The Bourne Treachery

by Brian Freeman

  “I’d say yes,” Bourne told her.

  “Barbaric. Why send it here? Why now?”

  “To tell us he knows where we are. He knows where we have Tati.”

  “We should leave the house at once,” Holly told Dixon sharply. “We need to move up the schedule and get Tati on a plane. The sooner we’re out of London, the sooner we put distance between her and Lennon, the better.”

  Dixon shook his head. “The jet I arranged doesn’t land at Northolt until later tonight. Cafferty’s plane is still at Farnborough, and I’m sure we could get clearance to use it, but I’m reluctant to improvise on the exfil. If we panic, if we make a mistake, that gives Lennon an opportunity. Which is probably what he’s hoping for.”

  “I agree,” Bourne said. “Right now, the estate is about the safest place Tati can be. Lennon won’t try to breach the security here.”

  “Then why taunt us?” Holly asked. “Why show his hand?”

  “He’s not taunting you,” Jason replied with a frown. “He’s taunting me. He addressed the box to me.”

  Which meant there was something more inside. Something about Nova.

  He dug around the box with his fingers. Beneath the folds of linen, he came upon a small velvet jewelry box. When he lifted up the box, he caught a familiar scent, which he realized was the floral smell of Nova’s perfume. Gingerly, he opened the lid.

  Inside was the gold necklace with the Greek coin pendant that had hung around Nova’s neck since she was a girl. The necklace from her mother. The necklace she never, ever took off. Jason slid the chain around one of his fingers and let it dangle in the air. The coin made a pendulum back and forth.

  At that moment, outside the study, Sugar howled again, like a cry for the dead. The dog scratched at the door. Bourne didn’t like it. He didn’t know if Sugar was reacting to Clark Cafferty’s remains or to the smell of something—someone—else. He squeezed his eyes shut and shoved his emotions behind a wall.

  You feel nothing! You are Cain!

  “The teenager,” Bourne said coldly. “The one who brought the box. I need to talk to him.”

  He curled the necklace tightly inside his fist and walked to the door and opened it. Holly and Dixon followed him. Outside, Sugar galloped along the hardwood floor as Bourne made his way to the living room, where two security guards sat with a shaggy-haired fourteen-year-old who looked ready to wet himself. Bourne gestured at the two guards, who each took an arm and lifted the boy to his feet.

  “What’s your name?” Bourne asked him.

  “Alfie,” the kid replied in a panicked voice. “Alfie Watkins.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Stroud Green. I really need to go home! You can’t keep me here!”

  “The police talked to your parents. They know where you are. Who gave you the box, Alfie?”

  The teenager sweated. His eyes went from face to face. “Some bloke on the street. He said it was a gift for a mate. A surprise.”

  “Did he tell you what was inside? Did you look?”

  “No! I didn’t open it. Swear to God, I just carried it over here.”

  “What did this man look like?”

  “Tall. Dark hair, I think, but he had a hat on. Weird sort of Elton John glasses. I didn’t notice anything else.”

  “Was he alone?” Bourne asked.

  As Jason stood in front of the boy, Sugar nosed against his closed fist, where he held Nova’s necklace. Then the dog let out another bloodcurdling wail. Alfie’s eyes widened, and he shivered, listening to Sugar bay like a kind of golden wolf. Holly gently shushed the dog.

  “Yeah!” Alfie said breathlessly. “Yeah, he was alone.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  The boy wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “He said a mate was getting married, and would I take the box to his house? He gave me sixty quid! I figured, what the hell? All I was supposed to do was put it outside the gates, ring the bell, and then get back in the cab and go. I didn’t count on no sodding cops wrestling me to the ground.”

  “Where did he give you the box?”

  “Swain’s Lane. I took a bus over there from school.”

  “Was the man on foot or in a car?”

  “He was getting out of some kind of dark van. I think it was like for maintenance or something.”

  “Maintenance?” Bourne asked. “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, the bloke was pushing some kind of big plastic cart on wheels.”

  Jason felt a shadow cross his face. “A cart? Could you see what was inside?”

  “No. It was covered.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The van was in the parking lot, so I had to walk right by it. When the bloke saw me, he whistled me over. That’s when he asked me about delivering the box.”

  “Parking lot?” Jason asked. “What parking lot?”

  “At Highgate Cemetery. That’s where he was. That’s where the van was. He was using the cart to bring something inside.”

  To bring something inside.

  Jason’s body tightened into a knot of fury and fear. Beside him, Holly put a hand on his shoulder. There was a shadow on her face now, too.

  “Take Sugar,” she told him softly. “Go.”

  * * *

  —

  Sugar pulled Bourne along a dirt trail through what felt like the grounds of a haunted house. Overgrown trees blotted out the sky and left the cemetery in a kind of gray twilight. Vines crept like snakes across the graves, and mold and black soot gathered over centuries-old stone. Gargoyles and angels watched with empty eyes from atop the tombs.

