The Bourne Objective

by Robert Ludlum

  Karpov paused before the last stall, then charged through. Just as the voice had described, there was no toilet, only another door set flush with the rear wall. Karpov, a cold ball of dread beginning to form in his stomach, disintegrated the lock with a furious burst from his AK-47 assault rifle. At once he shouldered his way through to find an interior set up with an office against the rear wall, raised off the floor and accessed by a metal ladder.

  No one was in the office. The phones had been pulled from the wall outlets, the upended file cases and desks, their drawers open, mocked him with their complete barrenness, the obvious haste with which they had been denuded. He turned slowly in a circle, his practiced eye running over everything. Nothing, there was nothing.

  Contacting his men at the perimeter, he confirmed what the ice ball growing in his stomach already told him: No one had entered or left the warehouse from the time they had arrived in the area.

  “Fuck!” Karpov set one ample buttock on the corner of a desk. The man on the phone had been right all the way down the line. He had warned Karpov not to tell anyone, warned him that Maslov’s people might be warned. He had to have been Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.

  The Rolls-Royce was gargantuan, something out of the automotive Jurassic age. It stood gleaming like a silver train at the curb outside the office building. Stepping ahead of her, Lionel Binns opened the curbside rear door. As Moira bent and stepped inside, a wash of incense rolled over her. She sat down on the leather seat as the attorney closed the door after her.

  As she settled herself, her eyes slowly adjusting to the murky gloom, she found herself sitting beside a rather large, blocky man 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 long, thick, and as curly as Nebuchadnezzar’s. Now the cardamom tea made sense to her. He was some sort of Arab. Inspecting further, she noticed that his suit, though clearly Western, draped his shoulders and chest like a Berber robe.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said in a great, booming voice that echoed off the finely polished walnut surfaces of the spacious interior, “for taking a small leap of faith.” He spoke with a heavy, almost guttural accent, but his English was impeccable.

  A moment later the driver, unseen behind a walnut panel, pulled the Rolls out into traffic, heading south.

  “You are Mr. Binns’s client, correct?”

  “Indeed. My name is Jalal Essai, my home is in Morocco.”

  Yes, indeed. Berber. “And you had a laptop that was stolen.”

  “That’s right.”

  Moira was sitting with her right shoulder against the door. She felt abruptly chilled; the interior now seemed suffocatingly small, as if the man’s presence had spilled out of his body, invading and darkening the backseat, stealing over her, worming its way inside. She tried to catch her breath and managed only to shiver. The air seemed to fizz or shimmer, as if she were seeing a desert mirage. “Why me? I still don’t get it.”

  “Ms. Trevor, you have certain, shall we say, unique abilities that I believe will be invaluable in finding my laptop and returning it to me.”

  “And those abilities would be…”

  “You have successfully taken on both Black River and the NSA. Do you think that I could find a single private detective who has also done so?” He turned and smiled at her with a set of large, brilliant white teeth shining out of a dusky cardamom face defined by flat planes, high cheekbones, and deep-set eyes, hooded as a hawk’s. “No need to answer, that wasn’t a question.”

  “Okay, I’ll ask you a question: Do you believe that clandestine agencies were involved in the theft?”

  Essai appeared to consider this for some time, though Moira had the distinct impression that he knew for certain.

  “It’s possible,” he said at length. “Even likely.”

  Moira crossed her arms over her breasts as if to protect herself from the way his logic was chipping away at her resolve, the waves of dark energy emanating from him like nothing she had felt before, as if she were sitting too near a particle collider. She shook her head emphatically. “Sorry.”

  Essai nodded. It seemed as if nothing she said or did surprised him.

  “In any event, this is for you.”

  He handed over a manila folder, which Moira eyed with mounting suspicion and an eerie dread. Why did she feel like Eve taking the apple of knowledge? Nevertheless, as if her hands were obeying someone else’s command, she took possession of the folder.

  “Please. There are no strings,” Essai said. “Rest assured.”

