Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Oh, yes. Vividly. A very beautiful woman. She seemed to exude sex.” He drank the remainder of his water, more slowly this time. “She was...well, I was powerfully drawn to her, you might say.” The ghost of a smile skittered across his lips. “Well, of course I was. Stahl was interested in her.”

  Rebeka leaned forward. “So you knew Stahl from before?”

  “Not knew, no.” Weaving frowned again. “I think I was at the bar to observe him. I know I went after the woman because of his scrutiny of her. I figured she might be my best way to learn about him. Then— I don’t know—she seemed to cast a spell over me.”

  Bourne sat back, absorbing this information. He thought the time had come to broach the question that, for the moment, most interested him. “You haven’t up to now, but do you remember your name?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Harry Rowland.”

  She’s crashing!” the EMS tech yelled to the team that met them at Virginia Hospital Center’s ER entrance in Arlington. Hendricks had phoned ahead, using his clout to get a crack group mobilized even before the ambulance came screaming down the driveway, the Escalade hard on its heels.

  Hendricks leaped out, following the gurney’s hurried journey through the sliding doors, down corridors smelling of medication and sickness, hope and fear. He watched as the team of doctors transferred Soraya to hospital equipment and began their critical initial assessment. There was a great deal of murmured crosstalk. He took a step closer to hear what they were saying but couldn’t make head or tail of their jargon-filled conversation.

  A decision made, they wheeled Soraya out and down another corridor. He hurried after them, but was stopped at the door marked surgery.

  He pulled at one doctor’s sleeve. “What’s going on? What’s the matter with her?”

  “Swelling of the brain.”

  A chill went through him. “How serious?”

  “We won’t know until we get inside her skull.”

  Hendricks was aghast. “You’re going to open her up? But what about an MRI?”

  “No time,” the doctor said. “We have to think about the fetus as well.”

  Hendricks felt as if the floor had just fallen away beneath him. “Fetus? You mean she’s pregnant?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary, but I’m needed inside.” He pushed a metal button that opened the door. “I’ll inform you as soon as I know something. Your mobile?”

  “I’ll be right here,” Hendricks said, stunned. “Right here until I know she’s safe and secure.”

  The doctor nodded, then vanished into that mysterious land ruled by surgeons. After a long moment, Hendricks turned away, walking back to where Willis, his Special Forces bodyguard, waited with coffee and a sandwich.

  “This way, sir,” Willis said as he led Hendricks to the waiting room closest to Surgery. As usual, he had cleared it out so that he and his boss were the only ones in residence.

  Hendricks tried to raise Peter Marks, but the call went directly to voicemail. Peter must be out in the field, the only time he kept his phone off. He considered a moment, then asked Willis to get him the number of the main DC office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and Explosives. When Willis gave it to him, he punched it in on his mobile and asked for Delia Trane. He spoke to her briefly and urgently. She told him she was on her way. She sounded calm and collected, which is what Soraya needed at the moment. In all honesty, it was what he needed, as well. He made several other calls of a serious and secret nature, and for a time he was calmed.

  He sat at a cheap wood-laminate table, and Willis set his food in front of him before retreating to the doorway, hypervigilant as ever. Hendricks found he wasn’t hungry. He looked around the room, which had a hospital’s pathetic attempt at making a space feel homey. Upholstered chairs and a sofa were interspersed with side tables on which sat lamps. But everything was so cheap and worn that the only emotion evoked was one of sadness. It’s like the waiting room to Purgatory, he thought.

  He took a sip of coffee and winced at its bitterness.

  “Sorry, sir,” Willis said, as attentive as ever. “I’ve asked one of the guys to get you some real coffee.”

  Hendricks nodded distractedly. He was consumed by the twin bombshells the doctor had dropped on him. Soraya with a serious concussion and a baby in her womb. How in the hell had this happened? How had he not known?

