Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

He drove east, toward the airport, and when he saw the radiant sign for Superama, he turned off. At Revolution 1151, Merced Gómez, Benito Juárez, he pulled into the colossal parking lot, slid the taxi into an empty slot, and got out.

Opening the trunk, he discovered a pile of rags. He used one to wipe down all the interior surfaces. He paused when he was finished and looked at Rebeka. Her shirt had been ripped open. Inside, he saw an aluminum-mesh wallet. Lifting it out with his fingertips, he wiped off the blood. Inside was her legend passport, the money she had taken from beneath the floorboards of her rental apartment in Stockholm, and a delicate silver necklace with a star of David. She had never shown the talisman to him. Leaving the wallet and its contents behind seemed like leaving a part of her to be picked over, so he took them. He knew there was nothing more he could do for her. Saying his silent goodbye, he slammed the door, using the rag, and picked his way through the lot to the store.

In the bathroom, he threw away the rag and washed her blood off his hands. Then he dumped his blood-stained coat and shirt, and went in search of a new outfit. He bought black jeans, a white shirt, and a charcoal-colored jacket.

Returning to the parking lot, he moved through the rows, looking for an older car. Behind him, he heard the throaty gurgle of a motorcycle engine. It was a large one—an Indian Chief Dark Horse. He saw it approaching out of the corner of his eye. It was traveling so slowly that he gave it scant attention, but the instant it put on a burst of speed, he turned. The driver was male, but a mirrored faceplate on his helmet obscured his face. Sunlight spun crazily off the crown of the black impact-resistant plastic.

The Indian went down a parallel row, and Bourne turned back to the car he had chosen. Unbending a wire hanger he had taken from the store where he bought his clothes, he stuck the hooked end down between the door frame and the window. The lock popped up. He was about to open the door when the Indian reappeared, coming at him very fast from the opposite side.

Bourne stood by the door, watching the motorcycle coming closer. It was almost upon him when he swung the door out. The Indian’s front wheel struck the metal with a dull clang, and the motorcycle bucked like a stallion. Its back reared up, flinging the driver out of his seat. He somersaulted up and over the car’s crumpled door, and landed on the roof.

As he slid down, Bourne grabbed him, slammed him back against the car’s side. He ripped off the helmet and saw up close the damage the flames had done to Halevy’s neck.

As the Babylonian leaped at him, Bourne drove a knee into Halevy’s crotch, then smashed a fist into the side of his head. Bourne grabbed him as he fell sideways. Halevy kicked him in the side of the knee, then, twisting free, drove his fist into the pit of Bourne’s stomach. As Bourne’s body turned, he struck the Babylonian in the kidney.

Bourne went down, Halevy on top of him. Halevy flicked out a knife, slicing a shallow arc toward Bourne’s throat. Bourne reached up, scraped his nails down the Babylonian’s fire-wounded throat. Halevy reared back, his eyes tearing with the fiery pain, and Bourne smashed his wrist against the bottom of the car. The knife clattered to the tarmac, and Bourne pressed his forearm against Halevy’s throat.

“Tell me about Ouyang.” Ouyang was the name Rebeka had spoken just before she died.

Halevy stared up at him balefully. “Who or what is an Ouyang?”

Bourne dug into the nerve bundle at the side of his neck. Halevy bared his teeth and his eyes popped. Sweat broke out on his face. The left side was scorched red, rippled and rent by the inroads the flames had made as they ate away and blackened the layers of his skin. He began to breathe hard.

“Ouyang,” Bourne prompted.

“How d’you know about Ouyang?”

Bourne did that thing again, and this time Halevy’s body arched up, his straining muscles trembling involuntarily. Little grunting noises emanated from his open mouth, like an animal caught in a trap, about to gnaw his leg off.

“Ben David deals with Ouyang.”

“Not the Director or Dani Amit?”

Halevy, blowing air through his mouth as if to cool himself off, shook his head. “This is private. It isn’t Mossad.”

“Then how do you know about it?”

“I won’t—” The Babylonian gave a silent howl as Bourne worked on him for a third time. His face was blue-white. Even his fire wound was now a pale pink, livid against the starkness of his stubble. Sweat flew off him like rain. “Okay, all right. Ouyang’s a high minister in the CSP. Ben David has something going with him, but I swear I don’t know what. Ben David recruited me to run interference with Tel Aviv, to make sure neither the Director nor Amit find out what he’s up to.” His gaze turned briefly canny. “But Rebeka found out, didn’t she? She’s the one who told you about Ouyang.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bourne said.

