The Bourne Sanction

Ibrahim had no recourse but to agree with his friend’s thesis, and indeed this was how it turned out. At every step, Farid and Ibrahim brilliantly outmaneuvered the postwar German agencies in keeping control of their people. As a result, the Eastern Legions not only survived but in fact prospered in postwar Germany.

Farid, however, fairly quickly uncovered a pattern of violence that made him suspicious. German officials who disagreed with his eloquent arguments for continued control were replaced by ones who did. That was odd enough, but then he discovered that those original officials no longer existed. To a one, they had dropped out of sight, never to be seen or heard from again.

Farid bypassed the weakling German bureaucracy and went straight to the Americans with his concerns, but he was unprepared for their response, which was one big shrug. No one, it seemed, cared the least bit about disappeared Germans. They were all too busy defending their slice of Berlin to be bothered.

It was about this time that Ibrahim came to him with the idea of moving the Eastern Legions’ headquarters to Munich, out of the way of the increasing antagonism between the Americans and the Soviets. Fed up with the American’s disinterest, Farid readily agreed.

They found postwar Munich a bombed-out wreck, seething with immigrant Muslims. Ibrahim wasted no time in recruiting these people into the organization, which by this time had changed its name to the Eastern Brotherhood. For his part, Farid found the American intelligence community in Munich far more receptive to his arguments. Indeed, they were desperate for him and his network. Emboldened, he told them that if they wanted to make a formal arrangement with the Eastern Brotherhood for intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain, they had to look into the disappearances of the list of former German officials he handed them.

It took three months, but at the end of that time he was asked to appear before a man named Brian Folks, whose official title was American attachй of something-or-other. In fact, he was OSS chief of station in Munich, the man who received the intel Farid’s network provided him from inside the Soviet Union.

Folks told him that the unofficial investigation Farid asked him to undertake had now been completed. Without another word, he handed over a slim file, sat without comment as Farid read it. The folder contained the photos of each of the German officials on the list Farid had provided. Following each photo was a sheet detailing the findings. All the men were dead. All had been shot in the back of the head. Farid read through this meager material with an increasing sense of frustration. Then he looked up at Folks and said, “Is this it? Is this all there is?”

Folks watched Farid from behind steel-rimmed glasses. “It’s all that appears in the report,” he said. “But those aren’t all the findings.” He held out his hand, took the file back. Then he turned, put the sheets one by one through a shredder. When he was finished, he threw the empty folder into the wastebasket, the contents of which were burned every evening at precisely 5 PM.

Following this solemn ritual, he placed his hands on his desk, said to Farid, “The finding of most interest to you is this: Evidence collected indicates conclusively that the murders of these men were committed by Ibrahim Sever.”

Tyrone shifted on the bare concrete floor. It was so slippery with his own fluids that one knee went out from under him, splaying him so painfully that he cried out. Of course, no one came to help him; he was alone in the interrogation cell in the basement of the NSA safe house deep in the Virginia countryside. He had to quite literally locate himself in his mind, had to trace the route he and Soraya had taken when they’d driven to the safe house. When? Three days ago? Ten hours? What? The rendition he’d been subjected to had erased any sense of time. The hood over his head threatened to erase his sense of place, so that periodically he had to say to himself: “I’m in an interrogation cell in the basement of the NSA safe house in”-and here he would recite the name of the last town he and Soraya had passed… when?

That was the problem, really. His sense of disorientation was so complete, there were periods when he couldn’t distinguish up from down. Worse, those periods were becoming both longer and more frequent.

The pain was hardly an issue because he was used to pain, though never this intense or prolonged. It was the disorientation that was worming its way into his brain like a surgeon’s drill. It seemed that with each bout he was losing more of himself, as if he were made up of grains of salt or sand trickling away from him. And what would happen when they were all gone? What would he become?

He thought of DJ Tank and the rest of his former crew. He thought of Deron, of Kiki, but none of those tricks worked. They’d slip away like mist and he’d be left to the void into which, he was increasingly sure, he’d disappear. Then he thought of Soraya, conjured her piece by piece, as if he were a sculptor, molding her out of a lump of clay. And he found that as his mind lovingly re-created each minute bit of her, he miraculously stayed intact.

As he struggled back to a position that was tolerably painful, he heard a metallic scrape, and his head came up. Before anything else could transpire, the scents of freshly cooked eggs and bacon came to him, making his mouth water. He’d been fed nothing but plain oatmeal since he was brought here. And at inconsistent times-sometimes one meal right after the other-in order to keep his disorientation absolute.

He heard the scuff of leather soles-two men, his ears told him.

Then General Kendall’s voice, saying imperiously, “Set the food on the table, Willard. Right there, thank you. That will be all.”

One set of shoe soles clacked across the floor, the sound of the door closing. Silence. Then the screech of a chair being hitched across the concrete. Kendall was sitting down, Tyrone surmised.

“What have we here?” Kendall said, clearly to himself. “Ah, my favorite: eggs over easy, bacon, buttered grits, hot biscuits and gravy.” The sound of cutlery being taken up. “You like grits, Tyrone? You like biscuits and gravy?”

Tyrone wasn’t too far gone to be incensed. “On’y ting I like betta is watermelon, sah.”

“That’s a damn fine imitation of one of your brethren, Tyrone.” He was obviously talking while eating. “This is damn fine chow. Would you like some?”

Tyrone’s stomach growled so loudly he was sure Kendall heard it.

“All you gotta do is tell me everything you and the Moore woman were up to.”

“I don’t rat anyone out,” Tyrone said bitterly.

“Um.” The sounds of Kendall swallowing. “That’s what they all say in the begi

“She never slept with him,” Tyrone said before he could stop himself.

“Sure. She told you that.” Munch, munch, munch went Kendall’s jaws, shredding the crisp bacon. “What’d you expect her to say?”

The sonovabitch was playing mind games with him, Tyrone knew that for a fact. Trouble was, he wasn’t lying. Tyrone knew how Soraya felt about Bourne-it was written all over her face every time she saw him or his name came up. Though she’d said otherwise, the question Kendall had just raised had gnawed at him like an addict at a candy bar.

It was difficult not to envy Bourne with his freedom, his encyclopedic knowledge, his friendship as equals with Deron. But all these things Tyrone dealt with in his own way. It was Soraya’s love for Bourne that was so hard to live with.