Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

35

ON A MAGNIFICENT SUNNY DAY in Bali when May had just begun to bud, Suparwita arrived at the sacred temple of Pura Lempuyang. Not a cloud was in the sky as he climbed the dragon staircase and passed through the carved stone portal to the second temple high on the mountainside. Mount Agung, clear, completely free of clouds, and blue as the Strait of Lombok, rose up in all its splendor. Then, as Suparwita made his way toward a group of kneeling penitents, a shadow fell across the stones and he saw that Noah Perlis was waiting for him.

— You don‘t look surprised. Perlis wore his Balinese sarong and T-shirt as uncomfortably as a drug addict wears a suit.

— Why would I be surprised, Suparwita said, — when I knew you would return?

— I had nowhere else to go. Back in the States I‘m a wanted man. I‘m a fugitive now, that‘s what you wanted, isn‘t it?

— I meant for you to be an outcast, Suparwita said. -The two are not the same.

Perlis sneered. -You think you can punish me?

— I have no need of punishing you.

— I should have killed you when I had the chance, years ago.

Suparwita regarded him with his large liquid eyes. -It wasn‘t enough that you killed Holly?

Perlis appeared startled. -You have no proof of that.

— I don‘t need what you call proof. I know what happened.

Perlis took a step toward him. -Which is what, exactly?

— You followed Holly Marie Moreau back here from Europe. What you were doing with her there I can‘t presume to know.

— Why not? The sneer hadn‘t left Perlis‘s face. -You claim to know everything else.

— Why did you follow Holly back here, Mr. Perlis?

Perlis kept his mouth shut, then he shrugged as if feeling that it no longer mattered. -She had come into possession of something of mine.

— And how did that happen?

— She stole it, goddammit! I came back here to retrieve what was mine. I had every right-

— To kill her?

— I was going to say that I had every right to take back what she had stolen. Her death was an accident.

— You killed her without purpose, Suparwita said.

— I got it back from her. I got what I wanted.

— But of what use was it? Did you ever crack its secret?

Perlis remained silent. If he knew how to mourn, he would have done so already.

— This is why you‘ve come back here, Suparwita said, — not just to Bali, but to the very spot where you murdered Holly.

Perlis suddenly experienced a flicker of anger. -Are you a policeman now as well as a holy man or whatever it is you call yourself?

Suparwita produced the ghost of a smile that held nothing for Perlis to cling to. -I think it‘s fair to say that what Holly took from you, you yourself stole.

Perlis went white. -How could you possibly… how could you possibly know that? he whispered.

— Holly told me. How else?

— Holly didn‘t know that, only I knew it. He tossed his head contemptuously. -Anyway, I didn‘t come here to be interrogated.

— Do you know now why you came? Suparwita‘s eyes burned so brightly their fire was scarcely dimmed by the sun.

— No.

— But you do. Suparwita raised an arm, pointing to the bulk of Mount Agung rising in the stone archway.

Perlis turned to look, shading his eyes from the glare, but when he turned back Suparwita had vanished. The people were still at their endless praying, the priest was absorbed in God alone knew what, and the man beside him was counting his money in a mesmerizingly slow, even rhythm.

Then, as if without his own volition, Perlis found himself walking toward Mount Agung, the carved stone gate, and the top of the stairs where, years before, Holly Marie Moreau had been sent to her death.

Perlis awoke with a shout of false denial trapped in his throat. Despite the air-conditioning of his room, he was sweating. He had bolted to a sitting position from a deep sleep or, more accurately, from the deep dream of Suparwita and Pura Lempuyang. He felt the pain around his pumping heart that always accompanied the aftermath of these dreams.

For a moment, he couldn‘t recall where he was. He‘d been on the run ever since he‘d ordered the Iranian oil fields set on fire. What had gone wrong?

He‘d asked himself that painful question a thousand times and finally, he was left with one answer: Bardem had failed to predict this outcome because of the introduction of two almost identical variables outside the million parameters with which it had been programmed-Bourne and Arkadin. In the world of finance, the appearance of a game-changing event that no one was anticipating was called a Black Swan. In the hermetic world of esoteric software programmers, a circumstance outside the parameters that crashed the program was called Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. For one Shiva to appear was rare enough, but two was unthinkable.

