The Bourne Sanction (3 page)

Pyotr stared implacably at him until Icoupov said, “Ah, yes, I see.” He sipped the tea from the cup himself to assure Pyotr it was only tea, then offered it again. The rim chattered against Pyotr’s teeth, but eventually Pyotr drank, slowly at first, then more avidly. When the tea was drained, Icoupov set the cup back on its matching saucer. By this time Pyotr’s shivering had subsided.

“Feeling better?”

“I’ll feel better,” Pyotr said, “when I get out of here.”

“Ah, well, I’m afraid that won’t be for some time,” Icoupov said. “If ever. Unless you tell me what I want to know.”

He hitched his chair closer; the benign uncle’s expression was now nowhere to be found. “You stole something that belongs to me,” he said. “I want it back.”

“It never belonged to you; you stole it first.”

Pyotr replied with such venom that Icoupov said, “You hate me as much as you love your father, this is your basic problem, Pyotr. You never learned that hate and love are essentially the same in that the person who loves is as easily manipulated as the person who hates.”

Pyotr screwed up his mouth, as if Icoupov’s words left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Anyway, it’s too late. The document is already on its way.”

Instantly, there was a change in Icoupov’s demeanor. His face became as closed as a fist. A certain tension lent his entire small body the aspect of a weapon about to be launched. “Where did you send it?”

Pyotr shrugged, but said nothing more.

Icoupov’s face turned dark with momentary rage. “Do you think I know nothing about the information and matйriel pipeline you have been refining for the past three years? It’s how you send information you stole from me back to your father, wherever he is.”

For the first time since he’d regained consciousness, Pyotr smiled. “If you knew anything important about the pipeline, you’d have rolled it up by now.”

At this Icoupov regained the icy control over his emotions.

“I told you talking to him would be useless,” Arkadin said from his position directly behind Pyotr’s chair.

“Nevertheless,” Icoupov said, “there are certain protocols that must be acknowledged. I’m not an animal.”

Pyotr snorted.

Icoupov eyed his prisoner. Sitting back, he fastidiously pulled up his trouser leg, crossed one leg over the other, laced his stubby fingers on his lower belly.

“I give you one last chance to continue this conversation.”

It was not until the silence was drawn out into an almost intolerable length that Icoupov raised his gaze to Arkadin.

“Pyotr, why are you doing this to me?” he said with a resigned tone. And then to Arkadin, “Begin.”

Though it cost him in pain and breath, Pyotr twisted as far as he was able, but he couldn’t see what Arkadin was doing. He heard the sound of implements on a metal cart being rolled across the carpet.

Pyotr turned back. “You don’t frighten me.”

“I don’t mean to frighten you, Pyotr,” Icoupov said. “I mean to hurt you, very, very badly.”

With a painful convulsion, Pyotr’s world contracted to the pinpoint of a star in the night sky. He was locked within the confines of his mind, but despite all his training, all his courage, he could not compartmentalize the pain. There was a hood over his head, drawn tight around his neck. This confinement magnified the pain a hundredfold because, despite his fearlessness, Pyotr was subject to claustrophobia. For someone who never went into caves, small spaces, or even underwater, the hood was the worst of all possible worlds. His senses could tell him that, in fact, he wasn’t confined at all, but his mind wouldn’t accept that input-it was in the full flight of panic. The pain Arkadin was inflicting on him was one thing, its magnification was quite another. Pyotr’s mind was spinning out of control. He felt a wildness enter him-the wolf caught in a trap that begins to frantically gnaw its leg off. But the mind was not a limb; he couldn’t gnaw it off. Dimly, he heard someone asking him a question to which he knew the answer. He didn’t want to give the answer, but he knew he would because the voice told him the hood would come off if he answered. His crazed mind only knew it needed the hood off; it could no longer distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, lies from truth. It reacted to only one imperative: the need to survive. He tried to move his fingers, but in bending over him his interrogator must have been pressing down on them with the heels of his hands.

Pyotr couldn’t hang on any longer. He answered the question. The hood didn’t come off. He howled in indignation and terror. Of course it didn’t come off, he thought in a tiny instant of lucidity. If it did, he’d have no incentive to answer the next question and the next and the next.

