The Bourne Deception

The Bourne Deception

The Bourne Deception first edition cover.
Author	Robert Ludlum (series creator) Eric Van Lustbader
Language	English
Series	Jason Bourne
Genre	Spy, Thriller novel
Publisher	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date	June 9, 2009
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	432 pp (first edition)
ISBN	9780446539821
Preceded by	The Bourne Sanction
Followed by	The Bourne Objective

The Bourne Deception is the title for the novel by Eric Van Lustbader and the seventh novel in the Jason Bourne series created by Robert Ludlum. It was released on June 9, 2009. It is Lustbader's fourth Bourne novel, following The Bourne Sanction that was published in 2008.

The Bourne Deception picks up where The Bourne Sanction left off. Jason Bourne's nemesis, Arkadin, is still hot on his trail and the two continue their struggle, reversing roles of hunter and hunted. When Bourne is ambushed and badly wounded, he fakes his death and goes into hiding. In safety, he takes on a new identity, and begins a mission to find out who tried to assassinate him. Jason begins to question who he really is, how much of him is tied up in the Bourne identity, and what he would become if that was suddenly taken away from him. Meanwhile, an American passenger airliner is shot down over Egypt by what seems to be an Iranian missile. A massive global investigative team is assembled to get at the truth of the situation before it can escalate into an international scandal. Jason Bourne's search for the man who shot him intersects with the search for the people that brought down the airliner, leading Bourne into one of the most deadly and challenging situations he has ever encountered. With the threat of a new world war brewing, Bourne finds himself in a race against time to uncover the truth and find the person behind his assault, all the while being stalked by his unknown nemesis.

Following this novel, Eric Van Lustbader has revealed at his official website, that the eighth Jason Bourne novel's working title is: The Bourne Objective.

Plot Introduction

In the prologue, secretary of Defense Bud Halliday returns. Halliday is meeting with Boris Karpov, a Russian colonel. Halliday is trying to make a plan with Karpov in which Karpov will kill Jason Bourne. In return, Halliday must assassinate Abdulla Khoury, the head of the Eastern Brotherhood, who is practically "holding hands" with the president of Iran himself. Karpov, who claims they were on a Mexico drug bust, extracted a notebook computer with cross references to the Middle East and Mexico. The Eastern brotherhood financed fifty percent of their profits to buying weapons who transshipped to the Middle East. As Karpov exits the pub and turns the corner he takes off his face accessories, revealing his true identity, Leonid Arkadin. Arkadin flies to Denpasar in Bali, because he extracted information from Moira Trevor's computer at Next Gen Energy Solutions, where he knows he will find Bourne.

Meanwhile, Bourne and Trevor are staying in Bali, Indonesia about two weeks after the LNG tanker went down. Bourne, confused by his thoughts, is persuaded to go to the holy man, Suparwita, by Moira. The two go there and to find out the truth behind his identity and see if the man can figure out Bourne's past himself. Suparwita tells Bourne his birthday has been mistaken, and it was on December 31. He also tells him he has been here before and will come again after making a trip to Tenganan, a place Bourne has never heard of. Bourne, disgusted, grabs Moira. As they're exiting the apartment, Arkadin chases them on a motor scooter through the forest into a town called Tenganan. As Bourne thinks he's lost his pursuer, he is sniped in the back. A crowd gathers, as Arkadin leaves, knowing he's completed his share of the bargain.

Plot Summary

Three months later, in Munich, Germany, a car carrying the Eastern Brotherhood's finance minister is blown up by a boy who was paid by Arkadin. Abdulla Khoury had a conversation with Arkadin letting him know that he may kill all of his associates, but he'll never kill him. Jason Bourne, who everyone thinks is dead, is currently at a hospital in Tenganan having major surgery on his heart.

Meanwhile an American airliner goes down over Cairo, Egypt. The government is informed of the situation during a meeting at the White House. Veronica Hart, the DCI, persuades the president to let her get Soraya Moore, the head Typhon agent, over to the crime scene.

As Soraya arrives at the crash site of the plane, she meets Amun Chalthoum whom she has met before while she was kidnapped due to the infiltration of CI. Al Mokhabarat was trying to place a microdot, which would reset the network. The mood between the two is more than awkward. Delia, one of Soraya's leading case officers, discovers a bomb was definitely not a case of the explosion. She also states it could not have been a plane. She suggests a ground-to-air missile, which would involve the cooperation of al Mokhabarat, whom Amun Chalthoum is the leader of, meaning he would be their unknown enemy, responsible for the crash. The teams discover ashes of a fire in the desert. Three days ago, in Iran, they were celebrating the new year. During the new year cannons are fired. In this case, it was a missile, leaving them confused as to if it was a mistake or a shot at the government.

