Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

immediate solving, otherwise he‘d never rest.

Save for a roll of bloodsoaked euros, Scarface‘s pockets were predictably empty. He must have stashed his false passport and other equally fake papers at a safe house or perhaps a locker at the airport or rail station-but if that was the case, where was the key?

Then Bourne turned the body slightly, looking for it when the bull came out of its temporary stupor and made a run at him. His arm was directly in the path of the horns. At the last instant he snatched it away, but the bull twisted its head violently and the length of the horn rode up his arm, flaying off the skin in a thin ribbon.

Grabbing on to the horn, Bourne used it as a fulcrum to swing himself onto the bull‘s back. For an instant the beast did not know what happened. Then, as the weight on its back shifted, it stomped forward, charging the barrier again. But this time the bull slammed into it sideways, and if Bourne hadn‘t lifted his right leg it would have been smashed between the muscle of the beast and the stucco. As it was, he was jarred halfway off the bull. Had he fallen, it would have been the end of him, the creature mindlessly stomping him to death within seconds.

Now he had to hang on as the bull made another run at the barrier in an attempt to shake him off. Bourne still had Scarface‘s knife; there was a chance the blade was long enough to deliver the coup de grA?ce and bring the bull to its knees if he chose precisely the right spot and the correct angle. But he knew he wouldn‘t do it. To kill this beast from behind when it was terrified of him seemed cowardly, craven. He thought of the wooden pig overlooking the pool in Bali, its painted face carved with the eternal smile of the mystical sage. This bull had its own life to live; Bourne had no right to take it.

At that moment he was almost thrown off as the beast slammed into the barrier at an angle, twisting its head down and to the left in a more desperate attempt to dislodge the shifting weight on its back. Bourne, bounced painfully around, was clinging to the bull‘s horns. His arm ached where Scarface had tried to break it, his back was still bleeding from the knife wound, and worst of all his head felt as if it were splitting into a thousand pieces. He knew he couldn‘t last much longer, but rolling off the bull meant almost certain death.

And then, as the massed shouts from the corrida came to an ear-shattering crescendo, the bull folded its front legs, its back canted steeply down, and Bourne was shaken loose at last, tumbling head over heels, fetching up against the barrier, which now was spiderwebbed with cracks from the force of the bull‘s charges.

He lay in a heap, half dazed. He could feel the beast‘s hot breath on him; the horns were no more than a handbreadth from his face. He tried to move, but couldn‘t. His breath labored in and out of his lungs and he was gripped by a terrible dizziness.

The red eyes fixed him in their glare, the muscles beneath the glistening hide were bunching for the final lunge at him, and he knew that in the next moment he would be nothing more than a rag doll skewered like Scarface on the points of those bloody horns.

15

THE BULL LURCHED FORWARD, covering Bourne‘s face with a spray of hot mist. The beast‘s eyes rolled up and its massive head hit the floor at Bourne‘s feet with a heavy thud. Bourne, struggling with clearing his fuzzy brain, wiped his eyes with his forearm, put his head back against the barrier, and saw the guard he had taken out and dragged into the anteroom.

He stood in the classic marksman‘s pose, legs spread, feet planted firmly, one hand cupping the butt of the pistol with which he‘d shot the bull twice and which, now that it was dead, was aimed squarely at Bourne.

– A’Levantese! he ordered. -Stand up and show me your hands.

— All right, Bourne said. -One moment. Using one hand on top of the barrier to brace himself, he struggled to his feet. Placing Scarface‘s knife carefully on top of the barrier, he raised his hands, palms outward.

— What are you doing here? The guard was livid with rage. -Son of a bitch, look what you made me do. Have you any idea what that bull cost?

Bourne pointed to the ripped-apart body of Scarface. -I‘m nothing. It was this man, a professional assassin, I was trying to get away from.

The guard frowned deeply. -Who? Who do you mean? He took several tentative steps toward Bourne, then he saw what was left of Scarface. — Madre de Dios! he cried.

Bourne leapt across the barrier into the bull pen and the guard toppled backward. For a moment, the two men grappled for the gun, then Bourne chopped down on the side of the guard‘s neck and his body went limp.

Before rolling off him, he checked the guard to make sure his pulse was steady, then climbed back over the barrier and put his head under the tap over the soapstone sink, using the cold water to sluice away the remainder of the bull‘s blood as well as to revive himself. Using the cleanest of the rags under the sink, he wiped himself dry, then-still slightly dizzy-retraced his steps up the ramp into the colored dazzle of the corrida, where the triumphant matador was slowly and majestically parading around the perimeter of the ring with the bull‘s ears held high to the screaming throng.

The bull itself lay near the center of the corrida, mutilated, forgotten, flies buzzing around its immobile head.

Soraya felt Amun beside her as if he were a small nuclear plant. How many lies had he told her, she wondered. Did he have powerful enemies high up in the Egyptian government, or were these the same people who had given him the order to barter a Kowsar 3 missile and bring down the American jet?

— What is particularly troubling, he said, breaking the short silence,

— is that the Iranians had to have help getting here. It would be easy enough to pass through the chaos in Iraq, but after that what choice did they have?

They wouldn‘t have taken the northern route, crossing into Jordan and the Sinai, because it‘s too risky. The Jordanians would have shot them dead and the Sinai is too open, too heavily patrolled. He shook his head. -No, they had to have come here via Saudi and the Red Sea, which means the most logical landfall was Al Ghardaqah.

Soraya was aware of this tourist city on the Red Sea, a relaxed, sundrenched mecca for the overly stressed not unlike Miami Beach. Amun was right: Its laid-back, carnival atmosphere would make it an ideal landing place for a small terrorist group, passing as tourists or better yet Egyptian fishermen, to arrive and depart unrecognized.

Amun floored the gas pedal, streaking past cars and trucks alike. -I‘ve arranged for a small plane to take us to Al Ghardaqah as soon as we arrive at the airfield. Breakfast will be served on board. We can strategize while we