Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (36 page)

“And yet he sent you to kill her.”

“That’s the kind of man he is.” Halevy took several shuddering breaths. “Divided, always divided, just like our country, just like every country in the Middle East. He loves Rebeka. I don’t know what it took out of him to order her termination.” Those oddly porcine breaths again. “There’s no reason for you to believe this, but I’m glad she’s still alive.”

At that, Bourne rose, and, hauling the Babylonian up by his shirtfront, walked him back to the taxi. He shoved his face against the window.

“See her there? She’s dead, Halevy,” Bourne said. “I hold you and Ben David to account.”

“I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t.” Even as he was saying this, he whirled, a needle-like weapon in the palm of his hand. Its point glinted wetly with what must be some kind of fast-acting poison. Bourne, lifting an arm, felt the needle snag in the fabric of his jacket. The needle point scraped against his skin but did not break it. Bourne smashed the heel of his hand into Halevy’s nose. He delivered a second strike to the Babylonian’s throat, fracturing the cricoid cartilage.

Jerking his arm away from the needle, he struck Halevy flush on his ear. The Babylonian, gasping for air that would not come, staggered to his knees, still trying desperately to swipe at Bourne with the needle. Bourne grabbed him, and drove his knee into his groin, then struck him over and over again until he felt the bones in Halevy’s chest give way.

With the Babylonian dead, Bourne slipped into the old car he had chosen, hot-wired it, and drove out of the lot. At Benito Juárez International Airport, he bought a first-class ticket, then went in search of something to eat.

While he waited for his food, he took out the tiny skull studded with crystals that
el Enterrador
had given him as protection against Maceo Encarnación.
“He is protected by an almost mystical power,”
Constanza Camargo had told him,
“as if by gods.”

His food came, but he found that he was no longer hungry. As he turned the skull around and around between his fingers, he thought about everything that had happened to him and Rebeka since coming to Mexico City, all of which had been dictated, in one way or another, by Constanza Camargo. And then he began to wonder about something else. Why would Henry Rowland secrete himself in the closet of his bedroom unless he had known they were coming? But how had he known with such precision where they were?

Bourne stared at the crystal-studded skull and into his mind came thoughts of other gods—the gods of technology. Placing the skull on the table, he smashed the bottom of his fist down onto it. Carefully, he picked through the shattered bits and pieces, extracting the minuscule tracking device that had been embedded in its center. He left it amid the debris without destroying it. He wanted the signal to continue broadcasting, just as if he had never discovered the device.

He rose, paying for the meal he hadn’t touched, then exited the departure lounge, heading for the long-term parking lot, to find a suitable vehicle to drive back into the city.

There are any number of ways to remain alive after you’re dead.” Don Fernando Hererra laughed, seeing the expression on Martha Christiana’s face. “This is only one of them.”

The pilot had landed the private jet in a vast field south of Paris.

There was no runway, no windsock, no customs shed. The plane had deviated from its flight plan and, after a frantic Mayday call, was now off the grid as far as the towers at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were concerned.

“There are no magicians in the world, Martha. Only illusionists,” Hererra said. “The idea is to create the illusion of death. For this, we require an authentic disaster, which is why the plane has landed here, where no one will be hurt.”

“Those bodies I saw on the plane,” Martha said, “are real.” Hererra nodded as he handed her a folder.

“What’s this?”

“Look inside.”

Opening the file, she saw forensic reports on three bodies retrieved from the wreckage of the plane that had not yet crashed. The three bodies were burned beyond recognition, of course, but were identified by dental records. Hererra was named, as well as the pilot and the navigator.

Martha picked her head up. “What about their families? What will you tell them?”

Hererra nodded to the two men who were exiting the jet, whose engines were still running. “These men have no families, one of the reasons they were hired in the first place.”

“But how—?”

“I have friends inside the Élysée Palace who will control the accident scene.”

The pilot approached Hererra. “The three corpses have been placed correctly,” he said. “We can proceed anytime.”

Hererra checked his wristwatch. “We’ve been off the radar for seven minutes. Do it now.”

