Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

4

THE MAN, BIG, BURLY,and round-shouldered, resembled a bear. Clad in a bespoke sharkskin suit that cost more than the yearly salaries of many of his minions, he stood in the sun-splashed Place de la Concorde. The ceaseless clamor of tourists sounded to him like the hammering of a flock of woodpeckers. The endless spiral of traffic surrounding the cement island on which he stood was like death, speeding by always a little out of reach, until the moment when it ran over you, pounding you into the cobbles before speeding onward. He thought of the wasted days of his youth, before he had found himself, before he had discovered how to work his inner strength; time wasted, and now gone forever.

The Place de la Concorde was a favorite meeting place of his when he was in Paris because of its proximity to death, both present and past. It was the place where the guillotine had sliced off the head of Marie Antoinette, among many others, guilty and innocent alike, during France’s notorious Reign of Terror. He liked the sound of that phrase, Règne de la Terreur, in any language.

His head turned and he saw her striding across the wide street on impossibly long legs as the light turned, favoring her. She came hidden within a cloud of tourists, seeing him, but totally ignoring him until she was on the far side of the 3,300-year-old Egyptian obelisk glorifying the reign of Rameses II. Given to France by Mehmet Ali, the Ottoman viceroy in 1829, it had originally marked the entrance to the Temple of Luxor. As such, it was a remarkable historical treasure. The man thought about this as the crowds of tourists ebbed and flowed around it without giving it more than a cursory glance. Every day now the history of the world was being lost, plowed under by the mountains of digital effluvia venting off the Internet, scanned by growing millions on their smartphones or iPads. The lives of Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, and Jennifer Aniston were of more interest to the new masses than were those of Marcel Proust, Richard Wagner, or Victor Hugo, if they even knew who these august personages were.

The man resisted the urge to spit, instead smiling as he slipped through the throngs to the west side of the obelisk where Martha Christiana stood, hands in the pockets of her avant black-and-red L’Wren Scott swing coat, beneath which a deep plum suede pencil skirt from the same designer showed off the shapely lower half of her body. She did not turn when she felt his presence at her left shoulder, but tilted her head in his direction.

“It’s good to see you, my friend,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

“Too long, chérie.”

Her full lips curved slightly in her Mona Lisa smile. “Now you flatter me.”

He barked a laugh. “There’s no need.”

He was right: she was a strikingly beautiful woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed, Latin in both features and temperament. She could be fiery as well as feisty. In any case, she knew who she was. She was her own woman, which he admired, all the while attempting to tame her. So far, he had not succeeded, for which a part of him was grateful. Martha would not have been half as useful to him if he had managed to break her spirit. Often, in his infrequent idle moments, he found himself wondering why she kept coming back to him. He had nothing on her; besides, she was no one to be coerced—he had found that out on their second meeting. He turned his mind away from that dark time to the pressing matter that necessitated today’s meeting.

Martha was leaning back against the massive obelisk, legs crossed at her tiny ankles. Her Louboutins glittered richly.

“When I was young,” he said, “I used to believe in the concept of reward, as if life were fair and predetermined, as if life couldn’t put undreamed-of and unacceptable obstacles in my path. So what happened? I failed, again and again. I failed until my head hurt and I realized that I had been fooling myself. I knew nothing about life.”

He shook out a cigarette, offered her one, then took one himself. He lit them both, first hers, then his. When he leaned in, he smelled her perfume, which held notes of citrus and cinnamon. Something deep inside him quivered. Cinnamon, especially, presented a special erotic note for him. Many intimate associations flooded his mind before he clamped down on them. Standing up straight, he filled his lungs with nicotine as a way of distancing himself from the past while he spoke.

“I realized that life was trying to guide me,” he continued, “to teach me the lessons I would need in order not only to survive, but to prosper. I realized that I would have to shed my pride, I would have to embrace the unacceptable obstacles, to find the way through them, rather than turning away from them. Because the path to success– anyone’s success, not only mine—lies through them.”

Martha Christiana listened to him silently, solemnly, following every word. He liked that about her. She was not so self-involved that she failed to hear what was important. This quality alone separated her from the masses. She was like him.

“Every time the unacceptable is accepted, there is a change,” she said finally. “Change or die, that is the central thesis we both absorbed, isn’t it? And as the changes add up, a certain metamorphosis occurs. And, suddenly, we are different.”

“More different than we ever thought we’d be.”

She nodded, her gaze fixed on the rows of horse chestnuts flanking the wide, perfectly straight Champs. “And now here we are, once again waiting for the shadows to fall.”

