The Bourne Imperative

by Eric Van Lustbader

  The president raised his eyebrows. “What’s your point?”

  “Marks and Moore take their orders from him.”

  The president swiveled around to stare out the window. “What have you found out about them?”

  Richards took a moment to marshal his thoughts. “They’re both smart—smart enough to keep me at arm’s length. Their mistake, however, is in thinking the assignment they gave me is merely make-work.”

  The president swung back around, his hooded eyes fixed on his mole. “Meaning?”

  “Did you know that the identity of Jason Bourne was created by Treadstone personnel?”

  “Richards, you’re sorely trying my patience today.”

  “Also, that Jason Bourne was a real human being. He was a soldier of fortune who was killed because he sold out his unit.”

  The president frowned deeply. “That knowledge is Archive Omega–​​level. How the devil did you get hold of it?”

  For an instant Richards wondered whether, in trying so hard to make his point, he had overplayed his hand. “There’s no leak, if that’s what you’re thinking. The Archivist asked me to vet a new priority-one algorithm for all Archival data, for security holes.” He waved his hand as if to downplay the importance of his explanation, which was the truth only on the surface. He certainly didn’t want anyone probing beneath. “The point is, I’m making headway finding out whether or not the Djinn Who Lights The Way is real or fictional. One thing I can tell you is that one man cannot be responsible for all the influence attributed to him.”

  The president sat forward. “Listen, Richards, you’re not understanding.”

  “It’s most likely that this Nicodemo is an agglomeration of many people.”

  “Fuck Nicodemo,” the president said harshly. “I’m not interested in him; that’s Hendricks’s bogeyman. What interests me are Peter Marks and Soraya Moore.”

  Richards shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Soraya Moore was a rogue agent at CI; now both of them are rogue directors at Treadstone.”

  “Surely they’re not security risks. I’m still not—”

  “They’re both close to Jason Bourne, you fool! It’s his toxic influence that’s made them unreliable.” The president seemed as shocked as Richards by the ferocity of this statement. He drummed his fingers on his desk, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he resumed speaking, it was in a more normal voice. “Moore and Marks are close to Bourne, therefore they must be in touch with him.”

  Richards took a moment to regroup. “You’re after Bourne.”

  “Why d’you imagine I placed you inside Treadstone, Richards? Bourne’s not subject to any rules or regulations. He does whatever he pleases. I can’t have that.”

  “I’ve heard that he’s helped us in the past.”

  The president’s hand cut through the air. “Those rumors may or may not be true, Richards. What they don’t address, however, is Bourne’s own agenda, and believe me, he has one. I want to know what it is. Anyone that far out on the rim, beyond our control, is not only a security risk, but a potential danger to our foreign policy programs. And that’s not even taking into account his unstable mental state. He’s an amnesiac, for Christ’s sake! Who the hell knows what he’ll do next. No.” He shook his head emphatically. “We’ve got to take care of him once and for all. The direct approach hasn’t worked, we’ll never find him that way. And tracking him is an exercise in futility. Besides, Hendricks doesn’t share my concern, so he’s out of this loop.”

  You and Secretary Hendricks are at odds, Richard thought. Hendricks condones thinking outside the box; clearly, you don’t. All at once, he realized that he desperately wanted to be on the winning side. For once in his life.

  The president stood abruptly, went to stand by the furled flag of the United States at one side of the curtained window. “Forget Nicodemo. He’s a smokescreen at best, more likely disinformation, a mirage perpetrated by our enemies to keep us running in circles. Get me now?”

  “Yessir, but I can’t just drop my search for Nicodemo. The directors will become suspicious.”

  “Do just enough Internet snooping to keep their suspicions at bay. Concentrate on finding Bourne.”

  Now his plan for getting Peter and Soraya to trust him by successfully completing the assignment they had given him was blown out of the water. He was growing more and more angry with how the president was treating him. Wasn’t he supposed to be the president’s golden boy? Hadn’t the president himself plucked him out of NSA for this special assignment? And now to find out that the president had lied to him about the real nature of the assignment made him mad as hell. Fuck it, he thought. It’s every man for himself now.

