The Bourne Enigma

  “In my world it’s too often unhealthy.”

  “My God, FM, she’s half a world away—safe in the arms of New York City. You ensure that.”

  “Stealth and prudence—two words I live by.”

  The Angelmaker put down her fork, having apparently lost her taste for the octopus. “Which brings us to why you’re here.” She never inserted herself into conversations regarding these clandestine field trips. It was as if she was invisible or didn’t exist.

  “So the vacation’s over.”

  “As far as I can see it was just the right amount of time.”

  He nodded. Sometimes—and he was at a loss to understand this—he felt good bending to her will. Better than good, actually. He felt a stirring in his loins, an ache, which was so inappropriate he encouraged it to its full extent, until he had to shift in his seat because of the pain of his phallus against the crotch of his trousers.

  “Anything the matter, FM?” Her full lips were half open, shining as if with the thinnest coating of saliva. “Something I can help you with?”

  He said nothing, even when her shoeless foot slipped between his thighs and her exceedingly talented toes, in concert with the ball of her foot, began to stretch his trousers to the limit.

  “It’s you who should have been a ballet dancer,” he murmured with half-closed eyes. “Such talent shouldn’t go unnoticed.”

  “Is it unnoticed now?”

  All Timur Savasin could do was groan softly through bared teeth.

  54

  Are you telling me he’s alive?”

  Dov nodded. “So far as we know. Some of these Kurds here on the ground took Bourne in a Jeep to the military air base just outside of Suruc, north of here.”

  “It was definitely him.”

  “The man who skydived out of the helo seconds before it was hit. Yes.”

  Sara’s heart turned over. She could feel it pumping new life into her. She and Dov were on the ground at a Kurdish base some miles beyond the border. The makeshift hut they were in was hastily constructed of stones, wood planks, waxed muslin, and God alone knew what other odds and ends. They sat facing each other on upended empty ammo crates. Beside her was a mattress that smelled as if it were stuffed with straw. It was covered in old, raggedy blankets and on it sat a hull pillow. To Sara, it looked like a little bit of heaven.

  Lieutenant Southern had been airlifted by his people to a hospital in Istanbul. Sara had found their parting bittersweet, which was almost always the way when you spent time with someone under fire. This had been one of those odd times when she regretted not telling him her real name, but in the field there was, of course, no choice. She was Rebeka, and would always be to him, the angel whom he had saved and who, in turn, had saved him. There could be no stronger bond between two people.

  “Where did Bourne go from the airfield?” she asked now. She was not going to call him “Jason” in front of Dov; their relationship was none of her boss’s business.

  “None of the Kurds know. But as they were leaving they saw a private jet coming in to land. It’s likely he boarded that.”

  “Any markings?”

  Dov waggled his head. “Sara, please. Right now, we need to concentrate on you, not Bourne.”

  It’s the same thing, she almost said, but, biting her lip, didn’t. She was appalled at how close her emotions were to the surface. The belief that he had died had harrowed her beyond anything she had ever known, and this both elated and frightened her.

  “From what little you’ve told me, you’ve been to hell and back.”

  That I have, she thought, unable to keep Jason out of her head. He resided there now like every other part of her.

  “Ivan Borz is dead,” she said. “The wildly successful ISIS recruitment campaign has ended.” Overcome by another bout of vertigo, she fell silent, head down. She massaged her temples with her fingertips.

  “Despite the disaster in Cairo, you’ve made the mission a success. That’s all that matters.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” she murmured, unable for the moment to speak any louder.

  “The Director is furious,” he said. Either he hadn’t heard her or else he thought she was semidelirious.

  “I can imagine.”

  “He wants you home ASAP.” Dov shoved a canteen full of cold water into her hands. “Drink,” he said. “Water’s the best way to get the residue of the drug out of your system.”

  She nodded, drank until the canteen was empty. Dov replaced it with another, and she continued to drink until she felt as if she were drowning. “Enough.”

