The Bourne Objective (Jason Bourne 8)

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.”

The 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?”

Jalal 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.

He drove south through the district. At some invisible demarcation, the massive government buildings vanished, replaced by local businesses, cheap retail outlets, fast-food chains, storefront missions, and corner bars. Outside the bars, young men in hoodies loitered, exchanging small packets of dope for wads of bills. Old men sat on stoops, head in hands or leaning back against the gray stone steps, eyes half closed, heads nodding. Caucasians grew rare as hen’s teeth, then disappeared altogether. This was a different Washington, one tourists never saw. Congressmen, either. Patrol cars were few and far between. When one did appear, it rolled at speed, as if its occupants couldn’t wait to be elsewhere, anywhere but here.

Essai pulled the car over in front of something that passed for a hotel. Its rooms went by the hour, and when he dragged Willard inside, supporting him, the whores assumed Willard was a drunk, passed out on his feet. They showed Essai their flyblown wares. He ignored them.

He placed a doctor’s black bag on the scarred counter of the attendant’s foul-smelling cubbyhole and slid a twenty across. The attendant was whey-faced, slim as a twig, neither young nor old. He was watching porn on a portable TV.

“What,” Essai said, “no concierge?”

The attendant laughed but didn’t turn his glassy eyes from the TV screen. Without looking he unhooked a key from a pegboard and dropped it on the counter.

“I don’t want to be disturbed,” Essai said.

“Everyone wants the same thing.”

He slid across another twenty, the attendant snapped it up, selected a different key, and said, “Second floor in the back. You could die in there and no one would know.”

Essai took the key and the black bag.

There was no elevator. Getting Willard up the stairs proved something of a chore, but Essai managed. A grime-laden window at the far end of the narrow hallway let in light that seemed both leaden and exhausted. A bare bulb burned halfway down, highlighting the constellations of obscene graffiti scrawled on the walls.

The room looked like a jail cell. The bare-bones furnishings—a bed, a dresser with a drawer missing, a rocking chair—were either gray or colorless. The window looked out on an air shaft, where it was always nighttime. The room smelled strongly of carbolic and bleach. Essai did not want to think of what had gone on there in the past.

Dumping Willard on the bed, he set down the doctor’s bag, opened it, and placed a number of items in a neat line on the stained coverlet. This bag and its contents were always with him, a habit that had been ingrained in him at an early age, when he had been in training to move to America, to insinuate himself into the lives of the people Severus Domna selected. He had no idea how the group came up with Bud Halliday’s name or how it suspected that he would rise so quickly into the firmament of American politics, but then he was used to Severus Domna’s uncanny prescience.

Using a box cutter, he stripped off Willard’s clothes, then unwrapped a Depends and fitted it around his loins. He slapped Willard’s cheeks lightly enough to rouse him slowly out of his unconscious state. Before Willard was fully conscious, he elevated his head and shoulders, and tipped a bottle of castor oil down his throat. At first, Willard choked and gagged. Essai eased off, then fed the viscous liquid to him more slowly. Willard swallowed it all.

Disposing of the bottle, Essai slapped Willard hard on one cheek, then the other, sending blood rushing into his head. Willard started awake, his eyes blinking rapidly. Then he looked around.

“Where am I

?” His voice was thick and furred.

When his tongue ran around his lips, Essai reached for the roll of duct tape.

“What’s this taste?”

As Willard started to retch, Essai slapped a length of tape across his mouth.

“If you vomit, you’ll suffocate. I advise you to clamp down on your gag reflex.”

He sat on the chair, rocking slowly as Willard struggled to regain his equilibrium. When he saw his prisoner winning that battle, he said, “My name is Jalal Essai.” His eyes opened wide at Willard’s response. “Ah, I see you’ve heard of me. Good. That makes my job easier. You’ve just come from seeing Benjamin El-Arian. It was El-Arian, I warrant, who told you about me. He painted me as the villain, I have no doubt. Well, heroes and villains—it’s all in your point of view. El-Arian would deny this, but then he’s proved himself to be irresolute, like a reed blown first this way then that by shifting winds.”

Essai rose, crossed to the bed, and ripped the tape off Willard’s mouth.

