Bourne said nothing as he continued to drive.
“I was sent out to find you.”
“I figured that out.”
Marks rubbed his eyes with his knuckles in an effort to clear his head of the last cobwebs. “I work for Treadstone now.”
Bourne pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Since when has Treadstone re-formed?”
“Since Willard found a backer.”
“And who might that be?”
“Oliver Liss.”
Bourne had to laugh. “Poor Willard. Out of the frying pan.”
“That’s it exactly.” Marks’s tone was mournful. “The whole thing’s a total fuckup.”
“And you’re part of the fuckup.”
Marks sighed. “Actually, I’m hoping to be part of the solution.”
“Really? And how would that work?”
“Liss wants something you have—a ring.”
Everyone wants the Dominion ring, Bourne thought, but he remained silent.
“I was supposed to get it from you.”
“I’d be curious to know how you were going to do that.”
“To be honest, I don’t have a clue,” Marks said, “and I’m no longer interested in that.”
Bourne was silent.
Marks nodded. “You have a right to be skeptical. But I’m telling you the truth. Willard called just before I arrived at the house. He told me the mission had changed, that I was now to get you to Tineghir.”
“In southeast Morocco.”
“Ouarzazate, to be precise. Apparently, Arkadin is being brought there, too.”
Bourne was silent for so long Marks felt compelled to say, “What are you thinking?”
“That Oliver Liss is no longer calling the shots at Treadstone.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Liss would no more order you to get me to Ouarzazate than he would open a vein.” He looked at Marks. “No, Peter, something’s changed radically.”
“I felt that myself, but what?” Marks took out his PDA and went on a number of government news sites. “Jesus,” he said at last, “Liss was taken into custody by the Department of Justice pending an investigation into his role in illegal Black River dealings.” He looked up. “But he was cleared of those charges weeks ago.”
“I told you something’s radically changed,” Bourne said. “Willard is taking orders from another source.”
“It has to be someone very high up the food chain to get the investigation reopened.”
Bourne nodded. “And now you’re as much in the dark as I am. It looks like your boss sold you down the river without even a second’s thought.”
“Frankly, this comes as no surprise.” Marks rubbed his leg. His pain-filled exhale was a whistle of protest.
“There’s a doctor in London who’ll be discreet about the gunshot wound.” Bourne put the car in gear and, checking for traffic, pulled out onto the road. “Just so you know, Diego led me into a trap. There were enemies waiting for me at the club.”
“Did Moreno have to kill him?”
“We’ll never know now,” Bourne said. “But Ottavio saved my life back there. He didn’t deserve to be shot down like a dog.”
“Which brings me to who the hell was firing at us.”
Bourne told him about Severus Domna and Jalal Essai without going into detail about Holly.
“I was attacked in London. I pulled an odd gold ring off the forefinger of my assailant’s right hand.” He fished around in his pockets. “Shit, I seem to have lost it.”
“Scarlett found it. I gave it to her as a souvenir,” Bourne said. “Every member of Severus Domna carries one.”
“So this is all about an old Treadstone mission.” Marks seemed to consider the implications for a moment. “Do you know why Alex Conklin wanted the laptop?”
“No idea,” Bourne said, though he thought he did know now. Was there anyone besides Soraya and Moira he could trust? Though he knew Soraya and Peter were good friends he still didn’t know whether he could trust Marks.
Marks shifted uncomfortably. “There’s something I need to tell you. I’m afraid I roped Soraya into joining Treadstone.”
Bourne knew that Typhon could not run successfully without her, so he assumed that Danziger was systematically dismantling the old CI and remaking it in the image of Bud Halliday’s beloved NSA. Not that it was any of his concern. He hated and distrusted all espionage agencies. But he knew the good work that Typhon had accomplished under its original director, and later under Soraya. “What is Willard having her do?”
“You won’t like this.”
“Don’t let that stop you.”
“Her mission is to get close to Leonid Arkadin and the laptop.”
“The same laptop that Conklin had me steal from Jalal Essai?”
“That’s right.”
Bourne wanted to laugh, but then Marks would ask questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Instead he said, “Was it your idea for Soraya to get close to Arkadin?”
“No, it was Willard’s.”
“Took him some time to come up with it?”
“He told me about it the day after I recruited her.”
“So chances are he had the assignment in mind for her when he asked you to recruit her.”
Marks shrugged, as if he couldn’t see how it mattered.
But it mattered very much to Bourne, who saw in Willard’s thinking a pattern. All the air went out of him. What if Soraya wasn’t the first female Treadstone had recruited to keep an eye on its first graduate? What if Tracy had been working for Treadstone? Everything fit. The only reason Tracy would lie, deliberately putting herself in Arkadin’s power, was so that he would hire her and keep her close, allowing her to pass on intel about both his whereabouts and his business ventures. A brilliant plan, which had worked until Tracy had been killed in Khartoum. Then Arkadin had vanished again. Willard needed a way to regain contact, so he had resorted to a tried-and-true Treadstone tactic. Arkadin used women like dish towels. They would be the last people he would suspect of keeping tabs on him.
“Soraya found him, I take it.”
