The Bourne Objective (13 page)

She shuddered. “Evil thing, that Black Painting.”

“You say that as if it were alive.”

She turned back to him. “In a sense it was, because it was connected with that man.”

“Arkadin.”

“She never told me his name. From what I could gather he gave her extremely dangerous assignments, but he paid her so well she accepted them all, at least that’s what she told me.”

“You didn’t believe her?”

“Oh, I believed her, all right, when we were young we made a pact never to lie to each other.” Her hair was a shade darker than her sister’s, and thicker, lush even, and her face was a bit less angular, softer, more open. It was also more careworn. She moved more quickly than Tracy, or perhaps it was that she moved in nervous bursts as if set off by a series of tiny interior explosions. “The problem arose when we grew up. I’m positive there were a great many things about her private life she refused to share.”

“You didn’t push it.”

“Secrecy was her choice,” she said defensively. “I honored her wishes.”

He followed her back into the bedroom. She stood looking around as if dazed, as if she’d lost her sister and now inexplicably couldn’t find her. Light slanting in through the window was splintered in lozenges and rectangles by the pear tree. It was mellow, toned, like the surface of a sepia print. She moved into one of those luminous geometric shapes now.

Her arms wound around her waist as if she were trying to hold in her emotions. “But of one thing I’m quite certain. That man’s a monster, she’d never have worked for him voluntarily. I’m sure he must have had something on her.”

An echo of his own suspicions. Maybe she had something to tell him after all. “Can you think of what it might be?”

“I already told you, Trace was the most secretive person on earth.”

“So there was nothing, no odd response to your questions, nothing of that nature.”

“No.” Chrissie drew the word out into two syllables. “I mean there was one thing, but, well, it’s kind of ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? How so?”

“I remember one time we were together and, for once, there didn’t seem to be anything to talk about after I’d exhausted the news about me. I was bored with all that, anyway, it was old news to me. I guess I got a bit frustrated, because I said, laughing, you know, something about was she hiding someone up her sleeve.”

Bourne cocked his head. “And?”

“Well, I mean she didn’t think it was funny, did she? She didn’t laugh, that’s for sure. I’d meant a boyfriend or a husband but she said, quite fiercely, that I was the only family she had.”

“You don’t think—”

“No, I don’t,” Chrissie said emphatically. “That wouldn’t be like her at all. She didn’t get on well with Mum and Dad, she was offended by everything about them. And they were deeply offended by her rebelliousness. I was the good daughter. I became a professor at Oxford, following in my father’s footsteps. But Trace… God only knows what they thought she was up to. Anyway, from the time she was thirteen or so they would fight like cats and dogs, until one day she stormed out of the house and never went back. No, I can tell you that she didn’t want a family of her own.”

“And you find that sad.”

“No,” Chrissie said, rather defiant. “I find it admirable.”

W
ell, at least we get to go after Bourne,” Marks said. “That’s some consolation, he’s one half of the Treadstone equation, isn’t he?”

“Don’t be dense,” Willard snapped. “Liss didn’t even bother to mention it as a peace offering because he knew I’d laugh in his face. He knows I’m the only person on earth—at least one under his control—who can get to Bourne without having his neck or back broken. No, he planned this out from the beginning, it was his whole reason for agreeing to back Treadstone in the first place, and I played right into his hand.”

“That’s a pretty damn high price to pay for a ring,” Marks said. “It must be very rare, costly, or important.”

“I’d like to have another look at that photo of the engraving,” Willard mused. “That’s our best chance of finding out something about the ring, since Liss won’t tell us.”

They had been walking across the Mall, from the Washington Monument toward the Lincoln Memorial, hands in overcoat pockets, backs bowed against the wind, but at the last instant they had decided to make a detour to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Along the way they had, each in his own way, checked for tags and tails. They didn’t trust anyone, least of all Oliver Liss.

They stopped, and Willard stared at the wall, somber in its eternal shadows, sighed deeply, and closed his eyes. A small, secret smile crept across his lips with the stealth of a cat. “He thinks he’s checkmated me, but I’ve got a queen he can’t control.”

Marks shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Willard’s eyes popped open. “Soraya Moore.”

Marks looked at him, alarmed. “Oh, no.”

