Page 30 of The Bourne Legacy (Jason Bourne 4)

  Here, every day since he had arrived, he and his two counterparts met in the mornings to refine and argue about details of the elaborate security arrangements. In the afternoons they reconvened with their respective staffs to review the details and to brief their respective personnel on the latest procedures. Ever since they’d arrived, the entire hotel had been closed to the public so that the security teams could do their electronic sweeps and inspections and make the area absolutely secure.

  As he walked into the brightly lit forum, he saw his counterparts: Feyd al-Saoud, slim and dark-eyed above his beak of a nose, with a bearing that was almost regal; Boris Illyich Karpov, head of the FSB’s elite Alpha Unit, brawny and bull-like, with wide shoulders and narrow hips, a flat Tatar face that seemed brutal beneath heavy brows and thick black hair. Hull had never seen Karpov smile, and as for Feyd al-Saoud, he doubted he knew how.

  “Good morning, fellow travelers,” Boris Illyich Karpov said in his ponderous deadpan manner that put Hull in mind of a 1950’s newscaster. “We have but three days until the summit commences and there is still much work to accomplish. Shall we begin?”

  “By all means,” Feyd al-Saoud said, taking his accustomed seat on the dais where just seventy-two hours from now the five heads of the leading Arab states would sit side by side with Presidents of the United States and Russia in order to hammer out the first concerted Arab-Western initiative to stop international terrorism in its tracks. “I’ve received instructions from my counterparts in the other attending Islamic nations and will be pleased to relay them to you.”

  “Demands, you mean,” Karpov said belligerently. He’d never gotten over their decision to speak English at their briefings; he’d been outvoted two to one.

  “Boris, why must you always put a negative spin on things?” Hull said.

  Karpov bristled; Hull knew he disliked American informality. “Demands have a certain stench, Mr. Hull.” He tapped the end of his ruddy nose. “I can smell them.”

  “I’m surprised you can smell anything, Boris, after years of drinking vodka.”

  “Drinking vodka makes us strong, makes us real men.” Karpov turned his red lips into a bow of derision. “Not like you Americans.”

  “I should listen to you, Boris? You, a Russian? Your country’s an abject failure. Communism proved so corrupt Russia imploded under its weight. And as for your people, they’re spiritually bankrupt.”

  Karpov leaped up, his cheeks as red as his nose and lips. “I’ve had enough of your insults!”

  “Too bad.” Hull stood, kicking his chair over, forgetting completely the DCI’s admonishment. “I’m only just warming up.”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Feyd al-Saoud interposed himself between the two antagonists. “Tell me, please, how these childish arguments are going to further the task we’ve all been sent here to accomplish.” His voice was calm and even-toned as he looked from one to the other. “We each have our respective heads of state, whom we serve with unswerving loyalty. Isn’t that true? Then we must serve them in the best way we can.” He wouldn’t let up until both had agreed.

  Karpov sat back down, though with arms crossed over his chest. Hull righted his chair, dragged it back to the table and threw himself into it, a sour expression on his face.

  Observing them, Feyd al-Saoud said, “We may not like one another, but we must learn to work together.”

  Dimly, Hull was aware that there was something else about Karpov besides his aggressive intransigence that got under his skin. It took him some moments to locate its origin, but at length he did. Something about Karpov—his smug self-satisfaction—reminded him of David Webb, or Jason Bourne, as all Agency personnel had been ordered to call him. It was Bourne who’d become Alex Conklin’s fair-haired boy, despite all the politicking and subtle campaigning Hull had done on his own behalf before he’d given up and gone into the Counterterrorist Center. He’d made a success of his new post, no question, but he never forgot what Bourne had forced him to leave behind. Conklin had been a legend within the Agency. Working with him was all Hull had dreamed about ever since he’d joined the Agency twenty years ago. There are dreams one has as a child; these aren’t difficult to let go of. But the dreams one had as an adult, well, that was another matter entirely. The bitterness of what might have been never went away, at least, not in Hull’s experience.

