Page 21 of The Bourne Dominion (Jason Bourne 9)

  Etana was sitting very still, his hands had a death grip on the bench, and he seemed green around the gills. Essai said nothing, out of respect, and, soon enough, he reefed the mainsail and they glided into the dock. He threw the bowline to the rental agent.

  “I was getting worried,” the man said as he drew the boat slowly in. “This storm front looks very bad.”

  “No need to worry about us,” Essai said. “No need at all.”

  Don’t you pass out on me,” Tyrone Elkins shouted.

  Peter Marks, his arms tight around Elkins’s waist, rode the motorcycle, dizzy and weak. There was a fire raging through his body, and he kept going in and out of consciousness, like an exhausted swimmer in the surf. That drowning reference again. Dimly, he wondered where that came from.

  “Is that you laughing back there?” Tyrone shouted across the wind.

  “Maybe,” Peter said. “I don’t know.” He let his cheek rest against the thick leather of Elkins’s jacket. Since when did CI allow one of its operatives to wear a leather jacket, he wondered. Then the thought was lost in the swirl of the inner surf that buffeted him.

  “No hospital,” he said.

  “Gotcha the first time, Chief.”

  Peter gave a start of deep-seated anxiety. Who knew who was after him, what places they’d be watching? And waiting. “Please.”

  “Fear not, Chief,” Tyrone said. “I know jus’ where to go.”

  “Someplace safe,” Peter mumbled.

  “Please,” Tyrone said. “Gimme a fuckin’ break.”

  They arrived at Deron’s house in Northeast DC seven minutes later, Tyrone having broken every traffic ordinance known to the district. Tyrone, brought up in this African American ghetto, had never held any truck with traffic laws, and now that he worked for CI he never gave them a second thought. Any cop stupid enough to pull him over got a face full of his federal ID and backed off faster than a rat looking at a cat.

  Back in the day, Tyrone had worked for Deron, a tall, handsome black man with a British education and cultured accent that stood him in good stead with his international clientele of shady art dealers trafficking in Deron’s magnificent forgeries. Deron also created all of Jason Bourne’s forged documents, and some of his weapons as well. It was because of Bourne’s friend Soraya Moore that Tyrone had decided to heed Deron’s advice, leave the hood behind, apply himself, and train for work at CI. He’d never worked harder in his life, but the rewards had been many and worth it.

  “What the bloody hell happened?” Deron said, as he helped Tyrone carry Peter into the house.

  “Fucking meat grinder is what happened.”

  Peter seemed delirious, rambling incoherently about making calls, dire warnings, pieces of a puzzle.

  “Any idea what he’s on about?” Deron asked.

  Tyrone shook his head. “Shit, no. All he was goin’ on about on the way over was I shouldn’t take him to a hospital.”

  “Hmm, Jason wouldn’t want that, either.”

  Tyrone helped his former mentor lay Peter on the sofa.

  “Details,” Deron said.

  Tyrone recounted the scene with the ambulance, the men shot, the driver beating up on Peter. “I brought him right over here,” he concluded, handing over the Glock he’d snatched up from the gutter before helping Peter onto his motorcycle.

  “I hope you didn’t handle it too much.”

  “Little as I could,” Tyrone said.

  Deron nodded, clearly pleased. After carefully putting the gun into a plastic bag, he surveyed the battleground of Peter’s body. “You know him?”

  “Yeah. He Soraya’s pal, Peter Marks. Used to work with her at Typhon before she was canned.”

  Deron went to fetch his extensive first-aid kit. Peter was still softly raving. “Call him, tell him…”

  Tyrone bent over him. “Who, Peter? Who do you want to call?”

  Peter just thrashed, mumbled words tumbling from his bloodstained lips.

  “Hold him down so he doesn’t hurt himself,” Deron said.

  “This here Peter left CI,” Tyrone went on. “Don’t know what he been up to since then, but seeing him like this, it sure as fuck can’t be healthy.”

  Deron returned, knelt down beside Marks, and opened the case. “Son, you have got to work on your King’s English.”

  “Say what?”

  Deron gave a short laugh. “Never mind. We’ll work on your pronunciation later.” He administered a shot into Peter’s arm.

