The Bourne Retribution

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “It was a good bargain,” Deng said. “It was the right one—the only one—to make.”

  “It’s impossible to disagree, of course it is.” Ouyang put down his empty cup, which Deng immediately refilled. “However, current events are leading me to the conclusion that the Grand Bargain is unraveling. The old ways that have served us well for decades are now making us the enemy in the eyes of the people. Today they are wealthier, better educated, more aware of the world outside the Middle Kingdom than ever before. More important, their exposure to the Internet has made them politically savvy. It has given them a belief in their individual rights we are powerless to fight.”

  Deng poured himself more tea. “Why is that?”

  “Because once the cat is out of the bag the only way to stuff it back in is to kill it.”

  Deng stared out the window at the non-weather, sipping his tea contemplatively. At length, he turned back to Ouyang.

  “So, younger brother, what do you suggest?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “I already don’t like what’s happening outside my residence, younger brother. Please continue.”

  Time for their fourth cup of tea.

  “Your forebear’s Grand Bargain was, as you rightly say, the right one at the right time. But times have changed. I no longer believe that turning the economy toward capitalism while keeping the old political system intact is working. There is growing unrest among the populace. We have had an alarming rise in the number of scandals among the elite, which have caused the governed’s anger to escalate.”

  “All this is known,” Deng said. “Again, I ask you for your solution.”

  “We have to get out in front of this. We have to make moves that will not only forestall the anger before it spills over and completely engulfs us, we have to extinguish it once and for all. In my opinion, the only way to do this is to come out of next week’s Party Congress with sweeping changes. We must present a government that is transparent, that openly works for the populace.”

  “I know your heart is in the right place, younger brother, but what you’re asking is simply impossible. The Congress would never agree to so sweeping a change. There are too many who treasure their elite status above the law. Old habits die hard—or not at all.”

  “The economic changes instituted by your forebear have borne fruit,” Ouyang said. “We must embrace the fruit, both the bitter and the sweet.”

  “Speak plainly, younger brother.”

  “There have been consequences, perhaps unforeseen, from the institution of capitalism. We cannot go back; nor can we turn a blind eye to what is happening to both the increasingly restless populace and the members of our own political elite, many of whom live well beyond their means and take what they want whenever they want it. This practice can no longer be tolerated.”

  “No one will listen. The twin forces of entitlement and inertia will defeat you.”

  “Then the people themselves will take it away. Listen, Patriarch, whether we like it or not, the Grand Bargain with the people is about to expire. Either we find our way to a new bargain that will satisfy the populace or we will face open rebellion. This I can guarantee.”

  Deng put down his cup. “Your endgame?”

  “First, Cho and his Chongqing Party must be defanged. Second, I must be installed as president at the Congress. With your help, I will forge an unshakable coalition that can withstand the tremors of the changes that need to be made in order to ensure our continuing rule of China.”

  Deng shook his head. His eyes held an infinite sadness. “It will never happen that way. It can’t. We’re like a train; our tracks run straight ahead.”

  Ouyang rose. “Listen to me, Patriarch. In the nineteen seventies the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire.” He was shaking. He had never spoken to Deng this way. “If we do not change course, soon it will be our turn.”

  “But don’t you see, younger brother, that is just what Cho and the Chongqing fervently hope for. They want us isolated from the world. They see it as contagion, a spreading stain upon the face of the Middle Kingdom. They want to wash China clean, to make it as it once was.”

  “Nothing can be as it once was, Patriarch. You, of all people, know that. And just look at where the Party Congress is being held this year—the seaside town of Beidaihe. Up until now, it’s always been held in Beijing. The story goes that the Congress hall’s renovations have not been completed, but you and I know that the story’s bullshit. We’re all afraid of demonstrations filling the streets of the capital. Five years ago such a concern would not have even existed.”

  “Jidan, Jidan,” the old man said, “we are but two leaves blown by the wind.”

