Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy (39 page)

He longed for freedom. If he'd been a God-fearing man, he would have prayed for his deliverance. So many days since he'd seen Laszl6 Molnar or spoken to Alex Conklin. When he asked his protectors about that, they invoked the word most sacred to them: security. Communication was simply not secure. They took pains to reassure him that he would soon be reunited with his friend and his benefactor. But when he asked when, all they did was shrug and go back to their endless card game. He could sense that they were bored as well, at least the ones not on guard duty.

There were seven of them. Originally, there were more, but the others had been left behind in Iraklion. But from what he'd been able to glean, they should have been here by now. Accordingly, there was no card game today—every member of the cadre was on patrol. There was a distinct air of tension that set his teeth on edge. Schiffer was a rather tall man, with piercing blue eyes and a strong-bridged nose below a mass of salt-and-pepper hair. There was a time before he'd been recruited into DARPA and had been more visible when he'd been taken for Burt Bacharach. Not being good with people, he'd never known how to respond. He'd merely mumble something unintelligible and turn away, but his obvious embarrassment only reinforced the misapprehension.

He got up, walked idly across the room to the window, but he was intercepted by one of the cadre and was turned away.

"Security," the mercenary said, his tension on his breath if not in his eyes.

"Security! Security! I'm sick to death of that word!" Schiffer exclaimed. Nevertheless, he was herded back to the chair on which he was meant to sit. It was away from all doors and windows. He shivered in the dampness.

"I miss my lab; I miss my work!" Schiffer looked into the dark eyes of the mercenary.

"I feel like I'm in prison, can you understand that?"

The cadre's leader, Sean Keegan, sensing his charge's unrest, strode swiftly over.

"Please take your seat, Doctor."

"But I—"

"It's for your own good," Keegan said. He was one of those black Irishmen, dark of hair and eye, with a rough-hewn face brimming with grim determination, and a streetbrawler's lumpy physique. "We've been hired to keep you safe and we take that responsibility seriously."

Obediently, Schiffer sat. "Would
someone
please tell me what's going on?" Keegan stared down at him for some time. Then, making up his mind, he squatted next to the chair. In a low voice, he said, "I've avoided keeping you informed, but I suppose it might be best for you to know now."

"What?" Schiffer's face was pinched and pained. "What's happened?"

"Alex Conklin's dead."

"Oh, God, no." Schiffer wiped his suddenly sweating face with his hand.

"And as for László Molnar, we haven't heard from him in two days."

"Christ almighty!"

"Calm yourself, Doctor. It's entirely possible Molnar's been out of touch for security reasons." Keegan's eyes met his. "On the other hand, the personnel we left at the house in Iraklion have failed to show."

"I gathered as much," Schiffer said. "Do you think something... untoward has happened to them?"

"I can't afford not to."

Schiffer's face shone; he couldn't stop himself from sweating in fear. "Then it's possible Spalko's found out where I am; it's possible that he's here on Crete." Keegan's face was set in stone. "That's the premise we're going by." Schiffer's terror made him aggressive. "Well," he demanded, "what're you doing about it?"

"We have men with machine pistols manning the ramparts, but I very much doubt Spalko's foolish enough to try a ground assault across a treeless terrain." Keegan shook his head. "No, if he's here, if he's coming for you, Doctor, he'll have no choice." He stood, slung his machine-pistol over his shoulder. "His route will be through the labyrinth."

Spalko, in the labyrinth with his small party, was becoming more and more apprehensive with every twist and turn they were forced to make. The labyrinth was the only logical approach for an assault on the monastery, which meant they might very well be walking into a trap.

He glanced down, saw the ball of twine was two-thirds behind them. They must be at or near the center of the monastery by now; the trail of twine assured him that the labyrinth hadn't taken them in a circle. At each branching, he believed that he'd chosen well.

He turned to Zina, said under his breath, "I smell an ambush. I want you to stay here in reserve." He patted her backpack. "If we run into trouble, you know what to do." Zina nodded, and the three men moved off in a half-crouch. They had only just disappeared when she heard machine-pistol fire coming in quick bursts. Quickly she opened her backpack, drew out a canister of tear gas, headed off after them, following the trail of the twine.

