The Bourne Betrayal

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Another of them aimed and fired. A bullet plowed into Bogdan’s left shoulder, jerking his body back and to the left. Bourne was ready—he had, in fact, braced himself in the stance of a martial artist: feet at hip width, knees slightly flexed, torso loose and, therefore, ready for the next move. His strength fountained up from his lower belly. He hauled Bogdan’s body back around, keeping him as a shield. The three men were quite close now, almost in the surf, spread out in a triangle. Bourne could see them very clearly in the cool moonlight.

  Another bullet struck the Ukrainian in the abdomen, almost doubling him over. Bourne brought him back up, aiming Bogdan’s Mauser with his own arm, his own hand. He pulled the trigger, his forefinger over Bogdan’s. The man on the right, the one closest to him, buckled and went down headfirst. A third bullet struck Bogdan in the thigh, but by that time Bourne had squeezed off another shot. The man in the middle flew backward, his arms spread wide.

  Bourne dragged Bogdan to the right. Two more bullets missed the Ukrainian’s head by centimeters. Then Bourne squeezed off another shot, missed. The third man came on in a wild zigzag pattern, firing as he neared, but he was in the increasingly rough surf now and his balance was off. Bourne shot him between the eyes.

  In the ringing aftermath, Bourne became aware of an animal stirring, a faint wriggling as Bogdan drew a second gun strapped beneath his overcoat. He’d lost the first one somewhere in the water, which was black and full of the seaweedy plumes of his own blood. Bourne chopped down with the edge of his hand, and the gun flew from the Ukrainian’s hand, vanishing into the restless sea.

  He reached up and with the strength of the damned closed his hands around Bourne’s neck. An incoming wave brought Bourne to his knees. Bogdan groped with his thumbs to crush the cartilage of Bourne’s throat. Bourne jammed the heel of his hand into one of the bullet wounds. Bogdan’s head went back as he screamed.

  Bourne rose, staggering, delivered a final blow that took Bogdan off his feet, hurled him backward. The side of his head slammed against a piling, and blood spewed out of his mouth.

  He looked at Bourne for a moment. A little smile curled the corners of his mouth.

  “Lemontov,” he said.

  There was now no other sound on the beach save for the waves running hard at the pilings. No thrum of a ship’s engine, no other earthly noise, until the boxer gave a whining bark, as if in distress.

  Then Bogdan began a gurgling laugh.

  Bourne grabbed him. “What’s so damn funny, Bogdan Illiyanovich?”

  “Lemontov.” The Ukrainian’s voice was thin, insubstantial, like air being released from a balloon. His eyes were rolling up, yet still he fought to say this one last thing. “There is no Lemontov.”

  Bourne, letting the corpse sink into the water, sensed someone coming at him fast out of the shadows. He whirled to his left. The fourth man!

  Too late. He felt a searing pain in his side, then a gush of warmth. His assailant began to twist the knife. He shoved the man away with both his hands and the knife the man had buried in his side released, spewing a line of blood.

  “He was right, you know,” the man said. “Lemontov is a ghost we conjured up for you to chase.”

  “We?”

  His assailant came forward. Moonlight, creeping between the planks of the pier, revealed a face, strangely familiar.

  “You don’t recognize me, Bourne.” His grin was as feral as it was venomous.

  But with a shock, recalling the face Martin Lindros had sketched for him, Bourne did.

  “Fadi,” he said.

  Fifteen

  I’VE WAITED a long time for this moment,” Fadi said. He held a Makarov in one hand, a bloody snake-bladed knife in the other.

  “A long time to look you in the face again.”

  Bourne felt the tide sucking and drawing around his thighs. He held his left arm hard against his side in an effort to stanch the bleeding.

  “A long time to exact my revenge.”

  “Revenge,” Bourne echoed. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, and all at once he was possessed with a burning thirst. “For what?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know. You couldn’t have forgotten—not that.”

