The Bourne Betrayal (27 page)

Lerner said nothing, which was, in its way, an acknowledgment. His silence didn’t mean his mind wasn’t working a mile a minute. So this is the real reason he promoted me, he thought. The Old Man doesn’t care about reorganizing CI. He wants my particular expertise. He wants an outsider to do the one piece of wet work he can’t entrust to one of his own.

“Let’s continue then.” The Old Man held up a forefinger. “I’ve had a bellyful of this insolent sonovabitch. He’s had his own agenda from the moment he first came to us. Sometimes I think we work for him. Witness his taking Cevik out of the cells. He had his reasons, you can bet on it, but he’ll never willingly tell us what they were. Just like we know nothing of what happened in Odessa.”

Lerner was taken aback. He was wondering whether he’d underestimated the Old Man.

“You can’t mean that Bourne was never fully debriefed.”

The
DCI
looked aggrieved. “Of course he was debriefed, along with everyone involved. But he claimed he could remember nothing-not a fucking thing. Martin believed him, but I never did.”

“Give me the word. I can get the truth out of him, sir.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Lerner. Bourne will kill himself before he’ll give up intel.”

“One thing I learned in the field, anyone can be broken.”

“Not Bourne. Trust me on this. No, I want him dead. That will have to suffice for my pound of flesh.”

“Yessir.”

“Not a word to anyone, including Martin. He’s saved Bourne from the executioner more times than I can count. Not this time, dammit. He said he’s severed Bourne. Now go find him.”

“I understand.” Lerner briskly rose.

The
DCI
lifted his head. “And Matthew, do yourself a favor. Don’t come back without the intel.”

Lerner met his gaze unflinchingly. “And when I do?”

The Old Man recognized a challenge better than the next man. He sat back, steepled his fingers, tapped the pads together as if in deep contemplation. “You may not get what you want,” he said.

“But you just might get what you need.”

Bourne climbed into the narrow cabin, and Bogdan followed close behind. The gondola left the terminus and swung out over the steeply dropping limestone cliff.

Bourne said: “I assumed those men were yours.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“I’m here alone, Bogdan Illiyanovich. I want only to make a deal with Lemontov.”

The two men’s eyes locked for a moment. Between them there was a kind of animus so strong it could actually be felt as a third party. Bogdan’s woolen coat stank of mildew and cigarette smoke. There were dandruff flakes on his lapels.

The cable groaned as the steel wheels above the gondola ground along. At the last moment, the four men leapt into the last two gondolas. They continued to make noise, as if they were drunk.

“You wouldn’t survive a fall from this height,” Bogdan observed mildly. “No one would.”

Bourne watched the men behind them.

The sea was restless. Tankers shambled across the harbor, but the ferries, like the gulls, were at rest. Farther out, moonlight frosted the tips of the waves.

On the beach, the boxer was scampering. As it made its way across the gray sand, it lifted its head. Its square muzzle was grizzled with foam and bits of sea kelp. It barked once and was hushed by its master, who patted its flank as they passed under a wooden pier, its greenish pilings creaking in the tide. To the left was a skeletal labyrinth of wooden beams; they held up a part of the green area that at some time in the past had been undermined by the sea. Past that was the line of darkened kiosks, bars, and restaurants that serviced the summer crowds. Down the gentle curve of the beach, perhaps a kilometer to the south, was the yacht club, where lights were burning like the glow from a small village.

The four men from the cable car had arrived on the beach.

Bogdan said, “Something has to be done.”

The moment he said it, Bourne knew this was another test. A glance told him that the men had disappeared, just like that. But of course he knew they must still be on the beach. Perhaps they were in the wooden framework that held up part of the hillside, or in one of the refreshment kiosks.

He held out his hand. “Give me the Mauser and I’ll go after them.”

“Do you imagine that I’d trust you with a gun? Or trust you to actually shoot them?” Bogdan spat.

“If it’s going to be hunting, we’ll both do it.”

Bourne nodded. “I’ve been here before, I know my way around. Just follow me.” They were crossing the sand, moving diagonally away from the surf. He ducked into the labyrinth, picked up a length of wood, banged it against a pole to judge its sturdiness. He looked at Bogdan to see if the other man would protest, but Bogdan only shrugged. He had the Mauser, after all.

