Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

Arkadin gestured. Soraya dragged the struggling boy to the edge of the roof and pushed his head over the side.

Idir made a move toward his son, but Arkadin waggled the Magpul, shaking his head.

“So you see death has many aspects,” Arkadin said, “and eventually fear comes to us all.”

And so at last the knives came fully out of their sheaths. Bourne came down off the roof when he heard the two shots. And now, as he saw Arkadin push Idir Syphax along in front of him, he came to meet them. Bourne and Arkadin stared at each other as if they were opposing agents about to exchange prisoners at the edge of no-man’s-land.

“Soraya?” Bourne said.

“On the rooftop with the boy,” Arkadin said.

“You didn’t hurt him?”

Arkadin glanced at Idir, then shot Bourne a disgusted look. “If I’d had to, I would have.”

“That wasn’t our deal.”

“Our deal,” Arkadin said tersely, “was to get this job done.”

Idir fidgeted in the tense silence, his eyes darting from one man to the other. “You two need to get your priorities straight.”

Arkadin struck him across the face. “Shut the fuck up.”

At length, Bourne handed Arkadin the laptop in its protective case. Then he took hold of Idir and said, “You’ll lead us inside. You’ll be the first through every barrier, electronic or otherwise.” He produced his cell phone. “I’m in constant touch with Soraya. Anything goes wrong…” He waggled the cell.

“I understand.” Idir’s voice was dull, but his eyes burned with hatred and rage.

He led them around to the front door, which he unlocked with a pair of keys. The moment they entered, he punched a code into a keypad set into the wall to the left of the door.

Silence.

A dog barked, unnaturally loud in the night, and in that highly charged atmosphere moonlight seemed to strike the house with the sound of sleet.

Idir coughed and turned on the lights. “Motion detectors come first, then the infrareds.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small remote control. “I can turn them both off from here.”

“Without the generator everything goes down,” Bourne said. “Take us to it.”

But when Idir started in one direction, Bourne said, “Not that way.”

A look of terror crossed Idir’s face. “You’ve been talking to Tanirt.” Breathing her name, he shuddered.

“If you know the way,” Arkadin said irritably, “what the fuck do we need him for?”

“He knows how to shut down the generator without it blowing the building to bits.”

That sobering news shut Arkadin up for the moment. Idir reversed directions, taking them on a route that skirted the outer rooms. They came to the first motion detector, its red eye blank and dark.

They passed it, Idir going first, as usual. They reached a door and Idir unlocked it. Another corridor unfolded like a fan, turning first this way, then that. Bourne was put in mind of the chambers of the great pyramids in Giza. Another door loomed before them. This, too, Idir unlocked. Another corridor, shorter this time and perfectly straight. They passed no doors. The walls were unadorned, stuccoed a neutral color that looked like flesh. The corridor ended at a third door, this one made of steel. They went through this. Ahead could be dimly seen a spiral staircase descending into darkness.

“Turn on the lights,” Arkadin ordered.

“There is no electricity down there,” Idir said. “Only torches.”

Arkadin lunged at him but Bourne blocked his path.

“Keep him away from me,” Idir said. “He’s a lunatic.”

They started down the staircase, unwinding into the darkness. At the bottom Idir lit a reed torch. He handed this to Bourne and reached into a niche in the wall where a wrought-iron basket contained a clutch of torches. He lit a second one.

“Where are the alarm systems?” Bourne asked.

“Too many animals down here,” Idir said.

Arkadin glanced around at the bare poured-concrete floor, which smelled of dust and dried droppings. “What kind of animals?”

Idir pushed forward. In the flickering torchlight the lower level seemed immense. There was nothing to see but flames crackling in the darkness. The smoke thickened the airless atmosphere. All at once they found themselves in a narrow passage. Within forty paces it began to curve, and they followed it around to the right. Once again the walls were doorless, completely blank. The passage kept curving. It seemed to Bourne that they were in a spiral, moving in ever-narrowing concentric circles, and he guessed they were approaching the heart of the building. An unseen weight seemed to press down on them, making breathing difficult, as if they had plunged under a deep subterranean lake.

At last, the corridor ended, opening out into a room roughly in the shape of a pentangle, inasmuch as it had five sides. There was a deep pulsing, like the thrum of a gigantic heart. It filled the room, the vibration stirring the thick air.

“There it is.” Idir nodded toward what seemed like a chunky plinth in the center of the room. On it stood a black basalt statue of the ancient god Baal.

Arkadin whirled on Idir. “What kind of crap is this?”

Idir took a step toward Bourne. “The generator is under the statue.”

Arkadin sneered. “All this idiotic mumbo-jumbo-”

“The missing set of instructions is hidden inside the statue.”

“Ah, that’s more like it.” As Arkadin picked his way toward the statue, Idir moved closer to Bourne.

“It’s clear enough you hate each other,” he whispered. “He moves the statue and a fail-safe packet of C-Four affixed to the side of the generator is activated on a three-minute delay. Even I can’t stop it, but I can lead you out of here in plenty of time. Kill this animal so he won’t harm my son.”

Arkadin was reaching out for the statue. Bourne could sense Idir holding his breath; he was ready to run. Bourne saw this moment clearly: It was the point in time that both Suparwita and Tanirt had somehow foreseen. It was the moment when his rage to revenge Tracy’s death could be sated. The moment when his two warring personalities would finally tear him apart from the inside out, the moment of his own death. Did he believe them? Was there no clear-cut moment in his life? Was everything infused with the unknown of the life he could not remember? He could turn away from the dangers to him, or he could master them. The choice he made now would stay with him, would change him forever. Would he betray Arkadin or Idir? And then he realized that there was no choice at all, his path lay clearly before him as if illuminated by the light of the full moon.

Idir’s plea was clever, but it was irrelevant.

“Leonid, stop!” Bourne called out. “Moving the statue will set off an explosion.”

Arkadin’s outstretched arm froze, his fingertips inches from the statue. He turned his head. “That’s what this sonovabitch told you behind my back?”

“Why did you do that?” Idir’s voice was full of despair.

“Because you didn’t tell me how to turn off the generator.”

Arkadin’s gaze shifted to Bourne. “Why is that so fucking important?”

“Because,” Bourne said, “the generator controls a series of security measures that will stop us from ever leaving here.”

Arkadin stalked over to Idir and backhanded the barrel of his Magpul across the Berber’s face. Idir spat out a tooth along with a thick gout of blood.

“I’m done with you,” he said. “I’m now going to take you apart piece by piece. You’ll tell us what we want to know whether or not you want to. You aren’t afraid of death, but you have already shown me your fear. When I get out of here I’m going to throw Badis off that roof myself.”