The Bourne Sanction Part 35

Virgil Pelz took Bourne and Petra farther into the bunker's main tunnel, to a rough-hewn s.p.a.ce that opened out into a circle. There were benches here, a small gas stove, a refrigerator.

"Lucky someone forgot to turn off the electricity," Petra said.

"Lucky my a.s.s." Pelz settled himself on a bench. "My nephew pays a town official under the table to keep the lights on." He offered them whiskey or wine, which they refused. He poured himself a shot of liquor, downed it perhaps to fortify himself or to keep himself from sinking back into the shadows. It was obvious he liked having company, that the stimulation of other humans was bringing him out of himself.

"Most of what I've already told you about the Black Legion is basic history, if you know where to look, but the key to understanding their success in negotiating the dangerous postwar landscape lies in two men: Farid Icoupov and Ibrahim Sever."

"I a.s.sume this Icoupov you speak of is Semion Icoupov's father," Bourne said.

Pelz nodded. "Just so."

"And did Ibrahim Sever have a son?"

"He had two," Pelz replied, "but I'm getting ahead of myself." He smacked his lips, glanced at the bottle of whiskey, then decided against another shot.

"Farid and Ibrahim were the best of friends. They grew up together, each the only sons in large families. Possibly, this is what bonded them as children. The bond was strong; it lasted for most of their lives, but Ibrahim Sever was a warrior at heart, Farid Icoupov an intellectual, and the seeds of discontent and mistrust must have been sown early. During the war their shared leadership worked out just fine. Ibrahim was in charge of the Black Legion soldiers on the Eastern Front; Farid put in place and directed the intelligence-gathering network in the Soviet Union.

"It was after the war when the problems began. Stripped of his duties as commandant of the military end, Ibrahim began to fret that his power was eroding." Pelz clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Listen, American, if you're a student of history you know how the two longtime allies and friends Gaius Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus became enemies infected by the ambitions, fears, deceptions, and power struggles of those under their respective commands. So it was with these two. In time, Ibrahim convinced himself-no doubt abetted by some of his more militant advisers-that his longtime friend was planning a power grab. Unlike Caesar, who was off in Gaul when Pompey declared war on him, Farid lived in the next house. Ibrahim Sever and his men came in the night and a.s.sa.s.sinated Farid Icoupov. Three days later Farid's son, Semion, shot Ibrahim to death as he was driving to work. In retaliation, Ibrahim's son, Asher, went after Semion in a Munich nightclub. Asher managed to escape, but in the ensuing hail of gunfire Asher's younger brother was killed."

Pelz scrubbed his face with his hand. "You see how it goes, American? Like an ancient Roman vendetta, an orgy of blood of biblical proportions."

"I know about Semion Icoupov, but not about Sever," Bourne said. "Where's Asher Sever now?"

The old man shrugged his thin shoulders. "Who knows? If Icoupov did, Sever would surely be dead by now."

For a time, Bourne sat silent, thinking about the Black Legion's attack on the professor, thinking about all the little anomalies that had been piling up in his mind: the oddity of Pyotr's network of decadents and incompetents, the professor saying it was his idea to have the stolen plans delivered to him via the network, and the question of whether Mischa Tarkanian-and Arkadin himself-was Black Legion. At last, he said, "Virgil, I need to ask you several questions."

"Yes, American." Pelz's eyes looked as bright and eager as a robin's.

Still, Bourne hesitated. Revealing anything of his mission or its background to a stranger violated every instinct, every lesson he'd been taught, and yet he could see no other alternative. "I came to Munich because a friend of mine-a mentor, really-asked me to go after the Black Legion, first because they're planning an attack against my country, and second because their leader, Semion Icoupov, ordered his son, Pyotr, killed."

Pelz looked up, a curious expression on his face. "Asher Sever gathered his power base, which he'd inherited from his father-a powerful intelligence-gathering network strewn across Asia and Europe-and ousted Semion. Icoupov hasn't been running the Black Legion for decades. If he had, I doubt whether I'd still be down here. Unlike Asher Sever, Icoupov was a man you could reason with."

"Are you saying that you've met both Semion Icoupov and Asher Sever?" Bourne said.

"That's right," Pelz said, nodding. "Why?"

