Page 44 of The Bourne Deception (Jason Bourne 7)

  Zachek held out Karpov’s passport, and the two men exchanged prisoners.

  When Karpov had put his passport safely away, he said, “I have a plane to catch.”

  “The pilot has instructions to wait until this interview has ended.” Zachek crossed to the samovar. “Tea?”

  “I think not.”

  Zachek, in the process of filling one glass, turned back to him. “A mistake, surely, General. We have here the finest Russian Caravan black tea. What makes this particular blend of oolong, Keemun, and Lapsang souchong so special is that it was transported from its various plantations through Mongolia and Siberia, just as it was in the eighteenth century when the camel caravans brought it from China, India, and Ceylon.” He took the filled glass by his fingertips and brought it up to his nose, breathing in deeply. “The cold, dry climate allows just the right touch of moisture to be absorbed by the tea when it is nightly set down on the snow-covered steppes.”

  He drank, paused, and drank again. Then he looked at Karpov. “Are you certain?”

  “Quite certain.”

  “As you wish, General.” Zachek sighed as he put down the glass. “It has come to our attention—”

  “Our?”

  “The SVR’s attention. Do you prefer that?” Zachek’s fingers waggled. “In any event, you have piqued the SVR’s attention.”

  “In what way?”

  Zachek put his hands behind his back. He looked like a cadet on the parade ground. “You know, General, I envy a man like you.”

  Karpov decided to let him talk uninterrupted. He wanted this mysterious interview over with as soon as possible.

  “You’re old school, you came up the hard way, fought for every promotion, bodies of those weaker than you littered behind you.” He pointed at his own chest. “I, on the other hand, had it comparatively easy. You know, it occurs to me that I could learn a lot from a man such as yourself.” He waited for Karpov to respond, but when only silence ensued, he continued.

  “How would you like that, General, mentoring me?”

  “You’re like all the young technocrats who play video games and think that’s a substitute for experience in the field.”

  “I have more important things to do than play video games.”

  “It pays to familiarize yourself with what the competition is up to.” Boris waved a hand. “Now get to the point. I don’t have all day.”

  Zachek nodded thoughtfully. “We simply want to ensure that the arrangement we had with your predecessor will continue with you.”

  “What arrangement?”

  “Oh, dear, you mean Cherkesov flew the coop without informing you?”

  “I have no knowledge of a deal,” Karpov said. “If you’ve done your research, you know that I don’t do deals.” He was through here. He headed for the door.

  “I thought,” Zachek said softly, “that in this case you would make an exception.”

  Karpov counted to ten and then turned back. “You know, it’s exhausting talking to you.”

  “Apologies,” Zachek said, though his expression indicated anything but. “The deal, General. It involves money—a monthly figure can easily be arrived at—and intelligence. We want to know what you know.”

  “That isn’t a deal,” Karpov said, “it’s extortion.”

  “We can bandy words all day, General, but as you yourself said, you have a plane to catch.” His voice hardened. “We do this deal—as we did with your predecessor—and you and your colleagues are free to wander the globe, far beyond the scope of FSB-2’s charter.”

  “Viktor Cherkesov created our charter.” Karpov turned the doorknob.

  “Believe me when I tell you that we can make your life a living hell, General.”

  Boris opened the door and strode out.

  It was just over 665 miles from Ramenskoye to the Uralsk Airport in western Kazakhstan, a flat and ugly stretch of land, barren, brown, desiccated.

  Viktor Delyagovich Cherkesov was waiting for him, leaning against a dusty military vehicle, smoking a black Turkish cigarette. He was a tall man with thick, wavy hair, graying at the temples. His eyes were dark as coffee and unreadable; he’d seen too many atrocities, had given too many orders, had himself participated in too many crimes.

  Karpov walked over to him with a quickening pulse. Part of his deal with this devil was that in return for the keys to FSB-2 he would, from time to time, grant favors. Of what sort, he had not bothered to ask; Cherkesov would not have told him. But now the first summons had arrived and Karpov knew that his obligation to the former head of FSB-2 had come due. Denying him his request was not an option.

