The Bourne Deception (Jason Bourne 7)

Book One

1

Three Months Later

IN AN UPPER-CLASS SUBURB of Munich, two young bodyguards with gimlet eyes and holstered 9mm Glocks in their armpits flanked a thin, hyperactive man as he emerged from a house. An older man with dark skin and grave lines reaching down from either corner of his mouth, like mustaches, emerged from the shadowed refuge to briefly shake the hyperactive man’s hand. Then the three men trotted down the stairs and entered a waiting car: one of the bodyguards riding shotgun, the other one with the hyperactive man in back. The meeting had been intense but brief, and the engine was already running, purring like a well-fed cat. His mind was filled with how he was going to structure the debriefing he would give his boss, Abdulla Khoury, on the rapidly changing face of the Turkish situation as it had just been outlined to him.

The newborn morning lay drowsing, barely awake, and utterly silent. The trees, well manicured and leafy, dappled the sidewalks in inky shade. The air was soft and cool, as yet innocent of the harsh sun that would turn the sky white in a few hours’ time. The early hour had been deliberately chosen. As expected, there was no traffic to speak of, just a young boy at the far end of the block teaching himself to ride a bicycle. A sanitation truck lumbered around the corner at the opposite end of the block, its huge brushes beginning to spin whatever dirt there might be on the nearly immaculate street into the truck’s belly. Again, the sight was utterly normal; the residents of this neighborhood all had pull with the municipal government, and they were proud of the fact that their streets were always the first to be cleaned each day.

As the car gathered speed, making its way down the street, the huge truck turned so that it was sideways to the oncoming vehicle, blocking the road. Without an instant’s hesitation the car’s driver threw the vehicle into reverse and stepped on the gas. With a screech of tires the car shot backward, away from the truck. At the sound, the boy looked up. He was standing, straddling the bike, appearing to get his wind back. But at the last moment, as the oncoming car neared him, he reached into the bike’s wicker basket and drew out an odd-looking weapon with an unnaturally long barrel. The rocket-launched grenade shattered the car’s rear window and the car burst apart in an oily orange-and-black fireball. By this time the boy, hunched over the handlebars of his bike, was pedaling expertly away, a satisfied smile on his face.

Just past noon that same day, Leonid Arkadin was sitting in a Munich beer hall surrounded by oompah music and drunken Germans when his cell phone buzzed. Recognizing the caller’s phone number, he walked out into the street, where it was slightly less noisy, and grunted a wordless greeting.

“Like the others, your latest attempt to destroy the Eastern Brotherhood has failed.” Abdulla Khoury’s ugly voice buzzed in his ear like an angry wasp. “You killed my finance minister this morning, that’s all. I’ve already appointed another.”

“You misunderstand me, I don’t mean to destroy the Eastern Brotherhood,” Arkadin said. “I mean to take it over.”

The response was a harsh laugh devoid of all humor, or even human emotion. “No matter how many of my associates you kill, Arkadin, this I assure you: I will always survive.”

Moira Trevor was sitting behind her sparkling new chrome-and-glass desk, in the sparkling new offices of Heartland Risk Management, LLC, her brand-new company, occupying two floors of a post-modern building in the heart of Northwest Washington, DC. She was on the phone with Steve Stevenson, one of her contacts in the Department of Defense, being briefed on a lucrative job her new company had been hired to do, one of half a dozen that had rolled in over the past five weeks, and simultaneously running through sets of daily intelligence reports on her computer terminal. Beside it was a snapshot of her and Jason Bourne, the Bali sun on their faces. In the background was Mount Agung, the island’s sacred volcano, up whose spine they had trekked early one morning before sunlight kissed the eastern horizon. Her face was completely relaxed; she looked ten years younger. As for Bourne, he was smiling in that enigmatic way she loved. She used to trace the line of his lips when he smiled like that, as if she were a blind woman able to glean a hidden meaning with her fingertip.