  But then, he thought with a silent, sardonic laugh, it always has been.

  For the rest of the briefing, he pasted a smile on his face, nodded occasionally, and made all the appropriate noises. The truth was, he wasn’t listening. He was already forming a new strategy, one that would benefit only him. He berated himself for not having thought along that line before.

  When he returned to Treadstone, Richards went straight to Peter Marks’s office, only to find Soraya Moore sitting behind his desk, working at his computer. This both surprised and alarmed Richards, and he heard again an echo of the president’s assertion that these two directors had rogue personalities. Even in business, it was frowned on to use someone else’s computer terminal; in the clandestine services it was unheard of. He could see why they maintained their connection with Bourne.

  Soraya looked up as he stood hesitantly on the threshold. “Yes? What is it, Richards?”

  “I was—I was looking for Director Marks.”

  “And instead you’ve found me.” She gestured. “Take a pew. What’s on your mind?”

  Another hesitation, even though momentary, brought home to Richards just how intimidated he was by her. Truth to tell, he’d never met a woman anything like her, and this made him deeply uneasy.

  Soraya sighed. “Sit. Now.”

  He lowered himself, perched on the edge of the chair. His physical discomfort echoed his emotional disquiet.

  “Are you going to say anything or just sit there like a toad on a log?”

  He watched her, wary still. It was only then that he remembered he was clutching a file that contained a hard copy of his progress so far in finding the truth about Nicodemo. He placed the file on Marks’s desk and shoved it across to her side. He found it curious that she had made no mention of what she was doing in her co-​director’s office, using his computer. Did she have the key code to his terminal? Everyone in Treadstone had their own personal codes to log in and out of their office computers. A second code was needed for their laptops, and a third for those who had been given the newest model tablet computers.

  He found Soraya staring at him with her large liquid eyes. That she was beautiful and highly desirable as well as powerful made him angry beyond words. She took up the file and, without taking her eyes from him, opened it.

  “What is this?”

  The unexpected question unnerved him. Why was she asking him when a simple glance down would give her the answer?

  He sucked in a ragged breath. “I’ve made significant progress on the assignment you and Director Marks gave me.”

  “Go on.”

  Why didn’t she look down? Richards shook off the nagging question and continued. “If you check the printouts—”

  “Hard copy is entirely without context or affect,” she said. “I’d like to hear your findings in your own words.”

  So that was it, he thought. Clearing his throat again, he continued. “It’s increasingly clear that the person Nicodemo doesn’t exist, per se. It’s more than likely he’s a clever construct, like the Bourne Identity.”

  “‘Increasingly clear,’ ‘more than likely’?” Soraya said, not rising to the bait. “These are not phrases I like. They’re not factual; they have no meaning.”

  “I’m workin
g on rectifying that now,” Richards said, wondering how he was going to get her to talk about Bourne.

  “No, you’re sitting here talking to me.” Soraya cocked her head. “Tell me, Richards, why were you coming to Peter with this and not to me?”

  Land mines, Richards thought. She’s placing land mines all over the place. I have to tread very carefully without letting on I know what she’s up to. He could say that Marks had told him he’d given Director Moore a couple of days off, but that wasn’t strictly speaking true. He’d overheard it. Snooping might be a better term. He couldn’t afford to have her catch him in a lie, or even a half-truth. “My first contact here was with Director Marks. I worked with him for several weeks, more or less collegially, before you arrived, and then…” He allowed his voice to trail off as he shrugged. She knew very well how she had frozen him out, treated him like a worm in the apple.

  “I see.” Soraya put down the file unread, and, steepling her fingers, leaned back in Peter Marks’s chair. “So you’re lodging a complaint against me, is that it?”