  Cherkesov offered a cigarette and Karpov took it, leaned in to catch the flame from Cherkesov’s lighter. He despised the harshness of Turkish tobacco, but he wasn’t about to refuse his former boss anything.

  “You look good,” Cherkesov began. “Ruining other people’s lives suits you.”

  Karpov cracked a wry smile. “And your new life suits you.”

  “Power suits me.” Cherkesov threw down his cigarette, the end burning bright against the cheap tarmac. “It suits both of us.”

  “Where have you been since you left us?”

  Cherkesov smiled. “Munich. Nowhere.”

  “Munich is nowhere,” Karpov affirmed. “If I never see that city again it will be too soon.”

  Cherkesov shot out another cigarette and lit it. “I know you, Boris Illyich. You have something weighing on your mind.”

  “SVR,” Karpov said. He’d been seething the entire flight. “I want to talk with you about the deal you made with them.”

  Cherkesov blinked. “What deal?”

  And then everything fell into place. Zachek had been running a bluff, hoping to take advantage of the fact that Boris had been in his new job less than a month. He told his former boss about the repugnant interview at Ramenskoye, leaving out no detail, from Zachek’s approach at Immigration to his last line as Boris had walked out the door of the windowless room.

  During this discourse, Cherkesov sucked ruminatively on the inside of his cheek. “I’d like to say I’m surprised,” he said at last, “but I’m not.”

  “You know this man Zachek? There’s something smarmy about him.”

  “All flunkies are smarmy. Zachek does Beria’s bidding. Beria is the man you need to watch out for.” Konstantin L. Beria was the current head of SVR and, like his notorious forebear, had amassed a reputation for violence, paranoia, and malevolent trickery. Konstantin was every inch as feared and despised as Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria had been.

  “Beria was afraid to come near me,” Cherkesov said. “He sent Zachek on a fishing expedition to see if you could be turned.”

  “Fuck Beria.”

  Cherkesov’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, my friend. This is not a man to be taken lightly.”

  “Advisement taken.”

  Cherkesov gave a curt nod. “If relations deteriorate, contact me.” He flicked his lighter open and closed, the clicking like that of an insect moving through a field of grass. “Now to the matter at hand. I have an assignment for you.”

  Karpov watched the other man for any sign of what he was about to say. He found none. Cherkesov was like that, his face closed as a bank vault. Military jets sat, tense and watchful, on the tarmac. Now and again a mechanic would appear; no one came near the two Russians.

  Cherkesov plucked a bit of tobacco off his lip, ground it to powder. “I need you to kill someone.”

  Karpov let out a breath he had not been fully aware he’d been holding. Was that all? He felt a wave of relief flood through him, and he nodded. “Just give me the details and it will be done.”

  “Immediately.”

  Karpov nodded again. “Of course. Immediately.” He took a drag on his cigarette, one eye slitted against the smoke. “I assume you have a photo of the victim.”

  Cherkesov, smirking, drew a snapshot out of his breast pocket and handed it over. He watched, curious and avid, as all the blood drained

from Karpov’s face.

  He met Karpov’s eyes with a knowing smile. “You have no choice. None whatsoever.” His head tilted. “What? Is the price of your success too high?”

  Karpov tried to speak, but he felt as if Cherkesov were throttling him.

  Cherkesov’s smile broadened. “No, I thought not.”

  2

  JASON BOURNE, IN a hotel on the edge of the Colombian jungle, awoke into darkness, but he did not open his eyes. He lay on the thin, lumpy mattress for a moment, still wrapped in the strange web of his dream. He’d been in a house of many rooms, with corridors that seemed to lead to places in which he was blind. Like his past. The house was on fire and filled with smoke. He was not the only one in it. There was someone else who moved with the stealth of a fox, someone who was looking for him, someone who, with murderous intent, was very close, though the thick, choking smoke hid him completely from view.

  At what precise moment dream became reality he couldn’t say. He smelled smoke; it was what had awakened him. Rolling out of bed, he was engulfed in it, and once again his dream reared up in his mind. He made for the door and stopped.

  Someone was waiting for him, just on the other side of the door. Someone armed. Someone with murderous intent.

