The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel

“You may be right. About going public, I mean.”

  “Whether I am or not, that was my recommendation this afternoon.… I’d like another bottle of wine.” Tyrell signaled the waitress, pointing at the ice bucket; she nodded, and walked to the outside bar.

  “Did you …” Cathy began gently, “did you tell them who Bajaratt was?”

  “No,” replied Hawthorne quickly, raising his clouded, tired eyes, locking them with Catherine’s. “There was no reason to, and every reason not to. She’s gone, whatever demons that drove her gone with her. Her traces were strictly to the Baaka Valley; everything else was a cover that could damage people who were used—just as I was used.”

  “I’m not arguing with you,” said Cathy, placing her hand on his arm. “I think you made the right decision. Please, don’t be angry.”

  “I apologize, I’m not angry—God knows, not with you. I just want to get back to the charter business and watch a boat cut through the water again.”

  “It’s a good life, isn’t it?”

  “The ultimate ‘balm of Gilead,’ as my erudite father and brother would say.” Hawthorne smiled, no appeal for sympathy in his expression.

  “Yes, I guess it is,” said Cathy, seeing beneath Tyrell’s facade. “Still, I’m sorry, so very sorry for everything that’s happened to you.”

  “So am I, but there’s no point in belaboring it, is there? Apparently I have a talent for attracting, or being attracted to, women who get killed—for the wrong reasons or the right ones. If I could bottle it, a lot of divorces might be prevented.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say, and I don’t believe for an instant that you mean it.”

  “I don’t. I’m just not feeling very nice, okay? The déjà vu has come around once too often.… But I don’t want to talk about me—I’m sick of me, very sick of me. I want to talk about you.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve been over that. Because I’m interested, because I care,”

  “Again, why, Commander Hawthorne? Because you’ve been hurt—desperately hurt, I’ll give you that—and I’m here, a person who cares for you, someone you can turn to as you did with your Dominique?”

  “If you think that, Major,” said Tyrell stiffly, moving back his chair and starting to rise, “this conversation is over.”

  “Sit down, you ass!”

  “What?”

  “You just said the words I wanted to hear, you damn fool.”

  “What the hell did I say?”

  “That I’m not Dominique, or Bajaratt, or whatever her name was. And I’m not the ghost of your Ingrid.… I’m me!”

  “I never thought otherwise—”

  “I had to hear it.”

  “Oh, Christ!” said Hawthorne, sitting down and leaning back in the chair. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Offer a suggestion or two, maybe. The President himself ordered the air force to give me an unlimited furlough, for my recuperation, which the doctors say will take three or four months.”

  “I understand Poole turned his leave down,” Tyrell said.

  “He didn’t have anywhere to go, Tye. The air force, computers and all, are his life. That’s Jackson, not necessarily me.”

  Hawthorne slowly moved forward in his chair and leaned over the table, his eyes again leveled with Cathy’s. “My God,” he said softly. “Do I see someone else crawling out of that uniform? Maybe a young kid who wanted to be an anthropologist?”

  “I don’t know. The services are crying for early retirements, the country can’t afford the military status quo. I just don’t know.”

  “But did you know that the Caribbean is loaded with undiscovered anthropological mysteries? For example, the lost colonies of the Ciboney and Couri Indians, traced from the islands back through the Guianas and down to the Amazon. And the primitive Arawaks, whose laws to keep a civilized peace were a couple of hundred years ahead of their time. Or the warrior Carib nation, at one time covering most of the Lesser Antilles, who perfected guerrilla tactics so well, the Spanish conquistadores ran like hell to stay out of their way … and also to stay away from their evening barbecues, where the king’s men would naturally be the main entrees. Von Clausewitz would have approved, both strategically and psychologically.… It all happened long before the slave trade; whole spread-out civilizations held together by huge drums and war canoes and leaders who meted out justice from island to island, like the traveling judges in the Old West when they weren’t drunk or dishonest. Those few centuries are so fascinating and so little is really known.”

