The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,168

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 girl-shadow 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