Page 13 of The Bourne Sanction (Jason Bourne 6)

  Arkadin for once in his life ignored the gun, stared implacably at Icoupov.

  “No?” Icoupov shrugged. “Do you know what I think, Leonid Danilovich? I think it gives you a measure of comfort to believe that your life has no meaning. Most times you revel in this belief; it’s what fuels you. But there are times, like now, when it takes you by the throat and shakes you till your teeth rattle in your skull.” He was dressed in dark slacks, an oyster-gray shirt, a long black leather coat that made him look somewhat sinister, like a German SS-Stürmbannführer. “But I believe to the contrary that you are searching for the meaning of your life.” His dark skin shone like polished bronze. He gave the appearance of a man who knew what he was doing, someone, above all, not to be trifled with.

  “What path?” Arkadin said dully, taking a seat on the sofa.

  Icoupov gestured with both hands, encompassing the self-inflicted whirlwind that had torn apart the rooms. “The past for you is dead, Leonid Danilovich, do you not agree?”

  “God has punished me. God has abandoned me,” Arkadin said, regurgitating by rote a lament of his mother’s.

  Icoupov smiled a perfectly innocent smile, one that could not possibly be misinterpreted. He had an uncanny ability to engage others one-on-one. “And what God is that?”

  Arkadin had no answer because this God he spoke of was his mother’s God, the God of his childhood, the God that had remained an enigma to him, a shadow, a God of bile, of rage, of split bone and spilt blood.

  “But no,” he said, “God, like heaven, is a word on a page. Hell is the here and now.”

  Icoupov shook his head. “You have never known God, Leonid Danilovich. Put yourself in my hands. With me, you will find God, and learn the future he has planned for you.”

  “I cannot be alone.” Arkadin realized that this was the truest thing he’d ever said.

  “Nor shall you be.”

  Icoupov turned to accept a tray from one of the bodyguards. While they had been talking, he’d made tea. Icoupov poured two glasses full, added sugar, handed one to Arkadin.

  “Drink with me now, Leonid Danilovich,” he said as he lifted his steaming glass. “To your recovery, to your health, to the future, which will be as bright for you as you wish to make it.”

  The two men sipped their tea, which the bodyguard had astutely fortified with a considerable amount of vodka.

  “To never being alone again,” said Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.

  That was a long time ago, at a way station on a river that had turned to blood. Was he much changed from the near-insane man who had put the muzzle of a gun to Semion Icoupov’s head? Who could say? But on days of heavy rain, ominous thunder, and twilight at noon, when the world looked as bleak as he knew it to be, thoughts of his past surfaced like corpses in a river, regurgitated by his memory. And he would be alone again.

  Tarkanian was coming around, but the phenothiazine that had been administered to him was doing its job, sedating him mildly and impairing his mental functioning enough so that when Bourne bent over him and said in Russian, “Bourne’s dead, we’re in the process of extracting you,” Tarkanian dazedly thought he was one of the men at the reptile house.

  “Icoupov sent you.” Tarkanian lifted a hand, felt the bandage the paramedics had used to keep light out of his eyes. “Why can’t I see?”

  “Lie still,” Bourne said softly. “There are civilians around. Paramedics. That’s how we’re extracting you. You’ll be safe in the hospital for a few hours while we arrange the rest of your travel.”

  Tarkanian nodded.

  “Icoupov is on the move,” Bourne whispered. “Do you know where?”

  “No.”

  “He wants you to be most comfortable during your debriefing. Where should we take you?”

  “Moscow, of course.” Tarkanian licked his lips. “It’s been years since I’ve been home. I have an apartment on the Frunzenskaya embankment.” More and more he seemed to be speaking to himself. “From my living room window you can see the pedestrian bridge to Gorky Park. Such a peaceful setting. I haven’t seen it in so long.”

  They arrived at the hospital before Bourne had a chance to continue the interrogation. Then everything happened very quickly. The doors banged open and the paramedic leapt into action, getting the gurney down, rushing it through the automatic glass doors into a corridor leading to the ER. The place was packed with patients. One of the paramedics was talking to a harried overworked intern, who directed him to a small room, one of many off the corridor. Bourne saw that the other rooms were filled.