“Oh, but it does.” The Babylonian gave Bourne a smile tainted with pain. “Ben David has a thing for her. He always did.”

“And yet he sent you to kill her.”

“That’s the kind of man he is.” Halevy took several shuddering breaths. “Divided, always divided, just like our country, just like every country in the Middle East. He loves Rebeka. I don’t know what it took out of him to order her termination.” Those oddly porcine breaths again. “There’s no reason for you to believe this, but I’m glad she’s still alive.”

At that, Bourne rose, and, hauling the Babylonian up by his shirtfront, walked him back to the taxi. He shoved his face against the window.

“See her there? She’s dead, Halevy,” Bourne said. “I hold you and Ben David to account.”

“I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t.” Even as he was saying this, he whirled, a needle-like weapon in the palm of his hand. Its point glinted wetly with what must be some kind of fast-acting poison. Bourne, lifting an arm, felt the needle snag in the fabric of his jacket. The needle point scraped against his skin but did not break it. Bourne smashed the heel of his hand into Halevy’s nose. He delivered a second strike to the Babylonian’s throat, fracturing the cricoid cartilage.

Jerking his arm away from the needle, he struck Halevy flush on his ear. The Babylonian, gasping for air that would not come, staggered to his knees, still trying desperately to swipe at Bourne with the needle. Bourne grabbed him, and drove his knee into his groin, then struck him over and over again until he felt the bones in Halevy’s chest give way.

With the Babylonian dead, Bourne slipped into the old car he had chosen, hot-wired it, and drove out of the lot. At Benito Juárez International Airport, he bought a first-class ticket, then went in search of something to eat.

While he waited for his food, he took out the tiny skull studded with crystals that el Enterradorhad given him as protection against Maceo Encarnación. “He is protected by an almost mystical power,”Constanza Camargo had told him, “as if by gods.”

His food came, but he found that he was no longer hungry. As he turned the skull around and around between his fingers, he thought about everything that had happened to him and Rebeka since coming to Mexico City, all of which had been dictated, in one way or another, by Constanza Camargo. And then he began to wonder about something else. Why would Henry Rowland secrete himself in the closet of his bedroom unless he had known they were coming? But how had he known with such precision where they were?

Bourne stared at the crystal-studded skull and into his mind came thoughts of other gods—the gods of technology. Placing the skull on the table, he smashed the bottom of his fist down onto it. Carefully, he picked through the shattered bits and pieces, extracting the minuscule tracking device that had been embedded in its center. He left it amid the debris without destroying it. He wanted the signal to continue broadcasting, just as if he had never discovered the device.

He rose, paying for the meal he hadn’t touched, then exited the departure lounge, heading for the long-term parking lot, to find a suitable vehicle to drive back into the city.

There are any number of ways to remain alive after you’re dead.” Don Fernando Hererra laughed, seeing the expression on Martha Christiana’s face. “This is only one of them.”

The pilot had landed the private jet in a vast field south of Paris.

There was no runway, no windsock, no customs shed. The plane had deviated from its flight plan and, after a frantic Mayday call, was now off the grid as far as the towers at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were concerned.

“There are no magicians in the world, Martha. Only illusionists,” Hererra said. “The idea is to create the illusion of death. For this, we require an authentic disaster, which is why the plane has landed here, where no one will be hurt.”

“Those bodies I saw on the plane,” Martha said, “are real.” Hererra nodded as he handed her a folder.

“What’s this?”

“Look inside.”

Opening the file, she saw forensic reports on three bodies retrieved from the wreckage of the plane that had not yet crashed. The three bodies were burned beyond recognition, of course, but were identified by dental records. Hererra was named, as well as the pilot and the navigator.

Martha picked her head up. “What about their families? What will you tell them?”

Hererra nodded to the two men who were exiting the jet, whose engines were still running. “These men have no families, one of the reasons they were hired in the first place.”

“But how—?”

“I have friends inside the Élysée Palace who will control the accident scene.”

The pilot approached Hererra. “The three corpses have been placed correctly,” he said. “We can proceed anytime.”

Hererra checked his wristwatch. “We’ve been off the radar for seven minutes. Do it now.”

The pilot nodded, then turned to his navigator, who was standing apart from them. The navigator held a small black box in his hand. When he pressed a button on the box, the jet’s engines rose in pitch until they became a scream. Another button remotely released the brakes, and the jet bucked forward, quickly gaining speed until it slammed into the line of trees at the far end of the field. A ferocious noise flared, momentarily deafening them. The ground shook, and an oily black-and-red fireball puffed out in the sky.

