Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

That morning, after peering in some heavily fortified windows, she had abandoned Avenida Presidente Masaryk for her real destination, the Piel Canela boutique, at Oscar Wilde 20. She stopped in front of the window, staring at the butter-soft handbags, gloves, clutches, and belts that reminded her of the beautiful serpents she used to dream about in her youth. Her eyes slowly filled with tears as desire burned in her heart and lungs like the fire from which the phoenix once rose. There, in the center of the window, was the handbag she coveted and, half wrapped around its double strap, the elegant gloves. Both were the color of dulce de leche. Maria-Elena wanted them so badly her throat itched. But she knew she would never buy them. Tears leaked from her eyes, making rivulets down her cheeks. She wept and wept. It was not that she didn’t have enough money. She had been in Maceo Encarnación’s employ long enough, and he had been generous enough with her, that she could afford both items. But she was a girl of the streets; she could no more buy these high-priced items for herself than she would ever leave Maceo Encarnación’s employ, even after what had happened.

The final stop on her early morning excursion had been La Baila, on the Paseo de la Reforma, just four blocks south of Lincoln Park. The beautiful restaurant, lined in colorful Mexican tiles, turned out delicious and authentic food. In fact, over the years, Maria-Elena had been able to inveigle the recipe for the amazing thirty-ingredient mole de Xicofrom the owner-chef.

As the morning was mild, she had sat at an outside table, ignoring the fumes from the hellacious traffic on the Reforma. When Furcal, her favorite waiter, arrived at her table, she ordered her usual, atole, a boiled maize drink, flavored today with nopal, empanadas de plátano rellenos de frijol, and a double espresso cortado.

She had time now all to herself when, for the moment, she was free of obligations to Maceo Encarnación, when her mind could be itself, much as it was each night in the moments between the time she got into bed and the time she fell asleep. Except even then, within Maceo Encarnación’s compound, where his will could stretch out its hand and reach her any time of the day or night, she wasn’t truly free. Not like now, anyway, sitting by herself in a familiar restaurant, the sooty air of the city rushing by her on mysterious errands from the great volcano, Popocatépetl.

A female waiter she didn’t know had smiled warmly at her as she set down Maria-Elena’s atole.

“I hope the drink is to your liking,” she had said.

Maria-Elena, always polite, thanked her, took a sip, then another, deeper one, and nodded, allowing the waitress, whose name was Beatrice, to depart.

She wrapped her hands around the hand-thrown mug. She had time now to consider the implications of what she had read in Anunciata’s diary. Last week she had come across it by accident when she was cleaning her daughter’s room. It had been kicked, no doubt inadvertently, under the bed. Maria-Elena recalled with perfect clarity the moment, holding the book in her palms, when she had become aware that it was a diary. She recalled in vivid detail the fateful moment before she opened the diary, when everything was as it had always been. She almost didn’t open it. In fact, she had bent down to return it, unread, to its place beneath Anunciata’s bed. What would have happened then? Reality would not have been ripped and reshaped.

But curiosity had crawled through her like an evil serpent. Even then she had extended her arms, about to drop the diary under the bed. But something—the serpent of desired knowledge?—had stopped her, and she saw herself withdrawing her arms until the diary came back into view.

She did not stand up, and she wondered at that now. On her knees, as if in prayer, she opened the forbidden book, and read what she should never have read. Because in there, near the end, were lines of fire that seared her brain. She would have cried out then if she hadn’t immediately jammed her fist into her mouth.

Anunciata—her daughter, her only child—had been taking herself regularly to Maceo Encarnación’s bed. In horrific detail, the words of fire recounted the first time and every time thereafter. Maria-Elena slammed the diary shut. Her mind was aflame, but her heart, mortally wounded, had already fallen to ash.

She took a sheet of paper out of her handbag, unfolded it, and with a careful, cramped hand, began to write. As she did so, tears slid down her cheeks, staining the paper. She did not care. Her heart overflowed with shame and sorrow, but that did not stop her. Grimly, she kept writing until she came to the dreadful end. Then she folded the sheet away without looking at what she had written. Why bother? It was seared into her heart.

Once again, possessed by the evil serpent and having drained her atole, leaving the rest untouched, she threw some bills on the table and rushed down the sidewalk. Returning to the Piel Canela boutique, at Oscar Wilde 20, she pushed through the door, and, egged on by the serpent inside her, pulled out the credit card with which she purchased the food for Maceo Encarnación and bought her longed for purse and gloves. She ran her hands over them as the saleswoman rang up the charge, then she asked for them to be gift wrapped, watching as they were buried in layers of pastel-colored crepe paper, carefully interred in a thick box with the name of the boutique embossed in gold ink on either side. The lid was placed on and all was wrapped with a pink-and-green bow.

