The Bourne Dominion (30 page)

A
ny meeting with M. Errol Danziger was fraught with both tension and peril—the man had a hair-trigger temper and all too often took offense at even the smallest perceived slight. For some reason he could not quantify, Hendricks felt unprepared, and so he put off the meeting until late in the afternoon, when he knew he should have taken Danziger to lunch.

He took Maggie to lunch instead. This meant—because she requested it—picking her up outside The Breadline on Pennsylvania Avenue, where she had bought enough food for their picnic on the National Mall.

The hazy sun moved in and out of the cloud cover as they walked through the grass. Hendricks’s security detail, none too happy with their boss’s choice of venues, nevertheless dutifully followed orders, staking out a suitable patch of grass around which they formed a strict perimeter.

Hendricks and Maggie sat facing each other, cross-legged like kids. She spread out the food she had bought. He was almost giddy with the child-like delight that comes from playing hooky. Here he was with Maggie, eating sandwiches, drinking iced tea, and basking in her smile and her scent.

“You surprised me with your call.” She took a small, precise bite of a ham and Brie with jalapeño mustard. Her golden hair was drawn back in a thick ponytail. She was wearing a scoop-neck black-and-white polka-dot dress cinched with a wide black patent-leather belt. She had taken off her low heels, her bare toes wriggling in the grass.

“I’m just glad you weren’t tending to my roses,” he said.

“Who said I wasn’t?” she said with a wry smile. She took another bite, small and precise. “I would have come anyway.”

This statement so pleased him that his sandwich caught in his throat. He took a couple of sips of tea to wash the food down. Looking at her now in this idyllic setting he realized that he was falling in love. His first instinct was to be skeptical, to admonish himself for being foolish, adolescent, and, worse, possibly vulnerable. And then the thought was washed away. Looking at her now he experienced the sensation of falling, of a delicious weightlessness that he associated with his dreams, though he could not dredge up any one in particular. He was happy, and in his life happiness was the rarest of commodities.

Maggie cocked her head. “Christopher? What are you thinking?”

He set his sandwich down. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I was thinking about a meeting I scheduled for the end of the day.” Hendricks hesitated. It occurred to him that a fresh perspective might
help him get a grip on dealing with Danziger and the president. “The individual I’m meeting with is extremely difficult.”

“That can mean so many things.”

Hendricks could see by Maggie’s expression that he had her undivided attention, and he was pleased. “He’s an egomaniac,” he said. “He’s come up in the world riding other people’s coattails—mainly my predecessor’s.” This was as specific as he planned to get with her. He might seek her opinion, but he was also unfailingly security-conscious. “Now a situation has arisen where he’s insinuating himself into a position of power on an initiative of mine.”

Maggie looked thoughtful. “I don’t see a problem. A man who makes his living riding other people’s coattails can’t be very competent.”

“But that
is
the problem. If he gets what he wants he’s sure to screw the pooch.”

“Then let him.”

“What? You must be joking.”

Maggie carefully rewrapped the uneaten half of her sandwich. “Consider, Christopher. This man screws the pooch, as you so colorfully put it—”

“But it’s
my
pooch he’ll be screwing.”

“—and you ride in to the rescue.” Maggie took out a chocolate chip cookie and broke off a small piece, which she held between her fingertips. “The people who are backing this individual will be so humiliated they’re sure to withdraw their support of him.” She popped the bit of cookie into her mouth, chewed slowly and luxuriantly. “In chess it’s known as retreating one square to take the board.”

Hendricks sat back, watching as she broke off another piece of cookie and handed it to him. He chewed thoughtfully, the chocolate melting in his mouth. What she was proposing ran against every protocol he had set for himself. Give in? Give Danziger his head? What a hellish thought.

He swallowed, and Maggie handed him more.
But then again why not?
he asked himself. After all, it was what the president wanted. Not only was the POTUS’s head on the block, but so were those of Marshall and Stokes. Hendricks thought it would feel mighty fine to take them all
down a couple of pegs, especially the two generals who were a constant pain in his ass. And think of the humiliation Danziger himself would suffer.

Thinking of Danziger and Indigo Ridge reminded him: Why the hell hadn’t he heard from Peter Marks?

