The Bourne Sanction

With an effort he pulled himself together. This is what they’d been hoping for: proof that the NSA was subjecting prisoners to illegal forms of torture. Tyrone took a slew of photos, even a short video before exiting the viewing room.

Once again, he was the only one in the corridor. This concerned him. Surely he would have heard or seen NSA perso

All at once, he felt a prickling at the back of his neck. He turned, retracing his steps at a half run. His heart pounded, his blood rushed in his ears. With every step he took his sense of foreboding increased. Then he broke into a full-out sprint.

Luther LaValle looked up from his reading, said ominously, “What kind of game are you playing, Director?”

Soraya kept herself from starting. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve been through these transmission intercepts you claim come from the Black Legion twice now. Nowhere do I find any reference to that name or, for that matter, any name at all.”

Willard appeared, handed General Kendall a folded slip of paper. Kendall read it without any expression. Then he excused himself. Soraya watched him leave the Library with no little trepidation.

To regain her attention, LaValle waved the sheets briefly in the air like a red flag in front of a bull. “Tell me the truth. For all you know, these conversations could be between two sets of eleven-year-olds playing terrorist games.”

Soraya could feel herself bristling. “My people assure me they’re genuine, Mr. LaValle, and they’re the best in the business. If you don’t believe that, I can’t imagine why you want a piece of Typhon.”

LaValle conceded her point, but he wasn’t finished with her. “Then how do you know they’re from the Black Legion.”

“Collateral intelligence.”

LaValle sat back in his chair. His drink was left untouched on the table. “Just what the holy hell does collateral intelligence mean?”

“Another source, unrelated to the intercepts, has knowledge of an imminent attack on American soil that originates with the Black Legion.”

“Who we have no tangible evidence actually exist.”

Soraya was growing increasingly uncomfortable. The conversation was veering perilously close to an interrogation. “I brought these intercepts at your behest with the intention of engendering trust between us.”

“That’s as may be,” LaValle said. “But quite frankly these anonymous intercepts, alarming as they seem on the surface, don’t do it for me. You’re holding something back, Director. I want to know the source of your so-called collateral intel.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. The source is absolutely sacrosanct.” Soraya could not tell him that her source was Jason Bourne. “However-” She reached down to her slim attachй case, pulled out several photos, handed them over.

“It’s a corpse,” LaValle said. “I fail to see the significance-”

“Look at the second photo,” Soraya said. “It’s a close-up of the inside of the victim’s elbow. What do you see?”

“A tattoo of three horses’ heads attached to-what is this? It looks like the Nazi SS death’s head.”

“And so it is.” Soraya handed him another photo. “This is the uniform patch of the Black Legion under their leader Heinrich Himmler.”

LaValle pursed his lips. Then he put sheets back in the file, returned it to Soraya. He held up the photos. “If you could find this insignia, anyone could. This could be a group that’s simply appropriated the Black Legion’s sign, like the skinheads in Germany appropriated the swastika. Besides, this isn’t proof that the intercepts came from the Black Legion. And even if they did I have a problem, Director. It’s the same as yours, I would think. You’ve told me-also according to your sacrosanct source-that the Black Legion is being fronted by the Eastern Brotherhood. If the NSA acts on this intel, we’ll have every flavor of PR nightmare visited on us. The Eastern Brotherhood, as I’m sure you’re aware, is exceedingly powerful, especially with the overseas press. We run with this and we’re wrong, it’s going to cause the president and this country an enormous amount of humiliation, which we can’t afford now. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly, Mr. LaValle. But if we ignore it and America is successfully attacked again, then how do we look?”

LaValle scrubbed his face with one hand. “So we’re between a rock and hard place.”

“Sir, you know as well as I do that action is better than inaction, especially in a volatile situation like this.”

LaValle was about to capitulate, Soraya knew it, but here came Willard again, gliding up, silent as a ghost. He bent, whispered something in LaValle’s ear.

“Thank you, Willard,” Lavalle said, “that will be all.” Then he returned his attention to Soraya. “Well, Director, it seems I’m urgently wanted elsewhere.” He stood up and smiled down at her, but spoke with a steely tone. “Please join me.”

Soraya’s heart plummeted. This invitation wasn’t a request.

Yakov, the bombila driver, who’d been ordered to park across the avenue from the front entrance of the Metropolya Hotel, had been joined forty minutes ago by a man who looked as if he’d been in a fistfight with a meat grinder. Despite efforts to cover it up, his face was swollen, dark as pounded flesh. He wore a silver patch over one eye. He was a surly bastard, Yakov decided, even before the man handed him a fistful of money. He uttered not a word of greeting, but slammed into the backseat, slithered down so even the crown of his head was invisible to anyone glancing casually in.

The atmosphere inside the bombila quickly grew so toxic that Yakov was forced to vacate the semi-warmth for the freezing Moscow night. He bought himself some food from a passing Turkish vendor, spent the next half hour eating it, talking to his friend Max, who’d pulled up behind him because Max was a lazy sonovabitch who grasped at any excuse not to work.

Yakov and Max were in the middle of heated speculation that concerned last week’s death of a high-level RAB Bank officer, who was discovered tied up, tortured, and asphyxiated in the garage of his own elitny dacha. The two of them were wondering why the General Prosecutor’s Office and the president’s newly formed Investigative Committee were fighting over jurisdiction of the death.

“It’s politics, pure and simple,” Yakov said.

“Dirty politics,” Max retorted. “There’s nothing pure and simple about that.”

It was then that Yakov spotted Jason Bourne and the sexy dyev getting out of a bombila in front of the hotel. When he struck the side of his cab three times with the flat of his hand, he sensed a stirring in the backseat.

“He’s here,” he said as the rear window rolled down.

Bourne was about to drop Gala off at the Metropolya Hotel when he looked out the bombila window, saw the taxi that had earlier taken him from The Chinese Pilot to the hotel. Yakov, the driver, was leaning against the fender of his dilapidated junkmobile, eating something greasy while talking to the cabbie parked right behind him.

Bourne saw Yakov glance over as he and Gala exited the bombila. When they’d gone through the revolving door, Bourne told her to stay put. To his left was the service door used by porters to take guests’s luggage in and out of the hotel. Bourne looked out across the street. Yakov stuck his head in the rear window, huddled with a man who’d been hidden in the backseat.

In the elevator, on the way up to their room, he said, “Are you hungry? I’m starved.” Harun Iliev, the man Semion Icoupov sent to find Jason Bourne, had expended hours in contentious negotiations and frustrating dead ends, and finally spent a great deal of money in his pursuit. It wasn’t coincidence that had led him at last to the bombila named Yakov, for Yakov was an ambitious man who knew he’d never get rich driving around Moscow, fending off other bombily, pissing them off by cutting in, snatching their fares from under their noses. What could be more lucrative than spying on other people? Especially when your chief client was the American. Yakov had many clients, but none of them knew how to throw around dollars like the Americans. It was their sincere belief that enough money bought you anything. Mostly, they were right. When they weren’t, though, it was still costly for them.