The Bourne Deception (22 page)

Taking the key from the chain at the guard’s hip, he unlocked the door and pushed the guard into the darkened interior. As he followed him in, he shut the door behind him, but not before he’d caught a glimpse of Scarface hurrying down the ramp. Now that he’d ascertained the place of Bourne’s meet, he was prepared to close in on his quarry.

Bourne found himself in a small anteroom filled with wooden bins containing food for the bulls and an enormous soapstone sink with outsize zinc spout and taps, beneath which sat buckets, cloths, mops, and plastic bottles of cleaning fluids. The floor was covered with straw, which absorbed only a minuscule part of the stench. The bull, hidden behind a concrete barrier that rose to Bourne’s chest, snorted and bellowed, scenting his presence. The frenzied shouts of the crowd broke like waves over the
toril
, above which sunlight, multicolored from the reflections spinning off the costume of the matador and the outfits of the patrons, splashed across the upper walls of the pen like an artist’s broad and reckless brushstrokes.

Bourne drew a cloth from one of the buckets and was halfway across the anteroom when the door behind him opened so slowly one needed to be looking straight at it to be aware of the movement. Putting his back to the barrier, he moved to his left, toward the part of the room where the opening door would block Scarface’s view of him.

The bull, frightened, angered, or both by the sudden new human scents, struck the concrete barrier with its hooves, the force so powerful it sent bits of stucco flying on Bourne’s side. Scarface seemed to hesitate, no doubt trying to identify the noise. Bourne was almost certain that he had no idea that the next bull was waiting here for its turn to die a bellowing death in the
corrida
. It was a creature of pure muscle and instinct, easily provoked, easily bewildered, fast and deadly unless brought low by exhaustion and a hundred wounds out of which its life dribbled into the dust of the
corrida
.

Bourne crept behind the door as it slowly opened, as Scarface’s left hand appeared holding a knife with a long, slender blade shaped like that of the matador’s sword. The wicked tip was tilted slightly up, a position from which he could thrust it, slash it, or throw it with equal ease.

Bourne wrapped the cloth around the knuckles of his left hand, providing sufficient padding. He let Scarface take one tentative step into the anteroom and then rushed him from the side. The killer’s instinct caused the blade to come up and out in a semicircular sweep as he turned toward the blur of motion he detected at the extreme corner of his field of vision.

Deflecting the blade with wrapped knuckles caused Scarface’s defense to open up, and Bourne stepped in, planting his feet, turning from his hips, and drove his right fist into Scarface’s solar plexus. The killer gasped almost inaudibly and his eyes opened in a moment of shock, but an instant later he’d wrapped his right arm around Bourne’s, locking the back of his hand against the inside of Bourne’s elbow. Instantly he applied both pressure and leverage in an attempt to break the bones in Bourne’s forearm.

Pain shot up Jason’s arm, and he faltered. Scarface took the opening and brought the knife blade down, inside Bourne’s wrapped left hand so that the point was directed at Bourne’s rib cage. He couldn’t concentrate on both motions at once, so he let up fractionally on Bourne’s forearm long enough to drive the blade inward toward Bourne’s heart.

Bourne stepped into the lunge, surprising him. Bourne was suddenly too close and the blade passed along his side, allowing him to trap Scarface’s hand between his side and his left arm. At the same time, he kept his forward momentum going, driving Scarface across the room at an angle, backing him up against the stucco barrier.

Scarface, enraged, redoubled his efforts to break Bourne’s arm. A moment more and the bones would snap. On the other side of the barrier, the bull scented the blood in the air, which further maddened it. Once again, its great hooves struck the barrier. The shock reverberated down Scarface’s spine and jolted him from his position of superior leverage.

For a moment Bourne broke free, but Scarface had maneuvered the knife in his trapped hand so that the blade raked down Bourne’s back, drawing blood. Bourne swiveled, but the knife blade followed him, jabbing ever closer until he vaulted over the barrier.

