The Bourne Objective

  Cherkesov offered a cigarette and Karpov took it, leaned in to catch the flame from Cherkesov’s lighter. He despised the harshness of Turkish tobacco, but he wasn’t about to refuse his former boss anything.

  “You look good,” Cherkesov began. “Ruining other people’s lives suits you.”

  Karpov cracked a wry smile. “And your new life suits you.”

  “Power suits me.” Cherkesov threw down his cigarette, the end burning bright against the cheap tarmac. “It suits both of us.”

  “Where have you been since you left us?”

  Cherkesov smiled. “Munich. Nowhere.”

  “Munich is nowhere,” Karpov affirmed. “If I never see that city again it will be too soon.”

  Cherkesov shot out another cigarette and lit it. “I know you, Boris Illyich. You have something weighing on your mind.”

  “SVR,” Karpov said. He’d been seething the entire flight. “I want to talk with you about the deal you made with them.”

  Cherkesov blinked. “What deal?”

  And then everything fell into place. Zachek had been running a bluff, hoping to take advantage of the fact that Boris had been in his new job less than a month. He told his former boss about the repugnant interview at Ramenskoye, leaving out no detail, from Zachek’s approach at Immigration to his last line as Boris had walked out the door of the windowless room.

  During this discourse, Cherkesov sucked ruminatively on the inside of his cheek. “I’d like to say I’m surprised,” he said at last, “but I’m not.”

  “You know this man Zachek? There’s something smarmy about him.”

  “All flunkies are smarmy. Zachek does Beria’s bidding. Beria is the man you need to watch out for.” Konstantin L. Beria was the current head of SVR and, like his notorious forebear, had amassed a reputation for violence, paranoia, and malevolent trickery. Konstantin was every inch as feared and despised as Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria had been.

  “Beria was afraid to come near me,” Cherkesov said. “He sent Zachek on a fishing expedition to see if you could be turned.”

  “Fuck Beria.”

  Cherkesov’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, my friend. This is not a man to be taken lightly.”

  “Advisement taken.”

  Cherkesov gave a curt nod. “If relations deteriorate, contact me.” He flicked his lighter open and closed, the clicking like that of an insect moving through a field of grass. “Now to the matter at hand. I have an assignment for you.”

  Karpov watched the other man for any sign of what he was about to say. He found none. Cherkesov was like that, his face closed as a bank vault. Military jets sat, tense and watchful, on the tarmac. Now and again a mechanic would appear; no one came near the two Russians.

  Cherkesov plucked a bit of tobacco off his lip, ground it to powder. “I need you to kill someone.”

  Karpov let out a breath he had not been fully aware he’d been holding. Was that all? He felt a wave of relief flood through him, and he nodded. “Just give me the details and it will be done.”

  “Immediately.”

  Karpov nodded again. “Of course. Immediately.” He took a drag on his cigarette, one eye slitted against the smoke. “I assume you have a photo of the victim.”

  Cherkesov, smirking, drew a snapshot out of his breast pocket and handed it over. He watched, curious and avid, as all the blood drained from Karpov’s face.

  He met Karpov’s eyes with a knowing smile. “You have no choice. None whatsoever.” His head tilted. “What? Is the price of your success too high?”

  Karpov tried to speak, but he felt as if Cherkesov were throttling him.

  Cherkesov’s smile broadened. “No, I thought not.”

  2

  JASON BOURNE, IN a hotel on the edge of the Colombian jungle, awoke into darkness, but he did not open his eyes. He lay on the thin, lumpy mattress for a moment, still wrapped in the strange web of his dream. He’d been in a house of many rooms, with corridors that seemed to lead to places in which he was blind. Like his past. The house was on fire and filled with smoke. He was not the only one in it. There was someone else who moved with the stealth of a fox, someone who was looking for him, someone who, with murderous intent, was very close, though the thick, choking smoke hid him completely from view.

  At what precise moment dream became reality he couldn’t say. He smelled smoke; it was what had awakened him. Rolling out of bed, he was engulfed in it, and once again his dream reared up in his mind. He made for the door and stopped.

