The Bourne Sanction

Stas Kuzin appeared in the doorway, gripping a Korovin TK pistol. “Leonid, what the fuck?”

Arkadin shot him once in each knee. Kuzin went down, screaming. As he tried to raise the Korovin, Arkadin trod heavily on his wrist. Kuzin grunted heavily. When he wouldn’t let go of the pistol, Arkadin kicked him in the knee. The resulting bellow brought the last of the girls from their respective rooms.

“Get out of here.” Arkadin addressed the girls, though his gaze was fixed on Kuzin’s monstrous face. “Take whatever money you can find and go back to your families. Tell them about the lime pit north of town.”

He heard them scrambling, babbling to one another, then it was quiet.

“Fucking sonovabitch,” Kuzin said, staring up at Arkadin.

Arkadin laughed and shot him in the right shoulder. Then, jamming the Stechkins in their holsters, he dragged Kuzin across the floor. He had to push one of the dead ghouls out of the way, but at last he made it down the stairs and out the front door with the moaning Kuzin in tow. In the street one of Kuzin’s vans screeched to a halt. Arkadin drew his guns, emptied them into the interior. The car rocked on its shocks, glass shattered, its horn blared as the dead driver fell over onto it. No one got out.

Arkadin dragged Kuzin to his car and dumped him in the backseat. Then he drove out of town to the forest, turning off at the rutted dirt track. At the end of it, he stopped, hauled Kuzin to the edge of the pit.

“Fuck you, Arkadin!” Kuzin shouted. “Fuck-”

Arkadin shot him point-blank in the left shoulder, shattering it and sending Kuzin down into the quicklime pit. He peered over. There was the monster, lying on the corpses.

Kuzin’s mouth drooled blood. “Kill me!” he shouted. “D’you think I’m afraid of death? Go on, do it now!”

“It’s not for me to kill you, Stas.”

“Kill me, I said. For fuck’s sake, finish it now!”

Arkadin gestured at the corpses. “You’ll die in your victims’s arms, hearing their curses echoing in your ears.”

“What about all your victims?” Kuzin shouted when Arkadin disappeared from view. “You’ll die choking on your own blood!”

Arkadin paid him no mind. He was already behind the wheel of his car, backing out of the forest. It had begun to rain, gunmetal-colored drops that fell like bullets out of a colorless sky. A slow booming coming from the smelters starting up sounded like the thunder of ca

Forty

WHERE ARE YOU, Jason?” Moira said. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I’m in Munich,” he said.

“How wonderful! Thank God you’re close by. I need to see you.” She seemed slightly out of breath. “Tell me where you are and I’ll meet you there.”

Bourne switched his cell phone from one ear to the other, the better to check his immediate surroundings. “I’m on my way to the Englischer Garten.”

“What are you doing in Schwabing?”

“It’s a long story; I’ll tell you about it when I see you.” Bourne checked his watch. “But I’m due to meet up with Soraya at the Chinese pagoda in ten minutes. She says she has new intel on the Black Legion attack.”

“That’s odd,” Moira said. “So do I.”

Bourne crossed the street, hurrying, but still alert for tags.

“I’ll meet you,” Moira said. “I’m in a car; I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Not a good idea.” He didn’t want her involved in a professional rendezvous. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m through and we can-” All of a sudden, he realized he was talking to dead air. He dialed Moira’s number, but got her voice mail. Damn her, he thought.

He reached the outskirts of the garden, which was twice the size of New York’s Central Park. Divided by the Isar River, it was filled with jogging and bicycle paths, meadows, forests, and even hills. Near the crown of one of these was the Chinese pagoda, which was actually a beer garden.

He was naturally thinking of Soraya as he approached the area. It was odd that both she and Moira had intel on the Black Legion. Now he thought back over his phone conversation with her. Something about it had been bothering him, something just out of reach. Every time he strained for it, it seemed to move farther away from him.

His pace was slowed by the hordes of tourists, American diplomats, children with balloons or kites riding the wind. In addition, a rally of teenagers protesting new rulings on curriculum at the university had begun to gather at the pagoda.

He pushed his way forward, past a mother and child, then a large family in Nikes and hideous tracksuits. The child glanced at him and, instinctively, Bourne smiled. Then he turned away, wiped the blood off his face, though it continued to seep through the cuts opened during his fight with Arkadin.

“No, you can’t have sausages,” the mother said to her son in a strong British accent. “You were sick all night.”

“But Mummy,” he replied, “I feel right as rain.”

Right as rain. Bourne stopped in his tracks, rubbed the heel of his hand against his temple. Right as rain; the phrase rattled around in his head like a steel ball in a pachinko machine.

Soraya.

Hi, it’s me, Soraya. That’s how she’d started off the call

Then she’d said: Actually, I’m in Munich.

And just before she’d hung up: Right as rain. I can make it. Can you?

Bourne, buffeted by the quickening throngs, felt as if his head were on fire. Something about those phrases. He knew them, and he didn’t, how could that be? He shook his head as if to clear it; memories were appearing like knife slashes through a piece of fabric. Light was glimmering…

And then he saw Moira. She was hurrying toward the Chinese pagoda from the opposite direction, her expression intent, grim, even. What had happened? What information did she have for him?

He craned his neck, trying to find Soraya in the swirl of the demonstration. That was when he remembered.

Right as rain.

He and Soraya had had this conversation before-where? In Odessa? Hi, it’s me coming before her name meant that she was under duress. Actually coming before a place where she was supposed to be meant that she wasn’t there.

Right as rain meant it’s a trap.

He looked up and his heart sank. Moira was heading right into it.

When the door opened, Willard froze. He was on his hands and knees hidden from the doorway by the desk’s skirt. He heard voices, one of them LaValle’s, and held his breath.

“There’s nothing to it,” LaValle said. “E-mail me the figures and after I’m done with the Moore woman I’ll check them.”

“Good deal,” Patrick, one of LaValle’s aides said, “but you’d better get back to the Library, the Moore woman is kicking up a fuss.”

LaValle cursed. Willard heard him cross to the desk, shuffle some papers. Perhaps he was looking for a file. LaValle grunted in satisfaction, walked back across the office, and closed the door after him. It was only when Willard heard the grate of the key in the lock that he exhaled.

He fired up the camera, praying that the images hadn’t been deleted, and there they were, one after another, evidence that would damn Luther LaValle and his entire NSA administration. Using both the camera and his cell phone, he linked them through the wireless Bluetooth protocol, then transferred the images to his cell. Once that was completed, he navigated to his son’s phone number-which wasn’t his son’s number, though if anyone called it a young man who had standing instructions to pass as his son would answer-and sent the photos in one long burst. Sending them one by one via separate calls would surely cause a red flag on the security server.

At last, Willard sat back and took a deep breath. It was done; the photos were now in the hands of CI, where they’d do the most good, or-if you were Luther LaValle-the most damage. Checking his watch, he pocketed the camera, relatched the door to the hidden compartment, and scrambled out from under the desk.