The Bourne Objective

  Bourne checked his hands but found no ring. Then he went through his pockets. His name was Farid Lever, according to his French passport, but that told Bourne nothing. The passport could be real or a fake, he had no time to scrutinize it. Lever, or whoever the hell he was, had on him five thousand British pounds, two thousand euros, and a set of car keys.

  Emptying the Dragunov’s magazine, he flung the rifle into the woods then slapped the sniper back into consciousness.

  “Who are you?” Bourne said. “Who do you work for?”

  The black eyes looked up at him impassively. Reaching down, Bourne squeezed the sniper’s ruined knee. His eyes opened wide and he gasped, but not another sound came out of his mouth. It soon would, Bourne vowed. This was a man who had shot two people, one of them dead. Prying open the sniper’s mouth, he shoved his fist in. The man gagged, arching up. He tried to twist away, to move his head from side to side, but Bourne kept a firm grip on him. As his hands came up, Bourne slapped them down and pressed harder, pushing his fist in deeper.

  The sniper’s eyes began to water, he coughed and gagged again. Then his gorge rose up uncontrollably and he tried to vomit, but there was nowhere for it to go. He began to asphyxiate. Terror flooded his face, and he nodded as vigorously as he was able.

  The moment Bourne extracted his fist, the sniper rolled over on his side and vomited, his eyes tearing, his nose running. His body shook all over. Bourne took him by the shoulders and turned him onto his back. His face was a mess; he looked like a kid who’d gotten the worst of a street fight.

  “Now,” Bourne said. “Who are you and who do you work for?”

  “Fa… Fa… Farid Lever.” Understandably, he was having trouble speaking.

  Bourne held up the French passport. “One more lie and this gets stuffed down your throat, and I promise you I won’t pull it out.”

  The sniper swallowed, wincing at the sour taste in his mouth. “Farid Kazmi. I belong to Jalal Essai.”

  Bourne took a shot in the dimness. “Severus Domna?”

  “He was.” Kazmi had to stop either to regain his breath or to get more saliva in his mouth. “I need water. Do you have any water?”

  “Those two men you shot needed water, too. One of them is dead, the other isn’t, but neither is getting any,” Bourne said. “Continue. Jalal Essai…”

  “Jalal was a member of Severus Domna. He has broken away from them.”

  “That’s a very dangerous course. He must have a damn good reason.”

  “The ring.”

  “Why?”

  Kazmi’s tongue came out, trying to moisten his dry lips. “It belongs to him. For years he thought it was lost, but now he knows that his brother stole it from him years ago. You have it.”

  So Jalal Essai is Holly’s dreaded uncle, Bourne thought. The puzzle was at last taking shape. Holly the hedonist on one side, and her uncle Jalal the religious extremist on the other. What if Holly’s father had left Morocco to protect her from his brother, who would surely have clamped down on Holly’s natural tendencies, stifled her, killed her, in a manner of speaking? And then, after his death, who had stood between Holly and her uncle? But in a blinding flash of memory he knew: It was him. Holly had somehow recruited him to protect her from Jalal Essai. He had done that, but the curious relationship among Holly, Tracy, Perlis, and Diego Hererra—a relationship she had failed to tell him about—had undone her. Perlis had found out about the ring from her and had killed her to get it.

  “I was to get the ring at all costs,” Kazmi said, bringing Bourne back into the present.

  “No matter how many lives it took.”

  Kazmi nodded, wincing with pain. “No matter how many.” Something lurked in those black eyes. “Jalal will get it, too.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  A look of serenity bloomed on Kazmi’s face and Bourne lunged for his mouth. But it was too late. His molars had ground open a fake tooth, and the cyanide inside was already shutting down his systems.

  Bourne sat back on his haunches. When Kazmi had breathed his last, he rose and headed back toward the house.

