The vodka came then, along with water glasses. Karpov waved the waiter away.
“One must open the first bottle oneself,” he said. “It’s tradition.”
“Bullshit,” Bourne said, turning to Khan. “It’s a habit from the old days when Russian vodka was so poorly refined there was often fuel oil in it.”
“Don’t listen to him.” Karpov pursed his lips, but there was a twinkle in his eye. He filled their glasses and very formally placed them in front of them. “To share a bottle of fine Russian vodka is the very definition of friendship, fuel oil notwithstanding. Because over that bottle of fine Russian vodka we talk of old times, of comrades and enemies who have passed.”
He lifted up his glass and they followed suit.
“Na Sdarovye!” he cried, taking an enormous swallow.
“Na Sdarovye!” they echoed, following suit.
Bourne’s eyes watered. The vodka burned all the way down, but in a moment a warmth suffused his stomach, reaching out its fingers to assuage the constant pain he’d been in.
Karpov hunkered down, his face slightly flushed from both the fiery liquor and the simple pleasure of being with friends. “Now we’ll get drunk and tell all our secrets. We’ll learn what it means to be friends.”
He took another huge swallow and said, “I’ll begin. Here’s my first secret. I know who you are, Khan. Though there’s never been a photo taken of you, I know you.” He put his finger beside his nose. “I haven’t been in the field for twenty years without honing my sixth sense. And knowing this, I steered you away from Hull, who, had he suspected, would surely have arrested you, hero status or no.”
Khan shifted slightly. “Why would you do that?”
“Oho, now you would kill me? Here at this amiable table? You think that I kept you isolated for myself? Did I not say that we were friends!” He shook his head. “You’ve much to learn about friendship, my young friend.” He leaned forward. “I kept you safe because of Jason Bourne, who always works alone. You were with him, therefore I knew you were important to him.”
He took another slug of vodka and pointed at Bourne. “Your turn, my friend.”
Bourne stared down into his vodka. He was acutely aware of Khan’s scrutiny. He knew what secret he wanted to divulge, but he was afraid that if he did, Khan would get up and walk away. But a truth was what he needed to tell them. He looked up finally.
“In the end, when I was with Spalko, I almost faltered. Spalko came close to killing me, but the truth is…the truth is…”
“It will be better for you to say it, yes,” Karpov urged.
Bourne took the vodka into his mouth, swallowed the liquid courage down and turned to his son. “I thought of you. I thought if I failed now, if I allowed Spalko to kill me, I wouldn’t come back. I couldn’t abandon you; I couldn’t allow that to happen.”
“Good!” Karpov banged his glass on the table. He pointed at Khan. “Now you, my young friend.”
In the ensuing silence Bourne felt as if his heart was in danger of stopping. Blood pounded in his head and all the pain of his many wounds, so briefly anesthetized, came flooding back.
“Well,” Karpov said, “has the cat got your tongue? Your friends have given themselves up to you, and now they’re waiting.”
Khan looked straight at the Russian and said, “Boris Illyich Karpov, I’d like to formally introduce myself. My name is Joshua. I’m Jason Bourne’s son.”
Many hours and liters of vodka later, Bourne and Khan stood together in the subbasement of the Oskjuhlid Hotel. It was musty down there and cold, but all they could smell were vodka fumes. There were bloodstains everywhere.
“I suppose you’re wondering what happened to the NX 20,” Khan said.
Bourne nodded. “Hull was suspicious of the HAZMAT suits. He said they didn’t find any evidence of biological or chemical weapons.”
“I hid it,” Khan said. “I was waiting for you to come back so that we could destroy it together.”
Bourne hesitated for a moment. “You had faith I’d come back.”
Khan turned and looked at his father. “It seems that I’ve newly acquired my faith.”
“Or had it restored.”
“Don’t tell me—”
“I know, I know, I have no business telling you what you think.” Bourne ducked his head. “Some acquisitions take more time than others.”
