Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy (30 page)

Out of the haze of stone dust, Bourne bull-rushed the sniper, driving him back across the stone floor, against one of the stone arches. The man slammed his combined fists down on Bourne's back, driving Bourne to his knees. His head went down, exposing his neck, too tempting a target to pass up. As the sniper drove a hand-strike at Bourne's neck, Bourne twisted, grasping the descending arm, using the sniper's own momentum against him, pulling the man off his feet. Bourne struck him in the kidney as he went down. The sniper brought his ankles together around Bourne's, twisting, so that Bourne fell backward. Immediately, the man leaped at him. They grappled hand-to-hand, the light from the flashlight picked apart by the hail of dust. By its illumination, Bourne saw the sniper's long, hatchet face, blond hair, light eyes. Bourne was briefly taken aback. He realized that he'd expected the sniper to be Khan.

Bourne did not want to kill this man; he wanted to question him. He desperately wanted to know who he was, who had sent him and why Vadas had been marked for death. But the man fought with the strength and tenacity of the damned, and when he struck Bourne on the right shoulder, Bourne's arm went numb. The man was on him before he could shift his stance and protect himself. Three punches in succession sent him reeling through one of the arches until he was backed over the low stone railing. The man came after him, his empty gun reversed in his hand so that he could use the butt as a cudgel.

Shaking his head, Bourne tried to rid himself of the pain in his right side. The sniper was almost upon him, his right arm raised, the heavy butt of the gun gleaming in the lights of the square. There was a murderous look on his face, his lips pulled back in an animal snarl. He swung in a shallow, vicious arc; the butt came down, its clear intention to shatter Bourne's skull. At the last moment, Bourne slid aside just enough and the sniper's own momentum sent him hurtling over the rail.

Bourne reacted instantly, reached down and grabbed the man by his hand, but the rain made the flesh slippery as oil and the fingers slid through his grip. With a scream the man fell away, plummeting to the pavement far below.

With the fall of night, Khan arrived in Budapest. He took a taxi from the airport and checked into the Danubius Hotel as Heng Raffarin, the name he'd used as a
Le Monde
reporter in Paris. This was how he'd come through Immigration, but he was also carrying other documents, purchased like the other that identified him as a deputy inspector for Interpol.

"I've flown in from Paris to interview Mr. Conklin," he said in a harassed tone of voice.

"All these delays! I'm frightfully late. Do you think you could inform Mr. Conklin that I've finally arrived? We're both on rather tight schedules." As Khan had foreseen, the desk clerk automatically looked at the cubbyholes behind him, each with a room number printed in gold-leaf. "Mr. Conklin isn't in his suite at the moment. Would you care to leave a note?"

"I suppose I have no other choice. We'll get a fresh start in the morning." Khan pretended to write a note for "Mr. Conklin," sealed it, gave it to the clerk. Taking his key, he turned away, but out of the corner of his eye he watched as the clerk stuck the envelope in the cubbyhole marked penthouse 3. Satisfied, he took the elevator up to his room, which was on the floor below the penthouse level.

He washed up, took some implements out of a small bag and went out of his room. He took the stairway up one flight to the penthouse level. He stood in the corridor a very long time, simply listening, accustoming himself to the small noises endemic to any building. He stood, still as stone, waiting for something—a sound, a vibration, a
feel
—

that would tell him whether to go forward or to retreat.

In the end, nothing untoward presented itself, and so he moved cautiously forward, reconnoitering the entire corridor, assuring himself that it, at least, was secure. At length, he found himself in front of the polished teak double doors of Penthouse 3. Extracting a pick, he inserted it into the lock. A moment later, the door opened. Again, he stood for some tune in the open doorway, breathing in the suite. Instinct told him that the room was empty. Still, he was wary of a trap. Swaying slightly with the effects of sleeplessness and the rising tide of his emotions, he scanned the room. Besides the remnants of a package the approximate size of a shoebox, there was precious little in the suite to indicate that it was occupied. Judging by the look of the bed, it hadn't been slept in. Where was Bourne now? Khan wondered.

