Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy (59 page)

"There is something," he said in a voice he barely recognizable. "A recurring nightmare I have of being underwater. I'm being drowned, pulled deeper because I'm tied to her dead body. She's calling to me, I hear her voice calling to me, or else it's my voice calling to her."

Bourne recalled Khan's thrashing in the Danube, the panic that had swirled him deeper into the pull of the current. "What does the voice say?"

"It's
my
voice. I'm saying 'Lee-Lee, Lee-Lee.'" Bourne felt his heart skip a beat, for up from the depths of his own damaged memory swam Lee-Lee. For one precious moment only he could see her oval face with his light eyes and Dao's straight black hair. "Oh, God," Bourne whispered. "Lee-Lee was Joshua's nickname for Alyssa. No one else called her that. No one else but Dao knew."
Lee-Lee.

"One of the powerful memories of those days that, with a great deal of help, I've been able to recall is how your sister looked up to you," Bourne went on. "She'd always wanted to be close to you. At night, when she went through a bout of night-terrors, you were the only one who could calm her down. You called her Lee-Lee and she called you Joshy."

My sister, yes. Lee-Lee.
Khan closed his eyes and immediately he was under the murky water of the river in Phnom Penh. Half-drowned, in shock, he'd seen her tumbling toward him the shot-up corpse of his little sister. Lee-Lee. Four years old. Dead. Her light eyes—

their Daddy's eyes—staring sightlessly at him, accusingly.
Why you?
she seemed to say.
Why was it you and not me?
But he knew that was his own guilt talking. If Lee-Lee could have spoken, she would've said,
I'm glad you didn't die, Joshy. I'm so happy one of us
stayed to be with Daddy.

Khan put his hand to his face, turned away toward the Perspex window. He wanted to die, he wished he
had
died in the river, that it had been Lee-Lee who'd survived. He couldn't stand this life one second more. There was, after all, nothing left for him. In death, at least, he would join her....

"Khan."

It was Bourne's voice. But he couldn't face him, couldn't even look him in the eye. He hated him and he loved him. He couldn't understand how this could be; he was ill equipped to deal with this emotional anomaly. With a strangled sound, he rose and pushed past him, staggering up to the front of the aircraft where he wouldn't have to see Bourne.

With an inexpressible sorrow, Bourne watched his son go. It took an enormous effort to rein in the impulse to pull him back, to put his arms around him and hug him to his chest. He sensed that would be the worst thing he could do now, that, given Khan's history, it might lead to renewed violence between them.

He had no illusions. They both had a hard road to travel before they could accept each other as family. It could even be an impossible task. But because he wasn't in the habit of thinking anything was impossible, he set that frightening thought aside. In a rush of anguish he realized at last why he'd spent so much time denying that Khan might, in fact, be his son. Annaka, damn her, had nailed it perfectly. At that moment he looked up. Khan was standing over him, his hands gripping the seatback in front of him as if for dear life.

"You said that you just found out that I was MIA."

Bourne nodded.

"How long did they look for me?" Khan said.

"You know I can't answer that. No one can." Bourne had lied on instinct. There was nothing to be gained and much to be lost by telling Khan that the authorities had only searched for one hour. He was acutely conscious of wanting to protect his son from the truth.

An ominous stillness had come over Khan, as if he were preparing for an act of terrible consequence. "Why didn't
you
check?"

Bourne heard the accusatory tone and sat as if poleaxed. His blood ran cold. Ever since it became clear that Khan could be Joshua, he'd been asking himself the same question.

"I was half-mad with grief," he said, "but I don't think now that's a good enough excuse. I couldn't face the fact that I'd failed you all as a father." Something in Khan's face shifted, showing what was akin to a spasm of pain, as an ominous thought wormed its way up to the surface. "You must've had ... difficulties when you and my mother were together in Phnom Penh."

"What d'you mean?" Bourne, alarmed by Khan's expression, responded in a tone that was perhaps sharper than in ought to have been.

"You know. Didn't you hear it from your colleagues because you were married to a Thai?"

"I loved Dao with all my heart."

"Marie isn't Thai, is she?"

