Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Would you care for more coffee?”

  The waitress smiled at her. She looked like a Valkyrie. Rebeka could imagine her, armored, riding to Ragnarök, or, more realistically, out on a fishing boat, hauling in the morning’s catch. She nodded, returning the smile.

  Turning back to the bay, she saw that a storm was coming in. Fine. The increasing bleakness matched her mood. She drank her coffee, added more sugar, and reflected on her life since she had met Jason Bourne on her regularly scheduled flight to Damascus. Though it was only six weeks ago, her former cover as a flight attendant seemed like a hundred years ago. How her life had changed since then! She and Bourne had both been after the same terrorist target, Semid Abdul-Qahhar. During their showdown with him, they had both been wounded. Though he had been shot in the shoulder, Bourne had flown her in a stolen helicopter across the southern border into Lebanon and, at her whispered instructions, had set down inside the Mossad encampment in Dahr El Ahmar.

  Now she had no idea where he was or whether he would even talk to her. After all, it was she who had directed him to the encampment commanded by Ben David. For all she knew, he blamed her for what had happened.

  No, even if she had been able to find him, she couldn’t go to Bourne with her suspicions, in spite of the fact that they had arisen during her convalescence in Dahr El Ahmar. As far as he was concerned, she was the enemy. She had betrayed him. After what had happened, how could he think otherwise?

  And, of course, she herself had come under suspicion from having brought Bourne into the encampment. Colonel Ben David was not a forgiving man—in truth, he could not afford to be—but the change in how he viewed her shocked, then saddened, her. She was inured to the byzantine ways of her world, but nothing she had experienced before could have prepared her for how quickly and thoroughly he had turned on her. In fact, he had acted more like a jilted lover than her commanding officer. It was only later, after she had left, after she had decided to act on the intel she had overheard while convalescing, after she had been in full pursuit of her target, that the nature of Ben David’s true feelings had dawned on her. In hindsight, she realized that she had never been just an agent to him. Now, of course, it was too late to do anything about that, even had she wished to.

  The stormfront hurled the first fistfuls of snow against the window with a force that startled her. The glass shivered and creaked in the wind. It was then that she turned around and saw the man, thin as a blade, sitting at a table near the door farthest from her, and knew that all was lost.

  One man. A single man.” Christien looked at Bourne. “His name is Nicodemo, but he is more commonly known at the Djinn Who Lights The Way.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He is the advance guard, the outrider.”

  “In other words, he gets things done.”

  Christien nodded.

  Bourne stared out the window. It was late morning. Clouds kept

  rolling in from the north like waves on a seashore. Off and on, snow gusted in the wind eddies. The nameless man, who Bourne had come to think of as Alef, had passed into an exhausted sleep. Bourne and Christien had decided to take a break from interrogating him, though neither of them had wanted to.

  “Tell me about Nicodemo,” Bourne said. “Why are you and Don Fernando so concerned about him?”

  The restaurant occupied the top floor of a chrome-and-green-glass ultramodern building on Kommendörsgatan in the posh Östermalm section of Stockholm, close to where Christien lived.

  Christien shrugged. “I’ll tell you as much as I know, which, quite honestly, isn’t much; his origins are obscure. Some say he’s Portuguese, others maintain he’s Bolivian, still others swear he’s Czech. Whatever the truth, he came out of nowhere, quite literally. For some time, a decade ago, he seemed to be an investment conduit for Core Energy. During that time, the company mushroomed into a multinational powerhouse that buys and sells all forms of energy. No one seems to know whether he is still involved, or in what way. By comparison, the CEO of Core Energy, Tom Brick, is an open book. He was born in London’s World’s End, graduated from London Business School. Don’t let his lack of degrees fool you, he’s a very savvy guy.”

  “Let’s get back to Nicodemo.”

  “That’s the problem. Nicodemo seems inextricably linked with Core Energy.”

  “Nicodemo is a terrorist,” Bourne said, “and Core Energy is a legitimate company, a leader in the burgeoning energy markets, green and otherwise.”

