Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (32 page)

“Precisely.”

The face had a name, of course, and he knew it as well as he knew his own—a name that was hideous, a name he was determined to eradicate as if it had never existed.

“I have worked long and hard cultivating this conduit. He can be saved from the oncoming storm,” Li said with the full force of his conviction.

“As long as you aren’t exposed, as long as our plan isn’t jeopardized, you have my permission.” He cocked his head to one side, concentrating on both his important conversation with Li and the equally important photo. He grunted. “Do not disappoint me, Li.”

While Li Wan rambled his gratitude, Ouyang tapped the eyes of the man in the photo, first one, then the other, in his mind’s eye blinding him before he was killed, and his name echoed and reechoed in his mind.

Jason Bourne, Jason Bourne, Jason Bourne.

"Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Soraya smiled when she saw Peter enter her room, heard his familiar voice. But seeing him in his bedraggled clothes, her

expression immediately changed. “What the hell happened to you?” 

“Thirty million dollars.” He pulled up a chair and began to relate the story of the increasingly visible web that included Richards, Core Energy, Tom Brick, Florin Popa, all leading to the thirty million sunk in a watertight satchel off the
Recursive
at Dockside Marina. 

“What does it all mean?” Soraya asked when she had absorbed the various strands.

Peter shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” 

“What about Richards?”

The same question Hendricks had asked him. “I’ve decided to give him his lead. Whatever Brick is up to, it runs through Richards.” 

“Won’t Brick be suspicious that you didn’t wait around to kill whoever it was he was bringing back to the house in Virginia?”

 Peter hitched his chair forward. “I don’t think so. Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t stay around. I think that was just a test.” 

“An intelligence test.”

“Brick doesn’t trust me fully.” Peter shrugged. “Why should he? As far as he’s concerned, I crawled out of a hole and saved him a lot of grief. But so what? In his business, he’s got to run me through a maze before he can accept me completely.”

“So you’ll contact him again?”

Peter winked at her. “You bet.” He stood up. “Now relax. I want to see you on your feet before long.”

Don Tulio sat in his rental car watching as Sam Anderson, his team having scoured and dredged the marina basin for any sign of the man who had attacked his boss, berated the crew and sent them back down to try again. 

Anderson stood giving orders to a man Don Tulio knew from conversations overheard as Sanseverino. Sanseverino nodded and went back up to the parking lot. Don Tulio followed Sanseverino as he drove Peter’s car to the hospital. Don Tulio was an expert driver; he knew how to tail someone without being discovered.

Now he sat in his car, watching as Sanseverino trotted into the ER entrance and disappeared into the bowels of the hospital complex. He had no intention of following Sanseverino inside, where there was sure to be security and every chance he would be made. Why bother, when all he had to do was wait here for
jefe
Marks to emerge, get in his car, and drive off? Don Tulio, time running out, would follow him and take his pound of flesh. The plane he had chartered back to Mexico City was ready and waiting for him.

As to the thirty million, he knew for certain it was gone. The
federales
had it, which meant it had evaporated like smoke. His lieutenants, having decapitated the sacrificial lamb Don Tulio had chosen from within his ranks, were hard at work replacing the thirty million. Rehabilitating his image with Don Maceo weighed just as heavily on his mind. Don Maceo would have already been placated, at least temporarily, by the head the Aztec’s lieutenant had delivered. But he would not be impressed until the money was returned and Don Tulio delivered the second head and informed him to whom it belonged.

The Aztec checked the 911 handgun, its hollow-point ammo, one more time. Then, setting the gun on the seat next to his gravity knife, he leaned his head back, closing his eyes halfway. He had developed the ability of sleeping with his eyes half-open, like a reptile. Nothing got by him when he was in this state. His mind relaxed and rested while his senses remained on alert. It was this peculiar ability that alerted him to
jefe
Marks emerging from the hospital, accompanied by Sanseverino. The two men went directly to Marks’s car. A brief altercation broke out as Sanseverino insisted on driving. Marks acquiesced, and his deputy got behind the wheel while Marks himself climbed in beside him.