“On the contrary,” he said, “we are the shadows.”

Martha Christiana chuckled, nodding. “Indeed.”

They smoked silently, companionably, for several minutes while the crush of people and traffic ebbed and flowed around them. In the distance, down the Champs, he could see the Arc de Triomph, shimmering like Martha’s Louboutins.

At length, he dropped his cigarette butt and ground it under his heel. “You have a car?”

“Standing by, as usual.”

“Good.” He nodded, then licked his lips. “I’ve got a problem.” He always began the business end of their conversations in the same way. The ritualistic opening calming him. He always had problems, but he rarely called on Martha Christiana to solve them. He hoarded her special talents for the problems he felt certain no one else could handle.

“Male or female?” asked Martha Christiana.

He slipped a photo out of an inner pocket and handed it over. “Ah, what a handsome devil!” Her lips curled up. “I could go for this one.”

“Right.” He laughed as he handed over a USB thumb drive. “All the relevant information on the target is on here, though I know you like to do your own digging.”

“On occasion. I like to hit all the notes, even the trivial ones.” She looked over at him. “And where is this Don Fernando Hererra currently residing?”

“He’s on the move.” He showed bits of his teeth, the color of ivory mah-jongg tiles. “He’s searching for me.”

Martha Christiana raised her eyebrows. “He doesn’t look like a killer.”

“He isn’t.”

“Then what does he want? And why do you want him terminated?”

He sighed. “He wants everything. Don Fernando wants to extract something from me far more precious than my life.”

Now Martha Christiana turned to him fully, her face full of concern. “What would that be, guapo?”

“My legacy.” He puffed air out of his mouth. “He wants to take everything I have, everything I ever will have, away from me.”

“I will not let him.”

He smiled like beaten brass and touched the back of her hand as lightly as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. “Martha, when you are finished, I will have someone come fetch you. There is a very special commission I need you for.”

Martha Christiana returned his smile as she pushed herself off the obelisk. “Don Fernando Hererra will be taken care of.”

He smiled. “I know he will.”

This thing with Bourne, this liaison,” Ze’ev said, “is fucking foolish, it isn’t worth it. It will be the death of you, Ben David will see to that.” Rebeka clucked her tongue. “This is what you traveled all the way from Tel Aviv to tell me?”

“I’m trying to help you. Why can’t you see that?”

She narrowed her eyes against the glare of sunlight peeking through shredding clouds in the wake of the swiftly moving storm. They were tramping through the freshly fallen hillocks of white. Ahead of them, the water was a pearlescent gray, as if it were an extension of the steeply sloping shingle. They were walking, maybe in circles. It seemed like it, anyway. Small blue-roofed cottages dotted the landscape. Here and there, men could be seen uncovering walkways to their front doors. She wanted to get back to Sadelöga, but Ze’ev was making things difficult. She knew she had to find a way to turn his appearance to her advantage, and she had precious little time in which to do it.

“I’m trying to understand what you get out of it.”

He cracked his large knuckles. He wasn’t wearing gloves. His hands were as white as a corpse’s. Though stationed in Tel Aviv, Ze’ev was one of Colonel Ben David’s men. That, in and of itself, made him dangerous. But there were other reasons to be wary of him if what she had heard at Dahr El Ahmar could be trusted.

“Out of what?” he said.

“I’m willing to bet that your helping me won’t sit well with either Amit or the Director.”

He flexed his powder-white fingers. A show of strength or a warning? “Neither of them know, or will know.”

She regarded him with a hard, skeptical glance, and he sighed. “All right, here’s the deal. Ilan Halevy has had it in for me ever since he’s risen in the ranks.”

Ilan Halevy, the Babylonian. “Why would that be?”

Ze’ev blew a breath out through his nose, a horse snorting under a too-tight rein. “I tried to get him sectioned out of Mossad. It was at the beginning of his career; he was a loose cannon, learned his lessons, then did everything his way, not Mossad’s way.”

“Turns out you were wrong.”

Ze’ev nodded. “He’s never let me forget it, either. He won’t be happy till he forces me out.”

“Ilan Halevy doesn’t know the meaning of the word happy.”

“Still...”

She nodded. “So, all right, the two of you hate each other’s guts. What does that have to do with me?”

“I want him to fail.”

“Not just fail.”

“No. I want him to fail spectacularly, a failure he cannot crawl out from under.”

Rebeka considered a moment. “You have a plan.”

