He had nowhere to go.
The windows of the hexagonal tower looked out on the sprawling wetlands. He made a panicked run from side to side, looking out. Scum covered the surface of the water below him, and wood ducks fed in the shallow swamps. Thistles and wildflowers grew in dense patches behind the fence that bordered the tower. He could see the Thames, and he could see how close the city was where the park ended. From here, he could see his escape back to the world. If he could reach it.
Someone thundered up the steps below him. He had only seconds to get away.
Vadik ran to an open window at the rear of the tower, and he slithered his skinny body awkwardly through the opening. His head, shoulders, and arms squeezed outside and dangled downward, and he saw the fence looming with its barbed wire three stories down. Squirming, he kicked hard, and the weight of his body carried him through the window. He tumbled down, barely clearing the fence. The sharp wire shredded one sleeve of his shirt and scored his arm with bloody lines. He landed in the soft weeds with an impact that nearly knocked him out, and then he rolled, ending up in the shallow water.
He pushed himself to his feet and fell, and then he got up again and half-staggered, half-ran.
He had to find Tati. They had to get away.
* * *
—
From the window of the tower, Jason saw the man escaping through the wetlands. He had no clear shot, and so he let him go. He headed down the tower steps again. Outside, he found the heavyset security guard, obviously a Russian, kneeling over the body of Gennady Sorokin.
The billionaire was dead.
Near the creek, Clark Cafferty stood next to Dixon Lewis. The two of them examined the bodies of the terrorists that Bourne had shot. Muddy and wet, Jason walked across the grass and joined them.
“Cain?” Cafferty asked, eyeing him up and down.
Jason nodded.
“Were these Lennon’s men?”
“No, I don’t think so. They’re from an extremist organization called the Gaia Crusade. They were targeting Sorokin. That means we’re not clear yet. Lennon knew where you were going. He’s somewhere in the park.”
A look of alarm crossed Cafferty’s face. “We need to find Tati.”
“Who?”
“Tati Reznikova. The Russian scientist. We need her alive. If Lennon gets that woman, it will be disastrous. We need to find her, Bourne. Now! We left her under guard at the helicopter on one of the other trails.”
Bourne took a couple of steps away along the fringe of the creek.
“Nova,” he murmured into the radio. There was a long pause, with Jason getting no response.
“Nova? Are you there? Cafferty’s secure, but we’re looking for the woman who left the Naval College with him.”
He said it again.
“Nova, are you there? Nova?”
19
Minutes earlier, Nova had found the helicopter.
The machine sat in the tall grass on the fringe of the swamp, its black metal glistening with rain. Close by lay the body of a British police officer. She ran forward and checked for a pulse, but it was obvious from the bullet wounds that he was already dead. She stood up and made a slow circle with her pistol outstretched and then approached the helicopter slowly. The door to the front compartment was open, and she could see someone slumped over the stick. The pilot was dead, too, one gunshot to the back of his head, blood running from his brown hair down his neck.
Nova backed away, listening. Beyond the helicopter, the water of the pond splashed as a kingfisher dove for food. A dragonfly darted among the wildflowers. Nature went on, indifferent to the dead bodies. Even so, she heard a noise that sounded out of place. Among the reeds farther down the trail, something caused a rustle louder than a small animal would make. She aimed her gun at the tall grass and hiked into the weeds, which grew as high as her thighs. The ground became sodden under her feet. The deeper she went, the more midges swarmed around her, landing on her exposed skin. She flinched but resisted the urge to swat them away. Whoever was hiding in the reeds was being attacked, too, because she heard a few low slaps as someone tried to brush away the biting gnats.
Nova was close enough to hear the person breathing low and fast. She pointed her gun ahead of her and separated some of the weeds with her other hand. A pretty woman’s face stared back at her. Nova recognized her from the video feed inside the Painted Hall. It was the woman who’d left with Clark Cafferty. She sat in the swamp water, her blouse muddy, her gray eyes wide and scared. Her arms were wrapped around her bare knees. When the woman saw Nova’s gun, she hyperventilated and inhaled as if to let out a scream.
“Quiet!” Nova hissed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The woman clamped her mouth shut and exhaled through her nose.
“Who are you?” Nova asked.
“My name is Tati Reznikova. I’m a Russian climate scientist.”
“You came here with Cafferty?”
She nodded.
“What happened?”
“He went off for a meeting. But there are men with guns in the park. Two of them killed the guard they left behind to watch me. I heard more coming, so I went and hid in the reeds. I think they—I think they killed the pilot, too. I was sure they’d kill me!”
“Why did Cafferty bring you here?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“How many men did you see?”
“Two, like I said. At first, there were two. And one of them—”
“What?”
Tati bit her lip. “One of them is my husband. Vadik. You mustn’t hurt him! I had no idea he was involved with these people!”
“Where did they go?”
“North. Past the lake.”
“And then more men came?” Nova asked.
“Yes! I heard them on the trail, and I hid. I told you, they killed the pilot! They were looking for me! And then there were gunshots from the north, and they headed that way. Not on the trail. They went into the woods toward the swamps.”