  Peter Marks lay on the ground, keeping as still as possible. Moving only caused a further loss of blood. Though well trained, he had never before been wounded in the field, or anywhere else, had never even experienced an accident like falling off a ladder or missing a stair tread. He lay as if dead, hearing his breath sawing in and out of his mouth, feeling the blood pulsing in his leg as if it had developed a second heart, but a heart that was malevolent, black as night, a heart that was close to death, or in whose chambers death had inveigled itself like a thief.

  Marks felt his life was about to be stolen from him prematurely, as it had been from his sister. How close he felt to her at this moment, as if at the last instant he had snatched her from the doomed plane, holding her close while they soared through the clouds. This abrupt awareness of the tenuousness of his own life did not frighten him so much as change his perspective. He lay, helpless and bleeding, and watched an ant struggle with a freshly fallen leaf, a new leaf, a luminous green, until moments ago bursting with life. The leaf was clearly too big for the ant, but the insect was undeterred, tugging and pulling, dragging the recalcitrant leaf over pebbles and roots, the huge impediments of its world. Marks loved that ant. It refused to give up no matter how difficult its life had become. It persevered. It abided. This, too, Marks resolved to do. He resolved to look out for himself and for the people he cared about—Soraya, for instance—in a way that he could not have imagined, let alone foreseen, before he had been shot.

  And so he lay for some time, hearing nothing but the occasional soughing of the wind through the woods. Which was why, when he heard Chrissie’s voice calling, he said, “This is Peter Marks. I’ve been hit in the leg. Moreno’s dead, and Adam went after the sniper.”

  “I’m coming out to get you.”

  “Stay where you are,” he shouted back. Dragging himself forward, he struggled to sit with his back against the Opel. “The area isn’t secure.”

  But a moment later she appeared at his side, crouched down behind the safety of the car’s bullet-ridden flank.

  “Stupid move,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  It was the second time someone had said that to him today and he didn’t like it. In fact, he didn’t like much of anything in his life at the moment, and he became momentarily disoriented, wondering how in the world he had allowed himself to get into this sorry state. He loved no one and so far as he knew no one loved him, not currently, anyway. He supposed his parents had loved him in their gruff overriding way, and surely his sister had. But who else? His latest girlfriend had lasted six months, just about par for the course, before she got fed up with his long hours and inattention, and walked out. Friends? A few. But like Soraya, he used them or they used him. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach and shuddered.

  “You’re going into shock,” Chrissie said, understanding him better than he could imagine. “We’d better get you into the house and warmed up.”

  She helped him to stand, balanced on his good leg. He put his arm around her, and she helped him toward the house. He moved shakily and, stumbling over a rock or a root, almost sent them both tumbling over.

  Christ on a crutch, he thought wildly, I’m full of self-pity today, and was even more thoroughly disgusted with himself than he had been a moment ago.

  Her father, who had emerged from the house, rushed to Marks’s other side and helped her with her burden. The old man kicked the door shut when they were inside.

  Bourne came upon the woman almost without warning. She was half buried in crisp, dead leaves. Her face was turned away from him, eyes closed. Her long hair was streaked with blood, but from the way she lay, it was impossible to tell whether she was dead or alive. A neighbor out walking, it had been her bad luck to stumble upon Kazmi. Beneath the fall of leaves, he could make out bits and pieces of her red-and-black-checked flannel shirt, jeans, and hikin
g boots. Leaves appeared to have been kicked over her with considerable haste.

  He needed to return to Peter Marks and to the people in the house, but he couldn’t bypass the woman until he found out whether she was alive and, if so, how badly she was injured. Creeping closer, he put a hand out to find the pulse in her carotid artery.

  Her eyes snapped open, her hand rose up, clutching a hunting knife by its handle. The point stabbed out toward his chest and, as he moved, sliced through his shirt and across the skin covering his breastbone. She sat up, coming after him. Leaves fell away from her like freshly turned earth from an animated corpse. Bourne grasped her wrist, redirecting the knife away from him, but she had a second knife in her other hand. Struggling with her, he saw it very late, and took the point on the bone of his shoulder.