And he would answer them-all of them. He knew this with a bone-chilling certainty. Even though part of him suspected that the hood might never come off, his trapped mind would take the chance. It had no other choice.

But now that he could move his fingers, there was another choice. Just before the whirlwind of panicked madness overtook him again, Pyotr made that choice. There was one way out and, saying a silent prayer to Allah, he took it. Icoupov and Arkadin stood over Pyotr’s body. Pyotr’s head lay on one side; his lips were very blue, and a faint but distinct foam emanated from his half-open mouth. Icoupov bent down, sniffed the scent of bitter almonds.

“I didn’t want him dead, Leonid, I was very clear on the point.” Icoupov was vexed.

“How did he get hold of cyanide?”

“They used a variation I’ve never encountered.” Arkadin did not look happy himself.

“He was fitted with a false fingernail.”

“He would have talked.”

“Of course he would have talked,” Arkadin said. “He’d already begun.”

“So he took it upon himself to shut his own mouth, forever.” Icoupov shook his head in distaste. “This will have significant fallout. He’s got dangerous friends.”

“I’ll find them,” Arkadin said. “I’ll kill them.”

Icoupov shook his head. “Even you can’t kill them all in time.”

“I can contact Mischa.”

“And risk losing everything? No. I understand your connection with him-closest friend, mentor. I understand the urge to talk to him, to see him. But you can’t, not until this is finished and Mischa comes home. That’s final.”

“I understand.”

Icoupov walked over the window, stood with his hand behind his back contemplating the fall of darkness. Lights sparkled along the edges of the lake, up the hillside of Campione d’Italia. There ensued a long silence while he contemplated the face of the altered landscape. “We’ll have to move up the timetable, that’s all there is to it. And you’ll take Sevastopol as a starting point. Use the one name you got out of Pyotr before he committed suicide.”

He turned around to face Arkadin. “Everything now rides on you, Leonid. This attack has been in the planning stages for three years. It has been designed to cripple the American economy. Now there are barely two weeks left before it becomes a reality.” He walked noiselessly across the carpet. “Philippe will provide you with money, documents, weaponry that will escape electronic detection, anything you need. Find this man in Sevastopol. Retrieve the document, and when you do, follow the pipeline back and shut it down so that it will never again be used to threaten our plans.”

WHO
IS
DAVID
Webb?”

Moira Trevor, standing in front of his desk at Georgetown University, asked the question so seriously that Jason Bourne felt obliged to answer.

“Strange,” he said, “no one’s ever asked me that before. David Webb is a linguistics expert, a man with two children who are living happily with their grandparents”
Marie’s parents
“on a ranch in Canada.”

Moira frowned. “Don’t you miss them?”

“I miss them terribly,” Bourne said, “but the truth is they’re far better off where they are. What kind of life could I offer them? And then there’s the constant danger from my Bourne identity. Marie was kidnapped and threatened in order to force me to do something I had no intention of doing. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“But surely you see them from time to time.”

“As often as I can, but it’s difficult. I can’t afford to have anyone following me back to them.”

“My heart goes out to you,” Moira said, meaning it. She smiled. “I must say it’s odd seeing you here, on a university campus, behind a desk.” She laughed. “Shall I buy you a pipe and a jacket with elbow patches?”

Bourne smiled. “I’m content here, Moira. Really I am.”

“I’m happy for you. Martin’s death was difficult for both of us. My anodyne is going back to work full-bore. Yours is obviously here, in a new life.”

“An old life, really.” Bourne looked around the office. “Marie was happiest when I was teaching, when she could count on me being home every night in time to have dinner with her and the kids.”

“What about you?” Moira asked. “Were you happiest here?”

A cloud passed across Bourne’s face. “I was happy being with Marie.” He turned to her. “I can’t imagine being able to say that to anyone else but you.”

“A rare compliment from you, Jason.”

“Are my compliments so rare?”

“Like Martin, you’re a master at keeping secrets,” she said. “But I have doubts about how healthy that is.”

“I’m sure it’s not healthy at all,” Bourne said. “But it’s the life we chose.”

“Speaking of which.” She sat down on a chair opposite him. “I came early for our dinner date to talk to you about a work situation, but now, seeing how content you are here, I don’t know whether to continue.”