  Ouyang stared down at Deng, for the first time seeing him for what he was, not what Ouyang wanted him to be. If Deng is too old, Ouyang thought, if he no longer has the will, I must be it for him. He marshaled his thoughts for one last stand.

  “All our lives,” he said, “we have made history, just as our fathers did before us. That’s an extraordinary—a singular—power. We still can, but the ability is fast slipping through our hands. If we do not alter our course now, that singular ability to make history will be stripped from us; it will be given to the people of China. Then we are finished.

  “So this is what we must do, Patriarch. We must harness the wind.”

  Bourne found Amir Ophir in his office, partially shielded by three computer screens. He did not look up when Bourne walked in, but Bourne could see his shoulders tense as if he were bracing for a street brawl.

  “You killed him.” There was no emotion in Ophir’s voice, only bitter accusation.

  “You sent him to kill me.”

  “That’s a lie. He was sent—with the approval of Director Yadin—to keep tabs on you after you broke your promise to the Director and went off the grid.”

  “I don’t do well with leashes,” Bourne said. “And you would have no knowledge whether or not I made such a promise. Here’s what really matters: I find it suspect sending a Kidon operative to do surveillance work.”

  “First, Kidon is not an assembly of assassins. We do surveillance and rescue work all the time. In fact, my department is in the process of acting on a complex and highly sensitive rescue of three Israeli citizens held in the Sinai.”

  “Citizens?” Bourne said. “Or your agents?”

  Ophir pointedly ignored him. “Second, the man I sent in was both close to hand and possessed a comprehensive knowledge of China, Shanghai in particular.”

  “First, his code name means ‘murder,’” Bourne said. “Second, he attacked me and Yue, the young woman with me. His intent was clear.”

  “Then he exceeded his mandate. Why would he do that?” Ophir said without taking his eyes off his pixeled screens.

  “Because you ordered him to kill me.”

  At last, Ophir raised his eyes to Bourne’s. “You have no proof—”

  Bourne produced Retzach’s mobile. “Retzach called you minutes before he entered the tunnel to track me down and kill me.”

  “That’s not—”

  Bourne tossed Retzach’s knife onto Ophir’s desk.

  “Here’s how he tried to kill me.”

  Ophir, staring at the knife as if it were a viper suddenly come alive, licked his lips.

  Bourne scooped up the knife, held it up with Retzach’s mobile. “Shall I give these to Director Yadin or will you invite me to sit down?”

  With a wave of his hand and a poisonous look, Ophir said, “Be my guest.”

  Bourne gave a steely laugh as he sat down opposite Ophir. “I need an armorer.”

  Ophir looked relieved, as if he was thinking, Is that all? “No problem. We have several excellent ones in the basement labs.”

  “I don’t need one here,” Bourne said. “I’m speaking of Mexico City.”

  For a moment there was only silence between them. The soft chatter of assistants and secretaries somewhere beyond the four walls rose and fell like ocea
n waves. Someone dropped a glass, which shattered against the floor tiles. A brief string of curses, then silence.

  At length, Ophir cleared his throat and said, “Director Yadin will never sanction it.”

  “Which is why I’ve come to you with my request.”

  “It’s not a request.”

  Bourne stared at him, unblinking.

  Ophir shook himself like a dog trying to shed muddy water. “I assume you require a handgun.”

  “Everything from a handgun to a grenade launcher, plus ammunition for them all.”

  “I don’t—”

  “And it needs to be be’shu’shu.” It has to be done secretly.

  “Gilita et America.” Tell me something I don’t know. “Anything else I can provide?” he added with a deliberate smirk. “A tank? A fighter jet, perhaps?”

  “Another time.”

  Ophir waved a hand as if in surrender. “All right, all right. Let’s see.” He checked his computer screen. “I have a good man in Mexico City. His code name is J. J. Hale. Here’s what he looks like. That’s all you need to know about him.” He drew a scratch pad toward him, scribbled a couple of lines on it, tore off the sheet, and handed it across to Bourne. “Starting tomorrow, he’ll be at this café precisely at eight o’clock in the evening every day for five days. The second line is the code words to introduce yourself and his response.”