Scarface followed without hesitation, and now both of them were in unknown territory, facing not only each other but the enraged bull as well.

Bourne had the immediate advantage of knowing it was there, but even he was surprised by its size. Like the
corrida
, the pen was divided by sunlight and shadow. Dust motes hung in the light in the upper half of the pen, but below was the darkness of the Minotaur’s cave. He saw the bull in the shadows, red eyes glittering, black lips flecked with foam. It was staring at him, pawing the ground with massive hooves. Its tail switched back and forth, its massive shoulders were bunched with muscle and sinew. Its head lowered ominously.

And then Scarface was on him. The man, solely intent on Bourne, was as yet unaware of the creature with which they shared the pen. The three skulls, each peering in a different direction, filled Bourne’s vision. He brought an elbow up, aiming for the throat, slammed it into Scarface’s chin instead as the killer partially deflected the blow. At almost the same time Scarface smashed his fist into the side of Bourne’s head, bringing him down to the packed-dirt floor. Rolling over, he grabbed Bourne’s ears, pulled Bourne’s head off the ground, then slammed it back down.

Bourne was rapidly losing consciousness. Scarface was astride him, his bulk painfully pressed down on Bourne’s rib cage. There was a moment when Scarface grinned. He slammed Bourne’s head down again and again, taking increasing pleasure.

Bourne thought,
Where’s his knife?

He felt around on the floor with both hands, but there were flashes behind his eyes, the light and dark of the room were spinning, merging into a pinwheel of silver sparks. He felt his breath laboring, his heart hammering in his chest, but as his head was once again slammed into the dirt even these vital sensations began to slip away, replaced by a numbing warmth that flooded inward from his extremities. This warmth was soothing, taking away all pain, all effort, all will. He saw himself floating on a river of white light, moving away from his world of shadows and darkness.

And then something cold intruded and for a moment he was certain it was the breath of Shiva, the destroyer, whose face he sensed hovering over him. Then he knew the blade of cold for what it was. Taking hold of the knife’s hilt brought him back from the brink, and he plunged the blade into Scarface’s side, piercing the flesh between his ribs, skewering his heart.

Scarface reared up, his shoulders trembling, but perhaps, Bourne thought, they weren’t trembling at all, because his head was still spinning from the pounding it had taken. He had trouble focusing. How else to explain Scarface’s head being replaced by that of a bull? This wasn’t Crete, he wasn’t in the Minotaur’s cave. He was in Seville, at the Maestranza
corrida
.

Then full consciousness returned and, with it, the knowledge of precisely where in the
corrida
he was.

The pen!

And as he looked up from his prone position he saw the bull, huge and menacing, its head lowered, its razor-tipped horns angled to disembowel him.

Undersecretary Stevenson did not look at all well when Moira and Veronica Hart found him, but then no one looks particularly good stretched out on a slab in the cold room of the DC morgue. The two women had been searching the area surrounding the Fountain of the Court of Neptune sculpture near the entrance to the Library of Congress. As fieldwork protocol dictated, they began at the point of origin—in this case, the fountain—and began moving outward in a spiral, hoping to spot some clue that Stevenson might have left as to what had happened to him.

Moira had already called Stevenson’s wife and married daughter, neither of whom had seen or heard from him. She had just looked up the number of Humphry Bamber, Stevenson’s friend and old college roommate, when Hart got the call that a corpse fitting the undersecretary’s description had just been brought into the morgue. The Metro police wanted a positive ID. The
DCI
had turned to Moira, who said she’d give the prelim. If it was Stevenson, the cops could call his wife to make the formal ID.

“He looks like shit,” Hart said now as they stood over the cadaver of the late Steve Stevenson. “What happened to him?” she asked the associate ME.

“Hit-and-run. C1 to C4 of his spine crushed, as well as most of his pelvis, so the vehicle must’ve been something big: an
SUV
or a truck.” The
AME
was a small, compact woman with an enormous coppery halo of wild curls.

