Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (45 page)

Bourne launched himself over the front seatbacks, but at that moment a figure ducked into the Mercedes and pointed a Sig-Sauer at him, forcing him to return to the backseat.

“No escape now,” Nicodemo said, as he slid behind the wheel.

He nodded, and the taxi driver returned to the car. Keeping the Sig trained on them, Nicodemo disengaged the central lock. The driver wrenched open the rear door and bound Bourne’s wrists behind his back with a length of plastic zip cord, then did the same to Don Fernando.

“Take them to the trunk,” Nicodemo said.

“You came into us too hard,” the driver said. “The lock’s bashed in and the trunk won’t open.”

“Okay. Get out of here,” Nicodemo said.

The driver slammed the rear door shut, and went back to the car Nicodemo had been driving.

Nicodemo, behind the wheel of the Mercedes, grinned at them. “Now the real darkness comes, Jason.”

Bourne said nothing. He was testing the tensile strength of the zip cord. He wouldn’t be able to snap it without outside help.

Placing the Sig on the bench seat beside him, Nicodemo turned away from them to face front. “Much better to have tame animals,” he said, watching them in the rear view mirror as he put the Mercedes in gear and pulled out into the nighttime street,“ than wild ones to the slaughter.”

A funny thing happened to me on the way to your office, Mr. Brick,” Anderson said. “Funny, odd, that is.”

“And what would that be, Agent Anderson?”

“I just came from looking at a body fished out of the Potomac River. Hadn’t been there long, a couple of hours max.”

Tom Brick, sitting at ease behind his large, masculine desk in his massive office that took up an entire corner of the top floor of Core Energy, spread his hands. “Yeah? So?”

“Knifed twice in the side.”

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“‘What’s it got to do with me?’ the man says.” Anderson, with James at his side, stood in the approximate center of the office. Having shown his government ID to the phalanx of secretaries, assistants, and assorted flunkies, they had been ushered into Brick’s office where, it appeared, he was having a meeting with a suit seated on a sofa facing the desk. Brick did not invite the newcomers to sit. Anderson checked the expression on the professionally scrubbed face of the suit before he returned his gaze to Brick.

“I’m curious, Mr. Brick, as to why you haven’t asked the victim’s name.”

Brick stared at him with dead-fish eyes. “His name is of no interest to me.”

“You said
his
, but I said a
body
.”

Brick snorted. “Don’t play
NCIS
with me, Anderson.”

“I’ll tell you anyway, because you know him. His name is Dick Richards.”

Brick sat for a moment, unmoving. Then he rose and gestured to the man with whom he had been talking when Anderson and James had entered.

“Perhaps it’s time you met Bill Pelham.”

“As in Pelham, Noble and Gunn?”

Brick couldn’t contain a smile. “That’s right.”

Pelham, Noble and Gunn was in the top tier of Washington law firms. It counted among its clients many presidents, former presidents, and senators, not to mention the head of the FBI, as well as the mayor and the police commissioner of DC. Its juice was potent; it flowed directly from the hallowed Beltway source.

Anderson, trying his damnedest to ignore the broadside, said, “In any event, Mr. Brick, we need to talk. Now.”

“No talk,” Bill Pelham said, rising from his seat on the sofa. “No talk now, not ever.”

Three things I can’t abide,” Ann Ring said. “Confusion, complication, and dissembling.”

Around them, in the postmodern spaciousness of the restaurant Li Wan had chosen, silverware clinked and glasses chimed. Voices were raised in small talk. People deep in conversations on their mobile phones ignored everyone around them. She stared deep into Li’s obsidian eyes. “Unfortunately, life is full of confusion, complication, and dissembling.” She smiled with crimson lips. “I like neatness—clean beginnings, at least.”

Li inclined his narrow head. “As do I, Senator Ring.”

“And yet, here we both are in Washington, DC.” Her laugh was easy to like, meant to put the listener at ease. Li was not as easy a mark as that.

“Being at a center of power is like being in a magnetic storm.” He took a sip of white wine. “At once exhilarating and disorienting.”

Ann tipped her head. “Is it the same in Beijing?” The change in Li’s expression caused her to curse herself.

“I wouldn’t know.” He put down his glass with exaggerated care. “I myself have never been to Beijing. Did you just assume—?”

