Read Online The Bourne Dominion by Robert & Lustbader Ludlum - Free Book Online

about him. He’d had little to do with raising him; to be truthful, he might have been someone else’s son. Without Amanda, he had no attachments, no sense of family, only place. Like a European, he valued property over cash. In a sense, this house was all he had, all he needed. Why was that? he asked himself. Was something wrong with him? In restaurants, at official functions or the theater, he encountered colleagues with their wives, sometimes with their grown children. He was always alone, even though, from time to time, he had one woman or another on his arm—widows desperate to remain part of the social scene inside the Beltway. They meant nothing to him, these women of a certain age, with tight, poreless faces, breasts pushed up to their carefully sculpted chins, in their long gowns manufactured to impress. Often they wore gloves to hide their age spots.
    He was pulled away from his ruminations by the sharp sound of the bell. Opening the front door, he was confronted by a woman in her mid- to late thirties, her hair pulled back from her heart-shaped face in a tomboyish ponytail. She wore round steel-rimmed glasses, denim overalls atop a plaid man’s shirt, frog-green clogs, and a floppy canvas sun hat.
    She introduced herself as Maggie Penrod and presented her credentials just as she had with the bodyguards patrolling the property. Hendricks studied them. She was trained at the Sorbonne and at Trinity at Oxford. Her father (deceased) had been a social worker, her Swedish mother (also deceased) a language teacher in the Bethesda school district. There was nothing memorable about her except, as she leaned forward to take back her ID, her scent, which had a decided tang. What was it? Hendricks asked himself. He sniffed as inconspicuously as possible. Ah, yes. Cinnamon and something slightly bitter, burnt almond, maybe.
    As he led the way outside to the sad-looking rose bed, he said, “What’s an art history major doing—”
    “In a place like this?”
    She laughed, a soft, mellow sound that somehow stirred something inside him, long hidden.
    “Art history was a totally unrealistic career choice. Besides, I don’t do well in academia—too much skulduggery and intrigue.”
    She had a slight accent, doubtless a product of her Swedish mother, Hendricks thought.
    She paused at the edge of the rose bed, hands on hips. “And I like being my own boss. No one but me to answer to.”
    Listening more closely, he became aware that her accent softened her words, lending them an unmistakable sensuality.
    She knelt down, her soft, strong fingers pushing aside stillborn flowers, their edges tight, ruffled, and brown. Blood streaked her skin, but she seemed unmindful of the thorns.
    “The roses are balled and the leaves are being eaten.” She stood up and turned to him. “For one thing, you’re overwatering them. For another, they need to be sprayed once a week. Not to worry, I use only organics.” She smiled up at him, her cheeks aflame in sunlight. “It’ll take a couple of weeks, but I think I can get them out of intensive care.”
    Hendricks gestured. “Whatever you need.”
    The sunlight slid over her forearms like oil, illuminating tiny white-gold hairs that seemed to stir beneath his gaze. Hendricks’s breath felt hot in his throat.
    And then, without his knowing quite how the words slipped out, he said, “Care to come inside for a drink?”
    She smiled sweetly at him, the sun in her eyes. “Not today.”
    I don’t believe it,” Bourne said. “It simply isn’t possible.”
    “Anything is possible,” Essai said. “Everything is possible.”
    “No,” Bourne said firmly, “it’s not.”
    Essai smiled his enigmatic smile. “Mr. Bourne, you are now in the dominion of Severus Domna. Please believe me in this.”
    Bourne stared into the fire. Darkness had come and, with it, a fresh wild pig, which Corellos’s men had trapped, scraped free of hair, and spitted. The rich odor of its melting fat suffused the