The Bourne Objective

13


WHEN SORAYA ARRIVED at the Tucson airport, she went straight to the line of rental-car booths and showed the photo of “Stanley Kowalski” around to all the personnel without getting a hit. That name was not on their books—not that she had expected it to come up. A professional of Arkadin’s skill level wouldn’t be careless enough to rent a car under the same false name he’d used at Immigration. Undaunted, she sought out the managers of each company. Because she had the date and the time that Arkadin passed through the airport, she had arranged to arrive at more or less the same hour. She asked the managers who had been on duty nine days ago. The same personnel were on duty save one, a woman with the unlikely name of Biffy Flisser, who had quit to take a hospitality position at the Best Western airport hotel. None of the salespeople recognized Arkadin.
The manager was gracious enough to call the Best Western, and Biffy Flisser was waiting for Soraya when she walked into the cool, airy lobby. They sat in the lounge and had drinks while they spoke. Biffy had a pleasant nature and readily agreed to help Soraya with her search.
“Yeah, I know him,” she said, tapping the surveillance photo on Soraya’s phone. “I mean, I don’t really know him, but yeah, he rented a car on that date.”
“You’re sure.”
“Positive.” Biffy nodded. “He wanted a long-term lease. A month or six weeks, he said. I told him in that case we could give him a special rate and he seemed pleased.”
Soraya waited a moment. “Do you recall his name?” she asked casually.
“This is important, isn’t it?”
“It would certainly help me out.”
“Let me see.” She drummed her lacquered fingernails against the tabletop. “Frank, I think, Frank something…” She concentrated all the harder, then brightened. “That’s it! Frank Stein. Frank Norman Stein, actually.”
Frank N. Stein. Soraya burst out into laughter.
“What?” Biffy seemed confused. “What’s so funny?”
This Arkadin was a real card, Soraya thought on her way back to the airport. Then she was brought up short. Or was he? Why would he deliberately use a name that might stick out? Possibly he planned to ditch the car somewhere across the border.
She felt suddenly deflated. Even so, she continued her investigation. Seeking out the rental-car manager, she gave him the fake name Arkadin had used. “What car did he rent?”
“Just a moment.” The manager turned to his computer terminal, input the name and the date. “A black Chevy, an old one, an ’87. A heap, really, but apparently that satisfied him.”
“You keep cars that long?”
The manager nodded. “For one thing, here in the desert they don’t rust. For another, since so many of our cars are stolen, it pays to rent out the old ones. Besides, customers like the gentle prices.”
Soraya copied down the information, including the license plate tag, but without much hope that if she even found the car it would lead to Arkadin. Then she rented a car of her own, thanked the manager, and walked into a café, where she sat down and ordered an iced coffee. She’d learned the hard way not to order iced tea outside New York, Washington, or LA. Americans liked their iced tea achingly sweet.
While she waited, she opened a detailed map of Arizona and northern Mexico. Mexico was a big country, but she guessed Arkadin might be somewhere within a hundred-mile radius of the airport. Otherwise, why specifically choose Tucson when he could have flown into Mexico City or Acapulco? No, she decided, his destination had to be northwestern Mexico, possibly even just across the border.
Her iced coffee came, and she drank it black and unsugared, savoring the acidic bite that chased its way down her throat and into her stomach. She drew a circle around the airport that encompassed one hundred miles. That was her search area.
The moment Soraya left his office, the manager took out a small key from his trouser pocket and unlocked the lowest drawer on the right side of his desk. Inside were files, a handgun registered in his name, and a head shot photo. He brought the photo into the light, staring at it for several moments. Then, pursing his lips, he turned the photo over, read the local number off to himself, and dialed it on his office phone.
When the male voice answered, he said, “Someone came looking for your man—the man in the photo you gave me… She said her name was Soraya Moore, she gave me no reason to disbelieve her… No official ID, no… I did just as you said… No sweat on that score… No, of course you don’t understand. What I mean is that it’ll be easy, I rented her a car…”
“… a Toyota Corolla, silver-blue, license tag… D as in David, V as in Victor, N as in Nancy, three-three-seven-eight.”
There was a bit more, but it was of no interest to Soraya. The tiny electronic bug she had affixed to the underside of the manager’s desk was working perfectly, the manager’s voice came through with crystal clarity. Pity she couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line. However, she now knew that someone had staked out the Tucson airport, possibly others near the border with Mexico. She also knew that whoever these people were they were going to follow her into Mexico. One thing stood out: The person the manager had called didn’t understand American jargon. That left out Mexicans, who this close to the border made an almost fetishistic habit of learning every possible English colloquialism and street phrasing. The person had to be a foreigner, possibly Russian. And if, as she suspected, he was one of Arkadin’s people put in place to look out for Dimitri Maslov’s hit squad, this just might be her lucky day.
The first thing Peter Marks did on disembarking at London’s Heathrow Airport was call Willard.
“Where are you?” Marks said.
“The less you know the better.”
Marks bridled at that. “The last thing anyone needs in the field is to fly blind,” he snapped.
“I’m trying to protect you from Liss. When he calls you—and believe me he will—you’ll tell him truthfully that you don’t know where I am, and for you that will be the end of it.”
Peter showed his official government ID to Immigration, and they stamped his passport and waved him through. “But not for you.”
