The Bourne Sanction Read online

From his lofty perch on the overlook just off Via Totone, Pyotr had a breathtaking panorama of the red-brown tile roofs of the chalets and apartment houses, the palm-lined squares of the town, the cerulean waters of the lake, the mountains, their shoulders mantled with capes of mist. The distant drone of powerboats, leaving frothy scimitars of white wake, came to him intermittently while he sat in his gray BMW. In truth, part of his mind was already on his imminent trip. Having gotten the stolen document, he had sent it on the long journey along his network to its ultimate end.

  Being here excited him in the most extraordinary way. His anticipation of what was to come, of the accolades he would receive, especially from his father, sent an electric charge through him. He was on the brink of an unimaginable victory. Arkadin had called him from the Moscow airport to tell him that the operation had been successful, that he had in his possession the physical proof Pyotr required.

  He had taken a risk going after Maks, but the man had murdered Pyotr’s brother. Was he supposed to turn his cheek and forget the affront? He knew better than anyone his father’s stern dictum to keep to the shadows, to remain hidden, but he thought this one act of vengeance was worth the risk. Besides, he’d handled the matter via intermediaries, the way he knew his father would have.

  Hearing the deep growl of a car engine, he turned, saw a dark blue Mercedes come up the rise toward the overlook.

  The only real risk he was taking was going to happen right now, and that, he knew, couldn’t be helped. If Leonid Arkadin was able to infiltrate Colony 13 in Nizhny Tagil and kill Borya Maks, he was the man for the next job Pyotr had in mind. One his father should have taken care of years ago. Now he had a chance to finish what his father was too timid to attempt. To the bold belonged the spoils. The document he’d procured was proof positive that the time for caution was at an end.

  The Mercedes drew to a stop beside his BMW, a man with light hair and even lighter eyes emerging with the fluidity of a tiger. He was not a particularly large man, he wasn’t overmuscled like many of the Russian grupperovka personnel; nevertheless something inside him radiated a quiet menace Pyotr found impressive. From a very young age Pyotr had been exposed to dangerous men. At the age of eleven he had killed a man who had threatened his mother. He hadn’t hesitated in the slightest. If he had, his mother would have died that afternoon in the Azerbaijani bazaar at the hands of the knife-wielding assassin. That assassin, as well as others over the years, had been sent by Semion Icoupov, Pyotr’s father’s implacable nemesis, the man who at this moment was safely ensconced in his villa on Viale Marco Campione, not a mile from where Pyotr and Leonid Arkadin now stood.

  The two men did not greet each other, did not address each other by name. Arkadin took out the stainless-steel briefcase Pyotr had sent him. Pyotr reached for its twin inside the BMW. The exchange was made on the hood of the Mercedes. The men put the cases down side by side, unlocked them. Arkadin’s contained Maks’s severed thumb, wrapped and bagged. Pyotr’s contained thirty thousand dollars in diamonds, the only currency Arkadin accepted as payment.

  Arkadin waited patiently. As Pyotr unwrapped the thumb he stared out at the lake, perhaps wishing he were on one of the powerboats slicing a path away from land. Maks’s thumb had withered slightly on the journey from Russia. A certain odor emanated from it, which was not unfamiliar to Pyotr Zilber. He’d buried his share of family and compatriots. He turned so the sunlight struck the tattoo, produced a small magnifying glass through which he peered at the marking.

  At length, he put the glass away. “Did he prove difficult?”

  Arkadin turned back to face him. For a moment he stared implacably into Pyotr’s eyes. “Not especially.”

  Pyotr nodded. He threw the thumb over the side of the overlook, tossed the empty case after it. Arkadin, taking this to be the conclusion of their deal, reached for the packet filled with diamonds. Opening it, he took out a jeweler’s loupe, plucked a diamond at random, examined it with an expert’s aplomb.

  When he nodded, satisfied as to the clarity and color, Pyotr said, “How would you like to make three times what I paid you for this assignment?”

  “I’m a very busy man,” Arkadin said, revealing nothing.

  Pyotr inclined his head deferentially. “I have no doubt.”

  “I only take assignments that interest me.”

  “Would Semion Icoupov interest you?”

