Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Sanction by Eric van Lustbader

Author:Eric van Lustbader
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 0446539864
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2008-07-29T07:00:00+00:00

Book Three

Twenty-Eight

IT TOOK ten minutes for Bourne to get a decent connection to Professor Specter, then another five for his people to rouse him out of bed. It was 5 AM in Washington. Maslov had gone downstairs to see to business, leaving Bourne alone in the greenhouse to make his calls. Bourne used the time to consider what Maslov had told him. If it was true that Pyotr was a member of the Black Legion, two possibilities arose: One was that Pyotr was running his own operation under the professor’s nose. That was ominous enough. The second possibility was far worse, namely that the professor was, himself, a member. But then why had he been attacked by the Black Legion? Bourne himself had seen the tattoo on the arm of the gunman who had accosted Specter, beat him, and hustled him off the street.

At that moment Bourne heard Specter’s voice in his ear. “Jason,” he said, clearly out of breath, “what’s happened?”

Bourne brought him up to date, ending with the information that Pyotr was a member of the Black Legion.

For a long moment, there was silence on the line.

“Professor, are you all right?”

Specter cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

But he didn’t sound fine, and as the silence stretched on Bourne strained to catch a hint of his mentor’s emotional state.

“Look, I’m sorry about your man Baronov. The killer wasn’t Black Legion; he was an NSA agent sent to murder me.”

“I appreciate your candor,” Specter said. “And while I grieve for Baronov, he knew the risks. Like you, he went into this war with his eyes open.”

There was another silence, more awkward than the last one.

Finally, Specter said, “Jason, I’m afraid I’ve withheld some rather vital information from you. Pyotr Zilber was my son.”

“Your son? By why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”

“Fear,” the professor said. “I’ve kept his real identity a secret for so many years it’s become habit. I needed to protect Pyotr from his enemies-my enemies-the enemies who were responsible for murdering my wife. I felt the best way to do that was to change his name. So in the summer of his sixth year, Aleksei Specter drowned tragically and Pyotr Zilber came into being. I left him with friends, left everything and came to America, to Washington, to begin my life anew without him. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. But how can a father renounce his son when he can’t forget him?”

Bourne knew precisely what he meant. He’d been about to tell the professor what he’d learned about Pyotr and his cast of misfits and fuckups, but this didn’t seem the right time to bring up more bad news.

“So you helped him?” Bourne guessed. “Secretly.”

“Ever so secretly,” Specter said. “I couldn’t afford to have anyone link us together, I couldn’t allow anyone to know my son was still alive. It was the least I could do for him.

Jason, I hadn’t seen him since he was six years old.”

Hearing the naked anguish in Specter’s voice, Bourne waited a moment.

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