The Bourne Objective

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Tracy’s flat was on the third floor, up flights of narrow, very steep stairs, the treads of which creaked beneath his weight now and again. He found it all the way in the rear and he recalled her saying, “There’s a mews out back with a flowering pear tree that a pair of house martins nest in come spring.” He imagined the house martins would be nesting there right about now. It was a bittersweet thought.

  The door opened a crack as he was warily approaching. The figure that revealed itself was backlit and for a moment he stood stock-still, his heart racing, because he was quite certain he was looking at Tracy. Tall, willowy, blond hair.

  “Yes? May I help you?”

  Her eyes broke the spell; they were brown, not blue, and they weren’t as large as Tracy’s. He felt himself breathe again. “My name is Adam Stone. I was a friend of Tracy’s.”

  “Oh, yes, Trace told me about you.” She did not offer her hand. Her expression was carefully neutral. “I’m Chrissie Lincoln, Tracy’s sister.”

  Still, she did not move out of the doorway. “She met you on a flight to Madrid.”

  “Actually, the flight was from Madrid to Seville.”

  “That’s right.” Chrissie watched him warily. “Trace traveled so much, it was a good thing she liked flying.”

  Bourne could see that he was being tested. “She hated flying. She got sick on the flight five minutes after she introduced herself.” He waited for her to say something, then: “May I come in? I’d like to speak to you about Tracy.”

  “I suppose.” She stood back, almost reluctantly.

  He walked in and she closed the door behind him. Tracy had been right, the flat was tiny, but as beautiful as she had been. Furniture in butter yellows and deep oranges, crisp cream curtains framed each window, throw pillows here and there in polka dots, animal prints, and stripes added bright bits of color. He walked across the living room and into her bedroom.

  “Are you looking for something in particular, Mr. Stone?”

  “Call me Adam.” Somehow he knew there would be French doors out onto the back, and there was the pear tree in the mews. “I’m looking for the house martins.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Her voice was pitched a bit higher, thinner, and her speech was more rapid than her sister’s had been.

  “Tracy said that come spring a pair of house martins nested in that pear tree.”

  She was at his shoulder. Her hair smelled of lemon. She wore an inexpensive cotton man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing sun-browned arms, jeans, not the fashionable low-riding ones, but sturdy Levi’s with the cuffs rolled up, cheap flats, scuffed and worn at the heels, and was in a light sweat as if she had been cleaning or rooting around for some time. She wore no jewelry, not even a wedding band. And yet her last name was Lincoln, not Atherton.

  “Do you see a sign of them?” she asked in a brittle voice.

  “No,” he said, turning away.

  She frowned momentarily and remained silent for a long time.

  “Chrissie?”

  When she didn’t answer he went and got her a glass of cold water from the kitchen. She took it without comment and drank it slowly and methodically, as if it were medicine.

  When she put the glass down, she said to him, “I’m afraid this was a mistake letting you in. I’d prefer if you left.”

  Bourne nodded. He’d seen the flat; he didn’t know what he’d expected to find, maybe it was nothing at all, save the scent of her, lingering long after she had left. The night they had shared in Khartoum was far more intimate than if they had made love, an act that despite its name could seem impersonal, even detached. The revelation that came later, that Tracy had been working for Leonid Arkadin, had come like a cold slap across the face. But in the weeks after her death he’d been haunted by the notion that something was wrong with that equation. Not that he doubted she’d been in Arkadin’s employ, but deep down he couldn’t escape the notion that the story wasn’t that simple. It was altogether possible that he’d come here looking for some form of proof, a confirmation of his suspicion.

  They had moved back to the front door now, and now Chrissie opened it for him. As he was about to step out, she said, “Mr. Stone—”

  “Adam.”

  She tried to smile and failed, her face seemed tight and pained. “Do you know what happened in Khartoum?”

  Bourne hesitated. He stared out into the hallway, but what he was seeing was Tracy’s face, spattered with blood, as he cradled it in his lap.

  “Please. I know I’ve been less than hospitable. I—I’m not thinking straight, you see.” She stood back for him to reenter.

  Bourne turned back one hand on the partially open door. “Her death was an accident.”

  Chrissie looked at him fearfully, expectantly. “You know this?”

  “I was there.”

  He saw the blood leave her face. She was staring at him fixedly, as if she couldn’t look away, as if with a terrible clarity she saw an accident about to happen.

  “Will you tell me how she died?”

  “I don’t think you want to hear the details.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do. I—I need to know. She was my only sibling.” She shut the door and locked it and went over to an armchair, but she did not sit down. Rather, she stood behind it, staring into the middle distance. “I’ve been in a kind of personal hell since I got the news. A sister’s death, it’s—well, it’s not like any other death. I—I can’t explain it.”

  Bourne watched her as she stood, her fingers dug into the high, arched back of the chair.

  “She was struck by shards of glass, one went through her. She bled out in minutes; there was nothing anyone could do.”

  “Poor Trace.” She was gripping the chair back so hard, her knuckles had turned white. “I begged her not to go, just as I begged her not to take that cursed assignment.”

  “What assignment?”

  “That bloody Goya.”