Bourne recalled the first time he had seen her, a slim, shapely figure in the mist, dark hair swirling about her face. She was standing at the parapet in the Cloisters, overlooking the Hudson River. The two of them had come there to say good-bye to their mutual friend Martin Lindros, whom Bourne had valiantly tried to save, only to fail. Today Moira was dressed in a wool suit, a silk blouse open at the throat. Her face was strong, with a prominent nose, deep brown eyes wide apart, intelligent, curved slightly at their outer corners. Her hair fell to her shoulders in luxuriant waves. There was an uncommon serenity about her, a woman who knew what she was about, who wouldn’t be intimidated or bullied by anyone, woman or man.

Perhaps this last was what Bourne liked best about her. In that, though in no other way, she was like Marie. He had never pried into her relationship with Martin, but he assumed it had been romantic, since Martin had given Bourne standing orders to send her a dozen red roses should he ever die. This Bourne had done, with a sadness whose depth surprised even him.

Settled in her chair, one long, shapely leg crossed over her knee, she looked the model of a European businesswoman. She had told him that she was half French, half English, but her genes still carried the imprint of ancient Venetian and Turkish ancestors. She was proud of the fire in her mixed blood, the result of wars, invasions, fierce love.

“Go on.” He leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

She nodded. “All right. As I’ve told you, NextGen Energy Solutions has completed our new liquid natural gas terminal in Long Beach. Our first shipment is due in two weeks. I had this idea, which now seems utterly crazy, but here goes. I’d like you to head up the security procedures. My bosses are worried the terminal would make an awfully tempting target for any terrorist group, and I agree. Frankly, I can’t think of anyone who’d make it more secure than you.”

“I’m flattered, Moira. But I have obligations here. As you know, Professor Specter has installed me as the head of the Comparative Linguistics Department. I don’t want to disappoint him.”

“I like Dominic Specter, Jason, really I do. You’ve made it clear that he’s your mentor. Actually, he’s David Webb’s mentor, right? But it’s Jason Bourne I first met, it feels like it’s Jason Bourne I’ve been coming to know these last few months. Who is Jason Bourne’s mentor?”

Bourne’s face darkened, as it had at the mention of Marie. “Alex Conklin’s dead.”

Moira shifted in her chair. “If you come work with me there’s no baggage attached to it. Think about it. It’s a chance to leave your past lives behind-both David Webb’s and Jason Bourne’s. I’m flying to Munich shortly because a key element of the terminal is being manufactured there. I need an expert opinion on it when I check the specs.”

“Moira, there are any number of experts you can use.”

“But none whose opinion I trust as much as yours. This is crucial stuff, Jason. More than half the goods shipped into the United States come through the port at Long Beach, so our security measures have to be something special. The US government has already shown it has neither the time nor the inclination to secure commercial traffic, so we’re forced to police it ourselves. The danger to this terminal is real and it’s serious. I know how expert you are at bypassing even the most arcane security systems. You’re the perfect candidate to put nonconventional measures into place.”

Bourne stood. “Moira, listen to me. Marie was David Webb’s biggest cheerleader. Since her death, I’ve let go of him completely. But he’s not dead, he’s not an invalid. He lives on inside me. When I fall asleep I dream of his life as if it was someone else’s, and I wake up in a sweat. I feel as if a part of me has been sliced off. I don’t want to feel that way anymore. It’s time to give David Webb his due.”

Veronica Hart’s step was light and virtually carefree as she was admitted past checkpoint after checkpoint on her way into the bunker that was the West Wing of the White House. The job she was about to be handed-director of Central Intelligence-was a formidable one, especially in the aftermath of last year’s twin debacles of murder and gross breach of security. Nevertheless, she had never been happier. Having a sense of purpose was vital to her; being singled out for daunting responsibility was the ultimate validation of all the arduous work, setbacks, and threats she’d had to endure because of her gender.

There was also the matter of her age. At forty-six she was the youngest
DCI
in recent memory. Being the youngest at something was nothing new to her. Her astonishing intelligence combined with her fierce determination to ensure that she was the youngest to graduate from her college, youngest to be appointed to military intelligence, to central army command, to a highly lucrative Black River private intelligence position in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa where, to this day, not even the heads of the seven directorates within CI knew precisely where she had been posted, whom she commanded, or what her mission had been.