Bourne had gone cold as he contemplated the unthinkable. Could the professor have been lying to him all the time? But if so-if he was in fact a member of the Black Legion-why in the world would he entrust the delivery of the attack plans to Pyotr's shaky network? Surely he would have known how unreliable its members were. Nothing seemed to make sense.

Knowing he had to solve this problem one step at a time, he took out his cell phone, scrolled through the photos, brought up the one the professor had sent of Egon Kirsch. He looked at the two men in the photo, then handed the phone to Pelz.

"Virgil, do you recognize either of these men?"

Pelz squinted, then stood and walked nearer to one of the bare lightbulbs. "No." He shook his head, then, after a moment's further scrutiny, his forefinger jabbed at the photo. "I don't know, because he looks so different . . ." He returned to where Bourne sat, turned the phone so they could both see the photo, and tapped the figure of Professor Specter. ". . . but, d.a.m.n, I'd swear this one is Asher Sever."

Thirty-Six.

PETER MARKS, chief of operations, was with Veronica Hart in her office, poring over reams of personnel data sheets, when they came for her. Luther LaValle, accompanied by a pair of federal marshals, had swept through CI security, armed with their warrant. Hart had only the briefest of warnings-a phone call from the first set of security guards downstairs-that her professional world was imploding. No time to get out of the way of the falling debris.

She barely had time to tell Marks, then stand up to face her accusers before the three men entered her office and presented her with the federal warrant.

"Veronica Rose Hart," the senior of the stone-faced federal marshals intoned, "you are hereby placed under arrest for conspiring with one Jason Bourne, a rogue agent, for purposes that violate the regulations of Central Intelligence."

"On what evidence?" Hart said.

"NSA surveillance photos of you in the courtyard of the Freer handing a packet to Jason Bourne," the marshal said in the same zombie voice.

Marks, who was also on his feet, said, "This is insane. You can't really believe-"

"Shut it, Mr. Marks," Luther LaValle said with no fear of contradiction. "One more word out of you and I'll have you put under formal investigation."

Marks was about to reply when a sharp look from the DCI forced him to bite back his words. His jaws clamped shut, but the fury in his eyes was unmistakable.

Hart came around the desk, and the junior marshal cuffed her hands behind her back.

"Is that really necessary?" Marks said.

LaValle pointed at him wordlessly. As they marched Hart from her office, she said, "Take over, Peter. You're acting DCI now."

LaValle grinned. "Not for long, if I have anything to say about it."

After they'd gone, Marks collapsed into his chair. Finding that his hands were trembling, he clasped them together, as if in prayer. His heart was pounding so hard he found it difficult to think. He jumped up, walked over to the window behind the DCI's desk, stood staring out at the Washington night. All the monuments were lit up, all the streets and avenues were filled with traffic. Everything was as it should be, and yet nothing looked familiar. He felt as if he'd entered an alternate universe. He couldn't have been witness to what just happened, NSA couldn't be about to absorb CI into its gigantic corpus. But then he turned around to find the office empty and the full horror of seeing the DCI frog-marched out in handcuffs swept over him, made his legs weak, so that he sought out the big chair behind the desk and sat in it.

Then the implications of where he sat, and why, sank in. He picked up the phone and dialed Stu Gold, CI's lead counsel.

"Sit tight. I'll be right over," Gold told him in his usual no-nonsense voice. Did nothing faze him?

Then Marks began to make a series of calls. It was going to be a long and harrowing night.

Rodney Feir was having the time of his life. As he accompanied Afrique into one of the rooms in the back of The Gla.s.s Slipper, he felt as if he were on top of the world. In fact, popping a v.i.a.g.r.a, he decided to ask her to do a number of things he'd never tried before. Why the h.e.l.l not Why the h.e.l.l not? he asked himself.

While he was undressing he thought of the information on Typhon's field agents Peter Marks had sent him via interoffice mail. Feir had deliberately told Marks he didn't want it sent electronically because it was too insecure. The info was folded into the inside pocket of his coat, ready to give to General Kendall before they left The Gla.s.s Slipper tonight. He could have handed it over while they were at dinner, but he'd felt, all things considered, that a champagne toast after all their treats had been consumed was the proper way to cap off the night.

