The Bourne Sanction

by Eric Van Lustbader

  The two men were on the move again, and Batt headed out after them. After a ten-minute drive, the two cars ahead of him pulled into the crowded parking lot of The Glass Slipper. As Batt passed by, Feir and Kendall got out of their respective cars and went inside. Batt drove around the block, parked on a side street. Reaching into the glove compartment, he took out a tiny Leica camera, the kind used by the Old Man in his youthful days of surveillance. It was the old spy standby, as dependable as it was easy to conceal. Batt loaded it with fast film, put it in the breast pocket of his shirt along with the digital camera, and got out of the car.

  The night was filled with a gritty wind. Refuse spiraled up from the gutter, only to come to rest in a different place. Jamming his hands in his coat pockets, Batt hurried down the block and into The Glass Slipper. A slide guitarist was up on stage, wailing the blues, warming up for the feature act, a high-powered band with several hit CDs under its belt.

  He’d heard about the club by reputation only. He knew, for instance, that it was owned by Drew Davis, primarily because Davis was a larger-than-life character who continually inserted himself into the political and economic affairs of African Americans in the district. Thanks to his influence, homeless shelters had become safer places for their residents, halfway houses had been built; he made it a point to hire ex-cons. He was so cannily public about these hirings that the ex-cons had no choice but to make the most of their second chances.

  What Batt didn’t know about was the Slipper’s back room, so he was puzzled when, after a full circuit of the space, plus an expedition to the men’s room, he could find no trace of either Feir or the general.

  Fearing that they’d slipped out the back, he returned to the parking lot, only to find their cars where they’d left them. Back in the Slipper, he took another trip through the crowd, figuring he must have missed them somehow. Still, there was no sign, but as he neared the rear of the space he spotted someone talking to a muscled black man the approximate size of a refrigerator. After a small bout of jawing, Mr. Muscle opened a door Batt hadn’t noticed before, and the man slipped through. Guessing this was where Feir and Kendall must have gone, Batt edged his way toward Mr. Muscle and the door.

  It was then that he saw Soraya walk through the front door.

  Bourne almost stripped the car’s gears trying to outrun the police car on their tail.

  “Take it easy,” Petra said, “or you’ll tear my poor car apart.”

  He wished he’d taken a longer look at the map of the city. A street blocked off with wooden sawhorses flashed by on their left. The paving had been torn up, leaving the heavily pitted and cracked underlayer, the worst parts of which were in the process of being excavated.

  “Hold on tight,” Bourne said as he reversed, then turned into the street and drove the car through the sawhorses, cracking one and scattering the others. The car hit the underlayer, jounced down the street at what seemed a reckless speed. It felt as if the vehicle were being machine-gunned by a pile driver. Bourne’s teeth rattled in his head, and Petra struggled to keep from crying out.

  Behind them, the police car was having even more difficulty keeping to a straight path. It jerked back and forth to avoid the deepest of the holes gouged in the roadbed. Putting on another burst of speed, Bourne was able to lengthen the distance between them. But then he glanced ahead. A cement truck was parked crosswise at the other end of the street. If they kept going there was no way to avoid crashing into it.

  Bourne kept the speed on as the cement truck loomed larger and larger. The police car was coming up fast behind them.

  “What are you doing?” Petra screamed. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  At that moment, Bourne threw the car into neutral, stepped on the brake. He immediately changed into reverse, took his foot off the brake, and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The car shuddered, its engine screaming. Then the transmission locked into place, and the car flew backward. The police car came on, its driver frozen in shock. Bourne swerved around it as the vehicle raced forward into the side of the cement truck.

  Bourne wasn’t even looking. He was busy steering the car back down the street in reverse. Blasting past the shattered sawhorses, he turned, braked, put the car into first, and drove off.

  What the hell are you doing here?” Noah said. “You should be on your way to Damascus.”

  “I’m due to take off in four hours.” Moira put her hands in her pockets so he wouldn’t see that they were curled into fists. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  Noah sighed. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  Her laugh had a bitter taste to it. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Because,” Noah said, “you’ve been with Black River long enough to know how we operate.”

  They were walking down Kaufingerstrasse in the center of Munich, a heavily trafficked area just off the Marienplatz. Turning in at the sign for the Augustiner Bierkeller, they entered a long, dim cathedral-like space that smelled powerfully of beer and boiled wurst. The hubbub of noise was just right for masking a private conversation. Crossing the red flagstone floor, they chose a table in one of the rooms, sat on wooden benches. The person closest to them was an old man sucking on a pipe while he leisurely read the paper.

  Moira and Noah both ordered a Hefeweizen, a wheat beer still clouded with unfiltered yeast, from a waitress dressed in the regional Dirndlkleid, a long, wide skirt and low-cut blouse. She had an apron around her waist, along with a decorative purse.

  “Noah,” Moira said when the beers had been served, “I don’t hold any illusions about why we do what we do, but how do you expect me to ignore this intel I got right from the source?”

