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.