  “That’s the most troubling part, Jason, the one Don Fernando and I have been investigating for months now. We believe that Core Energy is on the verge of making a deal that will be a game-changer, that will give it such an advantage in the new energy markets as to cause its profits to explode tenfold.”

  Bourne shrugged. “Business is business, Christien.”

  “Not when it leaves death and destruction in its wake.”

  “Which is where, I assume, Nicodemo comes in.”

  Christien nodded. “This is what we believe, yes.”

  “Are you certain this man actually exists?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Have you ever heard of Domenico Scarfo?”

  Christien shook his head.

  “He was a notorious boss of the Philadelphia mob in the forties and fifties. Behind his back, people called him ‘Little Nicky’ because he was five-six, but his full name was Nicodemo Domenico Scarfo.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Bourne set aside his menu. “I’ve come across this kind of thing several times before. A name is created, a legend is built, fed first by myth, then by rumors and innuendo, sometimes even by murders committed by a cadre of people who work for the people who created the name in the first place.”

  Christien plucked a warm roll from a basket in the center of the table and began to butter it. “Your own origin, if my sources are correct.”

  “The Jason Bourne identity was created this way, yes.” Bourne took a sip of fresh orange juice.

  Christien spooned up some lingonberry jam. “And now you are Jason Bourne.”

  Bourne nodded. “I am. Identities are powerful images that often take on a life of their own and have unintended consequences. But if I hadn’t lost my memory...”

  Christien nodded thoughtfully. “We’re back to Alef. I take your point.” He bit into his roll and looked up at the waiter, who had appeared by their side. He raised his eyebrows at Bourne, who ordered scrambled eggs and gravlax, toast, and more coffee. “I’ll have the same,” he said.

  When the waiter left, Bourne said, “Have you or Don Fernando entertained the notion that Nicodemo is an identity Tom Brick created so that he could circumvent the law without any blowback for either him or Core Energy?”

  Christien said, “Nicodemo exists, believe me.”

  Bourne looked up. “You’ve met him?”

  “Don Fernando believes he has.” He was speaking of Don Fernando Hererra, his sometime partner, an industrialist, banker, and friend with whom Bourne had had dealings previously.

  “Even if I accept what you tell me, all we know for certain is that he’s met someone purporting to be Nicodemo. It doesn’t mean that Nicodemo actually exists.”

  “I should take lessons from you on cynicism.”

  “One man’s cynicism is another man’s prudence,” Bourne said. “Speaking of Don Fernando, where is he? It would be helpful to speak with him.”

  “He’s away.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” Bourne said shortly.

  The food came then. They were both silent until the waiter left and they began to eat.

  “The truth is,” Christien said, “he has asked me to keep his whereabouts secret.”

  Bourne put down his fork and sat back. “Look, make a decision. Do you and Don Fernando want my help or not?”

  “Either way, you’ll have to deal with this growing menace. Core Energy forced us to use subterfuge to buy into the Indigo Ridge Rare Earths mine
in California. If we hadn’t, it would have bought it out from under America. We couldn’t allow that to happen. But Core has been busy elsewhere, buying up rare earth, uranium, gold, silver, copper, and base metals mines in Canada, Africa, and Australia. In the decades to come, these resources will increase in value exponentially as one nation after another is forced to phase out machines that run on oil, coal, and even natural gas. The world is running out of oil. As for coal, we’ll all be choking on the carcinogenic fumes that plague every city in China, India, and Thailand unless we abandon it as an energy source. Solar panels aren’t energy efficient and as for those much-hyped wind turbines, each one requires four hundred pounds of rare earths. Besides, you can’t put a windmill on a car or an airplane. Hybrid cars are dependent on rare earth components as well, and as for electric cars, where d’you think the electricity comes from?”

  Christien shook his head. “Nicodemo has seen the future and it’s energy.”

  “But Core Energy is run by Tom Brick.”

