Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (24 page)

Utilizing one of the super-sharp razor blades Brick had given him to kill whoever Bogs brought through the door, he slit open the covering and peeled it back. He was immediately disappointed. The plug was blank on both sides. Turning it on end, however, he saw etched into the end:

RECURSIVE
.

He looked at the key in a new light and considered that it might not be for a lock, after all.

Now that he had a substantial clue to follow, he was unwilling to stay in the house, trying to figure out how he would get around killing someone he most certainly did not want to kill. He rose and went to the front door, only to find it locked. The same was true for the back door. All the windows were locked. He could see the tiny wires that would raise an instant alarm if any of the panes were broken.

The same was true for the windows on the second floor, but up here in the bedrooms the panes were smaller. Back down in the kitchen, he rooted around in the drawers without finding what he needed, but a closet revealed a tool chest. Inside, he found a glass cutter. Racing back upstairs, he chose a window that looked out on a spreading oak and scored a line between the glass and the sash. The super-sharp blade dug deeply into the glass. He made the same scores on two other sides. Setting down the glass cutter, he crossed to the bed, removed a case from a pillow, then, wrapping it around his left hand, returned to the pane of glass he’d been working on. Slowly and carefully, he scored down the fourth side.

With the fingertips of his right hand on the glass, he struck it with his protected left hand, and it moved a little. He hit it again, harder this time, dislodging the pane from the sash. He grabbed it between the fingers of his right hand before it could fall and shatter. Then he turned it, laying it flat, careful not to disconnect the alarm wire. With infinite care, he climbed through the open space, turned his body and leaped to the crotch between two thick branches of the oak. He teetered vertiginously until he threw his arms around one of the branches. Steadying and orienting himself, he climbed down to the lowest branch, and, from there, dropped the last two and a half feet to the ground.

Retrieving his mobile from its hiding place in his crotch, he phoned Treadstone for a car to pick him up, giving his approximate location. Then he began to walk out of the cul de sac, toward a road whose name he could recognize and relay to the driver.

It took him three calls to determine that there was, in fact, a boat named
Recursive
tied up at slip 31 at the Dockside Marina at 600 Water Street SW. By that time, his driver had dropped him where he had left his car outside the Blackfriar Country Club. Forty minutes later, he was pulling up to Dockside, rolling into a parking space.

He sat for a moment, turning the key over and over between his fingers, as the car engine cooled, ticking like a clock. Then he got out and walked down to the boardwalk where the boats were tied up. Most of the boats were battened down for the winter, covered against the weather. Some of the slips were empty, their occupants dry-docked and shrink-wrapped. On a few boats, people were working, stowing fishing gear, hosing down decks, coiling ropes, cleaning seats and brass railings. He nodded to them, smiling, as he ambled past. He had to remind himself that everything slowed down at a marina, that a careful and unhurried manner held sway.

It seemed odd to him that Florin Popa, a bodyguard, would own a boat. But then, considering how carefully the key had been hidden, maybe Popa didn’t actually own the
Recursive
. Maybe he was just using it.

Peter followed the slip numbers until he came to 31. The
Recursive
was a 36-foot Cobalt inboard. Judging by the open deck and the seating arrangement, it was a pleasure craft, not a fishing boat. Taking hold of one of the dock’s wooden uprights, he swung aboard. The first thing he did was check to make certain no one was aboard. This was an easy enough task, considering that the Cobalt had no closed cabin or, apart from a minuscule head, belowdeck area.

Taking the key, he slid it into the ignition slot. He could only get it in halfway, however. It would not start the boat. Removing it, he began a thorough search, removing cushions that covered storage areas, opening the small dash box facing the passenger’s seat, pulling on the metal ring that opened another, larger storage area, all to no avail. There was no slot anywhere on the
Recursive
in which to insert the key.

By this time, twilight was falling on DC, and a chill wind whipped across the water. Peter sat on the rear cushions, staring out at nothing, trying to figure out what he had missed. The key was etched with the name
Recursive
. He was aboard the
Recursive
. Why couldn’t he find what the key was meant to open?