  She hesitated a moment, then opened it. Inside was a surveillance photo of one of the top operatives she’d poached from Black River meeting with the director of field operations for the NSA.

  “Tim Upton? He’s the NSA mole? This wasn’t Photoshopped, was it?”

  Essai said nothing, so she dropped her gaze to read the accompanying sheet of observed times and places when Upton met clandestinely with various members of the NSA. She sighed deeply, sitting back against the cushion, and slowly closed the file.

  “This is extremely generous of you.”

  Essai shrugged as if it were nothing. And as if on cue the Rolls slowed and pulled to the curb.

  “Good-bye, Ms. Trevor.”

  Moira actually got as far as grabbing the door handle before she turned back to the bearded man and said, “So what is it that makes this laptop of yours so valuable?”

  Essai’s smile shone like a beacon.

  4

  BOURNE ARRIVED IN London on a depressingly murky, windblown morning. A misty rain swirled along the Thames, obscuring Big Ben, and the low sky, heavy as lead, pressed down against the modern rise of the city. The air stank of petrol and coal dust, but possibly it was just the industrial grit whipped up by the wind.

  Suparwita had told him the address of Noah Perlis’s flat. It was the only specific clue he had left himself from that now forgotten time in his life. Sitting in the back of a taxi on the way in from Heathrow, he stared out at the passing scenery without seeing anything. There seemed whole stretches now when he forgot that he’d had a life before his amnesia, but then, like a slap in the face, a shard of it would unexpectedly surface to remind him of what he was missing, what he could never retrieve. In that first instant he felt diminished, a man living half a life, living with a shadow he could never see or even barely feel. Yet it was there, a part of him he could touch only briefly and in frustratingly limited fashion—flashes in the farthest periphery of his vision.

  This was what had happened to him in Bali when, trying to find Suparwita several weeks ago, he had ascended to the first temple at the Pura Lempuyang complex. He stood on the very spot he had been dreaming about and discovered that in the time before his amnesia he had been supposed to meet Holly Marie Moreau there. A memory had surfaced. He recalled watching from too great a distance to help her as she fell down the steep flight of stone steps to her death. In fact, as he had subsequently discovered, Noah Perlis, hidden in the shadows of the high carved stone gates, had pushed her.

  Perlis’s flat was in Belgravia, an area of West London between Mayfair and Knightsbridge, in what had once been a merchant’s Georgian mansion but which, in modern times, had been carved into individual living quarters. The shining white building featured a deep terrace that overlooked a tree-lined square. Belgravia was filled with glowing white Georgian row houses, embassies, and posh hotels, a lovely walking neighborhood.

  The front-door lock posed no problem, neither did the one on Perlis’s second-floor flat. Bourne walked into a generously proportioned sitting room, neatly and fashionably furnished, probably not by Perlis himself who surely hadn’t the time for such domestic matters. Despite the sunlight, the air was cold, somber, thick and sluggish with abandonment, the vague sorrow of the forgotten or the disappeared. A small vibration hovered at the edge of Bourne’s senses as if left over from the last time Perlis had been here. There was nothing now but a whisper of wind
through the old window sashes and the somnolent stirring of dust motes in the diagonal ribs of light.

  Though there was a distinctly masculine feel to the place—whiskey-colored leather sofa, burly woods, deep hues on the walls—Bourne couldn’t help but suspect a female touch in the accessories, the pewter candelabra with ivory-colored candles half burned down, the delicate swirl of Moroccan lamps, Mexican kitchen tiles bright as a tropical bird’s plumage. But it was the bathroom, with its retro pink-and-black glass tiles, and neat as a pin, that clearly revealed the flourishes of the woman’s hand. While he was there, he checked behind the toilet tank and, lifting the lid, inside it to see if Perlis had taped anything in those favorite hiding places.

  Finding nothing, he moved on to Perlis’s bedroom, which interested him the most. Bedrooms were where people—even ones as professional and security-minded as Perlis—tended to hide their intimate possessions, the items that if discovered might give themselves away as clues to the inner self.

