The Bourne Objective

Book Four


28


YOU SEEM SURPRISED,” Tanirt said.
Bourne was surprised. He had been expecting a woman of Don Fernando’s age, possibly a decade younger. It was difficult to tell precisely, but Tanirt seemed to be in her late thirties. This was an illusion, surely. Assuming Ottavio actually was her son, she had to be at least fifty.
“I came to Morocco with no expectations,” he said.
“Liar.” Tanirt was dark-skinned and dark-haired, with a voluptuous figure that had lost none of its lush ripeness. She carried herself as if she were a princess or a queen, and her huge, liquid eyes seemed to take in everything at once.
She studied him for a moment. “I see you. Your name is not Adam Stone,” she said with utter certainty.
“Does that matter?”
“Truth is the only thing that matters.”
“My name is Bourne.”
“Not the name you were born with, but the one you go by now.” She nodded, as if satisfied. “Please give me your hand, Bourne.”
He had called her the moment he landed in Marrakech. As Don Fernando had promised, she was expecting him. She had given him directions on where to meet her: a sweets shop in the center of a market on the southern edge of the city. He had found the market without difficulty, parked, and proceeded on foot through the labyrinth of alleys lined with stalls and shops selling everything from incised leather goods to camel feed. The sweets shop was owned by a wizened Berber who seemed to recognize Bourne on sight. Smiling, he waved him into the interior, which smelled of caramel and roasted sesame seeds. The shop was dark and full of shadows. Nevertheless, Tanirt was illuminated, as if from within.
Now he offered her his hand, palm up, and she took it. Tanirt looked up at him. She wore simple robes, belted at the waist. Nothing was exposed, and yet her sexuality, pulsing with life, seemed utterly revealed to him.
She held his hand tenderly, her forefinger lightly tracing the lines on his palm and fingers. “You are a Capricorn, born on the last day of the year.”
“Yes.” There was no way she could know that, and yet she did. A tingling began in Bourne’s toes, percolating up through his body, warming him, drawing him to her, as if she had established an energy link between them. Slightly disturbed, he thought about walking out of the shop, but didn’t.
“You have…” She stopped short and put her hand over his, as if trying to block out her sudden vision.
“What is it?” Bourne said.
She looked up at him and at that moment he felt as if he could drown in those eyes. She had not let go of his hand. On the contrary, she held it tightly between her two palms. There was a magnetism about her that was both intensely exciting and intensely disquieting. He felt forces inside him tugging him this way and that, as if in fierce opposition.
“Do you really want me to tell you?” Her voice was that of a trained contralto, deep and rich and sonorous. Even at low volume it seemed to pierce into every packed corner of the sweets shop.
“You started this,” Bourne pointed out.
She smiled, but there was nothing happy in it. “Come with me.”
He followed her to the rear of the shop and out a narrow door. Once again in the labyrinthine heart of the market, he looked out at a bewildering array of goods and services: live cocks and velvet-winged bats in cages, cockatoos on bamboo perches, fat fish in tanks of seawater, a butchered lamb, skinned and bloody, hanging from a hook. A brown hen waddled by, squawking as if being strangled.
“Here you see many things, many creatures, but as for people, only Amazighs, only Berbers.” Tanirt pointed south, into the High Atlas. “The town of Tineghir is centered within an eighteen-and-a-half-mile oasis at an altitude of more than five thousand feet, stretching across a relatively thin wedge of lush wadi between the High Atlas range to the north and the Anti-Atlas to the south.
“It is a homogeneous place. Like the area around it, the town is inhabited by Amazighs. The Romans called us Mazices; the Greeks, Libyans. By whatever name, we are Berbers, indigenous to many parts of North Africa and the Nile Valley. The ancient Roman author Apuleius was actually Berber, as was Saint Augustine of Hippo. So was, of course, Septimius Severus, emperor of Rome. And it was a Berber, Abd ar-Rahman the First, who conquered southern Spain and established the Umayyad Caliphate in Córdoba, the heart of what he called al-Andalus, modern-day Andalusia.”
She turned to him. “I tell you this so you may better understand what is to come. This is a place of history, of conquest, of great deeds and great men. It is also a place of great energy—a power spot, if you will. It is a nexus point.”
She took his hand again. “Bourne, you are an enigma,” she said softly. “You have a long lifeline—an unusually long lifeline. And yet…”
“What is it?”
“And yet you will die here today or perhaps tomorrow, but certainly within the week.”
All of Marrakech appeared to be a souk, all Moroccans vendors of something or other. Everything seemed to be bought and sold from the storefronts and marketplaces that lined the jammed streets and boulevards.
Arkadin and Soraya had been observed upon their arrival, which he had expected, but no one approached them and they weren’t followed from the airport into the city. This did not reassure him. On the contrary, it made him even more wary. If the Severus Domna agents at the airport hadn’t followed them, it was because they had no need to. His conclusion was that the city, probably the entire Ouarzazate region, was swarming with them.
Soraya confirmed that opinion when he voiced it. “It makes no sense you being here,” she said inside a taxi that smelled of stewed lentils, fried onions, and incense. “Why are you walking into such an obvious trap?”