He pondered this vexing question for another fifteen minutes or so. By then, darkness had fallen, the lights had been switched on, and he was forced to admit defeat, at least for the moment. He called Soraya at home, then disconnected, remembering that she had told him that line was out of order. Instead, he punched in her mobile number. It went right to voicemail. He left a brief, necessarily enigmatic message asking her to call him, and disconnected.

At home, he fixed himself a meal cobbled together from leftovers, but he scarcely tasted a thing. Afterward, he wandered around, touching things absently, while his mind whirred away a mile a minute. Finally, recognizing that he was as exhausted as he was wired, he slipped a DVD into his system and watched several episodes of
Mad Men
, which calmed him somewhat. He fell into a reverie where he was Don Draper, only his name was Anthony Dzundza. Roger Sterling was Tom Brick, Peggy was Soraya, and Joan was the strength-training guy at the gym Peter had been trying to approach for months.

Martha Christiana, watching the terrible inertia of what was left of her mother, said, “Is this how it ends?”

“For some.” Don Fernando stood close beside her. “For the broken.”

“She wasn’t always broken.”

“Yes,” he said, “she was.” When she turned to look at him, he smiled encouragingly. “She was born with a defect in her brain, something that wasn’t working correctly. In those days, it wasn’t something that could be diagnosed, but even today, there’s not much that can be done.”

“Drugs.”

“Drugs would have turned the young woman she used to be into a zombie. Would that have been better?”

Martha’s mother moved uncomfortably, made a mewing sound, and Martha went to her, helped her over to the bathroom. She was inside with her for several minutes. Don Fernando crossed to the dresser, picked up the two photos, and one by one, studied them. Or rather he studied the young girl Martha Christiana had been. He had the unusual ability of being able to glean people’s psychological quirks from “reading” old photos of them.

The door opened behind him, and, putting down the pictures, he helped Martha bring her mother over to the bed, where they sat her down. The old woman seemed exhausted or, perhaps, not there at all, as if she were already asleep.

The nurse came in then, but Martha waved her away. By silent mutual consent, she and Don Fernando got the old woman into bed. As she laid her head on the pillow and Martha arranged her hair around her emaciated face, a tiny spark appeared in her eyes as she looked up at her daughter, and it was possible to believe for just that instant that she recognized Martha. But the ghost of a smile evaporated so quickly that it might never have existed.

Martha sat on the edge of the bed while her mother closed her eyes, drifted deeper into the impenetrable jungle of her mind. “We’ll all end up here, in the end.”

“Or we’ll die young.” Don Fernando’s mouth twisted. “Except me, of course.” He nodded. “‘No one here gets out alive.’”

“‘Five to One.’” Martha recognized the line written by Jim Morrison.

He smiled. “It isn’t only Bach and Jacques Brel I’m partial to.”

Martha turned back. “How can I leave her here?”

“You left her before.” She turned on him, but before she could say anything, he said, “That’s not a criticism, Martha, simply a statement of fact.” He approached her. “And the fact is, she’s best off here. She needs care, and these people are caring.”

She turned, looked down at her mother’s sleeping face. Something had happened. She no longer saw herself there.

At length, Peter slept, dreaming of the Cobalt running at full throttle, while he desperately swam to keep from being chopped to kelp by the whirring prop. The next morning, as he disinterestedly poured cold cereal into a gaily striped bowl, he got a brainstorm.

Firing up his laptop, he Googled
recursive
, which referred him back to the noun
recursion
, whose main definition in the postmodern world was “the process of defining a function or calculating a number by the repeated application of an algorithm.” That told him nothing, but when he looked up the origin, he discovered that the Latin
recursio
meant “running back, or repeating a step in a procedure,” as in, say, shampooing: lather, rinse, repeat.

That led him to consider that there might be a recursive
within
the
Recursive
. The trouble there was that he had checked everything within the boat and had found nothing. But what about the area
around Recursive
?