  He started with the closet, with its rows of black or dark blue trousers and jackets—but no suits—all this year’s fashions. Someone had been shopping for Perlis, as well. Pushing aside the rack of clothes, Bourne tapped on the back wall, checking for hollow areas, finding none. He did the same with the side walls, then lifted the shoes pair by pair to check the floor for a hidey-hole. Next, he went through the chest of drawers, feeling under each for anything Perlis might have taped there. At the rear of the bottom drawer he found a Glock. Checking it, he discovered that it was well oiled and loaded. He pocketed it.

  Finally, he came to the bed, swinging aside the mattress to check the box spring for papers, photos, thumb drives, or a hidden compartment that might contain them. Under the mattress was a childish place to hide anything of value, but that was precisely why most people did it. Old habits died hard. He moved the box spring off the metal frame so he could flip it over, but found nothing out of the ordinary. Putting the bed back together, he sat on the edge and contemplated the seven framed photos on the top of the dresser. They were lined up in such a way that they were likely the last things Perlis saw before he went to sleep and the first things he saw when he woke up in the morning.

  Perlis himself appeared in all but one. He had been walking in Hyde Park with Holly Marie Moreau. They had stopped in front of one of the soapbox ministers, and obviously Noah had grabbed someone from the crowd to take the shot. In another—clearly self-timed—they were boating, perhaps upriver on the Thames. Holly was laughing, possibly at something Noah had said. She seemed at ease, which Bourne, knowing Perlis and the end of their tragic history, found deeply unsettling.

  The third photo showed Noah shoulder-to-shoulder with a handsome young man in a fashionable three-piece suit. His skin was dark, with exotic features. Something in his face spoke to Bourne, as if he’d seen him in his unremembered life, or at least someone like him. Another shot of the two of them with arm candy, in a swank London nightclub. There was some kind of a gaming table in the background, where bettors hovered tensely, bent at the waist like the elderly. Bourne looked more closely at the arm candy. The two women were half hidden behind the men, slightly out of focus, but as he scrutinized the photo more closely he recognized Holly… and Tracy. Which came as a shock to him. He’d met Tracy a month ago on a plane to Seville and they had become allies as they traveled together to Khartoum, where she had died in his arms. It was only later that he had discovered she was taking orders from Arkadin.

  So Tracy, Perlis, Holly, and the unknown young man had been a foursome. What strange stroke of fate had brought them together, had caused them to be friends?

  Next came a portrait of the young man, watching the camera with a mixture of suspicion and sardonic amusement, a mocking smile that only scions of wealthy families are rich enough to use as either weapon or lure. The seventh and last photo was of the three of them, Perlis, the young man, Holly Marie Moreau. Where was Tracy? Taking the photo, no doubt, or maybe she was away on one of her innumerable trips. Their faces were lit up from below by the candles of an ornate cake. It was Holly’s birthday. She was between the two men, slightly bent, one hand pushing back her long hair, her cheeks billowed out while she prepared to blow out the candles. She had a faraway look as she considered what to wish for. She looked very young and totally innocent.

  Bourne considered the lineup once again, then he rose and in random order took them apart. Taped to the back of the birthday photo was a passport in Perlis’s name, a spare. Pocketing it, Bourne reassembled the elements and replaced the framed photo, staring intently at it. What was Holly Marie Moreau like? How had Perlis met her? Had they been lovers, friends, or had he used her? Had she used him? He ran his hand through his hair, rubbing at his scalp as if he could stimulate his brain into remembering what it clearly couldn’t. He had a moment of pure panic, as if he were in a tiny boat set adrift on a fogbound sea, his sight obscured in every direction. Try as he might he could not recall his time with her. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the persistent dream of her death he’d had in Bali, he wouldn’t have remembered her at all. Was there no end to the nightmare of not remembering, of people appearing out of the dense fog of his past, hovering like ghosts caught in the corners of his vision? Usually he had his emotions under control, but he knew why this time was different: He could still feel the life draining out of Tracy Atherton as he held her in his arms. Had he held Holly the same way as she lay broken at the foot of the Balinese temple’s steep staircase?

