Текст книги "The Bourne Dominion (Господство Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“Just like El-Arian. I have a strong suspicion that he and Abdul-Qahhar had a prior relationship when they were young men—though I haven’t been able to substantiate it yet.”

“That would make sense.”

“But what is clear is that Treadstone’s assault was the excuse El-Arian needed to forge an alliance between the Domna and the Mosque.” Essai shook his head. “That kind of Arab influence goes against the Domna’s charter of East-West cooperation. It was a watershed moment for the Domna; it was when everything changed.”

Etana was sitting very still, his hands had a death grip on the bench, and he seemed green around the gills. Essai said nothing, out of respect, and, soon enough, he reefed the mainsail and they glided into the dock. He threw the bowline to the rental agent.

“I was getting worried,” the man said as he drew the boat slowly in. “This storm front looks very bad.”

“No need to worry about us,” Essai said. “No need at all.”

Don’t you pass out on me,” Tyrone Elkins shouted.

Peter Marks, his arms tight around Elkins’s waist, rode the motorcycle, dizzy and weak. There was a fire raging through his body, and he kept going in and out of consciousness, like an exhausted swimmer in the surf. That drowning reference again. Dimly, he wondered where that came from.

“Is that you laughing back there?” Tyrone shouted across the wind.

“Maybe,” Peter said. “I don’t know.” He let his cheek rest against the thick leather of Elkins’s jacket. Since when did CI allow one of its operatives to wear a leather jacket, he wondered. Then the thought was lost in the swirl of the inner surf that buffeted him.

“No hospital,” he said.

“Gotcha the first time, Chief.”

Peter gave a start of deep-seated anxiety. Who knew who was after him, what places they’d be watching? And waiting. “Please.”

“Fear not, Chief,” Tyrone said. “I know jus’ where to go.”

“Someplace safe,” Peter mumbled.

“Please,” Tyrone said. “Gimme a fuckin’ break.”

They arrived at Deron’s house in Northeast DC seven minutes later, Tyrone having broken every traffic ordinance known to the district. Tyrone, brought up in this African American ghetto, had never held any truck with traffic laws, and now that he worked for CI he never gave them a second thought. Any cop stupid enough to pull him over got a face full of his federal ID and backed off faster than a rat looking at a cat.

Back in the day, Tyrone had worked for Deron, a tall, handsome black man with a British education and cultured accent that stood him in good stead with his international clientele of shady art dealers trafficking in Deron’s magnificent forgeries. Deron also created all of Jason Bourne’s forged documents, and some of his weapons as well. It was because of Bourne’s friend Soraya Moore that Tyrone had decided to heed Deron’s advice, leave the hood behind, apply himself, and train for work at CI. He’d never worked harder in his life, but the rewards had been many and worth it.

“What the bloody hell happened?” Deron said, as he helped Tyrone carry Peter into the house.

“Fucking meat grinder is what happened.”

Peter seemed delirious, rambling incoherently about making calls, dire warnings, pieces of a puzzle.

“Any idea what he’s on about?” Deron asked.

Tyrone shook his head. “Shit, no. All he was goin’ on about on the way over was I shouldn’t take him to a hospital.”

“Hmm, Jason wouldn’t want that, either.”

Tyrone helped his former mentor lay Peter on the sofa.

“Details,” Deron said.

Tyrone recounted the scene with the ambulance, the men shot, the driver beating up on Peter. “I brought him right over here,” he concluded, handing over the Glock he’d snatched up from the gutter before helping Peter onto his motorcycle.

“I hope you didn’t handle it too much.”

“Little as I could,” Tyrone said.

Deron nodded, clearly pleased. After carefully putting the gun into a plastic bag, he surveyed the battleground of Peter’s body. “You know him?”

“Yeah. He Soraya’s pal, Peter Marks. Used to work with her at Typhon before she was canned.”