“A thousand pardons, Mr. Li. I meant nothing—”

“Oh, I’m most certain.” He waved away her words with the flat of his hand. “Actually, Beijing seems as foreign to me as I imagine it does to you.”

She allowed a small laugh to escape her lips. “Another thing we have in common.”

His depthless eyes sought hers. “Commonalities are rare, I find, especially in a magnetic storm.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Li.” She picked up her menu, a large, stiff thing with the offerings printed in a typeface simulating handwritten script. With her face shielded from his, she said, “What shall we eat?”

“Steak, I think,” he said without consulting his menu. “And a Caesar salad to start.”

“Creamed spinach and onion rings?”

“Why not?”

When she set aside her menu, she saw the depth of his scrutiny of her.
“Remember,”
Hendricks had told her at the very start,
“this is a very dangerous man. He seems unassuming; however, he’s anything but.”

Li called the waiter over and ordered for them. The waiter gathered up the menus and departed.

“This evening reminds me of a story,” Li said when they were alone again. “There was once a businessman in Chicago. He married a woman with a good head on her shoulders. So good, in fact, that following her suggestions caused his business to grow to two, then three times its original size. As you can imagine, the businessman was very happy. A flourishing business caused his standing in the community to grow by leaps and bounds. He was sought out for company mergers as well as for advice. In each instance, he consulted his wife, and in each instance, following her advice brought him more fame and riches.”

Li paused to refill their glasses. “Now, you might think the businessman’s life was perfect. Everyone who knew him, as well as everyone who knew of him, envied him his position and wealth. But no. In fact, he was miserable. His wife never warmed his bed, only others’.”

Li stared into his raised glass. “One day, the businessman’s wife died. It was very sudden and completely unexpected. Of course, the businessman mourned her, but more for the loss of her business acumen than for the woman herself.

“Several weeks later, his brother said to him, ‘What will you do now?’ And the businessman, after several moments of contemplation, said, ‘I will do what I’ve always done and hope for the best.’”

Ann Ring smiled in the most neutral way. This was not simply a story Li had once heard. In fact, he might have made it up on the spot. Either way, it was illustrative. The question the businessman’s brother had posed to him was the same one Li was asking her.

Whether by design or not, his timing was impeccable. The Caesar salads arrived, set down in front of each of them in white ceramic bowls. Ann spent some time tasting the salad, asking for fresh-ground pepper, and thanking the waiter.

“I like the first part of the businessman’s answer,” she said carefully, “but not the second. It’s never wise to sit back and hope for the best.”

“The story makes me wonder who really makes the decisions in families. It seems the answer is never what it appears to be on the surface.”

Ann understood that he was asking about her and Charles, which is why she chose to ignore the implied question, preferring to stick to her own agenda. She ate more salad, crunching through the garlic croutons as if they were bones.

“What surprises me, Mr. Li, is your knowledge of my intimate life with Charles.”

He laid down his fork. “There is no easy way to say this, Senator. Your husband was not a happy man.”

Ann watched Li with an enigmatic expression. “You mean he wasn’t content.” She bared her teeth just slightly. “The two aren’t synonymous.”

For the first time all evening Li appeared flustered. “I beg your pardon,” he said.

Looking out the window of the Mercedes, Bourne could see that Nicodemo was taking them across the river to the Left Bank.

The magnificent gilded light globes spanning the Pont Alexandre III spun by like miniature suns. Doubtless, Nicodemo was taking them to the killing ground he had chosen. Bourne had no intention of letting him get there.

Edging himself down on the seat until he was directly behind Nicodemo, Bourne arched his back, pressed it hard against the rear seatback. He extended his legs over the top of the front seat on either side of Nicodemo’s neck, and, bringing them together, locked his ankles at Nicodemo’s throat.

Predictably, Nicodemo arched backward, his body in reflex action to get away from the choke hold. Don Fernando kicked him hard on the right ear with his heel. Nicodemo’s head trembled on his neck, and Bourne squeezed tighter, muscles like iron bands.

Blindly, Nicodemo scrabbled on the seat for the Sig. Bourne, exerting all his strength, lurched him away, to the left, his shoulder impacting so hard against the unlocked door that it popped open.