  Arkadin stood very still. Two sports cars passed, heading up the road as if it were Le Mans. In the echo of their throaty exhausts, Arkadin said, “How convenient that we happen to be in the tiny principality where Semion Icoupov lives.”

  “You see?” Pyotr grinned. “I know precisely how busy you are.”

  “Two hundred thousand,” Arkadin said. “The usual terms.”

  Pyotr, who had anticipated Arkadin’s fee, nodded his agreement. “Conditional on immediate delivery.”

  “Agreed.”

  Pyotr popped the trunk of the BMW. Inside were two more cases. From one, he transferred a hundred thousand in diamonds to the case on the Mercedes’s hood. From the other, he handed Arkadin a packet of documents, including a satellite map, indicating the precise location of Icoupov’s villa, a list of his bodyguards, and a set of architectural blueprints of the villa, including the electrical circuits, the separate power supply, and details of the security devices in place.

  “Icoupov is in residence now,” Pyotr said. “How you make your way inside is up to you.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” After paging through the documents, asking a question here and there, Arkadin placed them in the case on top of the diamonds, snapped the lid shut, slung the case into the passenger’s seat of the Mercedes as easily as if it were filled with balloons.

  “Tomorrow, same time, right here,” Pyotr said as Arkadin slid behind the wheel.

  The Mercedes started up, its engine purring. Then Arkadin put it in gear. As he slid out onto the road, Pyotr turned to walk to the front of the BMW. He heard the squeal of brakes, the slewing of a car, and turned to see the Mercedes heading directly toward him. He was paralyzed for a moment. What the hell is he doing? he asked himself. Belatedly, he began to run. But the Mercedes was already on top of him, its front grille slammed into him, pinned him to the side of the BMW.

  Through a haze of agony he saw Arkadin get out of his car, walk toward him. Then something gave out inside him and he passed into oblivion.

  He regained consciousness in a paneled study, gleaming with polished brass fixtures, lush with jewel-toned Isfahan carpets. A walnut desk and chair were within his field of vision, as was an enormous window that looked out on the sparkling water of Lake Lugano and the veiled mountains behind it. The sun was low in the west, sending long shadows the color of a fresh bruise over the water, up the whitewashed walls of Campione d’Italia.

  He was bound to a plain wooden chair that seemed to be as out of place in the surroundings of wealth and power as he was. He tried to take a deep breath, winced with shocking pain. Looking down, he saw bandages wrapped tightly around his chest, realized that he must have at least one cracked rib.

  “At last you have returned from the land of the dead. For a while there you had me worried.”

  It was painful for Pyotr to turn his head. Every muscle in his body felt as if it were on fire. But his curiosity would not be denied, so he bit his lip, kept turning his head until a man came into view. He was rather small, stoop-shouldered. Glasses with round lenses were fitted over large, watery eyes. His bronzed scalp, lined and furrowed as pastureland, was without a single hair, but as if to make up for his bald pate his eyebrows were astonishingly thick, arching up over the skin above his eye sockets. He looked like one of those wily Turkish traders from the Levant.

  “Semion Icoupov,” Pyotr said. He coughed. His mouth felt stiff, as if it were stuffed with cotton. He could taste the salt-copper of his own blood, and swallowed heavily.

  Icoupov could have moved so that Pyotr didn’t have to twist his neck so far in order to keep
him in view, but he didn’t. Instead he dropped his gaze to the sheet of heavy paper he’d unrolled. “You know, these architectural plans of my villa are so complete I’m learning things about the building I never knew before. For instance, there is a sub-basement below the cellar.” He ran his stubby forefinger along the surface of the plan. “I suppose it would take some doing to break into it now, but who knows, it might prove worthwhile.”

  His head snapped up and he fixed Pyotr with his gaze. “For instance, it would make a perfect place for your incarceration. I’d be assured that not even my closest neighbor would hear you scream.” He smiled, a cue for a terrible focusing of his energies. “And you will scream, Pyotr, this I promise you.” His head swiveled, the beacons of his eyes searching out someone else. “Won’t he, Leonid?”

  Now Arkadin came into Pyotr’s field of view. At once he grabbed Pyotr’s head with one hand, dug into the hinge of his jaw with the other. Pyotr had no choice but to open his mouth. Arkadin checked his teeth one by one. Pyotr knew that he was looking for a false tooth filled with liquid cyanide. A death pill.

