Page 32 of The Bourne Sanction (Jason Bourne 6)

  Finally, they reached the loading bay where the sixteen parts of the coupling link were being packed for shipment by air to Long Beach on the NextGen 747 jet that had brought her and Bourne to Munich.

  “As specified in the contract, our team of engineers will be accompanying you on the homeward journey.” Müller rolled up the drawings, snapped a rubber band around them, and handed them to Moira. “They’ll be in charge of putting the coupling link together on site. I have every confidence that all will go smoothly.”

  “It had better,” Moira said. “The LNG tanker is scheduled to dock at the terminal in thirty hours.” She shot Müller an unpleasant look. “Not much leeway for your engineers.”

  “Not to worry, Fraulein Trevor,” he said cheerfully. “They’re more than up to the task.”

  “For your company’s sake, I sincerely hope so.” She stowed the roll under her left arm, preparatory to leaving. “Shall we speak frankly, Herr Müller?”

  He smiled. “Always.”

  “I wouldn’t have had to come here at all had it not been for the string of delays that set your manufacturing process back.”

  Müller’s smile seemed immovable. “My dear Fraulein, as I explained to your superiors, the delays were unavoidable—please blame the Chinese for the temporary shortage of steel, and the South Africans for the energy shortage that is forcing the platinum mines to work at half speed.” He spread his hands. “We’ve done the best we could, I assure you.” His smile widened. “And now we are at the end of our journey together. The coupling link will be in Long Beach within eighteen hours, and eight hours later it will be in one piece and ready to receive your tanker of liquid natural gas.” He stuck out his hand. “All will have a happy ending, yes?”

  “Of course it will. Thank you, Herr Müller.”

  Müller nearly clicked his heels. “The pleasure is all mine, Fraulein.”

  Moira walked back through the factory with Müller at her side. She said good-bye to him once more at the gates to the factory, walked across the gravel drive to where her chauffeured car sat waiting for her, its precisely engineered German engine purring quietly.

  They pulled out of the Kaller Steelworks property, turned left toward the autobahn back to Munich. Five minutes later, her driver said, “There’s a car following us, Fraulein.”

  Turning around, Moira peered out the back window. A small Volkswagen, no more than fifty yards behind them, flashed its headlights.

  “Pull over.” She pushed aside the hem of her long skirt, took a SIG Sauer out of the holster strapped to her left ankle.

  The driver did as he was told, and the car came to a stop on the shoulder of the road. The Volkswagen pulled in behind. Moira sat waiting for something to happen; she was too well trained to get out of the car.

  At length, the Volkswagen drove off the shoulder, into the underbrush, where it disappeared from sight. A moment later a man became visible tramping out onto the side of the road. He was tall and narrow, with a pencil mustache and suspenders holding up his trousers. He was in his shirtsleeves, oblivious to the German winter chill. She could see that he had no weapons on him, which, she reasoned, was the point. When he came abreast of her car, she leaned across the backseat, opened the door for him, and he slipped inside.

  “My name is Hauser, Fraulein Trevor. Arthur Hauser.” His expression was morose, bitter. “I apologize for the incivility of this impromptu meeting, but I assure you the melodrama is necessary.” As if to underscore his words, he glanced back down the road toward the factory, his expression fearful. “I do not have much time so I shall come straight to the point. There is a flaw in the coupling link—not, I hasten to add, in the hardware. That, I assure you, is absolutely sound. But there is a problem with the software. Nothing that will interfere with the operation of the link, no, not at all. It is, rather, a security flaw—a window, if you will. The chances are it might never be discovered, but all the same it’s there.”

  When Hauser glanced again out the back window a car was coming toward them. He clamped his jaws shut, watched as the vehicle passed by, then visibly relaxed as it drove on down the road.

  “Herr Müller was not altogether truthful. The delays were caused by this software flaw, nothing else. I should know, since I was part of the software design team. We tried for a patch, but it’s been devilishly difficult, and we ran out of time.”

  “Just how serious is this flaw?” Moira said.

