Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

22

ON THE ONE-HOUR FLIGHT from Seville to Madrid, Bourne realized that Tracy was no longer wearing her wedding band. When he asked her about it, she plucked it out of her handbag.

— I usually wear it when I‘m traveling to discourage unwanted conversations, she said, — but there‘s no reason to wear it now.

From Madrid they were booked on an Egyptair flight to Cairo. Once there, they were set to be taken to a military airfield just outside the Cairo International Airport, where a charter flight was waiting to fly them to Khartoum. She had already had her visas, and Don Hererra was kind enough to expedite Bourne‘s-still under the name of Adam Stone, of course. He‘d also provided Bourne with a satellite phone, because his cell would have only spotty coverage in Africa.

As Tracy put the ring away, she brought her briefcase onto her lap. -I‘m sorry about that call to Professor Zuiga.

— Why? It wasn‘t your fault.

She sighed. -I‘m afraid it was. With a sheepish look, she opened the briefcase. -I‘m afraid I have a rather awful confession to make. She took out the sheets Bourne had already seen: the X-rays of the Goya and the letter from the professor.

As she handed them over, she said, — You see, I‘d already met him. Those are the X-rays he took, that‘s his letter authenticating the Goya. He was really very excited by the find-so much so, in fact, that he actually wept when I took it away from him.

Bourne turned his laser gaze on her. -Why didn‘t you tell me this in the first place?

— I thought you were a rival. I was under strict orders to avoid a bidding war at all costs. So you can see why I didn‘t want to reveal anything that would drive up the price.

— And later?

She sighed again, taking the sheets back and stowing them carefully away.

— Later, it was already too late. I didn‘t want to admit that I‘d lied to you, especially after you‘d saved us both at the corrida.

— That was my fault, he said. -I should never have involved you in my dealings.

— It makes no difference now. As it turns out, I am involved.

That was hard to argue with. Still, he didn‘t like her traveling with him to Khartoum, to the heart of Nikolai Yevsen‘s arms empire, into what must certainly be the center of the web he‘d been thrust into by the bullet that almost killed him. Khartoum was where Yevsen‘s headquarters lay, at 779 El Gamhuria Avenue. According to Tracy, that was where Noah Perlis was going to accept the Goya. From what Don Hererra said it was also likely that Boris Karpov was there; last month, he‘d told Bourne he‘d just come back from Timbuktu, in Mali, and now Bourne had seen the photos, had heard the tape of Boris bartering a deal with Bud Halliday. Bourne still hadn‘t figured out how he would handle a situation where a trusted friend was the man who was trying to kill him. The question of the Torturer still nagged at him. Why would Boris hire someone else when he could go after Bourne himself?

— But speaking of lying, Tracy said now, — why did you lie to me about why you really wanted to see Don Hererra?

— Would you have taken me to see him if I‘d told you the truth?

— Probably not. She smiled. -So now that we‘ve admitted our mistakes, why don‘t we start fresh?

— If you wish.

She gave him a pensive look. -Would you rather not?

He laughed. -All I meant was that lying comes easily to both of us.

It took a moment but color rose to her cheeks. -My line of work-and clearly yours-is infested with unscrupulous people, con men, swindlers, even violent criminals. Hardly surprising since, these days especially, artwork commands such astronomical prices. I‘ve had to learn methods of protection against these dangers, one of which is becoming a convincing liar.

— I couldn‘t have said it better myself, Bourne said.

They broke off the conversation as a flight attendant approached to ask them what they‘d like to drink.

When she‘d brought what they‘d ordered, Bourne said, — I have to wonder why you‘re working for Noah Perlis.

She shrugged and sipped at her champagne. -He‘s a paying client like any other.

— I wonder whether that‘s the truth or a lie?

— It‘s the truth. At this stage, I have nothing to gain by lying to you.

— Noah Perlis is a very dangerous individual who works for an ethically unsound company.

— Perhaps, but his money is as good as the next person‘s. What Noah does is none of my business.

— It is if it brings you into the line of fire.

