Bourne was the only passenger by the time they reached their destination. It was raining harder, an early dusk settling in on the afternoon. The sky was indistinct, a blank slate on which any future could now be written.
“OnTime’s at Cargo Five, along with FedEx, Lufthansa and Customs.” Ralph pulled the bus over and turned off the ignition. They got out, half-ran across the tarmac to one in a line of huge flat-roofed ugly buildings. “Right in here.”
They went inside and Ralph shook rain off himself. He was a pear-shaped man, with oddly delicate hands and feet. He pointed now to their left. “You see where U.S. Customs is? Down the building, two stations past is where you’ll find your cousin.”
“Thanks a lot,” Bourne said.
Ralph grinned and shrugged. “Don’t mention it, Joe.” He held out his hand. “Glad to help.”
As the driver ambled away, hands in his pockets, Bourne headed down toward OnTime’s offices. But he had no intention of going there—not yet, anyway. He turned, following Ralph to a door that had affixed to it a sign reading NO ADMITTANCE—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He took out a credit card as he watched Ralph feed his laminated ID card into a metal slot. The door swung open and, as Ralph disappeared inside, Bourne silently darted forward, inserted the credit card. The door shut, just as it should have, but Bourne’s maneuver had prevented the lock from engaging. He counted silently to thirty in order to make certain that Ralph was no longer near the door. Then he opened it, pocketing his credit card as he went through.
He found himself in the maintenance locker room. The walls were of white tile; a rubber webbing had been laid on top of the concrete floor to keep the men’s bare feet dry as they padded to and from the showers. Eight ranks of standard metal lockers were arrayed in front of him, most with simple combination locks on them. Off to his right was an opening to the showers and sinks. In a smaller space just beyond were the urinals and toilets.
Bourne cautiously peered around the corner, saw Ralph padding toward one of the showers. Closer to hand, another maintenance man was lathering up, his back to both Bourne and Ralph. Bourne looked around, immediately saw Ralph’s locker. The door was slightly ajar, the combination lock hanging unhinged on the door handle itself. Of course. In a secure place like this what was there to fear in leaving your locker open for the few minutes it took to shower? Bourne opened the door wider, saw Ralph’s ID tag lying atop an undershirt on a metal shelf. He took it. Nearby was the other maintenance man’s locker, similarly open. He exchanged the locks, securing Ralph’s locker. That should keep the driver from discovering that his ID tag had been stolen for as long as Bourne hoped he’d need.
He grabbed a pair of maintenance overalls from the open cart meant for laundering, making sure the size was more or less right, then quickly changed. Then, with Ralph’s ID tag around his neck, he went out, walked quickly down to U.S. Customs, where he obtained the current flight schedule. There was nothing to Budapest, but Rush Service Flight 113 to Paris was leaving from Cargo Four in eighteen minutes. Nothing else was scheduled within the next ninety minutes, but Paris was fine; it was a major hub for intra-European travel. Once there, he would have no trouble getting to Budapest.
Bourne hurried back out to the slick tarmac. The rain was now coming down in sheets, but there was no lightning, and the thunder he had heard earlier was nowhere in evidence. That was good, as he had no desire to see Flight 113 delayed for any reason. He picked up his pace, hurrying to the next building, home to Cargo Three and Four.
He was drenched by the time he arrived inside the terminal. He looked to left and right, hurried toward the Rush Service area. There were few people about, which was not good. It was always easier to blend in with a crowd than with a sparse few. He found the door marked for authorized personnel, slid his ID card into the slot. He heard the gratifying click of the lock opening; he pushed on the door and went through. As he wended his way through the cinder-block corridors, the rooms stacked high with packing crates, the smells of resinous wood, sawdust and cardboard became overpowering. There was about the place an air of impermanence, a sense of constant motion, of lives ruled by schedules and weather, the anxiety of mechanical and human error. There was nothing to sit on, no place to rest.
