The Bourne Objective

by Robert Ludlum

  Moira was fascinated. “How did it end?”

  “I stepped in. FARC listens to me. Escúchame, I’m not against them—certainly not what they stand for. The government is a dirty joke, they’ve got that part right, at least. They know I’ll stand with them, that I’ll rally my people to support them—so long as they leave us alone. Me, I don’t give a fuck about politics—right-wing, left-wing, fascist, socialist, I leave the semantics to the people who have nothing better to do with their stinking lives. Me, I’m too busy making money, that’s my life. Everyone else can rot in hell.”

  He tapped the ash off his cigar into a brass ashtray. “I respect FARC. I have to, I’m a pragmatist. They own most of Bogotá, we don’t. And they’re the ones with their own prison release program. An example: Two weeks ago, in La Picota, the other prison here, the fucking FARC blew out an entire wall, freeing ninety-eight of their comrades. To a gringo such a thing sounds preposterous, impossible, am I right? But that’s life in Colombia.” He chuckled. “Say what you will about FARC, they’ve got balls. I respect that.”

  “In fact, Señor Corellos, unless I’ve misunderstood you, that’s the only thing you respect.” Without another word, Moira reached for the Taurus, broke it down, and put it back together, all the while staring unblinkingly into Corellos’s eyes.

  When she put the pistol back down on the table, Corellos said, “Why do you want to speak with me, señorita? Why did you really come? It isn’t to write a story for a newspaper, is it?”

  “I need your help,” she said. “I’m looking for a certain laptop computer Gustavo Moreno had. Just before he died, it disappeared.”

  Corellos spread his hands. “Why come to me?”

  “You were Moreno’s supplier.”

  “So?”

  “The man who stole the laptop—one of Moreno’s men working for someone else, someone unknown—was found dead on the outskirts of Amatitán, on the estancia owned by your cousin Narsico.”

  “That pussy, taking a gringo name! I want nothing to do with him, he’s dead to me.”

  Moira considered a moment. “It seems to me that implicating him in the murder of this man might be a good way to get back at him.”

  Corellos snorted. “What, and leave it to the Mexican police to figure it out and arrest him? Please! When it comes to solving crimes they’re complete idiots, all they know how to do is take bribes and siestas. Plus, Berengária would be suspect, too. No, if I wanted Narsico dead you would have found him in Amatitán.”

  “So who’s running Moreno’s business, who are you selling to now?”

  Corellos blew cigar smoke, his eyes half lidded.

  “I’m not interested in putting anyone in jail,” she said. “In fact, it would be fruitless, wouldn’t it? I’m just interested in finding the laptop, and there’s a trail I have to follow.”

  Corellos stubbed out his cigar. When he made a gesture someone—significantly, not a guard—came in with a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses, which he placed between Corellos and Moira. “I’m ordering food. What would you like?”

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  He nodded, spoke to the young man, who nodded and slipped unobtrusively out. He leaned forward and poured tequila. When they had both drained their glasses, he said, “You have to understand the depth of my hatred for Narsico.”

  She shrugged. “I’m a gringa, we don’t take such things so seriously. What I do know is that you haven’t had him killed.”

  He waved away her words. “This is what I mean by understanding. Killing’s too good for a shithead like him.”

  She was beginning to get a glimmer of where this conversation was going. “So you have something else planned.”

  That macaw laugh again. “It’s already done. Whoever said that revenge is a dish best served cold had no Colombian blood running through him. Why wait when opportunity stares you in the face?”

  The young man returned with a tray laden with food—an array of small dishes, from rice and beans to fried chilies and smoked seafood. He set the tray down, and Corellos waved him away. Immediately Corellos picked out a plate of shrimp in a fiery red sauce and ate them, head and all. As he sucked the sauce off his fingertips, he continued. “Do you know the best way to get to a man, señorita? It’s through his woman.”

  Now she understood. “You seduced Berengária.”

  “Yes, I cuckolded him, I shamed him, but that’s not all I did. Narsico wanted desperately to outrun his family, so I made sure that he couldn’t.” Corellos’s eyes sparkled. “I set Berengária Moreno up as her brother’s successor.”

