The Bourne Retribution (2 page)

H
ours later, when he was able to rouse himself, the sun was close to setting, turning sky, sea, and sand the color of blood. He lay close to Eden’s head, which bobbed in the water like a child’s toy, striped with black blood, abandoned.

Bourne turned his head, blinked blurriness out of his eyes. Not a figure could be seen. So far as he could tell, the entire resort was deserted.

The gentle surf bumped Eden’s head against him, turning it slowly, as inexorably as the earth rotates from day to night. Eden’s eyes, already filmed over, stared at him accusingly. Bourne opened his mouth, as if the accusation had been verbal, but all at once he was inundated by a wave of violent pain, and quickly he passed into merciful unconsciousness.

Book One

Ten days later

1

I
nternally, the Director of Mossad was traditionally known as Memune, “first among equals.” Not Eli Yadin. “I have a name,” he would say to the new recruits whenever he met them. “Use it.”

Yadin was normally an optimistic man—in his line of work you were either optimistic or you blew your brains out inside of eighteen months. But today he was unhappy; worse, his optimism had failed him. Possibly that was due to Amir Ophir, the man sitting opposite him, aboard his sailboat, the most secure spot in Tel Aviv—all of Israel for that matter.

Ophir was the head of Metsada, Mossad’s Special Ops branch. Through Kidon, its wet-work group, it was in charge of conducting assassination, sabotage, paramilitary, and psychological warfare projects. Unlike the Director, Ophir was dark of both skin and hair. His eyes, set far apart in his face, were pitch black, like the pupil of a raven’s eye. Yadin often thought Ophir’s soul was the same color.

“Honestly, Memune, I don’t understand you.” Ophir shook his head. “When he was up and running, the man was a liability, an albatross, even. Now he’s finished, done. He goes out with the trash. The Mexicans not only killed Eden, they desecrated him. This is totally unacceptable. They must be made to pay.”

“Are you telling me my job, Amir?”

“Of course not, Memune,” Ophir said hastily. “I am only voicing my outrage—the outrage of our entire family.”

“I share your outrage, Amir. And believe me, the perpetrators will be made to pay.”

“I will design a counter to the Mexicans that will—”

“You will do no such thing,” the Director said sharply.

“What?”

“Ouyang Jidan is behind the Mexicans. A larger plan has been set in motion.”

Ophir’s expression grew dark. “You have not told me about it.”

“I just did,” the Director said blandly.

“Details.”

“Compartmentalization.”

Ophir appeared offended by this blatant rebuff. “You do not trust me?”

“Don’t be absurd, Amir.”

“Then—”

The Director looked him in the eye. “The plan involves Bourne.”

Ophir made a derisive sound through pursed lips.

The Director raised a hand. “Ah, well, you see…”

“Memune, listen to me. Wherever Bourne goes, death follows. First Rebeka and now Eden. What I cannot fathom is why you’ve brought him into the center of our family.”

“I know how close you were with Eden.”

“Eden Mazar was one of my best men.”

The Director could see that Ophir was getting heated more rapidly than usual.

“I feel your pain, Amir,” the Director said, “but Bourne is of great strategic use to us.”

“Bourne is burned out. He’s of no use to anyone.”

“I disagree.”

Ophir raised one ebon eyebrow. “Even if you’re right, which I seriously doubt, is that use worth Eden Mazar’s life?”

“Amir, Amir, it is for God to make such a judgment.”

Ophir snorted. “Yes. God is everywhere, and nowhere at all. The fact is, God has nothing to do with our chosen profession. If there is a God, there would be no need for Mossad or Kidon.”

Unfortunately, the Director knew what Ophir meant. It was times like these—when terror clamped Eli’s heart and was slowly squeezing the life out of it—that felt as if God had abandoned his chosen people. But such thoughts were counterproductive.

“I would prefer we leave God out of our discussion,” the Director said. It wasn’t spoken as an order, and yet it was. This, too, was the Mossad way.

“You’re mistaken to pin the two deaths on Bourne,” he went on. “He was their harbinger, but certainly not their cause.”

“He failed to protect Rebeka.”

“Rebeka didn’t need protection,” the Director snapped. “You of all people know that.”

“And what about Eden?”

The Director stood up. The wind had changed directions, and he spent some time adjusting the sails accordingly. When everything was secure and to his liking he returned to his seat and stared into Ophir’s raven eyes.

“Amir, we find ourselves in a situation that I fear is quite beyond us. We need help.”

“I can get you all the help you need.”

The Director shook his head. “I think not. Not this time.”

“Memune, please. Bourne can’t be trusted.” Ophir’s eyes grew dark and dangerous. “He’s not us; he’s not family,” he said emphatically.

Leaning forward, forearms on knees, the Director put his hands together as if in prayer. “And yet, for better or for worse, it’s Bourne, Amir. Only Bourne can help us now.”

J
ason Bourne, sitting in ancient shadow, stared out at the sunlight chopping the Mediterranean into diamond shards. He imagined each shard to be a leaping fish, went through the exercise of visualizing what each fish looked like as it leapt from the water. Instead he saw Eden Mazar’s decapitated head flying over the gazebo into the edge of the surf.

Diamond shards became flecks of blood, raining down on him. He saw Eden’s veiled eyes admonishing him. He closed his eyes, but that only brought up images of Rebeka in Mexico City, dying in the backseat of a taxi.

Above him rose the arches of the ancient aqueduct built in the first century
BCE
, during King Herod’s reign. Three hundred years later, with the city of Caesarea greatly enlarged, it was extended, bringing cool, clear water from the springs of Shummi six miles away at the foot of Mount Carmel. Now the modern resort of Caesarea, adjacent to the ruins of the old city, was run by a private corporation.