On the card the saleswoman handed her, she wrote the name of her beloved daughter. And below it, she wrote, “This is for you.”

Accepting her altered desire, she exited the shop into sudden blinding sunshine. She stood on the sidewalk, unable to take another step. Her legs refused to work, and now a sharp pain pierced the left side of her chest. Dios, what was happening to her? A terrible taste in her mouth. What had been in her drink?

Vertigo overcame her, and she fell. Shouts and the sounds of running feet came to her as far-away echoes, unattached to her or what was happening to her.

As she lay, staring up into the dusky sky, tears came again, along with a sob torn from the depths, where the evil serpent coiled and uncoiled, flicking its forked tongue. Her mind, encased in amber, flickering on the edge of a lethal unconsciousness, retreated to the only thing that mattered: the moment of the revelation a week ago.

The catastrophe was her fault. If only she had told Anunciata, but she had wanted to spare her daughter the sordid details of her origin. Now the mother had read those same sordid details in her daughter’s diary, knowing, God help her, that both mother and daughter had shared the same colossal bed, the same monstrous, all-powerful man, the same defilement. Maceo Encarnación was Anunciata’s father. Now he was her lover as well.

That was her last thought before the poison she had ingested at the café stopped her heart completely.

Martha Christiana sat brooding on the flight back to Paris from Gibraltar. Beside her, Don Fernando leafed through the latest Robb Report.She stared out the Perspex window at the infinite blue sky. Below her, the clouds looked so billowy that she imagined she could lie down and rest on them.

Rest is what she desired most now. Rest and the deep, untroubled sleep of the righteous, neither of which, she knew, were available to her. Don Fernando had astonished her at every turn. Now, after visiting her father’s grave, after seeing what her mother had become, how could she continue on the same path she had been traveling for years? How can I not?she asked herself.

She turned to Don Fernando. “I’m thirsty. Where’s the flight attendant?”

“I sent the cabin crew back to Paris last night,” he said, not looking up.

She returned to her brooding. She realized that she had become unmoored in a world in which she had been certain she knew all the angles. She was confronted now with one she could not have anticipated and did not know how to play. She felt like a little girl again, lost and alone, wanting only to run from where she was into the void of the unknown. She was dizzied, as if falling from a great height. It was only now that she realized how completely Maceo Encarnación had fashioned a world around her, an environment in which she could function—but as what? His iron fist or his puppet, dancing to the tune of each new assignment. Death, death, and more death. She saw now how he had mesmerized her into thinking that killing was all she was good for, that without him, without the assignments he brought her, without the money she received from him, she was nothing.

“ You live for the moment of death,” Maceo Encarnación had told her. “ This makes you special. Unique. This makes you precious to me.”

She saw now the load of goods he had sold her, how he had flattered her, stroked her ego, caressing her with his words. She had a mental image of herself as a puppet, dancing to his tune. An icy wind knifed through her, and she shuddered inwardly.

“What do you think of this new Falcon 2000S?” Don Fernando said, plopping a two-page spread featuring the private jet onto her lap. “This plane is due for a major overhaul. Instead, I’m thinking of upgrading.”

“Are you serious?” She looked at him, not the photos of the Falcon. “This is what’s on your mind?”

He shrugged and took the magazine back. “Maybe you don’t have a feel for jets.”

“Maybe you don’t have a feel for what’s going on,” she said, a good deal more hotly than she had intended.

He put aside the magazine. “I’m listening.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“That’s entirely up to you.”

She shook her head, exasperated. “Do you not understand? If I don’t kill you, Maceo Encarnación will kill me.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. I won’t be able to escape him.”

“Again, I understand.”

“Then what am I—?”

“Are you still planning to kill me?”

She snorted. “Don’t be absurd.”

He turned toward her fully. “Martha, this sort of change of heart is not so easily accomplished.”

“No one knows that better than me. I’ve seen the mess it can make. At the last minute—”

“The person can’t go through with it.”

“Even though they want to.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “sensing no exit, they kill themselves instead.”

She looked at him levelly. “That won’t happen to me.”

He took her hand in his. “How can you be certain, Martha?”

“In Gibraltar, you took my heart and dissected it, picked out all the black bits, then put it back together.”

