The Bourne Dominion (Jason Bourne 9)

The embers of that despair-rage cycle were visible to him at last. And being visible, they cooled, their heat growing dim. He felt as if life had sprung up whole from the ground, had materialized before his eyes, and he thought, What have I been doing with myself? He felt ashamed of his behavior; that wasn’t the way Amanda would want him to act.

And now, jogging along, feeling Maggie’s heat, smelling her particular scent of cinnamon and bitter, burnt almond, he did something he hadn’t been able to do before. He looked back over those five years. He had been wandering in a desert. Maybe it was a desert of his own making, he thought, but it was no less real for that. Now, at last, he thought he was ready to leave that barren place and rejoin the world in which he and Amanda had laughed and loved and talked and just, well, enjoyed each other in the pure way that Cleo enjoyed her runs.

Hendricks, feeling lighter, became aware that he was enjoying jogging. He was enjoying not being alone. Maggie said something to him and he said something back. A moment later, he couldn’t remember what either of them had said, and, what’s more, it didn’t matter. He hadn’t shied away from her, he didn’t feel embarrassed or a need to run away. In fact, he wished the course was five miles, instead of three. So that when they came to the end, he turned to her and said, “Would you like to have some dinner with me tonight?” as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

She must have felt the same way, because this time she said, “I would like that very much.”

Estevan watched the storm coming in over the horns of the Cordilleras while Rosie was preparing dinner. She worked slowly and methodically, as she always did. Her hands were strong and sure as they trimmed the meat, seasoned it, and set it to braise in a pan slicked with hot oil.

When the rain came, it slashed at the windows and rattled the loose roof tiles he had promised to fix but never had. She lifted her head and smiled, the familiar sound assuring her that everything was as it should be. The end of the day grew dark as night and, for a moment, he saw her reflection in the mirror, the livid scars the margay had made down both sides of her neck. Outside, the white cross Estevan had fashioned from hardwood rose stark as bleached bone from the spot beneath the tamarillo tree that had been her favorite ever since he had brought her to his house screaming and severely wounded.

She turned away from the window and, touching her upper chest, where matching scars rose like white welts, lowered her head, and wept silently. At once, he was at her side.

“It’s all right, Rosie,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

“He’s out there,” she said, “in the rain.”

“No,” Estevan said. “Our child is in heaven, safe and secure in God’s light.”

There would never be another child, so the doctors told them. Estevan knew that she had expected him to throw her out, convinced that the infant’s death was her fault. Instead he had treated her with even more kindness. Hearing her weeping in the night, he had held her tight, rocked her, told her to forget about what the doctors had said, that they would keep trying to have another baby, that surely, by the grace of God and Jesus Christ, His son, a miracle would befall them. That had been three years ago, but since then nothing had grown inside her.

She was transferring the meat to the pot of cut-up potatoes, onions, and chilies when they heard the alarm. He could feel her body tense.

“Don’t worry,” he said, leaving her in the kitchen. He rustled around the living room, making his preparations.

“¿Son ellos?” she asked. “¿Han venido por fin?” Is it them? Have they come at last?

When Vegas returned to the kitchen, he had a shotgun in one hand. “Look at the filthy weather.” He dragged his fingers through his thick beard. “Who else could it be? If I was them I’d make my move now.”

Vegas was beside her, one strong arm around her, pulling her close. He kissed her cheek, her temple, her eyelids, and she felt the familiar tickle from his mustache.

“No te preocupes, hija mía,” he said in her ear. “Everything is ready. They can’t touch either of us. We’re safe, do you hear me? Safe.”

He left her then to see to the last of the preparations, which were elaborate. Placing the lid on the pot, she wiped her hands on her apron and moved to the den where Estevan was crouched over the equipment he had spent months installing and tweaking until everything worked to his complete satisfaction.

“¿Los ves, mi amor?” Do you see them, my love?

