When they did so, it was as if they had entered a modern-day emperor’s palace. There was such a dazzling array of cut-crystal chandeliers, jasper-topped side tables, marble statues, porcelain pots, Aztec jade masks, ivory utensils, Olmec stone heads, scrimshawed whales’ teeth, and ormolu clocks in just the vast two-story entryway, as well as the hallway that yawned beyond, she soon stopped counting. A majestic mahogany staircase spiraled up to a second floor guarded by an ornate balustrade that would not have been out of place in Versailles.
“Weapons,” Juan Ruiz said in his peculiar monosyllabic style.
Maricruz handed over both her guns.
Juan Ruiz motioned with a jut of his monumental chin. “Him?”
“Wendell isn’t armed,” she said.
Juan Ruiz set her guns on the jasper-topped table.
“Arms up.”
Juan Ruiz frisked them both with rapid, expert pats and slides of his hands. Finding no other weapons, he led them down the hall, through a drawing room, a formal library, and the living room, each space larger and more ornately decorated than the last, as if from the hidden coffers of the world’s finest museums. By the time they reached the study, she was exhausted with a surfeit of visible wonders, which was undoubtedly the point. Felipe Matamoros wanted to lay out his power and wealth for her to see in the most tangible way.
The man himself stood with his back to the doorway, facing out to the vista of long sloping emerald lawn that led to a sparkling pool. A waterfall cascaded at one end and a bevy of startlingly young, bikini-clad women with bronzed, well-oiled flesh lounged at the other. His hands were behind his back. One held an oversize old-fashioned glass containing, Maricruz guessed, aged tequila.
A moment after Juan Ruiz escorted them into the study, a slender, almost willowy man detached himself from the shadows on the right side of the room and stepped across what appeared to be an heirloom Tabriz carpet to confront them. He, too, held an old-fashioned glass of liquor.
“Señorita Encarnación,” he said, “may I get you and your guest a drink?”
“It’s señora now,” she said in a perfectly neutral tone.
“Ah, yes,” the man said, “Señora Ouyang, isn’t it?”
“Agave,” Maricruz said with an unaffected smile, “for both of us.”
“Of course.”
The willowy man crossed to a sideboard. Through this all, Matamoros hadn’t stirred. In fact, he seemed not even to have drawn a breath.
As the willowy man was pouring their drinks, Maricruz said, “I am still my father’s daughter. Still an Encarnación.”
At this, Matamoros turned to look at her. He was darkly handsome in a brutish sort of way. His eyes were clear, dark, and intelligent. He had a hawk’s nose and a jaguar’s mouth. His cheeks were pocked or scarred, in the low light, Maricruz could not tell which.
“This is good.” He had a deep, rolling voice like thunder through mountain valleys. “Your skin hasn’t turned yellow, your eyes haven’t become slanted.”
“What a relief!” Maricruz cried.
Matamoros’s thin, blue jaguar lips twitched in what might have been the semblance of a smile. It could just as easily be a smirk, Maricruz decided, but turned her mind in a different direction. Matamoros might be baiting her, testing her to gauge her toughness, the quality of her strength.
The willowy man brought them their agave. As he was about to hand her the drink, Maricruz said, “I’ve met your brother, Señor de la Luna.”
The slight tremble of the glass as it was passed from his hand to hers told her that she had scored bonus points.
“My brother,” de la Luna said, vamping for time to recover.
“Elizondo de la Luna.” She took a sip of the agave, keeping her gaze on him over the rim of the glass. “He is your brother, is he not?”
De la Luna stared at her as if he had found a deadly insect in his bed. “Where did you meet?”
“Manila.” Maricruz wondered what Manila was like, never having set foot in the Philippines. Advance intel was invaluable, she thought. Never more so than at this moment. “You and Elizondo haven’t seen each other in some time, I gather.” She savored the flavors of the aged agave on the back of her tongue. “Nor have you spoken.”
“Señora Encarnación,” Matamoros intervened, smiling cat-like, “I agreed to fly in from Nuevo Laredo to meet with you. We have important business to discuss.”
