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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.
The tanker was at a near stop. The captain was busy coordinating the hookups with the
tugboats that would bring it the final distance to the LNG terminal. Bourne couldn’t see
Moira, which was a blessing. He didn’t want her anywhere near Arkadin.
Bourne, heading for the sanctuary of the container city, was bowled over as Arkadin
leapt on him. Locked together, they rolled over and over until they fetched up against the
port railing. The sea was far below them, churning against the tanker’s hull. One of the
tugs signaled with its horn as it came alongside, and Arkadin stiffened. To him it was the
siren sounding an escape from one of Nizhny Tagil’s prisons. He saw the black skies,
tasted the sulfur smoke in his lungs. He saw Stas Kuzin’s monstrous face, felt Marlene’s
head between his ankles beneath the water, heard the terrible reports when Semion
Icoupov shot Devra.
He screamed like a tiger, pulling Bourne to his feet, pummeling him over and over
until he was bent back over the railing. In that moment, Bourne knew that he was going
to die as he had been born, falling over the side of a ship, lost in the depth of the sea, and only by the grace of God being brought in to a fishing boat with their catch. His face was
bloody and swollen, his arms felt like lead weights, he was going over.
Then, at the last instant, he pulled the shaker from his pocket, broke it against the rail, and threw the salt in Arkadin’s eyes. Arkadin bellowed in shock and pain, his hand flew
up reflexively, and Bourne snatched the switchblade from him. Blinded, Arkadin still
fought on, and he grasped the blade. With a superhuman effort, not caring that the edges
cut into his fingers, he wrested the switchblade away from Bourne. Bourne heaved him
backward. But Arkadin had control of the knife now, he had partial vision back through
his tearing eyes, and he ran at Bourne with his head tucked into his shoulders, all his
weight and determination behind the charge.
Bourne had one chance. Stepping into the charge, he ignored the knife, grabbed
Arkadin by his uniform jacket and, using his own momentum against him, pivoted from
the hip as he swung him around and up. Arkadin’s thighs struck the railing, his upper
body continuing its flight, so that he toppled head-over-heels over the side.
Falling, falling, falling… the equivalent of twelve stories, before plunging beneath the
waves.
Forty-Five
I NEED A VACATION, “Moira said. “I’m thinking Bali would do me quite well.”
She and Bourne were in the NextGen clinic in one of the campus buildings that
overlooked the Pacific. The Moon of Hormuz had successfully docked at the LNG
terminal and the cargo of the highly compressed liquid was being piped from the tanker
to onshore containers where it would be slowly warmed, expanding to six hundred times
its present volume so it could be used by individual consumers and utility and business
power plants. The laptop had been turned over to the NextGen IT department, so the
software could be parsed and permanently shut down. The grateful CEO of NextGen had
just left the clinic, after promoting Moira to president of the security division and offering Bourne a highly lucrative consulting position with the firm. Bourne had phoned Soraya,
each of them bringing the other up to date. He’d given her the address of Sever’s house,
detailing the clandestine operation it housed.
“I wish I knew what a vacation felt like,” Bourne said when he’d finished the call.
“Well…” Moira smiled at him. “You’ve only to ask.”
Bourne considered for a long time. Vacations were something he’d never
contemplated, but if ever there was a time to take one, he thought, this was it. He looked
back at her and nodded.
Her smile broadened. “I’ll have NextGen make all the arrangements. How long do you
want to go for?”
“How long?” Bourne said. “Right now, I’ll take forever.”
On his way to the airport, Bourne stopped at the Long Beach Memorial Medical
Center, where Professor Sever had been admitted. Moira, who had declined to come up
with him, was waiting for him in the chauffeured car NextGen had hired for them.
They’d put Sever in a private room on the fifth floor. The room was deathly still, except
for the respirator. The professor had sunk deeper into a coma and was now unable to
breathe on his own. A thick tube emerged from his throat, snaking to the respirator that
wheezed like an asthmatic. Other, smaller tubes were needled into Sever’s arms. A
catheter attached to a plastic bladder hooked to the side of the bed caught his urine. His
bluish eyelids were so thin Bourne thought he could see his pupils beneath them.
Standing beside his former mentor he found that he had nothing to say. He wondered
why he’d felt compelled to come here. Maybe it was simply to look once more on the
face of evil. Arkadin was a killer, pure and simple, but this man had made himself brick
by brick into a liar and a deceiver. And yet he looked so frail, so helpless now, it was
difficult to believe he was the mastermind of the monstrous plan to incinerate much of
Long Beach. Because, as he’d said, his sect couldn’t live in the modern world, it was
bound to destroy it. Was that the real reason, or had Sever once again lied to him? He’d
never know now.
He was abruptly nauseated by being in Sever’s presence, but as he turned away a small
dapper man came in, allowing the door to close at his back.
“Jason Bourne?” When Bourne nodded, the man said, “My name is Frederick
Willard.”
“Soraya told me about you,” Bourne said. “Well done, Willard.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Please don’t call me sir.”
Willard gave a small, deprecating smile. “Pardon me, my training is so ingrained in me
that’s all I am now.” He glanced over at Sever. “Do you think he’ll live?”
“He’s alive now,” Bourne said, “but I wouldn’t call it living.”
Willard nodded, though he seemed not at all interested in the disposition of the figure
lying in the bed.
“I have a car waiting downstairs,” Bourne said.
“As it happens, so do I.” Willard smiled, but there was something sad about it. “I know
that you worked for Treadstone.”
“Not Treadstone,” Bourne said, “Alex Conklin.”
“I worked for Conklin, too, many years ago. It’s one and the same, Mr. Bourne.”
Bourne felt impatience now. He was eager to join Moira, to see the sherbet skies of
Bali.
“You see, I know all of Treadstone’s secrets-all of them. This is something only you
and I know, Mr. Bourne.”
A nurse came in on her silent white shoes, checked all of Sever’s feeds, scribbled on
his chart, then left them alone again.
“Mr. Bourne, I thought long and hard about whether I should come here, to tell you…”
He cleared his throat. “You see, the man you fought on the tanker, the Russian who went
overboard.”
“Arkadin.”
“Leonid Danilovich Arkadin, yes.” Willard’s eyes met Bourne’s, and something inside
him winced away. “He was Treadstone.”
“What?” Bourne couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Arkadin was Treadstone?”