“Yes? May I help you?”
Rhonda beamed. She let the leash dangle from her fingers, and a nervous squeak crept into her voice. “I’m so sorry to bother you, sir. I’m pretty sure my dog got into your backyard. I want to make sure I get him before he does any damage. Do you mind if I pop through and collect him?”
The man’s face creased with surprise. “Oh. Oh, well, yes, that’s perfectly fine. Why don’t you come in?”
“Thank you!”
She crossed the threshold, and the man closed the door.
“My name’s—” he began, but he never finished the sentence. Rhonda had the leash around his neck in a flash, and she jerked it tight, choking off his air. With muscular arms, she threw the man to the ground and held him in place with her knee on his chest. His eyes widened in terror, his legs kicked spastically, and his face deepened into shades of purple.
Two minutes later, he was gone.
Rhonda whistled as she got up. She recovered the leash and stored it in her pack. She climbed over the dead man’s body, then took the steps to the second floor and located the corner bedroom whose windows looked down the street toward the sea. She located a pair of Zeiss binoculars in her pack and zoomed in on the corner house. The flower garden came into perfect view.
The two men were still playing chess. The board was set up for a new game. The sun was going down, but she doubted it would take the Russian spy and chess champ very long to finish off his friend again.
Rhonda grabbed her phone.
“It’s JoJo,” she said. “I have eyes on Maxim Zungaya.”
“What about Tati and Vadik?” Lennon asked.
“No sign of them. Maxim’s with a friend. You want me to take him out when he’s alone?”
“No, just keep an eye on him for now,” Lennon told her. “Report any movement he makes, and report any sign of Cain or Nova, too. I’ll be there with a team after nightfall. Sooner or later, Tati will make contact, and then Maxim will lead us right to her.”
28
Tati woke up with a start as Vadik steered the stolen Renault through a roundabout and pulled into a twenty-four-hour petrol station. It was almost one in the morning, but bright tower lights illuminated this section of the two-lane highway. There were a handful of other cars at the pumps, and she watched Vadik study the drivers nervously before he parked.
“Where are we?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
“A town called Scarborough,” Vadik replied.
“How far to Whitby?”
“Not long. Less than an hour.”
Vadik got out of the car and went inside the convenience store to pay cash for the gas. Tati got out, too, stretching her limbs after hours stuck inside the Renault. She was still in disguise. Wig. Unattractive clothes. No makeup. Even so, she got a few hungry little looks from the other men by the gas pumps, which made her uncomfortable. She walked away to a little patch of grass near the highway.
After getting out of London, they’d avoided the larger towns. Their route kept them on back roads, which were safer but slowed them down. As they’d neared evening, she’d decided they should wait until dark before finishing the trip, so they’d found a Sainsbury’s parking lot and stayed there until night fell. Since then, they’d been driving past miles of green hills and fields, which glowed under the brightness of a half-moon. Now they weren’t far away from their destination.
She thought about Maxim Zungaya. Uncle Maxim to her, when she was a little girl. He would be much older now, and she didn’t know if he would help her, but she didn’t know where else to turn. She remembered him teaching her chess and how shocked he was that she was such a natural at that age. She’d never beaten him, but they’d drawn several times, and he was impressed. Apparently, not many people got a draw from Uncle Maxim. Some of her favorite memories were of afternoons in her father’s dacha, the two men laughing and smoking, her studying the board as they played.
And then he was gone.
It was years before she learned the truth. Years before their secret correspondence. She had to struggle with her feelings about it. Her betrayal, her resentment. Maxim had spied on Russia, had spent much of his career giving away secrets to the West, which was something she couldn’t forgive. And yet he was still her Uncle Maxim. The man who bought her dolls. The man who taught her chess. She didn’t understand or approve of what he’d done, but right now, she needed him, and nothing else mattered.
“What are you doing out here?”
Vadik was back. He gave her an irritated look as he joined her on the strip of grass. “You should stay in the car. The less anyone sees us, the better. And men will always remember you.”
“I need to call Maxim,” Tati said. “I don’t want to just show up at his door. It may not be safe.”
“Then call. Make it fast. I’ll fill up the car.”
Tati wandered into the store. She lingered in the aisles, unseen, while another customer bought a bag of crisps at the cash register. When she was the only one inside, she went up to the woman behind the counter, who was in her fifties and looked bored as she read a copy of Hello! magazine.
“Can I borrow your phone?” Tati asked.
The woman didn’t look up. “What’s wrong with your own phone?”
“Dead battery.”
“So buy a charger.”
“Please. I’ll give you five pounds. I need to make a quick call.”
The gray-haired woman scowled, but when Tati slipped her the cash, she pushed her cheap phone under the plastic shield. “Make it fast, and don’t even think about stealing it.”
“Thank you.”