“It’s a jeep.” Estevan Vegas pointed to the green-and-black infrared image on the small screen just to his left. To his right was a laptop computer connected to the array. Vegas had installed a software package that identified the infrared images. It currently showed a closed-top jeep. “It’s them,” he said. “No doubt.”

“How long?”

Vegas looked at the meter on top of the infrared projector. “Three hundred yards,” he said. “They’re close now.”

Rosie placed her hands on his substantial shoulders.

“Se acerca el final.” It is the end.

“Para ellos, sí, el final.” For them, yes, the end.

Vegas’s fingers danced over the laptop’s keyboard and the image on the screen was wiped clean, to be replaced by images of the video cameras he had installed around the perimeter of the property.

For a moment all they could see were gray sheets of rain, and then all at once a shape—the jeep cutting through the rain, jouncing along the road to Vegas’s house. Rosie, feeling Estevan’s muscles bunch in tension, leaned farther over him. She inhaled the raw oil smell of him, so ingrained that nothing could erase it.

“Cerrar ahora,” he said softly, almost to himself. “Muy cerca.” Close. Very close.

“Will it work?” she breathed.

“Yes,” he said. “It will work.”

And then, a moment later, the fruits of his labor arrived. They saw the explosion just before they heard it. The explosives he had planted beneath the road detonated by the vibration of the jeep’s engine.

The vehicle jetted into the air, for a moment out of range of the video cameras. When it appeared again, crashing to earth, it was in pieces, ragged, fiery, smoking, twisted, almost unrecognizable.

Almost.

Estevan Vegas breathed a sigh of relief. “Ya está hecho.” It is done.

The wreckage of the jeep, smoldering, guttered in the downpour.

“Hay es el fin de ellos.” There is the end of them. “But just to make sure.” Vegas was not a man to leave anything to chance. This was how he had always lived his life; the philosophy had been good to him. It had made him a rich man.

He rose, took up his shotgun, and stepped to the front door. “Lock it behind me,” he said without turning around, and Rosie moved to do as he asked.

He went outside and strode through the driving rain, looking for the dead men.

Book Two

10

BORIS KARPOV FOUND plenty to dislike about Munich. Like almost all Russians, he despised the Germans. The bitter taste of World War II was impossible to dispel; the Russian senses of outrage and revenge were ingrained in him as deeply as his love of vodka. Besides, despite the city’s new motto, “München mag Dich”—Munich Likes You—Munich was easy for Boris to dislike. For one thing, it was founded by a religious order—the Benedictines—hence its name, derived from the German word for “monk.” Boris had an atheist’s staunch distrust for organized religion of any stripe. For another, it was in the heart of Bavaria, home of right-wing conservatism that had its roots in Adolf Hitler’s hateful National Socialism. In fact, it was in Munich that Hitler and his supporters staged the infamous Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic and usurp power. That they failed only delayed the inevitable. Ten years later, Munich finally became the stronghold of the National Socialists, who, among other heinous crimes, established Dachau, the first of the Nazi concentration camps, ten miles northwest of the city.

So yes, plenty to dislike here, Boris

thought, as he instructed his taxi driver to drop him along the Briennerstrasse, at the beginning of the Kunstareal, Munich’s art district. From there, he walked briskly to the Neue Pinakothek, the museum concentrating on European art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Inside, he stopped at the information booth for a map, and then made his way to the gallery that housed Francisco de Goya’s Plucked Turkey. Not a major work, Boris thought as he approached it.

A group stood contemplating the painting as a guide went through her spiel. Boris, standing to one side, waited in vain for her to mention whether or not Plucked Turkey had been one of the paintings stolen by the Nazis. His mind clicked over his responsibilities. Before leaving Moscow he had issued orders to Anton Fedarovich and left the day-to-day running of FSB-2 to him. But by definition that had to be temporary, since Boris was still in the process of shaping the organization to his desires and hadn’t yet weeded out all the dead potatoes. From the outset he’d given himself five days at most to deal with Cherkesov’s assignment. He could not count on FSB-2 being run properly without him longer than that.