Khan moved to where he’d hidden the NX 20, inside a crumbly niche behind a broken block of concrete obscured from view by one of the huge pipes in the thermal power station. “I had to leave Zina for a moment to do it,” he said, “but it couldn’t be helped.” He held it with understandable respect as he handed it over to Bourne. He went and took a small metal box out of the niche. “The vial with the payload is in here.”
“We need a fire,” Bourne said, thinking of the legend he’d read on Dr. Sido’s computer. “Heat will render the payload inert.”
The vast hotel kitchen was spotless. Its gleaming stainless-steel surfaces seemed even colder with the absence of personnel. Bourne had moved the skeleton staff out for the time being while he and Khan went over to the huge floor-to-ceiling ovens. They were gas-powered, and Bourne turned them up to the highest level. At once fierce flames shot through the fire-brick-lined interior. In less than a minute, it was too hot even to get close to.
They donned HAZMAT suits, broke down the weapon and each one threw one half into the flames. The vial went next.
“It’s like a Viking funeral pyre,” Bourne said as he watched the NX 20 collapse in on itself. He closed the door and they took off the suits.
Turning to his son, he said, “I’ve phoned Marie, but I haven’t told her about you yet. I was waiting—”
“I’m not going back with you,” Khan said.
Bourne chose his next words with great care. “That would not be my choice.”
“I know,” Khan said. “But I think there was a very good reason you didn’t tell your wife about me.”
In the silence that abruptly engulfed them, Bourne was gripped by a terrible sorrow. He wanted to look away, to hide what had rushed to his face, but he could not. He was through hiding his emotions from his son and from himself.
“You have Marie, two small children,” Khan said. “This is the new life David Webb has made for himself and I’m not a part of it.”
Bourne had learned many things in the few days since the first bullet sang its warning song past his ear on campus, not the least of which was when to keep his mouth shut around his son. He’d made up his mind and that was it. Trying to talk him out of his decision would be useless. Worse, it would reawaken the still-latent anger he would carry around with him for some time. An emotion so toxic, so deep-seated, it couldn’t be expunged in a matter of days, weeks or even months.
Bourne understood that Khan had made a wise decision. There was still too much pain, the wound still raw, though the bleeding, at least, had been stopped. And as Khan had astutely pointed out, he knew deep down Khan’s entry into the life that David Webb had fashioned for himself made no sense at all. Khan didn’t belong there.
“Perhaps not now, perhaps not ever. But no matter how you feel about me, I want you to know that you have a brother and a sister who deserve to know you and have an older brother in their life. I hope there will come a time when that will happen—for all our sakes.”
They walked together to the door and Bourne was very much aware that it was for the last time for many months to come. But not forever, no. This, at least, he had to make known to his son.
He moved forward and took Khan into his embrace. They stood together in silence. Bourne could hear the hiss of the gas jets. Inside the ovens, the fire continued to burn fiercely, annihilating the terrible threat to them all.
Reluctantly, he let Khan go, and for the briefest moment, as he stared into his son’s eyes, he saw him as he had been, as a little boy in Phnom Penh with the blazing Asian sun on his face and, in the dappled shadows of the palms just beyond,
Dao watching, smiling at them both.
“I’m also Jason Bourne,” he said. “That’s something you should never forget.”
Epilogue
When the President of the United States personally opened the double walnut doors to his West Wing study, the DCI felt as if he was being readmitted to the precincts of heaven after cooling his heels in the seventh circle of hell.
The DCI was still suffering from the godawful malady, but with the telephone summons, he’d managed to drag himself out of his leather chair, had showered, shaved and dressed. He had been expecting the call. In fact, after he had his “Eyes Only” report delivered to the president, including all the detailed evidence compiled by Martin Lindros and Detective Harris he’d been mentally waiting for the call. And yet he’d waited in his robe and pajamas, sunk in his chair, listening to the oppressive silence of the house as if, within that void, he could discern the ghost of his wife’s voice.
Now, as the president ushered him into the royal blue and gold corner office, he felt the desolation of his house even more keenly. Here was his life—the life he’d painstakingly built for himself over decades of faithful service and convoluted manipulation—here is where he understood the rules and knew how to play them, here and nowhere else.
