The Bourne Objective (9 page)

M
y family’s entire history is on that laptop,” Jalal Essai said.

“That would hardly be a reason for Black River and the
NSA
to be after it,” Moira countered.

“No, of course not.”

Essai sighed as he sat back against his chair. They were seated at a corner table in the heart of the terrace restaurant at Caravanserai, a small, exclusive boutique hotel in Virginia, which Essai owned. Ivy-covered brick walls rose on three sides, the fourth being taken up by a row of enormous French doors that led to the restaurant’s interior section.

Mint tea had been set before them, along with an elegant menu of the day’s fresh offerings, but Moira was far more interested in her host. He was more relaxed now, either because she was on the verge of agreeing to his proposal or because they were in surroundings he could control. While the restaurant’s interior was a bit more than half filled, theirs was the only occupied table on the flagstone terrace. A veritable fleet of servers stood by, waiting to be summoned by their master. There was something distinctly Eastern in the tone of the service that made it easy to imagine they were outside the borders of the United States. Far outside.

“I could lie but I have too much respect for you.” Essai moistened his lips with the tea. “The history of my family is of interest—quite possibly great interest—to elements of your government, as well as to a number of individuals and organizations in the private sector.”

“Why would that be?” Moira asked. “And please be specific.”

Essai smiled. “I knew the moment we met that I would like you, and I was right.”

“Did you make a bet with Mr. Binns?”

Essai laughed, a dark, bronze-edged sound that sounded uncannily like a gong being struck. “He told you about our bet, did he?” He shook his head. “Our Mr. Binns is a conservative sort, one wager is all he would accede to.”

Moira noted the
our
but decided to ignore it for the moment. “Let’s get back to basics.”

Essai took more of his tea. As with most Arabs, direct conversations were not a part of his repertoire; he preferred a circuitous route that would allow both parties time to gain valuable knowledge before closing a business deal. Moira knew this, of course, but Binns and Essai had blindsided her and she didn’t like it. She needed to regain the ground she had lost during the string of surprises Essai had sprung on her in the Rolls, and she calculated that the best way do this was to dictate the pace and flow of the conversation.

“This has something to do with Noah, doesn’t it?” she said suddenly. “I worked for him at Black River and he was involved with the laptop, which is why you chose me, correct?”

Essai looked at her directly. “You are the right person for this job for many reasons, as I told you. One of them is, yes, your relationship with Noah Perlis.”

“What did Noah do? Was he the one who stole the laptop?”

Essai had picked up his menu and perused it. “Ah, the Dover sole is a special today. I highly recommend it.” He looked up, his dark eyes serious. “It’s plated with authentic Moroccan couscous.”

“Then how could I refuse?”

“Splendid!” He looked genuinely delighted and, when he turned, a server was at his right elbow. He ordered for them, then handed the server their menus. When they were alone again he steepled his fingers and said, in much the same tone of voice, “Your late, and I gather unlamented, boss Mr. Perlis was very much involved.”

Moira found herself leaning forward in anticipation. “And?”

He shrugged. “We cannot go forward, you and I, until our deal is ratified. Will you or won’t you agree to find my laptop?”

Moira felt herself breathe, but it was as if she were detached from her body, as if she were looking down at this scene from a height. This was it: She could say no, even now. But she found that she didn’t want to walk away from this assignment. She needed work, needed a new door opened for her, and since this man had given her information that could save her new company from ruin she thought she might as well say yes.

“All right,” she heard herself say. “But I want double my usual fee.”

“Done.” Essai nodded, as if he was expecting this answer all along. “Most gratifying, Ms. Trevor. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“Thank me when I’ve returned your laptop,” she said. “Now about Noah.”

“Your Mr. Perlis was something of a pilot fish. That is to say, he thrived on going after other people’s initiatives.” He spread his hands. “But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I?”

Moira shook her head.

“This was no exception. Mr. Perlis came to the game a bit on the late side.”

A warning bell went off in Moira’s head. “How late?”

“The mission to find and obtain my notebook by illegal means was the brainchild of CI. More accurately, the small DoN—”

“DoN?”

“Dead of Night,” Essai explained. “This term isn’t known to you?” He waved a hand: It was of no matter. “The DoN arm known as Treadstone.”