He kept his eyes straight ahead, walking with the air of authority that no one would question. He soon came to another door, this one steel-clad. Through its small window, he could see planes arrayed on the tarmac, loading and unloading. It did not take him long to spot the Rush Service jet, its cargo bay door open. A fuel line ran from the plane to a tanker truck. A man in a rain slicker, its hood up over his head, was monitoring the gas flow. The pilot and co-pilot were in the cockpit going through their pre-flight instrument check.
Just as he was about to slide Ralph’s ID card into the slot, Alex’s cell phone rang. It was Robbinet.
“Jacques, it looks as if I’m about to head your way. Can you meet me at the airport in, say, seven hours or so?”
“Mais oui, mon ami. Call me when you land.” He gave Bourne his cell phone number. “I am delighted that I will be seeing you so soon.”
Bourne knew what Robbinet was saying. He was pleased that Bourne was able to slip through from the Agency’s noose. Not yet, Bourne thought. Not quite yet. But his escape was only moments away. In the meantime…
“Jacques, what have you discovered? Have you found out what NX 20 is?”
“I am afraid not. No record of any such project exists.”
Bourne’s heart sank. “What about Dr. Schiffer?”
“Ah, there I had a bit more luck,” Robbinet said. “A Dr. Felix Schiffer works for DARPA—or at least he did.”
A cold hand had wrapped around Bourne’s gut. “What do you mean?”
Bourne could hear a rustling of paper, could imagine his friend reading through the intel he had managed to procure from his sources in Washington. “Dr. Schiffer is no longer on DARPA’s ‘active’ roster. He left there thirteen months ago.”
“What happened to him?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“He simply dropped out of sight?” Bourne asked incredulously.
“In this day and age, as unlikely as it seems, that’s just what happened.”
Bourne closed his eyes for an instant. “No, no. He’s around somewhere—he has to be.”
“Then what—?”
“He’s been ‘disappeared’—by professionals.”
With Felix Schiffer vanished, it was more imperative than ever that he get to Budapest with all due haste. His only lead was the hotel key from the Danubius Grand Hotel. He glanced at his watch. He was cutting it close. He had to go. Now. “Jacques, thanks for sticking your neck out.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.” Robbinet hesitated. “Jason…”
“Yes?”
“Bon chance.”
Bourne pocketed the cell phone, opened the stainless-steel-clad door, headed out into the heavy weather. The sky was low and dark, sheets of rain slanting down, a shimmering silver curtain in the airport’s brilliant lights, running in glittering streamers over the depressions in the tarmac. He walked slightly bent over into the wind, walking purposefully, as he had before, a man who knew his job, wanted to get it done quickly and efficiently. Rounding the nose of the jet, he could see the cargo bay door ahead of him. The man fueling the jet had finished and had removed the nozzle from the tank.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bourne saw movement off to his left. One of Cargo Four’s doors had burst open and several airport security guards spilled out, weapons drawn. Ralph must have gotten his locker open; Bourne had run out of time. He kept moving at the same deliberate pace. He was almost at the cargo bay door when the fueler said, “Hey, buddy, got the time? My watch stopped.”
Bourne turned. At the same moment he recognized the Asian features of the face inside the hood; Khan shot a burst of aviation fuel into his face. Bourne’s hands came up and he choked, completely blinded.
Khan rushed h
im, pushing him back against the slick metal skin of the fuselage. He delivered two vicious blows, one to Bourne’s solar plexus, one to the side of his head. As Bourne’s knees collapsed, Khan shoved him into the cargo hold.
Turning, Khan saw a cargo handler heading toward him. He lifted an arm. “It’s okay, I’ll lock up,” he said. Luck was with him, as the rain made it difficult for anyone to see his face or his uniform. The cargo handler, grateful to get out of the rain and wind, returned a salute of thanks. Khan slammed the cargo door shut, locked it. Then he sprinted to the fuel truck, drove it far enough away from the plane so that it would not look suspicious.