  And you did it damn well, Moira thought. Essai said there was no hint of her involvement. “Do you think she had the mole inside her brother’s operation?”

  “If she wanted a list of Gustavo’s clients she only had to ask him, which she didn’t, at least while he was alive.”

  “Then who would?”

  He looked at her skeptically. “Oh, I don’t know, a thousand people, maybe more. You want me to write you a list?”

  Moira ignored his sarcasm. “What about you?”

  He laughed. “What? Are you kidding? Gustavo was making me a fortune by doing all the heavy lifting. Why would I fuck with that?”

  Did Corellos know that Moreno’s client list was on the laptop, or had he assumed it? Moira wondered. Essai didn’t look like the kind of man who was after a Colombian drug lord’s business; he had the aspect of someone who’d been ripped off and wanted his property back. She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Escúchame, hombre. Someone made off with that laptop. If it wasn’t Berengária then it has to be someone else who wants Gustavo’s business, and it’s just a matter of time before he acts.”

  Corellos took up a plate of fried chilies and popped them one after another into his mouth. His expressive lips were slick with grease. He didn’t appear interested in wiping them off.

  “I don’t know anything about this,” Corellos said coldly.

  Moira believed him. If he had known, he would already have done something about it. She rose. “Maybe Berengária does.”

  His eyes narrowed. “The fuck she does. Whatever she knows, I know.”

  “You’re a long way from Jalisco.”

  Corellos laughed unpleasantly. “You don’t know me very well, do you, chica.”

  “I want that laptop, hombre.”

  “That’s the spirit!” He made a sound deep in his throat astonishingly like a tiger purring. “The hour’s growing late, chica. Why don’t you stay the night? I guarantee my accommodations are better than any this city has to offer you.”

  She smiled. “I think not. Thank you for your hospitality—and your honesty.”

  Corellos grinned. “Anything for a beautiful señorita.” He lifted a warning finger. “Cuidad, chica. I don’t envy you. Berengária’s a fucking piranha. Give her the slightest opening and she’ll eat you up, bones and all.”

  When Peter Marks arrived at Noah Perlis’s flat, he found it crawling with CI agents, two of whom he knew. One, Jesse McDowell, he knew very well. He and McDowell had worked together on two field assignments before Marks was promoted upstairs into management.

  When McDowell saw Marks, he beckoned to him and, taking him aside, said in a hushed tone of voice, “What the hell are you doing here, Peter?”

  “I’m on assignment.”

  “Well, so are we, so you better get the hell out of here before one of Danziger’s gung-ho newbies gets curious about you.”

  “Can’t do that, Jesse.” Peter craned his neck, peering over McDowell’s shoulder. “I’m looking for Jason Bourne.”

  “Good bleeding luck with that, laddie.” McDowell shot him a sardonic look. “How many roses should I send to the funeral?”

  “Listen, Jesse, I just flew in from DC, I’m tired, hungry, cranky, and in no fucking mood to play games with you or any of Danziger’s little tin soldiers.” He made to take a step around McDowell. “D’you think I’m afraid of any of them, or
of Danziger?”

  McDowell raised his hands, palms outward. “Okay, okay. You’ve made your point, laddie.” He took Marks by the elbow. “I’ll fill you in on everything, but not here. Unlike you, Danziger still owns my ass.” He steered Marks out the door and into the hallway. “Let’s go down to the pub and lift a few. When I get a pint or two in me, I’ll screw me courage to the wall.”

  The Slaughtered Lamb was just the sort of London pub that had been written about for centuries. It was low, dark, ripe with the scents of fermented beer and very old cigarette smoke, some of which still seemed to hang in the air in a boozy mist.

  McDowell chose a table against one wood-paneled wall, ordered them pints of the room-temperature brew and, for Marks, a plate of bangers and mash. When the food came, Marks took one whiff of the meat and his stomach turned. He had the waiter take the plate away, and settled for a couple of cheese rolls.

