The Bourne Deception (21 page)

Soraya took up a pair of binoculars and began to scan for any anomalous object, but she wasn’t optimistic. The desert itself was their worst enemy because the winds would have shifted the sand, most likely burying anything the terrorists might have inadvertently left behind.

“Anything?” Chalthoum said twenty minutes later.

“No—wait!” She took her eyes from the binocular cups and pointed off to their right. “There, at two o’clock—about a hundred yards.”

Chalthoum turned in that direction and put on some speed. “What do you see?”

“I don’t know—it looks like a smudge,” she said as she trained the binoculars on the spot.

She jumped out of the jeep even as it reached the location. Staggering for two steps from the momentum and the softness of the sand, she pushed on. She was squatting down in front of the dark patch by the time Chalthoum reached her.

“It’s nothing,” he said with obvious disgust, “just a blackened branch.”

“Maybe not.”

Reaching out, she used her cupped hands to excavate away from the branch, which was almost fully buried. As the hole widened, Chalthoum helped keep the sand from running back into the hole. About eighteen inches down, her fingertips found something cool and hard.

“The stick is caught on something!” she said excitedly.

But what she unearthed was an empty can of soda, the end of the stick lodged into its opened pop-top. When she pulled the stick out the can fell over, causing a shower of gray ash to scatter from the opening.

“Someone made a fire here,” she said. “But there’s no way to tell how long the ashes have been here.”

“Maybe there is a way.”

Chalthoum was staring intently at the spill of ashes, which was more or less the shape of the cone of yellow on the laptop’s screen representing the margin of error for the missile launch site.

“Did your father teach you about Nowruz?”

“The Persian pre-revolutionary festival of the new year?” Soraya nodded.

“Yes, but we never celebrated it.”

“It’s had a resurgence in Iran over the past couple of years.” Chalthoum upended the can, shook out the contents, and nodded. “There is more ash here than one could reasonably expect for a cooking fire. Besides, a terrorist cell would have pre-prepared food that wouldn’t require heating.”

Soraya was racking her brains for the rituals of Nowruz, but in the end she needed Chalthoum to give her a refresher course.

“A bonfire is lit and each member of the family jumps over it while asking for the pale complexion winter breeds to be replaced by healthy red cheeks. Then a feast is consumed during which stories are told for the benefit of the children. As the festival passes from day into night, the fire dies out, then the ashes, which represent winter’s bad luck, are buried off in the fields.”

“I can hardly believe that Nowruz was observed here by Iranian terrorists,” Soraya said.

Chalthoum used the stick to poke around in the ashes. “That looks like a bit of eggshell and here is a piece of burned orange rind. Both an egg and an orange are used at the end of the festival.”

Soraya shook her head. “They’d never risk someone seeing the fire.”

“True enough,” Chalthoum said, “but this would be a perfect place to bury the bad luck of winter.” He looked at her. “Do you know when Nowruz began?”

She thought a moment, then her pulse began to race. “Three days ago.”

Chalthoum nodded. “And at the moment of Sa’at-I tahvil, when the old year ends and the new one begins, what happens?”

Her heart flipped over. “Cannons are fired.”

“Or,” Chalthoum said, “a Kowsar 3 missile.”

BOURNE
AND
TRACY
ATHERTON
entered Seville late on the third afternoon of the Feria de Abril, the weeklong festival that grips the entire city at Eastertime like a fever. Only weeks before, during the Semana Santa, masses of hooded penitents followed behind magnificently adorned floats, tiered and filigreed like baroque wedding cakes, filled with ranks of white candles and sprays of white flowers, at the center of which sat images of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Bands of colorfully dressed musicians accompanied the floats, playing music both melancholy and martial.

Now as then avenues were blocked off to vehicular traffic, and even on foot many streets were all but impassable because, it seemed, all of Seville was out taking part in or observing the eye-popping pageant.

In the packed Avenida de Miraflores, they pushed their way into an Internet café. It was dark and narrow, the manager behind a cramped desk in back. The entire left-hand wall was taken up with computer stations hooked up to the Internet. Bourne paid for an hour, then waited along the wall for one of the stations to free up. The place was dim with smoke; everyone had a cigarette except the two of them.

