The Bourne Treachery

by Brian Freeman

  In just a few minutes, Lennon had melted away and disappeared.

  While he was standing there, his phone rang. When he answered, he heard a woman’s voice. “Cain.”

  “Holly.”

  “What’s going on? I can’t reach anyone.”

  “Sorokin’s dead. Cafferty’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Lennon took him.”

  “That’s worse than dead. What about Dixon?”

  “He was shot, but he’s hanging on.”

  Holly didn’t say anything for a long time. “I’ll be there in less than half an hour. Don’t let anyone near the scene.”

  Jason hung up.

  Downstairs, he found that Nova had moved Dixon to the grass near the creek, where he was propped against a tree trunk. She’d taken a shirt from one of the dead men and tied it around Dixon’s shoulder to stanch the blood loss. He was conscious again and looked stronger.

  “They were here and gone in seconds,” Dixon said, wincing as he moved his arm. “They took Clark.”

  “What about the Russian guard?”

  “Nicholai was a Lennon mole. He went with them. Where’s Tati?”

  “We haven’t found her.”

  Dixon cursed loud and long.

  Nova took Jason out of earshot. They stood close to each other near the tower. Beyond the trees, they could hear the swarm of sirens getting louder.

  “We’re about to get a lot of company,” Nova said. “Police, medical. MI-5, too. I called Tony. I assume Holly’s going to want to keep this under wraps.”

  “She’s on her way,” Jason said.

  “Why take Cafferty?” Nova asked. “Why not kill him? Wasn’t that the original plan? Sorokin’s dead, so why keep Cafferty alive?”

  “Something changed.”

  “What?” Then Nova pursed her lips and answered her own question. “Tati.”

  “That’s my guess.” He gestured down the path. “Come on, this mission’s not done. It’s just starting.”

  He turned away, but Nova stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Jason. You left Cafferty. Why?”

  “He wanted me to find Tati.”

  “Dixon could have done that. Lennon was nearby, and you left Cafferty unguarded. Why? That’s not how you operate.”

  “I figured Dixon and Nicholai could hold them off. I didn’t know the Russian was a Lennon spy.”

  Nova’s green eyes were on fire. “Don’t you lie to me, Jason. Don’t you dare lie to me. Tell me why.”

  Jason heard the roaring in his head again as the two sides of his brain did battle. The part that was a loner, that was cold, that was nothing but a Treadstone killer. And the part that was madly in love with this woman.

  Don’t you get it? All I can do is lie!

  But he couldn’t. Not this time. Not to her.

  “I lost you once,” Jason told her. “I watched you die. I wasn’t going to do that again.”

  PART TWO

  21

  Holly Schultz’s yellow lab, Sugar, dug her nose into the flattened reeds where Tati Reznikova had been hiding. The dog splashed in the wetlands, pushed through the dense weeds, and then reemerged at a run. She bounded to Holly across the grass and sat waiting for instructions. Holly reattached the leash to the dog’s collar.

  “Find,” she said.

  Sugar shot down the trail. The dog’s speed nearly pulled Holly off her feet, but Holly made the dog heel with a single snap of the leash. Following Tati’s scent, Sugar led them southward toward the park entrance.

  Bourne walked next to Holly. He noticed that the police and security agents around them all deferred to her, clearing a path as she walked. It wasn’t just that she was blind. The small CIA agent had an aura of command about her that nobody questioned. She was an American in the midst of a British crime scene, but she still managed to make everyone believe that she was in charge.

  “So Lennon has Cafferty?” Holly asked.

  “We think so.”

  “Do you have any idea where they might have taken him?”

  Bourne shook his head. “No. The operative I killed—Yoko—didn’t have anything on her body to give us a clue. We have to assume Lennon has safe houses in any number of areas around the country.”

  “Will they keep him alive?”

  “For the time being.”

  “In other words, Lennon will torture him for information and then kill him.”

  “Yes.”

