The Bourne Sanction

by Eric Van Lustbader

  When you didn’t show for your scheduled flight, I had a hunch you’d show up here.” Noah stared at her, completely ignoring Bourne. “I won’t allow you on the plane, Moira. You’re no longer a part of this.”

  “She still works for NextGen, doesn’t she?” Bourne said.

  “Who is this?” Noah said, keeping his eyes on her.

  “My name is Jason Bourne.”

  A slow smile crept over Noah’s face. “Moira, you didn’t introduce us.” He turned to Bourne, stuck out his hand. “Noah Petersen.”

  Bourne shook his hand. “Jason Bourne.”

  Keeping the same sly smile on his face, Noah said, “Do you know she lied to you, that she tried to recruit you to NextGen under false pretenses?”

  His eyes flicked toward Moira, but he was disappointed to see neither shock nor outrage on her face.

  “Why would she do that?” Bourne said.

  “Because,” Moira said, “like Noah here, I work for Black River, the private security firm. We were hired by NextGen to oversee security on the LNG terminal.”

  It was Noah who registered shock. “Moira, that’s enough. You’re in violation of your contract.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Noah. I quit Black River half an hour ago. I’ve been made chief of security at NextGen, so in point of fact it’s you who isn’t welcome aboard this flight.”

  Noah stood rigid as stone, until Bourne took a step toward him. Then he backed away, descending the flight of rolling stairs. Halfway down, he turned to her. “Pity, Moira. I once had faith in you.”

  She shook her head. “The pity is that Black River has no conscience.”

  Noah looked at her for a moment then turned, clattered down the rest of the stairs, and stalked off across the tarmac without seeing the Mercedes or the police car behind it.

  Because it would make the least noise, Arkadin decided on the Mosquito. Hand curled around the grips, he got out of the police car, stalked to the driver’s side of the Mercedes. It was the driver—who doubtless doubled as a bodyguard—he had to dispense with first. Keeping his Mosquito out of sight, he rapped on the driver’s window with a bare knuckle.

  When the driver slid the glass down, Arkadin shoved the Mosquito in his face and pulled the trigger. The driver’s head snapped back so hard the cervical vertebrae cracked. Pulling open the door, Arkadin shoved the corpse aside and knelt on the seat, facing the two men in the backseat. He recognized Sever from an old photograph when Icoupov had showed him the face of his enemy. He said, “Wrong time, wrong place,” and shot Sever in the chest.

  As he slumped over, Arkadin turned his attention to Icoupov. “You didn’t think you could escape me, Father, did you?”

  Icoupov—who, between the sudden attack and the unendurable pain in his shoulder, was going into delayed shock—said, “Why do you call me father? Your father died a long time ago, Leonid Danilovich.”

  “No,” Arkadin said, “he sits here before me like a wounded bird.”

  “A wounded bird, yes.” With great effort, Icoupov opened his greatcoat, the lining of which was sopping wet with his blood. “Your paramour shot me before I shot her in self-defense.”

  “This is not a court of law. What matters is that she’s dead.” Arkadin shoved the muzzle of the Mosquito under Icoupov’s chin, and tilted upward. “And you, Father, are still alive.”

  “I don’t understand you.” Icoupov swallowed hard. “I never did.”

  “What was I ever to you, except a means to an end? I killed when you ordered me to. Why? Why did I do that, can you tell me?”

  Icoupov said nothing, not knowing what he could say to save himself from judgment day.

  “I did it because I was trained to do it,” Arkadin said. “That’s why you sent me to America, to Washington, not to cure me of my homicidal rages, as you said, but to harness them for your use.”

  “What of it?” Icoupov finally found his voice. “Of what other use were you? When I found you, you were close to taking your own life. I saved you, you ungrateful shit.”

  “You saved me so you could condemn me to this life, which, if I am any judge, is no life at all. I see I never really escaped Nizhny Tagil. I never will.”

  Icoupov smiled, believing he’d gotten the measure of his protégé. “You don’t want to kill me, Leonid Danilovich. I’m your only friend. Without me you’re nothing.”

