The Bourne Enigma

  Still, despite his care, she began to choke. At once, he sat her up, held her to him as he circled her back with the flat of his hand, almost as if she were a baby. Anxious moments passed. Then he felt her head move against his shoulder.

  “God.”

  She shuddered so hard he thought she was actually going into spasm, but it subsided soon enough.

  “God, God, God…”

  “You’re okay now.” He detached himself, held her at arm’s length so he could look into her eyes. “Rebeka, you’re okay.”

  “Yes.” A faint, watery smile. “Yes, I am.”

  “The Rohypnol must have caught up with you.” He studied her face, as he had when she was unconscious. “What the bloody hell did you do to fight it off?”

  “Did you ever see yogis—real yogis—walk on red-hot coals or lie on a bed of nails?”

  “In fact I have,” Southern said. “When I was a teenager.”

  “Same thing,” Sara said. “More or less.”

  “I could’ve used some of that over the last four days.”

  Sara’s eyes started to lose focus, and Southern slapped her cheek hard enough to startle her awake. “Here,” he said, handing her the glass of tea.

  “It’s always tea with you Brits, isn’t it?”

  “Mother’s milk.” He grinned. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

  When she nodded, he held out his hand palm up. “I found treasure.”

  Sara’s eyes opened wide. “Chocolate!” She popped a square into her mouth, chewed as it began to melt. “Mmm. Manna from heaven.” Then she gave a deep sigh as she began to come fully back to herself. She regarded him critically. “Hell, you look like shit, Lieutenant.”

  He laughed. “I must stink like it, too.”

  “No comment.” She held out her hand, and he gave her more chocolate.

  “The good news is I feel a ton better than I look.”

  She grinned as she devoured the chocolate. “A reprieve from a beheading will do that to you.”

  “Right. No bad news at the mo, except we’re smack-dab in the middle of a hot war zone. A shower, shave, and a change of clothes will do me up right.”

  “No time for any of civilization’s niceties,” Sara said, feeling more herself with every tick of the clock. She rose. “We’ve got to find a way out of here before ISIS troops get here, otherwise we’ll—”

  “Don’t even say it,” Southern said with a shudder. “One threat of a beheading is more than anyone should face in a lifetime.”

  They went through the house, looking for weapons, but apart from several carving knives from the kitchen found nothing of use.

  “Outside,” Sara said. “Borz’s men are all dead and they were heavily armed.”

  Together, they climbed through the rubble at the foot of the ruined wall, and were confronted by all manner of semiautomatic weapons, lying beside twisted corpses.

  “Speaking of treasure,” Sara said. “Here we go.”

  Which was when they were caught in a withering cross fire.

  —

  Poor Mr. Tesfey. The crestfallen look on his face when Bourne rose and excused himself without making that fantastic deposit was classic. However, Bourne had no time to worry about anyone else’s disappointment. He had his own to contemplate.

  Time was fast running out. If he couldn’t find the hidden bank the Sovereign was using to fund his horrifying war, the resulting worldwide conflagration would be catastrophic. He put his head back against the seat as the taxi took him back to the airport. There were two other international banks in Asmara, neither of which had the word commerce in its name. Nevertheless, Bourne had dutifully visited them, repeating the stage show he had put on for Mr. Tesfey, both with the same result.

  Dead end.

  Bourne closed his eyes. “So now I will show you the glyphs while I pronounce them in Russian,” Boris had said that year’s-ago day in the Jerusalem café, “and, naturally, you will memorize them as I draw them. Finally, we will each write a cipher for the other to decode. A game, if you will. Our kind of game. And like all our games, one with the possibility of deadly consequences.”

  Bourne wondered whether at that moment Boris could have had any intimation of just how deadly this one would become.

  And then he sat bolt upright as another fragment of that same conversation rose into the forefront of his mind: “And, of course,” Boris had reminded him, “there’s always the false group hidden somewhere in the message in the event a hostile figures out the cipher key.”

