The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,141
exploring the Ansar forts near Sabaloga Gorge; the forts had once been used to attack the troopships on their way to relieve the British General Gordon and his exhausted men in 1885. The young boy and his friend lived in the adjacent village, but a network of kids in Khartoum soon learned of the discovery of the bodies in their Internet chat room.
After handing them a pair of Glocks and extra ammunition, Yusef had led the way about fifty miles north, through the desert with its harsh winds and brutal sun. They used two four-wheel-drive vehicles, as Yusef had advised, because the rough roads and the unreliability of Sudanese vehicles made traveling in just one foolhardy.
?You see how much of the men is left,? Yusef said now, as they stared into the shallow pit that had been hastily dug in the packed-earth floor inside one of the old crumbling forts, ?despite the quicklime.?
Soraya waved away a cloud of flies as she crouched down. ?Enough to see they?ve all been shot in the back of the head.? Her nose wrinkled. At least the quicklime had taken care of the stench of rotting bodies.
?Execution, military-style,? Chalthoum said. ?But are we certain these four men are the ones we?re after??
?They?re the ones, all right,? Soraya said. ?The decomposition is still minimal. I recognize beef-fed men from the heartland of America when I see them.? She looked up at Amun. ?There?s only one reason for Americans being executed military-style in Khartoum and brought here.?
Chalthoum nodded. ?To sew up a major loose end.?
At that moment Yusef, responding to the vibrating ring of his cell, put the phone to his ear, then snapped it shut. ?My lookout says your company?s here,? he told them.
Bourne looked up as a familiar figure filled the doorway. The man with the dark, forbidding caterpillar eyebrows was holding an AK-47 and wearing a Kevlar vest. He stared at the figure of Bat-man sprawled on the floor.
?Nikolai, you cocksucker,? he said in guttural Russian, ?who the fuck killed you before I could bring you back to Mother Russia? Now I have been deprived of the pleasure of making you sing your head off.?
Then, seeing Bourne, he stopped dead in his tracks.
?Jason!? Colonel Boris Karpov bellowed like a Russian ox. ?I should have known you?d be at the heart of this bloody maze.?
His gaze moved downward, taking in the blood-soaked form of the young woman cradled in Bourne?s arms. At once, he yelled for a medic.
?It?s too late for her, Boris,? Bourne said in a deadened voice.
Karpov came across the room and knelt beside Bourne. His blunt fingers moved delicately over the shards of glass embedded in Tracy?s back.
?What a terrible way to die.?
?They?re all terrible, Boris.?
Karpov handed Bourne a hip flask. ?Too true.?
The medic from Boris?s assault team, also in riot gear, showed up out of breath. He went to Tracy, tried to find a pulse, and shook his head sadly.
?Casualties?? Karpov asked, without taking his eyes off Bourne.
?One dead, two wounded, not seriously.?
?Who died??
?Milinkov.?
Karpov nodded. ?Tragic, but the building is secured.?
Bourne felt the fire of the slivovitz all the way down to his stomach. The growing warmth felt good, as if he?d regained solid footing.
?Boris,? he said softly, ?have your man take Tracy. I don?t want to leave her.?
?Of course.? Karpov signaled to the medic, who lifted Tracy from Bourne?s lap.
Bourne watched her as she was carried out of the conference room. He felt her loss, her struggle to come to terms with her duplicitous life and her sense of isolation, living half in the shadows of a world most people were unaware of, let alone able to understand. Her struggle was his struggle, and the pain she felt because of her life was one with which he was all too familiar. He didn?t want to see her go, didn?t want to let go of her, as if a part of him, suddenly found, had been ripped away just as abruptly.
?What is this?? Boris said, holding up the painting.
?It?s a Goya, a previously unknown work of the famous Black Paintings series, which makes it virtually priceless.?
Boris grinned. ?I hope you don?t covet this, Jason.?
?To the victor belong the spoils, Boris. So Yevsen was your mission in Khartoum.?
Karpov nodded. ?I?ve been working in North Africa for months now, trying to track down Nikolai Yevsen?s arms-smuggling suppliers, clients, and pipeline. And you??
?I spoke to Ivan Volkin??
?Yes, he told me. That old man has a soft spot for you.?