Ahead of them, she heard voices, some raised in shouts, and she took possession of Matamoros’s assault rifle, aiming it at the shadows. Then, through the underbrush that had not yet been touched by the fire, she saw more of Matamoros’s men—no doubt the cadre that had brought down the four government helos. They recognized her at once, which was fortunate, because when they saw one of their leaders injured they were inclined to shoot first and ask questions afterward.
Twenty minutes later, she and Matamoros were inside another armored vehicle—protected by a convoy of jeeps mounted with machine guns and soldiers bristling with weaponry.
The men tried to pull her away from their leader, but Matamoros shook his head.
“Leave her,” he said, through parched lips. “Leave her alone.”
Maricruz fed him water from a plastic bottle before she herself gulped greedily, until this moment unaware how thoroughly the fire had sapped them of moisture. They rolled along rough-hewn back roads. Though she had no idea where they were headed, she no longer cared as long as it was away from the disaster in the forest.
When Matamoros beckoned to her with a crooked finger, she bent over, her ear to his lips in order to hear him over the roar of the powerful engines.
“You’re right. We have to kill Carlos. There’s no other way. But how?” He paused as the vehicle swayed around a bend in the road. He licked his lips and continued. “None of my men has a chance now. Carlos will be on his guard.”
“Leave that to me.” Maricruz lifted her head a moment to look into his eyes, which had widened in surprise.
“What d’you have in mind?”
“I’ll return to Mexico City. You tried to kill me, too, but I escaped, that will be my story.”
“Carlos will never believe you.”
“Trust me, he’ll be convinced. Why? Because he wants to believe. I’m his best and only chance of taking Los Zetas down.” She gave him a meaningful look. “You will have to hurt me.”
“No, mujer! No!”
“Felipe, you understand it must be done.”
He grimaced in pain. “I forbid it.”
“It’s not up to you, Felipe,” she said softly, put a hand against his cheek. “As you said, there’s no other way.”
Matamoros’s eyes turned dark and glittery as he bit his lip. At length, he nodded. There was a peculiar sadness behind his eyes as he looked past and above her.
Maricruz stared deep into his eyes. Then something exploded against the back of her head. Pitching forward, she lost consciousness.
The Israeli consulate?” Zhang said, querulous as usual. “Not the American?”
“Surprises come in all shapes and sizes.”
“It’s just as well,” Zhang mumbled. “I hear Colonel Sun has the American consulate under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”
“Then you’re sitting pretty. If…” Bourne pointed to a pad he had laid before the fat man. “Write down everything you and Yue know about Sun and Minister Ouyang. After I’m satisfied, I’ll take you to the Israeli consulate and we’ll get you two out of China.”
“Is that a guarantee?”
“Sam, don’t be an asshole,” Yue said firmly. “Give him what he wants.”
Zhang made a face, then nodded and, somewhat reluctantly, began to write. While he wrote, Bourne questioned Yue. Two hours later, as night tried to make its mark on the glittering city, they arrived in the vicinity of New Town Mansion, No. 55 Lou Shan Guan Road.
“Stay here,” Bourne said, leaving the shadows in which they huddled. He spent the next forty minutes quartering the immediate vicinity, checking doorways, parked cars as well as passing traffic, and the rooftops of the buildings with sight lines to the front of the consulate.
At last, satisfied that the area was free of surveillance, he returned to Yue and Zhang and hurried them down the block and across Lou Shan Guan to the consulate’s front door.
Once inside, Bourne asked for the consul general, who was at dinner at this hour. He used the code Director Yadin had included in the packet he’d given Bourne in Tel Aviv, and several moments later the trio were led into the consul general’s office by the assistant on duty. The phone on the consul’s desk rang a moment later. The assistant took the call, but as soon as he had ID’d his boss he handed the receiver over to Bourne.
“This is Avi Brun.”
“Jason Bourne.”
“Boker tov Eliyahu!” Brun said sourly. Nice of you to show up! He did not bother hiding his displeasure at being interrupted at dinner. “We cannot continue without—?”
Bourne gave him the second code phrase.
Brun cleared his throat. “You need an immediate exit from Shanghai.”
“Correct.”
“That has been prearranged.”
“I’m not alone.”
“Come again?” Brun said.
“I have two Chinese nationals with me. I’ve promised them asylum and an exit along with me.”
There was a lengthy pause, during which Bourne could hear the consul general breathing like an asthmatic.
“I can’t authorize that,” Brun said at last.
“Director Yadin can. Call him.”
“I don’t think—”
“Do it,” Bourne said flatly, “or I will.”
“Elize balagan!” What a mess!
“Avarnu et Paro, na’avor gam et zeh,” Bourne said. We overcame Pharaoh, we’ll get through this, too.
“What? Now all of a sudden I’m speaking to a Jew?” But the softening of his tone proved Bourne had gotten through to him.
“Tell the Director that my guests have proprietary intelligence on two people of particular interest to him.”
“Hmm. All right, all right, I’ll call Eli now. Stay put and I’ll get back to you.”
