Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

“Together we can beat Severus Domna.”

Arkadin snorted. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Think about it. Severus Domna brought us here, it has prepared the house for us, and it believes that when we come together one of us will wind up killing the other.”

“And?”

“And then everything goes according to its plan.” Bourne waited a moment. “Our only chance is to do the unexpected.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Bourne nodded.

“Until he’s not.”

Arkadin placed the Magpul he had been holding onto the table, and Bourne set down the Beretta that Tanirt had given him.

“We’re a team,” Bourne said. “The three of us.”

Arkadin glanced briefly at Soraya. “Spit it out then.”

“First and foremost,” Bourne said, “is a man named Idir Syphax.”

The house crouched in the middle of the block, its flanks rubbing up against those of its neighbors. Night had fallen, swift and complete, like a hood thrown over a head. All around the valley the mountains were pitch black. A bitter wind, knifing through the town, hurried snow crystals or grains of sand across streets and down alleys. The light from the stars was hallucinatory.

Idir Syphax was crouched on a rooftop across the street from the rear of the house. Flanking him were two Severus Domna sharpshooters, their Sako TRG-22 rifles aimed and ready. Idir watched the house as if waiting for his daughter to come home, as if feeling the danger of unknown places spreading its wings, as if the house itself were his child. And, in a way, it was. He had designed the house with advice from Tanirt. “I want to build a fortress,” he had told her. And she had said: “You cannot do better than to follow the plan of the Great Temple of Baal. It was the greatest fortress known to man.” After scrutinizing what she had drawn for him, he had agreed, and he himself had helped to build it. Every board, every nail, every length of rebar, every form of concrete bore the tattoo of his sweat. The house was invented not for people, but for a thing, an idea, an ideal, even; anyway, something intangible. In that sense it was a sacred place, as sacred as any mosque. It was the beginning of all things, and the end. Alpha and omega, a cosmos unto itself.

Idir understood this but others in Severus Domna did not. For Benjamin El-Arian, the house was a Venus flytrap. For Marlon Etana, it was a means to an end. In any event, for them both, the house was a dead thing, a pack animal at best. It was not holy, it was not a gateway to the divine. They did not understand that Tanirt had chosen the spot, using the ancient incantation she possessed and he coveted. He had once asked her what language she was chanting. It was Ugaritic. She said it was spoken by the alchemists of King Solomon’s court, in what is now Syria. That was why she had placed the statue in the very center of the house, the space from which its holiness emanated. He’d had to have it smuggled in because any statues of this sort were strictly forbidden by sharia. And of course, neither Benjamin El-Arian nor Marlon Etana knew of its existence. They’d have had him burned alive as a heretic. But if Tanirt had taught him anything, it was that there were ancient forces-perhaps mysteries was a better term-that had preceded religion, any religion, even Judaism, which were all the inventions of mankind in attempts to come to terms with the terror of death. The origins of the mysteries, Tanirt had told him, were divine, which according to her had nothing to do with man’s conception of God. “Did Baal exist?” she had asked rhetorically. “I doubt it. But something did.”

Save for the wind, the night was still. He knew they were coming, but he didn’t know from where. All attempts to follow them had ended in failure-a failure, he told himself, that was not unexpected. On the other hand, there had been attraction. Arkadin’s three men had been neutralized at the sacrifice of four of his own. These Russians were fierce warriors. Not that it mattered; Arkadin would not gain entrance no matter what he tried. All houses had vulnerabilities that could serve as points of entrance-sewers, for instance, or drains, or the place where the electrical lines came in. Because this house was not designed for people there were no sewers. Because there was no heating or cooling, no refrigerators or ovens to drain electricity, all the electrical systems ran off a giant generator in a shielded room within the house. There was, literally, no way into the house that wouldn’t set off the various alarms, which would in turn trip other security measures.

His son, Badis, had wanted to come, but of course Idir wouldn’t hear of it. Badis still asked about Tanirt even though at eleven he was old enough to know better. Badis remembered only when Tanirt loved his father, or at least said she loved him. Now she engendered in Idir a bone-deep terror that invaded his nights, his very sleep, shattering it with unspeakable nightmares.

It had all gone wrong when he had asked her to marry him and she had denied him.

“Is it because you don’t believe I love you?” he had said.

“I know you love me.”

“It’s because of my son. You think that because I love Badis more than anything I can’t make you happy.”

“It isn’t your son.”

“Then what?”

“If you have to ask,” she had said, “then you will never understand.”

That’s when he had made his fatal mistake. He had confused her with other women. He had tried to coerce her, but the more he threatened her, the larger her stature seemed to grow, until she filled his entire living room, asphyxiating him with her presence. And, gasping, he had fled his own home.

The sounds of the bolt-action Sakos brought his mind back into focus. He peered through the darkness. Was that a shadow flitting across the rooftop of the house? His sharpshooters thought so. In the hallucinatory moonlight there was a blur, then nothing. Utter stillness. And then, out of the corner of his eye, the shadow moved again. His heart leapt. His order for them to fire was already on his lips when from behind him he heard his name being called.

He whirled to see Leonid Arkadin standing spread-legged, an odd-looking boxy weapon in his hand.

“Surprise,” Arkadin said and promptly shot off two sharp bursts from the Magpul that took off the heads of the sharpshooters. They folded like marionettes.

“You do not frighten me,” Idir said. His face and robes were soaked with the blood and brains of his men. “I have no fear of death.”

“For yourself, perhaps.”

Arkadin motioned with his head and the woman, Soraya Moore, appeared out of the shadows. Idir gasped. She herded Badis in front of her.

“Papa!” Badis made a lunge toward his father, but Soraya caught him by the material at the back of his neck and jerked him back to her. “Papa! Papa!”

A look of terrible despair crossed Idir’s dark face.

“Idir,” Arkadin commanded, “throw your men over the parapet.”

Idir looked at him for a moment, dumbstruck. “Why?”

“So your men will know what happened up here, so they will fear the consequences of their actions.”

Idir shook his head.

Arkadin strode over to Badis and stuck the blunt barrel of the Magpul into his mouth. “I pull the trigger and even his own mother won’t recognize him.”

Idir blanched, then glowered impotently. He bent and picked up one of the sharpshooters, but there was so much blood the corpse slipped out of his hands.

Badis stared, wide-eyed and shivering.

Gathering the corpse to him, Idir rolled it onto the parapet. When he dropped it over the edge, they heard the sound it made smacking against the street. Badis shuddered. Quickly now Idir dumped the second corpse down onto the street. Again that thick, almost viscous sound made Badis jump.