The Bourne Imperative (Jason Bourne 10)

Delia said, “I want to see her.”

The nurse nodded. “Please don’t overtax her. She’s still very weak and is working for two.”

As the nurse was about to turn away, Delia said, “Has anyone else been in to see her?”

“I called you the moment the doctors were finished with their examinations.”

“Thank you,” Delia said fervently.

The nurse ducked her head. “Call me if you need me.” She pointed. “I’ll be at my monitoring station.”

Delia nodded, then, pushing aside the fabric curtain, went in to see her friend. Soraya, hooked up to a bewildering array of machines, was propped up on the high hospital bed. Her expression brightened considerably when she saw Delia.

“Deel,” she said, lifting her hand for her friend to take. She closed her eyes for a moment when she felt the warmth of Delia’s hand. “I’ve come from the back of beyond.”

“So the doctors tell me.” Delia’s smile was genuine. Raya looked far better than she had in recovery. The dusky-rose color had returned to her cheeks, happily replacing yesterday’s deathly pallor. “It’s been a rough ride, but now the worst is over, I know it.”

Soraya smiled and Delia burst into tears.

“What is it? Deel, what is it?”

“That’s your old smile, Raya. The smile I know and love so much.” She leaned over and kissed her friend tenderly on each cheek in the European manner. “Now I know I have my best friend back. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Come here,” Soraya said. “Sit by me.”

Delia perched herself on the edge of the bed, keeping hold of her friend’s hand.

“I’ve been dreaming non-stop, Deel. I dreamt I was in Paris with Amun, that he hadn’t been killed. I dreamt I was with Aaron. And I dreamt that Charlie was here.” Her eyes, clearer now, gazed into Delia’s. “Is Charlie still here, Deel?”

“No, he left.” Delia’s eyes cut away, then returned to her friend. “He said the baby changed everything, that he wants to keep you in his life.”

“In other words, you misread him.”

“I guess so.” She had no intention of telling Soraya that Thorne had threatened her.

“Good. That’s so good.” Soraya squeezed her hand. “You did precisely what I wanted you to do.”

“What?” Delia’s head came up.

Soraya’s smile was tinged with regret. “I used you, Deel. Before the attack, I went to see him, but what I wanted so disgusted me, I couldn’t tell him. I needed you to do that for me.” She squeezed her friend’s hand. “Don’t be angry.”

“How could I be angry with you?” Delia shook her head. “But I don’t understand.”

Soraya gestured. “Could I have some ice water?”

Delia rose and poured water from a plastic pitcher into a plastic cup and handed it to Soraya, who drank deeply.

When she handed the empty cup back, she said, “I need a way to keep Charlie tied to me.”

“Once again, not understanding.”

Soraya laughed softly and put a hand on her belly. “Come here, Deel. I can feel the baby moving.”

Leaning over, Delia put her hand next to Soraya’s, and when she felt the baby kicking, she laughed as well. Then she sat back. “Okay, Raya, time to tell me how we’re all linked, you, me, and Thorne.”

Soraya studied her for a moment. At length, she said, “My relationship with Charlie is not what I’ve made it appear to you.”

Delia shook her head mutely.

“It’s business.”

“Having an affair with him was business?” The shock reverberated straight through Delia. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I wish I were.” Soraya sighed. “It’s the reason I hooked up with him in the first place.” She smiled. “That’s all I can tell you. I feel so guilty using you like that.”

“Jesus, no, Raya. I…” Now things that had made no sense to Delia slid into focus. “Frankly, I could never understand what you saw in him.”

“Secrets, Deel. Secrets. They rule my life. You know that.”

“But this. Hopping into his bed because—”

“A centuries-old tradition. Ask Cleopatra, Lucretia Borgia, Mata Hari.”

Delia looked at her friend as if in an entirely new light. “And the baby?”

Soraya’s eyes glittered. “It’s not his.”

“Wait, what? But you told me—”

“I know what I told you, Deel. But I need Charlie to believe it’s his.” She rubbed her belly. “It’s Amun’s.”