When her intercom sounded, she started, realizing she’d been gazing at the photo, her thoughts wandering back, as they often did these days, to those golden days on Bali before Bourne was gunned down in the dirt of Tenganan. Glancing at the electronic clock on her desk, she gathered herself, finished up her call, and said “Send him in” into the intercom speaker.

A moment later Noah Perlis entered. He was her former handler at Black River, a private mercenary army used by the United States in Middle East hot spots. Moira’s firm was now in direct competition with Black River. Noah’s narrow face was more sallow than ever, his hair flecked with more gray. His long nose swept out like a sword-stroke above a mouth that had forgotten how to laugh or even smile. He prided himself on his keen insight into other people, which was ironic considering he was so heavily defended he was cut off even from himself.

She gestured at one of the contemporary chrome and black-strap chairs facing her desk. “Take a seat.”

He remained standing, as if he already had one foot out the door. “I’ve come to tell you to stop raiding our personnel.”

“You mean you’ve been sent like a common messenger.” Moira looked up, smiled with a warmth she didn’t feel. Her uptilted brown eyes, wide apart and inquiring, betrayed none of her feelings. Her face was uncommonly strong or intimidating, depending on your point of view. Nevertheless, she possessed a serenity that served her well in stressful situations such as this one.

Bourne had warned her even before she set up Heartland almost three months ago that this moment was going to come. Something inside her had been looking forward to it. Noah had come to personify Black River, and she’d been under his boot heel for too long.

Taking several steps toward her, he plucked the framed photograph off her desk, then turned it to gaze down at the image.

“Too bad about your boyfriend,” he said. “Got gunned down in a stinking village in the middle of nowhere. You must have been broken up.”

Moira had no intention of allowing him to upset her. “It’s nice to see you, Noah.”

He sneered as he replaced the photo. “Nice is a word people use when they politely lie.”

Her face held its innocent expression, a form of armor against his slings and arrows. “Why shouldn’t we continue to be polite to each other?”

Noah returned to stand with his fingers curled hard into his palms. His knuckles were white with the force he used to make his fists, and Moira couldn’t help but wonder whether he wished he had his hands around her neck rather than hanging at his sides.

“I’m very fucking serious, Moira.” His eyes engaged hers. Noah could be a scary individual when he put his mind to it. “There’s no turning back for you, but as for going forward in the way you have…” He shook his head in warning.

Moira shrugged. “No problem. The fact is, you have no people left who meet my ethical requirements.”

Her words had the effect of relaxing him enough to say in an entirely different tone, “Why are you doing this?”

“Why are you asking me a question to which you already know the answer?”

He stared at her, keeping silent, until she continued, “There needs to be a legitimate alternative to Black River, one whose members don’t skate at the edge of legality, then regularly cross over.”

“This is a dirty business. You of all people know that.”

“Of course I know it. That’s why I started this company.” She rose, leaned across her desk. “Iran is now on everyone’s radar. I’m not going to sit back and let the same thing happen there that’s happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Noah turned on his heel and crossed to the door. With his hand on the knob he looked back at her with a cold intensity, an old trick of his. “You know you can’t hold back the flood of filthy water. Don’t be a hypocrite, Moira. Y

ou want to wade in the muck like the rest of us because it’s all about the money.” His eyes glittered darkly. “Billions of dollars to be made off a war in a new theater of operations.”

2

LYING IN THE DIRT of Tenganan, Bourne whispers into Moira’s ear. “Tell them…”

She is bent low over him in the dust and the running blood. She is listening to him with one ear while pressing her cell phone to the other. “Just lie still, Jason. I’m calling for help.”

“Tell them I’m dead,” Bourne says just before losing consciousness…

Jason Bourne awoke from his recurring dream, sweating like a pig through the bedsheets. The warm tropical night was clouded by the mosquito netting tented around him. Somewhere high in the mountains it was raining. He heard the thunder like hoofbeats, felt the sluggish, wet wind on his chest, bare where the wound was in the latter stages of healing.

