David went tent to tent. Methodical, relentless; he would not stop until he checked from one end of the camp to another. At the far end from where he had started, he knocked on the frame of the 100th? 1000th? tent he had seen that day, opened the flap slightly, and glimpsed a pale-skinned child inside. He looked closer. Lying in a cot, eyes closed, her once-chubby cheeks gaunt, her skin beyond pale, was Drächen. He stepped in, saw she was alone, and went straight to her side. Feeling for a pulse, he was only alarmed by what he found. She was clammy and did not stir to his touch. He was just kneeling down to check her pupil responsiveness when he heard the unmistakable sound of a round dropping into the chamber of a semi-automatic handgun behind him.

Coming toward him, M11 in her hand and pointed at him, was a young woman, the look on her face all business. He was on his feet between the assailant and Drächen in a heartbeat, his Glock out and trained on her, his unwavering gaze delivering the message, I will kill you. They froze, disbelief on both faces. He had seen her before, in Pamela Landy's war room in Berlin the day he went to the rooftop and dialed his cell phone, the crosshair in his scope kissing Landy's left temple. This woman had been wearing a purple shirt that day. He had noticed her coloring: pale skin, hair and eyes dark like Marie's. Through the scope, he had seen her signal to Landy to keep him in play while she ran a trace on the call. As if he didn't know better than to hang up at 45 seconds. The look on her face now told him that she knew exactly who he was.

"Your daughter is very seriously ill," she said to him, her voice a bit hoarse, maybe from fear, adrenalin. She inclined her head towards the child, eyes riveted to his eyes. They weren't really like Marie's at all, he now saw. These eyes were hazel. Marie's were pure, dark brown; chocolate drops.

"She has dysentery," the girl went on. "I'm here with Médecins Sans Frontières…" Assessing him, making a decision. "I'm going to treat her now." She slowly raised her gun toward the tent ceiling and unchambered her round, eyes still on his. She put the firearm on the ground, tossed him her MSF ID badge, and waited, expectantly, for him to step aside.

David glanced at the badge, unmoving. The name read Kimberly Ramsey. MSF had the reputation of being absolutely apolitical; impervious to intelligence placements. If she had said Red Cross, that would be a different story. He moved slowly aside, leaving his round in the chamber, but clicking on the safety before lowering his weapon.

She knew he had killed at least one woman before, Violetta Neski. He had menaced Nicky Parsons, her colleague in Berlin, at gunpoint; Nicky had said that she thought he was going to pull the trigger. But Kim ignored him as she opened her bag and got out a bottle of water and a plastic syringe. He hadn't killed Conklin, the very embodiment of Treadstone, when he'd had the chance. Or Nicky, after all—and she had been up to her ears in the op. He hadn't killed Abbott, and Abbott had as good as killed his child's mother. In the tape Bourne sent Landy, he had renounced violence, in her name. Witnesses said he hadn't even fired a round into the man who had actually killed Marie, though Gretkhov's assassin had died anyway, bleeding to death from internal trauma due to the car crash.

Anyway, she was here to help the child; he wouldn't hurt her. Sure of that, she slipped into her professional demeanor, what she hoped was a soothing bedside manner. She looked into his steel-gray eyes once again. "Do you want to hold her?" she asked. She had no idea how long it had been since he had seen his daughter; he must want desperately to cradle her in his arms.

"Yes," not moving, his sidearm still drawn. It was just too much of a coincidence, finding someone from Landy's team here with Drächen. He had reason to trust Landy, after the help she had given him, after she followed through with blowing the whistle on Treadstone and Blackbriar. But who knew what Landy might agree to now that she was fighting for her career? And who knew where this person's loyalties lay? She might be one of Vosen's lackeys, out for revenge. And how did she know he was Drächen's father?

Kim shrugged, Suit yourself. She opened the syringe package.

"Who are you?" he asked, as she knelt down next to Drächen.