Afrique was already on the bed, spread languidly, her large eyes half closed, but she got right down to business as soon as Feir joined her. He tried to keep his mind on the proceedings, but seeing as how his body was totally in it, there wasn't much point. He preferred dwelling on the things that made him truly happy, like getting the better of Peter Marks. When he was growing up it was people like Marks-and, for that matter, Batt-who'd had it all over him, brainiacs with brawn, in other words, who'd made his life miserable. They were the ones who had the cool circle of friends, who got all the great-looking girls, who rode in cars while he was still tooling around on a scooter. He was the nerd, the chubby-fat, really-kid who was made the b.u.t.t of all their jokes, who was pushed around and ostracized, who, despite his high IQ, was so tongue-tied he could never stick up for himself.

He'd joined CI as a glorified pencil pusher, and, yes, he'd worked his way up the professional ladder, but not into fieldwork or counterintelligence. No, he was chief of field support, which meant that he was in charge of gathering and distributing the paperwork generated by the very CI personnel he longed to be like. His office was the central hub of supply and demand, and there were days when he could convince himself that it was the nerve center of CI. But most of the time he saw himself for what he really was-someone who kept pushing electronic lists, data entry forms, directorate requests, allocation tables, budget spreadsheets, personnel a.s.signment profiles, materiel lading bills, a veritable landslide of paperwork whizzing through the CI intranet. A monitor of information, in other words, a master of nothing.

He was enveloped in pleasure, a warm, viscous friction spreading outward from his groin into his torso and limbs. He closed his eyes and sighed.

At first, being an anonymous cog in the CI machine suited him, but as the years pa.s.sed, as he rose in the hierarchy, only the Old Man understood his worth, for it was the Old Man who promoted him, time after time. But no one else-certainly none of the other directors-said a word to him until they needed something. Then a request came flying through CI cybers.p.a.ce as quick as you could say, I need it yesterday I need it yesterday. If he got them what they wanted yesterday, he heard nothing, not even a nod of thanks in the hallway, but should there be any delay at all, no matter the reason, they'd land on him like woodp.e.c.k.e.rs on a tree full of insects. He'd never hear the end of their pestering until they got what they wanted, and then silence again. It seemed sadly ironic to him that even in an insider's paradise like CI he was on the outside.

It was humiliating to be one of those stereotypical Americans who time and again got sand kicked in his face. How he hated himself for being a living, breathing cliche. It was these evenings spent with General Kendall that gave his life color and meaning, the clandestine meetings in the health club sauna, the dinners at local barbecue joints in SE, and then the delicious chocolate nightcaps at The Gla.s.s Slipper, where he was for once the insider instead of having his nose pressed to someone else's window. Knowing that he couldn't be transformed he had to settle for losing himself in Afrique's bed at The Gla.s.s Slipper.

General Kendall, smoking a cigar in the corral, the colloquial name for the parlor room where the girls were paraded for the benefit of the patrons, was enjoying himself immensely. If he was thinking of his boss at all, it was of the heart attack this scene he was enacting would cause LaValle. As for his family, they were the farthest thing from his mind. Unlike Feir, who always went for the same girl, Kendall was a man of diverse tastes when it came to the women of The Gla.s.s Slipper, and why not? He had virtually no choice in any other areas of his life. If not here, where?

He sat on the purple velvet sofa, one arm thrown along the back, watching through slitted eyes the slow parade of flesh. He had already made his choice; the girl was in her room, undressing, but when Bev had come to him, suggesting that he might want something a bit more special-another girl to create a threesome-he hadn't hesitated. He'd been just about to make his choice when he saw someone. She was impossibly tall, with skin like the darkest cocoa, and was so regal in her beauty that he broke out into a sweat.

He caught Bev's eye and she came over. Bev was attuned to his desires. "I want her," he said to Bev, pointing at the regal beauty.

"I'm afraid Kiki's not available," she said.

This answer made Kendall want her all the more. Venal witch; she knew him too well. He produced five hundred-dollar bills. "How about now?" he said.

Bev, true to form, pocketed the money. "Leave it to me," she said.

The general watched her pick her way through the girls to where Kiki was standing, somewhat apart from the others. While he observed the conversation his heart began to beat in his chest like a war drum. He was sweating so much he was obliged to wipe his palms on the purple velvet of the sofa arm. If she said no, what would he do? But she wasn't saying no, she was looking across the corral at him, with a smile that raised his temperature a couple of degrees. Jesus, he wanted her!