“Good of you to come,” the president said with his high-wattage smile. “It’s been too long.”
“Thank you, sir,” the DCI said. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Take a seat.” The president waved him to an upholstered wing-back chair. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored dark-blue suit, white shirt and a red tie with blue polka dots. His cheeks were slightly flushed, as if he’d just come in from running wind sprints. “Coffee?”
“I think I will. Thank you, sir.”
At that moment, as if in response to an unheard summons, one of the presidential aides came in with a chased silver tray on which sat an ornate coffee pot and china cups in their delicate saucers. With a little thrill of pleasure, the DCI noted that there were only two cups.
“The NSA will be along presently,” the president said, taking a seat opposite the DCI. The flush, the DCI could see now, wasn’t from physical exertion but from the full ripening of his power. “But before that, I wanted to thank you personally for your good work these past several days.”
The aide handed them their coffee and left, closing the heavy door softly behind him.
“I shudder to think of the dire consequences suffered by the civilized world were it not for your man Bourne.”
“Thank you, sir. We never fully believed that he’d murdered Alex Conklin and Dr. Panov,” the DCI said with an earnest and thoroughly hypocritical candor, “but we were presented with certain evidence—trumped-up, as it turned out—and we were forced to act on it.”
“Of course—I understand.” The president dropped two cubes of sugar into his cup and stirred thoughtfully. “All’s well that ends well, though in our world—as opposed to Shakespeare’s—there are consequences to every action.” He sipped his coffee. “Nevertheless, despite the bloodbath, the summit, as you know, went on as scheduled. And it was an unqualified success. In fact, the threat served to bring us more firmly together. All the heads of state—even, thank God, Aleksandr Yevtushenko—could see clearly the fate the world faced if we didn’t put aside our own myopic viewpoints and agree to work together. We now have signed, sealed and delivered a practical framework for going forward in a united front against terrorism. Already, the Secretary of State is on his way to the Middle East to begin the next round of talks. Quite an opening salvo across our enemies’ bows.”
And your reelection is assured, the DCI thought. Not to mention the legacy of your presidency.
At the discreet sound of the intercom, the president excused himself, rose and crossed to his desk. He listened for a moment, then looked up. His penetrating gaze rested on the DCI. “I’ve allowed myself to be cut off from someone who could have provided measured and valuable advice. Rest assured I won’t allow that to happen again.”
Clearly, the president didn’t expect him to respond because he was already saying into the intercom, “Send her in.”
The DCI, as emotionally vulnerable as he’d ever been, took a moment to collect himself. He looked about the spacious high-ceilinged room with its cream walls, royal blue carpet, dentiled molding and solid, comfortable furniture. Large oil portraits of several Republican presidents hung above a matching pair of Chippendale cherrywood sideboards. An American flag stood half-furled in a corner. Outside the windows, under a downy white haze, was an expanse of closely mowed lawn above which a cherry tree spread its arching branches. Clusters of pale pink blossoms shivered like bells in the spring breeze.
The door opened and Roberta Alonzo-Ortiz was ushered in. The DCI noted with relish that the president didn’t budge from his position behind his desk. He stood still, facing the NSA, and, quite pointedly, didn’t ask her to sit down. The NSA was wearing a severely cut black suit, steel-gray silk blouse and practical low-heeled pumps. She appeared ready to attend a funeral, which, the DCI thought with no little glee, was entirely appropriate.
She registered a split-instant’s surprise at the DCI’s presence. A last spark of enmity glowed in her eyes before they turned inward and she drew her face into a rigid mask. Her complexion appeared oddly mottled, as if in reaction to the obvious effort of stifling her emotions. She didn’t address him or otherwise acknowledge his presence.
“Ms. Alonzo-Ortiz, I want you to understand some things so that you can put the events of the last several days into some kind of perspective,” the president began in a sonorous voice that brooked no interruption. “While I acceded to the Bourne sanction, I did so strictly on advice from you. I also agreed when you petitioned me for a quick resolution to the murders of Alex Conklin and Morris Panov and, foolishly, followed your judgment in condemning Detective Harry Harris of the Virginia State Police for the debacle beneath Washington Circle.