  He saw his mistake immediately and silently cursed himself. He could sense that any denial on his part would only make things worse. He could tell now that she despised any form of weakness, whether merely apparent or real. “Director, allow me a moment to take my foot out of my mouth.” He allowed a brief sense of relief as the flicker of her smile impressed itself on him. “I have a thick skin. I didn’t used to, but you know NSA.”

  “Do I?”

  “M. Errol Danziger, the current CI director, is NSA-trained, so I would judge that you know better than most.”

  “During your time at NSA did you form an opinion of Director Danziger?”

  “He’s an asshole, in my humble opinion.” This answer appeared to please her, and he willed himself to relax. “If my tenure at NSA taught me anything, it was that in order to survive, I had to toughen up. Which is all to say that how you treat me is entirely your business.”

  “Thank you.”

  Noting her sharply sardonic tone, he said, “My business is to carry out to the best of my ability whatever orders you give me.”

  “Not whatever orders the president has given you?”

  “I understand that you don’t trust me. Frankly, in your place I’d feel the same.”

  “Just why the hell did the president press you onto us?”

  “In the past, there has been too much leeway taken inside black-ops organizations. He’s asked me to monitor—”

  “Spy on us.”

  “If I’m to be honest, I don’t think he’s being adversarial.”

  “Then what?”

  “He’s cautious, I guess would be the best term for it.”

  Soraya smirked. “And you agree with him, I imagine.”

  “I guess I did before I got here. But now, seeing what Treadstone does…” He left a small silence to punctuate that statement.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “And I’m doing my best to earn your trust.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The deeper I get into the Nicodemo assignment, the more of a tangle it becomes. I finally came to the conclusion that this tangle, which proliferated at every turn of whatever form of search I performed, was deliberate.”

  “Nothing would arouse as much suspicion as your finding Nicodemo easily.”

  “Exactly! Of course, this was the first thought that came to me as I made my way through the first layers. But, as you’ll see in the file, this is more than a hacker’s tangle. It’s a goddamned Gordian knot. The more I unraveled one strand, the tighter the knot became.”

  “Isn’t that simply superior security?”

  “No,” Richards said. “It’s a double-blind.”

  “Meaning?”

  “This Gordian knot is meant to seem like superior security, the better to suck in expert hackers who, unlike me, are conspiracy theorists at heart. But, in fact, it’s nothing but bullshit. The Gordian knot is the product of some evil genius—sound and fury signifying nothing.”

  “So you’re saying—what?—Nicodemo doesn’t exist?”

  “Not as you and I were trained to think of him—and maybe not at all.”

  “Okay.” Soraya spread her hands. “Say you’re right.”

  “I am right.”

  “Then who the hell owns Core Energy?”

  Richards blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I have it on good authority that Nicodemo is connected with Core Energy.”

  “Where did you hear that? Tom Brick is CEO of Core Energy.”

  Soraya had learned about Core Energy and Nicodemo from Jason Bourne, with whom, by long-standing arrangement, she was in periodic phone contact, but she wasn’t about to tell Richards that. “According to this source, Core Energy has a shitload of masked subsidiaries that are buying up energy mines and producers worldwide, making deals Tom Brick or any other legit CEO couldn’t touch with a fifty-foot pole. If, as you claim, Nicodemo doesn’t exist, then who the hell is making those corrupt deals?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I, though I’ve tried my damnedest to find out.” She closed the file and skimmed it back across the desk to him. “Back to the salt pits, Richards. You want to impress me, dig me out some useful intel.”

  A hot spray of blood coated Bourne’s face as the gunshot reverberated through his mind. Helpless, he stared up into the gunman’s stunned face. An instant later, the gunman’s eyes turned glassy, and he keeled over onto his side.

  A second shadow passed across Bourne’s vision. He turned his head, saw another figure, gun in hand. Sunlight turned the figure inky, no more than a silhouette. Then the sun slipped behind a racing cloudbank and, as the figure knelt beside him, Bourne recognized the face.

  “Rebeka,” he said.