“Let me worry about that, Peter. You have enough on your plate getting the ring from Bourne.”
“I have to find him first,” Marks said, approaching the baggage carousel.
“You’ve had dealings with Bourne,” Willard said. “I trust you’ll find him.”
Marks was outside now, in a typically dreary London morning. He glanced at his watch. It was appallingly early and already the sky was spitting rain in fitful bursts.
“No one really knows Bourne,” he said, “not even Soraya.”
“That’s because nothing about him makes sense,” Willard pointed out. “He’s completely unpredictable.”
“Well, you can hardly complain. I mean Treadstone made him this way.”
“It absolutely did not,” Willard said hotly. “Whatever happened to him, the form of amnesia he’s suffered has changed him irrevocably. Speaking of which, I want you to see a Chief Inspector Lloyd-Philips. Bourne may have been involved in a murder at the Vesper Club in the West End last night. Start looking for him there.”
Marks made several quick notes on the palm of his hand. “You’re the one who isn’t understandable.” He was standing in line for a taxi, periodically shuffling forward. Speaking in a low voice, he covered his mouth with his hand. “You went out of your way to help him in Bali, now you seem to want to examine him like a circus freak.”
“He is a freak, Peter. A very dangerous freak—he’s already murdered Noah Perlis and now he may be implicated in another death. How much more proof do you need that he’s out of control? I don’t want you to forget that fact or lose sight of our goal. The Treadstone training made him into an ultimate warrior, but then something unforeseen—a freak of fate or nature, whatever you choose to call it—altered him further. He became something unknown, something more. Which is why I’ve pitted him against Arkadin. As I’ve already explained to you, Arkadin, being the first of Treadstone’s graduates, was subjected to a form of extreme training that—well, after he escaped and disappeared, Conklin decided to modify the training, to scale it back, make it less… extreme.”
Having reached the head of the line, Marks slid into the backseat of the taxi and gave the address of a small hotel he liked in the West End.
“If Treadstone is to go forward, if it’s to be successful, if it’s to fulfill its promise, we must find out who will prevail.” Willard’s voice buzzed in Marks’s ear like a wasp beating against a windowpane. “Depending on who is left alive, we’ll know how to proceed.”
Marks stared out the window, seeing nothing. “I want to get this straight. If Arkadin prevails, you’ll go back to the initial training methodology.”
“With several minor tweaks I’ve got in mind.”
“But what if Bourne kills Arkadin? You don’t know—”
“That’s right, Peter, we’ll be faced with an X-factor. The process will, therefore, take longer. We’ll have to study Bourne in a controlled environment. We’ll—”
“Wait a minute. Are you talking about imprisoning him?”
“Subjecting him to repeated batteries of psychological tests, yes, yes.” Willard sounded impatient, as if he’d made his point but Marks was too stupid to get it. “This is the essence of Treadstone, Peter. This is what Alex Conklin devoted his life to.”
“But why? I just don’t get it.”
“The Old Man didn’t either, not really.” Willard sighed. “Sometimes I think Alex was the only American to learn from the tragic mistakes of the war in Vietnam. It was his special genius, you see, to anticipate Iraq and Afghanistan. He saw the new world coming. He knew that the old methods of waging war were as antiquated, as certain to fail as the Napoleonic code.
“While the Pentagon was spending billions on stockpiling smart bombs, nuclear submarines, stealth bombers, supersonic jet fighters, Alex was concentrated on building the one weapon of war he knew would be effective: human beings. Treadstone’s mission from the very first day of its inception was to build the perfect human weapon: fearless, merciless, skilled at infiltration, subterfuge, misdirection, mimicry. A weapon of a thousand faces who could be anyone, go anywhere, kill any target without remorse, and return to take on the next mission.
“And now you see what a visionary Alex was. What he saw has, indeed, come to pass. What we create in the Treadstone program will become America’s most potent weapon against its enemies, no matter how clever they are, no matter how remote their location. Do you think I’m going to bury something invaluable? I made a deal with the devil so that Treadstone would be resurrected.”
“And what,” Marks said, “if the devil has other ideas for Treadstone?”
“Then,” Willard replied, “the devil will have to be dealt with in some manner.” There was a slight pause. “Arkadin or Bourne, it makes no difference to me. Only the outcome of their struggle for survival interests me. And either way, I will have them—one or the other—as the prototype for the graduates Treadstone will produce.”
Start at the beginning,” Bourne said. “This has all the earmarks of a nightmare.”
“The long and the short of it,” Ottavio Moreno said with a sigh, “is that you had no right to kill Noah Perlis.”
The two men were in a safe house in Thamesmead, a small developed area directly across the river from the London City Airport. It was one of those modern crackerjack boxes being thrown up all over the sprawling suburbs that were as flimsy as they looked. They had driven there in Moreno’s gray Opel, as anonymous a car as you were likely to find in London. They’d eaten some cold chicken and pasta out of the fridge, washed it down with a bottle of decent South African wine, and then had retired to the living room where they literally threw themselves onto the sofas.
“Perlis killed Holly Moreau.”
“Perlis was business,” Ottavio Moreno pointed out.
“So, I think, was Holly.”
Ottavio Moreno nodded. “But then it became personal, didn’t it?”
Bourne had no good reply to that, since the answer was obvious to both of them.
