The Bourne Sanction

With a last glance at slope-shouldered pedestrians hurrying through the driving rain, Arkadin turned his attention to the phone book. The name that Pyotr Zilber had given up just before he’d committed suicide was Oleg Shumenko. Arkadin dearly would have loved to have gotten more out of Zilber. Now Arkadin had to page through the phone book looking for Shumenko, assuming the man had a landline, which was always problematic outside Moscow or St. Petersburg. He made note of the five Oleg Shumenkos listed, handed the book back to the clerk, and went out into the windy false dusk.

The first three Oleg Shumenkos were of no help. Arkadin, posing as a close friend of Pyotr Zilber’s, told each of them that he had a message from Pyotr so urgent it had to be transmitted in person. They looked at him blankly, shook their heads. He could see in their eyes they had no idea who Pyotr Zilber was.

The fourth Shumenko worked at Yugreftransflot, which maintained the largest fleet of refrigerated ships in Ukraine. Since Yugreftransflot was a public corporation, it took Arkadin some time just to get in to see Shumenko, who was a transport manager. Like everywhere in the former USSR, the red tape was enough to grind all work to a near halt. How anything got done in the public sector was beyond Arkadin.

At length, Shumenko appeared, led Arkadin to his tiny office, apologizing for the delay. He was a small man with very dark hair and the small ears and low forehead of a Neanderthal. When Arkadin introduced himself, Shumenko said, “Obviously, you have the wrong man. I don’t know a Pyotr Zilber.”

Arkadin consulted his list. “I only have one more Oleg Shumenko left.”

“Let me see.” Shumenko consulted the list. “Pity you didn’t come to me first. These three are my cousins. And the fifth, the one you haven’t seen yet, won’t be of any use to you. He’s dead. Fishing accident six months ago.” He handed back the list. “But all isn’t lost. There’s one other Oleg Shumenko. Though we’re not related, people are always getting us confused because we have the same patronymic, Ivanovich. He doesn’t have a landline, which is why I’m constantly getting his calls.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

Oleg Ivanovich Shumenko checked his watch. “At this hour, yes, he’d be at work. He’s a winemaker, you see. Champagne. I understand the French say you’re not allowed to use that term for any wine not produced in their Champagne region.” He chuckled. “Still, the Sevastopol Winery turns out quite a fine champagne.”

He led Arkadin from his office out through dull corridors into the enormous main vestibule. “Are you familiar with the city, gospadin Arkadin? Sevastopol is divided into five districts. We’re in the Gagarinskiy district, named after the world’s first astronaut, Yuri Alexeevich Gagarin. This is the western section of the city. To the north is the Nakhimovskiy district, which is where the mammoth dry docks are. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. No? No matter. In the eastern section, away from the water, is the rural area of the city-pasturelands and vineyards, magnificent even at this time of the year.”

He crossed the marble floor to a long banc behind which sat half a dozen functionaries looking as if they’d had little to do in the past year. From one of them Shumenko received a city map, which he drew on. Then he handed it to Arkadin, pointing at a star he’d marked.

“There’s the winery.” He glanced outside. “The sky’s clearing. Who knows, by the time you get there, you may even see some sun.”

Bourne walked the streets of Georgetown securely hidden within the crowds of college and university kids prowling the cobbles, looking for beer, girls, and guys. He was discreetly shadowing the man in the restaurant, who was, in turn, following Moira.

Once he had determined that the man was her tail, he’d backed away and returned to the street, where he’d called Moira.

“Can you think of anyone who wants to keep tabs on you?”

“I guess several,” she said. “My own company, for one. I told you they’ve become paranoid ever since we started to build the LNG station in Long Beach. NoHold Energy might be another. They’ve been waving a vice president’s job at me for six months. I could see them wanting to know more about me so they can sweeten their offer.”

“Other than those two?”

“No.”

He’d told her what he wanted her to do, and now in the Georgetown night she was doing it. They always had habits, these watchers in the shadows, little peculiarities built up from all the boring hours spent at their lonely jobs. This one liked to be on the inside of the sidewalk so he could duck quickly into a doorway if need be.

Once he had the shadow’s idiosyncracies down, it was time to take him out. But as Bourne worked his way through the crowds, moving closer to the shadow, he saw something else. The man wasn’t alone. A second tail had taken up a parallel position on the opposite side of the street, which made sense. If Moira decided to cross the street in this throng, the first shadow might run into some difficulty keeping her in sight. These people, whoever they were, were leaving little to chance.

Bourne melted back, matching his pace to that of the crowd’s. At the same time, he called Moira. She’d put in her Bluetooth earpiece so she could take his call without being conspicuous. Bourne gave her detailed instructions, then broke off following her shadows.

Moira, the back of her neck tingling as if she were in the crosshairs of an assassin’s rifle, crossed the street, walked over to M Street. The main thing for her to keep in mind, Jason said, was to move at a normal pace, neither fast nor slow. Jason had alarmed her with the news that she was being followed. She had merely maintained the illusion of being calm. There were many people from both present and past who might be following her-a number of whom she hadn’t mentioned when Jason had asked. Still, so close to the opening of the LNG terminal it was an ominous sign. She had desperately wanted to share with Jason the intel that had come to her today about the possibility of the terminal being a terrorist target, not in theory, but in reality. However, she couldn’t-not unless he was an employee of the company. She was bound by her ironclad contract not to tell anyone outside the firm any confidential information.

At 31st Street NW, she turned south, walking toward the Canal Towpath. A third of the way down the block, on her side, was a discreet plaque on which the word JEWEL was etched. She opened the ruby-colored door, entered the high-priced new restaurant. This was the kind of place where dishes were accessorized with kaffir lime foam, freeze-dried ginger, and ruby grapefruit pearls.

Smiling sweetly at the manager, she told him that she was looking for a friend. Before he could check his reservation book, she said her friend was with a man whose name she didn’t know. She’d been here several times, once with Jason, so she knew the layout. At the rear of the second room was a short corridor. Against the right-hand wall were two unisex bathrooms. If you kept on going, which she did, you came to the kitchen, all bright lights, stainless-steel pans, copper pots, huge stovetops raging at high heat. Young men and women moved around the room in what seemed to her like military precision-sous-chefs, line cooks, expediters, the pastry chef and her staff, all performing under the stern commands of the chef de cuisine.

They were all too concentrated on their respective tasks to give Moira much notice. By the time her figure did register she’d already disappeared out the rear door. In a back alley filled with Dumpsters, a White Top cab was waiting, its engine purring. She climbed in and the cab took off.

Arkadin drove through the hills of rural Nakhimovskiy district, lush even in winter. He passed checkered farmland, bounded by low forested areas. The sky was lightening, the dark, rain-laden clouds already disappearing, replaced by high cumulus that glowed like embers in the sunlight that broke through everywhere. A golden sheen covered the acres of vineyards as he approached the Sevastopol Winery. At this time of year there were no leaves or fruit, of course, but the twisted, stunted boles, like the trunks of elephants, bore a life of their own that gave the vineyard a certain mystery, a mythic aspect, as if these sleeping vines needed only the spell of a wizard to come awake.