Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

“I...” Richards closed his eyes, swallowed hard. He was dying, so what the hell. “I thought if he and Soraya Moore liked me, took me in, I could—”

“What? What could you have, Richards? Friends? Colleagues?” He shook his head. “No one cares about you, Richards. No one wants to work with you. You’re an insect I’m about to squash. You have a gift, but your human flaws outweigh your usefulness to us. You can’t be trusted.”

“I made my choice. I chose you.” Richards’s voice sounded pathetic, even to him. Tears leaked out of his eyes and he began to weep. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”

Clearly disgusted, Tom Brick let him go, lifted his gaze, and nodded to his driver, holding Richards up. The knife slid in farther, was twisted so violently Richards’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. The sound that emerged through the hand clamped over his mouth was not unlike that a pig makes when the slaughtering blade comes down.

The moment the door to the apartment swung open and the carving knife slashed out, Bourne caught Don Fernando’s fist.

“Easy, Don Fernando.”

Don Fernando stared at him, obviously shaken. “It was you, Jason? You were outside my door earlier?”

Bourne shook his head as he stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind him. “I only just got here.” He cocked his head. “Someone was trying to get into the apartment?”

“That or he was keeping watch on me.”

“There was no surveillance on the building,” Bourne said, taking the carving knife from the older man’s hand. “I checked.”

“Maceo Encarnación and Harry Rowland are here in Paris. I think it was Rowland at my door earlier.”

“Don Fernando,” Bourne said, “Rowland is Nicodemo.”

“What? Are you certain?”

Bourne nodded. “He’s with Maceo Encarnación. I followed them here from Mexico City.”

“The woman?”

“Rebeka was a Mossad agent.” Bourne sat on a sofa. “She’s dead.”

“Ah, well, then we both lost someone.” Don Fernando sat heavily next to Bourne. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened?”

Don Fernando told him briefly about how Maceo Encarnación had sent Martha Christiana to kill him, and what had happened after he and Martha met. “She went out the bedroom window, leaped across me while I was sleeping. She could have killed me, but she didn’t.”

“You were lucky.”

Don Fernando shook his head. “No, Jason. Today I don’t feel in the least bit lucky.” He laced his fingers together. “Hers was a soul in torment. Perhaps she needed a priest. I am no priest. In this case, I might have played the role of the devil.”

“We’re all pursued by shadows, Don Fernando. There are times when they catch up to us. There’s nothing more to be done; we have to move on.”

Don Fernando nodded. He picked up Martha Christiana’s compact, popped it open, and showed Bourne the micro-SD card hidden beneath the false bottom. “I can’t help but think she left this for me to find.” He shrugged. “But perhaps that’s just wishful thinking.”

“Have you looked at what’s on the card?”

Don Fernando shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Well,” Bourne said, plucking up the card, “it’s time we did.”

Maceo Encarnación went up to the cockpit of his private jet. The door was open, the Chinese pilot going through a pre-flight checklist. “Do you think he’ll make it back in time?” the pilot asked without looking up.

Maceo Encarnación grunted as he slipped into the navigator’s seat. “Impossible to say.”

“Your attachment to him is well known.”

Maceo Encarnación contemplated the pilot for some time. “What you mean,” he said slowly and finally, “is that Minister Ouyang disapproves of my attachment to Nicodemo.”

The pilot, who was also Minister Ouyang’s agent, said nothing. He sat very still, as if attempting to divine the air currents.

“Nicodemo is my son. I raised him, taught him.”

“You took him from her.”

The pilot spoke without judgment, his voice perfectly neutral. Nevertheless, Maceo Encarnación took offense. He could not do otherwise; it was in his nature.

“His mother was married to someone else,” Maceo Encarnación said, more to himself than to the pilot. “I loved her, but her husband was a powerful man, and I needed his power. She could not keep the child, could not even be with the husband while it was growing inside her. She took herself to Mérida, to her aunt’s estancia for the five months she was showing. I took the boy from her, raised him.”

