The Bourne Objective

by Robert Ludlum

  “I think otherwise.”

  Bourne buried the tines of the fork in a mound of couscous. “Listen to me, Leonid, there are other forces at work here, forces neither you nor I can handle.”

  “I can handle anything. And I brought allies.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Bourne said, quoting an Arab proverb.

  Arkadin’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”

  “We are the only two graduates of Treadstone. We were trained for situations like this. But the two of us are not exactly alike. Mirror images, perhaps.”

  “You’ve got ten seconds. Get to the fucking point.”

  “Together we can beat Severus Domna.”

  Arkadin snorted. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Think about it. Severus Domna brought us here, it has prepared the house for us, and it believes that when we come together one of us will wind up killing the other.”

  “And?”

  “And then everything goes according to its plan.” Bourne waited a moment. “Our only chance is to do the unexpected.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  Bourne nodded.

  “Until he’s not.”

  Arkadin placed the Magpul he had been holding onto the table, and Bourne set down the Beretta that Tanirt had given him.

  “We’re a team,” Bourne said. “The three of us.”

  Arkadin glanced briefly at Soraya. “Spit it out then.”

  “First and foremost,” Bourne said, “is a man named Idir Syphax.”

  The house crouched in the middle of the block, its flanks rubbing up against those of its neighbors. Night had fallen, swift and complete, like a hood thrown over a head. All around the valley the mountains were pitch black. A bitter wind, knifing through the town, hurried snow crystals or grains of sand across streets and down alleys. The light from the stars was hallucinatory.

  Idir Syphax was crouched on a rooftop across the street from the rear of the house. Flanking him were two Severus Domna sharpshooters, their Sako TRG-22 rifles aimed and ready. Idir watched the house as if waiting for his daughter to come home, as if feeling the danger of unknown places spreading its wings, as if the house itself were his child. And, in a way, it was. He had designed the house with advice from Tanirt. “I want to build a fortress,” he had told her. And she had said: “You cannot do better than to follow the plan of the Great Temple of Baal. It was the greatest fortress known to man.” After scrutinizing what she had drawn for him, he had agreed, and he himself had helped to build it. Every board, every nail, every length of rebar, every form of concrete bore the tattoo of his sweat. The house was invented not for people, but for a thing, an idea, an ideal, even; anyway, something intangible. In that sense it was a sacred place, as sacred as any mosque. It was the beginning of all things, and the end. Alpha and omega, a cosmos unto itself.

  Idir understood this but others in Severus Domna did not. For Benjamin El-Arian, the house was a Venus flytrap. For Marlon Etana, it was a means to an end. In any event, for them both, the house was a dead thing, a pack animal at best. It was not holy, it was not a gateway to the divine. They did not understand that Tanirt had chosen the spot, using the ancient incantation she possessed and he coveted. He had once asked her what language she was chanting. It was Ugaritic. She said it was spoken by the alchemists of King Solomon’s court, in what is now Syria. That was why she had placed the statue in the very center of the house, the space from which its holiness emanated. He’d had to have it smuggled in because any statues of this sort were strictly forbidden by sharia. And of course, neither Benjamin El-Arian nor Marlon Etana knew of its existence. They’d have had him burned alive as a heretic. But if Tanirt had taught him anything, it was that there were ancient forces—perhaps mysteries was a better term—that had preceded religion, any religion, even Judaism, which were all the inventions of mankind in attempts to come to terms with the terror of death. The origins of the mysteries, Tanirt had told him, were divine, which according to her had nothing to do with man’s conception of God. “Did Baal exist?” she had asked rhetorically. “I doubt it. But something did.”

  Save for the wind, the night was still. He knew they were coming, but he didn’t know from where. All attempts to follow them had ended in failure—a failure, he told himself, that was not unexpected. On the other hand, there had been attraction. Arkadin’s three men had been neutralized at the sacrifice of four of his own. These Russians were fierce warriors. Not that it mattered; Arkadin would not gain entrance no matter what he tried. All houses had vulnerabilities that could serve as points of entrance—sewers, for instance, or drains, or the place where the electrical lines came in. Because this house was not designed for people there were no sewers. Because there was no heating or cooling, no refrigerators or ovens to drain electricity, all the electrical systems ran off a giant generator in a shielded room within the house. There was, literally, no way into the house that wouldn’t set off the various alarms, which would in turn trip other security measures.