  “This investigation’s part of Justice’s ongoing case against Black River,” McDowell said.

  “I thought that case had been wrapped up.”

  “So did everyone else.” McDowell drained his pint and ordered another. “But it appears that someone very high up is gunning for Oliver Liss.”

  “Liss left Black River before any of the shit hit the fan.”

  McDowell took possession of the new pint. “Suspicion has been thrown his way. Point being that he may have gotten out, but it still is likely that he was one of the architects of Black River’s dirty dealings. Our job is to confirm that conjecture with hard evidence, and since Noah Perlis was Liss’s personal lapdog, we’re tossing his place.”

  “Needle in a haystack,” Marks said.

  “Mebbe so.” McDowell gulped down his beer. “But one thing we did find there was a photo of this bloke Diego Hererra. You heard he was knifed to death last night in a posh West End casino by the name of the Vesper Club?”

  “I hadn’t heard,” Marks said. “What’s it to me?”

  “Everything, laddie. The man who was seen knifing Diego Hererra was with Jason Bourne. They left the club together just minutes after the murder.”

  Soraya drove due south as, she intuited, Arkadin—going by the name Frank N. Stein—had. Twilight was falling gently as a leaf as she pulled into Nogales. She was still in Arizona. Just across the border was the sister town, Nogales, in the Mexican state of Sonora.

  She parked and strolled through the dusty central square. Finding an open-air café, she sat and ordered a plate of tamales and a Corona. Her Spanish was a good deal better than her French or her German, which meant that it was very good, indeed. And here her dark skin, Egyptian blood, and prominent nose were easily mistaken for Aztec. She sat back and allowed herself to breathe while she watched the comings and goings of people on errands, shopping, strolling hand in hand. There were many old people, sitting on benches, playing cards or chatting. Vehicles passed—old, dented cars and dusty, rusting trucks loaded with produce. Nogales’s business was agriculture, shipments from its sister town continuously coming across the border for packaging and transshipping all across the United States.

  She had finished her last tamale and was on her second Corona when she saw an old black Chevy, dusty and hulking, but the plates didn’t match and she went back to her beer. She declined dessert but ordered coffee.

  The waiter was setting the tiny cup in front of her when, over his shoulder, she saw another black Chevy. She stood up as he walked away. The plate matched the one on the car Arkadin had rented, but the driver was an eighteen-year-old punk. He parked near the café and got out. His hair was crested, his arms covered in tattoos of snakes and plumed birds. Soraya recognized the quetzal, the sacred bird of the Aztecs and Maya. Downing her espresso in one shot, she left some bills on the table and walked over to the punk.

  “Where did you get that car, compadre?” she asked him.

  He looked her up and down with a sneer. His eyes on her breasts, he said, “What business is it of yours?”

  “I’m not a cop, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Why should I be worried?”

  “Because that Chevy is a rental car from Tucson—you and I both know that.”

  The punk continued his sneer. He looked like he practiced it in front of a mirror every morning.

  “Do you like them?”

  The punk started. “What?”

  “My breasts.”

  He laughed uneasily and looked away.

  “Listen,” she said, “I’m not interested in you or the car. Tell me about the man who rented it.”

  He spat sideways and said nothing.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You’re already in enough trouble. I can make it go away.”

  The punk sighed. “I really don’t know. I found the car out in the desert. It was abandoned.”

  “How did you start it up—did you hot-wire it?”

  “Nah, I didn’t have to, the key was in the ignition.”

  Now, that was interesting. It probably meant that Arkadin wasn’t coming back for it, which meant that he was no longer in Nogales. Soraya thought for a moment. “If I wanted to cross the border, how would I do it?”

  “The border station’s just a couple miles south—”

  “I don’t want to go that way.”

  The punk squinted, eyeing her as if for the first time. “I’m hungry,” he said. “How about buying me a meal?”

  “Okay,” she said, “but don’t expect anything else.”

  When he laughed, the brittle shell of his forced bravado cracked open. His face was transformed into that of a simple kid who looked at the world through sad eyes.

