It would be easy to tell himself that he’d been interrupted by Annaka Vadas, but the blinding, incomprehensible truth was that he’d had his chance before she arrived on the scene and had made a choice not to exact his revenge.
Why? He was completely at a loss to say.
His mind, usually as calm as a lake, jumped around from memory to memory, as if it found the present unbearable. He recalled the room in which he was incarcerated during his years with the Vietnamese gunrunner, his brief moment of freedom before being saved by the missionary, Richard Wick. He remembered Wick’s house, the sense of space and freedom that gradually eroded, the creeping horror of his time with the Khmer Rouge.
The worst part—the part he kept trying to forget—was that initially, he’d been attracted to the Khmer Rouge philosophy. Ironically enough, because it was founded by a group of young Cambodian radicals trained in Paris, its ethos was based on French nihilism. “The past is death! Destroy everything to create a new future!” This was the Khmer Rouge mantra, repeated over and over until it ground down all other thought or points of view.
It was hardly surprising that their worldview would initially draw Khan—himself an unwitting refugee, abandoned, marginalized—an outcast by circumstance rather than by design. For Khan the past was death—witness his recurring dream. But if he first learned to destroy from them, it was because they had destroyed him first.
Not content to believe his story of abandonment, they’d slowly drained the life, the energy from him as they bled him a little every day. They wanted, so his interlocutor said, to empty his mind of everything; they required a blank slate on which to write their radical version of the new future that awaited them all. They bled him, his smiling interlocutor said, for his own good, to rid him of the toxins of the past. Every day, his interlocutor read to him from their manifesto and then recited the names of those opposing the rebel regime who had been killed. Most, of course, were unknown to Khan, but a few—monks, mainly, as well as a smattering of boys his age—he had known, if only in passing. Some, like the boys, had taunted him, settling the mantle of outcast on his immature shoulders. After a time a new item was added to the agenda. Following the interlocutor’s reading of a particular section of the manifesto, Khan was required to repeat it back. This he did, in an ever-increasingly forceful manner.
One day, after the requisite recitation and response, his interlocutor read off the names of those newly killed in furtherance of the revolution. At the end of the list was Richard Wick, the missionary who had taken him in, thinking he’d bring Khan to civilization and to God. What roil of emotion this news elicited within Khan was impossible to say, but the overriding feeling was one of dislocation. His last link to the world at large was now gone. He was completely and utterly alone. In the relative privacy of the latrine, he had wept without knowing why. If there was ever a man he hated, it was the one who’d used and emotionally abandoned him, and now, unaccountably, he was crying over his death.
Later that day his interlocutor led him from the concrete bunker in which he’d been housed ever since being taken prisoner. Even though the sky was low and it was raining heavily, he’d blinked in the light of day. Time had passed; the rainy season had begun.
Lying in the stairwell, it occurred to Khan now that while he was growing up, he’d never been in control of his own life. The truly curious and disturbing thing was that he still wasn’t. He’d been under the impression that he was a free agent, having gone to great pains to set himself up in a business where he’d believed—naively, as it turned out—free agents thrived. He could see now that ever since he’d taken on his first commission from Spalko, the man had been manipulating him, and never more so than now.
If he was ever to break free of the chains that bound him, he’d have to do something about Stepan Spalko. He knew he’d been immoderate with him at the end of their last phone conversation, and now he regretted it. In that quick flash of anger, so uncharacteristic of him, he’d accomplished nothing save to put Spalko on his guard. But then, he realized, ever since Bourne had sat down beside him on the park bench in Old Town Alexandria, his usual icy reserve had been shattered, and now emotions he could neither name nor understand kept shooting up to the surface, roiling his consciousness, muddying his intent. He realized with a start that when it came to Jason Bourne, he no longer knew what he wanted.
He sat up, then looked around. He’d heard a sound; he was certain of it. He rose, put one hand on the bannister, his muscles tense, poised for flight. And there it was again. His head turned. What was that sound? Where had he heard it before?
His heart beat fast, his pulse in his throat as the sound rose through the stairwell, echoing in his mind, for he was calling again: “Lee-Lee! Lee-Lee!”
But Lee-Lee couldn’t answer; Lee-Lee was dead.
Chapter Nineteen
The underground entrance to the monastery lay hidden by shadow and time in the deepest cleft of the northernmost wall of the gorge. The lowering sun had revealed the cleft to be more of a defile, as it must have centuries ago to the monks who had chosen this location for their well-defended home. Perhaps they had been monk-warriors, for the extensive fortifications spoke of battles and bloodshed and the need to keep their home sacrosanct.
Silently the team moved into the defile, following the sun. There was no intimate talk between Spalko and Zina now, no hint whatsoever of what had transpired between them, even though it had been momentous. In a manner of speaking, it could be termed a form of benediction; in any case, it was a transference of allegiance and of power whose silence and secrecy only added to the ramifications of its effect. It was Spalko who once again had metaphorically thrown a pebble in a still pond, only to sit back and watch the effect as the resulting ripples spread outward, altering the basic nature of the pond and all who lived in it.
