Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Sanction

“For me to even contemplate what you’re asking, you have to guarantee blanket immunity,” Drew Davis said to Soraya. “Plus, leave our names out of it, unless you want to piss me off-which you don’t-as well as pissing off half the elected officials in the district.”

“You have my word,” Soraya said. “We want these two people, that’s the beginning and the end of it.”

Drew Davis glanced at Kiki, who responded with an almost imperceptible nod.

Now Davis turned to Bev.

“Here’s what you can do and what you can’t do,” Bev said, reacting to her boss’s cue. “I won’t allow anyone on my ranch who’s not there for legitimate purposes-that is, either a patron or a working girl. So forget just barging in there. I do that and tomorrow we have no business left.”

She wasn’t even looking at Drew Davis, but Soraya saw him nod in assent, and her heart fell. Everything depended on their gaining access to the general while he was in the midst of his frolics. Then she had a thought.

“I’ll go in as a working girl,” she said.

“No, you won’t,” Deron said. “You’re known to both the general and Feir. One look at you and they’ll be spooked.”

“They don’t know me.”

Everyone turned their heads to stare at Kiki.

“Absolutely not,” Deron said.

“Ease up there,” Kiki said with a laugh. “I’m not going through with anything. I just need access.” She mimed taking photos. Then she turned to Bev. “How do I get into the general’s private room?”

“You can’t. For obvious reasons the private rooms are sacrosanct. Another rule of the house. And both the general and Feir have chosen their partners for the evening.” She drummed her fingers against Davis’s desktop. “But in the case of the general there is one way.”

Virgil Pelz took Bourne and Petra farther into the bunker’s main tunnel, to a rough-hewn space that opened out into a circle. There were benches here, a small gas stove, a refrigerator.

“Lucky someone forgot to turn off the electricity,” Petra said.

“Lucky my ass.” Pelz settled himself on a bench. “My nephew pays a town official under the table to keep the lights on.” He offered them whiskey or wine, which they refused. He poured himself a shot of liquor, downed it perhaps to fortify himself or to keep himself from sinking back into the shadows. It was obvious he liked having company, that the stimulation of other humans was bringing him out of himself.

“Most of what I’ve already told you about the Black Legion is basic history, if you know where to look, but the key to understanding their success in negotiating the dangerous postwar landscape lies in two men: Farid Icoupov and Ibrahim Sever.”

“I assume this Icoupov you speak of is Semion Icoupov’s father,” Bourne said.

Pelz nodded. “Just so.”

“And did Ibrahim Sever have a son?”

“He had two,” Pelz replied, “but I’m getting ahead of myself.” He smacked his lips, glanced at the bottle of whiskey, then decided against another shot.

“Farid and Ibrahim were the best of friends. They grew up together, each the only sons in large families. Possibly, this is what bonded them as children. The bond was strong; it lasted for most of their lives, but Ibrahim Sever was a warrior at heart, Farid Icoupov an intellectual, and the seeds of discontent and mistrust must have been sown early. During the war their shared leadership worked out just fine. Ibrahim was in charge of the Black Legion soldiers on the Eastern Front; Farid put in place and directed the intelligence-gathering network in the Soviet Union.

“It was after the war when the problems began. Stripped of his duties as commandant of the military end, Ibrahim began to fret that his power was eroding.” Pelz clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Listen, American, if you’re a student of history you know how the two longtime allies and friends Gaius Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus became enemies infected by the ambitions, fears, deceptions, and power struggles of those under their respective commands. So it was with these two. In time, Ibrahim convinced himself-no doubt abetted by some of his more militant advisers-that his longtime friend was planning a power grab. Unlike Caesar, who was off in Gaul when Pompey declared war on him, Farid lived in the next house. Ibrahim Sever and his men came in the night and assassinated Farid Icoupov. Three days later Farid’s son, Semion, shot Ibrahim to death as he was driving to work. In retaliation, Ibrahim’s son, Asher, went after Semion in a Munich nightclub. Asher managed to escape, but in the ensuing hail of gunfire Asher’s younger brother was killed.”

Pelz scrubbed his face with his hand. “You see how it goes, American? Like an ancient Roman vendetta, an orgy of blood of biblical proportions.”

“I know about Semion Icoupov, but not about Sever,” Bourne said. “Where’s Asher Sever now?”

The old man shrugged his thin shoulders. “Who knows? If Icoupov did, Sever would surely be dead by now.”

For a time, Bourne sat silent, thinking about the Black Legion’s attack on the professor, thinking about all the little anomalies that had been piling up in his mind: the oddity of Pyotr’s network of decadents and incompetents, the professor saying it was his idea to have the stolen plans delivered to him via the network, and the question of whether Mischa Tarkanian-and Arkadin himself-was Black Legion. At last, he said, “Virgil, I need to ask you several questions.”

“Yes, American.” Pelz’s eyes looked as bright and eager as a robin’s.

Still, Bourne hesitated. Revealing anything of his mission or its background to a stranger violated every instinct, every lesson he’d been taught, and yet he could see no other alternative. “I came to Munich because a friend of mine-a mentor, really-asked me to go after the Black Legion, first because they’re planning an attack against my country, and second because their leader, Semion Icoupov, ordered his son, Pyotr, killed.”

Pelz looked up, a curious expression on his face. “Asher Sever gathered his power base, which he’d inherited from his father-a powerful intelligence-gathering network strewn across Asia and Europe-and ousted Semion. Icoupov hasn’t been running the Black Legion for decades. If he had, I doubt whether I’d still be down here. Unlike Asher Sever, Icoupov was a man you could reason with.”

“Are you saying that you’ve met both Semion Icoupov and Asher Sever?” Bourne said.

“That’s right,” Pelz said, nodding. “Why?”

Bourne had gone cold as he contemplated the unthinkable. Could the professor have been lying to him all the time? But if so-if he was in fact a member of the Black Legion-why in the world would he entrust the delivery of the attack plans to Pyotr’s shaky network? Surely he would have known how unreliable its members were. Nothing seemed to make sense.

Knowing he had to solve this problem one step at a time, he took out his cell phone, scrolled through the photos, brought up the one the professor had sent of Egon Kirsch. He looked at the two men in the photo, then handed the phone to Pelz.

“Virgil, do you recognize either of these men?”

Pelz squinted, then stood and walked nearer to one of the bare lightbulbs. “No.” He shook his head, then, after a moment’s further scrutiny, his forefinger jabbed at the photo. “I don’t know, because he looks so different…” He returned to where Bourne sat, turned the phone so they could both see the photo, and tapped the figure of Professor Specter. “… but, damn, I’d swear this one is Asher Sever.”

PETER MARKS, chief of operations, was with Veronica Hart in her office, poring over reams of personnel data sheets, when they came for her. Luther LaValle, accompanied by a pair of federal marshals, had swept through CI security, armed with their warrant. Hart had only the briefest of warnings-a phone call from the first set of security guards downstairs-that her professional world was imploding. No time to get out of the way of the falling debris.