Deron went to fetch his extensive first-aid kit. Peter was still softly raving. “Call him, tell him…”

Tyrone bent over him. “Who, Peter? Who do you want to call?”

Peter just thrashed, mumbled words tumbling from his bloodstained lips.

“Hold him down so he doesn’t hurt himself,” Deron said.

“This here Peter left CI,” Tyrone went on. “Don’t know what he been up to since then, but seeing him like this, it sure as fuck can’t be healthy.”

Deron returned, knelt down beside Marks, and opened the case. “Son, you have got to work on your King’s English.”

“Say what?”

Deron gave a short laugh. “Never mind. We’ll work on your pronunciation later.” He administered a shot into Peter’s arm.

“No, no!” Peter cried, his eyes not quite focused. “Must call, must tell him…” But then the anesthetic took him and, calmed, he slipped into unconsciousness.

Deron pulled apart Peter’s shirt, sticky with blood. Peter’s chest was studded with glass and metal shards, a miniature graveyard. “Right now, Tyrone, let’s you and me make this man right.”

Soraya heard the pounding of feet, and she turned, in a half crouch, ready to defend herself. But it was Amun, sprinting into the feeble light of the staircase.

“Are you all right?” he said from the foot of the stairs.

She nodded, unable for the moment to speak coherently. She was still reeling from Marchand’s second attack on her, and her chest hurt like hell. Marchand had seemed like the quintessential academic; she had never thought him capable of such viciousness, and thereby she had learned an important lesson.

Amun, taking the stairs two steps at a time, said, “That the whoreson, Marchand?”

She nodded again. “Dead.” It was the only word she was capable of uttering.

“It’s over now. They’re all dead down there. What a rotten nest of vipers. We should—”

His head exploded and he pitched forward into her arms. She screamed, staggering backward. He was deadweight. She saw a moving shadow, caught a glimpse of a red polo shirt. The man at the far end of the alley! Then a flash of metal. Another shot clanged off the stair railing, and, with her burden, she somersaulted backward, pitching down into the blackness.

Two shots followed. Then another, loud as a cannon shot.

Then nothing, not even an echo.

Oblivion.

18

“WAIT!” BORIS SAID. “Stop!”

“What?”

Despite the steady rain, Lana Lang was driving very fast down a street that paralleled the Mosque’s west side. The moment they had slewed into the dark, gloomy street, the hairs on the back of Karpov’s hands began to rise and he felt an unpleasant stirring of anxiety in the pit of his stomach.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Back up!”

“What for? We’re almost there.”

Leaning over, he grabbed the gearshift and began to jerk wildly on it.

“What the hell are you doing?” she cried.

“Reversing out of here!”

“Cut it out.” She fought him. “You’re stripping the goddamn gears.”

“Then you do it.” He wouldn’t give up. “Step on the fucking—”

A hail of bullets smashed the windshield, struck Lana Lang in the face, making her dance like a puppet. Boris, ducking down in the foot well, depressed the clutch with one hand and shoved Lana’s foot down on the accelerator with the other.

The car screeched and moaned like a banshee. The drumbeat of rain sounded on the roof as it reversed, scraping along a brick wall. A shrieking commenced as sparking metal was stripped off the car’s passenger’s side. The door started to cave in, slamming into Boris’s right side. He fell across Lana’s lap. Her torso was being held upright by the seat belt across her chest, but there was no life left in her. Blood was everywhere, a fountain of it, a pool, a river running through the careening car.

More bullets, shattering the headlights, shredding the front fenders. Then Karpov had pulled the wheel over and the car straightened out. It shot out of the street like a streak of lightning.

The screech of brakes, the war-like blare of horns, shouts of fear and outrage. The fusillade had stopped and Boris risked looking up above the scarred dashboard. The car sat crosswise, blocking the street. Lana’s corpse was preventing him from getting behind the wheel.

Just then an air horn sounded, deep and braying. He looked in the other direction and saw an enormous refrigeration truck bearing down on him. It was going too fast—in the foul weather he knew the shocked driver wouldn’t be able to stop it in time.

