Bourne drove away from the hotel and found a parking lot south of the river, near the transit station where rotating cable cars took skiers to the high slopes of Mount Titlis. At night, the idle cars dangled from the wires and swung in the mountain breeze. He got out of the Audi and paced beside a narrow stream, where rapids surged over the rocks toward the Eugenisee lake a hundred yards away.
They had Johanna. He had to get her back. But how?
Think! Make a plan!
He didn’t believe Le Renouveau would kill her, not right away. She wasn’t the one they wanted. They wanted him. But they’d left no message in the hotel, no threats, no place to meet. They wanted him off balance. They wanted him to make a mistake. Let him panic the more time passed, the way he’d panicked ten years ago.
But that wasn’t going to happen. A young man named David Webb had made mistakes, but not Cain. Cain was death.
He went to the water’s edge, letting the noisy flow of the river over the rocks clear his mind like white noise. Across from him, giant boulders piled high on the bank made a flood barrier that kept snowmelt from the heart of the town. Not far away, a wooden footbridge led over the stream, and he saw lights burning in a few apartment buildings. When his eyes examined the shadows, he saw no one, and yet he was sure he wasn’t alone.
They’re watching me.
Then his phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.
He didn’t recognize the number, and he wondered if this was the call. The outreach from the enemy. We have the woman. She dies if you don’t give yourself up.
Instead, the voice belonged to a friend. It was Rudy Graz.
“David! I’m so glad I reached you. Where are you? Are you still in town?”
“Yes, I’m at the river. What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t reach Lisette.”
Jason inhaled sharply. He didn’t like coincidences. First Johanna, now Lisette.
“When did you last talk to her?”
“Right after I saw you. She was fine, but I told her to be careful and let me know if she spotted anything unusual. Now she’s not answering her phone. That’s not like her. I’m worried.”
“Are you still at the school?”
“Yes, but I’m leaving now. We have a farmhouse north of town.”
“Give me the address. I’ll meet you there. When you get to the house, don’t go inside.”
“Don’t go inside?” Rudy protested. “This is my wife! If something’s wrong, I need to be with her.”
“I understand, but you don’t know who may be waiting for you. I’ll be right behind you. Stay outside, Rudy.”
Bourne hung up. He turned toward the Audi, then stopped. Across the river, car high beams passed like searchlights along the opposite bank. For just an instant, the light revealed a figure hidden among the trees, with what looked like binoculars aimed at him. Bourne reversed course. He sprinted for the footbridge and pounded to the opposite shore. It only took him seconds, but by the time he reached the trees, whoever it was had already melted away.
He heard running footsteps in the distance.
But he’d been right. Someone was watching him.
The words of Yanis Lorchaud echoed in his head. You’ve been betrayed.
Jason crossed back over the river and ran to the Audi. He headed west, passing the Eugenisee and following the river northward. Quickly, he left the town of Engelberg behind and found himself in the high hill country. The road climbed like a terrace cut into the mountainside, and his headlights were the only lights in an otherwise pitch-black night. He drove fast as the highway climbed, then braked when the road descended sharply in horseshoe curves toward the next valley.
The turnoff to Rudy’s house was a gravel lane joining the road at a tight angle. He had to do a U-turn to reach it. Then he followed the trail downward through dense trees on both sides. He turned off his lights, letting the grind of rocks under his tires tell him he was still on the road. Where the trees ended, a meadow opened up under the starlight. A handful of lights glowed in a farmhouse a hundred yards away.
He saw a car outside the house, its driver’s door open, its headlights on.
Rudy had beaten him here. He’d gone inside.
Bourne swung the Audi into the soft grass and parked. He got out, his Sig in his hand. Around him, evergreens lined the field like a wall. As his eyes adjusted to the night, he made out ruts in the grass, and the tracks led from the road to a black SUV hidden next to the trees. It was nearly invisible. Rudy wouldn’t have seen it as he sped toward his house.
He wouldn’t have known he was walking into a trap.
Rudy, why didn’t you wait for me?
Jason ran through the damp grass. As he neared the house, he stopped, hearing the hum and crackle of power lines suspended over his head. A car engine rumbled. Rudy had left his car running as he bolted for the house to check on his wife. The front door was open, with lights shining from inside.
He approached the house, which was two stories, built into a shallow slope so the second floor exited into fields out back. A large patio came off the front porch, with a firepit to warm the winter nights below the mountains. Near the corner of the house, he saw a lean-to stocked with chopped wood. Jason avoided the open front door. Instead, he climbed the grassy slope to approach the house from the rear. He found glass doors that led into a master bedroom suite, and when he tried them, the doors slid open, unlocked. It was dark inside, and he switched on a penlight to examine the room.
His light revealed heavy Swiss décor, like a cottage out of a fairy tale. An elaborate pattern of red and gold diamonds adorned the wallpaper. A cherrywood four-poster bed occupied one wall, along with carved end tables and a huge five-drawer dresser. He saw an overstuffed leather recliner facing a flat-screen television, and next to the recliner was a C-table with a bottle of vodka, an ice bucket, and a half-full tumbler. The ice in the glass had long since melted.
As he neared the other side of the C-table, he spotted the metal frame of a wheelchair.
Bourne froze.
When he stepped closer, the tiny beam of his light shined down into the face of Lisette Graz, her body and head slumped sideways, her hair falling toward the floor like a waterfall, a bullet hole in the middle of her forehead.