“Water under the bridge,” Moreno said, taking Bourne’s silence as acquiescence. “The point that you’ve forgotten is that I hired Perlis to find the laptop.”
“He had no laptop; he had the ring.”
Moreno shook his head. “Forget the ring and try to remember the laptop.”
Bourne felt as if he were sinking deeper and deeper into quicksand. “You mentioned the laptop before, but I have no memory of it.”
“In that event I imagine you have no memory of how you stole it from Jalal Essai’s home.”
Bourne shook his head helplessly.
Moreno dug his thumbs into his eyes for a moment. “I see what you meant when you said start at the beginning.”
Bourne, saying nothing, watched him carefully. The constant problem with people arising out of his past was this: Who were they really and were they telling him the truth? A man with no memory isn’t difficult to lie to. In fact, Bourne reflected, it was probably fun to lie to an amnesiac and watch his reactions.
“You were given an assignment to get the laptop computer.”
“By whom?”
Moreno shrugged. “Alex Conklin, I imagine. Anyway, we made contact in Marrakech.”
Morocco again. Bourne sat forward. “Why would I contact you?”
“I was Alex Conklin’s contact there.” When Bourne gave him a skeptical look, he added, “I’m a half brother. My mother is a Berber, from the High Atlas Mountains.”
“Your father got around.”
“Make a joke, okay, it’s all right, I won’t gut you.” Ottavio Moreno laughed. “Christ, this is a f*cked-up world.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Okay, look, my friend. My father had his thumb in a shitload of pies, most of them illegal, yes, I freely admit it. So what? So his business ventures took him to many places around the world, some of them strange.”
“Business wasn’t the only thing he had a healthy appetite for,” Bourne said.
Ottavio Moreno nodded. “Too true. He had an eye for exotic women.”
“Are there any other little half Morenos running around?”
Moreno laughed. “There very well might be, knowing my father. But if there are, I don’t know about them.”
Bourne decided there was nothing more to be gained by taking the subject of the elder Moreno’s love life any farther. “Okay, you say that you were Conklin’s contact in Marrakech.”
“I don’t say it,” Ottavio Moreno said with a slight frown, “I was that man.”
“I suppose you can’t produce any canceled checks from the Treadstone account.”
“Ha, ha,” Moreno said, but it wasn’t a laugh. He took out a pack of Gauloises Blondes, shook one out, and lit up. He stared at Bourne while he blew smoke at the ceiling. At length, he said, “Am I wrong in thinking we’re on the same page?”
“I don’t know. Are we?”
Bourne got up and went into the kitchen to get himself a glass of cold water. He was angry at himself, not Moreno. He knew he was at his most vulnerable at this juncture. He didn’t like being vulnerable. More to the point, in his line of work he couldn’t afford to be.
Returning to the living room, he sat down on an armchair facing the sofa where Ottavio Moreno still sat smoking slowly, as if in meditation. In Bourne’s absence he’d turned on the TV to the BBC news. The sound was off, but the images of the Vesper Club were all too familiar. Lights were flashing off the tops of emergency vehicles and police cars. Personnel emerged from the club’s front door carrying a stretcher. The body on it was draped in a cloth that covered its face. Then the scene switched to a newsreader in the BBC studios, mouthing whatever had been written for him moments before. Bourne gestured and Moreno turned up the volume, but there was nothing for them in the story, and Moreno muted the sound again.
“It will be harder than ever to get out of London now,” Bourne said shortly.
“I know more ways to get out of London than they do.” He gestured at the cop being interviewed on the screen.
“So do I,” Bourne said. “That isn’t the issue.”
Moreno leaned forward, stubbed out the butt in an ugly free-form ashtray, and lit another. “If you’re waiting for me to apologize, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“Too late for apologies,” Bourne said. “What’s so important about the laptop?”
Moreno shrugged.
“Perlis had the ring,” Bourne said. “He killed Holly to get it.”
“The ring is a symbol of the Severus Domna, all members wear it or carry it unobtrusively.”
“That’s it? If there’s nothing else important about it, why did Perlis murder Holly for it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought it would somehow lead him to the laptop.” Again Moreno stubbed out his cigarette. “Look, is all this distrust because Gustavo was my half brother?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Bourne said.
“Yeah, well, my big brother was a f*cking thorn in my side ever since I can remember.”
“Then it’s a good thing for you he’s dead,” Bourne said drily.
Moreno eyed Bourne for a moment. “Jesus Christ, you think I’ve taken over his drug business.”
“I’d be a fool if the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”
Moreno nodded morosely. “Fair enough.” He sat back and spread his hands wide. “Okay, then, how can I prove myself?”
“Up to you.”
Moreno crossed his arms over his chest and thought a moment. “What do you remember about the four of them: Perlis, Holly, Tracy, and Diego Hererra?”
“Virtually nothing,” Bourne said.
“I imagine you asked Diego about them. What did he tell you?”
“I know about their friendship, their romantic entanglements.”
Moreno frowned. “What romantic entanglements?”