Tati took the phone to the women’s toilet and locked the door. She knew the number. Numbers always stayed in her head; she had a good memory for that kind of thing. She dialed, knowing it was late, expecting it to take a while for the old man to answer. Instead, he picked it up on the first ring, almost as if he’d been waiting for a call. Even after all these years, she recognized his voice.
“Yes, who is it?” Maxim said. He sounded anxious.
“A girl who plays chess,” Tati replied.
There was a long pause. He knew who it was. In the silence, she could feel his surprise. “Is it really you, my dear? After all these years?”
“It’s me.”
“Are you all right?”
“I need to see you,” Tati said.
Another pause. “There’s trouble?”
“Yes.”
Uncle Maxim had always been smart. He made the connection immediately.
“There were reports about something that happened in London,” he murmured. “Does it have anything to do with that?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“Not far.”
“Don’t come here. I’m being watched.”
Tati was immediately alarmed. “Because of me?”
“I don’t know, but the timing makes me wonder, my dear. You’re not safe.”
“Can you help me?”
“Always,” Maxim said. “For you, always. I told you that when you were a girl.”
“I don’t want to put you in danger.”
“I’m an old man. Whatever happens, happens.”
“What should I do?” Tati asked.
“I’m going to give you another number. It’s a phone I keep only for emergencies. You can memorize it, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
Maxim rattled off the digits of a different phone, and then he said, “Find a kiosk, and call again in an hour. I’ll tell you where to meet me.”
“Yes, all right.” She hesitated. “Thank you.”
“No thanks are necessary. Seeing you again will be my reward.”
Tati hung up the phone. She unlocked the toilet door, returned the phone to the woman behind the counter, and wen
t back outside to find Vadik standing impatiently beside the Renault. He went to kiss her, but she turned away with coldness on her face. Whatever else happened, she was done with him. They both got into the car, but as Vadik started the engine, he glanced in the mirror and swore.
“What is it?” Tati asked.
She began to turn around, but Vadik hissed at her.
“Don’t look! A police car just pulled into the parking lot. Shit! He’s probably hunting for us.”
“You don’t know that,” Tati said. “Stay calm and drive.”
“I have to go right by him to get out! He’ll see us, he’ll see the car. You don’t think every cop in the country is trying to find us? I killed a cop. They’re going to want blood, Tati, one way or another.”
“Don’t look at him.”
Vadik’s eyes were glued to the mirror. “He’s getting out!”
“Is he coming toward us?”
“No. He’s heading for the shop.”
“So ignore him,” Tati said, “and when he’s inside, then we go.”
On the far side of the gas pumps, Tati spotted the British police officer heading across the pavement toward the doors of the convenience store. He didn’t look their way. When he was inside, she told Vadik, “Okay, leave right now, but don’t speed. Don’t do anything to attract attention.”
Vadik put the Renault in gear and drove slowly. He had to drive right by the shop to make a U-turn to get back to the exit driveway, and Tati glanced quickly through the windows as he did. She could see the cop talking to the woman behind the counter.
The woman from whom she’d borrowed the phone.
Was that a problem? Was that a mistake?
What if he redialed the number?
But the cop wasn’t looking outside. He didn’t glance their way at all. She exhaled a little, but she didn’t feel any relief.
“Drive,” she said.
Vadik steered past the parked police car and entered the roundabout. He wheeled clockwise around the circle and exited on the road that led north toward Whitby. The light towers vanished, and soon they were back in the darkness between the fields.
“That was close,” Vadik murmured.
“Hmmm.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
Tati frowned with concern. There was something about an incurious policeman in the middle of the night that bothered her. At the end of Vadik’s headlights, she spotted a driveway leading to an old farmhouse. The turn came up fast.
“Slow down,” she told him. “Take that driveway, then switch off the car, and turn off the lights.”
“Why?”
“Do it!” she ordered him sharply.
Vadik hit the brakes hard. He spun the wheel and shot off the highway. Then he pulled the car behind a crumbling brick wall and shut it down. He switched off the headlights, making them invisible.
Tati turned around in the seat to watch the road.
“What is it?” Vadik asked.
“Quiet.”
She waited, but she didn’t have to wait long. Not even a minute later, the police car from the petrol station drove by.
The cop was looking for them.
* * *
—
Bourne drove through the bleak emptiness of the Yorkshire countryside. Under the moon, they could see rust-colored scrub brush stretching over the fields for miles. Whitby was a faint glow on the horizon. It had been a long, silent drive from London, first on the motorway through the larger cities, then on the B roads that traversed the moors. Nova sat beside him, but for most of the ride, she’d stared out the window and said nothing.
He tried to shut out his memories of their history. It was safer to go back to the solitary emptiness where he lived. The man he’d been when they were together, the man who’d actually dared to think about a future with her, was just an illusion. Just like Jason Bourne was an illusion.
His true identity shouted at him every day.
You are Cain!
You are a killer!
