The Bourne Imperative

  “We can do what we do,” Bourne said softly, “only because we are what we are.” He looked down at her. “There’s no turning back for us. There’s only one exit from the life we live, and none of us who are good at what we do want to take it.”

  “Do we love what we do so much?”

  He was silent. The answer was evident.

  He held her that way until, with a discreet knock on the partially open door, Manny announced himself.

  His name is unimportant,” Manny said as he drove them through Mexico City’s bright-night streets. “He is known as el Enterrador.” The Undertaker.

  “Isn’t that a little over the top?” Rebeka said from the plush backseat of the armored Hummer.

  Manny looked at her in the rearview mirror and smiled with his teeth. “Wait till you meet him.”

  Flashing lights up ahead revealed a semicircle of cop cars, blazing headlights illuminating six cops using truncheons to beat down on a dozen teenagers armed with switchblades and broken beer bottles.

  “Just another night in Mexico City,” Manny said with no apparent irony.

  They traveled on, through the Zona Rosa, the Historic Center, seemingly across the entire broad expanse of a city that sprawled, octopus-like, across the mile-high plain toward the great looming volcano, Popocatépetl, brooding like an ancient Aztec god.

  They witnessed fires, street gangs stalking one another, they heard raucous Gringo techno and native ranchera music spilling out of nightclubs, vengeful brawls, the occasional gunshot. They were passed by roaring, souped-up cars driven by drunken kids, with cumbia or rap blasting from custom speakers, on and on, a nightmare scenario without end.

  But at last they reached Villa Gustavo a Madero, and Manny slowed the Hummer, rolling it through darkened, sleeping streets, into the heart of the city within the city. Up ahead, the bonnets of trees, black against the twinkling, indistinct skyline, rose up like a prehistoric world until, through tree-shadowed byways, they reached the very center of the heart: the Cementerio del Tepeyac.

  “Of course,” Rebeka said to relieve the almost unbearable tension, “where else would el Enterrador hang out but in a cemetery.”

  However, it wasn’t to one of the crypts that Manny took them, but to the Basilica de Guadelupe. He had no difficulty unlocking the door to the basilica and ushering them inside.

  The incredibly intricate and exquisitely painted interior was ablaze, the gilt chandeliers illuminating the host of cherubs that spilled across the domed ceiling. Manny remained just inside the doorway while gesturing them down the central aisle. Long before they reached the draped altar, however, a figure appeared: a man with a pointed beard and mustache. His black eyes seemed to penetrate their clothes, their very skin, as if peering into the heart of them.

  He possessed the pallor and demeanor of a ghost, speaking so softly Bourne and Rebeka were obliged to lean forward to hear him.

  “You come from Constanza Camargo.” It was not a question. “Follow me.”

  As he turned to go, he pushed up the wide sleeves of his ecclesiastical robe, revealing forearms knotted with muscle and ropy veins, crawling with tattoos of coffins and tombstones, beautiful and horrific.

  It was almost 4 AM by the time the Aztec awoke, according to his unerring internal clock. He was hungry. No matter. There were thirty million reasons to ignore the gnawing in his stomach. Finding a rubberized waterproof flashlight, he took it topside.

  Outside, Washington glittered, seeming far away across the water. Don Tulio looked across to where the Recursive lay tied up at slip 31. No one was visible. In fact, the entire marina appeared deserted. Still, the Aztec stood on the boat, aurally cataloguing the night noises—the slap of the wavelets against hulls, the creaking of masts, the pinging of rigging against those masts—these were all the normal sounds of a marina. Don Tulio listened beyond those for any anomalous sounds—the soft tread of feet, the low sound of voices, anything that would indicate the presence of human beings.

  Finding none, he was at last satisfied. He climbed onto the dock, first looking to the darkened harbormaster’s hut, then swiftly and silently made his way to slip 31, stepping, at last, aboard the Recursive.

  He went immediately to the second bumper on the starboard side and felt under it with his fingers. The nylon rope was still there! Heart pounding, he pulled in the rope, hand over hand. The weight felt just as it should; with every foot he reeled in, he became more and more certain that his thirty million was safe and secure at the nether end of the rope.