Delia felt dizzy, as if she had lost her moorings in this new world Soraya was revealing layer by mysterious layer. “What if he asks for a paternity test?”

“What if I tell his wife about us?”

Delia stared at Soraya with a new understanding, a kind of astonishment, and something else entirely. “Raya, you’re scaring the hell out of me right now.”

“Oh, Deel, I don’t mean to. You’re my friend. We’re closer than sisters. Even Peter doesn’t know what I’ve told you. Please try to understand.”

“I want to, Raya. Honestly, I do. But this just goes to show that you never really know anyone no matter how close you think you are.”

“But we are close, Deel.” She reached out. “Listen to me, ever since I came back from Paris I’ve come to realize that there’s more to life than secrets. That’s all I have, really.” She laughed. “Except you, of course.” She sobered immediately. “But now I have the baby and—I’ve been thinking—using the baby as a weapon against Charlie—it’s heinous. For the first time in my life I feel dirty, as if I’ve crossed a line that sickens me. I can’t use my child in this way. I don’t want that for him. I don’t want this life for him. He deserves more than shadows, Deel. He deserves the sunshine and kids his age. He deserves a mother who isn’t always looking over her shoulder.”

Delia leaned over and kissed her friend on the cheek. “This is good, Raya. Ever since you told me about the baby, I’ve been waiting for you to come to that conclusion.”

Soraya smiled. “Now I have.”

“You’ll have to tell Peter.”

“I already have, more or less.”

“Really? How did he take it?”

“Like Peter. He’s so rational. He understands.”

Delia nodded. “He’s a good guy.” She frowned. “What will you tell Thorne?”

“Not a fucking thing. I don’t have to tell you what Charlie’s like.”

With a shudder of disgust, Delia conjured up the horrible, humiliating conversation, culminating in the moment when he had grabbed his crotch and said, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

She felt the urge to tell her friend what Thorne had done, how he had hacked into her mobile, had tapes of the amorous voicemails Amy had left for her, but she bit her tongue. She didn’t want to upset Soraya, not in the state she was in now, not when Soraya was ready to embark on the next phase of her life, ready to leave all the dark shit behind.

Instead, she smiled, bit back her bitterness against Thorne, and said, “No, I’ve gotten to know him much better these days.” She leaned forward to kiss Soraya on the cheek. “Don’t worry. Your secrets are safe with me.”

Because I know you won’t take my advice,” Constanza Camargo said to Bourne, “I have no choice but to help you.”

“Of course you have a choice,” Rebeka said.

Constanza shook her head slowly. “You still have no conception of life here. There is destiny, only destiny. This cannot be explained or understood, except, possibly, in history. A story, then.”

La comida was finally at an end, and they had retired to her exquisite, jewel-like living room, paneled in ebony, evoking an earlier, gilded age. She sat back in her wheelchair, her hands laced in her lap, and, as she spoke, the years seemed to melt away, revealing the magnificent, vibrant beauty she had been in her twenties and thirties.

“Maceo Encarnación not only took my husband’s life, he took

my legs as well. This is how it happened.” She took out a flat silver case, snapped it open, and, after offering each of them a cigarillo, plucked one out. Manny, always at her side, lit it for her. “I hope you don’t mind if I smoke,” she said in a tone that said she had no intention of stopping.

She sat, smoking reflectively for several moments, before she began. “As I said, life in Mexico is bound to the wheel of destiny. Desire is also important—we are Latin, after all!—but, at the end of the day, desire hinders destiny. Acevedo found this out when he changed horses. He was destined to be a drug lord—this was his calling. He left it and he died.

“I should have learned from his mistake, but the truth is my desire for revenge blinded me, cut me off from my destiny, and, at the end of the day, cut me off from my legs. What happened was this: after Acevedo was shot dead, I summoned a cadre of men, Colombians who owed their livelihood, even their very lives, to Acevedo. They came here, and, at my direction, set out to end the life of the miserable Maceo Encarnación.”