“I know you’re wondering about that taste in your mouth.” He smiled. “You swallowed a bottle of castor oil.” He pointed. “Hence the diaper. Not long from now some very nasty stuff is going to be coming out of you. The diaper will help contain it, or at least some of it. I’m afraid there will be too much for it to absorb, and then…” He shrugged.

“Whatever you want from me you won’t get.”

“Bravo! That’s the spirit! But sadly for you, I’ve already gotten what I want. Like others El-Arian has dealt with or sent after me, you’ll be dumped on his doorstep. This procedure will continue until he ceases his actions and forgets about me.”

“He’s not about to do that.”

“Then he and I have a long road to travel.” Essai wadded up the tape and threw it away. He stuffed the roll back into the black bag. “You, however, have a significantly shorter road to travel.”

“I don’t feel well.” Willard said this in a curious voice, as if he were a querulous child talking to himself.

“No,” Essai said, stepping back from the bed, “I don’t suppose you do.”

27

NIGHT STILL LAY along the macadam roads and concrete sidewalks the following morning when Bourne arrived at Heathrow Airport. It was drizzling and chilly, and he was happy to get out of London. His flight left at seven twenty-five and arrived in Marrakech at one fifteen, with a brief stopover in Madrid. There were no direct commercial flights.

He was sitting in the only coffee shop open at that hour, its plastic chairs and tables wan in the fluorescent lights, sipping over-roasted coffee that tasted like ashes when Don Fernando Hererra appeared, walked over, and sat down without either invitation or greeting.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bourne said.

Don Fernando said nothing. Lost within his beautiful suit, he seemed to have aged since the last time Bourne had seen him, though only a week or so had passed. He was staring absently at a display of luggage in the window of a store across the concourse.

“How did you find me?” Bourne said.

“I suspected you were going to Marrakech.” Abruptly he turned to Bourne and said, “Why did you kill my son? He was only trying to help you as I asked him to do.”

“I didn’t kill him, Don Fernando.” It was then Bourne felt the nick of the knife point on the inside of his thigh. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“I have traveled far beyond wise, young man.” His eyes were pale, liquid, filled with anguish. “Now I am a father grieving for his dead son. That’s all I am, that’s all the life this old frame can muster.”

“I would never harm Diego,” Bourne said. “I think you know that.”

“There is no one else but you.” Don Hernando’s voice, though soft, was like a cry full of pain and suffering. “Betrayal, betrayal!” He shook his head. “The only other possibility is Ottavio Moreno. He’s my godson. He would never lay a hand on Diego.”

Bourne sat very still, feeling a trickle of blood down his leg. He could end this at any moment, but he chose to let the situation play out because a violent end wouldn’t help him. He was extremely fond of Don Hererra; he couldn’t lift a finger against him. “And yet, it was Ottavio who knifed Diego,” he said.

“Lies!” The old man was quivering. “What possible reason—?”

“Severus Domna.”

At once Don Hererra blinked. A tic started in his right cheek. “What’s that you say?”

“You’ve heard of Severus Domna, I take it.”

The old man nodded. “I’ve crossed swords with a few members over the years.”

This interested Bourne greatly. Now he was doubly glad he had chosen not to act. “I have something Severus Domna wants,” Bourne said. “Its emissaries have followed me in London, Oxford—elsewhere here. Somehow one of them got to Diego. His assignment was to bring me to the Vesper Club, where they were waiting for me. Ottavio found out. He might have acted too hastily, but he was protecting me, I assure you.”

“You and he know each other?”

“We did,” Bourne said. “He died yesterday.”

The old man’s face grew hard. “How?”

“He was shot by a man employed by Jalal Essai.”

Don Hererra’s head swung around. Life was beginning to bloom on his cheeks. “Essai?”

“He wants the same thing Severus Domna wants.”

“He’s no longer with the group?”

“No.” Slowly Bourne became aware of the knife point being withdrawn.

“My sincere apologies,” the old man said.

“I know you must have been proud of Diego.”

For a time, Don Hererra said nothing. Bourne waved down a waiter and ordered two coffees. When cup and saucer were set down in front of Don Hererra, the old man stirred in some sugar, then took a sip, wincing at the taste.