“All I can say is that I’m profoundly grateful that the sanction wasn’t in the end carried out, but I’m appalled at the damage done to the career of a fine detective. Zeal is a commendable trait but not when it overrides the truth, something you swore to uphold when I asked you to come aboard.”
Through this speech, he had neither moved nor taken his gaze from her. His expression was carefully neutral, but there was a certain clipped cadence to his words that revealed to the DCI, who after all knew him best, both the depth and the breadth of his anger. This was not a man to be made a fool of, this was not a president to forgive and forget. The DCI had counted on this when he prepared his damning report.
“Ms. Alonzo-Ortiz, my administration has no place for political opportunists—at least, not those who are willing to sacrifice the truth in order to cover their own ass. The truth is, you should’ve aided in the investigation of the murders instead of trying your best to bury those falsely implicated. If you had, we might have uncovered this terrorist, Stepan Spalko, soon enough to have averted the bloodbath at the summit. As it is, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the DCI, especially you.”
At this last, Roberta Alonzo-Ortiz winced, as if the president had dealt her a terrific blow, which, in a sense, he very deliberately had.
He picked up a single sheet of paper off his desk. “Therefore, I accept your letter of resignation and grant your request to return to the private sector, effective immediately.”
The former NSA opened her mouth to speak, but the president’s laserlike stare froze her in her tracks.
“I wouldn’t,” he said shortly.
She blanched, nodded slightly in submission, and turned on her heel.
The moment the door closed behind her the DCI took a deep breath. For a moment the president’s gaze intersected his and all was revealed. He knew why his Commander-in-Chief had summoned him to witness the NSA’s humiliation. It was his way of making an apology. In all his years toiling as a servant of his country, the DCI had never before been apologized
to by the president. He was so overcome he had no idea how to respond.
In a daze of euphoria, he rose. The president was already on the phone, his eyes roving elsewhere. For a brief moment, the DCI paused, savoring his moment of triumph. Then he, too, departed the sanctum sanctorum, striding down the hushed corridors of power that he had made his home.
David Webb had finished hanging the multicolored HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign in the living room. Marie was in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the chocolate cake she’d baked for Jamie’s eleventh birthday. The smells of pizza and chocolate drifted deliciously through the house. He looked around, wondering if there were enough balloons. He counted thirty—surely, that was more than enough.
Though he’d returned to his life as David Webb, his ribs pained him with every breath he took and the rest of his body ached enough for him to know that he was also Jason Bourne and always would be. For so long he’d been terrified each time that side of his personality resurfaced, but now with Joshua’s reemergence, everything had changed. He had a compelling reason to become Jason Bourne again.
But not with the CIA. With Alex’s death, he was quits with them, even though the DCI himself had asked him to stay, even though he actually liked and respected Martin Lindros, the man responsible for having the sanction against him lifted. It was Lindros who had admitted him to Bethesda Naval Hospital. In between bouts with a team of Agency-vetted specialists, who had seen to Webb’s wounds and had carefully examined his cracked ribs, Lindros had debriefed him. The DDCI had made a difficult task almost easy, allowing Webb precious time to sleep and unwind from his arduous trials.
But after three days Webb wanted nothing more than to return to his students, and he needed time with his family, even though there was now an ache in his heart, a certain void given form and shape by Joshua’s return. He’d meant to tell Marie about him, had in fact told her every other detail of what had happened while they’d been out of touch. And yet each time he had come to the subject of his other son, his brain shut down. It wasn’t that he was afraid of her reaction—he trusted her too much for that. It was his own reaction he was unsure of. After only a week away he felt estranged from Jamie and Alison. He’d completely forgotten Jamie’s birthday until Marie had gently reminded him. Like the proverbial line in the sand, he felt a clear demarcation of his life before Joshua’s startling appearance and after. There was the darkness of grief and now there was the light of reconnection. There was death and now, miraculously, there was life. He needed to understand the implications of what had happened. How could he share something so monumental with Marie until he understood it himself?