  “Why did she tell you about the Goya?”

  “It wasn’t the painting, but the assignment. She said it was going to be her last. She wanted me to know that. Because she knew I disapproved of what she did, I suppose.”

  She shuddered. “Evil thing, that Black Painting.”

  “You say that as if it were alive.”

  She turned back to him. “In a sense it was, because it was connected with that man.”

  “Arkadin.”

  “She never told me his name. From what I could gather he gave her extremely dangerous assignments, but he paid her so well she accepted them all, at least that’s what she told me.”

  “You didn’t believe her?”

  “Oh, I believed her, all right, when we were young we made a pact never to lie to each other.” Her hair was a shade darker than her sister’s, and thicker, lush even, and her face was a bit less angular, softer, more open. It was also more careworn. She moved more quickly than Tracy, or perhaps it was that she moved in nervous bursts as if set off by a series of tiny interior explosions. “The problem arose when we grew up. I’m positive there were a great many things about her private life she refused to share.”

  “You didn’t push it.”

  “Secrecy was her choice,” she said defensively. “I honored her wishes.”

  He followed her back into the bedroom. She stood looking around as if dazed, as if she’d lost her sister and now inexplicably couldn’t find her. Light slanting in through the window was splintered in lozenges and rectangles by the pear tree. It was mellow, toned, like the surface of a sepia print. She moved into one of those luminous geometric shapes now.

  Her arms wound around her waist as if she were trying to hold in her emotions. “But of one thing I’m quite certain. That man’s a monster, she’d never have worked for him voluntarily. I’m sure he must have had something on her.”

  An echo of his own suspicions. Maybe she had something to tell him after all. “Can you think of what it might be?”

  “I already told you, Trace was the
most secretive person on earth.”

  “So there was nothing, no odd response to your questions, nothing of that nature.”

  “No.” Chrissie drew the word out into two syllables. “I mean there was one thing, but, well, it’s kind of ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous? How so?”

  “I remember one time we were together and, for once, there didn’t seem to be anything to talk about after I’d exhausted the news about me. I was bored with all that, anyway, it was old news to me. I guess I got a bit frustrated, because I said, laughing, you know, something about was she hiding someone up her sleeve.”

  Bourne cocked his head. “And?”

  “Well, I mean she didn’t think it was funny, did she? She didn’t laugh, that’s for sure. I’d meant a boyfriend or a husband but she said, quite fiercely, that I was the only family she had.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “No, I don’t,” Chrissie said emphatically. “That wouldn’t be like her at all. She didn’t get on well with Mum and Dad, she was offended by everything about them. And they were deeply offended by her rebelliousness. I was the good daughter. I became a professor at Oxford, following in my father’s footsteps. But Trace… God only knows what they thought she was up to. Anyway, from the time she was thirteen or so they would fight like cats and dogs, until one day she stormed out of the house and never went back. No, I can tell you that she didn’t want a family of her own.”

  “And you find that sad.”

  “No,” Chrissie said, rather defiant. “I find it admirable.”

  Well, at least we get to go after Bourne,” Marks said. “That’s some consolation, he’s one half of the Treadstone equation, isn’t he?”

  “Don’t be dense,” Willard snapped. “Liss didn’t even bother to mention it as a peace offering because he knew I’d laugh in his face. He knows I’m the only person on earth—at least one under his control—who can get to Bourne without having his neck or back broken. No, he planned this out from the beginning, it was his whole reason for agreeing to back Treadstone in the first place, and I played right into his hand.”

  “That’s a pretty damn high price to pay for a ring,” Marks said. “It must be very rare, costly, or important.”

  “I’d like to have another look at that photo of the engraving,” Willard mused. “That’s our best chance of finding out something about the ring, since Liss won’t tell us.”

  They had been walking across the Mall, from the Washington Monument toward the Lincoln Memorial, hands in overcoat pockets, backs bowed against the wind, but at the last instant they had decided to make a detour to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Along the way they had, each in his own way, checked for tags and tails. They didn’t trust anyone, least of all Oliver Liss.

  They stopped, and Willard stared at the wall, somber in its eternal shadows, sighed deeply, and closed his eyes. A small, secret smile crept across his lips with the stealth of a cat. “He thinks he’s checkmated me, but I’ve got a queen he can’t control.”

  Marks shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Willard’s eyes popped open. “Soraya Moore.”

  Marks looked at him, alarmed. “Oh, no.”

  “I told you to try to recruit her and you did.”

  A pair of vets in uniform, one pushing the other, who was in a wheelchair, came down the long, graceful ramp into the full majesty of the wall and stopped in front of the names. The vet in the wheelchair was without legs. He handed his friend a small bouquet and a miniature American flag on a wooden stand. His friend laid them at the foot of the wall where their compatriots’ names were engraved for all time.

  There was a glitter in Willard’s eyes as he turned away from the scene. “I have her first assignment: Find Leonid Arkadin.”

  “You said you’d lost him,” Marks pointed out. “Where is she going to start looking?”

