The Bourne Objective (46 page)

Oserov could no longer look at himself. No vampire avoided mirrors more assiduously than he did. Also, he hated being seen in sunlight, any strong light, for that matter, behavior that gave rise to his new moniker among the Kazanskaya,
Die Vampyr.

He sat now brooding in Maslov’s offices, which by necessity were moved every week. In this room, which Maslov had designated his, the lights were out and the shades drawn against the daylight. One lamp across the room from where he slumped down cast a small circle of illumination across the scarred floorboards.

The fiasco in Bangalore, his failure to kill Arkadin or, at least, gain the laptop for Maslov, had scarred him in more ways than one. His physical appearance had been compromised. Worse, he had lost the confidence of his boss. Without the Kazanskaya, Oserov was nothing. Without Maslov’s confidence, he was nothing within the Kazanskaya. For days now he had been racking his brains as to how to get back in Maslov’s good graces, how to restore the majesty of his position as field commander.

No plan, however, had presented itself. It meant nothing to him that his mind, torn apart by the agony of his wounds, was scarcely able to put two coherent thoughts together. His only thought was of revenge against Arkadin, and to get for Maslov what he wanted most: that accursed laptop. Oserov didn’t know why his boss wanted it, and he didn’t care. His lot was to do or die, that’s how it had been ever since he had joined the Kazanskaya and that was how it would remain.

But life was strange. For Oserov salvation came from an unexpected quarter. A call came through. So sunk in black thoughts was he that at first he refused to take it. Then his assistant told him that it had come in on a scrambled cell line, and he knew who it must be. Still, he resisted, thinking that at the moment he had neither the interest nor the patience for anything Yasha Dakaev had to report.

Oserov’s assistant poked his head in the door, which he had strict orders never to do.

“What?” Oserov barked.

“He says it’s urgent,” his assistant told him, and quickly withdrew.

“Goddammit,” Oserov muttered, and picked up the phone. “Yasha, this better be fucking good.”

“It is.” Dakaev’s voice sounded flat and faraway, but then he was always having to find out-of-the-way nooks and crannies in the FSB-2’s offices to make his calls. “I have a line on Arkadin’s movements.”

“At last!” Oserov sat up straight. He heart seemed to pump at full speed again.

“According to the report that just came across my desk, he’s on his way to Morocco,” Dakaev said. “Ouarzazate, a village in the High Atlas Mountains called Tineghir, to be precise.”

“What the fuck is he going to do in Buttfuck, Morocco?”

“That I don’t know,” Dakaev said. “But our intel says he’s on his way.”

This is my chance,
Oserov thought, jumping up.
If I don’t take it, I might as well eat my Tokarev.
For the first time since that last night in Bangalore, he felt galvanized. His failure had paralyzed him, he had been gnawing at himself from the inside out. He’d become disoriented with shame and rage.

He called his assistant in and gave him the particulars.

“Get me the fuck out of here,” he ordered. “Book me on the first flight out of Moscow that’s heading in the right direction.”

“Does Maslov know you’re off again?”

“Does your wife know that your mistress’s name is Ivana Istvanskaya?”

His assistant beat a hasty retreat.

He turned away and started formulating a plan. Now that he’d been given a second chance, he vowed he would make the most of it.

B
ourne raised his hands. At the same time, he kicked Professor Giles in the small of the back. As Giles, arms flailing, stumbled toward the three gunmen, Bourne whirled, took a long stride toward the open window, and dived through it.

He hit the ground running at full speed, but soon enough, as the adjoining university building loomed up, he was required to slow his pace to match that of Oxford’s denizens. Pulling off his black overcoat, he stuffed it in a trash bin. He looked for and found a knot of adults, professors most likely, walking from one building to the next, and slipped into their midst.

Moments later he saw the two Severus Domna gunmen as they raced from the Centre. They immediately split up in a military-like formation.

One of the men came toward him, but he hadn’t yet seen Bourne, who eeled his way to the opposite side of the knot. The professors were debating the merits of the right-wing German philosophers and, inevitably, the effect Nietzsche had on the Nazis, Hitler in particular.

