He started up his rental car and was able to follow Bourne as he got into a taxi. The female continued on. Khan, knowing Bourne, was prepared for the backtracking, the reversal of direction, the changing taxis, and so was able to keep Bourne in sight during the maneuvers meant to shake any tails.
At last Bourne’s taxi reached Fo utca. Four blocks north of the magnificent domes of the Kiraly Baths, Bourne stepped out of the taxi and went into the building at 106–108.
Khan slowed his car, pulled it into the curb up the block and across the street—he didn’t want to pass by the entrance. He turned off the engine, sank into darkness. Alex Conklin, Jason Bourne, László Molnar, Hasan Arsenov. He thought about Spalko and wondered how all these disparate names were connected. There was a line of logic here, there always was, if only he could see it.
In this manner, five or six minutes passed and then another taxi pulled up in front of the entrance to 106–108. Khan watched a young female get out. He strained to catch a glimpse of her face before she pushed through the heavy front doors, but all he was able to determine was that she had red hair. He waited, watching the facade of the building. No light had gone on after Bourne had entered the lobby, which meant that he must be waiting for the woman—that this was her apartment. Sure enough, within three minutes, lights went on in the fourth—and top—floor bay window.
Now that he knew where they were, he commenced to sink into zazen, but after an hour of fruitlessly trying to clear his mind, he gave up. In the darkness, his hand closed around the small carved stone Buddha. Almost immediately thereafter, he fell into a deep sleep, from which he dropped like a stone into the nether world of his recurring nightmare.
The water is blue-black, swirling restlessly as if alive with malignant energy. He tries to strike out for the surface, stretching up so hard his bones crack with the strain. Still, he continues to sink into the darkness, dragged down by the rope tied around his ankle. His lungs are beginning to burn. He longs to take a breath, but he knows that the moment he opens his mouth, the water will rush in and he’ll drown.
He reaches down, trying to untie the rope, but his fingers fail to gain a grip on the slick surface. He feels, like an electric current running through him, the terror of whatever waits for him in the darkness. The terror presses in on him like a vise; he forces down an urge to gibber. In that moment he hears the sound rising from the depths—the clangor of bells, of massed monks chanting before they are slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge. Eventually, the sound resolves itself into the song of a single voice, a clear tenor, a repeated ululation not unlike a prayer.
And it is as he stares down into the darkness, as he begins to make out the shape tethered to the other rope, the thing that is dragging him inexorably to his doom, that he feels the song he is hearing must be coming from that figure. For he knows the figure twirling in the powerful current below him; it’s as familiar to him as his own face, his own body. But now, with a shock that pierces him to the quick, he realizes that the sound isn’t coming from the familiar form below him because it’s dead, which is why its weight is dragging him down to his doom.
The sound is nearer to hand, and now he recognizes the ululation as that of a clear tenor—his own voice coming from deep inside himself. It touches every part of him at once.
“Lee-Lee! Lee-Lee!” he is calling just before he drowns….
Chapter Sixteen
Spalko and Zina arrived in Crete before the sun, touching down in Kazantzakis Airport just outside Iráklion. They were accompanied by a surgeon and three men, whom Zina had taken the time to scrutinize during the flight. They were not particularly big men, if only to ensure that they wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. Spalko’s heightened sense of security dictated that when, as now, he was engaged not as Stepan Spalko, president of Humanistas, Ltd., but as the Shaykh, he maintain the lowest of profiles, not only for himself but for all of his personnel. It was in their motionlessness that Zina recognized their power, for they had absolute control over their bodies, and when they moved, they did so with the fluidity and surety of dancers or yoga masters. She could see the intent in their dark eyes, which came only after years of hard training. Even when they were smiling deferentially at her, she could sense the danger that lurked within them, coiled, waiting patiently for its moment of release.