“She’s with him now in Sonora and knows what to do,” Marks said. “Do you think she can get him to Tineghir?”
“No,” Bourne said. “But I can.”
“How?”
Bourne smiled, remembering the entry in Noah Perlis’s notebook. “I’ll need to text her the information. She’ll know what to do with it.”
They were in the outskirts of London now. Bourne got off the motorway at the next exit and pulled over in a side street. Marks handed him his PDA and recited Soraya’s number. Bourne punched it in, then pressed the SMS button, composed the text, and sent it.
After returning Marks’s PDA, he resumed driving. “I don’t know how it’s happened,” he said, “but Severus Domna is running Willard and Treadstone.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Jalal Essai is Amazigh. He comes from the High Atlas Mountains.”
“Ouarzazate.”
“So is Willard taking orders from Essai or Severus Domna?”
“For the moment it doesn’t matter,” Bourne said, “but my money’s on Severus Domna. I doubt Essai has the clout to get Justice to take Liss into custody.”
“Because Essai has broken away from Severus Domna, right?”
Bourne nodded. “Which makes the situation that much more interesting.” He made a left turn, then a right. They were now on a street of neat, white Georgian row houses. A Skye terrier, industriously sniffing at steps, led his master along the pavement. The doctor was three houses down. “It’s not often my enemies are at each other’s throats.”
“I take it you’re going to Tineghir, despite the danger. That couldn’t have been an easy decision.”
“You have your own tough decision to make,” Bourne said. “If you want to stay in this business, Peter, you’ll have to return to DC to take care of Willard. Otherwise, one way or another, h
e’ll wind up destroying you and Soraya.”
24
FREDERICK WILLARD KNEW about the White Knights Lounge. He’d known about it for some time, ever since he had started compiling his own private dossier on Secretary of Defense Halliday. Bud Halliday possessed the kind of arrogance that all too often brings men of his lofty status down into the dust with the rest of the peons who painfully labor over their lives. These men—like Halliday—have become so inured to their power, they believe themselves above the law.
Willard had witnessed Bud Halliday’s meetings with the Middle Eastern gentleman whom Willard had subsequently identified as Jalal Essai. This was information he’d had when he met with Benjamin El-Arian. He didn’t know whether El-Arian was aware of the liaison, but in any event he wasn’t about to tell him. Some information was meant to be shared only with the right person.
And that person appeared now, right on time, flanked by his bodyguards like a Roman emperor.
M. Errol Danziger came over to where Willard sat and slid into the ancient banquette. Its stained and ripped Naugahyde skin spoke of decades’ worth of benders.
“This is a real shithole,” Danziger said. He looked like he wished he’d worn a full-body condom. “You’ve slid down in the world since you left us.”
They were sitting in an anonymously named rheumatic bar-and-grill off one of the expressways that linked Washington with Virginia. Only pub-crawlers of a certain age and liver toxicity found it inviting; everyone else ignored it as the eyesore it was. The place stank of sour beer and months-old frying oil. It was impossible to say what colors its walls were painted. An old nondigital juke played Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, but no one was dancing or, by the looks of them, listening. Someone at the end of the bar groaned.
Willard rubbed his hands together. “What can I get you?”
“Out of here,” Danziger said, trying not to breathe too deeply. “The sooner the better.”
“No one we know or who’d recognize us would come within a country mile of this cesspit,” Willard said. “Can you think of a better place for us to meet?”
Danziger made a disagreeable face. “Get on with it, man.”
“You’ve got a problem,” Willard said without further preamble.
“I’ve got a lot of problems, but they’re none of your business.”
“Don’t be so hasty.”
“Listen, you’re out of CI, which means you’re nobody. I agreed to this meet out of—I don’t know what—acknowledgment of your past services. But now I see it was a waste of time.”
Willard, unruffled, would not be taken off topic. “This particular problem concerns your boss.”
Danziger sat back as if trying to get as far away from Willard as the banquette would allow.
Willard spread his hands. “Care to listen? If not, you’re free to leave.”
“Go ahead.”
“Bud Halliday has, shall we say, an off-the-reservation relationship with a man named Jalal Essai.”
Danziger bristled. “Are you trying to blackmail—?”
“Relax. Their relationship is strictly business.”
“What’s that to me?”
“Everything,” Willard said. “Essai is poison for him, and for you. He’s a member of a group known as Severus Domna.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Very few people have. But it was someone in Severus Domna who got Justice to take another look at Oliver Liss and incarcerate him while it’s investigating.”
A drunk began to wail, trying to duet with Connie Francis. One of Danziger’s gorillas went over to him and shut him up.
Danziger frowned. “Are you saying the US government takes orders from—what?—can I assume from this one name that Severus Domna is a Muslim organization?”
“Severus Domna has members in virtually every country around the globe.”
“Christian and Muslim?”
“And, presumably, Jewish, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, whatever other religion you’d care to name.”
Danziger snorted. “Preposterous! It’s absurd to think of men from different religions agreeing on a day of the week to meet, let alone working together in a global organization. And for what?”
“All I know is that its objectives are not our objectives.”
