The Bourne Objective

by Robert Ludlum

  Outside, the night was very dark, without moonlight. Because of the cloud cover, only a wan halo of stars toward the crown of the sky was visible. Inside, the cantina stank of beer and body odor. The room was raucous with a desperation tinged by hopelessness and despair. She felt surrounded by people for whom tomorrow didn’t exist.

  She wished that she and Moira could talk to each other, if only for the briefest moment, but under Arkadin’s eye that was impossible. Even going to the ladies’ room at the same time would doubtless arouse his suspicion. She didn’t know Moira’s cell number, so texting her was out. There remained only a verbal conversation laced with coded messages. If they were on parallel paths, or even by chance the same one, it was essential they not get in each other’s way.

  Arkadin and Moira were dripping sweat when they returned to the table. Arkadin ordered beers for them, and another coffee for Soraya. Whatever might happen tomorrow, he was clearly enjoying being with the two women tonight.

  “Moira,” Soraya said, “do you know anything about the Middle East, or is your expertise strictly in the Americas?”

  “Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, and to some extent Brazil are my territories.”

  “And you work alone?”

  “I have a company, but right now I’m on special assignment to Berengária Moreno.” Moira gestured with her chin. “And you?”

  “My own company, though there’s a conglomerate that’s looking for a hostile takeover.”

  “Multinational?”

  “Strictly American.”

  Moira nodded. “Import-export, you said?”

  Soraya stirred some sugar into her coffee. “That’s right.”

  “You might be able to use my, ah, expertise against hostile bidders.”

  “Thank you, but no.” Soraya sipped her coffee, then put the cup back in its saucer. “I have my own, ah, enforcers.”

  “What do you call a thought in a woman’s head?” Arkadin leaned forward, looking from one to the other. “A tourist!” He laughed so hard he almost choked on his beer. Then, noting their somber expressions, “Shit, lighten up, ladies, we’re here to have fun, not talk business.”

  Moira looked at him for a moment. “What do you get when you cross a Russian with a Vietnamese? A car thief that can’t drive.”

  Soraya laughed. “Now we’re having fun.”

  Arkadin smiled. “Have any more?”

  “Let’s see.” Moira drummed her fingers on the table. “How about this? Two Russians and a Mexican are in a car. Who’s driving? The police.”

  Arkadin laughed and shook his finger at Moira. “Where do you pick up these jokes?”

  “In prison,” Moira said. “Roberto Corellos loves making Russians the butt of jokes.”

  “Time to switch to tequila,” Arkadin said, signaling the waiter. “Bring a bottle,” he said to the young woman who came over. “Something fine. A reposado or añejo.”

  Instead of another ranchera, the jukebox began to play “Twenty-four Hours from Tulsa.” Gene Pitney’s high twang rang out over the laughter and shouts of the drunken patrons. But morning was coming, and with it a change in the clientele. As the night owls slowly staggered out, the night-shift people from the maquiladora drifted in, heads aching, tails dragging. There were fewer of them, as well, most of them stumbling home to fall into bed without taking off their clothes.

  Before the tequila got to the table, Arkadin had grabbed Moira’s hand and was swinging her onto the dance floor, which for the first time all night was larger than a postage stamp. He held her close while they swayed to the Burt Bacharach melody.

  “You’re something of a smart-ass,” he said, smiling like a shark.

  “It didn’t come easy,” she said.

  He laughed. “I can only imagine.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  Arkadin swung her around. “You’re wasting your time in South America. You should come to work for me.”

  “Before I set up Corellos’s murder?”

  “Let that be your last assignment.” He stuck his nose into the side of her neck and inhaled deeply. “How are you going to do it?”

  “I thought you said no business.”

  “Just this one bit, then it’s all fun. I swear.”

  “Corellos is addicted to women. I have a connection to his supplier. When is a man more vulnerable than after sex? I’ll find someone who’s good with a knife.”

