The Bourne Imperative

  Bending over, he peered more deeply into the Chevy’s interior. Where was jefe Marks? The door on his side was open, the window down, but there was no sign of a body, alive or dead. How could that be? The Aztec had put three bullets through the Chevy’s window, as close to point-blank as it was possible to get in a moving vehicle.

  The most infinitesimal movement alerted him, and, hurrying around the front of the wreck, he saw Marks, who looked as if he were pinned under his own car. The jefe was conscious.

  “How?” the Aztec said in English. “I shot you three times. How did you survive without a scratch?”

  Marks looked up at Don Tulio and said in a voice like the rustle of dry leaves, “Bulletproof glass.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Who are you?”

  “The one who brings your death.” The Aztec stalked toward where Peter lay. “You stole my thirty million, fucker.”

  “And who did you steal that thirty million from?”

  Don Tulio held the 911 in one hand, his opened knife in the other. Now he pointed the handgun at Marks. “Since you’ll be separated from your head thirty seconds from now, I’ll tell you. Don Maceo Encarnación.”

  “I spit on Don Maceo Encarnación,” the jefe said. “And I spit on you.”

  Within the blink of an eye, Peter brought the Glock he had been clutching into view, and, squeezing the trigger, shot the man standing over him in the left side of his chest. But Peter heard two shots, not one. As the man staggered back, Peter felt a blinding pain engulf him. He tried to breathe, coughed, felt a hot gout of blood rushing into his throat, choking him. He could not breathe. His heart labored as he lost strength.

  So this is how it ends, he thought. And, strangely, he didn’t seem to mind.

  20

  Rebeka lay unmoving on top of Bourne as the hearse drove through the burnt, bitter pre-dawn of Mexico City. They were enclosed within the polished elm coffin Maceo Encarnación had ordered for Maria-Elena, his deceased cook. Diego de la Rivera himself sat beside the driver. The coffin, locked into its stainless-steel rails, was the only thing in the capacious rear. Black curtains covered the windows.

  “The coffin is how Maceo Encarnación has the deceased travel back to the mortuary,” Diego de la Rivera had told them just before they had departed. “The coffin material and style are already picked out. His security guards know me; they’ll look into the interior, but they won’t bother searching it. Trust me.”

  Events transpired just as Diego de la Rivera had said. The hearse was stopped outside the gates. From inside the coffin, Rebeka and Bourne could hear muffled voices. A moment later, the wide rear door opened, more voices were heard, closer this time. Then the door slammed shut. Some rude laughter, then the hearse was granted entry to Maceo Encarnación’s estate. Gravel crunched beneath the hearse’s tires as the vehicle traveled at a funereal pace along the semicircular driveway, then around to the rear of the villa.

  More voices, less querulous. Again, the rear door was opened, but this time the coffin was unlocked from its position, and Diego de la Rivera and his driver carried it into the house, presumably to where Maria-Elena was laid out.

  At some point, the coffin was set down. A triple knock followed by a double informed them that their journey was at an end. The coffin’s lid was lifted up, and, like vampires in the night, they climbed out into the dimness of a room that smelled of perfume and death.

  Apart from the corpse of the unfortunate Maria-Elena, Diego de la Rivera and his driver were the only other people visible. They were in the woman’s bedroom. It was filled with trinkets, entire shelves covered with miniature skulls and skeletons, gaily painted in Day-Glo colors, obviously collected over the years from Day of the Dead festivals. The body lay on the white cotton coverlet, which was edged in decorative eyelets. Maria-Elena had been a handsome woman: wide Olmec face, large in bosom and hips, but with a narrow waist. Her hands were folded on her stomach. She wore a yellow dress printed with red poppies, making her seem as festive as the papier-mâché skulls and skeletons that surrounded her.

  “There’s an armed man outside the door. He’s the one who greeted us at the back door,” Diego de la Rivera whispered to them. “Vaya con Dios. You’re on your own from now on.”

  Bourne grabbed him by the elbow. “Not quite yet.”

  Maceo Encarnación’s man turned as Diego de la Rivera exited Maria-Elena’s bedroom.