Maricruz nodded without taking her eyes off de la Luna. He seemed to have gone pale beneath his glossy Mexican skin.
“Manila,” she repeated, “where Elizondo and his Interpol team were in the process of shutting down an illegal pharmaceutical factory.” Her eyes at last turned to the head of Los Zetas. “Lucky for you, Señor Matamoros, that your business interests lie strictly within Mexican borders.”
Now Matamoros did smile, an unpleasant sight by any measure. “I get by.” He gestured to a pair of large tobacco-colored leather chairs. “Please.”
Maricruz chose the chair with its back to the French doors that overlooked the pool and sat. The afternoon light streamed in from behind her. Matamoros seated himself opposite. Marsh and Juan Ruiz stood side by side, as if guarding the two, while de la Luna retreated into the shadows.
“Your father was a good man,” he said. “I respected him. My heartfelt condolences. It’s a great pity he’s gone.”
“You never met my father.”
“I dealt with him through an intermediary.”
“Tulio Vistoso. The Aztec.”
Matamoros inclined his head. “This was by his request.”
“Vistoso is dead, too,” Maricruz said. “And you have appropriated his organization.”
“Well…” Matamoros spread his hands. “What would you have had me do? Without the Aztec and your father’s guiding hands, the men were rudderless. Giron had his eye on them. I couldn’t let them fall into the lap of the Sinaloa.” He finished off his drink and put the glass aside. “However, awkwardly that leaves the Encarnación family without a presence in the world of cartels.”
Maricruz, having known this moment would come, said, “Awkwardly, that leaves you without our lines of supply.”
“I have my own lines of supply.”
“Not direct from China, you don’t. You have to deal with a succession of middlemen, all of whom dip their beak into your stew, diminishing it significantly.”
“Not significantly.”
Maricruz knew he was lying, but then she hadn’t expected anything like the truth from him. Not at this point, anyway.
“I wonder,” she said, “what your costs are for your meth business.” She looked at Matamoros. “Meth is the future, so I hope that segment is growing exponentially.”
Matamoros was silent for several moments, apparently deciding which way to play her new foray.
She did not wait for a reply. “Meth would be more profitable if it weren’t such a low-margin business, isn’t that right?” She sipped her drink. “I have direct access to all the required chemicals—a virtually unlimited supply.”
“Your husband.”
“Is a member of the Chinese Politburo. You can see how advantageous that is.”
“In fact, Señora Encarnación, I do see. Very clearly.” Matamoros nodded.
De la Luna emerged from the shadows holding a 9 mm handgun. He was aiming it at Wendell Marsh.
“It is good that you brought the abogado,” Matamoros said. “Good for me, but not for you. Now you will provide me with everything I require—every advantage your cartel had—or this man dies.”
10
Tossing the corpse aside, Bourne glimpsed a retreating figure through the open window. Instantly he climbed onto the sill, then down onto the sloping roof. The curved tiles were treacherously smooth, and he skidded, sliding close to the edge of the eaves. Ahead of him was a narrow gap between houses; below, the shadowed alley he had seen through the window in the hallway.
Gathering his energy, he leapt across the space, g
rabbing onto a cluster of antennas as he hit the roof of the adjoining building to keep from sliding off. Gaining his footing, he set off after the figure, which was already over the peak of this side of the roof, vanishing from his view.
Moments later, on the peak, he saw the figure, which way it was headed, and thought he saw a way to cut it off before it got too far ahead of him. Leaving the peak behind, he sprinted at an acute angle, leaping to another rooftop that more or less paralleled the route the hastening figure was taking. Clearly, the murderer had a specific destination in mind.
Bourne found that keeping his center of gravity low made running over the slippery tiles easier. Still, the figure ahead of him continued to hasten, clearly more knowledgeable when it came to the rooftops peculiar to Shanghai’s old quarter.