  The tide was strengthening as it came in, bringing with it larger clumps of kelp and seaweed. Without taking his eyes off Fadi’s, Bourne’s right hand dipped beneath the water, scooped up a fistful of the floating morass. Giving no warning at all, he threw the soaked ball directly at Fadi’s head. Fadi fired blindly at almost the same instant the seaweed-kelp mass struck him in the face.

  Bourne was already moving, but the tide that had been his ally against Bogdan and Fadi’s men now betrayed him as a strong wave struck him obliquely. He stumbled, pain lanced through him, his left arm came away from his wound, and the blood began to flow again.

  By this time, Fadi had recovered. As he held Bourne square in the Makarov’s sights, he loped toward him through the waves, flicking the serpent-bladed knife with which he clearly meant to carve Bourne up.

  Bourne struggled to recover, to keep moving to his right, away from Fadi’s attack, but another wave struck him full in the back, pitching him directly toward the oncoming blade.

  At that moment he heard a guttural animal growl close by. The brindled boxer leapt through the water, slamming its muscular body into Fadi’s right side. Taken completely by surprise, Fadi went down, pitched into the water, the boxer on top of him, snapping its jaws, raking him under with its forepaws.

  “Come on, come on!”

  Bourne heard the whispered voice in the darkness beneath that pier. Then he felt an arm, slim but strong, come around him, urging him off to his left, a winding, shadowy path between the mossy pilings, out into the moonlight.

  He gasped. “I have to go back and—”

  “Not now.” The whispered voice was firm. It came from the slender man with the wide-brimmed hat he’d seen on the beach—the boxer’s master. The man gave a whistle and the dog came bounding out from under the pier, paddling through the water toward them.

  And then Bourne heard the wail of sirens. Someone from the nearby yacht club must have heard the repeated sound of gunfire and called the police.

  So he lumbered on, the helping arm around him, the pain throbbing hotly and agonizingly with every step he took, as if the blade were still being twisted inside him. And with every beat of his heart, he lost more blood.

  When Fadi, choking and sputtering, broke the surface, the first thing he saw through reddened eyes was Abbud ibn Aziz, who was leaning over the low rail of a sailboat running without lights. The boat, heeled over slightly, had taken advantage of the onshore breeze to move in closer to land than many powerboats could without running aground.

  Abbud ibn Aziz held out a strong, browned arm. His forehead was furrowed in concern. As Fadi clambered onto the deck, Abbud ibn Aziz called out. The mate, who was already at the sheets, hauled the yardarm, causing the sailboat to tack away from the shore.

  Just in time. As they turned, Fadi could see what had caused Abbud ibn Aziz’s concern. Three police launches had just turned the headland to the north and were speeding toward the area surrounding the pier.

  “We’ll make for the yacht club,” Abbud ibn Aziz said in Fadi’s ear. “By the time they’re close enough to scrutinize the area, we’ll be safely berthed.” He said nothing of the three men. They weren’t here, clearly they weren’t coming. They were dead.

  “Bourne?” he asked.

  “Wounded, but still alive.”

  “How bad?”

  Fadi lay on his back, wiping blood off his face. That damn dog had bitten him in three places, including his right biceps, which felt as if it were on fire. His eyes glowed like a wolf’s in the moonlight. “Bad enough, perhaps, that he’ll end up as damaged as my father.”

  “A just fate.”

  The lights from the yacht club were coming up fast on the bow. “The documents.”

  Abbud ibn Aziz handed over a packet wrapped
in waterproof oilskin.

  Fadi took possession of the packet, turned on his side, spat into the water. “But is it a just revenge?” His head moved from side to side as he answered his own question. “I don’t think so, no. Not yet.”

  This way, this way!” the urgent voice said in Bourne’s ear. “Don’t slacken now, it’s not far.”

  Not far? he thought. Every three steps he took felt like a kilometer. His breathing was labored and his legs felt like stone columns. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep them moving. Waves of exhaustion swept over him and from time to time he lost his balance, pitching forward. The first time took his companion by surprise. He was facedown in the water before he was hauled back into the humid Odessa night. Thereafter, he was saved from the same watery fate.

