The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,61
of ideas; far from it. His experiences thus far had made clever thinking a way of life.
Continuing onward, he considered and rejected any number of possibilities, all of which were too public, too riddled with potential snitches whod be on the lookout for him in exchange for the promise of a bottle of real liquor or a night of free rutting with underage girls. Finally, he hit upon what he was certain was the perfect solution: Hed hole up in the basement of his own building, where the gang and its maniacal new boss, Lev Antonin, were still headquartered. Lev Antonins avowed goal was to find and destroy the murderer of the man hed succeeded. He wouldnt rest, wouldnt let his men rest until Arkadins severed head was brought to him.
Because Arkadin was the one who had bought it during the acquisition phase of his real estate business, he was intimately familiar with every square inch of the building. He knew, for instance, that an updated sewage system had been planned for the building, started, but never completed. Through a long-vacant municipal lot overgrown with weeds and refuse, he entered this dank and disused symbol of his birth city, a repellent underground conduit that stank of decomposition and death, emerging at length into the cavernous bowels of the building. He would have laughed at how easily this was accomplished had he not been acutely aware of his plight. He was a prisoner of the one place he wanted most desperately to leave.
The plane lurched sickeningly and Bourne woke with a start. Rain drummed hard against the Perspex window. Hed dozed off, dreaming of the conversation hed had with Tracy Atherton, the young woman seated beside him. In his dream, they were talking about Holly Marie Moreau instead of Francisco Goya.
He had slept deeply and without dreaming during the twenty-three-plushour trip from Bali, first to Bangkok, then Madrid on Thai Air. This flight, from Madrid to Seville on Iberia, was the shortest one, but now it had turned miserable. Sudden air pockets within a lashing storm caused the plane to lurch and dip. Tracy Atherton went quiet and still, staring straight ahead while her complexion turned ashen. Bourne held her head while she vomited twice into the airsick bag he pulled from the seat back.
She was a whisper-thin blonde with large blue eyes and a smile that seemed to wrap around her face. Her teeth were white and even, her nails cut straight across, her only bits of jewelry a gold wedding band and diamond stud earrings, large enough to be expensive but small enough to be discreet. She wore a flame-colored blouse under a lightweight silver silk suit with a pencil skirt and tapered jacket.
I work at the Prado in Madrid, shed said. A private collector hired me to authenticate a recently unearthed Goya that I think is a fake.
Why do you say that? hed asked.
Because its purported to be one of Goyas Black Paintings, done later in life when he was already deaf and going mad with encephalitis. There are fourteen in the series. This collector believes he owns the fifteenth. She shook her head. Frankly, history isnt on his side.
As the weather calmed, she thanked Bourne and went off to the toilet to clean up.
He waited several seconds, then reached down, unzipped her slim attaché case, and rifled through the contents. To her, he was Adam Stone, the name on the passport Willard had given him before hed left Dr. Firths compound. According to the legend Willard had devised, he was a venture capitalist on his way to see a potential client in Seville. Ever mindful of the unknown assailant whod tried to kill him, he was wary of anyone sitting next to him, anyone striking up a conversation with him, anyone wanting to know where hed been and where he was going.
Inside the attaché case were photossome quite detailedof the Goya painting, a horrific study of a man being drawn and quartered by four rearing, snorting stallions while army officers lounged around, smoking, laughing, and playfully poking the victim with their bayonets.
Along with these photos was a set of X-rays, also of the painting, accompanied by a letter authenticating the painting as a genuine Goya, signed by a Professor Alonzo Pecunia Zuńiga, a Goya specialist at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. With nothing else of interest, Bourne returned the sheets to the attaché case and rezipped it. Why had the woman lied to him about not