“What are we doing here?” Tracy said in a hushed voice.

“I need to find a photo of one of the Prado’s Goya experts,” Bourne said.

“If I can convince Hererra I’m this man, he’ll know he’s got a very clever fake rather than a real lost Goya.”

Tracy’s face lit up and she laughed. “You really are a piece of work, Adam.” All at once a frown overtook her. “But if you present yourself as this Goya expert, how on earth are you going to get any money out of Don Fernando for your consortium?”

“Simple enough,” Bourne said. “The expert leaves and I return as Adam Stone.”

A seat opened up and Tracy began to move toward it when Bourne stopped her with a taut shake of his head. When she looked at him questioningly, he spoke to her very softly.

“The man who just walked in—no, don’t look at him. I saw him on our flight.”

“So what?”

“He was on my Thai Air flight as well,” Bourne said. “He’s traveled with me all the way from Bali.”

She turned her back to him, using a mirror to glance at him briefly. “Who is he?” Her eyes narrowed. “What does he want?”

“I don’t know,” Bourne said. “But you noticed the scar on the side of his neck that runs up into his jaw?”

She risked another glance in the mirror, then nodded.

“Whoever sent him wants me to know he’s there.”

“Your rivals?”

“Yes. They’re thugs,” he improvised. “It’s a typical intimidation tactic.”

A look of alarm crossed Tracy’s face and she shrank away from him. “What kind of dirty business are you in?”

“It’s precisely what I told you,” Bourne said. “But the venture capital business is riddled with industrial espionage because being first to market with a new product or idea can often mean the difference between Google or Microsoft buying you out for half a billion dollars or going bust.”

This explanation appeared to calm her slightly, but she was clearly still on edge. “What are you going to do?”

“For the moment, nothing.”

Bourne crossed the floor and sat down, and Tracy followed him. As he brought up the Museo del Prado on Google, she bent low over his shoulder and said, “Don’t bother. The man you want is Professor Alonzo Pecunia Zuiga.”

This was the Prado’s Goya expert who’d authenticated Hererra’s Goya. Bourne recalled seeing his letter in her attaché case.

Without a word, he typed in the name. He had to scroll through several news items before he came upon a photo of the professor, who was accepting an award from one of the many Spanish foundations concerned with promoting Goya’s history and work worldwide.

Alonzo Pecunia Zuigawas a slim man who appeared to be in his midfifties. He had a dapper spade-shaped beard and thick eyebrows that shaded his eyes like a visor. Bourne checked the date of the photo to be certain it was current. Zooming in on the photo, he printed it out, which cost him an extra couple of euros. Using Google Local, he looked up the addresses of a number of shops.

“Our first stop,” he said to Tracy, “is just off Paseo de Cristóbal Colón, around the corner from the Teatro Maestranza.”

“What about the man with the scar?” she whispered.

Bourne closed out the screen, then went into the browser cache and deleted both the site history and the cookies from the sites he’d visited.

“I’m counting on him following us,” he said.

“God.” Tracy gave a brief shudder. “I’m not.”

The broad paseo ran beside the eastern branch of the Guadalquivir River in the El Arenal
barrio
of the city. It was the historical district called home by many of the Semana Santa brotherhoods. From the beautiful Maestranza bullring, next door to the massive theater, they could see the thirteenthcentury Torre del Oro, the great tower, once clad in gold, part of the fortifications to protect Seville from its ancient enemies, the Muslims of North Africa, the fundamentalist Almohads, Berbers from Morocco who were driven out of Seville and all of Andalusia in 1230 by the armies of the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragón.

“Have you ever been to a
corrida
?” Bourne asked.

“No. I hate the idea of bullfighting.”

“Here’s your chance to see for yourself.” Taking her by the hand, he went to the ticket office by the main gate and bought two
sol barreras
, the only front seats left, which were in the sun.

Tracy hung back. “I don’t think I want to do this.”

“You either come with me,” Bourne said, “or I leave you here to be questioned by Scarface.”

She stiffened. “He’s followed us here?”

Bourne nodded. “Come on.” As he handed his tickets over and pushed her through the entrance, he added, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. Trust me.”