“I told you to try to recruit her and you did.”

A pair of vets in uniform, one pushing the other, who was in a wheelchair, came down the long, graceful ramp into the full majesty of the wall and stopped in front of the names. The vet in the wheelchair was without legs. He handed his friend a small bouquet and a miniature American flag on a wooden stand. His friend laid them at the foot of the wall where their compatriots’ names were engraved for all time.

There was a glitter in Willard’s eyes as he turned away from the scene. “I have her first assignment: Find Leonid Arkadin.”

“You said you’d lost him,” Marks pointed out. “Where is she going to start looking?”

“That’s her problem,” Willard said. “She’s a smart girl, I’ve been following her career since she came to prominence at Typhon.” He smiled. “Have a little faith, Peter. She’s first-rate material, plus, she’s got a built-in advantage over you or me. She’s a very good-looking female—highly desirable—which means Arkadin will have her scent before she comes within a block of him.”

His brain was traveling at speed in its own peculiar orbit. “I want her with him, Peter. I want her attached to Arkadin, she’s going to tell me what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.”

The two vets’ heads were bowed, locked within their private memories as tourists and relatives of other fallen filed by, some touching names here and there. A Japanese tour leader, yellow pennant held high, gathered her photo-clicking flock to her.

Marks ran a hand through his hair. “You can’t expect me—What? Jesus, you want me to pimp her out?”

Willard looked like he was sucking on a lemon. “Since when did you become a Boy Scout? Not in CI, surely. The Old Man would’ve had your heart for lunch.”

“She’s a friend of mine, Fred. Longtime.”

“There are no friends in this business, Peter, just the bitterly oppressed. I am Liss’s slave and you are mine and she is yours. That’s how it works.”

Marks looked as glum as Willard had at the end of their breakfast with Liss.

“You will give her her assignment before we leave for the airport—” Willard glanced at his watch. “—which gives you less than six hours to prep for London and do the deed.” His smile was all teeth. “More than enough time for a clever fellow like you, wouldn’t you say?”

T
IME
FOR
ME to go,” Bourne said. “We should both get some sleep.”

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Chrissie said and, with a bleak smile, sang,
“Bad dreams in the night.”
She cocked her head inquiringly. “Kate Bush. Do you know her songs?”

“That’s from ‘Wuthering Heights,’ isn’t it?”

“Yes, my daughter, Scarlett, is a big fan. Not much Kate Bush up at Oxford, I can tell you.”

It was after midnight. He had ventured out to an Indian restaurant, bought their dinner, and had taken it back to Tracy’s flat, where, after swallowing a couple of desultory bites, Chrissie watched him eat. Considering the violent events earlier, outside the bank, it was best if he didn’t venture too far afield, even back to his hotel.

Watching her sitting across from him on the sofa, he recalled another fragment of the conversation he’d had with Tracy in Khartoum the night before she died:

“In your mind you can be anyone, do anything. Everything is malleable, whereas in the real world, effecting change—any change—is so bloody difficult, the effort is wearying.”

“You could adopt an entirely new identity,”
he had replied,
“one where effecting change is less difficult because now you re-create your own history.”

She had nodded.
“Yes, but that has its own pitfalls. No family, no friends—unless, of course, you don’t mind being absolutely isolated.”

“The night before she died,” he said now, “she told me something that led me to believe that in another time, another place she would have enjoyed having her own family.”

For a moment it seemed as if all the air had gone out of her. “Well, that’s bloody irony for you.” Then, recovering somewhat, she went on, “You know, the funny thing is—well, it’s bloody tragic, when I think about it now—I sometimes envied
her.
She wasn’t tied down, had never married, she could go where she pleased, when she pleased, and she did. She was like a skyrocket, in that way, because of how she loved to walk on the wild side. It was as if danger was—I don’t know—an aphrodisiac, or maybe it was more like the feeling people get when they ride a roller coaster, that sense of going so fast they’re almost, but not quite, out of control.” She gave a bitter little laugh. “The last time I rode a roller coaster I got sick to my stomach.”

