The Bourne Betrayal (28 page)

He gasped. “I have to go back and-”

“Not now.” The whispered voice was firm. It came from the slender man with the wide-brimmed hat he’d seen on the beach-the boxer’s master. The man gave a whistle and the dog came bounding out from under the pier, paddling through the water toward them.

And then Bourne heard the wail of sirens. Someone from the nearby yacht club must have heard the repeated sound of gunfire and called the police.

So he lumbered on, the helping arm around him, the pain throbbing hotly and agonizingly with every step he took, as if the blade were still being twisted inside him. And with every beat of his heart, he lost more blood.

When Fadi, choking and sputtering, broke the surface, the first thing he saw through reddened eyes was Abbud ibn Aziz, who was leaning over the low rail of a sailboat running without lights. The boat, heeled over slightly, had taken advantage of the onshore breeze to move in closer to land than many powerboats could without running aground.

Abbud ibn Aziz held out a strong, browned arm. His forehead was furrowed in concern. As Fadi clambered onto the deck, Abbud ibn Aziz called out. The mate, who was already at the sheets, hauled the yardarm, causing the sailboat to tack away from the shore.

Just in time. As they turned, Fadi could see what had caused Abbud ibn Aziz’s concern. Three police launches had just turned the headland to the north and were speeding toward the area surrounding the pier.

“We’ll make for the yacht club,” Abbud ibn Aziz said in Fadi’s ear. “By the time they’re close enough to scrutinize the area, we’ll be safely berthed.” He said nothing of the three men. They weren’t here, clearly they weren’t coming. They were dead.

“Bourne?” he asked.

“Wounded, but still alive.”

“How bad?”

Fadi lay on his back, wiping blood off his face. That damn dog had bitten him in three places, including his right biceps, which felt as if it were on fire. His eyes glowed like a wolf’s in the moonlight. “Bad enough, perhaps, that he’ll end up as damaged as my father.”

“A just fate.”

The lights from the yacht club were coming up fast on the bow. “The documents.”

Abbud ibn Aziz handed over a packet wrapped in waterproof oilskin.

Fadi took possession of the packet, turned on his side, spat into the water. “But is it a just revenge?” His head moved from side to side as he answered his own question. “I don’t think so, no. Not yet.”

This way, this way!” the urgent voice said in Bourne’s ear. “Don’t slacken now, it’s not far.”

Not far? he thought. Every three steps he took felt like a kilometer. His breathing was labored and his legs felt like stone columns. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep them moving. Waves of exhaustion swept over him and from time to time he lost his balance, pitching forward. The first time took his companion by surprise. He was facedown in the water before he was hauled back into the humid Odessa night. Thereafter, he was saved from the same watery fate.

He tried to lift his head, to see where they were, where they were headed. But keeping himself moving through the water was struggle enough. He was aware of his companion, aware of a peculiar familiarity that spread across the surface of his mind like an oil slick. Yet like an oil slick he couldn’t see beneath it, couldn’t decide who this person was. Someone from his past. Someone . .

.

“Who are you?” he gasped.

“Come on now!” the whispered voice urged him. “We must keep on. The police are behind us.”

All at once he became aware of lights dancing in the water. He blinked. No, not in the water, on the water. The wave-smeared reflections of electric lights. Somewhere in the back of his head a bell rang, and he thought, Yacht club.

But his curiously familiar companion turned them toward land before they got to the northern end of the network of piers, berths, and slatted walkways. With immense effort, they staggered into the surf. Once, Bourne went to his knees. Furious, he was about to hurl himself to his feet when his companion kept him in position. He felt something soft being wrapped around his torso so tight it nearly took his breath away. Around and around until he lost count. The pressure did its job. He stopped bleeding, but the moment he got to his feet and they continued up the sideline and onto the sand, a small stain appeared, spreading slowly, soaking into the material. Still, he wouldn’t leave a bloody trail on dry land. Whoever his companion was, he was both clever and brave.