“You said that already.”

Maceo Encarnación hated these people, but he was forced to deal with them. No one else had their power, their expertise, their deep pockets, their vision. Nevertheless, he often, as now, had to exert an iron will to keep himself from beating them to a bloody pulp. The fact that he could not treat them as he treated his own people was like a knife in his gut. He often dreamed of this Chinese agent on the edge of the Pacific, his severed head rolling fish-eyed in the surf, while his trunk twitched, spewing blood like the fountain in Chapultepec Park.

“I repeated it because it’s important in the understanding of my attachment, and I can never be certain of your grasp of Spanish.” Maceo Encarnación did not bother to wait for a response from the agent, knowing none would be forthcoming. Was there ever a poorer match in allies, he thought, than extrovert Mexican and introvert Chinese?

This agent had a name, but Maceo Encarnación never used it, assuming that it was false. Instead, he thought of him as Hey-Boy, a despicable term that amused him no end. He would tell him the story—part of it that he would take for the whole—because it amused him to do so. What he would not tell him was the private part. The identity of Nicodemo’s and his sister Maricruz’s mother remained locked inside him. Constanza Camargo had given birth to Nicodemo early in their years-long affair. Maricruz was born three years later. Constanza was the one woman he had ever loved, the one woman he could never have, first, because of Constanza’s husband, and then because of Constanza herself, who loved him, loved her two children with him, but had vowed never to see them, never to interrupt the flow of their lives with the truth, to complicate and warp their destinies in the name of her desire.

“So,” Maceo Encarnación said now, “Nicodemo, parted from his mother, became mine, body and soul. As soon as he was old enough, I sent him to a special school in Colombia. I felt it imperative that he learn the trade.”

“The drug trade,” the agent said, with unnecessary venom. The Middle Kingdom had been done irreparable harm by the opium trade in the 1800s. The Chinese had memories centuries long.

“That and the arms trade.” Maceo Encarnación pursed his lips. “As Minister Ouyang well knows, my prime interest is in arming those who need it most.” When speaking with the agent, he always assumed he was speaking with Ouyang, the spider in the center of his Beijing web.

“You are most altruistic.”

Maceo Encarnación’s left hand twitched. Not for the first time, Hey-Boy had crossed the line that would, in any other circumstance, have cost him, quite literally, his head. Once more it was necessary for Maceo Encarnación to remind himself of the extreme importance of Minister Ouyang and his minions. Without Ouyang’s assistance, the deal with Colonel Ben David would never have been possible.

“My altruism is matched only by Minister Ouyang’s,” he said, enunciating slowly and carefully. “You would do well to remember that.”

The agent stared out the cockpit window. “When do we leave?”

“When I tell you to start the engines.” Maceo Encarnación looked around. “Where is it?”

The pilot looked at him with his long Mandarin eyes. His spidery fingers drew out from beneath his seat an olive-drab metal box with a fingerprint lock. Maceo Encarnación pressed the end of his right forefinger onto the pressure-pad, and the lock opened.

He opened the top and looked down at the close-bonded stacks of thousand-dollar bills. “Thirty million. Amazing to look at,” he said, “even for me.”

“Colonel Ben David will be pleased,” the agent said, deadpan.

Maceo Encarnación gave a silent laugh. “We all will.”

Soraya was about to leave Peter’s hospital room when Secretary Hendricks bustled in.

“Good to see you out of bed, Soraya,” he said. Then he looked past her to where Peter lay. “How are you feeling?”

“Numb,” Peter said, “in every way imaginable.”

Hendricks dredged up a bark of a laugh. “Look, Peter, I don’t have a lot of time. We have a bit of a situation up at headquarters.”

“The computer network is down.”

“That’s right,” Hendricks said, at the same time Soraya said, “What?”

“Dick Richards.” Peter looked at Hendricks, who nodded. “I told Sam to pick him up.”