Eventually, the group moved on, leaving in its wake a man who remained contemplating the Goya. He seemed unremarkable in every way: medium height, middle-aged, salt-and-pepper hair with a bald spot on his crown. His hands were plunged deep into the pockets of his overcoat. His shoulders were slightly hunched, as if they were supporting an invisible weight.

“Good morning,” Boris said in passable German as he came up beside the man. “Our cousin regrets he could not come in person.” This contact was one of thousands cultivated over the decades by Ivan Volkin. As such, he was unimpeachable.

“How is the old gentleman?” the man said in passable Russian.

“Feisty as ever.”

The coded exchange having been made, the two men strolled together through the gallery, stopping at each painting in turn.

“How can I help?” the man said softly.

His name was Wagner, most likely a field moniker. That was fine by Boris; he felt no need to know Wagner’s real name. Ivan had vouched for him—that was enough.

“I’m looking for connections,” Boris said.

A faint smile crossed Wagner’s lips. “Everyone who comes to me is looking for connections.”

They had moved on and were now in front of Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow’s The Holy Family Beneath the Portico, in Boris’s view a thoroughly reprehensible subject, like all religious themes, though he could appreciate the clarity of the artist’s style.

“Involving Viktor Cherkesov?”

For a time, Wagner did nothing but stare intently at the painting. “Von Schadow was a soldier first,” he said at last. “Then he found God, went to Rome, and became one of the leaders of the so-called Nazarene Movement, dedicated to bringing true spirituality to Christian art.”

“I couldn’t care less,” Boris said.

“I’m sure.”

Wagner said this in a way that made Karpov feel like a philistine.

“As to Cherkesov,” Boris pressed.

Wagner moved them on. He let out a sigh. “What, specifically, do you want to know?”

“He was just in Munich. Why was he here?”

“He went to the Mosque,” Wagner said. “That’s all I know.”

Boris hid his consternation. “I need more than that,” he said evenly.

“The secrets of the Mosque are closely guarded.”

“I understand that.” What Boris couldn’t understand was what possible business Cherkesov’s new master might have with the Mosque. Viktor seemed about the last person to be sending into that particular snake pit. Cherkesov hated Muslims even more than Germans. He spent most of his time in FSB-2 hunting down ethnic Chechen Muslim terrorists.

“It’s exceedingly dangerous to poke into the Mosque’s business.”

“I know that, too.” Boris was well aware that the Mosque in Munich was ground zero for many of the Muslim extremist terrorist groups the world over. The Mosque indoctrinated disaffected young men and women, fired their hopelessness, channeled their frustration into anger. Then it trained them into cadres, armed them, and funded their subsequent flares of violence.

Wagner thought a moment. “There is someone who might be able to help you.” He bit his lip. “His name is Hermann Bolger. He’s a watchmaker. He also watches the goings-on at the Mosque.” His lips curled into a smile. “Amusing, no?”

“No,” Boris said flatly. “Where can I find Herr Bolger?”

Wagner told him the address and Boris committed it to memory. They visited two more paintings for show. Immediately thereafter, Wagner left. Boris consulted his map, wandering through the remainder of the galleries for the next twenty minutes.

Then he went in search of Hermann Bolger.

The rain fell like shouted words, like commands to the troops, with the fatal crash of ancient armies locked in hand-to-hand combat. Bourne stood beside a vaulting pine, its black branches swept by the wind, battered by the rain.

From this vantage point, he witnessed the explosion rip the jeep apart, the pieces crashing down, in flames for only seconds before the torrent doused them. Twisted junk fountained in all directions, two parts landing within three feet of where he hid: the blackened steering wheel and Suarez’s head, stinking, still smoking as if fresh from a barbecue pit. Suarez’s lips, nose, and ears had been burned away. The remains of his eyes were smoking as if he were a creature from hell.

