The Bourne Objective

by Robert Ludlum

  He shook himself like a dog coming out of the rain. Why did he care? Well, he knew why. The Old Man had once confided in him that he suffered from the same strange illness—that’s what the Old Man called it, an illness. Strange to think that the two of them had once been friends, more than friends, come to think of it—what had they called it then? Blood brothers. As young men they had confided all their little tics and habits, the secrets that inhabited the dark corners of their souls. Where had it all gone wrong? How had they become the bitterest of enemies? It might have been the gradual divergence of their political views, but friends often dealt with disagreement. No, their separation had to do with a sense of betrayal, and in men such as they were, loyalty was the ultimate—the only—test of friendship.

  The truth was they had betrayed what they had built as young men, as their idealism was burned away in the crucible of the nation’s capital, where they had both chosen to serve lifetime sentences. The Old Man had been an acolyte of John Foster Dulles while he had attached himself to Richard Helms—men with wildly divergent backgrounds, methodologies, and, most importantly, ideologies. And since they were in the business of ideology and that business was their life there was no recourse but to turn on each other, to try with every fiber of their being to prove the other wrong, to bring him down, to destroy him.

  For decades the Old Man had outwitted him at every turn, but now the tables were turned, the Old Man was dead, and he had the prize he’d set his gaze on so long ago: control of CI.

  Danziger clearing his throat brought Halliday back from the chasm of the past.

  “Is there anything we’ve failed to cover?”

  The secretary regarded him as a child studies an ant or a beetle, with the curiosity reserved for a species so far below him that it seemed inconceivably distant. Danziger was far from a stupid man, which was why Halliday had chosen him as his knight to move back and forth across the chessboard of the American clandestine services. But apart from his usefulness on the board, he viewed Danziger as entirely expendable. Halliday had closed himself off the moment he felt the Old Man’s betrayal. He had a wife and two children, of course, but he scarcely thought of them. His son was a poet—good Christ, a poet, of all things! And his daughter, well, the less said about her and her female partner the better. As for his wife, she had betrayed him as well, giving birth to two disappointments. These days, apart from formal functions where the strict code of Washington family values required her to be on his arm, they lived entirely separate lives. It had been years since they had slept in the same room, let alone the same bed. Occasionally they found themselves having breakfast together, a minor torture Halliday escaped as quickly as he could.

  Danziger was leaning forward confidentially across the table. “If there’s anything I can help you with, you only have to—”

  “I think you’ve confused me with a friend,” Halliday snapped. “The day I ask for your help is the day I put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger.”

  He slid out of the booth and walked away without a backward glance, leaving Danziger to pay the check.

  Alone for the moment while Boris Karpov slept inside the convent, Arkadin poured himself a mescal and took the drink out into the steamy Sonora night. Dawn would soon be scything through the stars, extinguishing them as it went. The shorebirds were already awake, flocking out of their nests to sweep along the beachfront.

  Arkadin, breathing deeply of the salt and the phosphorus, punched in a number on his cell. The phone rang for a very long time. Knowing there would be no voice mail, he was about to hang up when a raspy voice sounded in his ear.

  “Who in the unholy name of Saint Stephen is this?”

  Arkadin laughed. “It’s me, Ivan.”

  “Why, hello, Leonid Danilovich,” Ivan Volkin said.

  Volkin had once been the most powerful man in the grupperovka. Unaffiliated with any family, he had for many years been a negotiator, both between families and between the bosses of certain families and the most corrupt businessmen and politicians. He was a man, in sum, to whom practically anyone in power owed favors. And though long retired, he had defied convention by becoming even more powerful as his age advanced. He was also particularly fond of Arkadin, whose strange ascent in the underworld he’d followed since the day Maslov had him brought to Moscow from his hometown of Nizhny Tagil.

  “I thought you might be the president,” Ivan Volkin said. “I told him I couldn’t help him this time.”

  The thought of the president of the Russian Federation calling Ivan Volkin for a favor caused Arkadin to chuckle all the more. “Pity for him,” he said.

