She felt suddenly deflated. Even so, she continued her investigation. Seeking out the rental-car manager, she gave him the fake name Arkadin had used. “What car did he rent?”
“Just a moment.” The manager turned to his computer terminal, input the name and the date. “A black Chevy, an old one, an ’87. A heap, really, but apparently that satisfied him.”
“You keep cars that long?”
The manager nodded. “For one thing, here in the desert they don’t rust. For another, since so many of our cars are stolen, it pays to rent out the old ones. Besides, customers like the gentle prices.”
Soraya copied down the information, including the license plate tag, but without much hope that if she even found the car it would lead to Arkadin. Then she rented a car of her own, thanked the manager, and walked into a café, where she sat down and ordered an iced coffee. She’d learned the hard way not to order iced tea outside New York, Washington, or LA. Americans liked their iced tea achingly sweet.
While she waited, she opened a detailed map of Arizona and northern Mexico. Mexico was a big country, but she guessed Arkadin might be somewhere within a hundred-mile radius of the airport. Otherwise, why specifically choose Tucson when he could have flown into Mexico City or Acapulco? No, she decided, his destination had to be northwestern Mexico, possibly even just across the border.
Her iced coffee came, and she drank it black and unsugared, savoring the acidic bite that chased its way down her throat and into her stomach. She drew a circle around the airport that encompassed one hundred miles. That was her search area.
The moment Soraya left his office, the manager took out a small key from his trouser pocket and unlocked the lowest drawer on the right side of his desk. Inside were files, a handgun registered in his name, and a head shot photo. He brought the photo into the light, staring at it for several moments. Then, pursing his lips, he turned the photo over, read the local number off to himself, and dialed it on his office phone.
When the male voice answered, he said, “Someone came looking for your man-the man in the photo you gave me… She said her name was Soraya Moore, she gave me no reason to disbelieve her… No official ID, no… I did just as you said… No sweat on that score… No, of course you don’t understand. What I mean is that it’ll be easy, I rented her a car…”
“… a Toyota Corolla, silver-blue, license tag… D as in David, V as in Victor, N as in Nancy, three-three-seven-eight.”
There was a bit more, but it was of no interest to Soraya. The tiny electronic bug she had affixed to the underside of the manager’s desk was working perfectly, the manager’s voice came through with crystal clarity. Pity she couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line. However, she now knew that someone had staked out the Tucson airport, possibly others near the border with Mexico. She also knew that whoever these people were they were going to follow her into Mexico. One thing stood out: The person the manager had called didn’t understand American jargon. That left out Mexicans, who this close to the border made an almost fetishistic habit of learning every possible English colloquialism and street phrasing. The person had to be a foreigner, possibly Russian. And if, as she suspected, he was one of Arkadin’s people put in place to look out for Dimitri Maslov’s hit squad, this just might be her lucky day.
The first thing Peter Marks did on disembarking at London’s Heathrow Airport was call Willard.
“Where are you?” Marks said.
“The less you know the better.”
Marks bridled at that. “The last thing anyone needs in the field is to fly blind,” he snapped.
“I’m trying to protect you from Liss. When he calls you-and believe me he will-you’ll tell him truthfully that you don’t know where I am, and for you that will be the end of it.”
Peter showed his official government ID to Immigration, and they stamped his passport and waved him through. “But not for you.”
“Let me worry about that, Peter. You have enough on your plate getting the ring from Bourne.”
“I have to find him first,” Marks said, approaching the baggage carousel.
“You’ve had dealings with Bourne,” Willard said. “I trust you’ll find him.”
Marks was outside now, in a typically dreary London morning. He glanced at his watch. It was appallingly early and already the sky was spitting rain in fitful bursts.
“No one really knows Bourne,” he said, “not even Soraya.”
“That’s because nothing about him makes sense,” Willard pointed out. “He’s completely unpredictable.”
“Well, you can hardly complain. I mean Treadstone made him this way.”
“It absolutely did not,” Willard said hotly. “Whatever happened to him, the form of amnesia he’s suffered has changed him irrevocably. Speaking of which, I want you to see a Chief Inspector Lloyd-Philips. Bourne may have been involved in a murder at the Vesper Club in the West End last night. Start looking for him there.”
Marks made several quick notes on the palm of his hand. “You’re the one who isn’t understandable.” He was standing in line for a taxi, periodically shuffling forward. Speaking in a low voice, he covered his mouth with his hand. “You went out of your way to help him in Bali, now you seem to want to examine him like a circus freak.”
“He is a freak, Peter. A very dangerous freak-he’s already murdered Noah Perlis and now he may be implicated in another death. How much more proof do you need that he’s out of control? I don’t want you to forget that fact or lose sight of our goal. The Treadstone training made him into an ultimate warrior, but then something unforeseen-a freak of fate or nature, whatever you choose to call it-altered him further. He became something unknown, something more. Which is why I’ve pitted him against Arkadin. As I’ve already explained to you, Arkadin, being the first of Treadstone’s graduates, was subjected to a form of extreme training that-well, after he escaped and disappeared, Conklin decided to modify the training, to scale it back, make it less… extreme.”
Having reached the head of the line, Marks slid into the backseat of the taxi and gave the address of a small hotel he liked in the West End.
“If Treadstone is to go forward, if it’s to be successful, if it’s to fulfill its promise, we must find out who will prevail.” Willard’s voice buzzed in Marks’s ear like a wasp beating against a windowpane. “Depending on who is left alive, we’ll know how to proceed.”
Marks stared out the window, seeing nothing. “I want to get this straight. If Arkadin prevails, you’ll go back to the initial training methodology.”
“With several minor tweaks I’ve got in mind.”
“But what if Bourne kills Arkadin? You don’t know-”
“That’s right, Peter, we’ll be faced with an X-factor. The process will, therefore, take longer. We’ll have to study Bourne in a controlled environment. We’ll-”
“Wait a minute. Are you talking about imprisoning him?”
“Subjecting him to repeated batteries of psychological tests, yes, yes.” Willard sounded impatient, as if he’d made his point but Marks was too stupid to get it. “This is the essence of Treadstone, Peter. This is what Alex Conklin devoted his life to.”
“But why? I just don’t get it.”
“The Old Man didn’t either, not really.” Willard sighed. “Sometimes I think Alex was the only American to learn from the tragic mistakes of the war in Vietnam. It was his special genius, you see, to anticipate Iraq and Afghanistan. He saw the new world coming. He knew that the old methods of waging war were as antiquated, as certain to fail as the Napoleonic code.
“While the Pentagon was spending billions on stockpiling smart bombs, nuclear submarines, stealth bombers, supersonic jet fighters, Alex was concentrated on building the one weapon of war he knew would be effective: human beings. Treadstone’s mission from the very first day of its inception was to build the perfect human weapon: fearless, merciless, skilled at infiltration, subterfuge, misdirection, mimicry. A weapon of a thousand faces who could be anyone, go anywhere, kill any target without remorse, and return to take on the next mission.