"Khan, we don't choose whom we fall in love with."

There was a short pause, and then, into the charged silence that had sprung up between them, Khan said, as casually as if it were an afterthought, "And then there was the matter of your two mixed-race children."

"I never saw it that way," Bourne said flatly. His heart was breaking, for he heard the silent cry that underlay this line of questioning. "I loved Dao, I loved you and Alyssa. My God, you were all my life. In the weeks and months afterward, I nearly lost my mind. I was devastated, uncertain whether or not I wanted to go on. If not for meeting Alex Conklin, I might not have. Even so, it took years of agonizingly hard work to recover sufficiently."

He fell silent for a moment, listening to them both breathe. Then he took a deep breath and said, "What I've always believed, always struggled with is that I should've been there to protect you."

Khan regarded him for a long time, but the tension had been broken, some Rubicon had been crossed. "If you'd been there, you would've been killed, too." He turned away without another word, and as he did so, Bourne saw Dao in his eyes and knew that in some profound way the world had changed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Reykjavik, like any other civilized place on earth, had its fair share of fast food restaurants. Each day these establishments as well as the more upscale restaurants received shipments of fresh meats, fish, vegetables and fruit. Hafnarfjordur Fine Fruits & Vegetables was one of the main suppliers to the fast-food industry in Reykjavik. The company's van that had pulled up to the Kebab Hollin in City Centre early that morning with a delivery of leaf lettuce, pearl onions and scallions was one of many that had fanned out through the city on their daily rounds. The crucial difference was that, unlike all the others, this particular van had not been dispatched by Hafnarfjordur Fine Fruits & Vegetables.

By early evening all three sites of the Landspitali University Hospital were besieged by people who were increasingly ill. Doctors admitted these patients in alarming numbers even as they ran tests on their blood. By dinnertime the results confirmed that the city had a virulent outbreak of hepatitis A on its hands.

Health department officials frenziedly went to work to deal with the burgeoning crisis. Their job was hampered by several important factors: the quickness and severity of the onset of the particularly virulent strain of the virus, the complexities associated with trying to track which foodstuffs might be involved and where its source might be, and unspoken but much on their minds was the intense worldwide spotlight trained on Reykjavik by the international summit. High on their list of suspect foods were scallions, the culprits in the recent outbreaks of hepatitis A in the United States, but scallions were fairly ubiquitous in the local fast food chains, and of course they couldn't rule out meats or fish.

They worked into the twilit night, interviewing the owners of every company that specialized in fresh vegetables, sending their own staff out to inspect the warehouses, storage containers and vans of each firm, including Hafnarfjordur Fine Fruits & Vegetables. However, much to their surprise and dismay, they found nothing amiss, and as the hours swept by, they were forced to admit that they were no closer to finding the source of the outbreak than when they had started.

Accordingly, just after nine p.m., health department officials went public with their findings. Reykjavik was under a hepatitis A alert. Because they hadn't yet found the source of the infection, they put the city under quarantine. Over all their heads was the specter of a full-blown epidemic, something they could not afford with the terrorism summit beginning and the entire world's attention focused on the capital. In their television and radio interviews, the officials sought to reassure an uneasy public that they were taking every measure to gain control over the virus. To that end, they said repeatedly, the department was devoting its entire staff to the ongoing safety of the public at large.

It was just before ten p.m. when Jamie Hull walked down the hotel corridor to the president's suite in a high state of agitation. First, there was the sudden outbreak of hepatitis A to worry about. Then he was summoned to an unscheduled briefing with the president.

He looked around and saw the Secret Service men who were guarding the president. Farther down the corridor were the Russian FSB and Arab security guarding their leaders, who, for the sake of security and the ease of housing their staffs, had been assigned to one wing of the hotel.

He went through the door guarded by a pair of Secret Service guards, huge and impassive as sphinxes, and into the suite. The president was prowling restlessly back and forth, dictating to a pair of his speechwriters as the press secretary looked on, scribbling hurried notes on a tablet computer. Three more Secret Service men stood by. They were keeping the president away from the windows.

