Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(90)

“Mala…” Bourne jammed his fingertips around the edge of the door, hauled it open.

“Get in here,” she said.

He stepped in, closed the door behind him. Then he took the shard of glass out of her hand—she hadn’t yet punctured herself—and dropped it back into the sink.

“What d’you think you’re doing?”

She stared at him, her eyes large and questing. “My mother called me Anjelica. I always hated that name—Mala. It was the name my father insisted on, my official name. My mother called me Anjelica,” she repeated, more softly now, her voice barely above a whisper. “In secret, when we were alone together. Before, when I was born, she tried to argue with my father, but he beat her for that, too.”

He beat her for that, too. There was no point in asking her to elaborate; that sentence said it all.

“Mala—”

“No, don’t.” She crossed her arms under her breasts. “You have no idea how much I despise myself.” She held up a hand to forestall any comment. “Listen to me now.” She was trembling slightly, her eyes enlarged with incipient tears. “I have no daughter. Giza doesn’t exist. As with all his girls, Keyre was sure to keep me from getting pregnant; the process would spoil our appearance, we would be less than perfect, and that would necessitate us being thrown in the trash, like a piece of rotten meat.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, let it out. “The child—Giza—was his idea. He said I should use the imprisoned daughter card if you started to doubt me. It would, he said, bind you to me in a new and different way.”

She produced a rueful smile, tentative and, if he could believe anything about her anymore, frightened. “So, you see, my father was right. I’ve earned my name—a malediction, a curse.”

For a time, Bourne said nothing. Then he gestured at the sink. “Was this fake as well?”

“I…I don’t know. Maybe…maybe if you hadn’t broken in I would have. What is left of me? I no longer have substance. I no longer have the ability to make choices. And now…now I wonder whether I ever had it.”

Grabbing a couple of paper towels, Bourne moistened them, then scooped up the glass fragments, pushed them down into the waste disposal hopper. He ran the water repeatedly until all the glitter had washed down the drain.

“We need to get back to our seats,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” he said, “and you will.” He turned her to him. “You have a life to live, Anjelica. A long one.”

At the sound of the name her mother had called her, her lips formed a tentative smile. “That sounds good coming from you.” The smile never reached her eyes. “Not that you’ll believe me. I know I’ve used up all my credibility with you.”

“Come on,” he said, reaching for the door. “Someone has to believe in you.”

Reaching out, she held his movement in abeyance. “Not you, Jason. Anyone but you.”

He glanced down at her hand and she snatched it away.

“Don’t you see? I’m like a scorpion. No matter what I say, no matter which way I twist or turn, in the end I’ll sting. It’s my nature.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He opened the accordion door, pressing them up against each other in the process. She flinched away, as if stung or burned, but in the end she followed him back to their seats. As with, it seemed to her, everything else in her life, she had no choice.

—



“Come on now, smarten up, Morgana. You have no choice.”

Morgana regarded Fran?oise with a look of vague bewilderment, which was now calculated, rather than blindly innocent.

“Go with the flow,” Soraya had said. And: “You’ll think I’ve thrown you to the dogs.” She thought that part was behind her, but now she was further along in her brief, burrowing deeper down, and the dogs—the real dogs of war—were heading toward her with teeth bared.

“Why don’t you do it, then?”

“It’s you he’s after. I need to stay out of it.”

They were at breakfast the next day, Fran?oise knocking on her door at daybreak, the sky still in the process of throwing off the veil of night. Hours before Larry London would wake and come to her with room service breakfast, as was his habit. In a rickety café habituated by local fishermen come in with their catch or on their way out onto the choppy gray water. The stench of fish, both fresh and smoked, was only partially watered down by the fug of cigarette smoke.

“Or seem to stay out of it,” Fran?oise added, as she poured another packet of sugar into her coffee, stirred in cream.

It was all Morgana could do to keep her gorge down. Her breakfast lay before her. It was no more appetizing now than when it had been brought out of the kitchen.

“I’m not saying…I mean, there must be another way out.”

“There isn’t. You know there isn’t.” Fran?oise’s voice was clipped, her tone hard, the better to emphasize the finality of her words.

“Okay, well.” Morgana’s gaze slipped sideways as the door opened to admit a couple more fishermen in their thick rubber slickers and high, gum-soled boots. The fish stink grew stronger than Morgana thought possible. “I’m not saying I’ll do it, but what’s your plan.”