The Bourne Objective (17 page)

“I could give a shit.”

“Please try to surprise me,” Karpov said drily. He considered a moment, then, making up his mind, nodded decisively. “All right, then.” He raised a finger. “But I need to warn you that when I make my move you’ll have twelve hours maximum to take care of him. After that, he’s mine along with the rest of them.”

Arkadin extended his hand and took Karpov’s, whose grip was strong and callused, a workingman’s grip. He liked that. A government employee he might be, but he was no drone: This was a man who would not fuck him, of that Arkadin was certain.

In that precise moment Karpov sprang at Arkadin, one hand around his neck, gripping his chin and lifting it while the other hand held a razor blade to his exposed throat.

“Inside your shoe.” Arkadin sat perfectly still. “Very low-tech, very good.”

“Listen, you fucking goon, I don’t take kindly to being fucked over—you set me up to fail at the warehouse. Now Maslov has been warned, he’s going to be on his guard, which is going to make bringing him down all the more difficult. You’ve done nothing but treat me with disrespect. You’re a fucking murderer, the lowest form of what passes for life in a whole stinking pile of shit. You intimidate people, torture them, torment them, then kill them as if human life has no meaning. I feel unclean just being near you, but I want Dimitri Maslov more than I want to kill you, so I’ll just have to live with the decision. Life is full of compromises and with each one your hands dip deeper into blood, I’ve come to terms with that. But if you and I are going to work together, you’re going to give me the respect I deserve or I swear on my father’s grave I’ll slit your throat right here, right now, turn my back and forget I ever met you.” He put his face next to Arkadin’s. “Are we clear, Leonid Danilovich?”

“You’re not going to be able to make a move against Maslov with the moles in place.” Arkadin was looking straight ahead, which meant up at the night sky, where stars glittered like faraway eyes, watching the foibles of humankind with contempt or at least indifference.

Karpov jerked his head.
“Are we clear?”

“Crystal.” He relaxed somewhat as the colonel put away the blade. He had been correct about Karpov’s essential nature: This was no man to be bullied, not even by the fearsome Russian bureaucracy. Arkadin silently saluted him. “Your first problem is to poison the moles in the FSB-2’s kitchen.”

“You mean the baseboards.”

Arkadin shook his head. “If that were the case, my dear Colonel, your problems would all be simple ones. However, I do mean the kitchen, because Maslov owns one of the chefs.”

There was silence for a time, just the soft lapping of the water, the last of the gulls’ cries as they bedded down for the night. The moon emerged from behind a low bank of clouds, casting a bluish mantle over them even as it chipped away at the black sea, strewing pinpoints of light across its choppy surface.

“Which one?” Karpov said after a long time.

“I’m not sure you want to hear this.”

“I’m not sure, either, but what the fuck, it’s too late to stop now.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Arkadin took out a pack of Turkish cigarettes and offered one to the colonel.

“I’m trying to cut down on my bad habits.”

“A futile preoccupation.”

“Say that when you have high blood pressure.”

Arkadin lit up, put the pack away, and took a deep drag. As the smoke drifted out of his nostrils, he said, “Melor Bukin, your boss, reports to Maslov.”

Karpov’s eyes blazed. “You shit, are you fucking with me again?”

Without a word Arkadin dug out the plastic bag he’d stowed in the bottom of the ice chest, zipped it open, and handed over the contents. Then he added several pieces of driftwood to the fire, which was waning.

Karpov moved a bit nearer to the fire in order to have a better look. Arkadin had handed him one of those cheap cell phones bought in any convenience store, a burner, which meant its calls couldn’t be traced. He thumbed it on.

“Audio and video,” Arkadin said as he used a stick to better arrange the wood. Planning for this day or one like it, he had used this cell to clandestinely record certain meetings between Maslov and Bukin that he’d attended. He knew there would be no doubt in the colonel’s mind when he finished viewing the evidence.

At length, Karpov looked bleakly up from the tiny screen. “I’ll need to keep this.”

Arkadin waved a hand. “All part of the service.”

Somewhere far off, the drone of a small plane came to them, a sound no more significant than a mosquito’s whine.

“How many more?” Karpov asked.

“I know of two—their names are in the phone’s directory—but there may be more. I’m afraid you’re going to have to ask your boss.”

Karpov’s brow furrowed. “That won’t be easy.”

“Even with this evidence?”