Tracy‘s frown deepened. -But why should it? This is a straightforward job, pure and simple. I think you‘re reacting to shadows that aren‘t there.

When it came to Noah Perlis, no job was straightforward. Bourne had learned that from Moira. But he felt nothing would be served in continuing this topic with Tracy. If Noah was playing her, he‘d find out soon enough. He was disturbed by the insertion of Noah Perlis‘s name in the mix. Nikolai Yevsen was a top arms dealer, Dimitri Maslov, the head of the Kazanskaya mob; he could explain away even Boris‘s tangential involvement. But what was Noah Perlis, a high-level operative of Black River, doing with these unsavory Russian criminals?

— What is it, Adam, you look perplexed?

— I had no idea, Bourne said, — that Noah Perlis was an art collector.

Tracy frowned. -Do you think I‘m lying?

— Not necessarily, he said. -But I‘m willing to bet someone is.

Arkadin received the call from Triton right on schedule. The pestilential Noah might be arrogant, patronizing, disrespectful, possessive of his power and his influence, but at least he was punctual. A sad victory, really, because it was so minuscule to everyone but himself. He was a man for whom mystery was important enough that it had taken on mythic proportions. In the way Arkadin was a physical chameleon, having learned to remake his face, his gait, his very mien, depending on the role he was playing, so Noah was a vocal chameleon. He could be social and hearty, convincing and ingratiating, anything and everything in between, depending on the role he was playing. It took an actor, Arkadin thought, to mark another actor.

— The president‘s UN address had the desired effect, Noah told Arkadin. Rather than listening, he was always telling Arkadin something. -Not only are the American allies on board, but most of the neutrals and even a couple of the normally antagonistic nations. You have eight hours to finalize the squad‘s training. By then the plane will be on the landing strip, ready to take you to your drop point in the red zone. Are we clear?

— Never clearer, Arkadin said automatically.

He was no longer interested in the drivel Noah was spouting. He had his own plans to go over for the ten thousandth time, the crucial alteration to the joint American-Russian foray into Iran. He knew he‘d only have one shot at victory, only one brief window while the chaos was at its height to implement his plan. Failure never entered his mind, because it would spell certain death for him and for every one of his men.

He was fully prepared, unlike Mischa and Oserov when, on the fly, they‘d created their straw man in an attempt to spring him from his basement prison in Nizhny Tagil.

Word of the increasingly grisly and bizarre murders of Stas‘s men had raced around Nizhny Tagil with such unstoppable virulence that it even filtered down to Arkadin, securely hidden like a rat in the basement of the gang‘s headquarters. The news was disturbing to him, so much so, in fact, that it was the one thing that pried him from his dank and dreary haven. Who could be poaching on his territory? It was his job to make life for Stas‘s gang a living hell; no one else had the right.

So up he went into the thickly hellish atmosphere of Nizhny Tagil. Night shrouded him, along with a noxious ashy drizzle that did little to obscure the skyline‘s fiery beacons: smokestacks belching ferrous sulfur into the air. Like church bells in some other, more salubrious town, the blinding searchlight beams emanating atop the walls of the high-security prisons that ringed the benighted city marked off time at regular, soul-destroying intervals.

Arkadin still thought of it as the late Stas Kuzin‘s gang, even though a moron named Lev Antonin had taken over by dint of brute force. Three men had died violently in his ascent to power-needlessly, as Arkadin well knew, because if you had a brain that worked it wasn‘t difficult to figure out how to finesse your way to being Stas‘s successor. Lev Antonin wasn‘t one of those men, so in some sense he was the right man to lead Kuzin‘s band of cutthroats, sadists, and homicidal dimwits.

It was the death of the gang‘s head enforcer, along with his family, that galvanized Arkadin: You didn‘t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that Lev Antonin was going to be the unknown killer‘s next target. Whoever he was, he was going about his business in methodical fashion. With each victim he was moving up the ladder of the gang‘s hierarchy, the surest way to instill fear even in those who considered themselves inured to fear.

