Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(83)

“You’re angry with me,” Mala said.

“I didn’t say anything to that effect.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I don’t know how you can do the bidding of a man who tortured you,” Bourne said. “I don’t know how you can keep doing his bidding when I saved you from him.”

They were lying on a bed in a chain hotel room on the fringes of Dulles International Airport. Bourne had called his old friend, Deron. After sending him photos of Mala and himself, they were awaiting Deron’s messenger with new passports. Bourne still had his prosthetics; he had cut Mala’s hair and she had dyed it jet-black. They had checked into the hotel under the names Arnold and Mary Winstead, the same names that would be on the new passports; Bourne had paid cash, in advance.

The color scheme was ocher and brown, the room in dire need of refurbishing. Lights from the control tower periodically swept through the window, passing across the opposite wall. It was a depressing place, though both had been in far worse. For the moment, though, it was home.

“You took me away from him,” she said softly. “But you didn’t save me from him.”

He reached around her, felt along the lines of the ritual scars on her back. “The incantation will only work if you believe in it.”

Her eyes, lit with an inner fire, searched his face. “I do believe in it, Jason.”

“Why?”

“I have no choice.”

“There’s always a choice. You still have free will.”

She seemed to sink into herself, to ruminate deeply on the problem. As she did so, her countenance darkened. Rain spat against the window.

“You have no idea what I have, what I don’t have.”

“Then tell me.”

She smiled, sadly, wistfully, ruefully. No one else he’d ever encountered could encompass so many emotions with a simple curl of the lips.

“No,” Bourne said. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“Then you’ll have to do better.” She reached for him. “This is to be our lingua franca now, the currency with which we do business.”

He held her at bay, shook his head. “Mala, don’t.”

She tossed her head. “Why not? I’ve dreamed of this moment, why should I not have it?”

“Why? Because I don’t want it.”

“It’s the one thing you’ve withheld from me. And I want it.”

He got up off the bed, moved away from her. He did not want her to touch him. “What you want is wrong, Mala. You must know that.”

“I don’t care,” she raged.

“I know that.” He said it calmly, softly, as if gentling her.

Abruptly, she turned away from him, but not before he saw that she was silently weeping.

—



Four Harleys by the side of the road, a man and a woman to ride two of them.

Hours ago, they had said good-bye to Arthur Lee and Jimmy Lang. Arthur had wanted to accompany them all the way back to D.C., but Bourne had reminded him that, considering the carnage, the best thing for both of them was to return to their respective homes as quickly as possible and resume their normal lives as if nothing had happened. Jimmy had concurred, and in the end, Arthur had conceded the point.

Bourne’s next objective was to get himself and Mala into Russia as swiftly and efficiently as possible, while keeping so far under the radar they wouldn’t be picked up by any clandestine organization; he was still acutely aware that both the Americans and the Russians were hunting him.

Keyre’s transport plane was awaiting him, refueled and maintenanced, but the pilot and crew had orders to bring Bourne back to Somalia, so using it was out of the question. Bourne did not want Keyre to know where they were going, and while he couldn’t be with Mala 24/7 to ensure she wouldn’t contact the Somali magus herself, at least he’d had her destroy her mobile.

So while Arthur and Jimmy took the license tags off Arthur’s truck, then climbed into Jimmy’s vehicle, Bourne and Mala had taken possession of two of the motorcycles, the pairs setting off in opposite directions. On the way, Bourne had called Deron with his requests. Still in rural Virginia, he had withdrawn money from one of his many accounts under assumed names in banks throughout the world. They shopped for new clothes, and while Bourne purchased a pair of scissors, Mala chose the black hair dye color. Around three in the afternoon, he’d checked them into the chain hotel.

Bourne would buy their tickets as soon as he received their passports. The first leg was to Frankfurt. After a ninety-minute layover they would be booked on a two-hour, forty-minute Lufthansa flight into St. Petersburg. Even with their false identities, Bourne did not want to risk entering Russia through Moscow, where surveillance was always uncompromising. So they would take a train from St. Petersburg to Moscow. It was a long trip, but it couldn’t be helped.

Their flight out didn’t leave until after ten p.m.; there was time to kill, so to speak. They had a bite to eat and then, exhausted, they went up to their room and, sprawled side by side on the bed, slept like the dead.

—



The rain continued to beat against the window, the lights from the airport control tower flickered in and out of the room like a serpent’s tongue. Someone in an adjacent room turned on the TV, a punch line followed by canned laughter seeping through the thin walls. Bourne, awake but unmoving for some time, slammed his fist against the wall, and the sounds ceased.