Crete, the largest island in the Mediterranean, was the gateway between Europe and Africa. For centuries it had lain baking in the hot Mediterranean sun, its southern eye trained on Alexandria in Egypt and Banghazi in Libya. Inevitably, however, an island so blessed in location was also surrounded by predators. At the crossroads of cultures, its history was by necessity bloody. Like waves breaking on the shore, invaders from different lands washed up on Crete’s coves and beaches, bringing with them their culture, language, architecture and religion.
Iráklion had been founded by the Saracens in A.D. 824. They had called it Chandax, a bastardization of the Arabic word kandak, owing to the moat they dug around it. The Saracens ruled for one hundred forty years, before the Byzantines wrested control away from them. But the pirates were so astoundingly successful that it had taken three hundred boats to carry away all of their amassed booty to Byzantium.
During the Venetian occupation, the city was known as Candia. Under the Venetians, it became the most important cultural center in the Eastern Mediterranean. All of that came to an end with the first Turkish invasion.
This polyglot history was everywhere one looked: in Iráklion’s massive Venetian fortress that protected its beautiful harbor from invasion; the town hall, housed in the Venetian Loggia; the “Koubes,” the Turkish fountain near the former church of the Savior, which the Turks converted into the Valide mosque.
But in the modern, bustling city itself, there remained nothing of Minoan culture, the first and, from an archaeological point of view, the most important Cretan civilization. To be sure, the remnants of the palace of Knossos could be seen outside the city proper, but it was for historians to note that the Saracens had chosen this spot to found Chandax because it had been the main port of the Minoans thousands of years earlier.
At heart, Crete remained an island shrouded in myth, and it was impossible to set foot on it without being reminded of the legend of its birth. Centuries before the Saracens, the Venetians or the Turks existed, Crete had come to prominence from out of the mists of legend. Minos, Crete’s first king, was a demigod. His father, Zeus, taking the form of a bull, raped his mother, Europa, and so from the first, the bull became the signifier of the island.
Minos and his two brothers battled for the rule of Crete, but Minos prayed to Poseidon, promising eternal obeisance to the god of the sea if he would use his power to help Minos defeat his brothers. Poseidon heard the prayer and from the churning sea rose a snow-white bull. This animal was meant as a sacrifice for Minos to pledge his subservience to Poseidon, but the greedy king coveted the bull and kept it for himself. Enraged, Poseidon caused Minos’ wife to fall in love with it. In secret, she engaged Daedalus, Minos’ favorite architect, to build her a hollow cow out of wood in which she hid so that the bull would mate with her. The issue of that sexual congress was the Minotaur—a monstrous man with a bull’s head and tail—whose savagery wreaked so much havoc on the island that Minos had Daedalus build an enormous labyrinth, so elaborate that the captured Minotaur could never escape from it.
This legend was much in Stepan Spalko’s mind as he and his team drove up the city’s steep streets, for he had an affinity for Greek myths—their emphasis on rape and incest, bloodletting and hubris. He saw aspects of himself in many of them, so it was not difficult for him to believe himself a demigod.
Like many Mediterranean island towns, Iráklion was built on the side of a mountain, its stone houses rising up the steep streets mercifully plied by taxis and buses. In fact, the entire spine of the island rose in a chain known as the White Mountains.
The address Spalko had obtained by interrogation from László Molnar was a house perhaps h
alfway up the city slope. It belonged to an architect by the name of Istos Daedalika, who, as it turned out, was as mythical as his ancient namesake. Spalko’s team had determined that the house had been leased by a company associated with László Molnar. They arrived at the address just as the night sky was about to be split open like the hull of a nut, revealing the bloody Mediterranean sun.
After a brief reconnoiter, they all donned tiny headphones, connecting themselves electronically over a wireless network. They checked their weapons, high-powered composite crossbows, excellent for the silence they needed to keep. Spalko synchronized his watch with two of his men, then sent them around to the rear entrance while he and Zina approached the front entrance. The remaining member of the team was ordered to keep watch and warn them of any suspect activity on the street or, alternatively, the approach of the police.
