“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.
Her eyes went to his left shoulder. “You were injured in Damascus.”
“I’m fine,” Bourne said. He was going to ask her how she knew about him and what had happened in Damascus, but decided against it. He sensed he would find out soon enough.
“Now tell me about the Beretta.” She frowned. “I had no idea my mother owned a gun, let alone was armed when she was killed. Did you take it from her?”
“Your sister had it,” he said. “I have no idea how.”
Skara nodded, as if coming upon a fact that had been self-evident all along. “She must have given it to Viveka. That would be just like Kaja.”
“At fifteen?”
“After my father left, we were all terrified. I can imagine Mother grabbing it without a second thought.”
“There’s more to this story, isn’t there?”
Skara summoned up a bleak smile. “Unfortunately for all of us, there always is.”
Sometime during the night, the snow had stopped falling. Sometime during the night, Bourne had called Rebeka, who sounded tired but happy to hear from him. In the darkness of the hotel room, their murmured conversation felt like a dream. Afterward, the deep, basso throb of the drowsing city lulled him to sleep. In his dream, a truck rumbled along a deserted highway, sounding lonely and forlorn.
When morning arrived and he stepped out of his hotel and into a waiting taxi, the sky was a sparkling blue, the sunlight intense, as if magnified by the clear, crisp air. He got out in front of a modern building on Birger Jarlsgatan. Across the street was Goldman Sachs International.
Skara was waiting for him outside the building and, linking arms with him, took him inside. The entire ground floor was taken up by the Nymphenburg Landesbank of Munich. The guards nodded to her as she took him across the checkered marble floor to an elevator that whisked them skyward. When they got out, she led him to a huge suite of offices, passing by a pair of secretaries and three assistant managers, through a door marked with an engraved plaque that read MARTIN SIGISMOND, PRESIDENT, and into an enormous office with a breathtaking view of downtown Stockholm. Sunlight glittered on the river.
Sigismond, a tall, handsome man, slim and very fit, with straight blond hair and blue eyes, was waiting for them. He wore a navy-blue suit. His tie was a tongue of flame. At his side was Don Fernando Hererra, wearing a pair of pleated wool trousers and, of all things, a smoking jacket.
“Ah, Mr. Bourne, it’s a genuine pleasure to meet you,” Sigismond said, extending his hand. “Don Fernando speaks very highly of you.”
“Oh, please.” Skara was on the verge of laughing. “Mr. Bourne, I’d like to present Christien Norén, my father.”
After the shortest of pauses, Bourne took his hand. “Your grip is strong for a dead man.”
Christien smiled. “I’m back from the dead, and none the worse for it.”
The four of them sat together on facing sofas in one section of the president’s office.
“To all intents and purposes I’m Martin Sigismond,” Christien Norén said, “and have been for many years.”
“As you can imagine,” Don Fernando said, “Almaz produced all the identification papers Christien needed.”
“Almaz is behind this entire scheme,” Bourne said.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you everything,” Don Fernando said. “We needed you focused on the connection between Severus Domna and Semid Abdul-Qahhar. More specifically, we needed you in Damascus to cut off their arms and legs.”
“Semid Abdul-Qahhar had engineered an armed attack on Indigo Ridge, a rare earth mine in California,” Christien said. “He had a man inside Indigo Ridge, Roy FitzWilliams, whom he had recruited to his cause years ago.”
“That’s where all the matériel was being shipped,” Bourne said.
Don Fernando nodded. “Along with a cadre of handpicked terrorists. American-born Muslims, sad to say.”
There was silence for a time, then Skara said, “Dad?”
Christien made a gesture acknowledging his daughter. “Mr. Bourne, Don Fernando and I owe you an enormous debt of thanks.”
“What you owe me,” Bourne said, “is a full explanation.”
“And you shall have it.” He looked abruptly rueful. “I have made many mistakes in my life, Mr. Bourne, but none more grievous than walking out on my family. My wife is dead and so are two of my three children. The fact is, I miscalculated grievously.”
“No, Dad,” Skara said with some vehemence, “you were lied to.”
Christien seemed in no mood to abdicate responsibility. “I was already in a bind with the Domna. Benjamin El-Arian was growing suspicious of me, which is why he sent me to kill Alex Conklin. It was a test.”
“We both made mistakes,” Don Fernando said with a sigh. “I wanted to recruit Conklin into Almaz, and I thought Christien’s mission was the perfect opportunity.”
“Somehow,” Christien said, “El-Arian found out. I faked my death so he would have no cause to go after my family. That was a terrible mistake.”
&
nbsp; Bourne shook his head. “Then why did Conklin send me to kill Viveka?”
“Another mistake, pure and simple. He thought she was a spy.”
“No,” Skara said, “it was Kaja’s doing.”
Bourne and Don Fernando looked at her in astonishment. Christien just looked sad.
“I didn’t really understand until Mr. Bourne gave me this.” She produced the silver-plated .22. “Mom had this on her when she was killed. She shot at Mr. Bourne, isn’t that right?”
“It is,” Bourne said.
“Kaja gave Mom the weapon,” Skara said. “Just as in one of her personalities she hated you, Dad, in another she despised Mom.”
Christien pressed his palms together as if in prayer. “Kaja became a scourge.” His expression revealed the emotional body blow he had been delivered. “She had the advantage of looking three or four years older than she was. She was precocious and, in her own way, brilliant. I told no one about her—not even you, Don Fernando. For one thing, I was ashamed and horrified at the way in which she was trying to follow in my footsteps. For another, I thought I could control her. That was my biggest mistake.” He stared down at his shoes. “No one could control Kaja.”
“She used her body as well as her twisted mind,” Skara said.
Christien shuddered. “Doubtless you’re right.” He shrugged. “In any case, Conklin discovered that I had been sent to kill him. That aborted the mission. But even after he heard I was dead, he sent you, Mr. Bourne.”
Skara sat forward. “On the strength of Kaja’s dreadful lie.” She turned over the .22.
“At least the Beretta redeemed itself,” Bourne said. “It saved my life in Damascus.”
“Thank God for that,” Don Fernando said fervently.
Another silence descended. It seemed they were all spent. When Christien rose, so did everyone else. Bourne shook his hand; there was nothing else to do.
“Skara,” Christien said, “why don’t you take the day off and show Mr. Bourne some of the sights he might have missed when he was here last.”
Don Fernando embraced Bourne and kissed him on both cheeks. “Good-bye, Jason,” he said, “but not farewell.”
When Bourne and Skara had left, Christien turned to Don Fernando. “Do you think he suspects?”
“Not at the moment,” Don Fernando said. “But I have no doubt he will put it all together once he returns to Washington and speaks to Peter Marks.”
Christien frowned. “Are you certain that won’t be a problem?”
“It’s what we want.” Don Fernando smiled. “You have bought enough shares of NeoDyme so that we have a controlling interest in Indigo Ridge. We will have wealth beyond even our imagining.” He regarded his friend judicially. “I forgive you for keeping me in the dark about Kaja. Your plan to use the Domna’s attack on Indigo Ridge as a diversion worked perfectly. The notables in the American government were too busy unraveling the Domna’s scheme to investigate the companies we used to buy up all the NeoDyme shares.”
Christien crossed to the window. He looked down as Bourne and his daughter exited the building and crossed the slushy street. “What will Bourne do when he finds out?”
Don Fernando joined him at the window. The sky had clouded up; more snow would soon be on the way. “With Bourne it’s often difficult to predict. My hope is that he will come back here to have a talk with us.”
“We need him, don’t we?”
“Yes,” Don Fernando said gravely. “He’s the only one we can trust.”