Page 38 of The Bourne Objective (Jason Bourne 8)

  Well armed, he slammed the cabinet doors shut. Hefting his Makarov, he discovered a newfound vigor. After so many years behind a desk, it felt good to hit the streets, to take the law into his own hands, to shake it until it went limp and gave up. He felt ready to bite off its head.

  The Metropole barbershop was situated off the vast, marble-and-ormolu lobby of the Federated Moskva Hotel, an old and venerable establishment located between the Bolshoi Theater and Red Square. The building was so ornate, it seemed at any moment on the verge of imploding from the encrustations of cornices, balustrades, carved stone panels, massive lintels, and projecting parapets.

  The Metropole was set up with three old-fashioned barber’s chairs, behind which were a mirrored wall and the cabinets that contained the various implements of the trade: scissors, straight razors, shaving cream machines, tall glass jars of a blue liquid disinfectant, neatly folded towels, combs, brushes, electric hair clippers, canisters of talcum powder, and bottles of bracing aftershave.

  Currently all three chairs were occupied by clients over whom had been spread black nylon smocks that snapped at the neck. The two men at either end were getting their hair cut by barbers in the traditional Metropole white uniforms. The man in the middle, reclining on his chair with a hot towel wrapped around his face, was Boris Karpov. While his barber stropped a straight razor, Karpov whistled an old Russian folk melody he remembered from his childhood. In the background a dinosaur of a radio played a staticky news report, announcing the latest government initiative to combat growing unemployment. Two men, one young, one old, sat in wooden chairs on the other side of the shop, reading copies of Pravda while waiting their turn.

  Yevgeny’s men had reconnoitered the hotel lobby for ten minutes, assiduously checking for FSB-2 agents. Finding none, they signaled to their boss. Yevgeny, in a long winter overcoat similar to the ones his men wore, entered the Federated Moskva, along with a family led by an unsmiling Intourist guide. While the guide led the family to reception, he walked directly to the Metropole, assuring himself that Boris Karpov was, indeed, the man in the center chair getting his face scraped. As soon as the barber lifted the towel from Karpov’s face, Yevgeny turned and signaled to his man who was standing by the revolving door. This man, in turn, signaled Maslov, who got out of the black BMW parked in front of the hotel, went across the sidewalk, and up the steps.

  The moment he appeared through the revolving door, Yevgeny and his men went into action, just as had been planned. The two men stationed themselves on either side of the Metropole entrance. There was no other egress.

  Yevgeny walked in and, drawing his Makarov pistol, used the barrel to signal to the two men waiting to get the hell out. He swung the muzzle of the Makarov in the general direction of the clients getting their hair cut to keep them and their barbers from moving. He nodded and Maslov entered.

  “Karpov, Boris Karpov.” Maslov had his Makarov at the ready. “I understand you’re looking for me.”

  Karpov opened his eyes. His gaze rested on Maslov a moment. “Shit, this is awkward.”

  Maslov grinned wolfishly. “Only for you.”

  Karpov raised a hand from under his smock. The barber took the edge of the straight razor from his cheek and stepped back. Karpov looked from Maslov to Yevgeny to the two armed men who now appeared in the doorway.

  “This doesn’t look good for me, but if you’ll listen I think we can work a deal.”

  Maslov laughed. “Listen to this, the incorruptible Colonel Karpov begging for his life.”

  “I’m just being pragmatic,” Karpov said. “I’m soon to become the head of FSB-2, so why kill me? I’d be an excellent friend to have, don’t you agree?”

  “The only good friend,” Maslov said, “is a dead friend.”

  He took aim at Karpov, but before he could squeeze the trigger, an explosion blasted him backward off his feet. A hole had appeared in Karpov’s smock from the bullet he had fired. He threw off the smock at the same time as the two other clients—both FSB-2 undercover agents—fired through their smocks. Yevgeny’s two men went down. Yevgeny killed one of Karpov’s men before Karpov shot him three times in the chest.

