"Making Amends"
by Osiris Brackhaus
It was a lovely Tuesday morning, and spring finally seemed to be returning to Washington. As if to spite all the talk of global warming, winter had been long and almost ridiculously harsh. All the more now, the first rays of the sun that carried a little warmth were welcomed with open arms. Everywhere, people seized each single opportunity to sit outside or at least skip the subway for a short walk. The air still carried a distinct chill, but the radiant light was all it needed.
All the more, the first rays of the sun that carried a little warmth were welcomed with open arms. Everywhere, people seized each single opportunity to sit outside or at least skip the subway for a short walk. The air still carried a distinct chill, but the radiant light was all it needed.
In a café that also served outside in summer, the customers had short handedly taken out some of the chairs and tables and were sitting in the late mid-April morning in their thick jackets. A light breeze still carried the scent of old leaves and earth, but was already rich with the promise of more. One of the patrons, sitting unobtrusively with his back to the sunlit wall, was probably the only person in the whole town who missed the cold, drizzly days.
Not that Jason Bourne was necessarily fond of bad weather. But the numbingly peaceful, mindless chatter around him reminded the rogue assassin poignantly that there was also a good side to bad weather. Waiting for the coffee in front of him to cool down to a bearable degree, he opened the newspaper he had bought together with the drink. Personal ads were interesting to read if one knew what one was looking for.
And despite the fact he didn't still remember much of his past before he had been fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, he knew a lot.
With a sigh, he closed the newspaper again, blinking into the glaring morning. Almost a year had passed since the death of Marie. Almost a year since he had left her dead in the green waters of some tiny Indian river, after some bullet with his name on it had killed her.
There hadn't been another option for them, from the very beginning. He was bringing death, willingly or not, it was clinging to his steps like some karmic stigma.
And still, they had dared to dream. Marie with her own chaos, her widely dispersed and mostly dysfunctional family, had never accepted that, though. To her, there had always been a choice, always been a chance to get things right, and if not today, then tomorrow.
Her unquenchable energy and resolve made Jason smile despite everything. And in a way, Marie had been right, as weird as that fact sounded. For in the course of the past months, Jason had tried to believe her, tried to see things as Marie would have done, even if alone to honor her memory.
And to his own surprise, things had changed.
Well, not really, but in many little ways that made him wonder if there wasn't a way out of his fucked-up life, a way out into a normality that Marie had always dreamt up for them. Like a shopping-cart with a broken wheel, his life tended to drift in one direction if he didn't watch out. But as long as he tried hard enough, he might just able to choose the course.
It had started in Moscow, when Jason hadn't shot the assassin who had killed Marie. And not for lack of chance, not at all. For all he had done, the killer hadn't been a direct threat any longer, and for a split second, he had felt compelled to shoot him anyway.
Better safe than sorry, always two shots, always go for the head.
But he had been sore and tired already, and then he had remembered Marie. There always is a choice, those had been her last words; and Jason so dearly had wanted to believe she had been right.
So he hadn't shot him. He had lowered his gun and walked away, just like that.
And it had felt good. Still felt good every time Jason thought of the moment. His life, his decision. His choice.
As long as that Russian didn't come looking for him, Jason decided, their account was as settled as could be.
"Mind if I sit down here?" a deep voice suddenly asked from somewhere next to Bourne.
There was something to this question, something lingering, that made Jason immediately want to jump up and hit the guy with the chair he was sitting on. He could have sworn that he heard the remnants of a Slavic accent in the other man's voice, but those were just the phantoms in his mind, the former agent reminded himself firmly.
"Go right ahead." he ground out by sheer force of will, gesturing the man to sit down.
Against the bright morning sun, he couldn't make out much, at least not without being obvious. But the newcomer seemed to be pretty athletic, his broad shoulders all the more impressive as he apparently wore no jacket, instead sporting a tight turtleneck pullover and some denims.
Trying to calm his nerves, Jason opened his newspaper once again, scanning through the news. But the nagging feeling all over his mind didn't go away, instead intensified each moment he was sitting there.
As every time when his over-eager reflexes tried to tell him that there was something rotten, Jason started to look around, as inconspicuously as possible. Everyone around him could be a potential enemy, everywhere a hidden sniper, making him get a strong urge to get up and walk far, far away.
“One more moment,” Jason told himself. “One more moment. I have to learn to control my instincts, not to let them control me.”