  Bourne backed up, grabbed a scarred wooden chair, fragile seeming as kindling. Opening the door, he hurled the chair through the doorway. Even as he heard the answering gunshots, he exploded across the threshold.

  He struck the gunman’s wrist with such force that a bone snapped. The weapon hung by nerveless fingers but the gunman wasn’t done yet. His kick caught Bourne in the side, slamming him against the opposite wall. The gunman, having given himself breathing room, moved through the smoke like a wraith, swinging the butt of the gun—now gripped in his other hand—into the side of Bourne’s head.

  Bourne went down and stayed down. The smoke was thickening, and he could feel the heat as the flames licked closer. Down on the floor the air was clearer, it gave him an edge his opponent had not yet figured out. He kicked out at Bourne, who grabbed the shoe in mid-flight, twisted it so that the ankle cracked. The gunman shouted in pain. Bourne, on his knees, punched him hard in the kidneys then, as the body started to crumple, grabbed the back of the gunman’s head and slammed the chin against his knee.

  Smoke engulfed the hallway. The flames had reached the head of the stairs and threatened to turn the second floor into an inferno. Grabbing the gunman’s weapon, Bourne launched himself back into his room. As he sprinted across the floor, he crossed his arms over his face and, leaping, crashed through the glass and wood of the window.

  They were waiting for him on the other side. There were three of them, converging on him as he hurtled to the ground from the second-floor window in a hail of shattered glass. He caught one, in a bright wink of blood the barrel of his gun scoring a line down the man’s cheek. He buried his fist into the belly of the second man, who doubled over. Then a gun muzzle pressed hard into the back of his neck.

  Bourne raised his hands and the man with the gashed cheek ripped the gun from his grip, then punched him in the jaw.

  “¡Basta!” the man behind Bourne commanded. “Él no quiere ser lastimado.” He’s not to be hurt.

  Bourne calculated that he could take these three, but he remained unmoving. These people weren’t out to kill him. They had started the fire. The one lurking outside his door could have kicked it down and tried to shoot him, but he didn’t. The fire was to herd him, as were the shots fired in the hallway. He hadn’t been expected to engage the gunman in the hallway.

  Bourne had a strong suspicion who had sent these men, so he allowed them to tie his hands behind his back and jam a hemp sack over his head. He was bundled into a hot, cramped vehicle that stank of gasoline, sweat, and oil. They rumbled off into the jungle, the lack of shocks telling him that he was in some sort of run-down military vehicle. Bourne memorized the turns, counting to himself to get a rough approximation of how far they had come. All the while, he used the sharp metal edge behind his back to begin sawing through the flex that bound his wrists together.

  After perhaps twenty minutes, the vehicle came to a halt. For some time, nothing happened, except a sharp and sometimes vitriolic exchange in idiomatic Spanish. He tried to make out what was being said, but the thick hemp and the peculiar acoustics of the vehicle’s interior made it virtually impossible. He was summarily hauled out into the coolness of deep shade. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed, a falling leaf brushed against the back of his hand as he was pulled forward. The acrid stench of a latrine, then the odors of gun oil, cordite, and sour sweat. He was pushed down onto what felt like the rough canvas of a folding camp stool and there he sat for another half an hour, listening. He could hear movement, but no one spoke, a sign of ironclad discipline.

  Then, abruptly, the hemp sack was removed and he blinked in the dusky light of the forest. Looking around, he found himself in a makeshift camp. He noted thirteen men—and that was just in his field of vision.

  One man approached, flanked by two uniformed counterparts, heavily armed with semi-automatics, handguns, and ammo belts. Bourne recognized Roberto Corellos from Moira’s detailed description. He was handsome in a rough, hard-muscled way. And with his dark, smoldering eyes and intensely masculine presence, he possessed a certain charisma that was certain to resonate with these men.

  “So…” He drew a cigar from the breast pocket of his beautifully embroidered guayabera shirt, bit off the end, and lit up, using a heavy Zippo lighter. “Here we are, hunter and prey.” He blew out a cloud of aromatic smoke. “But which is which, I wonder?”

  Bourne studied him with great care. “Funny,” he said, “you don’t look like a convict.”

