Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

“Please tell him that I need a quote from him for a front-page story,” James hurried over her. “Time is of the essence.”

“I’m afraid I can’t, Mr. Davidoff. I’ll switch you to his voicemail. I assure you Mr. Brick accesses it several times a day.”

“Thanks very much,” James said, terminating the connection. He glanced at Anderson. “The house in Virginia?” He meant the house to which Peter had been taken by Tom Brick.

“Deploy our best COVSIC,” Anderson said as he put his foot to the accelerator. He meant a covert forensic team. James nodded and got on it.

Just then a call came in to Anderson’s mobile.

“Handle it yourself,” he barked. He was in no mood for office decisions.

“Sir, it’s Michaelson. I’m three blocks south of Founders Park in Virginia. The police just fished a body out of the Potomac. It’s Dick Richards.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Anderson said, even as he put the car into a controlled skid, making a sharp U-turn, and accelerated away.

Tell me why Colonel Ben David is at the nexus of the troika’s plan,” Don Fernando said.

“It started with SILEX.” Bourne shifted on the larger of the apartment’s two sofas. “The methodology draws on the extraordinary purity of laser light to selectively agitate uranium’s enriched form. The needed isotope is identified, culled, and extracted. If it works, the process is a game-changer. Enriched uranium for nuclear power plants could be manufactured in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost it now takes.

“The problem,” Bourne went on, “is that SILEX would also make weapons-grade uranium easily available. Yellow-cake to nuclear warheads in a matter of days.”

“But it doesn’t work,” Don Fernando said.

Bourne nodded. “GE bought the rights to SILEX in 2006, but it has yet to perfect the process.”

He turned, staring out the window at the slow river traffic. He seemed always to be looking at people going about their peaceful daily lives while the world hurtled toward the precipice of war.

“SILEX was just the beginning. Three years ago, the Israelis set up an underground research facility in northwest Lebanon, just outside a small town known as Dahr El Ahmar. The facility was guarded by a small, select unit of Mossad agents under the command of Colonel Ben David.”

He turned back to Don Fernando. “It was to Dahr El Ahmar that Rebeka guided me after we were both wounded in a firefight in Damascus six weeks ago. It was the closest safe haven, at least for her. She was feverish, very badly wounded. I imagine she wasn’t thinking clearly. Bringing me to Dahr El Ahmar was a breach of security.

“Colonel Ben David tried to have me killed. I managed to escape in the helo we flew in on, but as I left I caught a glimpse of the bunkered facility. Rebeka told me the rest. The Israeli scientists had a breakthrough. Their version of SILEX works.”

There was a deepening silence, into which, after a time, Don Fernando cleared his throat. “So let me get this straight. Colonel Ben David has agreed to sell this process to Maceo Encarnación?”

“To the Chinese,” Bourne said. “My guess is Maceo Encarnación is a peripheral figure in all this—maybe he’s the broker, the one who put Colonel Ben David together with the Chinese.”

“That could very well be.” Don Fernando tapped his teeth ruminatively with his forefinger. “After all, SteelTrap employs a good number of Israeli technicians. It sells its proprietary Internet security to the Israeli government, among many other huge clients.”

He shook his head. “What I don’t understand is why Colonel Ben David would betray his country.”

“Thirty million. Dangle enough money in front of a man like that, a military man, a disgruntled officer who’s probably never made more than fifty thousand dollars a year, and the crystal ball clears.”

“How did you come by that figure? Did you pull it out of the air?”

“So to speak,” Bourne said, waggling his mobile.

Don Fernando made a whistling sound. “Even for Christien and me that’s a trainload of money. I can only imagine that it would be irresistible to Ben David.”

He sat down heavily on the smaller sofa. “The problem is we’re trapped here in my apartment. Nicodemo could take me down with a sniper rifle the minute I walk out my door.”