F
ar beyond the periphery of the straining mob, Karpov paused long enough in his flight to take inventory. His leg hurt like hell, but otherwise he was unhurt. If he were a God-fearing man he would have said a prayer for Lana Lang, who’d had the foresight to buy a car with side air bags.

The rain had abated. Water still sluiced along the gutters, but the clouds were lifting and only a slight drizzle remained of the storm. He looked around and realized that he had no idea where he was. He must still be in the Mosque’s district, but that bit of information did him scant good.

He was in Munich, under attack from the SVR, and he still had no idea why Severus Domna had sent Cherkesov to the Mosque. Perhaps, he thought in a moment of weakness, it was time to cut his losses and escape this godforsaken city. He had only days to complete Cherkesov’s mission. He should call Bourne, set up a meet, and get the hell out of here. But then, leaning against a brick wall, his mind jumped to a different track. Running would do him no good and might actually hurt him. The SVR would still make his life miserable and he’d be no closer to finding out what Cherkesov was up to. He needed leverage to get himself out from under Cherkesov’s thumb. He was hoping to find that leverage here in Munich.

Then he thought about that bastard Zachek.
Of course he’s still tracking me
, he thought. And then he realized that Zachek, who got him into this shitstorm, could be the one to get him out of it.

He went on through the narrow streets, which had, if not exactly an Arab flavor, then a distinctly Muslim one. Halal butchers proliferated. He could smell the spices of the Middle East. Women were modestly dressed, their heads covered.

His winding route led him to circle blocks until he found what he wanted. He then loitered on a corner as if waiting for a friend—which wasn’t so far from the truth. He was waiting for Zachek, who did not disappoint him. When Boris saw him, he took off, his limp a good deal more pronounced than it needed to be.

It was odd, he thought, as he picked up his pace, how much better his leg felt the more he used it. He ducked into a clothing store, went through, and stepped out the back, a simplistic maneuver he fully expected Zachek to anticipate. He limped down the back alley lined with those same galvanized-steel garbage cans with the spiked lids. Zachek emerged from the rear of the clothing store. Boris was already nearing the end of the alley. He heard a shout behind him and, an instant later, one of Zachek’s hatchet men stepped into the end of the alley toward which Boris was limping. He pulled out a Tokarev pistol and aimed it at Boris’s chest.

Without missing a beat, Karpov snatched up one of the garbage can lids and jammed the spikes into the hatchet man’s face. The gun went off; the bullet pierced the lid, but missed Boris. As the hatchet man staggered back, Karpov grabbed the Tokarev, but before he had a chance to curl his forefinger around the trigger he felt the cold deadweight of a gun muzzle against his right temple.

A second hatchet man, who had appeared out of nowhere, said in guttural Russian, “Go ahead. Give me the chance to blow your brains out.”

T
he slam of the front door sent Don Fernando hurrying out of the living room.

Kaja stood very close to Bourne, staring at their reflections in the French doors. Then she turned the lever and stepped outside. Bourne followed her. It was chilly and she shivered a little.

“Let’s go back inside,” he said, but she made no move.

The wind lifted her hair. It was odd to see her as a blonde, as she really was. Then Bourne realized that for a very long time no one had seen him as he really was, not even Moira. He was heavily defended, even from himself. Was that what he wanted? he wondered. Or were his
defenses necessary in order for him to keep going? Though he couldn’t remember it, he was absolutely certain there had been a time he hadn’t felt the need to be like this.

“I noticed Skara’s peculiarities early on,” Kaja said. Her arms were wrapped around herself. “There was no help for her. None at all. She freaked our mother out.”

“I thought you said you were the black sheep of the family.”

“I lied.” She gave him a wan smile. “Skara taught me. She said she had no choice, that in order to live a more or less normal school life, all her personalities had learned to lie convincingly.”

“It must have been difficult for you,” Bourne said.

“At first. I used to have nightmares about her turning into some kind of monster—a vampire or a succubus.” She turned to him. “But what stumped me was where the personalities went when they were dormant. And how did they cycle? By what mechanism was it decided which personality should pop up next?”

“Did you ever get answers?”

“Skara had no idea. She said it was like being on a roller-coaster ride that never ended.”