  The two paramedics rolled Tarkanian into the room, checked the IV, took his vitals again, unhooked him.

  “He’ll come around in a minute,” one of them said. “Someone will be in shortly to see to him.” He produced a practiced smile that was not unlikable. “Don’t worry, your friend’s going to be fine.”

  After they’d left, Bourne went back to Tarkanian, said, “Mikhail, I know the Frunzenskaya embankment well. Where exactly is your apartment?”

  “He’s not going to tell you.”

  Bourne whirled just as the first gunman—the one he’d wrapped the python around—threw himself on top of him. Bourne staggered back, bounced hard against the wall. He struck at the gunman’s face. The gunman blocked it, punched Bourne hard on the point of his sternum. Bourne grunted, and the gunman followed up with a short chop to Bourne’s side.

  Down on one knee, Bourne saw him pull out a knife, swipe the blade at him. Bourne shrank back. The gunman attacked with the knife point-first. Bourne landed a hard right flush on his face, heard the satisfying crack of the cheekbone fracturing. Enraged, the gunman closed, the blade swinging through Bourne’s shirt, bringing out an arc of blood like beads on a string.

  Bourne hit him so hard he staggered back, struck the gurney on which Tarkanian was stirring out of his drugged stupor. The man took out his handgun with the suppressor. Bourne closed with him, grabbing him tightly, depriving him of space to aim the gun.

  Tarkanian ripped off the bandage the paramedics had used to keep light out of his eyes, blinked heavily, looking around. “What the hell’s going on?” he said drowsily to the gunman. “You told me Bourne was dead.”

  The man was too busy fending off Bourne’s attack to answer. Seeing his firearm was of no use to him he dropped it, kicked it along the floor. He tried to get the knife blade inside Bourne’s defense, but Bourne broke the attacks, not fooled by the feints the gunman used to distract him.

  Tarkanian sat up, slid off the gurney. He found it difficult to talk, so he slipped to his knees, crawled across the cool linoleum to where the gun lay.

  The gunman, one hand gripping Bourne’s neck, was working the knife free, prepared to stab downward into Bourne’s stomach.

  “Move away from him.” Tarkanian was aiming the gun at the two men. “I’ll have a clear shot.”

  The gunman heard him, shoved the heel of his hand into Bourne’s Adam’s apple, choking him. Then he moved his upper body to one side.

  Just as Tarkanian was about to squeeze the trigger Bourne rabbit-punched the gunman in the kidney. He groaned and Bourne hauled him between himself and Tarkanian. A coughing sound announced the bullet plowing into the gunman’s chest.

  Tarkanian cursed, moved to get Bourne back in his sights. As he did so, Bourne wrested the knife away from the gunman’s limp hand, threw it with deadly accuracy. The force of it lifted Tarkanian backward off his feet. Bourne pushed the gunman away from him, crossed the room to where Tarkanian lay in a pool of his own blood. The knife was buried to the hilt in his chest. By its position, Bourne knew it had pierced a lung. Within moments Tarkanian would drown in his own blood.

  Tarkanian stared up at Bourne. He laughed even as he said, “Now you’re a dead man.”

  Ten

  ROB BATT made his arrangements through General Kendall, LaValle’s second in command. Through him, Batt was able to access certain black-ops assets in the NSA. No congressional oversight, no fuss, no muss.

As far as the federal government was concerned, these people didn’t exist, except as auxiliary staff seconded to the Pentagon; they were thought to be pushing papers in a windowless office somewhere in the bowels of the building.

  Now, this is the way the clandestine services should run, Batt said to himself as he laid out the operation for the eight young men ranged in a semicircle in a Pentagon briefing room Kendall had provided for him. No supervision, no snooping congressional committees to report to.

  The plan was simple, as all his plans tended to be. Other people might like bells and whistles, but not Batt. Vanilla, Kendall had called it. But the more that was involved, the more that could go wrong was how he looked at it. Also, no one fucked up simple plans; they could be put together and executed in a matter of hours, if need be, even with new personnel. But the fact was he liked these NSA agents, perhaps because they were military men. They were quick to catch on, quicker even to learn. He never had to repeat himself. To a man, they seemed to memorize everything as it was presented to them.