“He won’t,” Bourne said. “Nicodemo comes from a tradition of hands-on killing. It’s a matter of honor. Killing you at a distance won’t satisfy him. He wants to take your head off.”

“Cold comfort,” Don Fernando grunted.

“Nevertheless, it works to our advantage.” Bourne, staring out the window again, lifted his view across the river to the Right Bank. “I need to bring Nicodemo into my territory.”

In the far distance, he could just make out the sugar-white dome of Sacre Coeur, atop Montmartre. “Tell me, Don Fernando, when was the last time you went to the Moulin Rouge?”

Peter and Soraya looked at each other after Secretary Hendricks left his room.

“Why did you do that?” Peter said.

Soraya smiled and came and sat on the edge of his bed. “You’re welcome.”

“Seriously?” he said.

She nodded. “I don’t want to leave.”

“Because of me.”

She shrugged. “Is that so terrible a reason?”

He studied her a moment, then took a drink of water from a plastic cup. He seemed to be debating something internally. “I have to ask myself...Soraya, you’ve been lying to me.”

“Withholding some information. That’s not the same thing.”

“If we can’t trust each other, what’s the point of either of us staying together?”

“Oh, Peter.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I trust you with my life. It’s just that...” Her eyes cut away for a moment. “I didn’t want anyone to know about my pregnancy. I figured it would jeopardize my position.”

“You thought I’d betray you to Hendricks?”

“No, I...To be honest, Peter, I don’t know what I thought.” She touched the bandaged side of her head. “Obviously, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

He took her hand in his, and they sat like that, wordless, full of emotion, for some time. Outside, in the corridor, orderlies wheeled gurneys, nurses hurried by, doctors’ names were called. All of that seemed part of another world that had nothing to do with them.

“I want to help you,” Soraya said at length.

“I don’t need help.”

But that was an instinctive, knee-jerk response, and they both knew it. That shared knowledge seemed to break the newly formed ice, to return them to the time when they were closer than siblings, when they shared everything.

Soraya leaned closer and spoke to him in low, intimate tones while he listened intently as she outlined the top-secret mission Hendricks had given her. “Listen, Peter,” she concluded, “Charles is dead, it’s over now, but this liaison with him was strictly Hendricks’s idea. He came to me with it, said it was a matter of national security, and I felt that I...well...that I couldn’t refuse him.”

“He shouldn’t have asked that of you.”

“I’ve been through that with him. He knows he crossed the line.”

“And yet he did it,” Peter said, “and he’ll do it again. You know it and I know it.”

“Probably.”

“What will you tell him the next time?”

She touched her belly. “I have my child to think of now. Things will be different.”

“You think so?”

Her gaze drifted from him to the middle distance. “You’re right. I can’t know.”

He squeezed her hand. “None of us can—ever—no matter the circumstances.”

A small smile wreathed her lips. “True enough.” Leaning over again, she hugged him. “I’m so sorry, Peter.”

“Don’t be. Everything happens for a reason.”

She drew back, watching him. “Do you really believe that?”

He laughed without much humor. “No, but saying it helps keep my spirits up.”

She looked at him steadily. “It’s going to be a long haul, no matter what happens with your legs.”

“I know that.”

“I’ll be here.”

“I know that, too.” He sighed. “They’ll order a psych eval to determine whether I’m fit for duty.”

“So what? They’ve already ordered one for me. We’re fit for duty, Peter. End of story.”

Once more, they sat in companionable silence. Once, a tear overran Peter’s eye and slid down his cheek. “Damn it to hell,” he said, and Soraya squeezed his hand again.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Tell me something positive.”

“Let’s start with Jason Bourne,” she said, “and how he needs our help.”

26

LA GOULUE HAD BEEN the first of the Moulin Rouge’s famed Cancan Queens.