  “Nothing is what I always was,” Arkadin said as he pulled the trigger. “Now you’re nothing, too.”

  Then he got out of the Mercedes, walked out on the tarmac to where the NextGen personnel were almost finished off-loading the crates. Without being seen, he climbed onto the hoist. There he hunkered down just beneath the operator’s cab, and after the last crate had been stowed aboard, when the NextGen loaders were exiting the cargo hold via the interior stairwell, he leapt aboard the plane, scrambled behind a stack of crates, and sat down, patient as death, while the doors closed, locking him in.

  Bourne saw the German official coming and suspected there was something wrong: An Immigration officer had no business interrogating them now. Then he recognized the man’s face. He told Moira to get back inside the plane, then stood barring the door as the official mounted the stairs.

  “I need to see everyone’s passport,” the officer said as he approached Bourne.

  “Passport checks have already been made, mein Herr.”

  “Nevertheless, another security scan must be made now.” The officer held out his hand. “Your passport, please. And then I will check the identity of everyone else aboard.”

  “You don’t recognize me, mein Herr?”

  “Please.” The officer put his hand on the butt of his holstered Luger. “You are obstructing official government business. Believe me, I will take you into custody unless you show me your passport and then move aside.”

  “Here’s my passport, mein Herr.” Bourne opened it to the last page, pointed to a spot on the inside cover. “And here is where you placed an electronic tracking device.”

  “What accusation is this? You have no proof—”

  Bourne produced the broken bug. “I don’t believe you’re here on official business. I think whoever instructed you to plant this on me is paying you to check these passports.” Bourne gripped the officer’s elbow. “Let’s stroll over to the commandant of Immigration and ask them if they sent you here.”

  The officer drew himself up stiffly. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I have a job to do.”

  “So do I.”

  As Bourne dragged him down the rolling stairs, the officer went for his gun.

  Bourne dug his fingers into the nerve bundle just above the man’s elbow. “Draw it if you must,” Bourne said, “but be prepared for the consequences.”

  The official’s frosty aloofness finally cracked, revealing the fear beneath. His round face was pallid and sweating.

  “What do you want of me?” he said as they walked along the tarmac.

  “Take me to your real employer.”

  The officer had one last blast of bravado in him. “You don’t really think he’s here, do you?”

  “As a matter of fact I wasn’t sure until you said that. Now I know he is.” Bourne shook the official. “Now take me to him.”

  Defeated, the officer nodded bleakly. No doubt, he was contemplating his immediate future. At a quickened pace, he led Bourne around behind the 747. At that moment, the NextGen truck rumbled to life, heading away from the plane, back the way it had come. That was when Bourne saw the black Mercedes and a police car directly behind it.

  “Where did that police car come from?” The officer tore himself away from Bourne and broke into a run toward the parked cars.

  Bourne, who saw the driver’s-side doors on both vehicles standing open, was at the officer’s heels. It was clear as they approached that no one was in the police car, but looking through the Mercedes’s door, they saw the driver, slumped over. It looked as if he’d been kicked to the passenger’s side of the seat.

/>   Bourne pulled open the rear door, saw Icoupov with the top of his head blown off. Another man had fallen forward against the front seat rests. When Bourne pulled him gently backward, he saw that it was Dominic Specter—or Asher Sever—and everything became clear to him. Beneath the public enmity, the two men were secret allies. This answered many questions, not the least of which was why everyone Bourne had spoken to about the Black Legion had a different opinion about who was a member and who wasn’t.

  Sever looked small and frail, old beyond his years. He’d been shot in the chest with a .22. Bourne took his pulse, listened to his breathing. He was still alive.

  “I’ll call for an ambulance,” the officer said.

  “Do what you have to do,” Bourne said as he scooped Sever up. “I’m taking this one with me.”

  He left the Immigration officer to deal with the mess, crossing the tarmac and mounting the rolling stairs.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said as he laid Sever down across three seats.

  “What happened to him?” Moira said with a gasp. “Is he alive or dead?”