  Karpov, his face still covered with shaving cream, walked over to where Maslov lay on the black-and-white tile floor.

  “How do you feel?” He aimed his pistol at Maslov’s face. “At the end of an era?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he squeezed the trigger.

  Moira opened her eyes after what seemed like days or weeks of sleep, and saw Berengária Moreno’s face.

  Berengária smiled, but it was a smile full of concern. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve been hit by a train.” Her left leg was in a full cast, suspended by a sling-and-pulley system, so the lower half was above the level of her head.

  “You look beautiful, mami.” Berengária’s voice was light and breezy. She kissed Moira lightly on the mouth. “I have a private ambulance waiting downstairs to take us back to the hacienda. A full-time nurse and a physical therapist have already settled into their guest rooms.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.” It was a stupid thing to say. Luckily, Berengária had the good grace to ignore it.

  “You’ll have to get used to calling me Barbara.”

  “I know.”

  Then her tone changed, her voice softened, and she leaned close to Moira. “I was sure I’d never see you again.”

  “Which only goes to prove that there are no sure things in life.”

  Berengária laughed. “God knows.”

  “Barbara…”

  “Mami, please, I’ll be angry if you think I expect anything. I would do anything for you, including leaving you alone, if that’s your wish.”

  Moira put her hand against Barbara’s cheek. “Right now, all I want is to recover.” She sighed deeply. “Barbara, I want to be able to run again.”

  Barbara put her hand over Moira’s. “Then you’ll make it so. And I’ll help you, if that is your wish. If not…” She shrugged.

  “Thank you.”

  “Get better, mami. That’s how you’ll thank me.”

  Moira’s expression clouded over. “You know, I wasn’t lying to Arkadin. Corellos has to be dealt with, and the sooner the better.”

  “I know.” Barbara almost mouthed the words, so softly did she speak.

  “It will take some thought, but the problem will give me something to concentrate on besides my leg.”

  “I’m tempted to say just concentrate on getting better, but I know you’ll laugh in my face.”

  Moira’s expression darkened even further. “You’re in the wrong business, you know that, don’t you?”

  “It was my brother’s life.”

  “I’m tempted to say that it doesn’t have to be yours, but I know you’ll laugh in my face.”

  Barbara smiled ruefully. “God knows there’s no escaping family.” Absently, she stroked Moira’s cast. “My brother was good to me, he protected me, he looked out for me when others tried to take advantage of me.” She looked into Moira’s eyes. “He taught me to be tough. He taught me how to hold my head up in the world of men. Without him I don’t know where I’d be.”

  Moira thought about this for some time. One compelling reason to stay with Barbara was so she could convince her to leave her brother’s business behind, despite her perceived obligation to him. Moira hadn’t been in touch with her own family for years, didn’t even know whether her parents were still alive. She wondered if she cared. Her own brother was another matter entirely. She knew where he was, what he was doing, and with whom he associated. She was certain he knew nothing of her. They had severed ties in their early twenties. Unlike with her parents, she felt something for him, but it wasn’t good.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled the stale air of her past. “I’m healing faster than the surgeon had expected, and no one thinks more highly of his work than he does.”

  Barbara’s eyes twinkled. “Well, you know, nothing is as

we expect.”

  This time, both women laughed together.

  Benjamin El-Arian sat behind his desk in his study. He was on the phone with Idir Syphax, the top-echelon member of Severus Domna in Tineghir. Syphax had confirmed that both Arkadin and Bourne were on their way to Morocco. El-Arian wanted to make certain that every detail he had worked out for their strategy was understood and in place. This was no time for surprises; he had no illusions concerning the nature of the two men.

  “Everything is prepared inside the house?”

  “Yes,” Idir said in his ear. “The system has been checked and rechecked. Most recently by me, as you requested. Once they’re in, they won’t be able to get out.”

  “We built a better rat trap.”

  A chuckle. “That’s the size of it.”

  Now El-Arian came to the most difficult question. “What about the woman?” He could not bring himself to utter Tanirt’s name.