  “No, no!” Peter cried, his eyes not quite focused. “Must call, must tell him…” But then the anesthetic took him and, calmed, he slipped into unconsciousness.

  Deron pulled apart Peter’s shirt, sticky with blood. Peter’s chest was studded with glass and metal shards, a miniature graveyard. “Right now, Tyrone, let’s you and me make this man right.”

  Soraya heard the pounding of feet, and she turned, in a half crouch, ready to defend herself. But it was Amun, sprinting into the feeble light of the staircase.

  “Are you all right?” he said from the foot of the stairs.

  She nodded, unable for the moment to speak coherently. She was still reeling from Marchand’s second attack on her, and her chest hurt like hell. Marchand had seemed like the quintessential academic; she had never thought him capable of such viciousness, and thereby she had learned an important lesson.

  Amun, taking the stairs two steps at a time, said, “That the whoreson, Marchand?”

  She nodded again. “Dead.” It was the only word she was capable of uttering.

  “It’s over now. They’re all dead down there. What a rotten nest of vipers. We should—”

  His head exploded and he pitched forward into her arms. She screamed, staggering backward. He was deadweight. She saw a moving shadow, caught a glimpse of a red polo shirt. The man at the far end of the alley! Then a flash of metal. Another shot clanged off the stair railing, and, with her burden, she somersaulted backward, pitching down into the blackness.

  Two shots followed. Then another, loud as a cannon shot.

  Then nothing, not even an echo.

  Oblivion.

  18

  WAIT!” BORIS SAID. “Stop!”

  “What?”

  Despite the steady rain, Lana Lang was driving very fast down a street that paralleled the Mosque’s west side. The moment they had slewed into the dark, gloomy street, the hairs on the back of Karpov’s hands began to rise and he felt an unpleasant stirring of anxiety in the pit of his stomach.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “Back up!”

  “What for? We’re almost there.”

  Leaning over, he grabbed the gearshift and began to jerk wildly on it.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she cried.

  “Reversing out of here!”

  “Cut it out.” She fought him. “You’re stripping the goddamn gears.”

  “Then you do it.” He wouldn’t give up. “Step on the fucking—”

  A hail of bullets smashed the windshield, struck Lana Lang in the face, making her dance like a puppet. Boris, ducking down in the foot well, depressed the clutch with one hand and shoved Lana’s foot down on the accelerator with the other.

  The car screeched and moaned like a banshee. The drumbeat of rain sounded on the roof as it reversed, scraping along a brick wall. A shrieking commenced as sparking metal was stripped off the car’s passenger’s side. The door started to cave in, slamming into Boris’s right side. He fell across Lana’s lap. Her torso was being held upright by the seat belt across her chest, but there was no life left in her. Blood was everywhere, a fountain of it, a pool, a river running through the careening car.

  More bullets, shattering the headlights, shredding the front fenders. Then Karpov had pulled the wheel over and the car straightened out. It shot out of the street like a streak of lightning.

  The screech of brakes, the war-like blare of horns, shouts of fear and outrage. The fusillade had stopped and Boris risked looking up above the scarred dashboa

rd. The car sat crosswise, blocking the street. Lana’s corpse was preventing him from getting behind the wheel.

  Just then an air horn sounded, deep and braying. He looked in the other direction and saw an enormous refrigeration truck bearing down on him. It was going too fast—in the foul weather he knew the shocked driver wouldn’t be able to stop it in time.

  He turned and tried to open the door, but it was so crumpled it was jammed shut. No amount of tugging and hammering was going to open it. And anyway, it was too late. With the roar and squeal of a rabid animal, the truck was on top of him.

  We owe you a great debt,” Don Fernando Hererra said. “You did us a great service.”

  “And now I’d like my payment,” Bourne said. “I’m not an altruist.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong, Jason.” Don Fernando crossed one elegant leg over the other, opened a beautifully filigreed humidor, offered a robusto to Bourne, who declined. Don Fernando plucked one out and went about the elaborate ritual of cutting and lighting it. “You’re one of the world’s last true altruists.” He puffed, getting the cigar going. “In my opinion, that is what defines you.”