The pilot nodded, then turned to his navigator, who was standing apart from them. The navigator held a small black box in his hand. When he pressed a button on the box, the jet’s engines rose in pitch until they became a scream. Another button remotely released the brakes, and the jet bucked forward, quickly gaining speed until it slammed into the line of trees at the far end of the field. A ferocious noise flared, momentarily deafening them. The ground shook, and an oily black-and-red fireball puffed out in the sky.

“We go,” Hererra said, herding them all toward a large four-wheeldrive SUV crouched at the edge of the field. “Now.”

The Cementerio del Tepeyac and, especially, the Basilica de Guadelupe looked completely different in daylight. All the sinister qualities, burned into the Mexican night, had been washed away, leaving a thin veneer of religiosity that no doubt hid a multitude of sins, both venial and mortal.

Parking his stolen car a hundred yards away, Bourne spent several minutes circumnavigating the immediate area around the basilica. There was no sign of the hearse that had conveyed him and Rebeka to the establishment of Diego de la Rivera, Maceo Encarnación’s brother-in-law. There was also no sign of the mysterious pseudopriest,
el Enterrador.
Bourne recalled in vivid detail the tattoos of coffins and tombstones adorning his forearms.

He went around to the entrance and slipped through. The interior was filled with echoes and incense. A choir of angelic voices lifted heavenward. Mass had commenced. Bourne made his way to the back of the apse, returning to the dimly lit corridor that led to the rectory.

Before he arrived, however, he paused, hearing voices from within the small office. One was a female alto. Moving stealthily forward, Bourne caught a sliver of the rectory, the enormous crucified Christ dominating as usual. Then into his restricted line of vision came the source of the alto. With a start, he recognized the beautiful young woman who had drifted down the staircase in Maceo Encarnación’s villa, who had cried out when she had seen what Bourne understood must have been her mother, laid out, ready for the mortician’s art. The anomaly of her coming from an upstairs bedroom where no servant ought to be, naked beneath her expensive robe, now returned to the forefront of Bourne’s mind. Upon returning upstairs, she had gone into the master suite, where Maceo Encarnación presumably lay beneath the bedcovers.

What was she doing here? Bourne moved slightly, his gaze following Maria-Elena’s daughter as she moved anxiously around the rectory. He’d heard de la Rivera, the mortician, use the dead cook’s name. A moment later, she stopped in front of a robed and hooded man. His spade beard announced him as
el Enterrador
.

“Give me absolution for my sins,” she said softly. “I harbor murderous thoughts.”

“Have you acted on these thoughts?” he replied in his raspy whisper.

“No, but—”

“Then all will be well, Anunciata.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t know what I know,” she said bitterly.

“By all means tell me,”
el Enterrador
said with quiet menace.

She quailed for a moment, then expelled a deep breath.

“I trusted Maceo. I thought he loved me,” she said, her voice abruptly changed, deeper in register and somehow darker.

“You can trust him. He does love you.”

“My mother’s legacy.” She unfolded a sheet of paper, shoved it at him. “Maceo slept with my mother before he slept with me. He’s my father.”

El Enterrador
touched the crown of her head. “My child,” he said, just as if he were a real priest, continuing in that ecclesiastical vein: “Fallen from the Garden of Eden, we all come from a dark place. This is our heritage, our collective legacy. We are all sinners, navigating a sinful world. However wrongful their liaison, your parents gave you life.”

“And if the worst happens, if he makes me pregnant?” “Of course we must see to it that never happens.”

“I could cut off his
cojones
,” Anunciata said with no little vitriol. “That would make me happy.”

El Enterrador
said, “I knew your mother ever since she came to Mexico City. I gave her confession. I have hope that I helped her through difficult times because she needed help and did not know where else to turn. Now it’s you who comes to me for help and advice. Go to your father. Talk to him.”

“What we have done!” Anunciata shuddered. “It’s a hideous sin. You of all people should know that.”

“Where is Maceo now?”

“You mean you don’t know? He’s gone. He left with Rowland for the airport.”

“Where are they going?” Bourne said as he stepped into the rectory.

Both Anunciata and
el Enterrador
turned to stare at him. The priest was clearly more surprised to see him. The young woman registered only curiosity.

“Who are you, señor?” Anunciata said.

“Rebeka and I were at the villa early this morning.”

“Then you—?”

But Bourne was already turning away from her. “I should still be at the airport. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“How would I—?”