  But, of course, he knew the reason. He’d been too preoccupied— obsessed, one might say—with the mythical Nicodemo. The president did not believe in Nicodemo’s existence, was only contemptuous of Hendricks’s allocating any time and money to what he called “the worst kind of disinformation.” In fact, Hendricks was certain that the president’s antipathy to the Nicodemo project was fueled by Holmesian rhetoric. There wasn’t a day that went by when Hendricks did not regret having helped Holmes up the security ladder.

  The truth of the matter: Holmes had discovered that Nicodemo might very well be Hendricks’s Achilles heel, the lever by which he could, at last, wrest control of Treadstone away from his rival. Ever since the president had named Mike Holmes as his national security advisor, Holmes had proved himself to be a power junkie. Increase and consolidate were the watchwords by which he formulated his career. And he had, more or less, been successful. Now, the only major roadblock was Hendricks’s control of Treadstone. Holmes coveted Treadstone with an almost religious fervor. In this, he and Hendricks were well matched; both were obsessives. They clashed obsessively over antithetical goals. Hendricks knew that if he could smoke Nicodemo out and capture or kill him, he’d be rid of Holmes’s interference forever. He’d have won his hard-fought battle. Holmes could no longer whisper poisoned thoughts into the president’s ear.

  But if his instincts failed him, if Nicodemo was, in fact, a myth, or, worse, an elaborate piece of disinformation, then his career would spiral downward, Holmes would get what he so desired, and Treadstone would be used for other, much darker purposes.

  The search for Nicodemo was, in fact, a struggle for the very soul of Treadstone.

  Harry,” Bourne said, “do you remember where you were born?”

  Alef nodded. Bourne had returned to thinking of him as Alef. “Dorset, England. I’m thirty-four years old.”

  Bourne softened his voice considerably, as if they were two old friends meeting after a long separation. “Who do you work for, Harry?”

  “I—” He looked at Bourne helplessly. “I don’t know.”

  “But you do remember that you were in Lebanon—specifically Dahr El Ahmar—to gain information about Ze’ev Stahl.”

  “That’s right. Maybe I was doing a bit of industrial espionage, eh?”

  “Stahl is Mossad.”

  “What? Mossad? Why would I—?”

  “Harry, tell me about Manfred Weaving.”

  Alef’s eyes clouded over, then he shook his head. “Don’t know him.” He looked at Bourne. “Why? Should I know him?”

  Bourne risked a glance at Rebeka, but Alef picked up on it. He had to turn almost 180 degrees in order to see her. When he did so, his eyes opened wide and he shivered. “What the hell is she doing here?”

  Bourne put a hand on his arm as Rebeka came toward them. “She’s not going to hurt you. She was the one who shot Stahl out on the lake while we were both almost frozen to death and helpless.”

  “Hello, Manny,” she said.

  Even though she was looking directly at him, he looked around, as if searching for someone else in the room. “What’s she talking about?

  Who’s this Weaving?”

  “You are,” she said. “Manfred Weaving.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He appeared genuinely confused. “My name is Harry Rowland. It’s the name I was born with, it’s the name I’ve always had.”

  “Possibly not,” Bourne said.

  “What? How—?”

  “Your network, Jihad bis saif.” Rebeka had crouched down beside them. “Tell us its goal.”

  Row
land opened his mouth, about to answer when they all heard a sound from outside. It was half concealed by the suck-and-wash of the low surf, but it could have been the scrape of a leather boot sole. In any case, it was very close to the house, and Rebeka mouthed: He’s found us.

  “Who’s found us?” Rowland said.

  At that moment, the front door crashed open.

  8

  MARTHA CHRISTIANA found Don Fernando Hererra with little difficulty. After receiving her commission, she had hunkered down in her Parisian hotel suite with her laptop and spent the next eight hours scouring the Internet for every iota of information on the banking mogul. The basics were at her fingertips within seconds. Hererra, born in Bogotá in 1946, the youngest child of four, was shipped off to England for university studies, where he took a First in economics at Oxford. Returning to Colombia, he had worked in the oil industry, rapidly working his way up the hierarchy until he went out on his own, successfully bidding for the company he had worked at. This was how he had amassed his first fortune. It was unclear how he segued into international banking, but from what Martha read, Aguardiente Bancorp was now one of the three largest banks outside of the United States.