  The two men were sitting in Don Fernando’s comfortable living room. Vegas was lying down in one of the bedrooms, Don Fernando having administered a light sedative. As for Rosie, she’d disappeared into one of the guest bathrooms, saying she was in desperate need of a long, hot shower.

  That left Bourne and his host, a man whom he had gotten to know first in Seville, where they had matched wits and sparred verbally, and later, more intimately, in London following the violent death of the old man’s son.

  “I want half an hour alone with Jalal Essai,” Bourne said.

  A smile haloed Don Fernando’s lips. He leaned forward. “More sherry?” He refilled Bourne’s glass, which stood beside a plate of Serrano ham, pink and smoky, and rough-cut chunks of Manchego cheese.

  Bourne sat back. “Where is Essai, anyway?”

  Don Fernando shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Then I can start with you. Why are you friends with him?”

  “Not friends. Business partners. He’s a means to an end, nothing more.”

  “And those ends?”

  “He makes me money. Not drugs.”

  “Human beings?”

  Don Hernando crossed himself. “God forbid.”

  “He’s a liar,” Bourne said.

  “True enough.” Don Hernando nodded soberly. “He knows no other way of operating. It’s pathological.”

  Bourne sat forward. “What I really want to know, Don Fernando, is the nature of your connection with Severus Domna.”

  “Also a means to an end. At times, these people can be useful.”

  “They will compromise you, if they haven’t already.”

  Don Hernando’s smile was like a slow signal waxing. “Now you underestimate me, my young friend. I should be offended, but with you…” He waved a hand, dismissing the thought. “The fact is, ever since they formed an alliance with Abdul-Qahhar’s Mosque in Munich, I felt it incumbent on me to keep an eye on them.”

  Seeing Bourne’s expression, he chuckled. “I see I have surprised you. Good. You must learn, my friend, that all knowledge doesn’t reside with you.”

  Rosie stepped into the shower and was immediately wrapped in a column of steam. The water cascaded down her shoulders, her back, her breasts, and her flat stomach as she slowly turned. Closing her eyes against the spray, she felt her muscles melt into the heat. Lifting her arms, she ran her fingers through her hair, moving it back and off her face. She turned her face up to the spray, and the hot water streamed against her eyelids, nose, and cheeks. Slowly, she turned her head to one side and the other, the jets massaging her muscles. The water hit her ears, creating a roaring sound that reminded her of surf, the vastness of the sea, and for a time she lost herself in this image of unplumbed depths.

  The hot water struck the small tattoo on her ear, rat-tat-tatting against it, and gradually, the color began to fade and run, the serpent seeming to uncoil as it dissolved into a tiny pool of water tinged by the dye, running down her neck like tears, swirling down the drain.

  Don Fernando contemplated the glowing end of his cigar.

  “It all started with Benjamin El-Arian,” Bourne said, “didn’t it?”

  Rain had come at last, hard and tropical in its fury. It beat against the windowpanes, whipped the palm fronds in the atrium beyond the glass. A gust of wind rattled a loose tile on the roof.

  The old man stood, unfolding like an origami, and stepped to the French doors out to the atrium. He stared out, one hand at his temple.

  “I wish it were that simple,” he said at length. “A simple villain, a simple goal, yes, Jason? It’s what we all crave because then we are free of complications. But we both know that life rarely affords us time to wrap things up so neatly. When it comes to Severus Domna—nothing is simple.”

  Bourne rose and followed Don Fernando, standing next to him. The rain sheeted down the glass, bounced off the paving stones. Runnels of water sluiced out of the copper downspouts, overrunning the grass and plant beds. The earth was black as pitch.

  Don Fernando heaved a sigh. His cigar sandwiched between two fingers, all but forgotten.

  “No, I’m afraid there is a terrible kind of circular logic at work here. Listen, Jason, it all started with a man named Christien Norén.”

  Don Fernando turned, peering into Bourne’s face to see if the name triggered a spark of recognition.

  “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “I don’t remember ever hearing the name Christien Norén. Tell me about him.”