“I can’t wait to get back to Sevilla.” His eyes engaged Bourne’s. “Before you go, there is something I must tell you. I used to hold Ottavio Moreno in my arms when I visited his mother. Her name is Tanirt and she lives in Tineghir.” He paused; his gaze was probing, and he was once again his old canny self. “That is where you’re headed, isn’t it?”

Bourne nodded.

“Be very careful, señor. Tineghir is the nexus of Severus Domna. Tineghir is where it was born, where it first flourished, due mostly to Jalal Essai’s family. But the Essais were split when Jalal’s brother turned his back on Severus Domna, uprooted his family, and moved to Bali.”

That would be Holly’s father, Bourne thought.

“Benjamin El-Arian, whose family coveted the Essais’ power, used the schism to gain influence. So far as I know, he has been the leader of Severus Domna for some years now.”

“So it’s all-out war between Essai and El-Arian.”

Don Fernando nodded. “From what I’ve been able to glean, Severus Domna doesn’t take kindly to members leaving the fold. Blood in, blood out.” He finished off his coffee. “But back to Tanirt. I’ve known her for a long time. She is, in many respects, the female I’ve been closest to most of my adult life, and that includes my late wife.”

“I think I should know if she’s your mistress.”

The old man smiled. “Tanirt is a special person, which you will discover for yourself when you speak with her.” He leaned forward. “Escúchame, señor, she is the first person you must see when you arrive in Morocco.” He scribbled a line on a scrap of paper. “Call her at this number when you arrive. She will be expecting you. Her advice will serve you well, there can be no doubt. She sees all sides of every situation.”

“Am I to believe that she was Gustavo Moreno’s mistress, and now she’s yours?”

“When you meet her you will understand,” Don Fernando said. “But this much I will say. Tanirt is no one’s mistress. She is who she is. It is not for any man to have her in that way. She is…” He looked away for a moment. “… wild.”

Dimitri Maslov received the news that Colonel Boris Karpov was ge

tting a haircut and shave at the Metropole barbershop with cautious optimism. Karpov, also a cautious man, never got his hair cut at the same place twice.

Maslov summoned Oserov, but was informed that Oserov was AWOL, having left Moscow the day before. Maslov, seething, had had enough of Oserov. In fact, he’d kept him on this long only to piss off Arkadin, for whom he harbored both a father’s love and a spurned parent’s bitter hatred. But Oserov’s humiliating failure in Bangalore had sunk him fatally. He had become all but useless to Maslov, having acquired the stink of defeat.

“Where did he go?” Maslov inquired of Oserov’s assistant. They were standing in the offices, surrounded by Maslov’s crew.

“Tineghir.” The assistant coughed and licked his dry lips. “Morocco.”

“Why did he go to Morocco?”

“He… he didn’t tell me.”

“Did you try to find out?”

“How would I do that?”

Maslov drew his custom-made Makarov and shot the assistant between the eyes. Then he turned a murderous gaze on each of his men, slowly. The ones closest to him stepped back a pace, as if struck by an invisible blow.

“Anyone who thinks he can take a piss without my order, step forward.”

No one moved.

“Anyone who thinks he can disobey an order, step forward.”

No one breathed.

“Yevgeny.” He turned to a stocky man with a scar beneath one eye. “Arm yourself and your two best men. You’re coming with me.”

Then he stalked back into his office, went to the cabinet behind his desk, and began to pick through weaponry. If the debacle in Bangalore had taught him anything it was that if you want to get something difficult done, do it yourself. Times had changed. He knew it, yet he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Everything was more difficult than it had been. The government had become aggressively hostile, the siloviks had run off the more pliable oligarchs, and good people were harder and harder to find. The easy money had been made. Now he had to claw and scratch for every dollar. He was working double the hours just to make the profit he’d earned ten years ago. It was enough to make you weep for lost youth. The fact of the matter is, he thought as he fitted a suppressor to the muzzle of his Makarov, it’s no fun being a criminal anymore. Now it’s work, pure and simple. He’d been reduced to the level of an apparatchik, and he hated it. This new reality was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He was exhausted from trying to keep his head above water. And then, to top it all off, Boris Karpov had become his personal bête noire.