The Bourne Deception

“I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Who are you working for? Really.”

  “I work for myself. I have for years.”

  Yevsen pursed his lips, which were thick as slabs of raw meat, and as ruddy. “Let me make this easy for you, Ms. Atherton. In my world there are only two kinds of people: friends and enemies. You have to decide which one you are, right now, this minute. If you don’t answer truthfully I will put a bullet through your right shoulder. Then I’ll ask again. Silence or a lie will only gain you a bullet through your left shoulder. Then I’ll go to work on that beautiful face of yours.” He waggled the gun at her. “One thing is certain, when I get through with you, you won’t be a pretty sight.” That ghastly chuckle again. “No Hollywood casting agents will come calling, that I can guarantee you.”

  “The man I’m with is Adam Stone, that’s really all I know.”

  “See, the problem, Ms. Atherton, is that I’m not feeling it—the truth, I mean.”

  “That is the truth.”

  He took a step toward her so that he was pressed up against the far side of the table. “Now you’ve offended me. You think I’ll believe you brought someone here without knowing anything about him but his name—which in fact isn’t his name at all.”

  Tracy closed her eyes. “No, of course not.” She took a deep breath and stared straight into Yevsen’s coffee-colored eyes. “Yes, I knew his real name was Jason Bourne, and, yes, it was my job not only to bring Noah the Goya, but to ensure Bourne would get here.”

  Yevsen’s eyes narrowed. “Why was Bourne sent here? What is he after?”

  “Don’t you know? You sent one of your Russian assassins, a man with a scar and a tattoo of three skulls on his neck, to kill Bourne in Seville.”

  “The Torturer?” Yevsen’s face twisted in obvious disgust. “I’d sooner cut off my arm than hire that piece of filth.”

  “All I know is that he thinks the man who tried to kill him is here. The same man who must have hired the Torturer.”

  “That’s not me. He’s been given the wrong information.”

  “Then I don’t understand why I was hired to make sure he got here.”

  Yevsen shook his head. “Who hired you to do this?”

  “Leonid Arkadin.”

  Yevsen aimed the .45 at her right shoulder. “Another lie! Why would Leonid Danilovich hire you to ensure Bourne arrived here?”

  “I don’t know, but…” Gauging his response, noting the look on his face, caused her to make a delayed connection. “Wait a minute, it must have been Arkadin who told you I had Bourne with me. He must be the one who hired the Torturer, which means he must be here, lying in wait for Bourne.”

  “Being so close to death has made you desperate. At this very moment, Leonid Danilovich is in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan.”

  “But don’t you see, Arkadin is the only one who knew Bourne was with me.”

  “This is bullshit! Leonid Danilovich is my partner.”

  “Why would I make up a lie like that? Arkadin paid me twenty thousand in diamonds.”

  Yevsen recoiled as if he’d been struck. “Diamonds are Leonid Danilovich’s signature—how he gets paid and how he pays. Damn him to hell, what’s that lying sack of shit up to? If he thinks he can double-cross me—”

  And at that moment Tracy saw Bourne sprinting down the hallway. Yevsen recognized the surprise in her eyes and began to turn toward the door, his .45 at the ready.

  Noah Perlis’s sense of triumph vanished as soon as he saw a Sudanese lurker and one of the guards that Yevsen’s security personnel had cornered on the street level just inside loading dock A.

  “What the hell is this?” he said in Sudanese Arabic. With a wave of his hand, he sent some of the security people out into the street to check for anyone else who had no business being on the block. Then he confronted the guard, quickly determining that he knew nothing. The chief of security—who had, by that time, joined him—fired the man on the spot.

  Addressing the lurker, he said, “Who are you and what are you doing on these premises?”

  “I… I lost my way, sir. I was talking with my cousin’s cousin—the man who was just fired, which, I think when you hear my story, you’ll agree is too harsh a punishment.” The man kept his eyes lowered and his shoulders hunched in a pose of servility. “My cousin’s cousin had to urinate, you see, but he didn’t want to turn me away because I needed money to pay for my child’s—”

  “That’s enough!” Noah slapped him hard across the face. “Do you think I’m some tourist you can gull with your idiotic stories?” He slapped the man again, harder this time, so that his teeth clacked together and he winced. “Tell me what you’re doing here or I’ll turn you over to Sandur.” The chief of security grinned, showing black gaps between his teeth. “Sandur knows what to do with vermin like you.”

