She crossed the room and grabbed her black jacket. She zipped it up with quick, angry motions. Bourne couldn’t let her go, couldn’t let her leave. He hauled himself out of bed but then slumped against the wall. His legs were deadweights. He dragged his body forward, one step, then two, but he crumpled to his knees.
“I needed you out of the way,” Nova said, kneeling in front of him and caressing his face. She was calm, in control of herself again. “That was part of the deal. I wasn’t going to let you get hurt. I know you’ll hate me, but this is something I have to do.”
He took hold of her wrist to stop her, but she disengaged his fingers as if he had no strength at all. The shadows closed in on him. She walked to the door, and her words came to him out of a cloud as he toppled forward.
“Goodbye, Jason. I really am sorry. I love you. But Lennon’s waiting.”
* * *
—
Sugar growled.
Nash looked up from the book he was reading. It was well past midnight, and Nash, who was a chronic insomniac, sat in the gloomy shadows of Kotov’s study. Holly was there, too, but she’d fallen asleep more than an hour ago.
The golden Lab, who’d been curled around Holly’s feet, got up and padded to the patio doors that led to the deck. The dog bared her fangs and unleashed another low, menacing rumble from her throat.
“Sugar?” Nash asked curiously. “What’s up?”
He put down the book and removed his half-glasses. Using his cane for support, he limped to the doors and peered outside into the darkness. Frowning, Nash unlocked the door and went onto the deck. He was conscious of the weight of his gun holstered at his back. Sugar came outside with him and ran to the railing, and the dog barked wildly. Nash snapped his fingers, silencing her, and he listened to the forest. A patter of drizzle lingered in the air. The sky was invisible, the dense trees and black clouds erasing the moon. Wraiths of fog blew around him.
“What’s going on?”
Holly was in the doorway.
“I don’t know. Sugar acted as if something was outside. Would she react to animals?”
“Yes, but she’d react to people, too.”
Nash reached behind his back and retrieved his pistol. He took Sugar inside the house and locked the patio doors, then swept the curtains shut. “I want to check the cameras in the control room.”
As he left the study and entered the house’s oversized foyer, he met Dixon Lewis, who had a gun in his hand, like Nash. Dixon’s gun arm was still in a sling, so Nash wasn’t sure how much good it would do him.
“I heard Sugar barking,” Dixon said. “What’s up?”
“Not sure. I’m going to the control room.”
Dixon nodded. “I’ll take a look outside. Lock the door behind me. I’ll knock four times to get back in. Two if there’s trouble.”
The CIA agent headed to the massive front door and slipped outside into the night. Nash secured the dead bolt behind him. Then he made his way to the kitchen, where a narrow door that looked like a walk-in pantry opened onto a winding staircase that led up to the electronic security center for the house. He climbed the metal stairs slowly and uncomfortably. At the top, he reached a windowless room with multiple computers and camera feeds mounted around log walls, all showing ghostly night vision images from around the perimeter of the compound. The overnight marshal who staffed the center was an Asian man in his thirties.
“Any activity?” Nash asked.
“We’ve got a camera down on the west fence,” the deputy replied with a frown. “It does happen sometimes, particularly in the rain.”
Nash didn’t think it was the rain. “Call the main gate.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man tapped a button on the radio and broadcast a query to the marshals at the main entrance. There was no response. He tried again, and then a third time, but the guards at the gate failed to answer.
“Unjam the cell signals,” Nash said. “We need to call for help. We’ve got to get backup out here right now.”
“Yes, sir.” The deputy flipped switches on another console, and Nash checked his phone. There was no signal. He waited impatiently for the cell service to kick in, but two minutes passed, and nothing happened.
“Why am I not getting anything?”
The man checked his own phone and shook his head. “The signal’s still being jammed, sir, but it’s not us.”
“Shit.” Nash headed back to the spiral staircase. “Get your weapon and follow me. We’re under attack.”
The two of them returned to the main level of the house. As they reached the foyer, the power cut out suddenly, bathing the entire building in blackness. Through one of the windows, he saw a beam of light come and go in the trees. It could have been Dixon. Or it could have been someone else. In the study, behind the closed door, Nash heard Sugar unleash a new tirade of barking. They continued to the front door, and Nash opened the lock again.
“Wake up Kotov and Tati,” he told the deputy. “When’s the next shift change? When will the other marshals arrive at the guard gate?”
The Asian man shook his head. “Not for another six hours.”
“Keep trying to get a call out.”
Nash went through the front door. In the darkness, he was as blind as Holly. He leaned on his cane and fumbled toward the steps, where he made his way to the muddy ground. The redwoods closed in around him on all sides. He tramped into the ferns, trying to make as little noise as possible.
“Dixon?” he hissed in a low voice.
The agent didn’t respond.
Nash took shelter near one of the redwoods. He switched on his flashlight and scanned the area. The trees were there, packed together like sentinels, with white swaths of fog drifting lazily between them. He shifted the light toward the ground and swung it in an arc, and he spotted a black shadow motionless in the green brush. Turning off the flashlight, he crouched and took awkward steps in that direction. When he got there, he nearly tripped over the body at his feet.
