The Bourne Objective

Bourne waited until the noises had subsided. “Professor Giles.”

For some time, there was no answer. Then the stall door was wrenched open and Professor Giles, looking distinctly green around the gills, staggered out past Bourne. He bent over the sink, turned on the cold water, and buried his head beneath the flow.

Bourne leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. When Giles picked his head up, Bourne handed him a handful of paper towels. The professor took them without comment, wiping his face and hair. It was only as he threw the wadded towels into the trash that he appeared to recognize Bourne.

At once his back stiffened and he stood up straight. “Ah, the prodigal returns,” he said in his most professorial tone.

“Did you expect me?”

“Not really. On the other hand, I’m hardly surprised to find you here.” He gave Bourne a wan smile. “Bad pe

“Professor, I’d like you to once again get in touch with your chess-playing colleague.”

Giles frowned. “That may not be so easy. He’s reclusive and he doesn’t like answering questions.”

I can imagine, Bourne thought. “Nevertheless, I’d like you to try.”

“All right,” Giles said.

“By the way, what’s his name?”

Giles hesitated. “James.”

“James what?”

Another hesitation. “Weatherley.”

“Not Basil Bayswater?”

The professor turned away, facing the door.

“What question do you want to put to him?”

“I’d like him to describe the afterlife.”

Giles, who had been headed for the door, paused, turning slowly back to Bourne. “I beg your pardon?”

“Since Basil Bayswater’s son buried him three years ago,” Bourne said, “I would think he’d be in a perfect position to tell me what it’s like to be dead.”

“I told you,” Giles said, somewhat sullenly, “his name is James Weatherley.”

Bourne took him by the elbow. “Professor, no one believes that, not even you.” He moved Giles away from the door to the far end of the loo. “Now you’ll tell me why you lied to me.” When the professor remained silent, Bourne went on. “You never needed to call Bayswater for the translation of the engraving inside the ring, you already knew it.”

“Yes, I suppose I did. Neither of us was truthful with the other.” He shrugged. “Well, what can you expect from life? Nothing is ever what it seems.”

“You’re Severus Domna.”

Giles’s smile had gained a bit more traction. “There’s no point denying it, now that you’re about to hand over the ring.”

At that moment, as if he’d had his ear to the door, the man who had been behind the professor’s desk entered the loo. With the SIG Sauer in his hand he looked quite a bit less owlish. Immediately two more men, larger, muscular, armed with silenced pistols, came in just behind him. They fa

“As you can see,” Professor Giles said, “I haven’t given you a choice.”

[26]

VYLACHESLAV OSEROV WAS nursing not only his facial wounds but also a planet-size grudge against Arkadin, the man who had tormented him for years, and who was the cause of his hideous disfigurement in Bangalore. The chemical fire had eaten through layers of skin and into the flesh itself, which made recovery difficult and a return to normalcy impossible.

For days after he returned to Moscow, he had been swathed in thick bandages through which seeped not only blood but a thick yellow fluid whose stench made him gag. He had refused all painkillers and when the physician, on Maslov’s orders, tried to inject him with a sedative, he broke the man’s arm and very nearly his neck.

Every day, Oserov’s howls of pain could be heard all over the offices, even in the toilets, where the other men congregated for a brief respite. His cries of agony were so dreadful, like an animal being dismembered, they frightened and demoralized even Maslov’s hardened criminals. Maslov himself was forced to tie him to a column, like Odysseus to the mast, and tape his mouth shut in order to give him and his people some respite. By this time, Oserov had deep gouges on his temples, bloody like tribal scars, where in his agony he had dug his nails through the skin that had not been burned away.

In a way, he had become an infant. Maslov couldn’t send him to a hospital or a clinic without awkward questions being asked, an FSB-2 investigation being initiated. So Maslov had tried to set him up at Oserov’s apartment, which was in a dreadful condition of disrepair, having been reclaimed, like an abandoned jungle temple, by insects and rodents alike. No one could be induced to stay there with Oserov, and Oserov could not be expected to survive there on his own. The office was the only option.

Oserov could no longer look at himself. No vampire avoided mirrors more assiduously than he did. Also, he hated being seen in sunlight, any strong light, for that matter, behavior that gave rise to his new moniker among the Kazanskaya, Die Vampyr.

He sat now brooding in Maslov’s offices, which by necessity were moved every week. In this room, which Maslov had designated his, the lights were out and the shades drawn against the daylight. One lamp across the room from where he slumped down cast a small circle of illumination across the scarred floorboards.

The fiasco in Bangalore, his failure to kill Arkadin or, at least, gain the laptop for Maslov, had scarred him in more ways than one. His physical appearance had been compromised. Worse, he had lost the confidence of his boss. Without the Kazanskaya, Oserov was nothing. Without Maslov’s confidence, he was nothing within the Kazanskaya. For days now he had been racking his brains as to how to get back in Maslov’s good graces, how to restore the majesty of his position as field commander.

No plan, however, had presented itself. It meant nothing to him that his mind, torn apart by the agony of his wounds, was scarcely able to put two coherent thoughts together. His only thought was of revenge against Arkadin, and to get for Maslov what he wanted most: that accursed laptop. Oserov didn’t know why his boss wanted it, and he didn’t care. His lot was to do or die, that’s how it had been ever since he had joined the Kazanskaya and that was how it would remain.

But life was strange. For Oserov salvation came from an unexpected quarter. A call came through. So sunk in black thoughts was he that at first he refused to take it. Then his assistant told him that it had come in on a scrambled cell line, and he knew who it must be. Still, he resisted, thinking that at the moment he had neither the interest nor the patience for anything Yasha Dakaev had to report.

Oserov’s assistant poked his head in the door, which he had strict orders never to do.

“What?” Oserov barked.

“He says it’s urgent,” his assistant told him, and quickly withdrew.

“Goddammit,” Oserov muttered, and picked up the phone. “Yasha, this better be fucking good.”

“It is.” Dakaev’s voice sounded flat and faraway, but then he was always having to find out-of-the-way nooks and cra

“At last!” Oserov sat up straight. He heart seemed to pump at full speed again.

“According to the report that just came across my desk, he’s on his way to Morocco,” Dakaev said. “Ouarzazate, a village in the High Atlas Mountains called Tineghir, to be precise.”

“What the fuck is he going to do in Buttfuck, Morocco?”

“That I don’t know,” Dakaev said. “But our intel says he’s on his way.”

This is my chance, Oserov thought, jumping up. If I don’t take it, I might as well eat my Tokarev. For the first time since that last night in Bangalore, he felt galvanized. His failure had paralyzed him, he had been gnawing at himself from the inside out. He’d become disoriented with shame and rage.