They moved through the shadows in the labyrinth, ducking here and there so as not to hit their heads on low-bolted beams.

“How close are we to our rendezvous with Lemontov?” Bourne whispered.

Bogdan laughed silently. The suspicion hadn’t left his eyes.

Bourne had a feeling it was to be on one of the boats anchored in the yacht basin. He returned his attention to peering into the shadows. Ahead of him, he knew, was the first of the kiosks-the place where he’d been before.

They crept ahead, Bourne a pace in front of Bogdan. Moonlight, reflected off the sand, stretched pale fingers into this subterranean world of four-square spars, massive trusses, and crossbeams. They were more or less parallel with the pier, very close to the kiosk now, Bourne knew.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement, furtive and indistinct. He didn’t change direction, didn’t turn his head, only moved his eyes. At first, he saw nothing but a jumbled crisscross of shadows. Then, out of the architectural angles, he saw an arc-a curve that could only belong to a human. One, two, three. He identified them all. The men were waiting for them, spread like a spider web in the shadows, placed perfectly.

They knew he was heading here, just as if they could read his mind. But how? Was he going mad?

It was as if his memories were leading him into making choices that led to mistakes and danger.

What could he do now? He stopped, started to back up, but at once felt the muzzle of Bogdan’s gun in his side, urging him forward. Was Bogdan in on this? Was the Ukrainian part of the conspiracy meant to trap him?

All at once, Bourne broke to his left, toward the beach. He twisted his torso as he ran, threw the length of wood at Bogdan’s head. Bogdan dodged it easily, but it delayed his firing, allowing Bourne to dodge behind a spar an instant before a bullet from the Mauser shredded a corner of it.

Bourne feinted right, sprinted left, taking longer strides with his right leg than with his left in order to keep Bogdan from predicting his pace. Another shot, this one a bit wider of the mark.

A third shot made a ragged hole in his overcoat, which was flared out by his flight. But then he’d reached the pier’s first piling and he slipped into shadow.

Bogdan Illiyanovich’s breathing increased as he raced after the man calling himself Ilias Voda. His lips were pulled back, baring teeth clenched with the effort of running through sand that became increasingly boggy as he neared the pier. His shoes were coated with sand inside and out, the ends of his overcoat blistered with clumps of it.

The water was frigid. He didn’t want to go any deeper, but all at once he caught a glimpse of his prey, and he pressed on. The water rose to his knees, then slapped against his thighs. The tide was coming in, slowing his progress considerably. It was becoming a struggle to-A sudden sharp noise to his left caused him to wheel around. But the damnable water clawed at his ankle-length woolen coat, slowing him, and at the same time the incoming tide threw him off balance. He stumbled and, in that moment of being physically out of control, he realized why Voda had run this way. It was to deliberately lure him into the water, where his coat would limit his maneuverability.

He began a string of curses, but bit it off as if it were his tongue. In the moonlight, he saw three of the businessmen, guns drawn, sprinting full-tilt toward him.

As he ran on, the lead man aimed and fired.

Bourne saw the men coming before Bogdan did. He was almost upon the Ukrainian when the first shot took a chunk out of the nearest piling. Bogdan was in the process of turning toward him when he slipped. Bourne pulled him back up, swung him around so he was between Bourne and the armed men.

Another of them aimed and fired. A bullet plowed into Bogdan’s left shoulder, jerking his body back and to the left. Bourne was ready-he had, in fact, braced himself in the stance of a martial artist: feet at hip width, knees slightly flexed, torso loose and, therefore, ready for the next move. His strength fountained up from his lower belly. He hauled Bogdan’s body back around, keeping him as a shield. The three men were quite close now, almost in the surf, spread out in a triangle. Bourne could see them very clearly in the cool moonlight.

Another bullet struck the Ukrainian in the abdomen, almost doubling him over. Bourne brought him back up, aiming Bogdan’s Mauser with his own arm, his own hand. He pulled the trigger, his forefinger over Bogdan’s. The man on the right, the one closest to him, buckled and went down headfirst. A third bullet struck Bogdan in the thigh, but by that time Bourne had squeezed off another shot. The man in the middle flew backward, his arms spread wide.