  “I did some digging regarding your problem as you outlined it to me. You do indeed have a mole, my friend. I was able to narrow the candidates down to two, but that’s as far as I was able to get.”

  “That’s more than enough, Ivan Ivanovich. You have my undying gratitude.”

  Volkin laughed. “You know, my friend, you’re just about the only person on earth I don’t want anything from.”

  “I could give you virtually anything you want.”

  “As I well know, but to tell you the truth it’s a relief to have someone in my life who owes me nothing and to whom I owe the same. Nothing changes between us, eh, Leonid Danilovich.”

  “No, Ivan Ivanovich, it doesn’t.”

  After Volkin had given Arkadin the names of the two suspects, he said, “I have one more bit of information that will be of interest to you. I find it curious that I cannot tie either of these suspects to the FSB or, for that matter, any Russian secret service whatsoever.”

  “Then who is running the spy in my organization?”

  “Your mole has been extremely careful to keep his identity a secret—he wears dark glasses and a sweatshirt with a hood over his head, so there’s no good photo of him. However, the man he’s been meeting has been identified as Marlon Etana.”

  “Odd name.” It rang a bell deep inside Arkadin’s mind, but he was unable to access it.

  “Odder still is that I cannot find a single scrap of information on Marlon Etana.”

  “Ah, a pseudonym, surely.”

  “One would have expected that, yes,” Volkin said. “However, that would mean a legend to give the pseudonym reality. I have found nothing, except that Marlon Etana is a founding member of the Monition Club, which has many branches throughout the world, but whose headquarters seems to be in Washington, DC.”

  “A deep-cover arm of CI or one of the many Hydra heads of the American Department of Defense.”

  Ivan Volkin made an animal sound deep in his throat. “When you find out, Leonid Danilovich, be sure to let me know.”

  Be sure to let me know,” Arkadin had said to Tracy some months ago. “Anything and everything you find out about Don Fernando Hererra, even the most minute, seemingly irrelevant bit of information.”

  “Including the regularity of his bowel movements?”

  He sat watching her, his feral eyes glittering, not moving, not blinking. They were seated at a café in Campione d’Italia, the picturesque Italian tax haven tucked away in the Swiss Alps. The tiny municipality rose steeply off the glassy ultramarine-blue surface of a clear mountain lake, studded with vessels of all sizes from rowboats to multimillion-dollar yachts, complete with the helipads, the copters, and, on the largest of these, the females to go with them.

  For the five minutes before she had arrived, Arkadin had been watching an obscenely large yacht on which two long-stemmed models preened as if for paparazzi. They had the kind of perfectly bronzed skin only the kept woman knows how to acquire. As he sipped a small cup of espresso, which was all but lost in his large, square hand, he thought, It’s good to be the king. Then he saw the naked hairy back of this particular king and turned away in disgust. You can take the man out of hell but you can’t take hell out of the man. This was the operative phrase for Arkadin.

  Then Tracy had shown up and he forgot the hell of Nizhny Tagil that plagued him like a recurring nightm
are. Nizhny Tagil was where he had been born and raised, where he’d lost three toes to rats when his mother had locked him in a closet, where he had killed and was almost killed so many times he’d lost count. Nizhny Tagil was where he had lost everything, where, one could say, he had died.

  He had ordered Tracy an espresso with sambuca, which was what she liked. As he stared into her beautiful face, he continued to be confounded by his conflicting feelings. He was drawn to her, intensely, but he also hated her. He hated her erudition, her vast knowledge. Every time she opened her mouth she reminded him of how little formal education he’d had. And to make matters much worse, he learned something valuable every time he was with her. How often do we despise our teachers, who lord it over us with their superior knowledge, who throw that knowledge and their experience in our faces. Every time he learned something, he was reminded of how inexorably tied to her he was, how much he needed her. Which was why he treated her as a bipolar might. He loved her, rewarded her with more and more money at the completion of each assignment, showered her with gifts between assignments.

