Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (13 page)

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.

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.

“Where 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?”

“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?”