  Holly’s face showed no emotion. “It would have been better if they simply killed him.”

  “What information does Cafferty have?” Bourne asked.

  “He’s privy to one of our most closely guarded intelligence secrets. Fewer than ten people have access to it.”

  “Well, if Cafferty knows about it, you should assume that Lennon will have the information soon, too.”

  “Yes, I expect so.” Holly was silent for a while as she kept up a brisk pace behind Sugar, whose nose was to the ground. “I don’t blame you for any of this, Jason. Dixon and I kept you out of the loop. That was a deliberate decision on our part, and I won’t apologize for it.”

  “Because you don’t trust me?”

  “Because we don’t trust anyone. We had to assume there would be leaks. CIA, Treadstone, MI-5, Interpol, they’re all vulnerable. Lennon has an amazing ability to turn people into assets. We operated on the belief that whatever plan we had for the meeting would be compromised. That’s why we opted for a ruse about the meeting location, and we used you to sell it. You were the shiny object to mislead Lennon. We wanted him and his people to see you at the Painted Hall. I had confidence in the plan, and so did Clark, but nonetheless, it failed. That’s on me. You weren’t even supposed to be here.”

  “I’ll find Cafferty,” he told her. “I’ll get him back.”

  Holly shook her head. “No. It’s too late for Clark. He’s second priority now, and he’d say the same thing himself. I need you focused on finding Tati Reznikova.”

  “What’s her role in all of this?”

  Holly ignored the question. They were near the parking lot, where the entrance road led out to a wooded lane known as Queen Elizabeth Walk. Ahead of them, Sugar strained at the leash and dragged them to a London police constable who was sitting on a bench outside the park gates. He was being tended by a paramedic. The constable’s head was bleeding, and he winced as the nurse cleaned his wound.

  Sugar stopped in front of the man and barked twice. Holly glanced at Bourne, leaving him to ask the questions.

  “We’re looking for a young woman who escaped from the park,” Jason told the constable. “Attractive, thin, tall, maybe thirty years old, long blond hair with purple streaks.”

  “I saw her,” the man replied. He gestured at the wound on his head. “The guy she was with gave me this.”

  “What happened?”

  “The two of them came from the wetland trails. Running. They spotted me and started calling for help. Said there was gunfire back there, people killed. I was naïve, because the woman looked harmless enough. I took my eyes off the man for a second, and next thing I know, something smacked me in the head.”

  “How many were there? Just those two?”

  “Yeah. Man and a woman. He was a skinny little fuck, spiky black hair, squinty dark eyes.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  The constable jerked a thumb toward the entrance road. “Out. I saw them running that way.”

  Holly let Sugar lead the way again. The dog followed Tati’s scent out of the park and onto a tree-lined lane that bordered a wide swath of green sports fields. When they were alone again, Holly said, “Do you know the man with Tati?”

  “He was one of the shooters with the Gaia Crusade,” Bourne replied. “He was supposed to take out Sorokin, but he couldn’t pull the tr
igger, so the other one did it for him. He escaped out of the tower into the wetlands.”

  Holly frowned. “You’re sure he was with the Gaia Crusade? He wasn’t a hostage of some kind?”

  “No. According to Nova, Tati said that her husband was in the park. She said he’d killed someone.”

  “Vadik,” Holly murmured, not breaking stride as Sugar tugged them along the lane. “Vadik Reznikov. The description matches him. We knew he was part of the Russian resistance, but we didn’t know that he was involved in terrorist activities. Obviously, he found out about Sorokin’s trip. When we arranged for Tati’s invitation to the WTO, no doubt Vadik saw an opportunity to stage a high-profile kill.”

  “How do you know that Tati’s not a terrorist, too?” Bourne asked.

  Holly shrugged. “Honestly? We don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. We need to get her back before Lennon finds her.”

  “Who is she? Why did you bring her to the WTO?”