It had been three months since the bullet struck him, three months since Moira followed his orders to the letter. Now virtually everyone who knew him believed him to be dead. Only three people other than him knew the truth: Moira; Benjamin Firth, the Australian surgeon whom Moira brought him to in the village of Manggis; and Frederick Willard, the last remaining member of Treadstone, who had revealed Leonid Arkadin’s Treadstone training to Bourne. It was Willard, contacted by Moira at Bourne’s behest, who had begun reconditioning Bourne as soon as Dr. Firth allowed it.

“You’re damn lucky to be alive, mate,” Firth said when Bourne had regained consciousness after the first of two operations. Moira was there, having just returned from making very public arrangements for Bourne’s “body” to be shipped back to the States. “In fact, if it weren’t for a congenital abnormality in the shape of your heart, the bullet would have killed you almost instantly. Whoever shot you knew what he was doing.”

Then he’d gripped Bourne’s forearm and flashed a bony smile. “Not to worry, mate. We’ll have you right as rain in a month or two.”

A month or two. Bourne, listening to the torrential rain come closer, reached out to touch the double ikat cloth that hung beside his bed, and felt calmer. He remembered the long weeks he’d been forced to remain in the doctor’s surgery on Bali, both for health and for security reasons. For a number of weeks after the second operation it was all he could do just to sit up. During that syrupy time Bourne discovered Firth’s secret: He was an inveterate alcoholic. The only time he could be counted on to be stone-cold sober was when he had a patient on the operating table. He proved himself to be a brilliant cutter; any other time, he reeked of arak, the fermented Balinese palm liquor. It was so strong, he used it to wipe down his operating theater when he occasionally forgot to refill his order of pure alcohol. In this way, Bourne unlocked the mystery of what the doctor was doing hidden far away from everything: He’d been canned from every hospital in Western Australia.

All at once Bourne’s attention turned outward as the doctor entered the room across the compound from the surgery.

“Firth,” he said, sitting up. “What are you doing up at this time of night?”

The doctor moved over to the rattan chair by the wall. He had a noticeable limp; one leg was shorter than the other. “I don’t like thunder and lightning,” he said as he sat down heavily.

“You’re like a child.”

“In many ways, yes.” Firth nodded. “But unlike many blokes I met back in the bad old days, I can admit it.”

Bourne switched on the bedside lamp, and a cone of cool light spread over the bed and lapped at the floor. As the thunder rumbled closer, Firth leaned into the light, as if for protection. He was carrying a bottle of arak by its neck.

“Your faithful companion,” Bourne said.

The doctor winced. “Tonight, no amount of liquor will help.”

Bourne held out his hand, and Firth handed him the bottle. He waited for Bourne to take a swig, then took possession of it. Though he sat back in the chair, he was far from relaxed. Thunder cracked overhead and all at once the downpour hit the thatch roof with the bang of a shotgun. Firth winced again, but he didn’t take more arak. It appeared that even he had a limit.

“I’m hoping I can convince you to throttle back your physical training.”

“Why would I do that?” Bourne said.

“Because Willard pushes you too hard.” Firth licked his lips, as if his body was dying for another drink.

“That’s his job.”

“Maybe so, but he’s not your doctor. He hasn’t taken you apart and stitched you back together.” He finally put the bottle down between his legs. “Besides, he scares the bejesus out of me.”

“Everything scares you,” Bourne said, not unkindly.

“Not everything, no.” The doctor waited while a crack of thunder shuddered overhead. “Not torn-up bodies.”

“A torn-up body can’t talk back,” Bourne pointed out.

Firth smiled ruefully. “You haven’t had my nightmares.”

“That’s all right.” Bourne once again saw himself in the dirt and the blood of Tenganan. “I have my own.”

For a time nothing more was said. Then Bourne asked a question, but when the only answer forthcoming was a brief snore, he lay back in the bed, closed his eyes, and willed himself to sleep. Before the soft morning light woke him, he had returned, unwillingly, to Tenganan, where the heat of Moira’s cinnamon musk mingled with the odor of his own blood.

