Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy (29 page)

"Alex Conklin," he replied.

"Passport, please," she said as crisply as an Immigration official. He handed it over, watched her as she examined it with her eyes and the pad of her thumb. She had interesting hands; they were slender, long-fingered, strong, blunt-nailed. A musician's hands. She could not be more than thirty-five.

"How do I know you're really Alexander Conklin?" she said.

"How does one know anything absolutely?" Bourne said. "Faith." The woman snorted. "What's your first name?"

"It says right on the pass—"

She gave him a hard look. "I mean your
real
first name. The one you were born with."

"Alexsei," Bourne said, remembering that Conklin was a Russian emigre". The young woman nodded. She had a well-sculpted face dominated by green Magyar eyes, large and hooded, and wide, generous lips. There was about her a certain sharpedged primness, but at the same time a fin de sie-cle sensuality that in its sub-rosa nature hinted intriguingly of a more innocent century when what was kept unspoken was often more important than what was freely expressed. "Welcome to Budapest, Mr. Conklin. I'm Annaka Vadas." She lifted a shapely arm, gestured. "Please come with me." She led him across the plaza fronting the church and around the corner. In the shadowed street, a small wooden door with ancient iron bands was barely visible. She took out a small flashlight, snapped it on. It produced a very powerful beam of light. Taking an old-fashioned key from her purse, she inserted it in the lock, turned it first one way, then the other. The door opened at her touch.

"My father is waiting for you inside," she said. They entered the vast interior of the church. By the wavering beam of the flashlight, Bourne could see that the plastered walls were iced with colored ornamental design. The frescoes depicted the lives of Hungarian saints.

"In 1541 Buda fell to the invading Turks and for the next one hundred fifty years the church became the main mosque of the city," she said. Playing the flashlight over her subject. "In order to serve their needs, the Turks stripped the furnishings and whitewashed the magnificent frescoes. Now, however, everything has been restored to the way it was in the thirteenth century."

Bourne saw dim light up ahead. Annaka led him into the northern section, where there was a series of chapels. In the one nearest to the chancel the sarcophagi of tenth-century Hungarian king, Bella III, and his wife, Anne of Chatillon, lay in ghostly precision. In the former crypt, beside a row of medieval carvings, stood a figure in the shadows. Janos Vadas extended his hand. As Bourne moved to grasp it, three glowering men appeared from out of the shadows. Bourne, very quick, drew the gun. This only produced a smile from Vadas.

"Look at the firing pin, Mr. Bourne. Did you think I would provide you with a gun that worked?"

Bourne saw that Annaka had a gun trained on him.

"Alexsei Conklin was a long-time friend of mine, Mr. Bourne. And, in any case, your face is on the news." He had a hunter's calculating face, all dark and brooding brows, a square jaw and glittering eyes. In his youth he had had a distinct widow's peak, but now, in his mid-sixties, time had eroded his hairline, leaving a gleaming triangular promontory on his forehead. "It's believed you killed Alexsei and another man, a Dr. Panov, I believe. For Alexsei's death alone I would be justified in ordering you killed here and now."

"He was an old friend, more, even—a mentor."

Vadas looked sad, resigned. He sighed. "And you turned on him, I suppose, because you, like everyone else, want what is in Felix Schiffer's mind."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"No, of course you don't," Vadas said with a good degree of skepticism.

"How do you think I knew Alex's real name? Alexsei and Mo Panov were friends."

"Then killing them would have been an act of utter insanity."

"Exactly."

"It is Mr. Hazas' considered opinion that you're insane," Vadas said calmly. "You remember Mr. Hazas, the hotel manager you almost beat to a pulp. A madman, I believe he called you."

"So that's how you knew to call me," Bourne said. "I may have twisted his arm a little too hard, but I knew he was lying."

"He was lying for me," Vadas said with a touch of pride. Under the watchful gaze of Annaka and the three men, Bourne went across to Vadas, held out the useless gun. The moment Vadas reached for it, Bourne spun him around. At the same instant he drew his ceramic gun, pressed it hard against Vadas' temple. "Did you really think I would use an unknown gun without pulling it apart and putting it back together again?"

