The Bourne Deception

by Robert Ludlum

  “Any route that leads to roadkill—weren’t those your words?” Willard smiled winningly. “Do you want to win this war or do you want to see the Old Man’s dream flushed into the NSA recycle bin?” His smile turned encouraging. “One would think that after serving all this time in, as you say, the shit-filled belly of the beast, you might crave a little fresh air. Come on. After the first shock, it won’t be so bad.”

  “Promise, Daddy?”

  Willard laughed under his breath. “That’s the spirit.”

  Taking Marks’s arm he steered him across the linoleum tiles. As they approached the banquette, the solitary man seemed to appraise them both. With his dark, wavy hair, wide forehead, and rugged features, he looked like a film star; Robert Forster came immediately to mind, but there were bits and pieces of others, Marks was certain.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. Please sit down.” Oliver Liss not only looked like a film star, he sounded like one. He had a deep, rich voice that rolled out of his throat with controlled power. “I took the liberty of ordering drinks.” He lifted his tall, frosty glass as two others were set down in front of Marks and Willard. “It’s iced chai with cinnamon and nutmeg.” He took a swig of his drink, urging them to do the same. “It’s said that nutmeg is a psychedelic in high doses.” His smile managed to convey the notion that he’d successfully tried out the theory.

  In fact, everything about Oliver Liss exuded success to the most exacting degree. But then he and his two partners hadn’t built Black River from the ground up on trust funds and dumb luck. As Marks sipped at his drink, he felt as if a nest of pit vipers had taken up residence in his abdomen. Mentally, he cursed Willard for not preparing him for this meeting. He tried to dredge up everything he’d read or heard about Oliver Liss, and was dismayed to discover that it was precious little. For one thing, the man kept out of the limelight—one of the other partners, Kerry Mangold, was the public face of Black River. For another, very little was known about him. Marks recalled Googling him once and discovering a disconcertingly short bio. Apparently an orphan, Liss was raised in a series of Chicago foster homes until the age of eighteen, when he got his first full-time job working for a building contractor. Apparently the contractor had both contacts and juice, because in no time Liss had begun working in the campaign of the state senator, for whom the contractor had built a twenty-thousand-square-foot home in Highland Park. When the man was elected he took Liss with him to DC, and the rest was, as they say, history. Liss was unmarried, without family affiliations of any kind, at least not that anyone knew about. In short, he lived behind a lead curtain not even the Internet could pierce.

  Marks tried not to wince when he drank the chai; he was a coffee drinker and hated any kind of tea, especially ones that tried to masquerade as something else. This one tasted like a cupful of the Ganges.

  Someone else might have said, Do you like it? just to break the ice, but it seemed Liss was uninterested in icebreaking or any other form of conventional communication. Instead he directed his eyes, the same deep shade of blue as the background of his tie, to Marks and said, “Willard tells me good things about you. Are they true?”

  “Willard doesn’t lie,” Marks said.

  This brought the ghost of a smile to Liss’s lips. He continued to sip his vile chai, his gaze never wavering. He seemed not to have to blink, a disconcerting asset in anyone, especially someone in his position.

  The food came, then. It appeared as if Liss had ordered not only their drinks but their breakfast as well. This consisted of buttered fresh corn tortillas and scrambled eggs with peppers and onions, drenched in an orange chile sauce that just about incinerated the lining of Marks’s mouth. Following the first incautious bite, he swallowed hard and stuffed his face with tortillas and sour cream. Water would just spread the heat from his stomach to his small intestine.

  Graciously, Liss waited until Marks’s eyes had stopped watering. Then he said, “You’re quite right about our Willard. He doesn’t lie to his friends,” just as if there had been no gap in the conversation. “As for everyone else, well, his lies seem like the soul of truth.”

  If Willard was flattered by this talk, he gave no indication. Rather, he contented himself by eating his food as slowly and methodically as a priest, his expression Sphinx-like.