  “Good Lord, you’re the one who should study them. You get really wound up.”

  “Oh, no, I’m the sort who sits around a fire and listens to the stories, I don’t study. But you could.”

  “I’d have to go back to school, to a university.”

  “There are some great ones, from Martinique to Puerto Rico; and I’m told some of the finest anthropologists are teaching in them. It’s a place to start, Cathy.”

  “You’re probably making that up … but are you saying—”

  “Yes, Major, I’m saying come back with me. We’re not children, either of us, we’ll know if it’s right given some time. Let’s face it, our personal agendas aren’t overcrowded, so what’s a few months? Where would you go, back to the farm?”

  “Maybe for a couple of days. After that Dad would point me to the barn to clean up the cows. And God knows my agenda’s a clean slate.”

  “Why not give it a try, Cath? You’re a free agent; you can always walk away.”

  “I like it when you call me Cath—”

  “Lieutenant Poole has his insights.”

  “Yes, he does. Give me your telephone number.”

  “Is that all I get?”

  “No, it isn’t, Commander. I’ll be there, my darling.”

  “Thank you, Major.”

  They both smiled, the smiles growing into quiet laughter as each reached for the other’s hand.

  For Jeffrey, Shannon, and James

  Ever a joy!

  Read on for an excerpt from Robert Ludlum’s

  The Bourne Identity

  1

  The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp. The waves rose to goliathan heights, crashing into the hull with the power of raw tonnage; the white sprays caught in the night sky cascaded downward over the deck under the force of the night wind. Everywhere there were the sounds of inanimate pain, wood straining against wood, ropes twisting, stretched to the breaking point. The animal was dying.

  Two abrupt explosions pierced the sounds of the sea and the wind and the vessel’s pain. They came from the dimly lit cabin that rose and fell with its host body. A man lunged out of the door grasping the railing with one hand, holding his stomach with the other.

  A second man followed, the pursuit cautious, his intent violent. He stood bracing himself in the cabin door; he raised a gun and fired again. And again.

  The man at the railing whipped both his hands up to his head, arching backward under the impact of the fourth bullet. The trawler’s bow dipped suddenly into the valley of two giant waves, lifting the wounded man off his feet; he twisted to his left, unable to take his hands away from his head. The boat surged upward, bow and midships more out of the water than in it, sweeping the figure in the doorway back into the cabin; a fifth gunshot fired wildly. The wounded man screamed, his hands now lashing out at anything he could grasp, his eyes blinded by blood and the unceasing spray of the sea. There was nothing he could grab, so he grabbed at nothing; his legs buckled as his body lurched forward. The boat rolled violently leeward and the man whose skull was ripped open plunged over the side into the madness of the darkness below.

  He felt rushing cold water envelop him, swallowing him, sucking him under, and twisting him in circles, then propelling him up to the surface—only to gasp a single breath of air. A gasp and he was under again.

/>   And there was heat, a strange moist heat at his temple that seared through the freezing water that kept swallowing him, a fire where no fire should burn. There was ice, too; an ice-like throbbing in his stomach and his legs and his chest, oddly warmed by the cold sea around him. He felt these things, acknowledging his own panic as he felt them. He could see his own body turning and twisting, arms and feet working frantically against the pressures of the whirlpool. He could feel, think, see, perceive panic and struggle—yet strangely there was peace. It was the calm of the observer, the uninvolved observer, separated from the events, knowing of them but not essentially involved.

  Then another form of panic spread through him, surging through the heat and the ice and the uninvolved recognition. He could not submit to peace! Not yet! It would happen any second now; he was not sure what it was, but it would happen. He had to be there!

  He kicked furiously, clawing at the heavy walls of water above, his chest burning. He broke surface, thrashing to stay on top of the black swells. Climb up! Climb up!

  A monstrous rolling wave accommodated; he was on the crest, surrounded by pockets of foam and darkness. Nothing. Turn! Turn!