Days and nights had passed as if in one of Perlis‘s dreams; often now he was unsure as to which was a dream and which waking life. In any event, nothing seemed real anymore, not the food he ate, the places in which he stayed, the shallow sleep he managed to snatch. Then yesterday he‘d arrived in Bali, and for the first time since the Black Hawk lifted off from the ruins of Pinprick, something changed inside him. His work at Black River had been his family, his comrades-he was able to see nothing beyond its parameters. Now, without it, he had ceased to exist. But no, it was far worse than that, because come to think of it, for all the time he‘d worked at Black River, he‘d made himself cease to exist. He‘d reveled in all the roles he‘d had to play because they took him further and further away from himself, a person he‘d never liked or had much use for. It was the real Noah Perlis-pathetic weakling that he was, not heard from since his childhood-who had fallen in love with Moira. Joining Black River was like donning armor, a protection against the weakling full of feelings that lurked like a spineless wretch inside him. Now that he no longer had Black River, he‘d been stripped of that armor, and his little pink mewling self was exposed. A switch had been thrown, from positive to negative, and all the energy that used to come to him was flowing out of him.

He swung his legs out of bed and walked to the window. What was it about this place? He‘d been to many paradisiacal islands in his time-spots strewn all across the globe in diamond-like glitter. But Bali seemed to throb against his eyes with an ethereal presence. He was a man who did not believe in the ethereal. Even as a child, he‘d been pragmatic. He had spent virtually his entire adult life isolated, without family or friends; a situation entirely of his own making, since both friends and family had the habit of betraying you without even knowing it. Early on in his life, he‘d discovered that if you felt nothing you couldn‘t get hurt. Nevertheless, he had been hurt, not only by Moira.

He showered and dressed, then went out into the moist heat and the glare. The sky was precisely as cloudless as it had been in his dream. In the far distance, he could see the blue bulk of Mount Agung, a place of eternal mystery to him, and of fear, because it seemed to him that something he didn‘t want to know about himself dwelled on that mountain. This thing-

whatever it was-drew him as powerfully as it repelled him. He tried to regain some semblance of equilibrium, to push down the emotions that had erupted inside him, but he couldn‘t. The fucking horses had bolted from the stable and without the iron discipline of Black River, without his armor, there was no getting them back in. He stared down at his hands, which shook as violently as if he had the DTs.

What’s happening to me? he thought. But he knew that wasn‘t the right question to ask.

“Why did you come?” That was the right question, the one Suparwita had asked him in his dream. From what he‘d read on the subject all the people in your dreams were aspects of yourself. This being so, he had been asking himself the question. Why had he returned to Bali? When he‘d left after Holly Marie‘s death he was certain that he‘d never return. And yet, here he was. Moira had hurt him, it was true, but what had happened with Holly had hurt him most of all.

He ate a meal without tasting it, and by the time he had reached his destination, he could not have said what it was. His stomach felt neither full nor empty. Like the rest of him, it seemed to have ceased to exist.

Holly Marie Moreau was buried in a small sema-cemetery-southwest of the village where she‘d been raised. As a rule, modern-day Balinese cremated their dead, but there were pockets of people-original Balinese like those in Tenganan, those who weren‘t Hindu-who did not. Balinese believed that seaward-west was the direction of hell, so sema were always built-when they were built at all-to the seaward-west of the village. Here, in the south of Bali, that was southwest. The Balinese were terrified of cemeteries, certain that the uncremated bodies were the undead, wandering around at night, being raised from their graves by evil spirits, led by Rudra, the god of evil. Consequently, the place was utterly abandoned-even, it appeared, by birds and wildlife.

Thick stands of trees were everywhere, casting the sema in deepest shadow, so that it seemed lost in the inky blues and greens of a perpetual twilight. Apart from one grave site, the place had a distinctly unkempt aspect that bordered on the disreputable. This particular grave site bore the headstone of Holly Marie Moreau.

