The Bourne Objective (37 page)

“Bad news?” Don Fernando Hererra said.

“Just more of the same,” Marks said. “I’ve a meeting to go to.”

They were seated in the living room of Diego Hererra’s home, surrounded by photos of him. Marks wondered whether being here was painful or comforting for the father.

“Señor Hererra, before I go, is there anything more you can tell me about your godson? Do you know why he was at the Vesper Club last night, or why he might have stabbed Diego? What sort of relationship did they have?”

“None, to answer your last question first.”

Hererra took out a cigarette and lit up but didn’t seem interested in smoking it. His eyes roved the room, as if afraid to alight on any one thing for long. Marks suspected that he was nervous. About what?

Hererra contemplated Marks for some moments. The ash from his unsmoked cigarette toppled soundlessly to the carpet, where it lay between his feet. “Diego did not know of Ottavio’s existence, at least so far as his relationship to me was concerned.”

“Then why would Ottavio kill Diego?”

“He wouldn’t, therefore I refuse to believe that he did.”

Hererra told his driver to take Marks to the nearest rental-car office. He insisted that he and Marks exchange phone numbers. Those words of disbelief resounded in Marks’s head as he punched the address Bourne had given him into the
GPS
program on his
PDA
.

“I want to stay abreast of your investigation,” Hererra said. “You promised me that you would find my son’s killer. You should know that I take all promises made to me extremely seriously.”

Marks saw no reason to doubt him.

Fifteen minutes after he drove out of the rental-car lot, his
PDA
buzzed and he read a text message from Soraya. Within minutes Willard called him.

“Progress.”

“I’ve made contact,” Marks said, meaning Bourne.

“You know where he is?” A slight quickening of Willard’s voice.

“Not yet,” Marks lied. “But I will soon.”

“Good, I’m in time.”

“Time for what?” Marks asked.

“The mission has changed somewhat. I need you to facilitate a meeting between Bourne and Arkadin.”

Marks searched for hidden meaning in Willard’s voice. Something back home had changed. He hated being out of the loop and felt at an immediate disadvantage. “What about the ring?”

“Are you listening to me?” Willard snapped. “Just do as you’re ordered.”

Now Marks was certain that he was being denied access to a major development. He felt the old anger against the machinations of his superiors rising up in his throat like bile.

“Has Soraya Moore made contact?” Willard continued.

“Yes. I just received the rearranged text message from her.”

“Contact her,” Willard said. “Coordinate your efforts. You need to get the two men to the following place.” He gave Marks an address. “How you do it is up to you, but I do have some information Arkadin should find interesting.” He told Marks what El-Arian had told him about the missing piece of information without which the file on the laptop’s hard drive was useless. “You have seventy-two hours.”

“Seventy-two—?” But he was talking to dead air. The conversation was over.

At the next intersection, Marks checked the
GPS
map on his
PDA
to make sure that he hadn’t missed a turn while talking with Willard. The morning had started out sunny, but clouds had rolled in, turning everything to shades of gray. Now a light drizzle blurred the edges of even the sharpest angles on buildings and signs.

The light turned green and, as he left the intersection behind, he noticed a white Ford moving into his lane right behind him. He knew a tail when he saw one. He’d seen the white Ford before, several vehicles behind him, though now and again he’d lost sight of it behind a large produce truck. The Ford was occupied by only the driver, who wore dark glasses. Stepping on the accelerator, he sent his rental car lurching forward as he ground the gearshift up from first to third more quickly than the transmission could easily handle. There was a moment between second and third when the car hesitated, and he was afraid he’d stripped the gears. Then it leapt forward so fast he almost slammed into the rear end of the truck in front of him. He swerved to the right-hand lane, accelerating further as the white Ford slid in behind him.

He was in a section of London dense with traffic, boutiques, and larger stores. A sign for an underground garage came up so fast he had to swerve into its entrance at the last possible instant. He scraped the front left fender on the concrete wall, then corrected and hurtled down the ramp into the neon-lit concrete cavern.

He pulled into a parking spot that was so tight, he had to roll down the window to slide out. By that time, he heard the squeal of tires and figured the white Ford was still hot on his trail. He saw the open stairwell next to the elevator, ducked into it just as a white car flashed by. The stairwell smelled of grease and urine. As he rushed up the stairs two and three at a time, he heard a car door slam and the fast slap of shoe soles against concrete, and then someone was running up the stairs behind him.

