Robert Ludlum - Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

Soraya turned to him. -And then?

He shrugged. -Report back to me, what else?

It was very late by the time Moira was ready to leave the office. With a weary hand she switched off CNN, which she‘d had on with the volume muted ever since the news of the airliner incident in Egypt broke. The incident unnerved her, as it had many people in the security field. No word on what had really happened-not even from her back-channel, not-for-attribution sources, whose terse responses were so brittle they set her teeth on edge. Meanwhile the press was having a typically monstrous field day-talking heads on TV speculating terrorist attack scenarios. And that didn‘t even count the more out-and-out fabrications posing as — the truth they don‘t want you to know on thousands of Internet sites, including the toxic chestnut trotted out since 9/11 that the American government was behind the incident in order to advance its own casus belli , its case for war.

As she took the elevator down to the underground garage, Moira‘s mind was in two places at once: here with the new organization she was building and in Bali with Bourne. His grave wounds had made it more difficult to separate herself from him. What had seemed so simple when they‘d discussed her future in the pool at the resort now seemed nebulous and vaguely anxiety producing. It wasn‘t that she felt the need to take care of him-God knows she would not have made a decent nurse-but that within the eternity when his life had hung in the balance, she‘d been forced to reassess her feelings for him. The possibility that he would be snatched from her filled her with dread. At least, she assumed it was dread, since she‘d never before felt anything like it: a suffocating blackness that blotted out the sun at noon, the stars at midnight.

Was this love? she wondered. Could love produce this madness that transcended time and space, that caused her heart to expand beyond its known limits, that turned her bones to jelly? How many times during the night had she been roused out of a shallow and restless sleep, compelled to pad into the bathroom to stare at the reflection in the mirror she did not recognize. It was as if she had been unceremoniously thrust into someone else‘s life, a life she neither wanted nor understood.

— Who are you? she said over and over to that strange reflection. -How did you get here? What is it you want?

Neither she nor her reflection had answers. In the stillness of the night she wept for the loss of who she had been, in despair of the new and incomprehensible future that had invaded her body like a transfusion.

But in the morning she was herself again: pragmatic, focused, ruthless both in her recruiting and in the stringent rules she set out for her operatives. She made each one swear allegiance to Heartland as if it were a sovereign nation-which in many respects Black River, her main rival, already was.

And yet, the moment the sun fell from the sky, twilight and uncertainty crept through her, and her thoughts returned to Bourne with whom she‘d had no contact since she had left Bali three months ago with the body of a dead Australian drifter and the paperwork identifying it as Bourne‘s. It was a recurring disease she‘d picked up on the island: The thought of his imminent death was enough to cause her to run, and keep running. Except that wherever she went she ended up at the terrifying place where she‘d started, at the moment he‘d fallen to the ground, at the moment her heart had stopped beating.

The elevator door opened onto the shadow-drenched concrete expanse of the garage, and she stepped out, her car key in her hand. She hated this latenight walk through the almost deserted garage. The smears of oil and gas, the stench of exhaust, the echoes of her heels ringing against the concrete made her feel sad and achingly lonely, as if there was no place in the world she could call home.

There were very few cars left; the parallel white lines painted on the unsealed concrete stretched away from her, ending where she‘d parked her car. She heard the cadence of her own strides, saw the movement of her crooked shadow as it passed across one square pillar after another.

She heard a car engine cough to life and came to a halt, standing still, her senses questing for the source. A dove-gray Audi pulled out from behind a pillar, turned on its headlights, and came toward her, gathering speed.

She drew her custom Lady Hawk 9mm from its thigh holster, moved to an expert sharpshooter‘s crouch, thumbed off the safety. She was just about to pull the trigger when the passenger‘s-side window slid down and the Audi screeched to a halt, rocking on its shocks.

— Moira-!

She bent her knees more to lower her line of vision.

— Moira, it‘s me, Jay!

Peering inside the Audi, she saw Jay Weston, an operative she‘d poached from Hobart, the largest government ODC-overseas defense contractor-six weeks ago.

At once she put up the Lady Hawk, holstered it. -Jesus, Jay, you could‘ve gotten yourself killed.

— I need to see you.

She squinted. -Well, shit, you could‘ve called.

He shook his head. His face was pinched and tight with unaccustomed tension. -Cell phones are too insecure. I couldn‘t take the risk, not with this.

— Well, she said, leaning on the window frame, — what‘s so important?

— Not here, he said, looking around furtively. -Not anywhere where we can be overheard.

Moira frowned. -Don‘t you think you‘re being a bit paranoid?

— Being paranoid is in my job description, isn‘t it?

She nodded; she supposed it was. -All right, how d‘you-

— I need to show you something, he said, patting a pocket of an expensive-looking sapphire-blue suede jacket slung across the passenger‘s seat, then took off toward the ramp up to the street before she had a chance to climb in or even answer him.

She sprinted to her car, starting it up with the remote as she ran. Hauling open the door, she slid behind the wheel, slammed the door shut behind her, and put the car in gear. Jay‘s Audi was waiting for her at the top of the ramp. The moment he saw her approach in his rearview mirror, he took off, turning right out of the garage. Moira followed.

Latenight traffic with people returning home from the theater and movies was light, so there was no real reason for Jay to run the lights on P Street, but that‘s precisely what he continued to do. Moira put on speed to keep up with him; more than once she barely avoided being clipped by the cross-street traffic, tires squealing, horns blaring angrily.

Three blocks from her building they picked up a cop on a motorcycle. She flashed her high beams at Jay, but either he wasn‘t looking or he chose to ignore her because he kept running the red lights. All at once she saw the cop flash by her, heading toward the Audi in front of her.

— Shit, she muttered, putting on some more speed.

She was thinking of how she was going to explain her operative‘s repeated infractions when the cop drew up alongside the Audi. An instant later he‘d drawn his service revolver, aimed it squarely at the driver‘s window, and pulled the trigger twice in close succession.

The Audi bucked and swerved. Moira had only seconds to avoid slamming into the car, but she was fighting the immoderate speed of her own vehicle. At the periphery of her vision she saw the motorcycle cop peel off and head north at a cross street. The Audi, in the middle of a series of sickening pendulum-like swings, smashed into her, sending her car spinning.

The collision flipped the Audi over like a beetle on its hard, shiny back. Then, as if a monstrous fingertip had flicked it, it continued to roll over, but Moira lost track of it as her car struck a streetlight and careened into a parked car, staving in the offside front fender and door. A blizzard of shattered glass covered her as she was jerked forward, hit the deployed air bag then dizzyingly was slammed back against her seat.