He turned and tried to open the door, but it was so crumpled it was jammed shut. No amount of tugging and hammering was going to open it. And anyway, it was too late. With the roar and squeal of a rabid animal, the truck was on top of him.

We owe you a great debt,” Don Fernando Hererra said. “You did us a great service.”

“And now I’d like my payment,” Bourne said. “I’m not an altruist.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong, Jason.” Don Fernando crossed one elegant leg over the other, opened a beautifully filigreed humidor, offered a robusto to Bourne, who declined. Don Fernando plucked one out and went about the elaborate ritual of cutting and lighting it. “You’re one of the world’s last true altruists.” He puffed, getting the cigar going. “In my opinion, that is what defines you.”

The two men were sitting in Don Fernando’s comfortable living room. Vegas was lying down in one of the bedrooms, Don Fernando having administered a light sedative. As for Rosie, she’d disappeared into one of the guest bathrooms, saying she was in desperate need of a long, hot shower.

That left Bourne and his host, a man whom he had gotten to know first in Seville, where they had matched wits and sparred verbally, and later, more intimately, in London following the violent death of the old man’s son.

“I want half an hour alone with Jalal Essai,” Bourne said.

A smile haloed Don Fernando’s lips. He leaned forward. “More sherry?” He refilled Bourne’s glass, which stood beside a plate of Serrano ham, pink and smoky, and rough-cut chunks of Manchego cheese.

Bourne sat back. “Where is Essai, anyway?”

Don Fernando shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Then I can start with you. Why are you friends with him?”

“Not friends. Business partners. He’s a means to an end, nothing more.”

“And those ends?”

“He makes me money. Not drugs.”

“Human beings?”

Don Hernando crossed himself. “God forbid.”

“He’s a liar,” Bourne said.

“True enough.” Don Hernando nodded soberly. “He knows no other way of operating. It’s pathological.”

Bourne sat forward. “What I really want to know, Don Fernando, is the nature of your connection with Severus Domna.”

“Also a means to an end. At times, these people can be useful.”

“They will compromise you, if they haven’t already.”

Don Hernando’s smile was like a slow signal waxing. “Now you underestimate me, my young friend. I should be offended, but with you…” He waved a hand, dismissing the thought. “The fact is, ever since they formed an alliance with Abdul-Qahhar’s Mosque in Munich, I felt it incumbent on me to keep an eye on them.”

Seeing Bourne’s expression, he chuckled. “I see I have surprised you. Good. You must learn, my friend, that all knowledge doesn’t reside with you.”

Rosie stepped into the shower and was immediately wrapped in a column of steam. The water cascaded down her shoulders, her back, her breasts, and her flat stomach as she slowly turned. Closing her eyes against the spray, she felt her muscles melt into the heat. Lifting her arms, she ran her fingers through her hair, moving it back and off her face. She turned her face up to the spray, and the hot water streamed against her eyelids, nose, and cheeks. Slowly, she turned her head to one side and the other, the jets massaging her muscles. The water hit her ears, creating a roaring sound that reminded her of surf, the vastness of the sea, and for a time she lost herself in this image of unplumbed depths.

The hot water struck the small tattoo on her ear, rat-tat-tatting against it, and gradually, the color began to fade and run, the serpent seeming to uncoil as it dissolved into a tiny pool of water tinged by the dye, running down her neck like tears, swirling down the drain.

Don Fernando contemplated the glowing end of his cigar.

“It all started with Benjamin El-Arian,” Bourne said, “didn’t it?”

Rain had come at last, hard and tropical in its fury. It beat against the windowpanes, whipped the palm fronds in the atrium beyond the glass. A gust of wind rattled a loose tile on the roof.

The old man stood, unfolding like an origami, and stepped to the French doors out to the atrium. He stared out, one hand at his temple.