  But when he had pulled it all in and switched on the flashlight, what he saw tied to the end was a lead weight.

  “Looking for this?”

  Don Tulio whirled, saw jefe Marks holding up the watertight satchel, deflated, empty, the thirty million and his life gone. Engulfed by the final wave of his murderous rage, he leaped at his tormentor, heard the explosion rocket through his ear, felt the bullet enter, then exit his left biceps. He kept going, a full-on bull-rush that took both Marks and him over the railing, both plunging down, the chill black water robbing them both of breath.

  Chinatown? Really?” Charles Thorne sat down at the Formica table opposite the tall, slender man, dressed in one of those shiny Chinese suits that imitated the American style, but none too well.

  “Try the moo goo gai pan,” Li Wan said, gesturing with his chopsticks. “It’s really rather good.”

  “Christ, it’s four in the morning,” Thorne said with a sour face. There was no point in asking Li how he managed to get a restaurant to stay open for him in the waning hours of the night when nothing, not even the cats, was roaming Chinatown’s streets. “Besides, it’s not really a Chinese dish.”

  Li Wan shrugged his coat-hanger shoulders. “When in America.”

  Thorne shook his head as he unwrapped his chopsticks and dug in.

  “I suppose you were expecting beef sinew and fish maw,” Li said with a visible shudder.

  “My friend, you’ve spent too much time in America.”

  “I was born in America, Charles.”

  Thorne lapped a slick of MSG off his chopsticks. “Exactly my point. You need a vacation. Back to the homeland.”

  “Not my homeland. I was born and raised right here in DC.”

  Li, a prominent intellectual rights lawyer, had graduated from Georgetown University, which made him wholly homegrown. Still, Thorne couldn’t help needling him; it was part of their relationship.

  Thorne frowned. Despite what Li had said, he didn’t like the moo goo gai pan at all. “As an outsider, you’re privy to an awful lot of their secrets.”

  “Who said I’m an outsider?”

  Thorne regarded him thoughtfully before hailing a passing waiter, who stopped and stood before him with the air of someone who, despite the hour, had many things better to do. Picking up the grease-stained plastic menu, Thorne ordered General Tso’s chicken. “Extra crispy,” he said, though it’s doubtful the waiter heard him or, if he did, cared, until Li spoke to him in the withering Cantonese only a Mandarin could manage. Off the waiter went, as if Li had lit his tail on fire.

  After pouring them both chrysanthemum tea, Li said, “Really, Charles, after all these years it would behoove you to learn Cantonese as well as Mandarin.”

  “What? So I can intimidate waiters in Chinatown? That’s all it’s good for these days.”

  Li regarded him again with his patented inscrutable look.

  “You do that deliberately,” Thorne complained. “You know that, don’t you? I’m on to you.”

  The waiter set down a platter of General Tso’s chicken, and, after giving Li a questioning look and receiving an answering nod, beat a hasty retreat.

  “Is it extra crispy?” Li said.

  “You know it is,” Thorne replied, piling some into his bowl of rice.

  The two men ate in companionable silence amid the sizzle and steam of the open kitchen behind them. The usual bustle, shouting, and shoving, however, were missing. The unaccustomed hu
sh lent the place a forlorn air.

  At last, when the first frenzy of shoving the food into his mouth had abated, Charles said, “I’ve known you a long time, Li, but I still can’t figure how an outsider like you is trusted with—”

  “Hush, Charles.”

  Their waiter, wiping his hands on his filthy apron, walked past them to the men’s room.

  Li pointed at Thorne’s dish. “There really was a General Tso, you know. Zuo Zongtang. Qing Dynasty. Died in 1885. From Hunan. Odd since the dish is mainly sweet, not spicy like most Hunan dishes. It’s not indigenous to Changsha, the capital of Hunan, nor Xiangyin, the general’s home town. So what is its origin? There’s speculation that the name of the dish was originally zongtang chicken.”