Karpov sighed. “I’m going to have to take him by surprise, cut him off completely before he has a chance to contact anyone.”

“Chancy,” Arkadin said. “On the other hand, if you go to President Imov with the evidence he’ll be so outraged he’s sure to let you do whatever you want with Bukin.”

Karpov appeared to be considering this approach. Good. Arkadin smiled inwardly. Melor Bukin had risen up through the apparatchik ranks mainly because of the president, before he’d been chosen by Viktor Cherkesov, the head of FSB-2. Inside the Kremlin a war was being waged between Cherkesov and the FSB’s Nikolai Patrushev, a well-known disciple of Imov’s. Cherkesov had built a formidable power base without the president’s patronage. Arkadin had his own reason for wanting Bukin disgraced. When Karpov threw Bukin in prison, his mentor, Cherkesov, would not be far behind. Cherkesov was the one thorn in his side he hadn’t been able to extricate, but now Karpov would take care of that for him.

Yet he had no time to gloat. His restless mind had already turned to more personal matters. Namely, the various routes he might take to avenge himself on Karpov for holding a knife to his throat. His mind was already afire with visions of slitting the colonel’s throat with his own razor blade.

M
OIRA
AND
JALAL
Essai sat together in the temporary quarters of his DC hotel suite. Between them were Essai’s netbook and the netbook that Moira had bought the day before, one she knew was absolutely clean. She had already souped it up far beyond its original specs.

She was going to ask him how to get started, because she had to assume that all her systems had been compromised, but she needn’t have bothered. As it turned out he had a lot of information about the laptop, all of which he shared with her. Latterly it had fallen into the hands of Gustavo Moreno, a Colombian drug lord living in the outskirts of Mexico City. Moreno had been killed some months ago when his compound had been raided by a party of officers disguised as Russian oilmen.

“The raiding party was headed by Colonel Boris Karpov,” Essai said.

Curious,
Moira thought. But then she knew how small and insular this world was. She knew about the colonel from Bourne; they were friends, as much as two people like that could be friends.

“So Karpov has the laptop.”

“Unfortunately, no,” Essai said. “The laptop was taken from Moreno’s compound, by one of his own people, sometime before the raid.”

“One of his own people who was obviously working for who—a rival?”

“Possibly,” Essai said. “I don’t know.”

“What’s the thief’s name?”

“Name, photo, everything.” Essai turned the laptop’s screen toward her and brought up the image. “But it’s a dead end, literally. His body was found a week after the raid.”

“Where?” Moira said.

“Outside of Amatitán.” Essai pulled up Google Earth and punched in a set of coordinates. The globe of the planet revolved until the northwest coast of Mexico came into view. He pointed. Amatitán was in Jalisco, in the heart of tequila country. “Right here. As it happens on the estancia of Moreno’s sister, Berengária, although now that she’s married Narsico Skydel, the tequila magnate, she goes by the name of Barbara Skydel.”

“I seem to recall a memo at Black River about Narsico. He’s the cousin of Roberto Corellos, the jailed Colombian drug lord, isn’t that right?”

Essai nodded. “Narsico has been trying to distance himself from his infamous cousin for some time. He hasn’t been back in Colombia in ten years. Five years ago, apparently finding it too difficult to outrun his family’s reputation, he changed his name and bought into the largest tequila distillery in Mexico. Now he owns it outright and over the past two years has been expanding its reach.”

“Marrying Berengária couldn’t have helped him,” Moira pointed out.

“I don’t know. She’s proved herself to be a shrewd businesswoman. Most people’s best guess is that she’s the one behind the expansion. I think she’s more willing to take calculated risks than he is, and so far she hasn’t made a single misstep.”

“How was her relationship with Gustavo?”

“By all reports the two siblings were close. They bonded early, after their mother died.”

“Do you think she was involved in his business?”

Essai folded his arms over his chest. “Difficult to say. Whatever involvement she might have had was certainly not evident, there’s nothing whatsoever to link her with Gustavo’s drug trafficking.”

“But you did say that she was a canny businesswoman.”

He frowned. “You think she had the mole inside her own brother’s shop?”

Moira shrugged. “Who can say?”

“Neither of them would be that stupid.”

Moira nodded. “I agree, though if someone wants us to think one of them had the mole murdered, it seems talking to them would be useful. But first I want to pay a visit to Roberto Corellos.”

