Excerpt
Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Escape
1
The Present
As Jason Bourne awoke in the middle of the night, he felt the violent sway of the Mediterranean water tossing the boat around like a floating toy. The belowdecks cabin was pitch-black, leaving him blind. When he reached across to the other side of the bed, he realized that it was empty. Johanna was gone.
He pushed his fingers underneath her pillow, but he didn't find the Ruger that she usually kept there. She'd taken her gun with her.
Where was she?
He swung his legs out of bed and stood up, balancing himself gracefully as the floor made a seesaw motion under his feet. His own Glock was invisible on the table by the bed, but he knew exactly where it was, and he took the cool grip into his hand. When he listened for noises on board, he heard only the furious slap of the sea. The engine was idle, the Fairline Squadron 65 anchored a few miles off the French coast. He crossed the cabin and felt along the wall for the gap that marked the narrow stairwell. Finding it, he grabbed the railing with one hand and ran up the steps.
On the main deck, Bourne slipped through glass doors onto the windswept stern of the Stormy Weather. Tonight the boat was aptly named. Dark clouds erased the stars, the high waves churned, and staccato flashes of lightning lit up the horizon. It would be pouring down rain soon from the warm summer sky. He checked the water for the signal lights of other boats, but for now, they had this corner of the Mediterranean to themselves. They were one tiny speck on a vast empty sea.
Below him, the Zodiac was still lashed to the deck. Johanna hadn't slipped away.
Bourne made his way along the port side of the cruiser. The boat lurched under the impact of a high wave, nearly throwing him overboard. Bent over, his body slammed into the railing, and he saw black water raging against the hull. He steadied himself, tightened his grip on the Glock, and staggered forward. Where the prow came to a point, he saw her.
Johanna.
Lightning lit up her naked body. In the wind, her long blond hair seemed to defy gravity as it made a tornado around her head. She was tall and scrawny-thin, her shoulder blades visible, her spine rippling through the valley of her back. She stood with her legs slightly apart, her bare feet gripping the deck and rolling smoothly with the wild motions of the boat. She stared northward at the unseen French mainland, as if searching for something. Or waiting for something to happen.
He shouted her name, but the wind deadened his voice. She didn't react. Bourne approached her and called again, and this time her head turned sharply at the noise. The next flash of lightning illuminated her pretty face, buried under the nest of her hair. Her sapphire blue eyes had a cold intensity, and shadows played across her high, angled cheekbones. Her expression was full of solemn foreboding, the way it had been for weeks.
Seeing him, she bent her pale lips into a smile. When she turned around, the sight of her body aroused hunger in him the way it always did. But he also noted the gun clutched securely in her right hand, barrel aimed at the water.
Bourne came closer. "What's wrong?"
Johanna didn't answer immediately. She leaned into him, her breasts against his chest, her soft mouth kissing him. Their passion for each other rose as their bodies pressed together in the night air. Then she broke away, and the odd darkness returned to her face. They stood inches apart from each other, bodies moving up and down as the sea tried to wrest the boat from its anchor and yank it free.
"I don't know," she replied in a voice he could barely hear. "I woke up and couldn't sleep. I have a bad feeling."
He studied the dark water in every direction, looking for threats. He saw nothing, and his instincts set off no alarms. At least for the moment, they were alone, and they were safe. "No one's coming for us."
"Aren't they? We can only hide for so long, Jason. Sooner or later, they're going to find us. Whoever they are."
Bourne said nothing, but he knew she was right.
Four months earlier, in February, killers had confronted Johanna and tried to abduct her during a port stop in Positano. They'd been looking for him. Since then, the two of them had lain low, keeping to the water, only stopping on land every few weeks to resupply the boat. But life on the run was a losing game. Eventually, a spy would spot them. Word would get passed.
We've found them!
Men would come to take them down on the water. But who were they?
Was it the Russians? Jason knew he was still in Putin's crosshairs for killing the assassin known as Lennon. The Russian leader was patient and determined, and sooner or later, he'd find Bourne and exact his revenge. But in the meantime, there were plenty of other enemies from his past who might be on the hunt for Cain.