  “However, if you don’t mind,” Liss continued, “tell me something about yourself.”

  “You mean my bio, my curriculum vitae?”

  Liss showed his teeth briefly. “Tell me something about yourself I don’t know.”

  Clearly, he meant something personal, something revealing. And it was at this precise moment that Marks realized that Willard had been in discussions with Oliver Liss before this morning, perhaps for some time. “It’s already rebooted,” Willard had said to him, referring to Treadstone. Once again he felt blindsided by the quarterback of his own team, not a good feeling to have at a meeting with the import of this one.

  He shrugged mentally. No use fighting it, he was here, he might as well play out the string. This was Willard’s show, anyway, he was just along for the ride. “One week shy of my first wedding anniversary I met someone—a dancer—a ballet dancer, of all things. She was very young, not yet twenty-two, a good twelve years my junior. We saw each other once a week like clockwork for nineteen months and then, just like that, it was over. Her company went on tour to Moscow, Prague, and Warsaw, but that wasn’t the reason.”

  Liss sat back and, drawing out a cigarette, lit it in defiance of the law. Why should he care? Marks thought acidly. He is the law.

  “What was the reason?” Liss said in an oddly soft tone of voice.

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know.” Marks pushed his food around his plate. “It’s a funny thing. That heat—one day it was there, the next it wasn’t.”

  Liss blew out a plume of smoke. “I assume you’re divorced now.”

  “I’m not. But I suspect you already knew that.”

  “Why didn’t you and your wife split up?”

  This was what Liss’s information couldn’t tell him. Marks shrugged. “I never stopped loving my wife.”

  “So she forgave you.”

  “She never found out,” Marks said.

  Liss’s eyes glittered like sapphires. “You didn’t tell her.”

  “No.”

  “You never felt the urge to tell her, to confess.” He paused reflectively. “Most men would.”

  “There was nothing to tell her,” Marks said. “Something happened to me—like the flu—then it was gone.”

  “Like it never happened.”

  Marks nodded. “More or less.”

  Liss stubbed out his cigarette, turned to Willard, and regarded him for a long moment. “All right,” he said. “You have your funding.” Then he rose and, without another word, walked out of the restaurant.

  It’s the oil fields, stupid!” Moira slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Good God, why didn’t I see that all along, it’s so damn obvious!”

  “Obvious now that you know everything,” Humphry Bamber said.

  They were in Christian Lamontierre’s kitchen, eating roast beef and Havarti cheese sandwiches on sprouted-wheat bread Bamber had made from the well-stocked fridge, washed down with Badoit, a French mineral water. Bamber’s laptop was on the table in front of them, Bardem up and running through the three scenarios Noah had inputted into the software program.

  “I thought the same thing the first time I read Israel Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery.” Humphry Bamber swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “It’s the first real locked-room mystery, although others as far back as Herodotus in the fifth century bce, believe it or not, toyed with the idea. But it was Zangwill who in 1892 introduced the concept of misdirection, which became the touchstone for all stories of so-called impossible crimes from then on.”

  “And Pinprick is classic misdirection.” Moira studied the scenarios with mounting fascination and dread. “But on such a massive scale that without Bardem
no one would be able to figure out that the real reason for invading Iran was to confiscate their oil fields.” She pointed at the screen. “This area—Noah’s target area, Shahrake Nasiri-Astara—I’ve read a couple of intelligence reports about it. At least a third of Iran’s oil comes from there.” She pointed again. “See how small a geographic area it is? That makes it both vulnerable to an assault by a relatively small force and easily defendable by that same small force. It’s perfect for Noah.” She shook her head. “My God, this is brilliant—demented, horrific, unthinkable even, but decidedly brilliant.”