As if in a trance, he saw her coming across the room toward him, her hips swaying, that maddening half smile on her face. He stood up, with some difficulty, he noted. He felt like a seventeen-year-old virgin. Kiki held out her hand and he took it, terrified that she'd be repulsed if it was damp, but nothing interfered with that half smile.

There was something intensely pleasurable about allowing her to lead him past all the other girls, enjoying the looks of envy on their faces.

"Which room are you in?" Kiki murmured in a voice like honey.

Kendall, inhaling her spicy, musky scent, could not find his voice. He pointed, and again she led him as if he were on a leash until they were standing in front of the door.

"Are you sure you want two girls tonight?" She brushed her hip against his. "I'm more than enough for any man I've been with."

The general felt a delicious shiver travel down the length of his spine, lodge itself like a heated arrow between his thighs. Reaching out, he opened the door. Lena writhed on the bed, naked. He heard the door close behind him. Without thinking, he undressed himself, then he stepped out of the puddle of his clothes, took Kiki's hand, padded over to the bed. He knelt on it, she let go of his hand, and he fell on Lena.

He felt Kiki's hands on his shoulders, and, groaning, he lost himself within Lena's lush body. The pleasure built along with the antic.i.p.ation of Kiki's long, lithe body pressed against his glistening back.

It took him some time to become aware that the quick flashes of light weren't a result of the quickened firing of nerve endings behind his eyes. Drugged with s.e.x and desire, he was slow to turn his head directly into another battery of flashes. Even then, negative images dancing behind his retinas, his fogged brain couldn't quite piece together what was happening, and his body continued to move rhythmically against Lena's pliant flesh.

Then the camera flashed again, he belatedly raised his hand to shield his eyes, and there was stark reality staring him in the face. Kiki, still dressed, continued to take shots of him and Lena.

"Smile, General," she said in that sensual, honeyed voice. "There's nothing else you can do."

I've got too much anger inside me," Petra said. "It's like one of those flesh-eating diseases you read about."

"Dachau is toxic for you, so is Munich now," Bourne said. "You've got to go away."

She moved to the left-hand lane of the autobahn, put on some real speed. They were on their way back to Munich in the car Pelz's nephew had bought for him under the nephew's name. The police might still be looking for both of them, but their only lead was Petra's Munich apartment, and neither of them had any intention of going anywhere near it. As long as she didn't get out of the car, Bourne felt it was relatively safe for her to drive him back into the city.

"Where would I go?" she said.

"Leave Germany altogether."

She laughed, but it wasn't a pleasant sound. "Turn tail and run, you mean."

"Why would you see it that way?"

"Because I'm German; because I belong here."

"The Munich police are looking for you," he said.

"And if they find me, then I'll do my time for killing your friend." She flashed her headlights so a slower car could get out of her way. "Meanwhile I have money. I can live."

"But what will you do?"

She gave him a lopsided smile. "I'm going to take care of Virgil. He needs drying out; he needs a friend." Nearing the city, she changed lanes so she could exit when she needed to. "The cops won't find me," she said with an odd kind of certainty, "because I'm taking him far away from here. Virgil and me, we'll be two outlaws learning a whole new way of life."

Egon Kirsch lived in the northern district of Schwabing, known as the young intellectual quarter because of the ma.s.s of university students that flooded its streets, cafes, and bars.

As they came abreast of Schwabing's main plaza, Petra pulled over. "When I was younger I used to hang out here with my friends. We were all militants, then, agitating for change, and we felt connected to this place because it was from here that the Freiheitsaktion Bayer, one of the most famed resistance groups, commandeered Radio Munich near the end of the war. They broadcast messages to the populace to seize and arrest all local n.a.z.i leaders, and to signal their rejection of the regime by waving white sheets out of their windows-an action that was punishable by death, by the way. And they managed to save a large number of civilian lives as the American army swept in."

"At last we find something in Munich that even you can be proud of," Bourne said.