Directing himself to Annaka, he said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, "Unless you want your father's brains spattered all over five centuries of history, put down your gun. Don't look at him; do as I tell you!"

Annaka put down her gun.

"Kick it over here." She did as he ordered.

None of the three men had made a move, and now they wouldn't. Bourne kept one eye on them just the same. He took the muzzle away from Vadas' temple, let him go.

"I could have shot you dead, if that had been my wish."

"And I would have killed you," Annaka said fiercely.

"I've no doubt you'd have tried," Bourne said. He put up the ceramic gun, showing her and Vadas' men that had he no intention of using it. "But these are hostile acts. We'd have to be enemies to make them." Picking up Annaka's gun, he handed it to her, grips first. Without a word, she took it, aimed it at him.

"What have you turned your daughter into, Mr. Vadas? She would kill for you, yes, but it also seems as if she would kill too quickly and for no reason at all." Vadas stepped between Annaka and Bourne, pushed her gun down with his hand. "I've enough enemies as it is, Annaka," he said softly.

Annaka put away her gun, but her flashing eyes still held a hostility Bourne noted. Vadas turned to Bourne. "As I said, for you, killing Alexsei would have been an act of insanity, and yet you seem to be the very opposite of a madman."

"I was set up, made to be the patsy for the killings, so that the real killer would remain free."

"Interesting. Why?"

"I came here to find that out."

Vadas stared hard at Bourne. Then he looked around him, raised his arms. "I would have met Alexsei here, you know, had he lived. You see, this is a place of great significance. Here, at the dawn of the fourteenth century, once stood Buda's first parish church. The huge pipe organ you see up there on the balcony played at the two weddings of King Matthias. The last two kings of Hungary, Francis Joseph I and Charles IV, were crowned on this spot,. Yes, there's great history here, and Alexsei and I, we were going to change history."

"With the help of Dr. Felix Schiffer, wasn't it?" Bourne said. Vadas had no time to answer. Just then, an echoing roar sounded and he was thrown backward, arms outstretched. Blood oozed from a bullethole in his forehead. Bourne grabbed Annaka, dived onto the stonework paving. Vadas' men turned and, fanning out, began to return fire as they headed for cover. One was shot almost immediately, and he skidded over the marble floor, dead before he collapsed. A second gained the edge of a bench and was desperately trying to get behind it when he, too, was felled by a bullet that entered his spine. He arched back, his weapon crashing to the floor. Bourne looked from the third man taking cover to Vadas, who lay sprawled face-up in a widening pool of blood. He was unmoving, no respiration visible in his chest. More gunfire brought Bourne's attention back to Vadas' third man, who was now rising out of a crouch, squeezing off a series of shots, his trajectory upward toward the cathedral's great organ. His head flung backward and his arms opened wide as a speck of blood on his chest rapidly widened. He tried to clutch at the fatal wound, but his eyes were already rolling up in his head.

Bourne looked up into the gloom of the organ balcony, saw a darker shadow flitting, and he fired. Stone chips flew. Then he had grabbed Annaka's flashlight, playing the beam over the balcony as he ran toward the spiral stone staircase up to it. Annaka, at last released and able to make sense of the chaos, saw her father and screamed.

"Back!" Bourne shouted. "You're in danger!"

Ignoring him, Annaka rushed to her father's side.

Bourne covered her, sending more shots into the shadows of the balcony, but he was not surprised at the lack of return fire. The sniper had achieved his aim; in all liklihood he was already on the run.

With no more time to waste, Bourne leaped up the staircase up to the balcony. Seeing a spent shell casing, he kept on going. The balcony appeared deserted. Its floor was stoneflagged, and the wall behind the organ ornately carved wood paneling. Bourne ducked behind the organ, but the space was deserted. He checked the floor around the organ, then the wood wall. The spacing around one of the panels appeared slightly different from the others, one side several millimeters wider as if...

Bourne felt around with his fingertips, discovered that the panel was in fact a narrow doorway. He went through it, found himself confronting a steep spiral staircase. With his gun at the ready, he climbed up the treads, which ended at another door. When he pushed it open, he saw that it gave out onto the rooftop of the church. The moment he poked his head out, a shot was fired at him. He ducked back but not before seeing a figure making its way onto the roof tiles, which were pitched at an extreme angle. To make matters worse, it had begun to rain and the tiles were even more treacherous. The positive side to this was that the assassin was too engaged with keeping his balance to risk firing off another shot at Bourne.

