The Bourne Sanction (53 page)

Arkadin, staring into the mouth of hell, gave a little cry, the sound a puppy might make if you mistakenly stepped on its paw. Scrambling down the side, he ignored the appalling stench and, through watering eyes, dragged her up the slope, laid her out on the forest floor, the bed of brown needles, soft as her own. Then he trudged back to the car, opened the trunk, and took out a shovel.

He buried her half a mile away from the pit, in a small clearing that was private and peaceful. He carried her over his shoulder the whole way, and by the time he was finished he smelled like death. At that moment, crouched on his hamstrings, his face streaked with sweat and dirt, he doubted whether he’d ever be able to scrub off the stench. If he knew a prayer, he would have said it then, but he knew only obscenities, which he uttered with the fervor of the righteous. But he wasn’t righteous; he was damned. For a businessman there was a decision to be made. Arkadin was no businessman, though, so from that day forward his fate was sealed. He returned to Nizhny Tagil with his two Stechkin handguns fully loaded and extra rounds of ammunition in his breast pockets. Entering the brothel, he shot the two ghouls dead as they stood at guard. Neither had a chance to draw his weapon.

Stas Kuzin appeared in the doorway, gripping a Korovin TK pistol. “Leonid, what the fuck?”

Arkadin shot him once in each knee. Kuzin went down, screaming. As he tried to raise the Korovin, Arkadin trod heavily on his wrist. Kuzin grunted heavily. When he wouldn’t let go of the pistol, Arkadin kicked him in the knee. The resulting bellow brought the last of the girls from their respective rooms.

“Get out of here.” Arkadin addressed the girls, though his gaze was fixed on Kuzin’s monstrous face. “Take whatever money you can find and go back to your families. Tell them about the lime pit north of town.”

He heard them scrambling, babbling to one another, then it was quiet.

“Fucking sonovabitch,” Kuzin said, staring up at Arkadin. Arkadin laughed and shot him in the right shoulder. Then, jamming the Stechkins in their holsters, he dragged Kuzin across the floor. He had to push one of the dead ghouls out of the way, but at last he made it down the stairs and out the front door with the moaning Kuzin in tow. In the street one of Kuzin’s vans screeched to a halt. Arkadin drew his guns, emptied them into the interior. The car rocked on its shocks, glass shattered, its horn blared as the dead driver fell over onto it. No one got out. Arkadin dragged Kuzin to his car and dumped him in the backseat. Then he drove out of town to the forest, turning off at the rutted dirt track. At the end of it, he stopped, hauled Kuzin to the edge of the pit.

“Fuck you, Arkadin!” Kuzin shouted. “Fuck-”

Arkadin shot him point-blank in the left shoulder, shattering it and sending Kuzin down into the quicklime pit. He peered over. There was the monster, lying on the corpses.

Kuzin’s mouth drooled blood. “Kill me!” he shouted. “D’you think I’m afraid of death? Go on, do it now!”

“It’s not for me to kill you, Stas.”

“Kill me, I said. For fuck’s sake, finish it now!”

Arkadin gestured at the corpses. “You’ll die in your victims’s arms, hearing their curses echoing in your ears.”

“What about all your victims?” Kuzin shouted when Arkadin disappeared from view.

“You’ll die choking on your own blood!”

Arkadin paid him no mind. He was already behind the wheel of his car, backing out of the forest. It had begun to rain, gunmetal-colored drops that fell like bullets out of a colorless sky. A slow booming coming from the smelters starting up sounded like the thunder of cannons signaling the beginning of a war that would surely destroy him unless he found a way out of Nizhny Tagil that wasn’t in a body bag.

WHERE
ARE
YOU
, Jason?” Moira said. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I’m in Munich,” he said.

“How wonderful! Thank God you’re close by. I need to see you.” She seemed slightly out of breath. “Tell me where you are and I’ll meet you there.”

Bourne switched his cell phone from one ear to the other, the better to check his immediate surroundings. “I’m on my way to the Englischer Garten.”

“What are you doing in Schwabing?”

“It’s a long story; I’ll tell you about it when I see you.” Bourne checked his watch.

“But I’m due to meet up with Soraya at the Chinese pagoda in ten minutes. She says she has new intel on the Black Legion attack.”