Don Tulio turned on his ignition a moment before Sanseverino did. He followed the car out of the hospital parking lot at a discreet distance, varying the number of vehicles between them. As he drove, he hummed a
cumbia
tune that reminded him of sleek arms and powerful legs, sweat-slicked bodies, minds lubricated with mezcal, all moving to the insistent beat.

Sorry we haven’t found him yet, boss,” Sanseverino said as he negotiated a turn. “Maybe the currents took him, ’cause if he was down there the divers would’ve found him by now. The current was sucking out, they told me, so Anderson sent them down to search a wider circle.”

“Dammit,” Peter said, “I needed to ID him in order to follow the money trail back to its source. Without him, we’re at a dead end.”

“Dead is dead,” Sanseverino said.

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Peter grumbled. He was in a foul mood.
Everything is going wrong today
, he thought, refusing to admit how worried he was about Soraya. Plus, he didn’t like that she had shut him out; it wasn’t like her.

“Anderson said to leave it and go home,” Sanseverino said. “Take the day and night to recuperate.”

Peter shook his head. “With Soraya down, Treadstone is undermanned as it is.”

“We’re kind of circling, you realize that?” Sanseverino said. “I have no idea where we’re going.”

“Take a deep breath.” Peter pulled out his mobile. “In a moment you will.” He looked up Delia’s mobile in his address book and clicked on the highlighted number. A moment later, Delia answered.

“It’s Peter,” he said, brusquely. “We need to talk.”

“I’m—”

“Now.”

“Uh-oh.”

He grinned fiercely. “That’s right. ‘Uh-the-fuck-oh.’ Where are you?”

“Out of the office. On a case.”

“I’ll come to you.” He snapped his fingers. “Address.”

Don Tulio followed
jefe
Marks’s car out into the countryside, moving farther and farther away from the more populated areas of the section of Virginia closest to DC. Quite soon, he was lost. The rental car wasn’t equipped with a GPS, but his mobile was. He fumbled it out with one hand and turned it on.

Not that it mattered exactly where they were, not at this moment, anyway. All he had to do was to keep his eye on the car in front of him and, as the traffic began to thin out, figure out ways to keep his own car from being spotted by either Marks or Sanseverino. This included some fancy maneuvering, but luckily, even when the traffic was at its sparsest, there were always trucks to hide behind for a time.

Don Tulio narrowed his cruel Aztec eyes against the glare and kept pumping his foot on the accelerator. It wouldn’t do to maintain a constant speed, which would mirror that of Marks’s car, and, therefore, bring attention to himself. By moving in and out of the sight line of their mirrors, he made himself all but invisible.

They had been traveling for close to forty minutes when Don Tulio saw the large red-brick building off to their right: Silversun High School. A group of official-looking vehicles were parked helter-skelter near its front entrance. Peering more closely, he spotted figures in loose-fitting jackets with atf printed on their backs in oversized bright yellow letters.

A moment later, Marks’s car slowed, preparing to take the next right onto the approach road to the school.

This is it,
the Aztec thought.
I’ll never get a better chance.

Accelerating, he came up right behind Marks’s car as if from nowhere. The touch of a button slid his window all the way down. The Chevy sped up. He grabbed his 911 off the seat. Then he swerved to the right, overtaking the Chevy within seconds.

As he came abreast of the car, he glimpsed
jefe
Marks’s pale face turn inquiringly toward him. He saw the muzzle of Marks’s police Glock. Aiming the 911 directly at Marks’s face, he squeezed off one, two, three shots, then he stamped on the brakes, negating any chance of return fire.

Ahead of him, the Chevy slewed wildly, then swerved, tires squealing as the driver put on the brakes and began a sweeping U-turn. That was the Aztec’s cue. Accelerating again, he broadsided the Chevy, staving in both doors on the driver’s side. His own front end crumpled, jarring him so hard his teeth clacked together.

His head snapped back against the seat and the airbag deployed, but he was ready, puncturing it with the point of his knife, slashing it away from him with the blade. The seat belt was jammed, and he used the knife like a machete to hack through it as if it were a fibrous jungle vine.

He kicked out, impatient now to view his handiwork, and the door swung open, screaming a bit as metal abraded metal. The hinges were askew. He got out, a little dazed by the sudden brute force of gravity rushing back in.