  A grin split Corellos’s face and he made a broad gesture. “That, my friend, is because my friends at FARC were good enough to spring me from La Modelo.”

  FARC, Bourne knew, stood for “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,” the left-wing guerrillas.

  “Interesting,” he said, “you’re one of the most powerful drug lords in Latin America.”

  “In the world!” Corellos corrected, his cigar lifted high.

  Bourne shook his head. “Left-wing guerrillas and right-wing capitalists, I don’t get it.”

  Corellos shrugged. “What’s to get? FARC hates the government, so do I. We have a deal. Every now and again we do each other favors and, as a result, the government fuckers suffer. Otherwise we leave each other alone.” He puffed out another fragrant cloud. “It’s business, not ideological. I make money. I don’t give a fuck about ideology.

  “Now to business.” Corellos bent over, hands on knees, his face on a level with Bourne’s. “Who sent you to kill me, señor? Which one of my enemies, eh?”

  This man was a danger to Moira and to her friend Berengária. In Phuket, Moira had asked him to find Corellos and deal with him. Moira had never asked him for anything before, so he knew this must be extremely important, possibly a matter of life or death.

  “How did you find out I was sent to kill you?” Bourne said.

  “This is Colombia, my friend. Nothing happens here that I don’t know about.”

  But there was another reason he hadn’t hesitated. His epic encounter with Leonid Arkadin had taught him something about himself. He was not happy in the spaces between, the dark, solitary, actionless moments when the world came to a standstill and all he, an outsider, could do was observe it and feel nothing at the sight of marriages, graduations, memorial services. He lived for the periods when he sprang into action, when both his mind and his body were fully engaged, sprinting along the precipice between life and death.

  “Well?” Corellos was almost nose-to-nose with Bourne. “What do you have to tell me?”

  Bourne slammed his forehead into Corellos’s nose. He heard the satisfying crack of cartilage being dislodged as he freed his hands from the flex bindings he’d surreptitiously sawed through. Grabbing Corellos, he swung him around in front of him and locked the c

rook of his arm around the drug lord’s throat.

  Gun muzzles swung up but no one made a move. Then another man strode into the arena.

  “That’s a bad idea,” he said to Bourne.

  Bourne tightened his grip. “It certainly is for Señor Corellos.”

  The man was large, well built, with walnut-colored skin and windswept eyes, dark as the inside of a well. He had a great shock of dark hair, almost ringlets, and a beard as long, thick, and curly as an ancient Persian’s. He emitted a certain energy that affected even Bourne. Though he was much older, Bourne recognized him from the photo he’d been shown so many years ago.

  “Jalal Essai,” Bourne said now. “I’m wondering what you’re doing here in the company of this drug lord. Is Severus Domna moving heroin and cocaine now?”

  “We need to talk, you and I.”

  “I doubt that will happen.”

  “Mr. Bourne,” Essai said slowly and carefully, “I murdered Frederick Willard.”

  “Why would you tell me that?”

  “Were you an ally of Mr. Willard’s? No, I think not. Not after he spent so much time and energy pitting you against Leonid Arkadin.” He waved a hand. “But in any event, I killed Willard for a very specific reason: He’d made a deal with Benjamin El-Arian, the head of the Domna.”

  “That’s difficult to believe.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s true. You see, Willard wanted Solomon’s gold as badly as your old boss at Treadstone, Alexander Conklin, did. He sold his soul to El-Arian to get a piece of it.”

  Bourne shook his head. “This from a member of the Domna?”

  A slow smile spread across Essai’s face. “I was when Conklin sent you to invade my house,” he said. “But that was a long time ago.”

  “Now—”

  “Now Benjamin El-Arian and the Domna are my sworn enemies.” His smile turned complicit. “So you see, we have a great deal to talk about after all.”

  Friendship,” Ivan Volkin said as he took down two water glasses and filled them with vodka. “Friendship is highly overrated.” He handed one to Boris Karpov and took up the other, holding it high in a toast. “Unless it’s between Russians. Friendship is not entered into lightly. Only we, of all the peoples of the world, understand what it means to be friends. Nostrovya!”