Bourne, seeing Vegas clomp down the front steps of his house, stepped back within the dense shadow of the looming pine. From this distance, he looked like he was wearing old-fashioned hobnailed boots. Bourne noted the shotgun he carried, but that was hardly his most dangerous aspect. Vegas’s eyes were like living coals. His bloody-minded demeanor reminded Bourne of a grizzly he had observed in Montana protecting her cubs from a marauding mountain lion. He wondered whom Vegas was protecting himself and Rosie from. This electronic setup must have been weeks in the making; it certainly wasn’t meant for Bourne.

Who then?

You’re out of your mind,” Suarez had said when Bourne had stopped the jeep a thousand yards from Vegas’s house. “I’m not doing that.”

“It’s the only way you’re going to get some medical help,” Bourne had replied.

“Once you get out, what’s to stop me turning the jeep around and getting the hell out of here?”

“The only way out is back down the mountain,” Bourne said. The rain was so torrential it felt like being inside a waterfall. “You’ll be driving with one hand. You’re welcome to kill yourself any way you want.”

Suarez had delivered a murderous glare, but a moment later he just looked glum. “What evil moon was I born under to have crossed paths with you?”

Bourne opened the door and a roar like the end of the world rushed into the jeep. “Just stick to the plan and everything will be fine. You make the direct approach. Vegas knows you. I’ll come around from the rear. Are we clear?”

Suarez nodded resignedly. “My hand is killing me. I can’t feel the fingers you broke.”

“You’re lucky,” Bourne said. “Imagine how much worse the pain would be if you did.”

Slipping out of the jeep, he was completely drenched in seconds. He watched Suarez slide awkwardly over behind the wheel and move off down the road toward the house.

Bourne had seen the first of the infrared camera posts and had immediately stopped the jeep, though he hadn’t told Suarez why. It was disguised as a mile marker. He recognized the equipment because he’d come across the same scenario in a villa in the mountains of Romania several years ago. The system was highly sophisticated, state-of-the-art, but in the end Bourne had defeated it and gained access to the villa. Even if Suarez had noticed the mile marker, Bourne doubted he’d know what he was looking at.

The infrared setup was a surprise. Bourne didn’t want another, so he had decided to have Suarez drive the jeep the rest of the way while he explored Vegas’s property on foot.

The proof of Bourne’s prudence was at this moment staring up at him with empty eye sockets. He felt no remorse at having sent Suarez to his death. The commander was a stone-cold killer, and given half a chance he would have shot Bourne through the heart.

He watched Vegas move cautiously around the wreckage, poking here and there with the shotgun barrel. When Vegas found one of Suarez’s arms, he crouched down, examining it closely. From that point on, he concentrated on body parts. Slowly, methodically, his search took him in concentric circles, farther and farther from ground zero, closer and closer to Bourne’s position under the pine.

The rain was still torrential, the hidden sky coming apart with scars of lightning and booming thunder. Bourne’s vision wavered, blended with a newly risen memory shard, which took over. Bourne had slogged through a near blizzard to get to the disco where Alex Conklin had sent him to terminate the target. The fast-melting remnants lay on the fur collar of his coat as he made his way through the packed club. In the ladies’ room, he had fitted the silencer to his handgun, kicked open the door.

The icy blonde’s face was set, almost resigned. Even though she was armed, she had no illusions about what was about to happen. Was that why she had opened her mouth, why she had spoken to him just before he had ended her life?

What was it she had said? He combed through the memory shard, trying to hear her voice. In Colombia, in the intense downpour, he heard a woman’s voice shouting across the thunder, and now he heard the icy blonde’s voice, so similar in pitch and in desperation.

“There is no—”

There is no what? Bourne asked himself. What had she been trying to tell him? He searched through what was left of the memory but it was already breaking up like an ice floe in summer, the images fading, becoming gauzy and indistinct.

A sound close by startled him back into the present. Vegas had found one of Suarez’s legs, and, rising from his scrutiny of it, was looking around. He spotted Suarez’s head and began to make his way toward it, a deep frown furrowing his brow. Bourne wondered whether he would recognize the burn-mutilated face.