The Bourne Dominion (40 page)

Bourne disengaged his hand from the older man’s. “What gives you the right to make that decision?”

“Mikaela’s death gives me the right. She found out; the truth killed her.”

Bourne sat back, regarding Don Fernando. He was like a chimera. Every time you thought you had him figured out, he changed shape the way Bourne himself changed identities.

Don Fernando, gazing deep into Bourne’s eyes, shook his head. “At least give me a fair hearing before you find me guilty.”

Y
our eye looks terrible,” Boris said. “I’ll get you a steak to put on it.”

“No time,” Zachek said, closing the connection on his cell phone, “Cherkesov was spotted going through security at the Munich airport.”

Boris stepped to the curb and flagged down a taxi. “Where is he headed?”

“Damascus,” Zachek said as they climbed in.

Boris told the driver their destination, and he headed toward the nearest entrance to the A 92 Munich–Deggendorf Autobahn.

“Syria.” Boris sat back against the seat. “What the hell is he doing in Damascus?”

“We don’t know,” Zachek said, “but we intercepted a call on his cell phone. He’s been given instructions to go to El-Gabal, a mining company on Avenue Choukry Kouatly.”

“Curious.”

“It gets curiouser,” Zachek said. “So far as we’ve been able to ascertain, El-Gabal has been defunct since the 1970s.”

“Clearly, your intel is wrong,” Boris said drily.

“I’ll try not to revert, if you don’t,” Zachek said.

“We made a deal that’s satisfactory to both of us,” Boris said. “That doesn’t mean I have to like you.”

“But you have to trust me.”

“It’s not you I worry about,” Boris said. “It’s SVR.”

“You mean Beria.”

Boris stared out the window, relieved that he was getting out of Germany. “I take care of Cherkesov and you take care of Beria. It’s a straightforward bargain.” But he knew nothing was straightforward in their line of work, where lying was not only endemic, but necessary for survival.

“It’s a matter of trust,” Zachek said, punching in a coded number on his phone. “It always is.” He spoke into it for several moments, then disconnected. “We have a ticket waiting for you at the airport. Cherkesov took the four
PM
flight. We got you on the six forty. You’ll arrive in Damascus just after two tomorrow morning. The good news is your flight is shorter. You’ll have an hour in Damascus before he arrives.” He was texting a message. “We’ll have a man waiting to take you to—”

“I don’t want one of your men looking over my shoulder.”

Zachek glanced up. “I assure you—”

“I know Damascus as well as I know Moscow,” Boris said with such finality that Zachek shrugged.

“As you wish, General.” He put away his phone and cleared his throat. “We are putting our lives in each other’s hands.”

“That’s not wise,” Boris said. “We scarcely know each other.”

“What’s to be done about Ivan Volkin?”

Boris understood Zachek’s point. Boris and Ivan went back decades. Their friendship had not protected him from Volkin’s betrayal.

“You won’t be safe until he’s planted,” Zachek said in such an offhand manner that Boris laughed.

“First things first, Zachek.”

The other man smiled. “You called me by name.”

B
ourne willed himself to relax. “Go on.”

“Almaz was born during the dark days of Stalin and his chief enforcer, Lavrentiy Beria.” Don Fernando cupped the snifter, inhaling the brandy fumes before drinking again. He did it slowly, as if it was a ritual that calmed him, brought him back to himself. “As you doubtless know, Beria was named head of NKVD in 1938. From that moment on, the secret police became the state-sanctioned executioners Stalin lusted for. At Yalta, Stalin introduced him to President Roosevelt as ‘our Himmler.’

“Beria’s bloodthirsty ways are well documented, but, believe me, the truth is far more dreadful. Kidnappings, torture, rape, maiming, and death became the order of the day for his enemies and their families—women and children, it was all the same to him. And as the months turned into years there were those within the NKVD who became disgusted with the unrelenting cruelty and violence. It was impossible to voice their dissent, so they went underground, forming a group they called Almaz—diamond—because diamonds are hidden, created under tremendous pressure deep within the earth.”

Don Fernando’s eyes were blue again, glinting like the morning sea. He had finished his brandy and he poured himself another.

