The Bourne Sanction by Eric van Lustbader

August 18, 2009; South Amboy, NJ

Paperback 2008, 672 pages

Basically two plots that both have Jason Bourne as the main character. The plot that is easier to follow involves a power struggle between the NSA and the CI. Somehow the NSA are the bad guys as they want to take over the espionage functions of CI, but they are eventually undone because of the torturing that goes on in a safehouse.

The other plot centers around Black Legion, a Nazi organization that eventually got taken over by Muslim terrorists. The two people that started the transformation were supposedly on bad terms, but were working together to attack a new LNG terminal in Long Beach. One of the two (Sever) was David Webb's (Jason Bourne) mentor at University, the other (Icoupov) was a father figure to Arkadin. Arkadin was actually the original Treadstone, he was sent to the US to be trained as a super-assassin by Alex Conklin. Icoupov was killed by Arkadin to avenge the killing of his girlfriend, Sever was shot by Arkadin and was in a coma when the story ended, and Arkadin himself fell overboard during the final struggle on the tanker.

The actual story is quite a bit more complicated than that. For instance, we get to know how the dark past of Arkadin’s shaped him to be the person he was. The other was the deception put in place by Black Legion to use a chain of couriers to pass plans of another site (Empire State Building) and how Arkadin track down the couriers and killed them. The author’s habit of weaving multiple subplots together and jumping from one to another sometimes makes it difficult to follow. Before it was revealed that Icoupov and Sever worked together, I was a bit concerned about not being able to distinguish who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. Turns out it wasn’t important. These techniques led to a book that was 200 pages longer than necessary.

In any case, not a bad book to read while on vacation. I read it during our trip to the West Coast, mostly during plane rides.