Bourne dragged Bogdan to the right. Two more bullets missed the Ukrainian’s head by centimeters. Then Bourne squeezed off another shot, missed. The third man came on in a wild zigzag pattern, firing as he neared, but he was in the increasingly rough surf now and his balance was off. Bourne shot him between the eyes.

In the ringing aftermath, Bourne became aware of an animal stirring, a faint wriggling as Bogdan drew a second gun strapped beneath his overcoat. He’d lost the first one somewhere in the water, which was black and full of the seaweedy plumes of his own blood. Bourne chopped down with the edge of his hand, and the gun flew from the Ukrainian’s hand, vanishing into the restless sea.

He reached up and with the strength of the damned closed his hands around Bourne’s neck. An incoming wave brought Bourne to his knees. Bogdan groped with his thumbs to crush the cartilage of Bourne’s throat. Bourne jammed the heel of his hand into one of the bullet wounds. Bogdan’s head want back as he screamed.

Bourne rose, staggering, delivered a final blow that took Bogdan off his feet, hurled him backward. The side of his head slammed against a piling, and blood spewed out of his mouth.

He looked at Bourne for a moment. A little smile curled the corners of his mouth.

“Lemontov,” he said.

There was now no other sound on the beach save for the waves running hard at the pilings. No thrum of a ship’s engine, no other earthly noise, until the boxer gave a whining bark, as if in distress.

Then Bogdan began a gurgling laugh.

Bourne grabbed him. “What’s so damn funny, Bogdan Illiyanovich?”

“Lemontov.” The Ukrainian’s voice was thin, insubstantial, like air being released from a balloon. His eyes were rolling up, yet still he fought to say this one last thing. “There is no Lemontov.”

Bourne, letting the corpse sink into the water, sensed someone coming at him fast out of the shadows. He whirled to his left. The fourth man!

Too late. He felt a searing pain in his side, then a gush of warmth. His assailant began to twist the knife. He shoved the man away with both his hands and the knife the man had buried in his side released, spewing a line of blood.

“He was right, you know,” the man said. “Lemontov is a ghost we conjured up for you to chase.”

“We?”

His assailant came forward. Moonlight, creeping between the planks of the pier, revealed a face, strangely familiar.

“You don’t recognize me, Bourne.” His grin was as feral as it was venomous.

But with a shock, recalling the face Martin Lindros had sketched for him, Bourne did.

“Fadi,” he said.

I’VE
WAITED
a long time for this moment,” Fadi said. He held a Makarov in one hand, a bloody snake-bladed knife in the other.

“A long time to look you in the face again.”

Bourne felt the tide sucking and drawing around his thighs. He held his left arm hard against his side in an effort to stanch the bleeding.

“A long time to exact my revenge.”

“Revenge,” Bourne echoed. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, and all at once he was possessed with a burning thirst. “For what?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You couldn’t have forgotten-not that.”

The tide was strengthening as it came in, bringing with it larger clumps of kelp and seaweed. Without taking his eyes off Fadi’s, Bourne’s right hand dipped beneath the water, scooped up a fistful of the floating morass. Giving no warning at all, he threw the soaked ball directly at Fadi’s head. Fadi fired blindly at almost the same instant the seaweed-kelp mass struck him in the face.

Bourne was already moving, but the tide that had been his ally against Bogdan and Fadi’s men now betrayed him as a strong wave struck him obliquely. He stumbled, pain lanced through him, his left arm came away from his wound, and the blood began to flow again.

By this time, Fadi had recovered. As he held Bourne square in the Makarov’s sights, he loped toward him through the waves, flicking the serpent-bladed knife with which he clearly meant to carve Bourne up.

Bourne struggled to recover, to keep moving to his right, away from Fadi’s attack, but another wave struck him full in the back, pitching him directly toward the oncoming blade.

At that moment he heard a guttural animal growl close by. The brindled boxer leapt through the water, slamming its muscular body into Fadi’s right side. Taken completely by surprise, Fadi went down, pitched into the water, the boxer on top of him, snapping its jaws, raking him under with its forepaws.

“Come on, come on!”

Bourne heard the whispered voice in the darkness beneath that pier. Then he felt an arm, slim but strong, come around him, urging him off to his left, a winding, shadowy path between the mossy pilings, out into the moonlight.