  “All his,” Arkadin said as he let go of Pyotr.

  “I’m curious,” Icoupov said. “How in the world did you procure these plans, Pyotr?”

  Pyotr, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop, said nothing. But all at once he began to shiver so violently his teeth chattered.

  Icoupov signaled to Arkadin, who swaddled Pyotr’s upper body in a thick blanket. Icoupov brought a carved cherry chair to a position facing Pyotr, sat down on it.

  He continued just as if he hadn’t expected an answer. “I must admit that shows a fair amount of initiative on your part. So the clever boy has grown into a clever young man.” Icoupov shrugged. “I’m hardly surprised. But listen to me now, I know who you really are-did you think you could fool me by continually changing your name? The truth of the matter is you’ve prodded open a wasp’s nest, so you shouldn’t be surprised to get stung. And stung and stung and stung.”

  He inclined his upper body toward Pyotr. “However much your father and I despise each other, we grew up together; once we were as close as brothers. So. Out of respect for him, I won’t lie to you, Pyotr. This bold foray of yours won’t end well. In fact, it was doomed from the start. And d’you want to know why? You needn’t answer; of course you do. Your earthly needs betrayed you, Pyotr. That delicious girl you’ve been bedding for the past six months belongs to me. I know you’re thinking that’s not possible. I know you vetted her thoroughly; that’s your MO. I anticipated all your inquiries; I made certain you received the answers you needed to hear.”

  Pyotr, staring into Icoupov’s face, found his teeth chattering again, no matter how tightly he clamped his jaw.

  “Tea, please, Philippe,” Icoupov said to an unseen person. Moments later, a slender young man set an English silver tea service onto a low table at Icoupov’s right hand. Like a favorite uncle, Icoupov went about pouring and sugaring the tea. He put the porcelain cup to Pyotr’s bluish lips, said, “Please drink, Pyotr. It’s for your own good.”

  Pyotr stared implacably at him until Icoupov said, “Ah, yes, I see.” He sipped the tea from the cup himself to assure Pyotr it was only tea, then offered it again. The rim chattered against Pyotr’s teeth, but eventually Pyotr drank, slowly at first, then more avidly. When the tea was drained, Icoupov set the cup back on its matching saucer. By this time Pyotr’s shivering had subsided.

  “Feeling better?”

  “I’ll feel better,” Pyotr said, “when I get out of here.”

  “Ah, well, I’m afraid that won’t be for some time,” Icoupov said. “If ever. Unless you tell me what I want to know.”

  He hitched his chair closer; the benign uncle’s expression was now nowhere to be found. “You stole something that belongs to me,” he said. “I want it back.”

  “It never belonged to you; you stole it first.”

  Pyotr replied with such venom that Icoupov said, “You hate me as much as you love your father, this is your basic problem, Pyotr. You never learned that hate and love are essentially the same in that the person who loves is as easily manipulated as the person who hates.”

  Pyotr screwed up his mouth, as if Icoupov’s words left a bitter taste in his mouth. “Anyway, it’s too late. The document is already on its way.”

  Instantly, there was a change in Icoupov’s demeanor. His face became as closed as a fist. A certain tension lent his entire small body the aspect of a weapon about to be launched. “Where did you send it?”

  Pyotr shrugged, but said nothing more.

  Icoupov’s face turned dark with momentary rage. “Do you think I know nothing about the information and matйriel pipeline you have been refining for the past three years? It’s how you send information you stole from me back to your father, wherever he is.”

  For the first time since he’d regained consciousness, Pyotr smiled. “If you knew anything important about the pipeline, you’d have rolled it up by now.”

  At this Icoupov regained the icy control over his emotions.

  “I told you talking to him would be useless,” Arkadin said from his position directly behind Pyotr’s chair.

  “Nevertheless,” Icoupov said, “there are certain protocols that must be acknowledged. I’m not an animal.”

  Pyotr snorted.

  Icoupov eyed his prisoner. Sitting back, he fastidiously pulled up his trouser leg, crossed one leg over the other, laced his stubby fingers on his lower belly.

  “I give you one last chance to continue this conversation.”

  It was not until the silence was drawn out into an almost intolerable length that Icoupov raised his gaze to Arkadin.