The ghost of a smile made a brief appearance, then was gone. “There’s no way to turn him back. You said so yourself.”

“Yes, that would be a complete waste of time. Instead, we lure him to Sadelöga.”

“And then what?”

“Then we’ll be waiting.”

The DC offices of Politics As Usualwere on E Street NW.

Soraya tried not to think as she rode up to the sixteenth floor along with a fistful of suits talking options, margin calls, and Forex strategies. She forced herself off as soon as the doors opened, striding right to the curving front banc formed of sheets of burl maple and stainless steel.

“Is Charles in?” she said to Marsha, the receptionist.

“He is, Ms. Moore,” Marsha said with a thoroughly professional smile. “Why don’t you have a seat while I call him.”

“I’m fine right here.”

Marsha gave her a brief nod as she dialed Charles’s extension. Even this close, Soraya could only hear an indistinct murmur. While she waited, she glanced around the reception area, even though she knew it well. Laminated plaques commemorating the online news agency’s Peabody– and Pulitzer-Prize–winning stories were everywhere in evidence. Her eye fell inevitably on the brilliant piece Charles had written two years ago, centering on a powerful but littleknown Arab terrorist cell in Syria. Hardly surprising, since that was how he had come to her attention. She had called on him in order to appropriate at least some of his sources, with little result.

She sensed him then, as she always did, and her head came up, a smile on her full lips. He was tall and slender, with a crop of unruly and prematurely gray hair. He was, as usual, impeccably dressed in a midnight-blue suit, dove-gray shirt, and water-print tie in muted colors.

He beckoned to her as soon as he saw her, but there was something troubling in his smile that she couldn’t place and that sent a thread of disquiet through her. She began to question her decision. Part of her wanted to turn, enter the elevator, and never see him again.

Instead, she stepped forward and, with his hand lightly at the small of her back, walked with him down the hallway to his corner office. Just before she stepped inside, she saw the plaque affixed to the wall just to the right of the doorway: charles thorne, deputy editor in chief.

He closed the door behind him.

I need to get this over with as quickly as possible,she thought, before I lose my nerve.“Charles,” she said as she sat down.

“It’s fortuitous you came here just now.” He raised a hand, forestalling her, and carefully and deliberately drew the blinds. “Soraya, before you say anything—”

Oh, no,she thought. He’s going to give me the “I love my wife” thing. Not now, please not now.

“I have to tell you something in strictest confidence. Yes?”

Here we go. She swallowed hard. “Yes, of course.”

He took a deep breath and let it out with a kind of thin whistling sound. “We’re being investigated by the FBI.”

Her heart lurched in her chest. “We?”

“ Politics As Usual. Marchand.” The publisher. “Davidoff.” The editor in chief. “Me.”

“I...don’t understand.” Her pulse was beating an unpleasant tattoo in her temples. “What for?”

Charles ran a hand across his face. “Wiretapping—specifically victims of crimes, prominent celebrities, NYC police, some pols.” He hesitated, pain in his eyes. “Nine-eleven victims.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Sadly, I’m not.”

She felt hot, as if she had contracted a tropical fever. “But...is it true?”

“You and I have to...” He coughed, cleared his throat. “We have to go our separate ways.”

“But you—” She shook her head, her ears ringing. “How could you possibly—?”

“Not me, Soraya. I swear it wasn’t me.”

He’s not going to answer my question, she thought. He’s not going to tell me.And then, looking into his eyes, she heard his voice again: “ We have to go our separate ways.”

Stumbling, she struck the backs of her knees on a chair and she sat down, quickly and hard.

“Soraya?”

She did not know what to say, did not even know what to think. She was struggling simply to breathe normally again. In the space of a heartbeat, her world had been turned upside down. They couldn’t separate, not now. It was unthinkable. All at once, she remembered a dinner she’d had with Delia the night after she had met Charles.

“Are you insane?” Delia had said, wide-eyed. “Charles Thorne? Seriously? Do you know who he’s married to?”

“I do,” Soraya had said. “Of course I do.”

“And still you...?” Delia had broken off in disbelief.

“We couldn’t help ourselves.”

“Of course you could help yourselves.” Delia was angry now. “You’re adults.”

“This is something that adults do, Dee. That’s why they call it—”

“Don’t,” Delia had said, holding her palms up toward her friend. “Dear God, don’t you dare say it.”

“It isn’t a one-night stand, if that makes a difference.”

“Of course it makes a difference,” Delia had said, a bit too loudly. Then she lowered her voice to a fierce whisper. “Dammit, Raya, the longer this goes on, the worse it becomes!”