In the dead of night Arkadin approached Lev Antonin‘s house, a large, unspeakably ugly two-story affair that equated brutal modern architecture with style. He spent a good forty minutes reconnoitering the block, checking out the house from all angles, calculating the risk factors involved in every vector of approach. All the security lights had been switched on; the stucco looked flat and two-dimensional in the blue-white glare.

As it happened, there was a half-dead cherry tree on one side of the house. It was an elderly, twisted specimen, as if it were a proud but exhausted veteran of many wars. Halfway up its height, its intertwined branches made a Gordian knot sturdy enough to support several men. They were thick enough that the night caught in its web, repulsing in its sphere even the man-made glare.

As a boy, whenever he managed to escape the prison-like confines of his parents‘ home, Arkadin would climb trees, rocks, hills, and mountains, the steeper the better. The more death defying the more he loved it and the higher he was prodded to climb. If he died in the attempt at least he‘d die on his own terms, doing what he loved, not beaten to death by his mother.

Without hesitation, he mounted the nether side of the tree, where its thick trunk afforded him deep shadow. Climbing hand over hand, he felt once again the old exhilaration he‘d experienced when he was nine and ten, before his mother, discovering him slipping out of the house yet again, had broken his leg.

Once inside the Gordian knot, he paused to survey the scene. He was more or less at the level of the second-story windows, which were, of course, all shut tight against both intruders and the city‘s toxic ash. Not that a closed window was much of a problem for Arkadin; what mattered far more was choosing one that fronted an empty room.

He moved closer, looking through the glass from one darkened room to another. There were four windows, two and two, in line with the second story-

which he guessed meant two rooms, doubtless bedrooms. Lights out didn‘t necessarily guarantee an empty room. Peeling off a bit of bark from the branch nearest his right shoulder, he tossed it against the glass of the second window of the first pair. When nothing happened, he peeled off another piece, larger this time, and threw it harder. It hit the pane with a clearly discernible smack. He waited. Nothing.

Now he made his way through the front half of the Gordian knot until he was almost up against the window pane. Here the knotty branches had been sawed or clipped back, presenting their sheared side to the house. There was a gap of perhaps eighteen inches between the lopped-off stumps and the lightmottled wall of the house into which the windows were set like the dull eyes of a cuboid doll.

As Arkadin set himself in a convenient crotch, he saw his reflection staring back at him as if from out of some mythic, sentient forest. The paleness of his face startled him. It was as if he were looking at a future version of himself who was already dead, a version from whom the fire of life had been suddenly and cruelly drained, not by time but by circumstance. In that face he recognized not himself, but some stranger who had stepped into his life and, like a puppet master, had directed his hands and feet onto a ruinous path. A moment later the image or illusion vanished and, leaning across the gap, he jimmied open the window, slid it up, and clambered silently inside.

He found himself in a very ordinary bedroom with a bedstead, a pair of lamps on nightstands, a dresser, all on a circular hooked rug. Nevertheless, at that moment it looked to him like a room in a sultan‘s palace. He sat on the corner of the bed for a moment, luxuriating in the give of the mattress, inhaling the homey swirl of perfume and body powder, which made him salivate like a beast scenting blood. Oh, for a hot bath, or even a shower!

A narrow floor-length mirror announced the door to a closet, which he opened. He had, quite naturally, a marked aversion to closets, a confined space into which his mother locked him as punishment. But here he steeled himself, reaching in to run his open hand along the downy backs of the hanging clothes: dresses, slips, nightgowns, pale and shimmering as his face had been in reflection. What he breathed in, however, along with traces of perfume and powder was the odor of solitude so familiar to someone like him. In his crummy basement lair this scent was altogether familiar, almost a given, but here in a family home it seemed strange and ineffably sad.

He was just about to turn away and go about his business when he sensed something in the well of darkness below. Tensed and ready for anything, he crouched down and, pushing aside a handful of hideous tweed skirts, perceived a pale oval face rising out of the gloom. It belonged to a small child. They stared at each other for a moment, transfixed. He recalled that Lev Antonin had four children-three girls and a rather sickly boy who, had his father been anyone else, would have had his life made miserable by his peers. It was this very boy whom he now faced, crouched in a closet as he himself had once been.