Moira gets in a car accident following her friend Jay, who says he has information that she needs to see. During the pursuit of a cop, Jay is killed and Moira is sent to the hospital. Without letting anybody know she has it, Moira sneaks into a back booth in the restaurant and opens the file she took from Jay's pocket. Moira barely has time to read the code Pinprickbardem as she is ambushed at the restaurant by the NSA. Arkadin is currently in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, training his strike force. As Maslov comes out of his plane, Arkadin starts thinking about his current plan to take over the Eastern Brotherhood. His partner, Triton, is probably going to try to kill Arkadin before the last part of the mission so he can take the Eastern Brotherhood for himself. Arkadin receieves a phone call from an unknown caller (Williard), and is told Ian Bowles, whom he sent to find out information about Bourne, is dead. Arkadin concludes Bourne is still alive, after receiving the call, thinking if Bourne was dead, they wouldn't have bothered to call. . Bourne is on his way to Seville, Spain to find Don Fernando Hererra who bought a cartridge off of Wayans, the pig dealer. Disguising himself as a pig dealer, Wayans is also able to sell rifles, guns, and all sorts of weaponry and ammunition. On the plane, he meets a woman named Tracy, on her way to Herrera as well.

Bourne is attacked by "The Torturer" in Spain, but defeats him.

Back in the United States, Steve Stevenson is killed. He supposedly knows about some secret computer program called Pinprickbardem.

Moira and DCI Hart find out about Steve's murder and go to Steve's best friend, Humphrey Bamber, and tell him the news. Moira said Steve was terrified of something going on at the Pentagon and left. However, Moira and Hart find out about the program Jay Weston was trying to tell Soraya about, pinprickbardem. Pinprickbardem is a highly sophisticated statistical analysis program that can take into account millions of factors. The program provides all of the factors from lab scenarios and real-world scenarios. After the conversation the trio go to leave in Moira's car. However Moira, being superstitious, checks the back and discovers a car bomb attached to her car. She is able to pull Bamber out, but not Veronica Hart, and Hart is blown up in the car.

Oserov, an assassin of the grupperovka, is sent to make Stas's camp. He one by one kills gang members of Stas's men from the inside out, obeying his mission, 'to make their camp a living hell'.

Moira, meanwhile, returns to her house to retrieve her laptop for Bamber. She cloned the hard drive from her laptop at CI, and Bamber tells her that if she has the hard drive, he can probably crack Noah's plan of whatever he's doing. When she goes up to look in her closet, someone jumps through a window in the other room, locking her door and sealing it. The person starts to pump carbon monoxide gas through it, awaiting their victim's fate. However, Moira escapes through the vents in her house, landing on her attacker outside and killing him. However, in doing so, she shattered her own hard drive to the computer.

Bourne is in the airport terminal in Seville, awaiting his flight to Madrid. He calls Boris Karpov, but he doesn't pick up. Then he calls Boris's assistant, Ivan Volkin. Ivan tells Bourne Karpov is in Khartoum. Bourne also asks Ivan if he knows a man named Bogdan Machin, also known as The Torturer. He tells Ivan that The Torturer was sent to Seville to kill him by someone and suspects it was Karpov because he thinks Karpov was the one that initially tried to kill him in Bali. Bourne tells Ivan someone showed him surveillance photos in Seville, of a meeting between Secretary Halliday and Karpov, in which Halliday agreed to kill Abdulla Khoury if Karpov killed Bourne. However, Bourne discovers Arkadinis alive and perfectly cloned himself to look like Karpov. Everything is finally starting to make sense.

Bourne ends up on 779 El Gamhuria Avenue in Khartoum, Sudan. He deliberately breaks into the house looking for Tracy, who he sent in minutes ago as a diversion for him to find Noah. In a room inside the house, Noah confronts Tracy wanting his Goyle. Here we find out Tracy is a rat and brought Bourne as bait for Arkadin who hired her. Noah leaves the room, obtaining to a break in downstairs. Immediately after he leaves, Nikolai Yevsen, the russian arms dealer, breaks in, demanding to know why Tracy wants to kill him and threatens her he'll take her life in a second. Bourne breaks through the door and kills Yevsens, but not before Tracy suffers gun shot wounds to her body. Jason tries to revive her but cannot in time and she dies. Boris Karpov enters the room, intending to take out Yevsen, but finds him already dead. Karpov and Bourne, who is still bleeding bad, is stitched up my one of Karpov's medics. Here, one of Karpov's soldiers, was able to swipe some information from Yevsen's hard drive, extracting his last three transactions. Bourne and Karpov now find out Yevsen bought the Kowsar 3 missile and sold it to Black River who shot down their own airline. On the way out of the building, Karpov and Bourne get information that Arkadin is heading to Shahrake Nasiri-Astara in northwest Iran.

Moira and Humphrey Bamber break Noah's code and find out that he's using Pinprickbardem to take over the Iranian oil fields.

Williard and Peter Marks are at a bar in a restaurant and Williard tells Marks that he was Conklin's main man. Williard tells him that the Treadstone files that were destroyed, were duplicated by Conklin. He also tells Marks that he's starting the program again and gives him the choice to be on board.

Yet to be completed

Publication history

• 2009, US, Grand Central Publishing ISBN 9780446539821, Pub date June 9, 2009, Hardback
• 2009, UK, Orion Publishing Group ISBN 9781409101611, Pub date June 11, 2009, Hardback