The Bourne Sanction

It would have been best to keep to where the garden was most crowded, but that would put them in the center of the trap. Bourne led them around the crowd, hoping to emerge in a place where the agents wouldn’t spot them, but now he saw three more outside the mass of the demonstration and knew retreat was impossible. Instead he reversed course, drawing Moira farther into the surging mass of demonstrators.

“What are you doing?” Moira said. “Aren’t we headed straight into the trap?”

“Trust me.” Instinctively he headed toward one of the flashpoints where the skinheads were clashing with the university students.

They reached the edge of the escalating fight between the two groups of teens. Out of the corner of his eye Bourne saw an NSA agent struggling through the same mass of people. Bourne tried to alter their course, but their way was blocked, and a resurgent wave of students pushed them like flotsam at the tide line. Feeling the new influx of people, the agent turned to fight against it and ran right into Moira.

He barked Bourne’s name into the microphone in his earpiece, and Bourne slammed a shoe into the side of his knee. The agent faltered, but managed to counter the chop Bourne directed at his shoulder blade. The agent drew a handgun, and Bourne snatched a baseball bat from a skinhead’s grip, struck the agent so hard on the back of his hands that he dropped the handgun.

Then, from behind him, Bourne heard Moira say. “Jason, they’re coming!”

The trap was about to snap shut on both of them.

Forty-One

LUTHER LAVALLE waited on tenterhooks for the call from his extraction team leader in Munich. He sat in his customary chair facing the window that looked out over the rolling lawns to the left of the wide gravel drive, which wound through the elms and oaks lining it like sentinels. Having verbally put her in her place after returning from his office, he contrived to ignore Soraya Moore and Willard who, after the second time, had given up asking him if he wanted his single-malt scotch refreshed. He didn’t want his single-malt scotch refreshed and he didn’t want to hear another word from the Moore woman. What he wanted was his cell phone to ring, for his team leader to tell him that Jason Bourne was in custody. That’s all he required of this day; he didn’t think it was too much to ask.

Nevertheless, it was true that his nerves were pulled tighter than a drawn bowstring. He found himself wanting to scream, to punch someone; he’d almost launched himself like a missile at Willard when the steward had approached him the last time-he was so damn servile. Beside him, the Moore woman sat, one leg crossed over her knee, sipping her damnable Ceylon tea. How could she be so calm!

He reached over, slapped the cup and saucer out of her hands. They bounced on the thick carpet, along with what was left of the espresso, but they didn’t break. He jumped up, stomped the china beneath his heel until it cracked and cracked again. Aware of Soraya staring up at him, he snapped, “What? What are you looking at?”

His cell phone buzzed and he snatched it off the table. His heart lifted, a smile of triumph wreathed his face. But it was a guard at the front gate, not the leader of his extraction team.

“Sir, I’m sorry to bother you,” the guard said, “but the director of Central Intelligence is here.”

“What?” LaValle fairly shouted his response. He was flooded with bitter disappointment. “Keep her the fuck out!”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir.”

“Of course it’s possible.” He moved to the window. “I’m giving you a direct order!”

“She’s with a contingent of federal marshals,” the guard said. “They’re already on their way to the main house.”

It was true, LaValle could see the convoy making its way up the drive. He stood, speechless with confusion and fury. How dare the DCI invade his private sanctuary! He’d have her in prison for this outrage!

He started, feeling someone standing next to him. It was Soraya Moore. Her wide lips were curled in an enigmatic smile.

Then she turned to him and said, “I do believe it’s the end of days.”

The maelstrom closed around Bourne and Moira. What had once been a simple demonstration was now a full-blown melee. He heard screams and shouts, hurled invective, and then, under it all, the familiar high-low wail of police sirens approaching from several different directions. Bourne was quite certain the NSA hit squad had no desire to run afoul of the Munich police; it was therefore running out of time. The agent near Bourne heard the sirens, too, and with his hands clearly still half numb from the bat grabbed Moira around the throat.

“Drop the bat and come with me, Bourne,” he said against the rising tide of screams and shouts, “or so help me I’ll break her neck like a twig.”

Bourne dropped the bat but, as he did so, Moira bit into the agent’s hand. Bourne drove his fist into the soft spot just below his sternum then, taking hold of his wrist, he turned over the arm at an awkward angle, and with a sharp blow broke the agent’s elbow. The agent groaned, went to his knees.

Bourne dug out his passport and earbud, threw the passport to Moira as he fitted the electronic bud into his ear canal.

“Name,” he said.

Moira already had the wallet open. “William K. Saunders.”

“This is Saunders,” Bourne said, addressing the wireless network. “Bourne and the girl are getting away. They’re heading north by northwest past the pagoda.”

Then he took her hand. “Biting his hand,” he said as they stepped over the fallen agent. “That was quite a professional move.”

She laughed. “It did the trick, didn’t it?”

They made their way through the mob, heading southeast. Behind them, the NSA agents were shoving their way toward the opposite side of the mass of people. Ahead, a corps of uniformed policemen outfitted in riot gear were trotting along the path, semi-automatics at the ready. They passed Bourne and Moira without a second look.

Moira glanced at her watch. “Let’s get to my car as quickly as possible. We have a plane to catch.”

Don’t give up. Those three words Tyrone had found in his oatmeal were enough to sustain him. Kendall never came back, nor did any other interrogator. In fact, his meals came at regular intervals, the trays filled with real food, which was a blessing because he didn’t think he could ever get oatmeal down again.

The periods when the black hood was taken off seemed to him longer and longer in duration, but his sense of time had been shot, so he didn’t really know whether or not that was true. In any case, he’d used those periods to walk, do sit-ups, push-ups, and squats, anything to relieve the terrible, bone-deep aching of his arms, shoulders, and neck.

Don’t give up. That message might just as well have read You’re not alone or Have faith, so rich were those words, like a millionaire’s cache. When he read them he knew both that Soraya hadn’t abandoned him and that something inside the building, someone who had access to the basement, was on his side. And that was the moment when the revelation struck him, as if, if he remembered his Bible correctly, he were Paul on the road to Damascus, converted by God’s light.

Someone is on my side -not the side of the old Tyrone, who roamed his hood with perfect wrath and retribution, not the Tyrone who’d been saved from life in the gutter by Deron, not even the Tyrone who’d been awed by Soraya. No, once he spontaneously thought Someone is on my side, he realized that my side meant CI. He had not only moved out of the hood forever, but also stepped out from under Soraya’s beautiful shadow. He was his own man now; he’d found his own calling, not as Deron’s protector, or his disciple, not as Soraya’s adoring assistant. CI was where he wanted to be, in the service of making a difference. His world was no longer defined by himself on one side and the Man on the other. He was no longer fighting what he was becoming.