  She was well trained and surprisingly strong. She scissored her legs, catching his right ankle, taking him off balance. He fell backward and she was on him. He had control of one wrist, but the knife blade scythed in to slit his throat. Using the carpenter’s nail like a push dagger, he slapped his hand against the side of her neck, puncturing her carotid artery.

  A fountain of blood arced out, pulsing with each slackening beat of her heart. The woman toppled over into the leaves that had covered her. She looked up at him with Kazmi’s enigmatic smile, that smile that made him believe that Jalal Essai wasn’t finished with him, that had put him on alert, that had caused him to keep the carpenter’s nail hidden in his left hand. Were Kazmi and the woman working together? Had she been his backup? It seemed so to him, a diabolical scheme that made of Jalal Essai a formidable enemy with whom he had a difficult and shadowed past, a man who doubtless nursed a blood grudge against him.

  As Chrissie and her father sat Marks down in a chair, they heard rifle shots. Chrissie gave a little gasp and ran to the door, pulling it open against her father’s shouted warning. Still in the shadows of the doorway, she peered out past the driveway and the Opel to the woods beyond, but she could see nothing, even though she strained with every ounce of her strength to penetrate the foliage, to spot a sign that Bourne was still alive. What if he was wounded and needed help?

  She had already made up her mind to go after him, as she imagined Tracy would have done in the same circumstances, when she saw him emerging through the branches. Before she could take a step, someone flashed past her, down the steps.

  “Scarlett!”

  Scarlett raced down the driveway, skirted the dead man, passing around the trunk of the car, and flung herself into Bourne’s arms.

  “This is real blood, your blood,” she said a bit out of breath, “but I can help you.”

  Bourne was about to brush her gently away, but her obvious concern changed his mind. She genuinely wanted to help, and he couldn’t take that away from her. He knelt down beside her so that she could check his cuts and bruises.

  “I’ll get bandages from Granddad’s kit.” But she made no move to leave him, digging in the dirt with her fingers as children will when they’re embarrassed or at a loss for words. Then she put her face up to his. “Are you all right?”

  He smiled. “Imagine tripping over a rock.”

  “Just scratches and bruises?”

  “That’s all.”

  “That’s good then. I—” She held something up for him to see. “I found this just now. Does it belong to Mr. Marks? This is where he was lying.”

  Bourne took it and rubbed the dirt off. It was a Severus Domna ring. Where had it come from?

  “I’ll ask Mr. Marks when we get inside.” He pocketed the ring.

  At that moment Chrissie came up, out of breath not only from the all-out sprint but also from the terror of having her daughter exposed to more danger.

  “Scarlett,” she said.

  Bourne saw that she was prepared to scold her daughter until she glimpsed her examining Bourne’s superficial wounds with absolute concentration and she, like Bourne, shut her mouth to allow this mini-drama to play out.

  “If you let me put bandages on your cuts,” Scarlett said, “you’ll be fine.”

  “Then let’s go inside, Dr. Lincoln.”

  Scarlett giggled. Bourne stood up, and the three of them returned in silence to the house, where Bourne went directly to where they had sat Marks. Chrissie’s father was tending him with materials from an astonishingly well-stocked first-aid kit. Marks’s eyes were closed, his head back. Bourne guessed the professor had administered a sedative.

  “The first-aid kit’s from the trunk of Dad’s car,” Chrissie said as Scarlett rummaged around for bandages and Mercurochrome. “He’s been a hunter all his life.”

  Bourne sat cross-legged on the rug while Scarlett ministered to him.

  “The wound’s a clean one,” Professor Atherton said of his own patient. “Bullet went clear through, so the chance of infection is low, especially now that I’ve cleaned it out.” He took the Mercurochrome from Scarlett, applied it to two squares of sterile gauze, placed the gauze over the entrance and exit wounds, then expertly wrapped the whole in surgical tape. “Seen much worse in my day,” he said. “The only problem now is to make sure he rests and gets some fluids in him as soon as possible. He’s lost a lot of blood, though not nearly as much as if he didn’t have the tourniquet on.”

  Finished, he looked up from his patient to see Bourne. “You sure look like crap, whatever-the-hell-your-name-is.”