At length, he drew his wandering mind back into his body, crossed to the bathroom, turned on the light. He saw the plastic comb, the toothbrush, toothpaste, tiny bottle of mouthwash the hotel had provided along with soap, shampoo and hand cream. He unscrewed the toothpaste top, squeezed out a bit into the sink, washed it away. Then he pulled out a paper clip and a small silver box. Inside the box were two capsules with shells of quick-dissolving gelatin. One was white, the other black.

"One pill makes your heart beat, the other makes it slow, and the pills that Father gives you don't do anything at all," he sang to the tune of "White Rabbit" in a clear tenor as he extracted the white capsule from its bed.

He was about to place it into the open top of the toothpaste tube, tamp it down with the end of the paper clip, when something stopped him. He counted to ten, then replaced the cap, careful to put the tube back precisely as he had found it.

He stood, for a moment, bewildered, staring at the two capsules that he himself had prepared while waiting for his flight out of Paris. He had been clear, then, about what he'd wanted to do—the black capsule was filled with just enough krait venom to paralyze Bourne's body while still allowing his mind to remain conscious and alert. Bourne knew more about what Spalko was planning than Khan did; he had to, having followed his trail of leads all the way back to Spalko's home base. Khan wanted to know what Bourne knew before he killed him. This is what he told himself, at least. But it was impossible to deny any longer that his mind, so long filled with fevered visions of revenge, had lately made room for other scenarios. No matter how much energy he expended on rejecting them, they persisted. In fact, he realized now, the more violently he dismissed them, the more stubbornly they refused to disappear. Feeling like a fool, he was standing in the room of his nemesis, unable to follow through on the plan he had meticulously formulated. Instead, in the theater of his mind he was replaying the look on Bourne's face when he had seen the carved stone Buddha that hung by a gold chain around his neck. He clutched at the Buddha now, feeling as he always did a certain sense of solace and safety in its soft shape and singular weight. What was wrong with him?

With a small grunt of anger, he turned and stalked out of the suite. On his way down to his room, he pulled out his cell phone, punched in a local number. After two rings, a voice answered.

"Yes?" said Ethan Hearn.

"How's the job going?" Khan asked.

"Actually, I'm finding it enjoyable."

"Just as I predicted."

"Where are you?" Humanistas, Ltd.'s newest development officer asked.

"Budapest."

"That's a surprise," Hearn said. "I thought you had a commission in East Africa."

"I've declined it," Khan said. He had reached the lobby and now crossed it, heading to the front door. "In fact, for the time being I've taken myself off the market."

"Something pretty important must've brought you here."

"It's your boss, as a matter of fact. What have you been able to ferret out?"

"Nothing concrete, but he's up to something, I can tell, and it's very, very big."

"What makes you say that?" Khan asked.

"First, he entertains a pair of Chechens," Hearn said. "On the surface, there's nothing strange about that. We have an important initiative in Chechnya. And yet it
was
strange, very strange, because even though they were dressed as Westerners—the man was beardless, the woman without her head scarf—I recognized them, well,
him-,
at least. Hasan Arsenov, leader of the Chechen rebels."

"Go on," Khan urged, thinking he was getting more than his money's worth from this mole.

"Then, two nights ago, he asked me to go to the opera," Hearn continued. "He said he wanted to snag a wealthy prospect by the name of László Molnar."

"What's so strange about that?" Khan said.

"Two things," Hearn replied. "First, Spalko took over midway through the evening. He pretty much ordered me to take the next day off. Second, Molnar's disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

"Vanished utterly, like he never existed," Hearn said. "Spalko thinks I'm too naive not to have checked up." He laughed softly.

"Don't get overconfident," Khan warned. "That's when you make a mistake. And, remember what I told you, don't underestimate Spalko. Once you do, you're as good as dead."

"I got it, Khan. Christ, I'm not stupid."

"You wouldn't be on my payroll if you were," Khan reminded him. "D'you have this László Molnar's home address?"

Ethan Hearn gave it to him.

"Now," Khan said, "all you have to do is keep your ears open and your head down. I want everything of his you can burrow into."