For what seemed an eternity, Perlis stood staring at the slab of marble engraved with her name and dates of birth and death. Beneath the impersonal information was one word: BELOVED.

As with whatever was waiting for him on Mount Agung, he felt an inexorable pull and repulsion toward her grave. He walked slowly and deliberately, his pace seemingly dictated by the beat of his heart. All at once, he stopped, having glimpsed, or thought he glimpsed, a shadow darker than the others flit from tree to tree. Was it something or nothing, a trick of the crepuscular light? He thought of the gods and demons said to inhabit semas and laughed to himself. Then he saw the shadow, more clearly this time. He could not make out the face but saw the long, streaming hair of a young woman or a girl. The undead, he told himself, as a continuation of the joke. He was quite close to Holly‘s grave, practically standing on top of it, and he looked around, concerned enough to draw his gun, wondering if the sema was as deserted as it appeared.

Making up his mind at last, he went past the gravestone, picking his way through the trees, following the direction of the girlshadow he‘d seen, or thought he‘d seen. The land rose quickly to a ridge, more heavily forested than that of the sema. He paused at the crest for a moment, unsure which way to go because his view was obstructed by trees stretching away in every direction. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw another flicker of movement, and he turned his head like a dog on point. Only a bird, perhaps?

But cocking an ear, he heard no bird-song, no rustle of leaves in the underbrush.

He pushed on, following the flicker, walking sure-footedly down into a steep-sided ravine filled with even thicker stands of trees.

Then, up ahead, he saw her hair flying, and he called her name though it was foolish and completely unlike him.

— Holly!

Holly was dead, of course. He knew that better than anyone else alive, but this was Bali and anything was possible. He began to run after her, his legs and heart pumping. He ran between two trees and then something slammed the back of his head. He pitched forward into blackness.

Who knew her better, said a voice in his head, — you or me?

Perlis opened his eyes and, through the pain dizzying him, saw Jason Bourne.

— You! How did you know I‘d be here?

Bourne smiled. -This is your last stop, Noah. The end of the line.

Perlis glanced around. -That girl-I saw a girl.

— Holly Marie Moreau.

Perlis saw his gun lying on the ground and lunged for it.

Bourne kicked him so hard, the crack of two ribs echoed off the tree branches. Perlis groaned.

— Tell me about Holly.

Perlis stared up at Bourne. He could not keep the grimace of pain off his face, but at least he didn‘t cry out. Then a thought occurred to him.

— You don‘t remember her, do you? Perlis tried to laugh. -Oh, this is too good!

Bourne knelt down beside him. -Whatever I can‘t remember you‘re going to tell me.

— Fuck you!

Now Perlis did cry out as Bourne‘s thumbs pressed hard into his eyeballs.

— Now look! he commanded.

Perlis blinked through eyes streaming with tears and saw the girlshadow climbing down from one of the trees.

— Look at her! Bourne said. -Look what you‘ve made of her.

— Holly? Perlis couldn‘t believe it. Through watering eyes he saw a lithe shape, Holly‘s shape. -That isn‘t Holly. But who else could it be? His heart hammered in his chest.

— What happened? Bourne said. -Tell me about you and Holly.

— I found her wandering around Venice. She was lost, but not in the geographic sense. Perlis heard his own voice thin and attenuated, as if it were being transmitted through a poor cell connection. What was he doing?

That switch had been thrown, the energy flowing out of him, just like these words he‘d kept inside himself for years. -I asked her if she wanted to make some quick money and she said, Why not? She had no idea what she was getting into, but she didn‘t seem to care. She was bored, she needed something new, something different. She wanted her blood to flow again.

— So you‘re saying all you did was give her what she wanted.

— That‘s right! Perlis said. -That‘s all I ever gave anybody.

— You gave Veronica Hart what she wanted?

— She was a Black River operative, she belonged to me.

— Like a head of cattle.

Perlis turned his head away. He was staring at the girlshadow, who stood watching him, as if in judgment of his life. Why should he care? he wondered. He had nothing to be ashamed of. And yet he couldn‘t look away, he couldn‘t rid himself of the notion that the girlshadow was Holly Marie Moreau, that she knew every secret he had chained in the prison of his heart.