“Did you ever worry that the same thing would happen to you?”

“All the time.” Kaja shuddered. “Did you ever see
High Noon
? It’s like that. I’m waiting for the train with the killer to come.”

T
he president of the United States picked up the phone and called his securities broker. “Bob, gimme a quote on NeoDyme.”

“Sixty-seven and a quarter,” his broker said.

“What?” The president sat up straight. “It came at twenty-three, if I remember right, and that was, what? Three days ago?”

“There’s been a shitload of buying, sir,” Bob said. “The stock has gone vertical.”

The president closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “Jesus, I don’t know.”

“If you don’t buy now, sir, you’ll kick yourself when it breaches a hundred.”

“Okay, buy five hundred now through the usual shell corp, and another five when it pulls back to… what would be reasonable?”

“With any other stock, I’d say it’d retrace a third, sir. But with NeoDyme, well, it’s acting like an IPO from the go-go Internet days. Simply astounding. Hold on.”

The president could hear Bob working his keyboard. “I mean, every day since it came it’s been up on heavy volume. It might pull back ten per, but honestly I wouldn’t bet on a deeper dip.”

“Then put the order in for the second five at sixty.”

“Done,” Bob said. “Anything else, sir?”

“Nothing else matters,” the president said sourly and hung up.

His phone buzzed almost immediately. Checking his watch, he saw that he had seven minutes to manage this call and get to the john to pee before his next briefing. Sighing, he picked up the receiver.

“Roy FitzWilliams for you, sir.”

“Put him on,” the president said. The line clicked several times, then he said, “Fitz, d’you have an answer for me?”

“I think I do, sir,” FitzWilliams said from his office in Indigo Ridge.

“Tell me you found a method to get the rare earths out of the ground more quickly.”

“I wish that were so, sir, but I think I’ve found the next best thing. As you know, all computer motherboards use rare earths. I think if we start a government-wide recycling program immediately, we might be able to scrape together enough of the elements to get the DoD its first weapons order in, say, eighteen months.”

“Eighteen months!” The president literally sprang out of his chair. “The Joint Chiefs tell me DoD needed the first shipment yesterday, but it will settle for eight months.”

“Eighteen is the best I can do,” FitzWilliams said, “unless the government makes wholesale upgrades on all its computers immediately.”

Good Lord
, the president thought, trying to calculate the cost.
The Congressional Oversight Committees will have my ass in a sling
. He knew he was between a rock and a hard place.

“I’ll see what I can do, Fitz,” he said, “but you have to get Indigo Ridge up and running ASAP.”

“I’ll go to the NeoDyme board and see about a massive hiring initiative.”

The president grunted. “With the stock on a rocket ride to the moon money won’t be a problem.”

FitzWilliams laughed. “Yes, sir. My fortune is already made.”

D
on Fernando reappeared. “Essai has returned, Jason, and is asking for you. He’s in the library. It’s on the east side of the house. Meanwhile, Kaja and I will go prepare dinner.”

Bourne crossed the living room, went down a side hallway to the library. It was a square room, light and airy, unlike most libraries. A number of bookcases lined the walls on either side of the double windows. The room was furnished with a scattering of comfortable-looking chairs and throw pillows in Moroccan-patterned fabrics.

Jalal Essai was standing in the center of the room, his fingers steepled in front of him. He turned just as Bourne stepped into the room.

As usual, his mood was unreadable. “I imagine you have a number of questions to ask me.” He gestured to a pair of high-backed wing chairs. “Why not be comfortable while we talk?”

The two men sat, facing each other.

Bourne said, “Essai, there’s no point in talking if you continue to lie to me.”

Essai folded his hands in his lap. He appeared completely at ease. “Agreed.”

“Are you still working for Severus Domna?”

“I am not; I haven’t for some time. I did not lie about that.”

“And that sad tale about your daughter?”

“Unfortunately, also true.” Essai lifted a forefinger. “But I did not tell you the whole story. She was killed, yes, but it wasn’t by agents of
the Domna. They would never have condoned such a thing.” He took a breath and slowly exhaled. “My daughter was murdered by agents of Semid Abdul-Qahhar.” He cocked his head. “You have heard of this man?”