  He’d actually celebrated when the DCI had informed him that Bourne might be on his way to Reykjavik. The thought of Bourne having turned on his mentor and gone rogue was one that made his blood boil. If only Conklin had chosen him, Hull had thought, he’d be alive today. The thought that he might be the one to terminate Bourne in an Agency sanction was a dream come true. But then he’d got the news that Bourne was dead and his elation had turned to disappointment. He’d become increasingly testy with everyone, including the Secret Service operatives with whom it was vital he keep a close and open relationship. Now, in the absence of any kind of fulfillment, he leveled a murderous look at Karpov and received one in return.

  Bourne didn’t take the elevator down when he left Annaka’s apartment. Instead, he went up the short flight of utility stairs that led to the roof. There, he confronted the alarm system and defeated it quickly and efficiently.

  The sun had abandoned the afternoon to slate-gray clouds and a stiff quartering wind. As Bourne gazed south, he could see the four elaborate domes of the Kiraly Turkish Baths. He went to the parapet, leaned over in more or less the same spot that Khan had occupied no more than an hour before.

  From this vantage point, he scanned the street, first for anyone standing in a shadowed doorway, then for any pedestrians walking too slowly or stopped altogether. He watched two young women strolling arm in arm, a mother pushing a pram, and an old man he scrutinized, recalling Khan’s expert work as a chameleon.

  Finding nothing suspicious, he turned his attention to the parked cars, looking for anything out of the ordinary. All rental cars in Hungary were obliged to have a sticker identifying themselves as such. In this residential neighborhood, a rental car was something he’d need to investigate.

  He found one on a black Skoda up the block and across the street. He studied its position in detail. Anyone sitting behind the wheel would have an unobstructed view of the front entrance to 106–108 Fo utca. At the moment, however, there was no one behind the wheel or anywhere else inside the car.

  He turned and strode back across the rooftop.

  Khan, crouched on the stairwell in readiness, watched Bourne coming toward him. This was his chance, he knew. Bourne, his mind no doubt filled with matters of surveillance, was completely unsuspecting. As if in a dream—a dream he’d had in his mind for decades—he saw Bourne heading straight toward him, his eyes clouded with thought. Khan was filled with rage. This was the man who had sat next to him and not recognized him, who even when Khan had identified himself had rejected him for who he was. This only intensified Khan’s belief that Bourne had never wanted him, that he was all too ready to run away and abandon him.

  Therefore, when Khan rose, it was with righteous fury. As Bourne stepped into the shadow of the doorway, Khan slammed his forehead hard into the bridge of his nose. Blood flew and Bourne staggered backward. Khan, pressing his advantage, moved in, but Bourne kicked out.

  “Che-sah!” Bourne exhaled.

  Khan absorbed the kick by partially deflecting it, then clamped his left arm against the side of his body, trapping Bourne’s ankle in between. Bourne surprised him, then. Instead of being thrown off balance, he rose up, pressing his back and buttocks against the steel door, kicked with his right foot, delivering a sickening blow to Khan’s right shoulder, so that Khan was obliged to let go of Bourne’s left ankle.

  “Mee-sah!” Bourne cried softly.

  He came at Khan, who shuddered as if in pain even as he delivered a straight-fingered blow to Bourne’s sternum. At once he gripped Bourne’s head on either side, cracked it against the roof door. Bourne’s eyes went out of focus.

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sp; “What’s Spalko up to?” Khan said harshly. “You know, don’t you?”

  Bourne’s head was swimming with pain and shock. He tried to focus his eyes and clear his mind at the same time.

  “Who’s…Spalko?” His voice seemed watery, as if it was coming from a long way off.

  “Of course you know.”

  Bourne shook his head, which produced a fusillade of daggers in his head all digging in at once. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  “I thought…I thought you wanted to kill me.”

  “Listen to me!”

  “Who are you?” Bourne whispered hoarsely. “How d’you know about my son? How d’you know about Joshua?”

  “Listen to me!” Khan put his head close to Bourne’s. “Stepan Spalko is the man who ordered Alex Conklin’s death, the man who set you up—who set us both up. Why did he do that, Bourne? You know and I need to know!”