  “Meaning ‘ancestral meeting hall.’”

  Li nodded. “In that event, nothing to do with the good general.” He swirled some tea around his mouth and swallowed. “Of course, the Taiwanese have claimed they created the dish.” Li put down his chopsticks. “The point being, Charles, that no one knows these things—no one can.”

  “Are you saying that it’s impossible to know how you became such a trusted guardian of—”

  “Listen to me,” Li said, abruptly and finally. “I’m saying that in Chinese culture there are many reasons for many things, most of them too complicated to comprehend fully.”

  “Try me,” Thorne said with a mouthful of food.

  “I can’t go into my lineage. It would make your eyes pop and your head spin. Suffice it to say, I am among the elite residing outside of Beijing. As to your suggestion of returning to the motherland, I’m far too valuable to the powers that be precisely where I am.”

  “‘The powers that be.’” Thorne flashed a lopsided grin. “One of those opaque, distinctly Chinese phrases.”

  “As they say,” Li said, returning the lopsided grin like a forehand over the net, “Beijing is composed of equal parts quicksand and cement.”

  “What do ‘the powers that be’ think of your bedding Natasha Illion?” Li and Illion, a supermodel of Israeli background, had been a breathless item for over a year, something of a record for that rareified, hothouse species.

  Li, silent on the subject of his inamorata, watched Thorne return to his eating, waiting a decent amount of time before he said, “I understand you have a bit of an issue.”

  At that, Thorne’s chopsticks froze halfway to his mouth. He covered his consternation by making a show of putting them down slowly and carefully. “Exactly what have you heard, Li?”

  “Exactly what you have. You and the rest of the senior staff at Politics As Usual are about to be investigated for illegal voicemail hacking.” He cocked his head. “Tell me, does the illustrious Senator Ann Ring know?”

  “If she did,” Thorne said acidly, “she’d be jumping out of her skin.” He shook his head. “The investigation has not yet begun.”

  “For the time being.”

  “She must, on no account, find out. It will be the end.”

  “Yes, the end of your gravy train. How many millions is your wife worth?”

  Thorne regarded him bleakly.

  “But the senator will find out the moment the investigation begins, if she hasn’t already.”

  “She hasn’t, believe me.”

  “Tick-tock, Charles.”

  Thorne winced inwardly. “I need help.”

  “Yes, Charles,” Li Wan said, “you most certainly do.”

  El Enterrador led them to the back of the apse, down a short, dimly lit corridor, into the rectory, which smelled of incense, polished wood, and man-sweat. Beneath an enormous figure of Christ on the Cross were laid out the architectural plans for Maceo Encarnación’s villa on Castelar Street.

  “Are you sure this is where our man is going to be?” Bourne had asked Constanza Camargo earlier in the evening.

  “If, as you say, he was flown here to Mexico City,” she had replied, “this is the reason why.”

  El Enterrador took them floor by floor, room by room, through the house. “Two floors,” came his papery whisper, “plus, most importantly, a basement.” He told them why.

  “The roof is made of traditional unglazed Mexican tiles. Very sturdy. There are two exit doors on the ground floor—front and back. None on the second floor, save the windows. And as for the basement—” his long, stiletto-like forefinger showed them on the plan.

  Then he lifted the top sheet, exposing another. “Those were the original plans. Here are the modifications Maceo Encarnación made when he moved in.” His forefinger stabbed out again. “You see, here—and here—and again here.” His black-ice eyes cut to them for an instant. “Good for you, possibly. Possibly not. That is not my business. I told Constanza Camargo that I would get you in. The rest is up to you.”

  He stood up, his cowl throwing an oblique shadow across the modified plan. “Afterward, if you are successful, if you manage to escape, you will not come here, nor will you go to Constanza Camargo’s home.”

  “We discussed with her what would happen,” Rebeka said, “after.”

  “Did you?” Clearly, el Enterrador’s interest was piqued. “Well, well.”

  “She must like us.”

  El Enterrador nodded. “I believe she does.”