“We go,” Hererra said, herding them all toward a large four-wheeldrive SUV crouched at the edge of the field. “Now.”

The Cementerio del Tepeyac and, especially, the Basilica de Guadelupe looked completely different in daylight. All the sinister qualities, burned into the Mexican night, had been washed away, leaving a thin veneer of religiosity that no doubt hid a multitude of sins, both venial and mortal.

Parking his stolen car a hundred yards away, Bourne spent several minutes circumnavigating the immediate area around the basilica. There was no sign of the hearse that had conveyed him and Rebeka to the establishment of Diego de la Rivera, Maceo Encarnación’s brother-in-law. There was also no sign of the mysterious pseudopriest, el Enterrador.Bourne recalled in vivid detail the tattoos of coffins and tombstones adorning his forearms.

He went around to the entrance and slipped through. The interior was filled with echoes and incense. A choir of angelic voices lifted heavenward. Mass had commenced. Bourne made his way to the back of the apse, returning to the dimly lit corridor that led to the rectory.

Before he arrived, however, he paused, hearing voices from within the small office. One was a female alto. Moving stealthily forward, Bourne caught a sliver of the rectory, the enormous crucified Christ dominating as usual. Then into his restricted line of vision came the source of the alto. With a start, he recognized the beautiful young woman who had drifted down the staircase in Maceo Encarnación’s villa, who had cried out when she had seen what Bourne understood must have been her mother, laid out, ready for the mortician’s art. The anomaly of her coming from an upstairs bedroom where no servant ought to be, naked beneath her expensive robe, now returned to the forefront of Bourne’s mind. Upon returning upstairs, she had gone into the master suite, where Maceo Encarnación presumably lay beneath the bedcovers.

What was she doing here? Bourne moved slightly, his gaze following Maria-Elena’s daughter as she moved anxiously around the rectory. He’d heard de la Rivera, the mortician, use the dead cook’s name. A moment later, she stopped in front of a robed and hooded man. His spade beard announced him as el Enterrador.

“Give me absolution for my sins,” she said softly. “I harbor murderous thoughts.”

“Have you acted on these thoughts?” he replied in his raspy whisper.

“No, but—”

“Then all will be well, Anunciata.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t know what I know,” she said bitterly.

“By all means tell me,” el Enterradorsaid with quiet menace.

She quailed for a moment, then expelled a deep breath.

“I trusted Maceo. I thought he loved me,” she said, her voice abruptly changed, deeper in register and somehow darker.

“You can trust him. He does love you.”

“My mother’s legacy.” She unfolded a sheet of paper, shoved it at him. “Maceo slept with my mother before he slept with me. He’s my father.”

El Enterradortouched the crown of her head. “My child,” he said, just as if he were a real priest, continuing in that ecclesiastical vein: “Fallen from the Garden of Eden, we all come from a dark place. This is our heritage, our collective legacy. We are all sinners, navigating a sinful world. However wrongful their liaison, your parents gave you life.”

“And if the worst happens, if he makes me pregnant?” “Of course we must see to it that never happens.”

“I could cut off his cojones,” Anunciata said with no little vitriol. “That would make me happy.”

El Enterradorsaid, “I knew your mother ever since she came to Mexico City. I gave her confession. I have hope that I helped her through difficult times because she needed help and did not know where else to turn. Now it’s you who comes to me for help and advice. Go to your father. Talk to him.”

“What we have done!” Anunciata shuddered. “It’s a hideous sin. You of all people should know that.”

“Where is Maceo now?”

“You mean you don’t know? He’s gone. He left with Rowland for the airport.”

“Where are they going?” Bourne said as he stepped into the rectory.

Both Anunciata and el Enterradorturned to stare at him. The priest was clearly more surprised to see him. The young woman registered only curiosity.

“Who are you, señor?” Anunciata said.

“Rebeka and I were at the villa early this morning.”

“Then you—?”

But Bourne was already turning away from her. “I should still be at the airport. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“How would I—?”

“The crystal-encrusted skull you gave me. I found the transmitter inside it.”

El Enterradorwithdrew a long-bladed stiletto from beneath his robes, but Bourne shook his head, leveling the handgun he had taken from Maceo Encarnación’s guard. “Put it down, Undertaker.”

Anunciata’s eyes opened wide. She seemed even more beautiful now than she had earlier. “He is a priest. Why do you call him el Enterrador?”