“I wish it were that simple,” he said at length. “A simple villain, a simple goal, yes, Jason? It’s what we all crave because then we are free of complications. But we both know that life rarely affords us time to wrap things up so neatly. When it comes to Severus Domna—nothing is simple.”

Bourne rose and followed Don Fernando, standing next to him. The rain sheeted down the glass, bounced off the paving stones. Runnels of water sluiced out of the copper downspouts, overrunning the grass and plant beds. The earth was black as pitch.

Don Fernando heaved a sigh. His cigar sandwiched between two fingers, all but forgotten.

“No, I’m afraid there is a terrible kind of circular logic at work here. Listen, Jason, it all started with a man named Christien Norén.”

Don Fernando turned, peering into Bourne’s face to see if the name triggered a spark of recognition.

“You don’t remember, do you?”

“I don’t remember ever hearing the name Christien Norén. Tell me about him.”

“That’s not for me to do.” Don Fernando placed a hand on Bourne’s shoulder. “You must ask Estevan’s woman.”

“Her name isn’t Rosie,” Bourne said, “is it?”

Don Fernando stuck the cigar in his mouth, but the ash was cold and gray. “Go find her, Jason.”

Clean and ruddy, Rosie stepped out of the shower, swaddled herself in a thick bath sheet, then wrapped a smaller towel around her hair, making a turban and tucking the end under. Wiping the fog from the mirror with her fingers, she leaned in over the sink, pushed up the makeshift turban, and stared at herself.

Her hair was now its natural tawny blond, the last dregs of the dye ringing the shower drain. Holding her head still, she plucked the contact lens out of her right eye. There she was, one eye dark as coffee, the other the cerulean blue she was born with. One half of her in one world, the other in a second. Swinging open the mirror, she found inside the medicine cabinet everything she had asked for: nail clippers, file, an array of face scrubs and moisturizers. She removed what she needed.

And that was how Bourne found her, as he opened the door to the bathroom. Rosie stared at his reflection in the mirror.

“Don’t you knock?”

“I think I’ve earned the right to come in on you unannounced,” he said.

She turned slowly around to face him. “When did you figure it out?”

“In the car,” Bourne said. “You’d never look at me directly. Then, when you turned to check on Estevan, I saw the edge of the contact lens.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“I wanted to see how it played out.”

Cupping a hand, she bowed her head, popped the lens out of her left eye, and threw it in the trash can under the sink.

“Is that your real hair color or another dye job?” Bourne asked.

“This is me.”

He stepped closer. She seemed utterly unafraid. “Not quite. Though the snake tattoo is gone, you still have a nose typical of native Colombians.” He peered more closely. “The operation was masterful.”

“It took three separate reconstructions to get it just right.”

“That’s a lot of trouble to go through to pass for an indigenous Colombian.”

“Hiding in plain sight, my father used to say, is hiding completely.”

“He’s right about that, your father. Christien Norén, is that right?”

Rosie’s eyes opened wide. “Don Hernando told you then.”

“I suppose he thought it was time.”

She nodded. “I suppose it is.”

“So, then. It’s you, not Estevan, who is so important to Don Hernando and Essai.”

“It was me those people on the highway were after.”

“Who are they?”

“I told you I was running.”

“From family, you said.”

“In a way, it’s the truth. They’re the people my father worked for.”

Bourne stood very close to her. She smelled of lavender soap and citrus shampoo. “What shall I call you?”

She gave him an enigmatic smile. She came toward him, so close there was scarcely a handbreadth between them.

“I was born Kaja Norén. My father was named Christien, my mother, Viveka. They’re both dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re very kind.”

Kaja laid one hand on his cheek, stroking it gently. With the other, she drove the nail file she had palmed through skin and layers of muscle.

Book Three

19

CLUTCHING THE HIGH-HEELED shoe he had ripped off Lana Lang’s foot, Boris attacked the bullet-shattered windshield just as the truck plowed into Lana’s car. The front and side air bags deployed, saving him from a dislocated shoulder. Still, he almost lost consciousness. Pulling himself together, he hacked at the windshield, using the heel like a hammer.