  “That’s her problem,” Willard said. “She’s a smart girl, I’ve been following her career since she came to prominence at Typhon.” He smiled. “Have a little faith, Peter. She’s first-rate material, plus, she’s got a built-in advantage over you or me. She’s a very good-looking female—highly desirable—which means Arkadin will have her scent before she comes within a block of him.”

  His brain was traveling at speed in its own peculiar orbit. “I want her with him, Peter. I want her attached to Arkadin, she’s going to tell me what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.”

  The two vets’ heads were bowed, locked within their private memories as tourists and relatives of other fallen filed by, some touching names here and there. A Japanese tour leader, yellow pennant held high, gathered her photo-clicking flock to her.

  Marks ran a hand through his hair. “You can’t expect me—What? Jesus, you want me to pimp her out?”

  Willard looked like he was sucking on a lemon. “Since when did you become a Boy Scout? Not in CI, surely. The Old Man would’ve had your heart for lunch.”

  “She’s a friend of mine, Fred. Longtime.”

  “There are no friends in this business, Peter, just the bitterly oppressed. I am Liss’s slave and you are mine and she is yours. That’s how it works.”

  Marks looked as glum as Willard had at the end of their breakfast with Liss.

  “You will give her her assignment before we leave for the airport—” Willard glanced at his watch. “—which gives you less than six hours to prep for London and do the deed.” His smile was all teeth. “More than enough time for a clever fellow like you, wouldn’t you say?”

  7

  TIME FOR ME to go,” Bourne said. “We should both get some sleep.”

  “I don’t want to go to sleep,” Chrissie said and, with a bleak smile, sang, “Bad dreams in the night.” She cocked her head inquiringly. “Kate Bush. Do you know her songs?”

  “That’s from ‘Wuthering Heights,’ isn’t it?”

  “Yes, my daughter, Scarlett, is a big fan. Not much Kate Bush up at Oxford, I can tell you.”

  It was after midnight. He had ventured out to an Indian restaurant, bought their dinner, and had taken it back to Tracy’s flat, where, after swallowing a couple of desultory bites, Chrissie watched him eat. Considering the violent events earlier, outside the bank, it was best if he didn’t venture too far afield, even back to his hotel.

  Watching her sitting across from him on the sofa, he recalled another fragment of the conversation he’d had with Tracy in Khartoum the night before she died:

  “In your mind you can be anyone, do anything. Everything is malleable, whereas in the real world, effecting change—any change—is so bloody difficult, the effort is wearying.”

  “You could adopt an entirely new identity,” he had replied, “one where effecting change is less difficult because now you re-create your own history.”

  She had nodded. “Yes, but that has its own pitfalls. No family, no friends—unless, of course, you don’t mind being absolutely isolated.”

  “The night before she died,” he said now, “she told me something that led me to believe that in another time, another place she would have enjoyed having her own family.”

  For a moment it seemed as if all the air had gone out of her. “Well, that’s bloody irony for you.” Then, recovering somewhat, she went on, “You know, the funny thing is—well, it’s bloody tragic, when I think about it now—I sometimes envied her. She wasn’t tied down, had never married, she could go where she pleased, when she pleased, and she did. She was like a skyrocket, in that way, because of how she loved to walk on the wild side. It was as if danger was—I don’t know—an aphrodisiac, or maybe it was more like the feeling people get when they ride a roller coaster, that sense of going so fast they’re almost, but not quite, out of control.” She gave a bitter little laugh. “The last time I rode a roller coaster I got sick to my stomach.”

  Part of him genuinely felt for her, but another part, the professional part, the Bourne identity, in other words, was seeking a way to worm his w
ay farther in, a probe to see if there was anything else Chrissie could tell him about Tracy and her mysterious relationship with Leonid Arkadin. He saw her only as a means to an end, a stepping-stone, not a human being. He hated himself for feeling that way, and yet his dispassion was part of what made him successful. This was who he was, or at least what Treadstone had made of him. In any event, for good or for ill, he was damaged, trained, highly skilled. Just like Arkadin. And yet there was a gulf between them—an abyss so vast, Bourne could not see its bottom or even guess at its depth. He and Arkadin faced each other across this divide, invisible perhaps to anyone but themselves, searching for ways to destroy each other without destroying themselves in the process. There were times when he wondered whether that would be possible, whether to rid the world of one, both had to go.

  “You know what I wish?” She turned to him. “Remember that film Superman, not a great film, admittedly, but anyway, Lois Lane dies and Superman is so grief-stricken that he launches himself into the air. He flies around the earth, faster and faster, faster than the speed of sound, faster than the speed of light, so fast that he reverses time to the moment just before Lois will be killed, and he saves her.” Her eyes had settled on his face, but it was something else she was seeing. “I wish I were Superman.”

  “You’d turn back time and save Tracy.”

  “If I could. But unlike what the screenwriters allowed Superman to do in the film, if I couldn’t, well, at least… at least I’d understand what the bloody hell to do with this grief.” She tried to take a deep breath but succeeded only in choking on her tears. “I feel weighed down, as if I have an anchor tied to my back, or Tracy’s body, cold and stiff and… never moving ever again.”

  “That feeling will pass,” Bourne said.

  “Yes, I suppose it will, but what if I don’t want it to?”