  Better still, because of their military background, they obeyed orders unquestioningly, unlike agents in CI—Soraya Moore a case in point—who always thought they knew a better way to get things done. Plus, these bad boys weren’t afraid of rendition; they weren’t afraid to pull the trigger. If given the appropriate order they’d kill a target without either question or regret.

  Batt felt a certain exhilaration at the knowledge that no one was looking over his shoulder, that he wouldn’t have to explain himself to anyone—not even the new DCI. He’d entered an altogether different arena, one all his own, where he could make decisions of great moment, devise field operations, and carry them out with the confidence that he would be backed to the hilt, that no operation would ever boomerang on him, bring him face-to-face with a congressional committee and disgrace. As he wrapped up the pre-mission briefing, his cheeks were flushed, his pulse accelerated. There was a heat building inside him that could almost be called arousal.

  He tried not to think of his conversation with the defense secretary, tried not to think of Luther LaValle heading up Typhon while he looked helplessly on. He desperately didn’t want to give up control of such a powerful weapon against terrorism, but Halliday hadn’t given him a choice.

  One step at a time. If there was a way to foil Halliday and LaValle, he was confident he’d find it. But for the moment, he returned his attention to the job at hand. No one was going to fuck up his plan to capture Jason Bourne. He knew this absolutely. Within hours Bourne would be in custody, down so deep even a Houdini like him would never get out.

  Soraya Moore made her way to Veronica Hart’s office. Two men were emerging: Dick Symes, the chief of intelligence, and Rodney Feir, chief of field support. Symes was a short, round man whose red face appeared to have been applied directly to his shoulders. Feir, several years Symes’s junior, was fair-haired, with an athletic body, an expression as closed as a bank vault.

  Both men greeted her cordially, but there was a repellent condescension to Symes’s smile.

  “Bearding the lioness in her den?” Feir said.

  “Is she in a bad mood?” Soraya asked.

  Feir shrugged. “Too soon to tell.”

  “We’re waiting to see if she can carry the weight of the world on those delicate shoulders,” Symes said. “Just like with you, Director.”

  Soraya forced a smile though her clenched jaws. “You gentlemen are too kind.”

  Feir laughed. “Ready, willing, and able to oblige, ma’am.”

  Soraya watched them leave, two peas in a pod. Then she poked her head into the DCI’s inner sanctum. Unlike her predecessor, Veronica Hart maintained an open-door policy when it came to her upper-echelon staff. It engendered a sense of trust and camaraderie that—as she’d told Soraya—had been sorely lacking at CI in the past. In fact, from the vast amount of electronic data she’d pored over the last couple of days it was becoming increasing clear to her that the previous DCI’s bunker mentality had led to an atmosphere of cynicism and alienation among the directorate heads. The Old Man came from the school of letting the Seven vie with one another, complete with duplicity, backstabbing, and, so far as she was concerned, outright objectionable behavior.

  Hart was a product of a new era, where the primary watchword was cooperation. The events of 2001 had proved that when it came to the intelligence services, competition was deadly. So far as Soraya was concerned that was all to the good.

  “How long have you been at this?” Soraya asked.

  Hart glanced out the window. “It’s morning already? I ordered Rob home hours ago.”

  “Way past morning.” Soraya smiled. “How about lunch? You definitely need to get out of this office.”

  She spread her hands to indicate the queue of dossiers loaded onto her computer. “Too much work—”

  “It won’t get done if you pass out from hunger and dehydration.”

  “Okay, the canteen—”

  “It’s such a fine day, I was thinking of walking to a favorite restaurant of mine.”

  Hearing a warning note in Soraya’s otherwise light voice, Hart looked up. Yes, there was definitely something her director of Typhon wanted to talk to her about outside the confines of the CI building.

  Hart nodded. “All right. I’ll get my coat.”

