The Bourne Retribution

by Eric Van Lustbader

  The corridor was still deserted, but by the time she reached her own room a nurse finally appeared.

  “Señora, what are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?” Maricruz said, elbowing Julio out of the doorway and stepping into her room.

  The nurse hurried toward her. “Is that another patient? Señora, stop! You cannot—”

  “The fuck I can’t!” Maricruz said even more vehemently than she had intended.

  The nurse went immediately to the station and picked up the phone. “If you don’t stop, I’ll be forced to call security to take the girl back to her room. It’s against hospital policy—”

  “Is it hospital policy,” Maricruz said, “to leave an entire floor unmanned? Is it hospital policy to leave a child howling like a wolf, sitting in her own shit and piss? Is it hospital policy to leave a pitiful, severely traumatized creature alone at night?” She glared at the nurse. “So go ahead, call security. I’ll have Julio here call Señor Carlos and we’ll see who prevails.”

  The nurse held on to the phone just long enough so as not to lose maximum face. As soon as she put the receiver down, Maricruz told her to get an orderly to clean up the girl’s bed. “Better still, do it yourself. Then find a bed and put it in my room.”

  “That I can’t do until tomorrow,” the nurse said icily. “The storeroom is in the basement and it’s locked for the night.”

  “Then get me a fresh gown for her,” Maricruz said, taking the girl into her room and laying her on her own bed.

  When the nurse came in with the gown and attempted to put it on the girl, Maricruz stopped her. “I’ll do that,” she said, taking the gown from her and unfolding it. “Go clean the room.”

  When she hesitated, Julio came into the room. “Do as the señora tells you,” he said gruffly, “or it will be your job.”

  Making a sound deep in her throat, the nurse turned on her heel and left. Maricruz heard the soles of her shoes squeaking against the linoleum as she went down the corridor to the girl’s room.

  Julio took another step into the room. “How can I help?”

  Maricruz gave him a look that set him back on his heels, and he retreated to his usual position on the folding chair outside her door. Turning back to the girl, Maricruz unwrapped her and put on the fresh gown. The girl lay passively in her bed, staring up at her.

  “You’re safe now,” Maricruz whispered, bent low over her. Her lips brushed the girl’s cool, damp forehead. “Warm and safe.”

  When she climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up, the girl froze, trembling like a dry leaf in a storm.

  “It’s all right,” Maricruz whispered. “You’re safe now, you’re safe now.”

  Gradually, the terrible tension gripping the girl’s narrow frame began to lose its grip, until, eventually, she curled her little body into Maricruz, as a dog or cat would. She was so thin, Maricruz could feel each knob of her spine as it pressed into her. She curled forward, kissed the top of the girl’s head.

  Much later, Maricruz could swear she heard the child purring.

  Hale received the packet from Amir Ophir via the courier at his chicly appointed apartment in Roma, just south of the Zona Rosa. When he was alone, he slit open the arcane packaging. He smiled when he saw the sealing wax, thinking, That’s Amir for you.

  For a long time he stared at the tape with its fingerprint, then he opened Ophir’s instructions and read it twice through, committing it to memory. Drawing an ashtray to him, he struck a match, held the flame to one corner of the paper, watched as it was consumed by the fire. He rose, then, and flushed the ashes down the toilet.

  Then he got to work. First, he went to his large oak cabinet, which contained thirteen long and narrow drawers of the kind artists and art dealers use to store prints. Each drawer was labeled with two letters of the alphabet. He opened the second drawer, labeled C–D, and pulled out the architectural blueprints for Carlos Danda Carlos’s palatial villa. Bringing them over to the table, he spread them out under a goosenecked lamp and devoted his complete attention to them for a solid thirty minutes. When he was certain of what needed to be done, he returned them to their drawer. Next, he crossed to his workshop and gathered the parts he needed, fitting them together beneath a strong light, a jeweler’s loupe over one eye.

  Before he was finished, he took the tape Ophir had sent him and applied the fingerprint to the inside of the item he had made.

  Finishing assembling it, he packed it and everything else he needed into a plumber’s tool bag, then set out. Night had fallen several hours before. The sky was roiled with low, menacing clouds, off which the lights of the city bounced, creating eerie patterns and lurid colors. Every few seconds thunder boomed, and once or twice lightning split the sky and rattled windowpanes. The air was heavy with rageful electricity.

  Hale took a bus that ran alongside Chapultepec Park. Past the statue of Diana, he got off. The rain began to fall first as steaming mist then, abruptly, in sheets that bounced off the sidewalk like sleet. He traveled down Avenida Presidente Masaryk all the way to Rubén Darío. Turning down a quiet, tree-lined street, he immediately saw the plainclothes security detail staked out around Carlos Danda Carlos’s SUV and residence. Good, Hale thought, Carlos is at home. The villa rose like a spiked medieval castle behind a high stucco wall, festooned with purple bougainvillea and wicked razor wire.

