The Bourne Enigma

  It’s true, he thought. God does love Englishmen!

  With a rock-steady forefinger, he typed FORTY MINUTES, then hit Send.

  He told his secretary to cancel his morning classes, he had been taken ill. On the way down the hall, he began to whistle his favorite melody from Mary Poppins.

  —

  The slender minarets of the city rose, silhouetted with their many close-waist balconies beyond the treetops of Al-Azhar Park. Precisely forty minutes after he had left the university, Professor Tambourine, a tall, pear-shaped man with the small, delicate feet of a ballet dancer and the soft hands of an academic, stood in the shadow of the southwest corner of the pavilion closest to the unearthed Ayyubid wall. The pavilion was newly constructed of fragrant cedar, aged with stain, and arabesqued in a design proper to this historical district.

  He had bought a small paper bag of pistachios from a vendor, and was now eating them, slowly and methodically, as he gazed at the skyline that still seemed as alien as it was familiar. It was a fine morning, the haze having for the moment lifted, revealing the piercing blue sky overhead. The desert breeze was already heating up the sunlit sections of the park.

  Tambourine wasn’t aware of her approach, but then he hadn’t expected to be. One minute he was standing alone, amid the families, running children, young couples holding hands, and milling groups of tourists with their cameras, mobiles, and iPads, indiscriminately taking photos of everything, the next she was right beside him, head-wrapped in a cream-colored hijab.

  “I’m not really a big fan of pastries,” she said.

  “Nor am I,” Tambourine replied. “But we all have to make a living.”

  Having gotten through the preliminaries, the two of them began to stroll along the packed pathways. He offered her pistachios, and she took a handful.

  “I need passage out of Egypt right away,” she said without looking at him.

  She was quite beautiful. He had known who she was at first sight, having memorized all of the Kidon personnel. This one—Rebeka—was part of the Caesarea unit. He felt honored.

  “Destination?” he said.

  When she told him, he was so astonished he broke protocol, turned to her, and said, “You’re joking.”

  “I only wish I was,” Rebeka said. “Ivan Borz flew out on his private jet ten hours ago. Even flexing my muscles it took me that long to find out he’d left and to obtain his flight plan.”

  “But you’re asking me to send you into the heart of a war zone.”

  “And?”

  “Does the Director—?”

  “Is this assignment too difficult for you?” Her voice had the force of a fist striking flesh.

  Professor Tambourine laughed. “Hardly.” He lengthened his stride, his pace quickening with his pulse. “Come with me. There’s no time to lose.”

  —

  “Wait!” Bourne shouted.

  “I’m afraid he can’t hear you,” El-Amir said.

  “I’ll give him what he wants.”

  “In his current frame of mind he won’t believe you.”

  “Tell him!”

  El-Amir shrugged. “Cut!” he said into the mic. “Ivan, our guest seems to have had a change of heart.”

  —

  “I don’t make deals with terrorists,” Bourne said when Borz, stepping off the killing stage, came back behind the plastic screen.

  “I’m not a terrorist,” Borz said. “I’m a high-functioning sociopath.”

  Bourne looked up at him. “Then we have our starting point.”

  “Cheeky bastard, isn’t he?” El-Amir said.

  “Go take your pal for tea and crumpets,” Borz said without looking at him.

  Without a word of protest, Amira’s brother rose and left the building, the engineer following. Borz took his seat. The shelling began again, muffled by what Bourne suspected were the double walls and insulation of the field studio.

  “So, Jason, you’ve changed since we last met.”

  “Where was that again?”

  Borz grinned. “Like ill-fated lovers, our paths first crossed in Istanbul, the city where East meets West. A fitting place for us, don’t you think?”

  “Istanbul,” Bourne said, sensing Borz needed a push to get him to make the jump into the past. “One of my favorite cities.”

  “Mine, as well,” Borz said. “You’d know that if you still had your memory.” His hands were steepled as if he were a bishop at prayer. “Since that time I see you’ve grown a sense of humor. I commend you. In a world where cynicism is king, a sense of humor is required to maintain perspective, don’t you think?”

