“Goddamn strange night,” the spindly man rasped.
“How so?”
The spindly man’s eyes lit up. “Don’t tell me ya didn’t hear about the murders?”
Bourne shook his head.
“Not twenty miles away.” The spindly man leaned over the counter. His breath smelled unpleasantly from coffee and bile. “Two men—government people—nobody sayin’ nothin’ else about ’em, an’ y’know what that means around here: hush-hush, deep-throat, cloak-an’-dagger, who the hell knows what they was up to? You turn on CNN when you get to the room, we got cable an’ everything.” He handed Bourne the key. “Putcha in a room at the other end from Guy—he’s the trucker, might have seen his semi when you came in. Guy makes a reg’lar run from Florida to D.C.; he’ll be leavin’ at five, don’t wantcha disturbed, now do we?”
The room was a drab brown, timeworn. Even the smell of an industrial-strength cleaner could not entirely blot out the odor of decay. Bourne turned on the TV, switching channels. He took out the peanut butter and crackers, began to eat.
“There is no doubt that this bold, visionary initiative of the president’s has a chance to build bridges toward a more peaceful future,” the CNN newsreader was saying. Behind her, a graphic banner in screaming red across the top of the screen proclaimed THE TERRORISM SUMMIT with all the subtlety of a London tabloid. “The summit includes, besides the president himself, the president of Russia and the leaders of the major Arab nations. Over the course of the coming week, we’ll be checking in with Wolf Blitzer with the president’s party and Christiane Amanpour with the Russian and Arab leaders for in-depth commentaries. Clearly, the summit has the makings of the news story of the year. Now, for an up-to-the-minute report from Reykjavík, Iceland…”
The scene switched to the front of the Oskjuhlid Hotel, where the terrorism summit would take place in five days’ time. An overearnest CNN reporter began to conduct an interview with the head of American security, Jamie Hull. Bourne stared at Hull’s square-jawed face, his short brush-cut hair, ginger-colored mustache, cold blue eyes, and an alarm went off in his head. Hull was Agency, high up in its Counterterrorist Center. He and Conklin had butted heads more than once. Hull was a clever political animal; he had his nose up the ass of everyone who counted. But he went by the book even when situations dictated he take a more flexible approach. Conklin must have been apoplectic at his being named head of the American security at the summit.
While Bourne was considering this, a news update took over the crawl on the screen. It concerned the deaths of Alexander Conklin and Dr. Morris Panov, both, according to the crawl, high-level government officials. All at once, the scene shifted and a banner reading BREAKING NEWS flashed on, followed by another, MANASSAS MURDERS, which was superimposed above a government photo of David Webb that took up almost the entire screen. The newsreader began her update on the brutal murders of Alex Conklin and Dr. Morris Panov. “Each was shot once in the head,” the newsreader said with all the grim delight of her ilk, “indicating the work of a professional killer. The government’s prime suspect is this man, David Webb. Webb may be using an alias, Jason Bourne. According to highly placed government sources, Webb, or Bourne, is delusional and is considered dangerous. If you see this man, do not approach. Call the number listed on your screen….”
Bourne switched off the sound. Christ, the shit had really hit the fan now. No wonder that roadblock up ahead had looked so well organized—it was Agency, not the local cops.
He had better get to work. Brushing crumbs off his lap, he pulled out Conklin’s cell phone. It was time to find out who Alex had been talking to when he had been shot. He accessed the auto-redial key, listened to the ring on the other end. A prerecorded message came on. This wasn’t a personal number; it was a business. Lincoln Fine Tailors. The thought that Conklin was talking to his tailor when he was shot to death was depressing, indeed. It was no way for a master spy to go out.
He accessed the last incoming call, which was from the previous evening. It was from the DCI. Dead end, Bourne thought. He rose. As he padded to the bathroom, he stripped off his clothes. For a long time he stood under the hot shower spray, his mind deliberately blank as he sluiced the dirt and sweat off his skin. It was good to feel warm again and clean. Now if only he had a fresh set of clothes. All at once his head came up. He wiped water out of his eyes, his heart beating fast, his mind fully engaged again. Conklin’s clothes were made by Old World Tailors off M Street; Alex had been going there for years. He even had dinner with the owner, a Russian immigrant, once or twice a year.
