The Bourne Imperative

by Robert Ludlum

  He turned once more, then rolled to the side of the bed and sat up. Today there was to be no respite in sleep, no way out of the noose tightening inexorably around him. Of course, he could ask Soraya for immunity from the coming phone hacking tsunami, but that would mean crawling back to her on his knees, groveling like the basest supplicant. He would be in her power forever, and he knew from bitter experience that she could be merciless when she felt she had been wronged. But what if she was his only recourse? Li had made noises about helping him, but he’d rather be tied to a third rail than be in that bastard’s debt.

  No, he thought now, as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, Soraya was his last best hope of getting out of the water before the Justice Department investigation sank all boats.

  Then he remembered that she was in the hospital, that she was carrying his baby, and all at once, the General Tso’s chicken moved inside him in an altogether unpleasant manner.

  He jumped up, and, sprinting, just made it across his bedroom, over the bathroom tiles, to the toilet before vomiting with such force that he felt as if his intestines had turned inside out.

  Li Wan, luxuriating between the impossibly long legs of Natasha Illion, picked up his enciphered mobile and pressed one button. The sounds on the line went immediately hollow as the call was shunted through a series of encrypted substations that hopscotched across the country, across the Pacific, at last ping-ponging dizzily through a cluster of top secret listening posts within Beijing. The offices of the State Administration of Grain were housed in the massive Guohong Building in the Central Government District. Though the top three floors bore the same SAG logo, none of its workers on the floors below were allowed access. There was a separate elevator that rose from the colossal lobby to those top three floors without stopping at the intervening levels. As far as the workers below were concerned, those floors above them housed the offices of the ministers who directed the State Administration of Grain, connected directly to the Politburo itself. No one harbored a desire to go up there; in fact, for them it did not exist.

  But for Li Wan, and people like him, those floors were all that existed in the Guohong Building. Their interests did not include grain production, quotas, or yearly allocations. The final destination of the call he initiated that morning in Washington, between Natasha Illion’s silky legs, was a vast office on the very top floor of the Guohong Building.

  It was 6 PM in Beijing, but the hour of night or day was of no import, as that office, those three floors, in fact, were fully manned 24/7.

  The High Minister stood at the edge of an immense open-plan room whose fifteen hundred computers, linked through a proprietary intranet, were manned by youngsters ranging in age from ten to nineteen. These youngster were hackers all, handpicked by the Chinese military, and their sole job was to hack through the firewalls and intranets of foreign governments and multinationals supplying foreign governments and militaries with cutting-edge weaponry and technologies. To do this, they were broken up into cadres, each one working on the next generation of Trojans, worms, and viruses, be they Stuxnet, Ginjerjar, or Stikyfingers. Anyone trying to backtrace the origins of these attacks would, after a long, arduous search, find that the ISP number belonged to Fi Xu Lang, a disgraced economics professor in a backwater village in Guangdong Province.

  The Minister felt an unalloyed sense of pride at the operation that he himself had argued for and set up. The intelligence stolen from a variety of sources had already proved highly valuable to his friend General Hwang Liqun and the rest of the Chinese military.

  The Minster felt the vibration of his mobile phone and went out of the cyber sweatshop, down to the far end of the hall, and into his office. He sat behind an ebony-wood desk, inlaid with elephant ivory, that was entirely clear of clutter. There was a rank of six corded phones on one side, a paperweight made of a thick chunk of rhino horn adorning the other side. In front of him was an open dossier marked TOP SECRET. The Minister, perhaps fifty, was possessed of the long, elegant face of a conductor or a choreographer. His black hair was slicked back from his wide, intelligent forehead. His hands, long and spidery-thin, were as carefully groomed as his hair and face. As he answered his mobile, he stared at a photo stapled to the inside cover of the dossier. He waited patiently as Li Wan’s call was routed to one of his phones. He held the phone to his ear without letting his gaze leave the photo, which was a black-and-white surveillance snapshot made with a long lens.