  Arkadin pulled her hips harder into him. “I like it. Set it up right away.”

  “I want a bonus.”

  He nuzzled her neck, licked her sweat. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

  “Then I’m yours.”

  Karpov’s cell phone rang while he was in the process of reprogramming Dimitri Maslov’s mole. Dakaev was drowning, or more precisely, he believed he was drowning, which was, after all, the point. But ten minutes later, when Dakaev was back in his stainless-steel chair and Karpov was pouring tea into a glass, his cell rang again. This time he answered it. A familiar voice was on the other end of the line.

  “Jason!” Karpov cried. “How excellent to hear your voice.”

  “Are you busy?”

  Karpov glanced over at Dakaev, slumped over, his chin on his chest. He looked barely human, which was also the point. You couldn’t build something new without tearing down what had been there before.

  “Busy? Yes. But never too busy for you. What can I do for you?”

  “I assume you know Dimitri Maslov’s lieutenant, Vylacheslav Oserov.”

  “You assume correctly.”

  “Do you think you can find a way to get him somewhere?”

  “If you mean somewhere like hell, yes I can.”

  Bourne laughed in his ear. “I was thinking of something a little less terminal. A place, let us say, in Morocco.”

  Karpov took a sip of tea, which was in desperate need of sugar. “May I ask why you need Oserov in Morocco?”

  “He’s bait, Boris. I intend to catch Arkadin.”

  Karpov thought of his sojourn in Sonora, his deal with Arkadin, and added him to the list of President Imov and Viktor Cherkesov. He had promised Arkadin his chance at Oserov, but fuck that. I’m too old and too bloody-minded to owe so many dangerous people so much, he thought. One less is a step toward none.

  Then he looked over at Dakaev, the conduit to Dimitri Maslov and, therefore, Vylacheslav Oserov. After what he had just been through, he had no doubt that the prisoner would jump at the chance to do what Karpov asked of him.

  “Tell me in detail what you need done.” Listening, Karpov smiled contentedly. When Bourne was finished, he chuckled deeply. “Jason, my friend, what I wouldn’t give to be you!”

  Just after sunrise they were all sweaty enough to want to go into the water. At the convent, Arkadin gave Moira and Soraya oversize T-shirts. He was in surfer trunks that came down to his knees. His upper body and limbs were a museum of tattoos that, if interpreted correctly, traced his career in the grupperovka.

  The three of them waded through the surf, pulled and pushed by the waves rushing onto the golden sand. The sky was still pink, paling out to the color of butter. Gulls dipped and swooped over their heads and tiny fish nibbled at their feet and ankles. The water came up and slapped them in the face, making them laugh like children. The unalloyed joy of being let free in the ocean.

  Out beyond the surf line, Moira thought it odd that Arkadin kept diving for seashells rather than stare at her breasts through the wet T-shirt, especially after the way he’d been dancing with her at the cantina. She had found out little enough information about Soraya’s mission from the coded conversation Soraya had started and Arkadin had nipped off with his misogynistic joke.

  While Arkadin was still trolling for shells, she set off after Soraya to see if the two of them could speak briefly. Diving through an incoming wave, she began to swim out to where Soraya was drifting on her back, but something caught her left ankle, jerking her back.

  Jackknifing her body, she looked behind
her. Arkadin had hold of her. She pushed back at him, palms against his chest, but he only drew her more closely to him. She rose up, breaking the surface, and found herself face-to-face with him.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” She scrubbed the sheeting water off her face. “I can’t stand properly.”

  He let her go immediately. “I’ve had enough and I’m hungry.”

  Moira turned and shouted to Soraya, who plunged down from her float and paddled over.

  “We’re going to breakfast,” Moira said.

  The two women waded out of the surf with Arkadin just behind them. They had reached the high-tide line, hillocks of dry sand ahead, when Arkadin bent over. Using the scythe-like edge of the seashell, he severed the tendons at the back of Moira’s left knee.