“The crystal-encrusted skull you gave me. I found the transmitter inside it.”

El Enterrador
withdrew a long-bladed stiletto from beneath his robes, but Bourne shook his head, leveling the handgun he had taken from Maceo Encarnación’s guard. “Put it down, Undertaker.”

Anunciata’s eyes opened wide. She seemed even more beautiful now than she had earlier. “He is a priest. Why do you call him
el Enterrador
?”

“That’s his nickname.” Bourne gestured with his head. “Show her the tattoos on your forearms, priest.”

“Tattoos?” Anunciata echoed. She stared at her companion, clearly stunned.

He said nothing, didn’t even look at her.

She reached out, pushed up the sleeves of his robe, and gasped at the intricate handiwork displayed.

“What is this?” It seemed unclear who she was addressing.

“Tell her, Undertaker,” Bourne said. “I’d like to hear it, as well.”

El Enterrador
glared at him. “You were not supposed to come back here.”

“You weren’t supposed to track me, either.” Bourne nodded. “Now let’s get to the truth.”

“About what?”
el Enterrador
whispered. “Maceo Encarnación asked for my help. I gave it to him.”

“Rebeka—the woman—my friend—is dead. Put the knife on the desk.”

After a hesitation,
el Enterrador
complied.

“The truth,” Bourne said. “That’s what I’m here for. How about you, Anunciata?”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Ask the Undertaker. He’s the one who is in real need of forgiveness.”

She shook her head again.

Bourne said, “Rebeka and I got into Maceo Encarnación’s villa via a mortician’s hearse. In order for that to happen, someone inside the villa had to die.”

“My mother.”

Bourne nodded. “Your mother. But how would anyone know beforehand that she was going to die?” He stared directly at the priest. “People had to know your mother was going to die. Which means she was murdered.”

Tears were standing out in Anunciata’s eyes. “The doctor said she died of a heart attack. There wasn’t a mark on her. I know. I dressed her for the...the mortician.”

“Poison doesn’t leave an external mark,” Bourne said. “And if you’re clever you can find a poison that won’t leave an internal trace, either.” He nodded. “I think that might have been your part in the murder, Undertaker.” He turned to Anunciata. “Hence his nickname.”

She whirled on
el Enterrador
. “Is that true?”

“Of course not,” he scoffed. “The very idea that I would harm your mother is absurd.”

“Not if Encarnación asked it of you.”

“Did you do it?” Anunciata’s cheeks were flaming. Her entire frame was shaking.

“I already told you—”

“The truth!” she cried. “This is a church. I’ll have the truth!”

He went to reach for the stiletto, but she was quicker. Or perhaps she had already prepared herself. Snatching up the knife, she strode forward, and, in one powerful swing, thrust the knife into
el Enterrador
’s throat.

His eyes opened wide in shock and disbelief. He grabbed on to the edge of the desk as he was falling, but his already numb fingers slipped off, and he crashed to the floor in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood.

THE BEIJING CENTRAL Committee Earth and Sky Country Club lay only five miles northwest of the capital.

But it could have been a hundred. Here, beyond the massive layer of industrial smog that hung above the city like an intimation of a permanent twilight, the skies were clear. Within the twelve-foot-high spiked fence, electrified for added security, could be seen endless rows in meticulous parallels of cabbage, cucumbers, peppers and beans of all varieties, onions, scallions,
gai lan
, bok choy, and chilies, among many others. What made these vegetables special, necessitating the heavy security, was that they were all organic, grown pesticide-free in pristine conditions. In the northern section of Earth and Sky was the dairy farm, where cows were fed an all-organic diet, the milk processed in sterile conditions.

It was to Earth and Sky that Minister Ouyang was being driven in his state-provided limousine for his twice-monthly visit. The produce of Earth and Sky was the sole property of the state, for consumption only by the Central Committee and those high-level ministers who, like Ouyang, were privy to its largesse. There were twenty-five levels of power within the many ministries of Beijing’s central government. Each level was entitled to a specific amount of organic food. The higher up the minister, the larger the monthly allotment. This feudal system was a holdover from Mao’s regime, made necessary by the severe pollution of China’s earth and sky, which was nearing crisis level.