The Bourne Dominion (20 page)

The Etanas had envisioned a cross-cultural cabal of businessmen, spanning both the Eastern and Western worlds, whose combined power and influence would eventually dwarf those of even the largest of the multinational corporations.
Duco ex umbra
, influence from the shadows—that had been the motto of the Etana family from time immemorial.

Marlon’s great-great-great-grandfather—a giant among men—had laid out long-term plans for Severus Domna, a way to help the world grow together rather than splinter apart. It was a noble dream and, certainly, if he had lived long enough it might have come to fruition. But human beings are fallible—worse, they are corruptible, and influence is the great corruptor. Exceedingly rare is the man who can ignore its glittering temptation, and even some of the Etanas succumbed. Not the least of these was Marlon’s father, who was weak-willed. In order to fend off a threat from a group inside the Domna, he had forged an alliance with Benjamin El-Arian. Rather than becoming his savior, the clever El-Arian happily arranged for the man’s downfall. El-Arian had already lined up a rival group within the Domna and, with its help, proceeded to toss the elder Etana aside. Soon after, Marlon’s father took his own life—a terrible sin. For an Islamic, the lowest level of hell is reserved for suicides, because Allah has forbidden it in many verses of the Qur’an. The one Marlon had memorized, upon looking at his father’s blank face, was: “
And do not kill yourselves. Surely, Allah is Most Merciful to you.
”

Marlon did not know whether his father believed that Allah had been merciful to him, or whether he felt he had been abandoned. All he knew was that he’d used what little strength was left inside him to cause an uproar inside Severus Domna, to cause outrage and, hopefully, out of that outrage the beginnings of a difficult debate concerning the soul of the organization.

Benjamin El-Arian, clever devil, had seen through the veil of the suicide and had forbidden any debate whatsoever. And so, Marlon, all that was left of the once mighty Etana dynasty, without whose vision the Domna would not exist, had been reduced to taking orders from
Benjamin El-Arian. He had become a whipped dog, begging for whatever scraps El-Arian saw fit to throw to him.

Just after noon, Marlon saw movement at the front door to Hererra’s house. Jalal Essai and Don Fernando emerged. They spoke for a few minutes before shaking hands in the Western style. Hererra climbed into a car parked at the curb and drove off alone. When the car was out of sight, Essai turned and began to walk toward the water. Marlon followed at a discreet distance.

Essai’s pace was no more than a casual stroll, he gave the impression that he had nothing to do and nowhere to go. He followed Essai along the crescent waterfront, where Essai picked up several newspapers from a kiosk vendor. About a mile farther on he approached a café with a blue-and-white awning. A red anchor logo was stitched onto the awning’s center.

Marlon Etana observed Essai seat himself at a table facing the water and proceed to order lunch. Marlon took several deep breaths, then retreated a distance so he could keep Essai in sight but also have a wider field of vision. Stepping into the shadows of a doorway, he checked that his pistol was loaded and functional. Then he drew a noise suppressor out of his pocket and screwed it onto the end of the barrel. He gave himself over to one of his Zen-inspired deep-breathing exercises.

The moment he saw a figure pass by a second time, Etana walked briskly along the waterline, a man with an urgent purpose. The man followed. Benjamin El-Arian had set him on Etana to make sure he terminated Jalal Essai. And if by some chance Etana failed, the shadow would take over the mission.

Etana led his shadow to the far end of the beachhead, beyond the piers and harbors, out along a strip of beach whose unpleasant constitution ensured it was deserted until the middle of the night, when, he had observed, kids used it to party, drink, and have clandestine sex. Etana had found it a nauseating sight, another vivid example of the corruption of the West.

A fishing boat, turned keel-up, sat up on a block of wood. The boat was rotting, the keel line encrusted with barnacles, entwined with dried
seaweed. A faint odor of decomposition floated off the impromptu structure, which, to Marlon, seemed appropriate. He chose a perch along the keel and shook out a cigarette. As he put the cigarette between his lips, he drew his pistol with its elongated barrel and, turning, shot the shadow between the eyes. There was some noise, but none at all when the body hit the sand.