“Anderson made a command decision to try and definitively link Richards with Core Energy.” Hendricks gestured. “Brick has been ultra-cautious. Despite what he allegedly said to you—”

“He did say it to me, dammit!” Peter said heatedly.

Hendricks let Peter expend himself. “A court of law will rule against you,” he said, after a time. “We’ve tried to follow a money trail, but if Richards is being paid by Core Energy or any of its subsidiaries, we have yet to find any evidence of it. Anderson knew this, which was why he put a keylogger onto the terminal he set Richards up at.”

“Don’t tell me,” Peter said sourly. “It didn’t work.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I assume you have Richards in custody.”

For the first time, Hendricks appeared chagrined. “He’s gone, disappeared.”

“Find Brick,” Peter said. “That’s where Richards went, guaranteed.”

Hendricks spoke softly into his mobile. When the conversation concluded, he said, “For some reason Brick wants the Treadstone system down. Why?”

“Assuming you’re right,” Soraya said, “it’s likely our overseas monitoring he wants to go silent.”

Peter snapped his fingers. “You’re right! But what is he afraid of us finding out?” He gnawed on his thumb for a moment.

Hendricks shifted from one foot to the other. “Peter...” He looked suddenly uncomfortable. When Peter looked up, he continued. “Considering everything that’s happened to you—the serious nature of your current injury, I think it’s best if you’re relieved of duties as codirector of Treadstone.”

“What?” Peter said.

Soraya took a step forward. “You can’t.”

“I can,” Hendricks said. “And I am.”

“It’s my legs that are paralyzed,” Peter said, “not my brain.”

“I’m very sorry, Peter, but my mind’s made up.”

As he turned to go, Soraya said, “If Peter goes, so do I.”

Hendricks swiveled back, leveling his heavy gaze at her. “Don’t be foolish, Soraya. Don’t throw away your career for—”

“For what? My loyalty to my friend?” she countered. “Peter and I have served together from the beginning. We’re a team, end of story.”

Hendricks shook his head. “You’re confusing dedication with loyalty. That’s a terrible mistake, one you’re not likely to recover from.”

“It’s Treadstone that won’t recover from losing its co-directors,” she said with all the force she could muster.

The secretary appeared shocked. “You talk about Treadstone as if it’s a family. It’s not, Soraya. It’s a business.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, Treadstone isa family,” she said. “Every one of its contacts overseas belongs to me. If I leave, they’ll leave with me—”

“They won’t.”

“—just as they did when I was let go from CI during the regime change.” She stood toe to toe with Hendricks, unafraid because, really, she had nothing to lose. She had no desire to remain at Treadstone without Peter. “I told you at the time that regime change was a mistake and that’s turned out to be true. CI is a shell of its former self. It’s dysfunctional, and morale is far worse than it was in the weeks following nine-eleven.”

“I don’t react well to being threatened,” Hendricks said.

“I don’t think I’m the one doing the threatening here.”

“Look, Anderson’s in the field, even as we speak. Peter put him in charge and—”

“I like Sam as much as the next guy,” Peter said, “but he’s not seasoned enough to run field ops for Treadstone for any length of time.”

“Are either of you going to do it?” Hendricks gestured. “Look at you. Neither of you could walk out of here under your own power.”

“There’s nothing to stop us setting up a temporary HQ right here in Peter’s room,” Soraya said. “In fact, given that the Treadstone servers have been rendered useless, a substitute network seems like the best possible course of action right now.”

Peter, who had been watching the dispute like a spectator at a tennis match, now said, “Wait a minute! Soraya, that thirty million I found. I assumed it was drug money, but what if it’s not?”

She turned, frowning. “What d’you mean?”

“What if it was being used to pay for something else?”

“The money’s proved to be counterfeit,” Hendricks said dismissively.

“What?” Peter’s head turned. “Really?”

Hendricks nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. The guy who almost killed me—” “Tulio Vistoso,” Hendricks said. “Aka the Aztec. A top-line Mexican drug lord.”