As he was about to whip around a corner, he came upon a homeless man, so drunk he had passed out. Bending over, Marks held his breath as he dragged the drunk up the stairs, placing him across the tread just around the corner. Retreating into shadow on the stairs above, Marks waited, breathing deeply and easily.

The sounds of pounding footsteps came closer, and Marks tensed himself into a half crouch. His tail raced around the corner and, as Marks had planned, didn’t see the drunk until it was too late. As he stumbled, pitching forward, Marks leapt down the stairs, driving his knee into the top of the man’s head. The tail lurched backward, stumbling again over the drunk and sprawling onto his back.

Marks saw him pulling a Browning M1900 from beneath his jacket. Marks kicked it upward just before he fired a shot. The noise held and echoed so deafeningly in the confined space, the drunk opened his eyes and sat bolt upright. The man with the Browning grabbed the drunk by the collar and pressed the gun’s muzzle into the side of his head.

“You’ll come with me now.” He had a heavy accent, Middle Eastern perhaps. “Or I shoot his brains out.” He jerked the drunk so hard, spittle flew from his slack lips.

“Oi, yer wanker!” the drunk shouted, completely confused. “Piss off!”

The gunman, as contemptuous as he was incensed, slammed the side of the drunk’s head with the barrel of the Browning. Marks launched himself across the gap. The heel of his hand made contact with the gunman’s chin, shoved it hard upward, exposing his neck. While he wrestled with the gun hand, he drove his fist into the gunman’s throat. The cartilage gave way and the gunman collapsed, gasping without getting oxygen into his system. His eyes were wide and rolling. He could only make animal gruntings, but soon enough even that ceased.

The drunk whirled with astonishing agility and kicked the gunman in the crotch. ” ’Ow ’bout that now, yer bleedin’ pisspot!” Then, muttering to himself, he stumbled down the stairs without a backward glance.

Quickly now Marks went through the gunman’s pockets, but all he found was keys to the white Ford and a wad of money. No passport, no identification of any kind. He had dark skin, black curling hair, and a full beard.
One thing for sure,
Marks thought,
he’s not CI. So who was he working for and why the hell was he following me?
He wondered who could know he was here except for Willard and Oliver Liss.

Then he heard the whistle raised by foot police and knew he had to get out of there. Once more, he studied the dead man, wishing there was some identifier, like a tattoo or…

That’s when he saw the gold ring on the third finger of his right hand and, stooping, worked it off. He hoped there might be a commemorative engraving on the inside.

There wasn’t. There was something far more interesting.

S
oraya saw Leonid Arkadin again in the lone marina restaurant. Or, rather, he must have been searching for her, because engrossed in her fiery shrimp and yellow rice she didn’t see him enter. Her waiter brought her a drink—a tequini, he said—from the man at the bar. Soraya glanced up, and of course it was Arkadin. She looked into his eyes as she picked up the martini glass. She smiled. That was all the encouragement he needed.

“You’re persistent, I’ll give you that,” she said when he’d sauntered over.

“If I were your lover, I wouldn’t let you eat dinner alone.”

“My ex pool boy? I sent him packing.”

He laughed and gestured to the booth in which she sat. “May I?”

“I’d prefer you didn’t.”

He sat down anyway and put his drink on the table, as if marking out his territory. “If you let me order, I’ll pay for your dinner.”

“I don’t need you to pay for my dinner,” she said flatly.

“Need has nothing to do with it.” He lifted his hand and the waiter glided over. “I’ll have steak, bloody, and an order of tomatillos.” The waiter nodded and left.

Arkadin smiled, and Soraya was astonished at how genuine it seemed. There was a deep warmth to it that frightened her.

“My name is Leonardo,” he said.

She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. No one in Puerto Peñasco is named Leonardo.”

He seemed crestfallen, like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and now she was beginning to make sense of his approach to women. She could see how magnetic he was, how compelling an impression he made, exuding the security of a powerful man with a softer core of vulnerability. What woman could resist that? She laughed silently to herself and felt better, as if at last she was standing on solid ground, in a place where she could confidently move forward with her assignment.

