Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative

by Eric Van Lustbader

  It was possible, the secretary mused, that Ann had mismanaged her private life with him. He shrugged mentally. That was the chance you took when manipulating human beings; their behavior wasn’t always predictable.

  “Don’t worry,” Ann said.

  One thing you could say about Ann Ring, Hendricks thought, she had ice in her veins.

  “Nevertheless, you do look worried.”

  “It’s Soraya.”

  “Ah, yes. I heard.” Ann tilted her head. “How is she?”

  “She almost died,” Hendricks said with more emotion than he had intended.

  Ann regarded him coolly, her arms crossed over her chest. “But she hasn’t died, has she?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s thank our lucky stars.”

  “I should have chosen—”

  “You chose her because she was the right person for the job.”

  “Once you told me that your husband was infatuated with her.”

  “Really, Christopher, that wasn’t the reason at all. Charles’s infatuation with her just made the assignment you gave her that much easier. She would have found another way; she’s an exceptionally clever girl. And from what you’ve told me, she enjoyed passing on the bits of disinformation to Charles.”

  Hendricks nodded. “It gave her a great deal of pleasure to have a direct hand in taking down Li and his cohorts.”

  “There,” Ann said. “You see? You’re just feeling remorseful because her concussion landed her in the hospital.”

  That wasn’t it at all, Hendricks thought sadly. Or, at least, not all of it. What worried him most of all was Soraya’s pregnancy. It seemed clear to him that she was carrying Charles Thorne’s child. If that was the case, how was Ann going to react? She was his most closely held, and therefore his most precious, asset-in-place. He could not afford to lose her, especially now that they had made such definitive contact with Li.

  The question that vexed Hendricks most was the identity of Li’s handler. Not one of the DoD’s vaunted sources could tell him who might be running Li Wan.

  Hendricks turned his mind to more practical matters. “Ann, I want you dressed and out of here before the team arrives. You have a place?”

  She nodded. “A room at the Liaison. I use it when I have late nights on the Hill.”

  “Go there now. Tomorrow you will assume your role as a grieving widow.”

  “What about Li?”

  “He’ll want to convey his condolences,” Hendricks said. “Encourage him to do so in person.”

  “It won’t be easy. As we’ve seen, he is a very wary man. If he becomes suspicious now, we’ll never find out who’s running him and what they want.”

  “You’re right.” Hendricks thought for a moment. “You’re going to have to give him something that will allay any suspicions he might harbor.”

  “It’ll have to be something big—something important.”

  Hendricks nodded. “Agreed. Give up his girl.”

  “What?” Ann, plainly shaken, stared at him, stupefied. “We can’t. You know we can’t.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Silence.

  “Good God,” Ann Ring said, “I didn’t sign up for this.” “But you did, Ann. You know you did.”

  She licked her lips. Her face was pale. “It’s people’s lives we’re manipulating.”

  “Not civilians,” Hendricks said. “We all signed the same document.”

  “In blood.”

  He did not contradict her.

  She glanced over one last time at the corpse of her husband. “At what point,” she said, “are you completely drained of all human emotion?”

  “You’d better get going,” Hendricks said. He had no clear answer for her.

  Four minutes after Ann Ring departed, the clean-up crew arrived. Shortly thereafter, Davies delivered the man who had shot Charles Thorne to death in the midst of a break-in robbery. Hendricks settled the Walther into the corpse’s right hand, curling the forefinger over the trigger. When he and Davies had set it in place and made certain everything was correct, he called Eric Brey, director of the FBI, and emotionlessly filled him in on the murder.

  Fuck,” Peter Marks said, “I’m alive.”

  “You sound disappointed,” Anderson said.

  There was a jouncing, along with the steady vibration of a vehicle engine. His eyes roved.

  “Ambulance,” Anderson said. “It was Delia who got to you first. She was inside the school when the shooting took place. She called me first thing.”

  Peter licked his lips. “How am I?”

  “You’re fine,” Anderson said.

  “Where was I shot?”

