The Bourne Objective

  “Good afternoon, I’m Soraya Moore,” she said. “I have an appointment with the DCI.”

  Lt. R. Simmons Reade glanced up and gave her a neutral look that nevertheless seemed to hold the hint of a sneer. He wore a blue suit, a starched white shirt, and a red-and-blue regimental striped tie. Without glancing at his computer terminal he said, “You had an appointment with Director Danziger. That was fifteen days ago.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “I was in the field, cleaning up the loose ends of the mission in northern Iran that had to be—”

  The light’s greenish tint made Reade’s face seem longer, sharper, dangerous, almost like a weapon. “You disobeyed a direct order from Director Danziger.”

  “The new DCI had just been installed,” she said. “He had no way of knowing—”

  “And yet Director Danziger knows all he needs to know about you, Ms. Moore.”

  Soraya bristled. “What the hell does that mean? And it’s Director Moore.”

  “Not surprisingly, you’re out of date, Ms. Moore,” Reade said blandly. “You’ve been terminated.”

  “What? You’ve got to be joking. I can’t—” Soraya felt as if she were being sucked down a sinkhole that had just appeared beneath her feet. “I demand to see the DCI!”

  Reade’s face got even harder, like a pitchman for the “Be All You Can Be” slogan. “As of this moment, your clearance has been revoked. Please surrender your ID, company credit cards, and cell phone.”

  Soraya leaned forward, her fists on the sleek desktop. “Who the hell are you to tell me anything?”

  “I’m the voice of Director Danziger.”

  “I don’t believe a word you say.”

  “Your cards won’t work. There’s nowhere to go but out.”

  She stood back up. “Tell the DCI I’ll be in my office when he decides he has time to debrief me.”

  R. Simmons Reade reached down beside his desk and lifted a small, topless cardboard box, which he slid across to her. Soraya looked down and almost choked on her tongue. There, neatly stacked, was every personal item she’d had in her office.

  I can only repeat what you yourself told me.” Suparwita stood up and, with him, Bourne.

  “So even then I was concerned with Noah Perlis.” It wasn’t a question and the Balinese shaman didn’t treat it as such. “But why? And what was his connection to Holly Marie Moreau?”

  “Whatever the truth of it,” Suparwita said, “it seems likely they met in London.”

  “And what of the odd lettering that runs around the inside of the ring?”

  “You showed it to me once, hoping I could help. I have no idea what it means.”

  “It isn’t any modern language,” Bourne said, still racking his damaged memory for details.

  Suparwita took a step toward him and lowered his voice until it was just above a whisper. Nevertheless, it penetrated into Bourne’s mind like the sting of a wasp.

  “As I said, you were born in December, Siwa’s month.” He pronounced the god Shiva’s name as all Balinese did. “Further, 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.”

  “I already did that eight months ago when Arkadin shot me.”

  Suparwita nodded gravely. “Had I not given you a draft of the resurrection lily beforehand, it’s very likely you would have died from that wound.”

  “You saved me,” Bourne said. “Why?”

  Suparwita gave him another of his thousand-watt grins. “We are linked, you and I.” He shrugged. “Who can say how or why?”

  Bourne, needing to turn to practical matters, said, “There are two of them outside, I checked before I came in.”

  “And yet you led them here.”

  Now it was Bourne’s turn to grin. He lowered his voice even further. “All part of the plan, my friend.”

  Suparwita raised a hand. “Before you carry out your plan, there is something you must know and something I must teach you.”

  He paused long enough for Bourne to wonder what was on his mind. He knew the shaman well enough to understand when something grave was about to be discussed. He’d seen that expression just before Suparwita had fed him the resurrection lily concoction in this very room some months ago.

  “Listen to me.” There was no smile on the shaman’s face now. “Within the year you will die, you will need to die in order to save those around you, everyone you love or care about.”

