Ahead of them, the BMW had turned left into an alley. Aaron pulled over to the curb and parked. He was the first out of the car, but Amun said, “Considering the atmosphere, it might be better if you stayed with the car.”
Aaron bristled. “Paris is my city.”
“This isn’t Paris,” Amin said. “This is North Africa. Soraya and I are both Muslims. Let us take care of this part of the operation.”
Soraya saw Aaron’s face go dark. “Aaron, he’s right,” she said softly. “Take a step back. Think about the situation for a minute.”
“This is my investigation.” Aaron’s voice was shaking with barely suppressed emotion. “Both of you are my guests.”
Soraya engaged his eyes with her own. “Think of him as a gift.”
“A gift!” Aaron seemed to crush the words between his teeth.
“Don’t you see? He’s used to these Arab slums; he can connect with the residents. Considering the way in which the investigation has turned, it’s a great stroke of luck having him help us.”
Aaron tried to push past her. “I don’t—”
She blocked him with her body. “We wouldn’t even have this lead without him.”
“He’s already gone,” Aaron said.
Soraya turned and saw that he was right. Amun wasn’t wasting any more time, and she understood—coming this far, they didn’t want to lose Marchand now.
“Aaron, stay here.” She began to follow Amun down the alley. “Please.”
The alley was narrow, crooked as a crone’s finger, and twilight-dark. She could just make out Amun’s back as he slipped through a battered metal door. Racing ahead, she caught the door before it closed. As she was about to enter, she saw a rail-thin young man at the far end of the alley. She squinted. She could make out his red polo shirt, but the light was so dim she couldn’t tell whether he was looking at her or at something else.
Inside, a grimy iron staircase led downward. The area was lit by a single bare bulb, hanging from a length of flex. Ducking below it, she moved cautiously down the stairs. As she descended, she strained to hear the sounds of Amun’s footsteps—anyone’s footsteps—but all that came to her were the creakings and protestations of an old, ill-maintained building.
She came to a tiny landing, and she continued down again. She could smell the dampness, mold, the sharp odors of decay and decomposition. She felt as if she had entered a dying body.
Approaching the end of the stairs, she found herself on slabs of rough concrete. Cobwebs brushed her face, and, now and again, she could hear the click and chitter of rats. Soon enough, other small noises came to her—hushed voices opened up the darkness. Doggedly, she groped her way forward, guided by the voices. Within fifty feet, she began to make out a wavering light that illuminated what appeared to be a warren of cave-like rooms. She paused for a moment, struck by the similarity between these spaces and those used by Hezbollah when they were preparing to cross the border for a raid into Israel. There was the same stench of sour sweat, anticipation, forgotten hygiene, spices, and the bitter, metallic smell of ordnance being prepped for detonation.
She was close enough to make out the voices—there were three of them. This brought her up short. Had Amun engaged them already? But no, now that she had crept close enough, her ears told her that only one of the voices was familiar—the miserable liar Donatien Marchand.
Approaching a corner, she peeked around. Three men stood in the dim fizzy light of an old-fashioned oil lamp. One was very young, thin as a reed, dark-eyed and hollow-cheeked. The other was only a bit older with a full beard and hands like ax heads. Facing them was Marchand. From the tone of their voices and their body language, it appeared they were in the middle of a difficult negotiation. She risked a glance around. Where was Amun? Somewhere close, she had to assume. What was his plan? And how could she get close enough to hear what the men were arguing about? Looking all around, she saw nothing that would help her. Then, directing her gaze upward into the shadows, she saw the massive beams that crisscrossed the space, keeping the entire building from collapsing into the Arabs’ basement lair.
Using a series of boxes she found strewn over the floor, she climbed up until she could loop her arms around one of the beams. Hauling her torso upward, she wrapped her ankles across the top of the beam and, using that leverage, swung fully up. She had to be careful not to disturb the accumulated filth—grime, sticky cobwebs, iridescent insect shells, and rat droppings—which, raining down, would announce her presence. On her belly, Soraya inched along the beam until she was more or less above the three men.
“No, man, I say triple for that.”
“Triple is too much,” Marchand said.
“Shit, for that bitch triple’s too little. You got ten seconds, then the price goes up.”
“Okay, okay,” Marchand said after a short pause.
Soraya could heard the slither of bills being counted out.
“I’ll have a photo downloaded to your cell phone,” Marchand said.
“Don’t need no pho-to. That Moore bitch’s face is etched in my brain.”
Soraya shuddered. There was something grimly surreal about eavesdropping on the plans for her own imminent demise. She could feel her heart hammering in her throat as the meeting broke up.
She hated these Arabs, but she remained motionless. The mission was to discover whom Marchand had called after they had scared him half out of his wits. These Arab thugs couldn’t tell her; only Marchand could do that. He would never have talked on his own territory, but now that she had caught him in a compromising position with these hit men, he might be more inclined—
She started as Amun came racing out of the shadows. The older of the Arabs turned, a switchblade already in one hand. He stabbed outward, forcing Amun to change direction. The younger Arab smashed his fist into the side of Amun’s head, knocking him down.