Half running, half sliding, Bourne negotiated the steep rises and falls of the narrow rooftops, the leaps across alleys stinking of garbage and animal remains, using a quartering action to keep pace with the murderer. The figure he was chasing seemed fueled with inexhaustible energy.
Once a slim blur of face glanced back and, seeing him in pursuit, the figure slid across the tiles, vanishing over the edge. Bourne followed down into a cramped street market overcrowded with makeshift stalls selling fruits, vegetables, and bootleg DVDs of American films.
The figure flitted through the tiny spaces between the merchants, squeezing through the crowds of shoppers like a cockroach. Bourne was closing in when the figure turned a corner. When he followed, the murderer was gone. He looked up to see a small figure climbing up a drainpipe like a monkey.
Seeing that the pipe would never hold them both, he ducked into the building’s doorway, taking the crumbling stairs three at a time. Reaching the top floor, he crashed through a door on the drainpipe side of the building, crossed the floor, and, amid screams and panicked residents, smashed through the window, climbed through, and reached up for the tiles on the eaves.
Swinging his legs up, he gained the roof in time to see the figure already two rooftops away. At the far edge, he leapt, grabbed onto a metal exhaust pipe on the neighboring building, and, using it as a fulcrum, swung his body around, flinging himself across the width of the rooftop, landing on the one beyond—the same one the retreating figure was on. Another blur of a face as the figure saw him coming hard. Then, abruptly, the figure went rigid, a small cry bursting forth. It began to tremble violently.
Putting on a burst of speed, Bourne caught up to the figure just past the peak, grabbing it around the curiously slim waist. Swiveling, he saw that the figure he had been pursuing was a young woman, small as a preteen, who could not be more than twenty years old.
Her face was drawn into a rictus of pain, and looking down, he saw that her right foot was caught between the vicious steel jaws of a bear trap.
Really?” Maricruz said. “This is the route you want to take?”
“Is there another?” Matamoros said. “The tried and true always works, Señora Encarnación. What was true yesterday is just as true today.”
Without another word, Maricruz rose and stepped in front of Marsh.
“They have no business threatening me, do they, Wendell?”
“No,” he said, “they don’t.”
With a quick, contemptuous glance at de la Luna, she slammed the heavy old-fashioned glass into Marsh’s face. As he swayed, stunned and confused, she withdrew a small dagger from between her breasts and buried it in his throat.
She stepped away, though there was scarcely any blood. Marsh collapsed onto the rug. For the next several moments, the only sound in the room was the terrible aquatic gurgle of him trying to suck air into his lungs. Maricruz gazed down at him impassively. Once betrayed, always betrayed, she thought. No matter his protestations to the contrary, he could never be trusted. But now he had fulfilled his purpose, he had given his aliyah.
Finally, as his convulsions slowed, then stilled altogether, Maricruz looked up at Matamoros, who had leapt out of the chair and now stood with shoulders hunched forward, feet at shoulder width, in the classic street fighter’s stance.
“Step up,” Maricruz said, beckoning him on with her cupped fingers. “It’s what you’ve wanted from the moment I walked in the room.”
My name is Yue,” the young woman said breathlessly.
“What is a bear trap doing up here?”
Bourne could see how much pain she was in; the teeth had penetrated skin and flesh down to the bone.
“They’re used to trap sun bears.” Yue was taking long, deep breaths in an attempt to lessen the pain. “It’s illegal now, so sometimes the trappers keep the jaws up on the roofs of their apartment buildings.”
On one knee, Bourne ripped off a loose tile. Pressing an end against one side of the trap’s teeth, he jammed his heel between the two jaws and, using his bent leg as leverage, slowly, agonizingly, pulled apart the bloody jaws enough for Yue to pull her leg free. A moment later the tile cracked and Bourne just missed having his foot injured as the jaws snapped shut again.
Yue tried to put her weight on the bleeding ankle.
“Fuck!”
Bourne caught her as she toppled. She was almost weightless. With her in his arms, he stepped to the edge of the roof. Below, a narrow alleyway was filled with enormous plastic bags of garbage.
“Hold tight,” Bourne said as he launched them over the side.