  He tried to lift his head, to see where they were, where they were headed. But keeping himself moving through the water was struggle enough. He was aware of his companion, aware of a peculiar familiarity that spread across the surface of his mind like an oil slick. Yet like an oil slick he couldn’t see beneath it, couldn’t decide who this person was. Someone from his past. Someone…

  “Who are you?” he gasped.

  “Come on now!” the whispered voice urged him. “We must keep on. The police are behind us.”

  All at once he became aware of lights dancing in the water. He blinked. No, not in the water, on the water. The wave-smeared reflections of electric lights. Somewhere in the back of his head a bell rang, and he thought, Yacht club.

  But his curiously familiar companion turned them toward land before they got to the northern end of the network of piers, berths, and slatted walkways. With immense effort, they staggered into the surf. Once, Bourne went to his knees. Furious, he was about to hurl himself to his feet when his companion kept him in position. He felt something soft being wrapped around his torso so tight it nearly took his breath away. Around and around until he lost count. The pressure did its job. He stopped bleeding, but the moment he got to his feet and they continued up the sideline and onto the sand, a small stain appeared, spreading slowly, soaking into the material. Still, he wouldn’t leave a bloody trail on dry land. Whoever his companion was, he was both clever and brave.

  On the beach, he became aware of the boxer, a huge brindled male with the magnificent face of royalty. They had passed the end of the line of kiosks. At the land side of the beach, bare rock towered over them, silent, frowning. Directly in front of them he saw a waist-high wooden shed, painted dark green, closed and padlocked, where beach umbrellas were stored.

  The boxer emitted a short, sharp whine, and his rear end began to twitch anxiously.

  “Quickly now! Quickly!”

  Half bent over, they scrambled forward. From the water rose the thrumming of powerful marine engines, and all at once the beach to their right was ablaze with the intense glare of spotlights, directed from the police launches. The beams swept the beach, coming directly toward them. In a moment, they’d be revealed.

  They tumbled to the landward side of the umbrella lockbox, crouched, pressing their bodies against it. Here came the beams, swiping back and forth across the sand. For a nerve-racking moment, the lockbox was caught square in the nexus of the spotlights. Then they had moved on.

  But there was shouting from the police launches, and now Bourne could see that another police unit had begun to infiltrate the yacht club. The men wore steel helmets, flak vests. They carried semiautomatic rifles.

  His companion pulled urgently on him, and they ran on toward the base of the cliff. Bourne felt naked and vulnerable as they crossed the upper portion of the beach. He knew he lacked the strength to defend himself, let alone both of them.

  Then a push on his back took him off his feet. Facedown in the sand, his companion beside him, he saw more beams of light bobbing through the night, perpendicular to the searchlights from seaside. Several policemen at the yacht club were scanning the beach with their flashlights. The beams passed over the two prone bodies with scarcely twenty centimeters to spare. There was movement in the periphery of his vision. A contingent of policemen were jumping down from the wharves onto the sand. They were coming this way.

  Acting on a silent signal from his companion, Bourne crawled painfully into the shadow of the naked cliff face where the dog crouched, waiting. Turning back, he saw that his companion had taken off his overcoat and was using its skirt behind him to cover the tracks they had made in the sand.

  He stood, panting, weaving on his feet like a wrestler who’d gone one too many rounds against a superior opponent.

  He saw his companion on his knees, gripping the thick iron bars of what appeared to be a sewage outlet. The shouting increased in volume. The police were moving closer.

  He bent over to help and together they pulled out the grille. He saw that someone had already removed the bolts.

  His companion shoved him inside, the boxer loping excitedly at his side. He watched his companion follow. As the man ducked down, his wide-brimmed hat came off. He twisted to retrieve it and moonlight shone on the face.

  Bourne sucked in a sharp breath, which caused an explosion of pain.

  “You!”

  For the person who’d saved him, whose manner was so familiar to him, wasn’t a man at all.

  It was Soraya Moore.