  “I left something in the hearse,” he said sheepishly.

  The man nodded. “I’ll come with you.”

  As the guard moved off after de la Rivera, Bourne stepped out and slammed him in the back of the neck. Dazed, the man half-turned into Bourne’s smash to the side of his head. He went down, unconscious.

  Bourne dragged him into the bedroom and disarmed him, sticking a Sig Sauer into his waistband. He found a gravity knife and pocketed that as well. Selecting a piece of clothing from Maria-Elena’s dresser drawer, he stuffed it into the security man’s mouth. Then he tied his hands behind his back with a scarf and shoved him under the bed, settling the end of the coverlet over him so that he was completely out of sight.

  “Now,” Bourne said as de la Rivera reentered the bedroom, “it’s vaya con Dios.”

  Just outside Maria-Elena’s closed bedroom door, Bourne and Rebeka stood silent and still, listening to the sounds of the house, alert for any footfalls, voices, anything at all that might indicate there were security guards inside the house as well as outside, but, apart from a radio, dimly playing Tino Rossi’s 1945 version of “Besame Mucho,” there was no sign of life.

  It was very early, barely sunrise. It was a good bet that the principals of the house were still sleeping. But someone must be up, listening to the sinuous music. And now they heard soft footfalls down the hallway, so they ducked into a bathroom, leaving the door ajar just a sliver.

  Bourne saw a beautiful young woman, wrapped in a long, silken robe intricately embroidered with flowers and vines, come down the wide, curving polished-wood staircase and hurry along the hallway past them. She was clearly naked beneath the robe. Judging by her features and her grief-stricken expression, he guessed she must be Maria-Elena’s daughter. Peering out carefully, he saw her disappear into her mother’s room. A moment later, as they emerged from their hiding place, they heard a low wail of despair from behind the bedroom door.

  “Poor thing,” Rebeka whispered in Bourne’s ear.

  Bourne mentally surveyed the layout of the two-floor villa that el Enterrador had showed them. The non-help bedrooms were upstairs. Bourne noted with curiosity that Maria-Elena’s daughter had come from there, not the main floor, where by all rights she ought to have her sleeping quarters. Plus, the dressing gown she had wrapped around her must have cost as much as her mother’s yearly salary. These small oddities were pushed aside as they began to ascend the staircase, their senses on high alert.

  Once they had assured themselves that no one else was on the stairs, they raced the rest of the way up, reaching the second floor landing without incident. This upper floor was divided in two. The west wing—to their left—was Maceo Encarnación’s immense master bedroom suite, which included a sybaritic bathroom and a massive wood-paneled study. The east wing—to their right—contained four en suite guest bedrooms. It was toward the east wing they crept, keeping their heads below the railing until they reached the wall where the bedrooms started, two on each side.

  Bourne signed that he’d check the bedrooms on the left while Rebeka should take the ones on the right. Nodding in affirmation, she stepped down the hallway. He watched her for a moment before he went to the first door.

  Placing one ear against the door, he listened, but, apart from the low hum of the HVAC system, he heard nothing. Hand on the knob, he turned it, opened the door, and silently stepped into the bedroom. Heavy curtains hung across the window. In the dimness, he made out the basic furniture: bed, dresser, desk, and chair. No one was in the bed, whose coverlet was undisturbed. The air in the room smelled s
tale; no point checking the bathroom.

  Returning to the hall, he saw Rebeka emerging from the first bedroom on her side. She shook her head: no one there, either. They moved farther down the hall until they were standing in front of the third and fourth bedrooms.

  Hearing soft footfalls on the staircase, they turned, crouching down, pressed back against the walls. Maria-Elena’s beautiful daughter came floating up the stairs as if on a cloud, trailing her extravagant robe behind her. Reaching the landing, she turned to her left, moving into the west wing and vanishing behind the heavily carved mahogany door to the master suite.

  Bourne and Rebeka exchanged glances before they went back to work. As before, Bourne put his ear to the bedroom door, but this time he heard, very faintly, the sound of running water. Signaling for Rebeka to join him, he slowly turned the doorknob, opening the door just enough to peek inside. This bedroom was as dim as the previous one, but here the bedcovers were rucked back, the pillow clearly showing the indentation of a head.