  Despite all his training, all his mental discipline, Bourne felt a wave of coldness sweep through him. It was one thing to put yourself in harm’s way, to cheat death over and over, often by a hairbreadth, but it was quite another to be told in unequivocal terms that you had less than a year to live. On the other hand, he had the choice to laugh it off—he was a Westerner, after all, and there were so many belief systems in the world that it was easy enough to dismiss 99 percent of them. And yet, looking into Suparwita’s eyes, he could see the truth. As before, the shaman’s extraordinary powers had allowed him to see the future, or at least Bourne’s future. “We are linked, you and I.” He had saved Bourne’s life before, it would be foolish to doubt him now.

  “Do you know how, or when?”

  Suparwita shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. My flashes of the future are like waking dreams, filled with color and portent, but there are no images, no details, no clarity.”

  “You once told me that Siwa would look after me.”

  “Indeed.” The smile returned to Suparwita’s face as he led Bourne into another room, filled with shadows and the scent of frangipani incense. “And the next several hours will be an example of his help.”

  Valerie Zapolsky, Rory Doll’s personal assistant, brought the message to DCI M. Errol Danziger herself, because, as she said, her boss did not want to entrust the news to the computer system, even one as hackproof as CI’s.

  “Why didn’t Doll bring this himself?” Danziger frowned without looking up.

  “The director of operations is otherwise engaged,” Valerie said. “Temporarily.”

  She was a small dark woman with hooded eyes. Danziger didn’t like that Doll had sent her.

  “Jason Bourne is alive? What the fuck—!” He leapt off his chair as if he’d been electrocuted. As his eyes scanned the report, which was brief and lacking actionable detail, his face grew red with blood. His head fairly trembled.

  Then Valerie made the fatal mistake of trying to be solicitous. “Director, is there anything I can do?”

  “Do, do?” He looked up as if coming out of a stupor. “Sure, here’s what, tell me this is a joke, a sick, black joke on Rory Doll’s part. Because if not, I sure as hell am going to fire your ass.”

  “That will be all, Val,” Rory Doll said, appearing in the doorway behind her. “Go on back to the office.” Her expression of deliverance only partially assuaged his guilt at thrusting her into the line of fire.

  “Goddammit,” Danziger said. “I swear I will fire her.”

  Doll strolled into the office and stood in front of Danziger’s desk. “If you do, Stu Gold will be on you like flies on shit.”

  “Gold? Who the fuck is Stu Gold and why should I give a shit about him?”

  “He’s CI’s lawyer.”

  “I’ll fire his ass, too.”

  “Impossible, sir. His firm has an ironclad contract with CI, and he’s the only one with clearance all the way up—”

  The DCI’s hand cut across the air in a vicious gesture. “You think I can’t find just cause to can her?” He snapped his fingers. “What’s her name?”

  “Zapolsky. Valerie A. Zapolsky.”

  “Right, what is that, Russian? I want her re-vetted down to the brand of toenail polish she uses, understood?”

  Doll nodded diplomatically. He was slender and fair-haired, which only caused his electric-blue eyes to blaze like flares. “Absolutely, sir.”

  “And God help you if there’s a s
pot, however small, or even a question, on that report.”

  Ever since Peter Marks’s recent defection the DCI had been in a foul mood. Another director of ops had not yet been named. Marks had been Doll’s boss and Doll knew that if he could prove his loyalty to Danziger, he’d have a good shot at Marks’s position. Grinding his teeth in silent fury, he changed the subject. “We need to talk about this new bit of intel.”

  “This isn’t a file photo, is it? This isn’t a joke?”

  “I wish it were.” Doll shook his head. “But, no, sir. Jason Bourne was photographed applying for a temporary visa at Denpasar Airport in Bali, Indonesia—”

  “I know where the hell Bali is, Doll.”

  “Just being complete, sir, as per your instructions to us on first-day orientation.”

  The DCI, though still fuming, said nothing. He held the report, and its attendant grainy black-and-white photo of Bourne, in his fist—his mailed fist, as he liked to call it.

  “Continuing, as you can see by the electronic legend in the lower right-hand corner, the photo was taken three days ago, at two twenty-nine PM local time. It took our signals department this long to ensure there was no transmission error or interception.”

  Danziger took a breath. “He was dead, Bourne was supposed to be dead. I was sure we’d shut him down forever.” He crushed the photo, threw it in the hopper attached to the paper shredder. “He’s still there, I assume you know that much.”

