The Bourne Retribution (52 page)

All the while he had lain naked, Eli Yadin had stood guard, staring out the window, hands clasped loosely behind his back, as if in deep contemplation.

“I followed you here once,” Bourne said as he buttoned his shirt.

“Did you? I never knew.”

“I was concerned you were ill.”

“I am ill.” Yadin turned back to him, his expression bleak. “Life has made me ill, Jason. I am dying of the ten thousand lies I am forced to tell in order to ensure the safety of my country. I am a patriot, Jason, but I am wounded to my soul by the lies I utter.”

He lifted an arm, ushering Bourne out of the surgery. They began to walk slowly down the hall dotted with nurses, patients on gurneys, an occasional doctor, hurrying from one catastrophe to another.

“None of my wounds has struck deeper than the one caused by the lie I was forced to tell you.”

Bourne stopped, turned toward the Director.

“That the lie was absolutely necessary. That it served to protect a number of people, including you, makes it only nominally more palatable.”

He shook his shaggy head. “You see, the lie I told you goaded you into hunting down Ouyang. He was a serious threat to me, to Mossad, to the State of Israel, but try as I might I could not get to him. Then you fell into my lap, as it were. Because of Rebeka. Because of your work with her, because of your feelings for her.

“God sent you to me, Jason, and I had no choice but to use you. And you accomplished the impossible.” His smile was wan, almost transparent. “I know I have given you reason to hate me now, but I have faith that in time you will find it in yourself to forgive me.”

“Why would I?” Bourne said coldly. “You’ve done to me what every other agency has done.”

Eli gestured and they continued down the hallway. “Because whether you choose to believe it or not I consider you a friend—a good friend I am honored to know.”

“Enough with the bullshit, Director.”

“I mean it, Jason, with all my heart.”

“How can you mean it when you lie to friends?”

“I lie only when it’s absolutely necessary.”

“The trouble is it’s you who decides when it’s necessary.”

“I think I’ve earned the right.”

“Everyone thinks that.”

Eli grunted. “Let me know if you feel the same way when you leave this unit.”

He pushed open the double doors to critical care. Inside, the atmosphere was as hushed and sepulchral as a funeral parlor. Solemn nurses and PAs moved from patient to patient like bees pollinating flowers.

Each patient was housed in a separate room. The sighs of breathing tubes and beeps of electronic monitors were virtually the only sounds, a kind of doleful electronic music.

They stopped in front of a door. “The measure of my trust in you, Jason, is that I have taken you here, that in a moment I will allow you to walk into this room, because in there is my one true secret and your gift.”

There was silence for some time.

“Will you come in with me?” Bourne asked.

Eli Yadin’s smile seemed to brighten. “Another time.”

Bourne opened the door.

“I’ll be here, Jason.”

The room was large and bright, more like a diminutive living room than a hospital cubicle. The door sighed shut behind him and he was alone with the person sitting up in the bed on the far side of the room.

“Hello, Jason.”

For a moment he felt rooted to the spot, absolutely disbelieving despite what his eyes showed him. It was as if his stunned mind was suspicious that this was another of Eli Yadin’s superbly tailored lies.

“Won’t you come here?”

Bourne could find nothing to say. Was this a dream? He had such a powerful sense of unreality he nearly staggered. He felt blood rush to his head. His heart beat painfully in his chest, and he could scarcely breathe.

“Rebeka,” he said at last, “for all this time I thought you were dead.”

“My real name is Sara. Sara Yadin.” She held out her hand. “If you touch me you’ll know I’m not dead.”

“I’ve been…”

“I know, and I’m so sorry.”

“All I could think of was…”

Her hand was so thin, so pale, almost translucent.

Bourne was aware of a great heat inside himself, a rageful trembling in his soul. His fist slammed into the wall so hard, the plaster groaned, cracking. The door opened, and it was all he could do not to rush through it and crush Eli Yadin’s windpipe.

“Get out!” he yelled.

“It’s all right,” Sara called. “Everything’s fine.”

The door subsided, sighing shut.

Bourne’s face was a frightening mask. “Your father lied to me, time and again he lied.”

“He lied to everyone, Jason. It was to protect me while I was vulnerable lying here, without strength, recovering.”

Her words did nothing to dispel his fury. “But it was me he manipulated. He used my anguish at your death—”

“To kill the man who ordered me dead.”

“I would willingly have—”

“Of course,” Sara said, “but you might have failed. Even you.” She smiled sadly. “If he’d told you the truth you would have insisted on seeing me. And having seen me, part of you would have remained here with me. Your attention would have been divided. Your effectiveness would have been compromised.”

Apart from the rhythmic beeping of the heart rate monitor, there was silence.

“You know it’s true, Jason.”

She was right, Bourne thought. Knowing she was alive, lying here helpless, would have made him crazy. He would not have been thinking clearly. Ouyang was far too dangerous a foe to engage while his concentration was divided.

“Please.” She waggled her outstretched fingers. “I want to touch you. I want to hold you. I want to know you’re real, that you’ve returned from China alive and well.”

Like a sleepwalker, he approached the bed. He recognized her, yet she looked vastly different. She was painfully thin, and so ashen she appeared almost ghostly. In some places, the blue of her veins shone through her translucent skin with a venomous lucidity. She had the appearance of someone who was still in the grip of an exceptionally grave and painful illness.