“No,” he said. “You did that.”

A smile formed slowly on her face. “Who handed me the scalpel?”

The plane was descending, touching the top of the clouds, and then, all at once, it was in them, the sky going gray and featureless, as if they were alone in the air, lost to the world. The drone had become a kind of silence, a shroud.

“We’ll be landing soon,” Martha said. “I’ll have to call him.”

“By all means do.”

“What will I tell him?”

“Tell him what he wants to hear,” he said. “Tell him you have completed your assignment. Tell him I’m dead.”

“He always demands proof.”

“Then we’ll give him some.”

“It will have to be convincing.”

“It will be,” Don Fernando assured her.

Her brows knit together. “I don’t understand.”

Unbuckling his seat belt, he stood up. “The plane isn’t going to land.”

The waters of Acapulco were turquoise, clear down to the rocky bottom.

Diving into them from great heights took both skill and lungs of steel. To survive the depths to which a cliff diver plunged, to hold your breath for the time it took to descend and then fight the currents, eddies, and undertow on your way up to the frothy surface took long practice and, again, lungs of steel.

By the time, he was eleven, Tulio Vistoso, the best cliff diver in the sun-bleached resort city, could hold his breath for just under nine minutes. By the time he was fifteen, it was at least a minute longer.

The water around Dockside Marina was black as oil, but the lack of light was no deterrent for the Aztec. He had let go of jefeMarks’s legs when the bullets hit the water; there was no sense in being stupid. If he didn’t pull Marks under then, he knew it was just a matter of time. Not that Maceo Encarnación had given him much time. In fact, half of it was gone. He had to return to Mexico City with someone’s head and at least the promise of the return of the thirty million.

The moment the bullets stopped and jefeMarks was pulled out of the water, Don Tulio made his move. He knew it would be only a small matter of time before Marks’s people dropped divers into the water. He had to be either securely hidden or out of the water entirely before that happened. With the boats in the water, he could hardly swim out of the marina. Besides, he had to assume the Gringo federaleswould already have established a secure perimeter.

Rising near one of the slimy piers near the Recursive, he felt the vibrations of other boats. Then powerful floodlights were switched on, probing the darkness of the water, pushing back the shadows in which he had thought to secret himself. Clearly, now, that would not do. Neither would the network of pilings and crossbeams beneath the pier, his next choice. As he popped his head experimentally out of the water, he heard the panting and sniffing of dogs. They’d find him for sure under the pier.

That left only one alternative, one he was reluctant to use. Ducking back down to avoid a moving spotlight, he moved slowly and deliberately, causing no ripple at all, moving stealthily into the narrow crevasse between the dock and the starboard side of the Recursive. He edged his way along until he was directly beneath the second, and larger, bumper.

Feeling only with his fingertips, he found the metal ring, painted the same color as the hull. If you didn’t know it was there, you would never have seen it. But the Recursivewas, first and foremost, a smuggler’s boat; it contained all manner of tricks and traps. This particular one ran along the starboard side just above the waterline. It was meant for plastic bags of china white or heroin, but it could, in an emergency, accommodate a man. The trouble was that it wasn’t entirely watertight, not, at least, with the Aztec’s weight in it. This was why he had been reluctant to consider it. Being able to hold your breath for over nine minutes was one thing, but being trapped in a coffin-sized space while it slowly filled with seawater was quite another.

Still, entombment was the only chance Don Tulio had now, and he took it. Twisting the ring, he opened the hatch from the top and swung himself into the space. Water splashed in with him, filling the bottom. Quickly now, he closed the door and turned the ring into the locked position from the inside so it could not be seen.

Then, his heart beating fast, he began to pray to a god he had long since abandoned, except in name.

Forty minutes after he reached the ER, Peter was allowed to sit up while he was hydrated with fluids via an IV. He called Hendricks, waking him up.

“Where the hell have you been?” the secretary said grumpily.

When Peter told him that he had infiltrated Core Energy, that its CEO had verbally implicated himself, that Dick Richards was secretly working for Tom Brick, and that he had followed leads to the thirty million aboard the Recursive, Hendricks sounded mollified. But only for a moment.

“I hate it when both my directors are out of circulation.” Instantly, Peter was on the alert. “What are you talking about?”

“Soraya’s in the hospital,” the secretary said. “She collapsed and had to have an emergency procedure.”

In his extreme agitation, Peter nearly tore out his IV. “How is she?”