She took another long drag from her cigarillo, which emitted smoke like a just-fired pistol. Then she continued: “I was foolish. I miscalculated, or, rather, I underestimated Maceo Encarnación’s power. He is protected by an almost mystical power, as if by gods. Acevedo’s loyalists were beheaded, and then he came after me himself.”

Her fist pounded against her useless legs. “Here is the result. He didn’t kill me. Why? To this day, I don’t know. Possibly, to him my living as a cripple was a more fitting punishment than death. More likely, it was raw cruelty.”

She lifted a hand, fluttering it back and forth, as if the reason for her continued life was unimportant. “This is a cautionary tale, Mr. Moore, not an attempt to elicit sympathy.” She turned to Rebeka. “But now you see, my dear, how the great wheel of destiny works. It has brought you to me or me to you, and there is a reason for that. Destiny has now combined with my desire for revenge. It has brought me the weapons I need because, Rebeka, I do not for a moment believe that you are Mr. Moore’s wife—”? she smiled “—any more than I believe his name is Moore.” Her gaze shifted back to Bourne. “Mr. Moore, you would no more bring your wife to Mexico on such a mission than you would allow her to walk into a tiger’s den.”

She lifted a forefinger. “And make no mistake, going after Maceo Encarnación is walking into tiger territory. There will be no mercy, no second chances, only, if you are lucky, death.” She stubbed out her cigarillo. “But if you are very lucky and extremely clever, you may yet walk out of the tiger’s den with what you and I desire.”

17

Tulio Vistoso arrived in Washington, DC, with anxiety in his mind and murder in his heart. How difficult was it, he thought, for Florin Popa to keep safe what he, Don Tulio, had so cleverly stolen on the steep, treacherous trail along the Cañon del Sumidero, outside Tuxtla Guttiérez, replacing the real thirty million with what he had been certain were undetectable counterfeit bills? And yet, Popa had failed, and his life was forfeit if he could not placate Don Maceo and his holy, all-powerful buyers within thirty-six hours.

He was still fulminating about the monumental fuck-up when he arrived at the Dockside Marina and saw the Cobalt in slip 31 crawling with cops. And not just cops, he realized with a jolt. Federales. He could smell them a mile away. They moved with a certain measured gait, like dray horses in their traces. He stared, horrified. The boat was well guarded, cordoned off with yellow CRIME SCENE tape.

Christ on the cross, what in the name of all that’s holy has happened? Instinctively, he looked around, as if Popa might be lurking somewhere in the vicinity. Where the hell was Popa? Don Tulio wondered with a sinking heart. Had Popa absconded with the thirty million? Don Tulio’s thirty million. This prospect terrified him. Or, worse, did the federales have it? Was Popa in their custody? With a trembling hand, he began to fire off a series of text messages to his lieutenants in a frenzied endeavor to recoup the thirty million as quickly as possible.

The Aztec felt like pulling his hair out. His crazed brain kept churning out dire possibilities, but a sliver of civilized veneer stopped him cold. Instead, he turned on his heel and stalked away. He swiped a hand across his forehead. Despite the chill, he was sweating like a pig.

Up ahead, a car pulled into a parking space in the lot and, a moment later, a young man leaped out. He pushed by Don Tulio as he hurried down the gangplank, onto the dock, and out to slip 31. Sensing something unusual, the Aztec turned. Sure enough, the federale ants crawling all over the Recursive began kowtowing to the new arrival: el jefe. This interested Don Tulio so, instead of hightailing it, he decided to hang around as unobtrusively as possible. This meant going down the gangplank himself and onto the dock. Choosing a deserted boat as far away as practical from the activity on the Recursive, he climbed aboard and busied himself doing nothing at all while he spied on the new arrival.

Happily for him, the marina’s quiet atmosphere, combined with how the water carried the voices, allowed him to overhear snatches of conversation. In this way, he determined that el jefe’s name was Marks. Turning for a moment, he noted that the vehicle Marks had arrived in was a white Chevy Cruze. He jumped off the boat, then went at an unhurried pace back up the ramp and into the lot, where he jotted down the Cruze’s license plate number. Back on the boat, he returned his attention to Marks himself, his mind already plotting his next several moves.