When Bourne told him, he laughed. “Mano, your boy Diego dropped one steaming pile of shit on your doorstep. There was no romance among the four of them. There was only friendship—until, that is, Holly started wearing the ring. One of them, maybe Tracy, I don’t know, became interested in the engraving on the inside. The more interested she became in it, the more Perlis’s curiosity was piqued. He took a photo of the engraving and brought it to Oliver Liss, his boss at the time. This led directly to the tragedy of Holly’s death.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I worked for Black River until Alex Conklin recruited me as a Treadstone agent in place. That gave the old boy a good deal of satisfaction—he despised Liss, as corrupt and exploitative an individual as you’re likely to meet in this business. He feasted off other people’s misery, hosed the government mercilessly, and directed his operatives to commit crimes and atrocities the government dared not do itself. Until you helped sink Black River, Liss was about the most successful modern-day agent of chaos, and believe me that’s saying a lot.”
“That still doesn’t explain how—”
“Back in the day, Perlis reported to me, before Liss took charge of him directly and used him to carry out private missions.”
Bourne nodded. “The ring was one of those private missions.”
“It became one. Perlis needed help, so he came to me. I was the only one he trusted. He told me that the moment Liss saw the ring he flipped out. That was when he ordered Perlis to find the laptop.”
“The one you helped me steal from Jalal Essai.”
“That’s right.”
Bourne frowned. “But what happened to it?”
“You were supposed to deliver it to Conklin personally, but you didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You discovered something about the laptop—something, you told me, that it was probable Conklin didn’t want you to know. You took it upon yourself to change the mission on the fly.”
“What did I discover?”
Moreno shrugged. “You never told me, and I was too well trained to ask.”
Bourne was sunk deep in thought. The enigma of the ring was growing with every moment. Considering Liss’s reaction when he saw the ring, it seemed likely that it was in some way connected to the laptop. That was if Moreno was telling him the truth. He felt as if he were in a hall of mirrors, each reflection distorted in a different way so that it was no longer possible to discern reality from carefully constructed fantasy, truth from cleverly worded fiction.
On the TV screen the newsreader had gone on to other stories, in other lands, but the images of Diego Hererra’s corpse being taken out of the Vesper Club continued to flicker through Bourne’s mind. Had it been necessary to kill him, as Moreno had said, or did Moreno have another, darker motive he was keeping from Bourne? The only way to find out the truth was to keep Moreno close to him, and to continue questioning him as subtly as possible until a chink in his armor appeared—or until he proved himself truthful.
“What do you know about Essai?” Bourne asked.
“Besides being a member of the Severus Domna ruling council, not much. He comes from an illustrious family, which dates back all the way to the eleven hundreds, if I’m not mistaken. His ancestors took part in the Moorish invasion of Andalusia. One of them ruled there for a number of years.”
“What about in more modern times?”
“These days no one’s interested in the Berbers or the Amazigh, which we call ourselves.”
“And what of Severus Domna itself?”
“Ah, well, there I can be of some help. First off, I should point out that very little is known about the group. They fly so far below the radar that whatever footprints they leave are all but invisible or easily wiped away. No one knows how large the group is, but members are scattered in virtually every corner of the globe, all in positions of power in governments, businesses, media, and criminal activities. Any industry you care to name they’re in.”
“What’s their aim?” Bourne was thinking of the word Dominion inscribed on the inside of his ring. “What do they want?”
“Power, money, control of world events. Who knows, but that’s a better guess than any other. It’s what everyone wants, isn’t it?”
“If you’re a student of history,” Bourne conceded.
Ottavio Moreno laughed. “So many aren’t.”
Bourne took a breath and let it out slowly. He wondered what it was he’d found out about the laptop that had led him to change the mission. He wasn’t aware of changing any of the Treadstone missions he’d been sent on, if only because he remembered that up until Conklin’s murder he and the Treadstone boss had been on good terms, even friendly ones.
When he mentioned this, Moreno said, “You told me to tell Conklin that Essai didn’t have the laptop, that you didn’t know what had happened to it.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you do that? Treadstone was paying your salary, Conklin was your boss.”
“I’m not altogether certain,” Ottavio Moreno confessed. “Other than there’s a fundamental difference between field and office personnel. The one doesn’t necessarily understand the motives of the other, and vice versa. Out here, if we don’t have each other’s backs, we’re dead meat.” He put the pack of Gauloises away. “When you told me you’d found something fundamental enough to change the mission I believed you.”
So you have come to see the famous Corellos.”
Roberto Corellos, Narsico Skydel’s cousin, smirked at Moira. He sat in a comfortable armchair. The room, spacious, filled with light, with its deep-pile rug, porcelain lamps, paintings on the walls, looked like someone’s living room. But as Moira was about to discover, Bogotá’s prisons weren’t like any others in the world.
“The American press wants to speak with the famous Corellos, now that he’s in La Modelo, now that it’s safe.” He drew a cigar from the breast pocket of his guayabera shirt and with great fanfare bit off the end and lit up, using an old Zippo lighter. With another smirk, he said, “A present from one of my many admirers.” It wasn’t immediately clear whether he meant the robusto or the Zippo.
He blew a cloud of aromatic smoke toward the ceiling and crossed one linen-clad leg over the other. “What newspaper are you with again?”
“I’m a stringer for The Washington Post,” Moira said. These credentials had been presented to her by Jalal Essai. She didn’t know where he had obtained them and she didn’t care. All that concerned her was that they would hold up under scrutiny. He assured her that they would, and so far he’d been right.
She had arrived in Bogotá less than twenty-four hours ago and had obtained immediate permission to interview Corellos. She was mildly surprised that no one seemed to care one way or the other.