“These men were clever. They knew their survival depended not only
on the absolute secrecy of Almaz, but on expanding it beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. Allies were their only long-term hope, both in terms of power and influence, and also as an escape conduit should the need arise to flee the motherland.”

“That’s where your father came in,” Bourne said.

Don Fernando nodded. “My father started in Colombia working the oil fields, but soon became bored. ‘Fernando,’ he used to say to me, ‘I am plagued with a restless mind. You are forbidden to follow in my footsteps.’ He was joking, of course, but only slightly. He shipped me off to London, where I took a First in economics at Oxford. But the truth was, I enjoyed physical labor, so when I returned to Colombia, much to my father’s horror, I went to work in the oil fields, working my way up. I found great satisfaction in eventually buying my former bosses out.

“My father, meanwhile, turned his restless mind to international banking, founding Aguardiente Bancorp.” He knocked down his third brandy and attacked the bottle again. “My three brothers were, unfortunately, of no use whatsoever. One died of a drug overdose, another died in a cartel shoot-out. The third died, I think, of a broken heart.”

He waved his hand again. “In any event, it was through Aguardiente’s increasingly lucrative international deal-making that my father came in contact with the dissidents of Almaz. There is no more ardent capitalist than a converted socialist. So it was with my father. He sympathized completely with Almaz and pledged to help them in any way he could. Not without compensation, however. Almaz systematically raided Stalin’s coffers. My father laundered their money, then invested it most wisely, including his generous cut. They all grew rich and increasingly powerful.

“By the time Beria was finally forced out by Khrushchev and his allies, Almaz was a force to be reckoned with, so much so that its members could have surfaced, but they had learned not to believe in any form of Soviet government. Besides, they were comfortable in the shadows, and that is where they chose to remain, influencing events behind the scenes.”

“But their ambitions outgrew the Soviet Union,” Bourne interjected.

“Yes. They foresaw the Soviet Union’s demise. With my father’s urging, they diversified.”

“And by this time I imagine your father was a full-fledged member,” Bourne said. “Joining Almaz was what he had trained you for.”

Don Fernando nodded. “I joined Christien Norén as the first non-Russian members of Almaz.”

“You were the brains and he was the brawn, the enforcer.”

Don Fernando finished off his brandy, but didn’t refill his glass. His eyes had taken on a slightly glassy, alcohol-fueled look. “It’s true that Christien was very good at killing people. I think he might have actually enjoyed it.”

He threw some bills on the table and both men rose, strolling out of the café and up the sea road toward Don Fernando’s house. The night was exceptionally clear, the moon the palest yellow, riding high in the cloudless sky. Rigging clanged arrhythmically against masts in the gusts of salt wind off the sea. The far-off roars of Vespas lent the end of the night a melancholy note.

“If Christien was a mole inside the Domna,” Bourne said, “then I assume the two groups were antagonists.”

“I would say, rather, that their spheres of influence overlapped. Then Benjamin El-Arian made his deal with the devil.”

“Semid Abdul-Qahhar.”

Don Fernando nodded. “It was then we realized we had made a terrible mistake. We started the rumor that Treadstone had targeted the Domna. We knew that the Domna would dispatch Christien to terminate your old boss.”

“You wanted Alex Conklin dead.”

“On the contrary, we wanted Christien to recruit Conklin into Almaz.”

Bourne knew that Conklin was of Russian extraction. He had hated the communists with every fiber of his being. Almaz would have had a good chance of recruiting him to its cause.

“It would have been the ultimate coup,” Don Fernando continued, “accomplished right under the Domna’s nose.”

Up ahead, Don Fernando’s street came into view, the lights in his house warm and beckoning.

“But the plan went wrong,” Bourne said. “Conklin killed Christien and El-Arian made his deal with his own enforcer, Semid Abdul-Qahhar.”

“Worse, the Domna became aware of Almaz as its implacable enemy, and now we are in a state of all-out war.”