  “You...” Anderson’s eyes cut to the paramedic on his right. Peter felt a sudden lurch in the pit of his stomach. “I can’t feel any thing.”

  Anderson’s expression betrayed nothing. “Trauma. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “But I can’t feel...” Peter braced himself. “Is my spine involved?” Anderson shook his head.

  Better off dead, Peter thought, than a cripple.

  Anderson put a hand on his shoulder. “Boss, I know what’s going through your mind, but right now nothing’s set in stone. Just relax. Keep still. A surgical team is standing by. Let them do their thing. Everything will be okay.”

  Peter closed his eyes, willing his screaming brain to shut up. He needed to concentrate on this moment. Que sera sera. The future would take care of itself.

  “The man who shot me. I need to know his identity.”

  “He had no ID on him, boss.”

  “Fingerprints, dental records, DNA.”

  “All being taken care of.”

  Peter nodded. He licked his lips. “There’s something else. Richards.”

  “I’m on it, boss. There was a breach of the intranet this morning. A Trojan. I called Richards in.”

  Peter thought about Richards working for Tom Brick and Core Energy. “Richards may be the one who planted it. The fucker’s clever enough to get through the firewall.”

  “I thought of that,” Anderson said. “I placed an electronic keylogger on the server terminal he’s using to ID and quarantine the Trojan.” “Nicely done, Sam.” Peter winced, feeling some pain now. “I don’t yet know why Brick wants to get inside Treadstone.”

  “We’ll find out. Take it easy now, boss.”

  He saw Anderson nod to the paramedic beside him, who slipped a needle into a vein on the inside of his elbow from which a delicious warmth drifted, washing through him.

  “It’s important. It’s all important,” he said, his words already slurry. “I’ll see to it, boss.” And, good as his word, as Peter slipped into unconsciousness, Anderson punched in a number on his mobile, making the first of many calls.

  Bourne, heading through the relentlessly beating heart of Mexico City, the smell of blood in his nostrils, hadn’t forgotten about the Babylonian.

  He was somewhere within the brightly colored whirlpool of the city, standing in a plaza, watching, driving the same chaotic streets as Bourne, using what contacts and conduits he might have in Mexico to reestablish contact with his quarry.

  Thinking about Ilan Halevy was preferable to thinking about Rebeka, who he had failed to protect adequately, who died before she could finish the mission she had assigned herself, a mission that was important enough for her to abandon Mossad and strike out on her own.

  Her mission was now his own.

  Bourne, heading through the city streets, the stench of fire and fear in his nostrils, looked for Halevy, wanting to find the Babylonian as badly as Halevy wanted to find him.

  He drove east, toward the airport, and when he saw the radiant sign for Superama, he turned off. At Revolution 1151, Merced Gómez, Benito Juárez, he pulled into the colossal parking lot, slid the taxi into an empty slot, and got out.

  Opening the trunk, he discovered a pile of rags. He used one to wipe down all the interior surfaces. He paused when he was finished and
looked at Rebeka. Her shirt had been ripped open. Inside, he saw an aluminum-mesh wallet. Lifting it out with his fingertips, he wiped off the blood. Inside was her legend passport, the money she had taken from beneath the floorboards of her rental apartment in Stockholm, and a delicate silver necklace with a star of David. She had never shown the talisman to him. Leaving the wallet and its contents behind seemed like leaving a part of her to be picked over, so he took them. He knew there was nothing more he could do for her. Saying his silent goodbye, he slammed the door, using the rag, and picked his way through the lot to the store.

  In the bathroom, he threw away the rag and washed her blood off his hands. Then he dumped his blood-stained coat and shirt, and went in search of a new outfit. He bought black jeans, a white shirt, and a charcoal-colored jacket.

  Returning to the parking lot, he moved through the rows, looking for an older car. Behind him, he heard the throaty gurgle of a motorcycle engine. It was a large one—an Indian Chief Dark Horse. He saw it approaching out of the corner of his eye. It was traveling so slowly that he gave it scant attention, but the instant it put on a burst of speed, he turned. The driver was male, but a mirrored faceplate on his helmet obscured his face. Sunlight spun crazily off the crown of the black impact-resistant plastic.