Each night she entered the famed theater via the well-hidden and almost unknown entrée des artistes, a tiny staircase that led to heaven from the grubby back alleys of Montmartre. The well-worn staircase, trod upon by generations of the Moulin’s dancers and cabaret artists for over a century, had in years past been supplanted by a newer backstage entrance. Don Fernando, however, knew not only of its existence, but the fact that it was still a useful way to gain access to the halcyon environs of the Moulin Rouge, when all other methods failed, or when one of the Doriss Girls of his acquaintance wanted to sneak him in for some backstage shenanigans between shows.

He called his current Doriss Girl, Cerise, who, he assured Bourne, was absolutely reliable.

Just after 8 pm, they exited Don Fernando’s building on the Quai de Bourbon. A driver and car from Don Fernando’s favored service were waiting.

“Tell the driver you’ve changed your mind,” Bourne said.

When Don Fernando dismissed the car and driver, he and Bourne crossed the nearby bridge to the Right Bank without incident.

“I don’t see him,” Don Fernando said.

“You won’t,” Bourne assured him. “But there was a better than even chance he had suborned someone inside the car company you frequent.”

The thing to avoid was crowds, so they headed for the taxi tête de stationnear the Hôtel de Ville and climbed into the waiting cab. Don Fernando gave the driver the address of the Moulin Rouge, and the Mercedes nosed out into traffic.

“You seem very sure of yourself, Jason,” Don Fernando said as he settled back into the seat.

“It never pays to be sure of anything,” Bourne replied, “apart from putting one foot in front of the other in the dark.”

Don Fernando nodded as he stared at the back of the driver’s head. “I never asked you about the female Mossad agent.”

“Rebeka,” Bourne said. “She and I were both after the same man, Semid Abdul-Qahhar, the head of the Mosque in Munich and one of the seminal players in the Muslim Brotherhood. We joined forces, we helped each other. She was a good person—someone trying to do the right thing, even though it might very well have cost her her position at Mossad.”

Don Fernando nodded absently. “There’s always a price to pay for doing the right thing,” he mused, “the only question is, how heavy is the price?” He rubbed his knuckles against the side of his face. “There’s also a price for not being able to do the right thing.” He sighed. “That’s the nature of life, I suppose.”

“Our life, especially.”

Their discussion was interrupted when they were rear-ended by the car behind them. It was at a slow speed and didn’t amount to much; nevertheless, their driver threw the Mercedes into park and got out and started an altercation with the driver of the other car. “Get out!” Bourne said suddenly. He pushed against Don Fernando. “Get out now!”

Bourne pulled on the door handle, but the central lock had been engaged from the driver’s console. The driver who had hit them handed the taxi driver a small packet.

Bourne launched himself over the front seatbacks, but at that moment a figure ducked into the Mercedes and pointed a Sig-Sauer at him, forcing him to return to the backseat.

“No escape now,” Nicodemo said, as he slid behind the wheel.

He nodded, and the taxi driver returned to the car. Keeping the Sig trained on them, Nicodemo disengaged the central lock. The driver wrenched open the rear door and bound Bourne’s wrists behind his back with a length of plastic zip cord, then did the same to Don Fernando.

“Take them to the trunk,” Nicodemo said.

“You came into us too hard,” the driver said. “The lock’s bashed in and the trunk won’t open.”

“Okay. Get out of here,” Nicodemo said.

The driver slammed the rear door shut, and went back to the car Nicodemo had been driving.

Nicodemo, behind the wheel of the Mercedes, grinned at them. “Now the real darkness comes, Jason.”

Bourne said nothing. He was testing the tensile strength of the zip cord. He wouldn’t be able to snap it without outside help.

Placing the Sig on the bench seat beside him, Nicodemo turned away from them to face front. “Much better to have tame animals,” he said, watching them in the rear view mirror as he put the Mercedes in gear and pulled out into the nighttime street,“ than wild ones to the slaughter.”

A funny thing happened to me on the way to your office, Mr. Brick,” Anderson said. “Funny, odd, that is.”

“And what would that be, Agent Anderson?”

