Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

Arkadin, breathing deeply of the salt and the phosphorus, punched in a number on his cell. The phone rang for a very long time. Knowing there would be no voice mail, he was about to hang up when a raspy voice sounded in his ear.

“Who in the unholy name of Saint Stephen is this?”

Arkadin laughed. “It’s me, Ivan.”

“Why, hello, Leonid Danilovich,” Ivan Volkin said.

Volkin had once been the most powerful man in the grupperovka. Unaffiliated with any family, he had for many years been a negotiator, both between families and between the bosses of certain families and the most corrupt businessmen and politicians. He was a man, in sum, to whom practically anyone in power owed favors. And though long retired, he had defied convention by becoming even more powerful as his age advanced. He was also particularly fond of Arkadin, whose strange ascent in the underworld he’d followed since the day Maslov had him brought to Moscow from his hometown of Nizhny Tagil.

“I thought you might be the president,” Ivan Volkin said. “I told him I couldn’t help him this time.”

The thought of the president of the Russian Federation calling Ivan Volkin for a favor caused Arkadin to chuckle all the more. “Pity for him,” he said.

“I did some digging regarding your problem as you outlined it to me. You do indeed have a mole, my friend. I was able to narrow the candidates down to two, but that’s as far as I was able to get.”

“That’s more than enough, Ivan Ivanovich. You have my undying gratitude.”

Volkin laughed. “You know, my friend, you’re just about the only person on earth I don’t want anything from.”

“I could give you virtually anything you want.”

“As I well know, but to tell you the truth it’s a relief to have someone in my life who owes me nothing and to whom I owe the same. Nothing changes between us, eh, Leonid Danilovich.”

“No, Ivan Ivanovich, it doesn’t.”

After Volkin had given Arkadin the names of the two suspects, he said, “I have one more bit of information that will be of interest to you. I find it curious that I cannot tie either of these suspects to the FSB or, for that matter, any Russian secret service whatsoever.”

“Then who is running the spy in my organization?”

“Your mole has been extremely careful to keep his identity a secret-he wears dark glasses and a sweatshirt with a hood over his head, so there’s no good photo of him. However, the man he’s been meeting has been identified as Marlon Etana.”

“Odd name.” It rang a bell deep inside Arkadin’s mind, but he was unable to access it.

“Odder still is that I cannot find a single scrap of information on Marlon Etana.”

“Ah, a pseudonym, surely.”

“One would have expected that, yes,” Volkin said. “However, that would mean a legend to give the pseudonym reality. I have found nothing, except that Marlon Etana is a founding member of the Monition Club, which has many branches throughout the world, but whose headquarters seems to be in Washington, DC.”

“A deep-cover arm of CI or one of the many Hydra heads of the American Department of Defense.”

Ivan Volkin made an animal sound deep in his throat. “When you find out, Leonid Danilovich, be sure to let me know.”

Be sure to let me know,” Arkadin had said to Tracy some months ago. “Anything and everything you find out about Don Fernando Hererra, even the most minute, seemingly irrelevant bit of information.”

“Including the regularity of his bowel movements?”

He sat watching her, his feral eyes glittering, not moving, not blinking. They were seated at a café in Campione d’Italia, the picturesque Italian tax haven tucked away in the Swiss Alps. The tiny municipality rose steeply off the glassy ultramarine-blue surface of a clear mountain lake, studded with vessels of all sizes from rowboats to multimillion-dollar yachts, complete with the helipads, the copters, and, on the largest of these, the females to go with them.

For the five minutes before she had arrived, Arkadin had been watching an obscenely large yacht on which two long-stemmed models preened as if for paparazzi. They had the kind of perfectly bronzed skin only the kept woman knows how to acquire. As he sipped a small cup of espresso, which was all but lost in his large, square hand, he thought, It’s good to be the king . Then he saw the naked hairy back of this particular king and turned away in disgust. You can take the man out of hell but you can’t take hell out of the man. This was the operative phrase for Arkadin.

Then Tracy had shown up and he forgot the hell of Nizhny Tagil that plagued him like a recurring nightmare. Nizhny Tagil was where he had been born and raised, where he’d lost three toes to rats when his mother had locked him in a closet, where he had killed and was almost killed so many times he’d lost count. Nizhny Tagil was where he had lost everything, where, one could say, he had died.

He had ordered Tracy an espresso with sambuca, which was what she liked. As he stared into her beautiful face, he continued to be confounded by his conflicting feelings. He was drawn to her, intensely, but he also hated her. He hated her erudition, her vast knowledge. Every time she opened her mouth she reminded him of how little formal education he’d had. And to make matters much worse, he learned something valuable every time he was with her. How often do we despise our teachers, who lord it over us with their superior knowledge, who throw that knowledge and their experience in our faces. Every time he learned something, he was reminded of how inexorably tied to her he was, how much he needed her. Which was why he treated her as a bipolar might. He loved her, rewarded her with more and more money at the completion of each assignment, showered her with gifts between assignments.

She had never slept with him. He hadn’t tried to seduce her, fearing that in the throes of passion his iron control might weaken, that he would grab her by the throat and throttle her until her tongue poked out and her eyes rolled up in her head. He would regret her death. Over the years she had proved indispensable. With the inside knowledge she had given him, he’d been able to blackmail her wealthy art clients, and those he chose not to suborn he used as patsies, delivering drugs all over the world secreted in the crates that held their precious artwork.

Tracy ran the crescent of lemon rind around the rim of her cup. “What’s so special about Don Fernando?”

“Drink your espresso.”

She stared down at her cup but didn’t touch it.

“What’s the matter?” he said at last.

“Let’s skip him, shall we?”

He waited a moment, quietly. Then, suddenly leaning forward, he grasped her knee beneath the table in an agonizing grip. Her head snapped up, her eyes engaged with his.

“You know the rules,” he said with soft menace. “You don’t question assignments, you take them.”

“Not this one.”

“All of them.”

“I like this man.”

“All. Of. Them.”

She stared at him, unblinking.

He despised most of all when she got like this, that enigmatic mask that came down over her face, making him feel like a dim-witted child who had failed to learn how to read properly. “Have you forgotten the damaging evidence I have on you? Do you want me to go to your client and tell him how you accommodated your brother when he stole your client’s painting to cover his debts? Do you really want to spend the next twenty years of your life in prison? It’s more terrible than you can imagine, believe me.”

“I want out,” she said in a strangled voice.

He had laughed. “God, you’re a stupid cow.” Once, just once, he thought, I’d like to make you cry. “There is no out. You signed on, a contract in blood, metaphorically speaking.”