  Further exploration turned up more. Five years ago, Hererra had named Diego, his only son, to head up the prestigious London branch of Aguardiente. Diego had been killed several years ago under mysterious circumstances that, no matter how she tried, Martha could not clarify; it seemed clear enough that he had been murdered, possibly by Hererra’s enemies, though that, too, remained murky. Currently, Hererra’s main residence was in the Santa Cruz barrio of Seville, though he maintained homes in London, Cadiz—and Paris.

  When she had absorbed all the information available on the Web, she pushed back her chair, rose, and padded across the parquet floor to the bathroom, where she turned on the taps and stepped into a steaming shower.

  By the time she emerged, she had the framework of a plan formulated. By the time she had dried off, blown out her hair, put on makeup, and gotten dressed, the plan had been fleshed out and detailed. Gathering up her coat, she went out of the hotel. Her car was waiting for her, its powerful engine humming happily in the chilly air. Her driver opened the door for her, and she climbed in.

  Hererra lived in an apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, in the middle of the Seine River. It was on the western tip, high up with breathtaking views that encompassed the Pantheon and the Eiffel Tower on the Left Bank, Notre Dame Cathedral on the adjoining Île de la Cité, and the major buildings in that section of the Right Bank.

  Martha Christiana had discovered that Hererra was a creature of habit. He liked to haunt certain bars, cafés, bistros, and restaurants in whichever city he was currently inhabiting. In Paris, that meant Le Fleur en Ile for breakfast, lunch at Yam’tcha, and dinner at L’Agassin. As it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, she had the car take her past the Aguardiente Bancorp offices. In the shower she had considered all of these places and, for one reason or another—too awkward or obvious—had rejected them all. She had read in the paper of a concert of chamber music by Bach that evening at Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité, one of an ongoing series at the magnificent jewel-box chapel. The concert was early so as to catch the last sparks of winter sunlight through the chapel’s radiant westfacing stained-glass windows.

  Martha Christiana had decided on the concert for several reasons. First, Hererra loved Bach, as she did. From her study of him, she surmised that he loved the strict order of the mathematical music, which would appeal to his precise banker’s mind. Second, Sainte-Chapelle was his favorite place in Paris to hear music. Third, the chapel was small, the audience packed together. This would give her ample opportunity to find him and figure out the most natural approach. It would also provide a number of topics—music, architecture, Bach, religion—in which to engage him in conversation that would be both innocent and stimulating.

  Yes, she thought, as she left her car and walked the last several blocks to the concert entrance to Sainte-Chapelle, she had chosen wisely. Joining the line, she inched along the sidewalk. She spotted him as he turned into the doorway and came into view. She was pleased: She was only six people behind him. She had chosen an Alexander McQueen outfit, one of her favorites: a belted, navy Vneck military pencil dress, which she had paired with black anklehigh boots with a wedge heel. She wanted to stand out, but not too much.

  Inside, the rows of folding chairs were neat and precise, and people took their seats silently, almost reverently, as if they were coming to Mass, not to a concert played by a string quartet. Perhaps, Martha thought, because it was Bach the two might not be so different. She had read that those who loved Bach’s music above all others often felt that when the music rose around them, they were as close to God as they would get in this life.

  Her seat was three rows behind Hererra, which was good; she could keep him in sight. He sat between a man more elderly than he and a woman who Martha judged to be on the good side of forty. It was unclear if he knew either of these people, and shortly it didn’t matter, at least not while the quartet was playing Bach. This almost mystical composer elicited many different reactions in his listeners. For Martha Christiana, the music brought up memories of her past: the fogbound lighthouse off the coast of Gibraltar in which she had been born, her father, gruff and weather-beaten, tinkering constantly with the ever-revolving light, her mother, pale and fragile, so agoraphobic that she never left the lighthouse. When her mother looked up at the stars at night, she was overcome with vertigo.