  Noah took a long draw of his Hefeweizen, fastidiously wiped his lips before answering. Then he began to tick off points on his fingers. “First, this man Hauser told you that the flaw in the software is virtually undetectable. Second, what he told you isn’t verifiable. He might simply be a disgruntled employee trying to get revenge on Kaller Steelworks. Have you considered that possibility?”

  “We could run our own tests on the software.”

  “No time. There’s less than two days before the LNG tanker is scheduled to dock at the terminal.” He continued ticking off points. “Third, we couldn’t do anything without alerting NextGen, who would then turn around and confront Kaller Steelworks, which would put us in the middle of a nasty situation. And, fourth and finally, what part of the sentence We’ve officially notified NextGen that we’ve withdrawn from the project do you not understand?”

  Moira sat back for a moment and took a deep breath. “This is solid intel, Noah. It could lead to the situation we were most worried about: a terrorist attack. How can you—”

  “You’ve already taken several steps over the line, Moira,” Noah said sharply. “Get your tail on that plane and your head into your new assignment, or you’re through at Black River.”

  It’s better for the moment that we don’t meet,” Icoupov said.

  Arkadin was seething, barely holding down his rage, and only then because Devra, canny witch that she was, dug her fingernails into the palm of his hand. She understood him; no questions, no probing, no trying to pick over his past like a vulture.

  “What about the plans?” He and Devra were sitting in a miserable, smoke-filled bar, in a run-down part of the city.

  “I’ll pick them up from you now.” Icoupov’s voice sounded thin and far away over the cell phone, even though there could be only a mile or two separating them. “I’m following Bourne. I’m going after him myself.”

  Arkadin didn’t want to hear it. “I thought that was my job.”

  “Your job is essentially over. You have the plans and you’ve terminated Pyotr’s network.”

  “All except Egon Kirsch.”

  “Kirsch has already been disposed of,” Icoupov said.

  “I’m the one who terminates the targets. I’ll give you the plans and then take care of Bourne.”

  �
��I told you, Leonid Danilovich, I don’t want Bourne terminated.”

  Arkadin made an anguished animal sound under his breath. But Bourne has to be terminated, he thought. Devra dug her claws deeper into his flesh, so that he could smell the sweet, coppery scent of his own blood. And I have to do it. He murdered Mischa.

  “Are you listening to me?” Icoupov said sharply.

  Arkadin stirred within his web of rage. “Yes, sir, always. However, I must insist that you tell me where you’ll be when you accost Bourne. This is security, for your own safety. I won’t stand helplessly by while something unforseen happens to you.”

  “Agreed,” Icoupov said after a moment’s hesitation. “At the moment, he’s on the move, so I have time to get the plans from you.” He gave Arkadin an address. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “It’ll take me a bit longer,” Arkadin said.

  “Within the half hour then. The moment I know where I’ll be intercepting Bourne, you’ll know. Does that satisfy you, Leonid Danilovich?”

  “Completely.”

  Arkadin folded away his phone, disentangled himself from Devra, and went up to the bar. “A double Oban on rocks.”

  The bartender, a huge man with tattooed arms, squinted at him. “What’s an Oban?”

  “It’s a single-malt scotch, you moron.”

  The bartender, polishing an old-fashioned glass, grunted. “What does this look like, the prince’s palace? We don’t have single-malt anything.”

  Arkadin reached over, snatched the glass out of the bartender’s hands, and smashed it bottom-first into his nose. Then, as blood started to gush, he hauled the dazed man over the bar top and proceeded to beat him to a pulp.

  I can’t go back to Munich,” Petra said. “Not for a while, anyway. That’s what he told me.”

  “Why would you jeopardize your job to kill someone?” Bourne said.

  “Please!” She glanced at him. “A hamster couldn’t live on what they paid me in that shithole.”

  She was behind the wheel, driving on the autobahn. They had already passed the outskirts of the city. Bourne didn’t mind; he needed to stay out of Munich himself until the furor over Egon Kirsch’s death died down. The authorities would find someone else’s ID on Kirsch, and though Bourne had no doubt they’d eventually find out his real identity, he hoped by that time to have retrieved the plans from Arkadin and be flying back to Washington. In the meantime the police would be searching for him as a witness to the murders of both Kirsch and Jens.

  “Sooner or later,” Bourne said, “you’re going to have to tell me who hired you.”

  Petra said nothing, but her hands trembled on the wheel, an aftermath of their harrowing chase.

  “Where are we going?” Bourne said. He wanted to keep her engaged in conversation. He felt that she needed to connect with him on some personal level in order to open up. He had to get her to tell him who had ordered her to kill Egon Kirsch. That might answer the question of whether he was connected to the man who’d gunned down Jens.

  “Home,” she said. “A place I never wanted to go back to.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I was born in Munich because my mother traveled there to give birth to me, but I’m from Dachau.” She meant the town, of course, after which the adjacent Nazi concentration camp had been named. “No parent wants Dachau to appear on their child’s birth certificate, so when their time comes the women check into a Munich hospital.” Hardly surprising: Almost two hundred thousand people were exterminated during the camp’s life, the longest of the war, since it was the first built, becoming the prototype for all the other KZ camps.