  Someone was waiting for him, just on the other side of the door. Someone armed. Someone with murderous intent.

  Bourne backed up, grabbed a scarred wooden chair, fragile seeming as kindling. Opening the door, he hurled the chair through the doorway. Even as he heard the answering gunshots, he exploded across the threshold.

  He struck the gunman’s wrist with such force that a bone snapped. The weapon hung by nerveless fingers but the gunman wasn’t done yet. His kick caught Bourne in the side, slamming him against the opposite wall. The gunman, having given himself breathing room, moved through the smoke like a wraith, swinging the butt of the gun—now gripped in his other hand—into the side of Bourne’s head.

  Bourne went down and stayed down. The smoke was thickening, and he could feel the heat as the flames licked closer. Down on the floor the air was clearer, it gave him an edge his opponent had not yet figured out. He kicked out at Bourne, who grabbed the shoe in mid-flight, twisted it so that the ankle cracked. The gunman shouted in pain. Bourne, on his knees, punched him hard in the kidneys then, as the body started to crumple, grabbed the back of the gunman’s head and slammed the chin against his knee.

  Smoke engulfed the hallway. The flames had reached the head of the stairs and threatened to turn the second floor into an inferno. Grabbing the gunman’s weapon, Bourne launched himself back into his room. As he sprinted across the floor, he crossed his arms over his face and, leaping, crashed through the glass and wood of the window.

  They were waiting for him on the other side. There were three of them, converging on him as he hurtled to the ground from the second-floor window in a hail of shattered glass. He caught one, in a bright wink of blood the barrel of his gun scoring a line down the man’s cheek. He buried his fist into the belly of the second man, who doubled over. Then a gun muzzle pressed hard into the back of his neck.

  Bourne raised his hands and the man with the gashed cheek ripped the gun from his grip, then punched him in the jaw.

  “¡Basta!” the man behind Bourne commanded. “Él no quiere ser lastimado.” He’s not to be hurt.

  Bourne calculated that he could take these three, but he remained unmoving. These people weren’t out to kill him. They had started the fire. The one lurking outside his door could have kicked it down and tried to shoot him, but he didn’t. The fire was to herd him, as were the shots fired in the hallway. He hadn’t been expected to engage the gunman in the hallway.

  Bourne had a strong suspicion who had sent these men, so he allowed them to tie his hands behind his back and jam a hemp sack over his head. He was bundled into a hot, cramped vehicle that stank of gasoline, sweat, and oil. They rumbled off into the jungle, the lack of shocks telling him that he was in some sort of run-down military vehicle. Bourne memorized the turns, counting to himself to get a rough approximation of how far they had come. All the while, he used the sharp metal edge behind his back to begin sawing through the flex that bound his wrists together.

  After perhaps twenty minutes, the vehicle came to a halt. For some time, nothing happened, except a sharp and sometimes vitriolic exchange in idiomatic Spanish. He tried to make out what was being said, but the thick hemp and the peculiar acoustics of the vehicle’s interior made it virtually impossible. He was summarily hauled out into the coolness of deep shade. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed, a falling leaf brushed against the back of his hand as he was pulled forward. The acrid stench of a latrine, then the odors of gun oil, cordite, and sour sweat. He was pushed dow
n onto what felt like the rough canvas of a folding camp stool and there he sat for another half an hour, listening. He could hear movement, but no one spoke, a sign of ironclad discipline.

  Then, abruptly, the hemp sack was removed and he blinked in the dusky light of the forest. Looking around, he found himself in a makeshift camp. He noted thirteen men—and that was just in his field of vision.

  One man approached, flanked by two uniformed counterparts, heavily armed with semi-automatics, handguns, and ammo belts. Bourne recognized Roberto Corellos from Moira’s detailed description. He was handsome in a rough, hard-muscled way. And with his dark, smoldering eyes and intensely masculine presence, he possessed a certain charisma that was certain to resonate with these men.

  “So…” He drew a cigar from the breast pocket of his beautifully embroidered guayabera shirt, bit off the end, and lit up, using a heavy Zippo lighter. “Here we are, hunter and prey.” He blew out a cloud of aromatic smoke. “But which is which, I wonder?”