  Bourne knelt beside his old mentor. “He’s still breathing.” As he began to rip off the professor’s shirt, he said to Moira. “Get us moving, okay? We need to get out of here now.”

  Moira nodded. As she went up the aisle, she spoke to one of the flight attendants, who ran for the first-aid kit. The door to the cockpit was still open, and she gave the order for takeoff to the captain and the co-pilot.

  Within five minutes the rolling stairs had been removed and the 747 was taxiing to the head of the runway. A moment later the control tower cleared it for takeoff. The brakes were let out, the engines revved up, and, with increasing velocity, the jet hurtled down the runway. Then it lifted off, its wheel retracted, flaps were adjusted, and it soared into a sky filled with the crimson and gold of the setting sun.

  Forty-Three

  IS HE DEAD?” Sever stared up at Bourne, who was cleaning his chest wound.

  “You mean Semion?”

  “Yes. Semion. Is he dead?”

  “Icoupov and the driver, both.”

  Bourne held Sever down while the alcohol burned off everything that could cause the wound to suppurate. No organs had been struck, but the injury must be extremely painful.

  Bourne applied an antiseptic cream from a tube in the first-aid kit. “Who shot you?”

  “Arkadin.” Tears of pain rolled down Sever’s cheeks. “For some reason, he’s gone completely insane. Maybe he was always insane. I thought so anyway. Allah, that hurts!” He took several shallow breaths before he went on. “He came out of nowhere. The driver said, ‘A police car has pulled up behind us.’ The next thing I know he’s rolling down the window and a gun is fired point-blank in his face. Neither Semion nor I had time to think. There was Arkadin inside the car. He shot me, but I’m certain it was Semion he’d come for.”

  Intuiting what must have happened in Kirsch’s apartment, Bourne said, “Icoupov killed his woman, Devra.”

  Sever squeezed his eyes shut. He was having trouble breathing normally. “So what? Arkadin never cared what happened to his women.”

  “He cared about this one,” Bourne said, applying a bandage.

  Sever stared up at Bourne with an expression of disbelief. “The odd thing was, I think I heard him call Semion ‘Father.’ Semion didn’t understand.”

  “And now he never will.”

  “Stop your fussing; let me die, dammit!” Sever said crossly. “It doesn’t matter now whether I live or die.”

  Bourne finished up.

  “What’s done is done. Fate has been sealed; there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to change it.”

  Bourne sat on a seat opposite Sever. He was aware of Moira standing to one side, watching and listening. The professor’s betrayal only went to prove that you were never safe when you let personal feelings into your life.

  “Jason.” Sever’s voice was weaker. “I never meant to deceive you.”

  “Yes, you did, Professor, that’s all you know how to do.”

  “I came to look upon you as a son.”

  “Like Icoupov looked upon Arkadin.”

  With an effort, Sever shook his head. “Arkadin is insane. Perhaps they both were, perhaps their shared insanity is what drew them together.”

  Bourne sat forward. “Let me ask you a question, Professor. Do you think you’re sane?”

  “Of course I’m sane.”

  Sever’s eyes held steady on Bourne’s, a challenge still, at this late stage.

  For a moment, Bourne did nothing, then he rose and, together with Moira, walked forward toward the cockpit.

  “It’s a long flight,” she said softly, “and you need your rest.”

  “We both do.”

  They sat next to each other, silent for a long time. Occasionally, they heard Sever utter a soft moan. Otherwise, the drone of the engines conspired to lull them to sleep.

  It was freezing in the baggage hold, but Arkadin didn’t mind. The Nizhny Tagil winters had been brutal. It was during one of those winters that Mischa Tarkanian had found him, hiding out from the remnants of Stas Kuzin’s regime. Mischa, hard as a knife blade, had the heart of a poet. He told stories that were beautiful enough to be poems. Arkadin had been enchanted, if such a word could be ascribed to him. Mischa’s talent for storytelling had the power to take Arkadin far away from Nizhny Tagil, and when Mischa smuggled him out past the inner ring of smokestacks, past the outer ring of high-security prisons, his stories took Arkadin to places beyond Moscow, to lands beyond Russia. The stories gave Arkadin his first inkling of the world at large.