“I don’t understand,” Soraya said.

“We think it was a feint,” the Secretary said. “Classic misdirection on Maceo Encarnación’s part. When he’s in Mexico City, the two are practically joined at the hip.”

Peter shook his head. “I’m not so sure. The Aztec went to extreme lengths to protect that money.”

Another short silence ensued.

“Is it possible,” Soraya mused, “that Vistoso didn’t know the money was counterfeit?”

Peter was intrigued. “That would mean he’d been scammed.”

“That doesn’t track,” Hendricks said. “Vistoso was one of the Mexican Big Three. Who would dare to scam him?”

“Someone with more juice.” Peter looked from one to the other. “Someone like Maceo Encarnación.”

Soraya turned to Hendricks. “Have you been tracking him?”

“Encarnación was in Washington several days ago, giving an interview for Politics As Usual.”

“I’m still back on the counterfeit thirty mil,” Peter said. “Something about it is totally off.” He snapped his fingers. “There must be an expert we can get hold of who might be able tell us who the counterfeiter is.”

“It’s already being worked on,” Hendricks said. “But why should we be interested?”

“Thirty million is an enormous amount,” Peter mused. “It had to be very, very good work. A master forger was involved. Maybe we can use him to implicate Maceo Encarnación.”

Soraya crossed her arms over her swollen breasts, noticing how tender they had become. “Speaking of Maceo Encarnación, do we know where he went after his interview?”

“He flew back to his headquarters in Mexico City,” Hendricks said.

“Is he there now?” Peter said.

Hendricks was already on his mobile, barking orders. He waited, staring at Peter. A moment later, he got his reply. “He’s in Paris now, but has yet to disembark, which is odd because his plane has been on the ground for a good six hours.”

“So okay,” Peter said, “because Vistoso was Maceo Encarnación’s prime lieutenant and because thirty million, even in counterfeit money, is a helluva sum, we’ve speculated that Encarnación must be involved.”

“I’m thinking of Brick wanting the Treadstone system down,” Soraya said. “Could there be a connection between him and Maceo Encarnación?”

“That system,” Peter said, “is our best listening post in the Middle East.”

“And Paris,” Soraya said, “is a helluva lot closer to the Middle East than Mexico City.”

Hendricks gave a quick nod. “Maceo Encarnación’s pilot will have to file a flight plan out of Paris.”

“We get that,” Peter nodded, “we know precisely where he’s going. If it’s to the Middle East we have our proof of Encarnación’s involvement.”

Hendricks, the mobile to his ear, started giving them orders.

“Hold on,” Soraya said. “You forget we don’t work for you anymore.”

“Who the fuck said that?” Hendricks gave them a hint of a smile just before he stepped through the door.

25

THINK OF IT AS a troika,” Bourne said as he scanned the information on Martha Christiana’s micro-SD chip. “Maceo Encarnación, Tom Brick, the Chinese.”

Don Fernando shook his head. “What I don’t understand is why Martha had this material in the first place.”

“It was her fuck-you stash,” Bourne said. “She amassed this information to use as leverage.”

Don Fernando was silent for some time. He stared at the screen of his laptop with a melancholy sorrow. At last he heaved a great sigh. “But, in the end, she didn’t use it.” He turned to look at Bourne. “Why?”

“This was a way out, but only one of several. It would still leave her a life of constantly looking over her shoulder.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted that,” Don Fernando said.

“From what you’ve told me about her, no. But, on the other hand, I doubt that she wanted out at all. That was her essential dilemma. She could no longer go forward, and, for her, there was no way back. There was no other way, no other life that she could conceive of.”

“I told her about it,” Don Fernando lamented. “I laid it all out for her.”

“She couldn’t hear it, or she couldn’t believe it.”

Don Fernando sighed and nodded with a kind of finality. “You’re a good friend, Jason. There aren’t many like you.”

