He stayed until the fire guttered out, the acrid smell of melting plastic etched into his senses. Marie Helena Kreutz was dead, and all her identities along with her. The passports and visas were liabilities now, needed to be destroyed. He couldn't risk anyone getting their hands on her papers, least of all the bastard son of a bitch agent who'd followed them and
&*%&
The human part of the man wanted to keep everything, wanted to surround himself with mementos and tributes to Marie, wanted to build shrines. Jason Bourne considered, pointed out the supreme stupidity of the idea, and quashed it while it lay wailing in the bottom of his mind.
A spark popped, and he heard in it the scream she didn't utter with her last breath. He burned everything bearing her face, everything with her eyes and her name that would have silently accused him wherever he turned, save for the single agonizing photograph that he allowed himself. Frozen joy.
&*%&
Memory was a mutable thing. He cursed it for its elusive properties often enough.
But now he took advantage of the mind's malleability. He put every thought away, forced himself to forget as he methodically wiped down every surface in the house, every object she had ever touched with her artist's fingers (after a while, her skill at making false passports had nearly rivaled his
&*%&
Cold, implacable anger was safe. Soft memories were crippling, would shake him and bring out the human man right when Jason Bourne was needed most. He left the Goa house tearless. The taxi driver did not speak to the frightening man climbing into his backseat, the man dressed like a tourist but who moved like a cobra. Every time he glanced in the rearview, the man's eyes were covering everything in sight in a way that reminded him of the elite paramilitary troopers he'd once chauffeured around the city, dangerous even when drunk.