  Jason wore a leather jacket, and he had his hand around his gun in the jacket pocket. With his other hand, he held the leash tightly as the dog led him through the cemetery. Sugar seemed to know exactly where she was going. Wherever they went, he felt watched, but everyone who came here probably felt the same way. It was a place full of old ghosts. He heard no one nearby, but there were plenty of hiding places among the crumbling monuments.

  What did Lennon want? A meeting? To lure him into a trap?

  Or had he left something horrible for Bourne to find?

  He was using the cart to bring something inside.

  Behind him, a twig snapped with a sharp crack. Instantly, Bourne spun, his gun out. He studied the web of musty stones and saw a flash of movement among the weeds. A red fox, with wiry fur and a long snout, slunk onto the trail, a dead rabbit clutched in its jaws. The animal froze when it saw them. Sugar growled, but Jason held up a hand, and the dog quieted. The fox stayed low to the ground and disappeared with a rustle among the graves.

  Sugar tugged at the leash to lay chase. Jason bent down and let the dog take another whiff of the velvet box that smelled of Nova’s perfume.

  “Find,” he said.

  With a snort, the dog returned to the hunt.

  They hiked past dense foliage that encroached from both sides of the path and crowded around the tombs. Sugar guided him through a sweeping S-curve and then tugged him left where a grove of ferns led toward a long, dark passageway. The entrance was bordered by four fluted columns, overgrown with ivy and lichen, as if he were exploring the ruined palace of Ozymandias.

  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

  He could only see a short distance down the passage. Sugar strained to go faster, but he held her back and made her heel next to him. He took slow, cautious footfalls through the dark corridor. They emerged on the far side, back in the gray day, and ahead of them was a series of underground vaults, built in the circular shape of a wheel, accessed by a set of cracked, moss-covered concrete steps. With Sugar leading the way, they climbed down to the crypts, which felt like descending into hell.

  The path was overrun with grass and weeds. On the outer side of the circle was a series of stone doorw
ays, all with triangular gables above them. The stonework on the inner hub of mausoleums was broken and black. Each doorway featured a family name carved into stone, and metal doors concealed the tombs inside. Sugar led him to a crypt engraved for the family of some long-dead lawyer named Thomas Galt, and she stopped there and shoved her nose at the heavy door.

  This was the end of the road.

  A dead rat lay on the ground, and Jason kicked it away. He told Sugar, “Stay,” and then he let go of the leash. The dog stood at attention, muscled legs ready to charge.

  Bourne turned on a flashlight. He shoved his shoulder against the door of the crypt, which was slightly ajar. It opened with a squeal of metal on metal, letting out a dank smell. The dust from inside made him cough. His light lit up a stone floor and another dead rat. On the wall, he saw stone squares outlining individual family graves, marked with metal name plates that had long ago turned green and illegible.

  In the cone of light, he saw her.

  Huddled in the corner of the crypt was Nova. Alive. His heart soared.

  When she spotted the light at the doorway, her bloodshot eyes squinted and blinked, and she shrank away from him. Jason shoved his gun in his pocket and ran to her. Her hands and feet were tied, her mouth gagged. To her, he was just a man in shadow, so he turned the light upward to his own face. When she recognized him, a tear slipped down one of her pale cheeks. Just one.

  He’d never seen that. He’d never seen her cry.

  What happened? What did he do to you?

  Jason hoisted her into his arms and carried her out of the vault. She clung to him as he took her up the steps, with Sugar following, and he laid her down in the long grass with her back against a tall stone cross. Using a knife, he cut the rope binding her hands and feet, and he undid the knot of the gag that was stuffed in her mouth. Her lips were chapped, her green eyes sunken and red. Her dirty black hair hung limply over her face. From inside his jacket, he grabbed a bottle of water and let her drink slowly. Then he poured a little of the water over her face to moisten her eyes.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, her voice raspy.

  He nodded at Sugar, who shoved her nose between them and licked Nova’s face.

  “Good girl,” Nova murmured.

  “I found something else, too,” Jason said.

  He reached inside his jacket for the velvet box. He took out the pendant and slipped the chain around Nova’s head. It dangled down to her chest, the way it had for years. She took the pendant in her hand and stared at the image of Pegasus on the coin.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she said to the winged horse. Her eyes met Jason’s. “Or you.”

  He took note of the burn marks bit into the skin on her wrists and ankles. “There’s a doctor back at the safe house.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Those cuts look deep—”

  “I’m okay.” She insisted that nothing was wrong, which made him think something was wrong.

  He let a long silence pass, and then he asked, “What happened?”

  Nova laid her head back and stared across the cemetery. “He used my past against me. My childhood.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m not sure I can even explain it.”

  “To do what? To make you talk?”

  “No. He didn’t ask me for anything. No information, no intelligence. I don’t know, it was as if all he wanted to do was make me submit to him. Not for any reason, just to prove he could.”

  Jason didn’t ask for more details, but he watched Nova’s face and saw something he’d never seen there. Fear. Fear, bordering on panic. He couldn’t help thinking that whatever Lennon had done to her, he’d won.

  She looked broken.

  “Why not just kill me?” she murmured.