Essai smiled the dark smile that chilled Moira’s soul. “I think, Ms. Trevor, that you’ve already begun to earn your fee.”

B
ourne and Chrissie were on their way back in a driving rainstorm that had come upon them virtually without warning when Bourne’s cell rang.

“Mr. Stone.”

“Hello, Professor,” Bourne said.

“I have some news,” Giles said. “I’ve received an e-mail back from my chess partner. It seems that he has solved the riddle of the third word.”

“What is it?” Bourne asked.

“Dominion.”

“Dominion,”
Bourne repeated. “So the three words engraved on the inside of the ring are:
Severus Domna Dominion.
What does it mean?”

“Well, it could be an incantation,” Giles said, “or an epithet, a warning. Even—and I’m being deliberately fanciful here—the instructions for turning lead into gold. Without additional information I’m afraid there’s no way of knowing.”

The road ahead was smeared with rain, the wipers slapped back and forth on their prescribed arc. Bourne checked the side mirror, as he did automatically every thirty seconds or so.

“There is an interesting tidbit about Ugaritic my friend provided, though I can’t see how it’s relevant. The basis of its interest for him and his colleagues is that there are documents—or fragments thereof—they claim come from the court of King Solomon. It seems that Solomon’s astrologers spoke Ugaritic amongst themselves, that they believed in its alchemical powers.”

Bourne laughed. “With all the legends of King Solomon’s gold, I can see where the scientists of an early age believed alchemy was the key to turning lead into gold.”

“Frankly, Mr. Stone, I told him the same thing.”

“Thank you, Professor. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Anytime, Mr. Stone. A friend of Christina’s is a friend of mine.”

As Bourne put away his cell, he saw that the black-and-gold truck that had pulled into their lane three vehicles back some minutes ago was now right behind them.

“Chrissie, I’d like you to get off the motorway,” he said quietly. “When you do, pull over.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

He said nothing, his eyes flicking to the side mirror. Then he reached out and stopped her from using the turn signal. “Don’t do that.”

Her eyes opened wide and she gave a little gasp. “What’s going on?”

“Just do what I tell you and everything will be all right.”

“Not reassuring.” She moved into the left-hand lane as the next exit sign became visible through the rain. “Adam, you’re scaring me.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

She took the ramp, which immediately curved around to the left, and pulled onto the shoulder. “Then what is your intention?”

“To drive,” he said. “Move over.”

She got out of the Range Rover, covered her head, which was tucked down between her hunched shoulders, and went around, jumping into the passenger’s side. Her door was not even fully closed when Bourne saw the truck making its way around the curve of the off-ramp. Immediately he put the vehicle in gear and pulled out.

The truck was directly behind him as if tethered to the Range Rover with a grappling hook. Bourne put on a burst of speed, went through a light on the red, then onto the motorway’s entrance ramp. Traffic was moderate and he was able to weave in and out of the lanes. He was just thinking that a truck was an impractical vehicle to pursue them when a gray
BMW
pulled up abreast of them.

As the window slid down, Bourne yelled for Chrissie to get down. He pushed her, then bent low over the wheel as gunshots shattered his side window, showering him with glass pellets and fistfuls of rain. At that moment he saw the black-and-gold truck coming up fast behind him; they meant to box him in.

Both vehicles rocked back and forth, their sides scraping together dangerously. Bourne risked a glance in the rearview mirror. The black-and-gold truck was right on their tail.

“Brace yourself,” he said to Chrissie, who was bent over as far as her seat belt would allow, her arms over her head.

He angled the car, then slammed on the brakes. For a split second the Range Rover skidded on the wet tarmac, then he had compensated. The offside rear bumper crumpled on impact with the truck, the Range Rover swerved at a sharp angle so that, as he had calculated, the driver’s-side rear bumper plowed into the
BMW
with tremendous force, as if it had been shot out of a cannon. Impelled by the crash, the
BMW
veered hard right and, out of control, slammed into the guardrail with such force that the entire driver’s side was staved in. A fireworks of sparks, a shrieking of tortured metal as the
BMW
bounced off the guardrail and spun. The front end was heading directly for the Range Rover and Bourne turned the wheel hard to the right, cutting off a yellow Mini. There was a horrific screech of tires, horns blared, fenders were dented or flattened in a chain reaction. Bourne accelerated into the gap, switched lanes again, then as he cleared more of the traffic moved back across to the fast lane.