“We’ll find them both in Dahr. We have a field unit there. Your shoulder will be as good as new.”
He was surprised that she had had the presence of mind to notice. “My shoulder is fine.”
“Nevertheless…”
“Nevertheless what?”
“I have an obligation to see you restored to health.”
“That works both ways.”
Her sphinx-like smile reappeared, flickering like a guttering candle.
They flew on. Bourne could see the first outbuildings of Dahr El Ahmar, looking like sugar cubes in the morning’s strong, slanted sunlight. They passed over clumps of sentinel palm trees, their fronds, like tongues, set wagging in the helicopter’s backwash. Soon they would be down. His shoulder was on fire.
“El-Gabal.” Rebeka shivered. “That felt like the end of the world.”
Bourne put his hand over hers. “We survived.”
Her eyes were half closed and she looked very pale. Her dark hair lay damp against her cheek. “In the long history of my people, that’s the important thing.”
“It’s the only thing,” he said.
Epilogue
IT WAS SNOWING in Stockholm, just as it had been the last time he had been there. Bourne, shoulders hunched against the wind-driven snow, crossed Stureplan, the crowded square that was the hub of Stockholm nightlife.
He had flown into Stockholm that morning in response to a brief but telling text that had shown up on his cell phone three days before:
Back home after 13 yrs. @ Frequencies evry nite from 9 till u come.
Kaja. The small package he had sent on ahead was waiting for him when he checked into the small family-run hotel in Gamla Stan, the island between Stockholm proper and Södermalm. He had the contents of the package tucked in the inside pocket of his fur-lined greatcoat as he crossed the busy street and stepped into the entrance of Frequencies. The electronic music hit him with the force of a jackhammer. Lights blazed across the ceiling, the dance floor was jammed with bodies bobbing to the trance-like beat that seemed to rise up from the floor, the shimmering air thick with sweat and perfume.
The long, underlit bar was three- and four-deep with guys trying to score and girls checking them out. It was a mystery how Bourne saw her amid all the throbbing mob and pinballing energy, but there she was, her mother’s eyes shining. Her hair was its natural blond color and her tan was completely gone. She was standing near one end of the bar, a glass in one hand, slightly detached from the mingling crowd. As Bourne approached her, someone asked her to dance and she declined. She had seen Bourne by this time, handing her glass to the bewildered guy and moving toward Bourne. She was dressed in umber: snow boots, a three-quarter-length leather skirt, and a wool cable-knit turtleneck.
They met in a small, briefly calm space amid the swirl. There was no point in having a conversation amid the earsplitting noise. She took his hand and led him around the periphery of the club to the bathrooms. Inside the door marked DAMER, no one batted an eye when she led him across the tiled floor. The young women were too busy snorting coke and telling one another war stories about the guys out on the dance floor.
She opened one of the stall doors and they went in, the door closing behind them.
“Kaja,” he said, “I have something for you.” He took out the silver-plated .22 that had belonged to her mother and handed it over.
She studied it briefly, then looked up at him. There was something subtly different about her, but maybe it was her blond hair or how much she resembled Viveka Norén. Or maybe it had something to do with where they were, the Beretta between them.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are you giving this to me?”
“It belonged to your mother, Kaja. She tried to shoot me with it.”
“I’m not Kaja,” she said. “I’m Skara.”
For a moment time seemed to stand still, the throbbing noise from outside seemed to fade, and Bourne’s mind ran in circles. “You must be Kaja,” he said. “Skara was in Damascus with Semid Abdul-Qahhar.”
“Kaja died in the destruction of El-Gabal,” the woman said. “It was my sister, Kaja, you met there.”
Kaja. Skara. One of them was lying, but which one? “Skara has dissociative identity disorder,” he said, “which fits with the sister I confronted in Damascus.”
“Well, that seals it, doesn’t it? Kaja was the one with dissociative identity disorder.”
Bourne felt as if the ground had fallen away under him.
As if divining his confusion, she said, “Let’s go somewhere less charged.”
She took him to a small café in Gamla Stan. It was filled with teenagers and twenty-somethings, which would include her, if Bourne’s calculations were correct. The two remaining sisters had fled Stockholm when they were fifteen. They had been away for thirteen years. That made the woman sitting across from him twenty-eight.
“My sister loved to tell everyone that I was the one suffering from dissociative identity disorder. It was part of her problem.”
The coffee and stollen they had ordered came, and she spent some time adding sugar and cream to her cup. “Kaja was a stellar liar,” she said after she had taken her first sip. “She had to be, in order to keep her brain from flying into a thousand pieces. Every personality she displayed was at once authentic and a lie.” She put down her cup and gave him a sad smile. “I see you don’t believe me. It’s okay, you’re not alone. Kaja fooled everyone.”
“Even Don Fernando Hererra?”
“She was a master at it. I’m quite certain she could have beaten a lie detector.”
“Because she believed her own lies.”
“Yes, absolutely.”
Bourne took a moment to regroup. Now that he had been talking to this woman for a while he had begun to notice differences from the Kaja he had known—or, to be accurate, not known. He was becoming more and more convinced that the person sitting across from him was, indeed, Skara. Into his mind swam the final encounter in the storeroom at El Gabal. There had been something different in the woman’s eyes, something achingly familiar. “ Kill me,” she had cried. “ Kill me now and end this.”
Had that woman returned to being Kaja just before the end?
There was one way to be absolutely sure.
Bourne leaned toward her. “Show me your neck.”
“What did you say?” She looked at him quizzically.
“Kaja was mauled by a margay. She has scars down the sides of her neck.”
“All right.” She pulled down her turtleneck, revealing a long, beautiful neck with skin a luminous pink, and perfectly clear. “Do I pass?”
Bourne relaxed, but there was a sadness inside him. “ Kill me now and end this.” Poor Kaja, tortured by the nightmare of personalities she couldn’t control.
“What was Kaja doing with Semid Abdul-Qahhar?” he said at length.
Skara sighed as she rearranged her turtleneck. “One of her personalities hated our father. She wanted to strike back at him for walking out on us.”
“So she told the truth about that.”
Skara regarded him for a moment. “First of all, the best lies are always embedded in the truth. Second of all, the truth she told you is incomplete.”
Bourne felt chilled. He took up his cup and drank off some of the coffee, black, bitter, but invigorating. “Tell me.”
For a moment her gaze was lost in the dregs of her coffee. “I’d rather not.”
“No?” Bourne felt a rising anger. The feeling of being manipulated was all too familiar.
“It’s not for me to tell you.” She smiled. “Please. Be patient just until tomorrow morning.” She took a small leather notebook out of her handbag, wrote out an address, tore it off, and handed it to him. “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” She raised her arm to summon the waitress and got their cups refilled.