“You’re right, of course,” Arkadin said. “It’s actually Leonard, just plain Leonard.”

“Penny.” She held out a hand, which he held briefly. “What are you doing in Puerto Peñasco, Leonard?”

“Fishing, sport racing.”

“In your cigarette.”

“Yes.”

Soraya finished up her shrimp just as his steak and tomatillos arrived. The steak, bloody as ordered, was smothered in chilies. Arkadin dug in.
He must have a cast-iron stomach,
she thought.

“And you?” he said around bites.

“I came for the weather.” She pushed the tequini away from her.

“You don’t like it?”

“I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Alcoholic?”

She laughed. “Muslim. I’m Egyptian.”

“I apologize for sending you an inappropriate gift.”

“No need.” She waved away his words. “You couldn’t have known.” Then she smiled. “But you’re sweet.”

“Ha! Sweet is one thing I’m not.”

“No?” She cocked her head. “What are you, then?”

He wiped the blood off his lips and sat back for a moment. “Well, to tell you the truth I’m something of a hard-ass. My partners thought so, especially when I bought them out. So did my wife, for that matter.”

“She’s also in the past?”

He nodded as he dug into his food again. “Nearly a year now.”

“Children?”

“Are you kidding?”

Arkadin certainly had a gift for spinning yarns, she thought appreciatively. “I’m not much of a nurturer, either,” she said, somewhat truthfully. “I’m entirely focused on my business.”

He asked her what that might be without looking up from his steak.

“Import-export,” she said. “To and from North Africa.”

His head came up slowly, but very deliberately. She felt her heart beating against her rib cage. It was, she thought, like coaxing a shark onto the hook. She didn’t want to make the slightest mistake now, and felt a little thrill pass through her. She was very close to the precipice, to the moment when her fictional self would fuse with her real self. This moment was why she chose to do what she did. It was why she hadn’t walked away from Peter when he’d recruited her for the assignment, why she had set aside the demeaning aspect of what she was expected to do. None of that mattered. What mattered was standing a hairbreadth from the precipice. This precise moment was what she lived for,
and Peter had known this long before she did
.

Arkadin wiped his mouth again. “North Africa. Interesting. My former partners did a fair amount of business in North Africa. I didn’t like their methods—or, to be honest, the people they were dealing with. That was one of the reasons I decided to buy them out.”

He was quick on his feet, Soraya thought, improvising like crazy. She was liking this conversation more and more.

“What line are you in?” she asked.

“Computers, peripherals, computer services, that sort of thing.”

Right,
she thought, amused. She put a thoughtful expression on her face. “Well, I could connect you with some reliable people, if you like.”

“Maybe you and I could do business.”

Bite!
she thought with some elation.
Time to reel in the shark, but very slowly and very carefully.

“Hm. I don’t know, I’m already near capacity.”

“Then you need to expand.”

“Sure. With what capital?”

“I have capital.”

She eyed him warily. “I don’t think so. We know nothing about each other.”

He set his knife and fork down, and smiled. “Then let’s make getting to know each other our first order of business.” He lifted a finger. “In fact, I have something to show you that just might entice you into doing business with me.”

“And what might that be?”

“Ah-ah-ah, it’s a surprise.”

Calling the waiter over, he ordered two espressos without asking her if she wanted one. As it happened, she did. She wanted her senses to be on full alert because she had no doubt that at some point tonight she would have to fend off his amorous advances in a way that would lead him on, not turn him off.

They chatted amiably while drinking the espressos, finding their way toward feeling comfortable with each other. Soraya, seeing how relaxed he was, allowed herself to relax, as well, at least as far as she was able. Beneath, however, she felt the tension of steel cables singing through her body. This was a man of enormous charm, as well as charisma. She could see how so many women were magnetically drawn into his orbit. But at the same time the part of her that had pulled back, observing at an objective distance, recognized the show he was putting on, and that she was not seeing the real Arkadin. After a time, she wondered whether anyone had. He had so successfully walled himself off from other human beings that she suspected he was no longer accessible even to himself. And at that moment, he seemed to her a lost little boy, long exiled, who could no longer find his way home.