The street was deserted and quiet; no one was stirring. There were no lights on in the house, but Spalko didn’t expect there to be any. He glanced at his watch, counting into his microphone as the second hand swept toward sixty.
Inside the house, the mercenaries were astir. It was moving day, the last few hours before they would depart as the others had before them. They moved Dr. Schiffer to a different location on Crete every three days; they did it quickly and quietly, the destination being decided upon only at the last minute. Such security measures required that some of them stay behind to ensure every last vestige of their presence was either taken or destroyed.
At this moment, the mercenaries were dispersed throughout the house. One of them was in the kitchen making thick Turkish coffee, a second was in the bathroom, a third had turned on the satellite TV. He watched the screen disinterestedly for a moment, then went to the front window, pulled aside the curtain, peered out into the street. Everything appeared normal. He stretched like a cat, bending his body this way and that. Then, strapping on his shoulder holster, he went to perform his morning perimeter check.
He unlocked the front door, pulled it open and was promptly shot through the heart by Spalko. He pitched backward, his arms splayed, his eyes rolling upward in their sockets, and was dead before he struck the floor.
Spalko and Zina entered the vestibule at the same moment his men crashed through the back door. The mercenary in the kitchen dropped his coffee cup, drew his weapon and wounded one of Spalko’s men before he, too, was shot dead.
Nodding to Zina, Spalko took the stairs three at a time.
Zina had reacted to the shots coming through the bathroom door by ordering one of Spalko’s men out the back door. She ordered another of Spalko’s team to break down the door. This he did quickly and efficiently. No gunfire greeted them as they burst into the bathroom. Instead, they saw the window out which the mercenary had crawled. Zina had anticipated this possibility, hence her sending a man out the back.
A moment later she heard the telltale thwok! of the bolt being loosed, followed by a heavy grunt.
Upstairs, Spalko went from room to room in a crouch. The first bedroom was empty and he moved to the second. As he passed the bed, he caught a movement in the wall mirror above the dresser to his left. Something moved under the bed. At once, he dropped to his knees, shot the bolt. It passed through the dust ruffle and the bed was lifted off its feet. A body thrashed and groaned.
On his knees, Spalko fitted another bolt in his crossbow, began to aim it when he was bowled over. Something hard hit his head, a bullet ricocheted and he felt a weight on him. At once he let go of the crossbow, drew out a hunting knife and stabbed upward into his attacker. When it was buried to the hilt, he turned it, gritting his teeth with the effort, and was rewarded with a heavy gout of blood.
With a grunt, he threw the mercenary off him, retrieved his knife, wiped the blade down on the dust ruffle. Then he shot the second bolt down through the bed. Mattress stuffing flew through the air and the thrashing came to an abrupt halt.
He came back downstairs, after having checked the remaining second-floor rooms, into a living room reeking of cordite. One of his men was entering the open back door with the last remaining mercenary, whom he had seriously wounded. The entire assault had lasted less than three minutes, which suited Spalko’s design; the less attention they brought to the house, the better.
There was no trace of Dr. Felix Schiffer. And yet Spalko knew that László Molnar hadn’t lied to him. These men were part of the mercenary contingent Molnar had hired when he and Conklin had engineered Schiffer’s escape.
“What’s the final disposition?” he asked his men.
“Marco is wounded. Nothing major, the bullet went in and out the flesh of his left arm,” one of them said. “Two opposition dead, one seriously wounded.”
Spalko nodded. “And two dead upstairs.”
Flicking the snout of his machine pistol at the last remaining mercenary, the man added, “This one won’t last long unless he gets treatment.”
Spalko looked at Zina, nodded. She approached the wounded man and, kneeling, turned him over on his back. He groaned and blood leaked out of him.
“What’s your name?” she said in Hungarian.
He looked at her, with eyes darkened by pain and knowledge of his own impending death.
She took out a small box of wooden matches. “What’s your name?” she repeated, this time in Greek.