  Bourne slipped inside the room, Rebeka following him soundlessly. The shower was on, the door to the bathroom slightly ajar. Signing that he would go in while she checked the closets, Bourne stole across the bedroom and, turning his body sideways, tapped the door slightly and slipped through the wider opening into the steam-bound bathroom. Bright lights were on, blindingly reflected off the shiny white tiles.

  In one motion, Bourne was across the space, his arm extended, hand pulling back the opaque shower curtain. Water streamed from the showerhead, cascading down on empty space. There was no one in the shower.

  Understanding bloomed. With an inarticulate growl, Bourne whirled, retracing his steps, out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. Rebeka, half inside the closet, turned as he came in. As she did so, Harry Rowland, emerging from the depths of the closet, slammed his fist into her side, where she had been knifed in Damascus six weeks ago. Before Bourne could move, he had a knife across her throat. From behind her, he grinned like a death’s-head.

  Bourne was certain Rebeka knew at least a dozen ways to free herself. She wasn’t able to; Rowland saw to that. He bent her torso cruelly, causing her to gasp like a fish out of water. A red stain slowly spread across the side of her shirt where she had been struck.

  “One of the useful bits of intel I picked up when I was nosing around the Dahr El Ahmar camp,” Rowland said, eyes darkening, “was where she was wounded and how bad it was.”

  He moved infinitesimally, shifting something Bourne couldn’t see because Rebeka was in the way. Then he punched her in the side, and she hissed her pain through clamped teeth. The bloodstain widened. She stared at Bourne with bloodshot eyes.

  “Let her go, Rowland,” Bourne said.

  “Is that a request or a threat? Either way.” Rowland shook his head. “This fucker has been following me halfway around the world, and now you have joined the hunt.” He smiled with his teeth. “See, this is what it’s like to regain your memory.” Nodding, he continued: “Oh, yeah, I know who you are, you poor amnesiac freak. I actually feel sorry for you, living half a life, carrying that shadow around with you, day and night, awake or asleep. A nightmare of unimaginable proportions.” Rebeka moved and he struck her again in the same place. Blood welled up out of the fabric, dripped onto the floor. “Only I know what it’s like to have no past, to be adrift in the present.”

  “What do you want?” Bourne was seeking a way to forestall more damage being done to Rebeka.

  “I want an end to the hunt. I want your deaths.”

  Bourne could see Rebeka gathering her reserves of strength, and he knew for what. He signaled with his eyes for her to stand down, to do nothing. I have a plan, his eyes said. Let me handle Rowland. But she ignored him, drew on her training, fierce and indomitable.

  “There’s another way out for all of us,” Bourne said, doing whatever he could to distract Rowland an instant before Rebeka made her move.

  Afterward, Bourne could not determine what went wrong—was Rebeka too depleted by the pain? Rowland too fast? She moved in a blur, he countermoved into her, the blade of his knife penetrating her side even as she whirled, delivering a blow to the point of his chin.

  He staggered back, letting go of her, but she reeled back, the knife buried to the hilt in her side, and, as Bourne moved forward, collapsed into his arms. Lifting her off her feet, Bourne ran out of the bedroom, down the hallway to the door to the basement.

  The plan of the house was clear in his mind, everything el Enterrador had told them about the basement echoing the only promise of escape. With Rebeka lying bleeding in his arms, he could think only of escaping from Maceo Encarnación’s estate and getting her to a hospital as quickly as possible.

  He took her down the concrete stairs. With a flick of a switch the basement blazed with light, illuminating the space and its contents. He found a flashlight in a tool chest and switched it on. Crossing to the electric panel, he cut the power to all the breakers. The lights went out, not only down in the basement, but all through the house, along with the alarm system.

  “In the center of the basement is a storm drain,” el Enterrador had told them. “The water table beneath the house dictates a large one.” Large enough to accommodate a human being.

