"Pissed as hell."

"But he's forgiven you."

"Not exactly," she said. "I'm on what you might call probation."

Bourne nodded. "That sounds about right."

It was then, as she drew back, that she got a good look at his face. "Jason, what happened to you?"

He told her what had transpired in the tunnel deep within the bedrock of Moscow.

"So it was Volkin all along," she said. "Volkin, who helped you. Volkin, your friend."

"He helped me," Bourne said, "because it also benefited him. And as for being my friend..." He shrugged. "He was Boris's friend once, when it suited him."

"And the diamonds?"

"Gone," Bourne said, moving out of the way of two corps members. "All except for the ones I gave to you."

"Which I had appraised and sold in Amsterdam, after which I flew back to Cairo, and, as you instructed, gave one-third of the proceeds to Amira. She can buy a new houseboat now. Hell, she can buy a fleet of them."

"More likely, she'll leave Egypt forever."

Sara nodded. "That's my guess, as well." She paused, waiting until one of the tall male dancers passed by on what seemed silent cat's feet. "Then it was on to Paris, where I met up with Soraya and her daughter." Soraya was a longtime friend who had worked alongside Bourne, before marrying and having a child. Her husband had been brutally murdered last year. "A third went to them."

"Then you flew here."

"The final third was turned into the trust you had me set up for Liis. She'll have use of the interest until she turns twenty-five, when the principal is hers, just as you wanted."

"I would have been here sooner, but I took a couple of days to visit old sites."

"Boris's grave."

He nodded. A cloud crossed his face. "His dacha was razed. It's as if it had never existed."

"The famous Russian revisionism at work. I'm sorry."

Seeing so much of Boris's life's work erased had been difficult to stomach, and he had been shadowed all the time. No one had dared approach him, though. Lucky for them; he'd been in a homicidal frame of mind. In shadows, he had mourned his friend and compatriot on so many adventures. He felt Boris's absence as a child feels a hole in his pocket through which he had lost something personal, something valuable. There were tears inside him, but they refused to budge. They stayed hidden as he traced the nighttime streets of Moscow, looking for trouble, finding only a life apart. A solitary man shadowed, always shadowed. His expression was grimly determined. "They can't erase my memories."

She studied him closely, moved her hand experimentally under his coat. "Volkin shot you twice before you got to him."

"Once in the shoulder, once in the meat of my biceps." He had not told her that he'd taken the first shot protecting the Angelmaker, though he could not quite figure out why. "The arm wound was nothing, the bullet went clear through, but the first shot nicked an artery. I lost a lot of blood. I don't remember much after that, I was out cold. The next thing I knew I was in a Moscow hospital. No one could tell me who had brought me in."

"But you knew. It was the Angelmaker who saved you." Her eyes were wide and staring. "Why did she do that? And why... Helping Amira and Soraya now that she's a widow I understand. But why have you done this for Liis?"

At that moment, Liis stepped out of her changing closet, saw Bourne and, with a shriek, flew into his arms. She swung against his chest like a perfect porcelain doll. "And now here you are in the flesh! My very own Christmas present! Thank you! Thank you for everything!"

She hugged him again, and then, almost immediately pushed back. "Mala. Where is she? I know she'd want to be here. I was so counting on seeing her."

"She'll come," Bourne said with a wide smile. "She'll come," he repeated without knowing whether it was the truth or a lie, "one of these days."

- The Angelmaker sat in the last row of the theater balcony, off to the side, in a darkened corner. She had shrunk her presence down, clung to the shadows, so that when, one by one, the banks of spots winked off, until only one light remained on at center stage, no one noticed her.

It was from this high eyrie that she had watched her little sister perform, her eyes moist, her heart fluttering like a bird's in her chest. There were no words to describe what she was feeling. High emotions clogged her like a stopped-up drain, made whatever words she wished to say to Liis impossible for her to voice. Besides, considering her profession, it was far wiser to keep her distance from her sister, painful though it was.

But, then again, pain was her life. She had lived with it from the moment she had been abducted. It had never occurred to her that the pain would lessen, let alone go away, when she was saved by Jason Bourne. He had removed her from the basis of her physical pain, but the rest of it, nesting at the emotional, the psychic levels of her being, could not be exorcised, even by the phalanx of psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and cognitive therapists she had been subjected to, like a butterfly pinned to a sheet of paper. There was nothing anyone could do. The pain had been embedded so deeply inside her there were days when her bones ached from it. But it was a familiar ache, which, in time, had morphed from a parasite to a passenger to a form of symbiosis, until she had convinced herself that it had always been a part of her, waiting for the right circumstances to step out into the light. Bourne meant well, and she was eternally grateful to him, but he didn't understand. How could he? How could anyone?

At length, she rose, slipped from the silenced building to wait with the crowd of balletomanes, oblivious to the snow and the bitter cold that was not so different from Moscow this time of year. She watched her sister, in the intoxicated arms of excitement and cheer, emerge from the stage door. The expectant clutch of people rushed forward, Playbills and autograph books extended toward the New York City Ballet's newest rising star. She resisted the tide, pushing back against it until she was at the outer fringe, almost in the gutter.