The Mercedes began to swerve in wider and wider arcs, and the Sig fell to the floor well, out of his reach. Horns blared, brakes squealed, abruptly halted tires left scorch marks on the bridge bed. Wide-eyed, Nicodemo was forced to try to free himself while attempting to keep control of the car. Blind instinct took over. In trying to pry Bourne’s legs away from him, he removed his hands from the wheel. But as he arched back again, his right foot inadvertently stabbed down on the accelerator. The Mercedes shot forward just as it was aimed at the side of the bridge. The combination of its speed and weight lifted it onto the pedestrian walkway, slammed it into the ancient stone, crumbling in places, of the bridge’s decorative balustrade.

The impact jerked everyone forward, momentarily loosening Bourne’s grip, but at that moment, a light truck, attempting to circumnavigate the traffic tie-up, sideswiped the Mercedes, smashing it through the already crumbling balustrade.

The massive impact hurled the Mercedes out over the river, the driver’s door swinging wide with the momentum, and the car plummeted straight down. It hit the water, which instantly rushed in on a merciless tidal wave, swamping the interior, threatening to drown the three men inside.

Ann made a sound much like that of a cat purring. She set aside her salad. “You know, Mr. Li, it occurs to me now that I know nothing about Natasha Illion—apart, that is, from what I read in
W
,
Vogue
, and
Vanity Fair
, but that’s all image, publicity spin.”

Mr. Li smiled. They were back on familiar ground. “Tasha and I lead very different lives,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“But when you come together...” The slightest hint of a smile. “I beg your pardon.”

“Tasha isn’t someone easy to know,” Li said as if he had not heard her. “Israelis are gruff, direct, often disconcertingly so. Like all of them, she spent time in the army. That changes them, in my opinion.”

“Is that so?” Ann cupped her chin in one hand. “How do you mean?”

The salad bowls were cleared away, the oversized steak knives presented and, with a brief flourish, laid out.

“In Tasha’s case, it’s made her wary, distrustful. She considers her entire life a secret.”

“And, of course, you find this intriguing, fascinating.”

He sat back as the entrées and side dishes were set before them. Several twists of black pepper later, he took up fork and steak knife and sliced. The meat was bloody, exactly as ordered. “I’m a selfprofessed xenophile. I’m fascinated, as you put it, by the different, the exotic, the unknowable.”

“I imagine there’s nothing more exotic than an Israeli supermodel.” He chewed slowly and fastidiously. “I could think of several, but I’m quite content with what I have.”

“Unlike my late husband.” She dragged several onion rings onto the crusty top of her steak. She looked up suddenly, her gaze like the thrust of a knife. “Charlie confided in you about his affairs.” It wasn’t a question, and Li didn’t take it as such. “It seemed that Charles had very few friends and no confidants,” he said. “Apart from you.” Her eyes held steady on him. “That should have been me.”

“We can’t always get what we want, Senator.” He took a slice of meat between his teeth, chewed in his dainty way, then swallowed. “But we can try.”

“I’m wondering why Charlie felt he could confide in you.” “The answer is simple enough,” Li said. “It’s easier to talk of intimate matters to a stranger.”

But that wasn’t it at all, and they both knew it. Ann was growing weary of the conversational circumlocutions required by Chinese custom. Though Li was American born, in this he was very traditional. Maybe the Chinese insisted on these long, circular verbal paths, she thought, to wear you out, soften you up for the moment when negotiation began.

“Come on, Mr. Li. You and Charlie shared secrets.”

“Yes,” he said. “We did.”

Ann was so surprised by this bald admission that she briefly lost her breath.

“Your husband and I had an arrangement, Senator. An arrangement that benefitted both of us in equal measure.”

Ann didn’t bat an eye. “I’m listening.”

“It seems to me,” Li said, “that you have been listening all evening.” She laughed then, dry as wood. “Then we understand each other.”

He inclined his head fractionally. “However, we do not
know
one another.” The emphasis was subtle, but clear.

“This shortcoming has not been lost on me.” She smiled without, she hoped, a trace of guile. “Which is why I would like to present you with a gift.”

Li sat perfectly still across from her, his body neither tense nor relaxed. Simply waiting.