  “That’s not for me to do.” Don Fernando placed a hand on Bourne’s shoulder. “You must ask Estevan’s woman.”

  “Her name isn’t Rosie,” Bourne said, “is it?”

  Don Fernando stuck the cigar in his mouth, but the ash was cold and gray. “Go find her, Jason.”

  Clean and ruddy, Rosie stepped out of the shower, swaddled herself in a thick bath sheet, then wrapped a smaller towel around her hair, making a turban and tucking the end under. Wiping the fog from the mirror with her fingers, she leaned in over the sink, pushed up the makeshift turban, and stared at herself.

  Her hair was now its natural tawny blond, the last dregs of the dye ringing the shower drain. Holding her head still, she plucked the contact lens out of her right eye. There she was, one eye dark as coffee, the other the cerulean blue she was born with. One half of her in one world, the other in a second. Swinging open the mirror, she found inside the medicine cabinet everything she had asked for: nail clippers, file, an array of face scrubs and moisturizers. She removed what she needed.

  And that was how Bourne found her, as he opened the door to the bathroom. Rosie stared at his reflection in the mirror.

  “Don’t you knock?”

  “I think I’ve earned the right to come in on you unannounced,” he said.

  She turned slowly around to face him. “When did you figure it out?”

  “In the car,” Bourne said. “You’d never look at me directly. Then, when you turned to check on Estevan, I saw the edge of the contact lens.”

  “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “I wanted to see how it played out.”

  Cupping a hand, she bowed her head, popped the lens out of her left eye, and threw it in the trash can under the sink.

  “Is that your real hair color or another dye job?” Bourne asked.

  “This is me.”

  He stepped closer. She seemed utterly unafraid. “Not quite. Though the snake tattoo is gone, you still have a nose typical of native Colombians.” He peered more closely. “The operation was masterful.”

  “It took three separate reconstructions to get it just right.”

  “That’s a lot of trouble to go through to pass for an indigenous Colombian.”

  “Hiding in plain sight, my father used to say, is hiding completely.”

  “He?

??s right about that, your father. Christien Norén, is that right?”

  Rosie’s eyes opened wide. “Don Hernando told you then.”

  “I suppose he thought it was time.”

  She nodded. “I suppose it is.”

  “So, then. It’s you, not Estevan, who is so important to Don Hernando and Essai.”

  “It was me those people on the highway were after.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I told you I was running.”

  “From family, you said.”

  “In a way, it’s the truth. They’re the people my father worked for.”

  Bourne stood very close to her. She smelled of lavender soap and citrus shampoo. “What shall I call you?”

  She gave him an enigmatic smile. She came toward him, so close there was scarcely a handbreadth between them.

  “I was born Kaja Norén. My father was named Christien, my mother, Viveka. They’re both dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  Kaja laid one hand on his cheek, stroking it gently. With the other, she drove the nail file she had palmed through skin and layers of muscle.

  Book Three

  19

  CLUTCHING THE HIGH-HEELED shoe he had ripped off Lana Lang’s foot, Boris attacked the bullet-shattered windshield just as the truck plowed into Lana’s car. The front and side air bags deployed, saving him from a dislocated shoulder. Still, he almost lost consciousness. Pulling himself together, he hacked at the windshield, using the heel like a hammer.

  The truck driver slammed on the brakes, but the momentum of the two-ton vehicle was too much. The truck dragged the car along with it. The brake pads started to smoke, something fell out of the bottom of the car, sparks flying as it scraped the wet roadbed.

  Arms crossed over his face, Boris sprang through the ruined windshield, the crack and tinkle of safety glass in his ears. The car shuddered beneath him like a shot deer. He rolled across the hood, then dropped awkwardly down onto the road. Pain stabbed briefly through his foot and up into his leg. Rain beat down on him, soaking him instantly. The car and truck, now one grotesque unit, continued on, slewing heavily, overheated, tortured metal screaming. The truck’s brakes seized up and the mass skidded, like a planet thrown out of orbit. Then truck and car both jumped the curb and plowed through a plate-glass storefront. With a horrendous sound like an animal screaming in pain, they smashed the interior to smithereens and impacted the rear wall.