  She took him back to the café, where he ordered burritos de machaca and a huge plate of cowboy beans larded with chiles pasados. His name was Álvaro Obregón. He was from Chihuahua. His family had migrated north in search of work and had ended up here. Through the intervention of his mother’s brother, his parents worked at a maquiladora packaging fruit and vegetables. According to him, his sister was a slut and his brothers goofed off all day instead of working. He himself was employed by a rancher. He’d come into town to pick up an order of supplies the rancher had phoned in.

  “At first, I was excited about coming here,” he said. “I’d read up about American Nogales and discovered that a lot of really cool people were born here, like Charlie Mingus. His music sounds like shit to me, but you know, he’s famous and all. And then there’s Roger Smith. Imagine banging Ann-Margret, huh! But the coolest is Movita Castaneda. I bet you never heard of her.”

  When Soraya said she hadn’t, he grinned. “She was in Flying Down to Rio and Mutiny on the Bounty, but I only saw her in Tower of Terror.” He mopped up the last of his beans. “Anyway, she married Marlon Brando. Now, there was one cool actor, until he blew up like a blimp, anyway.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smacked his lips. “It didn’t take long for the shine to wear off. I mean, just look around you. What a fucking dump!”

  “You seem to have a good job,” Soraya pointed out.

  “Yeah, you try it. It sucks.”

  “It’s steady work.”

  “A rat makes more money than I do.” He gave a wry, lopsided smile. “But that doesn’t mean I starve to death.”

  “Which brings us back to my original question. I want to get into Mexico.”

  “Why? The place is a fucking shithole.”

  Soraya smiled. “Who do I see?”

  Álvaro Obregón made a show of having to think about it, but Soraya suspected he already knew. He looked out over the square. The lights had come on, people were on their way to dinner or heading home after some last-minute shopping. The air smelled of refried beans and other sharp, acidic scents of norteño cooking. Finally, he said, “Well, there are a couple of local polleros across the border.” These were people whom you paid to guide you across the border without having to bother with customs and Immigration. “But really, there’s only one to use, and you’re in luck, ea
rly this morning he brought a family of migrants across from Mexico. He’s here now and I can make the introductions. He’s known as Contreras, though I know for a fact that’s not his real name. I’ve dealt with him personally.”

  On that score Soraya had no doubt. “I’d like you to set up the meet with your compadre Contreras.”

  “It’ll cost you. A hundred American dollars.”

  “Highway robbery. Fifty.”

  “Seventy-five.”

  “Sixty. That’s my last offer.”

  Álvaro Obregón put his hand on the table palm-up, and Soraya laid a twenty and a ten onto it. The bills disappeared so fast they might never have existed.

  “The rest when you deliver,” she said.

  “Wait here,” Álvaro Obregón said.

  “Save time and call him, why don’t you?”

  Álvaro Obregón shook his head. “No cell contact, ever. Rules of the game.” He rose and, seemingly in no particular hurry, sauntered off at the leisurely pace endemic to Nogales.

  For just over an hour Soraya sat alone, soaking up the spangle of the night and the lilt of songs of a local banda, playing a form of brass-heavy music from Sinaloa. A couple of men asked her to dance; politely but firmly she turned them down.

  Then, just as the banda segued into its second cumbia, she saw Álvaro Obregón emerge out of the shadows. He was accompanied by a man, presumably Contreras, the pollero, whom she judged to be in his early to midforties with a face like a map that had been folded and refolded too many times. Contreras was tall and rangy with slightly bowed legs, like a lifetime cowboy. And like a cowboy he wore a wide-brimmed hat, stovepipe jeans, and a western shirt with piping and pearl snaps.

  The man and the boy sat down without a word. Up close Contreras had the sun-bleached eyes of a man used to sagebrush, dust, and the scorching desert. His skin resembled overtanned leather.

  “Boy tells me you want to go south.” Contreras spoke to her in English.

  “That’s right.” Soraya had seen eyes like his before in professional gamblers. They seemed to bore into your skull.

  “When?”

  A man of few words, that was all right with her. “The sooner the better.”