Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Sanction

They retired to spacious rooms, furnished like bedrooms in European villas, with four-poster beds, tons of chintz, velvet, swags, drapes. There Kendall watched as, in one astonishing shimmy, Imani slid out of her chocolate silk spaghetti-strap dress. She wore nothing underneath. The lamplight burnished her dark skin.

Then she opened her arms and, with a deep-felt groan, General Richard P. Kendall melted into the sinuous river of her flawless body.

The moment Bourne felt his air supply cut off, he levered himself up off the front bench seat, arching his back so that he could put first one foot, then the other on the dashboard. Using his legs, he launched himself diagonally into the backseat, so that he landed right behind the ill-fated Baronov. The strangler was forced to turn to his right in order to keep the wire around Bourne’s throat. This was an awkward position for him; he now lacked the leverage he had when Bourne was directly in front of him.

Bourne planted the heel of his shoe in the strangler’s groin and ground down as hard as he could, but his strength was depleted from the lack of oxygen.

“Die, fucker,” the strangler said in a hard-edged Midwestern accent.

White lights danced in his vision, and a blackness was seeping up all around him. It was as if he were looking down a tunnel through the wrong end of a telescope. Nothing looked real; his sense of perspective was skewed. He could see the man, his dark hair, his cruel face, the unmistakable hundred-mile stare of the American soldier in combat. In the back of his mind, he knew the NSA had found him.

Bourne’s lapse of concentration allowed the strangler to free himself, jerk the ends of the wire so that it dug deeper into Bourne’s throat. Bourne’s windpipe was totally cut off. Blood was running down into his collar as the wire bit through his skin. Strange animal noises bubbled up from deep inside him. He blinked away tears and sweat, used his last ounce of strength to jam his thumb into the agent’s eye. Keeping up the pressure despite blows to his midsection gained him a temporary respite: The wire slackened. He gasped in a railing breath, and dug deeper with his thumb.

The wire slackened further. He heard the car door open. The strangler’s face wrenched away from him, and the car door slammed shut. He heard running feet, dying away. By the time he managed to unwind the wire, to cough and gasp air into his burning lungs, the street was empty. The NSA agent was gone.

Bourne was alone in the Volga with the corpse of Lev Baronov, dizzy, weak, and sick at heart.

ICAN’T SIMPLY contact Haydar,” Devra said. “After what happened in Sevastopol they’ll know you’ll be going after him.”

“That being the case,” Arkadin said, “the document is long gone.”

“Not necessarily.” Devra stirred her Turkish coffee, thick as tar. “They chose this backwater because it’s so inaccessible. But that works both ways. Chances are Haydar hasn’t yet been able to pass the document along.”

They were sitting in a tiny dust-blown cafй in Eskisёehir. Even for Turkey this was a backward place, filled with sheep, the smells of pine, dung, and urine, and not much else. A chill wind blew across the mountain pass. There was snow on the north side of the buildings that made up the village, and judging by the lowering clouds more was on its way.

“ Godforsaken is too good a word for this hellhole,” Arkadin said. “For shit’s sake, there isn’t even a cell phone signal.”

“That’s funny coming from you.” Devra downed her coffee. “You were born in a shithole, weren’t you.”

Arkadin felt an almost uncontrollable urge to drag her around the back of the rickety structure and beat her. But he held his hand and his rage, husbanding them both for another day when he would gaze down at her as if from a hundred miles away, whisper into her ear, I have no regard for you. To me, your life is without meaning. If you have any hope of staying alive even a little longer, you’ll never again ask where I was born, who my parents were, anything of a personal nature whatsoever .

As it turned out, among her other talents Marlene was an accomplished hypnotist. She told him she wanted to hypnotize him in order to get at the root of his rage.

“I’ve heard there are people who can’t be hypnotized,” Arkadin said. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” Marlene said.

It turned out he was one of them.

“You simply will not take suggestion,” she said. “Your mind has put up a wall it’s impossible to penetrate.”

They were sitting in the garden behind Semion Icoupov’s villa. Owing to the steep lay of the land it was the size of a postage stamp. They sat on a stone bench beneath the shade afforded by a fig tree, whose dark, soon-to-be-luscious fruit was just beginning to curl the branches downward to the stony earth.

“Well,” Arkadin said, “what are we to do?”

“The question is what are you going to do, Leonid.” She brushed a fragment of leaf off her thigh. She was wearing American designer jeans, an open-necked shirt, sandals on her feet. “The process of examining your past is designed to help you regain control over yourself.”

“You mean my homicidal tendencies,” he said.

“Why would you choose to say it that way, Leonid?”

He looked deeply into her eyes. “Because it’s the truth.”

Marlene’s eyes grew dark. “Then why are you so reluctant to talk to me about the things I feel will help you?”

“You just want to worm your way inside my head. You think if you know everything about me you can control me.”

“You’re wrong. This isn’t about control, Leonid.”

Arkadin laughed. “What is it about then?”

“What it’s always been-it’s about helping you control yourself.”

A light wind tugged at her hair, and she smoothed it back into place. He noticed such things and attached to them psychological meaning. Marlene liked everything just so.

“I was a sad little boy. Then I was an angry little boy. Then I ran away from home. There, does that satisfy you?”

Marlene tilted her head to catch a bit of sunlight that appeared through the tossed leaves of the fig tree. “How is it you went from being sad to being angry?”

“I grew up,” Arkadin said.

“You were still a child.”

“Only in a manner of speaking.”

He studied her for a moment. Her hands were crossed on her lap. She lifted one of them, touched his cheek with her fingertips, traced the line of his jaw until she reached his chin. She turned his face a bit farther toward her. Then she leaned forward. Her lips, when they touched his, were soft. They opened like a flower. The touch of her tongue was like an explosion in his mouth.

Arkadin, damping down the dark eddy of his emotion, smiled winningly. “Doesn’t matter. I’m never going back.”

“I second that emotion.” Devra nodded, then rose. “Let’s see if we can get proper lodgings. I don’t know about you but I need a shower. Then we’ll see about contacting Haydar without anyone knowing.”

As she began to turn away, he caught her by the elbow.

“Just a minute.”

Her expression was quizzical as she waited for him to continue.

“If you’re not my enemy, if you haven’t been lying to me, if you want to stay with me, then you’ll demonstrate your fidelity.”

“I said, yes, I would do what you asked of me.”

“That might entail killing the people who are surely guarding Haydar.”

She didn’t even blink. “Give me the fucking gun.”

Veronica Hart lived in an apartment complex in Langley, Virginia. Like so many other complexes in this part of the world, it served as temporary housing for the thousands of federal government workers, including spooks of all stripes, who were often on assignment overseas or in other parts of the country.