Soraya dropped feet-first from the beam, her knee catching the younger Arab in the small of the back. He went down, his head striking the concrete, which shattered his front teeth. Blood spattered from his split lip. He groaned and lay still. Amun scrambled away from the older Arab’s knife, and they both vanished into the darkness.
That left Soraya and Donatien Marchand. He stared at her with the fixed intensity of a trapped wolf. His eyes seemed yellow with hatred.
“How did you know where I was coming?” When she didn’t answer, he glanced around. “Where’s the Jew? Too timid to make it down here?”
“You’re dealing with me now,” Soraya said.
Before she could say another word, Marchand bolted away. She tore after him, back toward the stairs. Part of her mind was with Amun and his fight with the Arab. Were there more down here? But she couldn’t think of that now; she couldn’t let Marchand get away.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and leapt upward, faster and more agile than she had expected. She pounded after, through the wan, gritty light, up through patches of darkness, past the tiny landing, ascending the second part of the staircase, up toward where the bare bulb emitted its waxen light.
Marchand was running so hard he hit the bulb with his shoulder. It swung back and forth on the end of its flex, casting wild and disorienting shadows across the stairs. Soraya redoubled her pace, closing the distance to her enemy.
All at once Marchand stopped and, whirling, drew a small .22 with silver grips. He fired once, wildly, and then again as she closed, the second bullet tearing through the shoulder of her jacket but leaving her unharmed.
Barreling into him, she drove the edge of her hand into his wrist, knocking the .22 out of his grip. With a series of bright, hard clangs, it bounded down the stairs and lay half in the shadows.
Soraya grabbed the front of Marchand’s coat, drawing him to her, but he had reached up and, before she knew what had happened, looped the electrical flex around her neck. He pulled tight and she gagged. Her hands reached up to loosen the flex, but Marchand, standing behind her, only pulled it tighter.
H
er fingers scrabbled futilely at the flex cutting into her neck and throat. She tried to draw a breath, but it was no use. A moment later she began to lose consciousness.
16
BOURNE ARRIVED IN Seville with his two passengers without further incident. Interpol hadn’t been waiting for the plane in Madrid, and in Seville the trio passed through the arrivals terminal unnoticed.
As promised, a rental car was waiting for them along with an Internet address. Bourne entered it into his cell phone’s browser and up came a map of the area from Seville to Cadiz. A purple line indicated the route Essai expected them to take. At the end was an address in Cadiz, the place, he assumed, where Don Fernando Hererra was waiting for their arrival.
They climbed into the car, and Bourne started it up then drove them out of the airport. He had spent the air time trying to figure out Jalal Essai’s game. There was no doubt that Essai had fed him a brew of truth and lies, so whether he was ally or enemy was still to be determined. Bourne had also spent much of the time brooding over his friend Boris Karpov. If it was true he had been ordered to kill Bourne, he hadn’t shown up yet. But would he? Essai wanted something from Bourne, something he knew Bourne wouldn’t do if Essai asked him straight-out. Did it have to do with Boris? Bourne felt a vast net beginning to tighten around him, but as yet he had no idea of its size or origin.
Someone wanted him—but why and for what?
“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” Rosie said from the seat next to him.
Bourne smiled, staring straight ahead as he navigated the road. He was concerned about tails, but so far the traffic behind them appeared normal.
“You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Dios mio, Rosie,” Vegas said from the backseat, “stop peppering him with questions.”
“I’m only making conversation, mi amor.” She turned to Bourne, but her eyes did not meet his, sliding away into shadow. “I know what it’s like to be alone—really alone, crouched in the shadows watching the sunlight.”
“Rosie!”
“Hush, mi amor.” She addressed Bourne again. “Here is what I can’t understand: Why would someone do this voluntarily?”
“You know,” Bourne said, “you don’t speak like someone from the backwater of Colombia.”
“I sound educated, yes?”
“I admire your vocabulary.”
Her laughter was deep and rich. “Yes, someone like you would.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“No? You are alone, always alone. I think this is the essential thing about you—it defines how you think and everything you do.” She cocked her head. “You have no answer for this?”
“I don’t know a single thing about you.”
She touched the scars on her neck and chest. “But I think you do.”
“The margay.”
“She was so beautiful,” Rosie said, “but I got in her way.”
“No,” Bourne said. “You frightened her.”
Rosie looked away, out her window at the passing scenery, which was nothing much, a series of hypnotically undulating hills, some covered in groves of gnarled, dusty-looking olive trees.
Bourne glanced again in the rearview mirror. There was a red Fiat he was keeping an eye on, though he doubted any professional tail would be driving a red car.
“Stumbling over a margay’s den,” he said, “that doesn’t sound like the kind of behavior I’d expect from someone who was born and raised in the Cordilleras.”
“I was running. Crossing a stream, I slipped on a mossy rock and hurt my knee. I wasn’t looking where I was going; I was frightened.”
“You were running away.”
“Yes.”
“From whom?”
Rosie tossed her head. “You’re always running. You should know.”
“I was told you were running away from your family.”
She nodded. “That is true.”
“I’ve never done that.”
“And yet you’re alone, always alone,” she said. “It must be exhausting.”