“I just came from looking at a body fished out of the Potomac River. Hadn’t been there long, a couple of hours max.”

Tom Brick, sitting at ease behind his large, masculine desk in his massive office that took up an entire corner of the top floor of Core Energy, spread his hands. “Yeah? So?”

“Knifed twice in the side.”

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“‘What’s it got to do with me?’ the man says.” Anderson, with James at his side, stood in the approximate center of the office. Having shown his government ID to the phalanx of secretaries, assistants, and assorted flunkies, they had been ushered into Brick’s office where, it appeared, he was having a meeting with a suit seated on a sofa facing the desk. Brick did not invite the newcomers to sit. Anderson checked the expression on the professionally scrubbed face of the suit before he returned his gaze to Brick.

“I’m curious, Mr. Brick, as to why you haven’t asked the victim’s name.”

Brick stared at him with dead-fish eyes. “His name is of no interest to me.”

“You said his, but I said a body.”

Brick snorted. “Don’t play NCISwith me, Anderson.”

“I’ll tell you anyway, because you know him. His name is Dick Richards.”

Brick sat for a moment, unmoving. Then he rose and gestured to the man with whom he had been talking when Anderson and James had entered.

“Perhaps it’s time you met Bill Pelham.”

“As in Pelham, Noble and Gunn?”

Brick couldn’t contain a smile. “That’s right.”

Pelham, Noble and Gunn was in the top tier of Washington law firms. It counted among its clients many presidents, former presidents, and senators, not to mention the head of the FBI, as well as the mayor and the police commissioner of DC. Its juice was potent; it flowed directly from the hallowed Beltway source.

Anderson, trying his damnedest to ignore the broadside, said, “In any event, Mr. Brick, we need to talk. Now.”

“No talk,” Bill Pelham said, rising from his seat on the sofa. “No talk now, not ever.”

Three things I can’t abide,” Ann Ring said. “Confusion, complication, and dissembling.”

Around them, in the postmodern spaciousness of the restaurant Li Wan had chosen, silverware clinked and glasses chimed. Voices were raised in small talk. People deep in conversations on their mobile phones ignored everyone around them. She stared deep into Li’s obsidian eyes. “Unfortunately, life is full of confusion, complication, and dissembling.” She smiled with crimson lips. “I like neatness—clean beginnings, at least.”

Li inclined his narrow head. “As do I, Senator Ring.”

“And yet, here we both are in Washington, DC.” Her laugh was easy to like, meant to put the listener at ease. Li was not as easy a mark as that.

“Being at a center of power is like being in a magnetic storm.” He took a sip of white wine. “At once exhilarating and disorienting.”

Ann tipped her head. “Is it the same in Beijing?” The change in Li’s expression caused her to curse herself.

“I wouldn’t know.” He put down his glass with exaggerated care. “I myself have never been to Beijing. Did you just assume—?”

“A thousand pardons, Mr. Li. I meant nothing—”

“Oh, I’m most certain.” He waved away her words with the flat of his hand. “Actually, Beijing seems as foreign to me as I imagine it does to you.”

She allowed a small laugh to escape her lips. “Another thing we have in common.”

His depthless eyes sought hers. “Commonalities are rare, I find, especially in a magnetic storm.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Li.” She picked up her menu, a large, stiff thing with the offerings printed in a typeface simulating handwritten script. With her face shielded from his, she said, “What shall we eat?”

“Steak, I think,” he said without consulting his menu. “And a Caesar salad to start.”

“Creamed spinach and onion rings?”

“Why not?”

When she set aside her menu, she saw the depth of his scrutiny of her. “Remember,”Hendricks had told her at the very start, “this is a very dangerous man. He seems unassuming; however, he’s anything but.”

Li called the waiter over and ordered for them. The waiter gathered up the menus and departed.

