The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,11
of his motorbike, intent on overtaking them.
All at once the natural stairs gave out and the path resumed, this time at a more bearable pitch. Their pursuer tried to aim his handgun, but Bourne slashed a stand of bamboo with the knife hed taken from the old man, and the thin trees came crashing down across the path. The mahogany man was forced to jam the gun between his teeth. It took all his skill to keep from veering off into the looming forest.
As the path flattened out, they whizzed past small shacks, men wielding axes or stirring pots over fires, women with babies in the crooks of their arms, and the ubiquitous feral dogs, thin and cowed, which shied away from the racing vehicles. Clearly they were on the outskirts of a village. Could it be Tenganan? Bourne wondered. Had Suparwita foreseen this chase?
Soon thereafter they passed through a stone archway and entered the village proper. Children playing badminton outside the local school stopped and stared as the bikes flashed by. Chickens scattered, squawking, and huge fighting cocks dyed pink, orange, and blue were so agitated they overturned their wicker cages, in turn disturbing the cows and calves lying in the center of the village. The villagers themselves, emerging from the walled compounds of their houses, ran after their precious fighting cocks.
Like all hill villages, this one was built on terraces, much like the rice paddies: swaths of packed earth and scraggly grass interspersed with stone ramps that led to the next level. Running down the center was a wall-less structure used by the elders for town meetings. On either side were shops, part of the living compounds, selling single and double ikat weavings. Catching sight of the first of the weaving shop signs through the chaos of running feet and animal sounds, Bourne felt a chill run down his spine. So this was, indeed, Tenganan, the village of Suparwitas prediction.
In the chaos that had erupted in the village, Bourne cut a line of washing, which undulated in the air like a scaled reptile, before fluttering in their wake. Skillfully guiding the motorbike through a narrow alley, he doubled back the way they had come.
Risking a glance behind him, he saw hed failed to lose the Indonesian; he came roaring at them unabated, unfazed by the downed laundry. Bourne with a burst of speed lengthened the distance between him and his pursuer enough to make a sharp U-turn, reversing course to make a run past the small man and out of the village. But once again, the Indonesian seemed unsurprised, almost as if he were expecting this tactic. He pulled up, drew his gun, and fired, forcing Bourne to whirl the motorbike back the way he had been going, even as a second shot passed just wide of his left shoulder. Bourne kept going in the only direction open to him, continued on over the bumpy packed dirt and stone ramps, away from his dogged pursuer.
Leonid Arkadin, lost in the dappled shadows of the forest, heard the roar of the engines over the measured chanting that came from inside the walls of the temple over which, from his position, he had a perfect view. He raised the Parker Hale M85 so the stock fit comfortably to his shoulder and sighted down the Schmidt & Bender scope.
He was calm now, his anxiety replaced by a curious and cunning fire that burned away all thought extraneous to his purpose, leaving his mind as clear as the sky above him, as still as the forest within which he was nestled like an adder in a tree, waiting patiently for its prey. Hed planned well, using the local Indonesian as a hunter will use a beater to stalk the prey, moving it ever closer to where the hunter has hidden himself.
All at once a motorbike emerged into the temple clearing, and Arkadin breathed deeply as he centered Bourne in his sights. And in that moment the outline of Bournes body became keenly defined, like vapor condensing into the poisoned nectar of revenge.
Bourne and Moira broke out into a perfectly still clearing in which were set three templesa large one in the center, two smaller ones on either side. There was no sound except the rhythmic throb of the motorbikes engine. Then, hearing chanting from inside the walls of the center temple, Bourne pulled up.
In that moment Arkadin, settling himself on the nearly horizontal branch of a tree, pulled the trigger, and Bourne was