Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

14

"WHAT D’YOU MEAN I can’t see her?”

“She’s crashing, Charles.” Delia put her hands against his chest, pushing Thorne back from the recovery room.

He stood against the wall as doctors and nurses pushing stainless steel carts hurried past.

He followed them with his eyes. His mouth was half open and he seemed to have trouble breathing. “What’s happening, Delia?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were in there.” His restless gaze lit on her. “You must know  something.”

“We were talking and she just collapsed. That’s all I know.”

“The baby.” He licked his lips. “What about the baby?”

Delia reared back. “Ah, now I get it.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Why you’re here. I get it. It’s the baby.”

Thorne appeared confused—or was that alarm on his face? “What are you talking—”

“If the baby dies, all your troubles die with it.”

He came off the wall, his eyes blazing. “Where the hell do you come off—?”

“The baby dies and you don’t have problems with Ann, do you? No explanations needed, it’s as if the baby never existed, your affair with Soraya a distant memory, far away from the press and the bloggers, looking for dirt twenty-four–seven.”

“You’re nuts, you know that? I care about Soraya. Deeply. Why can’t you accept that?”

“Because you’re a cynical, self-centered sonofabitch.” Thorne took a breath, gathering himself. His eyes narrowed. “You know, I thought we could be friends.”

“You mean you thought you could recruit me.” She produced a steely laugh. “Fuck off.”

Turning her back on him, Delia went to talk to Dr. Santiago as he emerged from Soraya’s room.

“How is she?”

“Stable,” Dr. Santiago said. “She’s being moved to the ICU.” Delia was aware that Thorne had come up behind her. She could almost hear him listening.

“What happened?”

“A slight blockage developed at the surgical site. Rare, but it happens sometimes. We’ve cleared it and we’re giving her a low dose of

blood thinner. We’ll try to get her off it as soon as we deem it safe.”

“Safe for her,” Delia said. “What about what’s safe for the baby?”

“Ms. Moore is our primary patient, her life takes precedence. Besides, the fetus—”

“Her baby,” Delia said.

Dr. Santiago regarded her enigmatically for a moment. “Right. Excuse me.”

Delia, melancholy and forlorn, watched him disappear down the hallway.

Thorne sighed. “Now I see how it is between you and me, I’ll lay my cards on the table.”

“When will you learn I don’t give a shit about your cards?”

“I’m wondering whether Amy will feel the same way.”

Delia spun on him. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.” The challenge in his voice was unmistakable. “I have transcripts of your voicemails with Amy Brandt.”

“What?”

“Surprised? It’s a simple hack. We use a software program that imitates caller ID. It’s how we can gain access to your mobile phone—

anyone’s, really—and bypass the password protection.”

“So you have—”

“Every message you and Amy have left for each other.” He could not hide a smirk. “Some of it’s pretty hot.”

She slapped him across the face so hard he rocked back on his heels.

“You hit like a guy, you know that?”

“How the hell d’you live with yourself?”

He laughed thinly. “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.” She eyed him warily. “If you have a point, make it.”

“We each have something on the other.” He shrugged. “Just something to remember.”

“I don’t care—”

“But Amy does, doesn’t she? In her line of work she has to be careful. A shitload of parents don’t like their kids being taught by a lesbian.”

Delia thought of several choice things to say, but at that moment a pair of grim-faced nurses wheeled Soraya out of recovery, past them, down the hall to the ICU. There was silence for a time after that.

“So there’s our truce,” Thorne said, “laid out for you.”

Delia turned back to him. “Did you ever care about Soraya, even for a moment?”

“She’s a hellcat in bed.”

“What’s the matter? Ann’s not enough for you?”

“Ann has sex with her job. Otherwise she’s a cold fish.”

“My heart goes out to you,” she said acidly.

He gave her a lupine grin. “And mine to you.” He grabbed his crotch. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

Maceo Encarnación, staring out the Perspex window as his jet circled Mexico City prior to landing, saw the familiar fug of brown effluvia that hovered over the sprawling metropolis like a filthy carpet.

A combination of the happenstance of geography and the unbridled emissions of modern progress formed this almost permanent atmospheric layer. Mexico City, built upon the ruins of the great Aztec megalopolis Tenochtitlán, seemed to be drowning in its own future.

The first thing his lungs inhaled when he stepped onto the rolling stairs was the stink of human shit, used to fertilize many of the crops. In the street markets where fruits and vegetables were laid out on the ground, dogs and toddlers alike pissed and shat on the wares without consequence.