“Because I can.” Arkadin sat with his small suitcase on his lap. Inside was the laptop computer.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t give a shit what you believe.”
“Another lie, otherwise I wouldn’t be here with you now.”
He looked at her, shaking his head. “Within ten minutes I could make you cry out, I could make you forget all your previous lovers.”
“I’m charmed, truly.”
“Mother Teresa, not Mata Hari.” He said this with a good measure of disgust, as if her chastity had made him lose respect for her, or at least devalue her.
“Do you imagine I care what a piece of shit like you thinks of me.” It was not a question.
They bounced around in the backseat for some time. Then he said, as if continuing the previous conversation, “You’re here as an insurance policy. You and Bourne have a connection. At the proper time, I mean to make the most of it.”
Soraya, brooding, was silent for the remainder of the ride.
In Marrakech, Arkadin took her along a warren of streets where Moroccans peered at her, licking their lips as if they were trying to measure the tenderness of her flesh. They were engulfed by the madhouse screeches of the jungle. At length, they entered a stuffy shop that stank of machine oil. A small, bald, mole-like man greeted Arkadin in the obsequious manner of an undertaker, rubbing his hands together and bowing continuously. At the rear of the shop was a small Persian carpet. Lifting this aside, he pulled on a thick metal ring, which opened a trapdoor. Switching on a small flashlight, the mole-man descended a metal spiral staircase. At the base, he flicked on a series of fluorescent coils set into a ceiling so low they were forced to stoop as they crab-walked across the polished floorboards. Unlike the shop above, dusty, packed willy-nilly with all manner of cartons, barrels, and crates, the basement was spotless. Along the walls, portable dehumidifiers hummed quietly alongside a row of air purifiers. The basement was divided into neat aisles sided by long, waist-high cabinets, each with three drawers, each one filled with every form of hand weaponry known to modern man. Every weapon was marked and tagged in meticulous fashion.
“Well, since you know my stock,” the mole-man said, “I’ll leave you to make your choices. Bring what you want to buy upstairs, I’ll provide what ammunition you require, and we’ll settle the bill.”
Arkadin nodded absently. He was consumed with passing from one drawer of the arsenal to another, calculating firepower, ease of use, rapidity of fire, and the practicality of weight and size of each weapon.
When they were alone, he removed from a drawer what looked to Soraya like a searchlight with a large battery pack underneath it. Turning to her, he shook the searchlight. The battery pack opened and locked into place. The item was a folding machine gun.
“I’ve never seen that before.” She was fascinated despite herself.
“It’s a prototype, not on the market yet. It’s a Magpul FMG, takes standard nine-millimeter Glock ammo but spits it out a shitload faster than a pistol.” He ran his hand down the stubby barrel. “Nice, huh?”
Soraya thought it was. She’d dearly like one for herself.
Arkadin must have recognized the avidity of her gaze. “Here.”
She took it from him, examined it expertly, broke it down, then put it back together.
“F*cking ingenious.” Arkadin seemed in no hurry to take back the FMG. He seemed to be watching her, but, in fact, he was seeing something else, a scene from far away.
In St. Petersburg he’d taken Tracy to her hotel room. She had not asked him to come up, but she hadn’t protested when he had. Inside, she put her handbag and key down on a table, walked across the carpet and into the bathroom. She closed the door but he didn’t hear the click of a lock.
The river glittered in moonlight, black and thick and full of secrets, like an ancient serpent, always half asleep. It was stuffy in the room, so he went to the window and, unlatching it, opened it. A wind, thick as the river and smelling of it, swirled about the room. He turned, looked at the bed, and imagined Tracy there, her nakedness revealed by the moonlight.
A tiny sound, like a sigh or a catch in the throat, caused him to turn around. The bathroom door, unlatched, had opened, and now another swirl of wind pushed it farther, so that a thin wedge of buttery light fell across the carpet. He entered the wedge of light, and his gaze penetrated into the bathroom. He saw Tracy’s back, or rather a slice of it, pale and unblemished. Lower was the swell of her buttocks and the deep crease between. The pulse of pleasure in his groin was so extreme it bordered on pain. There was that thing about her—his hatred and his dependence—that made him weak. He despised himself, but he could not help moving toward the door and pushing it farther open.
The door, old and peeling, creaked, and Tracy peered at him over her shoulder. Her body was revealed to him in all its glory. She looked at him with a pity and loathing that brought an animal sound to his lips. Hurriedly, he pulled the door shut. When she emerged, he could not look at her. He heard her cross the room and close the window.
“Where were you brought up?” she said.
It was not a question, but a slap in the face. He could not answer her, and for that—for many things—he burned to kill her, to feel the cartilage in her throat rupture beneath the pressure of his fingers, to feel her blood running hotly in his hands. Yet he was bound to her, as she was bound to him. They were locked in hateful orbit, with no possibility of escape.
But Tracy did escape, he thought now, into death. He missed her, hated himself for missing her. She was the only woman who had refused him. Up until now, that is. As his eyes refocused on Soraya folding up the FMG, he felt a premonitory shiver run through him. For a moment, he saw her skull, and she looked like death. Then everything snapped back into focus and he could breathe again.