As he came close, she parted her gown, revealing the ugly scar on her side where she had been stabbed the night they had escaped Maceo Encarnación’s villa in Mexico City. He had had to carry her the final yards, and then…

He took her to him, enfolding her, cradling her, rocking her gently. As the tips of his fingers ran along the still-livid scar, he felt his heart well up to the bursting point. And he whispered, “I saw you bleed out in the back of the taxi. I left you a corpse in Mexico City. I stood by while they buried you here in Tel Aviv. And now…”

“Now here we are. Everything is good.” She smiled.

He remembered that smile, and the feelings it engendered rose up in him like a cresting wave.

“You were so brave, Jason. So resourceful. I never would have made it if it weren’t for you.” She took his head in her hands, kissed him tenderly with lips soft as clouds. “My love, you saved my life.”

For a seemingly endless time, they held each other wordlessly, content just to feel each other, to assure themselves that this reunion was real, not a dream from which they would wake, heartbroken and in despair.

“Jason,” she said at length, “I was so frightened for you. When my father told me his plan, I was livid. I wouldn’t speak to him for days. But he kept at me, repeated over and over what I told you, and at last I relented. And he was right. You were the only one who could get close to Ouyang, who could kill him. The only one. And of course, he had given you the perfect motivation: my death.”

There was anguish in her voice, as well as love. But there was also unmistakable pride.

Holding her now, hearing her speak, having once again felt her lips against his, the rage leached out of Bourne’s heart, and he calmed. As always, her touch was like a balm against the betrayals the world had, time and again, heaped on him. And as this process continued, he understood that though Eli had used him, he hadn’t betrayed him. On the contrary, Eli had trusted him to commit the most sacred act a father could set in motion: retribution for his gravely wounded daughter.

Rebeka—Sara; it would take some getting used to before he could call her that—shifted against him, and he realized that she must still be in pain.

“Lie back,” he said gently.

“Only if you keep hold of me.”

He lay her down, held her hand in both of his while she smiled up at him, and sighed deeply.

“Now listen, my love, while I tell you a story. When we met I was a flight attendant. You were heading for Damascus and so was I. But some time before, I met with Ouyang. It was all part of the plan. I presented myself as a courier, moving military secrets from Damascus to Oman. He saw me as a mule—as he was supposed to.

“The fact was, I was the one stealing the secrets. I was hiding in plain sight. From that moment on, his attention moved off me to find the people running me. But he never could find them, because they didn’t exist. He wasted untold time and money chasing the invisible honeypot while, one by one, I killed off his people.”

“Until he discovered the truth.”

“Yes.”

“And then he wouldn’t rest until you were dead.” Bourne wanted to scream. All at once, he hated his life of secrets and lies, hated the despicable life that had put her in harm’s way.

“At the outset of the mission, I was outfitted with a hollow tooth,” she continued. “Inside was a fast-acting capsule. It wasn’t a death pill, but one that would ensure my life under extreme circumstances. I swallowed a drug our scientists have perfected that slows the metabolism to simulate death. If I’m found in time, I can be revived, though the return to life is a long and painful one.”

For some time, Bourne sat holding her hand.

Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. “How many times have I imagined this moment, Jason; longed for it with all my heart and soul.”

Leaning over, Bourne kissed her tears away. “You’re not going out into the field again.”

“Could I stop you?” She searched his face. “Be honest. What else would either of us do?”

For a long time, they stared into each other’s eyes. At length, he took the gold chain from around his neck. The small star of David glimmered between them, a comet in the night sky. The moment she saw it, the tears came again. But this time her eyes were shining. She bent her head forward and he affixed the chain at the nape of her neck. The emblem of her he had carried with him from the moment of her supposed death lay on her chest as it had on the afternoon he had met her, heading to Damascus.

“You see, you were always close to me,” he whispered.

“Jason.” Tears lay heavy on her eyelids, reflecting tiny prisms. “Oh, Jason, what are you waiting for?”

He leaned toward her, and Sara Yadin burst into delighted laughter.

“Yes,” she sighed just before his lips covered hers.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to:
Sinocism and
The Financial Times
for insights into China.

About the Author

ROBERT
LUDLUM
was the author of twenty-seven novels, each one a
New York Times
bestseller. There are more than 225 million copies of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. He is the author of
The Scarlatti Inheritance
,
The Chancellor Manuscript
, and the Jason Bourne series—
The Bourne Identity
,
The Bourne Supremacy
, and
The Bourne Ultimatum
—among others. Mr. Ludlum passed away in March 2001. To learn more, visit www.Robert-Ludlum.com and Facebook.com/RobertLudlumBooks.

ERIC
VAN
LUSTBADER
is the author of numerous bestselling novels including
First Daughter
,
Blood Trust
,
The Ninja
, and the international bestsellers featuring Jason Bourne:
The Bourne Legacy
,
The Bourne Betrayal
,
The Bourne Sanction
,
The Bourne Deception
,
The Bourne Objective
, and
The Bourne Dominion
. For more information, you can visit www.EricVanLustbader.com. You can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

The Jason Bourne Novels

The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Supremacy