Encarnación ducked into a black armored SUV, its motor running so that it sped off the moment he had settled into the backseat. His elaborate colonial California-style house, with its pseudo-baroque quarry windows, front garden, and elaborate wood-clad interior hallways, was on Castelar Street, in Colonia Polanco. Situated less than a mile from Chapultepec Park and the Museum of National History, it was constructed of pale yellow stone and tezontle, the indigenous reddish volcanic stone that marked so many of the city’s great structures.

The ground on which his urban estancia sat was the most valuable in all of Mexico City, but because it was protected from development by the powerful National Fine Arts Institute, of which Encarnación was, not coincidentally, an influential member, no high-rises could be built there, as they had been in Lomas de Chapultepec or Colonia Santa Fe.

“Welcome home, Don Maceo. You have been missed.”

The man sitting beside Encarnación was short, squat as a frog, with dark skin, a belligerent hooked Aztec nose, and pomaded black hair swept back from his wide forehead, thick and lustrous as a horse’s mane.

His name was Tulio Vistoso; he was one of the three most powerful drug lords in Mexico, but almost everyone except Encarnación called him the Aztec.

“There is tequila to share, Don Tulio,” Encarnación said amiably, “and news to digest.”

At once the Aztec was on guard. “Problems?”

“There are always problems.” Encarnación fluttered a hand back and forth. “What matters is the level of difficulty these problems present in the solving.”

The Aztec grunted. He was wearing a black linen suit over an elaborate guayabera shirt. His feet were clad in caiman-skin huaraches dyed the color of polished mahogany. The driver was Encarnación’s bodyguard, the stolid armed man beside him belonged to the Aztec.

Nothing more was said on the drive to Encarnación’s mansion. Both men knew the value of silence and of presenting business at the proper time and place. Neither man was possessed of an impetuous nature. They were not prone to make a move before its time.

The familiar streets, avenues, and squares slid by in a blur of color and cacophonous noise. Bursts of bougainvillea crawled up the stucco sides of restaurants and tavernas, lumbering buses belched carbonized particulates. They passed by the square of Santo Domingo, inhabited by evangelistaswith their old bulky typewriters, banging out for the city’s illiterates letters of love or condolences, simple contracts to be explained and signed, eviction notices to be delivered orally, occasionally short, stark missives of bile and hate. The sleek armored SUV maneuvered nimbly in the rattling sea of taxis painted in violent colors and trucks and buses packed with stinking men, women, children, and animals. While church and cathedral bells clanged incessantly, it passed through the thick, grainy, wallowing morass of the city on its way to the cleanly exalted Colonia Polanco, and nestled within its heart, the villa, screened by high walls and pines, secured by electrified fences.

Beautiful as it was, with finely wrought designs and magnificent scrollwork, Encarnación’s mansion was built like a fortress, an absolute necessity, even for him, in the city’s crime-ridden environs. Yet it wasn’t the increasingly powerful drug lords the premises were fortified against, but the shifting political landscape, unstable as quicksand. Over the years, Encarnación had witnessed too many of his supposedly invulnerable friends plowed under by regime changes. He had vowed that would never happen to him.

It was the time of la comida, the grand theatrical lunch of the City of the Aztecs, a meal taken as seriously as a saint’s festival and with an almost religious fervor. It started at 2:30, often lasting until 6 pm. Grilled meat with assertive pasillachilies; baby eels, white as sugar, in a thick, vinegary stew; grilled fish; flour tortillas, hot and steaming from the griddle; chicken mole; and, of course, bottles of aged tequila set the long plank table in Encarnación’s paneled, light-filled dining room to groaning.

The two men sat opposite each other, drank a toast with tequila the color of sherry, then set about sating their immense appetites, at least for the time being. They were served by Anunciata, the nubile daughter of Maria-Elena, Encarnación’s longtime cook. Seeing something special in her, he had relieved her of learning the finer points of cooking with the thousand varieties of fried peppers and exquisite moles, and was instead teaching her the finer points of disruptive technology in cyberspace. Her mind was as active and nubile as her body.

When their bellies were full, the dishes cleared, and the espressos and cigars served, Anunciata brought in enormous mugs of hot chocolate laced with chilies, which she proceeded to whip into a froth with a traditional wooden molinillo. This was the most important part of the ritual. Mexicans believe that the powerful spirit of the drink lives in the foam. Placing a mug in front of each man, she vanished as silently as she had appeared, leaving the two men alone to

discuss their Machiavellian plans.

