. “I know how we can solve this problem.”
“I need a f*cking hospital,” Bukin moaned. “I’m bleeding to death.”
“Tell me the names of the moles,” Karpov said. “Then I’ll take care of you.”
Bukin’s bloodshot eyes darted between him and Cherkesov.
“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?”