  It happened. The explosion was massive; he could hear it through the clashing waters and the wind, the sight and the sound somehow his doorway to peace. The sky lit up like a fiery diadem and within that crown of fire, objects of all shapes and sizes were blown through the light into the outer shadows.

  He had won. Whatever it was, he had won.

  Suddenly he was plummeting downward again, into an abyss again. He could feel the rushing waters crash over his shoulders, cooling the white-hot heat at his temple, warming the ice-cold incisions in his stomach and his legs and.…

  His chest. His chest was in agony! He had been struck—the blow crushing, the impact sudden and intolerable. It happened again! Let me alone. Give me peace.

  And again!

  And he clawed again, and kicked again … until he felt it. A thick, oily object that moved only with the movements of the sea. He could not tell what it was, but it was there and he could feel it, hold it.

  Hold it! It will ride you to peace. To the silence of darkness … and peace.

  The rays of the early sun broke through the mists of the eastern sky, lending glitter to the calm waters of the Mediterranean. The skipper of the small fishing boat, his eyes bloodshot, his hands marked with rope burns, sat on the stern gunnel smoking a Gauloise, grateful for the sight of the smooth sea. He glanced over at the open wheelhouse; his younger brother was easing the throttle forward to make better time, the single other crewman checking a net several feet away. They were laughing at something and that was good; there had been nothing to laugh about last night. Where had the storm come from? The weather reports from Marseilles had indicated nothing; if they had he would have stayed in the shelter of the coastline. He wanted to reach the fishing grounds eighty kilometers south of La Seyne-sur-Mer by daybreak, but not at the expense of costly repairs, and what repairs were not costly these days?

  Or at the expense of his life, and there were moments last night when that was a distinct consideration.

  “Tu es fatigué, hein, mon frère?” his brother shouted, grinning at him. “Va te coucher maintenant. Laisse-moi faire.”

  “D’accord,” the brother answered, throwing his cigarette over the side and sliding down to the deck on top of a net. “A little sleep won’t hurt.”

  It was good to have a brother at the wheel. A member of the family should always be the pilot on a family boat; the eyes were sharper. Even a brother who spoke with the smooth tongue of a literate man as opposed to his own coarse words. Crazy! One year at the university and his brother wished to start a compagnie. With a single boat that had seen better days many years ago. Crazy. What good did his books do last night? When his compagnie was about to capsize.

  He closed his eyes, letting his hands soak in the rolling water on the deck. The salt of the sea would be good for the rope burns. Burns received while lashing equipment that did not care to stay put in the storm.

  “Look! Over there!”

  It was his brother, apparently sleep was to be denied by sharp family eyes.

  “What is it?” he yelled.

  “Port bow! There’s a man in the water! He’s holding on to something! A piece of debris, a plank of some sort.”

  The skipper took the wheel, angling the boat to the right of the figure in the water, cutting the engines to reduce the wake. The man looked as though the slightest motion would send him sliding off the fragment of wood he clung to; his hands were white, gripped around the edge like claws, but the rest of his body was limp—as limp as a man fully drowned, passed from this world.

  “Loop the ropes!” yelled the skipper to his brother and the crewman. “Submerge them around his legs. Easy now! Move them up to his waist. Pull gently.”

  “His hands won’t let go of the plank!”

  “Reach down! Pry them up! It may be the death lock.”

  “No. He’s alive … but barely, I think. His lips move, but there’s no sound. His eyes also, though I doubt he sees us.”

  “The hands are free!”

  “Lift him up. Grab his shoulders and pull him over. Easy, now!”

  “Mother of God, look at his head!” yelled the crewman. “It’s split open.”

  “He must have crashed it against the plank in the storm,” said the brother.

  “No,” disagreed the skipper, staring at the wound. “It’s a clean slice, razorlike. Caused by a bullet; he was shot.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “In more than one place,” added the skipper, his eyes roving over the body. “We’ll head for Ile de Port Noir; it’s the nearest island. There’s a doctor on the waterfront.”

  “The Englishman?”

  “He practices.”