  “I do,” Bourne said, thinking the time had come to become verbal.

  Borz nodded. “Then, as one high-functioning sociopath to another, let’s begin. You said you would tell me what mischief Boris Karpov was up to.”

  “First, have your men take the prisoner away. He looks like he could use a place to lie down.”

  Borz stared at Bourne, seeming to examine every feature of the face he had come to know so well. “It’s like looking into a mirror, isn’t it?”

  “A fun house mirror.”

  Borz’s lips flickered in the semblance of a smile. He swiveled, spoke into the console mic. His men picked the SAS officer off his knees, carted him away. He seemed barely alive.

  “Get him some medical attention, will you?”

  “Waste of resources,” Borz said. “He doesn’t have long to live anyway.”

  “Give him at least a modicum of relief, then.”

  Borz tapped a forefinger against his lips. “You know, I’m beginning to think you may not be a sociopath after all. Then what would you be? A high-functioning what, do you suppose?”

  “We are what we are, Bobby. Nothing can change that.”

  “True enough. Take me, for instance. I’m a businessman by nature. Violence is not my instinctive métier. In fact, I rather hate it. But what can you do? I had to learn violence from the ground up—with my head held underwater, metaphorically speaking. It was an agonizing experience, believe me.”

  Borz’s voice seemed to be honing a double edge. The second edge, keener, darker than the first, riding just below the surface, was the one that interested Bourne the most. He had the uncomfortable feeling that Borz was speaking not in the abstract but in the particular, not in the objective but in the personal, and more than ever, he wondered what had happened in Istanbul. He could sense how badly Borz wanted Boris’s information. But he was also keenly aware of how much he himself wanted to retrieve a piece of his lost past—and at the same time solve the enigma of who Borz really was.

  “Tell me,” was all Borz said now.

  “Tell me,” Bourne replied.

  Two mirror images tossing words back in each other’s face.

  “Your good friend, the late Boris.”

  “Istanbul. Our ill-fated affair.”

  “This was your idea,” Borz said.

  There was no help for it, Bourne knew. As Borz himself had said, trust had no provenance here among the scorpions. But if there was a chance to save the SAS officer, if there was, moreover, a chance to regain even a sliver of his maddeningly forgotten past, he had to take it.

  “Boris discovered a plot hatched by the president.”

  “You mean the Kremlin.”

  “Not quite.” Bourne was homed in on Borz’s eyes. This close up, he could see the irises beneath the colored contacts. “None of the inner-circle oligarchs and very few of the siloviki know.”

  “Continue.”

  Understanding that he had acquired Borz’s complete attention, he continued with the information Svetlana had relayed to him from Amsterdam. “In two days’ time, the president intends to order his troops massed along the border to engage in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”

  Borz looked at Bourne incredulously. “This is your story? This is why I shouldn’t behead that officer?” He shook his head as he rose to his feet. “You disappoint me, Jason. Deeply and completel
y.”

  “You haven’t heard the rest.”

  “Why should I listen to the rest when the first part is so patently absurd?”

  “The current Russian pact with Ukraine for natural gas is a ruse. A means to allay Western fears.”

  “And all the while the Sovereign is thinking war that will rain fire down on him and his country,” Borz said with a derisive snort.

  “Yes.” Bourne had worked out the larger pattern, extrapolating from what Svetlana had told him. “Let me pose a question: Where do you think all the money ISIS has is coming from?”

  “Why guess when it’s clear you’re going to tell me.”

  “It’s you, Bobby. The money is coming from you.”

  42

  Goga stood in the living room of Ivan Borz’s villa in Giza. Through the glass sliders he watched the sun spark off the slanted sides of the Pyramids. The Great Sphinx returned his gaze with the stored wisdom of the ages.

  Goga shook out a cigarette, lighted it, inhaled deeply. The general was gone, Borz was gone, Bourne was gone, Amira was gone. Everyone, even the Mossad unit—taking their dead leader—had slunk back to Jerusalem, tails between their legs. Well, Goga didn’t mind that, at least.

