Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Forty minutes after she sat down, the door opened, and a clutch of suits marched out, glassy-eyed, still in the grip of the power of the Oval Office. Hendricks was talking in low tones to Holmes. Hendricks, who had himself ascended from the position Holmes now held and who had recommended Holmes to be his successor, was no doubt passing on a well-considered kernel of accumulated wisdom to his protégé. He saw Soraya when she stood up. He was almost abreast of her and appeared surprised to see her. He raised a forefinger, indicating that she should wait while he completed his conversation with Holmes.

  Soraya bent and put her coffee cup down on the sideboard. When she straightened up, she winced at the pain that lanced through her head. Immediately she broke out into a cold sweat, and, turning away from the men, wiped her brow and upper lip with the back of her hand. Her heart was pounding, whether in fear for her own life or for that of her unborn baby, she could not say. Instinct drove her to place one hand on her belly, as if to protect the fetus from whatever was happening inside her skull. But there was no protection, she knew, not really. Every option available to her was fraught with dire peril.

  “Soraya?”

  She started at the sound of Hendricks’s voice so close to her, and when she turned, she was afraid that her face was ashen, that her boss would see what was happening to her. But his smile seemed unclouded with doubt. He projected only mild surprise and a certain curiosity.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “You could have called.”

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t.”

  His brow furrowed. “I’m not following.”

  “I need to talk with you, someplace secure.” She was appalled to hear how breathless she sounded.

  “Ride with me to my next meeting.”

  He took her elbow lightly and escorted her out of the West Wing, out of the White House, to his armored, custom Escalade. A Secret Service agent opened the rear door. He signed for Soraya to climb in, then followed her inside. When the door slammed shut behind them and they were settled, he pressed a hidden button. A privacy wall rose up, cutting them off from the driver and an eagle-eyed Special Forces bodyguard who was riding shotgun. They began to move out through the gates. The world looked blurred and indistinct through the blacked-out bulletproof glass.

  “We’re perfectly secure here,” Hendricks said. “Now, what’s on your mind?”

  Soraya took a deep breath, then let it out, trying to slow her pulse, which was galloping like a terrified horse. “Sir, with all due respect, I need to know what the fuck is going on.”

  Hendricks seemed to consider this for some time. They had left the White House grounds and were gliding through the traffic on the streets of DC. “Putting aside the oxymoronic usage of ‘respect’ and ‘fuck’ in the same sentence, Director, I think you’re going to have to be more specific.”

  She had gotten his back up, but she’d also gotten his full attention, which was the point. “Okay, straight up, Mr. Secretary,” she said, mimicking his brusque formal tone. “Ever since you briefed Peter and me on this Djinn Who Lights The Way, strange things have been happening.”

  “What kind of strange things, Director?” He snapped his fingers. “Details, please.”

  “For one thing, I’ve discovered that there seems to be a continuing connection between Nicodemo and Core Energy. Only I can’t fathom what it is. Core Energy’s president is Tom Brick.”

  Hendricks turned to look at the ashy city outside the window.

  “Brick. Never heard of him,” he said. “Ditto for—what was it again?” “Core Energy.”

  And there it was, Soraya thought. Hendricks lied. He had a steeltrap mind; there was no way he would need to ask her to repeat the company’s name. He must be familiar with Core Energy. Did he know Brick as well? And if so, why was he lying to her about it? They crossed over the Key Bridge, into Virginia, and the Escalade picked up speed. Soraya wondered where Hendricks was headed. The secretary sighed. “Is that all?”

  “Well, then there’s Richard Richards.”

  “Forget Richards.” The disdain in his voice was palpable. “He’s a nobody.”

  “A nobody who reports to the president.”

  Hendricks turned back to her. “What sort of snooping has he been up to?”

  “It’s not that, so much as—”

  “What?” He snapped his fingers again. “Details, Director.” Should I tell him? she wondered. And then, she thought, It might help to see his reaction. She was about to speak when the Escalade slowed and turned into the entrance of a cemetery. They passed through high iron gates, drifted slowly down a narrow paved road that bisected the graveyard. Near the back they turned right, went three quarters of the way down, and rolled to a stop.