Soraya remembered how she had reached out and taken her friend’s hand. “Don’t be angry, Dee.” She hadn’t been listening, not really. “Be happy for me.”

“The longer this goes on, the worse it becomes.”

“Soraya?” Thorne had repeated. When he saw her expression, he looked stricken.

And now, Soraya thought, returning to the dreadful present, the worst had happened. Now she had to tell him. It was the only way for them to stay together, to ensure their relationship continued uninterrupted.

She opened her mouth to do it but, instead, her mind rebelled. Is this what I’ve reduced the baby to—a pawn?An immediate wave of disgust overwhelmed her and, leaning forward, she grabbed his wastepaper basket and vomited into it.

“Soraya?” He hurried toward her. “Are you ill?”

“I don’t feel well,” she whispered thickly.

“I’ll call a taxi.”

She waved away his words. “I’ll be all right soon enough.” She had to tell him, she knew she had no choice, but another wave rose up into her throat, gagging her, clogging her throat, and she thought, Not today. Just give me a day’s respite.

An hour before he was set to embark with Alef for Sadelöga, Bourne had a dream. In the dream, he had been shot, pitched into the storm-dark waters of the Mediterranean, but instead of losing consciousness, as he had when this had occurred many years ago, he remained alert to the electric bolts of pain transfiguring his head into a short-circuiting engine.

As he struggled in the darkness, he became aware that he was not alone. There was a presence eeling its way up from the depths of the sea, long and thin, a monstrous sea snake of some sort. It wrapped its long length around him while its fanged mouth darted in toward him. Again and again, he fought it off, but with each second that ticked by strength passed out of him, dissipating into the inky water. And as his strength waned, so the monster’s strength waxed, until it reared back, opened its mouth, and said, “You’ll never know who I am. Why don’t you stop trying?”

It unwound itself from him, slipping away even as he grabbed for it, even as his desire to know it became unbearable...He woke up.

Sweating heavily, he threw the covers off his naked body and padded into the bathroom, stepping into the shower even before he turned on the taps. The icy water hit him like a fist, which is what he wanted, to get away from the last coiling tendrils of the dream as quickly and completely as he could. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that dream. It always ended the same way. He knew the sea eel was his past, lurking in the deepest depths of his unconscious, coiling and uncoiling, but never revealing itself to him. If the sea eel was to be believed, it never would.

When he was shaved and dressed, he sat on the edge of his bed and called Soraya, using his new satphone. They had an arrangement to check in with each other periodically, which worked well for both of them. Often they were able to swap intel to their mutual advantage.

It was the middle of the night in DC, and it was clear that he had woken her up.

“Are you all right?” her asked.

“I’m perfectly fine. I just had a long, difficult day.”

At once he knew she wasn’t telling him the whole truth, even though she insisted nothing was wrong. He kept at her until she admitted that the concussion she had gotten in Paris had become worse. That was all she would say, other than that she was being closely monitored by her doctor. Then she mentioned Nicodemo, and Bourne told her about his conversation with Christien, that Nicodemo was somehow involved with Core Energy and, specifically, its CEO, Tom Brick.

“You mean Nicodemo is real?” she said when he had finished.

“Christien and Don Fernando certainly think so. Can you do some digging into Core Energy and Brick for me?”

“Of course.”

“Take care of yourself, Soraya.”

There was a slight hesitation before she said, “You, too.”

Ninety minutes later, with the sky clearing in the east, the last clots of night gathered like refuse in the street gutters, he and Alef were in one of Christien’s cars, heading out of Stockholm toward Sadelöga.

“You don’t look too good,” Alef said as they hit the highway and hurtled down it at breakneck speed.

Bourne said nothing. Every few minutes his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, memorizing the makes, models, and positions of the vehicles behind them.

Alef’s gaze automatically went to the side mirror. “Expecting company?”

“I’m always expecting company.”

Alef laughed shortly. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Bourne gave him a long, keen look. “You do?”

“What?”

“You said you knew what I meant when I said I’m always expecting company. Howdo you know?”

Alef returned his gaze and shook his head helplessly. “I have no idea.”

“Think!”

Bourne said it so sharply that Alef jumped.

“I don’t know. I just do.” His eyes returned to the side mirror. “Nothing suspicious.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

Alef nodded, accepting this judgment. “I have a good feeling about Sadelöga. Going back, I mean.”

“You think it will help you remember.”