  He was alone in Cairo with nowhere to go and nothing to do. He glanced down at Svetlana’s open suitcase. He had opened it, taken a photo of the contents, so he could put every article of clothing and cosmetics back precisely as she had packed them.

  He had orders from First Minister Savasin to send Svetlana’s effects back intact. Savasin had made the order very clear. Goga hated Savasin, but the general’s death had cast him adrift. He needed a rabbi, as the Jews said, otherwise, as one of Karpov’s most trusted agents, he would certainly drown in the rising tide. So he had called Savasin, who gave him assurances of safe haven in exchange for terminating the general’s widow and returning her effects.

  He had had every intention of pawing through Svetlana’s clothes, digging for whatever it was the first minister was so intent on retrieving. But as of yet he hadn’t made a move. He inhaled the smoke, seeking to calm himself, soothe an inner part of him. He expelled the smoke too fast; he would not be soothed, thinking about how Savasin had so quickly disposed of Svetlana. He smelled a purge—the air was rank with it, even here in Cairo. He strongly suspected that the moment he returned to Moscow he would be met by Savasin’s people, who would throw him into the Lubyanka—or someplace more remote, more bestial—and interrogate him until he vomited up every secret of his life and of the general’s. This he would do, he had no doubt whatsoever. He was far too familiar with the rendition procedures to delude himself. Eventually, he would tell them everything they wanted to know, and more.

  He could not go back. He could not let that happen. He was already racked with guilt. His instinctual fear of the implacable Federation system had led him to reach out to the first minister, and Savasin had taken full advantage of Goga’s fear. He was revolted at his own weakness, sick to his soul at his betrayal. Shooting the general’s widow, at the time seeming such a practical solution to his altered situation, now revealed itself as the basest of crimes. Unforgivable.

  Now to ransack the suitcase of the general’s widow—all that was left of her—was totally beyond him, a violation too far.

  Sunlight moved through the room, silent as the great necropolis across the desert plateau. Abruptly, Goga dropped his lit cigarette onto the top layer of clothes. When that didn’t get a fire going fast enough, he flicked the flame on his lighter, tossed it in.

  A whoosh went up as flames brought an acrid stench to the room.

  Stepping around the rising fire, he opened the glass slider, stepped out onto the balcony. He looked out at the Sphinx, wished once again that it would speak to him, give up its secrets, because for him there was no solution.

  Silence. Always silence from those with the most wisdom. At least he could do something honorable for his General.

  As he inserted the muzzle of his Makarov into his mouth, he tilted his head back, stared up into the sky: blue and white and then…

  Nothingness. Peace, at last.

  —

  For a moment Borz stood stock-still, then, slowly and methodically, he refolded himself into the chair opposite Bourne.

  “Explain yourself.”

  Bourne shook his head. “I don’t think so. First, I want to hear about Istanbul.”

  “Jason, Jason, you’re in no position to negotiate.”

  “I gave you a sliver of trust.”

  “That’s your problem.” Borz turned to the mic, spoke into it. “Bring the prisoner back.”

  “Don’t do that,” Bourne said. “You need me.”

  “Really?” Borz looked at him askance.

  “You claim to be a businessman, not a terrorist.”

  Borz watched two of his men drag the SAS officer back onto the killing stage. “I stand by that statement.”

  “Without me, you’ll never get your money back.”

  Borz turned slowly toward him. “What money?”

  “You really want to hear this?”

  Borz sat down opposite Bourne. “I’m listening.”

  “It’s getting more difficult to speak, bound like this.”

  Borz hesitated only a moment. Then he took out a stiletto, cut through the plastic ties binding Bourne to the director’s chair. Then he sat back.

  “The SAS officer is waiting, Jason.”

  Bourne rubbed circulation back into his wrists and ankles. “I kept wondering why Irina would willingly bring me to Mik, your vosdushnik. He also made her grandfather’s money disappear from one place and appear in another.” This was the meaning of the second part of Boris’s rebus: Follow the money. “But what no one knew, what Boris discovered, was that Mik was also the sole conduit for the president.”

