Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (8 page)

“Good.” He nodded, then licked his lips. “I’ve got a problem.” He always began the business end of their conversations in the same way. The ritualistic opening calming him. He always had problems, but he rarely called on Martha Christiana to solve them. He hoarded her special talents for the problems he felt certain no one else could handle.

“Male or female?” asked Martha Christiana.

He slipped a photo out of an inner pocket and handed it over. “Ah, what a handsome devil!” Her lips curled up. “I could go for this one.”

“Right.” He laughed as he handed over a USB thumb drive. “All the relevant information on the target is on here, though I know you like to do your own digging.”

“On occasion. I like to hit all the notes, even the trivial ones.” She looked over at him. “And where is this Don Fernando Hererra currently residing?”

“He’s on the move.” He showed bits of his teeth, the color of ivory mah-jongg tiles. “He’s searching for me.”

Martha Christiana raised her eyebrows. “He doesn’t look like a killer.”

“He isn’t.”

“Then what does he want? And why do you want him terminated?”

He sighed. “He wants everything. Don Fernando wants to extract something from me far more precious than my life.”

Now Martha Christiana turned to him fully, her face full of concern. “What would that be,
guapo
?”

“My legacy.” He puffed air out of his mouth. “He wants to take everything I have, everything I ever will have, away from me.”

“I will not let him.”

He smiled like beaten brass and touched the back of her hand as lightly as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. “Martha, when you are finished, I will have someone come fetch you. There is a very special commission I need you for.”

Martha Christiana returned his smile as she pushed herself off the obelisk. “Don Fernando Hererra will be taken care of.”

He smiled. “I know he will.”

This thing with Bourne, this liaison,” Ze’ev said, “is fucking foolish, it isn’t worth it. It will be the death of you, Ben David will see to that.” Rebeka clucked her tongue. “This is what you traveled all the way from Tel Aviv to tell me?”

“I’m trying to help you. Why can’t you see that?”

She narrowed her eyes against the glare of sunlight peeking through shredding clouds in the wake of the swiftly moving storm. They were tramping through the freshly fallen hillocks of white. Ahead of them, the water was a pearlescent gray, as if it were an extension of the steeply sloping shingle. They were walking, maybe in circles. It seemed like it, anyway. Small blue-roofed cottages dotted the landscape. Here and there, men could be seen uncovering walkways to their front doors. She wanted to get back to Sadelöga, but Ze’ev was making things difficult. She knew she had to find a way to turn his appearance to her advantage, and she had precious little time in which to do it.

“I’m trying to understand what you get out of it.”

He cracked his large knuckles. He wasn’t wearing gloves. His hands were as white as a corpse’s. Though stationed in Tel Aviv, Ze’ev was one of Colonel Ben David’s men. That, in and of itself, made him dangerous. But there were other reasons to be wary of him if what she had heard at Dahr El Ahmar could be trusted.

“Out of what?” he said.

“I’m willing to bet that your helping me won’t sit well with either Amit or the Director.”

He flexed his powder-white fingers. A show of strength or a warning? “Neither of them know, or will know.”

She regarded him with a hard, skeptical glance, and he sighed. “All right, here’s the deal. Ilan Halevy has had it in for me ever since he’s risen in the ranks.” 

Ilan Halevy, the Babylonian. “Why would that be?”

Ze’ev blew a breath out through his nose, a horse snorting under a too-tight rein. “I tried to get him sectioned out of Mossad. It was at the beginning of his career; he was a loose cannon, learned his lessons, then did everything his way, not Mossad’s way.” 

“Turns out you were wrong.”

Ze’ev nodded. “He’s never let me forget it, either. He won’t be happy till he forces me out.”

“Ilan Halevy doesn’t know the meaning of the word
happy
.” 

“Still...”

She nodded. “So, all right, the two of you hate each other’s guts. What does that have to do with me?”

“I want him to fail.”

“Not just fail.”

“No. I want him to fail spectacularly, a failure he cannot crawl out from under.”

Rebeka considered a moment. “You have a plan.”

The ghost of a smile made a brief appearance, then was gone. “There’s no way to turn him back. You said so yourself.” 