“How many?”
“Four, maybe five. One was a woman. One was an older man. He seemed to be the leader. I mean, he looked old, but he didn’t walk like someone who was old. He was smart, too. He kept eyeing the reeds, like he could see me, like he knew I was close by. If they’d stayed, he would have found me, but when the guns began firing, they left.”
Lennon, Nova thought.
“How long ago?” she asked.
“Just a couple of minutes, that’s all! They can’t be far!”
“Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. I’ll be back.”
Nova waded out of the swamp. She ran north and found herself on a wooden walkway over deeper water. Beyond the bridge, foliage closed in on the trail on both sides. She slowed her pace as she spotted a low wooden building with an earthen roof, a shelter to observe the wildlife in the wetlands. The door was open, but it was dark inside.
She was about to search the shelter itself when she saw movement in the trees just beyond the building. A man stepped into the long grass.
He looked old, leaning on his cane, a pair of binoculars around his neck. But his disguise didn’t convince her. She recognized him from the Painted Hall. Dr. Russel Amundsen. She also spotted the odd gait that Jason talked about, the way his shoulders seemed to float over the rest of his body.
“Lennon,” she said, raising her gun.
“Hello, Nova.”
She passed the shelter and walked into the grass beyond the door. No more than ten feet separated the two of them.
Lennon.
The assassin she’d hunted for three years. The man responsible for murders across Europe. All she had to do was pull the trigger.
“Yes, you can kill me if you want,” he told her, reading her thoughts. “But then you won’t get any answers.
And you want answers, don’t you?”
“Maybe not as much as I want you dead.”
“Death is overrated. You were dead, and you came back to life.”
Nova squinted, looking at the man carefully. “Who are you? Cain thinks you’re a part of his past.”
“My identity doesn’t matter. Jason Bourne’s identity doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is who we are today. Who we become.”
“You seem to know a lot about Cain.”
“That’s true. I know things about Cain that he doesn’t know himself. Then again, I know things about you, too.”
“What things?”
Lennon smiled. “I know what a sad little girl you were, Nova.”
“Fuck you.”
“Ah, so courageous. So bold. And yet underneath all of those tattoos, still lost and alone.”
She slid her finger over the trigger. “Tell me about Tallinn. Who betrayed us?”
“If you knew the truth about Tallinn, you’d thank me.”
Nova shook her head. “Put your hands in the air.”
“You’re arresting me? Is that how this goes?”
“That’s how this goes,” she said.
She took a step toward him, but then she hesitated. He’d made it too easy. She knew she had him cornered, but he knew she didn’t. The little hairs on her neck stood straight up, warning her. The voodoo mask tattoo on her arm tingled, the way it always did when someone was standing directly behind her.
A gun was pointed at her head.
Lennon’s eyes glittered. You lose!
Nova knew what would happen next. He would make the barest nod of his head, and in that moment, the person behind her would fire. Immediately, Nova dropped her gun, and before it even hit the ground, she dove into a cartwheel, snapping backward with her foot as her body looped upside down. She took the woman behind her by surprise. It was Yoko. Nova’s heel crashed into the woman’s wrist and sent her gun flying.
As Nova righted herself, they faced each other. With incredible speed, Yoko jabbed one fist like a piston into Nova’s throat, and the blow made Nova choke. She staggered backward, then failed to duck as Yoko did her own cartwheel kick that landed hard against Nova’s shoulder. Another kick, this one into Nova’s stomach, pushed the air from her lungs. Struggling to breathe, she saw the open door of the shelter, and she ran inside the dusty space, where the only light was from a few narrow windows on the back wall facing the wetlands.
Yoko followed behind her. Nova dove to the wooden floor as another fierce kick missed over her head. Reaching out, she grabbed Yoko’s ankle and toppled the woman off her feet, then leaped on top of her. She swung a fist toward the woman’s temple, but Yoko grabbed her wrist. They rolled in the semidarkness, entwined with each other, their arms locked together. Yoko ended up on top, and Nova was surprised by the woman’s strength. Nova felt her arms and legs pinned to the floor, with Yoko’s breath hot in her face. She tried to butt the woman’s forehead with her own, but Yoko stayed out of reach.
One stream of light from outside played across Yoko’s face, leaving half of it in shadow. Her mouth bent into a cruel grin as she held Nova down. With her left hand, Yoko peeled Nova’s right wrist off the floor, still holding it tight. Nova squirmed to pull free, but Yoko’s grip was a vise. As the woman’s fist rose into the light, Nova saw an inlaid ring on her index finger. The ring was mannish, made of tanzanite, with a series of tiny multi-colored jewels in the center. Yoko’s thumb slid to the ring, and as the woman squeezed it, Nova saw the glint of a half-inch needle poke out from among the jewels.
With Nova fighting to keep the woman’s wrist away, Yoko forced the needle down. It looked so small, so harmless, but Nova knew that the tiniest little scratch meant death. She pushed back with all of her strength, but the woman above her was at least ten years younger, and that was enough to give her an advantage. Inch by inch, Yoko’s hand got closer. The jewels caught the light. So did the tip of the needle. Nova pressed her head back against the wooden floor and wrestled to shove the woman away, but the ring was practically touching her skin now.