“That’s odd,” Moira said. “So do I.”

Bourne crossed the street, hurrying, but still alert for tags.

“I’ll meet you,” Moira said. “I’m in a car; I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Not a good idea.” He didn’t want her involved in a professional rendezvous. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m through and we can-” All of a sudden, he realized he was talking to dead air. He dialed Moira’s number, but got her voice mail. Damn her, he thought. He reached the outskirts of the garden, which was twice the size of New York’s Central Park. Divided by the Isar River, it was filled with jogging and bicycle paths, meadows, forests, and even hills. Near the crown of one of these was the Chinese pagoda, which was actually a beer garden.

He was naturally thinking of Soraya as he approached the area. It was odd that both she and Moira had intel on the Black Legion. Now he thought back over his phone conversation with her. Something about it had been bothering him, something just out of reach. Every time he strained for it, it seemed to move farther away from him. His pace was slowed by the hordes of tourists, American diplomats, children with balloons or kites riding the wind. In addition, a rally of teenagers protesting new rulings on curriculum at the university had begun to gather at the pagoda. He pushed his way forward, past a mother and child, then a large family in Nikes and hideous tracksuits. The child glanced at him and, instinctively, Bourne smiled. Then he turned away, wiped the blood off his face, though it continued to seep through the cuts opened during his fight with Arkadin.

“No, you can’t have sausages,” the mother said to her son in a strong British accent.

“You were sick all night.”

“But Mummy,” he replied, “I feel right as rain.”

Right as rain. Bourne stopped in his tracks, rubbed the heel of his hand against his temple. Right as rain; the phrase rattled around in his head like a steel ball in a pachinko machine.

Soraya.

Hi, it’s me, Soraya. That’s how she’d started off the call Then she’d said: Actually, I’m in Munich.

And just before she’d hung up: Right as rain. I can make it. Can you?

Bourne, buffeted by the quickening throngs, felt as if his head were on fire. Something about those phrases. He knew them, and he didn’t, how could that be? He shook his head as if to clear it; memories were appearing like knife slashes through a piece of fabric. Light was glimmering…

And then he saw Moira. She was hurrying toward the Chinese pagoda from the opposite direction, her expression intent, grim, even. What had happened? What information did she have for him?

He craned his neck, trying to find Soraya in the swirl of the demonstration. That was when he remembered.

Right as rain.

He and Soraya had had this conversation before-where? In Odessa? Hi, it’s me coming before her name meant that she was under duress. Actually coming before a place where she was supposed to be meant that she wasn’t there.

Right as rain meant it’s a trap.

He looked up and his heart sank. Moira was heading right into it. When the door opened, Willard froze. He was on his hands and knees hidden from the doorway by the desk’s skirt. He heard voices, one of them LaValle’s, and held his breath.

“There’s nothing to it,” LaValle said. “E-mail me the figures and after I’m done with the Moore woman I’ll check them.”

“Good deal,” Patrick, one of LaValle’s aides said, “but you’d better get back to the Library, the Moore woman is kicking up a fuss.”

LaValle cursed. Willard heard him cross to the desk, shuffle some papers. Perhaps he was looking for a file. LaValle grunted in satisfaction, walked back across the office, and closed the door after him. It was only when Willard heard the grate of the key in the lock that he exhaled.

He fired up the camera, praying that the images hadn’t been deleted, and there they were, one after another, evidence that would damn Luther LaValle and his entire
NSA
administration. Using both the camera and his cell phone, he linked them through the wireless Bluetooth protocol, then transferred the images to his cell. Once that was completed, he navigated to his son’s phone number-which wasn’t his son’s number, though if anyone called it a young man who had standing instructions to pass as his son would answer-and sent the photos in one long burst. Sending them one by one via separate calls would surely cause a red flag on the security server. At last, Willard sat back and took a deep breath. It was done; the photos were now in the hands of CI, where they’d do the most good, or-if you were Luther LaValle-the most damage. Checking his watch, he pocketed the camera, relatched the door to the hidden compartment, and scrambled out from under the desk.