  As soon as the encrypted connection opened, he said, “Speak.” His voice was high and keening, like that of a child being punished.

  “Minister Ouyang, there has been a significant development.”

  Ouyang’s eyelids dropped halfway. He was imagining the room his agent was calling from. It was five in the morning along America’s East Coast. He wondered whether Li Wan was alone or with his long-legged girlfriend.

  “This could have a positive or negative impact on my evening, Li. What is it?”

  “Through the auspices of stupidity, we have been given an extraordinary opportunity.”

  “With Mr. Thorne?”

  “Yes.”

  “He and his coven of executives at Politics As Usual have been caught in a phone-hacking scandal that netted them some extraordinary exclusives over the past nineteen months, boosting their bottom line, but leaving them open to investigation by the American Justice Department.”

  “This is not unknown to me.” In fact, Ouyang had a contact inside Justice. “Please continue, Citizen Li.”

  “From day one, my mission in establishing a mutual conduit with Charles Thorne has been to get to his wife.”

  “As chair of the newly formed Homeland Strategic Appropriations Committee, Senator Ann Ring is of extraordinary importance to us.” Ouyang kept staring at the photo, as if trying to unlock the secrets inside the brain of the man caught by one of his surveillance teams. Then he said pointedly, “So far, however, you have failed to engage her on any level apart from the superficial.”

  “That time is at an end,” Li said. “Thorne’s back is against the wall. He needs my—our—help. I believe now is the time to extend our hand to support him in his hour of need.”

  Ouyang grunted softly, delicately. “In return for what?”

  “In return for Senator Ann Ring.”

  “I was under the impression—an impression you gave me, I might remind you—that Thorne’s marital relationship is not all it might be, all it should be.”

  The insane implication, via the stressed word, was that the couple’s personal troubles were somehow Li’s fault. This was Minister Ouyang through and through. Li set his mind to navigating the increasingly choppy waters.

  “That slight estrangement will now work in our favor,” Li said.

  Ouyang, running his fingertips ever so lightly over the face of the man in the photo, said, “Please explain.”

  “If Thorne and Ann Ring were closer, I feel certain he would have confided in her about the impending investigation. He has told me nothing could be further from the truth. But if I—we—can provide him with a way out, a method of inoculating and indemnifying himself against implication, he would be grateful—and so would she.

  “Senator Ring has an exemplary congressional record. Any hint of scandal—even from her husband—could be devastating to her position as chair of the Homeland Strategic Appropriations Committee. If she is disgraced and steps down, we will be back to square one. We will have lost valuable time. We cannot afford to start all over.”

  No, Minister Ouyang thought, we most certainly cannot.

  “I despise stupidity,” he said.

  Li wisely held his tongue.

  “There is danger in exposing ourselves to the extent required to extricate Thorne from his predicament.” At the moment, Ouyang appeared to be talking to himself, trying to work out the pros and cons of Li’s suggestion. “As you know, Li, there is a very thin line between an asset and a liability.”

  His eyes never left the face he
now knew so well, a face he saw in long, drawn-out nightmares to which he returned again and again, an endless repetition that infuriated him.

  “I understand, Minister. But I have trained Thorne. He is our unwitting conduit.”

  “The best kind,” Ouyang acknowledged.

  “Precisely.”

  The face had a name, of course, and he knew it as well as he knew his own—a name that was hideous, a name he was determined to eradicate as if it had never existed.

  “I have worked long and hard cultivating this conduit. He can be saved from the oncoming storm,” Li said with the full force of his conviction.

  “As long as you aren’t exposed, as long as our plan isn’t jeopardized, you have my permission.” He cocked his head to one side, concentrating on both his important conversation with Li and the equally important photo. He grunted. “Do not disappoint me, Li.”

  While Li Wan rambled his gratitude, Ouyang tapped the eyes of the man in the photo, first one, then the other, in his mind’s eye blinding him before he was killed, and his name echoed and reechoed in his mind.

  Jason Bourne, Jason Bourne, Jason Bourne.

  Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.” Soraya smiled when she saw Peter enter her room, heard his familiar voice. But seeing him in his bedraggled clothes, her expression immediately changed. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Thirty million dollars.” He pulled up a chair and began to relate the story of the increasingly visible web that included Richards, Core Energy, Tom Brick, Florin Popa, all leading to the thirty million sunk in a watertight satchel off the Recursive at Dockside Marina.

  “What does it all mean?” Soraya asked when she had absorbed the various strands.

  Peter shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  “What about Richards?”

  The same question Hendricks had asked him. “I’ve decided to give him his lead. Whatever Brick is up to, it runs through Richards.”

  “Won’t Brick be suspicious that you didn’t wait around to kill whoever it was he was bringing back to the house in Virginia?”

  Peter hitched his chair forward. “I don’t think so. Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t stay around. I think that was just a test.”

  “An intelligence test.”

  “Brick doesn’t trust me fully.” Peter shrugged. “Why should he? As far as he’s concerned, I crawled out of a hole and saved him a lot of grief. But so what? In his business, he’s got to run me through a maze before he can accept me completely.”

  “So you’ll contact him again?”

  Peter winked at her. “You bet.” He stood up. “Now relax. I want to see you on your feet before long.”

  Don Tulio sat in his rental car watching as Sam Anderson, his team having scoured and dredged the marina basin for any sign of the man who had attacked his boss, berated the crew and sent them back down to try again. Anderson stood giving orders to a man Don Tulio knew from conversations overheard as Sanseverino. Sanseverino nodded and went back up to the parking lot. Don Tulio followed Sanseverino as he drove Peter’s car to the hospital. Don Tulio was an expert driver; he knew how to tail someone without being discovered.

  Now he sat in his car, watching as Sanseverino trotted into the ER entrance and disappeared into the bowels of the hospital complex. He had no intention of following Sanseverino inside, where there was sure to be security and every chance he would be made. Why bother, when all he had to do was wait here for jefe Marks to emerge, get in his car, and drive off? Don Tulio, time running out, would follow him and take his pound of flesh. The plane he had chartered back to Mexico City was ready and waiting for him.

  As to the thirty million, he knew for certain it was gone. The federales had it, which meant it had evaporated like smoke. His lieutenants, having decapitated the sacrificial lamb Don Tulio had chosen from within his ranks, were hard at work replacing the thirty million. Rehabilitating his image with Don Maceo weighed just as heavily on his mind. Don Maceo would have already been placated, at least temporarily, by the head the Aztec’s lieutenant had delivered. But he would not be impressed until the money was returned and Don Tulio delivered the second head and informed him to whom it belonged.

  The Aztec checked the 911 handgun, its hollow-point ammo, one more time. Then, setting the gun on the seat next to his gravity knife, he leaned his head back, closing his eyes halfway. He had developed the ability of sleeping with his eyes half-open, like a reptile. Nothing got by him when he was in this state. His mind relaxed and rested while his senses remained on alert. It was this peculiar ability that alerted him to jefe Marks emerging from the hospital, accompanied by Sanseverino. The two men went directly to Marks’s car. A brief altercation broke out as Sanseverino insisted on driving. Marks acquiesced, and his deputy got behind the wheel while Marks himself climbed in beside him.

  Don Tulio turned on his ignition a moment before Sanseverino did. He followed the car out of the hospital parking lot at a discreet distance, varying the number of vehicles between them. As he drove, he hummed a cumbia tune that reminded him of sleek arms and powerful legs, sweat-slicked bodies, minds lubricated with mezcal, all moving to the insistent beat.

  Sorry we haven’t found him yet, boss,” Sanseverino said as he negotiated a turn. “Maybe the currents took him, ’cause if he was down there the divers would’ve found him by now. The current was sucking out, they told me, so Anderson sent them down to search a wider circle.”

  “Dammit,” Peter said, “I needed to ID him in order to follow the money trail back to its source. Without him, we’re at a dead end.”