The Aztec was in a jovial mood. “Little by little, like hair falling from an aging scalp, the president is ceding power to us.” “We run this city.”

“We have control, yes.” Don Tulio cocked his head. “This does not please you, Don Maceo?”

“On the contrary.” Encarnación sipped his hot chocolate meditatively. It wasn’t until he tasted this magnificent drink that he truly knew he was home. “But gaining control and maintaining it are two very different animals. Succeeding at the one does not guarantee the other. The country abides, Don Tulio. Long after you and I are dust, Mexico remains.” Like a professor in a classroom, he lifted a finger. “Do not make the mistake of taking on the country, Don Tulio. Governments can be toppled, regimes can be replaced. To defy Mexico itself, to take it on, to think you can overthrow it, is hubris, a fatal mistake that will bury you, no matter the length and breadth of your power.”

The Aztec, not quite seeing where the conversation was going, opened his spatulate hands. Besides, he wasn’t altogether certain what hubrismeant. “Is this the problem?”

“It is aproblem, a discussion for another day. It is not theproblem.”

Encarnación savored a draft of the chilied chocolate foam, sweet and spicy. “Yes,” he said, licking his lips. “ Theproblem.”

Extracting a pen and pad from his breast pocket, he scribbled something on the top sheet, tore it off, folded it in half, and passed it across the table. The Aztec looked at him for a moment, then lowered his gaze as his fingers took hold of the folded sheet and opened it to read what Encarnación had written.

“Thirty million dollars?” he said.

Encarnación bared his teeth.

“How could this happen?”

Encarnación, rolling the hot chocolate around his mouth, looked up at the ceiling. “This is why I asked you to meet me at the airport. Somewhere between Comitán de Dominguez and Washington, DC, the thirty million disappeared.”

The Aztec put down his cup. He looked distressed. “I don’t understand.”

“Our partner claims the thirty million is counterfeit. I know, I couldn’t believe it myself, so much so that I sent two experts, not one. Our partner is right. The real thirty million that started its journey in Comitán de Dominguez ended up counterfeit.”

The Aztec grunted. “How did the partner find out?”

“These people are different, Don Tulio. Among other things, they have a great deal of experience counterfeiting money.”

Don Tulio wet his lips, his brow furrowed in concentration. “The thirty million changed hands a number of times over many thousands of miles.” Comitán de Dominguez, in the south of Mexico, was the first distribution point for the drug shipments originating in Colombia, transshipped through Guatemala, crossing the border into Mexico. “It means there is a thief inside.”

At that, Encarnación’s fist slammed down on the table, upsetting his cup, spilling hot chocolate over the embroidered lace tablecloth, a present his paternal grandmother had received on her wedding day. The Aztec’s eyes opened wide even as his body froze.

“A thief inside,” Encarnación echoed. “Yes, Don Tulio, you have caught the essence of the problem in its entirety. A very clever thief, indeed. A traitor!” His eyes blazed, his hand trembled with barely suppressed rage. “You know who that thirty million belongs to, Don Tulio. It’s taken me five years of the most delicate, frustrating, and nerve-racking negotiations to get to this point. Our buyers must take possession of that money within forty-eight hours or the deal, everything I’ve worked toward, will be flushed. Have you any idea what it took to make those people trust me? Dios de diablos, Don Tulio! There is no reasoning with those people. Their word is ironclad. There is no wiggle room, no elasticity whatsoever. We are bound to them, and them to us. Till death do us part, comprende, hombre?”

His fist came down again, rattling cups and saucers. “This does not happen in my house, this cannot happen. Do I make myself clear?”

“Absolutely, Don Maceo.” The Aztec knew when he was being dismissed. He rose. “Rest assured this problem will be solved.”

Encarnación’s eyes followed the Aztec as a predator will its prey. “Within the next twenty-four hours you will bring me both the thirty million and the head of this traitor. This is the solution I demand, Don Tulio. The only solution possible.”

The Aztec, eyes as opaque as those of a dead fish, inclined his head. “Your will, Don Maceo, my hand.”

When Bogs reached the area surrounding the Treadstone headquarters, he pulled the car up to the curb but restrained Dick Richards as he was about to get out.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” Bogs said.