  “Right. Brick is the company’s public face. But it’s altogether possible that he is getting his orders from Nicodemo. This is what Don Fernando intends to find out. If it’s true, it would allow Nicodemo the freedom to work on the nether side of the law. Don Fernando believes that he is the first of the coming generation of terrorists. He can make deals in the shadows, the gray areas—by outright bribery, extortion, or other methods of coercion—that Brick and Core Energy itself can’t. He’s motivated by neither religion nor ideology. Corner the market on the next century’s major fuel sources and you have the entire world at your feet. In one fell swoop you’ve choked off free trade, you’ve compromised nations’ economies and security. These days, no one can build a competent army without weapons that rely heavily on rare earths.”

  “Where has Don Fernando gone?”

  Christien, too, put down his utensils and wiped his mouth. “Jason, there is a very good reason why Don Fernando asked me to keep his whereabouts secret. He was afraid that you’d try to follow him.”

  “Why?” Bourne leaned forward. “Where has he gone? Tell me.”

  Christien sighed. “Jason, we have our own mystery to solve here.”

  “There’s no going back. You’ll tell me now.”

  The two men’s gazes locked in a contest of wills. At length, Christien looked down at his plate. He picked up his knife and fork and returned to eating. He did not look up from his food. Between bites he said, “Don Fernando has gone to find the Djinn Who Lights The Way.”

  Rebeka paid her check, rose, and walked to the door. At the last minute, she turned and sat down at the table where the blade-thin man had installed himself some time before.

  “Edge of the world,” he said dryly.

  She eyed him. “Not nearly.”

  “For us, at least.”

  “You mean Jews?”

  “That, too.”

  He had curiously dainty hands, milky white, the knuckles prominent, as if the bones were about to burst through the skin. His eyes were black, his thinning hair of a nondescript color. His features were sharp: a slash of mouth, a knife-like nose. She had seen him only once before, years ago, when she had finished her training and had been summoned to Mossad’s Tel Aviv headquarters. He had watched, silent as death, as Dani Amit, head of Collections, had given her her first commission. She remembered him, though, his face indelible on the screen of her mind. His name was Ze’ev—wolf, in Hebrew— though she seriously doubted it was the one he had been born with.

  “You’re lucky I found you,” Ze’ev said.

  “How does that work?” She cocked her head.

  He took an almost dainty sip of coffee. “They’ve activated the Babylonian.”

  Beneath her cool exterior, Rebeka felt the first ripples of apprehension. She tamped down on this emotion before it could turn into outright fear. “Why would they do that?”

  “What the devil are you up to?” Ze’ev said.

  At first, she thought he had deliberately ignored her question, but she quickly realized that his counter-question was his answer. The depth to which she had shaken her bosses was signified by their extreme response.

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t understand you, Rebeka. You’ve had a stellar career so far. Then you go and bring Jason Bourne into Dahr El Ahmar, into the heart of—”

  “He saved my life. I was bleeding out. There was nowhere else to go.”

  Ze’ev sat back, his black eyes contemplating her. She wondered what he was thinking.

  “You had clearance. You knew the secret nature of Dahr El Ahmar.”

  She met his gaze, said nothing.

  “And yet—”

  “As I said.”

  He shook his head. “Colonel Ben David is out for your blood— and, of course, Bourne’s.”

  “I had no idea of the Colonel’s intense antipathy toward Bourne.” “Are you saying he’s not justified?”

  She thought about this for a moment. “I suppose not. But at the time of the crisis I had no knowledge—”

  “But you did have the one piece of crucial knowledge: the absolute secrecy in which Dahr El Ahmar operates. Bourne escaped. He knows—”

  “You have no idea what he knows,” she snapped. “He was in the encampment for less than fifteen minutes. He was wounded and fighting for his life. I hardly think he had time to—”

  “One, Bourne is a trained agent; he sees and hears everything. Two, he knows, at the very least, that Dahr El Ahmar exists. Three, he escaped via helicopter, which means he overflew the compound.”

  “That doesn’t mean he made sense of what he saw. He was too busy trying to evade the ground-to-air missile Ben David sent up after him.”

  “So far as Colonel Ben David—and, I have it on good authority, Dani Amit—are concerned, Bourne’s presence at Dahr El Ahmar is more than enough to condemn him. The security breach is of the most serious level. Following this, you vanish off the grid. Rebeka, you must see where their thinking has taken them.”