Jason Bourne watched Annaka Vadas as she exited the morgue, where, he suspected, she had been taken in the company of the police in order to identify her father and the three men who had been gunned down. As for the sniper, he had landed on his face, which ruled out identification by dental records. The police must be running his fingerprints through the EU database. From fragments of the conversation he had overheard at Matthias Church, the police were rightly curious as to why a professional assassin would want to kill Janos Vadas, but Annaka had no explanation and at length the police had given up and allowed her to go. They, of course, had no inkling of Bourne's involvement. He had stayed away from the investigation by necessity—he was, after all, an internationally wanted man—but he felt some trepidation. He had no idea whether he could trust Annaka. It hadn't been that long ago when she had been intent on putting a bullet through his brain. But he had hoped that his actions following her father's murder would convince her of his good intentions.

Apparently they had, because she had not told the police about him. Instead, he had found his boots in the chapel Annaka had shown him, lying between the crypts of King Bella III and Anne of Chatillon. Bribing a taxi driver, he'd shadowed her to the police station, and then to the morgue.

Now he watched as the police touched their caps, said their goodnights. They had offered to drive her home, but she had refused. Instead, she pulled out her cell phone, in order to call a taxi, he surmised.

When he was certain that she was alone, he quit the shadows in which he had been hiding, walked quickly across the street toward her. She saw him, put her cell phone away. Her look of alarm brought him up short.

"You! How did you find me?" She looked around, rather wildly, he thought. "Have you been following me all this time?"

"I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"My father was shot to death in front of me," she said shortly. "Why would I be okay?" He was conscious of the fact that they were standing beneath a streetlight. At night, he always thought in terms of targets and security; it was second nature—he couldn't help it.

"The police here can be difficult."

"Really? And how would you know that?" Apparently, she wasn't interested in his answer, for she began to walk away from him, her heels click-clacking over the cobbles.

"Annaka, we need each other."

Her back was very straight, her head held high on her long neck. "What would make you say such an absurd thing?"

"Because it's true."

She turned on her heel, confronting him. "No, it's not true." Her eyes blazed. "It's because of you that my father's dead."

"Now who's being absurd?" He shook his head. "Your father was murdered because of whatever he and Alex Conklin were into. That's why Alex was murdered in his home, and that's why I'm here."

She snorted in derision. Bourne understood the source of her brittle-ness. She had been forced into a male-dominated arena, perhaps by her father, and was now more or less at war. At the very least, she was highly defended.

"Don't you want to know who killed your father?"

"Frankly, no." Her balled fist was on one hip. "I want to bury him and forget I ever heard of Alexsei Conklin and Dr. Felix Schiffer."

"You can't mean that!"

"Do you know me, Mr. Bourne? Do you know anything about me?" Her clear eyes observed him from her slightly cocked head. "I think not. You're completely in the dark. That's why you came here, posing as Alexsei. A stupid ruse, transparent as plastic. And now that you've blundered your way in, now that blood has been spilled, you think it's your due to find out what my father and Alexsei were up to." "Do you know me, Annaka?"

A sardonic smile split her face as she took a step closer to him. "Oh, yes, Mr. Bourne, I know you well. I've seen your kind come and go, each one thinking in the moments before he is gunned down that he's more clever than the last one." "So who am I?"

"You think I won't tell you? Mr. Bourne, I know exactly who you are. You're a cat with a ball of string. Your only thought is to unravel that ball of string no matter the cost. This is all a game to you—a mystery that must be solved. Nothing else matters. You're denned by the very mystery you seek to unravel. Without it, you wouldn't even exist."

"You're wrong."

"Oh, no, I'm not." The sardonic smile widened. "It's why you can't fathom how I can walk away from this, why I don't want to work with you, help you find out who killed my father. Why should I? Will knowing the answer bring him back? He's dead, Mr. Bourne. He no longer thinks or breathes. He's just a pile of refuse now, waiting for time to finish what it started."

She turned and began to walk away again. "Annaka—"

"Go away, Mr. Bourne. Whatever you have to say, I'm not interested." He ran to catch up with her. "How can you say that? Six men have lost their lives because of—" She gave him a rueful look and he could tell that she was on the verge of tears. "I begged my father not to get involved, but you know, old friends, the lure of the clandestine, who knows what it was. I warned him that it would all come to an evil end, but he just laughed—yes, laughed—and said I was his daughter and couldn't possibly understand. Well, that put me in my place, didn't it?"