“Back to work,” Richards answered. “I’ve already been away from my desk for too long.” He glanced down at Bogs’s meat-hook hand on his arm. “Let me go.”

“You’ll go when you’re told to go, not before.” Bogs looked at Richards intently. “It’s time for you to go to work.”

“Go to work? I havebeen working.”

“No,” Bogs said. “You’ve been sleeping. Now you will create. I will give you specific instructions. You’re to carry them out to the letter. You do what I tell you, in the way I tell you, no more, no less, got it?”

Richards, his insides suddenly turned liquid, nodded uncertainly. “Naturally.”

“What we have in mind isn’t easy.” He leaned toward Richards. “But what in life ever is?”

Richards nodded again, even more uncertainly. He had not expected this. Up until now his life as a triple agent had gone relatively smoothly, settling into a pattern that was easy to follow. Now he knew that he had been lulled into a false sense of calm and security. Bogs was right, he had been sleeping. Now came the deep; now came the unknown, where monsters that could swallow him whole lurked.

“What...” His words stuck in his throat. He licked his lips, as if to grease the way. “What do you want me to do?”

“We want you to set a Trojan inside the Treadstone intranet.”

“Treadstone has electronic safeguards. The Trojan will be found almost immediately.”

Bogs nodded. “Yes, it will.” His eyes glittered ferally. “And, if you’re clever enough not to get caught, your bosses will assign you to neutralize the Trojan.”

Richards didn’t like this; he didn’t like it at all. “And?”

“And you’ll do your job, Richards, in your usual quick and efficient manner. You’ll impress them. You’ll quarantine the Trojan, neutralize it, shred it.” He leaned in so close that Richards could smell the onions on his stale breath. “As you’re shredding it, you’ll implant a virus that will corrupt all the files on Treadstone’s servers.”

Richards frowned, shaking his head. “What good will that do? I’ll never get to the remote archives off-site. They’re isolated from the servers. The on-site server system will be cleansed. It will re-establish the files from archives. The system will be up and running within twelve hours.”

“You must extend the downtime to twenty-four.”

“I...” Richards swallowed. He felt both frozen and as if he had a high fever. “I can do that.”

“Sure you can.” Bogs’s grin looked a mile wide. The better to eat you with, my dear.“That’s the amount of time we’ll need.”

15

PETER HAD EXPECTED Tom Brick to stay in the safe house with him, but following his murderous instructions, he left. Alone in the vast house, Peter wandered for some moments, then sat down in a chair and took out the key he had found in Florin Popa’s shoe as he dragged him into the boxwood maze at Blackfriar Country Club.

Holding it up to the light, he turned it over and over, studying every square inch of it. It was small, with a round plug at the end, covered in a blue rubberized material similar to what had been used on public locker keys, back in the days before 9/11 when there were such things as public storage lockers. This key had no markings whatsoever, but he figured there must be something to distinguish its use.

Utilizing one of the super-sharp razor blades Brick had given him to kill whoever Bogs brought through the door, he slit open the covering and peeled it back. He was immediately disappointed. The plug was blank on both sides. Turning it on end, however, he saw etched into the end:

RECURSIVE.

He looked at the key in a new light and considered that it might not be for a lock, after all.

Now that he had a substantial clue to follow, he was unwilling to stay in the house, trying to figure out how he would get around killing someone he most certainly did not want to kill. He rose and went to the front door, only to find it locked. The same was true for the back door. All the windows were locked. He could see the tiny wires that would raise an instant alarm if any of the panes were broken.

The same was true for the windows on the second floor, but up here in the bedrooms the panes were smaller. Back down in the kitchen, he rooted around in the drawers without finding what he needed, but a closet revealed a tool chest. Inside, he found a glass cutter. Racing back upstairs, he chose a window that looked out on a spreading oak and scored a line between the glass and the sash. The super-sharp blade dug deeply into the glass. He made the same scores on two other sides. Setting down the glass cutter, he crossed to the bed, removed a case from a pillow, then, wrapping it around his left hand, returned to the pane of glass he’d been working on. Slowly and carefully, he scored down the fourth side.