“It’s fortunate that you came now. In a week or so I’ll be out of here.” Corellos stared at the glowing tip of the cigar. “This has been something of a vacation for me.” He waved a hand. “I have everything I could want—food, cigars, bitches to f*ck, anything and everything—and I don’t have to lift a finger to get them.”
“Charming,” Moira said.
Corellos eyed her. He was a handsome man, in a rough, hard-muscled way. And with his dark, smoldering eyes and intense masculine presence, he was certainly charismatic. “You have to understand something about Colombia, Se?orita Trevor. The country isn’t in the hands of the government, no, no, no. In Colombia power is split between FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and the drug lords. Left-wing guerrillas and right-wing capitalists, something like that.” His laugh was as raucous and as joyful as a macaw’s cry. He seemed completely relaxed, as if he were at home, instead of in Bogotá’s most notorious prison. “FARC controls forty percent of the country, we control the other sixty.”
Moira was skeptical. “That seems something of an exaggeration, Se?or Corellos. Should I take everything you tell me with a grain of salt?”
Corellos reached behind him and placed a Taurus PT92 semi-automatic pistol on the table between them.
Moira felt sucker-punched.
“It’s fully loaded, you can check it if you want.” He seemed to be enjoying her shocked reaction. “Or you can take it—as a souvenir. Not to worry, there’s plenty more where that came from.”
He laughed again. Then he pushed the Taurus to one side. “Listen, se?orita, like most gringos I think you’re a bit out of your league here. Just last month we had a war in here—the FARC guerrillas against the, uh, businessmen. It was a full-scale conflict, complete with AK-47s, fragmentation grenades, dynamite, you name it. The guards, such as they are, backed away. The army surrounded the prison but wouldn’t venture inside because we’re better armed than they are.” He winked at her. “I’ll bet the justice minister didn’t tell you about that.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“I’m not surprised. It was a bloody f*cking mess in here, let me tell you.”
Moira was fascinated. “How did it end?”
“I stepped in. FARC listens to me. Escúchame, I’m not against them—certainly not what they stand for. The government is a dirty joke, they’ve got that part right, at least. They know I’ll stand with them, that I’ll rally my people to support them—so long as they leave us alone. Me, I don’t give a f*ck about politics—right-wing, left-wing, fascist, socialist, I leave the semantics to the people who have nothing better to do with their stinking lives. Me, I’m too busy making money, that’s my life. Everyone else can rot in hell.”
He tapped the ash off his cigar into a brass ashtray. “I respect FARC. I have to, I’m a pragmatist. They own most of Bogotá, we don’t. And they’re the ones with their own prison release program. An example: Two weeks ago, in La Picota, the other prison here, the f*cking FARC blew out an entire wall, freeing ninety-eight of their comrades. To a gringo such a thing sounds preposterous, impossible, am I right? But that’s life in Colombia.” He chuckled. “Say what you will about FARC, they’ve got balls. I respect that.”
“In fact, Se?or Corellos, unless I’ve misunderstood you, that’s the only thing you respect.” Without another word, Moira reached for the Taurus, broke it down, and put it back together, all the while staring unblinkingly into Corellos’s eyes.
When she put the pistol back down on the table, Corellos said, “Why do you want to speak with me, se?orita? Why did you really come? It isn’t to write a story for a newspaper, is it?”
“I need your help,” she said. “I’m looking for a certain laptop computer Gustavo Moreno had. Just before he died, it disappeared.”
Corellos spread his hands. “Why come to me?”
“You were Moreno’s supplier.”
“So?”
“The man who stole the laptop—one of Moreno’s men working for someone else, someone unknown—was found dead on the outskirts of Amatitán, on the estancia owned by your cousin Narsico.”
“That p-ssy, taking a gringo name! I want nothing to do with him, he’s dead to me.”
Moira considered a moment. “It seems to me that implicating him in the murder of this man might be a good way to get back at him.”
Corellos snorted. “What, and leave it to the Mexican police to figure it out and arrest him? Please! When it comes to solving crimes they’re complete idiots, all they know how to do is take bribes and siestas. Plus, Berengária would be suspect, too. No, if I wanted Narsico dead you would have found him in Amatitán.”
“So who’s running Moreno’s business, who are you selling to now?”
Corellos blew cigar smoke, his eyes half lidded.
“I’m not interested in putting anyone in jail,” she said. “In fact, it would be fruitless, wouldn’t it? I’m just interested in finding the laptop, and there’s a trail I have to follow.”
Corellos stubbed out his cigar. When he made a gesture someone—significantly, not a guard—came in with a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses, which he placed between Corellos and Moira. “I’m ordering food. What would you like?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
He nodded, spoke to the young man, who nodded and slipped unobtrusively out. He leaned forward and poured tequila. When they had both drained their glasses, he said, “You have to understand the depth of my hatred for Narsico.”
She shrugged. “I’m a gringa, we don’t take such things so seriously. What I do know is that you haven’t had him killed.”
He waved away her words. “This is what I mean by understanding. Killing’s too good for a shithead like him.”
She was beginning to get a glimmer of where this conversation was going. “So you have something else planned.”
That macaw laugh again. “It’s already done. Whoever said that revenge is a dish best served cold had no Colombian blood running through him. Why wait when opportunity stares you in the face?”