  “It depends on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist.” Hauser ducked his head, embarrassed. “As I said, it might never be discovered.”

  Moira glanced out the window for a time, thinking that she shouldn’t ask the next question because, as Noah told her in no uncertain terms, the Firm was now out of ensuring the security of NextGen’s LNG terminal.

  And then she heard herself say, “What if I’m a pessimist?”

  Peter Marks found Rodney Feir, chief of field support, in the CI caff, eating a bowl of New England clam chowder. Feir looked up, gestured to Marks to sit. Peter Marks had been elevated to chief of operations after the ill-starred Rob Batt was outed as an NSA rat.

  “How’s it going?” Feir said.

  “How d’you think it’s going?” Marks parked himself on the chair opposite Feir. “I’ve been vetting every one of Batt’s contacts for any sign of NSA taint. It’s daunting and frustrating work. You?”

  “As exhausted as you, I expect.” Feir sprinkled oyster crackers into the chowder. “I’ve been briefing the new DCI on everything from agents in the field to the cleaning firm we’ve used for the past twenty years.”

  “D’you think she’ll work out?”

  Feir knew he had to be careful here. “I’ll say this for her: She’s a stickler for detail. No stone unturned. She’s not leaving anything to chance.”

  “That’s a relief.” Marks twiddled a fork between his thumb and fingers. “What we don’t need is another crisis. I’d be happy with someone who can right this listing ship.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “The reason I’m here,” Marks said, “is I’m having a staffing problem. I’ve lost some people to attrition. Of course, that’s inevitable. I thought I’d get some good recruits graduating from the program, but they went to Typhon. I’m in need of a short-term fix.”

  Feir chewed on a mouthful of gritty clam bits and soft potato cubes. He’d diverted those graduates to Typhon and had been waiting for Marks to come to him ever since. “How can I help?”

  “I’d like some of Dick Symes’s people to be assigned to my directorate.” Dick Symes was the chief of intelligence. “Just temporarily, you understand, until I can get some raw recruits through training and orientation.”

  “Have you talked to Dick?”

  “Why bother? He’ll just tell me to go to hell. But you can plead my case to Hart. She’s so snowed under that you’re the one best suited to get her to listen to me. If she makes the call Dick can yell all he wants, it won’t matter.”

  Feir wiped his lips. “What number of personnel are we talking here, Peter?”

  “Eighteen, two dozen tops.”

  “Not inconsiderable. The DCI is going to want to know what you have in mind.”

  “I’ve got a brief detailing it all ready to go,” Marks said. “I shoot it to you electronically, you walk it in to her personally.”

  Feir nodded. “I think that can be arranged.”

  Relief flooded Marks’s face. “Thanks, Rodney.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He began to dig into what was left of the chowder. As Marks was about to rise, he said, “Do you by any chance know where Soraya is? She’s not in her office and she’s not answering her cell.”

  “Unh-unh.” Marks resettled himself. “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Something in Feir’s voice gave him pause. “No reason? Really?”

  “Just, you know how office scuttlebutt can be.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You two are tight, aren’t you.”

  “Is that what you heard?”

  “Well, yeah.” Feir placed his spoon into the empty bowl. “But if it isn’t true—”

  “I don’t know where she is, Rodney.” Marks’s gaze drifted off. “We never had that kind of thing going.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Marks waved away his apology. “Forget it. I have. So what do you want to talk with her about?”

  This was what Feir was hoping he’d say. According to the general, he and LaValle required intel on the nuts and bolts of how Typhon worked. “Budgets. She’s got so many agents in the field, the DCI wants an accounting of their expenses—which, frankly, hasn’t been done since Martin died.”

  “That’s understandable, given what’s been going on in here lately.”

  Feir shrugged deferentially. “I’d do it myself; Soraya’s got more on her plate than she can handle, I imagine. Trouble is, I don’t even know where the files are.” He was going to add: Do you? but decided that would be over-selling it.

  Marks thought a minute. “I might be able to help you there.”

