The Bourne Dominion by Robert & Lustbader Ludlum Page B

fragrant and steaming. Bourne, suddenly ravenous, dug in, using the
arepas
to soak up the sauce as a combination fork and spoon. As he ate, his thoughts continued. Then there was the matter of the Domna enlisting Boris to kill him. The story was so outrageous he had been inclined to dismiss it out of hand. Until, that is, Essai had described the trap Benjamin El-Arian had laid for his friend. He knew Boris wanted to be the head of FSB-2 more than anything. In a sense, he’d dedicated his entire adult life to that end. If he had been given the choice between his heart’s desire and protecting Bourne, what would he do? Bourne was shaken by the knowledge that he didn’t know. Boris was a friend, true, and he had saved Boris’s life in the temporary war zone of northeastern Iran, but Boris was a Russian through and through. Hisethos was different, which made predicting his choices difficult, if not impossible.
    The thought that, even at this moment, Boris might be hunting him sent a chill through him that could not be dispelled by Perales’s blazing heat. He pulled out the sat phone from Essai’s car and, placing it on the table, stared at it for a time. He resisted the urge to call Boris and ask him outright what had happened and where he stood. That would be an unforgivable mistake. If Boris was innocent he’d be mortally offended—in fact, now that Bourne considered it, he’d act mortally offended even if he was guilty. Plus, if Essai was telling the truth, Boris would have been given a warning, and Bourne would lose a vital advantage.
    He swept the sat phone off the table as if it were a chess piece. No, he thought, the best thing he could do was to go forward one step at a time into the dark. He was used to that. He had burst from the darkness of an unknown life into this shadow world where everything in front of him was black as night. There was a pain inside him—the agony of unknowing—that he had lived with so long he often forgot it was there. And yet every now and again it rushed back at him with the power of an express train. Nothing in his past was real, nothing he had once done or accomplished, nothing he had felt, no one he had known or cared about. All had been obliterated by his fall into the void. He kept looking for the things that were now impossible to find. The occasional shards that came back to him from time to time only increased his sense of isolation and helplessness. Often, they were disturbing in their own right.
    At once, he saw again the woman in the stall of the Nordic disco, the sheen of sweat on her face, the sardonic smile, the muzzle of the handgun she aimed at him. What make and model was it? He strained to remember, but all he could see was her face, devoid of fear or even resignation. He felt the fur collar against his cheeks. Her mouth had opened, those red lips parting. She had said something to him in the moment before he had killed her. What was it? What had she said? He had the impression that it was somehow important, though he was at a loss to say why. And then the memory slithered away from him, back into the blackness of a past that felt as if it belonged to someone else.
    To lose everything—your very life—was an unspeakable agony. He was wandering in an unknown land. The stars overhead were arrayed in unfamiliar constellations, and the sun never rose. He was alone, the impenetrable darkness ahead his sole companion.
    The darkness, and, of course, the pain.

6

    S ORAYA ARRIVED IN Paris early on a gray, rain-washed morning. She didn’t mind. Paris was one of the only cities she loved in the rain. The slick surfaces, the melancholy mood mysteriously heightened the beauty and romance of the city, the modern-day crust sluiced away, revealing the facades of history, turning like the pages of a book. Besides, hours from now she would be seeing Amun. In the first-class lounge, she showered and changed into fresh clothes, then spent fifteen minutes applying makeup while she