  “Yes, sir.” Doll nodded. “At this moment he’s on Bali.”

  “You have him under surveillance?”

  “Twenty-four hours a day. He can’t make a move without us knowing about it.”

  Danziger considered for a moment, then said, “Who’s our wet-work man in Indonesia?”

  Doll was ready for this question. “Coven. But, sir, if I may point out, in her last written report filed from Cairo, Soraya Moore claimed that Bourne had a major hand in preventing the disaster in northern Iran that brought down Black River.”

  “Almost as dangerous as his rogue status is Bourne’s ability to—how shall I put it?—influence women unduly. Moore is certainly one of them, which is why she was fired.” The DCI nodded. “Activate Coven, Mr. Doll.”

  “Can do, sir, but it will take him some time to—”

  “Who’s closer?” Danziger said impatiently.

  Doll checked his notes. “We have an extraction team in Jakarta. I can get them on a military copter within the hour.”

  “Do it, and use Coven as backup,” the DCI ordered. “Their orders are to bring Bourne in. I want to subject him to extensive, ah, questioning. I want to pick his brains, I want to know his secrets, how he manages to keep evading us, how at every turn he cheats death.” Danziger’s eyes glittered with malice. “When we’re done with him we’ll put a bullet through his head and claim the Russians killed him.”

  2

  THE LONG BANGALORE night was nearly at an end. Thick with the stench of raw sewage, disease, and human sweat, dense with terror, displaced rage, thwarted desire, and despair, the ashen dawn did nothing to return color to the city.

  Finding a physician’s surgery, Arkadin broke in and took what he needed: sutures, iodine, sterile cotton, bandages, and antibiotics to take the place of the ones he hadn’t been able to pick up at the hospital. Loping through the wheezing streets, he knew he needed to stop the bleeding of the wound at the back of his thigh. It wasn’t life threatening, but it was deep, and he didn’t want to lose any more blood. Even more, though, he needed a place to hide, where he could stop the clock that Oserov had set ticking, a place of respite where he could assess his situation. He cursed himself for having been caught flat-footed by the enemy. But he was also acutely aware that his next step was a crucial one, disaster could so quickly compound itself into a catastrophe of deathly proportions.

  With his local security penetrated, he could no longer trust any of his usual contacts in Bangalore, which left only one option: the place where he maintained absolute leverage. On the way, entering an encrypted number that gave him access to a relay of secure signal routers, he called Stepan, Luka, Pavel, Alik, as well as Ismael Bey, the figurehead leader of the Eastern Brotherhood, which he controlled.

  “We’re under attack from Maslov, Oserov, the entire Kazanskaya,” he told each one brusquely and without preamble. “As of this moment we’re in a state of war.”

  He had trained them well, none of them asked superfluous questions, merely acknowledged the order with curt replies. Then they rang off in order to commence the preparations Arkadin had blueprinted for them months ago. Each captain had his specific role to play, each was activating his piece of a plan that literally stretched across the globe. Maslov wanted war, that’s precisely what he was going to get, and not merely on a single front.

  Arkadin shook his head and barked a laugh. This moment was always in the wind, as inevitable as their next breath. Now that it was upon him there was a palpable sense of relief. No more grinning through gritted teeth, no more pretending a friendship where only bitter enmity existed.

  You’re a dead man, Dimitri Ilyinovich, Arkadin thought. You just don’t know it yet.

  A touch of watery pink had tinged the sky, and he was almost at Chaaya’s. Time to make the difficult call. He punched in an eleven-digit number. A male drone at the other end said “Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency” in Russian. The now infamous FSB-2 that, under its leader, a man named Viktor Cherkesov, had become the most powerful and feared agency within the Russian government, surpassing even the FSB, the KGB’s successor.

  “Colonel Karpov, if you please,” Arkadin said.

  “It’s four AM. Colonel Karpov is unavailable,” the drone said in a voice not unlike one of the undead from a George Romero film.

  “So am I,” Arkadin said, honing his sardonic edge, “but I’m making the time to talk to him.”