  She had never slept with him. He hadn’t tried to seduce her, fearing that in the throes of passion his iron control might weaken, that he would grab her by the throat and throttle her until her tongue poked out and her eyes rolled up in her head. He would regret her death. Over the years she had proved indispensable. With the inside knowledge she had given him, he’d been able to blackmail her wealthy art clients, and those he chose not to suborn he used as patsies, delivering drugs all over the world secreted in the crates that held their precious artwork.

  Tracy ran the crescent of lemon rind around the rim of her cup. “What’s so special about Don Fernando?”

  “Drink your espresso.”

  She stared down at her cup but didn’t touch it.

  “What’s the matter?” he said at last.

  “Let’s skip him, shall we?”

  He waited a moment, quietly. Then, suddenly leaning forward, he grasped her knee beneath the table in an agonizing grip. Her head snapped up, her eyes engaged with his.

  “You know the rules,” he said with soft menace. “You don’t question assignments, you take them.”

  “Not this one.”

  “All of them.”

  “I like this man.”

  “All. Of. Them.”

  She stared at him, unblinking.

  He despised most of all when she got like this, that enigmatic mask that came down over her face, making him feel like a dim-witted child who had failed to learn how to read properly. “Have you forgotten the damaging evidence I have on you? Do you want me to go to your client and tell him how you accommodated your brother when he stole your client’s painting to cover his debts? Do you really want to spend the next twenty years of your life in prison? It’s more terrible than you can imagine, believe me.”

  “I want out,” she said in a strangled voice.

  He had laughed. “God, you’re a stupid cow.” Once, just once, he thought, I’d like to make you cry. “There is no out. You signed on, a contract in blood, metaphorically speaking.”

  “I want out.”

  He sat back, releasing her knee. “Besides, Don Fernando Hererra is only a secondary target—at least, for now.”

  She had begun to shake, very slightly, and there was a tic under her left eye. She took up her espresso and drained the cup. There was a slight clatter when she set it down.

  “Who are you after?”

  Close, this time, he thought. Very close. “Someone special,” he had said. “A man who calls himself Adam Stone. And this assignment is a bit different.” His hands had spread wide apart. “Adam Stone is not his real name, of course.”

  “What is it?”

  Arkadin’s smile held real malice. He turned his head and ordered them two more espressos.

  Dawn was spreading its wings over Puerto Peñasco as Arkadin’s brief flare of memory subsided into darkness. A freshening breeze off the water brought the scent of a new day. There had been women in his life—Yelena, Marlene, Devra, others, surely, though their names now escaped him—but no one like Tracy. Those three—Yelena, Marlene, and Devra—had meant something to him, though he’d be hard put to say precisely what. Each in her own way had changed the course of his life. Yet none had enriched it. Only Tracy, his Tracy. He clenched his fist. But she hadn’t been his Tracy, had she? No, no, no. Good Christ, no.

  Rain drummed against the roof of the cottage, fat drops sliding down the windows. A rumble of approaching thunder. The lace curtains stirred. In the dead of night Chrissie lay fully dressed on one of the twin beds, staring at the window, speckled as a robin’s egg. Scarlett lay curled on the other bed, breathing evenly in her sleep. Chrissie knew she should be sleeping, that she needed her rest, but after the incident on the motorway her nerves would not stop singing. Several hours ago she had contemplated taking half a lorazepam to calm herself into sleep, but the thought of drifting off made her more anxious.

  The singing of her nerves had only increased when she’d picked Scarlett up from her parents. Her father, always well attuned to her moods, had suspected something was up with her the moment he opened the door to her knock, and he was not convinced when she tried to reassure him that everything was fine. She could still see his thin, oblong face as he stood looking after her while she bundled Scarlett into the Range Rover. It was the same stricken look he’d had standing over Tracy’s coffin as it was lowered into the ground. As she got in behind the wheel, Chrissie breathed a sigh of relief that she’d had the foresight to park the SUV so that he couldn’t see the scrapes along one side. She waved cheerfully to him as she drove away. He was still standing in the doorway when she went around a curve and disappeared from his view.