  “Pyotr, why are you doing this to me?” he said with a resigned tone. And then to Arkadin, “Begin.”

  Though it cost him in pain and breath, Pyotr twisted as far as he was able, but he couldn’t see what Arkadin was doing. He heard the sound of implements on a metal cart being rolled across the carpet.

  Pyotr turned back. “You don’t frighten me.”

  “I don’t mean to frighten you, Pyotr,” Icoupov said. “I mean to hurt you, very, very badly.”

  With a painful convulsion, Pyotr’s world contracted to the pinpoint of a star in the night sky. He was locked within the confines of his mind, but despite all his training, all his courage, he could not compartmentalize the pain. There was a hood over his head, drawn tight around his neck. This confinement magnified the pain a hundredfold because, despite his fearlessness, Pyotr was subject to claustrophobia. For someone who never went into caves, small spaces, or even underwater, the hood was the worst of all possible worlds. His senses could tell him that, in fact, he wasn’t confined at all, but his mind wouldn’t accept that input-it was in the full flight of panic. The pain Arkadin was inflicting on him was one thing, its magnification was quite another. Pyotr’s mind was spinning out of control. He felt a wildness enter him-the wolf caught in a trap that begins to frantically gnaw its leg off. But the mind was not a limb; he couldn’t gnaw it off.

  Dimly, he heard someone asking him a question to which he knew the answer. He didn’t want to give the answer, but he knew he would because the voice told him the hood would come off if he answered. His crazed mind only knew it needed the hood off; it could no longer distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, lies from truth. It reacted to only one imperative: the need to survive. He tried to move his fingers, but in bending over him his interrogator must have been pressing down on them with the heels of his hands.

  Pyotr couldn’t hang on any longer. He answered the question.

  The hood didn’t come off. He howled in indignation and terror. Of course it didn’t come off, he thought in a tiny instant of lucidity. If it did, he’d have no incentive to answer the next question and the next and the next.

  And he would answer them-all of them. He knew this with a bone-chilling certainty. Even though part of him suspected that the hood might never come off, his trapped mind would t
ake the chance. It had no other choice.

  But now that he could move his fingers, there was another choice. Just before the whirlwind of panicked madness overtook him again, Pyotr made that choice. There was one way out and, saying a silent prayer to Allah, he took it.

  Icoupov and Arkadin stood over Pyotr’s body. Pyotr’s head lay on one side; his lips were very blue, and a faint but distinct foam emanated from his half-open mouth. Icoupov bent down, sniffed the scent of bitter almonds.

  “I didn’t want him dead, Leonid, I was very clear on the point.” Icoupov was vexed. “How did he get hold of cyanide?”

  “They used a variation I’ve never encountered.” Arkadin did not look happy himself. “He was fitted with a false fingernail.”

  “He would have talked.”

  “Of course he would have talked,” Arkadin said. “He’d already begun.”

  “So he took it upon himself to shut his own mouth, forever.” Icoupov shook his head in distaste. “This will have significant fallout. He’s got dangerous friends.”

  “I’ll find them,” Arkadin said. “I’ll kill them.”

  Icoupov shook his head. “Even you can’t kill them all in time.”

  “I can contact Mischa.”

  “And risk losing everything? No. I understand your connection with him-closest friend, mentor. I understand the urge to talk to him, to see him. But you can’t, not until this is finished and Mischa comes home. That’s final.”

  “I understand.”

  Icoupov walked over the window, stood with his hand behind his back contemplating the fall of darkness. Lights sparkled along the edges of the lake, up the hillside of Campione d’Italia. There ensued a long silence while he contemplated the face of the altered landscape. “We’ll have to move up the timetable, that’s all there is to it. And you’ll take Sevastopol as a starting point. Use the one name you got out of Pyotr before he committed suicide.”

  He turned around to face Arkadin. “Everything now rides on you, Leonid. This attack has been in the planning stages for three years. It has been designed to cripple the American economy. Now there are barely two weeks left before it becomes a reality.” He walked noiselessly across the carpet. “Philippe will provide you with money, documents, weaponry that will escape electronic detection, anything you need. Find this man in Sevastopol. Retrieve the document, and when you do, follow the pipeline back and shut it down so that it will never again be used to threaten our plans.”