Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Sanction

Devra watched Arkadin through the windshield. Then she kicked open her door, went after him. She shaded her eyes against a white sun plastered to a high, pale sky.

“What is it?” she said when she’d caught up to him. “What did I say?”

Arkadin turned a murderous look her way. He appeared to be in a towering rage, just barely holding himself together. Devra found herself wondering what would happen if he let himself go, but she also didn’t want to be in his way when it happened.

She felt an urge to touch him, to speak soothingly until he returned to a calmer state of mind, but she sensed that would only inflame him further. So she went back to the car to wait patiently for him to return.

Eventually he did, sitting sideways on the seat, his shoes on the ground as if he might bolt again.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”

She felt he wanted to say something else, but couldn’t, that whatever it was was too bound up in what had happened to him a long time ago.

“It was a joke,” she said softly. “I was making a stupid joke.”

“There was a time when I would’ve thought nothing of it,” he said, as if talking to himself. “Sex is unimportant.”

She sensed that he was speaking about something else, something only he knew, and she glimpsed just how alone he was. She suspected that even in a crowd, even with friends-if he had any-he’d feel alone. It seemed to her that he’d walled himself off from sexual melding because it would underscore the depth of his apartness. He seemed to her to be a moonless planet with no sun to revolve around. Just emptiness everywhere as far as he could see. In that moment she realized that she loved him.

How long has he been in there?” Luther LaValle asked.

“Six days,” General Kendall replied. He was in his shirtsleeves, which were turned up. That precaution hadn’t been enough to protect them from spatters of blood. “But I guarantee that to him it feels like six months. He’s as disoriented as it’s possible for a human being to be.”

LaValle grunted, peering at the bearded Arab through the one-way mirror. The man looked like a raw piece of meat. LaValle didn’t know or care whether he was Sunni or Shi’a. They were the same to him-terrorists bent on destroying his way of life. He took these matters very personally.

“What’s he given up?”

“Enough that we know the copies of the Typhon intercepts Batt has given us are disinformation.”

“Still,” LaValle said, “it comes straight from Typhon.”

“This man’s very highly placed, there’s no question whatsoever of his identity, and he knows of no plans moving into their final stages to hit a major New York building.”

“That in itself could be disinformation,” LaValle said. “These bastards are masters of that kind of shit.”

“Right.” Kendall wiped his hands on a towel he’d thrown over his shoulder like a chef at the stove. “They love nothing better than to see us running around in circles, chasing our tails, which is what we’ll be doing if we put out an alert.”

LaValle nodded, as if to himself. “I want our best people to follow up on it. Confirm the Typhon intercepts.”

“We’ll do our best, but I feel it my duty to report that the prisoner laughed in my face when I asked him about this terrorist group.”

LaValle snapped his fingers several times. “What are they called again?”

“The Black Lesion, the Black Legion, something like that.”

“Nothing in our database about this group?”

“No, or at any of our sister agencies, either.” Kendall threw the soiled towel into a basket whose contents were incinerated every twelve hours. “It doesn’t exist.”

“I tend to agree,” LaValle said, “but I’d like to be certain.”

He turned from the window, and the two men went out of the viewing room. They walked down a rough concrete corridor painted an institutional green, the buzzing fluorescent tubes that hurled purple shadows on the linoleum floor as they passed. He waited patiently outside the locker room for Kendall to change his clothes; then they proceeded down the corridor. At the end of it they climbed a flight of stairs to a reinforced metal door.

LaValle pressed his forefinger onto a fingerprint reader. He was rewarded by the clicking of bolts being shot, not unlike a bank vault opening.

They found themselves in another corridor, the polar opposite of the one they were leaving. This one was paneled in polished mahogany; wall sconces produced a soft, buttery glow between paintings of historical naval engagements, phalanxes of Roman legions, Prussian Hussars, and English light cavalry.

The first door on the left brought them into a room straight out of a high-toned men’s club, replete with hunter-green walls, cream moldings, leather furniture, antique breakfronts, and a wooden bar from an old English pub. The sofas and chairs were well spaced, the better to allow occupants to speak of private matters. Flames cracked and sparked comfortingly in a large fireplace.

A liveried butler met them before they’d taken three steps on the thick, sound-deadening carpet. He guided them to their accustomed spot, in a discreet corner where two high-backed leather chairs were arranged on either side of a mahogany pedestal card table. They were near a tall, mullioned window flanked by thick drapes, which overlooked the Virginia countryside. This club-like room, known as the Library, was in an enormous stone house that the NSA had taken over decades ago. It was used as a retreat as well as for formal dinners for the generals and directors of the organization. Its lower depths, however, were used for other purposes.

When they had ordered drinks and light refreshments, and were alone again, LaValle said, “Do we have a line on Bourne yet?”

“Yes and no.” Kendall crossed one leg over the other, arranging the crease in his trousers. “As per our previous briefing, he came onto the grid at six thirty-seven last night, passing through Immigration at Dulles. He was booked on a Lufthansa flight to Moscow. Had he showed we could’ve put McNally onto the flight.”

“Bourne’s far too clever for that,” LaValle grumbled. “He knows we’re after him now. The element of surprise has been neutralized, dammit.”

“We managed to discover that he boarded a NextGen Energy Solutions corporate jet.”

Like a hunting dog on alert, Lavalle’s head came up. “Really? Explain.”

“An executive by the name of Moira Trevor was on it.”

“What is she to Bourne?”

“A question we’re trying to answer,” Kendall said unhappily. He hated disappointing his boss. “In the meantime, we obtained a copy of the flight plan. The destination was Munich. Shall I activate a point man there?”

“Don’t waste your time.” LaValle waved a hand. “My money’s on Moscow. That’s where he meant to go, that’s where he’s going.”

“I’ll get right on it.” Kendall opened his cell phone.

“I want Anthony Prowess.”

“He’s in Afghanistan.”

“Then pull him the fuck out,” LaValle said shortly. “Get him on a military chopper. I want him on the ground in Moscow by the time Bourne gets there.”

Kendall nodded, punched in a special encrypted number, and typed the coded text message to Prowess.

LaValle smiled at the approaching waiter. “Thank you, Willard,” he said as the man snapped out a starched white tablecloth, arranged the glasses of whiskey, small plates of nibbles, and cutlery on the table, then departed as silently as he’d come.

LaValle stared at the food. “It seems we’ve backed the wrong horse.”

General Kendall knew he meant Rob Batt. “Soraya Moore witnessed the debacle. She’s put two and two together in short order. Batt told us he knew about Hart’s meet with Bourne because he was in her office when Bourne’s call came in. Other than the Moore woman, who else is she likely to have told? No one. That’ll lead Hart right back to the deputy director.”