The Bourne Objective (Цель Борна)

“Do you imagine I care what a piece of shit like you thinks of me.” It was not a question.

They bounced around in the backseat for some time. Then he said, as if continuing the previous conversation, “You’re here as an insurance policy. You and Bourne have a co

Soraya, brooding, was silent for the remainder of the ride.

In Marrakech, Arkadin took her along a warren of streets where Moroccans peered at her, licking their lips as if they were trying to measure the tenderness of her flesh. They were engulfed by the madhouse screeches of the jungle. At length, they entered a stuffy shop that stank of machine oil. A small, bald, mole-like man greeted Arkadin in the obsequious ma

“Well, since you know my stock,” the mole-man said, “I’ll leave you to make your choices. Bring what you want to buy upstairs, I’ll provide what ammunition you require, and we’ll settle the bill.”

Arkadin nodded absently. He was consumed with passing from one drawer of the arsenal to another, calculating firepower, ease of use, rapidity of fire, and the practicality of weight and size of each weapon.

When they were alone, he removed from a drawer what looked to Soraya like a searchlight with a large battery pack underneath it. Turning to her, he shook the searchlight. The battery pack opened and locked into place. The item was a folding machine gun.

“I’ve never seen that before.” She was fascinated despite herself.

“It’s a prototype, not on the market yet. It’s a Magpul FMG, takes standard nine-millimeter Glock ammo but spits it out a shitload faster than a pistol.” He ran his hand down the stubby barrel. “Nice, huh?”

Soraya thought it was. She’d dearly like one for herself.

Arkadin must have recognized the avidity of her gaze. “Here.”

She took it from him, examined it expertly, broke it down, then put it back together.

“Fucking ingenious.” Arkadin seemed in no hurry to take back the FMG. He seemed to be watching her, but, in fact, he was seeing something else, a scene from far away.

In St. Petersburg he’d taken Tracy to her hotel room. She had not asked him to come up, but she hadn’t protested when he had. Inside, she put her handbag and key down on a table, walked across the carpet and into the bathroom. She closed the door but he didn’t hear the click of a lock.

The river glittered in moonlight, black and thick and full of secrets, like an ancient serpent, always half asleep. It was stuffy in the room, so he went to the window and, unlatching it, opened it. A wind, thick as the river and smelling of it, swirled about the room. He turned, looked at the bed, and imagined Tracy there, her nakedness revealed by the moonlight.

A tiny sound, like a sigh or a catch in the throat, caused him to turn around. The bathroom door, unlatched, had opened, and now another swirl of wind pushed it farther, so that a thin wedge of buttery light fell across the carpet. He entered the wedge of light, and his gaze penetrated into the bathroom. He saw Tracy’s back, or rather a slice of it, pale and unblemished. Lower was the swell of her buttocks and the deep crease between. The pulse of pleasure in his groin was so extreme it bordered on pain. There was that thing about her-his hatred and his dependence-that made him weak. He despised himself, but he could not help moving toward the door and pushing it farther open.

The door, old and peeling, creaked, and Tracy peered at him over her shoulder. Her body was revealed to him in all its glory. She looked at him with a pity and loathing that brought an animal sound to his lips. Hurriedly, he pulled the door shut. When she emerged, he could not look at her. He heard her cross the room and close the window.

“Where were you brought up?” she said.

It was not a question, but a slap in the face. He could not answer her, and for that-for many things-he burned to kill her, to feel the cartilage in her throat rupture beneath the pressure of his fingers, to feel her blood ru

But Tracy did escape, he thought now, into death. He missed her, hated himself for missing her. She was the only woman who had refused him. Up until now, that is. As his eyes refocused on Soraya folding up the FMG, he felt a premonitory shiver run through him. For a moment, he saw her skull, and she looked like death. Then everything snapped back into focus and he could breathe again.

Unlike Tracy, her skin was burnished a golden bronze. Like Tracy, she had revealed herself to him when she stripped off the T-shirt he had loaned her to use as a tourniquet for Moira’s thigh. She had heavy breasts, the nipples dark and erect. He could see them now, beneath her top, see them as clearly as if she were still half naked.

“It’s because you can’t have me,” Soraya said as if reading his mind.

“On the contrary, I could have you right now.”

“Rape me, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“If you were going to,” she said, turning her back on him, “you would have already.”

He came up behind her and said, “Don’t tempt me.”

She whirled around. “Your rage is toward men, not women.”

He glared at her, unmoving.

“You get off on killing men and seducing women. But rape? You’d no more consider raping a woman than I would.”

His mind raced back to his hometown of Nizhny Tagil, where he had briefly become a member of Stas Kuzin’s gang, rounding up girls off the streets to stock Kuzin’s savage brothel. Night after night he’d heard the girls’ screams and cries as they were raped and beaten. In the end, he’d killed Kuzin and half his gang.

“Rape is for animals,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m not an animal.”

“That’s your life: the struggle to be a man, not an animal.”

He looked away.

“Did Treadstone do this to you?”

He laughed. “Treadstone was the least of it. It was everything that happened before, everything I try to forget.”

“Curious. For Bourne it’s just the opposite. His struggle is to remember.”

“He’s lucky, then,” Arkadin snarled.

“It’s a great pity you’re enemies.”

“God made us enemies.” Arkadin took the weapon from her. “A god named Alexander Conklin.”

Do you know how to die, Bourne?” Tanirt whispered.

“You were born on Siwa’s day: the last day of the month, which is both the ending and the begi