The truck driver slammed on the brakes, but the momentum of the two-ton vehicle was too much. The truck dragged the car along with it. The brake pads started to smoke, something fell out of the bottom of the car, sparks flying as it scraped the wet roadbed.

Arms crossed over his face, Boris sprang through the ruined windshield, the crack and tinkle of safety glass in his ears. The car shuddered beneath him like a shot deer. He rolled across the hood, then dropped awkwardly down onto the road. Pain stabbed briefly through his foot and up into his leg. Rain beat down on him, soaking him instantly. The car and truck, now one grotesque unit, continued on, slewing heavily, overheated, tortured metal screaming. The truck’s brakes seized up and the mass skidded, like a planet thrown out of orbit. Then truck and car both jumped the curb and plowed through a plate-glass storefront. With a horrendous sound like an animal screaming in pain, they smashed the interior to smithereens and impacted the rear wall.

By that time Boris had staggered to his feet amid a chaotic mass of shouting pedestrians, blaring sirens, and stalled traffic. People in herky-jerky motion were everywhere, their umbrellas clashing into one another. Faces peered at him, hands grabbed for him, beseeching him for answers: Was he all right, what had happened? The crowd swelled into a mob that spilled out into the adjoining streets. People seemed to be running from every direction, splashing in the running gutters.

Boris was busy wrenching himself free of the mounting chaos. That was when he spied the human machine knifing through the crowd. The human machine grinned at him and said something Boris couldn’t make out. It was Zachek, the mouthpiece for Konstantin Beria, the head of SVR. Zachek, who had detained him at Ramenskoye airport. What was he doing here? Boris asked himself.

“ Believe me when I tell you that we can make your life a living hell,” Zachek had warned him.

In that moment he saw everything as if a curtain had been lifted, revealing the poisoned feast laid out on a table. As he reeled drunkenly away, clawing through the dense clusters of chattering gawkers, Boris knew that it was SVR. SVR was responsible for Lana Lang’s death, fucking with him here in Munich.

Do you ever think about them?” Kaja said.

Bourne, lying on the floor of the bathroom, stared up into her piercing blue eyes. She was sitting astride his stomach, one fist grasping the end of the nail file she had used as a makeshift knife. He felt very little pain. He suspected that the file hadn’t gone very deep, that, in fact, one of his ribs had deflected it from its path. He could have dislodged her, but what was the point? She hadn’t wanted to kill him, or even to hurt him badly. She had something to tell him, something he wanted–possibly even needed—to hear. So he lay still, breathing deeply, his thoughts going deep, gathering his resolve.

“The people you’ve killed?” she continued.

And then, staring into her eyes, the past rose up and melded with the present. Her blue eyes became the eyes of the woman in the bathroom of the Nordic disco club. Lights strobed, music blared, and he was back there in time and place. She was sitting on the toilet, the small silver-plated .22—almost a plaything when it came to stopping a human being—aimed at him.

He did what Alex Conklin had sent him to do. He knew nothing about the woman, except that she had been marked by Treadstone for termination. Those were the days when he had done what he was told, as his training dictated. Before the incident when he had lost his memory, after which he had begun to question everything, starting with Treadstone’s motives.

Just before he had completed his mission, she had said to him, “ There is no—”

There is no…what?

Kaja’s eyes, the dead woman’s eyes, the same eyes.

And then Kaja said, “I saw her. The police came and took me to Frequencies in Stureplan to identify her. She was sitting there, they hadn’t moved her, God knows why…” Her head trembled. “There was no reason for you to do what you did.”

“ There is no reason.” That was what she had said just before he had killed her. “ There is no reason.”

Soraya fell into darkness. She landed on Amun’s corpse, which, in death, protected her as Amun had done in life.