That included Shadow. She was the head of Treadstone, and she'd warned him-ordered him-to stay away from Johanna, without giving him a reason. He hadn't listened; he hadn't obeyed. If Shadow knew they were together, she wouldn't hesitate to send agents to kill them both.
So yes, they were living on borrowed time.
But none of that mattered. Jason savored every moment he could get with this woman. She was beautiful, skilled, unstable, and treacherous, but he loved her. He'd walked away from Treadstone to be with her. They'd cut ties with the rest of the world in order to live in a kind of isolated paradise on the sea. It was a bubble where nothing else mattered-but bubbles were also fragile and fleeting.
It was as if she could read his mind.
"I don't want this to end," Johanna murmured. "I never want to let go of this time."
"Neither do I."
"These months with you, they've been the best of my life."
"Mine, too."
"But it will be over soon. I feel it, Jason. Something wicked this way comes."
"Don't think about that."
"I can't think about anything else."
He kissed her again, trying to ease her mind. She slid an arm around his waist, her face settling into his chest. But her heartbeat thumped against him, crazy fast. He felt something intense and extreme emanating from her, a strange desperation.
Extreme desire. Extreme fear.
"I need to ask you something," she said without looking up at his face.
"Of course."
"What do you remember about David Abbott?"
Bourne pushed Johanna away in surprise. He took her chin in his left hand and lifted it up, staring deeply into her blue eyes, looking for answers. "Abbott? Why are you asking about him?"
"He started Treadstone. He recruited Shadow. He recruited you. It all started with him."
"I know, but David Abbott's been dead for years. You never mentioned him before. Why ask about him now?"
Johanna hesitated. A wrinkle slithered across her forehead like a snake. He tried to read her face, but she was good at keeping secrets. Too good. She was also good at lying. He didn't know whether to believe anything she told him.
"A month ago, I took the Zodiac into port near Dubrovnik," she said. "Remember? I was late. You were worried. The thing is, in the Old Town, I spotted someone I knew. A Croatian agent. He was obviously surveilling the area, looking for someone. I wondered-I wondered if he was hunting for us. It didn't feel like a coincidence that they'd station someone near the water who knew me."
"Jesus! Why didn't you tell me?"
"I-I wanted to, Jason. But I knew as soon as I did, it would be the beginning of the end. From that moment forward, we'd never be free."
"So what happened?" Bourne asked.
"I followed him after his replacement showed up. He went to a bar, he got drunk. After dark, when he left, I took him down in an alley. I needed to know what he was doing there. I needed to know if we were in danger."
"And?"
"I interrogated him, then I killed him."
Bourne saw no regret or guilt in her eyes. She'd made the only decision she could. Once the Croatian saw her, once he recognized her, he had to die. "What did you learn?"
"He wasn't there looking for you, but he confirmed what we already knew-that there's a dragnet out for Cain. A bounty on your head. Mercenaries all over Europe are on the hunt for you, Jason."
"Is it Putin?"
"He didn't know."
Johanna stopped, her face still dark. There was something more.
"What else did he say?" Bourne asked, his eyes narrowing. "Why was this man in Dubrovnik?"
"Surveillance, just like I thought-but we weren't the target. He was searching for someone else."
"Who?"
"David Abbott. He was looking for David Abbott."
Bourne stumbled backward, pressing a fist against his skull. Lightning flashed again, thunder boomed, but this was in his head, not on the sea. Pain jabbed like the thrust of a knife behind his eyes. He tried to remember Abbott, but he couldn't, because nothing was there. David Abbott, like every other part of his past, was nothing but a ghost without substance, lost in a mist that never cleared.
"That's impossible," he said. "That makes no sense."
"The agent told me Abbott had been seen in Dubrovnik. The ID was definitive."
"Abbott is dead!" Bourne insisted.
"Is he, Jason?"
"Of course he is."