Unlike Tracy, her skin was burnished a golden bronze. Like Tracy, she had revealed herself to him when she stripped off the T-shirt he had loaned her to use as a tourniquet for Moira’s thigh. She had heavy breasts, the nipples dark and erect. He could see them now, beneath her top, see them as clearly as if she were still half naked.
“It’s because you can’t have me,” Soraya said as if reading his mind.
“On the contrary, I could have you right now.”
“Rape me, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“If you were going to,” she said, turning her back on him, “you would have already.”
He came up behind her and said, “Don’t tempt me.”
She whirled around. “Your rage is toward men, not women.”
He glared at her, unmoving.
“You get off on killing men and seducing women. But rape? You’d no more consider raping a woman than I would.”
His mind raced back to his hometown of Nizhny Tagil, where he had briefly become a member of Stas Kuzin’s gang, rounding up girls off the streets to stock Kuzin’s savage brothel. Night after night he’d heard the girls’ screams and cries as they were raped and beaten. In the end, he’d killed Kuzin and half his gang.
“Rape is for animals,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m not an animal.”
“That’s your life: the struggle to be a man, not an animal.”
He looked away.
“Did Treadstone do this to you?”
He laughed. “Treadstone was the least of it. It was everything that happened before, everything I try to forget.”
“Curious. For Bourne it’s just the opposite. His struggle is to remember.”
“He’s lucky, then,” Arkadin snarled.
“It’s a great pity you’re enemies.”
“God made us enemies.” Arkadin took the weapon from her. “A god named Alexander Conklin.”
Do you know how to die, Bourne?” Tanirt whispered.
“You were born on Siwa’s day: the last day of the month, which is both the ending and the beginning. Do you understand? You are destined to die and be born again.” This was what Suparwita had told him only days ago in Bali.
“I’ve died once,” he said, “and was reborn.”
“Flesh, flesh, only flesh,” she muttered. And then: “This is different.”
Tanirt said this with a force he felt through every fiber of his being. He leaned toward her, the promise of her thighs and her breasts drawing him into her orbit.
He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Her hands gripped him, pulling him even closer. “There is only one way to explain.” She turned and led him back into the sweets shop. In the far corner she pushed several fragrant bales out of the way, revealing a wooden staircase, full of dust and crystals of palm sugar. They ascended to an upper floor that was, or until recently had been, someone’s living quarters. The owner’s daughter, judging by the posters of film and rock stars on the walls. It was brighter up here, the windows bringing in blinding sunlight. But it was also as hot as a fever. Tanirt appeared unaffected.
In the center of the floor she turned to him. “Tell me, Bourne, what do you believe in?”
He did not answer.
“The hand of God, fate, destiny? Any of those things?”
“I believe in free will,” he said at last, “in the ability to make one’s own choices without interference, either by organizations or by fate, whatever you want to call it.”
“In other words, you believe in chaos, because man doesn’t control anything in this universe.”
“That would mean I’m helpless. I’m not.”
“So neither Law nor Chaos.” She smiled. “Yours is a special path, the path between, where no one before you has gone.”
“I’m not sure I’d put it that way.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not a philosopher. How would you put it?”
“Where is this going?” he said.
“Always the soldier, the impatient soldier,” Tanirt said. “Death. It’s going toward the nature of your death.”
“Death is the end of life,” Bourne said. “What else is there to know about its nature?”
She went to one of the windows and opened it. “Tell me, please, how many of the enemy can you see?”
Bourne stood beside her, feeling her intense warmth as if she were an engine that had been running at speed for a long time. From this lofty vantage point, he could see a fair number of streets and observe their occupants.
“Somewhere between three and nine. It’s difficult to be precise,” he said after several minutes. “Which one will kill me?”
“None of them.”
“Then it will be Arkadin.”
Tanirt cocked her head. “This man Arkadin will be the herald, but he won’t be the one who kills you.”
Bourne turned to her. “Then who?”
“Bourne, do you know who you are?”
He had been with her long enough to know that he wasn’t expected to answer.
“Something happened to you,” Tanirt said. “You were one person, now you’re two.”
She put the flat of her hand on his chest and his heart seemed to skip a beat—or, more accurately, to race past it. He gave a little gasp.
“These two people are incompatible—in every way incompatible. Therefore, there is a war inside you, a war that will lead to your death.”
“Tanirt—”
She raised the hand that had been on his chest, and he felt as if he had sunk into a bog.
“The herald—this man Arkadin—will arrive in Tineghir with the one who will kill you. It is someone you know, perhaps very well. It is a woman.”
“Moira? Is her name Moira?”
Tanirt shook her head. “An Egyptian.”
Soraya!
“That… that doesn’t seem possible.”
Tanirt smiled her enigmatic smile. “This is the conundrum, Bourne. One of you can’t believe it is possible. But the other one knows that it is possible.”
For the first time in Bourne’s memory he felt truly helpless. “What am I to do?”
Tanirt took his hand in hers. “How you react, what you do, will determine whether you live or die.”