  His son, Badis, had wanted to come, but of course Idir wouldn’t hear of it. Badis still asked about Tanirt even though at eleven he was old enough to know better. Badis remembered only when Tanirt loved his father, or at least said she loved him. Now she engendered in Idir a bone-deep terror that invaded his nights, his very sleep, shattering it with unspeakable nightmares.

  It had all gone wrong when he had asked her to marry him and she had denied him.

  “Is it because you don’t believe I love you?” he had said.

  “I know you love me.”

  “It’s because of my son. You think that because I love Badis more than anything I can’t make you happy.”

  “It isn’t your son.”

  “Then what?”

  “If you have to ask,” she had said, “then you will never understand.”

  That’s when he had made his fatal mistake. He had confused her with other women. He had tried to coerce her, but the more he threatened her, the larger her stature seemed to grow, until she filled his entire living room, asphyxiating him with her presence. And, gasping, he had fled his own home.

  The sounds of the bolt-action Sakos brought his mind back into focus. He peered through the darkness. Was that a shadow flitting across the rooftop of the house? His sharpshooters thought so. In the hallucinatory moonlight there was a blur, then nothing. Utter stillness. And then, out of the corner of his eye, the shadow moved again. His heart leapt. His order for them to fire was already on his lips when from behind him he heard his name being called.

  He whirled to see Leonid Arkadin standing spread-legged, an odd-looking boxy weapon in his hand.

  “Surprise,” Arkadin said and promptly shot off two sharp bursts from the Magpul that took off the heads of the sharpshooters. They folded like marionettes.

  “You do not frighten me,” Idir said. His face and robes were soaked with the blood and brains of his men. “I have no fear of death.”

  “For yourself, perhaps.”

  Arkadin motioned with his head and the woman, Soraya Moore, appeared out of the shadows. Idir gasped. She herded Badis in front of her.

  “Papa!” Badis made a lunge toward his father, but Soraya caught him by the material at the back of his neck and jerked him back to her. “Papa! Papa!”

  A look of terrible despair crossed Idir’s dark face.

  “Idir,” Arkadin commanded, “throw your men over the parapet.”

  Idir looked at him for a moment, dumbstruck. “Why?”

  “So your men will know what happened up here, so they will fear the consequences of their actions.”

  Idir shook his head.

  Arkadin strode over to Badis and stuck the blunt barrel of the Magpul into his mouth. “I pull the trigger and even his own mother won’t recognize him.”

  Idir blanched, then glowered impotently. He bent and picked up one of the sharpshooters, but there was so much blood the corpse slipped out of his hands.
/>   Badis stared, wide-eyed and shivering.

  Gathering the corpse to him, Idir rolled it onto the parapet. When he dropped it over the edge, they heard the sound it made smacking against the street. Badis shuddered. Quickly now Idir dumped the second corpse down onto the street. Again that thick, almost viscous sound made Badis jump.

  Arkadin gestured. Soraya dragged the struggling boy to the edge of the roof and pushed his head over the side.

  Idir made a move toward his son, but Arkadin waggled the Magpul, shaking his head.

  “So you see death has many aspects,” Arkadin said, “and eventually fear comes to us all.”

  And so at last the knives came fully out of their sheaths. Bourne came down off the roof when he heard the two shots. And now, as he saw Arkadin push Idir Syphax along in front of him, he came to meet them. Bourne and Arkadin stared at each other as if they were opposing agents about to exchange prisoners at the edge of no-man’s-land.

  “Soraya?” Bourne said.

  “On the rooftop with the boy,” Arkadin said.

  “You didn’t hurt him?”

  Arkadin glanced at Idir, then shot Bourne a disgusted look. “If I’d had to, I would have.”

  “That wasn’t our deal.”

  “Our deal,” Arkadin said tersely, “was to get this job done.”

  Idir fidgeted in the tense silence, his eyes darting from one man to the other. “You two need to get your priorities straight.”

