Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(92)

She pressed the call button, and when the attendant arrived, she shook her empty glass to ask for another. She remained silent until the second vodka arrived and she’d taken several slow and deliberate sips, moving further along the road to getting drunk. Bourne watched her like a hawk.

“So I had to leave,” Mala continued as if there had been no interruption. “I missed my mother; I had to find her—it was a kind of fever. I went home to Estonia. I spent six weeks looking for her, but there was no sign of her. It was as if the earth had swallowed her whole. Words are inadequate to express my despair. I was an orphan. Worse, I didn’t know whether my mother was alive or dead.

“I wandered, then, to Prague, don’t ask me why, then Rome, and ended up in Paris. I was grieving, and more importantly, considering how my life turned out, I was angry—angry at my father for selling us out, at my mother for not stopping him, even Liis, for having a life I did not, could not have.”

She pursed her lips, her eyes heavy-lidded, as if these memories still weighed mightily on her. “Paris in the springtime, with the horse chestnuts in bloom and the couples young and old holding hands and kissing as they strolled along the banks of the Seine. What was there for me in Paris, you may ask? I had remembered that my mother spoke to me about Paris when I was little; she even taught me some French. I looked for her there, too, but, of course, it was impossible, like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then, one afternoon in the Tuileries, while I sat on one of those green metal chairs, feeling the sun on my face, I met Fran?oise. She stepped, rather rudely, between me and the sun, to get my attention, I suppose.

“It was clear from the first moment of our meeting that afternoon, and confirmed soon after as we sat at a café, drinking espressos, that she had meant to meet me. Someone had told her about me, and I imagine you can guess who that someone was.

“As soon as you had placed me with that family and left, Keyre began monitoring me, my movements from city to city, and he had sent Fran?oise after me. She’d just missed me in Rome, but, despite the lovers all around me, I was comfortable enough in Paris, feeling closer to my mother, hearing French spoken, to give her the chance to catch up.

“Of course, she didn’t tell me this right away. She had a way about her—ingratiating without being in the least condescending. Gradually, as we spent more time together, I formed the impression that her background, like mine, was something she wished to forget. That formed a bond, you see. That it was a false bond was something I learned much later, after she had indoctrinated me into her way of life, had trained me. She became my mentor and me her willing acolyte. Under her tutelage, I began to make money—lots of it. I became a go-between, taking a rake-off from both sides. That the deals were shady, that the principals were on the wrong side of the law—often as far on the wrong side as you could get—was of no interest to me. The money was. I was addicted.” Her smile was rueful. “You see, Keyre’s Yibir magic worked on me, after all.”

She was drinking faster now, as if her impending inebriation could save her from herself. Almost finished with her second vodka, she was about to hit the call button like a hospital patient in pain who keeps giving herself intravenous doses of morphine, when Bourne stopped her.

“Go on,” he said softly. “Where did it all go wrong?”

Mala closed her eyes for a moment. “I suppose you could say that it all went wrong the moment Fran?oise came between me and the soothing warmth of the Parisian sunlight. But I know that’s not what you meant.” She took a breath, stared into the cubes in her glass. “What happened was this: I discovered that Fran?oise was not what she appeared to be—no, that’s not quite right. She was precisely what she appeared to be. On the surface. But underneath, down where it counted, she was someone else. She wasn’t French as she purported to be; she was Russian. Her name wasn’t Fran?oise Sevigne, it was Alyosha Orlova.”

The name sent a lightning bolt through Bourne. “She isn’t, by any chance, related to Dima Vladimirovich Orlov, the man we’re going to see, is she?”

Mala nodded. “His granddaughter.”

“And Katya, the older woman you were once friends with, is Alyosha’s mother.”

Mala nodded. Bourne sat very still, thinking that this woman was like an onion—the more layers you peeled away, the more intense the experience.

“Alyosha has been long lost to Orlov; she’s the black swan of the family.”

Bourne shifted in his seat, as if his mind, working at light speed, made it impossible for his body to remain still. A skein was forming, but he had yet to make out its final shape.

“And that’s when you found out that she was working for Keyre.”

“Yes and no,” Mala said. She seemed calmer now, as if, having broken, the storm or the fever that had gripped her had become a shadow of its former self. “Yes, she was working for Keyre, but at the same time she was working for the Russians. To be more specific, her half brother, Gora Maslov.”

Revelation after revelation; strand after strand working itself into a pattern. “So she’s the black swan for a good reason. She’s the illegitimate daughter of Katya Orlov and Dimitri Maslov. And she’s more loyal to the Maslovs?”

“She grew up with the Maslovs but never took the name. I doubt Alyosha knows the meaning of loyalty.” Mala glanced at him. “And, yes, I’m fully aware of the irony of that.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I should tell you something about Keyre and Gora Maslov: they’ve been doing business together.”