  The Indian went down a parallel row, and Bourne turned back to the car he had chosen. Unbending a wire hanger he had taken from the store where he bought his clothes, he stuck the hooked end down between the door frame and the window. The lock popped up. He was about to open the door when the Indian reappeared, coming at him very fast from the opposite side.

  Bourne stood by the door, watching the motorcycle coming closer. It was almost upon him when he swung the door out. The Indian’s front wheel struck the metal with a dull clang, and the motorcycle bucked like a stallion. Its back reared up, flinging the driver out of his seat. He somersaulted up and over the car’s crumpled door, and landed on the roof.

  As he slid down, Bourne grabbed him, slammed him back against the car’s side. He ripped off the helmet and saw up close the damage the flames had done to Halevy’s neck.

  As the Babylonian leaped at him, Bourne drove a knee into Halevy’s crotch, then smashed a fist into the side of his head. Bourne grabbed him as he fell sideways. Halevy kicked him in the side of the knee, then, twisting free, drove his fist into the pit of Bourne’s stomach. As Bourne’s body turned, he struck the Babylonian in the kidney.

  Bourne went down, Halevy on top of him. Halevy flicked out a knife, slicing a shallow arc toward Bourne’s throat. Bourne reached up, scraped his nails down the Babylonian’s fire-wounded throat. Halevy reared back, his eyes tearing with the fiery pain, and Bourne smashed his wrist against the bottom of the car. The knife clattered to the tarmac, and Bourne pressed his forearm against Halevy’s throat.

  “Tell me about Ouyang.” Ouyang was the name Rebeka had spoken just before she died.

  Halevy stared up at him balefully. “Who or what is an Ouyang?”

  Bourne dug into the nerve bundle at the side of his neck. Halevy bared his teeth and his eyes popped. Sweat broke out on his face. The left side was scorched red, rippled and rent by the inroads the flames had made as they ate away and blackened the layers of his skin. He began to breathe hard.

  “Ouyang,” Bourne prompted.

  “How d’you know about Ouyang?”

  Bourne did that thing again, and this time Halevy’s body arched up, his straining muscles trembling involuntarily. Little grunting noises emanated from his open mouth, like an animal caught in a trap, about to gnaw his leg off.

  “Ben David deals with Ouyang.”

  “Not the Director or Dani Amit?”

  Halevy, blowing air through his mouth as if to cool himself off, shook his head. “This is private. It isn’t Mossad.”

  “Then how do you know about it?”

  “I won’t—” The Babylonian gave a silent howl as Bourne worked on him for a third time. His face was blue-white. Even his fire wound was now a pale pink, livid against the starkness of his stubble. Sweat flew off him like rain. “Okay, all right. Ouyang’s a high minister in the CSP. Ben David has something going with him, but I swear I don’t know what. Ben David recruited me to run interference with Tel Aviv, to make sure neither the Director nor Amit find out what he’s up to.” His gaze turned briefly canny. “But Rebeka found out, didn’t she? She’s the one who told you about Ouyang.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bourne said.

  “Oh, but it does.” The Babylonian gave Bourne a smile tainted with pain. “Ben David has a thing for her. He always did.”

  “And yet he sent you to kill her.”

  “That’s the kind of man he is.” Halevy took several shuddering breaths. “Divided, always divided, just like our country, just like every country in the Middle East. He loves Rebeka. I don’t know what it took out of him to order her termination.” Those oddly porcine breaths again. “There’s no reason for you to believe this, but I’m glad she’s still alive.”

  At that, Bourne rose, and, hauling the Babylonian up by his shirtfront, walked him back to the taxi. He shoved his face against the window.

  “See her there? She’s dead, Halevy,” Bourne said. “I hold you and Ben David to account.”