Bourne left Yue and Zhang in the capable hands of Brun’s assistant while he went out of the office, down the silent hallway, in search of the lavatory. Locking himself into a stall, he pulled out the items he had taken off the man who had pursued them down the tunnel. The knife, which Yue had given back to him, was a good one, but unhelpful since it was one used by NATO.
The other item he had taken was the man’s mobile phone. Now that he was alone, he turned it on. The phone book was empty. He saw there was just enough battery life left to make a single call. He hit REDIAL and saw the numbers come up, one by one. Country code: Israel. City code: Tel Aviv.
Bourne’s blood ran cold. Mossad, he thought.
Then a man’s voice answered: “Retzach, where the hell have you been? I thought you were—” The tone changed entirely. It was filled with suspicion and anxiety in equal measure. “Who is this?”
Bourne cut the connection. Retzach was a code name; it meant “murder” in Hebrew. He knew who had sent Retzach after him.
Turning off the mobile, he replaced it in his pocket, rose, and left the lavatory. Yue and Zhang watched him with no little curiosity when he returned.
“Any word?”
The assistant shook his head. “These things take time.”
“No,” Bourne said, “they don’t.” He gestured. “Get the consul general back on the line.” Bourne shook his head. “Too slow.” He picked up the phone, checked the readout for the last incoming call, and dialed it.
“I was just about to ring you,” Brun said when he heard Bourne’s voice. “I spoke to Eli.” His tone indicated that it had pained him to do it. He sighed deeply. “I hope your guests like Tel Aviv. They’re apt to be there a good long while.”
21
Amir Ophir took his private cell phone away from his ear and threw it across his office as if it were a poisonous insect. It crashed against the wall, shattering into its basic components. One of his assistants opened the door at once.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
“Of course it’s all right,” Ophir bellowed. “Why shouldn’t it be all right?” He glared at the young man with such ferocity that, whey-faced, he turned and retreated, closing
the door after him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Ophir felt as if he were suffocating. Rising, he strode out of the office without giving a word of where he was going or why to his staff. Riding down in the elevator seemed to take a week. His ears were burning and his throat felt inflamed.
It wasn’t until he was outside, walking quickly in the direction of the harbor, that he could gather his thoughts sufficiently to inject a modicum of clarity into the swirl of panic threatening to drown him.
Bad enough that Retzach was dead. In answering his operative’s mobile, Ophir had been revealed to whoever had killed Retzach. But only, he reminded himself, if the person on the other end of the line recognized his voice—the number was an untraceable Tel Aviv number.
Then the panic returned full force. On the other hand, he told himself, the person who had killed Retzach could ID the number as Israeli. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that Retzach was Mossad. In the wrong hands, that knowledge could prove catastrophic not only to him, but to all of Mossad. If Retzach’s mobile was in the hands of the Chinese authorities, and not Bourne…He shuddered at the thought.
The angry blare of a car horn caused Ophir to start back. He hadn’t been looking where he was going and was almost run over. Wiping his hands down his trouser legs, he waited impatiently for the light to change, then hurried across the avenue.
The logical answer was to inform the Director immediately of the breach in security. But then Eli would ask how it was that Retzach was killed and, at the moment, Ophir had no answer. In that event, telling Eli was out of the question, at least for the moment.
If only the person on the other end of the line had said something, but he had offered not a word. Closing his eyes, Ophir wondered how he had gotten himself into this situation. At the time, it had seemed logical to send someone to find Bourne—he had even cleared it with Eli, who had agreed. But he could see now that he had made a grave miscalculation in sending in one of his Kidon assassins. He should have listened to Eli and handed the assignment over to Collections, but his hatred for Bourne had distorted his decision making.
Ophir had had no intention of keeping Bourne alive. He had intentionally disobeyed a direct order. He closed his hands into fists. Too late for recriminations now, and anyway they were counterproductive. What he needed was a solid foolproof plan. He pondered this puzzle the rest of the way to the water. It wasn’t until he reached the harbor and breathed in the fresh salt air that he saw what had been in front of his face all along.
There was only one way to ensure a plan would be foolproof: He had to carry it out himself.
Maricruz awoke to pain. Every bone in her body seemed to vibrate with it, making her teeth chatter until, with a force of will, she clamped her jaws shut. Even that hurt. She opened sticky eyes to see the top of a van, which seemed to be traveling at a heart-stopping pace. She lay on a filthy blanket on the floor of the van. She would have rolled this way and that if a soldier didn’t have the flat of his hand on her breastbone. She recognized him as one of Felipe’s cadre compadres, one of the leaders of Los Zetas. He had a thick, curling beard and mustache and the cruel eyes of a wolf.
Grinning down at her, he said, “Welcome back to the land of the living, mujer.”
“Is that what this is?” Her voice was thin as the whisper of wind through a wheat field. “I feel like I died.”
“You may wish you had,” the compadre said, “if that motherfucker Carlos gets even a hint of what you’re up to.”
Maricruz tried to smile, but failed. Her lips felt swollen; perhaps they were. She must look a fright, but then, that was the idea. Her idea. The van went over a bump and she tried to groan, but couldn’t even get much volume in her voice.
