The Bourne Sanction

Somewhere inside him he knew he’d lost track of time, that this slippage was part of the process to wear him down, open him up, and turn him inside out. Moment by moment he felt himself sliding down a slope so slick, so steep that whatever he did to try to hold on to it failed. He was falling into darkness, into a void filled only with himself.

This, too, was calculated. He could imagine one of Kendall’s underlings coming up with a mathematical formula for how far a subject should break down each hour of each day he was subject to incarceration.

Ever since he had suggested to Soraya that he might be useful to her he’d been reading up on how to handle himself in the worst situations. There was a trick he’d come across that was useful to him now-he needed to find a place in his mind where he could withdraw when the going got really rough, a place that was inviolable, where he knew he’d be safe no matter what was done to him.

He had that place now, he’d been there several times when the pain of kneeling with his arms locked high behind him became too much even for him. But there was one thing that frightened him: that damn trough on the other side of the room. If they decided to waterboard him he was done. For as far back as he could remember he’d been terrified of drowning. He couldn’t swim, couldn’t even float. Every time he’d tried to do either he’d choked, had to be hauled from the water like a three-year-old. He’d soon given up, figuring it didn’t matter. When was he going to go sailing or even lie on a beach? Never.

But now the water had come to him. That damn trough was waiting, gri

He looked down, saw that the hand he held out in front of him was trembling. Turning away, he pressed it against the wall, as if the cinder block could absorb his unreasoning terror.

He started as the sound of the door being unlocked ricocheted around the small space. In came one of the NSA zombies, with dead eyes and dead breath. He put down the tray of food and left without even glancing at Tyrone, all part of the second phase of the plan to break him down: make him think he didn’t exist.

He went over to the tray. As usual, his food consisted of cold oatmeal. It didn’t matter; he was hungry. Taking up the plastic spoon, he took a bite of the cereal. It was gummy, had no taste whatsoever. He almost gagged on the second bite because he was chewing on something other than oatmeal. Aware that his every move was monitored, he bent over, spit out the mouthful. Then he used the fork to paw open a folded piece of paper. There was something written on it. He bent over further to make out the letters.

DON’T GIVE UP, it read.

At first, Tyrone couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he read it again. After reading it a third time, he scooped the message up with another bite of oatmeal, chewed it all slowly and methodically, and swallowed.

Then he went over to the stainless-steel toilet, sat down on the edge, and wondered who had written that note and how he could communicate with him. It wasn’t until some time later that he realized this one brief message from outside his tiny cell had managed to restore the balance he’d lost. Inside his head, time resolved itself into normal seconds and minutes, and the blood began once again to circulate through his veins.

Arkadin allowed Devra to drag him out of the bar before he could demolish it completely. Not that he cared about the thuggish patrons who sat in stupefied silence, watching the mayhem he wreaked as if it were a TV show, but he was mindful of the cops who had a significant presence in this trashy neighborhood. During the time they’d been in the bar he’d noticed three police cruisers pass slowly by on the street.

They drove through the sunshine down littered streets. He heard dogs barking, voices shouting. He was grateful for the heat of her hip and shoulder against him. Her presence grounded him, wrestled his rage back down to a manageable level. He hugged her more tightly to him, his mind returning with feverish intensity to his past.

For Arkadin, the ninth level of hell began i

At first, his role was as simple as it was clearly defined: He’d provide the space in his buildings to expand Kuzin’s brothel empire. This Arkadin did with his usual efficiency. Nothing could have been simpler, and for several months as the rubles rolled in he congratulated himself on making a lucrative business deal. Plus, his association with Kuzin brought him a boatload of perks, from free drinks at the local pubs to free sessions with Kuzin’s ever-expanding ring of teenage girls.

But it was this very thing-the young prostitutes-that became Arkadin’s slippery slope into hell’s lowest level. When he stayed away from the brothels, or made his cursory weekly checkups to ensure the apartments weren’t being trashed, it was easy to turn a blind eye on what was really going on. He was mostly too busy counting his money. However, on those occasions when he availed himself of a freebie or two, it was impossible not to notice how young the girls were, how afraid they were, how bruised their thin arms were, how hollow their eyes, and, all too often, how drugged up most of them were. It was like Zombie Nation in there.

All of this might have passed Arkadin by with a minimum of speculation had he not developed a liking for one of them. Yelena was a girl with wide lips, skin as pale as snow, and eyes that burned like a coal fire. She had a quick smile and, unlike some of the other girls, she wasn’t prone to bursting into tears for no apparent reason. She laughed at his jokes, she lay with him afterward, her face buried in his chest. He liked the feel of her in his arms. Her warmth seeped into him like fine vodka, and he grew used to how she found just the right position so that the curves of her body meshed perfectly with his. He could fall asleep in her arms, which for him was something of a miracle. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept through the night.

About this time, Kuzin called him into a meeting, told him he was doing so well he wanted to increase his partnership stake with Arkadin.

“Of course, I’ll need you to play a more active role,” Kuzin said in his semi-intelligible voice. “Business is so good that what I need most now is more girls. That’s where you come in.”

Kuzin made Arkadin the head of a crew whose sole purpose was to solicit teenage girls from the populace of Nizhny Tagil. This Arkadin did with his usual frightening efficiency. His visits to Yelena’s bed were as plentiful but not as idyllic. She had grown afraid, she told him, of the disappearances of some of the girls. One day she saw them; the next they had vanished as if they’d never existed. No one spoke of them, no one answered her questions when she asked where they’d gone. In the main, Arkadin dismissed her fears-after all, the girls were young, weren’t they leaving all the time? But Yelena was certain the girls’ disappearances had nothing to do with them and everything to do with Stas Kuzin. No matter what he said, her fears did not subside until he promised to protect her, to make sure nothing happened to her.

After six months Kuzin took him aside.

“You’re doing a great job.” A mixture of vodka and cocaine slurred Kuzin’s voice even further. “But I need more.”

They were in one of the brothels, which to Arkadin’s practiced eye looked oddly underpopulated. “Where are all the girls?” he asked.

Kuzin waved an arm. “Gone, run away, who the fuck knows where? These bitches get a bit of money in their pocket, they’re off like rabbits.”

Ever the pragmatist, Arkadin said, “I’ll take my crew and go find them.”