Finally, as he was just about to stand up, he caught a glimpse of the man sitting next to him all the time.
It was him.
Like a mirage conjured up by his fractured mind, the very Russian killer he had left as mangled as his car in Moscow. The man who had killed Marie.
Jason froze, knowing that he had become sloppy. Negligence kills, and it always kills you first. He couldn't walk out on him. Nor could he attack the Russian right here. His heart racing in his chest, Bourne lingered on the edge between jumping and bolting, and the tension was all that kept him in place.
Slowly, as if trying to look as non-threatening as possible, the assassin turned around to face Jason.
"You were hard to find."
There was no doubt, it was him. The way he pronounced his r's, his eyes, the scars on his forehead. He had let his hair grow longer, but his features were just as sharp, his eyes just as striking as that day in Moscow.
Or in Goa, where he had killed Marie.
"What do you want?" Jason asked icily as he hovered a half an inch above his seat.
"I have a question."
The other man seemed surprisingly composed, considering the circumstances. But none the less, the Russian added evenly:
"Actually, it's more like two questions."
Again, the other man looked straight at Jason.
"Do I get that much time?"
He wanted to talk. Despite everything, Bourne was rather sure that the guy was real. Giving him the benefit of doubt, many other things made sense as well. No baggy clothes, meaning he tried to look as unarmed as any man of his profession could look. He was holding his Styrofoam mug in his hands with a white paper napkin that almost looked like a parley flag.
Yet after all the efforts this man must have gone through to find a man even the CIA couldn't get their hands on, asking two questions seemed a little unrealistic.
Jason knew he was being careless if he remained here any second longer. But then again, there was the chance, however negligent it was, that this man had said the truth. A slim chance, an option. A choice.
Sitting down, Jason gave a deep sigh.
"Two questions."
The Russian nodded gravely.
"The girl, in Goa. Did she make it?"
Of all possible questions, this was one Jason hadn't expected. But then again, he hadn't expected any of this happening, so... But answering the question was hard, much harder than he had thought.
"No."
Nothing more was to be said, and he wouldn't have managed any other word before his voice would have been strangled by his anguish. Or before he would have strangled the assassin, right here and now.
At least, the other man didn't comment on the subject in any way. There was nothing he could have said that would have made things better. They were both professionals, and there were no personal feelings involved in their jobs. Or technically, there shouldn't be. And no words in the world would bring Marie back to life.
For a long moment, both men just sat there, the world around them passing by as if never anything out of the ordinary had happened. Then, as if to get over with it, Jason asked:
"And your second question?"
The Russian grinned slightly and nodded softly. He took time to take a sip of his coffee before he spoke.
"That day in Moscow. Why didn't you kill me?"
Now that was a question Jason had vaguely been able to anticipate. But how to answer? Both of them knew the Russian assassin should have been dead. And both were most obviously aware of the fact that he wasn't.
This time, it was Bourne who took the time to drink some coffee. How to explain a killer like the one who was sitting next to him that he just didn't think it was necessary any longer?
Maybe that was the right way.
"It no longer felt necessary", Jason explained without looking at his unexpected companion. "You weren’t a direct threat any longer."
"I could have come back." It sounded more like a question than a threat, even as he added: "I am here now..."
"Do you want to kill me?" Jason asked without thinking, yet wondering if this probably wasn't the smartest question he had asked so far in this unusual conversation.
"No. I just had to know. Knowing makes things easier."
Jason almost jumped out of his chair, staring at the man next to him. Knowing makes things easier, he had said. Where the hell had he gotten those words from?
It had been his words, Jason's words, his own.
Hearing them from the man who had killed Marie felt outrageous, sacrilegious.
"What do you mean by that?" Bourne pressed out between his teeth.
The Russian arched one of his dark eyebrows at him. Then, he frowned softly, replying with a sadness that surprised Jason to his core:
"I thought you would understand." Turning his gaze away from the rogue assassin, the dark-haired killer looked into the bright morning, continuing his explanation, apparently to no one in particular. "You know, when I woke up in the hospital, there were days I wished you had killed me. My employer was jailed somewhere in Siberia, but his reach is far, even these days."
With a sigh, he took another sip of his coffee, and went on:
"As soon as anybody would notice that I was still alive, he would learn as well. And he wouldn't be so pleased. Actually, he was royally pissed when he heard. And my death would be the only redemption for failing him in his eyes."
