Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(42)
Fran?oise cradled her shoulders gently. “None of us is, darling. I’m afraid there’s a steep learning curve.”
Morgana stood up, but, still shaky, she leaned against the stall’s left partition. “Was it the same with you?”
Fran?oise nodded. “Of course. But, you know, it was Larry who taught me a lot.”
“Larry. Really.” Morgana allowed herself to be led out of the stall to the line of sinks.
“Uh huh,” Fran?oise affirmed.
Morgana washed out her mouth, splashed water on her face, toweled off. “God, I look a fright,” she said, staring into the mirror.
“Nonsense. You’re one of those women who don’t need makeup to look beautiful.” She tilted her head, handed Morgana a tube. “Maybe just a touch more color on your lips.”
As Morgana checked out the color, then applied the lipstick, Fran?oise said. “You know, now I think about it, maybe Larry would do the same for you.”
—
Like the tent that held the other girls, Mala’s tent was lit by a kerosene lantern—two of them, in fact, one on each side of the tent. Their light revealed a cheap tribal rug covering the rough ground, a small propane ring on which hunkered a squat iron kettle, beside which were a handleless cup and a square tin canister marked as Russian Caravan tea. Next to that was, incongruously, a wooden rolling cart with six long drawers. One of the drawers was pulled partway out. Bourne could see inside, and his blood ran cold. An array of implements, all sharply bladed or pointed, some steel, but others iron or fire-hardened bamboo, each meticulously nested in its own lined niche. In the center of the tent stretched a curious contraption made of bentwood and dowels, stained almost black in spots, a framework on which a human body could be lain giving access to both front and back. The carpet beneath the thing was black, as well. Many layers of blood, dried one over the other.
At the head—or foot, it was impossible to tell—of this strange and sinister piece of furniture, stood Mala. Keyre was pressed up against her back, holding an instrument much like a scalpel, but with a wickedly curved blade, at her carotid, which pulsed with her terror. Liis, cleaving to Bourne as if he were a rock, gave a little strangled cry.
“Kill her?” Keyre said without preamble in Somali. “No, I don’t think so.” Was he addressing Bourne or Liis? Perhaps it was both.
The instrument moved down from the side of Mala’s neck to a spot just underneath her right breast.
He caught Bourne’s eye. “But one of these will come off now.” He gestured with his head. “Unless, that is, you let go of the girl so she can be with her sister, where she belongs.”
“The girls belong as far away from here as they can get.”
“And that is why you’re here, one guesses.” He was tall but not a big man. Wiry and athletic, one muscle fitted into another without the interference of fat or excess flesh. His mahogany skin appeared to be stretched over muscle and bone with the form-fitting tightness of Lycra. His cheeks were shadowed, deeply sunken—or were they deformed by ritual scars? In the lantern light it was difficult to tell. His tightly curled hair fit like a cap high on his head, the sides and front shaven clean. His eyes radiated the fever-bright light of the fanatic. People like Keyre could not be reasoned with; they had to be dealt with on their own terms or not at all.
“Before anything gets out of hand—”
Keyre tossed his head. “It’s already out of hand. Thanks to you.”
“And yet here I am. I’ve got your attention. More than that, I have an audience alone with you.” Bourne cocked his head. “How d’you suppose I could have gotten that otherwise?”
Keyre grunted. “You speak very good Somali, for an infidel.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Don’t take it for fucking anything.”
Bourne decided he needed to take a chance. Pushing the cowering Liis slightly away from him, he unwound her fingers from his. For a long, tense moment, Keyre did nothing. Then he lowered his instrument to his side, but kept it at the ready.
“Speak, then.”
Bourne produced the deep sigh of a businessman who finds himself at the short end of the stick. “You’re right, I did come here for the girls.”
“Their father.”
Bourne nodded.
“Their father’s a shit. He sold them to people, who sold them to me.”
It was easy to believe Keyre was an inveterate liar; the talent went with the territory. But this time Bourne felt certain he was telling the truth. “Nevertheless, I’d like to take them away.”
“Impossible,” Keyre said. “The process is in its final stages.”
Ripping off her stained cloth shift, he pushed Mala forward with his chest and knees so that she came fully into the light. Liis’s cry was like that of a baby bird witnessing her mother being crushed. Mala’s skin down her torso and limbs was a reddened webwork of open cuts, angry wounds, and livid scars. She had been systematically tortured. This was Bourne’s initial reaction, not yet understanding the maiming wasn’t disfigurement at all—at least, not in Keyre’s eyes—but a series of Yibir magical glyphs, whose lineage stretched all the way back to the ancient Ajuran Empire of the 1300s.
“Once it has begun,” Keyre said in a frighteningly reasonable tone, “this process cannot be interrupted.” He gestured with his chin. “Take the little sister if you must. I will name a price, you will pay it, here, now, and you will depart, never to return.”