  Grabbing Florin Popa by his ankles, Peter dragged him deeper into the undergrowth, depositing him behind a thick boxwood hedge.

  As he maneuvered the body into place, one of Popa’s shoes came off and, as it bounced over the hard ground, something spilled out of it. Peter crouched down, peering at it, then picked it up and inspected it. A key, not to a hotel room or a car—smaller than either of those—but to a public locker.

  Pocketing the key, Peter replaced the shoe, then condensed Popa’s footprint by folding him into a fetal position. Rising, he backed away, checking everything. Then he turned, made his way out of the labyrinth of hedges, and crossed to the front of the pro shop. Inside, on his right, was a board listing the names of all the tennis pros, along with the days they were working. Back outside, Peter went around to the rear and made his way to the changing lockers. Each one had a nameplate affixed to it. The narrow windowless room was deserted. Peter bent over the locker of one of the pros the board had marked as not working today and picked the lock. Quickly, he changed his clothes, pinned on the pro’s ID tag, and exited the pro shop via the employees’ entrance.

  A short walk brought him again to the clubhouse. Trotting with a confident air up the steps to the front porch, he entered the nowfamiliar great room. He looked immediately to the small grouping where he had seen Richards sit down with the mystery man, but the chairs were empty now. Picking up a club phone and calling the guardhouse, he learned that Richards had driven out while he had been changing in the pro shop. Peter set down the receiver. Surely the mystery man would be looking for Florin Popa—people like that felt naked without their bodyguards. In fact, if Peter was any judge of human psychology, the man would be getting antsy as to Popa’s whereabouts. As Peter continued around the great room, he looked for a lone male who was peering around the space with increasing urgency. An older gentleman stood waiting near the rest rooms. He had silver hair like the man Richards had come to see. Perhaps...but no, an older woman emerged from the ladies’ room and smiled at the man—his wife. Chatting amiably, they strolled off. There was no one else.

  Wending his way past the club members, Peter made his way out onto the expansive terrace. Sunlight bathed a third of the tables, all of them occupied. The rest, in shadow, were empty. Moving forward, he saw a man with his back to him, his upper torso leaning forward, his hands gripping the wrought-iron railing. He, too, had silver hair.

  Peter lifted his head like a bloodhound catching a scent. He unpinned his ID, then snagged a uniformed waiter as he passed by, a tray of empty glasses held high.

  “This is my first day and I’m looking for clients. See that guy over there? Know his name?”

  The waiter looked at where Peter was pointing. “How could I not? That’s Tom Brick. He’s a fucking whale.”

  When Peter looked at him in puzzlement, he added, “Big fucking spender. There’s bedlam among the staff to serve him. Tips twenty-five percent. You get him to sign on with you, my man, you’re in clover, no lie.”

  Peter thanked him and let him go on about his business. He affixed his ID to his shirt. Taking a circular route to the railing afforded him several moments to observe Brick before he approached him. He was younger than Pet
er had imagined, perhaps in his very early thirties. He was neither handsome nor ugly, but possessed a face full of features that failed to mesh, as if it had been fashioned from spare parts.

  He had a tattoo of a knotted rope on the back of his left hand. He must have sensed Peter’s approach because he turned just before Peter reached the railing. Brick had a wandering eye, which, oddly, seemed to take Peter in from all sides at once.

  Peter nodded. “A perfect day for tennis, wouldn’t you say?”

  Brick’s good eye took in Peter’s ID while the other one continued its disconcerting scrutiny. “You’d know better than me, I should think.” Like the late, unlamented Florin Popa, he had an accent. This one was British, however.

  “Are you new to Blackfriar?”

  “You don’t play tennis, I take it.”

  Brick turned to gaze out over the deserted eighteenth hole. “Golf’s my sport. Are you soliciting, Mr.—” another hard look at Peter’s ID

  “—Bowden? Bad form, I should think.”

