The Bourne Sanction

“I’m afraid that’s impossible.” The doctor smiled that smile only doctors can. “He’s been sedated.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

The doctor gestured at the laptop. “I’m still trying to find out. He’s been subject to seizures, but so far I can’t find the pathology.”

“We’re near Long Beach, you’ll get help then,” she said. “I just need to see the insides of his elbows.”

The doctor’s eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”

“I need to see whether he’s got a tattoo.”

“They all have tattoos, these sailors.” The doctor shrugged. “But go ahead. You won’t disturb him.”

Moira approached the lower berth, bending over to pull the thin blanket back from the patient’s arm. As she did so, the doctor stepped forward and struck her a blow on the back of her head. She fell forward and cracked her jaw on the metal frame of the bunk. The pain pulled her rudely back from a precipice of blackness, and, groaning, she managed to roll over. The copper-sweet taste of blood was in her mouth and she fought against wave after wave of dizziness. Dimly she saw the doctor bent over his laptop, his fingers racing over the keys, and she felt a ball of ice form in her belly.

He’s going to kill us all. With this thought reverberating in her head, she grabbed the crossbow off the floor where she’d dropped it. She barely had time to aim, but she was close enough not to have to be accurate. She breathed a prayer as she let fly.

The doctor arched up as the bolt pierced his spine. He staggered backward, toward where Moira sat, braced against the berth frame. His arms extended, his fingers clawing for the keyboard, and Moira rose, swung the crossbow into the back of his head. His blood spattered like rain over her face and hands, the desk, and the laptop’s keyboard.

Bourne found her on the floor of the infirmary, cradling the computer in her lap. When he came in, she looked up at him and said, “I don’t know what he did. I’m afraid to shut it off.”

“Are you all right?”

She nodded. “The ship’s doctor was Sever’s man.”

“So I see,” he said as he stepped over the corpse. “I didn’t believe him when he told me he had only one man on board. It would be like him to have a backup.”

He knelt down, examined the back of her head. “It’s superficial. Did you black out?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

He took a large gauze pad from the supply cabinet, doused it with alcohol. “Ready?” He placed it against the back of her head, where her hair was plastered down with blood. She moaned a little through gritted teeth.

“Can you hold it in place for a minute?”

She nodded, and gently Bourne lifted the laptop into his arms. There was a software program ru

Bourne breathed a sigh of relief. “He brought up the program, but you got to him before he could activate it.”

“Thank God,” she said. “Where Arkadin?”

“I don’t know. When the captain told me you’d gone below I took off after you.”

“Jason, you don’t think…”

Putting the computer aside, he helped her to her feet. “Let’s get you back up to the captain so you can give him the good news.”

There was a fearful look on his face. “And you?”

He handed her the laptop. “Go to the wheelhouse and stay there. And Moira, this time I really mean it.”

With the crossbow in one hand, he stepped into the passageway, looked right and left. “All right. Go. Go!”

Arkadin had returned to Nizhny Tagil. Down in the engine room, surrounded by steel and iron, he realized that no matter what had happened to him, no matter where he’d gone, he’d never been able to escape the prison of his youth. Part of him was still in the brothel he and Stas Kuzin had owned, part of him still stalked the nighttime streets, abducting young girls, their pale, fearful faces turned toward him as deer turn toward headlights. But what they’d needed from him he couldn’t-or wouldn’t-give them. Instead, he’d sent them to their deaths in the quicklime pit Kuzin’s regime had dug amid the firs and the weeping hemlocks. Many snows had passed since he’d dragged Yelena from the rats and the quicklime, but the pit remained in his memory, vivid as a blaze of fire. If only he could have his memory wiped clean.

He started at the sound of Stas Kuzin screaming at him. What about all your victims?

But it was Bourne, descending the steel companionway to the engine room. “It’s over, Arkadin. The disaster has been averted.”

Arkadin nodded, but inside he knew better: The disaster had already occurred, and it was too late to stop its consequences. As he walked toward Bourne he tried to fix him in his mind, but he seemed to morph, like an image seen through a prism.

When he was within arm’s length of him, he said, “Is it true what Sever told Icoupov, that you have no memory beyond a certain point in time?”

Bourne nodded. “It’s true. I can’t remember most of my life.”

Arkadin felt a terrible pain, as if the very fabric of his soul was being torn apart. With an inchoate cry, he flicked open his switchblade, lunged forward, aiming for Bourne’s belly.

Turning sideways, Bourne grabbed his wrist, began to turn it in an attempt to get Arkadin to drop the weapon. Arkadin struck out with his other hand, but Bourne blocked it with his forearm. In doing so, the crossbow clattered to the deck. Arkadin kicked it into the shadows.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Bourne said. “There’s no reason for us to be enemies.”

“There’s every reason.” Arkadin broke away, tried another attack, which Bourne countered. “Don’t you see it? We’re the same, you and me. The two of us can’t exist in the same world. One of us will kill the other.”

Bourne stared into Arkadin’s eyes, and even though his words were those of a madmen Bourne saw no madness in them. Only a despair beyond description, and an unyielding will for revenge. In a way, Arkadin was right. Revenge was all he had now, all he lived for. With Tarkanian and Devra gone, the only meaning life had for him lay in avenging their deaths. There was nothing Bourne could say to sway him; that was a rational response to an irrational impulse. It was true, the two of them couldn’t exist in the same world.

At that moment Arkadin feinted right with his knife, drove left with his fist, rocking Bourne back onto his heels. At once he stabbed out with the switchblade, burying it in the meat of Bourne’s left thigh. Bourne grunted, fought the buckling of his knee, and Arkadin jammed his boot into Bourne’s wounded thigh. Blood spurted, and Bourne fell. Arkadin jumped on him, using his fist to pummel Bourne’s face when Bourne blocked his knife stabs.

Bourne knew he couldn’t take much more of this. Arkadin’s desire for revenge had filled him with an inhuman strength. Bourne, fighting for his very life, managed to counterpunch long enough to roll out from under Arkadin. Then he was up and ru

Arkadin reached up for him as he was half a dozen rungs off the engine room deck. Bourne kicked out with his bad leg, surprising Arkadin, catching him under the chin. As he fell back, Bourne scrambled up the rungs as fast as he could. His left leg was on fire, and he was trailing blood as the wounded muscle was forced to work overtime.

Gaining the next deck, he continued up the companionway, up and up, until he came to the first level belowdecks, which according to Moira was where the galley was. Finding it, he raced in, grabbed two knives and a glass saltshaker. Stuffing the shaker into his pocket, he wielded the knives as Arkadin loomed in the doorway.

They fought with their knives, but Bourne’s unwieldy carving knives were no match for Arkadin’s slender-bladed switchblade, and Bourne was cut again, this time in the chest. He kicked Arkadin in the face, dropped his knives in order to wrest the switchblade out of Arkadin’s hand, to no avail. Arkadin stabbed at him again and Bourne nearly suffered a punctured liver. He backed away, then ran out the doorway, up the last companionway to the open deck.