  Now, hours later and miles away, she lay on the bed in a house owned by a girlfriend who was away in Brussels on business. She’d been able to pick up the keys from the woman’s brother. In the dark she lay listening to all the tiny creaking and moaning, whispers and hissing of a strange house. The wind clawed at the window sashes, trying to find a way in. She shivered and pulled a blanket tighter around her, but the blanket didn’t warm her. Neither did the central heating. There was a chill in her bones, caused by her vibrating nerves, and the dread that stalked her thoughts.

  “We were being followed, possibly all the way from Tracy’s flat,” Adam had said. “There’s no point in taking a chance these people know about Scarlett—and where your parents live, for that matter.”

  The thought that these people who had wanted to shoot Adam might know about her daughter gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to feel safe here, wanted to believe that there was no danger now that she had separated herself from him, but the doubts continued to prey on her. Another roll of thunder, closer this time, and then another burst of rain rattled the windowpane. She sat up, gasping. Her heart was pounding, and she reached for the Glock that Adam had given her for protection. She had some experience with guns, though mostly rifles and shotguns. Against her mother’s objections, her father had taken her hunting on winter Sundays, when the frost was brittle and the sun was weak and drained of color. She remembered the quivering flank of a deer, and how she had flinched when her father had fired a shot into its heart. She remembered the look in its eye as her father had taken his skinning knife to its belly. Its mouth was half open as if it had been about to ask for mercy before it was shot.

  Scarlett whimpered in her sleep, and Chrissie rose and, leaning over, stroked her hair as she always did when her daughter was having a bad dream. Why were children burdened with nightmares, she wondered, when there was so much time for nightmares in adult life? Where was the carefree childhood she’d had? Was it a mirage? Had she also had nightmares, night terrors, anxieties? She could not now remember, which was a blessing.

  She knew one thing, though, Tracy would have laughed at her for even having such thoughts. “Life isn’t carefree,” she could hear her sister saying. “What are you th
inking? Life is difficult, at best. At its worst, it’s a bloody nightmare.”

  What would have led her to say such a thing? Chrissie asked herself. What misfortunes had befallen her while I had my head stuck in my Oxford texts? All at once she was overcome with the conviction that she had failed Tracy, that she should have seen the signs of her stress, her difficult life. But, really, how could she have helped her? Tracy had been lost in a world so distant, so alien, Chrissie was sure she would have found it incomprehensible. Just as she could make no sense of what had happened today. Who was Adam Stone? She had no doubt that he’d been friends with Tracy, but she suspected now that he was more—a compatriot, business partner, maybe even her boss. Something he hadn’t told her, hadn’t wanted to tell her. All she knew for certain was that her sister’s life had been a secret, and so was Adam’s. They had been part of the same alien world, and now all unknowing she had been dragged into it. She gave a shiver again and, seeing that Scarlett had quieted, lay beside her so that they were back-to-back. Her daughter’s warmth seeped slowly into her, her eyelids grew heavy, and she began to drowse, sinking slowly, inexorably into the delicious cushion of sleep.

  A sharp noise startled her awake. For a moment she lay completely still, listening to the rain, the wind, Scarlett breathing along with the cottage. She listened for the noise. Had she dreamed it or had she been asleep at all? After what seemed a long time, she got out of Scarlett’s bed, reached over, and slid her hand under the pillow for the Glock. Padding silently toward the half-open bedroom door, she peered out at the wedge of pale light from the lamp she’d kept on in the bedroom across the hall so she and Scarlett could find the bathroom without barking their shins.

  She moved into the hallway, listened fiercely. She became aware of sweat snaking down her sides from underneath her arms. Her breath felt hot in her throat. Every second that ticked by ratcheted up her anxiety, but also the hope that she had dreamed the noise. Gliding along the hallway, she peered down the stairs at the darkened living room. Standing at the head of the stairs, undecided, she had just about convinced herself that she’d been dreaming when she heard the small noise again.