The young man returned with a tray laden with food—an array of small dishes, from rice and beans to fried chilies and smoked seafood. He set the tray down, and Corellos waved him away. Immediately Corellos picked out a plate of shrimp in a fiery red sauce and ate them, head and all. As he sucked the sauce off his fingertips, he continued. “Do you know the best way to get to a man, se?orita? It’s through his woman.”
Now she understood. “You seduced Berengária.”
“Yes, I cuckolded him, I shamed him, but that’s not all I did. Narsico wanted desperately to outrun his family, so I made sure that he couldn’t.” Corellos’s eyes sparkled. “I set Berengária Moreno up as her brother’s successor.”
And you did it damn well, Moira thought. Essai said there was no hint of her involvement. “Do you think she had the mole inside her brother’s operation?”
“If she wanted a list of Gustavo’s clients she only had to ask him, which she didn’t, at least while he was alive.”
“Then who would?”
He looked at her skeptically. “Oh, I don’t know, a thousand people, maybe more. You want me to write you a list?”
Moira ignored his sarcasm. “What about you?”
He laughed. “What? Are you kidding? Gustavo was making me a fortune by doing all the heavy lifting. Why would I f*ck with that?”
Did Corellos know that Moreno’s client list was on the laptop, or had he assumed it? Moira wondered. Essai didn’t look like the kind of man who was after a Colombian drug lord’s business; he had the aspect of someone who’d been ripped off and wanted his property back. She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Escúchame, hombre. Someone made off with that laptop. If it wasn’t Berengária then it has to be someone else who wants Gustavo’s business, and it’s just a matter of time before he acts.”
Corellos took up a plate of fried chilies and popped them one after another into his mouth. His expressive lips were slick with grease. He didn’t appear interested in wiping them off.
“I don’t know anything about this,” Corellos said coldly.
Moira believed him. If he had known, he would already have done something about it. She rose. “Maybe Berengária does.”
His eyes narrowed. “The f*ck she does. Whatever she knows, I know.”
“You’re a long way from Jalisco.”
Corellos laughed unpleasantly. “You don’t know me very well, do you, chica.”
“I want that laptop, hombre.”
“That’s the spirit!” He made a sound deep in his throat astonishingly like a tiger purring. “The hour’s growing late, chica. Why don’t you stay the night? I guarantee my accommodations are better than any this city has to offer you.”
She smiled. “I think not. Thank you for your hospitality—and your honesty.”
Corellos grinned. “Anything for a beautiful se?orita.” He lifted a warning finger. “Cuidad, chica. I don’t envy you. Berengária’s a f*cking piranha. Give her the slightest opening and she’ll eat you up, bones and all.”
When Peter Marks arrived at Noah Perlis’s flat, he found it crawling with CI agents, two of whom he knew. One, Jesse McDowell, he knew very well. He and McDowell had worked together on two field assignments before Marks was promoted upstairs into management.
When McDowell saw Marks, he beckoned to him and, taking him aside, said in a hushed tone of voice, “What the hell are you doing here, Peter?”
“I’m on assignment.”
“Well, so are we, so you better get the hell out of here before one of Danziger’s gung-ho newbies gets curious about you.”
“Can’t do that, Jesse.” Peter craned his neck, peering over McDowell’s shoulder. “I’m looking for Jason Bourne.”
“Good bleeding luck with that, laddie.” McDowell shot him a sardonic look. “How many roses should I send to the funeral?”
“Listen, Jesse, I just flew in from DC, I’m tired, hungry, cranky, and in no f*cking mood to play games with you or any of Danziger’s little tin soldiers.” He made to take a step around McDowell. “D’you think I’m afraid of any of them, or of Danziger?”
McDowell raised his hands, palms outward. “Okay, okay. You’ve made your point, laddie.” He took Marks by the elbow. “I’ll fill you in on everything, but not here. Unlike you, Danziger still owns my ass.” He steered Marks out the door and into the hallway. “Let’s go down to the pub and lift a few. When I get a pint or two in me, I’ll screw me courage to the wall.”
The Slaughtered Lamb was just the sort of London pub that had been written about for centuries. It was low, dark, ripe with the scents of fermented beer and very old cigarette smoke, some of which still seemed to hang in the air in a boozy mist.
McDowell chose a table against one wood-paneled wall, ordered them pints of the room-temperature brew and, for Marks, a plate of bangers and mash. When the food came, Marks took one whiff of the meat and his stomach turned. He had the waiter take the plate away, and settled for a couple of cheese rolls.
“This investigation’s part of Justice’s ongoing case against Black River,” McDowell said.
“I thought that case had been wrapped up.”
“So did everyone else.” McDowell drained his pint and ordered another. “But it appears that someone very high up is gunning for Oliver Liss.”
“Liss left Black River before any of the shit hit the fan.”
McDowell took possession of the new pint. “Suspicion has been thrown his way. Point being that he may have gotten out, but it still is likely that he was one of the architects of Black River’s dirty dealings. Our job is to confirm that conjecture with hard evidence, and since Noah Perlis was Liss’s personal lapdog, we’re tossing his place.”
“Needle in a haystack,” Marks said.
“Mebbe so.” McDowell gulped down his beer. “But one thing we did find there was a photo of this bloke Diego Hererra. You heard he was knifed to death last night in a posh West End casino by the name of the Vesper Club?”