The sun-splashed rocks vanished behind them as they moved into shadow, and they clicked on their lights. Besides Spalko and Zina, there were two of them—the third having been taken back to the jet at Kazantzakis Airport, where the surgeon awaited. They wore lightweight nylon backpacks, filled with all manner of paraphernalia from canisters of tear gas to balls of twine and everything in between. Spalko didn’t know what they’d be up against and he was taking no chances.
The men went first, semiautomatic guns on wide straps slung over their shoulders, held at the ready. The defile narrowed, forcing them to continue on in single-file. Soon, however, the sky vanished beneath a wall of rock and they found themselves in a cave. It was dank and musty, filled with the fetid odors of decay.
“It stinks like an open grave,” one of the men said.
“Look!” the other cried. “Bones!”
They paused, their lights concentrated on a scattering of small mammal bones, but not a hundred meters on they came upon the thigh-bone of a much larger mammal.
Zina squatted to take up the bone in her hand.
“Don’t!” the first man cautioned. “It’s bad luck to handle human bones.”
“What are you talking about? Archaeologists do it all the time.” Zina laughed. “Besides, this might not be human at all.” Nevertheless, she dropped it back into the dust of the cave floor.
Five minutes later they were clustered around what was unmistakably a human skull. Their lights gleamed off the brow ridge, threw the eye sockets into deepest shadow.
“What d’you think killed him?” Zina asked.
“Exposure, probably,” Spalko said. “Or thirst.”
“Poor beggar.”
They kept going, deeper into the bedrock upon which the monastery was built. The farther they went, the more numerous the bones became. Now they were all human, and increasingly they were broken or fractured.
“I don’t think these people were killed by either exposure or thirst,” Zina said.
“What then?” one of the men asked, but no one had an answer.
Spalko ordered them curtly on. They had, by his calculation, just about reached the s
pot below the monastery’s crenelated outer walls. Up ahead, their lights picked out an odd formation.
“The cave is split in two,” one of the men said, shining his light on first the passageway to the left, then the one to his right.
“Caves don’t bifurcate,” Spalko said. He pushed his way ahead of them, stuck his head into the left-hand opening. “This one’s a dead end.” He ran his hand over the edges of the openings. “These are man-made,” he said. “Many years ago, possibly when the monastery was first built.” He stepped into the right-hand opening, his voice echoing strangely. “Yes, this one goes on, but there are twists and turns.”
When he came back out, he had an odd expression on his face. “I don’t think this is a passageway at all,” he said. “No wonder Molnar chose this place to hide Dr. Schiffer. I believe we’re headed into a labyrinth.”
The two men exchanged glances.
“In that case,” Zina said, “how will we ever find our way back?”
“There’s no way of knowing what we’ll find in there.” Spalko took out a small rectangular object no larger than a deck of playing cards. He grinned as he showed her how it worked. “A global positioning system. I’ve just electronically marked our starting point.” He nodded. “Let’s go.”
It didn’t take them long, however, to discover the error of their ways, and not more than five minutes later, they had reconvened outside the labyrinth.
“What’s the matter?” Zina asked.
Spalko was frowning. “The GPS didn’t work in there.”
She shook her head. “What d’you think is wrong?”
“Some mineral in the rock itself must be blocking the signal from the satellite,” Spalko said. He couldn’t afford to tell them that he had no idea why the GPS failed to work in the labyrinth. Instead, he opened his backpack, took out a ball of twine “We’ll take a lesson from Theseus and unwind the twine as we go.”
Zina eyed the ball uncertainly. “What if we run out of twine?”
“Theseus didn’t,” Spalko said. “And we’re almost inside the monastery’s walls, so let’s hope we don’t run out, either.”
Dr. Felix Schiffer was bored. For days now he’d done nothing but follow orders as his cadre of protectors flew him under cover of night to Crete, then proceeded to periodically move him from one location to another. They never stayed in one place for more than three days. He’d liked the house in Iraklion, but that too had proved boring in the end. There was nothing for him to do. They refused to bring him a newspaper or allow him to listen to the radio. As for television, there was none available, but he had to assume they would have kept him away from it, too. Still, he thought glumly, it was a damn sight better than this moldering pile of stone, with only a cot for a bed and a fire for warmth. Heavy chests and sideboards were virtually the only furniture, though the men had brought folding chairs, cots and linens. There was no plumbing; they’d made a privy in the courtyard and its stench reached all the way into the interior of the monastery. It was gloomy and dank, even at noon, and God help them all when darkness fell. Not even a light to read by, if there’d been anything to read.
He longed for freedom. If he’d been a God-fearing man, he would have prayed for his deliverance. So many days since he’d seen László Molnar or spoken to Alex Conklin. When he asked his protectors about that, they invoked the word most sacred to them: security. Communication was simply not secure. They took pains to reassure him that he would soon be reunited with his friend and his benefactor. But when he asked when, all they did was shrug and go back to their endless card game. He could sense that they were bored as well, at least the ones not on guard duty.
There were seven of them. Originally, there were more, but the others had been left behind in Iraklion. But from what he’d been able to glean, they should have been here by now. Accordingly, there was no card game today—every member of the cadre was on patrol. There was a distinct air of tension that set his teeth on edge.