"As you saw, my name is Kim Ramsey. You saw me working with Landy in Berlin?" She emptied a packet of powder into the water bottle and shook vigorously, then filled the needleless syringe from the water bottle. Kim gently took the limp child out of the cot and into her lap, holding her upright to receive the fluids. The little girl didn't stir, and David's attention went to his baby's face, his face registering alarm.

"Can she take that? She's unconscious."

Kim's face reflected serious concern, as well. "We'll just have to see," she said. "Sometimes someone can swallow a little, even if they're unconscious. It's all I've got until the full MSF detail arrives tomorrow, and she can't wait." Slipping the syringe into the baby's mouth, stroking Drächen's thin cheek with the thumb of the hand holding her head up, Kim prepared to depress the plunger on the syringe.

David spoke quickly. "I have hypodermics. IV lines, catheters, fluids, pharma, too."

Kim looked up, face annoyed. "Well, speak up, asshole! This baby's only dying!" At once remorseful—That's the child's father, Kimberly! her mother's voice whispered in her ear, she pressed her lips together momentarily. A high, red flush filled her cheeks. "Show me."

Drächen suddenly cried out, writhing in Kim's arms. A foul odor filled the tent as the main symptom of her illness—diarrhea—presented with a vengeance.

"Poor baby," said Kim soothingly. "Your poor tummy." She calmly and expertly stood up with the child still in her arms, pulled some plastic gloves and other supplies out of her bag, and placed the feverish child on a disposable changing pad. She carefully cleaned the baby, dressing her in a fresh disposable diaper and a t-shirt from a three-pack that she tore open.

"Here, tie this up, will you?" She tossed a plastic bag containing the soiled clothing and gloves at his feet and started sanitizing her hands.

He looked at the bag. She had been willing to shoot him to defend Drächen. And he was sick to the point of disgust of holding women at gunpoint. He put his weapon away in his waistband and picked up the bag. "She was using the toilet back in April," he said, carefully tying up the bag. Kim glanced up at him, intrigued: parental defensiveness in Jason Bourne? She tossed him a larger plastic bag for a trash receptacle and the hand sanitizer. He used both.

"Have you ever had dysentery?" Kim asked briskly, taking the little girl up in her arms again. He blinked, gave a nod; he knew he had. "I bet you forgot your toilet training, too. She'll get it back again, when she gets better. You going to show me what you've got?"

He opened his pack and took out the supplies they needed. She looked everything over with approval. "You brought neonatal needles. Good; her veins are small." She made to hand him the child so that she could get to work, but he shook his head.

"I'll do it," he said.

Kim hesitated for just a second, then sat on the cot and extended Drächen's thin, pale arm out for him, steadying it in her hand.

David brought the supplies over and laid them out neatly next to Kim on the cot, in the order in which he would need them. He sanitized his hands again, put on gloves, then quickly swabbed Drächen's inner arm with an iodine wipe and expertly slipped the needle into her vein, attaching the line to the bag of rehydration fluids. Grabbing a syringe, he drew up a dose of Cipro and injected it into the bag. He repeated the operation with Flagyl. He opened the valve, taped the line to the small arm, and was done. Holding the bag in his teeth, careful not to disturb the IV line, he reached for his daughter. Watching him closely to make sure he was using proper dosages, Kim noticed that his hands were rather small for a man of his size. And that they trembled as he took the child from her.

"Here, let me…" said Kim. She took the IV bag out of his mouth and taped it securely to the shoulder of his shirt. She could see he wasn't going to put that baby down any time soon. "Just keep her arm lower than the bag," she added, unnecessarily.

When he stood up, it took no effort at all to heft Drächen's small weight; she seemed lighter than when he last held her to say goodbye. She was so pale… Her red hair was dull and her lips—her pretty mouth, Marie's mouth—were dry and cracked. He craned his neck down to touch her too-warm head with his face. He stood directly over Kim's sidearm and turned his back to her, rocking to and fro, feet planted. To and fro, breathing his daughter in. Even hot and sick and sour-smelling, she was their baby. Our baby, Marie! He stayed there, just brushing the top of her head with his lips, murmuring, "Drächen." She was so very still. What if I'm too late?