She smelled the stench of cordite before she turned the second corner. She peeked around the corner, saw one of their unit sprawled on the ground in a pool of blood. Spalko and the other man were pinned down by gunfire. From her vantage point, she could tell that it was coming from two different directions.

Pulling the pin on the canister, she tossed it over Spalko's head. It struck the ground, then rolled to the left, exploding in a soft hiss. Spalko had slapped his man's back, and they retreated out of the spread of the gas.

They could hear coughing and retching. By this time they'd all donned their gas masks and were ready to mount a second attack. Spalko rolled another canister to their right, cutting short the gunfire directed at them, but not, regrettably, before his second man caught three bullets in the chest and neck. He went down, blood bubbling from between his slack lips.

Spalko and Zina split, one going right, the other left, killing the incapacitated mercenaries—two each—with efficient bursts from their machine-pistols. They both saw the stairway at the same time and made for it.

Sean Keegan grabbed Felix Schiffer even as he shouted orders for his men on the ramparts to abandon their positions and return to the center of the monastery, where he was now dragging his terrified charge.

He'd begun to act the instant he'd caught a whiff of the tear gas seeping up from the labyrinth below. Moments later he heard the resumption of gunfire, then a deathly ringing silence. Seeing his two men rush in, he directed them toward the stone staircase that led down to where he'd deployed the rest of his men to ambush Spalko. Keegan had for years been employed by the IRA before going out on his own as a mercenary-for-hire, so he was well acquainted with situations where he was outmanned and outgunned. In fact, he relished such situations, saw them as challenges to overcome. But there was smoke now in the monastery proper, great billowing wafts of it, and now a hail of machine-gun fire corning out of it. His men had no chance; they were mowed down before they had a chance even to identify their killers.

Keegan didn't wait to identify them either. Hauling on Dr. Schiffer, he took them through the warren of small, dark, stifling rooms, looking for a way out.

As they had planned, Spalko and Zina separated the moment they emerged from the dense clouds of the smoke bomb they had tossed out the door at the head of the stairs they had climbed. Spalko went methodically through the rooms while Zina looked for a door to the outside.

It was Spalko who saw Schiffer and Keegan first, and he called to them, only to be greeted with a burst of gunfire, obliging him to duck behind a heavy wooden chest.

"You've no hope of getting out of this alive," he called to the mercenary. "I don't want you; I want Schiffer."

"It's the same thing," Keegan shouted back. "I was given a commission; I intend to carry it out."

"To what purpose?" Spalko said. "Your employer, László Molnar, is dead. So is Janos Vadas."

"I don't believe you," Keegan responded. Schiffer was whimpering and he shushed him.

"How d'you think I found you?" Spalko went on. "I ground it out of Molnar. Come on. You know he's the only one who knew you were here."

Silence.

"They're all dead now," Spalko said, inching forward. "Who'll pay the last of your commission? Hand over Schiffer and I'll pay you whatever you're owed, plus a bonus. How does that sound?"

Keegan was about to answer, when Zina, having come at him from the opposite direction, put a bullet in the back of his head.

The resulting explosion of blood and gore made Dr. Schiffer whimper like a whipped dog. Then, with his last protector pitched over, he saw Stepan Spalko advancing toward him. He turned and ran right into Zina's arms.

"There's nowhere to go, Felix," Spalko said. "You see that now, don't you?" Schiffer stared wide-eyed at Zina. He began to gibber, and she put a hand to his head, stroking his hair back from his damp forehead as if he were a child ill with fever.

"You were mine once," Spalko said as he stepped over Keegan's corpse. "And you're mine again." From out of his backpack he took two items. They were made of surgical steel, glass and titanium.

"Oh, God!" The groan from Schiffer was as heartfelt as it was involuntary. Zina smiled at Schiffer, kissed him on both cheeks as if they were good friends reunited after a long absence. At once, he burst into tears.

Spalko, enjoying the effect the NX 20 diffuser had on its inventor, said, "This is the way the two halves fit together, isn't it, Felix?" Whole, the NX 20 was no larger than the automatic weapon slung across Spalko's back. "Now that I've got a proper payload, you'll teach me the proper use of it."