“I hadn’t heard,” Marks said. “What’s it to me?”
“Everything, laddie. The man who was seen knifing Diego Hererra was with Jason Bourne. They left the club together just minutes after the murder.”
Soraya drove due south as, she intuited, Arkadin—going by the name Frank N. Stein—had. Twilight was falling gently as a leaf as she pulled into Nogales. She was still in Arizona. Just across the border was the sister town, Nogales, in the Mexican state of Sonora.
She parked and strolled through the dusty central square. Finding an open-air café, she sat and ordered a plate of tamales and a Corona. Her Spanish was a good deal better than her French or her German, which meant that it was very good, indeed. And here her dark skin, Egyptian blood, and prominent nose were easily mistaken for Aztec. She sat back and allowed herself to breathe while she watched the comings and goings of people on errands, shopping, strolling hand in hand. There were many old people, sitting on benches, playing cards or chatting. Vehicles passed—old, dented cars and dusty, rusting trucks loaded with produce. Nogales’s business was agriculture, shipments from its sister town continuously coming across the border for packaging and transshipping all across the United States.
She had finished her last tamale and was on her second Corona when she saw an old black Chevy, dusty and hulking, but the plates didn’t match and she went back to her beer. She declined dessert but ordered coffee.
The waiter was setting the tiny cup in front of her when, over his shoulder, she saw another black Chevy. She stood up as he walked away. The plate matched the one on the car Arkadin had rented, but the driver was an eighteen-year-old punk. He parked near the café and got out. His hair was crested, his arms covered in tattoos of snakes and plumed birds. Soraya recognized the quetzal, the sacred bird of the Aztecs and Maya. Downing her espresso in one shot, she left some bills on the table and walked over to the punk.
“Where did you get that car, compadre?” she asked him.
He looked her up and down with a sneer. His eyes on her breasts, he said, “What business is it of yours?”
“I’m not a cop, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Why should I be worried?”
“Because that Chevy is a rental car from Tucson—you and I both know that.”
The punk continued his sneer. He looked like he practiced it in front of a mirror every morning.
“Do you like them?”
The punk started. “What?”
“My breasts.”
He laughed uneasily and looked away.
“Listen,” she said, “I’m not interested in you or the car. Tell me about the man who rented it.”
He spat sideways and said nothing.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You’re already in enough trouble. I can make it go away.”
The punk sighed. “I really don’t know. I found the car out in the desert. It was abandoned.”
“How did you start it up—did you hot-wire it?”
“Nah, I didn’t have to, the key was in the ignition.”
Now, that was interesting. It probably meant that Arkadin wasn’t coming back for it, which meant that he was no longer in Nogales. Soraya thought for a moment. “If I wanted to cross the border, how would I do it?”
“The border station’s just a couple miles south—”
“I don’t want to go that way.”
The punk squinted, eyeing her as if for the first time. “I’m hungry,” he said. “How about buying me a meal?”
“Okay,” she said, “but don’t expect anything else.”
When he laughed, the brittle shell of his forced bravado cracked open. His face was transformed into that of a simple kid who looked at the world through sad eyes.
She took him back to the café, where he ordered burritos de machaca and a huge plate of cowboy beans larded with chiles pasados. His name was álvaro Obregón. He was from Chihuahua. His family had migrated north in search of work and had ended up here. Through the intervention of his mother’s brother, his parents worked at a maquiladora packaging fruit and vegetables. According to him, his sister was a slut and his brothers goofed off all day instead of working. He himself was employed by a rancher. He’d come into town to pick up an order of supplies the rancher had phoned in.
“At first, I was excited about coming here,” he said. “I’d read up about American Nogales and discovered that a lot of really cool people were born here, like Charlie Mingus. His music sounds like shit to me, but you know, he’s famous and all. And then there’s Roger Smith. Imagine banging Ann-Margret, huh! But the coolest is Movita Castaneda. I bet you never heard of her.”
When Soraya said she hadn’t, he grinned. “She was in Flying Down to Rio and Mutiny on the Bounty, but I only saw her in Tower of Terror.” He mopped up the last of his beans. “Anyway, she married Marlon Brando. Now, there was one cool actor, until he blew up like a blimp, anyway.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smacked his lips. “It didn’t take long for the shine to wear off. I mean, just look around you. What a f*cking dump!”
“You seem to have a good job,” Soraya pointed out.
“Yeah, you try it. It sucks.”
“It’s steady work.”
“A rat makes more money than I do.” He gave a wry, lopsided smile. “But that doesn’t mean I starve to death.”
“Which brings us back to my original question. I want to get into Mexico.”
“Why? The place is a f*cking shithole.”
Soraya smiled. “Who do I see?”
álvaro Obregón made a show of having to think about it, but Soraya suspected he already knew. He looked out over the square. The lights had come on, people were on their way to dinner or heading home after some last-minute shopping. The air smelled of refried beans and other sharp, acidic scents of norte?o cooking. Finally, he said, “Well, there are a couple of local polleros across the border.” These were people whom you paid to guide you across the border without having to bother with customs and Immigration. “But really, there’s only one to use, and you’re in luck, early this morning he brought a family of migrants across from Mexico. He’s here now and I can make the introductions. He’s known as Contreras, though I know for a fact that’s not his real name. I’ve dealt with him personally.”
