The Bourne Objective (34 page)

For a moment, Imov did nothing; then he set down the fountain pen, reached out for the cell phone, and turned it on. For a long while after that, there was no sound whatsoever in the study, not even, Karpov noted, the hushed footfalls of the secretarial and support staffs that must infest the place. Possibly, the study was soundproof as well as electronic-bug-proof.

When Imov was finished, he held the cell phone precisely as he had held the fountain pen, as if it were a weapon.

“And who, Boris Illyich, do you envision purging the FSB-2 of its rot?”

“Whomever you choose.”

At this response, President Imov threw his head back and laughed. Then, wiping his eyes, he reached into a drawer, opened an ornate silver-clad humidor, and withdrew two Havana cigars. Handing one to Karpov, he bit the end off his and lit it with a gold lighter that had been a gift from the president of Iran. When Karpov produced a book of matches, Imov laughed again and pushed the gold lighter across the desk.

Colonel Boris Karpov found the lighter extraordinarily heavy. He flicked on the flame and luxuriously drew the cigar smoke into his mouth.

“We should begin, Mr. President.”

Imov regarded Karpov through a veil of smoke. “No time like the present, Boris Illyich.” He swung around, contemplating the onion domes of Red Square. “Clean the fucking place out—permanently.”

I
t was ironic, when you thought about it, Soraya thought. Despite having multiple eyes—she could not for the life of her remember how many—scorpions couldn’t see well, depending on tiny cilia on their claws to sense movement and vibration. At the moment that meant the rise and fall of her chest.

No-Name watched the scorpion with a mixture of impatience and contempt as it sat there, unmoving. Clearly, it didn’t know where it was or what it wanted to do. That’s when he took his pen and jammed the end of it onto the scorpion’s head. The sudden attack startled and infuriated it. The tail twitched and struck, and Soraya gave a little gasp. No-Name used the pen to prod the creature back into its cage. He swung the door closed and latched it.

“Now,” No-Name said, “either we wait for the venom to take effect, or you tell us where to find Arkadin.”

“Even if I knew,” Soraya said, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

He frowned. “You’re not going to change your mind.”

“Go screw yourself.”

He nodded, as if having anticipated her stubbornness. “It will be instructive to see how long you last after the scorpion stings you eight or nine times.”

With a languid pass of his hand, he signaled the scorpion handler, who unlatched the cage’s door and was about to open it when, with a deafening report, he was blown backward in a welter of blood and bone. Soraya turned her head and saw him sprawled on the ground, his entire forehead gone. More shots were fired, and when she turned back the other men lay on the ground. No-Name was clutching his ruined right shoulder, biting his lip in pain. A pair of legs ending in dusty boots came into her field of vision.

“Who—?” Soraya looked up, but between the first symptoms of the scorpion venom and the sun in her eyes she couldn’t see. Her heart seemed about to pump out of her chest, and her entire body was throbbing as if with a very high fever. “Who—?”

The male figure squatted down. With the back of his sunburned hand he swatted the cage off her chest. A moment later she felt the ropes that bound her being loosened, and she shook them off. As she squinted up, a cowboy hat was placed over her head, the wide brim shading her from the glaring sunlight.

“Contreras,” she said, seeing his creased face.

“My name is Antonio.” He put one arm beneath her shoulders and helped lift her up. “Call me Antonio.”

Soraya began to weep.

Antonio offered her his gun, an interesting piece of custom work: a Taurus Tracker .44 Magnum, a hunter’s handgun, with a wooden rifle stock affixed to it. She took the Taurus, and he stood her up. She was staring down at No-Name, who stared back, teeth bared. She felt shaky, her brain was on fire. She watched him watching her. Her forefinger curled around the trigger. She aimed the Tracker and pulled the trigger. As if jerked by invisible strings, No-Name arched up once, then lay still, his blind eyes reflecting the rising sun.

She stopped crying.

