Robert Ludlum - Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

The priest hadn‘t steered him wrong. This was the place of his dream, this was where he‘d been when he‘d seen the figure framed in the archway turn toward him. Turning around, he peered through the archway at the breathtaking view of sacred Mount Agung, rising blue and misty, now wreathed in clouds, its iconic cone shape visible in all its monumental power.

Drawn to the dragon staircases, Bourne continued his ascent. Stopping midway, he turned to look back at the gateway. There was the volcano framed between the soaring teeth that formed the entrance. His heart skipped a beat as a figure was silhouetted against Mount Agung. Involuntarily, he took a step down, then saw the figure was that of a little girl in a red-and-yellow sarong. She turned, moving in that liquid, sinuous way of all Balinese children, and abruptly vanished, leaving only dusty sunlight in her wake.

Resuming his climb, Bourne soon reached the upper plaza of the temple. There were a few people scattered here and there. A man knelt, praying. Bourne wandered aimlessly among the heavily carved structures, feeling somehow that he was floating, as if he had entered his dream, his past, but as a stranger returning to a place of forgotten familiarity.

He wished this place struck a chord, but it didn‘t, which bothered him. His experience with his form of amnesia was that a name, a sight, a smell often triggered a return of his lost memory about a place or a person. Why had he been in Bali? Being here in this place he had been dreaming about for months should have released the memories from the well of his mind. But those memories were like a fluke on a sandy sea bottom-that strange creature with two eyes on one side and none on the other-either all there or not at all.

The man at prayer was finished. He rose from his kneeling position and, as he turned around, Bourne recognized Suparwita.

His heart beating fast, he walked over to where Suparwita stood, contemplating him.

— You look well, Suparwita said.

— I survived. Moira thinks it‘s because of you.

The healer smiled, looked beyond Bourne for a moment, at the temple. -I see you‘ve found part of your past.

Bourne turned, looked as well. -If I have, he said, — I don‘t know what it is.

— And yet you came.

— I‘ve been dreaming about this place ever since I got here.

— I‘ve been waiting for you, and the powerful entity who guides and protects you brought you.

Bourne turned back. -Shiva? Shiva is the god of destruction.

— And of transformation. Suparwita raised an arm, indicating that they should walk. -Tell me about your dream.

Bourne looked around. -I‘m here, looking back at Mount Agung through the entryway. Suddenly, there‘s a figure silhouetted there. It turns to look at me.

— And then?

— And then I wake up.

Suparwita nodded slowly, as if he half expected this answer. They had walked the entire circumference of the temple plaza, and now had reached the area just in front of the entryway. The angle of light was just as it was in his dream, and Bourne gave a little shiver.

— You were seeing the person you were here with, Suparwita said. -A woman named Holly Marie Moreau.

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Bourne couldn‘t place it. -Where is she now?

— I‘m afraid she‘s dead. Suparwita pointed to the space between the two heavily carved teeth of the gateway. -She was there, just as you remember in your dream, and then she was gone.

— Gone?

— She fell. Suparwita turned to him. -Or was pushed.

GOD IN HEAVEN, it‘s hotter than Hades in there, even without these clean suits. Delia wiped the sweat off her face. -Good news. We‘ve recovered the black box.

Soraya, standing with Amun Chalthoum inside one of the tents his people had erected adjacent to the crash site, was grateful for the interruption. Being with Amun in such close quarters had put her nerves on overload. That there were so many layers to their relationship-professional, personal, ethnic-was difficult enough, but they were also frenemies, ostensibly on the same side but underneath fierce competitors for intel, bound to governments with vastly different agendas. So their dance was complex, often dizzyingly so.

— What does it tell you? Chalthoum said.

Delia gave him one of her Sphinx-like looks. -We‘ve just begun analyzing the instrument data from the aircraft‘s last moments, but from the cockpit conversation it‘s perfectly clear the crew didn‘t see an aircraft of any kind. However, the copilot saw something at the very last minute. It was small, coming at them very fast.

— A missile, Soraya said while looking into Amun‘s face. She wondered whether he already knew this. He would if al Mokhabarat had been complicit in the incident. But Chalthoum‘s dark face remained impassive.

Delia was nodding. -A ground-to-air missile seems the likeliest scenario at this stage.

— So, Chalthoum said in his native tongue even before Delia had left the tent, — it seems as if the United States isn‘t protecting us from extremists, after all.

— I think it would better serve both of us to start figuring out who was responsible, she said, — rather than pointing fingers, don‘t you?

Chalthoum watched her carefully for a moment, then nodded, and they retreated to opposite sides of the tent to update their superiors. Using the Typhon satellite phone she‘d brought with her, Soraya called Veronica Hart.

— This is bad news, Hart said from halfway around the world. -The very worst.

— I can only imagine how Halliday is going to run with it. While Soraya spoke, she assumed Chalthoum was briefing the Egyptian president with the same information Delia had provided. -Why do good things happen to bad people?

— Because life is chaos, and chaos can‘t distinguish between good and evil. There was a slight pause before Hart continued. -Any news on the MIG?

She meant the Iranian militant indigenous group.

— Not yet. We‘ve had our hands full with the crash. The scene is horrific and the conditions are next to intolerable. Besides, I haven‘t had three minutes to myself.

— This can‘t wait, Hart said firmly. -Finding out about the Iranian indigenous group is your primary mission.

The two of you came to me, Suparwita said. -Holly was extremely agitated, but she wouldn‘t tell you why.

Bourne stared at the spot where the body must have ended up, where his new beginning lay shattered. Why had he been so foolish to think that his past was dead and buried when, even here in a remote corner of the world, it existed like an egg waiting to hatch? Another piece of his past, another death. Why was he always entwined with loss of life?

He continued to stare down the three steep staircases with the undulating dragon banisters. He tried to remember that day: if he‘d rushed to this spot, if the woman was already a bloody heap far away as he flew down the steps. He strained to recall anything about the incident, but his mind was enclosed by a gray fog, thick as the stone dragons, fierce and implacable guardians of the temple. Was the fog protecting him from the terrible event here?

The pain in his chest, his constant companion in the aftermath of the shooting, accelerated, spreading out into his entire torso.

His face must have gone gray because Suparwita said, — This way.

They made their way from the lintel, from the chasm of the past, and walked back onto the temple plaza and into the cool shade of a towering wall into which was carved an army of demons being opposed by the local dragon spirits.

Bourne sat and drank water. The healer stood, hands folded together, waiting patiently. Bourne was reminded of what he liked so much about Moira-