  “How do you know Señora Camargo?” Rebeka asked.

  El Enterrador flashed them an evil smile. “We met in heaven,” he whispered, “or in hell.”

  “That’s hardly helpful,” Rebeka said.

  “We are in Mexico, Señorita. Here there are volcanos, serpents, madness, gods, sacred places. Mexico City is one such. It is built upon the navel of the Aztec world. Here, heaven and hell meet.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Bourne said, “shall we?”

  The evil smile returned to the false priest’s lips. “An unbeliever.”

  “I’m a believer in doing,” Bourne said, “not talking.”

  El Enterrador nodded. “Fair enough, but…” He handed a small object to Bourne. It was a tiny replica of a human skull, studded with crystals. “Keep this safe,” he said. “It is protection.”

  “Against what?” Bourne asked.

  “Maceo Encarnación.”

  At that moment, Bourne recalled what Constanza Camargo had said: “I underestimated Maceo Encarnación’s power. He is protected by an almost mystical power, as if by gods.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  El Enterrador inclined his head, obviously pleased.

  Rebeka said, “Are we to stay here?”

  “No. You will be transported to the mortuary, where you will stay until the call comes.”

  “The call will come to this particular mortuary?” Bourne said.

  “This one and no other.”

  Bourne nodded, accepting el Enterrador’s word.

  They were led out of the rectory, through a small, unobtrusive door, out into the churchyard beyond which stretched the vast cemetery, a city unto itself. There was a hearse awaiting them, its engine purring richly.

  El Enterrador opened the wide rear door, and they climbed in.

  “Vaya con Dios, mis hijos,” he said in a pious voice, and made the sign of the cross. Then he slammed the door shut, and the hearse rolled out of the churchyard, away from the basilica, making its funereal way through the blackened byways of Cementerio del Tepeyac, heading deeper and deeper into the mystical heart of the city.

  18

  Peter, down in the depths, felt the chill of death. Hands were at his throat. He kicked out, but the water, seeming thick as sludge, defeated his attack. Bringing his hands up under those at his throat, he exploded them outward the moment they made contact. The pressure came off, but the two of them were still sinking down.

  He scissored his legs, arrowing upward, but hands caught at him, dragging him back. Didn’t this man need to breathe as badly as he did, weren’t his lungs aching, his head pounding, his heart thumping painfully in his chest?

  Peter could not see his antagonist, had never seen him, in
fact. The moment his flashlight picked him out on the boat, he was blinded by the man’s own flashlight. Then came the attack, and both of them went into the water.

  Down and down.

  Peter felt the cold sucking the strength out of him. His limbs felt like lead weights. Then there was an arm around his throat, a choke hold, which he could not tolerate. Feeling for the man’s face, he jammed a thumb into one eye, pushing and pushing with all the strength left in him, and though the water impeded him, he had enough leverage that the choke hold vanished.

  Peter spun to confront his attacker face-to-face. No light in the darkness. He had no idea how deep they had drifted, only that there was less than a minute before his lungs ran out of oxygen.

  He rose, feathering his lower legs, then, instead of an ineffective kick, shoved the heel of his shoe into his attacker’s face. Instantly, then, he scissored his legs again, reaching upward with his arms, his first priority now to get to the surface.

  With that goal fixed firmly in mind, he kicked harder than ever. It seemed an eternity, during which he might have blacked out for seconds at a time, reality drooling by in discrete segments, connected by nothingness, as if his mind had completely fled his body. But, at last, he saw wavering above him the shadow of illumination—the opposite of a shadow, casting itself on what, as he neared, he realized was the skin of the water.

  As he broke the surface, strong arms reached down, powerful hands gripped him—his men, alerted by the shot he had fired, must have been searching for him from the moment they boarded the Recursive.

  He heard grunts above him, lifted his head to see two or three faces, among them Sam Anderson, his deputy, picked out in the glare of the spotlights. He squinted, half-blinded by the spots, like a creature from the depths. He heard Anderson turn and call for the spots to be angled slightly away, and was grateful when his men promptly complied.