  “He’s a psychopath,” Bourne said.

  “And yet he let me go.”

  “No. He left you to die in that crypt.”

  Nova pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Did he? I’m not so sure. If Lennon didn’t want you to find me, you wouldn’t be here. Whatever he’s doing, it’s part of the plan. I’m part of the plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “To kill Kotov,” she said.

  “He was playing games with you.”

  Nova put her arms around his neck. Her lips were at his ear. “That’s what scares me, Jason. What’s the game?”

  36

  Their evacuation from London began at one in the morning.

  Half a dozen vehicles poured through the gates into the long driveway of the estate, while guards kept watch on the street. The travelers split up among the cars, Holly and Sugar in one vehicle, Dixon in another. Bourne and Tati sat together in a separate armored sedan, with Nova in the front seat. Then the convoy embarked on a zigzag route out of the city.

  Along the way, Bourne saw no threats. There was no sign of Lennon, no sign that anyone was watching or following them. The lack of surveillance didn’t reassure him. If anything, he grew more concerned that he didn’t know Lennon’s next move.

  The most dangerous enemy is unpredictable. Treadstone.

  After a series of detours designed to foil any ambush, they ended up at RAF Northolt airport. Dixon had arranged transport on a Gulfstream through a defense contractor, and less than an hour later, they were airborne, leaving the UK behind. The jet had a range that would allow them to fly nonstop from London to Sacramento, California. From Sacramento, they would take a helicopter to a county airport outside Eureka, where U.S. marshals would bring them to Grigori Kotov’s hidden location.

  None of the flights would appear on airport logs. As far as the world was concerned, the transport had never happened.

  The cabin lights went dark once the Gulfstream was safely over the Atlantic. It was the middle of the night, and they had almost twelve hours of flight time ahead of them. Dixon was up front with the pilots. Holly slept in a double seat near the cockpit doors, with Sugar’s head nestled in her lap. Bourne stared out the jet window at the cloud-filled night, with Tati sitting next to him, her head resting on his shoulder.

  Nova sat alone at the back of the plane. She had one leg on the cushions of a sofa, one leg on the floor. Her eyes were closed, but Jason didn’t think she was sleeping. She’d been deep inside her own thoughts since the rescue. He was concerned about her.

  “So she is back in your life,” Tati murmured. She followed Jason’s stare, which hadn’t left Nova since they’d been airborne.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “She’s beautiful. Stunning, in fact.”

  “You’re right.”

  “But she has a tough shell. Then again, so do you.” Tati stroked his arm. “The two of you are lovers?”

  “We were.”

  “And you will be again.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Tati smiled at him. “You’re better at lying about other things than you are about yourself. I see your face, and I don’t think you can resist her. That’s okay, you know. She can’t resist you, either. A woman knows.”

  Jason changed the subject. He didn’t want to talk about Nova. “In a few hours, you’ll see your father again.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  Tati shrugged. Her voice took on a clinical tone. “I had to cut him out of my life. That’s the way it is at home. You betray us, you cease to exist. Of course, nothing is so simple and easy, is it? For years, I played chess in secret with Uncle Maxim, even though he was a traitor. Seeing him again reminded me that I still loved him. I imagine it will be the same with my father, but it doesn’t change what he did.”

  “Would you have played chess with your father if you knew he was alive?”

  Tati’s head tilted upward. Her gray eyes were icy as she stared at him. “No.”

&
nbsp; “You sound like you don’t forgive him.”

  “It’s not a question of forgiveness. We all make our choices in life. Once something is done, it’s done.”

  “Seems like you have a tough shell, too,” Jason said.

  “Yes, you’re right. But not about everything. Not about you.”

  She stared at him with a frank desire, and he could feel heat between them, as he had the previous night. She stroked her fingertips across his hand. Without thinking about it, he reached out to caress the line of her jaw. It was an intimate gesture, which he regretted.

  When he looked away, he found himself staring at Nova in the back of the plane. Her eyes were open now, watching them.

  Tati smirked. “She looks jealous.”

  “She has nothing to be jealous about.”

  “No? Well, if you say so.”

  “I’m just here to get you safely to your father,” Jason said.

  “And then what? You leave me there? Is that how it works?”

  “That’s how it works.”

  “Too bad.” She had a look on her face that said life was a chain of sadness, and that was that. She wasn’t sentimental; she was a scientist and a Russian.

  Tati closed her eyes to sleep, and Jason undid his seat belt and got up. The plane had entered a turbulent zone, rocking and thumping in the unstable air, its wings waggling. Bourne made his way to the rear of the jet and sat down next to Nova. She was drinking a bottle of San Pellegrino. Her eyes were cool and far away, as if she was wrestling with things she wasn’t going to share with him.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Tati has a bit of a crush on me,” he explained. “Survivor attachment.”

  “I see that. It seems like the feeling is mutual.”

  “It’s not.”

  “You don’t have to make excuses. She’s very attractive.”

  “Holly wants me to stay close to her until we get her to Kotov. That’s all it is.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Jason studied her face. “You look better.”