Do you like it?” Moira held up the cloth woven in the colors of the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva: blue, red, and yellow. The intricate pattern was of interlocking flowers, frangipani, perhaps. Since the dyes used were all natural, some water-based, others oil-based, the threads took eighteen months to two years to finish. The yellow—the personification of Shiva, the destroyer—would take another five years to slowly oxidize and reveal its final hue. In double ikats the pattern was dyed into both the warp and weft threads so that when it was woven all the colors would be pure, unlike the more common single ikat weaving in which the pattern was only in one set of threads, the other being a background color such as black. The double ikat was part of every Balinese home, where it hung on a wall in a place of honor and respect.

“Yes,” Bourne had replied. “I like it very much.”

He was about to go into the surgery for the first of his two operations.

“Suparwita said it was important I get a double ikat for you.” She leaned closer. “It’s sacred, Jason, remember? Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva together will protect you from evil and illness. I’ll make sure it’s near you all the time.”

Just before Dr. Firth wheeled him into the surgery, she leaned even closer, whispered in his ear: “You’ll be fine, Jason. You drank the tea made from kencur.”

Kencur, Bourne thought as Firth applied the anesthetic. The resurrection lily.

He dreamed of a temple high in the Balinese mountains while Benjamin Firth cut him open with little hope of his survival. Through the carved red gates of the temple rose the hazy pyramidal shape of Mount Agung, blue and majestic against the yellow sky. He was gazing down at the gate from a great height and, looking around, he realized that he was on the top step of a steep triple staircase, guarded by six ferocious stone dragons, whose bared teeth were easily seven inches long. The bodies of these dragons undulated upward on both sides of the three staircases, creating banisters whose solidity appeared to carry the stairs upward to the plaza of the temple proper.

As Bourne’s gaze was drawn again to the gates and Mount Agung, he saw a figure silhouetted against the sacred volcano, and his heart began to pound in his chest. The setting sun fell upon his face, and he shaded his eyes with one hand, straining to identify the figure, who now turned toward him. At once, he felt searing pain and pleasure.

At that precise moment Dr. Firth came across the curious abnormality in Bourne’s heart and began to work, knowing that he now had a chance to save his patient.

Just over four hours later, Firth, exhausted but cautiously triumphant, wheeled Bourn

e into the recovery room, adjacent to the surgery, that would become Bourne’s home for the next six weeks.

Moira was waiting for them. Her face was pale, her emotions retreated from her flesh, curled into a ball in the pit of her stomach.

“Will he live?” She almost choked on the words. “Tell me he’ll live.”

Firth sat wearily on a canvas folding chair as he stripped off his bloody gloves. “The bullet went clear through him, which is good because I didn’t have to dig it out. It is my considered opinion that he’ll live, Ms. Trevor, with the important caveat that nothing in life is certain, especially in medicine.”

As Firth took the first drink of arak he’d had that day, Moira approached Bourne with a mixture of elation and trepidation. She’d been so terrified that for the last four and a half hours her heart had hurt as much as she had imagined Bourne’s had. Gazing down into his near-bloodless but peaceful face, she took his hand in hers, squeezing hard to reestablish the physical connection between them.

“Jason,” she said.

“He’s still well under,” Firth said, as if from a great distance. “He can’t hear you.”

Moira ignored him. She tried not to imagine the hole in Bourne’s chest beneath the bandage, but failed. Her eyes were streaming tears, as they had periodically while he was in surgery, but the abyss of despair along which she had been walking was folding in on itself. Still, her breathing was ragged and she had to struggle to feel the solid ground beneath her feet, because for hours she was certain it had been about to open up and swallow her whole.

“Jason, listen to me. Suparwita knew what would happen to you, and he prepared you as best he could. He fed you the kencur, he had me get the double ikat for you. They both protected you, I know it, even if you won’t ever believe it.”

Morning broke in the soft colors of pink and yellow against the pale blue sky. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva rose as Bourne opened his eyes. Last night’s storm had scrubbed off the film of haze that had built up from the burning off of the rice stalks in the hillside paddies.