  “We cannot touch her, of course. The men are terrified of her.”

  With good reason, El-Arian thought. “Leave her alone, then.”

  “I will pray to Allah,” Idir said.

  El-Arian was pleased. Pleased also that Willard had actually made good on his end of the bargain. He was about to add a comment when he heard the screech of a car taking off from outside his Georgetown brownstone. Because he was wearing a wireless headphone he was able to get up, walk across the carpet, and peer through the slats of the wooden shutters without breaking off the call.

  He saw a bundle lying awkwardly on his front steps, as if it had been dropped there. The cylindrical shape was wrapped up in an old carpet. He estimated the length to be somewhere between five and a half and six feet.

  While still talking into his mike, he went down the hall, opened his front door, and hauled the carpet into his foyer. He grunted; it was very heavy. The carpet was tied in three places with common twine. He went back to his desk, retrieved a folding knife from a drawer, and returned to the foyer. Squatting down, he severed the three lengths of twine and unrolled the carpet. This unleashed an unholy stench that caused him to jump back.

  When he saw the body, when he recognized it, when he realized that it was still alive, he cut short the call. Staring down at Frederick Willard, he thought, Allah preserve me, Jalal Essai has declared war on me. Unlike the deaths of the men he had sent to terminate Essai, this was a personal statement.

  Setting aside his natural revulsion, he bent over Willard. One eye would not open, and the other was so inflamed there was no white at all.

  “I will pray for you, my friend,” El-Arian said.

  “I have no interest in Allah or in God.” Willard’s dry, cracked lips scarcely moved, and something terrible must have been done to his throat or vocal cords because his voice was nearly unrecognizable. It sounded like a razor cutting through flesh. “The rest is darkness. There is no one left to trust.”

  El-Arian asked him a question, but the answer wasn’t forthcoming. Leaning forward, he touched the side of Willard’s neck. There was no pulse. El-Arian said a brief prayer, if not for the infidel, then for himself.

  Book Four

  28

  YOU SEEM SURPRISED,” Tanirt said.

  Bourne was surprised. He had been expecting a woman of Don Fernando’s age, possibly a decade younger. It was difficult to tell precisely, but Tanirt seemed to be in her late thirties. This was an illusion, surely. Assuming Ottavio actually was her son, she had to be at least fifty.

  “I came to Morocco with no expectations,” he said.

  “Liar.” Tanirt was dark-skinned and dark-haired, with a voluptuous figure that had lost none of its lush ripeness. She carried herself as if she were a princess or a queen, and her huge, liquid eyes seemed to take in everything at once.

  She studied him for a moment. “I see you. Your name is not Adam Stone,” she said with utter certainty.

  “Does that matter?”

  “Truth is the only thing that matters.”

  “My name is Bourne.”

  “Not the name you were born with, but the one you go by now.” She nodded, as if satisfied. “Please give me your hand, Bourne.”

  He had called her the moment he landed in Marrakech. As Don Fernando had promised, she was expecting him. She had given him directions on where to meet her: a sweets shop in the center of a market on the southern edge of the city. He had found the market without difficulty, parked, and proceeded on foot through the labyrinth of alleys lined with stalls and shops selling everything from incised leather goods to camel feed. The sweets shop was owned by a wizened Berber who seemed to recognize Bourne on sight. Smiling, he waved him into the interior, which smelled of caramel and roasted sesame seeds. The shop was dark and full of shadows. Nevertheless, Tanirt was illuminated, as if from within.

  Now he offered her his hand, palm up, and she took it. Tanirt looked up at him. She wore simple robes, belted at the waist. Nothing was exposed, and yet her sexuality, pulsing with life, seemed utterly revealed to him.

  She held his hand tenderly, her forefinger lightly tracing the lines on his palm and fingers. “You are a Capricorn, born on the last day of the year.”

  “Yes.” There was no way she could know that, and yet she did. A tingling began in Bourne’s toes, percolating up through his body, warming him, drawing him to her, as if she had established an energy link between them. Slightly disturbed, he thought about walking out of the shop, but didn’t.