The Russian shook his head with a soft snort. Turning towards Jason, he grinned, full of regret and melancholy.
"You know, at first I thought you hadn't killed me because you wanted me to suffer."
"What a touching tale" Jason snapped coldly, wondering why the hell this man suddenly thought he was interested in the tale of his miserable life by any means.
But the other assassin shrugged, once again a sad smile on his features.
"I won't claim any of us is anything but a professional. But when I suddenly turned from predator to prey, I did the natural thing and tried to survive."
Now this was a part of the story, as much as Bourne loathed admitting it, that he could relate to. In a way he found far too personal.
"Surviving wasn't easy, but I got by" The killer continued, not noticing that by now, he had finally awakened Bourne's curiosity. "And I went after the man I still had a score to settle with. I went after you, to kill you or get killed, anything but this dreadful, unresolved situation."
This time, the other assassin looked directly at Jason, a strange light in the back of his black eyes.
"My name is Kirill" he said calmly, and it stuck Bourne most odd that he didn't use the usual 'you can call me...'.
It sounded as if he had given him his real name, the one
he used for himself. Once again, something you didn't do with a person you
were about to kill for revenge.
Looking rather doubtful by now, Jason nodded acknowledgement.
"You know my name by now, I gather", he replied, noticing with a certain wonder that his body seemed to slip out of his highly alerted stance. He was truly getting sloppy.
"But it's not a name I should drop here in the open", the Russian replied, smiling. "I learned quite a lot about you, at least of what little there is known of you. You're on the run from your former employers, aren't you?"
Jason didn't answer, but slowly, he got a vague feeling where all this was leading to.
"Seems that is a common problem these days" Kirill noted calmly, finishing his coffee. "But you are different. You're efficient, perfectly trained and talented. And yet you didn't kill me." Again, the other assassin looked at Bourne, a calm curiosity in his features. "The more I learned about you, the more I wondered how you managed to... well, to get out of this."
There was surprising honesty in the words of the Russian, and Jason found himself trying to look at his life from the other man's eyes. Sure, Kirill didn't know shit about him, but after all, he had managed to get at least a semblance of a life of his own again. He was the one who decided about his life, he didn't any longer only react to his enemies' movements.
Still looking at Jason, the Russian concluded:
"I thought you might understand that we have a lot in common."
"Like the wish to kill each other?" Jason snapped at this implication.
"Like the wish to survive", Kirill replied, a sharp tone in his voice reminding Jason that he was still talking to a man probably as dangerous as himself. "Like the wish to get out of this mess our lives have turned into, like the fact that we both wake up at night, full of regret for what we have done."
"You don't really strike me as repenting", Bourne remarked. His voice was still cold, but it had lost a lot of its caustic edge. Kirill was right- in a way- that there was a lot in their fucked-up lives that wasn't too different.
"On first glance, what you did to me in Moscow wasn't merciful, either."
The Russian met Jason's glance with calm concentration, and finally it was Bourne who broke their little stare-down duel. With the barest hint of a smile, he shook his head, asking:
"So what do you want, 'Kirill'?"
"To suggest we work together."
If that hadn't been what Jason had seen coming a long time ago already, he would have laughed out loud at this outrageous suggestion. They both had always worked alone, as it was the only option for anybody of their profession worth his grain of salt. Yet, they were both trying to get out of the business, so there was a certain sense in taking up that offer. If only for the fact to have someone around Jason wouldn't mourn too much if he met his certain and untimely demise.
Slowly, the rogue assassin nodded in agreement.
It was dangerous, but then again, not worse than his everyday life. And having someone with him on his run was a good thing, just as having something else to think of but exclusively his own mess. Kirill was far from being no threat to Jason, but at least he wouldn't shoot him outright. And Jason was determined to try and trust him for the time being, if only to give Kirill the chance to become someone he would trust. To allow him to choose.
Reaching out his hand at the other man, he said firmly:
"Cease-fire, no more."
Taking the offered hand, Kirill laughed, sounding surprisingly light-hearted to Jason.
"Cease-fire" he confirmed, "Everything else would have made me doubt your sanity."
Again, Jason nodded. It was an unfamiliar but not unwelcome feeling to have a colleague at his side he felt a semblance of trust for.
"What about we take a walk?" Jason suggested, gesturing into the bright spring morning. "There's a lot we have to talk about."
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to: Osiris Brackhaus