  Bourne studied him with great care. “Funny,” he said, “you don’t look like a convict.”

  A grin split Corellos’s face and he made a broad gesture. “That, my friend, is because my friends at FARC were good enough to spring me from La Modelo.”

  FARC, Bourne knew, stood for “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,” the left-wing guerrillas.

  “Interesting,” he said, “you’re one of the most powerful drug lords in Latin America.”

  “In the world!” Corellos corrected, his cigar lifted high.

  Bourne shook his head. “Left-wing guerrillas and right-wing capitalists, I don’t get it.”

  Corellos shrugged. “What’s to get? FARC hates the government, so do I. We have a deal. Every now and again we do each other favors and, as a result, the government fuckers suffer. Otherwise we leave each other alone.” He puffed out another fragrant cloud. “It’s business, not ideological. I make money. I don’t give a fuck about ideology.

  “Now to business.” Corellos bent over, hands on knees, his face on a level with Bourne’s. “Who sent you to kill me, señor? Which one of my enemies, eh?”

  This man was a danger to Moira and to her friend Berengária. In Phuket, Moira had asked him to find Corellos and deal with him. Moira had never asked him for anything before, so he knew this must be extremely important, possibly a matter of life or death.

  “How did you find out I was sent to kill you?” Bourne said.

  “This is Colombia, my friend. Nothing happens here that I don’t know about.”

  But there was another reason he hadn’t hesitated. His epic encounter with Leonid Arkadin had taught him something about himself. He was not happy in the spaces between, the dark, solitary, actionless moments when the world came to a standstill and all he, an outsider, could do was observe it and feel nothing at the sight of marriages, graduations, memorial services. He lived for the periods when he sprang into action, when both his mind and his body were fully engaged, sprinting along the precipice between life and death.

  “Well?” Corellos was almost nose-to-nose with Bourne. “What do you have to tell me?”

  Bourne slammed his forehead into Corellos’s nose. He heard the satisfying crack of cartilage being dislodged as he freed his hands from the flex bindings he’d surreptitiously sawed through. Grabbing Corellos, he swung him around in front of him and locked the crook of his arm around the drug lord’s throat.

  Gun muzzles swung up but no one made a move. Then another man strode into the arena.

  “That’s a bad idea,” he said to Bourne.

  Bourne tightened his grip. “It certainly is for Señor Corellos.”

  The man was large, well built, with walnut-colored skin and windswept eyes, dark as the inside of a well. He had a great shock of dark hair, almost ringlets, and a beard as long, thick, and curly as an ancient Persian’s. He emitted a certain energy that affected even Bourne. Though he was much older, Bourne recognized him from the photo he’d been shown so many years ago.

  “Jalal Essai,” Bourne said now. “I’m wondering what you’re doing here in the company of this drug lord. Is Severus Domna moving heroin and cocaine now?”

  “We need to talk, you and I.”

  “I doubt that will happen.”

  “Mr. Bourne,” Essai said slowly and carefully, “I murdered Frederick Willard.”

  “Why would you tell me that?”

  “Were you an ally of Mr. Willard’s? No, I think not. Not after he spent so much time and energy pitting you against Leonid Arkadin.” He waved a hand. “But in any event, I killed Willard for a very specific reason: He’d made a deal with Benjamin El-Arian, the head of the Domna.”

  “That’s difficult to believe.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s true. You see, Willard wanted Solomon’s gold as badly as your old boss at Treadstone, Alexander Conklin, did. He sold his soul to El-Arian to get a piece of it.”

  Bourne shook his head. “This from a member of the Domna?”

  A slow smile spread across Essai’s face. “I was when Conklin sent you to invade my house,” he said. “But that was a long time ago.”

  “Now—”

  “Now Benjamin El-Arian and the Domna are my sworn enemies.” His smile turned complicit. “So you see, we have a great deal to talk about after all.”