Four minutes later, his hair freshly combed, his uniform brushed down, and looking very smart, indeed, he placed a Ceylon tea in front of Soraya Moore and a single-malt scotch in front of Luther LaValle. Ms. Moore thanked him; LaValle, staring at her, ignored him as usual.

Moira hadn’t seen him, and Bourne couldn’t call out to her because in this maelstrom of people his voice wouldn’t carry. Blocked in his forward motion, he edged his way back to the periphery, moving to his left in order to circle around to her. He tried her cell again, but she either couldn’t hear it or wasn’t answering.

It was as he was disengaging the line that he saw the
NSA
agents. They were moving in concert toward the center of the crowd, and he could only assume that there were others in a tightening circle within which they meant to trap him. They hadn’t spotted him yet, but Moira was close to one of the pair in Bourne’s view. There was no way to get to her without them spotting him. Nevertheless, he continued to circle through the fringes of the crowd, which had grown so large that many of the young people were shoving one another as they shouted their slogans.

Bourne pushed on, although it seemed to him at a slower and slower pace, as if he were in a dream where the laws of physics were nonexistent. He needed to get to Moira without the agents seeing him; it was dangerous for her to be looking for him with
NSA
infiltrating the crowd. Far better for him to get to her first so he could control both their movements.

Finally, as he neared the
NSA
agents, he could see the reason for the sudden rancor of the crowd. The shoving was being precipitated by a large group of skinheads, some wielding brass knuckles or baseball bats. They had swastikas tattooed on their bulging arms, and when they began to swing at the chanting university students, Bourne made a run for Moira. But as he lunged for her, one of the agents elbowed a skinhead aside and, as he did so, caught a glimpse of Bourne. He whirled, his lips moving as he spoke urgently into the earpiece with which he was wirelessly connected with the other members of what Bourne assumed was an execution team.

He grabbed Moira, but the agent had hold of him, and he began to jerk Bourne back toward him, as if to detain him long enough for the other members of the team to reach them. Bourne struck him flush on the chin with the heel of his hand. The agent’s head snapped back, and he collapsed into a group of skinheads, who thought he was attacking them and started beating him.

“Jason, what the hell happened to you?” Moira said as she and Bourne turned, making their way through the throng. “Where’s Soraya?”

“She was never here,” Bourne said. “This is another
NSA
trap.”

It would have been best to keep to where the garden was most crowded, but that would put them in the center of the trap. Bourne led them around the crowd, hoping to emerge in a place where the agents wouldn’t spot them, but now he saw three more outside the mass of the demonstration and knew retreat was impossible. Instead he reversed course, drawing Moira farther into the surging mass of demonstrators.

“What are you doing?” Moira said. “Aren’t we headed straight into the trap?”

“Trust me.” Instinctively he headed toward one of the flashpoints where the skinheads were clashing with the university students.

They reached the edge of the escalating fight between the two groups of teens. Out of the corner of his eye Bourne saw an
NSA
agent struggling through the same mass of people. Bourne tried to alter their course, but their way was blocked, and a resurgent wave of students pushed them like flotsam at the tide line. Feeling the new influx of people, the agent turned to fight against it and ran right into Moira. He barked Bourne’s name into the microphone in his earpiece, and Bourne slammed a shoe into the side of his knee. The agent faltered, but managed to counter the chop Bourne directed at his shoulder blade. The agent drew a handgun, and Bourne snatched a baseball bat from a skinhead’s grip, struck the agent so hard on the back of his hands that he dropped the handgun.

Then, from behind him, Bourne heard Moira say. “Jason, they’re coming!”

The trap was about to snap shut on both of them.

LUTHER
LAVALLE
waited on tenterhooks for the call from his extraction team leader in Munich. He sat in his customary chair facing the window that looked out over the rolling lawns to the left of the wide gravel drive, which wound through the elms and oaks lining it like sentinels. Having verbally put her in her place after returning from his office, he contrived to ignore Soraya Moore and Willard who, after the second time, had given up asking him if he wanted his single-malt scotch refreshed. He didn’t want his single-malt scotch refreshed and he didn’t want to hear another word from the Moore woman. What he wanted was his cell phone to ring, for his team leader to tell him that Jason Bourne was in custody. That’s all he required of this day; he didn’t think it was too much to ask.