  Bourne felt as if were in the grip of an ice floe, everything moving with infinite slowness. He couldn’t think, couldn’t seem to put two ideas together. Then he noticed something. The oddness of it cut through the strange inertia in which he was gripped. There was something in Khan’s right ear. What was it? Under the guise of extreme pain, he moved his head slightly, saw that it was a miniature electronic receiver.

  “Who are you?” he said. “Goddammit, who are you!”

  There seemed to be two conversations going on simultaneously, as if the two men were in different worlds, living different lives. Their voices raised, their emotions flamed from embers, and the more they shouted, the further apart they seemed to get.

  “I told you!” Khan’s hands were covered with Bourne’s blood, which had now begun to coagulate in his nostrils. “I’m your son!”

  And with those words, the stasis was broken, their worlds collided once again. The rage that had swept Bourne up in its fist when the hotel manager had frustrated him thundered again in his ears. He screamed, driving Khan backward through the door, out onto the roof.

  Ignoring the pain in his head, he hooked his ankle behind Khan, shoved him hard. But Khan grabbed hold of him as he went down, raising his legs as his back struck the roof tiles, lifting Bourne off his feet, and with a powerful kick sent him tumbling head over heels.

  Bourne tucked his head under, landed on his shoulders and rolled, dissipating most of the impact. They both regained their feet at the same time, their arms outstretched, their fingers grasping for purchase. Bourne brought his arms down suddenly, striking them hard onto Khan’s wrists, breaking his hold, spinning him sideways. Bourne butted him, using his forehead against the nerve bundle just below Khan’s ear. Khan’s left side went slack, and Bourne, using his advantage, drove his balled fist into Khan’s face.

  Khan staggered, his knees buckling slightly, but like a punch-drunk heavyweight, he refused to go down. Bourne, a maddened bull, struck him again and again, driving him back with every blow, nearer and nearer the parapet. But in his extreme rage he made a mistake, allowing Khan inside his guard. It surprised him when, instead of staggering back beneath the blow, Khan attacked, driving forward off his back foot and, midway through, transferring all his weight to his front foot. The resulting strike rattled Bourne’s teeth even as it took him off his feet.

  Bourne fell to his knees, and Khan struck him a tremendous blow above his ribs. He began to topple over but Khan grabbed him by the throat and began to squeeze.

  “You’d better tell me now,” he said thickly. “You’d better tell me everything you know.”

  Bourne, panting and in intense pain, said, “Go to hell!”

  Khan struck his jaw with the edge of his hand.

  “Why won’t you listen?”

  “Try a little more force,” Bourne said.

  “You’re completely insane.”

  “That’s your plan, isn’t it?” Bourne shook his head doggedly. “This whole sick story about you being Joshua—”

  “I am your son.”

  “Listen to yourself—you can’t even say his name. You can drop the farce; it’ll avail you nothing now. You’re an international assassin named Khan. I won’t lead you to this Spalko or whoever it is you’re planning to get to. I won’t be anyone’s cat’s-paw again.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know—” He broke off, shook his head violently, changed tacks. He cradled the small carved stone Buddha in his free palm. “Look at this, Bourne!” He spat out the words as if they were poisonous. “Look at it!”

  “A talisman anyone in Southeast Asia could pick up—”

  “Not this one. You gave this one to me—yes, you did.” His eyes blazed, and his voice held a tremor that, to his shame, he couldn’t control. “And then you abandoned me to die in the jungles of—”

  A gunshot ricocheted off the roof tiles beside Khan’s right leg and, releasing Bourne, he jumped back. A second shot nearly struck his shoulder as he scuttled behind the brick wall of the elevator vent.

  Bourne turned his head, saw Annaka crouched at the top of the stairwell, her gun gripped tightly in both hands. Cautiously, she came forward. She risked a glance at Bourne.

  “Are you all right?”