  Using the flashlight’s beam, Bourne found the drain. Rebeka moaned as he set her down. The hilt of the knife still stuck out of her side. He could not pull it out without a resultant gush of blood. Even if he bound the wound, it would bleed far more than it was now. Curling his fingers around the grate that covered the drain, he hauled upward. It wouldn’t budge.

  All of a sudden, he heard the sound of running boot soles on the floorboards above his head. He looked over at Rebeka, the blood staining the bare concrete near her. Upstairs, there would be a clear trail to the basement door.

  Charles Thorne, in his enormous king-size bed, drifted restlessly in and out of sleep. He heard the front door click closed, and he sat up. Or had he dreamed it? He heard soft footfalls coming toward the bedroom. He knew the gait as well as he knew his own.

  His wife was home.

  “Did I wake you?” Ann Ring said from her position in the open doorway.

  “Would it matter?” He was trying to shake the sleep out of his head.

  “Not really.”

  That exchange, as much as anything, defined their relationship. A marriage fueled by hot sex had been transformed into a marriage of convenience as the chemicals cooled and dissolved into the routine of daily life.

  He watched his wife as she strode into the bedroom, crossing to her dresser, where she began to take off her jewelry.

  “It’s almost seven in the morning. Where were you?”

  “The same place as you. Out.”

  Staring at Ann’s back, pale and shimmery in the city light, as she unzipped and shrugged off her dress, Thorne could recall a time when the heat between them was so unbearable all they could think of was melding together, no matter where they were. Now he seemed to be watching a photograph. Now it was unbearable to look at her and admit to himself what he had lost.

  What has become of me? he wondered. How did I wander so far off course? There was no answer, of course, apart from the obvious one: Life happened, one decision at a time, a tiny incision in a rock face becoming a landslide under which he was now in imminent danger of being buried.

  Naked, Ann went into the bathroom and flicked on the lights. A moment later, as he heard the shower come on, he got out of bed and padded over to where her clothes were puddled on the floor. By the wedge of light thrown from the bathroom, he went through the hip pockets of her dress, then rooted in her small clutch.

  A shadow passed across him and he froze.

  “Can I help you with something?” Ann stood in the doorway, watching him with the coldly luminous eyes of a reptile.

  She hadn’t stepped into the shower after all. He closed his eyes, raging at himself for falling into so obvious a trap. Obvious in retrospect. His hate for her was so powerful he could
taste it.

  Then she moved. “Get away from my things, you pathetic sonofabitch.”

  He stepped back hurriedly as she snatched her purse from his hand.

  “You want to know where I was?” Ann’s nostrils flared as she shook her head, contempt altering her expression. “I had a little visit with Mr. Li.” As his eyes widened, a smile curled her lips. “That’s right, your Mr. Li.” She opened a drawer of her dresser, put the clutch inside, then leaned on the open drawer as if to show him how much he wearied her. “Only, he never was your Mr. Li. Not exclusively, anyway.”

  “How…?” Thorne felt paralyzed. His brain seemed to have lost the ability to string two thoughts together. “How did you…?”

  She laughed silently. “Who do you think introduced him to his Israeli girlfriend?”

  Back at the toolbox, Bourne grabbed a crowbar and used it to pry up the grate. Setting it aside, he trained the beam of light down to see the trajectory of the drain. It was a sheer vertical drop for only about seven or eight feet, after which there was a bend as it sloped slightly farther down. He gripped the flashlight between his teeth and gathered Rebeka into his arms. Holding her against him, he slid down the storm drain, the soles of his shoes thudding hard against the bottom of the vertical drop.

  Shifting her slightly in his arms brought no response from her. Tilting his head so the beam of light lit up her face, he saw that her eyes were closed. The wound in her side was deep, and he wondered if the knife blade had nicked, or even penetrated, a vital organ. There was no way to tell. He tried again to stanch the flow of blood but was only partially successful.

  “Rebeka,” he said softly. Then forcefully. But her eyes opened only after he had slapped her cheek. “Don’t pass out on me,” he said. “I’m getting you out of here.” Her eyes gazed up at him, slightly out of focus. “Just hold on a little longer.”