  He took the canteen from her. “It’s not enough, but it’ll do for now.”

  Her head was still down; she was staring at the dirt between her boots, trying to think and not think at the same time. She knew he was trying to read her by her body language, since she’d pretty much hidden her face from him.

  “Rebeka, more than anything now, you need to sleep.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Regain your strength.”

  “No time.”

  “Otherwise, you won’t be of any use to anyone…” He paused, sighed deeply. “Including Bourne.”

  She lifted her head, looked him directly in the eye. There was absolutely nothing in his expression to reveal his thought process.

  “There’s something else going on. Something bigger than Ivan Borz.”

  He went very still. He certainly was listening now. “What, precisely?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But a lot of people have been killed because of it.”

  “Don’t make me wait too long for the other shoe to drop.”

  “There’s only one person I know who does know.”

  For the next several, agonizing minutes Dov appeared to be putting his mind through a vigorous debate. At length, he said, “I’ll see if the owner of that private jet can be identified, and, if so, determine where it was off to.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, Dov.”

  “For what?” He stood up. “I did nothing. Nothing at all.” He began to turn away. “In fact, right about now I’m sitting in a café in Tripoli enjoying a Campari and soda, wondering where the hell you are.” He grinned at her over his shoulder. “Now get some sleep. Hear me?”

  “Yes, boss.” With a groan, Sara slid off the crate, onto the bed. She had never felt anything so soft and inviting. She stretched out.

  She had not prayed since she was a little girl, but now silent words came to her: Dear God of our fathers, thank you.

  An instant later, she plunged into a deep and dreamless slumber.

  —

  “A bank,” Timur Savasin said.

  The Angelmaker turned from her contemplation of the view outside their top-floor hotel suite. “Name?”

  “You’ve never heard of it.”

  She had the sliding glass door partially open. Beyond the rim of the terrace the Mediterranean pulled and subsided against the pebbled shore.

  “Is that so?”

  “It is,” the first minister said. He was in a powder-blue polo shirt and jeans, huaraches on his feet. He felt ridiculous. But then everything about this island was ridiculous. Apart from the Turks, no one took Cyprus seriously. That was the point; that was why the bank was situated here. “No one’s ever heard of it.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “Designed to exist under the radar.”

  Night had fallen, a velvety fisherman’s night he would never get used to. The western horizon was stained orange, bloodred. A line of teal divided them. Closer to, lights blinked out on the water, mutes trying to talk to him.

  “But you know it exists. Who else does?”

  He slid his hands into his pockets. “Why is it you give pleasure but refuse to receive it?”

  She smiled. “How do you know that?”

  “A man can tell.”

  “No. You mean you can tell.” She came away from the door, from the salty slick breeze stirring the chiffon curtains. “
That’s not the same thing.”

  He shrugged. “I’m just curious.”

  The Angelmaker was near enough that he could smell her scent: musk and cinnamon and something more exotic he couldn’t place. Her scent stopped him from pulling out a cigarette, even though he longed for the smoke. She did things like that to him.

  “If it was simple curiosity,” she said softly, “you wouldn’t have asked.” Her eyes slid away for a moment, as if she were watching the past unreel before her eyes. “My life before you became aware of me was very bad.”

  “Worse than Liis’s?”

  “Much, much worse. You’ve seen me naked.”

  “Those scars are nothing a good plastic surgeon couldn’t—”

  “No!”

  It was almost a shout, startling him. She never raised her voice, at least not when she was with him.

  “The scars are a part of me,” she said in an undertone so far removed from her yell the words might have been spoken by another person entirely. “They are what made me who I am.”

  “I refuse to believe that.”

  A quirk of a smile played around one corner of her mouth. “The person who made them was an artist.”

  “An artist of pain.” She wouldn’t even divulge the gender of her tormentor. How grudgingly she let go of bits of herself, he thought.