“This evening reminds me of a story,” Li said when they were alone again. “There was once a businessman in Chicago. He married a woman with a good head on her shoulders. So good, in fact, that following her suggestions caused his business to grow to two, then three times its original size. As you can imagine, the businessman was very happy. A flourishing business caused his standing in the community to grow by leaps and bounds. He was sought out for company mergers as well as for advice. In each instance, he consulted his wife, and in each instance, following her advice brought him more fame and riches.”

Li paused to refill their glasses. “Now, you might think the businessman’s life was perfect. Everyone who knew him, as well as everyone who knew of him, envied him his position and wealth. But no. In fact, he was miserable. His wife never warmed his bed, only others’.”

Li stared into his raised glass. “One day, the businessman’s wife died. It was very sudden and completely unexpected. Of course, the businessman mourned her, but more for the loss of her business acumen than for the woman herself.

“Several weeks later, his brother said to him, ‘What will you do now?’ And the businessman, after several moments of contemplation, said, ‘I will do what I’ve always done and hope for the best.’”

Ann Ring smiled in the most neutral way. This was not simply a story Li had once heard. In fact, he might have made it up on the spot. Either way, it was illustrative. The question the businessman’s brother had posed to him was the same one Li was asking her.

Whether by design or not, his timing was impeccable. The Caesar salads arrived, set down in front of each of them in white ceramic bowls. Ann spent some time tasting the salad, asking for fresh-ground pepper, and thanking the waiter.

“I like the first part of the businessman’s answer,” she said carefully, “but not the second. It’s never wise to sit back and hope for the best.”

“The story makes me wonder who really makes the decisions in families. It seems the answer is never what it appears to be on the surface.”

Ann understood that he was asking about her and Charles, which is why she chose to ignore the implied question, preferring to stick to her own agenda. She ate more salad, crunching through the garlic croutons as if they were bones.

“What surprises me, Mr. Li, is your knowledge of my intimate life with Charles.”

He laid down his fork. “There is no easy way to say this, Senator. Your husband was not a happy man.”

Ann watched Li with an enigmatic expression. “You mean he wasn’t content.” She bared her teeth just slightly. “The two aren’t synonymous.”

For the first time all evening Li appeared flustered. “I beg your pardon,” he said.

Looking out the window of the Mercedes, Bourne could see that Nicodemo was taking them across the river to the Left Bank.

The magnificent gilded light globes spanning the Pont Alexandre III spun by like miniature suns. Doubtless, Nicodemo was taking them to the killing ground he had chosen. Bourne had no intention of letting him get there.

Edging himself down on the seat until he was directly behind Nicodemo, Bourne arched his back, pressed it hard against the rear seatback. He extended his legs over the top of the front seat on either side of Nicodemo’s neck, and, bringing them together, locked his ankles at Nicodemo’s throat.

Predictably, Nicodemo arched backward, his body in reflex action to get away from the choke hold. Don Fernando kicked him hard on the right ear with his heel. Nicodemo’s head trembled on his neck, and Bourne squeezed tighter, muscles like iron bands.

Blindly, Nicodemo scrabbled on the seat for the Sig. Bourne, exerting all his strength, lurched him away, to the left, his shoulder impacting so hard against the unlocked door that it popped open.

The Mercedes began to swerve in wider and wider arcs, and the Sig fell to the floor well, out of his reach. Horns blared, brakes squealed, abruptly halted tires left scorch marks on the bridge bed. Wide-eyed, Nicodemo was forced to try to free himself while attempting to keep control of the car. Blind instinct took over. In trying to pry Bourne’s legs away from him, he removed his hands from the wheel. But as he arched back again, his right foot inadvertently stabbed down on the accelerator. The Mercedes shot forward just as it was aimed at the side of the bridge. The combination of its speed and weight lifted it onto the pedestrian walkway, slammed it into the ancient stone, crumbling in places, of the bridge’s decorative balustrade.

The impact jerked everyone forward, momentarily loosening Bourne’s grip, but at that moment, a light truck, attempting to circumnavigate the traffic tie-up, sideswiped the Mercedes, smashing it through the already crumbling balustrade.