  “The two incidents are wholly unrelated.”

  “Of course you’d say that.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  He shook his head. “They don’t buy it and, frankly, neither do I.”

  “Look—”

  “The Babylonian has been loosed, Rebeka. He’s coming for you.” He sighed. “There’s only one way to stop him.”

  “Forget it,” she said. “Don’t even ask me.”

  He shrugged. “Then I’m talking to a dead woman. Pity.” He threw down some money, then rose.

  “Wait.”

  He stood, staring down at her with an expression that made something inside her wither.

  Rebeka’s mind was working furiously. “Sit.”

  He hesitated, then did as she requested.

  “There’s something—” She stopped herself, abruptly frightened. She had promised herself to tell no one what had happened at Dahr El Ahmar. She looked away, chewing her lower lip in uncertainty.

  “What is it?” Ze’ev said, leaning forward.

  Some tone in his voice—conciliatory, as if he harbored a real concern for her—caused her to turn back. This is the moment, she thought. To trust or not to trust. It’s now or never. Of course, there was an entirely different route she could take.

  She took a deep breath, trying to settle herself, but nothing could stop the almost painful hammering of her heart. The not-quite-healed wound in her side began to throb.

  “Rebeka, look, there are two reasons someone in your position bolts. These days, we can forget ideology. So what are we left with? Money and sex.” He regarded her with great sympathy, even during her continued silence. “I’m going to hazard a guess. There’s been only one change in your recent life—Jason Bourne. Am I right?”

  Oh, my God, she thought. He believes I betrayed Mossad at Bourne’s request. But perhaps she could use that misconception.

  She rose abruptly and pushed out the door, only to be slapped in the face by t
he storm. She stood under the eaves of the restaurant, which sheltered her partially from the stinging snow but not at all from the ferocious wind.

  It wasn’t long before she sensed that Ze’ev had pushed through the door to stand close beside her.

  “You see,” he said, his voice raised over the unearthly howling, “there’s nowhere to go from here.”

  She allowed a long silence to build before she let out a breath and said, “You’re right.” She made herself look slightly ashamed. “It is Bourne.”

  Ze’ev’s eyebrows knitted together. “What did he say to convince you? What did he do?”

  “I was with him for two nights in Damascus.” Her eyes engaged fully with his. “What d’you think?”

  Life at Treadstone was difficult for Dick Richards. Going from NSA, where he was revered, even by the president, to being a virtual pariah was not easy on the nerves. That, on top of his duplicitous role, was getting to him. He was not someone cut out for the field; he did not have that nerveless sort of personality those agents did. You had to be born with it; no amount of training would give it to you. The fact was, he was a physical coward. He had lived with this humiliating knowledge since he was thirteen, in summer camp, in a house commanded by a bully who, sensing Richards’s weakness, preyed on him mercilessly. Instead of fighting back, he had endured the humiliations until, at the end of the dreadful summer, he had held out his hand to the bully and said, “No hard feelings, yeah?” All he had gotten in return was a knowing smirk. That memory haunted him into adult life, where it had been repeated in other forms. His intellectual achievements sometimes masked this core failing in him, but not always, and certainly not, as now, in the dead of night, when even the city’s golden glow failed to exorcise the feeling of helplessness from his heart.

  He had been at his computer all afternoon, evening, and into the night, stopping only to relieve his bladder and to get himself a hurried bite of fast food that now sat like a congealed lump in his roiling stomach. Opening a drawer without taking his eyes off the screen, he twisted open a bottle of antacids and popped a handful into his mouth, then chewed desultorily as he continued to pretend to track down the ghost in the sketchy intel his directors had given him, half, he suspected, in jest. Another humiliation piled onto all the others. On the other hand, it was heartening to know they weren’t much interested in Nicodemo themselves. The order must have come down from above, which meant that it was Secretary Hendricks who was trying to find Nicodemo. Richards had no idea who Nicodemo was; nevertheless, he knew far more about him than did anyone else at Treadstone.