The Bourne Sanction (5 page)

After the president glanced at the pages Veronica handed him, he said, “While this is compelling, Veronica, Congress seems to be on Luther’s side. It has provided him with twenty-five million dollars a year to pay informants on the ground and to recruit mercenaries.”

“That’s part of the problem, not the solution,” Veronica said emphatically. “Theirs is a failed methodology, the same one they’ve used all the way back to the
OSS
in Berlin after World War Two. Our paid informants have had a history of turning on us-working for the other side, feeding us disinformation. As for the mercenaries we recruited-like the Taliban or various other Muslim insurgent groups-they, to a man, eventually turned against us to become our implacable enemies.”

“She’s got a point,” the president said.

“The past is the past,” General Kendall said angrily. His face had been darkening with every word Veronica had said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that either our new informants or our mercenaries, both of which are vital to our victory in the Middle East, would ever turn on us. On the contrary, the intel they’ve provided has been of great help to our men on the field of battle.”

“Mercenaries, by definition, owe their allegiance to whoever pays them the most,”

Veronica said. “Centuries of history from Roman times forward have proved this point over and over.”

“All this back-and-forth is of little moment.” LaValle shifted in his seat uncomfortably. Clearly he hadn’t counted on such a spirited defense. Kendall handed him a dossier, which he presented to the president. “General Kendall and I have spent the better part of two weeks putting together this proposal for how to restructure CI going forward. The Pentagon is prepared to implement this plan the moment we get your approval, Mr. President.”

To Veronica’s horror, the president looked over the proposal, then turned it over to her.

“What do you say to this?”

Veronica felt suffused with rage. She was already being undermined. On the other hand, she observed, this was a good object lesson for her. Trust no one, not even seeming allies. Up until this moment she’d thought she had the full support of the president. The fact that LaValle, who was, after all, basically the mouthpiece for Defense Secretary Halliday, had the muscle to call this meeting shouldn’t have surprised her. But that the president was asking her to consider a takeover from the Pentagon was outrageous and, quite frankly, frightening.

Without even glancing at the toxic papers, she squared her shoulders. “Sir, this proposal is irrelevant, at best. I resent Mr. LaValle’s flagrant attempt to expand his intelligence empire at CI’s expense. For one thing, as I’ve detailed, the Pentagon is ill suited to direct, let alone win the trust of our vast array of agents in the field. For another, this coup would set a dangerous precedent for the entire intelligence community. Being under the control of the armed forces will not benefit our intelligence-gathering potential. On the contrary, the Pentagon’s history of flagrant disregard for human life, its legacy of illegal operations combined with well-documented fiscal profligacy, makes it an extremely poor candidate to poach on anyone else’s territory, especially CI’s.”

Only the presence of the president forced LaValle to keep his ire in check. “Sir, CI is in total disarray. It needs to be turned around
ASAP
. As I said, our plan can be implemented today.”

Veronica drew out the thick file detailing her plans for CI. She rose, placed it in the president’s hands. “Sir, I feel duty-bound to reiterate one of the main points of our last discussion. Though I’ve served in the military, I come from the private sector. CI is in need not only of a clean sweep but of a fresh perspective untainted by the monolithic thinking that got us into this insupportable situation in the first place.”

Jason Bourne smiled. “To be honest, tonight I don’t know who I am.” He leaned forward and said very softly, “Listen to me. I want you to take your cell phone out of your handbag without anyone seeing. I want you to call me. Can you do that?”

Moira kept her eyes on his as she found her cell in her handbag, hit the appropriate speed-dial key. His cell phone chimed. He sat back, answered the call. He spoke into the phone as if someone was on the other end of the line. Then he closed the phone, said, “I have to go. It’s an emergency. I’m sorry.”

She continued to stare at him. “Could you act even the least bit upset?” she whispered. His mouth turned down.

“Do you really have to go?” she said in a normal tone of voice. “Now?”

“Now.” Bourne threw some bills on the table. “I’ll be in touch.”

She nodded a bit quizzically, wondering what he’d seen or heard. Bourne went down the stairs and out of the restaurant. Immediately he turned right, walked a quarter block, then entered a store selling handmade ceramics. Positioning himself so that he had a view of the street through the plate-glass window, he pretended to look at bowls and serving dishes.