With the fingertips of his right hand on the glass, he struck it with his protected left hand, and it moved a little. He hit it again, harder this time, dislodging the pane from the sash. He grabbed it between the fingers of his right hand before it could fall and shatter. Then he turned it, laying it flat, careful not to disconnect the alarm wire. With infinite care, he climbed through the open space, turned his body and leaped to the crotch between two thick branches of the oak. He teetered vertiginously until he threw his arms around one of the branches. Steadying and orienting himself, he climbed down to the lowest branch, and, from there, dropped the last two and a half feet to the ground.

Retrieving his mobile from its hiding place in his crotch, he phoned Treadstone for a car to pick him up, giving his approximate location. Then he began to walk out of the cul de sac, toward a road whose name he could recognize and relay to the driver.

It took him three calls to determine that there was, in fact, a boat named Recursivetied up at slip 31 at the Dockside Marina at 600 Water Street SW. By that time, his driver had dropped him where he had left his car outside the Blackfriar Country Club. Forty minutes later, he was pulling up to Dockside, rolling into a parking space.

He sat for a moment, turning the key over and over between his fingers, as the car engine cooled, ticking like a clock. Then he got out and walked down to the boardwalk where the boats were tied up. Most of the boats were battened down for the winter, covered against the weather. Some of the slips were empty, their occupants dry-docked and shrink-wrapped. On a few boats, people were working, stowing fishing gear, hosing down decks, coiling ropes, cleaning seats and brass railings. He nodded to them, smiling, as he ambled past. He had to remind himself that everything slowed down at a marina, that a careful and unhurried manner held sway.

It seemed odd to him that Florin Popa, a bodyguard, would own a boat. But then, considering how carefully the key had been hidden, maybe Popa didn’t actually own the Recursive. Maybe he was just using it.

Peter followed the slip numbers until he came to 31. The Recursivewas a 36-foot Cobalt inboard. Judging by the open deck and the seating arrangement, it was a pleasure craft, not a fishing boat. Taking hold of one of the dock’s wooden uprights, he swung aboard. The first thing he did was check to make certain no one was aboard. This was an easy enough task, considering that the Cobalt had no closed cabin or, apart from a minuscule head, belowdeck area.

Taking the key, he slid it into the ignition slot. He could only get it in halfway, however. It would not start the boat. Removing it, he began a thorough search, removing cushions that covered storage areas, opening the small dash box facing the passenger’s seat, pulling on the metal ring that opened another, larger storage area, all to no avail. There was no slot anywhere on the Recursivein which to insert the key.

By this time, twilight was falling on DC, and a chill wind whipped across the water. Peter sat on the rear cushions, staring out at nothing, trying to figure out what he had missed. The key was etched with the name Recursive. He was aboard the Recursive. Why couldn’t he find what the key was meant to open?

He pondered this vexing question for another fifteen minutes or so. By then, darkness had fallen, the lights had been switched on, and he was forced to admit defeat, at least for the moment. He called Soraya at home, then disconnected, remembering that she had told him that line was out of order. Instead, he punched in her mobile number. It went right to voicemail. He left a brief, necessarily enigmatic message asking her to call him, and disconnected.

At home, he fixed himself a meal cobbled together from leftovers, but he scarcely tasted a thing. Afterward, he wandered around, touching things absently, while his mind whirred away a mile a minute. Finally, recognizing that he was as exhausted as he was wired, he slipped a DVD into his system and watched several episodes of Mad Men, which calmed him somewhat. He fell into a reverie where he was Don Draper, only his name was Anthony Dzundza. Roger Sterling was Tom Brick, Peggy was Soraya, and Joan was the strength-training guy at the gym Peter had been trying to approach for months.

Martha Christiana, watching the terrible inertia of what was left of her mother, said, “Is this how it ends?”

“For some.” Don Fernando stood close beside her. “For the broken.”

“She wasn’t always broken.”

“Yes,” he said, “she was.” When she turned to look at him, he smiled encouragingly. “She was born with a defect in her brain, something that wasn’t working correctly. In those days, it wasn’t something that could be diagnosed, but even today, there’s not much that can be done.”

“Drugs.”

“Drugs would have turned the young woman she used to be into a zombie. Would that have been better?”

Martha’s mother moved uncomfortably, made a mewing sound, and Martha went to her, helped her over to the bathroom. She was inside with her for several minutes. Don Fernando crossed to the dresser, picked up the two photos, and one by one, studied them. Or rather he studied the young girl Martha Christiana had been. He had the unusual ability of being able to glean people’s psychological quirks from “reading” old photos of them.