“Yes, that would be a complete waste of time. Instead, we lure him to Sadelöga.”

“And then what?”

“Then we’ll be waiting.”

The DC offices of
Politics As Usual
were on E Street NW.

Soraya tried not to think as she rode up to the sixteenth floor along with a fistful of suits talking options, margin calls, and Forex strategies. She forced herself off as soon as the doors opened, striding right to the curving front banc formed of sheets of burl maple and stainless steel.

“Is Charles in?” she said to Marsha, the receptionist.

“He is, Ms. Moore,” Marsha said with a thoroughly professional smile. “Why don’t you have a seat while I call him.”

“I’m fine right here.”

Marsha gave her a brief nod as she dialed Charles’s extension. Even this close, Soraya could only hear an indistinct murmur. While she waited, she glanced around the reception area, even though she knew it well. Laminated plaques commemorating the online news agency’s Peabody- and Pulitzer-Prize–winning stories were everywhere in evidence. Her eye fell inevitably on the brilliant piece Charles had written two years ago, centering on a powerful but littleknown Arab terrorist cell in Syria. Hardly surprising, since that was how he had come to her attention. She had called on him in order to appropriate at least some of his sources, with little result.

She sensed him then, as she always did, and her head came up, a smile on her full lips. He was tall and slender, with a crop of unruly and prematurely gray hair. He was, as usual, impeccably dressed in a midnight-blue suit, dove-gray shirt, and water-print tie in muted colors.

He beckoned to her as soon as he saw her, but there was something troubling in his smile that she couldn’t place and that sent a thread of disquiet through her. She began to question her decision. Part of her wanted to turn, enter the elevator, and never see him again.

Instead, she stepped forward and, with his hand lightly at the small of her back, walked with him down the hallway to his corner office. Just before she stepped inside, she saw the plaque affixed to the wall just to the right of the doorway: charles thorne, deputy editor in chief.

He closed the door behind him.

I need to get this over with as quickly as possible,
she thought,
before I lose my nerve.
“Charles,” she said as she sat down.

“It’s fortuitous you came here just now.” He raised a hand, forestalling her, and carefully and deliberately drew the blinds. “Soraya, before you say anything—”

Oh, no,
she thought.
He’s going to give me the “I love my wife” thing. Not now, please not now.

“I have to tell you something in strictest confidence. Yes?”

Here we go
. She swallowed hard. “Yes, of course.”

He took a deep breath and let it out with a kind of thin whistling sound. “We’re being investigated by the FBI.”

Her heart lurched in her chest. “We?”

“
Politics As Usual
. Marchand.” The publisher. “Davidoff.” The editor in chief. “Me.”

“I...don’t understand.” Her pulse was beating an unpleasant tattoo in her temples. “What for?”

Charles ran a hand across his face. “Wiretapping—specifically victims of crimes, prominent celebrities, NYC police, some pols.” He hesitated, pain in his eyes. “Nine-eleven victims.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Sadly, I’m not.”

She felt hot, as if she had contracted a tropical fever. “But...is it true?”

“You and I have to...” He coughed, cleared his throat. “We have to go our separate ways.”

“But you—” She shook her head, her ears ringing. “How could you possibly—?”

“Not me, Soraya. I swear it wasn’t me.”

He’s not going to answer my question
, she thought.
He’s not going to tell me.
And then, looking into his eyes, she heard his voice again: “
We have to go our separate ways.
”

Stumbling, she struck the backs of her knees on a chair and she sat down, quickly and hard.

“Soraya?”

She did not know what to say, did not even know what to think. She was struggling simply to breathe normally again. In the space of a heartbeat, her world had been turned upside down. They couldn’t separate, not now. It was unthinkable. All at once, she remembered a dinner she’d had with Delia the night after she had met Charles.

“Are you insane?” Delia had said, wide-eyed. “Charles Thorne? Seriously? Do you know who he’s married to?”

“I do,” Soraya had said. “Of course I do.”

“And still you...?” Delia had broken off in disbelief.

“We couldn’t help ourselves.”

“Of course you could help yourselves.” Delia was angry now. “You’re adults.”