  Arkadin struck him across the face. “Shut the fuck up.”

  At length, Bourne handed Arkadin the laptop in its protective case. Then he took hold of Idir and said, “You’ll lead us inside. You’ll be the first through every barrier, electronic or otherwise.” He produced his cell phone. “I’m in constant touch with Soraya. Anything goes wrong…” He waggled the cell.

  “I understand.” Idir’s voice was dull, but his eyes burned with hatred and rage.

  He led them around to the front door, which he unlocked with a pair of keys. The moment they entered, he punched a code into a keypad set into the wall to the left of the door.

  Silence.

  A dog barked, unnaturally loud in the night, and in that highly charged atmosphere moonlight seemed to strike the house with the sound of sleet.

  Idir coughed and turned on the lights. “Motion detectors come first, then the infrareds.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small remote control. “I can turn them both off from here.”

  “Without the generator everything goes down,” Bourne said. “Take us to it.”

  But when Idir started in one direction, Bourne said, “Not that way.”

  A look of terror crossed Idir’s face. “You’ve been talking to Tanirt.” Breathing her name, he shuddered.

  “If you know the way,” Arkadin said irritably, “what the fuck do we need him for?”

  “He knows how to shut down the generator without it blowing the building to bits.”

  That sobering news shut Arkadin up for the moment. Idir reversed directions, taking them on a route that skirted the outer rooms. They came to the first motion detector, its red eye blank and dark.

  They passed it, Idir going first, as usual. They reached a door and Idir unlocked it. Another corridor unfolded like a fan, turning first this way, then that. Bourne was put in mind of the chambers of the great pyramids in Giza. Another door loomed before them. This, too, Idir unlocked. Another corridor, shorter this time and perfectly straight. They passed no doors. The walls were unadorned, stuccoed a neutral color that looked like flesh. The corridor ended at a third door, this one made of steel. They went through this. Ahead could be dimly seen a spiral staircase descending into darkness.

  “Turn on the lights,” Arkadin ordered.

  “There is no electricity down there,” Idir said. “Only torches.”

  Arkadin lunged at him but Bourne blocked his path.

  “Keep him away from me,” Idir said. “He’s a lunatic.”

  They started down the staircase, unwinding into the darkness. At the bottom Idir lit a reed torch. He handed this to Bourne and reached into a niche in the wall where a wrought-iron basket contained a clutch of torches. He lit a second one.

  “Where are the alarm systems?” Bourne asked.

  “Too many animals down here,” Idir said.

  Arkadin glanced around at the bare poured-concrete floor, which smelled of dust and dried droppings. “What kind of animals?”

  Idir pushed forward. In the flickering torchlight the lower level seemed immense. There was nothing to see but flames crackling in the darkness. The smoke thickened the airless atmosphere. All at once they found themselves in a narrow passage. Within forty paces it began to curve, and they followed it around to the right. Once again the walls were doorless, completely blank. The passage kept curving. It seemed to Bourne that they were in a spiral, moving in ever-narrowing concentric circles, and he guessed they were approaching the heart of the building. An unseen weight seemed to press down on them, making breathing difficult, as if they had plunged under a deep subterranean lake.

  At last, the corridor ended, opening out into a room roughly in the shape of a pentangle, inasmuch as it had five sides. There was a deep pulsing, like the thrum of a gigantic heart. It filled the room, the vibration stirring the thick air.

  “There it is.” Idir nodded toward what seemed like a chunky plinth in the center of the room. On it stood a black basalt statue of the ancient god Baal.

  Arkadin whirled on Idir. “What kind of crap is this?”

  Idir took a step toward Bourne. “The generator is under the statue.”

  Arkadin sneered. “All this idiotic mumbo-jumbo—”

  “The missing set of instructions is hidden inside the statue.”

  “Ah, that’s more like it.” As Arkadin picked his way toward the statue, Idir moved closer to Bourne.

  “It’s clear enough you hate each other,” he whispered. “He moves the statue and a fail-safe packet of C-Four affixed to the side of the generator is activated on a three-minute delay. Even I can’t stop it, but I can lead you out of here in plenty of time. Kill this animal so he won’t harm my son.”