Moira felt stunned. “Alex Conklin wanted your laptop?”

“That’s right.” Essai sat back as the appetizers of prawn salad, the heads still on, were placed in front of them. The server vanished without a word.

“And he engineered the raid?”

“Oh, no, not Conklin.”

Essai took up his fork with his right hand and for a moment concentrated on deftly separating the heads from the bodies of his prawns. With one head still impaled on the tines of his fork, his gaze met hers again in such a shocking manner that she instinctively moved back, as if scrambling out of the line of fire.

“It was your friend Jason Bourne who came into my house, where my family eats and sleeps and laughs.”

In that frozen moment, while her heart seemed to cease beating, she knew the dislocated feeling for what it really was: the terrifying moment when your car’s brakes fail and, accelerating beyond your control, you see another vehicle about to slam into you head-on.

“Where my wife sews my clothes, where my daughter rests her head on my lap, where my son is day by day learning to be a man.” A dark vibration, as of a vengeance-filled scream, turned his voice ragged. “Jason Bourne violated every sacred tenet of my life when he stole my laptop.” He lifted the shrimp head as if it were a banner on the field of war. “And now, Ms. Trevor, by all that’s holy you’re going to get it back.”

T
HE
CITY
OF London, just over a mile square, is the historic core of what is now London proper. In medieval times it encompassed London, Westminster, and Southwark, guarded by a defensive wall built by the Romans in the second century, around which the modern metropolis threw its many arms like a spider extending its web. These days the City, slightly expanded, was the financial hub of London. Aguardiente Bancorp, being largely a commercial rather than a retail bank, had its one and only branch on Chancery Lane, just north of Fleet Street. From its large, stately windows, which faced southwest, Bourne could imagine rising the Temple Bar, the historic gate that a century ago linked the City, the financial center, to the road to Westminster, London’s political seat. The Temple Bar, named after the Temple Church, once home of the Knights Templar, was soberly presided over by statues of a griffin and a pair of dragons. Bourne did not, of course, look like Bourne, but rather Noah Perlis, the result of having made a number of purchases at a theatrical makeup shop in Covent Garden.

The gray stone and black marble interior of the bank was equally sober, as befitted an institution that counted as its clients a majority of the international companies doing business in the City. The ecclesiastical vaulted ceiling was so high, it seemed hazed like the sky outside—which, having delivered its burden, hovered now like the ravens in the Tower of London. Bourne crossed the softly echoing floor to the Safe Deposit desk, where a gentleman straight out of a Charles Dickens novel stood with shoulders as thin as a coat hanger, a sallow complexion, and a pair of beady eyes that looked like they had seen everything life had to offer pass them by.

Bourne introduced himself using Perlis’s passport as proof of identity. The Dickens cartoon pursed his lips as he squinted at the fine print, his liver-colored hands tilting the open passport into the light. Then abruptly he closed it, said, “One moment please, sir,” and vanished into the mysterious interior of the bank.

In the low glass barrier guarding each side of the sallow clerk’s window Bourne watched the dim reflections of the people—both customers and bank personnel—behind his back, moving about their business. As he did so, his gaze fell upon a face he had seen before. He’d glimpsed it once inside the shop on Tavistock Street earlier this morning. There was absolutely nothing unusual about it, in fact it was ordinary in every way imaginable. Only Bourne, and perhaps a handful of others with similar experiences and skills, would detect the intentness of the gaze, the way the eyes sliced and diced the vast lobby of the bank into a neat mathematical grid. Bourne watched the eyes moving back and forth in a familiar pattern. The man was figuring possible pathways to him, distances of escape routes to the exits, the placements of the bank guards, and so on.

A moment later the Dickens cartoon returned with no discernible change in his face, which remained as closed as the bank’s vault.

“This way, sir,” he said in a watery voice that reminded Bourne of a man gargling. He opened a panel in the marble half wall, and Bourne stepped through. He shut it with a soft click of a locking mechanism before leading Bourne between rows of polished wooden desks at which sat a platoon of men and women in dark, conservatively cut suits. Some were talking on phones, others addressing customers who sat on the other side of their desks. None of them looked up as the sallow clerk and Bourne passed them by.