  Bamber went and got another bottle of Badoit out of the fridge. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not yet certain of all the details, but what’s clear is that Black River has made a deal with the devil. Someone high up in the US government has been pushing for us to do something about Iran’s fast-progressing nuclear program, which threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East. We—and other right-minded governments—have been making noises in the correct diplomatic channels for Iran to cease and dismantle its nuclear reactors. Iran’s response has been to thumb its nose in our faces. Next, we and our allies tried economic embargoes, which only made Iran laugh because we need their oil, and we’re not the only ones. Worse, they have the strategic option of closing down the Straits of Hormuz, which would have the effect of shutting down oil shipments from all the OPEC nations in the region.”

  She got up and put her plate into the sink, then returned to the table. “Someone here in Washington decided that patience was getting us nowhere.”

  Bamber frowned. “And?”

  “So they decided to force the issue. They used the downing of our airliner to go to war against Iran, but they’re also apparently running a side mission.”

  “Pinprick.”

  “Exactly. What Bardem is telling us is that under the chaos of the ground invasion, a small cadre of Black River operatives—with the full consent of the government—is going to take over the oil fields in Shahrake Nasiri-Astara, giving us far more control over our economic destiny. With this Iranian oil, we’ll no longer have to kowtow to the Saudis, the Iranians, Venezuela, or any OPEC nation, for that matter. America will be oil-independent.”

  “But the oil field land-grab is illegal, isn’t it?”

  “Duh. However, for some reason that doesn’t seem to be concerning anyone at the moment.”

  “Well, what are you going to do now?”

  That was, of course, the billion-dollar question. In another time, another place she would have called Ronnie Hart, but Ronnie was dead. Noah—she was quite certain it was Noah—had seen to that. She missed Ronnie now, more than ever, but the selfish reason for her emotion shamed her, and she turned away from the acknowledgment. That’s when she thought of Soraya Moore. She’d met Soraya through Bourne, and liked her. That they’d shared a past hadn’t bothered her in the slightest; she wasn’t the jealous type.

  How to get in touch with Soraya? Opening her cell, she called CI headquarters. The director, she was told, was out of the country. When she told the operative that her call was urgent, he told her to wait. A little over sixty seconds later, he was back on the phone.

  “Give me the number where Director Moore can reach you,” he said.

  Moira recited her cell phone number and cut the connection, fully expecting that her request would be promptly lost in the maze of paperwork and requests that must constantly flood Soraya’s electronic in-box. She was therefore stunned when her cell phone rang ten minutes later, showing an out of area logo on her tiny screen.

  She put the cell to her ear. “Hello?”

  “¿Moira? It’s Soraya Moore. Where are you? Are you in trouble?”

  Moira laughed in relief to hear the other woman’s voice. “I’m in DC and yes, I’ve been in trouble, and out. Listen, I have some news for you.” Quickly and methodically, she started at the beginning, outlining what she knew about Jay Weston’s murder—and what she was now certain was Steve Stevenson’s murder—as well as what she knew of Ronnie Hart’s death. “It all boils down to this software program Noah Perlis commissioned.” She went on to describe what Bardem did, how she had obtained a copy of it, and what it had revealed about Black River’s plans to confiscate the Iranian oil fields.

  “What I can’t figure is how such a complex plan could have been hatched after the terrorist attack on the airplane outside Cairo.”

  “It wasn’t,” Soraya said. “I’m currently in Khartoum and here’s why.” And she told Moira what she and Amun Chalthoum had discovered regarding the Iranian Kowsar 3 missile and the four-man American cadre that had smuggled it over the Sudanese border into Egypt. “So you see it’s bigger even than Black River and elements inside the government. Even Noah couldn’t have gotten to Nikolai Yevsen without the help of the Russians.”

  Now Moira understood why no one was concerned about the illegality of the oil field land-grab. If the Russians were in on Pinprick they would deflect world opinion in the right direction.

  “Moira,” Soraya said now, “we found the four men outside Khartoum. They were shot once in the head, execution-style, and their bodies dumped in with quicklime. But we managed to salvage something odd from each of them. They look like dog tags, only the writing on them is enciphered.”

  Moira felt her heart thumping hard in her chest. “They sound like the tags Black River gives to its field personnel.”