  “I don’t—”

  This time Noah’s fist slammed into the lurker’s mouth, spraying bits of teeth and blood onto the man’s filthy shirt. “There’s a full moon tonight, but don’t count on seeing it.”

  The lurker had just launched into his story about being accosted by an American who wanted to get inside 779 El Gamhuria Avenue when the contingent of security people Noah had sent out into the street returned. One of the men leaned over and whispered something into his ear.

  At once Noah grabbed the lurker and threw him into the arms of Sandur. “Here, take care of him.”

  “Sir, have pity,” the lurker protested, “I don’t deserve this, I swear I’m telling the truth.”

  But Noah was no longer concerned with the lurker or who had tried to gain access to the Air Afrika headquarters. An urgent sense of self-preservation had taken hold of him. He approached the glare of the loading dock and peered out from the shadows. Sure enough, as the security man had said, there was a minibus parked across the street. It was full of people—all male—which was what had raised a red flag for the guard. Then Noah saw the flash of metal—the muzzle of an AK-47—and his worst fears were confirmed. Someone was planning an imminent raid on the Air Afrika offices. He was so stunned he couldn’t even think of who might have the knowledge and the wherewithal to attempt what most considered unthinkable. But that wasn’t the issue now. He needed to get away from ground zero before he was caught in the crossfire between Yevsen’s mercenaries and the raiding party crowded into the Sudanese minibus across the street.

  Bourne, combing the third floor of the building while keeping out of the way of both the staff and the security personnel, heard a deep, rough-edged voice coming from a large room ahead of him. When he heard Tracy’s voice in the interval between the male voice’s questions, he broke into a flat-out run because he was certain that she had been captured by Arkadin as the last bit of bait for him.

  As he burst through the open doorway, he curled himself into a ball, rolling fast into the room then unfolding himself all in one smooth motion. He saw a burly man with a bat tattooed on the side of his neck turn and fire at him. He ducked, rolling toward the conference table laden with food. In that moment he saw Tracy pull her ceramic gun out of a thigh holster. He heard the report of another gunshot and launched himself, his body low and twisting, into the massive legs of the Bat-man, taking him down just as he fired at Tracy, who instinctively turned away. The bullet went low into one of the heavy glass bowls, sending shards exploding in all directions.

  Bourne and Bat-man crashed to the floor with Bourne trying to wrest the .45 out of his left hand. The gun went off again, the bullet whining past Bourne’s ear, rendering him temporarily deaf. Bat-man drove his right hand into Bourne’s ribs, Bourne slammed his knuckles into Bat-man’s jaw, then followed it with three quick chops with the edge of his hand to the side of Bat-man’s neck. Using all his strength, his adversary inched the muzzle of the .45 toward Bourne’s temple. Bourne drove it back, but three successive punches to the same spot on his rib cage caused him to suck in air and, all at once, the muzzle was aimed at his head. Bat-man bore down on the trigger
with his left forefinger.

  That was when Bourne found his shoulder wound. Driving his finger into the pulpy mass caused Bat-man to howl like a wolf at bay, and Bourne was able to slap the .45 out of his hand. But with a great heave of his body, Bat-man shoved Bourne off, lunged for the gun, and, grabbing it by its barrel, struck Bourne on the temple with the butt end. Bourne’s head snapped back, bouncing off the floor, but Bat-man kept up the attack, already sensing victory. Bourne, his consciousness wavering, crawled away, as if seeking safety beneath the conference table. Bat-man grunted with each blow he delivered, rising up as he swung the heavy butt down again and again.

  Bourne, feeling consciousness slipping further and further away into a red haze of agony, crawled the few more inches he needed to grab Tracy’s ceramic gun, which was lying on the floor. With grim determination, he pointed it up at Bat-man and shot him point-blank in the face.