Traffic rolled endlessly by outside. The amplified voice of the guide aboard a passing Bateau Mouche rolled up the stone walls to them, then drifted away as if on a watery tide. The bare trees whipped in the wind off the Seine. Downstairs, on the Quai de Bourbon, there were still gawkers, murmuring among themselves about last night’s suicide. The circus hadn’t died down.

Bourne pointed to the screen. “According to Martha’s information, the Chinese have been laundering money through Maceo Encarnación.”

“They’re going to use the thirty million to buy something from an unknown entity in the Middle East—something very important,” Don Fernando said. “But Martha didn’t know what it was or from whom it was to be bought.”

Bourne did know, however, because Rebeka had whispered the name to him just before she bled out in the backseat of the taxi in Mexico City.

Don Fernando sat back. “What I don’t understand is what Maceo Encarnación gets out of this deal. A ten percent laundering fee? That’s hardly worth the risk he’s taking.”

Bourne scrolled through Martha’s information again. Something he had seen before had stuck in his mind. Then his forefinger stabbed out as he pointed. “There! Tom Brick’s involvement.” He turned to Don Fernando. “What does Core Energy stand to gain in a deal with Maceo Encarnación and the Chinese?”

Don Fernando thought a moment. “That depends on what the Chinese are buying.”

“It’s energy-related,” Bourne said. “Don’t you see? Energy is the element that ties all these people together.”

“Yes. With their huge upsurge in economic expansion, production, infrastructure, and population, the Chinese are always after alternative forms of energy. I can see how Brick and Core Energy would want a piece of whatever technology the Chinese are after.” He shook his head. “But Maceo Encarnación?”

“The troika only makes sense if Maceo Encarnación and Core Energy are somehow allied.”

“What? But Christien and I would know about that, surely?”

“Would you?”

“We’ve had our eye on both Maceo Encarnación and Core Energy, Jason. We could find no money trail between the two.”

“If Brick and Maceo Encarnación went about the alliance in the right way, there wouldn’t be one. A money trail would be the first thing they’d conceal. From what I’ve read, Core Energy has more than enough subsidiaries worldwide to conceal a money trail.”

“Not from us,” Don Fernando insisted. “Christien has developed a proprietary software program that drills down through any mare’s nest of shell corporations and holding companies. I’m telling you there’s no money trail.”

Bourne laughed. “Of course! That’s where Maceo Encarnación’s drug lords come in. They’re the ones who reverse-launder the money flowing between Maceo Encarnación and Core Energy.”

“Reverse-launder?”

Bourne nodded. “Instead of funneling dirty money through legitimate sources, Brick and Maceo Encarnación have done the reverse. They’ve taken the legitimate money that flows between their two companies and funneled it through the drug lords, making it dirty, and therefore, untraceable. It’s all cash, back and forth. No matter how clever and sophisticated Christien’s software program is, it isn’t going to pick up those kinds of transactions. No one else is, either.”

“It’s brilliant.” Don Fernando passed a hand across his forehead. “I wish to God I had thought of it.”

“Don Fernando,” Bourne said, “Maceo Encarnación and the thirty million are going to Lebanon to consummate a deal.”

The older man brightened considerably. It was clear Martha Christiana’s death had hit him hard. “Then we need to get there as quickly as possible.”

Bourne regarded him warily. “We’re not going anywhere until we take care of Nicodemo. You told me you went to a lot of trouble to prove to Maceo Encarnación that you died when your private jet crashed. But if Nicodemo was at your door earlier, then chances are he saw you outside the building. Encarnación knows you’re alive. Nicodemo won’t allow you to leave Paris alive.”

"So many things can go wrong.”

