Read Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy for Free Online

by side. As he walked across the bluestone gravel, his heart felt suddenly lighter. The two best friends he had in the world—both in their own ways the keepers of his past—were inside. Together, they would solve this mystery as they had all the others before. He climbed onto the front portico, rang the bell. There was no answer. Pressing his ear to the polished teak door, he could hear voices from within. He tried the handle, found the door unlocked.
    An alarm went off inside his head and, for a moment, he stood behind the half-open door, listening to everything inside the house. No matter that he was out here in the countryside where crime was practically unheard of—old habits never died. Conklin's overactive sense of security would dictate locking the front door whether or not he was home. Opening the switchblade, he entered, all too aware that an attacker—one of a termination team sent to kill him—could be lurking inside.
    The chandeliered foyer gave out onto a wide sweep of polished wood stairs leading up to an open gallery that ran the width of the foyer. To the right was the formal living room, to the left the denlike media room with its wet bar and deep, masculine leather sofas. Just beyond there was a smaller, more intimate room that Alex had made into his study. Bourne followed the sound of the voice into the media room. On the large-screen TV a telegenic CNN commentator was standing outside the front of the Oskjuhlid Hotel. A superimposed graphic indicated that he was on location in Reykjavik, Iceland. "... the tenuous nature of the upcoming terrorism summit is on everyone's mind here." No one was in the room, but there were two old-fashioned glasses on the cocktail table. Bourne picked one up, sniffed. Speyside single-malt, aged in sherry casks. The complex aroma of Conklin's favorite Scotch disoriented him, brought back a memory, a vision of Paris. It was autumn, fiery horse-chestnut leaves tumbling down the Champs-Elysées. He was looking out the window from an office. He struggled with this vision, which was so strong he seemed to be pulled out of himself, to actually be in Paris, but, he reminded himself grimly, he was in Manassas, Virginia, at Alex Conklin's house, and all was not well. He struggled, trying to maintain his vigilance, his focus, but the memory, triggered by the scent of the single-malt, was overpowering, and he so yearned to know, to fill in the gaping holes in his memory. And so he found himself in the Paris office. Whose? Not Conklin's—Alex had never had an office in Paris. That smell, someone in the office with him. He turned, saw for the briefest instant the flash of a half-remembered face. He tore himself away. Even though it was maddening to have a life you remembered only in fitful bursts, with all that had happened and things here feeling just slightly offkilter, he couldn't afford to get sidetracked. What had Mo said about these triggers? They could come from a sight, a sound, a smell, even the touch of something, that once the memory was triggered he could tease it out by repeating the stimulus that had provoked it in the first place. But not now. He needed to find Alex and Mo.
    He looked down, saw a small notepad on the table and picked it up. It seemed blank; the top leaf had been ripped off. But when he turned it slightly, he could see faint indentations. Someone—presumably Conklin— had written "NX 20." He pocketed the pad.
    "So, the countdown has begun. In five days' time, the world will know whether a new day, a new world order will emerge, whether the law-abiding peoples of the world will be able to live in peace and harmony." The anchor continued to drone on, segueing into a commercial.
    Bourne switched off the TV with the remote and silence descended. It was possible that Conklin and Mo were out walking, a favorite way for Panov to let off steam while in conversation, and he, no doubt, would want the old man to get his exercise. But there was the anomaly of the