  —

  The moment Bourne had left, Mr. Gebre Tesfey stood looking at a door in his office he had hoped never to open. But now he knew he must. Using a key, he unlocked the door, stepped inside. As he pulled the door shut behind him the lights came on and the electronic antisurveillance system was activated. Three months ago, a cadre of workmen had outfitted this windowless room. It had taken them three days, working fourteen hours a day. Mr. Tesfey knew this for a fact; he had been required to be present in his office the entire time. When they were finished, they left as mysteriously as they had come. They never once talked to one another—at least when he was in earshot—he had no idea of their nationality. Just as well, he thought now as he crossed to a desk, unlocked the lower of the two drawers. He did not know the nationality or even the identity of the man who had contacted him by phone, the man who had arranged everything, including his ten-thousand-dollar-a-month stipend. That money guaranteed two things: the first, that Mr. Tesfey never, ever ask questions or seek to discover the man’s identity. He was about to fulfill the second condition.

  Inside the drawer was only one item: an encrypted mobile phone sent to him by international courier the day the workmen left for parts unknown. The mobile was always plugged in to an outlet in the rear of the drawer, ensuring the battery would never run down.

  Mr. Tesfey was disturbed to discover his hands were moist as he gripped the phone, that his upper lip had grown a thin, itchy line of cold sweat. Unplugging the mobile, he punched in a three digit code. As if it were alive, the mobile sprang into consciousness, automatically dialing an overseas number.

  “Yes,” the man at the other end of the line said. It was both a greeting and a question.

  “He was just here,” Mr. Tesfey said.

  “You’re quite certain?”

  “He claimed to be Fyodor Ilianovich Popov, second vice president of Gazprom. Is that his real name?” The moment he asked the question, Mr. Tesfey knew it was a mistake.

  Silence.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  Mr. Tesfey’s blood ran cold. The line was dead. He fervently prayed the same wouldn’t soon be said of him.

  —

  “So the third group—the one with the oblique reference to Eritrea—was a false clue,” Abdul said when Bourne returned to the plane.

  “That’s right, and I fell for it.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Jason. You couldn’t know that Boris was using a double-blind cipher.”

  “The point is I should have known the moment I saw the Sumerian glyphs.”

  “Forget regrets. Forward,” Aziz ordered. He held out a small plate. “Have some halvah.”

  “Abdul.”

  “What? It’s sesame—brain food. Every good Arab knows that.”

  Bourne popped a square into his mouth, sat chewing it slowly while he wrote the Sumerian cipher down on a ruled pad provided by his friend. He pointed. “See, here, the first grouping is the date—tomorrow—when the invasion is set to begin. I can only think that ISIS is preparing a major assault—possibly on western Turkey—to coincide with the Sovereign’s troops pushing across the border in Ukraine.”

  “The Western powers will be paralyzed. They won’t know which way to look first. There will be chaos in the United Nations and the EU, with politicians and diplomats debating endlessly on what response to make.”

  “Precisely the point,” Bourne said. His pen point moved to the second group. “Here, Boris
writes, Follow the money.”

  “And the third group is when you ran into trouble.”

  Bourne crossed it out. “It’s the double-blind, in case the cipher fell into hostile hands and was cracked.”

  “So that leaves us with the fourth group,” Aziz said. “Logically, it would be the account number and security code.”

  “Yes, and the third group would translate as the name of the bank. But, as we’ve seen, Boris wasn’t being logical. The double-blind is much too clever for that.” Bourne considered for a moment. “More often than not it’s an inversion.”

  Aziz pursed his lips in concentration. “Meaning the three active groups don’t follow in sequential order.”

  “Correct,” Bourne nodded. “Added to that is the fact that the fourth group doesn’t translate into a number string as it would if it were the account number.”

  “Then what does it translate as?”

  “That’s the central enigma Boris has left me.” Bourne tapped the pen point on the paper underneath the fourth group of glyphs. “Maybe I’ve been looking at this the wrong way.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “I’ve been assuming that all the information I need is right here in the cipher.”