“This is something that adults do, Dee. That’s why they call it—”

“Don’t,” Delia had said, holding her palms up toward her friend. “Dear God, don’t you dare say it.”

“It isn’t a one-night stand, if that makes a difference.”

“Of course it makes a difference,” Delia had said, a bit too loudly. Then she lowered her voice to a fierce whisper. “Dammit, Raya, the longer this goes on, the worse it becomes!”

Soraya remembered how she had reached out and taken her friend’s hand. “Don’t be angry, Dee.” She hadn’t been listening, not really. “Be happy for me.”

“The longer this goes on, the worse it becomes.”

“Soraya?” Thorne had repeated. When he saw her expression, he looked stricken.

And now, Soraya thought, returning to the dreadful present, the worst had happened. Now she had to tell him. It was the only way for them to stay together, to ensure their relationship continued uninterrupted.

She opened her mouth to do it but, instead, her mind rebelled.
Is this what I’ve reduced the baby to—a pawn?
An immediate wave of disgust overwhelmed her and, leaning forward, she grabbed his wastepaper basket and vomited into it.

“Soraya?” He hurried toward her. “Are you ill?”

“I don’t feel well,” she whispered thickly.

“I’ll call a taxi.”

She waved away his words. “I’ll be all right soon enough.” She had to tell him, she knew she had no choice, but another wave rose up into her throat, gagging her, clogging her throat, and she thought,
Not today. Just give me a day’s respite
.

An hour before he was set to embark with Alef for Sadelöga, Bourne had a dream. In the dream, he had been shot, pitched into the storm-dark waters of the Mediterranean, but instead of losing consciousness, as he had when this had occurred many years ago, he remained alert to the electric bolts of pain transfiguring his head into a short-circuiting engine.

As he struggled in the darkness, he became aware that he was not alone. There was a presence eeling its way up from the depths of the sea, long and thin, a monstrous sea snake of some sort. It wrapped its long length around him while its fanged mouth darted in toward him. Again and again, he fought it off, but with each second that ticked by strength passed out of him, dissipating into the inky water. And as his strength waned, so the monster’s strength waxed, until it reared back, opened its mouth, and said,
“You’ll never know who I am. Why don’t you stop trying?”

It unwound itself from him, slipping away even as he grabbed for it, even as his desire to know it became unbearable...He woke up.

Sweating heavily, he threw the covers off his naked body and padded into the bathroom, stepping into the shower even before he turned on the taps. The icy water hit him like a fist, which is what he wanted, to get away from the last coiling tendrils of the dream as quickly and completely as he could. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that dream. It always ended the same way. He knew the sea eel was his past, lurking in the deepest depths of his unconscious, coiling and uncoiling, but never revealing itself to him. If the sea eel was to be believed, it never would.

When he was shaved and dressed, he sat on the edge of his bed and called Soraya, using his new satphone. They had an arrangement to check in with each other periodically, which worked well for both of them. Often they were able to swap intel to their mutual advantage.

It was the middle of the night in DC, and it was clear that he had woken her up.

“Are you all right?” her asked.

“I’m perfectly fine. I just had a long, difficult day.”

At once he knew she wasn’t telling him the whole truth, even though she insisted nothing was wrong. He kept at her until she admitted that the concussion she had gotten in Paris had become worse. That was all she would say, other than that she was being closely monitored by her doctor. Then she mentioned Nicodemo, and Bourne told her about his conversation with Christien, that Nicodemo was somehow involved with Core Energy and, specifically, its CEO, Tom Brick.

“You mean Nicodemo is real?” she said when he had finished.

“Christien and Don Fernando certainly think so. Can you do some digging into Core Energy and Brick for me?”

“Of course.”

“Take care of yourself, Soraya.”

There was a slight hesitation before she said, “You, too.”

Ninety minutes later, with the sky clearing in the east, the last clots of night gathered like refuse in the street gutters, he and Alef were in one of Christien’s cars, heading out of Stockholm toward Sadelöga.

“You don’t look too good,” Alef said as they hit the highway and hurtled down it at breakneck speed.

Bourne said nothing. Every few minutes his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, memorizing the makes, models, and positions of the vehicles behind them.