  He sat on the bed, hunched over, staring into a well of memories, of people close to him who were now dead—because of him? Because they had loved him? He’d loved Marie, of that there was no question. But what about Tracy? Could you love someone after only days, a week? Even a month seemed too short a time to know. And yet Tracy remained in his mind, vibrant and infinitely sad, someone he wanted to touch, to talk with, and couldn’t. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. And then there was the agony of knowing that Holly had meant something to him, that she had walked beside him, possibly laughing as she had with Noah Perlis, but he would never know. His only memory was of her falling down the temple steps, falling, falling… And now he was alone again, because he didn’t want Moira to suffer the fate of all the others who had tried to get close to him. Alone, always and forever…

  Tracy had shivered against him, as if she had been exhaling for the last time. “Jason, I don’t want to be alone.”

  “You’re not alone, Tracy.” He remembered his lips pressing against her forehead. “I’m here with you.”

  “Yes, I know, it’s good, I feel you around me.” Just before she died she had given a sigh, akin to a cat’s purr of contentment.

  The curtains in Noah Perlis’s flat twitched and shivered as if alive, and a harsh, flat laugh escaped his pulled-back lips. Had Holly whispered to him as Tracy had: “It’s in our darkest hour that our secrets eat us alive.” Little did Tracy know that every hour of his amnesiac life was his darkest hour, that the secrets eating him alive were secrets even from him. He missed Tracy, missed her with the sharpness of a stiletto slipped between his ribs so that he gasped out loud. The curtains shivered in the wind through the sash and it was as if Tracy were here with him again, looking at him with her huge blue eyes, her wide megawatt smile so like Suparwita’s. In the wind he heard her laugh, felt the back of her hand brush against his cheek, cooling his flesh.

  He had only known her a very short time, but those days had consisted of the compressed time in battle, when staying alive became the be-all and end-all of existence, when every moment contained the taint of death, when company mates become lifelong friends.

  Tracy had touched him in a place both heavily defended and starkly tender. She had wormed her way inside him and now remained there, coiled and breathing, even after death.

  And then, so close to her, hearing her voice in his mind, he remembered something she had said the night before she’d been killed: “I live in London, Belgravia. If you saw my flat—it�
��s a tiny thing, but it’s mine and I love it. There’s a mews out back with a flowering pear tree that a pair of house martins nest in come spring. And a nightjar serenades me most evenings.”

  He caught his breath. Was it really a coincidence that both Tracy and Perlis lived in Belgravia? Bourne didn’t believe in coincidences, especially not with this group of people: Tracy, Holly, Perlis, the Hererras, Nikolai Yevsen, Leonid Arkadin. Perlis and Yevsen were dead, as were Tracy and Holly, and Arkadin was God only knew where. That left the Hererras as the living tendons that held this constellation together.

  Only the photo of the handsome young man with the mocking half smile was left unexplored. Where had he seen that face before? It was maddeningly familiar and yet subtly changed, as if he’d seen the man when he was younger… or older! In a sudden frenzy he slid out the cardboard backing and discovered a small key taped to the back of the photo. He peeled it off. The size indicated that it was from either a public locker at one of the airports or the train station or… There was a paper tag attached by a small piece of thin wire that had a series of numbers handwritten on it in ink. Safe-deposit box. He turned the key over. Imprinted on its obverse was a logo consisting of two tiny interlinked letters: AB.

  Everything clicked into place. This man was Diego Hererra, son and heir of Don Fernando Hererra, who had dealt in illicit gun trafficking with the late great Nikolai Yevsen, the legendary arms dealer whom Bourne had killed last month. Don Hererra’s legitimate business was the Aguardiente Bancorp: AB. He had given Diego the job of running Aguardiente’s London office.

  Noah Perlis was friends with Diego Hererra, and they both knew Holly. Picking up the photo of the three of them at Holly’s birthday, he looked from one face to another and saw the identical complicit look in their eyes. Perlis had been friends with Holly and he had killed her. That complicit look of friendship… and then murder.