Minister Ouyang, a tiny, translucent teacup balanced between his fingertips, stood in the large central chamber of the magnificent Chonghuagong, the private suite of Qianlong, emperor of the Qing dynasty, buried in the secret center of the Forbidden City. Few people were allowed into the chambers, which gleamed with the emperor’s jaw-dropping collection of precious jade figurines and historic calligraphic scrolls, and none but Minister Ouyang and several others of the Central Committee at such a late hour. The flames from tiers of thick yellow candles threw off flickering, glimmering light that both illuminated and shadowed the array of the Middle Kingdom’s treasures.

The woman to whom Ouyang had directed his concern was curled like a cat on a Mandarin divan brought in for the occasion and followed him with her coffee-colored eyes. Even in this position, the power in her long legs was apparent. Cloaked in a gleaming orange shantung silk robe, she looked like the emissary of the sun. “If you think that way, darling, you will make it so.”

Ouyang turned sharply enough for the hot tea to sting one fingertip. He ignored the pain to stare at his wife. “I will never understand you, Maricruz.”

She bowed her head slightly, her thick waterfall of hair covering one eye, acknowledging the compliment in the restrained manner of the high-caste Chinese with whom she had lived since coming to Beijing a decade ago. “This is as it should be.”

Ouyang, in a long, traditional Mandarin’s robe, took a step toward her. “But, really, you are not like a Westerner at all.”

“If I had been,” she said in a voice of stillness and depth, “you never would have married me.”

Ouyang studied her the way a painter eyes the model for his most important work of art. Transformation was the painter’s skill; it was also Ouyang’s. “Do you want to know what ultimately attracted me to you?”

Maricruz opened her eyes slightly.

“Your patience.” Ouyang took a sip of his tea, held it in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed. “Patience is the greatest of virtues. It is almost wholly unknown in the West. The Arabs understand the value of patience, but they are primitives compared to us.”

Maricruz laughed. “I think that’s what I like most about you Chinese—your incredibly high opinion of yourselves.” She laughed again. “The Middle Kingdom.”

Ouyang took another sip of tea, savoring it much as he savored these intellectual boxing matches with his wife. No one else had the guts to talk to him in this blunt manner. “You’re living in the Middle Kingdom, Maricruz.”

“And loving every minute of it.”

Ouyang crossed to a narrow niche and took up a small jade box, exquisitely engraved with rampant dragons on a field of stylized clouds. He held this box in his two hands.

“The Middle Kingdom has always been a rich source of mythology. I think you know this, Maricruz. Your own civilization is steeped in myth and legend.” Ouyang’s obsidian eyes glittered. “However, our history is so long and twisted that we have had several setbacks, all of them egregious. The first one occurred many centuries ago, in two thirteen bc, when Emperor Shi Huangdi of the Qin dynasty ordered the burning of all books on subjects other than medicine, prophecy, and farming. Thus were lost many of the Middle Kingdom’s root mythological sources.

“As often happens here, Shi Huangdi’s order was reversed in one ninety-one bc, and much of the literature was reconstructed. However, it was rewritten to support ideas popular with the then current emperor. Mythological history was rewritten, as it is over and over again, by the victor. Valuable information was lost forever.”

He came toward her with the box held like an object of infinite value. “Rarely, however, a piece of the precious past is somehow discovered, either by fate or by the desire to find it.”

Standing in front of her, he held out the box.

Maricruz eyed the jade warily. “What is this?”

“Please,” Ouyang said, bending down to her.

Maricruz took the box, which weighed far more than she had expected. It was cool to the touch, smooth as glass. With one hand, she opened the top. Her fingers trembled. Inside was a folded square of paper. She looked up at Ouyang.

“The name of your mother, Maricruz.”

Her mouth opened but no sound emerged.

“Should you wish to find her.”

“She’s alive?” Maricruz breathed.

Ouyang watched her, eyes alight. “She is.”

Very slowly, she closed the box and set it down on the settee beside her. She uncoiled with a lithe strength he found intoxicating. She reminded him of the American movie stars of the 1940s. As she rose, her robe parted. How did she manage that magician’s sleight of hand?he wondered. The inner hemispheres of her firm breasts revealed themselves like beautiful bronze bowls. She pressed her body against him.