He swore under his breath.
Rudy’s car was outside, but Rudy wasn’t in the bedroom with his wife. Jason knew what that meant.
He headed for the upstairs hallway. The lights weren’t on, but a glow from the foyer carried up the stairs. With his back to the wall, he sidestepped along the corridor and looked over the railing to the ground floor below him. His breath caught.
At the base of the steps, spread-eagled on his back, was Rudy. His friend.
Dead like his wife.
A flurry of shots had caught him in the chest, followed by a final kill shot to his temple. His mouth was open, eyes wide with surprise at the ambush. The blood still dripped down his face like a slow red creek. It couldn’t have happened more than a few minutes earlier. Bourne had seen no one in the field, and the black SUV was still hidden in the trees. So the killer or killers were inside the house. They hadn’t left.
Why were they still here?
Then Bourne knew. They were waiting for him.
He assumed at least two men downstairs. Did they know he was already in the house? Not likely. His footsteps had been silent.
From where he was, he studied the foyer, which was lit by a hanging chandelier. He had a partial view of the living room on his left and what looked like an office or library on his right. The lights in both of those rooms were off. The front door opened inward toward the office, so he guessed that the killers were hiding there, out of sight, as they waited for their target to clear the door.
He had to draw them out of the house.
Bourne backtracked to the master bedroom. He slipped through the doorway, past the body of Lisette Graz, and grabbed the bottle of Xellent vodka from the C-table. In the walk-in closet, he ripped a sleeve from one of Rudy’s shirts. Then he let himself back outside into the darkness. He made his way down the slope and approached a set of large windows that opened into the office. Nudging his face only an inch or two past the frame, he looked inside, but if anyone was waiting there, they were hidden where the foyer lights didn’t reach.
Ducking under the window, he continued to the front of the house. At the lean-to, he searched a metal shelf above the stacks of firewood and found an old can of lighter fluid. He uncorked the vodka bottle, poured some of it off, then replaced the missing liquid with kerosene from the can. With what was left, he doused the shirtsleeve and stuffed it into the neck of the bottle.
He crept around the corner toward the porch steps and the open front door. With a cigarette lighter from his pocket, he ignited the doused sleeve into a burning torch, then lofted the Molotov cocktail through the doorway. It landed on the tile floor, glass shattering. In the next instant, an explosion of flame erupted inside, reaching almost to the ceiling. Smoke, heat, and a sweet-sour gasoline smell billowed into the night air. Panicked gunshots cracked behind the walls, followed by the shouts of an angry voice.
“Nach oben! Nach oben!”
Upstairs. They were heading upstairs.
Bourne retraced his steps and sprinted to the top of the slope. He kept his gun aimed at the doors that led out of the bedroom into the fields. A few seconds later, the doors flew open with a bang, and a boy bolted outside, semiautomatic rifle slung around his neck. Jason recognized him. It was the teenager with the bad soccer kick from the college quad, the kid who’d taken a ball to the groin in retaliation.
Josef.
Bourne’s finger curled around the trigger, but he held his fire. He let the boy run. Josef was the sacrificial lamb. The real assault came next. Jason ducked behind the corner just as the older student from the quad, Manfred, charged through the door, sweeping fire from his rifle around the field. Jason let him get off several shots in a semicircle, then spun back and laid down a rain of pinpoint bullets from his Sig. He caught Manfred facing the wrong way and cut him down with four shots in the middle of his back.
As the boy collapsed, Bourne walked over and ended him the way they’d ended Rudy, with a coup de grâce to the temple.
He holstered his Sig and took Manfred’s rifle into his hands. It was a Slovenian gun, a Tinck Perun X-16. When he swung it toward the meadow behind the house, he saw Josef in the grass, absolutely motionless, arms in the air and panicked terror on his face. He’d dumped his rifle on the ground at his feet.
“Nicht schiessen!” the boy pleaded.
Bourne walked up to Josef, the X-16 pointed at the teenager’s chest. His heart was cold. He shoved the hot barrel into the bottom of Josef’s chin and forced his head upward to look at the stars.
“Who killed them?” Jason asked.
“Was meinen Sie?”
“Who killed Rudy and Lisette? Was it you?”
“Nein, nein, es war Manfred! Ich schwöre!”
Bourne squatted and closed his hand around the Perun on the ground at Josef’s feet. The barrel was cold. It hadn’t been fired. He stood up again, gun still pointed at the boy.
“Bitte, mein Gott, schiesse nicht!” Josef cried.
“I won’t shoot you. Not if you do exactly what I say.”
“Ja, ja, alles was Sie willst!”
“Where is Johanna? Do you know where they took her?”
“Ja, sure, yes, I know,” Josef replied, switching to accented English. “Manfred told me. She is in the chalet where you killed our men years ago. The same place! If we find you, we are to bring you there!”
“How many are waiting?”
“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know! Manfred didn’t say. But there is an important man there.”
“Why is he important? Who is he?”
“He is a leader. One of the top men of Le Renouveau. Manfred called him Justin. He’s American like you. He came here to lead the operation. First they kill the woman, and then they kill you.”
Bourne gestured with the barrel of the X-16 toward the black SUV that was parked in the trees.
“Drive,” he told Josef. “Take me there.”