  Sixteen

  AT 6:46 PM, Anne Held’s PDA began to vibrate. This was her personal PDA, a gift from her lover, not the one issued to her by CI. When she grabbed it, the black housing was warm from the outside of her thigh, where she had it strapped. On its screen appeared this message, like the writing of a genie: TWENTY MINUTES. HIS APARTMENT.

  Her heart raced, her blood sang, because the message was from a genie of sorts: her lover. Her lover had returned.

  She told the Old Man she had an appointment with her gynecologist, which made her laugh inside. In any event, he took it in stride. HQ was like a hospital ER: They’d all been working nonstop for hours, ever since Lindros had placed them on emergency status.

  She exited the building, called for a taxi, took it to within six blocks of Dupont Circle. From there, she walked. The high moonlit sky, without any clouds to speak of, brought with it a knifing wind that intensified the cold. Anne, hands jammed in her pockets, felt warm inside, despite the weather.

  The apartment was on 20th Street, in a historic four-story nineteenth-century house in the Colonial Revival style, designed by Stanford White. She was buzzed through a wood-framed beveled-glass door. Beyond was a wainscoted hallway that ran straight through the center of the building, ending in a rear glass-and-wood-framed door that looked out onto a narrow, minimally landscaped area between buildings used as a private parking lot.

  She stopped at the bank of mailboxes, her fingertips running over the vertically hinged brass door with 401: MARTIN LINDROS stenciled on it.

  On the fourth landing, in front of the cream-colored door, she paused, one hand on the thick wood. It seemed to her that she could feel a subtle vibration, as if the apartment, so long vacant, was humming with newfound life. Her Lover’s body, warm and electric, inhabited the rooms beyond the door, flooding them with energy and a magnified heat, like sunlight through glass.

  Into her mind came the moment of their last parting. It carried with it the same pain, sharp as an indrawn breath on a freezing night that shot between her ribs, inflicting another wound to her heart. And yet this time the pain had also been different, because she’d been certain not to see him for a minimum of nine months. In fact, today would make it just shy of eleven. Yet it wasn’t only the matter of time—bad enough—but also the knowledge of the changes that would be effected.

  Of course she had put that fear away in a cupboard in the far recesses of her mind, but now, here in front of the apartment door, she understood that it was a weight she had been carrying like an unwanted child for all these months.

  She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the painted wood, remembering their parting.

  “Y
ou look so troubled,” he had said. “I’ve told you not to worry.”

  “How can I not?” she’d replied. “It’s never been done before.”

  “I’ve always thought of myself as something of a pioneer.” He smiled encouragement. Then, seeing that fail, he enfolded her in his arms. “Extreme times require extreme measures. Who better than you to understand this.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course.” She had shuddered. “Still, I can’t help but wonder what will happen to us on… the other side.”

  “Why should anything change?”

  She had pushed away from him just enough so that she could look into his eyes. “You know why,” she had whispered.

  “No, I don’t. I will be the same, just the same inside. You must trust me, Anne.”

  Now here she was—here they both were—on the other side. This was the moment of truth, when she would discover what changes had been wrought in him by those eleven months. She did trust him, she did. Yet the fear she’d been living with now unleashed itself, slithered in her lower belly. She was about to enter the great unknown. There was no precedent, and she was genuinely frightened that she would find him so altered, he would no longer be her Lover.

  With a low growl of self-disgust, she turned the brass knob of the door and pushed it open. He’d left it unlatched for her. Walking into the entryway, she felt like a Hindu, as if her path had been set for her long ago and she lived in the grip of a destiny that outstripped her, that outstripped even him. How far she was from the privileged upbringing her parents had foisted upon her. She had her Lover to thank for that. She had come partway, it was true, but her rebelliousness had been reckless. He had tamed that, turned it into a focused beam of light. She had nothing to fear.

  She was about to call out when she heard his voice, the ululating song she had come to know so well floating to her as if on a personal current of air. She found him in the master bedroom on one of Lindros’s carpets because of course he could not carry one of his own.