Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

“Noah,” he said with a deep hearty voice. “Welcome home!”

The moment Bourne took his hand the tip of a switchblade was pressed against his jacket in the spot over his right kidney.

“Who the hell are you,” Diego Hererra said.

Bourne’s face held no emotion. “Is this any way for a banker to act?”

“Fuck that.”

“I’m Noah Perlis, just like my passport-”

“The hell you are,” Diego Hererra said flatly. “Noah was killed in Bali by person or persons unknown less than a week ago. Did you kill him?” He dug the point of the switchblade through Bourne’s jacket. “Tell me who you are or I’ll bleed you like a pig at slaughter.”

“Lovely,” Bourne said as he wrapped an arm around Diego Hererra’s knife arm, locking it in place. When the banker tensed, he said, “Make a move and I’ll fracture your arm so badly it will never work right.”

Diego Hererra’s dark eyes blazed with barely suppressed fury. “You fucker!”

“Calm down, Señor Hererra, I’m a friend of your father’s.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Bourne shrugged. “Call him, then. Tell him Adam Stone is in your office.” Bourne had little doubt that Hererra’s father would recognize the alias Bourne had used when he met him in Seville several weeks ago. When Diego Hererra made no sign of acquiescence, Bourne switched tactics. His tone was now distinctly conciliatory. “I was a friend of Noah’s. Some time ago he’d delivered a set of instructions to me. In the event of his death I was to go to his apartment in Belgravia, where I would find in specific places a duplicate of his passport and the key to a safe-deposit box that resides here. He wanted me to take possession of whatever was in the box. That’s all I know.”

Diego Hererra remained unconvinced. “If you were a friend of his, how is it he never spoke of you?”

“I imagine it was to protect you, Señor Hererra. You know as well as I do what a secretive life Noah led. Everything was neatly compartmentalized, friends and associates included.”

“What about acquaintances?”

“Noah had no acquaintances.” This Bourne had intuited from his brief but intense encounters with Perlis in Munich and Bali. “You know that as well as I do.”

Diego Hererra grunted. Bourne was about to add that he’d been a friend of Holly’s, but some sixth sense born of years of experience warned him against it. Instead he added, “Besides, I was a good friend of Tracy Atherton’s.”

This seemed to affect Diego Hererra. “Is that so?”

Bourne nodded. “I was with her when she died.”

The banker’s eyes narrowed. “And where was that?”

“The headquarters of Air Afrika,” Bourne said without a moment’s hesitation. “Seven seventy-nine El Gamhuria Avenue, Khartoum, to be exact.”

“Christ.” At last Diego Hererra relaxed. “That was a tragedy, a first-class tragedy.”

Bourne let go of his arm, and Hererra closed the switchblade, then gestured for them to cross to the clubby nook. As Bourne sat, he stood in front of the bar.

“Even though it’s early, I think we could use a drink.” He poured three fingers of Herradura Seleccion Suprema añejo sipping tequila into two thick old-fashioned glasses, handed one to Bourne, then sat down himself. After they’d both savored the first sip, he said, “What happened at the end, can you tell me?”

“She was delivering a painting,” Bourne said slowly. “She got caught in a crossfire when the offices were raided by Russian security forces who were after Nikolai Yevsen.”

Diego Hererra’s head came up. “The arms smuggler?”

Bourne nodded. “He was using his company, Air Afrika, to pick up and deliver the contraband.”

The banker’s eyes clouded over. “Who was she working for?”

Bourne lifted his glass to his lips, watching Diego’s face carefully without seeming to do so. “A man by the name of Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.” He took another sip of the aged tequila. “Do you know him?”

Diego Hererra frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“Because,” Bourne said slowly and distinctly, “I want to kill him.”

H e’s alive, Leonid Arkadin thought. Vylacheslav Germanovich Oserov didn’t burn to death in that Bangalore hospital corridor. Fuck me, he’s still alive.

He was staring down at a surveillance photo of a man the right side of whose face was horribly disfigured. But I did him some serious hurt, he thought, touching his own leg wound, which was healing nicely, that’s for certain.

He had installed himself in an old convent, dusty and dry as an outdated philosophical text, risen on the outskirts of Puerto Peñasco, a coastal town in the northwest of the Mexican state of Sonora. But then virtually everything in Puerto Peñasco was outdated. An unlovely industrial sprawl, it was redeemed by its broad white beach and warm water.

Puerto Peñasco was off the edge of most people’s maps, but that was only one of the reasons he had chosen it. For another, at this time of the year college students poured across the border from Arizona to take advantage of the surf, the high-rise hotels, and a police force that looked the other way as long as sufficient numbers of American dollars changed hands. With so many young people around, Arkadin felt relatively safe; even if by some means Oserov and his hit squad managed to find him, as they had in Bangalore, they’d stick out like monks on spring break.

How Oserov had tracked him down in India was still a vexing mystery. Yes, Gustavo Moreno’s laptop was safe and he’d been able to reconnect with the remote server that contained the contracts with his arms clients, but half a dozen of his men were gone and, worse, his vaunted security clearly had a hole. Someone within his organization was funneling information to Maslov.

He was about to go down to the beach when his cell phone rang, and because reception was spotty in this odd backwater, he stayed where he was, staring out at tiers of clouds in the west lit like neon signs.

“Arkadin.”

It was Boris Karpov; he felt a certain satisfaction. “Did you keep your destination to yourself?” The pregnant pause was all he needed. “Don’t tell me, no one was there, everything was cleaned out.”

“Who are they, Arkadin? Who are Maslov’s moles inside my organization?”

Arkadin mused for a moment, letting the colonel feel the sharpness of the hook. “I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that, Boris Illyich.”

“What do you mean?”

“You should have gone alone, you should have believed what I told you,” Arkadin said. “Now your end of the bargain has become so much more complicated.”

“What bargain?” Karpov asked.

“Take the next international flight you can get on.” Arkadin watched the sunset splash the clouds with more and more color until they became so supersaturated, they made his eyes throb. Still, he refused to look away, the beauty was overwhelming. “When you arrive at LAX–I assume you know what that is.”

“Of course. It’s the international airport in Los Angeles.”

“When you get to LAX call the number I’m about to give you.”

“But-”

“You want the moles, Boris Illyich, so let’s not equivocate. Just do it.”

Arkadin closed the connection and walked across the sand. Bending over, he rolled up his trousers. He could already feel the wavelets break over his bare feet.

Arkadin may not have killed Tracy himself,” Bourne said, “but he’s the one responsible for her death.”

Diego Hererra sat back for a moment, his glass balanced on one knee as he held it reflectively. “You fell in love with her, didn’t you?” He held up a hand, palm outward. “Don’t even bother answering, everyone fell in love with Tracy, without even trying she had that effect.” He nodded as if to himself. “Speaking for myself, I think that was the part that made it the most devastating. Some women, you know, they’re trying so hard you can practically taste the desperation, and what a turnoff that is. But with Tracy it was another matter entirely. She had…” He snapped his fingers several times. “… what do you call it?”