The Bourne Sanction

“That’s exactly what I asked him about you.” Each ragged breath filled her with indescribable pain. “He’s not a monster, but if he were you’d be so much worse.”

Her hand twitched. Icoupov, caught up in her words, paid no attention until the bullet she fired from her Luger struck his right shoulder. He spun back against the wall. The pain caused him to drop the SIG. Seeing her struggling to fire again, he turned and ran out of the apartment, fleeing down the stairwell and out onto the street.

Thirty-Nine

WILLARD, relaxing in the steward’s lounge adjacent to the Library of the NSA safe house, was enjoying his sweet and milky midmorning cup of coffee while reading The Washington Post when his cell phone buzzed. He checked it, saw that it was from his son, Oren. Of course it wasn’t actually from Oren, but Willard was the only one who knew that.

He put down the paper, watched as the photo appeared on the phone’s screen. It was of two people standing in front of a rural church, its steeple rising up into the top margin of the photo. He had no idea who the people were or where they were, but these things were irrelevant. There were six ciphers in his head; this photo told him which one to use. The two figures plus the steeple meant he was to use cipher three. If, for instance, the two people were in front of an arch, he’d subtract one from two, instead of adding to it. There were other visual cues. A brick building meant divide the number of figures by two; a bridge, multiply by two; and so on.

Willard deleted the photo from his phone, then picked up the third section of the Post and began to read the first story on page three. Starting with the third word, he began to decipher the message that was his call to action. As he moved through the article, substituting certain letters for others as the protocol dictated, he felt a profound stirring inside him. He had been the Old Man’s eyes and ears inside the NSA for three decades, and the Old Man’s sudden death last year had saddened him deeply. Then he had witnessed Luther LaValle’s latest run at CI and had waited for his phone to ring, but for months his desire to see another photo fill his screen had been inexplicably unfulfilled. He simply couldn’t understand why the new DCI wasn’t making use of him. Had he fallen between the cracks; did Veronica Hart not know he existed? It certainly seemed that way, especially after LaValle had trapped Soraya Moore and her compatriot, who was still incarcerated belowdecks, as Willard privately called the rendition cells in the basement. He’d done what he could for the young man named Tyrone, though God knows it was little enough. Yet he knew that even the smallest sign of hope-the knowledge that you weren’t alone-was enough to reinvigorate a stalwart heart, and if he was any judge of character, Tyrone had a stalwart heart.

Willard had always wanted to be an actor-for many years Olivier had been his god-but in his wildest dreams he’d never imagined his acting career would be in the political arena. He’d gotten into it by accident, playing a role in his college company, Henry V, to be exact, one of Shakespeare’s great tragic politicians. As the Old Man said to him when he’d come backstage to congratulate Willard, Henry’s betrayal of Falstaff is political, rather than personal, and ends in success. “How would you like to do that in real life?” the Old Man had asked him. He’d come to Willard’s college to recruit for CI; he said he often found his people in the most unlikely places.

Finished with the deciphering, Willard had his immediate instructions, and he thanked the powers that be that he hadn’t been tossed aside with the Old Man’s trash. He felt like his old friend Henry V, though more than thirty years had passed since he’d trod a theater stage. Once again he was being called on to play his greatest role, one that he wore as effortlessly as a second skin.

He folded the paper away under one arm, took up his cell phone, and went out of the lounge. He still had twenty minutes left on his break, more than enough time to do what was required of him. What he had been ordered to do was find the digital camera Tyrone had on him when he’d been captured. Poking his head into the Library, he satisfied himself that LaValle was still sitting in his accustomed spot, opposite Soraya Moore, then he went down the hall.

Though the Old Man had recruited him, it was Alex Conklin who had trained him. Conklin, the Old Man had told him, was the best at what he did, namely preparing agents to be put into the field. It didn’t take him long to learn that though Conklin was renowned inside CI for training wet-work agents, he was also adept at coaching sleeper agents. Willard spent almost a year with Conklin, though never at CI headquarters; he was part of Treadstone, Conklin’s project that was so secret even most CI personnel was unaware of its existence. It was of paramount importance that he have no overt association with CI. Because the role the Old Man had planned for him was inside the NSA, his background check had to be able to withstand the most vigorous scrutiny.

All this flashed through Willard’s mind as he walked the sacrosanct hallways and corridors of the NSA’s safe house. He passed agent after agent and knew that he’d done his job to perfection. He was the indispensable nobody, the person who was always present, whom no one noticed.

He knew where Tyrone’s camera was because he’d been there when Kendall and LaValle had spoken about its disposition, but even if he hadn’t, he’d have suspected where LaValle had hidden it. He knew, for instance, that it wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the safe house, even on LaValle’s person, unless the damaging images Tyrone had taken of the rendition cells and the waterboarding tanks had been transferred to the in-house computer server or deleted off the camera’s drive. In fact, there was a chance that the images had been deleted, but he doubted it. In the short amount of time the camera had been in the NSA’s possession, Kendall was no longer in residence and LaValle had become obsessed with coercing Soraya Moore into giving him Jason Bourne.

He knew all about Bourne; he’d read the Treadstone files, even the ones that no longer existed, having been shredded and then burned when the information they held became too dangerous for Conklin, as well as for CI. He knew there had been far more to Treadstone than even the Old Man knew. That was Conklin’s doing; he’d been a man for whom the word secrecy was the holy grail. What his ultimate plan for Treadstone had been was anyone’s guess.

Inserting his passkey into the lock on LaValle’s office door, he punched in the proper electronic code. Willard knew everyone’s code-what use would he be as a sleeper agent otherwise? The door opened inward, and he slipped inside, shutting and locking it behind him.

Crossing to LaValle’s desk, he opened the drawers one by one, checking for false backs or bottoms. Finding none, he moved on to the bookcase, the sideboard with its hanging files and liquor bottles side by side. He lifted the prints off the walls, searching behind them for a hidden cache, but there was nothing.

He sat on a corner of the desk, contemplated the room, unconsciously swinging his leg back and forth while he tried to work out where LaValle had hidden the camera. All at once he heard the sound the heel of his shoe made against the skirt of the desk. Hopping off, he went around, crawled into the kneehole, and rapped on the skirt until he replicated the sound his heel had made. Yes, he was certain now: This part of the skirt was hollow.

Feeling around with his fingertips, he discovered the tiny latch, pushed it aside, and swung open the door. There was Tyrone’s camera. He was reaching for it when he heard the scratch of metal on metal.

LaValle was at the door.

Tell me you love me, Leonid Danilovich.” Devra smiled up at him as he knelt over her.

“What happened, Devra? What happened?” was all he could say.

He’d extricated himself at last from the sculpture, and would have gone after Bourne-but he’d heard the shots coming from Kirsch’s apartment, then the sound of running feet. The living room was spattered with blood. He saw her lying on the floor, the Luger still in her hand. Her shirt was dyed red.

“Leonid Danilovich.” She’d called his name when he appeared in her limited field of vision. “I waited for you.”

She started to tell him what had happened, but blood bubbles formed at the corners of her mouth and she started to gurgle horribly. Arkadin lifted her head off the floor, cradled it on his thighs. He pushed matted hair off her forehead and cheeks, leaving red streaks like war paint.

She tried to continue, stopped. Her eyes went out of focus and he thought he’d lost her. Then they cleared, her smile returned, and she said, “Do you love me, Leonid?”

He bent down and whispered her in ear. Was it I love you? There was so much static in his head, he couldn’t hear himself. Did he love her, and, if he did, what would it mean? Did it even matter?