The massive impact hurled the Mercedes out over the river, the driver’s door swinging wide with the momentum, and the car plummeted straight down. It hit the water, which instantly rushed in on a merciless tidal wave, swamping the interior, threatening to drown the three men inside.

Ann made a sound much like that of a cat purring. She set aside her salad. “You know, Mr. Li, it occurs to me now that I know nothing about Natasha Illion—apart, that is, from what I read in W, Vogue, and Vanity Fair, but that’s all image, publicity spin.”

Mr. Li smiled. They were back on familiar ground. “Tasha and I lead very different lives,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“But when you come together...” The slightest hint of a smile. “I beg your pardon.”

“Tasha isn’t someone easy to know,” Li said as if he had not heard her. “Israelis are gruff, direct, often disconcertingly so. Like all of them, she spent time in the army. That changes them, in my opinion.”

“Is that so?” Ann cupped her chin in one hand. “How do you mean?”

The salad bowls were cleared away, the oversized steak knives presented and, with a brief flourish, laid out.

“In Tasha’s case, it’s made her wary, distrustful. She considers her entire life a secret.”

“And, of course, you find this intriguing, fascinating.”

He sat back as the entrées and side dishes were set before them. Several twists of black pepper later, he took up fork and steak knife and sliced. The meat was bloody, exactly as ordered. “I’m a selfprofessed xenophile. I’m fascinated, as you put it, by the different, the exotic, the unknowable.”

“I imagine there’s nothing more exotic than an Israeli supermodel.” He chewed slowly and fastidiously. “I could think of several, but I’m quite content with what I have.”

“Unlike my late husband.” She dragged several onion rings onto the crusty top of her steak. She looked up suddenly, her gaze like the thrust of a knife. “Charlie confided in you about his affairs.” It wasn’t a question, and Li didn’t take it as such. “It seemed that Charles had very few friends and no confidants,” he said. “Apart from you.” Her eyes held steady on him. “That should have been me.”

“We can’t always get what we want, Senator.” He took a slice of meat between his teeth, chewed in his dainty way, then swallowed. “But we can try.”

“I’m wondering why Charlie felt he could confide in you.” “The answer is simple enough,” Li said. “It’s easier to talk of intimate matters to a stranger.”

But that wasn’t it at all, and they both knew it. Ann was growing weary of the conversational circumlocutions required by Chinese custom. Though Li was American born, in this he was very traditional. Maybe the Chinese insisted on these long, circular verbal paths, she thought, to wear you out, soften you up for the moment when negotiation began.

“Come on, Mr. Li. You and Charlie shared secrets.”

“Yes,” he said. “We did.”

Ann was so surprised by this bald admission that she briefly lost her breath.

“Your husband and I had an arrangement, Senator. An arrangement that benefitted both of us in equal measure.”

Ann didn’t bat an eye. “I’m listening.”

“It seems to me,” Li said, “that you have been listening all evening.” She laughed then, dry as wood. “Then we understand each other.”

He inclined his head fractionally. “However, we do not knowone another.” The emphasis was subtle, but clear.

“This shortcoming has not been lost on me.” She smiled without, she hoped, a trace of guile. “Which is why I would like to present you with a gift.”

Li sat perfectly still across from her, his body neither tense nor relaxed. Simply waiting.

“Something precious that will correct the deficiency between us.”

From her handbag, she took out a small manila envelope, which she passed across the table. Li spent several moments engaging her eyes with his own. Only then did he allow his gaze to fall to the envelope.

His hands moved, took up the envelope, and unsealed it. He shook out its contents, which consisted of a single sheet of paper, a photocopy of an official document. As if magnetized, his eyes were drawn to the seal at the top of the page.

“This is...monstrous, insane,” he murmured, almost to himself.

As he scanned the information, a bead of sweat appeared at his meticulous hairline. Then he looked up into Ann’s face.