“Stable, from the last update I got. Delia’s with her. She’s barely left Soraya’s side.”

“Where is she?”

“Same hospital you’re in, but you don’t sound as if you’re in any shape—”

“I’m fine,” Peter snapped, a bit too aggressively. Even he realized that, albeit belatedly. “Sorry, sir, this whole business at the marina has got me on edge.”

“Right. Keep me wired into that. The moment you ID the man who attacked you, I want to know, got it?”

“Yessir.”

There was another pause. “As for Richards, do you want to pick him up or let him run?”

Peter considered this question, among thoughts of Soraya. “Give me a day or two to see what he’s up to. Now that I’ve flown Brick’s coop, I want to see what’s going to happen.”

“I wish we knew who he was bringing back for you to kill.” “Me, too, boss. But it might have been no one. Brick is into playing games with your head. I had had enough of that, and there was this key lead to run down.”

“I hear you. But as of this moment we have to treat Richards as a threat.”

“Absolutely, boss. But if we can use him to gain solid evidence of what Brick is really up to, I don’t want to miss the chance.”

“Fine.” Hendricks sounded reluctant. “But any backup you need—”

“I’ll call ASAP.”

“Do that. And, for the time being, I’m ordering you up protection.”

“That’s precisely what you won’t do, sir. With all due respect, I can’t do my job with a shadow. I’m not a desk jockey. I can handle myself.”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“Sir?”

“Peter, for God’s sake, take better care of yourself,” Hendricks said before he disconnected.

You have two choices,” the mortician said, “sleep on the floor or in one of these coffins.”

“Nice silk,” Rebeka said, sliding her hand along the rim of a coffin.

The mortician grinned. “Soft as a cloud, too.” He was a pale, thin man with a sunken chest, a pencil mustache, and the bee-stung, ruddy lips of a woman. His hands looked as delicate as porcelain. He had lacquered nails. He told them his name was Diego de la Rivera.

“Your choice,” he said. “Either way, I’ll notify you when it’s time.”

“You’re sure Maceo Encarnación’s people will call you,” Bourne said.

“More than that,” de la Rivera said, “I’m sure Maceo Encarnación himself will call me.”

“How’s that?”

De la Rivera’s lips twitched. “I’m married to his sister.” This made Bourne uneasy. “Isn’t blood thicker than water here?”

De la Rivera’s lips curled fully into a sneer. “Maceo Encarnación is not my blood. The man is made of money, but still he treats his sister like shit.” He spat onto the floor. “And me? He likes giving me business; he thinks it demeans me. ‘All you’re interested in is my money,’ he tells me, when what I want is for him to treat us like people. But, what? He doesn’t even invite us to his home. So there’s no blood here, not for me, not for my wife. He can go fuck himself for all I care.” He waved his hand. “So whatever chaos you cause when you’re inside, I’ll fucking applaud.”

He went out then without another word, cutting the overhead lights as he left. The lamp on his desk was left burning as, it seemed, it always was, even when he wasn’t there. All that remained was the deep, steady humming of the massive refrigeration units in the basement, rising through the concrete floor in spectral sound.

“Do you want to lie down?” Rebeka looked from Bourne, whose expression made her laugh, to the open coffin. “Neither do I.”

Bourne opened the detailed map of the city el Enterradorhad given him, and, by the dim lamplight, began to study it. “Are we clear on what we need to do,” he said, “once we get in?”

“Rowland first, then Maceo Encarnación.”

Bourne shook his head. “Rowland first, then we get out.”

“What about Encarnación?”

Bourne glanced up. He could see the lamp reflected in her eyes, a corona of light surrounding her pupils. “Listen, I’ve been thinking,” he said softly. “I’m beginning to suspect that Jihad bis saif—”

“It’s hiding in plain sight.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “It’s part of Encarnación’s empire. It must be.”

He returned to studying the map of the labyrinthine city. “Why do you say that?”

“We arrived here, drove through...I listened to what Constanza Camargo said, and I knew.”

“You’re wrong,” Bourne said. “ Jihad bis saifis a ghost. It doesn’t exist.”

“But what about what I overheard in Dahr El Ahmar?”

“Dahr El Ahmar. That’s the key, isn’t it?” Bourne looked up again. “It was Colonel Ben David you overheard. You say he thought you were still unconscious, right?”

She nodded.

“What if he knew you were listening?”

She stared at him.

