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“You can’t remember your name?” the second man said.
He shook his head, but that caused a fierce throbbing.
“What do you remember?”
He took a moment, but this only made him break out into a cold sweat as, his brow deeply furrowed, he strained to recall anything— even a single memory.
“Relax,” the second man said. He seemed to have taken over from Christien.
“Who are you?” he said.
“My name is Jason. You’re in a private clinic in Stockholm. Christien and I were out fishing when you surfaced. We pulled you into our boat and flew you here. You were suffering from hypoxia and hypothermia.”
He thought, I should ask Jason what those words mean, but to his shock, he already knew. He licked his lips and Christien, leaning over, poured water from a carafe into a plastic cup and stuck a bendy straw in it. Christien stepped on a pedal, and his head and torso were raised to a modified sitting position. He took the cup gratefully and sipped the water. He felt parched, as if his thirst would never be slaked.
“What... what happened to me?”
“You were shot,” Jason said. “A bullet grazed the left side of your head.”
Automatically his left hand went to the side of his head, felt the thick layers of bandages. He had identified the source of his headache.
“Do you know who shot you? Why you were shot?”
“No,” he said. He drained the cup, held it out for more.
While Christien refilled it, Jason said, “Do you know whereyou were shot, where you went into the water?”
At the mention of going into the water he shuddered. “No.”
Christien handed him the cup. “It was Sadelöga.”
“Do you remember Sadelöga?” Jason said. “Does the name sound familiar?”
“Not in the least.” He was about to shake his head again, but stopped himself in time. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I remember.”
This seemed to interest Jason. “Nothing at all?” he said.
He stopped sipping his water. “Not where I was born, who my parents are, who I am, what I was doing in—where did you say?”
“Sadelöga,” Christien said.
“Maybe I was fishing there,” he said hopefully, “like you.”
“I very much doubt that fishing involves being shot, and there’s no hunting to speak of there,” Jason said. “No, you were in Sadelöga for another reason entirely.”
“I wish I knew what it was,” he said sincerely.
“There’s another thing,” Jason said. “You had no identification on you—no wallet, passport, keys, money.”
He thought a moment. “I threw them all away, along with my shoes, to lighten myself. I was desperate to get back to the surface. They must all be at the bottom of the sea now.”
“You remember getting rid of these things,” Jason said.
“I... Yes, I do.”
“You said that you remembered nothing.”
“ ThatI remember. Nothing else.” He looked at Jason. “I don’t recall you pulling me out of the water, or the trip here. Only those first panic-stricken moments after I went under, not going under itself. Nothing of that.”
Jason seemed lost in thought. “Maybe when you’re sufficiently recovered we should take you back to Sadelöga.”
“Would you agree to that?” Christien asked.
He thought about that for a moment. On the one hand, the idea of returning to the spot where he went into the water terrified him; on the other, he felt an overwhelming, desperate desire to know who he was.
“When can we leave?” he said at last.
What do you think?”
Bourne looked at Christien. They were downstairs in the lounge of the private clinic owned by Christien’s company. Outside, the traffic along Staligatan was fierce, but the clinic’s thick windows muffled all noise. Clouds were gathering as if for a battle. Once again, it looked like snow. They sat on low Swedish-modern furniture, stylish as well as practical: a sofa in a sturdy print, its colors suitably muted, that was the focal point of one of several conversation areas.
“He reminds me of me,” Bourne said.
Christien nodded. “I had the same thought, though this man’s amnesia appears virtually complete.”
“If he’s telling us the truth.”
“Jason, he was quite clearly in serious distress. Is there any reason to doubt him?”
“The bullet that grazed the side of his head,” Bourne said. “He isn’t a tourist. Also, he quite clearly, as you would say, understood all five languages you spoke to him in.”
“So he’s a linguist. So what?”
“So am I.”
“You’re also a professor of comparative linguistics.”
“Used to be.”
“He could be one, too.”
“What’s he doing out here with a bullet crease in the side of his head?”
“Noted.”
“I want to find out whether he’s in our business.”
Christien gave him a skeptical look. “Just because he’s a linguist?”
Bourne gestured. “Look, if he’s not a spy we have nothing to worry about. But given what you’ve told me...”
Christien spread his hands. “All right, what do you suggest?”
“We have some time before we can take him back to Sadelöga.”
“What does it matter? We won’t get anything out of him in his current state.”
“Untrue. We can subject him to a series of tests.”
Christien shook his head. “Tests? What do you mean?”
Bourne sat forward, perched on the edge of the sofa. “You discovered that this man speaks at least five languages when he himself didn’t know that. Let’s find out what else he doesn’t know he knows.”
Soraya and Peter left the briefing with Hendricks filled with mixed feelings.
“This so-called Nicodemo sounds like a ghost,” Soraya said. “I don’t like chasing ghosts.”
“For some reason, Hendricks is obsessed with finding and eliminating Nicodemo,” Peter said. “He gave it his highest priority. And yet, he had no specific intel, no chatter as to a clear and present attack that Nicodemo might be pla
“I never thought of that.”
Peter laughed. “That’s because you still have one foot in Paris.”
She turned to him. “Is that what you think?”
He shrugged. “Can you blame me?”
The hallway was quiet, save for the hum of the HVAC vents high up in the walls. Far away at one end, she thought she saw Dick Richards coming toward them, and she groaned inwardly. The guy was like a leech.
She gestured with her head toward Richards. “If we can’t trust each other, we’re fucked.”
“My thought exactly.”
“About your leaving...”
“Let’s not talk about that now, Peter.” She sighed. It was definitely Richards coming toward them. “So how important to us is finding Nicodemo?”
“If, as you surmise, the issue is political, not very. I didn’t take this job to carry Hendricks’s water.”
“I think I know just what to tell Mary’s little lamb.”
She smiled broadly as they met Dick Richards halfway along the hall.
Richards handed a dossier to Peter. “I have some intel briefs I thought you’d want to see,” he said helpfully.
“Thanks.” Peter, opening the file, glanced through the pages with no real interest.
Soraya shoved the fuzzy intel on Nicodemo that Hendricks had given them in the briefing at Richards.
“Peter and I would like you to run this person of interest down,” she said, “see if there’s anything substantive to him, see what level of danger he represents to US interests abroad.”
Peter looked up as Richards nodded. He gave her a sharp glance to which she responded with her sweetest smile.
“We’d appreciate your dropping whatever it is you’re working on now,” she continued, “and concentrating on this until you can give us a yea or a nay. If you need any help, ask Tricia.” She pointed in the general direction of the chubby blonde.
“Great.” Richards, having no interest in assistance of any kind, slapped the back of his hand against the thin file Soraya had given him. “I’ll get on it ASAP.”