C
OVEN
WENT
ABOUT
his work with a frightening calm. He had spent the hours after trussing up Chrissie and Scarlett familiarizing himself with the house. As for Chrissie’s father, he’d bound and gagged him and stuffed him in a closet. He left them for forty minutes for a trip to a hardware store, where he bought the largest portable generator he could carry by himself. Returning to the house, he checked on his captives. Chrissie and her daughter were still securely tied to the twin beds upstairs. The father was either asleep or unconscious, Coven didn’t care which. Then he had lugged the generator into the basement and with little difficulty hooked it up to the electrical system, as a backup if the lights went out. He ran a test. The thing ticked like a geriatric grandfather clock. It was severely undersize for its task. Even cutting back on the circuits he connected, he determined that he’d have a maximum of ten minutes of light before the generator conked out. Well, it would have to do.

Then he went back upstairs and stared at Chrissie and Scarlett while he smoked a cigarette. The daughter, though only a preteen, was prettier than the mother. If he were another sort of person he would avail himself of that very young, tender body, but he despised that degenerate trait in men. He was a fastidious person, a man of moral rectitude. It was how he dealt with his job, how he managed to stay sane in what he considered an insane world. His personal life was pure vanilla, as dull as a bus driver’s gray existence. He had a wife—his high school sweetheart—two children, and a dog named Ralph. He had mortgage payments, a dotty mother to support, and a brother he visited fortnightly in a loony bin, though these days they didn’t call it that. When he came home from a long, hard, often bloody assignment, he kissed his wife hard on the lips, then went to his children and—whether they were playing, sitting in front of the TV, or asleep in bed—bent over them and inhaled their milky-sweet scent. Then he ate a meal his wife had prepared, took her upstairs, and fucked her silly.

He lit another cigarette from the end of the butt, and stared down at mother and daughter spread-eagled side by side on the twin beds. The girl was a child, inviolate. The thought of harming her was thoroughly repellent to him. As for the mother, she didn’t appeal to him, too skinny and wan looking. He’d leave her to someone else. Unless Bourne forced him to kill her.

Back downstairs, he rummaged through the larder, opened up a can of Heinz baked beans, and ate the contents cold from the backs of his two fingers. All the while he listened to the tiny sounds around him, breathed in and mentally cataloged the scents in each room. In short, he moved around the house until he’d familiarized himself with every idiosyncrasy, every nook and cranny. Now it was his territory, his high ground, his eventual place of victory.

Then he returned to the living room and switched on all the lamps. That’s when he heard the gunshot. Rising, he drew his Glock from its leather holster and, pulling back the drapes, peered out the front window. He tensed as he saw Jason Bourne zigzagging at top speed toward the front door. With a squeal of rubber and a spray of gravel, a gray Opel slewed around broadside to the front of the house. The driver’s door opened, and the driver fired a shot at Bourne. He missed. Then Bourne was on the front steps, and Coven went to the door, his Glock at the ready. He heard two more shots and, crouching down, swung the door open. Bourne was sprawled facedown on the steps, a stain of blood spreading over his jacket.

Coven ducked back as another shot was fired. He darted out even as he squeezed off one shot after another. The gunman ducked back inside the Opel. Coven grabbed Bourne’s jacket with his free hand and hauled him over the sill. He fired off one more shot, heard the gunman put the Opel into gear and speed off. He kicked the door shut behind him.

He checked Bourne’s pulse, then went to the window. Pulling aside the curtains again, he peered into the driveway but could see no sign of either the gunman or the Opel.

Turning back into the living room, he bent over to Bourne’s prone form and pressed the muzzle of the Glock to the side of Bourne’s head. He was turning him over when the lights flickered, dimmed, then came on again. From the basement, he heard the grandfather-clock ticking of the backup generator. He had scarcely enough time to register that the power to the house had been cut when Bourne knocked the Glock away and struck him a powerful blow on his sternum.

T
he man you’re looking for is in Puerto Peñasco, no doubt.” Antonio handed Soraya back her cell phone. “My
compadre,
the marina’s harbormaster, knows the gringo. He’s taken up residence in the old Santa Teresa convent, which has been abandoned for years. He has a cigarette boat he takes out each evening just after sunset.”

They were seated in a sunny cantina on Calle de Ana Gabriela Guevara in Nogales. Antonio had spent some time helping Soraya clean up, getting her ice to use in the compress she placed against the spot between her breasts where the scorpion had stung her. The reddish patch did not swell, and whatever symptoms she had felt in the desert were now mostly gone. She also had Antonio buy her half a dozen bottles of water, which she started drinking right away to fight her dehydration and more quickly move the venom out of her system.