Part of him genuinely felt for her, but another part, the professional part, the Bourne identity, in other words, was seeking a way to worm his way farther in, a probe to see if there was anything else Chrissie could tell him about Tracy and her mysterious relationship with Leonid Arkadin. He saw her only as a means to an end, a stepping-stone, not a human being. He hated himself for feeling that way, and yet his dispassion was part of what made him successful. This was who he was, or at least what Treadstone had made of him. In any event, for good or for ill, he was damaged, trained, highly skilled. Just like Arkadin. And yet there was a gulf between them—an abyss so vast, Bourne could not see its bottom or even guess at its depth. He and Arkadin faced each other across this divide, invisible perhaps to anyone but themselves, searching for ways to destroy each other without destroying themselves in the process. There were times when he wondered whether that would be possible, whether to rid the world of one, both had to go.

“You know what I wish?” She turned to him. “Remember that film
Superman,
not a great film, admittedly, but anyway, Lois Lane dies and Superman is so grief-stricken that he launches himself into the air. He flies around the earth, faster and faster, faster than the speed of sound, faster than the speed of light, so fast that he reverses time to the moment just before Lois will be killed, and he saves her.” Her eyes had settled on his face, but it was something else she was seeing. “I wish I were Superman.”

“You’d turn back time and save Tracy.”

“If I could. But unlike what the screenwriters allowed Superman to do in the film, if I couldn’t, well, at least… at least I’d understand what the bloody hell to do with this grief.” She tried to take a deep breath but succeeded only in choking on her tears. “I feel weighed down, as if I have an anchor tied to my back, or Tracy’s body, cold and stiff and… never moving ever again.”

“That feeling will pass,” Bourne said.

“Yes, I suppose it will, but what if I don’t want it to?”

“Do you want to follow her down into darkness? What about Scarlett, what will happen to her then?”

Chrissie got red in the face and jumped up. Bourne followed her as she stalked into the bedroom, where he found her staring out the French doors at the pear tree, flooded now in silvery moonlight. “Bloody hell, Trace, why are you gone? If she were here now I swear I’d wring her neck.”

“Or at least make her promise to have nothing more to do with Arkadin.”

Bourne hoped injecting Arkadin’s name back into the conversation would lead her back to a memory she might have overlooked. He sensed they might be at a crucial juncture. He had no intention of leaving, as long as she didn’t throw him out. He didn’t think she would, he was her only link with her sister now, he’d been there when Tracy had died. That meant the world to her, he sensed that it brought the two of them closer, made Tracy’s sudden death a bit more bearable.

“Chrissie,” he said gently, “did she ever tell you how she met him?”

She shook her head, then said, “Maybe in Russia. Saint Petersburg? She’d gone there to have a look at the Hermitage. I remember because I was all set to go with her when Scarlett came down with an ear infection, high fever, disorientation, the works.” She shook her head. “God, what different lives the two of us have led! And now… now it’s come to this. Scarlett will be devastated.”

Then she frowned. “Why did you come here, Adam?”

“Because I wanted something to remind me of her, because I had nowhere else to go.” He realized, a bit belatedly, that it was the truth, or at least as much of it as he was prepared to share with her.

“I didn’t, either,” she said with a sigh. “Scarlett was visiting my folks when the call came. She was having a grand time, still is, judging by our last texts.” Her eyes were on him, but again her attention was fixed somewhere else. “Of course you can have a look around, take whatever keepsake you want.”

“I appreciate that.”

She nodded absently, then turned back to her contemplation of the mews and its budding pear tree. A moment later she gave a tiny gasp. “There they are!”

Bourne rose and joined her at the window.

“They’ve returned,” he said. “The house martins.”

A
rkadin woke at dawn, climbed into swim shorts, and went out for a run in the surf. The sky was filled with cormorants and pelicans. Greedy gulls walked along the sand, plucking at the remnants of last night’s drunken parties. He ran south until he reached the outskirts of one of the big resort clubs, then turned around. After that he plunged into the water and swam for forty minutes. When he returned to the convent there were more than twenty messages waiting for him on his cell phone. One was from Boris Karpov. He showered and dressed, then chopped up fresh fruit. Pineapple, papaya, bananas, oranges. He ate the sweet chunks with a large dollop of yogurt. Ironically, he was learning to eat healthily in Mexico.