Bourne saw immediately that his new boot soles would skid and he pulled them off, dropped them over the side of the parapet. He then went crab-wise across the roof. Thirty meters below him, a dizzying drop away, the square in which the church sat gleamed in the Old World streetlights. Using his fingers and toes to anchor him, he continued his pursuit of the sniper. In the back of his mind was the suspicion that the figure he was pursuing was Khan, but how could he have arrived in Budapest before Bourne and why would he shoot Vadas rather than Bourne?

Lifting his head, he could see the figure was making for the south spire. Bourne scrambled after him, determined not to let him get away. The tiles were old and crumbly. One tile split down the center as he grasped it, coming off in his hand, and for a moment, he flailed about, balancing precariously on the acute pitch. Then he regained his balance, threw the tile away. It shattered on the flat rooftop of the small chapel extension ten feet below him.

His mind was racing ahead. The moment of extreme peril for him was when the sniper reached the safe haven of the spire. If Bourne was still exposed on the roof, the sniper would have a clear shot at him. It was raining harder now, making touch and sight that much more difficult. The south spire was no more than a hazy outline some fifty feet away.

Bourne was three-quarters of the way to the spire when he heard something—the clang of metal against stone—and he threw himself prone onto the tiles. Water sluiced over him and as he felt the zing of the bullet whizz past his ear, the tiles near his right knee exploded and he lost his purchase. He slid down the precipitous slope, tumbling off the edge.

Instinctively, he had relaxed his body, and when his shoulder struck the roof of the chapel below, he rolled himself into a ball, using his own momentum to launch himself across the roof, dissipating the energy of the drop. He fetched up against a stained-glass window, which kept him out of the sniper's line of sight.

Looking up, he could see that he was not that far from the spire. A lesser tower was just in front of him, a narrow slit of a window presenting itself. It was medieval in nature and therefore had no pane of glass in it. He squeezed through, found his way up to the top, which gave out onto a narrow stone parapet that led directly to the south spire. Bourne had no way of knowing whether he would become visible to the sniper as he crossed the parapet. He took a deep breath, bolted out of the doorway, sprinted along the narrow stone passageway. Ahead of him, he saw the movement of a shadow, and he dove into a ball as a shot rang out. He was up and running again all in one motion, and before the sniper could fire again he had left his feet, this time diving head-first through an open window of the spire.

More shots resounded, and shards of stone flew past him as he scrambled up the spiral staircase at the core of the spire. Above him, he heard the metallic click that told him his adversary had run out of ammo, and he leaped up the stairs three at a time, making the most of his temporary advantage. He heard another metallic sound, and an empty cartridge came bouncing down the stone stairs. Bounding ahead, he bent his back, keeping his profile low. No more shots ensued, increasing the probability that he was gaining on the sniper.

But probability was not good enough; he had to be certain. He aimed Annaka's flashlight up the spiral, flicked the beam on. At once he saw the trace of a shadow on the treads just above him, slipping away almost immediately, and he redoubled his efforts. He switched off the beam before the sniper could get a reading on his position. They were near the top of the spire now, some eighty meters in the air. There was nowhere else for the sniper to go. He would have to kill Bourne to get himself out of the trap. This desperation would make him both more dangerous and more reckless. It was up to Bourne to use the latter possibility to his advantage.

Up ahead of him, he could see the spire's ending, a circular space surrounded by high arches that let in the rain and wind, and he checked his headlong ascent. He knew that if he continued, the chances were good that he would be met with a fusillade of bullets. And yet he could not stay here. He took his flashlight, set it on a step above him at an angle, then he lay down, and keeping his head down, he reached out, stretching as far as he could, and flicked on the beam.

The resulting hail of bullets was deafening. Even while the noise was still echoing up and down the length of the spire, Bourne had launched himself up the remaining stairs. He had gambled that the sniper's desperation would lead him to empty his entire cartridge at what he assumed was Bourne's final assault.