Down they fell, with him cradling her protectively. They hit the bags, and Bourne rolled, using their momentum across his left shoulder to help break the fall.
Her gun slid out. As she snatched at it, he wrestled it away from her. It was an odd-looking weapon, and he soon realized this was what she had used to launch the poison dart into the cop’s neck.
“Where did you get this?”
Yue, sitting atop the garbage pile, crossed her arms over her bony chest and stared at him with a belligerence that belied her age.
Bourne tried another tack. “Why did you kill that cop?”
She threw her head back and laughed at him. It was a true laugh, coming from deep down in her belly.
When she started to curse him, he gripped her tiny wrist more tightly and pulled her to him. “I speak fluently,” he said in idiomatic Shanghainese. “Don’t fuck around with me.”
The only reply he received was the emergence of her bottom lip. She was only a slip of a thing, but she was lightning-quick on her feet, and now Bourne wondered whether the same was true for her mind.
“Why were you at Wei-Wei’s?” she said finally.
“He asked me to meet him there.”
“Why would he do that?”
Bourne studied her for a moment. “He had something he wanted to tell me.”
“I don’t believe you. Wei-Wei would never ask you to meet him at home.”
“Why not?”
“His home was sacred space,” Yue said. “He never conducted business there.”
Bourne thought about the note he had been given at the restaurant, then he gestured with his head. “Let’s get out of this alley. Do you know someone who can fix you up?”
“My mother taught me not to talk to strangers,” Yue said.
Bourne sighed, pulled out the slip of paper with Wei-Wei’s message, and held it out to her. “Is this Wei-Wei’s handwriting?”
She snatched the paper from him and opened it. “Wei-Wei didn’t write this,” she said, handing it back. “Not that I’m surprised.”
“What do you mean?”
“That man I killed was no cop. He was an assassin sent to kill Wei-Wei. You interrupted him before he could get out of the apartment. I followed him to Wei-Wei’s, but he got ahead of me. I was too late to stop him. Then you showed up.”
“In fact, I distracted him long enough for you to get a clear shot at him,” Bourne said.
She looked away.
“Who d’you work for?”
She gave him that poisoned look again. “You said you were meant to meet with Wei-Wei.”
“That’
s right. At a teahouse.” He gave her the name and address.
Her look seemed slightly less skeptical. “What were you to say to him when you met?”
Bourne hesitated only slightly, then gave her the recognition code provided by the Director.
Something dark and dangerous vanished from behind her eyes.
“Okay, then.” Her voice was brisk, all business. “Take me to Tak Sin. He’s just around the corner.”
Put that weapon away,” Matamoros said to de la Luna while he watched Maricruz warily. “You and Juan Ruiz make yourselves useful.” He waved vaguely at the pool. “Go talk to the girls; they’re looking bored.” He snorted. “And take this piece of human excrement with you before he ruins my rug.”
When the room had cleared, Matamoros broke his fighter’s stance and, sighing, crossed in front of Maricruz, kicked her fallen glass into a corner, then went to the sideboard and poured them both a generous portion of tequila.
“Your father brought you up right,” he said as he turned to her.
Maricruz wiped down the blade, then put the push-dagger away. “My father had nothing to do with it.”
“¡Ay de mí!” He handed her the drink. “Cálmate, mi princesa guerrera. Usted ha ganado la batalla.” Calm yourself, my warrior princess. You have won the battle.
He held his sparkling glass aloft and they clinked rims. Both drank deeply. Matamoros sighed. “To be honest, I am grateful to find you as you are—a soldier as fierce as any of my men, and far more resourceful.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “Mujer, I have never met a female like you. I want what you’re selling. Can I be any more frank?”
“I am most concerned with my father’s legacy.”
Matamoros frowned, for the first time looking disconcerted. “Money doesn’t enter the equation?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Please.” He lifted his glass again. “Enlighten me.”
When she said nothing, his frown deepened, and then, as if a veil had been lifted, he nodded. “I see. You think your words will be wasted on me.”