  “Professor, I need to ask you a question.”

  The old man snorted. “Is that all you do, son, ask questions?” He put a hand on the arm of Marks’s chair and levered himself up to a standing position. “Well, you can ask me anything you like, doesn’t mean I’ll answer you.”

  Bourne stood as well. “Did Tracy have a brother?”

  “What?”

  Chrissie frowned. “Adam, I already told you that Tracy was my only—”

  Bourne held up his hand. “I’m not asking your father whether you and your sister had a brother. I’m asking if Tracy had a brother.”

  A malevolent expression gathered on Professor Atherton’s face. “Bugger’n’blast, son, in days gone by I’d’ve boxed your ears for saying something so bloody-minded.”

  “You didn’t answer the question. Did Tracy have a brother?”

  The professor’s expression darkened further. “You mean a half brother.”

  Chrissie took a step toward the two men, who were now faced off like street fighters about to settle a grudge. “Adam, why are you—?”

  “Don’t get all gutted up over nothing.” Her father waved away her protest. And then to Bourne: “You’re asking me if I had sexual relations with another woman and something came of it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Never did,” Professor Atherton said. “I loved the girls’ mother and I’ve been faithful to her for longer than I care to remember.” He shook his head. “I think you’ve made rather a hash of this.”

  Bourne was unfazed. “Tracy worked for a dangerous man. I had to ask myself why because it seemed doubtful that she would work for him willingly. Then Chrissie provided a partial answer. Tracy told this man she had a brother who was in trouble.”

  At once Professor Atherton’s demeanor altered radically. All color drained out of his face; he might have fallen if Chrissie hadn’t stepped to his side to support him. With some difficulty she got him to sit down in the chair opposite Marks.

  “Dad?” She knelt beside him, his clammy hand in hers. “What is this? Is there a brother I don’t know about?”

  The old man kept shaking his head. “I had no idea she knew,” he mumbled as if to himself. “How the bloody hell did she find out?”

  “So it’s true.” Chrissie shot Bourne a glance, then redirected her attention to her father. “Why didn’t you and Mum tell us?”

  Professor Atherton sighed deeply, then passed a hand across his sweating brow. He looked at his daughter blankly, as if he didn’t recognize her, or he was expecting to see someone else.

  “I don’t w
ant to talk about it.”

  “But you must.” She seemed to rise up, stiffening her spine, and she leaned in toward him as if to lend her words more weight. “You have no choice now, Dad. You have to tell me about him.”

  Her father remained silent, impassive now, as if free of a fever that had gripped him.

  “What’s his name?” she implored. “Can’t you tell me that much?”

  Her father’s eyes would not meet hers. “He had no name.”

  Chrissie sat back, as if he had slapped her across the face. “I don’t understand.”

  “And why would you?” Professor Atherton said. “Your brother was born dead.”

  23

  JALAL ESSAI WAS a marked man and he knew it. As he sat on a bridge chair he’d opened up in his darkened bedroom, he considered these factors: Breaking with Severus Domna had not been an easy decision—or rather, while the decision had been easy, the actual implementation had been difficult. But then it was always difficult, Essai thought, deliberately putting oneself in harm’s way. He had not acted on his decision until he had worked out the methods of implementation, drawing up a list in his mind of all the possible paths he could take, then eliminating them one by one until he reached the one with the fewest objections, the most acceptable level of risk, and the best odds of success. This methodical approach was how he arrived at every decision: The process was the most logical. Also, it had the added benefit of calming his mind, not unlike his prayers to Allah, or contemplating a Zen koan. The empty mind fills itself with possibilities unavailable to others.

  So he sat, absolutely still, within the darkness of his apartment, the blackness of his bedroom where all the blinds were drawn against nighttime’s streetlights and the passing headlights of the occasional car or truck. Night, and the threat of night. Night was to him what a cup of espresso was to others, a calm and satisfying state of reflection. He could navigate his way through darkness, even nightmares, because Allah had blessed with the light of the true believer.