Outside, people passed by-a young couple, an elderly man with a cane, three young women, laughing. But the man who’d been seated in the back corner of their room precisely ninety seconds after they sat down did not appear. Bourne had marked him the moment he’d come in, and when he’d asked for a table in back facing them, he’d had no doubt: Someone was following him. All of a sudden he’d felt that old anxiety that had roiled him when Marie and Martin had been threatened. He’d lost Martin, he wasn’t about to lose Moira as well.

Bourne, whose interior radar had swept the second-floor dining room every few minutes or so, hadn’t picked up anyone else of a suspicious nature, so he waited now inside the ceramics shop for the tail to amble by. When this didn’t occur after five minutes, Bourne went out the door and immediately strode across the street. Using streetlights and the reflective surfaces of windows and car mirrors, he spent another few minutes scrutinizing the area for any sign of the man at the table in back. After ascertaining he was nowhere to be found, Bourne returned to the restaurant. He went up the stairs to the second floor, but paused in the dark hallway between the staircase and the dining room. There was the man at his rear table. To any casual observer he seemed to be reading the current issue of The Washingtonian, like any good tourist, but every once in a while his gaze flicked upward for a fraction of a second, focused on Moira.

Bourne felt a little chill go through him. This man wasn’t following him; he was following Moira.

As Veronica Hart emerged through the outermost checkpoint to the West Wing, Luther LaValle emerged from the shadows, fell into step beside her.

“Nicely done,” he said icily. “Next time I’ll be better prepared.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Veronica said.

“Secretary Halliday is confident there will be. So am I.”

They had reached the hushed vestibule with its dome and columns. Busy presidential aides strode purposefully past them in either direction. Like surgeons, they exuded an air of supreme confidence and exclusivity, as if theirs was a club you desperately wanted to belong to, but never would.

“Where’s your personal pit bull?” Veronica asked. “Sniffing out crotches, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“You’re terribly flip for someone whose job is hanging by a thread.”

“It’s foolish-not to mention dangerous, Mr. LaValle-to confuse confidence with being flip.”

They pushed through the doors, went down the steps to the grounds proper. Floodlights pushed back the darkness to the edges of the premises. Beyond, streetlights glittered.

“Of course, you’re right,” LaValle said. “I apologize.”

Veronica eyed him with no little skepticism.

LaValle gave her a small smile. “I sincerely regret that we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”

What he really regrets, Veronica thought, is my pulling him and Kendall to pieces in front of the president.Understandable, really.

As she buttoned her coat, he said, “Perhaps both of us have been coming at this situation from the wrong angle.”

Veronica knotted her scarf at her throat outside her collar. “What situation?”

“The collapse of CI.”

In the near distance, beyond the flotilla of heavy reinforced concrete anti-terrorist barriers, tourists strolled by, chatting animatedly, paused briefly to take snapshots, then went on to their dinners at McDonald’s or Burger King.

“It seems to me that more can be gained by us joining forces than by being antagonists.”

Veronica turned to him. “Listen, buddy, you take care of your shop and I’ll take care of mine. I’ve been given a job to do and I’m going to do it without interference from you or Secretary Halliday. Personally, I’m sick and tired of you people extending the line in the sand farther and farther so your empire can grow bigger. CI is off limits to you now and forever, got it?”

LaValle made a face as if he were about to whistle. Then he said, very quietly, “I’d be a bit more careful if I were you. You’re walking across a knife-edge. One false step, one hesitation, and when you fall no one’s going to be there to catch you.”

Her voice turned steely. “I’ve had my fill of your threats, too, Mr. LaValle.”

He turned up his collar against the wind. “When you get to know me better, Veronica, you’ll realize I don’t make threats. I make predictions.”