  Friendship,” Ivan Volkin said as he took down two water glasses and filled them with vodka. “Friendship is highly overrated.” He handed one to Boris Karpov and took up the other, holding it high in a toast. “Unless it’s between Russians. Friendship is not entered into lightly. Only we, of all the peoples of the world, understand what it means to be friends. Nostrovya!”

  Volkin was old and gray, his face sunken in on itself. But his blue eyes still danced merrily in his head, proof if any was needed that, even in his retirement, he retained every fiber of the superbly clever mind that had made him the most influential negotiator among the heads of the grupperovka, the Russian mafia.

  Boris poured himself more. “Ivan Ivanovich, how long have we known each other?”

  Volkin smacked his livery lips and held out his empty glass. His hands were large, the veins on their backs ropy, popped out, a morbid blue-black. “If memory serves, we wet our diapers together.” Then he laughed, a gurgling sound in the back of his throat.

  Boris nodded. A wistful smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Almost, almost.”

  The two men stood in the cramped, overstuffed living room of the apartment in central Moscow where Volkin had lived for the last fifty years. It was a curious thing, Boris thought. With the money Ivan had amassed over the years, he could have had his pick of any apartment, no matter how large, grand, or expensive, and yet he chose to stay in this insular museum of his with its hundreds of books, shelves stocked with souvenirs from around the world—expensive gifts bestowed on him by grateful clients.

  Volkin stretched out an arm. “Sit, my friend. Sit and put your feet up. It’s not often I am visited by the great General Karpov, head of FSB-2.”

  He sat in his usual spot, an upholstered wing chair that had been in desperate need of re-covering fifteen years ago. Now its oxblood hue had all but receded into formless, colorless mass. Boris sat opposite him on the chintz sofa, mildewed and battered as if it had been salvaged from a shipwreck. He was shocked by how thin Ivan had grown, how stooped, bent like a tree battered by decades of storms, sleet, and drought. How many years has it been since we last saw each other? he asked himself. He was dismayed to discover that he couldn’t recall.

  “To the general! A pissant’s death to his enemies!” Ivan cried.

  “Ivan, please!”

  “Toast, Boris, toast! Revel in your time! How many men in their lifetime have achieved what you have? You are at the pinnacle of success.” He rolled his thin shoulders. “What, you’re not proud of what you have accomplished?”

  “Of course I am,” Boris said. “It’s just that…” He let his voice trail off.

  “Just what?” Ivan sat
up straight. “What’s on your mind, old friend? Come, come, we share too much for you to be reticent with me.”

  Boris took a deep breath and another slug of the fiery vodka. “Ivan, I find myself, after all these years, in the jaws of a trap and I don’t know whether I can extricate myself.”

  Volkin grunted. “There is always a way out of a trap, my friend. Please go on.”

  As Boris described the deal he had made with his former boss and what Cherkesov had asked for, Volkin’s eyes turned yellowish, feral, his innate cunning rising like a deep-sea creature to the surface.

  At length, he sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “The way I see it, Boris Illyich, this trap exists only in your mind. The problem is your relationship with this man Bourne. I have met him several times. In fact, I even helped him. But he is an American. Worse still, he’s a spy. In the end, how can he be trusted?”

  “He saved my life.”

  “Ah, now we get to the nub of the problem.” Volkin nodded sagely. “Which is you are a sentimentalist at heart. You think of this man, Bourne, as your friend. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but are you prepared to throw away everything you’ve worked toward for the last thirty years to save his skin?” Volkin tapped the side of his nose. “Consider that this is not a trap at all, but a test of your will, your determination, your dedication. All great things require sacrifices. This, in essence, is what sets them apart from the ordinary, what makes them great, out of the reach of ordinary civilians, attainable by only the very few, individuals willing and capable of making such sacrifices.” He leaned forward. “You are such an individual, Boris Illyich.”

  Silence engulfed them. An ormolu clock ticked the minutes off like the beating of a heart pulled from a victim’s chest. Boris’s gaze fell upon an old czarist sword he’d given Volkin many years before. It was in beautiful shape, well oiled, lovingly rubbed, its steel glowing in the lamplight.