  “I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t.” Even as he was saying this, he whirled, a needle-like weapon in the palm of his hand. Its point glinted wetly with what must be some kind of fast-acting poison. Bourne, lifting an arm, felt the needle snag in the fabric of his jacket. The needle point scraped against his skin but did not break it. Bourne smashed the heel of his hand into Halevy’s nose. He delivered a second strike to the Babylonian’s throat, fracturing the cricoid cartilage.

  Jerking his arm away from the needle, he struck Halevy flush on his ear. The Babylonian, gasping for air that would not come, staggered to his knees, still trying desperately to swipe at Bourne with the needle. Bourne grabbed him, and drove his knee into his groin, then struck him over and over again until he felt the bones in Halevy’s chest give way.

  With the Babylonian dead, Bourne slipped into the old car he had chosen, hot-wired it, and drove out of the lot. At Benito Juárez International Airport, he bought a first-class ticket, then went in search of something to eat.

  While he waited for his food, he took out the tiny skull studded with crystals that el Enterrador had given him as protection against Maceo Encarnación. “He is protected by an almost mystical power,” Constanza Camargo had told him, “as if by gods.”

  His food came, but he found that he was no longer hungry. As he turned the skull around and around between his fingers, he thought about everything that had happened to him and Rebeka since coming to Mexico City, all of which had been dictated, in one way or another, by Constanza Camargo. And then he began to wonder about something else. Why would Henry Rowland secrete himself in the closet of his bedroom unless he had known they were coming? But how had he known with such precision where they were?

  Bourne stared at the crystal-studded skull and into his mind came thoughts of other gods—the gods of technology. Placing the skull on the table, he smashed the bottom of his fist down onto it. Carefully, he picked through the shattered bits and pieces, extracting the minuscule tracking device that had been embedded in its center. He left it amid the debris without destroying it. He wanted the signal to continue broadcasting, just as if he had never discovered the device.

  He rose, paying for the meal he hadn’t touched, then exited the departure lounge, heading for the long-term parking lot, to find a suitable vehicle to drive back into the city.

  There are any number of ways to remain alive after you’re dead.” Don Fernando Hererra laughed, seeing the expression on Martha Christiana’s face. “This is only one of them.”

  The pilot had landed the private jet in a vast field south of Paris.

  There was no runway, no windsock, no customs shed. The plane had deviated from its flight plan and, after a frantic Mayday call, was now off t
he grid as far as the towers at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were concerned.

  “There are no magicians in the world, Martha. Only illusionists,” Hererra said. “The idea is to create the illusion of death. For this, we require an authentic disaster, which is why the plane has landed here, where no one will be hurt.”

  “Those bodies I saw on the plane,” Martha said, “are real.” Hererra nodded as he handed her a folder.

  “What’s this?”

  “Look inside.”

  Opening the file, she saw forensic reports on three bodies retrieved from the wreckage of the plane that had not yet crashed. The three bodies were burned beyond recognition, of course, but were identified by dental records. Hererra was named, as well as the pilot and the navigator.

  Martha picked her head up. “What about their families? What will you tell them?”

  Hererra nodded to the two men who were exiting the jet, whose engines were still running. “These men have no families, one of the reasons they were hired in the first place.”

  “But how—?”

  “I have friends inside the Élysée Palace who will control the accident scene.”

  The pilot approached Hererra. “The three corpses have been placed correctly,” he said. “We can proceed anytime.”

  Hererra checked his wristwatch. “We’ve been off the radar for seven minutes. Do it now.”

  The pilot nodded, then turned to his navigator, who was standing apart from them. The navigator held a small black box in his hand. When he pressed a button on the box, the jet’s engines rose in pitch until they became a scream. Another button remotely released the brakes, and the jet bucked forward, quickly gaining speed until it slammed into the line of trees at the far end of the field. A ferocious noise flared, momentarily deafening them. The ground shook, and an oily black-and-red fireball puffed out in the sky.

  “We go,” Hererra said, herding them all toward a large four-wheeldrive SUV crouched at the edge of the field. “Now.”