  “You have…” She stopped short and put her hand over his, as if trying to block out her sudden vision.

  “What is it?” Bourne said.

  She looked up at him and at that moment he felt as if he could drown in those eyes. She had not let go of his hand. On the contrary, she held it tightly between her two palms. There was a magnetism about her that was both intensely exciting and intensely disquieting. He felt forces inside him tugging him this way and that, as if in fierce opposition.

  “Do you really want me to tell you?” Her voice was that of a trained contralto, deep and rich and sonorous. Even at low volume it seemed to pierce into every packed corner of the sweets shop.

  “You started this,” Bourne pointed out.

  She smiled, but there was nothing happy in it. “Come with me.”

  He followed her to the rear of the shop and out a narrow door. Once again in the labyrinthine heart of the market, he looked out at a bewildering array of goods and services: live cocks and velvet-winged bats in cages, cockatoos on bamboo perches, fat fish in tanks of seawater, a butchered lamb, skinned and bloody, hanging from a hook. A brown hen waddled by, squawking as if being strangled.

  “Here you see many things, many creatures, but as for people, only Amazighs, only Berbers.” Tanirt pointed south, into the High Atlas. “The town of Tineghir is centered within an eighteen-and-a-half-mile oasis at an altitude of more than five thousand feet, stretching across a relatively thin wedge of lush wadi between the High Atlas range to the north and the Anti-Atlas to the south.

  “It is a homogeneous place. Like the area around it, the town is inhabited by Amazighs. The Romans called us Mazices; the Greeks, Libyans. By whatever name, we are Berbers, indigenous to many parts of North Africa and the Nile Valley. The ancient Roman author Apuleius was actually Berber, as was Saint Augustine of Hippo. So was, of course, Septimius Severus, emperor of Rome. And it was a Berber, Abd ar-Rahman the First, who conquered southern Spain and established the Umayyad Caliphate in Córdoba, the heart of what he called al-Andalus, modern-day Andalusia.”

  She turned to him. “I tell you this so you may better understand what is to come. This is a place of history, of conquest, of great deeds and great men. It is also a place of great energy—a power spot, if you will. It is a nexus point.”

  She took his hand again. “Bourne, you are an enigma,” she said softly. “You have a long lifeline—an unusually long lifeline. And yet…”

  “What is it?”

  “And yet you will die here today or perhaps tomorrow, but cert

ainly within the week.”

  All of Marrakech appeared to be a souk, all Moroccans vendors of something or other. Everything seemed to be bought and sold from the storefronts and marketplaces that lined the jammed streets and boulevards.

  Arkadin and Soraya had been observed upon their arrival, which he had expected, but no one approached them and they weren’t followed from the airport into the city. This did not reassure him. On the contrary, it made him even more wary. If the Severus Domna agents at the airport hadn’t followed them, it was because they had no need to. His conclusion was that the city, probably the entire Ouarzazate region, was swarming with them.

  Soraya confirmed that opinion when he voiced it. “It makes no sense you being here,” she said inside a taxi that smelled of stewed lentils, fried onions, and incense. “Why are you walking into such an obvious trap?”

  “Because I can.” Arkadin sat with his small suitcase on his lap. Inside was the laptop computer.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you believe.”

  “Another lie, otherwise I wouldn’t be here with you now.”

  He looked at her, shaking his head. “Within ten minutes I could make you cry out, I could make you forget all your previous lovers.”

  “I’m charmed, truly.”

  “Mother Teresa, not Mata Hari.” He said this with a good measure of disgust, as if her chastity had made him lose respect for her, or at least devalue her.

  “Do you imagine I care what a piece of shit like you thinks of me.” It was not a question.

  They bounced around in the backseat for some time. Then he said, as if continuing the previous conversation, “You’re here as an insurance policy. You and Bourne have a connection. At the proper time, I mean to make the most of it.”