In something of a frenzy Bourne dried himself off, took up Conklin’s phone again and dialed information. After he had gotten Lincoln Fine Tailors’ address in Alexandria, he sat on the bed, staring at nothing. He was wondering just what it was Lincoln Fine Tailors did besides cut fabric and sew hems.
Hasan Arsenov appreciated Budapest in ways Khalid Murat could never have. He said as much to Zina Hasiyev as they passed through Immigration.
“Poor Murat,” she said. “A brave soul, a courageous fighter for independence, but his thinking was strictly nineteenth century.” Zina, Arsenov’s trusted lieutenant as well as his lover, was small, wiry, as athletic as Arsenov himself. Her hair was long, black as night, swirling around her head like a corona. Her wide mouth and dark, lustrous eyes also contributed to her wild, gypsylike appearance, but her mind could be as detached and calculating as a litigator’s, and she was stone-cold fearless.
Arsenov grunted in pain as he ducked into the back of the waiting limousine. The assassin’s shot had been perfect, striking muscle only, the bullet exiting his thigh as cleanly as it had entered. The wound hurt like hell, but the pain was worth it, Arsenov thought as he settled in beside his lieutenant. No suspicion had fallen on him; even Zina had no idea he had colluded in Murat’s assassination. But what choice had he had? Murat had been growing increasingly nervous regarding the consequences of the Shaykh’s plan. He hadn’t had Arsenov’s vision, his monumental sense of social justice. He would have been content merely to win back Chechnya from the Russians, while the rest of the world turned its back in scorn.
Whereas, when the Shaykh had unfurled his bold and daring stratagem, it was, for Arsenov, the moment of revelation. He could vividly see the future the Shaykh was holding out to them like a ripe fruit. Gripped by the flash of supernal illumination, he had looked at Khalid Murat for confirmation, had seen instead the bitter truth. Khalid could not see past the borders of his homeland, could not understand that regaining the homeland was, in a way, secondary. Arsenov realized that the Chechens needed to gain power not only to throw off the yoke of the Russian infidel but to establish their place in the Islamic world, to gain the respect of the other Muslim nations. The Chechens were Sunnis who had embraced the teachings of the Sufi mystics, personified by the zikr, the remembrance of God, the common ritual involving chanted prayer and rhythmic dance that achieved a shared trancelike state during which the eye of God appeared to the assembled. Sunni, being as monolithic as other religions, abhorred, feared and therefore reviled those who deviated even slightly from its strict central doctrine. Mysticism, divine or otherwise, was anathema. Nineteenth-century thinking, in every sense of the phrase, Arsenov thought bitterly.
Since the day of the assassination, the long-dreamed-of moment when he had become the new leader of the Chechen freedom fighters, Arsenov had lived in a feverish almost-hallucinatory state. He slept heavily but not restfully, for his slumber was filled with nightmares in which he was trying to find something or someone through mazes of rubble and was defeated. As a consequence, he was edgy and short with his subordinates; he tolerated no excuses whatsoever. Only Zina had the power to calm him; her alchemical touch allowed him to return from the strange limbo into which he had somehow receded.
The twinge of his wound brought him back to the present. He stared out the window at the ancient streets, watched with an envy that bordered on agony as people went about their busi
ness without hindrance, without the slightest trace of fear. He hated them, each and every one who in the course of their free and easy lives gave not one thought to the desperate struggle he and his people had been engaged in since the 1700s.
“What is it, my love?” A frown of concern crossed Zina’s face.
“My legs ache. I grow weary of sitting, that’s all.”
“I know you. The tragedy of Murat’s murder hasn’t left you, despite our vengeance. Thirty-five Russian soldiers went to their graves in retaliation for the murder of Khalid Murat.”
“Not just Murat,” Arsenov said. “Our men. We lost seventeen men to Russian treachery.”
“You’ve rooted out the traitor, shot him yourself in front of the sublieutenants.”
