Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

— Kasih, she said at once.

He smiled. -What are you doing here, Kasih?

The girl‘s eyes were deep as pools, dark as obsidian. She had long hair that came down past her narrow shoulders. She wore a coffee-colored sarong with a pattern of frangipani blossoms just like his double ikat. Her skin was silky and unblemished.

— Kasih-?

— You were hurt three full moons ago in Tenganan.

The smile Bourne kept on his face turned tissue-thin. -You‘re mistaken, Kasih. That man died. I went to his funeral in Manggis before his body was flown back to the United States.

The outer corners of her eyes turned up and she gave him a curious smile, as enigmatic as the expression of the Mona Lisa. Then she reached out and her fingers opened his sweat-drenched shirt, revealing the bandaged wound.

— You were shot, Bapak, she said as gravely as an adult. -You didn‘t die, but it‘s hard for you to climb our steep hills. She cocked her head. -Why do you do it?

— So that one day it won‘t be hard. He rebuttoned his shirt. -This is our secret, Kasih. No one else must find out, otherwise-

— The man who shot you will come back.

Rocked back on his heels, Bourne felt his heartbeat accelerate. -Kasih, how do you know that?

— Because demons always return.

— What do you mean?

Reverently approaching the shrine, she placed a handful of red and violet blossoms in the shrine‘s small niche, pressing her palms together at forehead height, bowing her head in a brief prayer to protect them against the evil demons that lurked in the forest‘s restless green shadows.

When she was finished, she stepped back and, kneeling, began to dig at the rear corner of the shrine. A moment later she plucked out of the black, volcanic earth a small package of tied banana leaves. She turned and, with a fearful look in her eyes, presented it to Bourne.

Brushing off the soft clots of dirt, he untied and peeled back the leaves, one by one. Inside, he discovered a human eyeball, made of acrylic or glass.

— It‘s the demon‘s eye, Bapak, she said, — the demon who shot you.

Bourne looked at her. -Where did you find this?

— Over there. She pointed to the base of an immense pule or milk wood tree not more than a hundred yards away.

— Show me, he said, following her through the tall fan-like ferns to the tree.

The girl would approach no closer than three paces, but Bourne hunkered down on his hams at the spot she indicated, where the ferns were broken, trampled down as if someone had left in great haste. Cocking his head up, he eyed the network of branches.

As he made to climb up, Kasih gave a little cry. -Oh, please don‘t! The spirit of Durga, the goddess of death, lives in the pule.

He swung one leg up, gaining a foothold on the bark, and smiled reassuringly at the girl. -Don‘t worry, Kasih, I‘m protected by Shiva, my own goddess of death.

Ascending swiftly and surely, he soon came to the thick, almost horizontal branch he had spied from the ground. Arranging himself along it on his belly, he found himself peering out through a narrow gap in the tangle of trees at the precise spot where he‘d been shot. He rose up on one elbow, looked around. In a moment he found the small hollow in the place where the branch was thickest as it attached to the trunk. Something glinted dully there. Plucking it out, he saw a shell casing. Pocketing this, he shimmied back down the tree, where he grinned down at the clearly nervous girl.

— You see, safe and sound, he said. -I think Durga‘s spirit is in another pule tree on the other side of Bali today.

— I didn‘t know Durga could move around.

— Of course she can, Bourne said. -This isn‘t the only pule on Bali, is it?

She shook her head.

— That proves my point, Bourne said. -She‘s not here today. It‘s perfectly safe.

Kasih still appeared troubled. -Now that you have the demon‘s eyeball, you‘ll be able to find him and stop him from coming back, won‘t you?

He knelt beside her. -The demon isn‘t coming back, Kasih, that I promise you. He rolled the eyeball between his fingers. -And, yes, with its help I hope to find the demon who shot me.

Moira was taken by the two NSA agents to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where she was subjected to a medical workup both harrowing and stultifying in its thoroughness. In this way, the night crawled by. When, just after ten the next morning, she was declared physically fit, materially unimpaired by the car crash, the NSA agents told her that she was free to go.

— Wait a minute, she said. -Didn‘t you say you were taking me in for tampering with a crime scene?

— We did take you in, one of the agents said in his clipped Midwestern accent. Then the two of them walked out, leaving her confused and not a little alarmed.

Her alarm escalated significantly when she called four different people at the Department of Defense and State, all of whom were either — in a meeting, — out of the building, or, even more ominously, simply