  She smiled. “Welcome back to the living, Bourne.”

  Trying to move, he crackled like an iceberg cleaving. Reversing her Glock, she used the butt to chip off the layer of ice that had turned his coat and trousers to armor.

  “We’d better peel this stuff off you before it adheres to your skin permanently.” As she worked, she said: “It’s good to see you. I never thanked you for saving my life.”

  “All in a day’s work,” Bourne said now. “Is Alef okay?”

  She frowned. “Who?”

  “The man next to me. I pulled him out of the water several days ago.”

  “Oh, you mean Manfred Weaving.” She glanced to Bourne’s left. “He’s fine. Thanks to you. But I need to get him inside, too.”

  Bourne was beginning to regain movement in his limbs, but he was still dreadfully chilled. To keep his teeth from chattering, he said, “How d’you know him? What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been pursuing him for weeks now, all the way from Lebanon.” She laughed. “You remember Lebanon, Bourne, don’t you?”

  “How’s Colonel Ben David?”

  “Pissed as a bear up a tree.”

  “Good.”

  “He hates your guts.”

  “Even better.”

  With a wry smile, she helped him up to a sitting position. “I’ve got to get you both warmed up.”

  He turned, glanced at the man lying in his own blood. “Who the hell is this?”

  “His name’s Ze’ev Stahl. He worked for Ari Ben David.”

  Bourne looked at her. “You killed one of your own?”

  “It’s a long story.” She nodded at Manfred Weaving. “We’d better get going.” She gave him a wry smile. “You, I don’t know about, but he’s far too valuable to let freeze to death.”

  Peter Marks sat in his unmarked car, enjoying a Snickers bar. He hated stakeouts so much that the only way to get through them was to give himself a constant supply of treats. It being a particularly mild day, he had all the windows down, breathing in the air of a coming spring. While he waited, he listened again to the relevant snippet of recording from his office:

  Soraya: “I have it on good authority that Nicode
mo is connected with Core Energy.”

  Richards: “Where did you hear that?”

  Peter nodded in satisfaction. He had to hand it to Soraya. She was a fucking expert. When she had first outlined her plan, he had counted on confronting Richards himself, but she had made a clear case otherwise. “First, he won’t expect me to be in the office, let alone be sitting at your desk,” she had said. “Second, I give him the heebie-jeebies, I can tell. He doesn’t know whether to spit at me or ask me out. When he looks at me, I can see the heat in his eyes. I can use all that to rattle him.” As it turned out, she had been dead-on in her psych profile of Dick Richards.

  Taking a last luxurious bite of his Snickers, Peter glanced at the dashboard clock. Fifteen minutes since the impromptu meeting in his office had concluded. Movement at the entrance to the Treadstone building caused him to look up. Bingo! Here came Richards, hurrying down the steps, turning left into the guarded and electronically surveilled parking lot.

  Peter watched as he climbed into his car, started the engine, and drove out. Putting his own car in gear, Peter nosed out into the traffic flow, taking up a position a car length behind Richards.

  He had expected Richards to head across the Key Bridge into DC, but instead he went the other way, heading out past the suburban sprawl of Arlington, into the rolling Virginia hills, so lushly verdant in spring and summer, aflame in autumn, brown now, sleeping in winter’s chill.

  Exiting the highway, they passed through sleepy villages and tony residential enclaves, separated by long swaths of parkland, stands of trees beside golf courses and tennis courts.

  On the old Blackfriar Pike, they rose up, then swung down into a broad valley. The road ascended again, cresting a hill, and Peter thought, Really? This is where he’s gone?

  Beyond, on the left, he could make out the thick brick walls of the Blackfriar, the oldest and still the most exclusive country club in the area, tendentiously outmuscling the clutch of multi-million-dollar pretenders that had sprung up over the decades. Blackfriar accepted only the most powerful pols, lobbyists, newsmen and -women, influence peddlers, and attorneys, starting, of course, with the president and the vice president.