Schiffer was a rather tall man, with piercing blue eyes and a strong-bridged nose below a mass of salt-and-pepper hair. There was a time before he’d been recruited into DARPA and had been more visible when he’d been taken for Burt Bacharach. Not being good with people, he’d never known how to respond. He’d merely mumble something unintelligible and turn away, but his obvious embarrassment only reinforced the misapprehension.
He got up, walked idly across the room to the window, but he was intercepted by one of the cadre and was turned away.
“Security,” the mercenary said, his tension on his breath if not in his eyes.
“Security! Security! I’m sick to death of that word!” Schiffer exclaimed.
Nevertheless, he was herded back to the chair on which he was meant to sit. It was away from all doors and windows. He shivered in the dampness.
“I miss my lab; I miss my work!” Schiffer looked into the dark eyes of the mercenary. “I feel like I’m in prison, can you understand that?”
The cadre’s leader, Sean Keegan, sensing his charge’s unrest, strode swiftly over. “Please take your seat, Doctor.”
“But I—”
“It’s for your own good,” Keegan said. He was one of those black Irishmen, dark of hair and eye, with a rough-hewn face brimming with grim determination, and a street-brawler’s lumpy physique. “We’ve been hired to keep you safe and we take that responsibility seriously.”
Obediently, Schiffer sat. “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Keegan stared down at him for some time. Then, making up his mind, he squatted next to the chair. In a low voice, he said, “I’ve avoided keeping you informed, but I suppose it might be best for you to know now.”
“What?” Schiffer’s face was pinched and pained. “What’s happened?”
“Alex Conklin’s dead.”
“Oh, God, no.” Schiffer wiped his suddenly sweating face with his hand.
“And as for László Molnar, we haven’t heard from him in two days.”
“Christ almighty!”
“Calm yourself, Doctor. It’s entirely possible Molnar’s been out of touch for security reasons.” Keegan’s eyes met his. “On the other hand, the personnel we left at the house in Iraklion have failed to show.”
“I gathered as much,” Schiffer said. “Do you think something…untoward has happened to them?”
“I can’t afford not to.”
Schiffer’s face shone; he couldn’t stop himself from sweating in fear. “Then it’s possible Spalko’s found out where I am; it’s possible that he’s here on Crete.”
Keegan’s face was set in stone. “That’s the premise we’re going by.”
Schiffer’s terror made him aggressive. “Well,” he demanded, “what’re you doing about it?”
“We have men with machine pistols manning the ramparts, but I very much doubt Spalko’s foolish enough to try a ground assault across a treeless terrain.” Keegan shook his head. “No, if he’s here, if he’s coming for you, Doctor, he’ll have no choice.” He stood, slung his machine-pistol over his shoulder. “His route will be through the labyrinth.”
Spalko, in the labyrinth with his small party, was becoming more and more apprehensive with every twist and turn they were forced to make. The labyrinth was the only logical approach for an assault on the monastery, which meant they might very well be walking into a trap.
He glanced down, saw the ball of twine was two-thirds behind them. They must be at or near the center of the monastery by now; the trail of twine assured him that the labyrinth hadn’t taken them in a circle. At each branching, he believed that he’d chosen well.
He turned to Zina, said under his breath, “I smell an ambush. I want you to stay here in reserve.” He patted her backpack. “If we run into trouble, you know what to do.”
Zina nodded, and the three men moved off in a half-crouch. They had only just disappeared when she heard machine-pistol fire coming in quick bursts. Quickly she opened her backpack, drew out a canister of te
ar gas, headed off after them, following the trail of the twine.
She smelled the stench of cordite before she turned the second corner. She peeked around the corner, saw one of their unit sprawled on the ground in a pool of blood. Spalko and the other man were pinned down by gunfire. From her vantage point, she could tell that it was coming from two different directions.
Pulling the pin on the canister, she tossed it over Spalko’s head. It struck the ground, then rolled to the left, exploding in a soft hiss. Spalko had slapped his man’s back, and they retreated out of the spread of the gas.
They could hear coughing and retching. By this time they’d all donned their gas masks and were ready to mount a second attack. Spalko rolled another canister to their right, cutting short the gunfire directed at them, but not, regrettably, before his second man caught three bullets in the chest and neck. He went down, blood bubbling from between his slack lips.
Spalko and Zina split, one going right, the other left, killing the incapacitated mercenaries—two each—with efficient bursts from their machine-pistols. They both saw the stairway at the same time and made for it.
Sean Keegan grabbed Felix Schiffer even as he shouted orders for his men on the ramparts to abandon their positions and return to the center of the monastery, where he was now dragging his terrified charge.
He’d begun to act the instant he’d caught a whiff of the tear gas seeping up from the labyrinth below. Moments later he heard the resumption of gunfire, then a deathly ringing silence. Seeing his two men rush in, he directed them toward the stone staircase that led down to where he’d deployed the rest of his men to ambush Spalko.
Keegan had for years been employed by the IRA before going out on his own as a mercenary-for-hire, so he was well acquainted with situations where he was outmanned and outgunned. In fact, he relished such situations, saw them as challenges to overcome.
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