It had been his experience that meeting with the chief of your enemies was preferable to working your way up the plantain tree. But meeting with federales, especially on their own turf, was a tricky business, one, Don Tulio knew, that needed to be thought out in considerable detail. He also knew that he would get one shot at confronting jefe Marks, so he was obliged to make the best of it. The danger of such a maneuver did not disturb him; he lived with danger every day of his life, had done so from the time he was ten years old and already raging through the streets of Acapulco. He had loved the sea, even before he became a cliff diver, showing off for Gringo money. He jumped from the highest cliff, dove the deepest, stayed down the longest. The churning water was his father and his mother, rocking him into a form of peace he could find nowhere else.

He became king of the divers, taking a cut from all their winnings. That might have continued indefinitely, until the moment a Gringo tourist accused him of fucking his teenage daughter. That the Gringa had initiated the liaison meant nothing in the face of her father’s colossal wealth and the authorities’ desperation to keep Acapulco a world-class tourist destination.

He got out just ahead of the cops, fleeing north, losing himself in the immense urban sprawl of Mexico City. But he never forgot how the Gringo had ruined his life, for he loved the ocean waters, desperately missed his old life. Years passed and a new life began to weave around him. Anarchism first. When he was older, he took out his rage at the institutional corruption with bouts of extreme violence against anyone who held a steady job. Eventually, he got smart and joined a drug cartel, working his way up the power grid by any and all means, which impressed his superiors up until the moment he directed his followers to cut their heads off with machetes.

From that bloody moment on he had been jefe, consolidating his power with the other cartel heads. He was uncomfortable in society. He had no expertise navigating the capital’s deep and treacherous political waters, so he had forged an alliance with Maceo Encarnación, which had served them both well.

The Aztec made himself busy all over again while he leaned his ear to the prevailing wind and discovered that Popa was dead. Jefe Marks had killed him, after which he had inadvertently found the key. The fucking key, Don Tulio thought with a savagery that shook him to his core. He has the fucking key. But then, his mind cooling a single degree, he dredged up this hopeful thought: He has the fucking key, but that doesn’t mean he has the thirty million. Which was followed by a second hopeful thought: If the federales have the money, why are they searching the boat so frantically?

Fuming, the Aztec finished

coiling a rope for the seventeenth time. Noting that the federales were breaking up, he went down into the cabin, waiting there patiently while he counted the number of rivets in the deck, perched uncomfortably on a narrow seat. Shadows passed as the federales left the Recursive and went back up the dock to the parking lot. He listened for the car engines starting up. When, like popping corn, they ceased, he knew it was time.

Emerging from the cabin, he looked at the Recursive. It appeared deserted, but he resisted the urge to board it. Even though the clock that now measured his life was ticking mercilessly away, he knew it would be foolish to risk everything by going over there in daylight. Better by far to show patience, to wait for night to fall. He returned to the boat, lay down on the deck, and fell instantly into a deep and untroubled sleep.

Midnight,” Constanza said. “Manny will come and collect you.”

After she bade them goodnight, Bourne and Rebeka retired to the two adjoining bedrooms in the guest wing. But almost immediately she appeared on the threshold of his room.

“Are you tired?” Rebeka asked.

Bourne shook his head.

She walked in, went past him, and stood by the window, arms wrapped around herself, staring out at the inner courtyard. Bourne came and stood beside her. They could hear the wind clatter through the palms. By a sliver of moonlight, they watched the rustling of the leaves on the lime tree.

“Jason, do you ever think about death?” When he said nothing, she went on. “I think about it all the time.” She shivered. “Or maybe it’s just this place. Mexico City seems steeped in death. It gives me the creeps.”

She turned to him. “What if we don’t survive tomorrow?”

“We will.”

“But what if we don’t?”

He shrugged.

“Then we die in darkness,” she said, answering her own question.

She stirred, then said, “Put your arms around me.” When he did, holding her tight, she said, “Why don’t we feel the way other people feel, deep down, not just on the surface, like water glancing off water? What is the matter with us?”