Pocketing the pistol, Etana walked over to the shadow and, grabbing him by the back of his collar, dragged him the fifty or so yards to the upturned boat. With some difficulty, he jammed the corpse into the open space beneath the craft. It already smelled bad enough that a decomposing body would not arouse any attention for days, maybe a week. By then the seagulls would surely have done their work, and no one would be able to identify the corpse.

Dusting off his hands, Marlon Etana drew smoke deep into his lungs and started back the way he had come. There was no one around, no one to see him. Best of all, there was no one to report back to Benjamin El-Arian.

Now it was time, he thought, to engage with Jalal Essai.

B
oris Karpov wanted to murder someone. If one of the German cops was still stalking the back alley—as they had been for the past three hours while the forensics team in the watchmaker’s shop methodically went about its business—the German would have been a dead man.

In the darkness that had descended over Munich, Boris had found his legs spasming, cramping, then, worst of all, growing weak. His head pounded with his need to urinate. He felt that if he didn’t pee soon his bladder would surely burst. And yet his mouth was as dry as a desert, his lips all but pasted together.

At last, the lights had gone out in Hermann Bolger’s shop, the flashlights of the alley cops were extinguished, and, save for a dog barking hoarsely, all fell silent. Boris made himself wait another agonizing thirty minutes. Toward the end, he’d had to bite his lip to keep from moaning.

Finally, when he judged it safe, he swung onto the downspout and
shinnied down. It was tough going because his legs were all but useless. Twice he felt his hands, slippery with sweat, lose their grip and he was obliged to try to clamp the metal with his knees. This worked, but just barely.

On the ground at last, he squeezed between two garbage cans, and, crouching down, peed like a female. He let out a soft groan of relief. The pent-up water went on and on, creating a veritable lake. Getting his legs to work was a different matter. His muscles were so tight that the pain almost overwhelmed him when he stood up.

Acutely aware that he needed to put as much distance as he could between him and Bolger’s shop, he nevertheless spent the next several minutes stretching gingerly and then more vigorously. He had no choice, really; his legs wouldn’t have taken him to the end of the alley without giving out. He cursed his time as an administrator when he’d failed to keep up with his often brutal exercise routine. While he worked out, silently and without respite, he concentrated on breathing slowly and deeply.

When his legs had returned to a semblance of normalcy, he set out for the far end of the alley. He heard the soft swishing sounds of traffic and, now and again, a drunken laugh or two.

At the mouth of the alley he stopped, more cautious than ever. A slow, dull drizzle wet the streets, just like in those American spy movies. The city was filled with the throaty rumble of approaching thunder. All of a sudden the rain came down harder, bouncing off the concrete sidewalk and the asphalt street. He put up the collar of his coat and hunched his shoulders.

He looked and listened for anything anomalous. He’d been blindsided; a trap had been sprung where there should have been no trap. His security had been breached. How had it happened? There was only one person he had come into contact with since he had arrived in Munich: Wagner, the contact he had met at the Neue Pinakothek museum. And unless Karpov had been shadowed from the airport to the watchmaker’s, it was Wagner who had informed someone at the Mosque of Boris’s inquiries. Sensing a tail was more art than science, and Boris was a master at smelling a shadow—he was certain he had not been tailed.

That left Wagner, or whatever his real name was, and Karpov would be in danger until he terminated the security breach. The sensible thing to do was to call Ivan and inform his friend that Wagner was playing both sides. If anyone knew Wagner’s real name and whereabouts it would be Ivan. He pulled out his cell phone and was about to punch in the number when a sudden flash of lightning illuminated a man standing in a doorway almost directly opposite the mouth of the alley. A moment later thunder cracked and boomed.

Boris put the phone to his ear as if he were actually making a call and spoke as if in a conversation with someone. Meanwhile he forced his eyes to look left and right, down the street, ignoring the now heavily shadowed doorway dead ahead.

He pocketed the phone, then, hands deep in the pockets of his coat, emerged from the alley and headed left, hurrying through the rain. Three blocks along, he entered a
biergarten
. It was warm and bustling and smelled of wurst and sauerkraut and beer. An enormous skylight ran the length of the establishment, giving the illusion of being outdoors without the weather problems. Shaking off the excess wetness, he wound his way around patrons and servers and took a seat at a long table near the rear.