At some point he became aware that a figure had entered his island of shade, and he grew annoyed, wanting, more than anything, to be alone. He turned, about to voice his displeasure, when he saw the Director, clad in one of his usual lightweight linen suits. His one concession for the beach was highly polished leather huaraches.

“It took me some time to find you,” the Director said, “so I imagine that’s the way you wanted it.”

When Bourne made no reply and swung his head to look out again at the sea, the Director stepped closer and sat down beside him.

“I understand you left the hospital prematurely.”

“Opinions differ,” Bourne said dully.

“A doctor’s opinion—”

“I know my body better than any doctor,” Bourne said curtly.

For some time, the two sat in an uncomfortable silence. Young women in tiny bikinis ran, shouting with laughter, into the surf to interrupt their boyfriends’ game of water Frisbee. Someone was taking photos of the aqueduct. A mother herded her two children up the beach, rubbing a towel briskly over their dripping heads. The salt tang was overlaid with the scents of suntan lotion and clean sweat.

“How’s your shoulder?”

“My shoulder’s fine,” Bourne said. “Is that why you’re here? To check on my health? I don’t need a shoulder.”

“I don’t have a shoulder to give,” the Director said brusquely. Then he sighed. “You may want out, Jason—”

“I don’t want out. I just want to be here.”

“Doing nothing but thinking of her.”

“It’s none of your business what I’m doing.”

“Sitting on the beach day after day isn’t for people like us.”

Bourne remained mute.

“We’ll rest when we’re dead,” the Director observed drily. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to debate the merits of the life we’re in. I came to tell you that your enemies are still searching for you.”

“Eden’s death is proof I’m not ready.”

“No one could have saved Eden, not from a betrayal by Carlos. Recall, if you will, Eden had his handpicked bodyguards with him. They were killed instantly. You did your best.”

“I should have done better. In other times—”

“This isn’t other times,” the Director said. “And the past is the past. You and I have to deal with the now.”

Bourne’s eye was caught by two of the Director’s grim-faced men coming down the beach. They bracketed the man who had been taking pictures and hustled him away.

“It didn’t take me that long to find you,” the Director said. “It hasn’t taken Ouyang Jidan long, either.”

Bourne squinted through the harsh sunlight. Was the photographer in custody Chinese?

The Director produced a cigar but made no move to light it, simply rolled it back and forth between his fingers like a magician’s wand. “Don’t for a moment imagine Ouyang hasn’t been monitoring the entire situation, Jason.” The Director’s face held a measure of solace for Bourne. “You embarrassed him, caused him to lose face. He’s going to strike while you’re most vulnerable.”

Bourne swung his head around. “Did Rebeka know about Ouyang?”

“What? No.”

“Who did, besides you?”

The Director heaved another sigh. “My head of Metsada. Amir Ophir.”

“Then why did Ouyang order her killed?”

For a moment the Director stood stock-still. A pulse beat in his right temple. “Encarnación gave the order.”

“No,” Bourne said. “He didn’t.”

2

G
ood.” Quan, the wushun master, almost casually tossed a
jian
, a slender double-edged sword, traditionally used by gentlemen and scholars. As Ouyang Jidan caught it deftly by the hilt, Quan said, “White Snake Form.”

Ouyang stood perfectly still in the center of the training facility. The three men against whom he had been fighting for the past twenty minutes, using the Red Phoenix open-hand style, now picked up their own swords. Unlike Ouyang’s, theirs were
dao
, short, single-edged broadswords. All the weapons were carbon steel, rather than the traditional wooden training swords. Ouyang had moved beyond those years ago. There were twenty-nine levels in his chosen wushun discipline; he was fifteenth level.

Quan, a tiny man, looking no more than a wisp, was old in the manner of all great wushun masters. That is to say old in years only. He moved like a thirty-year-old, but his mind was filled with the wisdom only long decades of experience could produce. He was twenty-ninth level.

“Now,” Quan said to the three men, “attack.”

Ouyang moved not a muscle as the others advanced, an oasis of utter calm in the eye of the approaching whirlwind. The three men—tall, medium, and small in stature—came at him one by one, in the gliding, stretched movements of the Chinese straight sword form.

The small one struck first, an overhead blow meant to split the skull. Ouyang countered without moving his legs or torso in the slightest. Just his arms blurred, steel struck on steel, a lightning flash of sparks, and then the short man, shaken, stepped back at the precise moment the tall man lunged in with a strike meant to penetrate all the way to the spine. With a flick of his wrists that was neither disdainful nor flamboyant, Ouyang guided his opponent’s
dao
aside.

The medium man’s approach was entirely different. He was an expert in Sacred Stone, the same form Ouyang was using. For almost five minutes the two men stood toe-to-toe, with only their arms and weapons moving, until Ouyang, employing an unorthodox strike, swept his opponent’s legs out from under him.

The three men now spread out and simultaneously attacked Ouyang from different directions, the medium man switching from the immobile Sacred Stone to the fluid Fire Dance. For long moments, the endless clang of steel on steel, sparks like lightning, blurs like a mist clouding the interior of the building. Again and again the men tried to defeat Ouyang. Again and again, they were deflected, and then, in a breathtaking flurry, disarmed, defeated.

W
ell,” Colonel Sun said, when it was over, after Ouyang had been elevated to sixteenth level in a brief ceremony, “even I am impressed.”

Ouyang looked at him, sword blade lying against his hairless forearm. “Perhaps you wish to take me on.”

Colonel Sun chuckled, shaking his head. “You are old school, Minister. I never studied the straight sword forms.”

“Too low-tech, I imagine.” Ouyang sheathed his
jian
with a reverence the younger man would never grasp. “So there is a gap in your expertise.”