  As he sat now, his back against a crate, knees drawn up to his chest in order to conserve warmth, he had good cause to think of Mischa. Icoupov had paid for killing Devra, now Bourne must pay for killing Mischa. But not just yet, Arkadin brooded, though his blood called out for revenge. If he killed Bourne now, Icoupov’s plan would succeed, and he couldn’t allow that, otherwise his revenge against him would be incomplete.

  Arkadin put his head back against the edge of the crate and closed his eyes. Revenge had become like one of Mischa’s poems, its meaning flowering open to surround him with a kind of ethereal beauty, the only form of beauty that registered on him, the only beauty that lasted. It was the glimpse of that promised beauty, the very prospect of it, that allowed him to sit patiently, curled between crates, waiting for his moment of revenge, his moment of inestimable beauty.

  Bourne dreamed of the hell known as Nizhny Tagil as if he’d been born there, and when he awoke he knew Arkadin was near. Opening his eyes, he saw Moira staring at him.

  “What do you feel about the professor?” she said, by which he suspected she meant, What do you feel about me?

  “I think the years of obsession have driven him insane. I don’t think he knows good from evil, right from wrong.”

  “Is that why you didn’t ask him why he embarked on this path to destruction?”

  “In a way,” Bourne said. “Whatever his answer would have been it wouldn’t have made sense to us.”

  “Fanatics never make sense,” she said. “That’s why they’re so difficult to counteract. A rational response, which is always our choice, is rarely effective.” She cocked her head. “He betrayed you, Jason. He nurtured your belief in him, and played on it.”

  “If you climb on a scorpion’s back you’ve got to expect to get stung.”

  “Don’t you have a desire for revenge?”

  “Maybe I should smother him in his sleep, or shoot him to death as Arkadin did to Semion Icoupov. Do you really expect that to make me feel better? I’ll exact my revenge by stopping the Black Legion’s attack.”

  “You sound so rational.”

  “I don’t feel rational, Moira.”

  She took his meaning, and blood rushed to her cheeks. “I may have lied to you, Jason, but I didn’t betray you. I could never do that.” She engaged his eyes. “There were so many times in the last week wh
en I ached to tell you, but I had a duty to Black River.”

  “Duty is something I understand, Moira.”

  “Understanding is one thing, but will you forgive me?”

  He put out his hand. “You aren’t a scorpion,” he said. “It’s not in your nature.”

  She took his hand in hers, brought it up to her mouth, and pressed it to her cheek.

  At that moment they heard Sever cry out, and they rose, went down the aisle to where he lay curled on his side like a small child afraid of the dark. Bourne knelt down, drew Sever gently onto his back to keep pressure off the wound.

  The professor stared at Bourne, then, as Moira spoke to him, at her.

  “Why did you do it?” Moira said. “Why attack the country you’d adopted as your own?”

  Sever could not catch his breath. He swallowed convulsively. “You’d never understand.”

  “Why don’t you try me?”

  Sever closed his eyes, as if to better visualize each word as it emerged from his mouth. “The Muslim sect I belong to, that Semion belonged to, is very old—ancient even. It had its beginnings in North Africa.” He paused, already out of breath. “Our sect is very strict, we believe in a fundamentalism so devout it cannot be conveyed to infidels by any means. But I can tell you this: We cannot live in the modern world because the modern world violates every one of our laws. Therefore, it must be destroyed.

  “Nevertheless…” He licked his lips, and Bourne poured out some water, lifted his head, and allowed him to drink his fill. When he was finished, he continued. “I should never have tried to use you, Jason. Over the years there have been many disagreements between Semion and myself—this was the latest, the one that broke the proverbial camel’s back. He said you’d be trouble, and he was right. I thought I could manufacture a reality, that I could use you to convince the American security agencies we were going to attack New York City.” He emitted a dry, little laugh. “I lost sight of the central tenet of life, that reality can’t be controlled, it’s too random, too chaotic. So you see it was I who was on a fool’s errand, Jason, not you.”