The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,78

slice of living room was visible. He stirred, sensing he was alone. Where was he? Where was Tracy?

In answer to his second question, he heard the front door open in the living room and recognized Tracy?s sharp, quick gait as she came across a wooden floor. When she entered the bedroom, he tried to sit up.

?Please don?t, you?ll only aggravate your wound,? she said. She put down some packages and sat beside him on the bed.

?My back was barely scratched.?

She shook her head. ?A bit deeper, but I?m talking about the wound in your chest. It?s started seeping.? She unpacked items she had obviously bought at the local pharmacy: alcohol, antibiotic cream, sterile pads, and the like. ?Now hold still.?

As she went to work stripping the old bandage and cleaning the wound, she said, ?My mother warned me about men like you.?

?What about me??

?Always getting into trouble.? Her fingers worked quickly, nimbly, surely. ?The difference is that you know how to get yourself out of whatever mess blows up around you.?

He grimaced at the pain but didn?t flinch. ?I have no choice.?

?Oh, I don?t think that?s true.? She bunched up a wad of soiled sterile pads, then took up another, soaking it in alcohol and applying it to the reddened flesh. ?I think you go looking for trouble, I think that?s who you are, I think you?d be unhappy?and, worse for you, bored?if you didn?t.?

Bourne laughed softly, but he didn?t think she was far off the mark.

She examined the newly cleaned wound. ?Not so bad, I doubt you?ll need a fresh round of antibiotics.?

?Are you a doctor??

She smiled. ?On occasion, when I have to be.?

?That answer requires an explanation.?

She palpated the flesh around his wound. ?What the hell happened to you??

?I got shot, don?t change the subject.?

She nodded. ?Okay, as a young woman?a very young woman?I spent two years in West Africa. There was unrest, fighting, horrible atrocities perpetrated. I was assigned to a field hospital where I learned triage, how to dress a wound. One day we were so overloaded with wounded and dying, the doctor put an instrument in my hand and said, ?There?s an entry wound but no exit wound. If you don?t get the bullet out right away your patient will die.? Then he went off to work on two other patients at once.?

?Did your patient die??

?Yes, but not because of his wound. He?d been terminal before he?d been shot.?

?That must have helped some.?

?No,? she said, ?it didn?t.? Throwing the last of the used pads into a wastebasket, she applied the antibiotic cream and began the bandaging process. ?You must promise not to abuse this again. The next time the bleeding will be worse.? She sat back inspecting her work. ?Ideally, you should be in hospital, or at least see a doctor.?

?This isn?t an ideal world,? he said.

?So I?ve noticed.?

She helped him to sit up. ?Where are we?? he asked.

?An apartment of mine. We?re on the other side of town from Maestranza.?

He transferred to a chair, sat back gingerly. His chest felt as if it were made of lead. It beat with a dull ache as if from pain remembered from long ago. ?Don?t you have an appointment with Don Fernando Hererra??

?I postponed it.? She looked at him inquiringly. ?I couldn?t possibly go without you, Professor Alonzo Pecunia Zu?iga.? She was speaking of the Goya expert from the Prado he was going to impersonate. Then, abruptly, she smiled. ?I like money too much to spend it when I don?t have to.?

She stood, moving him back to the bed. ?But now you must rest.?

He was going to answer her but his eyelids had already slid down. With the darkness came a deep and peaceful sleep.

Arkadin pushed his recruits through the desolate landscape of Nagorno-Karabakh, working them twenty-one hours a day. When they began to doze on their feet, he slammed them with his baton. He never had to hit any of them twice. For three hours they slept wherever they happened to be, sprawled on the ground, all except Arkadin himself for whom sleep had been completely banished months ago. Instead, his mind was filled with scenes from the past, from the end of his days in Nizhny Tagil, when Stas?s men were closing in on him and it seemed as if his only choice was to kill as many of them as he could before they shot him to death.

He wasn?t afraid to die, that was clear to him from the outset of his forced incarceration