  “Dead is dead,” Sanseverino said.

  “It ain’t over till it’s over,” Peter grumbled. He was in a foul mood. Everything is going wrong today, he thought, refusing to admit how worried he was about Soraya. Plus, he didn’t like that she had shut him out; it wasn’t like her.

  “Anderson said to leave it and go home,” Sanseverino said. “Take the day and night to recuperate.”

  Peter shook his head. “With Soraya down, Treadstone is undermanned as it is.”

  “We’re kind of circling, you realize that?” Sanseverino said. “I have no idea where we’re going.”

  “Take a deep breath.” Peter pulled out his mobile. “In a moment you will.” He looked up Delia’s mobile in his address book and clicked on the highlighted number. A moment later, Delia answered.

  “It’s Peter,” he said, brusquely. “We need to talk.”

  “I’m—”

  “Now.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  He grinned fiercely. “That’s right. ‘Uh-the-fuck-oh.’ Where are you?”

  “Out of the office. On a case.”

  “I’ll come to you.” He snapped his fingers. “Address.”

  Don Tulio followed jefe Marks’s car out into the countryside, moving farther and farther away from the more populated areas of the section of Virginia closest to DC. Quite soon, he was lost. The rental car wasn’t equipped with a GPS, but his mobile was. He fumbled it out with one hand and turned it on.

  Not that it mattered exactly where they were, not at this moment, anyway. All he had to do was to keep his eye on the car in front of him and, as the traffic began to thin out, figure out ways to keep his own car from being spotted by either Marks or Sanseverino. This included some fancy maneuvering, but luckily, even when the traffic was at its sparsest, there were always trucks to hide behind for a time.

  Don Tulio narrowed his cruel Aztec eyes against the glare and kept pumping his foot on the accelerator. It wouldn’t do to maintain a constant speed, which would mirror that of Marks’s car, and, therefore, bring attention to himself. By moving in and out of the sight line of their mirrors, he made himself all but invisible.

  They had been traveling for close to forty minutes when Don Tulio saw the large red-brick building off to their right: Silversun High School. A group of official-looking vehicles were parked helter-skelter near its front entrance. Peering
more closely, he spotted figures in loose-fitting jackets with ATF printed on their backs in oversized bright yellow letters.

  A moment later, Marks’s car slowed, preparing to take the next right onto the approach road to the school.

  This is it, the Aztec thought. I’ll never get a better chance.

  Accelerating, he came up right behind Marks’s car as if from nowhere. The touch of a button slid his window all the way down. The Chevy sped up. He grabbed his 911 off the seat. Then he swerved to the right, overtaking the Chevy within seconds.

  As he came abreast of the car, he glimpsed jefe Marks’s pale face turn inquiringly toward him. He saw the muzzle of Marks’s police Glock. Aiming the 911 directly at Marks’s face, he squeezed off one, two, three shots, then he stamped on the brakes, negating any chance of return fire.

  Ahead of him, the Chevy slewed wildly, then swerved, tires squealing as the driver put on the brakes and began a sweeping U-turn. That was the Aztec’s cue. Accelerating again, he broadsided the Chevy, staving in both doors on the driver’s side. His own front end crumpled, jarring him so hard his teeth clacked together.

  His head snapped back against the seat and the airbag deployed, but he was ready, puncturing it with the point of his knife, slashing it away from him with the blade. The seat belt was jammed, and he used the knife like a machete to hack through it as if it were a fibrous jungle vine.

  He kicked out, impatient now to view his handiwork, and the door swung open, screaming a bit as metal abraded metal. The hinges were askew. He got out, a little dazed by the sudden brute force of gravity rushing back in.

  Staggering over to the Chevy, he could see that Sanseverino had been caught in the broadside. His entire left side, trapped by the airbag, was crushed by the metal hammer of the collapsed door. His head was canted at an unnatural angle, as if he were inspecting the footwell. He wasn’t inspecting anything, the Aztec observed. He was dead.