One touch.
One prick.
That would be the end.
Then the floor shifted and groaned. A shadow fell across the door behind them, and the steel toe of a shoe cracked across Yoko’s wrist, breaking the bones like splintering wood. Nova felt the woman let go with a scream, and she drove her own hand straight into Yoko’s chest and scrambled out from beneath her.
As she got to her feet, she saw Jason standing next to her.
Yoko sprang up with a cry as her broken wrist bent against the floor. She stood no more than six feet away, poised like a tiger, her face wild with fury. One arm hung limply at her side, but she reached to her shattered wrist and slipped off the ring and held it between her fingers like a tiny sword. Jason raised his gun arm, pointing his pistol at her. Their hands were practically touching. She shunted sideways, and Jason fired, the bullet missing her chest and grazing her shoulder. She slashed with her hand, and the ring came within a hairsbreadth of grazing the knuckles on Jason’s fingers.
He fired again.
The bullet caught her in the neck this time, spraying the air with a red cloud. With her lips bared, blood spewed from her mouth. She charged again, not at Bourne but at Nova, leading with the deadly ring aimed at Nova’s face.
Jason fired twice more. Both bullets landed in Yoko’s head, and the woman dropped dead to the floor between them.
Nova bent over with her hands on her thighs as she caught her breath, and her hair fell across her face. “Jesus.”
“Are you okay?”
She nodded with her head down. Then she straightened up and walked over to Jason. She grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him hard. It felt good; it felt like the old days, like nothing had changed. Then she walked from the shelter out into the gray drizzle. Bourne was right behind her.
Nova looked down the trail and saw that Lennon had vanished.
Up ahead, where Clark Cafferty was, they heard a gunshot.
20
Tati peered through the reeds. She was cold, wet, and scared. The rain fell, the swamp pooled around her ankles, and midges feasted on every inch of her exposed skin. She had no idea how much time had passed, but she felt as if it had been hours since the raven-haired woman found her hiding in the brush. There was no sign of her, so Tati worried that the woman was now dead like the others.
Her instincts said: Run!
Head down the path toward the park entrance. Never stop running. But as soon as she came out of hiding, she was afraid that the men with guns would reappear. So she stayed where she was and tried to remain motionless. Silent. She held her breath so as not to give herself away.
Then she heard movement on the other side of the trail. Someone splashed loudly out of the small lagoon, branches snapping, birds squawking as they took flight to get away. Her first reaction was to part the reeds and see who it was, but instead, she hunkered down and held her knees even tighter. She willed herself to be invisible.
Whoever was on the path was very close by. Would he see her?
With her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she heard a raspy voice calling her name in a panicked whisper. “Tati!”
It was Vadik.
Tati sprang to her feet. Her legs had fallen asleep, and she fell in the mire. She pushed herself up again and parted the reeds and stumbled toward the trail. Vadik saw her and waved for her to come faster. She was barefoot, but she ran with clumsy strides. When she got close to him, she froze in shock. He was dirty and wet, just like her, and he was covered in splatters of red that she knew was blood.
He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. “Vadik, what’s going on? What did you do?”
“There’s no time! We need to run. We need to get away.”
“Vadik, you killed a man!”<
br />
“I struck back against the people who are killing the planet! None of these men are innocent. Now let’s go, come on! We need to get away from here before the police arrive. Can’t you hear the sirens?”
Tati did.
They were distant, but they were getting closer.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Vadik pulled her down the path. He ran fast, and she struggled to keep up with him. The pavement was hard, so they veered onto the grass, where it was easier to run without her shoes.
“Tell me where we’re going! Or I swear I won’t move another step.”
He glanced back, his eyes wild with fear. He wiped away blood from his mouth. “I don’t know! Away! Away from the city! We need to find someone who can help us get out of here!”
“Who can do that?”
“I need to reach out to the Gaia Crusade. They can keep us safe. They can help us.”
“They can help us get home?” Tati asked.
Vadik kept running, and she kept pace beside him. “We’re not going home,” he told her breathlessly. “I’m sorry. We can never go home.”
* * *
—
Cafferty was gone.
Bourne and Nova ran to the tower with their guns out, but they were too late. Lennon and his men had vanished, and they’d taken Cafferty with them. The Russian security guard had vanished, too. All that was left were the bodies on the trail, including Gennady Sorokin, dead with a look of surprised anger on his face. Jason spotted Dixon Lewis in the grass in a pool of blood. When he checked the man’s neck, he found a weak pulse.
“Dixon’s alive,” he said. “We need an ambulance.”
Nova grabbed her phone and dialed.
Jason went inside the tower and bolted up the steps. When he reached the top, he went from window to window, looking out on the spidery legs of the wetlands. Barely a couple of hundred feet away was the ribbon of the Thames. The buildings of the city crowded around the borders of the park on three sides. He saw no one.
The Bourne Treachery Page 16