  He smiled. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “I’ll let you know.” Bourne rose and left the office.

  The moment he was alone, Ophir contacted Hale and gave him his instructions via coded email, then added the line, Stand by for a pkg via the usual method.

  After he sent the email, he used a key he kept around his neck to open the lowest drawer on the right side of his desk. He took out a black folder and opened it. Inside was the transfer tape that his man had used to pick Bourne’s fingerprint off the glass in his hotel room in Caesarea.

  Ophir stared at it for a moment, a thin smile playing across his lips. It was a good thing Bourne didn’t know enough about how Mossad worked. Those two items he assumed were so incriminating, weren’t. Their presence could be explained—though perhaps not easily—to Eli. Ophir had nothing to fear from Bourne on that score, but rather than inform him he had come to a better conclusion. One that would lead to Bourne’s undoing.

  He packed the tape carefully in a small envelope, which he sealed with wax. He put this into a larger envelope then hand-wrote instructions to Hale, put these in the larger envelope with the fingerprint, sealed the larger envelope with wax, placed it in the proprietary secure packing Mossad used.

  Then he called for an immediate overseas courier.

  24

  Minister Ouyang, exiting the Patriarch’s building, found his white SUV waiting at the curb, its huge motor thrumming. The rear door opened as he approached and, ducking inside, he slammed the door behind him. The instant he sat, the SUV nosed out into the incessant traffic.

  “All went as planned,” said the tall, thin man who sat beside him. His face bespoke his Manchu blood lineage. He had the delicate long-fingered hands of a surgeon or a pianist.

  Why not? Ouyang thought. The man was an artist.

  “And how did you make out at the summit of the Middle Kingdom?” From anyone else’s mouth the question would have had a sardonic edge, but not this man.

  “Kai,” Ouyang began, “the Patriarch may indeed come around to our way of thinking, but for the moment he remains lost in the clouds.”

  “Pity,” Kai said with a sigh. “The old man used to be a visionary of extraordinary usefulness.”

  “His time may not yet be past,” Ouyang said a touch too sharply.

  “Time,” Kai said, clearly not taking offense, “is what we have the least of. In less than a week the Party Congress will convene to elect a new Politburo, which will map out the next ten years of China’s future. If we do not act now—and act decisively—we will not be offered a second chance.”

  Ouyang shifted uneasily in his seat. He knew he was being forced into the one dangerous position he had labored so hard to avoid.

  “I hope you’re wrong, Kai, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that we must act now.”

  Bourne arrived in Mexico City on a teary morning, gray with mist and pollutants. The air stank from the human excrement used as fertilizer for fruits and vegetables.

  He knew the city well. Though he was, in a way, closer to Rebeka, to the place where she had died, this knowledge brought him no solace. He experienced Mexico City as a necropolis throbbing with shadows, nightmarish memories, and an eternal sense of peril and foreboding.

  By the time his taxi had reached the city streets, the sun—an ugly tannish ball—had fought its way through the mist, but had been defeated by the smog, which hung over the city like a translucent mask.

  Bourne had given the driver an address in Coyoacán, a neighborhood five miles from Colonia Centro. The district name was derived from the Náhuatl Coyohuacán, an Aztec word meaning “place of coyotes,” possibly because the native people, the Tecpanecas, hated their Aztec conquerors to such a degree they welcomed in Hernán Cortés, hastening the demise of the Aztecs and their history and culture.

  Bourne got out at Francisco Sosa, not far from where Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had lived, a cobblestone thoroughfare, the neighborhood’s main artery. He walked to 23 Caballo Calco, a two-story apartment building of whitewashed cement, trimmed in terra-cotta and faced with intricate white wrought-iron fencing.

