Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

“And you’re part of the fuckup.”

Marks sighed. “Actually, I’m hoping to be part of the solution.”

“Really? And how would that work?”

“Liss wants something you have-a ring.”

Everyone wants the Dominion ring, Bourne thought, but he remained silent.

“I was supposed to get it from you.”

“I’d be curious to know how you were going to do that.”

“To be honest, I don’t have a clue,” Marks said, “and I’m no longer interested in that.”

Bourne was silent.

Marks nodded. “You have a right to be skeptical. But I’m telling you the truth. Willard called just before I arrived at the house. He told me the mission had changed, that I was now to get you to Tineghir.”

“In southeast Morocco.”

“Ouarzazate, to be precise. Apparently, Arkadin is being brought there, too.”

Bourne was silent for so long Marks felt compelled to say, “What are you thinking?”

“That Oliver Liss is no longer calling the shots at Treadstone.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Liss would no more order you to get me to Ouarzazate than he would open a vein.” He looked at Marks. “No, Peter, something’s changed radically.”

“I felt that myself, but what?” Marks took out his PDA and went on a number of government news sites. “Jesus,” he said at last, “Liss was taken into custody by the Department of Justice pending an investigation into his role in illegal Black River dealings.” He looked up. “But he was cleared of those charges weeks ago.”

“I told you something’s radically changed,” Bourne said. “Willard is taking orders from another source.”

“It has to be someone very high up the food chain to get the investigation reopened.”

Bourne nodded. “And now you’re as much in the dark as I am. It looks like your boss sold you down the river without even a second’s thought.”

“Frankly, this comes as no surprise.” Marks rubbed his leg. His pain-filled exhale was a whistle of protest.

“There’s a doctor in London who’ll be discreet about the gunshot wound.” Bourne put the car in gear and, checking for traffic, pulled out onto the road. “Just so you know, Diego led me into a trap. There were enemies waiting for me at the club.”

“Did Moreno have to kill him?”

“We’ll never know now,” Bourne said. “But Ottavio saved my life back there. He didn’t deserve to be shot down like a dog.”

“Which brings me to who the hell was firing at us.”

Bourne told him about Severus Domna and Jalal Essai without going into detail about Holly.

“I was attacked in London. I pulled an odd gold ring off the forefinger of my assailant’s right hand.” He fished around in his pockets. “Shit, I seem to have lost it.”

“Scarlett found it. I gave it to her as a souvenir,” Bourne said. “Every member of Severus Domna carries one.”

“So this is all about an old Treadstone mission.” Marks seemed to consider the implications for a moment. “Do you know why Alex Conklin wanted the laptop?”

“No idea,” Bourne said, though he thought he did know now. Was there anyone besides Soraya and Moira he could trust? Though he knew Soraya and Peter were good friends he still didn’t know whether he could trust Marks.

Marks shifted uncomfortably. “There’s something I need to tell you. I’m afraid I roped Soraya into joining Treadstone.”

Bourne knew that Typhon could not run successfully without her, so he assumed that Danziger was systematically dismantling the old CI and remaking it in the image of Bud Halliday’s beloved NSA. Not that it was any of his concern. He hated and distrusted all espionage agencies. But he knew the good work that Typhon had accomplished under its original director, and later under Soraya. “What is Willard having her do?”

“You won’t like this.”

“Don’t let that stop you.”

“Her mission is to get close to Leonid Arkadin and the laptop.”

“The same laptop that Conklin had me steal from Jalal Essai?”

“That’s right.”

Bourne wanted to laugh, but then Marks would ask questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Instead he said, “Was it your idea for Soraya to get close to Arkadin?”

“No, it was Willard’s.”

“Took him some time to come up with it?”

“He told me about it the day after I recruited her.”

“So chances are he had the assignment in mind for her when he asked you to recruit her.”

Marks shrugged, as if he couldn’t see how it mattered.

But it mattered very much to Bourne, who saw in Willard’s thinking a pattern. All the air went out of him. What if Soraya wasn’t the first female Treadstone had recruited to keep an eye on its first graduate? What if Tracy had been working for Treadstone? Everything fit. The only reason Tracy would lie, deliberately putting herself in Arkadin’s power, was so that he would hire her and keep her close, allowing her to pass on intel about both his whereabouts and his business ventures. A brilliant plan, which had worked until Tracy had been killed in Khartoum. Then Arkadin had vanished again. Willard needed a way to regain contact, so he had resorted to a tried-and-true Treadstone tactic. Arkadin used women like dish towels. They would be the last people he would suspect of keeping tabs on him.

“Soraya found him, I take it.”

“She’s with him now in Sonora and knows what to do,” Marks said. “Do you think she can get him to Tineghir?”

“No,” Bourne said. “But I can.”

“How?”

Bourne smiled, remembering the entry in Noah Perlis’s notebook. “I’ll need to text her the information. She’ll know what to do with it.”

They were in the outskirts of London now. Bourne got off the motorway at the next exit and pulled over in a side street. Marks handed him his PDA and recited Soraya’s number. Bourne punched it in, then pressed the SMS button, composed the text, and sent it.

After returning Marks’s PDA, he resumed driving. “I don’t know how it’s happened,” he said, “but Severus Domna is running Willard and Treadstone.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Jalal Essai is Amazigh. He comes from the High Atlas Mountains.”

“Ouarzazate.”

“So is Willard taking orders from Essai or Severus Domna?”

“For the moment it doesn’t matter,” Bourne said, “but my money’s on Severus Domna. I doubt Essai has the clout to get Justice to take Liss into custody.”

“Because Essai has broken away from Severus Domna, right?”

Bourne nodded. “Which makes the situation that much more interesting.” He made a left turn, then a right. They were now on a street of neat, white Georgian row houses. A Skye terrier, industriously sniffing at steps, led his master along the pavement. The doctor was three houses down. “It’s not often my enemies are at each other’s throats.”

“I take it you’re going to Tineghir, despite the danger. That couldn’t have been an easy decision.”

“You have your own tough decision to make,” Bourne said. “If you want to stay in this business, Peter, you’ll have to return to DC to take care of Willard. Otherwise, one way or another, he’ll wind up destroying you and Soraya.”

FREDERICK WILLARD KNEW about the White Knights Lounge. He’d known about it for some time, ever since he had started compiling his own private dossier on Secretary of Defense Halliday. Bud Halliday possessed the kind of arrogance that all too often brings men of his lofty status down into the dust with the rest of the peons who painfully labor over their lives. These men-like Halliday-have become so inured to their power, they believe themselves above the law.