  Aziz nodded. “That would be logical.” His brows lifted, his eyes brightened. “But, as we now know, this cipher doesn’t follow a logical course.”

  “Right,” Bourne said. “There are three necessities for this bank: it needs to be officially unconnected with Bank Rossiya, but, preferably, with some back-channel proximity in case of emergency; it needs to be hidden away somewhere out of major banking centers.”

  “Like Asmara.”

  Bourne grunted. “That was the brilliance of Boris’s double-blind. Asmara appeared to fit the bill, even down to—” He broke off, his eyes going out of focus.

  Aziz became alarmed. “Jason, what is it? You look like you’ve had a stroke.”

  “A stroke of luck, maybe.” Bourne’s attention snapped back to his friend. “Listen, Abdul, the third and maybe most important necessity was that the bank the Sovereign chose had to be in need of a big account like his.”

  “Money coming in, going out in odd amounts and at odd times.” Aziz nodded. “I understand.”

  Bourne’s eyes were alight with a strange passion. “Where in this part of the world would fulfill those requirements better than any other?” He didn’t wait for his friend to answer. “Cyprus.”

  Aziz snapped his fingers. “That’s right! Cyprus’s banking system almost failed less than two years ago. The IMF bailed them out—at least to some extent—but the infrastructure has been in desperate need of a substantial capital infusion since then.”

  “Now the island is home to banks from Greece, Lebanon, Jordan, Eastern Europe, and—”

  “Russia!”

  “Just so. Let’s go on the premise the bank we’re looking for is domiciled in Cyprus and see where that leads us.” Returning to the fourth cipher group, Bourne stared long and hard at his translation in this new light. The last section of the rebus was still withholding its secret.

  “The first two glyphs translate as ‘shore bird,’” Bourne said. “The third is ‘fair.’”

  “I’m no expert on the language,” Aziz ventured, “but that fourth glyph doesn’t look Sumerian at all.”

  “That’s because it’s written backward.”

  “Why would Boris do that?”

  “In this rebus a backward word means it’s to be ignored.” Bourne scribbled the word “fair.” “The backward glyph is ‘air.’” He put a line through the last three letters, leaving only the “f.”

  Aziz shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Here, look. ‘Shore bird.’” Bourne wrote the word “gull.” Then he added the “f” left over from the third glyph.

  “Gulf?” Aziz said uncertainly.

  “Yes. The shore bird is a gull.”

  “Hold on a minute.” Aziz turned to his laptop, checking foreign banks in Cyprus. “There are three banks with Gulf in their names: Gulf Friends Bank, Lebanon and Gulf Bank, and—”

  “Omega and Gulf Bank.”

  Aziz’s head snapped around, staring at him. “How did you know?”

  “Because I was right. Boris was counting on my knowing the bank’s name all along.” He told Abdul about Omega + Gulf Agencies in Doha, where friends of his had been held captive last year. “I had assumed the company was owned by Borz, but now I suspect he was only a minor partner. Omega and Gulf is owned by the Sovereign.”

  52

  Down!” Sara screamed, and when Southern didn’t move fast enough, she grabbed him by the belt, dragged him down beside her, behind a Jeep that looked like it had seen better days. She had gathered two semiautomatic rifles and now, with bullets whizzing over their heads, striking the metal shell of the Jeep, she offered him one.

  “I’m an officer of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces liaising with our American cousins, not a fighter.”

  She jammed the weapon into his chest. “Well, pretend for a moment you’re an American and shoot the shit out of anyone who comes toward you.”

  As she began to scuttle away, he said, clearly alarmed, “Where are you going?”

  “To find out who’s shooting at us.”

  “It has to be ISIS.”

  “Lieutenant, the gunfire is coming from two opposite directions. It’s not just ISIS bullets that can air us out.” She looked at his white, pinched face. “We’re almost out of this. What d’you Brits say, ‘Keep calm and carry on.’”