When there was no reply forthcoming, she said to Spalko’s men, “Hold him still.”
Two of them bent to comply. The mercenary struggled briefly, then was still. He stared up at her with equanimity; he was a professional soldier, after all.
She struck the match. A sharp smell of sulphur accompanied the flare of the flame. With her thumb and forefinger, she pried apart the lids of one eye, brought the flame down toward the exposed eyeball.
The mercenary’s free eye blinked maniacally and his breathing became stertorous. The flame, reflected in the curve of his glistening orb, moved ever closer. He felt fear, Zina could see that, but beneath that there was a sense of disbelief. He simply did not believe that she would follow through with her implied threat. A pity, but it made no difference to her.
The mercenary screamed, his body arching up despite the men’s efforts to hold him down. He writhed and howled even after the match, guttering, fell smoking onto his chest. His good eyeball rolled around in its socket as if trying to find a safe haven.
Zina calmly lit another match, and all at once the mercenary vomited. Zina wasn’t deterred. It was vital now that he understand that there was only one response that would stop her. He wasn’t stupid; he knew what it was. Also, no amount of money was worth this torture. Through the tearing of his good eye, she could see his capitulation. Still, she wouldn’t let him up, not until he’d told her where they had taken Schiffer.
Behind her, observing the scene from start to finish, Stepan Spalko was impressed despite himself. He’d had no clear idea of how Zina would react when he gave her the assignment of interrogation. In a way, it was a test; but it was more—it was a way to get to know her in the intimate fashion he found so pleasurable.
Because he was a man who used words every day of his life in order to manipulate people and events, Spalko had an innate distrust of them. People lied, it was as simple as that. Some liked to lie for the effect it had; others lied without knowing it, in order to protect themselves from scrutiny; still others lied to themselves. It was only in action, in what people did, especially in extreme circumstances or under duress, that their true natures were revealed. There was no possibility of lying then; you could safely believe the evidence arrayed before you.
Now he knew a truth about Zina he hadn’t before. He doubted whether Hasan Arsenov knew it, whether he’d even believe it if told. At her core Zina was hard as a rock; she was tougher than Arsenov himself. Watching her now extracting the information from the hapless mercenary, he knew that she could live without Arsenov, though Arsenov couldn’t live without her.
Bourne awoke to the sound of practice arpeggios and the aromatic smell of co
ffee. For a moment he hung between sleep and consciousness. He was aware that he was lying on Annaka Vadas’ sofa, that he had an eiderdown comforter over him and a goose feather pillow beneath his head. At once he rose fully out of sleep into Annaka’s sun-drenched apartment. He turned, saw her sitting at the gleaming grand piano, a huge cup of coffee by her side.
“What time is it?”
She continued her chord runs without picking up her head. “After noon.”
“Christ!”
“Yes, it was time for my practice, time you got up.” She began to play a melody he couldn’t place. “I actually thought you’d have gone back to your hotel by the time I awoke, but I came in here and there you were, sleeping like a child. So I went and made coffee. Would you like some?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know where it is.”
She picked up her head then, refused to turn away, watched him as he peeled off the eiderdown, drew on his cords and shirt. He padded into the bathroom, and when he was finished, he went into the kitchen. As he was pouring himself coffee, she said, “You have a nice body, scarred though it is.”
He searched for cream; apparently she liked her coffee black. “The scars give me character.”
“Even the one around your neck?”
Poking through the refrigerator, he didn’t answer her but, rather, involuntarily put a hand to the wound, and in so doing felt again Mylene Dutronc’s compassionate ministrations.
“That one’s new,” she said. “What happened?”
“I had an encounter with a very large, very angry creature.”
She stirred, abruptly uneasy. “Who tried to strangle you?”
He had found the cream. He poured in a dollop, then two teaspoonfuls of sugar, took his first sip. Returning to the living room, he said, “Anger can do that to you, or didn’t you know?”