  How badly does your shoulder hurt?” Devra said.

  Arkadin, pressed against her body, his powerful arms around her, said, “I don’t know how to answer that. I have an extremely high tolerance for pain.”

  The airplane’s cramped bathroom allowed him to concentrate exclusively on her. It was like being in a coffin together, like being dead, but in a strange afterlife where only they existed.

  She smiled up at him as one of his hands traced its way from the small of her back to her neck. His thumb pressed against her jaw, gently tilted her head up while his fingers tightened on the nape of her neck.

  He leaned in, his weight arching her torso backward above the sink. He could see the back of her head in the mirror, his face about to eclipse hers. A flame of emotion flickered to life, illuminating the soulless void inside him.

  He kissed her.

  “Gently,” she whispered. “Relax your lips.”

  Her moist lips opened beneath his, her tongue searched for his, tentatively at first, then with an unmistakable hunger. His lips trembled. He had never felt anything when kissing a woman. In fact, he’d always done his best to avoid it, not knowing what it was for, or why women sought it so relentlessly. An exchange of fluids, that’s all it was to him, like a procedure performed in a doctor’s office. The best he could say was that it was painless, that it was over quickly.

  The electricity that shot through him when his lips met hers stunned him. The sheer pleasure of it astonished him. It hadn’t been like this with Marlene; it hadn’t been like this with anyone. He did not know what to make of the tremor in his knees. Her sweet, moaning exhalations entered him like silent cries of ecstasy. He swallowed them whole, and wanted more.

  Wanting was something Arkadin was unused to. Need was the word that had driven his life up to this moment: He needed to avenge himself on his mother, he needed to escape home, he needed to strike out on his own, no matter the course, he needed to bury rivals and enemies, he needed to destroy anyone who got close to his secrets. But want? That was another matter entirely. Devra defined want for him. And it was only when he was certain he no longer needed her that his desire revealed itself. He wanted her.

  When he lifted her skirt, probing underneath, her leg drew up. Her fingers nimbly freed him from his clothing. Then he stopped thinking altogether.

  Afterward, when they’d returned to their seats, making their way through the line of glaring passengers queued up to use the lavatory, Devra burst into laughter. Arkadin sat watching her. This was another thing unique about her. Anyone else would have asked, Was that your first time? Not her. She wasn’t interested in prying his lid open, peering inside to see what made him tick. She had no need to know. Because he was someone who had always needed something, he couldn’t tolerate that trait in anyone else.

  He was aware of her next to him in a way he was unable to understand. It was as if he could feel her heartbeat, the rush of blood through her body, a body that seemed frail to him, even though he knew how tough she could be, after all she’d suffered. How easily her bones could be broken, how easily a knife slipped through her ribs might pierce her heart, how easily a bullet could shatter her skull. These thoughts sent him into a rage, and he shifted closer to her, as if she were in need of protection—which, when it came to her former allies, she most certainly was. He knew then that he’d do everything in his power to kill anyone who sought to do her harm.

  Feeling him edge closer, she turned and smiled. “You know something, Leonid, for the first time in my life I feel safe. All that prickly shit I give off is something I learned early on to keep people away.”

  “You learned to be tough like your mother.”

  She shook her head. “That’s the really shitty part. My mother had this tough shell, yeah, but it was skin-deep. Beneath it, she was a mass of fears.”

  Devra put her head against the headrest as she continued, “In fact, the most vivid thing I remember about my mother was her fear. It came off her like a stink. Even after she’d bathed, I smelled it. Of course, for a long time I didn’t know what it was, and maybe I was the only one who smelled it, I don’t know.

  “Anyway, she used to tell me an old Ukrainian folktale. It was about the Nine Levels of Hell. What was she thinking? Was she trying to frighten me or lessen her own fear by sharing it with me? I don’t know. In any case, this is what she told me. There is one heaven, but there are nine levels of hell where, depending on the severity of your sins, you’re sent when you die.