On that score Soraya had no doubt. “I’d like you to set up the meet with your compadre Contreras.”
“It’ll cost you. A hundred American dollars.”
“Highway robbery. Fifty.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Sixty. That’s my last offer.”
álvaro Obregón put his hand on the table palm-up, and Soraya laid a twenty and a ten onto it. The bills disappeared so fast they might never have existed.
“The rest when you deliver,” she said.
“Wait here,” álvaro Obregón said.
“Save time and call him, why don’t you?”
álvaro Obregón shook his head. “No cell contact, ever. Rules of the game.” He rose and, seemingly in no particular hurry, sauntered off at the leisurely pace endemic to Nogales.
For just over an hour Soraya sat alone, soaking up the spangle of the night and the lilt of songs of a local banda, playing a form of brass-heavy music from Sinaloa. A couple of men asked her to dance; politely but firmly she turned them down.
Then, just as the banda segued into its second cumbia, she saw álvaro Obregón emerge out of the shadows. He was accompanied by a man, presumably Contreras, the pollero, whom she judged to be in his early to midforties with a face like a map that had been folded and refolded too many times. Contreras was tall and rangy with slightly bowed legs, like a lifetime cowboy. And like a cowboy he wore a wide-brimmed hat, stovepipe jeans, and a western shirt with piping and pearl snaps.
The man and the boy sat down without a word. Up close Contreras had the sun-bleached eyes of a man used to sagebrush, dust, and the scorching desert. His skin resembled overtanned leather.
“Boy tells me you want to go south.” Contreras spoke to her in English.
“That’s right.” Soraya had seen eyes like his before in professional gamblers. They seemed to bore into your skull.
“When?”
A man of few words, that was all right with her. “The sooner the better.”
Contreras lifted his head to the moon, as if he were a coyote about to howl at it. “Just a sliver,” he said. “Tonight’ll be better than tomorrow, tomorrow’ll be better than the next. After that…” He shrugged, as if to say the door would close.
“What’s your fee?” she asked.
He gazed at her again in a neutral way. “Can’t bargain with me like you did with the boy.”
“All right.”
“Fifteen hundred, half up front.”
“A quarter, the rest when you’ve brought me safely across.”
Contreras’s mouth gave a little twitch. “You were right, boy, she is some kinda bitch.”
Soraya wasn’t offended; she knew it was meant as a compliment. That’s how these people spoke, she wasn’t going to change it and she wasn’t about to try.
Contreras shrugged then and began to stand up. “I told you.”
“Tell you what,” Soraya said, “I’ll meet your terms if you take a look at a photo for me.”
Contreras studied her for a moment, then eased back into the chair. He held out his hand, just as álvaro Obregón had. The boy learned quickly.
Soraya scrolled through the photos on her cell until she found the surveillance shot of Arkadin. She laid the phone in the pollero’s palm. “Have you seen him? You might have taken him south maybe nine or ten days ago.” That’s what she surmised from álvaro Obregón’s tale of the black Chevy abandoned in the desert: Arkadin had found a way into Mexico that bypassed official scrutiny.
Contreras did not look down at the photo, but kept his colorless eyes on her. “I don’t bargain,” he repeated. “Are you asking me for a favor?”
Soraya hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I suppose I am.”
“Don’t do favors.” He glanced down at the photo. “My fee is now two thousand.”
Soraya sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Now you’re taking advantage of me.”
“Decide,” Contreras said. “A minute more and we’ll call it an even three thousand.”
Soraya exhaled. “Okay, okay.”
“Let’s see the color.”
He meant he wanted to see the money, all of it, to make sure she’d be able to pay. When she had unrolled the hundred-dollar bills to his satisfaction, he nodded.
“Took him across ten days ago.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
Contreras snorted. “Didn’t say a f*cking thing, not even when he handed me the money. That was fine by me.”
Soraya played her last card. “Where do you think he was going?”
Contreras lifted his head a moment, as if sniffing something on the wind. “Man like him, not into the desert, that’s for sure. I could see he hated the heat. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to work at one of the maquiladoras in Sonora. This was a boss, his own man.” His gaze lowered and he squinted at her. “Like you.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“The coast, lady boss. Sure as we’re sitting here he was going to the coast.”
Bourne was asleep when the call from Chrissie came in. The sound of his cell woke him instantly, and he pressed a thumb against his eye as he answered the call.
“Adam.”
Instantly alerted by the tension in that one word, he said, “What’s happened?”
“There’s… there’s someone here who wants to speak with you. Oh, Adam!”
“Chrissie, Chrissie…”
An unfamiliar male voice took over: “Stone, Bourne, whatever you’re calling yourself. You’d better get over here. The woman and her daughter are in very deep shit.”
Bourne gripped the phone more tightly. “Who are you?”
“My name is Coven. I need to see you, right now.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m going to give you directions. Listen carefully, I won’t repeat them.” Coven rattled off a complicated list of highways, roads, turns, and mileage. “I expect you here in ninety minutes.”
Bourne glanced at Moreno, who was gesturing at him. “I don’t know whether I can make it by—”
“You’ll make it,” Coven assured him. “If you don’t, the little girl gets hurt. For every fifteen minutes you’re late, she gets hurt worse. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” Bourne said.
“Good. The clock starts ticking now.”