“To show them what awaits all traitors to the cause. The judgment was swift, the punishment hard. This is our fate, Zina. There aren’t enough tears to shed for our people. Look at us. Lost and dispersed, hiding in the Caucasus, more than one hundred fifty thousand Chechens living as refugees.”
Zina did not stop Hasan as he enumerated once again this agonizing history because these stories needed to be repeated as often as possible. They were the history books of the Chechens.
Arsenov’s fists went white, his nails drawing crescents of blood from beneath the skin of his palms. “Ah, to have a weapon more deadly than an AK-47, more powerful than a packet of C4!”
“Soon, soon, my love,” Zina crooned softly in her deep, musical voice. “The Shaykh has proved to be our greatest friend. Look how much aid his organization has provided our people in just the last year; look how much coverage his press people have gotten us in international magazines and newspapers.”
“And still the Russian yoke is around our necks,” Arsenov growled. “Still we die by the hundreds.”
“The Shaykh has promised us a weapon that will change all that.”
“He’s promised us the world.” Arsenov wiped grit out of his eye. “The time for promises is over. Let us now see the proof of his covenant.”
The limousine the Shaykh had sent for the Chechens turned off the motorway at Kalmankrt Boulevard, which took them over the Arpad Bridge, the Danube with its heavy barges and brightly painted pleasure craft a dazzle below them. Zina glanced down. To one side were the breathtaking domed and needle-spired Gothic stone edifices of the Houses of Parliament; on the other was thickly forested Margaret Island, within which was the luxe Danubius Grand Hotel, where crisp white sheets and a thick down comforter were awaiting them. Zina, hard as armor plate during the day, reveled in her nights in Budapest, never more so than in the luxury of the huge hotel bed. She saw in this feast of pleasure no betrayal of her ascetic existence but rather a brief respite from hardship and degradation, a reward like a wafer of Belgian chocolate slipped beneath the tongue, there in secret to melt in a cloud of ecstasy.
The limo nosed into the car park in the basement level of the Humanistas, Ltd. building. As they got out of the car, Zina took the large rectangular package from the driver. Uniformed guards checked the pair’s passports against photos in the data bank of their computer terminal, gave them laminated ID tags and ushered them into a rather grand bronze-and-glass elevator.
Spalko received them in his office. By this time the sun was high in the sky, beating the river to a sheet of molten brass. He embraced them both, asked after the comfort of their flight, the ease of their trip in from Ferihegy Airport and the status of Arsenov’s bullet wound. When the amenities had been dispensed with, they went into an adjacent room, paneled in honey-toned pecan wood, where a table had been set with crisp white linen and sparkling dinnerware. Spalko had had a meal prepared, Western food. Steak, lobster, three different vegetables—all the Chechens’ favorites. And not a potato anywhere in evidence. Potatoes were often all Arsenov and Zina had to eat for days on end. Zina put the package on an empty chair, and they sat at the table.
“Shaykh,” Arsenov said, “as always, we’re overwhelmed by the largesse of your hospitality.”
Spalko inclined his head. He was pleased with the name he had given himself in their world, which meant the Saint, friend of God. It struck the right note of reverence and awe, an exalted shepherd to his flock.
He rose now and opened a bottle of powerful Polish vodka, which he poured into three glasses. He lifted his and they followed suit. “In memory of Khalid Murat, a great leader, a powerful warrior, a grim adversary,” he intoned solemnly in the Chechen fashion. “May Allah grant him the glory he has earned in blood and courage. May the tales of his prowess as a leader and as a man be told and retold among all the faithful.” They downed the fiery liquor in one quick gulp.
Arsenov stood, refilled the glasses. He raised his glass, and the others followed suit. “To the Shaykh, friend of the Chechens, who will lead us to our rightful place in the new order of the world.” They drank down the vodka.
Zina made to rise, doubtless to make her own toast, but Arsenov stayed her with a hand on her arm. The restraining gesture did not fail to catch Spalko’s attention. What interested him most was Zina’s response. He could see past her veiled expression to her seething core. There were many injustices in the world, he knew, on every scale imaginable. It seemed to him peculiar and not a little perverse that human beings could be outraged by injustice on a grand scale, all the while missing the small wrongs that were daily visited on individuals. Zina fought side by side with the men; why, then, should she not have an opportunity to raise her voice in a toast of her own choosing? Rage seethed within her; Spalko liked that—he knew how to use another person’s anger.