Danziger reacted as if Willard had insulted him. “Our objectives? You’re a civilian now.” He made the word sound ugly and demeaning.
“The head of Treadstone can hardly be classified as a civilian,” Willard said.
“Treadstone, huh? Better to call it Headstone.” He laughed raucously. “You and Headstone are nothing to me. This meeting is terminated.”
As he began to slide out of the banquette, Willard played his ace. “Working with a foreign group is treason, which is punishable by execution. Imagine the ignominy, if you live that long.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Imagine you in a world without Bud Halliday.”
Danziger paused. For the first time since he walked in, he seemed unsure of himself.
“Tell me this,” Willard continued, “why would I waste our time on nonsense, Director? What would I have to gain?”
Danziger subsided back onto the banquette. “What do you have to gain by telling me this fairy tale?”
“If you thought it was a fairy tale, I would be talking to myself.”
“Frankly, I don’t know what to think,” Danziger said. “For the moment, however, I’m willing to listen.”
“That’s all I ask,” Willard said. But, of course, it wasn’t. He wanted much more from Danziger, and now he knew he was going to get it.
On the way back to the office, Karpov had his driver pull over. Out of sight of everyone, he vomited into a clump of tall grass. It wasn’t that he’d never killed anyone before. On the contrary, he’d shot a great many miscreants. What made his stomach rebel was the situation he was in, which felt like the underbelly of a rotting fish or the bottom of a sewer. There must be some way out of the coffin he found himself in. Unfortunately, he was caught between President Imov and Viktor Cherkesov. Imov was a problem all rising siloviks had to deal with, but now he was beholden to Cherkesov and he was certain that sooner or later Cherkesov would ask him for a favor that would curl his toes. Looking into the future, he could see those favors multiplying, taking a toll until they shredded him completely. Clever, clever Cherkesov! In giving him what he wanted, Cherkesov had found the one way around his, Karpov’s, incorruptibility. There was nothing to do but what good Russian soldiers had done for centuries: Put one foot in front of the other and move forward through the mounting muck.
He told himself this was all in a good cause—getting rid of Maslov and the Kazanskaya was surely worth any inconvenience to him. But that was like saying I was only following orders, and depressed him further.
He returned to the backseat of his car, brooding and murderous. Five minutes later his driver missed a turn.
“Stop the car,” Karpov ordered.
“Here?”
“Right here.”
His driver stared at him in the rearview mirror. “But the traffic—”
“Just do as you’re told!”
The driver stopped the car. Karpov got out, opened the driver’s door, and, reaching in, hauled the man out from behind the wheel. Unmindful of the honking horns and squealing brakes of the vehicles forced to detour around them, he bounced the driver’s head off the side of the car. The driver slid to his knees, and Karpov drove a knee into his chin. Teeth came flying out of the driver’s mouth. Karpov kicked him several times as he lay on the pavement, then he slid behind the wheel, slammed the door shut, and took off.
I should have been an American, he thought as he wiped his lips over and over with the back of his hand. But he was a patriot, he loved Russia. It was a pity Russia didn’t love him back. Russia was a pitiless mistress, heartless and cruel. I should have been an American. Inventing a melody, he sang this phrase to himself as if it were a lullaby,
and in fact it made him feel marginally better. He concentrated on bringing down Maslov and how he would reorganize FSB-2 when Imov named him director.
His first order of business, however, was dealing with the three moles inside FSB-2. Armed with the names Bukin had vomited up, he parked the car in front of the nineteenth-century building housing FSB-2 and trotted up the steps. He knew the directorates that the moles worked in. On the way up in the elevator, he took out his pistol.
He ordered the first mole out of his office. When the mole balked, Karpov brandished the pistol in his face. Siloviks all over the floor emerged from their dens, their secretaries and assistants picked their heads up from their mind-numbing paperwork to follow this unfolding drama. A crowd formed, which was all the better, as far as Karpov was concerned. With the first mole in tow, he went into the second mole’s office. He was on the phone, turned away from the door. As he was swinging back, Karpov shot him in the head. The first mole flinched as the victim flew backward, his arms wide, the phone flying, and slammed into the plate-glass window. The victim fell to the floor, leaving behind an interesting abstract pattern of blood and bits of brain and bone on the glass. As stunned siloviks crowded into the doorway, Karpov snapped photos with his cell phone.
Pushing his way through the agitated throng, he frog-marched the now shivering first mole to his next stop, a floor up. By the time they appeared, news had spread and a crowd of siloviks greeted them in silent astonishment.
As Karpov was dragging his charge toward the office of the third mole, Colonel Lemtov shouldered his way to the front of the group.
“Colonel Karpov,” he shouted, “what is the meaning of this outrage?”
“Get out of my way, Colonel. I won’t tell you twice.”
“Who are you to—”
“I’m an emissary of President Imov,” Karpov said. “Call his office, if you like. Better yet, call Cherkesov himself.”
Then he used the mole to shove Colonel Lemtov aside. Dakaev, the third mole, was not in his office. Karpov was about to contact security when a terrified secretary informed him that her boss was chairing a meeting. She pointed out the conference room, and Karpov took his prisoner in there.
The Bourne Objective (2010) Page 34