  “Then we could prove it was Black River personnel who fired that missile. We could avert this ill-advised and self-serving war.”

  “I’d have to see them to make sure,” Moira said.

  “I’ll overnight them to you,” Soraya said. “My pal here tells me he can expedite the shipment so you’ll get the tags tomorrow morning.”

  “That would be fantastic. If they are what they seem to be, I can get them processed in hours. I’ll just have to make sure they’re delivered into the right hands.”

  “That wouldn’t be CI,” Soraya said. “There’s a new director, M. Errol Danziger. Though his appointment hasn’t yet been officially announced, he’s already taken over—and he’s Secretary Halliday’s man.” She took a breath. “Listen, do you need protection? I can have some of my people to wherever you are within twenty minutes.”

  “Thanks very much, but the way things are going the fewer people who know where I am, the better.”

  “Understood.” There was another, longer pause. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Jason recently.”

  “Me, too.” Moira was thinking how happy she was that Jason wasn’t a part of all this. He needed his time to heal, both physically and mentally. Being a hairbreadth from dying wasn’t something you got over in a few weeks or even months.

  “There’s a lot about him to remember.” Half a world away, Soraya was thinking she’d call Jason and update him just as soon she concluded this conversation.

  “You and I share that, don’t we?”

  “Don’t forget about him, Moira,” Soraya said just before she rang off.

  33

  ARKADIN, alighting from the Air Afrika jet, despised Noah Perlis on sight. For that reason, he was at his most cordial when he, at the head of his twenty-man cadre, met with the Black River operative. At the same time, he was trying his best to ignore the eerie similarities between this section of Iran and Nizhny Tagil, with its sulfurous stench, the particulate-filled air, the ring of oil wells that seemed so much like the guard towers on the high-security prisons surrounding his home city.

  The rest of Arkadin’s contingent was still in the plane, where they were looking after the pilot and navigator, as they had the entire flight, to make sure they didn’t warn anyone about the larger-than-normal cargo. At a pre-arranged signal, the men would come pouring out of the belly of the plane, not unlike the Greek warriors who had been taken inside the impregnable walls of Troy in the wooden horse.

  “It’s good to meet you at last, Leonid Danilovich,” Perlis said in passable Russian as he gripped Arkadin’s ha
nd. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  Arkadin smiled his most welcoming smile and said, “I think you ought to know Jason Bourne is here—”

  “What?” Perlis looked as if the world had dropped away from him. “What did you say?”

  “—or if he isn’t here yet, he soon will be.” Arkadin kept the smile on his face even as Perlis tried to yank his hand away from the death grip Arkadin had on it. “It was Bourne who infiltrated the Air Afrika building in Khartoum. I know you must have been wondering who it was.”

  Perlis appeared to be struggling to understand what Arkadin was up to. “That’s nonsense. Bourne is dead.”

  “On the contrary.” Arkadin jerked back hard on Perlis’s trapped hand. “And I ought to know. I shot Bourne in Bali. I, too, thought he’d died, but, like me, he’s a survivor, a man with nine lives.”

  “Even if all this is true, how would you know Bourne was in Khartoum, let alone at the Air Afrika building?”

  “It’s my business to know these things, Perlis.” He laughed. “Now I’m being coy. Actually, I sent Bourne on a course expressly designed to lead him to Khartoum, to the Air Afrika building, to—and this is most important of all—Nikolai Yevsen.”

  “Yevsen is at the heart of our plan, why would you do such an idiotic—”

  “I wanted Bourne to kill Yevsen. And that’s precisely what he did.” Arkadin’s smile spread all the way up to his eyes. This arrogant American looks good with all the blood drained from his face, he thought. “I have all of Yevsen’s computer files—all his contacts, clients, and suppliers. Not that that’s a wide circle of people, as you can imagine, but by now they’ve all been informed of Nikolai Yevsen’s death. They’ve also been told they’ll be dealing with me from now on.”