Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

Willard had witnessed Bud Halliday’s meetings with the Middle Eastern gentleman whom Willard had subsequently identified as Jalal Essai. This was information he’d had when he met with Benjamin El-Arian. He didn’t know whether El-Arian was aware of the liaison, but in any event he wasn’t about to tell him. Some information was meant to be shared only with the right person.

And that person appeared now, right on time, flanked by his bodyguards like a Roman emperor.

M. Errol Danziger came over to where Willard sat and slid into the ancient banquette. Its stained and ripped Naugahyde skin spoke of decades’ worth of benders.

“This is a real shithole,” Danziger said. He looked like he wished he’d worn a full-body condom. “You’ve slid down in the world since you left us.”

They were sitting in an anonymously named rheumatic bar-and-grill off one of the expressways that linked Washington with Virginia. Only pub-crawlers of a certain age and liver toxicity found it inviting; everyone else ignored it as the eyesore it was. The place stank of sour beer and months-old frying oil. It was impossible to say what colors its walls were painted. An old nondigital juke played Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, but no one was dancing or, by the looks of them, listening. Someone at the end of the bar groaned.

Willard rubbed his hands together. “What can I get you?”

“Out of here,” Danziger said, trying not to breathe too deeply. “The sooner the better.”

“No one we know or who’d recognize us would come within a country mile of this cesspit,” Willard said. “Can you think of a better place for us to meet?”

Danziger made a disagreeable face. “Get on with it, man.”

“You’ve got a problem,” Willard said without further preamble.

“I’ve got a lot of problems, but they’re none of your business.”

“Don’t be so hasty.”

“Listen, you’re out of CI, which means you’re nobody. I agreed to this meet out of-I don’t know what-acknowledgment of your past services. But now I see it was a waste of time.”

Willard, unruffled, would not be taken off topic. “This particular problem concerns your boss.”

Danziger sat back as if trying to get as far away from Willard as the banquette would allow.

Willard spread his hands. “Care to listen? If not, you’re free to leave.”

“Go ahead.”

“Bud Halliday has, shall we say, an off-the-reservation relationship with a man named Jalal Essai.”

Danziger bristled. “Are you trying to blackmail-?”

“Relax. Their relationship is strictly business.”

“What’s that to me?”

“Everything,” Willard said. “Essai is poison for him, and for you. He’s a member of a group known as Severus Domna.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Very few people have. But it was someone in Severus Domna who got Justice to take another look at Oliver Liss and incarcerate him while it’s investigating.”

A drunk began to wail, trying to duet with Connie Francis. One of Danziger’s gorillas went over to him and shut him up.

Danziger frowned. “Are you saying the US government takes orders from-what? — can I assume from this one name that Severus Domna is a Muslim organization?”

“Severus Domna has members in virtually every country around the globe.”

“Christian and Muslim?”

“And, presumably, Jewish, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, whatever other religion you’d care to name.”

Danziger snorted. “Preposterous! It’s absurd to think of men from different religions agreeing on a day of the week to meet, let alone working together in a global organization. And for what?”

“All I know is that its objectives are not our objectives.”

Danziger reacted as if Willard had insulted him. “ Our objectives? You’re a civilian now.” He made the word sound ugly and demeaning.

“The head of Treadstone can hardly be classified as a civilian,” Willard said.

“Treadstone, huh? Better to call it Headstone. ” He laughed raucously. “You and Headstone are nothing to me. This meeting is terminated.”

As he began to slide out of the banquette, Willard played his ace. “Working with a foreign group is treason, which is punishable by execution. Imagine the ignominy, if you live that long.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Imagine you in a world without Bud Halliday.”

Danziger paused. For the first time since he walked in, he seemed unsure of himself.

“Tell me this,” Willard continued, “why would I waste our time on nonsense, Director? What would I have to gain?”

Danziger subsided back onto the banquette. “What do you have to gain by telling me this fairy tale?”

“If you thought it was a fairy tale, I would be talking to myself.”

“Frankly, I don’t know what to think,” Danziger said. “For the moment, however, I’m willing to listen.”

“That’s all I ask,” Willard said. But, of course, it wasn’t. He wanted much more from Danziger, and now he knew he was going to get it.

On the way back to the office, Karpov had his driver pull over. Out of sight of everyone, he vomited into a clump of tall grass. It wasn’t that he’d never killed anyone before. On the contrary, he’d shot a great many miscreants. What made his stomach rebel was the situation he was in, which felt like the underbelly of a rotting fish or the bottom of a sewer. There must be some way out of the coffin he found himself in. Unfortunately, he was caught between President Imov and Viktor Cherkesov. Imov was a problem all rising siloviks had to deal with, but now he was beholden to Cherkesov and he was certain that sooner or later Cherkesov would ask him for a favor that would curl his toes. Looking into the future, he could see those favors multiplying, taking a toll until they shredded him completely. Clever, clever Cherkesov! In giving him what he wanted, Cherkesov had found the one way around his, Karpov’s, incorruptibility. There was nothing to do but what good Russian soldiers had done for centuries: Put one foot in front of the other and move forward through the mounting muck.

He told himself this was all in a good cause-getting rid of Maslov and the Kazanskaya was surely worth any inconvenience to him. But that was like saying I was only following orders, and depressed him further.

He returned to the backseat of his car, brooding and murderous. Five minutes later his driver missed a turn.

“Stop the car,” Karpov ordered.

“Here?”

“Right here.”

His driver stared at him in the rearview mirror. “But the traffic-”

“Just do as you’re told!”

The driver stopped the car. Karpov got out, opened the driver’s door, and, reaching in, hauled the man out from behind the wheel. Unmindful of the honking horns and squealing brakes of the vehicles forced to detour around them, he bounced the driver’s head off the side of the car. The driver slid to his knees, and Karpov drove a knee into his chin. Teeth came flying out of the driver’s mouth. Karpov kicked him several times as he lay on the pavement, then he slid behind the wheel, slammed the door shut, and took off.

I should have been an American, he thought as he wiped his lips over and over with the back of his hand. But he was a patriot, he loved Russia. It was a pity Russia didn’t love him back. Russia was a pitiless mistress, heartless and cruel. I should have been an American. Inventing a melody, he sang this phrase to himself as if it were a lullaby, and in fact it made him feel marginally better. He concentrated on bringing down Maslov and how he would reorganize FSB-2 when Imov named him director.

His first order of business, however, was dealing with the three moles inside FSB-2. Armed with the names Bukin had vomited up, he parked the car in front of the nineteenth-century building housing FSB-2 and trotted up the steps. He knew the directorates that the moles worked in. On the way up in the elevator, he took out his pistol.