Robert Ludlum - Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

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.

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.

– Ä’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 eat.

Soraya called Veronica Hart, who answered immediately.

When she had been updated, Hart said, — The president is addressing the UN

Security Council tomorrow morning. He‘ll be asking for a formal condemnation of Iran.

— Without definitive proof?

— Halliday and his NSA people have convinced the president that their written report is all the proof we need.

— I take it you don‘t agree, Soraya said drily.

— I most certainly don‘t. If we go out on a limb like we did with the WMDs in Iraq and are subsequently proven wrong it will be an un-mitigated disaster, both politically and militarily, because we‘ll have enmeshed the world in a wider war than anyone can currently handle, and that includes us, no matter what Halliday says. You‘ve got to find me definitive proof of Iranian involvement.

— That‘s just what Chalthoum and I are working on, but the situation has become more complicated.

— What do you mean?

— Chalthoum theorizes that the Iranians must have had help in transshipping the missile, and I agree. She repeated the logistics that Amun had given her. -Many of the people who took part in the nine-eleven disaster were Saudis. If the same group is now involved with an Iranian terrorist network or, far more ominously, the Iranian government itself, the implications are far reaching because the Iranians are Shi‘a and the overwhelming majority of Saudis are Wahhib, a branch of the Sunni sect. As you know, Shi‘a and Sunni are blood enemies. This raises the possibility that they have somehow entered into either a temporary truce or an alliance of shared purpose.

Hart sucked in her breath. -God in heaven, we‘re talking about a nightmare scenario that‘s frankly terrified us and the European intelligence community for years.

— With good reason, Soraya said, — because it means that a united Islam is girding itself for an all-out war with the West.

Bourne felt the wound near his heart throbbing so badly, he feared it might have reopened. Exiting the pen, he headed for the toilets where he could at least get the remainder of the blood off his clothes, but halfway there he saw two police rounding the corridor, heading toward the pens. Had someone in the corrida seen something and raised the alarm? Or perhaps the guard had regained consciousness. There was no time for speculation as he reversed course and headed, somewhat unsteadily, up the ramp into the spangled Seville twilight. Behind him, he heard someone calling. Was it to him? Without a backward glance, he turned to look for Tracy, but as if intuiting the increasing danger of the situation, she was already out of her seat, searching for him. The moment they saw each other, she headed not toward him but toward the nearest exit, leading him there by example.