  The town itself, situated along the Amper River, lay some twelve miles northwest of Munich. It was unexpectedly bucolic, with its narrow cobbled streets, old-fashioned street lamps, and quiet tree-lined lanes.

  When Bourne observed that most of the people they passed looked contented enough, Petra laughed unpleasantly. “They go around in a permanent fog, hating that their little town has such a murderous burden to carry.”

  She drove through the center of Dachau, then turned north until they reached what once had been the village of Etzenhausen. There, on a desolate hill known at the Leitenberg, was a graveyard, lonely and utterly deserted. They got out of the car, walked past the stone stela with the sculpted Star of David. The stone was scarred, furry with blue lichen; the overhanging firs and hemlocks blocked out the sky even on such a bright midwinter afternoon.

  As they walked slowly among the gravestones, she said, “This is the KZ-Friedhof, the concentration camp cemetery. Through most of Dachau’s life, the corpses of the Jews were piled up and burned in ovens, but toward the end when the camp ran out of coal, the Nazis had to do something with the corpses, so they brought them up here.” She spread her arms wide. “This is all the memorial the Jewish victims got.”

  Bourne had been in many cemeteries before, and had found them peculiarly peaceful. Not KZ-Friedhof, where a sensation of constant movement, ceaseless murmuring made his skin crawl. The place was alive, howling in its restless silence. He paused, squatted down, and ran his fingertips over the words engraved on a headstone. They were so eroded it was impossible to read them.

  “Did you ever think that the man you shot today might have been a Jew?” he said.

  She turned on him sharply. “I told you I needed the money. I did it out of necessity.”

  Bourne looked around them. “That’s what the Nazis said when they buried their last victims here.”

  A flash of anger momentarily burned away the sadness in her eyes. “I hate you.”

  “Not nearly as much as you hate yourself.” He rose, handed her back her gun. “Here, why don’t you shoot yourself and end it all?”

  She took the gun, aimed it at him. “Why don’t I just shoot you?”

  “Killing me will only make matters worse for you. Besides…” Bourne opened up one palm to show her the bullets he’d taken out of her weapon.

  With a disgusted sound, Petra holstered her gun. Her face and hands looked greenish in what light filtered through the evergreens.

  “You can make amends for what you did today,” Bourne said. “Tell me who hired you.”

  Petra eyed him skeptically. “I won’t give you the money, if that’s what you’re angling for.”

  “I have no interest in your money,” Bourne said. “But I think the man you shot was going to tell me something I needed to know. I suspect that’s why you were hired to kill him.”

  Some of the skepticism leached out of her face. “Really?”

  Bourne nodded.

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” she said. “You understand that.”

  “You walked up to him, put the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger.”

  Petra looked away, at nothing in particular. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Then you’re no better than anyone else in Dachau.”

  Tears spilled over, she covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders shook. The sounds she made were like those Bourne had heard on Leitenberg.

  At length, Petra’s crying jag was spent. Wiping her reddened eyes with the backs of her hands, she said, “I wanted to be a poet, you know? I always equated being a poet with being a revolutionary. I, a German, wanted to change the world or, at least, do something to change the way the world saw us, to do something to scoop that core of guilt out of us.”

  “You should have become an exorcist.”

  It was a joke, but such was her mood that she found nothing funny in it. “That would be perfect, wouldn’t it?” She looked at him with eyes still filled with tears. “Is it so naive to want to change the world?”

  “Impractical might be a better word.”

  She cocked her head. “You’re a cynic, aren’t you?” When he didn’t answer, she went on. “I don’t think it’s naive to believe that words—that what you write—can change things.”

  “Why aren’t you writing then,” he said, “instead of
shooting people for money? That’s no way to earn a living.”

  She was silent for so long, he wondered whether she’d heard him.

  At last, she said, “Fuck it, I was hired by a man named Spangler Wald—he’s just past being a boy, really, no more than twenty-one or -two. I’d seen him around the pubs; we had coffee together once or twice. He said he was attending the university, majoring in entropic economics, whatever that is.”

  “I don’t think anyone can major in entropic economics,” Bourne said.

  “Figures.” Petra was still sniffling. “I have to get my bullshit meter recalibrated.” She shrugged. “I never was good with people; I’m better off communing with the dead.”

  Bourne said, “You can’t take on the grief and rage of so many people without being buried alive.”

  She looked off at the rows of crumbling headstones. “What else can I do? They’re forgotten now. Here’s where the truth lies. If you omit the truth, isn’t that worse than a lie?”

  When he didn’t answer, she gave a quick twitch of her shoulders and turned around. “Now that you’ve been here, I want to show you what the tourists see.”

  She led him back to her car, drove down the deserted hill to the official Dachau memorial.

  There was a pall over what was left of the camp buildings, as if the noxious emissions of the coal-fired incinerators still rose and fell on the thermals, like carrion birds still searching for the dead. An ironwork sculpture, a harrowing interpretation of skeletal prisoners made to resemble the barbed wire that had imprisoned them, greeted them as they drove in. Inside what had once been the main administrative building was a mock-up of the cells, display cases of shoes and other inexpressibly sad items, all that was left of the inmates.