“I do, yes. If anything will...”

His voice dropped off and they rode the rest of the way in silence. Christien had a boat waiting—the same one he and Bourne had been fishing in when they pulled Alef out of the water. Someone had cleaned it up. No trace of blood could be detected on its interior.

Bourne saw Alef into the boat, then untied the ropes and, pushing off with his boot, jumped in. They motored slowly over to Sadelöga. The air was wet and heavy. A low mist lay over parts of the water like a shroud. As they neared Sadelöga, Alef began to look around.

“Anything look familiar?” Bourne’s breath made little clouds in the icy air.

Alef shook his head.

Several minutes later, Bourne slowed. “This is where we hauled you out of the water. You couldn’t have been in too long, so we must be near where you were shot.”

Slowing further, he nosed the boat in closer, paralleling the shore.

“Let me know,” he said.

Alef nodded. He appeared increasingly agitated, like someone approaching his own death. Bourne knew the feeling. Beneath the tendrils of fog, chunks of ice could be seen milling against the shoreline. In just the few days since they had been here, the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. The cold had silenced even the usually gregarious gulls. It was painful to pull air into the lungs.

“I don’t know,” Alef said miserably. “I don’t know.” And then, all at once, his head came up like a hunting dog on point. “There!” He was quivering. “Over there!”

Bourne turned the boat, heading in to shore.

You’ve been spying on her!” Delia looked at Peter incredulously. “She’s your friend, for God’s sake.”

“I know, but—”

“You people are incredible.” She shook her head. “Inhuman.” “Delia, it’s becauseI’m Soraya’s friend that I followed her.” Delia snorted skeptically. They were in her office, where Peter had come to see her. She had kicked the door closed as soon as he had

asked his first question.

“What was she doing at the offices of Politics As Usual?” “Gosh,” Delia said, “aren’t you going to ask me what she and I

talked about at lunch?”

“I assumed it had something to do with her visit to Dr. Steen.” Delia, head shaking again, backed away from him until she was behind her desk. “I don’t know what you think is going on—” “I’m asking you to tell me.”

“You need to ask Soraya these questions, not me.”

“She won’t talk to me about them.”

“Then you have to understand that she has good reason.” “See, that’s the thing,” Peter said, taking a step toward her, “I don’t think her reasoning is sound.”

Delia spread her hands. “I don’t know what—”

“I think she’s in trouble,” he said. “I’m asking you to help me help

her.”

“No, Peter. You’re asking me to betray her trust.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I won’t, no matter what you say or do.” He stared at her for what seemed a long time. “I care about her,

Delia. Deeply and truly.”

“Then go back to your work. Leave this alone.”

“I want to help her.”

“ Helpis a relative term. If you pursue this, I promise you it will only end in tears.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure what you—”

“Whatever she’s going through, she doesn’t want to share it with you.” Delia smiled coldly at him. “It will be the end of your friendship, Peter. That’s what I mean.”

Alef scrambled ashore even before the boat had run up onto the snow-covered shingle.

“Wait!” Bourne called as he cut the motor. Then, cursing, he leaped onto the bank, sprinting after Alef.

“There’s a copse of pines and a lake,” Alef said, as if to himself. “Somewhere, somewhere.” His eyes were wide and staring and his head jerked back and forth on the stalk of his neck.

Bourne was almost upon him when he burst through a small stand of pines and saw the lake. It looked solidly frozen.

“I remember crossing this,” he said as Bourne caught up with him.

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” Bourne said. “Why were you here?”

Alef shook his head. “I crossed the lake or—” He took a step onto the ice. “I was trying to get away.”

“Get away from who?” Bourne pressed him. “Who was chasing you?”

“That lake.” Alef had begun to shake. “That damn lake.”

A kind of electric storm bursts behind his eyes as shards of memories bubble up from the fog of his amnesia. He sees himself, hears the panting of his breath, sees the slim figure skating lithely after him as if on blades. An abrupt blank, the memory-lamp inside his head extinguished, then he feels himself stumbling. The next instant, he is down on his knees, the figure is rushing inexorably toward him, and he turns, aims his handgun, but he stumbles, and it goes flying. He wants to scramble after it, but there’s no time. He’s off and running again, running for his life.

These memories rush at him like an attacking army, flickering in and out of focus. In between is the darkness of the befogged abyss he has come to know as amnesia—his life ripped away from him, forever beyond his grasp. The grief that had held him fast quickly morphs into panic welling up inside him as shards of memory stab him so fast and furiously that he becomes overwhelmed, disoriented, briefly insane.