Johanna grabbed his hand tightly. "How do you know? Because Treadstone told you so? Do you think Shadow's not capable of keeping the truth from you if it serves her interests? She's done it over and over, Jason. You can't trust her. For that matter, you can't trust David Abbott, either. Treadstone is evil. It has no soul. That's why we're out. That's why it's just you and me now. We don't owe anything to anyone."
Bourne shook his head.
David Abbott. Alive?
That couldn't be true. He'd read the letters and emails between them, going back for years. He'd seen the photographs of the two of them together. He'd been to Abbott's grave in Calvary Cemetery in New York.
But what did he really know about the man who'd been his surrogate father?
Only what he'd been told. Only the story that Treadstone-that Shadow-had crafted for him. And time and time again, what he'd been told about his past was a lie. His whole life had been nothing but layers of deception.
Johanna repeated the question she'd asked at the beginning. "What do you remember about him? What do you know about David Abbott?"
"Almost nothing," he admitted. "After I lost my memory, Abbott didn't exist for me at all anymore. He was just a few disconnected flashes. A face. A voice. Fragments of memories. But you're right, he was the mastermind of Treadstone. He planned everything, like a puppet master pulling the strings. He sent me on the mission where I got shot, where I lost who I was. The whole scheme was his idea. And when he found out I was still alive, he was the one who gave the order to have me killed."
Jason stared at the hidden coast of France to the north. The few memories he did have always came back like fire, hot and intense.
"It happened right here," he went on, anger creeping into his voice. "We're practically in the same place, the same waters. Somewhere out there in the darkness is the French village where the fishermen took me. That's where they found the doctor who saved me. My life began on a small island in the Mediterranean called Ile de Port Noir."
He looked down into Johanna's blue eyes, and he tried to make sense of things that made no sense at all. "David Abbott can't be alive."
"He is, Jason."
Bourne wondered if that could be true.
The impossible is always possible.
That was one of the Monk's rules. One of Treadstone's rules.
He felt a sharp stinging across his body, needles all over his skin. The rain came, a soaking downpour blown sideways with the howling wind. The Stormy Weather jerked and twisted, a dog anxious to break its leash and run.
Johanna's words echoed in Bourne's mind. David Abbott is alive.
Then he thought: What does that mean?
But he had no answer for that question. They'd run out of time. His gaze drifted to the water, and his hand tightened around the wet metal of the Glock. Johanna was right. Something wicked was headed their way. From the French coast, lights blinked in and out of the night, arriving like monsters out of the sea. They weren't alone anymore.
Other boats were out there now. Closing in.
------------
His eyes opened.
He stared up at stars winking in the clear night sky. Had there been a storm? He had a vague memory of pelting rain. But if so, the storm had passed, and now the water around him was as still and calm as black glass.
Water.
Where am I?
The man turned his head, feeling a jolt of pain travel into the muscles of his neck. He saw a wide-open sea, far from land, illuminated by tongues of flame licking at debris that floated in the water. Wood. Metal. Fiberglass. The field of wreckage drifted around him, feeding smoke into the air in clouds that choked the sky. It filled his nose, and he gagged with a raspy cough shuddering through his chest.
Moving made the pain worse. His whole body was nothing but pain. Every muscle screamed. He touched his face, wincing at the barest pressure, and his fingers came away with blood. Then his chest, his legs. More blood. Blood everywhere.
Beneath him, heat warmed his skin. Burned his skin. He examined his surroundings and realized that he lay on his back on a scorched fragment of wood, barely as long as he was, so narrow that his hands and feet dangled in the water. The wood smoldered, hot and black with char. It would break apart soon; it wouldn't hold him much longer.
How did I get here?
The man blinked, trying to remember. But nothing came. Darkness closed around his mind, an emptiness as wide as the sea where he floated.
What happened to me?
He had no idea.
Below the surface of the water, something brushed his foot. A creature, large, curious, bumped past him. Was it a tiger shark? They were relatively rare in the warmer waters of the Mediterranean, but any shark would smell blood at great distances and be drawn to the scent. He drew his limbs out of the water and squeezed his hands and feet onto the fragile sanctuary.
