Robert Ludlum - Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

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-mâché 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 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 grâce 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.