"I suppose so." Petra laughed, almost sadly. "But I among all of my friends was the only one who stayed a revolutionary. The others are corporate functionaries or Hausfraus now. They lead sad, gray lives. I see them sometimes, trudging to and from work. I walk by them; they don't even look up. In the end, they all disappointed me."

Kirsch's apartment was on the top floor of a beautiful house of stone-colored stucco, arched windows, and a terra-cotta tile roof. Between two of his windows was a niche holding a stone statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus.

Petra pulled into the curb in front of the building. "I wish you well, American," she said, deliberately using Virgil Pelz's phrasing. "Thank you . . . for everything."

"You may not believe it, but we helped each other," Bourne said as he got out of the car. "Good luck, Petra."

When she'd driven off, he turned, went up the steps to the building, and used the code Kirsch had given him to open the front door. The interior was neat and spotlessly clean. The wood-paneled hallway gleamed with a recent waxing. Bourne climbed the carved wooden staircase to the top floor. Using Kirsch's key, he let himself in. Though the apartment itself was light and airy, with many windows overlooking the street, it was steeped in a deep silence, as if it existed on the bottom of the sea. There was no TV, no computer. Bookcases lined one entire wall of the living room, holding volumes by Nietzsche, Kant, Descartes, Heidegger, Leibniz, and Machiavelli. There were also books by many of the great mathematicians, biographers, fiction writers, and economists. The other walls were covered with Kirsch's framed and matted line drawings, so detailed and intricate that at first glance they seemed to be architectural plans, but then suddenly they came into focus and Bourne realized the drawings were abstracts. Like all good art, they seemed to move back and forth from reality to an imagined dream world where anything was possible.

After taking a brief tour of all the rooms, he settled down in a chair behind Kirsch's desk. He thought long and hard about the professor. Was he Dominic Specter, the nemesis of the Black Legion, as he claimed to be, or was he, in fact, Asher Sever, the leader of the Black Legion? If he was Sever, he'd staged the attack on himself-an elaborate scheme that had cost a number of lives. Could the professor be guilty of such an irrational act? If he was the leader of the Black Legion, certainly. The second question Bourne had been asking himself was why the professor would entrust the stolen plans to Pyotr's thoroughly undependable network. But there was another enigma: If the professor was Sever, why was he so anxious to get those plans? Wouldn't he already have them? These two questions went around and around in Bourne's head without producing a satisfactory solution. Nothing about the situation he found himself in appeared to make sense, which meant that a vital part of the picture was missing. And yet he had the nagging suspicion that, like Egon Kirsch's drawings, he was being shown two separate realities-if only he could decipher which was real and which one was false.

At length, he turned his mind to something that had been bothering him ever since the incident at the Egyptian Museum. He knew that Franz Jens had been the only one to follow him into the museum, so how on earth did Arkadin know where he was? Arkadin had to have been the one to kill Jens. He also must have given the order to kill Egon Kirsch, but, again, how did he know where Kirsch was?

The answers to both questions were firmly rooted in time and place. He hadn't been tailed to the museum, then . . . As a chill spread through him, Bourne went very still. With no physical tail, there had to be an electronic tail somewhere on his person. But how had it been put there? Someone could have brushed up against him in the airport. He rose, slowly undressed. As he did so, he went through every item of clothing, looking for an electronic tag. Finding nothing, he dressed, sat again in the chair, deep in thought.

With his eidetic memory, he went through every step of his journey from Moscow to Munich. When he recalled the German Immigration officer, he realized that his pa.s.sport had been out of his possession for close to half a minute. Taking it out of his breast pocket, he began to leaf through it, checking each page both by sight and by touch. On the inside of the back cover, stuck in the fold of the binding, he found the tiny transmitter.

Thirty-Seven.

HOW WONDERFUL it is to breathe the good night air," Veronica Hart said as she stood on the pavement just outside the Pentagon.

"Diesel fumes and all," Stu Gold said.

"I knew LaValle's charges wouldn't stick," she said as they crossed to his car. "They're patently trumped up."

"I wouldn't begin celebrating just yet," the attorney said. "LaValle's put me on notice that he's going to take those surveillance photos of you and Bourne to the president tomorrow for an executive order to have you removed."

"Come on, Stu, those were private conversations between Martin Lindros and a civilian, Moira Trevor. There's nothing in them. LaValle's banking on hot air."