Unless he had a chance to get to Professor Giles alone, which he doubted, Bourne had no desire for another physical encounter with Severus Domna. The organization was like a Hydra: Lop off one head and two took its place.

The gunman, who had hidden his weapon beneath his overcoat, approached the knot of professors, oblivious as they were locked in their philosophical ivory tower. Bourne presented the gunman with his anonymous back. The gunman would be looking for a man in a black overcoat. Bourne was happy to take any edge he could.

The knot of professors trotted up the steps and, in elegant fashion, poured into the university building. Bourne, debating the finer points of Old German with a white-haired professor, stepped across the threshold.

The gunman reacted as he glimpsed Bourne’s reflection in the glass pane of the open door. Taking the steps two at a time, he tried to shoulder his way through the knot of men who, though elderly, were certainly not passive, especially when it came to decorum and protocol. As one, they formed a living wall, pushing back at him in the manner of a phalanx of Roman soldiers advancing on the barbarian enemy. The gunman, taken aback, retreated.

The pause gave Bourne the time he needed to slip away from the professors, down the corridor with its sounds of well-shod feet and hushed conversations bouncing off the polished marble floor. A line of square windows, high up, bestowed sunlight on the crowns of the students’ heads like a benediction. The wooden doors blurred by as Bourne made for the rear of the Centre. Bells sounded for the beginning of the four o’clock classes.

He raced around a corner, into the short corridor leading to the rear door. But the Severus Domna gunman pushed through it. They were alone in the back corridor. The gunman had his overcoat draped over his right arm and hand, which held the silenced pistol. He aimed it at Bourne, who was still sprinting.

Bourne went down, sliding on his backside along the marble floor as a shot whizzed by overhead. He barreled into the gunman with the soles of his shoes, knocking him over. The pistol flew out of his grip. Bourne rolled over, slammed his knee into the point of the gunman’s chin. His body went slack.

Voices echoed down the corridor from just around the corner. Scrambling to his feet, Bourne scooped up the pistol, then dragged the gunman out the rear door, down the steps, and deposited him behind a thick boxwood hedge. He pocketed the pistol and continued along the university pathways at a normal pace. He passed fresh-faced students, laughing and chatting, and a dour professor, huffing as he scurried, late for his next lecture. Then Bourne was out onto St Giles’ Street. In typical English fashion, the afternoon had turned gloomy. A chill wind swept across the gutters and storefronts. Everyone was bent over, shoulders hunched, dashing like boats fleeing an oncoming storm. Bourne, blending in as he always did, hurried to his car.

G
o,” Moira said, when she was out of recovery and had gained full consciousness.

Soraya shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”

“The worst has already happened,” Moira said quite rightly. “There’s nothing left here for you to do.”

“You shouldn’t be alone,” Soraya insisted.

“Neither should you. You’re still with Arkadin.”

Soraya smiled, somewhat sadly, because everything Moira said was true. “Still and all—”

“Still and all,” Moira said, “someone’s coming to look after me, someone who loves me.”

Soraya was slightly taken aback. “Is it Jason? Is Jason coming for you?”

Moira smiled. She had already drifted off to sleep.
S
oraya found Arkadin waiting for her. But first she needed to speak with the young neurosurgeon, who was, in his own way, optimistic in his prognosis.

“The main thing in instances like these where nerves and tendons are involved is how quickly the patient receives medical attention.” He spoke formally, as if he were Catalan, rather than a Mexican. “In this respect, your friend is extremely fortunate.” He tipped his hand over, palm down. “However, the wound was ragged rather than clean. Plus, whatever she was cut with wasn’t clean. As a result, the procedure took longer, and was both more delicate and more complicated than it might otherwise have been. Again, fortunate that you called me. I don’t say this out of self-aggrandizement. It’s a matter of record, a fact. No one else could have managed the procedure without botching or missing something.”

Soraya sighed with relief. “Then she’ll be fine.”

“Naturally, she’ll be fine,” the neurosurgeon said. “With a proper course of rehab and physical therapy.”

Something dark clutched at Soraya’s heart. “She’ll walk naturally, won’t she? I mean, without a limp.”