The security police that Bourne had spotted before were making their way down the row of jets. They signaled to the pilot. Khan put the jet between himself and the oncoming police. He reached up, unlocked the cargo bay door, swung himself inside. Bourne was on his hands and knees, his head hanging down. Khan, surprised at his recuperative powers, kicked him hard in the ribs. With a grunt, Bourne fell over on his side, his arms wrapped around his waist.
Khan took out a length of cord. He pressed Bourne face-first onto the cargo bay deck, took his arms behind his back and wrapped the wire around his crossed wrists. Over the sound of the rain, he could hear the security police shouting to the pilot and co-pilot for their IDs. Leaving Bourne incapacitated, Khan walked over and quietly pulled the bay door closed.
For a few minutes Khan sat cross-legged in the darkness of the cargo bay. The pinging of the rain on the skin of the fuselage set up an arrhythmic percussion that reminded him of the drums in the jungle. He had been quite ill when he had heard those drums. To his fever-stricken mind, they had sounded like the roaring of aircraft engines, the frantic beating of the air about the outflow vents just before it begins a steep dive. The sound had frightened him because of the memories it brought up, memories he had fought long and hard to keep at the very bottom of his consciousness. Because of the fever, all his senses were heightened to an almost painful pitch. He was aware that the jungle had come alive, that shapes were coming warily toward him in an ominous wedgelike formation. His one conscious action was to bury the small carved stone Buddha he wore around his neck under leaves in a shallow hurriedly dug grave beneath where he lay. He could hear voices, and after a while he became aware that the shapes were asking him questions. He squinted through the fever-sweat to make them out in the emerald twilight, but one of them covered his eyes with a blindfold. Not that it was needed. When they lifted him off the bed of leaves and detritus he had made for himself, he passed out. Waking two days later, he found himself inside a Khmer Rouge encampment. As soon as he was deemed fit by a cadaverous man with sunken cheeks and one watery eye, the interrogation began.
They had thrown him into a pit with writhing creatures which to this day he could not identify. He was cast into a darkness more complete, more profound than any he had ever known before. And it was this darkness, enveloping, constricting, pressing against his temples like a weight growing in baleful proportion to the hours that passed, that terrified him the most.
A darkness not unlike this one, in the belly of Rush Service Flight 113.
…Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly. And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me…
He still remembered that section from the frayed and stained copy of the Bible the missionary had made him memorize. Horrible! Horrible! Because Khan, in the midst of the hostile and murderous Khmer Rouge, had been cast quite literally into the belly of hell, and he had prayed—or what passed for prayer in his still unformed mind—for deliverance. This was before the Bible had been pushed on him, before he had understood the teachings of the Buddha, for he had descended into formless chaos at a very early age. The Lord had heard Jonah cry out from the belly of the whale, but no one had heard Khan. He had been utterly alone in the darkness and then, when they felt that they had softened him up sufficiently, they pulled him out and slowly, expertly, with a cold passion it would take him years to acquire began to bleed him.
Khan snapped on the flashlight he carried with him, sat immobile, staring at Bourne. Unfolding his legs, he kicked out violently, the sole of his shoe catching Bourne on the shoulder so that he rolled over on his side facing Khan. Bourne groaned, and his eyes fluttered open. He gasped, took another shuddering breath, inhaling the fumes from the aviation fuel, and convulsed, vomiting in the space between where he lay in burning pain and misery and where Khan sat serene as Buddha himself.
“I’ve been down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me forever; yet have I brought up my life from the darkness,” Khan said, paraphrasing Jonah. He continued to stare fixedly into Bourne’s reddened swollen face. “You look like shit.”
Bourne struggled to rise onto one elbow. Khan calmly kicked it out from under him. Again Bourne tried to sit up and again Khan thwarted him. The third time, however, Khan did not make a move and Bourne sat up, facing him.
The faint and maddeningly enigmatic smile played across Khan’s lips, but there was a sudden spark of flames in his eyes.
“Hello, Father,” he said. “It’s been such a long time I was beginning to think we’d never have this moment.”
Bourne shook his head slightly. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m your son.”
