“And you find that sad.”
“No,” Chrissie said, rather defiant. “I find it admirable.”
Well, at least we get to go after Bourne,” Marks said. “That’s some consolation, he’s one half of the Treadstone equation, isn’t he?”
“Don’t be dense,” Willard snapped. “Liss didn’t even bother to mention it as a peace offering because he knew I’d laugh in his face. He knows I’m the only person on earth-at least one under his control-who can get to Bourne without having his neck or back broken. No, he planned this out from the beginning, it was his whole reason for agreeing to back Treadstone in the first place, and I played right into his hand.”
“That’s a pretty damn high price to pay for a ring,” Marks said. “It must be very rare, costly, or important.”
“I’d like to have another look at that photo of the engraving,” Willard mused. “That’s our best chance of finding out something about the ring, since Liss won’t tell us.”
They had been walking across the Mall, from the Washington Monument toward the Lincoln Memorial, hands in overcoat pockets, backs bowed against the wind, but at the last instant they had decided to make a detour to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Along the way they had, each in his own way, checked for tags and tails. They didn’t trust anyone, least of all Oliver Liss.
They stopped, and Willard stared at the wall, somber in its eternal shadows, sighed deeply, and closed his eyes. A small, secret smile crept across his lips with the stealth of a cat. “He thinks he’s checkmated me, but I’ve got a queen he can’t control.”
Marks shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Willard’s eyes popped open. “Soraya Moore.”
Marks looked at him, alarmed. “Oh, no.”
“I told you to try to recruit her and you did.”
A pair of vets in uniform, one pushing the other, who was in a wheelchair, came down the long, graceful ramp into the full majesty of the wall and stopped in front of the names. The vet in the wheelchair was without legs. He handed his friend a small bouquet and a miniature American flag on a wooden stand. His friend laid them at the foot of the wall where their compatriots’ names were engraved for all time.
There was a glitter in Willard’s eyes as he turned away from the scene. “I have her first assignment: Find Leonid Arkadin.”
“You said you’d lost him,” Marks pointed out. “Where is she going to start looking?”
“That’s her problem,” Willard said. “She’s a smart girl, I’ve been following her career since she came to prominence at Typhon.” He smiled. “Have a little faith, Peter. She’s first-rate material, plus, she’s got a built-in advantage over you or me. She’s a very good-looking female-highly desirable-which means Arkadin will have her scent before she comes within a block of him.”
His brain was traveling at speed in its own peculiar orbit. “I want her with him, Peter. I want her attached to Arkadin, she’s going to tell me what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.”
The two vets’ heads were bowed, locked within their private memories as tourists and relatives of other fallen filed by, some touching names here and there. A Japanese tour leader, yellow pennant held high, gathered her photo-clicking flock to her.
Marks ran a hand through his hair. “You can’t expect me-What? Jesus, you want me to pimp her out?”
Willard looked like he was sucking on a lemon. “Since when did you become a Boy Scout? Not in CI, surely. The Old Man would’ve had your heart for lunch.”
“She’s a friend of mine, Fred. Longtime.”
“There are no friends in this business, Peter, just the bitterly oppressed. I am Liss’s slave and you are mine and she is yours. That’s how it works.”
Marks looked as glum as Willard had at the end of their breakfast with Liss.
“You will give her her assignment before we leave for the airport-” Willard glanced at his watch. “-which gives you less than six hours to prep for London and do the deed.” His smile was all teeth. “More than enough time for a clever fellow like you, wouldn’t you say?”
TIME FOR ME to go,” Bourne said. “We should both get some sleep.”
“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Chrissie said and, with a bleak smile, sang, “Bad dreams in the night.” She cocked her head inquiringly. “Kate Bush. Do you know her songs?”
“That’s from ‘Wuthering Heights,’ isn’t it?”
“Yes, my daughter, Scarlett, is a big fan. Not much Kate Bush up at Oxford, I can tell you.”
It was after midnight. He had ventured out to an Indian restaurant, bought their dinner, and had taken it back to Tracy’s flat, where, after swallowing a couple of desultory bites, Chrissie watched him eat. Considering the violent events earlier, outside the bank, it was best if he didn’t venture too far afield, even back to his hotel.
Watching her sitting across from him on the sofa, he recalled another fragment of the conversation he’d had with Tracy in Khartoum the night before she died:
“In your mind you can be anyone, do anything. Everything is malleable, whereas in the real world, effecting change-any change-is so bloody difficult, the effort is wearying.”
“You could adopt an entirely new identity,” he had replied, “one where effecting change is less difficult because now you re-create your own history.”
She had nodded. “Yes, but that has its own pitfalls. No family, no friends-unless, of course, you don’t mind being absolutely isolated.”
“The night before she died,” he said now, “she told me something that led me to believe that in another time, another place she would have enjoyed having her own family.”
For a moment it seemed as if all the air had gone out of her. “Well, that’s bloody irony for you.” Then, recovering somewhat, she went on, “You know, the funny thing is-well, it’s bloody tragic, when I think about it now-I sometimes envied her. She wasn’t tied down, had never married, she could go where she pleased, when she pleased, and she did. She was like a skyrocket, in that way, because of how she loved to walk on the wild side. It was as if danger was-I don’t know-an aphrodisiac, or maybe it was more like the feeling people get when they ride a roller coaster, that sense of going so fast they’re almost, but not quite, out of control.” She gave a bitter little laugh. “The last time I rode a roller coaster I got sick to my stomach.”
Part of him genuinely felt for her, but another part, the professional part, the Bourne identity, in other words, was seeking a way to worm his way farther in, a probe to see if there was anything else Chrissie could tell him about Tracy and her mysterious relationship with Leonid Arkadin. He saw her only as a means to an end, a stepping-stone, not a human being. He hated himself for feeling that way, and yet his dispassion was part of what made him successful. This was who he was, or at least what Treadstone had made of him. In any event, for good or for ill, he was damaged, trained, highly skilled. Just like Arkadin. And yet there was a gulf between them-an abyss so vast, Bourne could not see its bottom or even guess at its depth. He and Arkadin faced each other across this divide, invisible perhaps to anyone but themselves, searching for ways to destroy each other without destroying themselves in the process. There were times when he wondered whether that would be possible, whether to rid the world of one, both had to go.
“You know what I wish?” She turned to him. “Remember that film Superman, not a great film, admittedly, but anyway, Lois Lane dies and Superman is so grief-stricken that he launches himself into the air. He flies around the earth, faster and faster, faster than the speed of sound, faster than the speed of light, so fast that he reverses time to the moment just before Lois will be killed, and he saves her.” Her eyes had settled on his face, but it was something else she was seeing. “I wish I were Superman.”