He turned on the flashlight again.
It was Dixon Lewis.
Dead. A bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
Nash didn’t have time to turn off the light before he heard movement behind him. As he swung around, he spotted a lithe figure in a dark bodysuit looming over him. Definitely a woman. He only had a moment for the sight of her to register in his brain. He lifted his gun to fire, but she was faster. Something heavy and metal cracked across his temple, and he felt an explosion of pain and color before his world turned black.
39
Bourne awoke on the floor of the hotel room. Cold ocean air through the cracked window blew over his naked body. A splitting headache stabbed him behind his eyes. He grabbed the wall to pull himself to his feet, leaving sticky bloodstains on the wallpaper. As he took a step, his leg buckled, and he fell again. His whole body felt swollen and sluggish. When he was finally able to walk, he staggered to the bathroom and turned on the shower and let icy water pour over his body. The chill revived him and cleared his head.
Back in the room, he called every emergency number he had. Nash. Holly. Dixon. No one answered. He couldn’t wait to reach anyone else; he had to go now. Midnight had already come and gone.
Nova.
Lennon.
They were going after Kotov. The assault had probably begun.
When he dressed, he found that Nova had taken his gun and knife. She obviously expected him to chase her. He ran into the hotel hallway, where there was one other door adjacent to his room. Earlier, he’d seen a young twentysomething couple go inside. Honeymooners.
He had no time to pick the lock or stay quiet. Swallowing down his nausea and the spinning in his head, he drove his boot into the doorframe. It splintered but held, and he kicked again. This time the door slammed inward and ripped off its hinges, falling to the floor. The
young couple inside was already scrambling out of bed in terror, her in bra and panties, him in white underwear. Before the man could sputter out a protest, Jason crossed the room and grabbed him by the throat.
“Car keys. Keys! Where are they?”
The man’s eyes widened. He pointed a finger at the nightstand. Bourne saw the fob and key set, and he stuffed it in his pocket, along with the man’s phone. On the other side of the bed, the man’s wife had grabbed her phone to dial the police, but Bourne ran and pried it from her hand, and then he ripped the hotel phone out of the wall.
“Stay here. Don’t move. If you want to stay alive, don’t contact anyone.”
That would buy him at least ten minutes while they panicked. He ran from the room.
In the oceanside parking lot, he used the key fob to find the couple’s Toyota sedan. He took the winding entrance road back to the north–south highway, and he turned left in the direction of Crescent City. Through the cloud in his mind, he tried to remember the route, the distances, the landmarks, the turns. The highway offered no guidance. The night was pitch black, the road obscured by fog that shined his headlights back in his face. He had to squint to see, but the disorientation left him with no idea where he was. Every mile looked like every other. He drove fast, and when he heard the spit of dirt under his tires, he knew he’d wandered onto the shoulder, so he steered sharply back to avoid driving into the trees.
He was conscious of the clock time on the car dashboard. The turn toward the compound would be coming up any minute. He slowed, trying to find his way, hunting for a break in the wall of trees that pushed up to the pavement.
There!
The side road took shape in his headlights when he was right on top of it. Bourne overshot the intersection. He spun the wheel and reversed direction to take the turn, and immediately the road narrowed and the paved road went away. The car rocked through potholes, mud spraying from his tires. He coaxed the route from his memory, left, right, left, left, until he was within a hundred yards of the guardhouse outside the fence.
He turned off the car and got out. The fog played tricks on his eyes. He saw shapes moving in the trees. He ran down the road until he could see the barbed-wire fence ahead of him. The gate was wide open. So was the door to the guardhouse. He crept along in the shelter of the trees, then entered the guardhouse and turned on his flashlight.
Three bodies lay sprawled on the floor. All dead. All shot. Deputy Craig Wallins was among them. Jason checked, and the man’s skin was still warm. The blood from their bodies hadn’t had time to congeal; it made red pools that shined under his light. He checked the security equipment, but the power in the shed was out, and the computers and monitors had been disabled, their electric cords cut. The weapons of the marshals had been gathered up, leaving nothing behind.
Outside, he ran through the open gate. He sprinted half a mile down the access road to the clearing where the house was located. Like the guardhouse, it was completely dark. No power. The front door was open; the lock had been shot away. Jason crept closer, listening for voices, but what he heard was something else. A frantic barking.
Sugar.
He was about to head inside when he heard a low moan nearby. In the darkness, he took a few steps through the overgrown ferns and came upon a body in the dirt. He switched on his flashlight and saw a familiar face squinting up at him. Blood made ribbons out of his matted gray hair.
“Nash.”
Bourne helped the Treadstone agent to his feet. Supporting him, he led Nash toward the front steps. The man grunted with pain with each step, and once he had to stop and throw up in the mud.
“How many?” Jason asked.
“No idea, but he had to have a good-sized team to pull this off.”
“Did you see any of them?” he asked, wondering if Nash knew the truth. Nova was with them.
“No. One of them knocked me out cold and took my gun. I don’t know why she didn’t kill me.”
“She?”
“A woman. I didn’t see her face.”