The door opened behind him, and, putting down the pictures, he helped Martha bring her mother over to the bed, where they sat her down. The old woman seemed exhausted or, perhaps, not there at all, as if she were already asleep.

The nurse came in then, but Martha waved her away. By silent mutual consent, she and Don Fernando got the old woman into bed. As she laid her head on the pillow and Martha arranged her hair around her emaciated face, a tiny spark appeared in her eyes as she looked up at her daughter, and it was possible to believe for just that instant that she recognized Martha. But the ghost of a smile evaporated so quickly that it might never have existed.

Martha sat on the edge of the bed while her mother closed her eyes, drifted deeper into the impenetrable jungle of her mind. “We’ll all end up here, in the end.”

“Or we’ll die young.” Don Fernando’s mouth twisted. “Except me, of course.” He nodded. “‘No one here gets out alive.’”

“‘Five to One.’” Martha recognized the line written by Jim Morrison.

He smiled. “It isn’t only Bach and Jacques Brel I’m partial to.”

Martha turned back. “How can I leave her here?”

“You left her before.” She turned on him, but before she could say anything, he said, “That’s not a criticism, Martha, simply a statement of fact.” He approached her. “And the fact is, she’s best off here. She needs care, and these people are caring.”

She turned, looked down at her mother’s sleeping face. Something had happened. She no longer saw herself there.

At length, Peter slept, dreaming of the Cobalt running at full throttle, while he desperately swam to keep from being chopped to kelp by the whirring prop. The next morning, as he disinterestedly poured cold cereal into a gaily striped bowl, he got a brainstorm.

Firing up his laptop, he Googled recursive, which referred him back to the noun recursion, whose main definition in the postmodern world was “the process of defining a function or calculating a number by the repeated application of an algorithm.” That told him nothing, but when he looked up the origin, he discovered that the Latin recursiomeant “running back, or repeating a step in a procedure,” as in, say, shampooing: lather, rinse, repeat.

That led him to consider that there might be a recursive withinthe Recursive. The trouble there was that he had checked everything within the boat and had found nothing. But what about the area around Recursive?

He showered and dressed in record time, drove back to the marina, where he arrived at slip 31 and jumped onto the Cobalt. It looked just the same as it had yesterday. He moved methodically around the boat, peering over the side. There was nothing on the port side, bow, or stern, and it seemed the same for the starboard side, until he reached down under the second bumper and found a rope tied to the underside.

With mounting excitement, he hauled up the rope, hand over hand, until he had retrieved what was on the end of it: an immense rubberized watertight satchel. With some difficulty, owing to the weight, he set it on one of the aft cushions. Sure enough, the satchel was locked. When he inserted the key and turned it to the right, the lock popped open.

Removing it, the satchel’s top opened like an animal’s jaws. Inside, he found stacks of five-hundred– and thousand-dollar bills. All the breath went out of him. Instinctively, he looked around, peering through the bright morning sunlight to see if anyone was watching him. No one was. The few people he had passed earlier had taken their boats out. The marina was deserted.

He spent the next half hour counting the bills, adding up the sums of the stacks, which, he quickly discovered, each held the same number of bills. When he was finished, he couldn’t believe the figure he had come up with.

Good God, he thought. Thirty million dollars!

Bourne and Rebeka deplaned in Mexico City with the Babylonian on their backs.

“There’s no way out,” Rebeka said. “He has us trapped in here.”

“There’s still customs and immigration to consider.” Bourne was aware of the Babylonian, ambling five or six people behind them. He needed to stay there in order to keep them in sight.

“We should split up,” Rebeka said, passport out and open as they joined the first-class line to be processed into Mexico.

“That’s what he’ll expect us to do,” Bourne said. “I imagine he’ll welcome that, a man like him. Divide and conquer.”

They inched forward toward the white line painted on the concrete floor that marked the last staging area before handing over their passports.

“Do you have a better idea?” Rebeka asked.

“I will,” Bourne said, “in a minute.”

He looked around at all the faces—the men and women, the children of all ages, the families traveling with strollers and the paraphernalia endemic to babies and toddlers alike. Three teenage girls with teddy bear backpacks giggled and did a little dance, a woman drew up in an airline wheelchair, a three-year-old broke away from her mother and began wandering through a thicket of people who laughed and patted her on the head.

“What we have to do,” Bourne said, moving, “is make something happen.”

“What?” But she followed him as he stepped over to the longer line of economy-class passengers that snaked through the hall.