T
here were a number of ways into a bank and Soraya knew them all. Ten am found her walking down Avenue Montaigne and into the Chanel boutique, where she bought a day outfit that fit her perfectly. It reeked of moneyed status. In a nearby boutique she used her Treadstone credit card, which had no spending limit, to purchase a pair of Louboutin shoes that complemented her ensemble. As she was signing the receipt, she was overcome again; directed to the bathroom by a concerned saleswoman, she rushed in, slammed the door behind her, and had just enough time to make it to the toilet before she retched so violently she imagined she was giving up the lining of her stomach. Now she began to worry; vomiting was a common symptom of a serious concussion. Her heart was like a trip-hammer in her chest and, feeling abruptly weak, she grabbed onto the stall door. Gritting her teeth, she took deep breaths and carried on.

It took her ten minutes to wash her face, rinse out her mouth, and recover sufficiently to be seen, but by that time her headache had bloomed into a violent pounding. She was so pale, the saleswoman offered to call a doctor. Soraya declined politely, but asked where she might purchase makeup.

Out on the street, the sunlight hurt her eyes and increased the pain in her head. Half an hour later, after she’d spent nearly three hundred euros, having designer makeup professionally applied, she looked more or less normal. Then, wearing a pair of outsize sunglasses she had selected at the shop, she strode down the street, entered the Élysée Bank branch a block from the Seine, and tapped into the Treadstone account.

She had a bank officer call her a taxi, asking for a late-model Mercedes. While she waited, she called her destination and, in her best, clipped Parisian French, made an appointment with the vice president under the name of Mademoiselle Gobelins. When the Mercedes arrived, she gave the driver the address of her destination.

Ignoring the intermittent pounding in her head, she pushed through the glass doors of the bank building at the stroke of eleven thirty. A receptionist’s podium rose imposingly in the center of the space, flanked on either side by large potted traveler’s palms. Directly behind the podium were the glass doors to the bank. She stood in front of them for a moment, feeling lost, ill, and slightly fearful, but then a feeling of elation gripped her, as if she had reached the end of her investigation. With an effort, she put aside the grief and despair of last night and drew on her anger to help her concentrate on her mission.

Inside, the bank was an open space with long pedestals for people to write on. To the right, a line of teller cages stretched away, to the left a gated wooden half wall led to a row of cubicles inside which bank officers dutifully listened to customer requests or brought their paperwork up to date. At the rear of the room was a high wood-paneled wall in the center of which were a series of digital clocks showing the time in Paris, New York, London, and Moscow. On either side were staircases leading up to the second-floor offices where the highest-ranking bank officers worked. That was where Soraya needed to go.

She gave her name to the information officer, who immediately picked up a phone and called upstairs. Moments later a guard came and accompanied her across the room. She was buzzed in through a gate, and the guard brought her to the center of the rear wall. At the touch of a button, a panel slid open and Soraya stepped into a sumptuously appointed elevator. The guard accompanied her up to the second floor, directing her to the right, down a softly lit corridor. Soraya could hear the discreet
tap-tap-tap
of fingernails on computer keyboards as she passed open doorways to right and left.

Her appointment was with M. Sigismond, a tall man, slim but
powerful looking, with light brown hair, parted on one side, who sprang around his desk to greet her. Extending his hand, he said, “So very nice to make your acquaintance, Mademoiselle Gobelins.” His French contained a slight Germanic starchiness. Holding her hand by the tips of her fingers, he kissed the back, then indicated a plush sofa on her right. “Please have a seat.”

When he had settled himself beside her, he said, “I understand that you would like to make the Nymphenburg Landesbank of Munich your financial institution of choice.”

“That’s right,” Soraya said. She thought M. Sigismond’s brown eyes were the product of colored contacts. “Now that I’ve come into my inheritance, your Wealth Management Division has been recommended to me as being the best in Western Europe.”

M. Sigismond’s smile could not have been warmer. “My dear, it is gratifying, is it not, to know that all one’s hard work has had its desired result.”

“It certainly is.”

“And your complete wish is?”

“To open an account. I have a sizable sum to deposit with more to come. And I will require investment assistance.”

“But of course. Splendid!” M. Sigismond slapped his hands decisively on his thighs. “Now, before we proceed further, I would like to introduce you to the gentleman behind the grand success of our Wealth Management.” He rose and opened a door in the wall that Soraya had not previously noticed. In strode a man of distinctly Middle Eastern descent. He was dark in every way imaginable, and almost magnetically handsome.