The neurosurgeon shook his head. “In a child, the tendons are elastic enough that it might be possible. But in an adult that elasticity—or rather a good part of it—is gone. No, no, she’ll have a limp. How noticeable it will be depends entirely on the outcome of her rehab. And of course, her will to adapt.”

Soraya thought for a moment. “She knows all this?”

“She asked and I told her. It’s better that way, believe me. The mind needs more time to adapt than the body does.”

“Can we get out of here now?” Arkadin said, after the neurosurgeon had vanished down the corridor.

Shooting him a murderous look, Soraya brushed past him, striding through the bustling lobby and out onto the street. Puerto Peñasco looked as strange as a dream, as unfamiliar as if it were located in a Bhutanese valley. She looked at the people passing by as slowly as sleepwalkers. She saw their Aztec or Mixtec or Olmec features and thought of beating hearts carved from the chests of living sacrifices. She felt as if she were covered in congealed blood. She wanted to run, but felt paralyzed, rooted to the spot as if by the hands of all the sacrificial dead buried beneath the ground.

Then she felt Arkadin close beside her and shuddered as if waking from one nightmare into another. She wondered how she could stand to be near him, to talk to him after what he’d done to Moira. If he had exhibited even an iota of remorse, she might have felt differently. But all he had said was,
“She’s the enemy.”
Which meant, of course, that she herself was also the enemy, that the same thing, or worse, could happen to her.

Without a word being exchanged between them, he herded her back to his car, and soon enough they set off back to the convent.

“What do you want from me now?” she asked him in a dull voice.

“The same thing you want from me,” he said. “Destruction.”

T
he moment they entered the convent, Arkadin began to pack. “While you were going through your hand-wringing, I made reservations for us.”

“For us?”

“Yes,” he said without missing a beat. “You and I are going to Tineghir.”

“If I go anywhere with you I’ll be sick to my stomach.”

He paused and turned to face her. “I think you’ll be useful to me when I get to Morocco, so I don’t want to kill you. But I will if you give me no other choice.” He went back to his methodical packing. “Unlike you, I know when to cut my losses.”

It was at that moment that Soraya caught sight of the laptop, which, for her, had taken on a mythical significance. He was right, in his own way, she thought. As right as Moira had been. It was time to get past her personal abhorrence at his actions. It was time to return to acting like a professional. Time to cut her losses.

“I’ve always wanted to see the High Atlas Mountains,” she said.

“You see?” He tucked away the laptop. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

J
alal Essai, sitting in an anonymous car he had boosted early this morning, watched Willard emerge from the Monition Club. As Essai observed, he did not move as if he had been defeated by the receptionist, or had waited in vain to be seen by a member of the club. Rather, he descended the stairs as Fred Astaire might, lightly and trippingly, as if to music playing in his head. This jaunty attitude disturbed Essai. It also raised the hackles on the back of his neck, which was far worse.

Essai, whose life was in constant jeopardy ever since his home had been invaded by Severus Domna, knew from being on the other side that a passive response, such as flight, would only result in his eventual death. The organization would come after him again and again, until someway, somehow, somewhere it succeeded in terminating his life. Under these extreme circumstances, there was only one way to stay alive.

Willard turned a corner and stopped, looking to flag down a taxi. Essai pulled over to the curb and rolled down the passenger’s-side window.

“Need a lift?” he said.

Willard, startled, drew back as if affronted. “No, thank you,” he said, and returned to scanning the traffic for an empty cab.

“Mr. Willard, please get into the car.”

When Willard looked back, he saw the man holding a wicked-looking
EAA
10mm Hunter Witness pistol, aimed at his face.

“Come, come,” Essai said, “let’s not make a scene.”

Willard opened the door and slid into the passenger’s seat without a word.

“How, may I ask, are you going to drive this vehicle and at the same time keep me under control?”

In answer, Essai slammed the barrel of the Hunter Witness against the side of Willard’s head just above his left ear. Willard sighed as his eyes rolled up. Essai leaned the unconscious body against the window and returned the pistol to its shoulder holster. Then he put the car in gear, waited for a gap, and slid out into traffic.