The Bourne Retribution Read Free

the Director stepped closer and sat down beside him.
    “I understand you left the hospital prematurely.”
    “Opinions differ,” Bourne said dully.
    “A doctor’s opinion—”
    “I know my body better than any doctor,” Bourne said curtly.
    For some time, the two sat in an uncomfortable silence. Young women in tiny bikinis ran, shouting with laughter, into the surf to interrupt their boyfriends’ game of water Frisbee. Someone was taking photos of the aqueduct. A mother herded her two children up the beach, rubbing a towel briskly over their dripping heads. The salt tang was overlaid with the scents of suntan lotion and clean sweat.
    “How’s your shoulder?”
    “My shoulder’s fine,” Bourne said. “Is that why you’re here? To check on my health? I don’t need a shoulder.”
    “I don’t have a shoulder to give,” the Director said brusquely. Then he sighed. “You may want out, Jason—”
    “I don’t want out. I just want to be here.”
    “Doing nothing but thinking of her.”
    “It’s none of your business what I’m doing.”
    “Sitting on the beach day after day isn’t for people like us.”
    Bourne remained mute.
    “We’ll rest when we’re dead,” the Director observed drily. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to debate the merits of the life we’re in. I came to tell you that your enemies are still searching for you.”
    “Eden’s death is proof I’m not ready.”
    “No one could have saved Eden, not from a betrayal by Carlos. Recall, if you will, Eden had his handpicked bodyguards with him. They were killed instantly. You did your best.”
    “I should have done better. In other times—”
    “This isn’t other times,” the Director said. “And the past is the past. You and I have to deal with the now.”
    Bourne’s eye was caught by two of the Director’s grim-faced men coming down the beach. They bracketed the man who had been taking pictures and hustled him away.
    “It didn’t take me that long to find you,” the Director said. “It hasn’t taken Ouyang Jidan long, either.”
    Bourne squinted through the harsh sunlight. Was the photographer in custody Chinese?
    The Director produced a cigar but made no move to light it, simply rolled it back and forth between his fingers like a magician’s wand. “Don’t for a moment imagine Ouyang hasn’t been monitoring the entire situation, Jason.” The Director’s face held a measure of solace for Bourne. “You embarrassed him, caused him to lose face. He’s going to strike while you’re most vulnerable.”
    Bourne swung his head around. “Did Rebeka know about Ouyang?”
    “What? No.”
    “Who did, besides you?”
    The Director heaved another sigh. “My head of Metsada. Amir Ophir.”
    “Then why did Ouyang order her killed?”
    For a moment the Director stood stock-still. A pulse beat in his right temple. “Encarnación gave the order.”
    “No,” Bourne said. “He didn’t.”

2
    G ood.” Quan, the wushun master, almost casually tossed a jian , a slender double-edged sword, traditionally used by gentlemen and scholars. As Ouyang Jidan caught it deftly by the hilt, Quan said, “White Snake Form.”
    Ouyang stood perfectly still in the center of the training facility. The three men against whom he had been fighting for the past twenty minutes, using the Red Phoenix open-hand style, now picked up their own swords. Unlike Ouyang’s, theirs were dao , short, single-edged broadswords. All the weapons were carbon steel, rather than the traditional wooden training swords. Ouyang had moved beyond those years ago. There were twenty-nine levels in his chosen wushun discipline; he was fifteenth level.
    Quan, a tiny man, looking no more than a wisp, was old in the manner of all great wushun masters. That is to say old in years only. He moved like a thirty-year-old, but his mind was filled with the wisdom only long decades of experience could produce. He was twenty-ninth level.
    “Now,” Quan said to the three men,