"What do you call her?" Kim interrupted his spiraling thoughts.

David cleared the emotion out of his throat. "Drächen," he said, clearly, his German pronunciation perfect.

"They call her "Marie" down at the orphanage." When he didn't answer, she busied herself with repacking her bag. Kim wondered why anyone would call such a sweet baby "Little Dragon." And, of course, she knew that the mother's name was Marie. But, she could see that now was not the time to discuss it.

"Where are Father John and Sister Angela?" he asked.

"They have a tent encampment inside the orphanage gates. The water's receded now, and it's safer for the children down there. The dysentery's been making the rounds. When someone gets sick, I bring 'em up here to isolate them. Father John… He's something, isn't he? He trusts me to keep myself and the children safe. MSF will come here first; it's the official relief site."

Everything was catching up with David. He lowered himself into a seated position on the cot recently occupied by Drächen, found a 2x4 support to lean back against. He leaned his head back, looked at Kim.

"What are you doing here?" His face was shadowed with suspicion.

She kept her tone even, as light as possible. "I resigned from the Company after the Berlin operation. A friend of mine recruits for MSF. I was a medical tech once, so I volunteered. When the tsunami hit, they sent me here. They'll boot me, by the way, if they find out I'm packing." She pushed a lock of hair back, tucking it behind her ear.

"How'd you know she's mine?" he asked, eyes sharp, searching.

"The picture." When he looked at her blankly, she went to her pack—careful to keep her hands visible at all times—and took out a ziplock baggie. "This was in Mar—Drächen's hand when they gave her to me." She held it out to him and he saw that there was an envelope and a photograph inside.

His face showed surprised recognition. It was Marie and him at the market in Goa; the photo she had stuck in a book. Marie, what did you do? Not able to bear the thought of watching the photo burn, he had tossed the whole book into the fire at the shack. That done, he couldn't bring himself to immolate the only other photograph of the two of them in this world. He had put it in his pocket, thinking, This will mean a lot to Drächen some day. It had meant a lot to him in the weeks since then.

He set Drachen's lower body down in his lap and took the baggie in his hand, studying the photo. Marie was looking full on into the camera in this one, face radiant. He had looked away, of course. His photo, pressed now between two pages in his leather-bound book (with all the other pictures of dead people, it occurred to him for the first time), showed her looking at him, face just as glowing; he was still looking away from the camera, but towards her. His light.

For just a second, he felt her arms around him, her kiss on his ear before she let go to run and get the camera from her friend. His eyes stinging, he wrangled the bag open with one hand, pulled the envelope out and looked at it. Rotterdam return address in Marie's writing, Canadian stamps and postmark; she must have given it to that silly friend of hers to mail. So she had taken some precautions. Of course, she would think of that. Maybe they had worked and this wasn't the key to them being ID'd in Goa. The bag fluttered to the ground. He exhaled quickly, blinking tears.

"I recognized you, of course," Kim said. "I'm sorry," she added.

A few long moments passed as he looked inside at his grief, wiping his face on the shoulders of his shirt, his hands full of his daughter. His and Marie's. He looked back down at Drächen, placed the picture and envelope on her chest.

"Time will tell for your little girl," Kim told him. "You brought all the right things to help her." Her voice was still husky. It must be a natural characteristic, he decided.

He nodded. He felt an unfamiliar, impotent fear clawing at him as he held the motionless body. He had never seen Drächen sick before, just teething crankiness, sniffles… A reaction to her pre-India shots that gave her fever for two days was maybe the worst illness she had ever suffered, before this. He held her close, closed his eyes. Just for an hour or two, he told himself. Just to be her father, just for an hour or two.