  The Angelmaker nodded imperceptibly. “That, too.”

  He found he did not want to take this line of questioning further. “To answer your question, the name is the Omega and Gulf Bank.” Because that was what he thought she was aiming at. He was right, but he was also wrong.

  “You want to know me, but that’s all there is,” she said. “You want to see clear through me so you can pin me to the bedroom wall of your underground train. You want another trophy.”

  “I don’t think of you that way,” he said stiffly, suddenly defensive. “I never have.”

  “I know.” She laid a hand along his cheek. “You know I’m no man’s trophy.”

  He searched her eyes. “Why do you do what you do? Is it for money, for the privilege this life affords you, is it for the freedom I give you between assignments?” He found himself willing an expression onto her face, a reaction to him. “Or is it only for Liis’s sake?”

  Her large eyes were of such a deep blue they seemed black in low light, starless. “I do what I do for the pleasure of it. Pleasure is provided by measuring out death in specific doses.”

  “You can control death, is that what you believe?”

  “Death walks beside me every day. Death lays its head down on the pillow next to me each night. Death is here in this suite with us.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Extending his benevolent arms.”

  “Benevolent? Whatever do you mean?”

  “Death is the doorway out of pain, suffering, and misery. Death is the beginning of peace, of beauty—and of love.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  Abruptly, she turned back to the open slider, stepped out onto the terrace, leaned on the railing, staring out at the glimmering water and, beneath her, the beach. When Timur Savasin followed her out, she altered the mood with the tone of her voice. It was clipped again, all business. “What happens tomorrow morning?”

  “We go to the bank.” The first minister was relieved to return to solid footing. He found the occult, ghosts, personifying death in the form of vampires or zombies, and other such outlandish notions risible as well as vaguely unsettling. “We safeguard it.”

  “Against what?”

  “Unauthorized withdrawals.”

  The Angelmaker was caught slightly off guard. She gave him a sideways look. “I thought you said no one knows about this bank.”

  “I know,” he said. “The Sovereign knows.” He was watching her carefully. He seemed oblivious to the world beyond the terrace, and with good reason. “It’s altogether possible that someone else knows.”

  “Such as?”

  “General Boris Karpov.”

  “Karpov’s dead.”

  “There are people in the world who are powerful enough to speak from the grave. I’m afraid the good General was one of them.”

  “Perhaps it would be wiser now to speak plainly, FM.”

  “Somehow, General Karpov found out about the Omega and Gulf Bank. Worse, he discovered its purpose. Worst of all, it seems as if he foresaw the possibility of his own death. Therefore, he went to great lengths to keep his discovery alive.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “By sending it in code to his best friend, Jason Bourne.”

  “So you foresee the possibility of Bourne coming here.”

  “Oh, no,” Timur Savasin said as he turned back inside. “I know he’s coming.”

  55

  The distance between Asmara and Nicosia was 1,415 miles, as the crow flies. It took Bourne three and a half hours via Aziz’s flight plan to navigate the distance. The jet touched down just after sunset. The sky was indigo, shot through with orange, bloodred, teal. Bourne heard the plaintive cry of the wheeling gulls as they stepped out onto the tarmac. Aziz was already on his mobile, talking rapidly and excitedly.

  “Well, that was fun,” Aziz said, finished with his call. He stretched his cramped legs. “Unfortunately, there’s no rest for the airsick. As soon as we’re refueled and I can hire a pilot I’m off back to Istanbul.” He looked chagrined. “As you know, Allah blessed me with two sons, one of whom is an idiot when it comes to his life. He needs me to extricate him from yet another pile of excrement he walked into with his eyes open.”

  He stepped in, embraced Bourne, loudly kissing him on both cheeks. “May Allah keep you wise and safe, my friend.”

  “And you,” Bourne said. “Thank you, Abdul.”