  The air was filled with a storm of blood, bone, and bits of pink brain matter. Bat-man had reared up to deliver another titanic blow, but the force of the bullet arched his head and torso back and away. Then Bourne heard, as if through a ton of cotton wool, what sounded like a sack of wet cement hitting the floor.

  For a moment, he lay on his back, one leg raised, his heart pumping like a sprinter’s at the finish line. Pain suffused him, radiating out from the bullet wound he’d sustained in Bali. His violent actions and the beating he had taken had a deleterious effect on his healing, just as Dr. Firth had warned. Just like after the second surgery, he felt like he’d been struck by a speeding train.

  Then he breathed, and heard his blood singing the song of life in his inner ears. And then came the fiery touch of Shiva, removing the chill of death from his bones, as if this spirit—or, as Suparwita believed, god—had protected him once again, extending his strong hand to take Bourne’s and bring him back fully into the land of the living.

  All at once, hearing conflicting rounds of semi-automatic fire coming from the hallway, he twitched, stirred, and, rising on one elbow, groaned deeply. His head was swimming and he seemed afloat in blood—not his blood, Bat-man’s, dead as yesterday’s news, faceless, all but unrecognizable.

  It was then, amid the semi-automatic fire that seemed both closer and more frenzied, that he looked around for Tracy. She was lying on her side beyond the table.

  “Tracy,” he said, and then more urgently, “Tracy!”

  Her right arm moved in response. He crawled painfully under the table, across the floor glittering with knife-like glass shards that tore into the heels of his hands and his shins.

  “Tracy.”

  Her eyes stared straight ahead, but as he rose up into her field of vision, her eyes tracked him and a small smile lit her face.

  “There you are.”

  He reached down, putting one arm beneath her shoulders, but when he moved to pick her up, her face contorted and she cried out.

  “Oh, God—God help me!”

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  She stared at him mutely, a web of pain clouding her eyes.

  He lifted her torso as gently as he could, and that was when he saw the two large shards of glass sticking out of her back like dagger blades. Wiping the sweat off her brow, he said, “Tracy, I want you to move your feet. Can you do that for me?”

  He looked at her feet, but nothing happened.

  “What about your legs?”

  Nothing. He pinched the flesh of her thigh. “Do you feel that?”

  “What… what did you do?”

  She was paralyzed. At least one of the glass spears had severed key nerves. And the other one? He moved, trying to get a better look at how deeply the glass was embedded. These were good-size pieces, six to eight inches long, he judged, and they were buried deep. He recalled Tracy turning away, then the bullet from Yevsen’s gun slamming into the heavy glass bowl. The impact had acted like the detonation of a nail bomb, impaling her on two of the larger projectiles.

  The thunder of the semi-automatic fire was very close now, though more intermittent.

  “I’ve got to get you to a hospital,” Bourne said, but as he tried to lever her from her half-sitting position she vomited a gout of blood, and he eased back, cradling her in his arms.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’m not going to let you—”

  “You know it and I know it.” Tracy’s eyes were bloodshot, cratered with dark circles like deep bruises. “I don’t want to be alone, Jason.”

  He held her as she relaxed back against him. “Why did you call me that?”

  “Yes, I know your real name, I have from the moment I met you, which wasn’t a coincidence. Keep still,” she said, cutting him off, “I have things to tell you and there isn’t much time.” She licked her bloody lips. “Arkadin hired me to make sure you got here. Nikolai Yevsen, the man you just killed, told me that Arkadin is in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, why I don’t know, but he isn’t here.”

  So she’d been working for Arkadin all along. Bourne shook his head grimly at how well he’d been played. He’d been made to suspect her and then been given a perfectly plausible explanation as to why she’d lied about knowing the Goya was real. At that, he’d stupidly let down his guard. He saw Arkadin’s hand in these delicate threads and admiration mingled with his anger at himself.

  Tracy’s eyes suddenly opened so wide he could see the bloodshot whites all the way around. “Jason!”

  Her breathing had become shallow and erratic. She tried to smile. “It’s in our darkest hour that our secrets eat us alive.”

