He did not wipe away Lindros's blood. Instead, he licked it off.
Chapter One
Book One
Chapter One
WHEN DID THIS particular flashback begin, Mr. Bourne?" Dr. Sunderland asked.
Jason Bourne, unable to sit still, walked about the comfortable, homey space that seemed more like a study in a private home than a doctor's office. Cream walls, mahogany wainscoting, a vintage dark-wood desk with claw feet, two chairs, and a small sofa. The wall behind Dr. Sunderland's desk was covered with his many diplomas and an impressive series of international awards for breakthrough therapy protocols in both psychology and psychopharmacology related to his specialty: memory. Bourne studied them closely, then saw the photo in a silver frame on the doctor's desk.
"What's her name?" Bourne said. "Your wife."
"Katya," Dr. Sunderland said after a slight hesitation.
Psychiatrists always resisted giving out any personal information about themselves and their family. But in this case, Bourne thought...
Katya was in a ski suit. A striped knit cap was on her head, a pom-pom at its top. She was blond and very beautiful. Something about her suggested that she was comfortable in front of the camera. She was smiling into the camera, the sun in her eyes. The crinkles at their outside corners made her seem peculiarly vulnerable.
Bourne felt tears coming. Once he would have said that they were David Webb's tears. But the two warring personalities-David Webb and Jason Bourne, the day and night of his soul-had finally fused. While it was true that David Webb, sometime professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, was sinking deeper into shadow, it was just as true that Webb had softened Bourne's most paranoid and antisocial edges. Bourne couldn't live in Webb's world of normalcy, just as Webb couldn't survive in Bourne's vicious shadow world.
Dr. Sunderland's voice intruded on his thoughts. "Please sit down, Mr. Bourne."
Bourne did so. There was a kind of relief in letting go of the photo.
Dr. Sunderland's face settled into an expression of heartfelt sympathy. "The flashbacks, Mr. Bourne, they began following your wife's death, I imagine. Such a shock would-"
"Not then, no," Jason Bourne said quickly. But that was a lie. The memory shards had resurfaced the night he had seen Marie. They had woken him out of sleep-nightmares made manifest, even in the brilliance of the lights he had turned on.
Blood. Blood on his hands, blood covering his chest. Blood on the face of the woman he is carrying. Marie! No, not Marie! Someone else, the tender planes of her neck pale through the streams of blood. Her life leaking all over him, dripping onto the cobbled street as he runs. Panting through the chill night. Where is he? Why is he running? Dear God, who is she?
He had bolted up, and though it was the dead of the night he'd dressed and slipped out, running full-out through the Canadian countryside until his sides ached. The bone-white moonlight had followed him like the bloody shards of memory. He'd been unable to outrun either.
Now he was lying to this doctor. Well, why not? He didn't trust him, even though Martin Lindros-the DDCI and Bourne's friend-had recommended him, showed Bourne his impressive credentials. Lindros had gotten Sunderland's name from a list provided by the DCI's office. He didn't have to ask his friend about that: Anne Held's name on the bottom of each page of the document verified his hypothesis. Anne Held was the DCI's assistant, stern right hand.
"Mr. Bourne?" Dr. Sunderland prompted him.
Not that it mattered. He saw Marie's face, pale and lifeless, felt Lindros's presence beside him as he took in the coroner's French-Canadian-accented English: "The viral pneumonia had spread too far, we couldn't save her. You can take comfort in the fact that she didn't suffer. She went to sleep and never woke up." The coroner had looked from the dead woman to her grief-stricken husband and his friend. "If only she'd come back from the skiing trip sooner."
Bourne had bitten his lip. "She was taking care of our children. Jamie had turned an ankle on his last run. Alison was terribly frightened."
"She didn't seek a doctor? Suppose the ankle was sprained-or broken."
"You don't understand. My wife-her entire family are outdoors people, ranchers, hardy stock. Marie was trained from an early age to take care of herself in the wilderness. She had no fear of it whatsoever."
"Sometimes," the coroner had said, "a little fear is a good thing."
"You have no right to judge her!" Bourne had cried out in anger and grief.