Then the present returned with the speed of a rocket, and he saw the severed head facing away from him. He turned it toward him by hooking his foot against the side of the nose. It stared up at him with the unthinking eyes of a landed shark. It was a face he knew well, but it wasn’t Bourne’s.
He expelled a startled yelp as Bourne grabbed hold of him and slammed him back against the wall so hard he dropped the bloody machete. He stared from Bourne to the severed head.
“I thought Ben David had been burned to death.”
“One of his agents saved him, and I liberated him from his agent,” Bourne said. “I wanted his death to have meaning.”
Maceo Encarnación’s gaze returned to Colonel Ben David’s face, which stared up at him from its position on the floor. There was no seawater to wash away the blood and gore, to make the death clean and neat, to dream the dream of a perfect death.
“I thought he was you,” Maceo Encarnación said.
“Of course you did.”
Maceo Encarnación shuddered. “Let me go. I have the secret to SILEX. Imagine the wealth you and I will share.”
Bourne stared into his eyes.
“You killed Nicodemo in Paris.” It was only a semi-question.
“He knifed Rebeka,” Bourne said by way of answer. “She died a slow, painful death.”
“For that I’m sorry.”
“I looked into her eyes. I saw the pain. I saw the end coming, and there was nothing I could do.”
“For a man like you, that must be terrible indeed.”
Bourne drove a fist deep into Encarnación’s stomach. He doubled over, and Bourne pulled him erect by his hair.
The Mexican’s red-rimmed eyes opened wide. “You killed my son.”
“He killed himself.”
Maceo Encarnación spat into his face. “How dare you!”
“I tried to subdue him underwater, but you trained him too well. He would have killed me and Don Fernando if I hadn’t killed him.” “¡Asesino!” Encarnación slipped a push-dagger from a sheath hidden beneath his clothes. His fist shot out, the blade aimed at Bourne’s heart.
Bourne grasped the wrist, and turned it, snapping it in two. Maceo Encarnación grimaced, slammed Bourne’s throat with the heel of his other hand. Bourne, a low animal growl erupting from deep inside him, spun him around, grasped his head in both hands, and cracked the neck completely in two. As he let Maceo Encarnación go, the Mexican’s head lolled at an unnatural angle, as if begging to be separated from the rest of him.
Epilogue
Tel Aviv, Israel
THE DIRECTOR WOULD like to talk with you,” Dani Amit, head of Mossad Collections, said.
“Talk with me,” Bourne said. “Not kill me.”
Amit laughed, but his pale blue eyes remained steady and grave. The two men were sitting at a small table at Entr’acte, a seaside restaurant along Tel Aviv’s sweeping scimitar beach.
“The termination order was a mistake. Obviously.”
“In our business,” Bourne said, matching Amit’s tone, “almost everything is a mistake in hindsight.”
Amit’s eyes drifted to the water, the lines of empty chairs set up on the beach. “That which doesn’t kill us turns us gray.”
“Or insane.”
Amit’s gaze snapped back.
“She went off the grid. She broke protocol.”
“Because she couldn’t trust anyone.”
Amit sighed and folded his hands together, as if in prayer. “Concerning Dahr El Ahmar, we owe you a great debt of gratitude.”
“Rebeka suspected Ben David was rotten.” Bourne would not let the subject go. “She was right.”
Amit licked his lips. “Concerning Rebeka, we have received her body from the authorities in Mexico City.”
“I know. You will bury her with honors. I want to be there.”
“Outsiders are not permitted—” Amit bit off the automatic response, and nodded. “Of course.”
A soft breeze ruffled Bourne’s hair. His body ached. He could feel every place the flames had touched him, every place Maceo Encarnación had struck him.
“Did she have family?”
“Her parents are dead,” Amit said. “You’ll meet her brother at the funeral.”
“He’s Mossad also.”
“Finish your espresso,” Amit said, “then we must go.”
Aboard the Director’s boat, Bourne was provided with a panoramic view of the city. The sun beat down from a sky studded with small clouds, scudding before a following wind. He seemed far removed from the snowy highlands of Lebanon.
“You’re a fine sailor,” the Director said. “What other talents have you hidden from us?”
“I don’t forgive.”
The Director looked at him. “That’s a very Mossad trait.” His Brillo hair seemed impervious to the wind. “That said, we’re all human, Bourne.”
“No,” Bourne said. “You’re Mossad.”
The Director pursed his livery lips. “Well, there’s truth to that, no doubt, but as you’ve already discovered, we’re not infallible.”
Bourne looked back at the glaringly white city and was suddenly aware of the ages of history buried there. He took out the thin gold chain with the star of David.
The Director saw it and came and sat beside his guest. “That was Rebeka’s.”
Bourne nodded.
The Director took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I go sailing whenever one of my people has been killed.”
Bourne was silent. The star of David dangled between them, spinning slowly, now and then catching sunlight and redirecting it. After a long time, he said, “Does it help?”
“Out here in the clean air and the calm of the water, without the burden of the city on my back, I can finally feel how lost I am.” The Director looked down at his strong, capable hands. “Is that a help?” He shrugged, as if to himself. “I don’t know. Do you?”
Bourne, thinking how helpless he was when Rebeka’s life slipped away, felt, like a little earthquake, echoes of identical sorrows, and understood with a terrible finality that he was as lost as the man who sat beside him.
About the Authors
ROBERT LUDLUM was the author of twenty-one novels, each one a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 210 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. He is the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancellor Manuscript, and the Jason Bourne series—The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum—among others.
Mr. Ludlum passed away in March 2001. www.Robert-Ludlum.com
ERIC VAN LUSTBADER is most widely known as the New York Times bestselling author of twenty international bestselling thrillers including The Ninja and Black Heart. He is also the author of two successful and highly regarded series of fantasy novels, The Sunset Warrior Cycle and The Pearl Saga. His novels have been translated into over twenty languages. www.ericvanlustbader.com
The Jason Bourne Novels The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Bourne Legacy (by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Betrayal (by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Sanction (by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Deception (by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Objective (by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Dominion (by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Imperative (by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Covert-One Novels The Hades Factor (by Gayle Lynds)
The Cassandra Compact (by Philip Shelby)
The Paris Option (by Gayle Lynds)
The Altman Code (by Gayle Lynds)
The Lazarus Vendetta (byPatrickLarkin)
The Moscow Vector (by Patrick Larkin)
The Arctic Event (by James Cobb)
The Ares Decision (by Kyle Mills)
The Paul Janson Novels
The Janson Directive
The Janson Command (by Paul Garrison)
Also by Robert Ludlum
The Scarlatti Inheritance
The Matlock Paper
Trevayne
The Cry of the Halidon
The Rhinemann Exchange
The Road to Gandolfo
The Gemini Contenders
The Chancellor Manuscript
The Holcroft Covenant
The Matarese Circle
The Parsifal Mosaic
The Aquitaine Progression
The Icarus Agenda
The Osterman Weekend
The Road to Omaha
The Scorpio Illusion
The Apocalypse Watch
The Matarese Countdown
The Prometheus Deception
The Sigma Protocol
The Tristan Betrayal
The Ambler Warning
The Bancroft Strategy
Also by Eric Van Lustbader
Nicholas Linnear Novels
Second Skin
Floating City
The Kaisho
White Ninja
The Miko
The Ninja