  He put two fingers against her carotid. Her pulse was weak and irregular. She was slipping away. All at once their conversation of last night came back to him—“Why is it, I wonder, that people feel the need to lie altogether?” she had said—and he knew absolutely that she had wanted to tell him then. “Would it be so terrible if everyone just told each other the truth?” Their entire conversation had been about her double life, and her inability to confess it to him. “What about you?” she had said. “Do you mind being alone?”

  He struggled to understand the situation—to understand her—but all human beings were too complicated to be summed up by one thought, or even one string of thoughts. Once again, he was struck by all the myriad strands that went into the weave of a human life—Tracy’s no less than anyone else’s—perhaps more so in her case because, like him, she lived a double life. Like Don Hererra and the Torturer, she had been part of Arkadin’s spider’s web, an attempt to manipulate him into doing—what? He still didn’t know. But here was one of his enemy’s pawns, lying still and dying in his arms. It was obvious now—and, in retrospect, last night—that she felt conflicted about the role Arkadin had hired her to play. Her ambivalence struck him like a blow to his stomach. She had fooled him but, as she had wondered last night, had she in the process been fooling herself? These were questions that went to the heart of his own dilemma: the not-knowing, the always being on the verge of another identity and, in consequence, losing the people around him. Death was always and ever around him, the other side of Shiva, who was the destroyer as well as the harbinger of resurrection.

  All at once Tracy gave a great shiver in his arms, as if she were exhaling for the last time. “Jason, I don’t want to be alone.”

  Her plaintive words thawed his icy heart. “You’re not alone, Tracy.” He bent over her, his lips touching her forehead. “I’m here with you.”

  “Yes, I know, it’s good, I feel you around me.” She gave a sigh, akin to a cat’s purr of contentment.

  “¿Tracy?” He took his lips away so he could look into her eyes, which were fixed, staring at infinity. “Tracy.”

  29

  IT’S COMING THROUGH!” Humphry Bamber said.

  “How much of it?” Moira asked.

  Bamber watched the numbers scrolling across his screen as the download bar registered the illicit transfer from Noah Perlis’s laptop.

  “All of it,” he said as the green bar
reached the 100 percent level. “Now to get under the hood and see what’s going on.”

  Her adrenaline was running high, and she lost patience with the minutes ticking off, pacing around the perimeter of his work space, which smelled of hot metal and spinning hard drives, the scent of money in the twenty-first century. The room was in the rear of the office, its dusky north light forming wan pools in between the shadows thrown by the stacks of electronic equipment, whose fans and motors whirred and hummed like a menagerie. The only two spaces on the walls not filled with instruments or shelves overloaded with computer peripherals, containers of blank DVDs, and USB and power cords of all lengths and descriptions, were taken up by a window and a framed photograph of Bamber at college in full football gear down in a three-point stance. He was even more handsome then than he was now.

  When Moira’s circuit of the room took her past the window, she paused, staring out across the street onto which the building backed. In the facing building, fluorescent lights were on, revealing an office filled with filing cabinets, hulking Xerox machines, and identical desks. Middle-aged people rushed back and forth, clutching files or reports the way a drowning man clutches a piece of driftwood. On the floor above that living death, she saw through high loft windows into an artist’s atelier, where a young woman was throwing paint onto a massive canvas propped against a dead-white wall. Her concentration was so intense, lost within the vision she was trying to reproduce, that she appeared unaware of her surroundings.

  “How are you coming?” Moira asked as she turned back into the room.

  Bamber, concentrating as intensely as the artist across the street, needed a bit of prompting to answer. “A few more minutes and I’ll know,” he mumbled at last.

  Moira nodded. She was about to continue her anxious perambulation when a sudden movement brought her attention back to the street. A car had drawn up near the end of the block and a man had emerged. Something about the way he moved set off alarm bells in her head. He had a way of turning his head in minute increments, as if he was looking at everything and nothing, that made the hair stir at the nape of her neck. When he reached Bamber’s building, he stopped. Keeping close to the rear door, he took out a set of picks and inserted one, then another in the lock, until he found the right one to simulate the hills and valleys of the key.