“Your beloved Tasha is not just a beauty, Mr. Li, she’s also a beast,” Ann said. “She’s a Mossad agent.”

Jackknifing his body, Bourne followed Nicodemo out the open driver’s door, but immediately had to turn back to fetch Don Fernando, who was floundering over into the front. With his hands bound behind him, Bourne used his teeth to grab at Don Fernando’s shirt. Grateful for the help, Don Fernando scissored his legs, propelling himself through the door.

It was dark under the water, and the two men positioned themselves back-to-back, their hands together so they would not lose each other. Breaching the surface, they heard screams emanating from pedestrians on the bridge, and, in the far distance, sirens. Bourne directed them to one of the bridge’s immense piers, thick with encrusted green-black weed. Beneath the weeds were barnacles, sharp as razor blades. Shoving himself back first against the pier, Bourne scraped the plastic tie against the barnacles, sawing through his bonds.

Don Fernando was beside him, treading water calmly. “Almost out of it,” Bourne said.

Don Fernando nodded. But just as Bourne reached for him, he was pulled under the water.

Nicodemo!

Bourne swiped at the pier, then kicked out powerfully as he dove beneath the water. Like a shark, he could feel Don Fernando’s thrashing, along with the kicking movement that was part of Nicodemo’s attack. Finding Don Fernando in the blackness, he used one of the barnacles he had grabbed to slice through the plastic tie, then propelled Don Fernando toward the surface.

This maneuver cost him. Nicodemo swerved underwater, caught Bourne a blow to the side of his head. Bourne canted over in the water, bubbles strewn from between his lips. Nicodemo struck him again, along the nerve bundle in the side of his neck. Bourne’s consciousness seemed to drift away from him. He tried to move, but nothing seemed to work. He was aware of Nicodemo maneuvering behind him, and he kicked out, but a slimy rope encircled his neck, a ferocious pressure converged at his throat. His lungs burned and his throat ached. Reaching around, Nicodemo pressed on his cricoid cartilage. If that shattered, he would drown within seconds.

He felt an increasingly tenuous connection with his consciousness, felt a sharp, circular instrument against his fingertips, but he wondered whether he possessed the strength to use it. The pressure on his throat was unbearable. Any second now Nicodemo’s fingertips would break through, and the black water would cascade down his throat, into his stomach and his lungs, and he would spiral down into the silty bottom of the river.

With an immense effort, he raised his arm. Everything seemed to be moving at a glacial pace, though another part of his mind was aware that time was running out far too quickly. He drew on this part, using it to arc his arm inward, grip his organic weapon more tightly as he dragged it across first one of Nicodemo’s eyes, then the other.

Gouts of blood erupted. Nicodemo spasmed, and an inhuman strength gripped him, a long moment that almost did Bourne in. But the barnacle he gripped went to work again, slashing from left to right across Nicodemo’s throat.

Veils of blood, blacker than the river water, spiraled outward. Nicodemo’s mouth opened and closed, caught for a moment in the lights from the bridge. Then his grip on Bourne fell away, and he passed, arms outstretched in a terrible yearning, out of what light there was, into the filthy depths of the river.

27

WHEN THE LITHE flight attendant lifted her head to emit a soft moan, Maceo Encarnación pushed her head back down between her bare shoulders, exposing the soft nape of her long neck. Her uniform jacket lay puddled on the floor; her thin pearl-white blouse rippled at her narrow waist, giving him access to her swaying breasts. Her pencil skirt was rucked up to her hips, her thong hobbling her ankles.

As Maceo Encarnación repeatedly pushed into her from behind, his pleasure produced images of the old Aztec gods of Tenochtitlán. Chief among them, Tlazolteotl, the goddess of pleasure and sin. Tlazolteotl was both feared and beloved. Feared because she was associated with human sacrifice; beloved because, when summoned correctly, she would devour your sins, freeing you to continue your life without taint.