He showered and dressed in record time, drove back to the marina, where he arrived at slip 31 and jumped onto the Cobalt. It looked just the same as it had yesterday. He moved methodically around the boat, peering over the side. There was nothing on the port side, bow, or stern, and it seemed the same for the starboard side, until he reached down under the second bumper and found a rope tied to the underside.

With mounting excitement, he hauled up the rope, hand over hand, until he had retrieved what was on the end of it: an immense rubberized watertight satchel. With some difficulty, owing to the weight, he set it on one of the aft cushions. Sure enough, the satchel was locked. When he inserted the key and turned it to the right, the lock popped open.

Removing it, the satchel’s top opened like an animal’s jaws. Inside, he found stacks of five-hundred- and thousand-dollar bills. All the breath went out of him. Instinctively, he looked around, peering through the bright morning sunlight to see if anyone was watching him. No one was. The few people he had passed earlier had taken their boats out. The marina was deserted.

He spent the next half hour counting the bills, adding up the sums of the stacks, which, he quickly discovered, each held the same number of bills. When he was finished, he couldn’t believe the figure he had come up with.

Good God
, he thought.
Thirty million dollars!

Bourne and Rebeka deplaned in Mexico City with the Babylonian on their backs.

“There’s no way out,” Rebeka said. “He has us trapped in here.”

“There’s still customs and immigration to consider.” Bourne was aware of the Babylonian, ambling five or six people behind them. He needed to stay there in order to keep them in sight.

“We should split up,” Rebeka said, passport out and open as they joined the first-class line to be processed into Mexico.

“That’s what he’ll expect us to do,” Bourne said. “I imagine he’ll welcome that, a man like him. Divide and conquer.”

They inched forward toward the white line painted on the concrete floor that marked the last staging area before handing over their passports.

“Do you have a better idea?” Rebeka asked.

“I will,” Bourne said, “in a minute.”

He looked around at all the faces—the men and women, the children of all ages, the families traveling with strollers and the paraphernalia endemic to babies and toddlers alike. Three teenage girls with teddy bear backpacks giggled and did a little dance, a woman drew up in an airline wheelchair, a three-year-old broke away from her mother and began wandering through a thicket of people who laughed and patted her on the head.

“What we have to do,” Bourne said, moving, “is make something happen.”

“What?” But she followed him as he stepped over to the longer line of economy-class passengers that snaked through the hall.

He came up beside the woman in the wheelchair. She was dressed in a chic pinkish Chanel suit, her thick black hair pulled severely back from her face in a complex bun. Bending over, he said, “You shouldn’t be waiting on a long line. Let me give you a hand.”

“You’re very kind,” she said.

“Tim Moore,” he said, giving the name on the passport he was using.

“Constanza.” She had a face in which the DNA of the Olmec and their Spanish conquerors mingled as it had in their centuries-old bloody battles. Her skin was the color of honey, her features hard, almost brutal in the unquestionable beauty that seemed timeless. “Honestly, I don’t know why they deposited me here. The attendant said to wait just a moment, but she hasn’t come back.”

“Don’t worry,” Bourne said. “My wife and I will have you through here in no time.”

With Rebeka following, he pushed the wheelchair off the long line and headed straight through to the head of the first-class line.

“Halevy is watching,” Rebeka whispered to Bourne.

“Let him,” he said. “There’s nothing he can do.”

Constanza cocked her head, her clever eyes questioning. “What’s that, Mr. Moore?”

“I’ll need your passport.”

“Of course.” She handed it over as they came up to the immigration cubicle.

He handed over the three passports. The official opened them, stared into their faces. “This woman is a Mexican citizen. You two should be in that line over there.”

“Señor and Señora Moore are with me,” Constanza said. “As you can see, I can’t get around without them.”

The official grunted. “Business or pleasure?” he said to Bourne in a bored voice.

“We’re on vacation,” Bourne said, matching the official’s tone.

Their passports were duly stamped and Bourne pushed the wheelchair through into the baggage claim area, Rebeka just behind him. They stayed with Constanza, helping her with her baggage, while, some yards away, the Babylonian fumed, pacing, helpless to come nearer.