THE
VIOLENCE
of the Black Sea fit Leonid Arkadin down to his steel-tipped shoes. In a tumultuous rain, he drove into Sevastopol from Belbek Aerodrome. Sevastopol inhabited a coveted bit of territory on the southwestern edge of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine. Because the area was blessed with subtropical weather, its seas never froze. From the time of its founding by Greek traders as Chersonesus in 422 BC, Sevastopol was a vital commercial and military outpost for fishing fleets and naval armadas alike. Following the decline of Chersonesus-“peninsula,” in Greek-the area fell into ruin until the modern-day Sevastopol was founded in 1783 as a naval base and fortress on the southern boundaries of the Russian Empire. Most of the city’s history was linked to its military glory-the name Sevastopol translated from Greek means “august, glorious.” The name seemed justified: The city survived two bloody sieges during the Crimean War of 1854-1855 and World War Two, when it withstood Axis bombing for 250 days. Although the city was destroyed on two different occasions, it had risen from the ashes both times. As a result, the inhabitants were tough, no-nonsense people. They despised the Cold War era, dating to roughly 1960 when, because of its naval base, the
USSR

ordered Sevastopol off limits to visitors of all kinds. In 1997 the Russians agreed to return the city to the Ukrainians, who opened it again.

It was late afternoon when Arkadin arrived on Primorskiy Boulevard. The sky was black, except for a thin red line along the western horizon. The port bulged with roundhulled fishing ships and sleek steel-hulled naval vessels. An angry sea lashed the Monument to Scuttled Ships, commemorating the 1855 last-ditch defense of the city against the combined forces of the British, French, Turks, and Sardinians. It rose from a bed of rough granite blocks in a Corinthian column three yards high, crowned by an eagle with wings spread wide, its proud head bent, a laurel wreath gripped in its beak. Facing it, embedded in the thick seawall, were the anchors of the Russian ships that were deliberately sunk to block the harbor from the invading enemy. Arkadin checked into the Hotel Oblast where everything, including the walls, seemed to be made of paper. The furniture was covered in fabric of hideous patterns whose colors clashed like enemies on a battlefield. The place seemed a likely candidate to go up like a torch. He made a mental note not to smoke in bed.

Downstairs, in the space that passed for a lobby, he asked the rodent-like clerk for a recommendation for a hot meal, then requested a telephone book. Taking it, he retired to an understuffed upholstered chair by a window that overlooked Admiral Nakhimov Square. And there he was on a magnificent plinth, the hero of the first defense of Sevastopol, staring stonily at Arkadin, as if aware of what was to come. This was a city, like so many in the former Soviet Union, filled with monuments to the past. With a last glance at slope-shouldered pedestrians hurrying through the driving rain, Arkadin turned his attention to the phone book. The name that Pyotr Zilber had given up just before he’d committed suicide was Oleg Shumenko. Arkadin dearly would have loved to have gotten more out of Zilber. Now Arkadin had to page through the phone book looking for Shumenko, assuming the man had a landline, which was always problematic outside Moscow or St. Petersburg. He made note of the five Oleg Shumenkos listed, handed the book back to the clerk, and went out into the windy false dusk.

The first three Oleg Shumenkos were of no help. Arkadin, posing as a close friend of Pyotr Zilber’s, told each of them that he had a message from Pyotr so urgent it had to be transmitted in person. They looked at him blankly, shook their heads. He could see in their eyes they had no idea who Pyotr Zilber was.

The fourth Shumenko worked at Yugreftransflot, which maintained the largest fleet of refrigerated ships in Ukraine. Since Yugreftransflot was a public corporation, it took Arkadin some time just to get in to see Shumenko, who was a transport manager. Like everywhere in the former
USSR
, the red tape was enough to grind all work to a near halt. How anything got done in the public sector was beyond Arkadin. At length, Shumenko appeared, led Arkadin to his tiny office, apologizing for the delay. He was a small man with very dark hair and the small ears and low forehead of a Neanderthal. When Arkadin introduced himself, Shumenko said, “Obviously, you have the wrong man. I don’t know a Pyotr Zilber.”

Arkadin consulted his list. “I only have one more Oleg Shumenko left.”

“Let me see.” Shumenko consulted the list. “Pity you didn’t come to me first. These three are my cousins. And the fifth, the one you haven’t seen yet, won’t be of any use to you. He’s dead. Fishing accident six months ago.” He handed back the list. “But all isn’t lost. There’s one other Oleg Shumenko. Though we’re not related, people are always getting us confused because we have the same patronymic, Ivanovich. He doesn’t have a landline, which is why I’m constantly getting his calls.”