"No," Schiffer said hi a quavery voice. "No, no, no!"

"Don't you worry about a thing," Zina whispered as Spalko took hold of the back of Dr. Schiffer's neck, sending yet another spasm of terror through the scientist's frame. "You're in the best of hands now."

The flight of stairs was short, but, for Bourne, descending them was more painful than he had expected. With every step he took, the trauma he'd received from the blow above his ribs sent jolts of agony through him. What he needed was a hot bath and some sleep, two things he couldn't yet afford.

Back in Annaka's apartment, he showed her the top of the piano bench and she swore under her breath. Together they moved it beneath the light fixture and he stood on it.

"You see?"

She shook her head. "I haven't the slightest idea what's going on." He went to the escritoire, scribbled on a pad:
Do you have a ladder?

She looked at him oddly but nodded.

Go get it,
he wrote.

When she brought it back into the living room, he climbed it high enough to look into the shallow frosted-glass bowl of the light fixture. And, sure enough, there it was. Carefully, he reached in, plucked up the tiny item between his fingertips. He climbed down and showed it to her in the palm of his hand.

"What—?" She broke off at the emphatic shake of his head.

"Do you have a pair of pliers?" he asked.

Again, the curious look as she opened the door of a shallow closet. She handed him the pliers. He put the tiny square between the ribbed ends, squeezed. The square shattered.

"It's a miniature electronic transmitter," he said.

"What?" Curiosity had turned to bewilderment.

"That's why the man on the roof broke in here, to plant this in the light fixture. He was listening as well as looking."

She looked around the cozy room and shivered. "Dear God, I'll never again feel the same way about this place." Then she turned to Bourne. "What does he
want?
Why try to record our every move?" Then she snorted. "It's Dr. Schiffer, isn't it?"

"It may be," Bourne said, "I don't know." All at once, he became dizzy and, near to blacking out, half-fell, half-sat on the sofa.

Annaka hurried to the bathroom to get him disinfectant and some bandages. He put his head back against the cushions, clearing his mind of everything that had just happened. He had to center himself, maintain his concentration, keeping his eye firmly fixed on what had to be done next.

Annaka returned from the bathroom carrying a tray on which were a shallow porcelain bowl of hot water, a sponge, some towels, an ice pack, a bottle of disinfectant and a glass of water.

"Jason?"

He opened his eyes.

She gave him the glass of water, and when he had drained it, she handed him the ice pack. "Your cheek is starting to swell."

He put the pack against his face, felt the pain slowly recede into numbness. But when he took a quick breath, his side seized up as he twisted to put the empty glass on a side table. He turned back slowly, stiffly. He was thinking of Joshua, who had been resurrected in his mind if not in reality. Maybe that was why he was so filled with blind rage at Khan, for Khan had raised the specter of the awful past, thrusting into the light a ghost so dear to David Webb he had haunted him in both his personalities. Watching Annaka as she cleaned his face of dried blood, he recalled their brief exchange at the cafe when he brought up the subject of her father and she had broken down, and yet he knew that he had it pursue it. He was a father who'd violently lost his family. She was a daughter who'd violently lost her father.

"Annaka," he began gently, "I know it's a painful subject for you, but I'd very much like to know about your father." He felt her stiffen, plowed on. "Can you talk about him?"

"What d'you want to know? How he and Alexsei met, I suppose." She concentrated on what she was doing, but he wondered whether she was deliberately not meeting his gaze.

"I was thinking more along the lines of your relationship with him." A shadow flickered across her face. "That's an odd—and intimate— question to ask."

"It's my past, you see ..." Bourne's voice trailed off. He was unable either to lie or to tell the full truth.

"The one you remember only in glimmers." She nodded. "I see." When she wrung out the sponge, the water in the bowl turned pink. "Ah, well, Janos Vadas was the perfect father. He changed me when I was an infant, read to me at night, sang to me when I was ill. He was there for all my birthdays and special occasions. Honestly, I don't know how he managed it." She wrung out the sponge a second time; he'd begun bleeding again. "I came first. Always. And he never grew tired of telling me how much he loved me."