  Holly still didn’t answer. Sugar kept following the scent, but the quiet lane ended not far away at an intersection where five roads came together. Among the exhaust of cars and the overlapping smell of dozens of pedestrians, Sugar stopped on the sidewalk and didn’t go any farther. She’d lost the trail. The dog looked up at Holly and gave a pathetic little bark of confusion.

  “It’s okay, girl,” Holly said.

  Bourne studied the layout of the intersection. Tati and Vadik could have escaped anywhere, in any direction. Car. Taxi. Bus. They were long gone.

  “They’ll go to ground until it’s dark,” he said.

  “Is that what you would do?”

  “Yes.”

  Holly nodded. “All right, then.”

  She gave a little whistle. Sugar began to lead them back to the wetland center, but before they left the intersection, Jason took Holly by the shoulder and held her back. This caused Sugar to give a little growl.

  “Who is Tati Reznikova?” Bourne asked again.

  Holly stared at him from behind empty eyes. “She’s now Lennon’s number one target. That’s all you need to know.”

  Bourne shook his head. “Until I get some answers, we don’t go anywhere. Who is she?”

  Sugar kept growling. Holly made a sideways slashing motion with her hand, and the dog fell silent.

  “All right,” Holly told him. “Yes, I suppose it’s time to bring you into the loop. Lennon certainly knows about her, so you should, too. Her birth name was Tatiana Kotov.”

  Jason hissed. “Kotov.”

  Again, everything went back to Tallinn.

  “That’s right. Tati is Grigori Kotov’s daughter.”

  * * *

  —

  Clark Cafferty couldn’t hold out much longer.

  His heart was already beating erratically under the stress. His hope was that his heart would give out altogether before he cracked and began talking. Because he would talk soon. He’d tell them everything. He knew it. Some drug was in his bloodstream, as freeing as a dose of morphine, and he could already feel his senses wearing down, his perception of reality beginning to fracture.

  They’d blindfolded him, so he saw nothing. They’d put headphones over his ears and pounded music into his brain, so loud he was sure his eardrums had burst and were bleeding. Beatles music. John Lennon music. Like it was all a big joke. He’d been tied to a chair in a hot room, his skin covered in sweat. His tongue had swollen with thirst. He had no idea where he was or how much time had passed since they’d put him here. It could have been an hour. It could have been days.

  Every now and then the music stopped. When it did, he’d feel his brain throbbing and swelling against his skull, pushing to get out. Then a voice would talk to him. Lennon. The voice really was John Lennon. That same Scouse accent from Liverpool he’d heard on television as a child. Cafferty was sure he was going crazy.

  “Talk to me, mate. What’s the plan?”

  The voice was loud, but after the music, it sounded like a whisper.

  “Tell me about Sorokin. What did you offer him, eh? Come on, give it up, we know you’re going to talk eventually. Why make it hard?”

  Cafferty tried to keep his mouth clamped shut, tried to say not a word. The trouble was, he no longer knew if he was talking or thinking. His mind and ears couldn’t tell the difference. The voice asked the questions, and automatically, his brain supplied the answers—but was he doing it out loud?

  “Tati. Why’d you bring her here? What’s she got to do with all this? I mean, we both know she’s Kotov’s daughter. Okay. But how is she supposed to help you?”

  Cafferty’s brain gave up all of its secrets, but he said nothing.

  Or did he?

  We need to get Tati out of the country. Once the truth comes out, she’s at risk.

  “Okay, we’ll do it the hard way.”

  The music began again. It was so loud. Unbearably loud. He wanted to scream. Maybe he was screaming, but he couldn’t hear his own voice over the unrelenting throb that turned his brain to jelly.

  “Whatever gets you through the night.”

  That was the song. Cafferty wasn’t going to make it through the night. He knew that. Ask me, talk to me, ask me anything, I’ll tell you. You want the truth? I’ll give you the truth.

  We’re going to take down the Moth. Putin’s time is done.

  The siloviki will back us if we give them a new leader. Power abhors a vacuum.