“He never felt a thing, if that’s any consolation.”

“I doubt it will be to his family,” Moira said.

The
AME
went on unperturbed; she’d seen and heard it all before. It wasn’t that she was callous, just that her job demanded dispassion. “The cops are investigating now but I doubt they’ll find anything.” She shrugged. “In these cases they rarely do.”

Moira stirred. “Did you find anything out of the ordinary?”

“Not in the prelim, anyway. His alcohol level was almost two, more than double the legal limit, so it’s all too likely he became disoriented and walked off the curb when he should have stayed put,” the
AME
said. “We’re waiting on the formal ID to begin the full autopsy.”

As the two women turned away, Hart said, “What I find curious is they found no wallet on him, no keys, nothing to indicate who he was.”

“If he was deliberately hit,” Moira said, “his killers wouldn’t necessarily want him identified right away.”

“Your conspiracy theory again.” Hart shook her head. “Okay, let’s play this game for a minute. If he was murdered, why have him found at all? They could have snatched him, killed him, and buried him where he wouldn’t be dug up for ages, if at all.”

“Two reasons,” Moira said. “First, he’s an undersecretary at DoD. Can you imagine the scope of the manhunt the moment he was reported missing, the amount of time his name would be in the forefront of the news? No, these people wanted him dead, wanted it over and done with, which defines an accident.”

Hart cocked her head. “What’s the second reason?”

“They want to scare me away from whatever Weston found, whatever Stevenson was afraid of.”

“Pinprickbardem.”

“Precisely.”

“You’ve become as bad as Bourne was with these conspiracy theories.”

“All of Jason’s conspiracy theories proved correct,” Moira said hotly.

The
DCI
appeared unconvinced. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?”

They reached the door and Moira turned back to take one last look at Stevenson. Then she opened the door. When they’d entered the corridor she said, “Would we be getting ahead of ourselves if I told you that Stevenson was a reformed alcoholic?”

“Could be his fear made him slip off the wagon.”

“You didn’t know him,” Moira said. “He’d converted his disease into a religion. Staying sober was his watchword, the reason he stayed alive. He hadn’t had a drink in the last twenty years. Nothing could have induced him to do it.”

The bull was coming, nothing could stop it. Bourne grabbed the knife, pulled it out of Scarface’s side, and rolled to one side. The bull, scenting fresh blood, flicked its horns, goring Scarface in the groin. The animal twisted its massive head, lifting Scarface’s bulk off the ground as if it were made of papier-mÃ{c\}ché and tossing it against the barrier.

Snorting and stomping its front hooves, the bull then charged the corpse, impaling it on both horns, shaking it back and forth. The beast would surely tear it to shreds within moments. Bourne rose slowly, moving toward the bull with measured steps. When he was close enough, he slapped it smartly on its glistening, black snout with the flat of the blade.

The bull pulled up short, confused, and backed up, allowing the bloodsoaked body to crumple to the ground. There it stood its ground, with forelegs spread wide, and shook its head from side to side as if it couldn’t decide where the blow came from or what it meant. Blood spiraled down the horns, dripping onto the dirt. Staring at Bourne, uncertain how to deal with this second interloper in its territory, it made a sound deep in its throat. The moment it took a step toward him, Bourne smacked it once again with the blade and it halted, blinking, snorting, shaking its head as if to rid itself of the stinging pain.

Bourne turned, knelt beside the ragged corpse. Quickly he went through Scarface’s pockets. He needed to find out who had sent this man. According to Wayan’s description of a man with gray eyes, Scarface wasn’t the one who’d tried to kill him in Bali. Had he been sent by the same man who’d hired the marksman? He needed to find some answers because Scarface was unfamiliar to him. Had Bourne known him in the past he couldn’t remember? As always when there was the possibility of someone resurfacing, these questions were maddening, required immediate solving, otherwise he’d never rest.

Save for a roll of blood-soaked 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.