He cooled his heels without protest until the president dismissed the press people, and like mice, they scurried off to another room.

"Jamie," the president said with a big smile and an extended hand. "Good of you to come." He squeezed Hull's hand, gestured for him to sit, then took a seat across from him.

"Jamie, I'm counting on you to help bring this summit off without a hitch," he said.

"Sir, I can assure you that I have everything under control."

"Even Karpov?"

"Sir?"

The president smiled. "I heard that you and Mr. Karpov have been going at it pretty good."

Hull swallowed hard, wondering if he'd been brought in to be fired. "There was some minor friction," he said tentatively, "but that's all in the past."

"I'm glad to hear it," the president said. "I'm having enough difficulties with Aleksandr Yevtushenko as it is. I don't need him pissed off at me over a slight to his number-one security chief." He slapped his thighs and rose. "Well, showtime is eight o'clock this morning. There's still a lot to prepare for." He stuck out his hand as Hull rose. "Jamie, no one knows better than I how perilous this situation might become. But I think we're agreed that there's no turning back now."

Outside in the corridor Hull's cell phone rang.

"Jamie, where are you?" the DCI barked in his ear.

"I just came out of a briefing with the president. He was pleased to hear that I have everything under control, including Comrade Karpov."

But instead of sounding pleased, the DCI forged on in a tense urgent tone. "Jamie, listen to me carefully. There's another aspect to this situation, which is given strictly on a need-to-know basis."

Hull automatically looked around and walked quickly out of earshot of the Secret Service guards. "I appreciate your confidence in me, sir."

"It concerns Jason Bourne," the DCI said. "He wasn't killed in Paris."

"What?" For a moment Hull lost his composure. "Bourne's
alive?"

"Alive and kicking."

"Jamie, just so we're on the same page, this call, this conversation, never happened. If you ever mention it to anyone, I'll deny it ever took place and I'll have your ass in a sling, are we clear?"

"Perfectly sir."

"I have no idea what Bourne is going to do next, but I always believed that he was heading your way. He may or may not have killed Alex Conklin and Mo Panov, but he sure as hell killed Kevin McColl."

"Jesus. I knew McColl, sir."

"We all did, Jamie." The Old Man cleared his throat. "We can't allow that act to go unpunished."

All at once Hull's rage vanished, to be replaced by a sense of high elation. "Leave it to me."

"Use caution, Jamie. Your first order of business is keeping the president safe."

"I understand, sir. Absolutely. But you can be sure that if Jason Bourne shows up, he won't leave the hotel."

"Well, I trust he will," the Old Man said. "Feet first."

Two members of the Chechen cadre were waiting in front of the Reykjavik Energy van when the health services vehicle, dispatched to the Oskjuhlid Hotel, came around the corner. The van was parked crosswise in the street and they had placed orange plastic work cones around and seemed hard at work.

The health services vehicle came to an abrupt halt.

"What are you doing?" one of the health services people said. "This is an emergency."

"Fuck you, little man!" one of the Chechen answered in Icelandic.

"What did you say?" The irate health services worker climbed out of his vehicle.

"Are you blind? We have important work here," the Chechen said. "Use another fucking route."

Sensing a situation that could turn ugly, the second man got out of the health services vehicle. Arsenov and Zina, armed and intent, emerged from the back of the Reykjavik Energy van and herded the suddenly cowed health services workers into the van.

Arsenov and Zina and one other member of the cadre arrived at the delivery entrance to the Oskjuhlid Hotel in the hijacked vehicle. The other Chechen had taken the Reykjavik Energy van to pick up Spalko and the remainder of the cadre. They were dressed as government employees and presented the health department ID

tags that Spalko had procured at great expense to the security detail on duty. When queried, Arsenov spoke in Icelandic, then changed to halting English when the American and Arab security people couldn't understand him. He said that they had been sent to ensure that the hotel kitchen was free of hepatitis A. No one—least of all the various security teams—wanted any of the dignitaries to come down with the dread virus. With all due dispatch, they were admitted and directed to the kitchen. This was where the cadre member went, but Arsenov and Zina had other destinations in mind.