The man with the red polo was on her immediately, dragging her off Amun and throwing her to the side like a sack of garbage. For a moment, he stared down at Amun’s face. Then he kicked it. The jaw cracked and teeth flew everywhere. He kicked again and Amun’s nose collapsed. Then he went to work on Amun’s ribs, staving them in with kicks that became ever more vicious. He was panting like a dog in heat. His face was flushed with blood and his lips were drawn back from his yellow teeth.

Soraya, coming to, heard the man’s imprecations. Because they were Arabic, she became momentarily disoriented, believing she was back in Cairo. Then her gaze fell upon Amun’s ruined face and she shrieked like a banshee. The Arab was turning toward her as she landed on him, toppling him backward.

They hit hard on the bare concrete, and she grunted with a sudden pain flaring through her left side. The Arab tried to roll off her, but she dug in with clawed fingers. Despite an overwhelming dizziness, she held fast to him. He chopped down on one of her wrists, providing the opening she needed. Slamming the heel of her hand into his nose, she pushed herself off her left side and tried to knee him. He jerked away and she connected with his thigh instead.

That was all the opportunity he was going to afford her. He jabbed her throat with the tips of his fingers and she reared back, gagging, gasping for breath. Calmly and methodically, he drew out a switchblade, snikkedit open, and prepared to slit her throat.

A pounding on the bathroom door caused Kaja to lock it.

Don Fernando’s voice could be heard through the door. “Is everything all right?”

“Perfectly fine,” Kaja said. “Jason and I are having a heart-to-heart.”

“Don’t do anything precipitous,” Don Fernando said. “He knows nine hundred ways to kill you.”

“You worry too much, Don Fernando,” she said.

He rattled the doorknob. “Come out at once, Kaja. This was a mistake.”

“No,” she said, “it’s not.”

“He doesn’t remember, Kaja.”

“So you told me.” Leaning down, her face close to Bourne’s, she said softly, “You won’t lay a hand on me, will you? Not until you learn what happened, and by then it will be too late.”

He wondered what she meant by that.

“Do you even remember her, Jason? Do you remember Frequencies, the dance club in Stockholm?”

Bourne was still engaged in a duel with her eyes. “It was winter, snowing.”

Kaja seemed mildly surprised. “Yes, the day she died it was snowing hard. The day you killed her.”

Full understanding bloomed. “She was your mother.”

For a moment, something dark and ugly swam in her eyes. “Viveka. My mother’s name was Viveka.” She leaned ever closer, their lips virtually touching. And all at once her face twisted with a demonic spasm. Her voice was clotted with emotion when she said: “Why did you kill her?”

The knife blade swung in a shallow arc. Soraya tried to lift one arm to fend it off, to protect herself, but still gasping for air, she lacked the strength. The Arab knocked her arm away as if it belonged to a doll.

Gripping her hair with one hand, he jerked her head back, exposing the long, vulnerable curve of her throat. He grinned. “Bitch,” he said. Then other words that made her shudder. His body curved into one long blade, a weapon bent solely to take her life, as if he had been born to that one dreadful task.

He arched up and Soraya said a prayer, for life and for death. And then the Arab’s head was surrounded by a pair of arms. A hand cupped his chin and, even while recognition came into his eyes, jerked his head to the right in the most violent motion imaginable. His neck cracked, snapped, and, as the hands let go, he slumped sideways, down into the darkness he had meant for her.

Soraya looked up as Aaron moved into the pale, fluttering light at the base of the stairwell. He reached down and, without a word, picked her up in his arms and took her out of the basement via the alternate route by which he had found his way in.

T here is no reason.

He could tell her the truth or lie. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t listening. All she wanted was her pound of flesh, and now he knew what it was.

“She was a civilian. That was what my father told us just before he left us. ‘Whatever happens to me, don’t be concerned,’ he said. ‘You’re safe. You’re civilians.’ I didn’t know what he meant, until the day of the snowstorm, the day my mother…” A spasm of deflected energy went through her. Her face looked white-hot. “Why did you kill her? Tell me! I need to know!”

