The Bourne Betrayal Read Online Free PDF Page B

get worse over the next forty-eight hours, the time it takes for your synapses to adjust to the treatment.”
    The short winter twilight was skidding toward night when Bourne exited the doctor’s building, a large Greek Revival limestone structure on K Street. An icy wind off the Potomac, smelling of phosphorus and rot, whipped the flaps of his overcoat around his shins.
    Turning away from a bitter swirl of dust and grit, he saw his reflection in a flower shop window, a bright spray of flowers displayed behind the glass, so like the flowers at Marie’s funeral.
    Then, just to his right, the brass-clad door to the shop opened and someone exited, a gaily wrapped bouquet in her arms. He smelled . . . what was it, wafting out from the bouquet? Gardenias, yes. That was a spray of gardenias carefully wrapped against winter’s chill.
    Now, in his mind’s eye, he carried the woman from his unknown past in his arms, felt her blood warm and pulsing on his forearms. She was younger than he had assumed, in her early twenties, no more. Her lips moved, sending a shiver down his spine. She was still alive! Her eyes sought his. Blood leaked out of her half-open mouth. And words, clotted, distorted. He strained to hear her. What was she saying? Was she trying to tell him something? Who was she?
    With another gust of gritty wind, he returned to the chill Washington twilight. The horrific image had vanished. Had the scent of the gardenias summoned her from inside him? Was there a connection?
    He turned around, about to go back to Dr. Sunderland, even though he had been warned that in the short run he might still be tormented. His cell phone buzzed. For a moment, he considered ignoring it. Then he flipped open the phone, put it to his ear.
    He was surprised to discover that it was Anne Held, the DCI’s assistant. He formed a mental picture of a tall, slim brunette in her middle twenties, with classic features, rosebud lips, and icy gray eyes.
    “Hello, Mr. Bourne. The DCI wishes to see you.” Her accent was Middle Atlantic, meaning that it lay somewhere between her British birthplace and her adopted American home.
    “I have no wish to see him,” Bourne responded coldly.
    Anne Held sighed, clearly steeling herself. “Mr. Bourne, next to Martin Lindros himself nobody knows your antagonistic relationship with the Old Man-with CI in general-better than I do. God knows you have ample cause: They’ve used you countless times as a stalking horse, and then they were sure you’d turned rogue on them. But you really must come in now.”
    “Eloquently said. But all the eloquence in the world won’t sway me. If the DCI has something to say to me, he can do it through Martin.”
    “It’s Martin Lindros the Old Man needs to talk to you about.”
    Bourne realized he was holding the phone with a death grip. His voice was ice cold when he said:
    “What about Martin?”
    “That’s just it. I don’t know. No one knows but the Old Man. He’s been closeted in Signals since before lunchtime. Even I haven’t seen him. Three minutes ago, he called me and ordered me to have you brought in.”
    “That’s how he put it?”
    “His precise words were, ‘I know how close Bourne and Lindros are. That’s why I need him.’ Mr. Bourne, I implore you, come in. It’s Code Mesa here.”
    Code Mesa was CI-speak for a Level One emergency.
    While Bourne waited for the taxi he’d called, he had time to think about Martin Lindros.
    How many times in the past three years had he spoken of the intimate, often painful subject of his memory loss with Martin. Lindros, the deputy director of CI-the least likely confidant. Who would have expected him to become Jason Bourne’s friend? Not Bourne himself, who had found his suspicion and paranoia coming to the fore when Lindros had shown up at Webb’s campus office nearly three years ago. Surely, Bourne had figured, he was there to once more try to recruit Bourne into CI. It wasn’t such an odd notion. After all,