  —

  He had the taxi drive him three blocks past the Omega + Gulf Bank. He gave the driver money to wait, got out, and walked back. Though it was dark, the street illuminated only by poles and the lights of passing cars, Bourne was able to make out the details of the building. It was set back from those around it, looking for all the world like a boutique hotel. It took some doing to find the sign, though.

  He toured around the two-story building and grounds, noting every detail, including the palm-tree-laden park along one side. Twenty minutes later, he was back in the taxi, somewhat surprised it was still waiting for him. The driver was eating a gyro out of a waxed paper wrap. He offered Bourne half, and Bourne accepted gratefully. Piloting an aircraft did wonders for his appetite.

  He asked the driver to suggest a hotel on the water, and, in due course, checked into a new boutique hotel next to the immense Golden Tulip resort. Bourne did not go immediately to his room, but stepped out of the rear of the lobby into the dimly lit bar. He sat at a curved granite-and-pearwood bar at some remove from those around him. Ordering a gimlet, he took in the room, which was perhaps half filled. A murmur of low conversation mingled with the pianist’s repertoire of songs he’d never heard before.

  “You here on business or pleasure?” the bartender asked as he set the drink in front of Bourne.

  “Business,” Bourne said. “The Omega and Gulf Bank.”

  “Huh,” the bartender said. He was a Cypriot with leathery skin and a whole lot of crow’s-feet around his eyes. “You’ll be the only one.”

  Bourne sipped his gimlet. “How’s that?”

  The bartender leaned in. “That building’s been up for close to a year. No business yet, so I hear. Don’t even think the place is finished.”

  “No one comes and goes?”

  “Small group of men from off island.” The bartender swiped at the bar top with a cloth. “They come and go now and again, so I hear. Said to be a cleaning crew, but there seems to be some conflicting views on that score.”

  A customer hailed the bartender, who nodded at Bourne as he drifted away. Bourne finished his drink, slipped some money under the empty glass, and strolled out onto the dining terrace, where eve
ry table was full. Broad sandstone steps led to the beach. He needed to detox. Other men went to brothels, or perhaps S&M dungeons, got massages or lap dances, or simply took drugs and slept for eighteen hours straight. Proximity to the sea was what worked best for Bourne.

  At this hour of the evening the only people on the strand were young couples, lovers with their sandals dangling from one hand, their shoulders and hips pressed together. Not too many of them, either. He removed his shoes and socks, picked his way down to the water’s edge, and let what passed for surf in the Mediterranean rush and withdraw over the tops of his bare feet. He breathed deeply of the salt air and tried to rid himself of the events of the past eight hours.

  Time was running out. Tomorrow evening the full-scale invasion of Ukraine would begin, the world leaders would be shaken out of bed, and nothing would be the same again as the Sovereign sought to mold a new world order in his image.

  But until the bank opened tomorrow morning there was nothing Bourne could do. In fact, if he were to be honest with himself, he didn’t know what would happen after the bank opened. He did not have the code for the Sovereign’s account. Without it, he couldn’t stop the flow of money to ISIS or turn off the spigot that would fund the Sovereign’s expanding war in Eastern Europe. The Sovereign needed ISIS to keep advancing, to keep gaining territory, to keep winning. Without the distraction the terror group provided, the Western powers would turn their collective eye east, they would unite against the Russian Federation, and the Sovereign would have no choice but to withdraw his troops or risk devastation and, worse for him, personal humiliation beyond imagining.

  For a time, he sat on the pebbly sand, arms clasped around drawn-up knees, listening to the water lap against the hulls of small boats close by, the rhythmic slap of rigging, the plaintive cries of night birds, the lulling susurrus of the wind. His eyes began to close as his body relaxed, his mind following its lead.

  In times like these his thoughts turned to Sara. He wondered where she was, what she was doing. He projected his thoughts to help keep her out of harm’s way. Not that she needed any help from him. His lips curled up at the thought, as he tried to conjure her up.