A ferocious roaring signaled that the
corrida
had already begun. The place was filled with tiers of seats, above which rose a continuous line of decorative arches. As they made their way down the aisle, the first bull was in the process of being tenderized via the
suerte de picar
. The
picadores
, mounted on horses, padded and blindfolded for the animals’ protection, drove their short lances into the bull’s neck while he expended energy attempting to toss their mounts. The horses had oil-soaked cloths in their ears to keep them from shying at the roaring of the crowd. Their vocal cords had been cut to render them mute so as not to distract the bull.

“Okay,” Bourne said, handing her a ticket. “I want you to go get a beer from the stand over there. Drink it in back with plenty of people around you, then make your way to our seats.”

“And where will you be?”

“Never mind,” he said, “just do as I’ve told you and wait for me in the seat.”

He’d caught sight of the man with the pink scar, who’d entered the
corrida
high up to give himself a better vantage point. Bourne watched Tracy picking her way back to the refreshment stalls, then he took out his cell phone and pretended to talk to a contact he wanted Scarface to believe he was meeting here. With an emphatic nod, he put the cell away and made his way around the ring. He had to find a place in shadow, private enough for a meet, where he could handle Scarface without interference.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scarface glance briefly at Tracy before moving down one of the aisles that intersected with the lowest tier where Bourne was heading.

Bourne had been here before and knew the basic layout. He was looking for the
toril
, the enclosure where the bulls were kept, because he knew a corridor near it led to the toilets on this side of Maestranza. A couple of young
toreros
were leaning on the bull gate. Beside them the matador, having exchanged his pink-and-gold cape for the red one, stood still as death, waiting for the moment of
suerte de matar
, when he would enter the ring with nothing but his sword, his cape, and his athletic skill to bring down the snorting, panting beast. At least, that’s how these
corrida
fans saw it. Others, like the Asociación para la defensa del anima, saw quite another picture.

As he neared the
toril
, there came a jolt against the door that sent the young
toreros
scattering in fright. The matador briefly turned his attention to the animal in the pen.

“Good, you are eager to come out,” he said in Spanish, “into the smell of blood.”

Then he returned his attention to the
corrida
proper where, as the bull tired, his moment was upon him.

”
Fuera!
” came the fevered cries from the aficionados. ”
Fuera!
” Get out!

they called to the
picadores
, for fear their lances were weakening the bull too much, that the final confrontation would not be the blood match they craved.

Now, as the
picadores
backed their mounts away from the beast, the matador was on the move, entering the
corrida
as his underlings exited it. The tumult from the crowd was almost ear shattering. No one paid the slightest attention to Bourne as he reached the area near the
toril
, save for Scarface who, Bourne could see now, had the tattoo of three skulls on the opposite side of his neck. They were crude, ugly, without doubt prison tattoos, most likely received inside a Russian penitentiary. And this man was more than an intimidator. A skull meant that he was a professional killer: three skulls, three kills.

Bourne was at the very end of this section of the stands—beyond was a decorative archway that led back to the area under the stands. Just below him was the wall that divided the pit where the
toreros
crouched to evade the charges of the bull. At the end of that, to Bourne’s right, was the
toril
.

Scarface was rapidly approaching, moving down the aisle and across the tiers like a ghost or a wraith. Bourne turned and passed through the archway and down an incline into the shadowed interior. Immediately he was hit by a miasma of human urine and strong animal musk. To his left was the concrete corridor that led to the toilets. There was a door along the wall to his right, outside of which was a uniformed guard.

As he walked toward this tall, slim man a figure blotted out the daylight: Scarface. Bourne approached the guard, who told him, rather brusquely, he had no business being in an area so close to the bulls. Smiling, Bourne placed himself between the guard and Scarface, then reached out and, talking amiably to the guard, pressed the artery at the side of his neck. Even as the guard reached for his weapon, Bourne blocked him with his other hand. The man tried to fight, but Bourne, moving swiftly, used an elbow to temporarily paralyze the guard’s right shoulder. He was rapidly losing consciousness from loss of blood to his brain and, as he fell forward, Bourne held him up, continued talking to him because he wanted Scarface to think that this was the man he’d spoken to on his cell, a colleague of the man Bourne had come here to see. It was essential that he keep the fiction going now that Scarface was closing in.