  25

  THE VILLAGE OF Whitney, Oxfordshire, lay twelve miles west of Oxford, on the Windrush River. All that was missing were Hobbits and Orcs. Bourne drove out from London in a rental car. The afternoon was cool and dry with peeks of sun now and again through the rolling clouds. He hadn’t lied to Peter Marks; he had every intention of going to Tineghir. But first there was something he needed to do.

  Basil Bayswater lived in a thatch-roofed cottage straight out of a Tolkien novel. It had quirky round windows and flower shoots springing up in neat beds lining a white gravel walkway that led up to the front door. This door was thick and wooden, with a roaring brass lion’s-head knocker in its center. Bourne used it.

  Several moments later a man quite a bit younger than he had expected opened the door.

  “Yes? How may I help you?” He had long hair brushed straight back off his wide forehead, dark, watchful eyes, and a strong chin.

  “I’m looking for Basil Bayswater,” Bourne said.

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bourne said.

  “Ah, you must mean Professor Basil Bayswater. I’m afraid my father passed away three years ago.”

  Moira screamed as blood bloomed in the water like a stranded jellyfish. Arkadin caught her as she canted over.

  “My God,” Soraya cried, “what’ve you done?”

  Moira continued to scream, bent double, clutching her left leg.

  Arkadin, ignoring Soraya for the moment, bared his teeth at Moira. “Did you think I didn’t recognize you?”

  Something icy congealed in the pit of Moira’s stomach.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw you in Bali. You were with Bourne.”

  In her mind’s eye she saw the flight through the village of Tenganan, and then Bourne being shot by a sniper hidden in the forest.

  Her eyes opened wide.

  “Yeah, that was me.” He laughed, throwing the bloody seashell up in the air and catching it as if it were a ball. “You were with Bourne. You’re his lover. And now fate has brought you to me.”

  Soraya was both outraged and terrified. “What the hell is happening here?”

  “We’re about to find out.” Arkadin turned to her. “This is Jason Bourne’s lover, but perhaps the two of you know each other.”

  With a force of will, Soraya kept her panic down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay, I’ll spell it out for you. I never bought your story, but I wasn’t going to send you away until I found out what you really wanted. I strongly suspect Willard sent you. He tried this trick on me once before with a woman named Tracy Atherton. He sent her to keep an eye on me, to report back on all my business dealings. And it worked. She was dead by the time I figured it out. But you I fingered from the get-go, because Willard is a creature of habits, especially ones that have worked for him.”

  “Let her go,” Soraya said, more agitated with each passing moment.

  “I might do that,” Arkadin said. “I might even let her live. But that’s entirely up to you.”

  Soraya walked over and took Moira away from him. Gently and slowly, she lowered her to the ground. Then she slid her wet shirt over her head and, winding it around Moira’s left thigh, pulled it as tight as she could and tied it. By that time Moira had passed out, from either the shock or the pain, or both.

  “It’s you I want,” Arkadin continued. “You’re the one talking about Khartoum, you’re the one who wants to get me there. You tell me who you are and what you know and I’ll consider lightening Moira’s punishment.”

  “We need to get her to the nearest hospital,” Soraya said. “This wound has to be cleaned out and disinfected as soon as possible.”

  “Again”—Arkadin spread his hands—“up to you.”

  Soraya looked down at the back of Moira’s knee. Dear God, she wondered, will she ever walk normally again? She knew the longer they waited to get Moira into the hands of a competent surgeon, the worse off she’d be. She’d seen tendons severed like this. They weren’t easy to repair, and who knew how badly the nerves were affected?

  She let out a long breath. “What do you want to know?”

  “For starters, who are you?”

  “Soraya Moore.”

  “The Soraya Moore, director of Typhon?”

  “Not anymore.” She stroked Moira’s damp hair. “Willard has resurrected Treadstone.”

  “No wonder he wants to keep an eye on me.

  What else?”

