The Bourne Betrayal Read Free Page B

said in Arabic.
    Lindros continued to stare at him, unblinking.
    “Silent American, where is your bluster now?” Smiling, he added: “It’s no use pretending. I know you speak Arabic.” He relieved Lindros of both radiation detector and Geiger counter. “I must assume you found what you were looking for.” Feeling through Lindros’s pockets, he produced the metal canister. “Ah, yes.” He opened it and poured out the contents between Lindros’s boots. “Pity for you the real evidence is long gone. Wouldn’t you like to know its destination.” This last was said as a mocking statement, not as a question.
    “Your intel is first-rate,” Lindros said in impeccable Arabic, causing a considerable stir among everyone in the cadre, save two men: the leader himself and a stocky man whom Lindros took to be the second in command.
    There came the leader’s smile again. “I return the compliment.”
    Silence.
    Without warning, the leader hit Lindros so hard across the face his teeth snapped together. “My name is Fadi, the redeemer, Martin. You don’t mind if I call you Martin? Just as well, as we’re going to become intimates over the next several weeks.”
    “I don’t intend to tell you anything,” Lindros said, abruptly switching to English.
    “What you intend and what you will do are two separate things,” Fadi said in equally precise English. He inclined his head. Lindros winced as he felt the wrench on his arms, so savage it threatened to dislocate his shoulders.
    “You have chosen to pass on this round.” Fadi’s disappointment appeared genuine. “How arrogant of you, how truly unwise. But then, after all, you are American. Americans are nothing if they are not arrogant, eh, Martin. And, truly, unwise.”
    Again the thought arose that this was no ordinary terrorist: Fadi knew his name. Through the mounting pain shooting up his arms, Lindros fought to keep his face impassive. Why wasn’t he equipped with a cyanide capsule in his mouth disguised as a tooth, like agents in spy novels?
    Sooner or later, he suspected, he’d wish he had one. Still, he’d keep up this front for as long as he was able.
    “Yes, hide behind your stereotypes,” he said. “You accuse us of not understanding you, but you understand us even less. You don’t know me at all.”
    “Ah, in this, as in most things, you’re wrong, Martin. In point of fact I know you quite well. For some time I have-how do American students put it?-ah, yes, I have made you my major. Anthropological studies or realpolitik?” He shrugged as if they were two colleagues drinking together. “A matter of semantics.”
    His smile broadened as he kissed Lindros on each cheek. “So now we move on to round two.”
    When he pulled away, there was blood on his lips.
    “For three weeks, you have been looking for me; instead, I have found you.”
    He did not wipe away Lindros’s blood. Instead, he licked it off.

Book One

One
    WHEN DID THIS particular flashback begin, Mr. Bourne?” Dr. Sunderland asked.
    Jason Bourne, unable to sit still, walked about the comfortable, homey space that seemed more like a study in a private home than a doctor’s office. Cream walls, mahogany wainscoting, a vintage dark-wood desk with claw feet, two chairs, and a small sofa. The wall behind Dr. Sunderland’s desk was covered with his many diplomas and an impressive series of international awards for breakthrough therapy protocols in both psychology and psychopharmacology related to his specialty: memory. Bourne studied them closely, then saw the photo in a silver frame on the doctor’s desk.
    “What’s her name?” Bourne said. “Your wife.”
    “Katya,” Dr. Sunderland said after a slight hesitation.
    Psychiatrists always resisted giving out any personal information about themselves and their family. But in this case, Bourne thought . . .
    Katya was in a ski suit. A striped knit cap was on her head, a pom-pom at its top. She was blond and very beautiful. Something