“Think this through, Rebeka. Ben David knew you brought me into Dahr El Ahmar, a top secret Mossad camp in a foreign country, harboring even more top secret research on a procedure parallel to SILEX, the separation of isotopes by laser excitation, in order to quickly and efficiently enrich nuclear material to weapons grade.

“Now, all of a sudden, he doesn’t know whether to trust you. So he sets a trap. He discusses Jihad bis saifwithin your hearing. Come on, why would he do that when you’re within earshot? Would he really take the chance that you were unconscious? The hell he would. No, he talked about Jihad bis saifto see what you would do. And what did you do?You cut and ran. No wonder he sent the Babylonian after you.”

Rebeka shook her head. “No. It can’t be.”

“But you know it is,” Bourne pressed her. “We know Ben David better than most people. I think we’ve both seen him at his worst.”

“Then what about Rowland?”

“He was sent by Maceo Encarnación,” Bourne said. “Encarnación is the one who wants me dead. You saw how his copter came after me in Stockholm.”

He could see her taking deep breaths, gathering herself. When she turned back to him, her eyes were glistening and a tiny tremor went through her like an arrow. “I thought I was so smart.”

“Forget it. We all make mistakes.”

“There was no one inside Mossad I could trust, and in the end Ben David betrayed me.”

“I imagine he sees the betrayal from a different perspective.”

She took another slow breath. “What really happened between you and him? Before, I mean.”

Bourne regarded her for a long time. She became acutely aware of the open coffins, pale silk linings spectral islets in the semi-darkness. They didn’t look soft and comforting at all.

“In the twilight of Mubarak’s reign in Egypt, his government lost control over the Sinai,” Bourne said. “But I’m sure you already know this.”

She nodded.

“That’s where Ben David and I first met. A contingent of IDF was in there policing the local bedouin caravans, which were smuggling drugs, arms, and human slaves from Eritrea into Israel. Ben David was there with five of his Mossad agents, investigating a rumor that Mubarak or someone highly placed inside his government was behind the shipments, greasing the wheels with the bedouin chieftains. I was in the midst of my own investigation that peripherally involved the IDF. Suffice it to say that our goals clashed.”

“He wouldn’t have liked that.”

“He didn’t,” Bourne said. “In typical Ben David fashion, he concocted a story about me and sold it to the IDF commander. As a result, the IDF went after me.”

“Which accomplished the dual goal of getting you and the IDF off his back, giving him a free field to pursue his own objective without interference. Clever.”

“Not clever enough,” Bourne said. “I evaded the IDF by impersonating an arms dealer and joining one of the bedouin caravans. When Ben David and his unit attacked them, there I was.”

Rebeka indicated that they should sit on the floor. “What happened?” she said, when they were settled.

“Ben David got the surprise of his life. According to the caravan leader, the shipments originated in Pakistan, Syria, and Russia, not with the Egyptian government.”

“You believed him?”

Bourne nodded. “He had no reason to lie. As far as he was concerned, I was there to supervise one of my own shipments. He received his payments from Russian arms dealers, like the one I was impersonating, and from terrorist cells with connections to the Colombian and Mexican cartels.”

His eyes glittered. “Ben David’s intel was either incorrect or deliberate disinformation. Either way, he was wasting his and the Mossad’s time in the Sinai. Trouble was, Ben David refused to believe me. He ordered me executed, and I almost was.”

“But you escaped.”

“With the help of my newfound bedouin friends. Ben David was infuriated, vowing to hunt me down and kill me.”

“That’s the end of the story?”

“Until it picked up again when we flew into Dahr El Ahmar.”

“Shit, I wish I had known.”

“What would you have done differently?” Bourne said. “You needed immediate medical assistance. The Mossad camp was the closest safe haven.”

“I would have warned you.”

Bourne grunted. “Seeing Ben David again was warning enough.”

“He took off half a mountaintop trying to bring you down,” she said. “But then again, you scarred him for life.”

“He got what he deserved.”

Her eyes studied the shadowed contours of his face. “He’ll never forgive you.”

“I don’t want his forgiveness.”

“He’ll never stop hunting you.”

Bourne gave the hint of a smile. “He isn’t the first. He won’t be the last.”

“It must be...” She seemed to lose her voice, or her nerve.

“It must be what?”

“A difficult life you’ve chosen.”

“I think,” he said softly, “it chose me. I’m an accidental passenger.” She shook her head. “You’re an agent of change.”

“Maybe just the center of a balancing act.”

“That’s enough...more than enough, maybe, for one man.”