“My compatriots, my friends.” His eyes were sparking with conviction. “To the meeting of sorrowful past, desperate present and glorious future. We stand on the brink of tomorrow!”
They began to eat, speaking of general and inconsequential matters just as if they were at a rather informal dinner party. And yet an air of anticipation, of incipient change, had crept into the room. They kept their eyes on their plates or on one another, as if now so close to it, they were reluctant to look at the gathering storm that was pressing in upon them. At length, they were finished.
“It’s time,” the Shaykh said. Arsenov and Zina rose to stand before him.
Arsenov bowed his head. “One who dies for the love of the material world dies a hypocrite. One who dies for the love of the hereafter dies an ascetic. But one who dies for the love of the Truth dies a Sufi.”
He turned to Zina, who opened the package they had brought with them from Grozny. Inside were three cloaks. She handed one to Arsenov, who put it on. She donned hers. The third Arsenov held in his hands as he faced the Shaykh.
“The kherqeh is the garment of honor of the dervish,” Arsenov intoned. “It symbolizes the divine nature and attributes.”
Zina said, “The cloak is sewn with the needle of devotion and the thread of the selfless remembrance of God.”
The Shaykh bowed his head and said, “La illaha ill Allah.” There is no God but God, who is One.
Arsenov and Zina repeated, “La illaha ill Allah.” Then the Chechen rebel leader placed the kherqeh around the Shaykh’s shoulders. “It is enough for most men to have lived according to the Shariah, the law of Islam, in surrender to the divine will, to die in grace and to enter into Paradise,” he said. “But there are those of us who yearn for the divine here and now and whose love for God compels us to seek the path of inwardness. We are Sufi.”
Spalko felt the weight of the dervish cloak and said, “O thou soul which are at peace, return unto thy Lord, with gladness that is thine in Him and His in thee. Enter thou among My slaves. Enter thou My Paradise.”
Arsenov, moved by this quotation from the Qur’an, took Zina’s hand, and together they knelt before the Shaykh. In a call-and-response three centuries old, they recited a solemn oath of obedience. Spalko produced a knife, handed it to them. Both in turn cut themselves and, in a stemmed glass, offered up to him their blood. In this manner, they became murids, disciples of th
e Shaykh, bound to him in both word and deed.
Then, even though it was painful for Arsenov with his wounded thigh, they sat cross-legged, facing one another, and in the manner of the Naqshibandi Sufis, they performed the zikr, the ecstatic union with God. They placed their right hands on their left thighs, left hands atop right wrists. Arsenov began to move his head and neck to the right in the arc of a semicircle, and Zina and Spalko followed in perfect time to Arsenov’s soft, almost sensual chanting: “Save me, my Lord, from the evil eye of envy and jealousy, which fall-eth upon Thy bountiful Gifts.” They made the same movement to the left. “Save me, my Lord, from falling into the hands of the playful children of earth, lest they might use me in their games; they might play with me and then break me in the end, as children destroy their toys.” Back and forth, back and forth. “Save me, my Lord, from all manner of injury that cometh from the bitterness of my adversaries and from the ignorance of my loving friends.”
The chanted prayers and the movement became one, merging into an ecstatic whole in the presence of God….
Much later, Spalko led them down a back corridor to a small stainless-steel elevator, which took them down below the basement into the very bedrock in which the building was set.
They entered a vaulted, high-ceilinged room, crisscrossed by iron struts. The low hiss of the climate control was the only sound they heard. A number of crates had been stacked along one wall. It was to these that Spalko led them. He handed a crowbar to Arsenov, watched with a good measure of satisfaction as the terrorist leader cracked open the nearest crate, stared down at the gleaming sets of AK-47 assault rifles. Zina took one up, inspected it with care and precision. She nodded to Arsenov, who opened another crate, which held a dozen shoulder-held rocket-launchers.
The Bourne Legacy Page 7