  Peter cursed himself for botching the approach so badly. Mentally, he retreated, kept his mouth shut, and began to formulate Plan B, which, admittedly, he should have come up with before saying one word to this man.

  He was about to attempt reestablishing contact when Brick turned to him and said in a low voice, “Who the bloody hell are you?”

  Taken aback, Peter pointed to his ID. “Dan Bowden.”

  “Fuck you are,” Brick said. “I’ve met Bowden.” He turned fully to Peter, his eyes abruptly hard as crystal. “Time to own up, mate. Tell me who you are or I call Security and have you arrested.”

  Wait here,” Hendricks said gruffly, then got out and, accompanied by his bodyguard, walked slowly between the headstones until he stopped in front of one. He stood, head down, while his bodyguard, several paces back, looked around, as always, for trouble.

  Soraya pushed open the SUV’s door and slipped out. A mild breeze, holding the first heady scent of spring, snaked through the headstones. She came around the back of the Escalade, then stepped carefully over the mounded turf. The secretary’s bodyguard saw her, shook his head, but she kept on, close enough for her to get a partial view of what was engraved on the headstone Hendricks stood in front of: Amanda Hendricks, Loving Wife and Mother.

  The bodyguard took a step forward and murmured something to his charge. Hendricks turned, glanced at Soraya, and nodded. The bodyguard beckoned her on.

  When she had come up beside him, Hendricks said, “There’s something peaceful about a cemetery. As if there’s all the time in the world to think, to reconsider, to come to conclusions.”

  Soraya said nothing, intuiting that she was not meant to answer. Contemplating a loved one’s death was a private and mysterious moment. Inevitably, she thought of Amun. She wondered where he was buried—surely somewhere in Cairo. She wondered whether she would ever get the chance to visit his grave and, if so, what she would feel. If, in the end, she had loved him, it would have been different. Her profound guilt would have, to a mitigating extent, been assuaged. But that she had let go of him, had, in fact, despised him for his ugly prejudice against Jews, against Aaron in particular, shoved her guilt into outsized proportions.

  As if divining her thoughts, Hendricks said, “You lost someone in Paris, didn’t you?”

  A wave of shame rose inside her. “It never should have happened.”

  “Which? His death, or your affair?”

  “Both, sir.”

  “Yesterday’s news, Soraya. They ended in Paris—leave them there.”

  “Do you leave her here?”

  “Most of the time.” He thought for a moment. “Then some days...”

  His voice trailed off, but there was no need to finish the thought. His meaning was plain.

  He cleared his throat. “The difficulty comes in not letting it rest. Otherwise, there will be no possibility of peace.”

  “Have you found peace, sir?”

  “Only here, Director. Only here.”

  When, at last, he turned away from his wife’s grave, she said, “Thank you, sir, for bringing me here.”

  He waved away her words. As they walked slowly back to the waiting Escalade, accompanied by the bodyguard, he said, “Are you done, Soraya?”

  “No, sir.” She gave him a sideways glance. “About Richards. He lied about Core Energy. He knows about it, knows that Nicodemo is involved in it.”

  Hendricks stopped dead in his tracks. “How on earth would he know that?”

  Soraya shrugged. “Who knows? He’s the ‘It Boy’ when it comes to the Internet.” She made herself pause. “Then again, maybe there’s another reason.”

  Hendricks stood still as a statue. Very carefully, spacing the words out, he said, “What other reason?”

  Soraya was about to answer when an abrupt pain in her head blotted out all sight and sound. Leaning forward, she pressed the heel of her hand to her temple, as if to keep her brains from spilling all over someone’s headstone.

  “Director?” Hendricks grabbed her, saving her from falling over. “Soraya?”

  But she could not hear him. Pain flared through her like forked lightning, blotting out everything else apart from the darkness, which overtook her in a kind of blessing.