  “How could that be?” Borz said. “There would be no plausible deniability.”

  “There would be if Vasily, Irina’s father, was his cutout.”

  “This is pure fancy. Vasily was killed on orders by the president.”

  “I think Vasily—and his older son—got greedy. They were skimming.” “There are records in there you need to see,” Irina had said outside Mik’s. “Something terrible has been going on. What I’ll make Mik show you will explain everything.” This was the shard of memory he had been trying to pull out of the darkness of the rift in his mind. Irina knew her father’s real work and, he surmised, so did his wife. That knowledge and the fact that he wouldn’t stop had driven her mad. Of course she believed she was possessed by the devil. In her mind Vasily was the devil. “Irina wanted me to see the proof because then I could connect the Sovereign to the scheme he had hatched.”

  “What has all this got to do with me?”

  “Patience, Bobby. The president was using Vasily and Mik to move money around—it became an immense shell game. The money you deposited with Mik was halved—probably halved, anyway—and sent—”

  “And you really think I wouldn’t know?”

  “It’s Madoff accounting—voodoo economics. Your money seems to be there, but if you had ever asked Mik for all of it…” Bourne allowed the unspoken end of the sentence to hang in the air, giving the treachery far more weight than if he had voiced it.

  Without a word, Borz rose, strode over to a sturdy metal briefcase, opened it, took out a military-grade laptop. He brought it back, opened it, fired it up. The top prevented Bourne from seeing what he was doing. It didn’t matter; Bourne knew that Borz was accessing his account.

  “There,” he said, with a distinct note of triumph in his voice. “It’s all there.” He looked up. “I knew you were full of shit.”

  “You must have other accounts elsewhere, Bobby. Transfer that money into one of them.”

  Borz frowned. “This is a trick of some kind.”

  “I’m trying to help you, Bobby. Trust me.”

  “Trust.”

  “Even though it’s not a word in your vocabulary.”

&n
bsp; Borz considered for a moment, trying to work all the angles, trying and failing to see how Bourne could trick him. His fingers began to dance over the keyboard. “I’m in,” he said, almost to himself. “Transfer complete.” For long minutes afterward he sat staring at the screen, so still the instant of transfer might have been frozen in time. At length, he sucked in a deep breath, let it out in a hiss. “Half,” he said. “It’s half of what it should be.

  “Fuck!” Borz seemed ready to smash his laptop to pieces. His gaze locked onto Bourne. “Where the fuck did my money go?”

  “You know, Bobby. The question has already been asked.”

  “What question?” And then it dawned on him. “You can’t mean that ISIS—”

  “Is being funded by the Sovereign with your money. Yes.”

  Borz jumped up. “This is crazy.” He paced back and forth, as if caged, which, in a way, he was. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  “It’s all part of the shell game,” Bourne said. “Misdirection. Make the world look one way—force it to concentrate on ISIS—”

  “—while the Russians overwhelm Ukraine, before the West can act.”

  “The Western powers make decisions about as quickly as the Queen Mary turns around,” Bourne said drily. “And, so, two days from now, the first stage of the president’s goal of retrieving the territory lost to Russia at the fall of the Soviet Union will be complete.”

  “At no cost to him.” Borz glanced down at his laptop screen as if hoping the figures would have somehow magically changed. Then his eyes flicked back up. “And you can get my money back? How?”

  “Bobby, Bobby,” Bourne said, “be kind enough to tell me about what happened in Istanbul.”

  “Kindness doesn’t enter into it,” Borz replied, slamming down the lid of his laptop.

  43

  There will be consequences when you get home,” Professor Tambourine said.

  Sara shrugged. “There always are.”

  Tambourine was getting her settled in the cockpit of the humanitarian freight flight outward bound to Kobanî, the Syrian city on the Turkish border that was under siege by ISIS. The flight was being sent to drop supplies to the embattled Kurds. Tambourine had arranged for Sara to parachute in with the crates, without anyone aboard giving her a second thought.