  The musicians played, the music unfurled, precise and rigorous in its progression of notes, and Martha Christiana saw herself escaping the lighthouse, leaving her dysfunctional parents behind, stealing aboard a freighter, steaming out of Gibraltar harbor for North Africa, where for nineteen months, she roamed the streets of Marrakech, selling herself to stupid tourists as a virgin, over and over, after the first time using fresh goat’s blood she bought from a butcher, before she was taken in by an enormously wealthy Moroccan, who made her his unwilling concubine. He kept her prisoner inside his house, took her roughly, often brutally, whenever the spirit moved him, which was often.

  He furthered her education in literature, mathematics, philosophy, and history. He also taught her how to look inward, to meditate, to empty herself of all thought, all desire, and while she was in that transcendental state, to see God. He gave her the world, many worlds, in fact. Eventually, inevitably, the knowledge with which he endowed her opened her eyes to the terrible price he was exacting from her. Three times she tried to escape from her perfumed prison and three times he caught her. Each time, her punishment was more grievous, more monstrous, but she steeled herself, she would not be cowed. Instead, one night, while they made love, she rose up, intending to slit his throat with a shard of glass she had hoarded in secret. His eyes turned opaque as if he could see his death reflected in her face. He emitted a sound like the ticking of a massive grandfather clock. She spread her arms wide, as if summoning God to do her bidding. His clawed fingers dug in, scratched down her upper arms as if he wished to take her with him as he died of a massive heart attack. Gathering up what money she could find, leaving untouched anything that could be traced back to him, she had fled Marrakech, never to return.

  These were not altogether pleasant memories, but they were hers, and after years of trying to deny them, she now accepted them as part of her, albeit a part known only to herself. Every once in a while, when she was alone in the dark, she played Bach on her iPod, reevoking these memories to remind herself of who she was and where she had come from. Then she meditated, emptying herself in order for God to fill her up. It had taken her a long time, absorbing pain of all kinds, to reach this state of being. Always, she emerged from these introspective sessions feeling renewed and ready for the task at hand.

  The concert over, the audience applauded, then stood and applauded some more, calling for an encore. The quartet re-emerged from the wings, where they had been absorbing
the well-deserved accolades, took up their instruments, and played a short, thrumming piece. More applause, as the concert ended, for good this time.

  Martha observed the woman on Hererra’s left turn to him, tilting her head while she spoke and he responded. She was more stately than pretty, very well dressed. A native Parisian, no doubt.

  The audience was breaking up, shuffling along the rows, filing slowly up the aisles, talk of the concert persistent and ongoing. Martha Christiana moved along with the people in her row, then hung back a bit at the end so that when she entered the aisle she was alongside the woman with Hererra.

  “Le concert vous a-t-il plu?” she said to the woman. Did you enjoy the concert? “J’aime Bach, et vous?” I love Bach, don’t you?

  “En fait, non,” the woman replied. In fact, no. “Je préfère Satie.”

  Martha, thanking God for the opening, finally addressed Hererra. “Et vous, monsieur, préférez-vous aussi Satie?”

  “Non,” Hererra said, with an indulgent smile toward his companion, “I favor Bach above all other composers—apart, of course, from Stephen Sondheim.”

  Martha emitted a silvery laugh as she threw back her head, revealing her long neck and velvety throat.

  “Yes,” she said. “Follies is my favorite show.”

  For the first time, Hererra looked past his companion, sizing Martha up. By this time they had reached the echoing marble hallway that led to the street. That was the moment for her to nod in friendly fashion and move ahead of the couple.

  Outside, a drizzle was making the streets shiny. Martha paused to turn up the collar of her coat, take out a cigarette, and fumble for her lighter. Before she could find it, a flame appeared before her, and she leaned in, drawing smoke deeply into her lungs. As she let it out, she looked up to see Hererra standing in front of her. He was alone.

  “Where is your companion?”

  “She had a previous engagement.”