“That’s his nickname.” Bourne gestured with his head. “Show her the tattoos on your forearms, priest.”

“Tattoos?” Anunciata echoed. She stared at her companion, clearly stunned.

He said nothing, didn’t even look at her.

She reached out, pushed up the sleeves of his robe, and gasped at the intricate handiwork displayed.

“What is this?” It seemed unclear who she was addressing.

“Tell her, Undertaker,” Bourne said. “I’d like to hear it, as well.”

El Enterradorglared at him. “You were not supposed to come back here.”

“You weren’t supposed to track me, either.” Bourne nodded. “Now let’s get to the truth.”

“About what?” el Enterradorwhispered. “Maceo Encarnación asked for my help. I gave it to him.”

“Rebeka—the woman—my friend—is dead. Put the knife on the desk.”

After a hesitation, el Enterradorcomplied.

“The truth,” Bourne said. “That’s what I’m here for. How about you, Anunciata?”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Ask the Undertaker. He’s the one who is in real need of forgiveness.”

She shook her head again.

Bourne said, “Rebeka and I got into Maceo Encarnación’s villa via a mortician’s hearse. In order for that to happen, someone inside the villa had to die.”

“My mother.”

Bourne nodded. “Your mother. But how would anyone know beforehand that she was going to die?” He stared directly at the priest. “People had to know your mother was going to die. Which means she was murdered.”

Tears were standing out in Anunciata’s eyes. “The doctor said she died of a heart attack. There wasn’t a mark on her. I know. I dressed her for the...the mortician.”

“Poison doesn’t leave an external mark,” Bourne said. “And if you’re clever you can find a poison that won’t leave an internal trace, either.” He nodded. “I think that might have been your part in the murder, Undertaker.” He turned to Anunciata. “Hence his nickname.”

She whirled on el Enterrador. “Is that true?”

“Of course not,” he scoffed. “The very idea that I would harm your mother is absurd.”

“Not if Encarnación asked it of you.”

“Did you do it?” Anunciata’s cheeks were flaming. Her entire frame was shaking.

“I already told you—”

“The truth!” she cried. “This is a church. I’ll have the truth!”

He went to reach for the stiletto, but she was quicker. Or perhaps she had already prepared herself. Snatching up the knife, she strode forward, and, in one powerful swing, thrust the knife into el Enterrador’s throat.

His eyes opened wide in shock and disbelief. He grabbed on to the edge of the desk as he was falling, but his already numb fingers slipped off, and he crashed to the floor in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood.

22

THE BEIJING CENTRAL Committee Earth and Sky Country Club lay only five miles northwest of the capital.

But it could have been a hundred. Here, beyond the massive layer of industrial smog that hung above the city like an intimation of a permanent twilight, the skies were clear. Within the twelve-foot-high spiked fence, electrified for added security, could be seen endless rows in meticulous parallels of cabbage, cucumbers, peppers and beans of all varieties, onions, scallions, gai lan, bok choy, and chilies, among many others. What made these vegetables special, necessitating the heavy security, was that they were all organic, grown pesticide-free in pristine conditions. In the northern section of Earth and Sky was the dairy farm, where cows were fed an all-organic diet, the milk processed in sterile conditions.

It was to Earth and Sky that Minister Ouyang was being driven in his state-provided limousine for his twice-monthly visit. The produce of Earth and Sky was the sole property of the state, for consumption only by the Central Committee and those high-level ministers who, like Ouyang, were privy to its largesse. There were twenty-five levels of power within the many ministries of Beijing’s central government. Each level was entitled to a specific amount of organic food. The higher up the minister, the larger the monthly allotment. This feudal system was a holdover from Mao’s regime, made necessary by the severe pollution of China’s earth and sky, which was nearing crisis level.

However, today Minister Ouyang had an altogether different reason for visiting the country club. As the cantilevered front gate opened to his driver’s electronic code, he saw another car waiting just inside. The man in army fatigues stood beside the car, eating a cucumber he had apparently just pulled off the vine.

When Ouyang stepped out of his limousine and approached, he saw the livid scar down the side of the man’s face.

“Colonel Ben David,” he said, donning dark glasses against the sun’s glare. “It has been some time.”

“You know,” Ben David said, lounging against the car, “I still prefer Israeli cucumbers.” He chomped on the Earth and Sky vegetable, chewing slowly. “Something about the desert sun.”

Minister Ouyang produced a curdled smile. “Bring your own food next time.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t good.”

“What happened to your face?” Ouyang said in a gross breach of Chinese etiquette.

