Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

“You say that as if it were alive.”

She turned back to him. “In a sense it was, because it was connected with that man.”

“Arkadin.”

“She never told me his name. From what I could gather he gave her extremely dangerous assignments, but he paid her so well she accepted them all, at least that’s what she told me.”

“You didn’t believe her?”

“Oh, I believed her, all right, when we were young we made a pact never to lie to each other.” Her hair was a shade darker than her sister’s, and thicker, lush even, and her face was a bit less angular, softer, more open. It was also more careworn. She moved more quickly than Tracy, or perhaps it was that she moved in nervous bursts as if set off by a series of tiny interior explosions. “The problem arose when we grew up. I’m positive there were a great many things about her private life she refused to share.”

“You didn’t push it.”

“Secrecy was her choice,” she said defensively. “I honored her wishes.”

He followed her back into the bedroom. She stood looking around as if dazed, as if she’d lost her sister and now inexplicably couldn’t find her. Light slanting in through the window was splintered in lozenges and rectangles by the pear tree. It was mellow, toned, like the surface of a sepia print. She moved into one of those luminous geometric shapes now.

Her arms wound around her waist as if she were trying to hold in her emotions. “But of one thing I’m quite certain. That man’s a monster, she’d never have worked for him voluntarily. I’m sure he must have had something on her.”

An echo of his own suspicions. Maybe she had something to tell him after all. “Can you think of what it might be?”

“I already told you, Trace was the most secretive person on earth.”

“So there was nothing, no odd response to your questions, nothing of that nature.”

“No.” Chrissie drew the word out into two syllables. “I mean there was one thing, but, well, it’s kind of ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? How so?”

“I remember one time we were together and, for once, there didn’t seem to be anything to talk about after I’d exhausted the news about me. I was bored with all that, anyway, it was old news to me. I guess I got a bit frustrated, because I said, laughing, you know, something about was she hiding someone up her sleeve.”

Bourne cocked his head. “And?”

“Well, I mean she didn’t think it was funny, did she? She didn’t laugh, that’s for sure. I’d meant a boyfriend or a husband but she said, quite fiercely, that I was the only family she had.”

“You don’t think-”

“No, I don’t,” Chrissie said emphatically. “That wouldn’t be like her at all. She didn’t get on well with Mum and Dad, she was offended by everything about them. And they were deeply offended by her rebelliousness. I was the good daughter. I became a professor at Oxford, following in my father’s footsteps. But Trace… God only knows what they thought she was up to. Anyway, from the time she was thirteen or so they would fight like cats and dogs, until one day she stormed out of the house and never went back. No, I can tell you that she didn’t want a family of her own.”

“And you find that sad.”

“No,” Chrissie said, rather defiant. “I find it admirable.”

Well, at least we get to go after Bourne,” Marks said. “That’s some consolation, he’s one half of the Treadstone equation, isn’t he?”

“Don’t be dense,” Willard snapped. “Liss didn’t even bother to mention it as a peace offering because he knew I’d laugh in his face. He knows I’m the only person on earth-at least one under his control-who can get to Bourne without having his neck or back broken. No, he planned this out from the beginning, it was his whole reason for agreeing to back Treadstone in the first place, and I played right into his hand.”

“That’s a pretty damn high price to pay for a ring,” Marks said. “It must be very rare, costly, or important.”

“I’d like to have another look at that photo of the engraving,” Willard mused. “That’s our best chance of finding out something about the ring, since Liss won’t tell us.”

They had been walking across the Mall, from the Washington Monument toward the Lincoln Memorial, hands in overcoat pockets, backs bowed against the wind, but at the last instant they had decided to make a detour to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Along the way they had, each in his own way, checked for tags and tails. They didn’t trust anyone, least of all Oliver Liss.

They stopped, and Willard stared at the wall, somber in its eternal shadows, sighed deeply, and closed his eyes. A small, secret smile crept across his lips with the stealth of a cat. “He thinks he’s checkmated me, but I’ve got a queen he can’t control.”

Marks shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Willard’s eyes popped open. “Soraya Moore.”

Marks looked at him, alarmed. “Oh, no.”

“I told you to try to recruit her and you did.”

A pair of vets in uniform, one pushing the other, who was in a wheelchair, came down the long, graceful ramp into the full majesty of the wall and stopped in front of the names. The vet in the wheelchair was without legs. He handed his friend a small bouquet and a miniature American flag on a wooden stand. His friend laid them at the foot of the wall where their compatriots’ names were engraved for all time.

There was a glitter in Willard’s eyes as he turned away from the scene. “I have her first assignment: Find Leonid Arkadin.”

“You said you’d lost him,” Marks pointed out. “Where is she going to start looking?”

“That’s her problem,” Willard said. “She’s a smart girl, I’ve been following her career since she came to prominence at Typhon.” He smiled. “Have a little faith, Peter. She’s first-rate material, plus, she’s got a built-in advantage over you or me. She’s a very good-looking female-highly desirable-which means Arkadin will have her scent before she comes within a block of him.”

His brain was traveling at speed in its own peculiar orbit. “I want her with him, Peter. I want her attached to Arkadin, she’s going to tell me what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.”

The two vets’ heads were bowed, locked within their private memories as tourists and relatives of other fallen filed by, some touching names here and there. A Japanese tour leader, yellow pennant held high, gathered her photo-clicking flock to her.

Marks ran a hand through his hair. “You can’t expect me-What? Jesus, you want me to pimp her out?”

Willard looked like he was sucking on a lemon. “Since when did you become a Boy Scout? Not in CI, surely. The Old Man would’ve had your heart for lunch.”

“She’s a friend of mine, Fred. Longtime.”

“There are no friends in this business, Peter, just the bitterly oppressed. I am Liss’s slave and you are mine and she is yours. That’s how it works.”

Marks looked as glum as Willard had at the end of their breakfast with Liss.

“You will give her her assignment before we leave for the airport-” Willard glanced at his watch. “-which gives you less than six hours to prep for London and do the deed.” His smile was all teeth. “More than enough time for a clever fellow like you, wouldn’t you say?”

TIME FOR ME to go,” Bourne said. “We should both get some sleep.”

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Chrissie said and, with a bleak smile, sang, “Bad dreams in the night.” She cocked her head inquiringly. “Kate Bush. Do you know her songs?”

“That’s from ‘Wuthering Heights,’ isn’t it?”