  “The first, the least bad, is the one familiar to everyone, where you roast in flames. The second is where you’re alone on the summit of a mountain. Every night you freeze solid, slowly and horribly, only to thaw out in the morning, when the process begins all over again. The third is a place of blinding light; the fourth of pitch blackness. The fifth is a place of icy winds that cut you, quite literally, like a knife. In the sixth, you’re pierced by arrows. In the seventh, you’re slowly buried by an army of ants. In the eighth, you’re crucified.

  “But it was the ninth level that terrified my mother the most. There, you lived among wild beasts that gorged themselves on human hearts.”

  The cruelty of telling this to a child wasn’t lost on Arkadin. He was absolutely certain that if his mother had been Ukrainian she’d have told him the same folktale.

  “I used to laugh at her story—or at least I tried to,” Devra said. “I struggled against believing such nonsense. But that was before a number of those levels of hell were visited on us.”

  Arkadin felt her presence inside him all the more deeply. The sense of wanting to protect her seemed to bounce around inside him, increasing exponentially as his brain tried to come to terms with what the feeling meant. Had he at last stumbled across something big enough, bright enough, strong enough to put his demons to rest?

  After Marlene’s death, Icoupov had seen the writing on the wall. He’d stopped trying to peer into Arkadin’s past. Instead he’d shipped him off to America to be rehabilitated. “Reprogrammed,” Icoupov had called it. Arkadin had spent eighteen months in the Washington, DC, area going through a unique experimental program devised and run by a friend of Icoupov’s. Arkadin had emerged changed in many ways, though his past—his shadows, his demons—remained intact. How he wished the program had erased all memory of it! But that wasn’t the nature of the program. Icoupov no longer cared about Arkadin’s past, what concerned him was his future, and for that the program was ideal.

  He fell asleep thinking about the program, but he dreamed he was back in Nizhny Tagil. He never dreamed about the program; in the program he felt safe. His dreams weren’t about safety; they were about being pushed from great heights.

  Late at night, a subterranean bar called Crespi was the only option when he wanted to get a drink in Nizhny Tagil. It was a reeking place, filled with tattooed men in tracksuits, gold chains around their necks, short-skirte

d women so heavily made up they looked like store mannequins. Behind their raccoon eyes were vacant pits where their souls had been.

  It was in Crespi where Arkadin at age thirteen was first beaten to a pulp by four burly men with pig eyes and Neanderthal brows. And it was to Crespi that Arkadin, after nursing his wounds, returned three months later and blew the men’s brains all over the walls. When another crim tried to snatch his gun away, Arkadin shot him point-blank in the face. That sight stopped anyone else in the bar from approaching him. It also gained him a reputation, which helped him to amass a mini real estate empire.

  But in that city of smelted iron and hissing slag success had its own particular consequences. For Arkadin, it was coming to the attention of Stas Kuzin, one of the local crime bosses. Kuzin found Arkadin one night, four years later, having a bare-knuckle brawl with a giant lout whom Arkadin called out on a bet, for the prize of one beer.

  Having demolished the giant, Arkadin grabbed his free beer, swigged half of it down, and, turning, confronted Stas Kuzin. Arkadin knew him immediately; everyone in Nizhny Tagil did. He had a thick black pelt of hair that came down in a horizontal slash to within an inch of his eyebrows. His head sat on his shoulders like a marble on a stone wall. His jaw had been broken and reconstructed so badly—probably in prison—that he spoke with a peculiar hissing sound, like a serpent. Sometimes what he said was all but unintelligible.

  On either side of Kuzin were two ghoulish-looking men with sunken eyes and crude tattoos of dogs on the backs of their hands, which marked them as forever bound to their master.

  “Let’s talk,” this monstrosity said to Arkadin, jerking his tiny head toward a table.

  The men who’d been occupying the table rose as one when Kuzin approached, fleeing to the other side of the bar. Kuzin hooked his shoe around a chair leg, dragged it around, and sat down. Disconcertingly, he kept his hands in his lap, as if at any moment he’d draw down on Arkadin and shoot him dead.