he?s a survivor, a man with nine lives.?
?Even if all this is true, how would you know Bourne was in Khartoum, let alone at the Air Afrika building??
?It?s my business to know these things, Perlis.? He laughed. ?Now I?m being coy. Actually, I sent Bourne on a course expressly designed to lead him to Khartoum, to the Air Afrika building, to?and this is most important of all?Nikolai Yevsen.?
?Yevsen is at the heart of our plan, why would you do such an idiotic??
?I wanted Bourne to kill Yevsen. And that?s precisely what he did.? Arkadin?s smile spread all the way up to his eyes. This arrogant American looks good with all the blood drained from his face, he thought. ?I have all of Yevsen?s computer files?all his contacts, clients, and suppliers. Not that that?s a wide circle of people, as you can imagine, but by now they?ve all been informed of Nikolai Yevsen?s death. They?ve also been told they?ll be dealing with me from now on.?
?You?you?re taking over Yevsen?s business?? Despite what he?d just heard, Perlis couldn?t stop himself from laughing in Arkadin?s brutal face. ?You have delusions of grandeur, my friend. You?re nothing but an uneducated, low-IQ Russian hood who?s inexplicably come into some good luck. But in this business good luck will get you only so far, then it?s time for the professionals to take you out.?
Arkadin resisted the urge to turn the American?s face into bloody pulp. That time would come, but first he required an audience for what he was about to do. Still holding on to Perlis?s hand, he thumbed open his cell phone and sent a three-digit text message. A moment later the belly of the Air Afrika jet seemed to split open with the remaining eighty men in Arkadin?s private army.
?What?s this?? Perlis said, as he watched his own personnel being overpowered, disarmed, thrown to the ground, where they were systematically bound and gagged.
?It isn?t only Yevsen?s business I?m taking over, Mr. Perlis, it?s these oil fields. What?s yours is now mine.?
The Russian Mi-28 Havoc combat helicopter carrying Bourne and Colonel Boris Karpov, two of his men, as well as a two-man crew and a full complement of weapons, banked low over the Iranian oil fields in Shahrake Nasiri-Astara, and immediately they saw the two planes?one the Air Afrika jet Karpov?s IT man in Khartoum had tracked here, the other a Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk painted matte black but with no markings: Black River transport.
?According to my intel in Moscow, the American-led allied forces have not yet crossed over into Iranian territory,? Karpov said. ?We may still have time to avert this catastrophe.?
?If I know anything about Noah Perlis, he?s sure to have made contingency plans.? Bourne, peering down at the swiftly changing terrain, was mulling over everything Soraya had told him. At last he had all the pieces of the puzzle, save one: Arkadin?s angle. He had to have one, Bourne was as certain of that as he was of anything in this delicately constructed spider?s web.
And there was the spider, he thought, as the Havoc swept down like a bat out of hell, passing directly over the figures of Arkadin and Perlis. As Karpov directed the pilot to land, Bourne felt the deep throbbing pain in his chest wound, returning like an old enemy to dog him. Ignoring it, he tried to work out what was going on. Five men and one woman were lying facedown on the ground, trussed like suckling pigs ready for the rotisserie. Bourne counted a hundred heavily armed men in camo uniforms that were clearly not American military issue.
?What the fuck is happening down there?? Boris had just now switched his attention to the same scene that absorbed Bourne. ?And there?s that fucker, Arkadin.? He clenched his fist. ?How I want his nuts in a sling, and now by God I?ll have them.?
By this time the Havoc had come under small-arms fire and the pilot, sitting in his raised cabin in the rear, was taking evasive maneuvers, the two TV3-117VMA turboshaft engines whining in response. Neither Bourne nor Karpov was particularly concerned by the semi-automatic fire, since the Havoc was outfitted with an armored cabin able to withstand the impact of 7.62 and 12.7mm bullets as well as 20mm shell fragments.
?Are you all set?? Karpov asked Bourne. ?You look ready for anything, just like an American should.? And he laughed tonelessly.
The weapons man yelled a warning. Looking to where he was pointing, they saw one of the