  He nodded, but at the same time Khan, choosing wisely, leaped from his hiding place, bounded to the side of the rooftop, jumped onto the next building. Bourne noted that instead of firing wildly, Annaka put up her gun and turned to him.

  “How can you be all right?” she asked. “There’s blood all over you!”

  “It’s just from my nose.” He felt lightheaded as he sat up. Reacting to her dubious expression, he was compelled to add, “Really, it looks like a lot of blood, but it’s nothing.”

  She put a wad of tissues against his nose as he started to bleed again.

  “Thank you.”

  She brushed away his words with those of her own. “You said you needed to get something back at your hotel. Why did you come up here?”

  Slowly, he rose to his feet but not without her help. “Wait a minute.” She glanced in the direction Khan had gone, then turned back to Bourne, a look of revelation on her face. “He’s the one who’s been watching us, isn’t he? The one who called the police when we were at László Molnar’s apartment.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe you. It’s the only plausible explanation for why you lied to me. You didn’t want to alarm me because you’d told me we were safe here. What changed?”

  He hesitated for a moment, then realized that he had no choice but to tell her the truth. “When we came back from the café, there were new scratch marks on your piano bench.”

  “What?” Her eyes opened wide and she shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  Bourne thought of the electronic receiver in Khan’s right ear. “Let’s go back to the apartment and I’ll show you.”

  He walked toward the open doorway, but she hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  Turning back, he said wearily, “What don’t you know?”

  A hard look had come into her face, along with a kind of ruefulness. “You lied to me.”

  “I did it to protect you, Annaka.”

  Her eyes were large and glistening. “How can I trust you now?”

  “Annaka—”

  “Please tell me, because I really want to know.” She stood her ground, and he knew that she wouldn’t take even a step toward the staircase. “I need to have an answer I can cling to and believe.”

  “What d’you want me to say?”

  She lifted her arms, let them fall to her side in gesture of exasperation. “Do you see what you’re doing, turning everything I say back on itself?” She shook her head. “Where did you learn to make people feel like shit?”

  “I wanted to keep you out of harm’s way,” he said. She had hurt him deeply and, despite his carefully neutral expression, he suspected she knew it. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I still think so, even if it meant keeping the truth from you, at least for a little while.”

r />   She looked at him for a long time. The gusting wind took her copper hair, floated it out like a bird’s wing. Querulous voices drifted up from Fo utca, people wanting to know what those noises were, a car backfiring or something else? There were no answers, and now, save for the intermittent barking of a dog, the neighborhood was quiet.

  “You thought you could handle the situation,” Annaka said, “you thought you could handle him.”

  Bourne walked stiff-legged over to the front parapet, where he leaned out. Against all odds, the rental car was still there, empty. Maybe it wasn’t Khan’s, or maybe Khan hadn’t fled the scene. With some difficulty, Bourne stood up straight. The pain was coming in waves, breaking harder on the shore of his consciousness as the endorphins released by the shock of the trauma began to dissipate. Every bone in his body seemed to ache, but none more than his jaw and his ribs.

  At last, he found it in himself to answer her truthfully. “I suppose so, yes.”

  She lifted a hand, pulled her hair away from her cheek. “Who is he, Jason?”

  It was the first time she had called him by his given name, but it scarcely registered on him. At the moment, he was trying—and failing—to give her an answer that would satisfy himself.

  Khan, splayed on the stairs of the building onto whose roof he had leaped, stared unseeing at the featureless ceiling of the stairwell. He waited for Bourne to come get him. Or, he wondered with the wandering mind of those in shock, was he waiting for Annaka Vadas to level her gun at him and pull the trigger? He should be in his car now, driving away, and yet here he was, as inert as a fly caught in a spiderweb.

  His buzzing mind was swept by shoulds. He should’ve killed Bourne when he first had him in his sights, but he had a plan then, one that made sense, one that he had meticulously outlined to himself, one that would bring him—so he believed then!—the maximum measure of revenge that was his due. He should’ve killed Bourne in the cargo hold of the plane bound for Paris. Surely he’d meant to, just as he’d meant to just now.