On the beach, he became aware of the boxer, a huge brindled male with the magnificent face of royalty. They had passed the end of the line of kiosks. At the land side of the beach, bare rock towered over them, silent, frowning. Directly in front of them he saw a waist-high wooden shed, painted dark green, closed and padlocked, where beach umbrellas were stored.

The boxer emitted a short, sharp whine, and his rear end began to twitch anxiously.

“Quickly now! Quickly!”

Half bent over, they scrambled forward. From the water rose the thrumming of powerful marine engines, and all at once the beach to their right was ablaze with the intense glare of spotlights, directed from the police launches. The beams swept the beach, coming directly toward them. In a moment, they’d be revealed.

They tumbled to the landward side of the umbrella lockbox, crouched, pressing their bodies against it. Here came the beams, swiping back and forth across the sand. For a nerve-racking moment, the lockbox was caught square in the nexus of the spotlights. Then they had moved on.

But there was shouting from the police launches, and now Bourne could see that another police unit had begun to infiltrate the yacht club. The men wore steel helmets, flak vests. They carried semiautomatic rifles.

His companion pulled urgently on him, and they ran on toward the base of the cliff. Bourne felt naked and vulnerable as they crossed the upper portion of the beach. He knew he lacked the strength to defend himself, let alone both of them.

Then a push on his back took him off his feet. Facedown in the sand, his companion beside him, he saw more beams of light bobbing through the night, perpendicular to the searchlights from seaside. Several policemen at the yacht club were scanning the beach with their flashlights. The beams passed over the two prone bodies with scarcely twenty centimeters to spare. There was movement in the periphery of his vision. A contingent of policemen were jumping down from the wharves onto the sand. They were coming this way.

Acting on a silent signal from his companion, Bourne crawled painfully into the shadow of the naked cliff face where the dog crouched, waiting. Turning back, he saw that his companion had taken off his overcoat and was using its skirt behind him to cover their tracks they had made in the sand.

He stood, panting, weaving on his feet like a wrestler who’d gone one too many rounds against a superior opponent.

He saw his companion on his knees, gripping the thick iron bars of what appeared to be a sewage outlet. The shouting increased in volume. The police were moving closer.

He bent over to help and together they pulled out the grille. He saw that someone had already removed the bolts.

His companion shoved him inside, the boxer loping excitedly at his side. He watched his companion follow. As the man ducked down, his wide-brimmed hat came off. He twisted to retrieve it and moonlight shone on the face.

Bourne sucked in a sharp breath, which caused an explosion of pain.

“You!”

For the person who’d saved him, whose manner was so familiar to him, wasn’t a man at all.

It was Soraya Moore.

AT 6:46 PM, Anne Held’s
PDA
began to vibrate. This was her personal
PDA
, a gift from her Lover, not the one issued to her by CI. When she grabbed it, the black housing was warm from the outside of her thigh, where she had it strapped. On its screen appeared this message, like the writing of a genie:
TWENTY
MINUTES
.
HIS
APARTMENT
.

Her heart raced, her blood sang, because the message was from a genie of sorts: her Lover. Her Lover had returned.

She told the Old Man she had an appointment with her gynecologist, which made her laugh inside. In any event, he took it in stride. HQ was like a hospital ER: They’d all been working nonstop for hours, ever since Lindros had placed them on emergency status.

She exited the building, called for a taxi, took it to within six blocks of Dupont Circle. From there, she walked. The high moonlit sky, without any clouds to speak of, brought with it a knifing wind that intensified the cold. Anne, hands jammed in her pockets, felt warm inside, despite the weather.

The apartment was on 20th Street, in a historic four-story nineteenth-century house in the Colonial Revival style, designed by Stanford White. She was buzzed through a wood-framed beveled-glass door. Beyond was a wainscoted hallway that ran straight through the center of the building, ending in a rear glass-and-wood-framed door that looked out onto a narrow, minimally landscaped area between buildings used as a private parking lot.

She stopped at the bank of mailboxes, her fingertips running over the vertically hinged brass door with 401:
MARTIN
LINDROS
stenciled on it.