Alef blinked, back in the present.

“Okay.” Shadowed by pines, at the edge of the flat, glittering expanse, Bourne began to guide him back toward the shoreline where he had moored the boat. “I think that’s enough for today.”

“No! My life is back there! I have to get it back!” Alef broke away, hit the ice, but before he could take another step Bourne grabbed him, jerking him back into the shelter of the trees.

“You can’t go out there,” Bourne said. “It’s too exposed, too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

Bourne shook him briefly, trying to get him to focus. “You were shot, remember? Someone is after you.”

“I’m dead, Jason.” He stared wide-eyed. “Don’t you see? No one’s after me now.”

Bourne saw that this trip that he and Christien had decided on was a mistake. It was too soon. Alef was losing his grip on reality. “Let’s go back to the boat and talk it through calmly and rationally.”

Alef hesitated, staring out across the icy expanse of the lake, then nodded. “Okay.”

But the instant Bourne let go, he broke away, began to skate onto the lake, his legs splayed, his arms straight out like airplane wings to keep himself from sprawling headfirst onto the ice.

Bourne lunged after him, one eye on Alef, the other on the trees, dense enough to hide a regiment, that ringed the lake. The wind whipped slivers of ice into his face. He raised one hand to shield his eyes, and heard the sharp report as if it were an afterimage, there and gone before it registered. Thick shards of ice fountained up as the sharpshooter squeezed off two more shots, creating a deep gouge in the ice just in front of where Alef stood.

Bourne slammed into Alef, covering him but, at the same time, sliding both of them forward into the gouge made by the sniper’s bullets. The ice cracked in a spiderweb beneath them. Bourne tried to back up, hauling Alef with him, but bullets struck the ice behind him, pinning him down, and now, with a deep groan, the ice gave way, plunging both of them down, a surprisingly strong current sucking them out into icy darkness.

5

WATER RUSHED INTO Bourne’s nose, stinging his nostrils. It was no wonder the ice cracked—this was a salt water lake. He was forced to let go of the gun in order to reach for Alef, who was sinking faster. Bourne had to turn, aim himself down, giving powerful kicks to force himself to accelerate like an arrow loosed from a bow, in an attempt to catch up with Alef.

Within moments, the cold penetrated his jacket and boots. He could feel his heart hammering faster as his core temperature came under attack. By the time it actually started to drop, it would be too late. He wouldn’t have strength enough to push himself up through the gelid water, let alone drag Alef with him.

Without light there was no direction. Bourne, an expert diver, knew how easy it was for even professional divers to become disoriented on night dives, or when adverse conditions like nitrogen narcosis began to affect them. Extreme cold was another serious danger that could slow the mind and cause wrong decisions to be made. This far down in the icy depths, wrong decisions would be fatal.

Bourne’s lungs were bursting, he could no longer feel his toes, and his fingers felt thick and unwieldy. Head pounding, he made one more desperate kick downward, felt Alef’s collar, and hauled upward. Reversing his body, he kicked rhythmically, trying to keep his mind occupied in the present, even while flickers of his own near-drowning, which had caused his amnesia, flashed through his mind.

He found it increasingly difficult to stay in the present, to keep his body working at peak level, never mind peak efficiency. There was nowhere for him to go in the Mediterranean, only he wasn’t in the Mediterranean, he was far, far to the north. But a kind of peaceful warmth was stealing over him, a great lethargy even as his legs continued to pump, even as he continued his hold on Alef. But if he was warm, wasn’t he in the Mediterranean? He must be. He had been shot, cast overboard out of Marseilles and now...Now he saw himself held fast in the dense shadows of jungle foliage. He was standing behind a man who knelt on the ground, wrists bound at the small of his back. He saw himself gripping a military-issue .45, saw himself pressing its muzzle against the base of the man’s skull, saw himself pull the trigger. And saw Jason Bourne crash to the jungle floor, dead...

He wanted to cry out. An icy shiver slithered down his spine and he twisted back and forth, as if trying to rid himself of the nightmarish images. Then he looked up, saw a lighter patch in the endless darkness, a way out!

Glancing down, he saw Alef’s pinched, white face, and the sight galvanized him, dissipating his lethargy, his slide into the nightmarish watery wastes. Kicking out with renewed energy, he saw the pale patch widening, growing brighter and brighter until he breached the surface, gulping air into his burning lungs. He renewed his grip on Alef as the unconscious man grew heavier the farther he hauled him out of the water.