After an hour or so, she felt better. Then she bought new clothes in a store on Plaza Kennedy, and they went to get something to eat.

“I’ll drive you to Puerto Peñasco,” Antonio said.

Soraya popped the last bite of her
chilaquiles
into her mouth. “I think you have better things to do. You’re no longer making money off me.”

Antonio made a face. On the ride back into Nogales he had told her his real name was Antonio Jardines. He’d taken
Contreras
as his business name. “Now you offend me. Is this how you treat the man who saved your life?”

“I owe you a debt of thanks.” Soraya sat back, contemplating him. “What I can’t understand is why you’re taking such a personal interest in me.”

“How to explain?” Antonio sipped his
café de olla
. “My life is defined by the space between Nogales, Arizona, and here, in Nogales, Sonora. A fucking boring strip of desert that’s been known to drive men like me to drink. My only concern is the fucking
migras
and, believe me, that’s not much of anything.” He spread his hands. “There’s something else, too. Life here is full of neglect. In fact, you could say that life here is
defined
by neglect, the kind that rots the soul and infests all of Latin America. No one gives a shit—about anyone, or anything, except money.” He finished off his
café de olla.
“Then you come along.”

Soraya considered this. She took her time because she didn’t want to make a mistake, although she could hardly be certain of anything here. “I don’t want to drive into Puerto Peñasco,” she said finally. She had been thinking about this all through the meal. Antonio finding out that Arkadin had a cigarette sealed the deal. “I want to arrive there by boat.”

Antonio’s eyes glittered. Then his forefinger made a bobbing motion. “This is what I’m talking about. You don’t think like a woman, you think like a man. This is what I would do.”

“Can your
compadre
at the marina arrange it?”

He chuckled. “You see, you do need my help.”

B
ourne struck a second blow. He had been shot with blanks by Ottavio Moreno and was covered in pig’s blood from a plastic bag he’d punctured. Coven, who didn’t react one way or another to the blows, drove the butt of the Glock down onto Bourne’s forehead. Bourne grabbed his wrist and twisted hard. Then he caught one of Coven’s fingers and broke it. The Glock went flying across the living room floor, fetching up beside the cold grate.

Bourne pushed Coven off and rose on one knee, but Coven kicked his leg out from under him and Bourne toppled backward. Coven was on him in an instant, driving his fist into Bourne’s face, landing blow after blow. Bourne lay still. Coven rose and aimed a kick at Bourne’s ribs. Without seeming to move at all, Bourne caught his foot before it could land and wrenched the ankle to the left.

Coven grunted as the anklebones snapped. He landed hard, immediately rolled over, and scrambled on elbows and knees toward where the Glock lay beside the grate.

Bourne took up a brass sculpture from a chair-side table and threw it. The sculpture slammed into the back of Coven’s head, driving his chin and nose into the floor. His jaws snapped shut and blood gushed from his nose. Undeterred, he grabbed the Glock and, in one fluid motion, swung it around and squeezed off a shot. The bullet struck the table beside Bourne’s head, toppling it and the lamp on it onto Bourne.

He tried to fire again, but Bourne leapt on him, wrestling him onto his back. He grabbed a fire poker and swung it down hard. Bourne rolled away and the poker bounced against the floor. Coven stabbed out with it, catching Bourne’s jacket, piercing it and pinning him to the floor. He rammed the end of the poker into the wood, then rose painfully over Bourne. Taking up the ash shovel, he brought the long brass handle across Bourne’s throat and, using all his weight, pressed down.

I
t was 123 miles from Nogales to Las Conchas, where an associate of Antonio’s
compadre
had driven the boat they would pick up. She had asked for a big boat, and an ostentatious one, something to catch Arkadin’s attention and keep it until he got a good look at her. In the Nogales Mall, before they had set out, she had bought the most provocative bikini she could find. When she’d modeled it for Antonio, his eyes almost popped out of his skull.

“ยกMadre de Dios, qué linda muchacha!”
he had cried.

Because of the aftereffect of the scorpion sting, she bought a diaphanous cover-up, also some beach towels, a pair of huge Dior sunglasses, a fashionable visor, and a fistful of sunscreen, which she lost no time in slathering on.