  Soraya took out her new cell, which she’d picked up at CI this morning. She’d found her old one in the gutter by her car at the Moira Trevor surveillance site, had disposed of it at the office. Now she texted a message.

  A moment later Hart’s cell buzzed. The text from Soraya read: VAN X ST. Van across the street.

  Hart folded her cell away and launched into a long story at the end of which both women laughed. Then they talked about shoes versus boots, leather versus suede, and which Jimmy Choos they’d buy if they were ever paid enough.

  Both women kept an eye on the van without seeming to look at it. Soraya directed them down a side street where the van couldn’t go for fear of becoming conspicuous. They were moving out of the range of its electronics.

  “You came from the private sector,” Soraya said. “What I don’t understand is why you’d give up that payday to become DCI. It’s such a thankless job.”

  “Why did you agree to be director of Typhon?” Hart asked.

  “It was a huge step up for me, both in prestige and in pay.”

  “But that’s not really why you accepted it, was it?”

  Soraya shook her head. “No. I felt a strong sense of obligation to Martin Lindros. I was in at the beginning. Because I’m half Arab, Martin sought out my input both in the creation of Typhon and in its recruitment. He meant Typhon to be a very different intelligence-gathering organization, staffed with people who understood both the Arab and the Muslim mind-set. He felt—and I wholeheartedly agree—that the only way to successfully combat the wide array of extremist terrorist cells was to understand what motivates them. Once you were in sync with their motivation, you could begin to anticipate their actions.”

  Hart nodded, her long face in a neutral set as she sank deeper in thought. “My own motivations were similar to yours. I grew sick of the cynical attitude of the private security firms. All of them, not just Black River where I worked, were focused on how much money they could milk out of the mess in the Middle East. In times of war, the government is a mighty cash cow, throwing newly minted money at every situation, as if that alone will make a difference. But the fact is, everyone involved has a license to plunder and steal to their heart’s content. What happens in Iraq stays in Iraq. No one’s going to prosecute them. They’re indemnified against retribution for profiting from other people’s misery.”

  Soraya took them into a clothes store, where they made a pretense of checking out camisoles to cover the seriousness of the conversation.

  “I came to CI because I couldn’t change Black River, but I felt I could make a difference here. The president gave me a mandate to change an organization that was in disarray, t

hat long ago had lost its way.”

  They went out the back, across the street, hurrying now, down the block, turning left for a block, then right for two blocks, left again. They went into a large restaurant boiling with people. Perfect. The high level of ambient noise, the multiple crosscurrents of conversations would make their own conversation undetectable.

  At Hart’s request they were seated at a table near the rear where they had excellent sight lines of the interior as well as the front door. Everyone who came in would be visually vetted by them.

  “Well executed,” Hart said when they were seated. “I see you’ve done this before.”

  “There were times—especially when I was working with Jason Bourne—when I was obliged to lose a CI tail or two.”

  Hart scanned the large menu. “Do you think that was a CI van?”

  “No.”

  Hart looked at Soraya over the menu. “Neither do I.”

  They ordered brook trout, Caesar salads to start, mineral water to drink. They took turns checking out the people who came into the restaurant.

  Halfway through the salads Soraya said, “We’ve intercepted some unconventional chatter in the last couple of days. I don’t think alarming would be a too strong a word.”

  Hart put down her fork. “How so?”

  “It seems possible that a new attack on American soil is in its final stages.”

  Hart’s demeanor changed instantly. She was clearly shaken. “What the hell are we doing here?” she said angrily. “Why aren’t we in the office where I can mobilize the forces?”

  “Wait until you hear the whole story.” Soraya said. “Remember that the lines and frequencies Typhon monitors are almost all overseas, so unlike the chatter other intelligence agencies scan, ours is more concentrated, but from what I’ve seen it’s also far more accurate. As you know, there’s always an enormous amount of disinformation in the regular chatter. Not so with the terrorists we keep an ear on. Of course, we’re checking and rechecking the accuracy of this intel, but until proven otherwise we’re going on the assumption that it’s real. We have two problems, however, which is why mobilizing CI now isn’t the wisest course.”