  “Plenty,” Soraya said. “I’ll tell you on the way to the hospital.”

  Arkadin loomed over her. “You’ll tell me now.”

  “You might as well kill us both right here.”

  Arkadin cursed her, but in the end he acceded to her demand. Hefting Moira in his arms, he carried her back to the convent. While he slid her into the backseat, Soraya went to get a shirt. She was rooting through Arkadin’s desk when he found her.

  “Fuck, no,” he said and, grabbing her wrist, dragged her outside.

  Half throwing her into the passenger’s seat of the car, he said, “I will kill you as soon as look at you.” Then he went around the front of the car, slid behind the wheel, and fired the ignition.

  “You’re right.” Soraya kept Moira’s leg elevated as they sped through the outskirts of Puerto Peñasco. “Willard wanted me to get close to you, to report on your whereabouts and your business dealings.”

  “And? I sense there’s something more.”

  “There is,” she said. She knew she had to sell this part perfectly. She no longer believed absolutely in her ability to outsmart him, but this much she needed to do. “Willard has become interested in a man I’m sure you know, because he works for Maslov: Vylacheslav Oserov.”

  Arkadin’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, but his voice betrayed nothing of what he must be feeling. “Why would Willard be interested in Oserov?”

  “I have no idea,” Soraya said. This much, at least, was true. “But I do know that yesterday a Treadstone agent ID’d Oserov in Marrakech. He tracked Oserov out into the Atlas Mountains, to a village called Tineghir.”

  They arrived at Santa Fe General, on Morua Avenue, but Arkadin made no move to get out of the car.

  “What was Oserov doing in Tineghir?”

  “Looking for a ring.”

  Arkadin shook his head. “Speak plainly.”

  “This particular ring somehow unlocks a hidden file on a laptop hard drive.” She looked at him. “I know, I don’t understand it, either.” All of this information had been in the last text message she had received from Peter. She opened the rear door. “Can we get Moira into the ER, please?”

  Arkadin got out of the car and slammed the door she had just opened. “I want more.”

  “I’ve told you all I know.”

  He stared into her face. “You see what happens to people who fuck with me.”

  “I’m not fucking with you,” Soraya said. “I’ve betrayed a trust, what more do you want from me?”

  “Everything,” he said. “I want everything.”

  They rushed Moira into the emergency room. While the personnel were hooking her up and taking her vitals, Sora
ya asked for the name of the best neurosurgeon in Sonora. She spoke idiomatic Spanish; furthermore, she looked Latina. These attributes opened doors for her. When she got the surgeon’s private number, she called him herself. His PA said he was unavailable until Soraya threatened to find the PA and wring his neck. The surgeon came on the line shortly thereafter. Soraya described Moira’s injury and told him where they were. He said considering a cash bonus of two thousand American dollars was involved, he’d be over immediately.

  “Let’s go,” Arkadin said the moment she disconnected.

  “I’m not leaving Moira.”

  “We have further business to discuss.”

  “Then we can discuss it here.”

  “Back at the convent.”

  “I’m not going to fuck you,” she said.

  “Thank God, fucking you would be like fucking a scorpion.”

  The irony of his comment made her laugh despite her worry and despair. She went to look for coffee, and he followed her.

  Bourne drove to Oxford as fast as he dared without attracting the attention of the police. The city was precisely as he had left it both times he had been there. The quiet streets, the quaint stores, the lifelong denizens going about their chores, the tearooms, the bookstores, all like a miniature created by an obsessive eighteenth-century academic. Driving its streets was like visiting the inside of a snow globe.

  Bourne parked near where Chrissie had left her Range Rover when they had come together, and he trotted up the steps of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents. Professor Liam Giles was also right where he had been when they had last been there, bent over his desk in his voluminous office. He looked up as Bourne entered, blinking owlishly, as if he didn’t recognize him. Bourne saw that it wasn’t Giles after all, but another man of Giles’s approximate build and age.