Liis, her cheeks flushed with her triumph as much as the cold, handed off a bouquet of roses-the very ones the Angelmaker had sent-to Rebeka, the beautiful woman who had been with Bourne at the Omega + Gulf Bank in Nicosia. Had she saved him for this? For Rebeka? He stood on the other side of Liis, almost unrecognizable in a suit and tie, a beautiful tweed overcoat. He'd had his hair trimmed, his stubble scraped off. He could pass for anyone in the real world of bright lights and nine-to-five jobs. Almost. She smiled to herself. But not quite. She saw how his eyes darted from person to person, his brain assessing risk, always and forever. She saw how he stood, very still but at the same time ready to spring into action at an instant's notice. In that, they were the same: the instincts of a feral creature, faculties undulled, unsullied by human civilization.

She followed the trio as they broke at last from the bubbling crowd, went down the block, and into a restaurant. For a moment, she stood gazing through one of the enormous windows, as the three removed their coats, handed them to a young woman, and were led by the matre d' to a choice table. Their small movements were like that of a family-intimate, secure with each other. Her pride in Liis swelled once again, making her eyes enlarge with tears, and glow brighter than the blighted streetlights overhead. Her fingertips traced an unknown pattern on the icy glass.

Abruptly, she turned, stepped decisively away, placing herself within the safety of the holiday throng. The rhythmic sound of a Salvation Army bell ringer floated to her from farther down Broadway, packed so tightly with pedestrians she couldn't see across to the east sidewalk. Boys shouted to one another, and a brief snowball fight erupted before an errant missile struck an old man in the back, and they ran away, laughing.

It's life and life only, she thought. But it had nothing to do with her. She took out her mobile, blew on her fingertip to warm it, then pressed a speed-dial key. With the phone against her ear, she listened so intently her sense of the frenetic activity around her vanished. She might have been in a vacuum. Her body trembled.

A moment later, she was talking with the Somali Yibir. His name was Keyre. Every scar on her body resonated to the sound of his voice, set up a yearning like a tide irresistibly bearing her back into the past.

Moments later, she was a speck in the crowd. After that, she was gone.

Acknowledgments.

Once again, thank you to all the people who helped with the research for this novel. Most of you have asked to remain anonymous, but you know who you are. Without your invaluable assistance The Bourne Engima would not see light in its current form. Having said that, any and all alterations (for dramatic effect) and (inadvertent) errors are mine alone.

Biggest thank-you of all to my wife, Victoria Schochet Lustbader, my first and best editor. You make my writing so much easier.

About the Author.

ROBERT LUDLUM was the author of twenty-seven novels, each one a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 225 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. He is the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancellor Manuscript, and the Jason Bourne series-The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum-among others. Mr. Ludlum passed away in March 2001. To learn more, you can visit Robert-Ludlum.com.

ERIC VAN LUSTBADER is the author of numerous bestselling novels including First Daughter, Beloved Enemy, The Ninja, and the international bestsellers featuring Jason Bourne: The Bourne Legacy, The Bourne Betrayal, The Bourne Sanction, The Bourne Deception, The Bourne Objective, The Bourne Dominion, The Bourne Imperative, The Bourne Retribution, and The Bourne Ascendancy. For more information, you can visit EricVanLustbader.com. You can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

The JASON BOURNE NOVELS.

The Bourne Identity.

The Bourne Supremacy.

The Bourne Ultimatum The Bourne Legacy (by Eric Van Lustbader).

The Bourne Betrayal (by Eric Van Lustbader).

The Bourne Sanction (by Eric Van Lustbader) The Bourne Deception (by Eric Van Lustbader).

The Bourne Objective (by Eric Van Lustbader) The Bourne Dominion (by Eric Van Lustbader).

The Bourne Imperative (by Eric Van Lustbader) The Bourne Retribution (by Eric Van Lustbader) The Bourne Ascendancy (by Eric Van Lustbader).

THE COVERT-ONE NOVELS.

The Hades Factor (by Gayle Lynds).

The Cassandra Compact (by Philip Shelby) The Paris Option (by Gayle Lynds) The Altman Code (by Gayle Lynds).

The Lazarus Vendetta (by Patrick Larkin) The Moscow Vector (by Patrick Larkin) The Arctic Event (by James Cobb).

The Ares Decision (by Kyle Mills) The Janus Reprisal (by Jamie Freveletti) The Utopia Experiment (by Kyle Mills) The Geneva Strategy (by Jamie Freveletti).

The Patriot Attack (by Kyle Mills) THE PAUL JANSON NOVELS.

The Janson Directive.

The Janson Command (by Paul Garrison) The Janson Option (by Paul Garrison) The Janson Equation (by Douglas Corleone).

ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM.

The Scarlatti Inheritance.

The Matlock Paper Trevayne.

The Cry of the Halidon The Rhinemann Exchange.

The Road to Gandolfo The Gemini Contenders The Chancellor Manuscript The Holcroft Covenant The Matarese Circle.

The Parsifal Mosaic The Aquitaine Progression The Icarus Agenda The Osterman Weekend.

The Road to Omaha The Scorpio Illusion The Apocalypse Watch The Matarese Countdown The Prometheus Deception.

The Sigma Protocol The Tristan Betrayal The Ambler Warning The Bancroft Strategy.

ALSO BY ERIC VAN LUSTBADER.

NICHOLAS LINNEAR NOVELS.

Second Skin.

Floating City.

The Kaisho White Ninja.

The Miko The Ninja.

CHINA MAROC NOVELS.

Shan.

Jian.

JACK MCCLURE / ALLI CARSON NOVELS.

Beloved Enemy.

Father Night.

Blood Trust Last Snow First Daughter.

OTHER NOVELS.

The Testament.

Art Kills Pale Saint Dark Homecoming.

Black Blade Angel Eyes French Kiss.

Zero Black Heart Sirens.

end.