Staggering over to the Chevy, he could see that Sanseverino had been caught in the broadside. His entire left side, trapped by the airbag, was crushed by the metal hammer of the collapsed door. His head was canted at an unnatural angle, as if he were inspecting the footwell. He wasn’t inspecting anything, the Aztec observed. He was dead.

Bending over, he peered more deeply into the Chevy’s interior. Where was
jefe
Marks? The door on his side was open, the window down, but there was no sign of a body, alive or dead. How could that be? The Aztec had put three bullets through the Chevy’s window, as close to point-blank as it was possible to get in a moving vehicle.

The most infinitesimal movement alerted him, and, hurrying around the front of the wreck, he saw Marks, who looked as if he were pinned under his own car. The
jefe
was conscious.

“How?” the Aztec said in English. “I shot you three times. How did you survive without a scratch?”

Marks looked up at Don Tulio and said in a voice like the rustle of dry leaves, “Bulletproof glass.”

“Fuck!”

“Who are you?”

“The one who brings your death.” The Aztec stalked toward where Peter lay. “You stole my thirty million, fucker.”

“And who did
you
steal that thirty million from?”

Don Tulio held the 911 in one hand, his opened knife in the other. Now he pointed the handgun at Marks. “Since you’ll be separated from your head thirty seconds from now, I’ll tell you. Don Maceo Encarnación.”

“I spit on Don Maceo Encarnación,” the
jefe
said. “And I spit on you.”

Within the blink of an eye, Peter brought the Glock he had been clutching into view, and, squeezing the trigger, shot the man standing over him in the left side of his chest. But Peter heard two shots, not one. As the man staggered back, Peter felt a blinding pain engulf him. He tried to breathe, coughed, felt a hot gout of blood rushing into his throat, choking him. He could not breathe. His heart labored as he lost strength.

So this is how it ends
, he thought. And, strangely, he didn’t seem to mind.

REBEKA LAY UNMOVING on top of Bourne as the hearse drove through the burnt, bitter pre-dawn of Mexico City.

They were enclosed within the polished elm coffin Maceo Encarnación had ordered for Maria-Elena, his deceased cook. Diego de la Rivera himself sat beside the driver. The coffin, locked into its stainless-steel rails, was the only thing in the capacious rear. Black curtains covered the windows.

“The coffin is how Maceo Encarnación has the deceased travel back to the mortuary,” Diego de la Rivera had told them just before they had departed. “The coffin material and style are already picked out. His security guards know me; they’ll look into the interior, but they won’t bother searching it. Trust me.”

Events transpired just as Diego de la Rivera had said. The hearse was stopped outside the gates. From inside the coffin, Rebeka and Bourne could hear muffled voices. A moment later, the wide rear door opened, more voices were heard, closer this time. Then the door slammed shut. Some rude laughter, then the hearse was granted entry to Maceo Encarnación’s estate. Gravel crunched beneath the hearse’s tires as the vehicle traveled at a funereal pace along the semicircular driveway, then around to the rear of the villa.

More voices, less querulous. Again, the rear door was opened, but this time the coffin was unlocked from its position, and Diego de la Rivera and his driver carried it into the house, presumably to where Maria-Elena was laid out.

At some point, the coffin was set down. A triple knock followed by a double informed them that their journey was at an end. The coffin’s lid was lifted up, and, like vampires in the night, they climbed out into the dimness of a room that smelled of perfume and death.

Apart from the corpse of the unfortunate Maria-Elena, Diego de la Rivera and his driver were the only other people visible. They were in the woman’s bedroom. It was filled with trinkets, entire shelves covered with miniature skulls and skeletons, gaily painted in Day-Glo colors, obviously collected over the years from Day of the Dead festivals. The body lay on the white cotton coverlet, which was edged in decorative eyelets. Maria-Elena had been a handsome woman: wide Olmec face, large in bosom and hips, but with a narrow waist. Her hands were folded on her stomach. She wore a yellow dress printed with red poppies, making her seem as festive as the papier-mâché skulls and skeletons that surrounded her.

“There’s an armed man outside the door. He’s the one who greeted us at the back door,” Diego de la Rivera whispered to them. “
Vaya con Dios
. You’re on your own from now on.”