  He rang the bell for apartment 11, which had no name on it, and was at once buzzed in. Apartment 11 was on the second floor, facing the street. Almost directly across rose the Iglesia de Coyoacán, looking much the worse for wear, weeds and tumbledown bricks covering its feet, rude graffiti defacing its flanks.

  When 808Azul opened the door, Bourne at first didn’t recognize her. She seemed a galaxy away from the girl, confused and enraged, who, with his help, had escaped Maceo Encarnación’s house in Colonia Polanco last year.

  He had suggested that she run far away, over the Mexican border, but instead she had chosen to remain in her homeland, changing her name, becoming a first-rate computer hacker, as much feared as respected.

  Online she was known as 808Azul, but Bourne knew her as Anunciata. Her mother had been Maceo Encarnación’s cook for many years until he had had her poisoned. That was when Bourne had helped Anunciata escape.

  She was a beautiful young woman now, with an open, smiling face, wide-apart chocolate eyes, and a mane of black hair that glimmered in the lamplight of her large, airy apartment. Photos of her mother adorned shelves, as well as the shrine-like area surrounding her computers—a mix of the most powerful laptops, smartphones, and tablets. To his right, a row of wooden jalousies partially hid a long, narrow balcony that overlooked Caballo Calco.

  “Jason, I was so happy to get your call,” she exclaimed, embracing him. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

  “You stayed in touch.”

  She laughed. “Good friends are rare as hen’s teeth.” She gestured. “You must be hungry, they don’t feed you well on flights. I made enchiladas and rice and black beans.”

  She led him into the large kitchen where the meal was spread out on a scarred wooden table.

  “You have your mother’s touch,” he said as he began to eat. She had brought a clutch of cold beers from the refrigerator.

  “You’re well, Jason?”

  “Well enough.”

  “You look sad, but then I think that’s the way you always look.”

  There was a small silence when only their eyes spoke.

  “I never thanked you for killing my father.” She said these supercharged words in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “No need.”

  “I disagree.”

  Bourne inclined his head, understanding only too well. Anunciata’s parents had conspired to hide the identity of her father. But when her mother discovered that her father had seduced her
and was taking her to bed, she threatened her employer. A brave but foolish gesture.

  Anunciata put down her knife and fork. “So what brings you back?”

  “Something serious.”

  “How could it be otherwise?”

  “I’m looking for Maceo Encarnación’s daughter.”

  “His daughter.” Anunciata laughed nervously. “You’re looking at her.”

  “He had another one. Maricruz.”

  “Ah, the one he had with Constanza Camargo.”

  Bourne nodded. “You know her?”

  “We never had the pleasure,” Anunciata said through bared teeth. “However, I’ve heard stories. She’s become sort of a legend.”

  “She’s here,” Bourne said. “I need to find her.”

  Anunciata thought for a moment. “Hold on,” she said as she rose.

  She went to her workstation. Sitting down, she twisted on her headset, began typing on one of the laptops. Several moments later, she started asking questions, nodding at the answers as she continued to type.

  Bourne got up and followed her in when he heard her say, “No shit. Really?”

  Her eyes tracked him, her eyebrows raised for an instant, until she returned her attention to the call.

  “I need someone inside…no, no, really inside…and reliable…of course for money.” She glanced up at Bourne again, and he nodded. “I understand. The amount’s not an issue,” she continued, “but reliability is…your assurances aside, if my client walks into an ambush I’ll hunt you down and pull your balls up into your throat…Go on, but I assure you it’s no laughing matter to suffocate on your own testicles.” She winked at Bourne. “Okay, got it. Be seeing you.”

  After jotting a couple of lines on a scratch pad, she ripped off the sheet, rose, and handed it to Bourne. Then she took a picture of him with one of her phones and sent it off to her contact.

  “You’re in luck. It seems my half sister got herself into a huge pile of shit,” she said. “Apparently, she came back to deal with Maceo’s cartel business and inserted herself into the war between Los Zetas and the Sinaloa. She can’t be that stupid so she must have had a plan in mind, insane as that sounds.”