“My son is ten years old.”
Khan’s eyes were glittery. “Not that one. I’m the one you left behind in Phnom Penh.”
All at once, Bourne felt violated. A red rage rose up inside him. “How dare you? I don’t know who you are, but my son Joshua is dead.” The effort cost him, for he had inhaled more of the fumes, and he bent over suddenly, retching again, but there was nothing left inside him to vomit up.
“I’m not dead.” Khan’s voice was almost tender as he leaned forward, pulled Bourne back up to face him. In so doing, the small carved stone Buddha fell away from his hairless chest, swinging a little with his efforts to keep Bourne upright. “As you can see.”
“No, Joshua is dead! I put the coffin in the ground myself, along with Dao and Alyssa! They were wrapped in American flags.”
“Lies, lies and more lies!” Khan held the carved stone Buddha in the palm of his hand, held it toward Bourne. “Look at this, and remember, Bourne.”
Reality seemed to slip away from Bourne. He heard his rapid pulse thundering in his inner ears, a tidal wave that threatened to pick him up and carry him off. It couldn’t be! It couldn’t! “Where—where did you get that?”
“You know what this is, don’t you?” The Buddha disappeared behind the curl of his fingers. “Have you finally recognized your long-lost son Joshua?”
“You’re not Joshua!” Bourne was enraged now, his face dark, his lips pulled back from his teeth in an animal snarl. “Which Southeast Asia diplomat did you kill to get it?” He laughed grimly. “Yes, I know more about you than you think.”
“Then you’re sadly mistaken. This is mine, Bourne. Do you understand?” He opened his hand, revealed the Buddha again, the stone dark with the imprint of his sweat. “The Buddha is mine!”
“Liar!” Bourne leaped at him, his arms coming around from behind his back. He had flexed his muscles—the cords expanding as Khan had wound the wire around him—then using the slack had worked his way out of the bonds while Khan had been gloating.
Khan was caught out, unprepared for his headlong bull-rush. He tumbled backward, Bourne on top of him. The flashlight struck the deck, rolling back and forth, its potent beam flashing on them, then off, illuminating an expression here, a bulging muscle there. In this eerily striped and stippled darkness and light, so like the dense jungle they had left behind, they fought like beasts, breathing in each other’s enmity, struggling for supremacy.
Bou
rne, his teeth gritted, struck Khan again and again in a maddened attack. Khan managed to gain a grip on Bourne’s thigh, pressed in on the nerve bundle there. Bourne lurched, his temporarily paralyzed leg buckling beneath him. Khan struck him hard on the point of the chin, and Bourne staggered further, shaking his head. He grabbed hold of his switchblade just as Khan delivered another massive blow. Bourne dropped the knife and Khan picked it up, flipped open the blade.
He stood over Bourne now, pulled him up by the front of his shirt. A brief tremor passed through him, as a current sizzles through a wire when the switch is thrown. “I’m your son. Khan is a name I took, just as David Webb took the name Jason Bourne.”
“No!” Bourne fairly shouted this over the rising noise and vibration of the engines. “My son died with the rest of my family in Phnom Penh!”
“I am Joshua Webb,” Khan said. “You abandoned me. You left me to the jungle, to my death.”
The point of the knife hovered over Bourne’s throat. “How many times I almost died. I would have, I’m sure of it, if I didn’t have your memory to hold on to.”
“How dare you use his name! Joshua is dead!” Bourne’s face was livid, his teeth bared in animal rage. His vision was clouded with blood-lust.
“Maybe he is.” The knife-blade lay against Bourne’s skin. A millimeter more and it would draw blood. “I’m Khan now. Joshua—the Joshua you knew—is dead. I’ve come back for revenge, to deliver your punishment for abandoning me. I could’ve killed you so many times in the last few days, but I stayed my hand because before I killed you I wanted you to know what you had done to me.” Khan’s lips opened and a bubble of spittle grew at the corner of his mouth. “Why did you abandon me? How could you have run away!”