  7

  WE HAVE TO MOVE him now,” Rebeka said as she peered out the window of the fisherman’s cottage. Darkness was falling at a rapid rate. Blue shadows rose like specters. The world seemed unstable.

  “Not until he’s regained consciousness.” Bourne crouched beside Weaving, whose face was pale and waxen. He took his pulse. “If we move him now, we risk losing him.”

  “If we don’t move him now,” she said, turning away from the window, “we risk the Babylonian finding us.”

  Bourne looked up. “Are you afraid of him?”

  “I’ve seen his handiwork.” She came over to him. “He’s different from you and me, Bourne. He lives with death every day; it’s his sole companion.”

  “He sounds like Gilgamesh.”

  “Close enough. Except that the Babylonian loves death—he revels in it.”

  “My concern is Weaving, not the Babylonian.”

  “I agree, Bourne. We have to take the chance that he’ll survive the journey out of here. He certainly won’t survive the Babylonian.”

  Bourne nodded, slapped Weaving hard on one cheek, then the other. Color bloomed as blood rushed back into Weaving’s face. His arms spasmed as he coughed. Bourne, leaning over him, pried his jaws open, flattened his tongue before he had a chance to bite through it.

  Weaving shivered, a tremor, then a rippling of his limbs. Then his eyes sprang open and, a moment later, focused.

  “Jason?” His voice was thin and fluty.

  Bourne nodded. At the same time, he waved Rebeka out of sight, afraid that if Weaving saw her he’d start to hyperventilate and perhaps even relapse into unconsciousness.

  “You’re safe. Perfectly safe.”

  “What happened?”

  “You fell through the ice.”

  Weaving blinked several times and licked his chapped lips. “There were shots, I—”

  “The man who shot at you is dead.”

  “Man?”

  “His name was Ze’ev Stahl.” Bourne scrutinized the other’s face. “Ring a bell?”

  For a long moment, Weaving stared up at Bourne, but his gaze was turned inward. Bourne not only sensed, but felt acutely, what must be going on in Weaving’s mind: a plunge into the morass of amnesia, trying desperately to pluck out even a single memory, a place, a name. It was a heart-wrenching, soul-destroying experience that often left you weak and gasping because you were alone, utterly and completely alone, severed from the world as if with a surgeon’s scalpel. Bourne shuddered.

  “I do,” Weaving said at last. “I think I do.” He reached for Bourne’s arm. “Help me up.”

  Bourne brought him to a sitting position. He licked his lips again as he stared into the fire.

  “Wher
e am I?”

  “A fisherman’s cottage a mile or so from the lake.” Bourne signaled Rebeka to bring a glass of water.

  “You’ve saved my life twice now, Jason. I have no way to thank you.”

  Bourne took the glass from Rebeka. “Tell me about Ze’ev Stahl.”

  Weaving looked around, but by that time Rebeka had stepped back into shadow. His curiosity seemed to have leeched away with his strength. Accepting the water from Bourne with a trembling hand, he gulped half of it down.

  “Take it easy,” Bourne said. “You’ve come back from the dead twice. That’s more than enough to plow anyone under.”

  Weaving nodded. He was still staring into the fire, as if it were a talisman that helped him remember. “I was in Dahr El Ahmar, I recall that much.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Bourne saw Rebeka move. Ask him why he was there, she mouthed to him.

  “Where were you, exactly?”

  Weaving scrunched up his face. “A bar, I think it was. Yes, a bar. It was very crowded. Smoke-choked. Some kind of raucous rock music playing.”

  “Did he approach you? Did you talk to him?”

  Weaving shook his head. “I don’t think he was aware of me.”

  “Was he with someone?”

  “Yes...no.” Weaving frowned, concentrating. “He...he was watching someone. Not openly, watching without looking.” He turned to look at Bourne. “You know.”

  Bourne nodded. “I do.”

  “So I felt...I don’t know, a kind of kinship with him. After all, we were both living in the margins, hidden by shadows.”

  “Who was he looking at, do you remember?”