  God help him, was he really talking? Cafferty didn’t know. He found himself singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the top of his lungs, anything to avoid saying what he was thinking, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. Not a word. He didn’t know what was real and what was in his head.

  Make it stop!

  Make the music stop, and ask me anything.

  “What did you offer Sorokin, Clark? What made you think he’d turn? The man’s no fool. You had something to persuade him. What?”

  We had—we had—

  He felt his mouth opening. Forming words.

  Stop! Don’t say anything!

  Cafferty felt warm breath next to his ear.

  “Come on, Clark. This can be all over. Talk to me. How did you think you were going to turn the oligarchs? The siloviki? Money? Weapons? None of that would work with them. No, you had something else in mind, didn’t you?”

  He felt a hand massage his head with a strange, almost tender caress. Fingers peeled away the blindfold. He opened his eyes and blinked, but he saw nothing. The room was completely black. Then he couldn’t even blink; tape fixed his eyelids to his brows, so that all he could do was stare into emptiness. The floor shuddered with the vibration of footsteps, but all he heard was the echo of the music thumping like a fist in his brain.

  Behind him, a single spotlight went on. A cone of light streamed across the black space. The light illuminated a face, and Cafferty thought he must be dreaming. Hovering in the darkness was John Lennon’s head. No body, just the head. Black pageboy hair. Odd, unreal pink skin, a mouth and smile that was fixed in place. Where the eyes should have been were two black ovals.

  A mask! A Halloween mask!

  In the darkness, it was hideous and terrifying. Cafferty felt himself struggling against the bonds that held him in place.

  “We’re all afraid of something,” the Lennon head said, floating in place like a balloon. “Heights, snakes, blood, spiders, needles, closed-in places, we all have our phobias. You have an interesting one, don’t you?”

  How did he know?

  “How did I know?” Lennon said, laughing. “How did I know?”

  Oh, God, he was talking! He was saying it all out loud! He couldn’t stop!

  “I know, because I know everything about you. I make it a point of knowing the people I kill. I study them inside and out. Don’t you remember that interview you did with a New York magazine
a few years ago? They asked you about your worst fear. The one thing that makes you insane with terror. We all have that one thing. And you said masks. You told them about a Halloween party when you were seven years old, and how the masks made you scream so much that you had to be taken to the hospital.”

  Stop!

  “Stop? Tell me what I want to know, and this can end right now.”

  Please!

  Another beam of light streamed into the room. Another disembodied head bobbed in front of him. This one was a mask of the face of a giant bat, with pointed pink ears and yellow fangs.

  Oh, God! No!

  “The plan, Clark.”

  Another mask appeared. This one was Queen Elizabeth, smiling wickedly, with snow-white eyes.

  “Why is Tati important to you? Why did you bring her here?”

  And then more masks. So many more. They were everywhere, appearing out of the darkness, floating, hovering, inches away from his eyes. A plague doctor. A Stephen King clown. Woodstock from Peanuts. Shrek. A pumpkin. A hyena. Cafferty jerked in the chair. He tried to get up, but he couldn’t. He shook his head back and forth. He tried to shut his eyes, but the tape held them open, forced him to see.

  Stop! Take them away!

  And still more. They were everywhere. Mask after mask after mask after mask closing in on him, gathering around his face. His heart skipped like a rock on a lake.

  Then he shouted, like a wail from inside his soul.

  “Tallinn!”

  He heard a soft click. The beams of light vanished. All the masks went away. Just like that, they were gone. All except the floating head of John Lennon, right where it had been in the middle of the darkness, lit up by the single floodlight.

  “What about Tallinn, Clark?”

  “Kotov.”

  “What about Kotov? Tell me.”

  No! Don’t say it! Don’t say it!

  But if he didn’t talk, the masks would come back. The masks that haunted his nightmares.

  Cafferty screamed out the secret. He tried to squeeze his lips together, but the words came straight out of his brain, and he couldn’t stop them.