From a backpack inside the castle, Monika retrieved night vision goggles for both of them. They reloaded their rifles and took up positions at the far end of the lower battery, behind the castle’s stone wall. When Bourne put on his goggles and assessed the glowing white lights of the invaders, he counted a dozen men, six running across the fields, six on the path along the harbor.
Twelve to two. Bad odds.
Was le commandant among them? Or was he waiting for the bloodshed to be over before he made his appearance?
Bourne took one end of the wall; Monika took the other. He leaned over the edge as far as he could, balanced his weight on his elbows, and tried to keep his aim steady in the shifting gales. The Astra rifle wasn’t a sniper’s tool for picking off men one by one. It was a blunt instrument. All he could do was fire as many bullets as fast as possible and hope some of them found their marks.
“Not yet,” Monika murmured. “Let them get a little closer.”
Below them, the two groups began to converge, the killers in the field meeting up with their colleagues storming the path. Soon the angle of fire over the wall would be too steep to target them. Bourne trained his barrel through the darkness, and he’d already begun to ease the trigger back when he heard Monika whisper, “Now.”
They both fired.
Again. And again. And again.
They unleashed one bullet after another, but at that distance, in the crosswind, nearly all of their shots went astray. For a while, the wind covered the noise of the assault, and the men below them didn’t seem to notice that they were under attack. Then one man fell. Bourne didn’t know if it was his shot or Monika’s that struck him, but a man clutched his throat and slumped to the path. Almost immediately, a second shot found its mark and took another man down.
Now the killers knew.
They separated as they charged up the path, widening the field of fire. Two stayed behind and swung up their own guns to aim for the shooters above them, but they had no hope of hitting their targets. Bourne kept raining down bullets from the heights of the castle, and so did Monika. In the group moving up the castle walkway, he saw another man fall. Then another. That made a total of four hits.
Now the odds were eight to two. But the men would be on them in moments, firing as they came up the castle steps. They had to fall back and retrench.
Bourne and Monika retreated inside the stone fortress. He shut and latched the heavy door behind them, but the door wouldn’t hold the killers back for long. They swapped out thirty-round magazines in their Astras, then Monika blew out the candles in the ship room, leaving the interior of the castle blacker than night. Wearing their night vision goggles, they staked out a location in the corridor opposite the entrance hall, near the worn stone steps that led to the upper battery. They stretched out on the cold floor, their bodies squeezed next to each other, their rifles aimed toward the door.
Thunder boomed outside, but not from the sky. The killers aimed their guns around the door’s iron hinges, blasting wood dust and splinters through the entrance hall and turning the stone walls into a shooting gallery of ricochets. Bourne and Monika covered their heads as bullets flew. When the wood gave way, the killers used the weight of their shoulders and forced the heavy door inward. They entered firing, but they were blind, and their shots went wild, and at least one bounced back and struck the first of the men, eliciting a scream.
From the floor, Bourne and Monika trained their rifles on the invaders. They could see two men through their goggles, and they took them both down. The others hung back, then aimed return fire through the darkness, zeroing in on the two of them with enough accuracy that they had to slither backward away from the entrance hall. Their faces were scratched and bloody from the flying debris.
There was nowhere to go but up.
They pounded up the stone steps, then stripped open the door and burst outside into the cold night air. They threw aside their goggles. The upper battery was long and narrow, making a dogleg to the right around the small living chamber of the fort. Up here, they had no escape. The only way out was back down into the faces of the killers or over the castle wall one hundred feet to the rocks.
Bourne checked his watch. Not enough time had passed. The two of them would be dead long before backup arrived. And he was low on ammunition in his magazine. He glanced at Monika, and her face told the same story.
This was the end.
They split up. Monika veered to a triangular notch jutting from the castle wall that blocked her from the interior stairs. Bourne took position along the wet stone floor where the battery turned to the right. From where he was, he could see her and she could see him. They trained their barrels at the doorway and waited.
The noise of footsteps thumped above the wind. Le Renouveau had learned its lesson; the six remaining men didn’t rush outside and offer themselves up as targets. Instead, the assault team sprayed bullets around the upper battery from cover, forcing Bourne and Monika back behind the walls. Two killers shot from the stairs and rolled toward an angled wall on the other side of Monika’s position. Bourne reacted in time to fire several shots, but the bullets nicked harmlessly off the battery floor.
He raised a hand toward Monika, signaling her to hold her fire. For now, he was the only one shooting, and that meant the killers didn’t know where she was. If he could lure them out, they’d run into her crossfire. She nodded her understanding and got herself ready, aiming her rifle toward the castle’s upper chamber and waiting. Bourne fired a couple of shots, then jerked back as the two men hiding on the upper battery sent a barrage his way. When they’d forced him back behind the corner, more men flew through the doorway, boots heavy on stone.
They headed for the far end of the battery, where Bourne was. They didn’t see Monika, and her rifle fire cut them down like prisoners before a firing squad. Two men went down, but a third reacted quickly enough to shift his momentum sideways and roll back behind the cover wall, where the others were hiding.
Bourne held up four fingers to Monika. Four to two. Their odds were improving.
But the last man in the stairwell took a chance and opened fire toward Monika. She hesitated before pulling back, and in that split-second delay, a bullet struck the barrel of her rifle, mangling it. Furious, Monika threw the rifle down and yanked her Glock from its holster. But in a face-to-face match of pistol versus rifle, she had no chance, and they both knew it.