On the fourth landing, in front of the cream-colored door, she paused, one hand on the thick wood. It seemed to her that she could feel a subtle vibration, as if the apartment, so long vacant, was humming with newfound life. Her Lover’s body, warm and electric, inhabited the rooms beyond the door, flooding them with energy and a magnified heat, like sunlight through glass.

Into her mind came the moment of their last parting. It carried with it the same pain, sharp as an indrawn breath on a freezing night that shot between her ribs, inflicting another wound to her heart. And yet this time the pain had also been different, because she’d been certain not to see him for a minimum of nine months. In fact, today would make it just shy of eleven. Yet it wasn’t only the matter of time-bad enough-but also the knowledge of the changes that would be effected.

Of course she had put that fear away in a cupboard in the far recesses of her mind, but now, here in front of the apartment door, she understood that it was a weight she had been carrying like an unwanted child for all these months.

She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the painted wood, remembering their parting.

“You look so troubled,” he had said. “I’ve told you not to worry.”

“How can I not?” she’d replied. “It’s never been done before.”

“I’ve always thought of myself as something of a pioneer.” He smiled encouragement. Then, seeing that fail, he enfolded her in his arms. “Extreme times require extreme measures. Who better than you to understand this.”

“Yes, yes. Of course.” She had shuddered. “Still, I can’t help but wonder what will happen to us on

. . . the other side.”

“Why should anything change?”

She had pushed away from him just enough so that she could look into his eyes. “You know why,”

she had whispered.

“No, I don’t. I will be the same, just the same inside. You must trust me, Anne.”

Now here she was-here they both were-on the other side. This was the moment of truth, when she would discover what changes had been wrought in him by those eleven months. She did trust him, she did. Yet the fear she’d been living with now unleashed itself, slithered in her lower belly. She was about to enter the great unknown. There was no precedent, and she was genuinely frightened that she would find him so altered, he would no longer be her Lover.

With a low growl of self-disgust, she turned the brass knob of the door and pushed it open. He’d left it unlatched for her. Walking into the entryway, she felt like a Hindu, as if her path had been set for her long ago and she lived in the grip of a destiny that outstripped her, that outstripped even him. How far she was from the privileged upbringing her parents had foisted upon her. She had her Lover to thank for that. She had come partway, it was true, but her rebelliousness had been reckless. He had tamed that, turned it into a focused beam of light. She had nothing to fear.

She was about to call out when she heard his voice, the ululating song she had come to know so well floating to her as if on a personal current of air. She found him in the master bedroom on one of Lindros’s carpets because of course he could not carry one of his own.

He was on his knees, feet bare, head covered with a white skullcap, his torso bent over so that his forehead pressed against the low nap of the carpet. He was facing toward Mecca, praying.

She stood very still, as if any movement would disturb him, and let the Arabic flow over her like a gentle rain. She was fluent in the language-in a number of the many dialects, a fact that had intrigued him when they’d first met.

At length, the prayer came to an end. He rose and, seeing her, smiled with Martin Lindros’s face.

“I know what you want to see first,” he said softly in Arabic, pulling his shirt over his head.

“Yes, show me all of it,” she answered in the same language.

There was the body she knew so well. Her eyes took in his abdomen, his chest. Traveling up, they met his eyes-his altered right eye with its new retina. Martin Lindros’s face, complete with Lindros’s right retina. It was she who had provided the photos and retinal scans that had made the transformation possible. Now she studied the face in a way she hadn’t been able to at work on those two occasions when he’d passed by her on his way in and out of the Old Man’s office. Then they had acknowledged each other with a brief nod, exchanging hellos, as she would have done with the real Martin Lindros.

She marveled. The face was perfect-Dr. Andursky had done a magnificent job. The transformation was everything he’d promised, and then some.

He put his hands up to his face, laughing softly as he touched the bruises, abrasions, and cuts. He was very pleased with himself. “You see, the ‘rough treatment’ I received from my ‘captors’ was calculated to conceal what little remains of the scars Andursky’s scalpel made.”