Ben David eyed him for some time. “You know, Minister, you’re looking a little peaked. You haven’t been drinking any of your infamous watered-down milk spiked with melamine so it can pass the protein-content tests?”

“I only drink milk from the Earth and Sky Dairy,” Ouyang said coldly.

Ben David threw the stump of the cucumber onto the ground and came away from the car. “You know what occurs to me? We hate each other so much it’s a wonder we can work together.”

Ouyang bared his teeth. “Necessity creates strange bedfellows.” “Whatever.” Ben David shrugged his shoulders. “What necessitated this face-to-face so close to our mutual journey’s end?”

Minister Ouyang took out a slender file and handed it over.

Ben David opened it. His scar seemed to flare with heat as he stared at the surveillance photo of Jason Bourne. He looked up, rageful. “What the fuck is this, Ouyang?”

“You know this man,” Ouyang said with maddening calm. “Intimately.”

Ben David slapped the file. “This is why you insisted I travel over nine hours?”

Ouyang was imperturbable. “Please confirm my statement, Colonel.”

“We have met on two occasions,” Ben David said neutrally.

“Then you are the man for the job.”

Ben David blinked. “What job? You’re giving me a fucking job?”

A jet, winking silver in the bright sunshine, passed by overhead, a roar so distant it might have come from the other side of the world. Off to their left, a tractor ground slowly through the furrowed earth. The smell of loam was abruptly strong as the wind shifted. To the southwest the brown mass stained the sky, obscuring even the highest of Beijing’s massive buildings.

“Tell me, Colonel, how long have we been working on our joint project?”

“You know as well as I do—”

Ouyang wiggled the first two fingers of his left hand. “Indulge me.”

Ben David sighed. “Six years.”

“A long time, by Western standards. Not so long as we measure time here in the Middle Kingdom.”

Ben David looked disgusted. “Don’t give me that ‘Middle Kingdom’ crap. This is business. It’s always been business. This is not about politics, ideology, or cant. There’s nothing mystical or even mysterious about it. You and I know that money makes the world turn. This is our ride, Ouyang, what brought us together. It’s first and last on our list.” He tossed his head. “This has been our program for six long, painstaking, dangerous years. Now you want to deviate. I don’t like deviations.”

“On all you say we agree,” Minister Ouyang said. “But the world is a dynamic place, always changing. If our program cannot accommodate change, it cannot succeed.”

“But we’ve already succeeded. In two days’ time—”

“An eternity for something to go wrong.” Ouyang pointed to the photo in the file. “This man Bourne has now bent his considerable talents to stopping us.”

Ben David reared back as if struck. “How do you know this?”

“I am in contact with our other partners. You are not.”

“Fuck!” Ben David slapped the file against his thigh. “You’re not asking me to go after him.”

“No need,” Minister Ouyang said. “He’ll quite happily come to you.”

The voices of the angelic choir swelled until the massed chorale filled the Basilica de Guadelupe.

In the rectory, Bourne stared down at the bloody corpse of el Enterrador, and said to Anunciata, “Now we must go.”

Her eyes flashed along with the ruby-red blade of the stiletto she still wielded. “I’m not going anywhere with you. You were part of the plan.”

“We knew nothing of the mechanisms of how we were being smuggled into Maceo Encarnación’s villa,” Bourne said. “My friend was killed because of that tracking device the Undertaker planted.”

They looked at each other as if across a great chasm. They had both experienced loss because of Maceo Encarnación. He became a lodestone that in a peculiar way now drew them together.

She lowered the stiletto and nodded.

Bourne took her out through the small rectory entrance, through a section of the cemetery skirting the basilica itself, to where he had parked his car. They drove off slowly. A mile away, he pulled over to the curb and put the car in park, turning to her.

“If you know where Maceo Encarnación and Harry Rowland have gone, you must tell me.”

Her large coffee-colored eyes stared at him without guile. “Will you kill them?”

“If I have to.”

“You have to,” Anunciata said. “There is no other way, with either of them.”

“You know Rowland?”

She dipped her head. “He is Maceo’s favorite, the protected one. Maceo looks on him as a son. He raised him from a very early age.”

“Who are his parents?”

“That I do not know. I think Rowland is an orphan, though we do not speak. Maceo has forbidden it.”

“Is Harry Rowland his real name?”

“He has many names,” Anunciata said. “This is part of the myth.”

Something icy sliced through Bourne. “The myth?”

“Maceo is obsessed with myths. ‘Myths protect men.’ This is what he always says. ‘Myths make them safe because they separate them from other men, myths make them more than human, myths make other men fearful.’”

