Robert Ludlum: Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

Cleaving to the outside of the paddies, Bourne took them up the hill, past terrace after terrace, some filled with brilliant green rice plants, others ashy brown following the harvest. A haze of aromatic smoke drifted over the hillside.

— Here! Moira said urgently. -Here!

Bourne saw the abutment of the drainage system, a five-inch ribbon of concrete on which he needed to drive the motorbike. Waiting until the last moment, he turned sharply to the left, running parallel to the terraces, which were laid out below them in a dizzying pattern, like hieroglyphics, immense and mysterious, carved into the hillside.

Due to his size and that of his motorbike, the Indonesian was able to close the gap between them. He was no more than two arm‘s-lengths behind them when Bourne came upon a worker-an old man with spindly legs and eyes the size of raisins. In one hand he held one of the fat-bladed knives used to harvest the rice, in the other a clump of freshly sliced raw rice. Seeing the two motorbikes approaching, the man froze in astonishment. As he passed, Bourne snatched the knife out of his hand.

Moments later Jason spied a rough wooden plank that crossed over the irrigation streamlet into the jungle on their right. He went over it, but as he did so the half-rotten board cracked, then splintered just as the front wheel bit into the dirt on the other side. The motorbike slewed dangerously, almost spilling them into the densely packed trees.

Their pursuer revved his motorbike, made the leap across the span left by the ruined bridge. He followed Bourne and Moira down a steeply sloping path, filled with rocks and half-buried tree roots.

The way grew steeper, Moira held on tighter. He could feel her heart hammering in her chest, her accelerated breath against his cheek. Trees flashed by frighteningly close on either side. Rocks caused the motorbike to rear up like a bucking bronco, forcing Bourne to fight to keep it under control. One mistake would send them plummeting off the path, down into the forest of thick-boled trees. Just when it seemed as if the trail couldn‘t get any steeper, it turned into a series of rock steps, down which they clattered and bumped with heart-stopping speed. Moira, risking a glance over her shoulder, saw the Indonesian, bent low over the handlebars of his motorbike, intent on overtaking them.

All at once the natural stairs gave out and the path resumed, this time at a more bearable pitch. Their pursuer tried to aim his handgun, but Bourne slashed a stand of bamboo with the knife he‘d taken from the old man, and the thin trees came crashing down across the path. The mahogany man was forced to jam the gun between his teeth. It took all his skill to keep from veering off into the looming forest.

As the path flattened out, they whizzed past small shacks, men wielding axes or stirring pots over fires, women with babies in the crooks of their arms, and the ubiquitous feral dogs, thin and cowed, which shied away from the racing vehicles. Clearly they were on the outskirts of a village. Could it be Tenganan? Bourne wondered. Had Suparwita foreseen this chase?

Soon thereafter they passed through a stone archway and entered the village proper. Children playing badminton outside the local school stopped and stared as the bikes flashed by. Chickens scattered, squawking, and huge fighting cocks dyed pink, orange, and blue were so agitated they overturned their wicker cages, in turn disturbing the cows and calves lying in the center of the village. The villagers themselves, emerging from the walled compounds of their houses, ran after their precious fighting cocks.

Like all hill villages, this one was built on terraces, much like the rice paddies: swaths of packed earth and scraggly grass interspersed with stone ramps that led to the next level. Running down the center was a wallless structure used by the elders for town meetings. On either side were shops, part of the living compounds, selling single and double ikat weavings. Catching sight of the first of the weaving shop signs through the chaos of running feet and animal sounds, Bourne felt a chill run down his spine. So this was, indeed, Tenganan, the village of Suparwita‘s prediction.

In the chaos that had erupted in the village, Bourne cut a line of washing, which undulated in the air like a scaled reptile, before fluttering in their wake. Skillfully guiding the motorbike through a narrow alley, he doubled back the way they had come.

Risking a glance behind him, he saw he‘d failed to lose the Indonesian; he came roaring at them unabated, unfazed by the downed laundry. Bourne with a burst of speed lengthened the distance between him and his pursuer enough to make a sharp U-turn, reversing course to make a run past the small man and out of the village. But once again, the Indonesian seemed unsurprised, almost as if he were expecting this tactic. He pulled up, drew his gun, and fired, forcing Bourne to whirl the motorbike back the way he had been going, even as a second shot passed just wide of his left shoulder. Bourne kept going in the only direction open to him, continued on over the bumpy packed dirt and stone ramps, away from his dogged pursuer.

Leonid Arkadin, lost in the dappled shadows of the forest, heard the roar of the engines over the measured chanting that came from inside the walls of the temple over which, from his position, he had a perfect view. He raised the Parker Hale M85 so the stock fit comfortably to his shoulder and sighted down the Schmidt amp; Bender scope.

He was calm now, his anxiety replaced by a curious and cunning fire that burned away all thought extraneous to his purpose, leaving his mind as clear as the sky above him, as still as the forest within which he was nestled like an adder in a tree, waiting patiently for its prey. He‘d planned well, using the local Indonesian as a hunter will use a beater to stalk the prey, moving it ever closer to where the hunter has hidden himself.

All at once a motorbike emerged into the temple clearing, and Arkadin breathed deeply as he centered Bourne in his sights. And in that moment the outline of Bourne‘s body became keenly defined, like vapor condensing into the poisoned nectar of revenge.

Bourne and Moira broke out into a perfectly still clearing in which were set three temples-a large one in the center, two smaller ones on either side. There was no sound except the rhythmic throb of the motorbike‘s engine. Then, hearing chanting from inside the walls of the center temple, Bourne pulled up.

In that moment Arkadin, settling himself on the nearly horizontal branch of a tree, pulled the trigger, and Bourne was blown backward off the motorbike. Moira screamed.

Throwing aside the rifle and drawing a wicked-looking hunting knife with a serrated blade, Arkadin jumped to the ground and raced toward the kill site in order to slit Bourne‘s throat and ensure his death. But his progress was impeded by a herd of cows. Following them were women with offerings of fruit and flowers on their heads, and behind them came the town‘s children in a ceremonial procession, moving toward the temple. Arkadin tried to get around them, but one of the cows, disturbed by his frantic movements, turned in his direction. It shook its long, sharp horns and at once the procession froze as if in midstep. Heads turned and all eyes were on him, and with one last look at Bourne‘s bloody body, he vanished back into the jungle.

The celebrants rushed toward Bourne, spilling their offerings across the sparse grass where he lay on his back in the dirt. He tried to get up, failed. Moira knelt over him, and he pulled her down so her ear was against his mouth. Blood had soaked the front of his shirt, and now trickled darkly into the earth.

IN AN UPPER-CLASS SUBURB of Munich, two young bodyguards with gimlet eyes and holstered 9mm Glocks in their armpits flanked a thin, hyperactive man as he emerged from a house. An older man with dark skin and grave lines reaching down from either corner of his mouth, like mustaches, emerged from the shadowed refuge to briefly shake the hyperactive man‘s hand. Then the three men trotted down the stairs and entered a waiting car: one of the bodyguards riding shotgun, the other one with the hyperactive man in back. The meeting had been intense but brief, and the engine was already running, purring like a well-fed cat. His mind was filled with how he was going to structure the debriefing he would give his boss, Abdulla Khoury, on the rapidly changing face of the Turkish situation as it had just been outlined to him.