  Arkadin was reaching out for the statue. Bourne could sense Idir holding his breath; he was ready to run. Bourne saw this moment clearly: It was the point in time that both Suparwita and Tanirt had somehow foreseen. It was the moment when his rage to revenge Tracy’s death could be sated. The moment when his two warring personalities would finally tear him apart from the inside out, the moment of his own death. Did he believe them? Was there no clear-cut moment in his life? Was everything infused with the unknown of the life he could not remember? He could turn away from the dangers to him, or he could master them. The choice he made now would stay with him, would change him forever. Would he betray Arkadin or Idir? And then he realized that there was no choice at all, his path lay clearly before him as if illuminated by the light of the full moon.

  Idir’s plea was clever, but it was irrelevant.

  “Leonid, stop!” Bourne called out. “Moving the statue will set off an explosion.”

  Arkadin’s outstretched arm froze, his fingertips inches from the statue. He turned his head. “That’s what this sonovabitch told you behind my back?”

  “Why did you do that?” Idir’s voice was full of despair.

  “Because you didn’t tell me how to turn off the generator.”

  Arkadin’s gaze shifted to Bourne. “Why is that so fucking important?”

  “Because,” Bourne said, “the generator controls a series of security measures that will stop us from ever leaving here.”

  Arkadin stalked over to Idir and backhanded the barrel of his Magpul across the Berber’s face. Idir spat out a tooth along with a thick gout of blood.

  “I’m done with you,” he said. “I’m now going to take you apart piece by piece. You’ll tell us what we want to know whether or not you want to. You aren’t afraid of death, but you have already shown me your fear. When I get out
of here I’m going to throw Badis off that roof myself.”

  “No, no!” Idir cried, scuttling around to the side of the generator housing. “Here, here,” he muttered to himself. At the base of the plinth he depressed a stone, which slid out of the way. He threw a switch, and the throb of the generator ceased. “See? It’s off.” He stood up. “I’ve done what you asked. My life is nothing, but I beg you to spare my son’s life.”

  Arkadin, grinning, set the case on top of the plinth, unlocked it, and took out the laptop. “Now,” he said, as he fired up the computer, “the ring.”

  Idir crept closer to the plinth. He managed to tap his fingernail along the top of the computer before Arkadin delivered a heavy backhand blow that swatted him back on his heels.

  As Bourne was taking out the ring, Idir said, “It won’t do any good.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Arkadin snapped.

  “Let him speak,” Bourne said. “Idir, what do you mean?”

  “That isn’t the right laptop.”

  “He’s a liar,” Arkadin said. “Look here—” He took the ring from Bourne and inserted it. “—it has the slot for the ring.”

  Idir’s laughter was tinged with hysteria, or with madness.

  As Arkadin slid the ring through the slot again and again, he tried in vain to bring up the ghost file on the partitioned hard drive.

  “You fools!” Idir could not stop laughing. “Someone has been fucking with you. I’m telling you it’s the wrong laptop.”

  With an inarticulate cry, Arkadin swung around.

  “Leonid, no!”

  Bourne leapt at him, too late to keep him from firing, but he ran full-tilt into Arkadin’s right shoulder. The spray of bullets went wide, but two bullets struck Idir’s chest and shoulder.

  Both torches were on the floor, crackling as they burned down. They were more than half finished. Bourne and Arkadin attacked each other with hands, feet, and knees. Arkadin, the Magpul in his right hand, hammered at Bourne, who was forced to raise his hands in front of his face in order to deflect the blows. Deep contusions, then ragged cuts broke out on his wrists from the force of the Magpul’s heavy barrel pounding him. He brought his knee up into Arkadin’s stomach, but it seemed to have little or no effect. At the next blow Bourne grabbed the barrel, but it raked down his palm, slicing it open. Arkadin turned the muzzle on Bourne, and Bourne slammed the heel of his bleeding hand into Arkadin’s nose. Blood flew as Arkadin’s head snapped back, the back of it banging off the floor. He squeezed off a short burst, the noise deafening in the space. Bourne struck him again, slamming his head to the right, where a blur of movement shot toward him.