Bourne helped Nash inside. He followed the noise of Sugar’s barking to an interior room that was wedged shut with a heavy chair. When he hauled the chair away and opened the door, the dog flew at his chest like a missile and knocked him over. The dog’s breath was in his face, her teeth poised to rip open Jason’s throat, but then Sugar obviously recognized the smell of the human beneath her. She realized he was a friend and instantly began to whimper and lick his face.
“Who’s there?” said an anxious voice from the doorway. It was Holly Schultz.
“Cain.”
“Oh, thank God. How did you know we were in trouble? Did someone reach you?”
He didn’t want to answer that question. Not now. “I assumed Lennon would try something tonight.”
“They took Kotov and Tati. I could hear their voices.”
“They were alive?”
“Yes, for now,” Holly said.
“How long ago?”
“Half an hour, maybe.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“I didn’t hear vehicles. I don’t think they took the road, so they must be heading for—”
“The beach.”
“Yes. They probably have a boat coming in from a larger ship out on the water. Or even a Russian sub. We don’t have much time. Jason, if they get Kotov off the beach, we’ll never see him again.”
Bourne retraced his steps out of the house. He dove into the old growth wilderness, heading west toward the ocean, which thundered ahead of him only a few hundred yards away. The forest was almost impenetrable, with the trees growing close together and dense brush rising almost to his waist. He had to fight his way forward in the darkness, his flashlight off. The night was so black and thick with fog that several times he walked into the tree trunks without seeing them.
He still had no weapon.
When he reached the fence on the border of the compound, he followed it until he found an area where the mesh had been cut away by Lennon’s team. He squeezed through the gap and continued toward the shore. The closer he got to the coast, the louder he heard the slap of the waves below him. Where the trees ended, he found himself on a rocky promontory high above the beach, the wind fierce. It was high tide, the water at its deepest, running up within a few feet of the cliffs. He could barely see the beach, but when he listened, he heard voices carried up on the gales.
Bourne followed the cliff’s edge and found a seam in the land where rainwater leached into a small waterfall. The darkness gave him cover as he climbed down, grasping at footholds and handholds among the rocks. Salty spray blew off the ocean and soaked his face. Several times his fingers slipped on the wet stone, and he nearly fell.
When he reached the shore, twenty-foot-high boulders dotted the coast, protecting a crescent-shaped inlet in the cliff. Waves crashed over his head and cast up clouds of surf. The night and fog kept him invisible. Wading slowly and silently, he made his way toward the hidden beach, which was littered with alabaster tree limbs and slimy bull kelp stranded like sea creatures.
The first sentry was just ahead of him. Bourne saw the silhouette of a pistol. The man’s eyes were focused far out on the water, looking for something. A light. A boat. He wasn’t looking for a threat behind him. Crouched in the water, Jason closed on the man a step at a time, but then a high wave crashed, and the man stumbled backward and instinctively turned away from the sea.
He spotted Bourne. His eyes widened with surprise. His mouth opened to scream a warning, and in the same instant, Bourne sprang toward him, cutting off his air with a fist to the man’s throat. The ocean drowned out whatever noise he made. Bourne threw the man sideways, cracking his head sharply against the boulder. He heard bone break. The man collapsed to the beach, surf gurgling around him.
Jason grabbed the guard’s gun. He searched him and found a knif
e, too.
On his belly now, Bourne wriggled through shallow water to the edge of the next boulder. He could see the inlet ahead of him, making a curve in the rocks of the cliff wall that rose above it. There were people there, barely even shadows, too far away to recognize. But again he heard voices, a faint noise carried with the wind. He knew who he would find on the beach.
Lennon. Kotov. Tati. And Nova.
Ten yards away, he saw the silhouette of another guard, standing where the surf lapped at the pebbled shore. There were at least two more. Knife in hand, almost submerged in the water that cascaded over his body with each wave, Bourne zeroed in on the next guard and prepared to take him down.
40
Nova kept her gun pointed at Grigori Kotov’s heart. They stood under the granite of the cliff, with spray turning the stone black. She tried to swallow down the guilt she felt, the horror of betraying Jason, the revulsion of who she’d become. But those emotions faded when she stared into this man’s eyes. Seeing him, she was a child again, hiding under a bed, watching the blood of her parents make a lake around her. And then afterward, alone and adrift with the bodies. A seven-year-old girl riding a ghost ship like the Ancient Mariner.
It had been three days before they found her. Three days!
All she wanted right now was to pull the trigger. Kill this man. Avenge her parents, avenge her savaged childhood. She wanted to see him in pain, gasping for breath, as the light went out of his eyes.
Murderer! Assassin!
Kotov stared back at her, a calm look on his face that made her rage grow. He knew. He knew who she was and what he’d done to her. He’d known back in Tallinn. His eyes showed no regret. To him, killing her parents had been a job, one assignment among many.
“May the condemned man have a last cigarette?” he asked with a casual disinterest in his voice.
“Go ahead. If you reach for a weapon, you’ll give me an excuse.”
“I have no weapon,” he replied. “You searched me. You know that.”
The Bourne Treachery Page 31