“Thank you, Ouyang,” she said formally.

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I want to know. I don’t want to know.”

“You have the chance to undo the revision of your own personal history.”

“It means defying my father.” She rubbed her forehead against his shoulder. “What if my mother doesn’t want to see me? Why didn’t she try—?”

“You know your father,” Ouyang said softly, “better than anyone.”

“There must be a reason,” she said. “Do you know what it is?”

“I have reached the limits of my knowledge in this affair.” But, of course, Ouyang knew the reason, just as Maricruz would the moment she saw the name of her mother, married to a powerful drug lord, a friend, a business partner, who Maceo Encarnación cuckolded without a scintilla of remorse. He had desired Constanza Camargo. That was Maceo Encarnación in a nutshell.

“I need time,” Maricruz said now. “I need to concentrate on what is about to transpire.”

Even as Ouyang felt his body respond to hers, his mind returned to what she had said. “You are correct, Maricruz. I have the perfect partners. Nothing is going to go wrong.”

She smiled at him, her arms wrapped around him.

“This plan would not have been possible without you,” he said, nuzzling her ear. “Without the participation of your father and brother.”

Maricruz’s laugh was a gurgle deep in her throat. “My poor brother, Juanito, saddled with the name Nicodemo, with the sobriquet the Djinn Who Lights The Way, both given to him by our father in order to bury himself even more deeply in the shadows.”

“Your father moves in a circle of light in his legitimate business dealings as CEO of SteelTrap. He moves in a circle of shadow with his illegitimate dealings with the cream of the drug lords and arms dealers.”

His fingertips caressed her bare shoulders beneath the slithery robe.

“But I know a different Maceo Encarnación, the one who moves in darkness, the one who makes plans like a master chess player, the one who brings disparate elements together, often without their knowledge or consent, the one who is invaluable to me.”

Maricruz, breathing softly and evenly, lowered her head into the crook of his neck. “There is no end to his cleverness, to his ruthlessness, to his ability to use anyone and everyone when it suits his purpose.”

Ouyang smiled. “Your father and I have no illusions about our relationship. We use each other. It’s symbiotic. We accomplish so much more that way.”

“And Colonel Ben David?”

“A means to an end.”

“You will make a lifelong enemy.”

Ouyang smiled as his hand encircled her breast. “This is not an issue. He won’t survive.”

She drew back with a tiny indrawn breath. “Ben David is a colonel in the Mossad. Do you really think you can get an assassin close enough to him?”

“I have already done my part,” Ouyang said, drawing her back to him. “Your father has arranged everything else.”

He smiled. “It will be Jason Bourne who terminates Colonel Ben David with extreme prejudice.”

Sam Anderson was in a foul mood when he got off the phone with Secretary Hendricks. He felt that he had let Peter down. He was angry at himself for not being able to be in two places at once, for not delegating, for not ordering one of his subordinates to keep an eye on Dick Richards.

As he climbed into his car along with an agent named James, he cursed the evil gods that raged over Treadstone. The organization had been ill-fated ever since it had first come into existence. Sometimes, as now, it seemed to him that the current Treadstone staff was paying for the missteps and sins of its founders. There was no other interpretation of both co-directors being down at the same time.

As he raced through the Washington traffic, he nodded to James. “Do it now.”

James dialed a number on his mobile, then put the call on speakerphone. When a female voice, smoothly efficient as a robot’s, answered, he asked for Tom Brick.

“May I ask who is calling?” the female voice asked.

James turned to Anderson, who nodded.

“Herb Davidoff, editor in chief of Politics As Usual.”

“Just a moment, please.”

There was a pause during which Anderson slewed the car around a lumbering truck. Half on the sidewalk, he hit the horn, scattering nearby pedestrians.

Take it easy, boss, James mouthed at him.

“Mr. Davidoff?” The female voice had returned.

“Here.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Brick is currently unavailable.”