— Like Holly.

— What?

— Did Holly belong to you, too?

— She took my money, didn‘t she?

— What did you pay her to do?

— I needed to get close to someone, and I knew I couldn‘t do it myself.

— A man, Bourne said. -A young man.

Perlis nodded. Now that he‘d embarked on this path he seemed to need to keep going. -Jaime Hererra.

— Wait a minute. Don Fernando Hererra‘s son?

— I sent her to London. In those days, he wasn‘t yet working in his father‘s firm. He frequented a club-gambling was a weakness he couldn‘t yet fight. Even though he was underage, he didn‘t look it, and no one challenged his fake ID. Perlis paused for a moment, struggling to breathe. His left arm, underneath his body, moved slightly as he tried to ease his suffering.

— Funny thing, Holly looked so innocent, but she was damn good at what I‘d sent her to do. Within a week she and Jaime were lovers, ten days after that she moved into his flat.

— And then?

Perlis appeared to be having an increasingly difficult time catching his breath. He continued to stare, not at Bourne, but at the girlshadow, which seemed to him all that was left of the world.

— Is she real?

— It depends what you mean by real, Bourne said. -Go on, what did Jaime Hererra have that you wanted Holly to steal?

Perlis said nothing, but Bourne saw him curl the fingers of his right hand, pushing them into the leafy forest floor.

— What are you trying to hide, Noah?

Perlis‘s left hand, which had been lying under him, swung out, a switchblade biting through Bourne‘s clothes into the flesh of his side. Perlis began to twist the knife, trying to find a way through muscle, sinew, and bone to one of Bourne‘s vital organs. Bourne struck him a horrific blow to the head, but Perlis, with a burst of superhuman strength, only plunged the knife in deeper.

Bourne took Perlis‘s head between his hands and, with a powerful twist, snapped his neck. At once, the life force ebbed and Perlis‘s eyes grew dim and all-seeing. There was a bit of foam at the corner of his mouth, either from his excessive effort or from the madness that had begun to infect him at the end of his days.

Gasping, Bourne let his head go and drew out the blade from his side. He started to bleed, but not badly. He grabbed Perlis‘s right hand and dug the fist out of the dirt. One by one, he opened the fingers. He‘d expected there to be something held against the palm-whatever it was that Perlis had taken back from Holly-but there was nothing. Circling his index finger, the one he‘d been so anxious to hide, was a ring. It was impossible to slip off, so Bourne used the switchblade to cut off the finger. What he held up into the emerald and sapphire light was a plain gold band, not unlike ten million wedding rings all around the planet. Could this be the reason Perlis had killed Holly? Why? What might have made it worth a young woman‘s life?

He turned it over and over, tumbling it between his fingers. And then he saw the writing on the inside. It went all the way around the circumference. At first he thought it was Cyrillic, then possibly an ancient Sumerian language, long-dead and forgotten except by the most esoteric specialists, but in the end the characters were unfathomable. A code, then, surely.

As Bourne continued to hold the ring aloft, he became aware of the girlshadow approaching. She stopped a number of paces away, and because he could see the fear on her face, he rose with a grunt of pain and walked over to her.

— You‘ve been very brave, Kasih, he told the Balinese girl who had led him to the bullet casing in the village of Tenganan, where he‘d been shot.

— You‘re bleeding. She pressed a handful of aromatic leaves she had gathered to his side.

He took her hand and together they began their trek back to her family compound at the top of the terraced rice paddy not far from Tenganan. His free hand pressed the poultice of herbs to his fresh wound, and he could feel the blood coagulating, the pain receding. -There‘s nothing to be afraid of, he said.

— Not when you‘re here. Kasih threw one last glance over her shoulder.

— Is the demon dead? she asked.

— Yes, Bourne said, — the demon is dead.

— And he won‘t come back?

— No, Kasih, he won‘t come back.

She smiled, content. But even as he said it, he knew it for a lie.