A silent siege ensued atop the castle. The charred smell of the firefight lingered in the air despite the wind. A chilled sea gale gusted across Bourne’s body, making the sweat on his skin turn cold. He felt the weight of the Astra in his hands and concluded he only had three or four bullets left in the magazine. Not nearly enough. Across the plaza, he saw Monika’s face turn toward the clouds, scanning for American or British helicopters. But no rescue was coming from the sky.
Le Renouveau broke the stalemate by sacrificing another of its men like a pawn on the chessboard. The last man, the one hiding on the stairs, threw himself forward, running toward the notch in the wall where Monika had taken cover. He fired as he ran, and Bourne had no choice. He spun around the corner and exhausted his last few shots, hitting the man but not taking him down. His barrel clicked as he yanked on the trigger; the rifle was empty. The killer ran into Monika’s fire, screaming as one of her bullets hit his leg, but he stayed on his feet long enough to knock the pistol out of her hand with a swing of his rifle.
When he fell, the others came.
Monika leaped for the Glock, but she stopped when the barrel of a rifle pushed into her forehead. Bourne had his Sig in its holster under his jacket, but he had no chance if he drew it now. They’d cut him down before he could get off a shot. Two of the men aimed their barrels at him, but they stayed ten feet away on the battery, and they held their fire. He didn’t expect them to shoot. Not yet.
These men were the hired help, and one man was missing.
Le commandant.
The killer with his rifle trained on Monika gestured with the barrel to get her to move. She got to her feet, and Bourne could see her eyes shifting from man to man and taking the measure of the situation. For now, they had no viable strategy to escape alive. She allowed herself to be pushed across the battery toward Bourne. As the three men with rifles inched closer, Bourne and Monika moved backward, until they were both pinned against the castle wall, with nothing but the long drop behind them.
The men took positions in a semicircle, four feet apart. They didn’t close the gap; they stayed out of range if Bourne or Monika made a sudden charge. Smart. They might get one, they might even get two, but not three.
Then they heard footsteps.
Someone else had arrived at the summit of the castle.
Bourne saw a man emerge from the stairs. He was very tall and good-looking, his short brown hair whipped by the wind, his handsome face chiseled and a lone scar on his forehead marring the smoothness of his skin. He had no gun in his hands. The commander needed no weapons. He wore a long black coat that draped to his knees, a black turtleneck and slacks, and buckled French cowboy boots that were wet and dirty with island mud.
Le commandant.
Bourne knew him.
This was the man who’d been sleeping with Monika, the man who bragged about it with his smile. This was the man who’d directed the trap at the chalet. And now—Bourne recognized the man’s face from the newspapers and television, and he understood why Monika said this man had to die.
Chrétien Pau was the man who was supposed to save France from the extremist grip of Raymond Berland and La Vraie.
Chrétien Pau was also a senior commander of Le Renouveau.
The man’s sharp gaze shifted between their faces, noting the blood and dirt and their tired eyes. His own face was flushed with victory.
“Ah, Monika, my love,” Pau said in a voice Bourne recognized, a voice that was honey-smooth and cruel at the same time. “There you are at long last. How long has it been? Ten years? I was so afraid you were dead. But spies never really die, do they? They simply become ghosts.”
Monika stared back with a frozen hatred, her lips pushed together into a hard, cherry-red line. She said nothing.
“No valentines for your old lover?” Pau asked. “Are you not surprised to see me? I suppose Cain finally figured it out and told you about me. That’s why I needed to make sure we took care of both of you. It’s been a long game of cat and mouse, but here we are. Does it get under that pretty skin of yours to know what I did to you? You were so proud of how you manipulated me back then. Gathering information from me on EU defense and policy. Watching your American spy climb the ranks in the French government and do your bidding. You had no idea you were playing into our hands. Setting the stage for the rise of Le Renouveau. Congratulations, my love. Raymond and I truly couldn’t have gotten this far without your help.”
Monika tossed her windswept blond hair. She finally spoke. “Fuck you, Chrétien.”
He laughed. “Marvelous. Oh, that’s marvelous. Truly, I’m honored. I do believe that’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from you, in or out of bed.”
Pau turned his attention to Bourne.
He came up closer, parting cautiously between two of his men, but keeping a safe distance with a careful respect for Bourne’s fighting skills. “Cain. Face-to-face once more. I told you we’d meet again soon. I also told you that you had no idea who Monika Roth really was. You should have listened to me. But I assume you know the truth about her now. She betrayed you more than I ever did. In fact, I’m curious, David. If you’d realized who she was back at the chalet—if you’d understood that your lover was a liar and a fraud—would you have killed her when I told you to? Would you have sacrificed her for the mission? That’s what Treadstone agents do, after all. The mission always comes first.”
Bourne didn’t answer. He stared back at the man, his mind furiously calculating Pau’s next moves and evaluating whether they had any way to strike back. But their options were few. Monika was unarmed. Three men with rifles stood guard around them, and he had nothing but a Sig hidden inside his jacket with a full magazine and one in the chamber. A few quick shots would change the dynamic, but by the time he drew the gun, he’d be dead.
“Ah well, it doesn’t really matter,” Pau said. “As it happens, I’m giving you another chance to make up for the past.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“It’s simple,” Pau replied. “Ten years ago you were a young spy, and you failed to follow my orders. Now I’m back to make sure you do. That’s how this ends, David. That’s why I’m here. You can never run from your destiny. Eventually, it always catches up with you. You see, it’s time to prove yourself to Le Renouveau once and for all. I want you to kill Monika.”