Winter Bourne
Chapter 27
---
Pamela Landy
The separate lunch room off the main cafeteria in CIA's main building at Langley was deserted. With relief at successfully avoiding any of her colleagues, Pamela sank into a chair at one of long tables. She didn't want to talk about Marty. He was being questioned and Pamela had little doubt of the outcome. Her bodyguards, as she'd asked, seated themselves at another table.
Pamela eyed her lunch without enthusiasm. Since the day Bob Shipperton had died in New York and she'd found out that she'd been selected for assassination, she'd had lost most of her appetite. This morning she'd noticed a new gauntness to her face, her skin almost gray. She'd had to use a safety pin to make sure her skirt hadn't slipped off. With determination not to get sick, Pamela picked up the chicken salad sandwich and took a bite. Tasteless.
A shadow made her look up. A thin older woman with graying wiry hair sat down opposite her, putting a lunch tray down. "May I join you?"
The bodyguards were ignoring the stranger. Worse, they were actively avoiding her eyes. Damn it. Pamela knew what this meant. This was a pre-arranged meeting that no one had told her about. Not that she was afraid. It'd be a stupid place for an attack when there were over a hundred people less than ten feet away. Then she was surprised at her own level of paranoia when she realized that she didn't trust the men assigned to guard her. Oh well.
"How are you holding up, Ms. Landy?"
Pamela could feel her back stiffen. The word slipped out, an edge of derision to it, before she could censor herself. "Shrink."
The woman laughed. "You have great instincts."
"Sorry."
"No, no," the woman waved the apology away. "I've been called worse. Please, call me Susanna."
"Why here and now?"
"It was my suggestion." Susanna added, "Thought this was a little more friendly than an office visit."
"What is this about?"
"I was tasked to do a work-up on Jason Bourne."
Pamela added milk to her coffee. "Another one? How many does that make now?"
Another laugh. "I wouldn't know about that. I'll tell you this. Abbott had me do one when Bourne first went AWOL."
"It's not in his file." Pamela couldn't help the sudden surge of interest. "I want a copy."
"Of course."
"What did you want to know?"
"Your reports on your recent meetings with Bourne." Susanna picked up her own coffee. "I found them quite interesting."
The long drawn out pause between the words 'quite' and 'interesting', the amused glint in Susanna's eye, the way she was modeling Pamela's own posture. Pamela smiled. "You're good. Do you really think I'm going to buy into that 'just between us girl's thing' you're doing and confess that I left something off my reports?"
The good humor didn't leave Susanna's face. One eyebrow went up. "Did you?"
"That eyebrow thing? All it does is give you a very defined wrinkle above your eyebrow."
Susanna's face froze.
"I'm sorry." Pamela rubbed her temples. "That was mean. I'm not usually like that. It's just that it's been unusually difficult around here. Please accept my apology."
The shrink's eyes slid across to look at the bodyguards. "Yes, I can see that. Let's have a redo, yes? Please let me introduce myself, I'm Dr. Susanna Hoffman."
Pamela reached out across the table to shake hands. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Pamela Landy, currently suffering from foot-in-mouth syndrome."
They both smiled, more sincerely this time.
"Now it's my turn to apologize. I do need to speak to you about Bourne."
"What do you want to know?"
"Nothing."
Pamela didn't hide her surprise.
"I've been granted access to all information concerning Bourne," Susanna explained. "By the way, your reports were excellent. Filled with a level of detail once doesn't always find."
"Who authorized it?" Pamela wasn't surprised with Susanna said nothing, just gave her a blank look. Oh, well. It was worth a shot. "Please go on."
"I asked to speak with you because 'm afraid for the girl he's been traveling with."
"For Nicky? Why?" Pamela's stomach dropped. She didn't like the way the conversation was going. "I fid it hard to belive that Jason would rescue her only to hurt her himself."
"Conklin didn't want to hear what I had to say about Bourne. Are you at least willing to listen?"
Pamela nodded, aware that the shrink was trying to manipulate her by equating her actions to something the now discredited Conklin would do so that she would do the opposite. She probably can't help herself. Pamela leaned forward as Susanna recounted the by now familiar events.
"… I told Abbott and Conklin that Bourne was suffering from conversion hysteria. He'd been left alone in the field for far too long, pushed too hard and inevitably, he suffered a breakdown." Susanna shook her head. "I admire him, I do. The way that he's has been able to recover and function at such a high level after the manifestation of the original psychosis is remarkable." The doctor fell silent, appearing to brood for a moment.
"But," Pamela prompted her.
"Yes, but." The doctor looked up from her plate. "After this most recent trauma, I worry. The violent death of his lover and everything he's done and everything that's been done to him sicne. Everyone involved needs to be reminded that he broke once. Without any chance to process what has happened, to accept it, his emotional state must be brittle. If something triggers another meltdown, if he comes to see Nicky as a threat, even a minor one, I'm not sure how he'll react."
"You don't think he's stable?"
"How can he be?" Susanna pushed her plate away. "How many times has he had to fight since then? More significantly, he was shot less than 3 months ago. Now he's being actively hunted again, yes?"
"What do you think could happen?"
Another shrug. "I can't say for sure. If Nicky does anything to pull at his emotions, he may react in a way that ends… violently."
Another pang of sympathy swept through Pamela. Poor David Webb's life had been a hard one since the day he's assumed the name Jason Bourne. trying to give up that legacy hasn't made his live any easier. But unstable? Closing her eyes, she pictured the way he'd looked, acted, sounded. Stressed. Oh yes. He'd been stressed, but still very much in control. "I trust him."
"I hope your trust isn't misplaced." Susanna stood up.
"Can you give me practical advice on how to deal with him?"
"Yes. Make him feel secure. Safe."
Pamela stared at the woman. "Is that a joke?"
"No. Just an impossibility."
With that, Susanna was gone.
--
Jason Bourne
Nicky was Blackbriar.
Shock kept Jason motionless for long seconds. Then the trained observer that resided in the back of his brain, the part of him that assessed facts and made decisions, often before he was conscious of it, clicked on. His virtual playing cards flickered to life to form new patterns behind his mind's eye, forming inescapable conclusions. What it told him made him shake as a cold sweat broke out on his skin. For the first time since he was in the Ganges, desperate to breathe life into Marie, he was afraid.
He should have known.
He should have known the moment he saw Nicky in the CIA substation in Madrid. Why hadn't he know?
Something was very wrong with him. His vision went dim. A terrible creeping sensation of losing himself swept over him. Jason knew what it meant. He staggered back until he collapsed into the chair. He'd had attacks like this before. When the world dissolved around him and he was somewhere else, dragged unwilling unto some dark memory. A flash of a woman's face. A memory that flailed his raw emotions. In Paris, in some hotel room, Nicky was saying things to him that burned. Branding him a monster. He'd fled with relief into another mission. Wombosi. Where he'd lost himself.
it was Nicky's fault.
All of it.