At the end of the regiment of desks, the Dickens cartoon pressed a buzzer beside a door with a pebbled-glass panel that revealed the light from within but nothing else. The buzzer was answered, the door swung open, and the clerk stood aside.

“Straight ahead, then left. The corner office.” And then with a vicious little smile: “Mr. Hererra will receive your request.” He even talked like a Dickens character.

With a quick nod, Bourne took his left and proceeded to the corner office, whose door was closed. He rapped on it, heard the one word, “Come,” and entered.

On the other side of the door he found himself in a large, expensively furnished office with a stupendous view of the bustling City, both its historic spires and its odd post-modern skyscrapers, the past and future commingling, it seemed to Bourne, uneasily.

In addition to the usual practical office ensemble of desk, chairs, credenzas, cabinets, and the like was a clubby section off to the right dominated by a leather sofa and matching chairs, a glass-and-steel coffee table, lamps, and a sideboard set up as a bar.

As Bourne walked in Diego Hererra, looking even more like his father than he did in the photos, rose, came out from behind his desk, and with a big smile extended his hand for Bourne to shake.

“Noah,” he said with a deep hearty voice. “Welcome home!”

The moment Bourne took his hand the tip of a switchblade was pressed against his jacket in the spot over his right kidney.

“Who the hell are you,” Diego Hererra said.

Bourne’s face held no emotion. “Is this any way for a banker to act?”

“Fuck that.”

“I’m Noah Perlis, just like my passport—”

“The hell you are,” Diego Hererra said flatly. “Noah was killed in Bali by person or persons unknown less than a week ago. Did you kill him?” He dug the point of the switchblade through Bourne’s jacket. “Tell me who you are or I’ll bleed you like a pig at slaughter.”

“Lovely,” Bourne said as he wrapped an arm around Diego Hererra’s knife arm, locking it in place. When the banker tensed, he said, “Make a move and I’ll fracture your arm so badly it will never work right.”

Diego Hererra’s dark eyes blazed with barely suppressed fury. “You fucker!”

“Calm down, Señor Hererra, I’m a friend of your father’s.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Bourne shrugged. “Call him, then. Tell him Adam Stone is in your office.” Bourne had little doubt that Hererra’s father would recognize the alias Bourne had used when he met him in Seville several weeks ago. When Diego Hererra made no sign of acquiescence, Bourne switched tactics. His tone was now distinctly conciliatory. “I was a friend of Noah’s. Some time ago he’d delivered a set of instructions to me. In the event of his death I was to go to his apartment in Belgravia, where I would find in specific places a duplicate of his passport and the key to a safe-deposit box that resides here. He wanted me to take possession of whatever was in the box. That’s all I know.”

Diego Hererra remained unconvinced. “If you were a friend of his, how is it he never spoke of you?”

“I imagine it was to protect you, Señor Hererra. You know as well as I do what a secretive life Noah led. Everything was neatly compartmentalized, friends and associates included.”

“What about acquaintances?”

“Noah had no acquaintances.” This Bourne had intuited from his brief but intense encounters with Perlis in Munich and Bali. “You know that as well as I do.”

Diego Hererra grunted. Bourne was about to add that he’d been a friend of Holly’s, but some sixth sense born of years of experience warned him against it. Instead he added, “Besides, I was a good friend of Tracy Atherton’s.”

This seemed to affect Diego Hererra. “Is that so?”

Bourne nodded. “I was with her when she died.”

The banker’s eyes narrowed. “And where was that?”

“The headquarters of Air Afrika,” Bourne said without a moment’s hesitation. “Seven seventy-nine El Gamhuria Avenue, Khartoum, to be exact.”

“Christ.” At last Diego Hererra relaxed. “That was a tragedy, a first-class tragedy.”

Bourne let go of his arm, and Hererra closed the switchblade, then gestured for them to cross to the clubby nook. As Bourne sat, he stood in front of the bar.

“Even though it’s early, I think we could use a drink.” He poured three fingers of Herradura Seleccion Suprema añejo sipping tequila into two thick old-fashioned glasses, handed one to Bourne, then sat down himself. After they’d both savored the first sip, he said, “What happened at the end, can you tell me?”