“What was that?” the compadre said, leaning over her.
Maricruz tried to lick her lips, but her tongue felt swollen as well. The inside of her mouth was gluey.
“Water,” she croaked.
“You’ll get water from your new friend, Carlos.” He looked up at a muffled shout from the front of the van. “Okay,” he said, probably to the driver. Then he looked down at Maricruz. “We’re almost there, mujer. The rest is up to you.”
He winked at her just before he opened the rear doors. “Let your body go slack.” The streaking van slowed down just long enough for him to kick her out the back. As she went rolling across the tarmac, he shouted to the driver, who accelerated fast, tires shrieking as he took the turn at speed.
Maricruz, covered in dust, lay as if dead. Then the buzzing flies started to alight, swarming greedily over her blood-streaked skin and clothes.
There are three things you have to know,” General Hwang Liqun said when he met Minister Ouyang at the VIP arrivals hall in Beijing. “First, the Chongqing conservatives have begun an all-out campaign to elevate Cho Xilan to president-in-waiting at the Party Congress. Second, major disagreements on the future path of China have broken out among the military leaders, the major state business enterprises, and the fistful of descendants of the remaining revolutionary families. All coalitions have been fractured. The atmosphere has become toxic.”
“Fatally?” Ouyang said as he and Hwang headed for his limousine.
“The word is the Chongqing think so.”
A liveried driver opened the rear door, and the two men climbed into the cool, dim interior.
“And the third thing?” Ouyang said as he settled himself into the plush seat.
“Cho Xilan has gone missing. He hasn’t been seen in public since you left for Shanghai.”
“And in private?”
The general fidgeted beside him as the limousine rolled out of the airport. “My people have heard nothing.”
“We have no eyes on Cho, then.”
Hwang, looking straight ahead, said nothing.
“You disappoint me, General.” Ouyang stared out the window. “Am I going to have to demote you?”
Hwang flinched. “There’s good news—I have word that Cho is ill, perhaps gravely. That’s why he hasn’t made any public—”
“Bullshit!” Ouyang said. “I know Cho. He hasn’t been seen at China Agricultural University to mark National Science Popularization Day or at any other nonsensical time-wasting function, because he’s been too busy scurrying from faction to faction trying to cobble together a coalition large enough to stop my rise to power.”
He turned to Hwang. “You have no idea how it pains me to have to tell you this, which seems as clear as the bewildered look on your face.”
Abruptly, he leaned forward and said to the driver, “Stop the car.”
“But, Minister, we’re on the main highway into the city and there is no breakdown lane that I can—”
“Why do you tell me what I can see with my own two eyes?” Ouyang shouted. “Stop the fucking car!”
The driver complied. Traffic behind them in their lane drew to a standstill. No one honked their horn; the limousine was a clear sign of power.
“General,” Ouyang said with a poisonous look, “this is where you get out.”
Hwang’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Minister?”
“Out, Hwang, you useless turd.” He shoved him. “Now!”
Ouyang leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes; when he felt Hwang’s weight come off the seat and, a moment later, heard the door click shut, he sighed deeply. Then he fished out his mobile and made a call. Despite what he had told Colonel Sun, his first concern was maintaining control of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee. Once he had these major players in his pocket it wouldn’t matter what machinations Cho got up to, Ouyang would defeat him.
Cho and his party had no idea what a dangerous game they were playing. Once you unleashed nationalism within the masses you were bound to ride the back of that tiger with the dire prospect of not being able to get off even when you wanted to.
“We have a problem that needs solving,” he said to the voice at the other end of the line.
“Does thi
s problem have a name?”
“General Hwang Liqun.”
“A shame.”
“No, not a shame,” Ouyang said. “A relief. I imagine the general has been working for Cho Xilan for some time.”
“Purges are a vital part of our history. Like an enema, they flush the shit down the toilet.”
Ouyang laughed, the first time he had done that since before Maricruz had left for Mexico City. How he missed her! No one understood him like she did. His world was like a shark tank. She was the only one he could really trust.
“How’s the old Patriarch?” he asked now.
“Still full of piss and vinegar.”
“He’s my next port of call.” The old Patriarch controlled more than half the vote that would reform the Politburo Standing Committee at the Party Congress. “I just dropped Hwang off. I’m sending the coordinates now. Use the white SUV. Meet me at the tower when you’ve solved the problem.”
The voice at the other end of the line chuckled. “I can already hear the flush of the toilet.”
Maricruz, far from dead, lay dazed but hardly confused. She knew exactly what she needed to do and when she needed to do it. Her plan formed in exquisite detail in her mind. It had the precision of a military campaign.
For some minutes all she heard was the whir of traffic, the brief staccato of querulous voices. A dog barked, approaching, and at his noisome snuffling the cloud of flies lifted off her. Then she heard steps clacking over marble steps, voices raised, chasing off both the dogs and the flies.
Someone said, “Dios mio, call the paramedics!”
Another said, “For the love of God, get her off the street!”