  “Actually, we never said that during the war, but no worries. It’s entirely appropriate.” His face darkened. “But, listen, before you go.”

  “Please don’t tell me to let your wife and kids know you love them. They already know that and, besides, you aren’t going to die.”

  He barked a laugh. “I’ve never married, I’m afraid. And you’re right, my partner knows I love him.” He shook his head. “But, listen, I overheard Borz talking on a sat phone. He spoke in Russian, which I don’t know, but one word stood out: ‘Vankor.’”

  Sara frowned. “‘Vankor? Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither.” He shrugged. “But I thought you should know.” He grinned suddenly, and it was like the sun had emerged from behind clouds. “Now go. I’m counting on you to save both our arses.”

  Sara sprinted away, and was at once submerged in the fog of war: particulates of churned-up dirt, larded with sticky droplets of coagulating blood, bone chips, bits of viscera, fistfuls of hair, tossed like grass clippings. The stench of death was inescapable, as well as the smells of cordite, overheated metal, the ozone-like scent of air burned by constant, rapid gunfire.

  She made it to the corner of the second building without being hit. Inside, she found a crude wooden ladder that rose vertically to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Pushing through it, she found herself in a makeshift rooftop observation post. From her eyrie she could see for miles. The black-clad ISIS troops were arrayed to the south, while to the north a triple line of Kurdish freedom fighters were slowly advancing toward her position.

  But now she could see that the Kurds had been joined by what must be outside forces. She counted two tanks, accompanied by a squad of soldiers in what were either British or American camo uniforms. When she heard the telltale whup-whup-whup of a military gunship quickening from the border to Turkey, she realized how she and Lieutenant Southern were going to get out of this war-torn hellhole.

  She turned, on her way back downstairs to tell him the good news, when she ran right into a pair of ISIS advance scouts: Two pairs of implacable eyes, one muzzle of a semiautomatic rifle stuck under her chin, and she thought: Fuck!

  —

  Abdul Aziz’s jet was refueled and ready to go. Peering through one of the Perspex windows Bourne could see the pilot striding across the tarmac toward them from the terminal. He was three-quarters of the way to the plane when he was shot dead. He fell facedown on the tarmac, unmovi
ng, having been struck three times simultaneously.

  Aziz pulled his head up from his laptop screen where he had been surveying their choices of routes to Cyprus. “What just happened?”

  “We need to get out of here now,” Bourne said, rising from his seat.

  Aziz glanced out the window, saw his downed pilot and the cadre of Army troops advancing across the tarmac toward them. They had weapons raised and looked ready to fire the instant anyone started the engines.

  “Jason!” Aziz shouted, tearing himself away from the terrifying scene. “What has happened? Where the hell are you going?”

  Following Bourne up the aisle, he hurried into the cockpit. Bourne was already strapped into the pilot’s chair, going through the final checklist the pilot had on a clipboard. “We’ll never get out of here,” he said. “Besides weapons on the ground leveled at us, we haven’t logged a flight plan. The control tower in Cyprus will never give us permission to land.”

  “I don’t need their permission.” Bourne was throwing switches. Lights came on, dials sprang to life, quivering. “There are only three or four flights a day in and out. I’ll take my chances.”

  “But what about the soldiers?”

  He was about to get his answer. Bourne started the engines, and almost immediately the firing commenced.

  “The chocks!” Aziz cried.

  “I kicked them out of the way before I boarded. Now sit down and strap yourself in, Abdul. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

  “If one of those bullets hits a fuel tank…” Now Bourne was hearing his friend through the com system, along with excitedly angry chatter from the tower.

  “Think positive,” Bourne said as he pushed levers forward and the jet began to taxi down the runway. “And pray to Allah.”

  As they gathered speed along the runway, Bourne saw an armored vehicle, no doubt borrowed from the adjacent military base, lumbering into his path. He gritted his teeth, increased speed to max, gave the jet maximum lift and pulled back on the lever.