Abruptly famished, he ordered everything he had smelled when he came in. The beer arrived almost immediately in an enormous ceramic-and-metal stein. He took two quick gulps and set the stein down. On either side of him jolly Germans were drinking and eating, but mostly shouting, singing, and laughing, obnoxious as hyenas. It was all Karpov could do not to get up and walk out. But he was here for a reason and he wasn’t going anywhere until he ascertained whether or not the man in the doorway had followed him.

Since he had sat down almost a dozen people had entered the
biergarten
, none of whom had set off any alarms. Mostly they consisted of families or young couples, arm in arm. Watching them, Boris strained to remember the last time he had walked arm in arm with a woman. He doubted he was missing anything.

His food came and, just as he was tucking into his gleaming, fragrant
bratwurst, a figure stepped through the front door. The hair on the backs of his hands stirred. He put the bite of wurst into his mouth and chewed meditatively.

He had expected the man from the doorway across from the alley, but this was a woman—a young one, at that. Boris watched her covertly as she shook out her umbrella, then collapsed it before taking a look around the restaurant. He was careful not to meet her gaze, concentrating on spearing a potato slippery with grease. He popped the morsel into his mouth, washed it down with some beer, and looked up. The young woman had taken a seat at the end of a table, on the side facing him. She was between him and the front door.

Karpov had had enough of this nonsense; these people were either bad at their job or amateurs. He laid his knife and fork on his plate, took the plate in one hand, his beer stein in the other, and got up.

As the hour had grown later, the
biergarten
had become downright raucous, more and more of the patrons transformed into red-faced drunks. Threading his way through the crowd, he decided amateurs were the worst kind of adversary. They didn’t know the rules, which made them unpredictable.

There was a small gap between the young woman and her neighbor—a thick-necked German, stuffing his face and guzzling beer. When Boris nudged him to move over, the fat German looked up, his eyes glaring.

He was about to say something, but Karpov beat him to it. “
Sie haben Fett über ihr ganzes Gesicht
.” You have grease all over your face.

Fatty grunted like a pig and, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, heaved his bulk over.

“
Danke, mein Herr,”
Karpov said, climbing into the space rather clumsily so that he deliberately jostled the young woman slightly.

“
Je suis désolé, mademoiselle
.”

Her head jerked around. He was gratified to see that his French had startled her. Then a door slammed shut in her eyes and she turned away, staring down at a magazine she was holding. It was in English, Boris saw, not German.
Vanity Fair
. She was reading a story on Lady Gaga, one of those perfectly idiotic pop stars who could exist only in America.

He returned his attention to his meal. Some time later, she lifted the magazine so a plate of Wiener schnitzel could be placed in front of her. She took a look at it, wrinkled her nose in distaste, and, pushing the plate away, resumed her reading.

Boris swallowed a chunk of bratwurst and hailed a passing server.

“
Noch ein Bier, bitte
.” Another beer, please. The server nodded. Just as she was turning away, Boris added, “
Und eine für die junge Dame
.”

The young woman turned to him and said more tartly than sweetly, “Thank you, no.”

“Bring it anyway,” Karpov shouted to the back of the disappearing server.

She had dark hair and a cream complexion, with that quintessentially pretty look only American women have: healthy, vibrant, with perfectly symmetrical faces. In other words, bland as Wonder Bread. Once, several years ago in New Jersey, he had actually eaten a couple of slices of Wonder Bread spread with Peter Pan peanut butter. The cloying sweetness of the sandwich had dissolved into an unpalatable paste in his mouth, and he had gagged.

He turned to the young woman and said in English, “Aren’t you going to eat your schnitzel?”

“Please.” She dragged out the word:
puh-leez
.

Boris eyed the breaded veal cutlet. “Yeah, that’ll put a couple of pounds on you, for sure.”

This use of American slang caused her to finally look at him. “What’s your story?”

“Gosh, Midge,” he said with a plastic malt-shop accent, “I was just about to ask you the same question.”