He felt briefly buffeted by her pain, as if a great gust of wind had slipped by him. What could he tell her that would mollify her? He considered the state she was in, the amount of time she’d had to work herself up.

This was a complicated woman, of that Bourne had no doubt; she had hidden in plain sight for a number of years, insinuated herself into Estevan Vegas’s life. More than that, however, she had made his life her own. She had lived and breathed, she had become what she seemed to be. She was no longer Swedish. She had been mauled by a margay; she was Achagua, from the serpent line.

“You should make that tattoo permanent,” he said. “That skytale was beautiful.”

His words seemed alchemical, working a change in her. Her hand came off his shoulder and she sat back, abruptly exhausted. The dark, ugly thing in her eyes vanished. She seemed to have gone to another place, and was now back with him in Don Fernando’s house in Cadiz.

“One afternoon I saw a skytale in the forest not far from Estevan’s house,” she said. “It is a beautiful creature; as beautiful, in its way, as the margay. I drew it myself, using the natural plant dyes of the Achagua.”

“It’s been a long journey,” he said. “You are no longer who you were.”

She looked at him, as if for the first time. “That’s true for both of us, isn’t it?”

She rose off him then and stepped back, watching him warily as he got up, took the nail file out of his side. Blood spread across his shirt, and he took it off. He turned on the hot water and soaped the wound. It wasn’t serious at all.

“It’s bleeding a lot,” she said, from her safe distance.

Does she think I’ll strike her now?Bourne wondered. Retaliate in some way?

“Unlock the door,” he said as he tended to the wound. “Don Fernando is worried about both of us.”

“Not until you tell me the truth.” She took one hesitant step toward him. “Was my mother a spy, as well?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Bourne said. He remembered now. The force of Kaja’s emotion had dislodged the shard of memory from the lost depths of his past. “Your father was sent to kill the man who was then my boss. He failed. I was sent in retaliation.”

Kaja made a noise. She seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Why wasn’t my father—?”

“My target?” he finished for her. “Your father was already dead.”

“And that wasn’t enough?”

There was no possible answer he could give that would satisfy her—or, he thought, himself.

There is no reason.

Viveka Norén had been right. There had been no reason for her death, save Conklin’s need for revenge. But who had Conklin been hurting? Norén’s daughters were innocents, they didn’t deserve to have their mother taken from them. Conklin’s vindictiveness sent a chill through him. He had been Conklin’s instrument, trained and sent out again and again to terminate lives.

He rubbed his hands over his eyes. Was there no end to the sins he had compiled in the past he couldn’t remember? For the first time, he wondered whether his amnesia was a blessing.

“This isn’t the answer I wanted,” Kaja said.

“Welcome to the real world,” he said wearily.

He thought she might cry then, but her eyes remained dry. Instead, she turned and unlocked the door.

Don Fernando, standing on the threshold, wrenched it open. He stepped in with an appalled expression as he took in Bourne’s wound.

“My house has now become a corrida? Kaja, what have you done?”

She was silent, but Bourne said, “Everything is fine, Don Fernando.”

“I should think not.” He frowned at Kaja, who refused to look at him. “You have abused my hospitality. You promised me—”

“She did what she had to do.” Bourne found a sterile gauze pad in the medicine cabinet and taped it over the wound. “It’s all right, Don Fernando.”

“On the contrary.” Don Fernando was furious. “I helped you out of the friendship I had with your mother. But it’s clear you’ve spent too long in the Colombian jungle. You’ve picked up some very nasty habits.”

Kaja collapsed onto the edge of the tub, her palms pressed together, as if in prayer. “It was not my intention to disappoint you, Don Hernando.”

“My dear, I’m not angry for myself—I’m angry for you.” The older man put his back against the door frame. “Imagine what your mother would think of your behavior. She raised you better than that.”

“My sister—”