He’d finally accepted that truth about himself after Nova died. He’d surrendered to his fate, because losing her had hollowed him out in a way that nothing else had. For two years, he’d been without her. For two years, he’d pushed away the vivid pictures of her in his head. Now she was back. Alive. Sitting next to him, unchanged, still the fiery, complex, haunted dynamo who’d turned his world upside down.
That first time.
That very first time he’d laid eyes on her. He always remembered it. They’d met in a café on the Vltava river in Prague. He sat alone at a window table, watching the streetcars rattle along the riverfront, drinking scotch as he listened to a silver-haired man in a tuxedo play piano. His job was to pass along an assignment. Wet work—an assassination. A file had been gathered about a Czech cabinet minister who’d built a global pornography ring involving ten-year-old girls. It was sensitive enough that Treadstone didn’t want to embarrass the Czech government by letting it become public. The problem simply had to go away.
That was Nova’s job.
He’d spotted her across the restaurant, and she looked like no one he’d ever seen. Barely thirty. Intense. Dark. Gorgeous. She wore a gray wool ski cap tugged low on her forehead, her long black hair falling to her shoulders. A zipped black nylon jacket. Her pants were ripped at both knees. Her huge boots came up to her calves. She’d introduced herself as Felicity Brand, social media influencer for a vitamin supplement manufacturer. That was her cover. And through her cover, she knew the worlds of Czech models, Czech drugs, and Czech porn.
He gave her the assignment, he gave her the file, and she’d asked only one question.
“Hard or soft?”
Bourne knew what she meant. What kind of death did they have in mind for the cabinet minister? When he said that was up to her, she’d reached over to take a swallow from his glass of scotch and said, “Hard it is.”
He’d known right then. He’d seen their future together. Even before they spent the next two hours together in the café, on a meeting that should have been over in ten minutes. Even before the mission where she’d flaunted her tattoos in a barely-there bikini on a Greek beach. Even before that night in a chalet northeast of Quebec City, when they’d crossed a line that Treadstone agents were never supposed to cross. He’d known in ninety seconds. Nova was going to change his life.
Jason rocketed the car down the straightaway through the Yorkshire moors. The black asphalt shined under his headlights. The past wouldn’t go away.
“I killed the woman who shot you,” he told Nova.
Surprised, she looked away from the window. “What?”
“In Las Vegas. It wasn’t the mass shooter. There was a woman targeting you. She’s the one who pulled the trigger.”
“I never knew that.”
“They called her Miss Shirley. She bragged to me about shooting you.”
“I remember her,” Nova said. “What a horrible bitch.”
“Yes, she was. And I killed her. I killed her for what she did to you.”
Nova stared at him, looking exactly like the girl he’d met in Prague. It was as if she knew what he’d been thinking about moments earlier. “Hard or soft?”
“Very hard.”
Her lips made the tiniest smile. “Good.”
They drove silently for a few more miles, but the ice had been broken between them.
“I’m curious about something,” Nova said. “If you’re willing to tell me.”
“What’s that?”
“Why are you still in?”
She put a meaningful emphasis on that last word. In. Why are you still in Treadstone? Why are you still a part of that world?
Why are you still Cain?
“That’s all I know how,” he replied. “That’s who I am.”
He’d said
the same thing to Abbey Laurent the previous year when he was saying goodbye to her.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Nova said, shaking her head. “I mean, me, I’m not normal. After what happened to my parents, I never could be. But you’re different, Jason. You don’t have to live this life, but for some reason, you choose to stay in it. It’s like you’re punishing yourself for something.”
“What else would I do?” Bourne asked.
“I don’t know. Teach? Write? Or just live somewhere and be happy. I’m sure you have money squirreled away to do that. Find a place to yourself, somewhere you’ll never be found.” She added after a beat, “You could marry Abbey. Send her some of those Quebec maple candies, and tell her you want to see her again.”
“Why do you keep pushing me to her?”
“Because I want you to be happy.” Nova reached out and touched his face as he drove. “And maybe because I know you’ll never be happy with me.”
He turned and looked at her. Those eyes!
“I was happy, you know. Back then. With you.”
She gave him a sad smile. “That’s sweet of you to say, but it never would have lasted. We both know that. We were dreaming to think we had a future. There’s no future for you with someone like me.”
He wondered if that was true. Another illusion.
“Even if I wanted to walk away, I can’t,” Jason told her. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“My past is still out there.”
“You think you’ll get your memory back?”
He shook his head. “No. That’s gone. But Lennon said I’m always afraid that my past will catch up with me, and he’s right. I can feel it. Sometime, somewhere, it’s going to come back to life. And whoever’s with me when it does is going to die. That’s why I’m alone.”
He knew there were other things she wanted to say, but the ringing of her phone interrupted them. It was safer that way. She answered, listened, and then hung up. They were back to the mission.
“A police officer spotted Tati and Vadik at a petrol station a few minutes ago,” she said. “He went to follow, but he lost them.”
The Bourne Treachery Page 22