“How did he weave the myths around Rowland?”

Anunciata closed her eyes for a moment. “The central myth of the Aztecs is that man was created to feed the gods, otherwise the gods would rain down fire and destroy them and everything they had built. The gods ate a sacred substance in human blood.”

“You’re talking about the Aztecs’ practice of human sacrifice.”

She nodded. “The Aztec priests carved the beating hearts out of those sacrificed, offering them to the gods.” She stared out the window for a moment at people passing by—a woman with a basket of fruit on her head, a boy on a dented blue bicycle. “That was a long time ago, of course.” She turned back to him. “Nowadays, it’s beheadings.” She shrugged. “The blood is the same, and the gods are appeased.”

“These are the same gods who allowed the Spaniards to defeat their people.”

An enigmatic smile curled at the corners of Anunciata’s lips. “Who can fathom the purposes of the gods? Mexico survived the Spaniards.” Her gaze turned prescient. “The important thing is this: The Aztec struggle to control destiny is the same as our own. The coming of Jesus to Mexico has changed nothing. Blood is still spilled, sacrifices are still performed, destiny and desire are still the only things that matter.”

“How does this fit in with Harry Rowland?”

“He is the advance guard, the outrider.”

“The Djinn Who Lights The Way,” Bourne said.

Anunciata’s eyes opened wide. “You know. Yes, Rowland is the man who performs the sacrifices that increase the myth, that separate him from others, that make men fear him.

“He is Nicodemo.”

The eagle sitting on a nopal cactus devouring a serpent is the modern-day coat of arms of Mexico,” Maceo Encarnación said, sitting opposite Nicodemo in the wide leather seat of his Bombardier Global 5000. They had been in the air for some time. “These two creatures are at the heart of Mexican and Aztec culture. The god of sun and war told his people that they should found their greatest city in the place where they see an eagle on a nopal cactus, where the heart of his brother was buried, devouring a snake. This was where Tenochtitlán was built, and on its back Mexico City rose centuries later.”

Maceo Encarnación watched Nicodemo, who hated lessons of any kind, to see his reactions. He stared at Maceo with his usual stoicism. “I tell you this tale, Nicodemo, because you are an outsider, a Colombian.” He waited, should a reply be forthcoming. When only silence presented itself, he continued. “We learn to devour in order not to be devoured. Is this not the truth of the world?”

“It is,” Nicodemo agreed with some animation. Speaking of death always brought him out of his brooding state. “I only wish I had been the one to kill the Aztec.”

“Tulio Vistosa was the traitor I had been looking for. It was he who stole the thirty million.” Maceo Encarnación chuckled. “The bundles of money were switched at the last minute. Very amusing, but not for him. He stole the counterfeit dollars and left me the real ones.” Maceo Encarnación shook his head. “You have to have lived among these thieving bandits to get into their heads. You have to have been one of them.”

“Like Acevedo Camargo,” Nicodemo said.

Maceo Encarnación felt gratified that he was paying attention. “Constanza Camargo was a first-class singer when I met her. She was an even better actress, but she did not want to go into films.”

“She wanted to spend more time with her husband, Don Acevedo.” Maceo Encarnación shook his head. “In a way. She was young and impressionable when she met Don Acevedo. He was rich and charismatic. He swept her off her feet. Within a month, they were married. At that time, Don Acevedo Camargo was the drug lord of the south. She was drawn to that life as strongly as she was drawn to other men, lovers she met with secretly. She loved the scheming. The plots she devised for him and behind his back! Dios Mio,that woman was bloodthirsty.”

“She was ambitious.”

Maceo Encarnación nodded. “Like Lady Macbeth. She enjoyed the role I gave her to play with Bourne and Rebeka.”

Something dark flashed in the recesses of Nicodemo’s eyes at the mention of Rebeka’s name. “It wasn’t supposed to work like that,” he said softly. “Rebeka wasn’t supposed to die. Bourne was.”

“There is no way to account for the human factor. You should not have stabbed her.”

“I had no choice!”

“It seems to me,” Maceo Encarnación said, “there is always a choice.”

“The heat of the moment precludes choice,” Nicodemo said. “It’s pure instinct.”

At that moment, the flight attendant came down the aisle on long, lithe legs and, stopping in front of Maceo Encarnación, bent over. He studied her ample cleavage while she whispered in his ear. He nodded, and she went back up the aisle. Both men watched the ballbearing movement of her shapely buttocks.