They sat silently then, their eyes locked, thinking their own thoughts, until they heard a sharp scrape. The overhead lights flickered on, revealing Diego de la Rivera.

“The call’s come in,” he said. “It’s time.”

19

"YOU’RE INSANE.” Martha Christiana stared up at Don Fernando. “You’re telling me we’re alone on the plane?”

“Yes.”

“The pilot and navigator have parachuted out.”

“Three minutes ago. It’s on autopilot.”

“And you plan to crash the plane—”

“Crash it, yes.” He slipped off a thick engraved gold ring with a pigeon-blood cabochon ruby in its center. “The recovery team will find this. It is unique. It will be identified as mine.”

Martha, breathless, still had trouble believing this crazy plan. “But they’ll find no body remains.”

“Oh yes, they will.”

She followed him to the rear of the plane, where, when she saw stacked up three body bags, she recoiled. She stared at him. “This is a joke, right?”

“Unzip the bags.”

He said this with such utter calmness that she felt a chill run down her spine. This was a side of him he had not revealed until now. Brushing past him, she leaned over the top body bag and, with a convulsive gesture, unzipped it. She found herself staring into the blank white face of a corpse.

“Three men,” Don Fernando said. “The pilot, the navigator, and me. That is the way it will be reported.”

She whirled on him. “And you’ll just what? Disappear from running Aguardiente Bancorp?”

“It’s a leap of faith,” he said, turning away. “Come now. Our time has run out.” He broke out a pair of parachutes and handed one to her. “Or do you want to die in the crash?”

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

“But it is.” He shrugged into his harness, tightening the bands across his chest. As if noticing her hesitation for the first time, he frowned. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“I don’t understand...”

“Then kill me now and have done with it. You’re running out of time. Fulfill Maceo Encarnación’s commission. I doubt I can stop you.”

Her frown deepened. “He said you wanted to take everything away from him.”

“How much do you know about his empire?”

She shook her head.

“Well then, there is no reason for his comment to affect you.”

She thought about her meeting with Maceo Encarnación at the Place de la Concorde, encircled by constant traffic, the shouts and laughter of unknowing tourists. In the shadow of the guillotine and the Reign of Terror. “But it did.”

“And so...” He spread his hands wide. When she didn’t answer, he stepped toward her, taking the parachute out of her hands and manipulating the straps over her shoulders. But when he began to cinch the wide strap across her waist, she gripped him.

“Wait.”

Their eyes met.

“Last chance, Martha,” he said. “You must decide now. Stay with Maceo Encarnación or take the first step into that new beginning you spoke about in Gibraltar.”

He removed her hands and cinched the waist strap tight. “It seems to me that your past has been defined by following a series of men.” He led her to the door, put his hand on the huge metal bar that would unlock it. “Continue or change, Martha. Your choice is as simple as that.”

“You call this a simple choice?”

“Call it what you will, it’s yours to make.” His voice softened. “No one can help you with this decision, Martha. I wouldn’t even try.”

She took a breath. She thought about the lighthouse, her father’s grave, her mother lost in a world where Martha was still a child, still a part of her life. She stared into Don Fernando’s eyes, wanting to read something there, but he was true to his word: he wasn’t going to try to influence her. And all at once, she realized that he was the first man in her life who hadn’t sought to manipulate her.

She nodded then and replaced his hand on the door’s locking bar. “Let me,” she said.

He laughed and kissed her on both cheeks with great affection. “Best I show you something first.”

“You said we were out of time.”

He guided her back up the aisle to the front of the plane, opened the door to the cockpit, and showed her the pilot and navigator alive and well in their seats.

“Better strap in, boss,” the pilot said. “We’ll be landing in five minutes.”

Charles Thorne turned, restless in bed.

The truth of the matter was he hated and feared Li Wan, yet the two men were bound together by the stream of secrets they passed back and forth as if through a delicate membrane. They were conduits; they needed each other. Thorne turned again, trying and failing to get comfortable.

Worse, by far, was that he envied Li Wan. He had been in love with Natasha Illion, the Israeli supermodel, Li’s inamorata. And he could swear that Li knew. Each time they were together, Li presented Natasha as if she were bathed in a follow spot, or so it seemed to him. And Natasha, perhaps being in on Li’s little running joke, always wore the most provocative designer outfits—necklines down to her navel or mesh tops through which Thorne stole clandestine peeks at her small but perfect breasts, the nipples like cherry buds. Thorne moaned, imagining his mouth enclosing them.