Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(118)

45



What did you do?” Keyre growled.

Bourne spread his hands.

“He didn’t do anything,” the Angelmaker said. “I was with him the whole time.”

“Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t.” Keyre glared at her. “Maybe the two of you cooked this up together.

“I’m not blind.” In a blur, he reached out, grabbed the Angelmaker’s upper arm, brought her to him. “I see the way you look at him. I know how you feel about him.”

Bourne, who knew how dangerous she could be, was appalled at the slackness in her the moment Keyre touched her. Her eyes grew soft and dreamy, her head tilted back slightly, exposing the pale flesh of her throat, as if to a lover. She bent backward, as if about to swoon. Bourne had never seen her like this, and it frightened him. It looked to him as if in Keyre’s grip she had lost all control.

He lunged at her, trying to wrest her from the Somali, but she wouldn’t help him work her loose.

Keyre bared his teeth, the lips drawing back, exposing black gums, in an atavistic expression, revealing all the history and power of the Yibir. “Don’t you get it yet, Bourne? Look, look. She doesn’t want to come.”

He was right, but that didn’t stop Bourne from chopping down on Keyre’s wrist. As his hand dropped away, Bourne wrapped an arm around the Angelmaker’s waist and dragged her away. She fought him.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” she cried, in eerie echo of the first time he had come to save her. It was as if they had all stepped back in time, as if the present was replaying the past in perfect synchronicity: Keyre laughing, Mala squirming and shouting, and him doing his best to contain the anger and panic of her younger self. In this unstable state, he half expected her to call out for him to find Liis and save her.

Perhaps to forestall her, he whispered into her ear: “You told me you had a daughter, that Keyre was holding her hostage. What else have you lied to me about?”

“That’s what I do. I lie,” she said, pointedly not answering him. “I warned you about my scorpion nature.”

He had no answer for her. With a sickening lurch, he saw no path through the thorny forest of her inscrutable nature. She was drawn to Keyre like a flame, she always would be. He kept trying to save her, but only she could save herself from the Yibir mesmerism, and he honestly didn’t know whether she possessed the inner strength.

Time seemed to slip away from him. He saw Keyre coming toward him, he felt Mala’s breath against his cheek, the heaving of her body, the flailing of her limbs, as if she had lost her coordination. He saw Keyre’s fist coming toward him, he saw the gleaming Damascus blade held in it, but they seemed to have no meaning for him. Not until the razor-sharp edge sliced into the meat of the arm he held around Mala.

With a shock, fire rode up his arm. His shoulder felt like it had been dislocated. As if from a great distance, he saw it drop away from Mala, he felt the blood as if it were someone else’s blood. He became aware of Mala yanking the gun from him, saw her take a staggering step back, her arms held out straight in front of her, both hands wrapped around the weapon’s grips. Strangely, Keyre didn’t continue his attack, but stood his ground three paces from Bourne, as if rooted to the spot. Blood dripped from the tip of the knife, which was now pointed at the floor. Dimly, Bourne wondered whether the blade was coated with a drug that was now in his system.

“You see how it is now, Bourne,” the Yibir magus said. “It won’t be me who doles out justice, it will be the Angelmaker.”

“Mala,” Bourne heard himself say. “Her name is Mala.”

“I’m afraid not, Bourne,” Keyre said, a note of genuine pity in his voice that pierced Bourne more deeply than if Keyre’s knife had found his heart. “Mala died a long time ago.” He pointed toward his laboratory. “She died, upon the same table that sits now in the middle of that room. All my paraphernalia is the same, in fact, it’s in the exact same spot the old tent occupied. Just the surroundings have changed.”

His expression was enigmatic; it was as if he had sunk inside himself, as if that essential part was hidden from Bourne, maybe from Mala as well.

“Mala is dead, Bourne. You’ve never accepted that fact. Mala died and in her place I created the creature you see before you: the Angelmaker.” He inclined his head toward her. “It will be the Angelmaker who will dispense justice to you.”

Mala had swung the gun in his direction. Her expression was as unreadable as was Keyre’s. Her eyes seemed to be looking inward, or perhaps through him. What was she, in fact, seeing? What Keyre wanted her to see? If so, Bourne knew he was finished. One thing Konstantin had been right about. He’d read Bourne’s Treadstone file, and he had gleaned the essential information. Bourne could not kill Mala, perhaps not even at the point of death. Part of him loved the part of her he still believed to be alive, despite Keyre’s contention otherwise.

“Kill him,” Keyre said. “Kill him now.”

And then from out of the depths of Bourne’s unconscious came the one last try to save them both. “Anjelica,” he said to Mala. “Your mother called you Anjelica. I’m calling you Anjelica, because that’s who you are. Anjelica didn’t die here years ago. She’s here now. She is you.”

Mala blinked.