A sense of loathing for his past overcame even his hatred of Lev Antonin.

— Why are you hiding in here? he whispered.

— Shhh, me and my sisters‘re playing a game.

— They haven‘t found you?

He shook his head, then he grinned fiercely. -And I‘ve been up here a long time.

It was a sound rising up the stairwell from the first floor that refroze them both, a noise so unexpected it intruded upon this momentary and unaccustomed conversation. It was a moan, a female voice caught not in the midst of sex, but in abject terror.

— Stay here, Arkadin said. -Whatever you do, don‘t come downstairs until I come get you, okay?

The boy, clearly frightened now, nodded.

Quitting the bedroom, Arkadin stole along the hall. The lights might have been extinguished all through the second story, but downstairs they blazed like a house on fire. As he approached the wooden balustrade he heard the moan again, more distinctly this time, and now he began to wonder what Lev Antonin could be doing to his wife to cause her such excruciating terror. Where were the other children while Lev Antonin was punishing his wife? No wonder they hadn‘t come upstairs looking for their brother.

Light rose up the stairs in decreasing amounts as Arkadin crept down bent almost double so he wouldn‘t be seen. He was not more than a third of the way down when he was greeted by a strange tableau. A man was standing with his back to Arkadin. In front of him was Joškar, Lev Antonin‘s wife, hog-tied to a ladder-backed kitchen chair. The gag that had been over her mouth was halfway off, hence the moans emanating from her mouth. One eye was swollen and there were cuts on her face out of which drooled smears of blood. Huddled around her, like chicks around a hen, were three of her four children, all of whose ankles were tied together. Thus hobbled, they couldn‘t move and, given the menacing stance of the man looming over them, surely wouldn‘t. Where was Lev Antonin?

The man took a lazy swing at Joškar Antonin‘s head. -Stop your whining,

he said. -Your fate is sealed. No matter what your husband decides, you and these brats- He kicked out, the sharp toe of his shoe making contact with a hip bone here, a rib there. The children, already crying, began to sob in earnest, and their mother moaned again. -You and these brats are finished. Dead, six feet under, get me?

As Arkadin listened to the man‘s manifesto, something important occurred to him. The man, whoever he was, must be an outsider; otherwise he‘d know that one of Lev Antonin‘s children was still free. Could he be the one who had been killing the gang members? At that moment it seemed to Arkadin to be a good bet, one he ought to put his money on.

Retracing his steps, he returned to the bedroom closet, where he instructed Lev Antonin‘s son to come with him, but to stay quiet no matter what happened. Keeping the cringing boy behind him, he went silently down the steps until he was perhaps halfway down. Nothing much had changed in the scene below, except the gag was back in place and there was more blood on Joškar‘s face.

When Lev Antonin‘s son tried to peep out from behind him, Arkadin pushed him back out of sight behind his legs.

Crouching down, he whispered, — Don‘t move until I tell you it‘s okay.

He recognized the look of abject fear in the boy‘s eyes and something tugged at him, an emotion perhaps, buried beneath the silt of his past. Ruffling the boy‘s hair, he stood and drew the Glock he‘d tucked into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back.

Rising to his full height, he said, — Why don‘t you take a step away from those people.

The man whirled around, his face twisted into an ugly mask for a split second before the soon-to-be-familiar smile full of condescension replaced it. Arkadin recognized that expression and what it revealed about the man behind it. Here was a man who lived for subjugation; the blunt instrument he used to gain it: fear.

— Who the fuck‘re you, and how did you get here? Despite being surprised, despite staring down the barrel of a Glock, there wasn‘t an iota of concern either on his face or in his voice.

— My name is Arkadin, and what the fuck‘re you doing here?

— Arkadin, is it? Well, well…

His smile turned smugly ironic. It was the kind of smile, Arkadin thought, that begged to be expunged, preferably with a balled fist.