Vegas leaned forward. “Rosie, for the love of God!” He turned to Bourne. “I apologize for her.”
Bourne shrugged. “The world is full of opinions.”
“I know why you run,” Rosie said. “It is so nothing will touch you.”
Bourne’s eyes flicked again to the rearview mirror, the red Fiat, then to Rosie’s face, but once again her eyes were averted.
“I suppose there’s not much call for a psychologist in Ibagué,” he said. “Is that where you were born?”
“I am Achagua,” Rosie said. “From the serpent line.”
Bourne, an expert in comparative languages, knew that the Achagua had named their different family lineages after animals: serpent, jaguar, fox, bat, tapir.
“Do you speak the language—Irantxe?”
A slow smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Nice try. I’m impressed. Really. But no, Irantxe is its own language. The Achagua spoke any number of Maipurean dialects depending on whether they lived in the mountains or the Amazon basin.” Her smile broadened. “Please tell me you don’t speak any of those languages.”
“I don’t,” Bourne said.
“Neither do I. They were spoken a very long time ago. Even my father had no knowledge of them.”
Bourne’s eyes returned to the rearview mirror. He could no longer see the red Fiat and, instead, began to concentrate on the black van up ahead. Over the past fifteen minutes, it had had several opportunities to change lanes and speed, but it hadn’t done so. Instead it had maintained its position four vehicles ahead of him.
Checking his side mirror, he waited for a break in the traffic, then, without signaling, shot forward into the left-hand lane. Within seconds he had passed the black van. He watched it firmly planted in his rearview, receding slowly from view. Then it changed lanes and accelerated.
Now he began to look for the box, a tailing maneuver extremely difficult to shake since it involved vehicles in front and behind.
“What’s happening?” Vegas said.
Bourne could feel the anxiety radiating from him like waves of heat.
“There are people on this road who shouldn’t be here,” Bourne said. “Sit back.”
Rosie gripped the handle above her door but said nothing. Her face was set in neutral. She knew when to keep quiet, Bourne thought.
The black van had established a position a car’s length behind him. Apparently, the driver understood he had been made.
Bourne checked ahead, but saw no other black van. He saw two-seater sports cars, a bus full of Japanese tourists, cameras held in front of their faces, and sedans with families. There were also a wide variety of trucks, including a semi, but none of these vehicles seemed likely to be part of the box.
He tried varying his speed, noting how each vehicle in front of him reacted, but he got no definitive read. He thought it interesting—and worrisome—that though the black van had announced itself, the second vehicle was still incognito. He wondered what that meant because it wasn’t part of the box playbook, which dictated all-in or all-out. Once one of the vehicles in the box was made, usually the two vehicles either peeled off or closed in.
Suddenly the black van made its move, coming up on Bourne’s left. He switched into the center lane and, moments later, it followed. He kept going, into the right-hand lane even though the semi was now in front of him. If the black van followed, he could always swing around the semi’s left.
With a burst of speed, the black van cut off a chugging sedan as it swerved into the right-hand lane behind Bourne. Bourne looked for a break in the traffic to switch to the center lane, but even as he plotted vectors the black van came up dangerously close behind him. He accelerated, and, at that precise moment, the rear of the semi slammed down, its edge casting off a shower of sparks as it dragged along the roadbed.
The moment Bourne saw it, he understood. The rear panel had been retrofitted as a ramp. The black
van then gently rear-ended him, urging his rental car farther toward the ramp and the yawning empty interior of the semi, the box’s second vehicle. These people never meant to tail him, never meant to kill him: They meant to capture him, seal him in, and take him out of the field permanently.
Soraya, struggling to stay conscious, dug her heels into the grit of the staircase. At the same time, she swiveled her hips to the left, moving them out of the way of her right elbow, which she drove into the soft spot in Marchand’s throat.
Marchand reared back, so shocked that he took his hands off the flex to belatedly protect his vulnerable throat. With her right hand, she tore the flex away from her throat. She slammed her knee into Marchand’s crotch. He gasped, bent over double, and she wrapped the flex around his neck, pulling on both ends so hard he collapsed to his knees.
He made little gasping sounds like a fish on the deck of a boat. He looked up at her, his watering eyes bloodshot and bulging. He tried to swipe at her with his right hand, then his left, but her grip on him was terminal.
She bent over, shoving her grim face in his. “Now, M. Marchand, you’re going to tell me what I want to know. You’re going to tell me now or by Allah I will take your life and your soul and I will grind them both to dust.”
He stared at her. His face was becoming bloated, dark with pooled blood. Tears of pain spilled out of his eyes. She could see the whites all the way around.
“Ak, ak, ak” was all he could manage.
The moment she loosened the flex the smallest amount he lashed out at her, but she slammed her forehead into the bridge of his nose, resulting in a spray of blood that covered his upper lip, cheeks, and chin.
“Now talk,” she said. “Who did you call after we left your office?”
His eyes opened even wider. “How… how did you know?”
“Tell me.”
“Why bother? You will kill me anyway.” His voice sounded sodden, as if he were speaking to her from underwater.
Robert Ludlum’s™ The Bourne Dominion Page 19