  “And who might you be?” the emotionless voice said in his ear.

  “My name is Arkadin, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin. Go find your boss.”

  There was a quick catch of the drone’s breath, then, “Hold the line.”

  “Sixty seconds,” Arkadin said, looking at his watch and starting the countdown, “no more.”

  Fifty-eight seconds later a series of clicks was followed by a deep, gruff voice that said, “This is Colonel Karpov.”

  “Boris Illyich, we’ve almost met so many times over the years.”

  “Would that I could cross out the almost. How do I know I’m speaking to Leonid Danilovich Arkadin?”

  “Dimitri Maslov is still giving you fits, isn’t he?”

  When Karpov gave no response, Arkadin continued. “Colonel, who else could give you the Kazanskaya on a silver platter?”

  Karpov laughed harshly. “The real Arkadin would never turn on his mentor. Whoever you are, you’re wasting my time. Good-bye.”

  Arkadin gave him an address hidden in the industrial outskirts of Moscow.

  Karpov was silent for a moment, but Arkadin, listening carefully, could hear the harsh soughing of his breathing. Everything depended on this conversation, on Karpov believing that he was, in fact, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin and that he was telling the truth.

  “What am I to make of this address?” the colonel said after a time.

  “It’s a warehouse. From the outside it looks exactly like the hundred or so on either side of it. Inside, as well.”

  “You’re boring me, gospadin Whoever-You-Are.”

  “The third door on the left near the back will take you into the men’s room. Go past the urinal trough to the last stall on the right, which has no toilet, only a door in the rear wall.”

  There was only a moment’s hesitation before Karpov said, “And then?”

  “Go in heavy,” Arkadin said. “Armed to the teeth.”

  “You’re saying that I should take a squad with—”

  “No! You go alone. Furthermore, you don’t sign out, you don’t tell a soul where you’re going. Tell them you’re going to t
he dentist or for an afternoon fuck, whatever your comrades will believe.”

  Another pause, this one dark with menace. “Who’s the mole inside my office?”

  “Ah, now, Boris Illyich, don’t be so ungrateful. You don’t want to spoil my fun, not after the gift I’ve just given you.” Arkadin took a breath. Having witnessed the colonel take the bait, he judged the moment right to sink the hook all the way in. “But were I you, I wouldn’t use the singular—moles is more like it.”

  “What—? Now, listen to me—!”

  “You’d best get rolling, Colonel, or your targets will have packed up for the day.” He chuckled. “Here’s my number, I know it didn’t come up on your phones. Call me when you return and we’ll talk names and, quite possibly, much, much more.”

  He cut the connection before Karpov could say another word.

  Near the end of the workday Delia Trane was sitting at her desk looking over a three-dimensionally rendered computer model of a diabolically clever explosive device, trying to find a way to disarm it before the timer went off. A buzzer deep inside the bomb would sound the instant she failed—if she cut the wrong wire with her virtual cutter or moved it inordinately. She herself had created the software program that had rendered the virtual bomb, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t having the devil’s own time figuring out a way to disarm it.

  Delia was a plain-looking woman in her midthirties with pale eyes, short-cropped hair, and skin deeply burnished by the genes from her Colombian mother. Despite her relative youth and her often ferocious temper, she was one of the ATF’s most coveted explosives experts. She was also Soraya Moore’s best friend, and when one of the guards from reception called to say Soraya was in the lobby she asked him to send her right up.

  The two women had met through work, had sparked off each other’s feistiness and independence, recognizing and appreciating kindred spirits, so difficult to find in the hermetically sealed public sector inside the Beltway. Because they had met on one of Soraya’s clandestine assignments they had no need to conceal from each other their life’s work and what it meant to them, the number one relationship killer in DC. Further, both of them realized that, for better or for worse, their entire lives were bound up in their respective services, that they were unsuited for anything but work they couldn’t talk about with civilians, which in a way validated their existence, their independence as women, and their importance irrespective of the gender bias that existed here as virtually everywhere else in Washington. Together they daily took on the DC establishment like a pair of Amazons.