— My name‘s Oserov. Vylacheslav Germanovich Oserov, and I‘m here to get you the fuck out of this shithole.

— What?

— That‘s right, jerk-off, my boss, Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov, wants you back in Moscow.

— Who the hell is Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov? Arkadin said. -And why should I give a fuck?

At this, Oserov‘s mouth opened and a sound not unlike fingernails drawn down a blackboard emanated from it. With a start, Arkadin realized the other man was laughing.

— You really are a hick. Maybe we should leave you here with all the other cretins. Oserov shook with mirth. -For your information Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov is the head of the Kazanskaya. He cocked his head. -Ever hear of the Kazanskaya, sonny?

— Moscow grupperovka. Arkadin spoke on autopilot. He was in shock. The head of one of the capital‘s premier mob families had heard of him? He had sent Oserov-and presumably someone else, since Oserov had said — we — here to fetch him? Either idea seemed improbable, but taken together the scenario seemed absurd.

— Who else is with you? Arkadin said, trying desperately to recover his wits.

— Mischa Tarkanian. He‘s with Lev Antonin negotiating your safe passage out, not that you seem worth the effort, now that you‘ve made an appearance.

There was no particular reason for Arkadin to believe that Mischa Tarkanian wasn‘t somewhere on the ground floor-in the toilet, perhaps.

— Here‘s what‘s confusing about your story, gospadin Oserov. I‘m wondering why this Maslov sent an incompetent to do a man‘s job?

Before the Muscovite could form a reply, Arkadin reached around behind him, grabbed the boy by the back of his shirt, and brought him into the light. He needed to regain control, and the boy was his ace in the hole.

— Lev Antonin has four children, not three. How could you make such a basic mistake?

Oserov‘s left hand, which had been at his side, out of Arkadin‘s sight, gave a flick and the knife with which he had been cutting Joškar‘s face whirred through the air. Arkadin jerked the boy away, but it was too late, the blade buried itself to the hilt, and the child was torn from his grasp.

With a feral shout, Arkadin discharged his Glock, then leapt after it as if he could ride the bullet straight into Oserov‘s black soul. The bullet missed, but he didn‘t. He landed atop the Muscovite and both of them went flying across the floorboards. They fetched up against sofa legs as thick and sturdy as a babushka‘s ankles.

Arkadin allowed Oserov to go on the offensive the better to get a sense of his style, strength, and coordination. Oserov proved to be a street fighter, vicious but undisciplined, someone who obviously relied on power and animal cunning rather than his wits to win battles. Arkadin took a few on the chin and the ribs, deflecting at the last instant a rabbit punch aimed squarely at his kidneys. Then he went to work on Oserov.

He was motivated not only by rage and a need for revenge, but by a sense of shame and humiliation for quite deliberately putting the boy in harm‘s way, relying on the twin elements of surprise and firepower to maintain control of the situation. Plus, he had to admit that he had been completely blindsided by the Muscovite killing a child in cold blood. Terrifying him, yes, roughing him up a little, maybe, but throwing a knife through his heart?

Never.

His knuckles were split and bloodied but he scarcely noticed. As he systematically pummeled the man beneath him he was overcome with images of his childhood, of the young ashen-faced boy he‘d once been, who‘d been terrorized by his mother, locked in her closet for hours, sometimes for days with scurrying, avid rats that had finally eaten three toes off his left foot. Lev Antonin‘s boy had put his faith in Arkadin and now he was dead. This outcome was unconscionable, and the only possible redemption was Oserov‘s death.

And he would have killed Oserov, too, without remorse or consideration of the consequences of beating to death someone owned body and soul by Dimitri Maslov, head of the Kazanskaya. In a murderous rage, Arkadin cared nothing for Maslov, the Kazanskaya, Moscow, or anything else. All he could see was that face in the closet upstairs. Whether it was the boy‘s or his own he could no longer tell.

Then something hard and heavy hit him in the side of the head and everything went black.