  “When he can,” said the skipper’s brother. “When the wine lets him. He has more success with his patients’ animals than with his patients.”

  “It won’t matter. This will be a corpse by the time we get there. If by chance he lives, I’ll bill him for the extra petrol and whatever catch we miss. Get the kit; we’ll bind his head for all the good it will do.”

  “Look!” cried the crewman. “Look at his eyes.”

  “What about them?” asked the brother.

  “A moment ago they were gray—as gray as steel cables. Now they’re blue!”

  “The sun’s brighter,” said the skipper, shrugging. “Or it’s playing tricks with your own eyes. No matter, there’s no color in the grave.”

  Intermittent whistles of fishing boats clashed with the incessant screeching of the gulls; together they formed the universal sounds of the waterfront. It was late afternoon, the sun a fireball in the west, the air still and too damp, too hot. Above the piers and facing the harbor was a cobblestone street and several blemished white houses, separated by overgrown grass shooting up from dried earth and sand. What remained of the verandas were patched latticework and crumbling stucco supported by hastily implanted pilings. The residences had seen better days a number of decades ago when the residents mistakenly believed Ile de Port Noir might become another Mediterranean playground. It never did.

  All the houses had paths to the street, but the last house in the row had a path obviously more trampled than the others. It belonged to an Englishman who had come to Port Noir eight years before under circumstances no one understood or cared to; he was a doctor and the waterfront had need of a doctor. Hooks, needles and knives were at once means of livelihood as well as instruments of incapacitation. If one saw le docteur on a good day, the sutures were not too bad. On the other hand, if the stench of wine or whiskey was too pronounced, one took one’s chances.

  Tant pis! He was better than no one.

  But not today; no one used the path today. It was Sunday and it was common knowledge that on any Saturday night the doctor was roaring drunk in the village, ending the evening with whatever whore was available.
Of course, it was also granted that during the past few Saturdays the doctor’s routine had altered; he had not been seen in the village. But nothing ever changed that much; bottles of scotch were sent to the doctor on a regular basis. He was simply staying in his house; he had been doing so since the fishing boat from La Ciotat had brought in the unknown man who was more corpse than man.

  Dr. Geoffrey Washburn awoke with a start, his chin settled into his collarbone causing the odor of his mouth to invade his nostrils; it was not pleasant. He blinked, orienting himself, and glanced at the open bedroom door. Had his nap been interrupted by another incoherent monologue from his patient? No; there was no sound. Even the gulls outside were mercifully quiet; it was Ile de Port Noir’s holy day, no boats coming in to taunt the birds with their catches.

  Washburn looked at the empty glass and the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the table beside his chair. It was an improvement. On a normal Sunday both would be empty by now, the pain of the previous night having been spiraled out by the scotch. He smiled to himself, once again blessing an older sister in Coventry who made the scotch possible with her monthly stipend. She was a good girl, Bess was, and God knew she could afford a hell of a lot more than she sent him, but he was grateful she did what she did. And one day she would stop, the money would stop, and then the oblivions would be achieved with the cheapest wine until there was no pain at all. Ever.

  He had come to accept that eventuality … until three weeks and five days ago when the half-dead stranger had been dragged from the sea and brought to his door by fishermen who did not care to identify themselves. Their errand was one of mercy, not involvement. God would understand; the man had been shot.

  What the fishermen had not known was that far more than bullets had invaded the man’s body. And mind.

  The doctor pushed his gaunt frame out of the chair and walked unsteadily to the window overlooking the harbor. He lowered the blind, closing his eyes to block out the sun, then squinted between the slats to observe the activity in the street below, specifically the reason for the clatter. It was a horse-drawn cart, a fisherman’s family out for a Sunday drive. Where the hell else could one see such a sight? And then he remembered the carriages and the finely groomed geldings that threaded through London’s Regent Park with tourists during the summer months; he laughed out loud at the comparison. But his laughter was short-lived, replaced by something unthinkable three weeks ago. He had given up all hope of seeing England again. It was possible that might be changed now. The stranger could change it.