  Backtracking to Rubén Darío, he went along to the next street, the trees of the park across the avenue dark and forbidding in the storm. Passing cars threw up bow waves of water as they passed, headlights rearing up, then veering away.

  Hale entered the street parallel to the one he’d been on. He was now nearing the rear of Carlos’s villa. In the heavily shadowed alleyway, he found the electrical box, half hidden by thick foliage, precisely where the architectural blueprints showed it would be.

  Completely sheltered from both the rain and the prying eyes of the security contingent, he set down his plumber’s bag, donned rubber gloves, and wiped the bag free of prints. Then he dug out the tools he needed and went to work. Seven minutes later, the lights winked out in the villa as the power lines were cut. At once, he heard the shouts of the security team as they called to one another. Leaving the open bag where it lay, he raced back around the way he had come.

  As anticipated, the security team had been drawn to the electrical box, and must even now be poring over the plumber’s bag. One man stood guard on the sidewalk in front of the villa, but even he was peering back along the alleyway in a vain attempt to see what was going on. Hale could hear him ask urgently for an update, and while he was listening via his wireless earpiece, Hale went down the street.

  When he was parallel to Carlos’s SUV, he saw a large truck turn onto the street. As if that were a signal, he bent, affixing the small box he had prepared, bearing the incriminating print, to the underside of the vehicle. He pulled out his mobile as he stepped out into the street almost directly in front of the truck. The truck’s horn blared, the guard whirled, briefly catching sight of his back in the headlights as he sprinted out of the way and across the street.

  “Hey, you!” the guard called. “Stop!”

  Two other guards came running down the alleyway toward their comrade’s shouts.

  Then, protected by the steel bulk of the truck, Hale pressed a button on his mobile, detonating the bomb. The car went up, blowing to pieces that shot outward from the epicenter. The guard who had shouted was immediately incinerated. The lead running guard had his face and chest ripped away. The third remaining man was thrown backward against a light pole with such force his spine shattered.

  As for Hale, he was lost in the shadows between two buildings. He heard more shouts raised, but he had worked out his escape route and, of course, the heavy rain helped conceal him. Not ten minutes later, he had boarded a bus, which carried him back past the statue of Diana and into Colonia Roma.

  28

  When, at length, Maricruz fell asleep, she dreamed of Jidan�
��a restless dream, in which she was running, only to come upon abrupt dead ends inside a labyrinth she had lost the power to navigate. But when she awoke, she could recall only shadowy bits and pieces, filling her with a strange dread that lasted through the early-morning hours and made her temper repeatedly boil over.

  What do you want from Maricruz?” Anunciata asked.

  Bourne shook his head. “Better not to know.”

  Rain rattled the long windows in Anunciata’s apartment, thunder crashed, and the church across the street was fitfully illuminated by the fleeting glare of lightning, cold as moonlight.

  Anunciata gave him a look, shrugged. “You hate being here, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t call it hate, exactly.”

  “Because Mexico City is where she died, the woman you loved.”

  Bourne lay back on the sofa. “Am I to pay you for this session?”

  Anunciata laughed. “You’re under no obligation to tell me anything.”

  “I’m here because there’s a job to do.”

  She went over to the refrigerator, took out two bottles of beer, and handed one to Bourne. She sat down opposite him. “You don’t have a job. You do what you want.”

  “I do what I need to do.” He put aside the beer. “Isn’t it the same for you?”

  She thought about this while she drank. Then she rose and stood in front of him, kicked off her shoes. She sat, straddling him.

  “Anunciata, what are you doing?”

  “What I want to do.” She raised her arms. “Take off my shirt.”

  “This is not a good idea.”

  Putting aside her beer, she crossed her arms, shrugged off her shirt. She had no need of a bra. Her bare breasts gleamed in the copper lamplight, nipples hard and dark. As she leaned in to kiss him, he stopped her with the heels of his hands on her creamy shoulders.

  “Don’t you find me attractive?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Her smoky gaze held his for what seemed a long time. “Oh, I see. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  She put her shirt back on, but stayed where she was. “You’re the only man who ever helped me, who ever showed me kindness and never expected payment.” She leaned in, but this time put her head in the crook of his shoulder. When he felt her shoulders shaking, he put one arm around her and stroked the back of her head. Her hot tears burned the side of his neck.

  “You’ve made a good life for yourself,” Bourne said.

  She pulled away to look into his eyes. “I’ve learned how to survive, that’s not the same thing. Sometimes, rattling around in these rooms, I feel as if my brain is about to explode. And when I can’t stand it anymore, I go out to a bar or a club. Sometimes I meet someone, sometimes not. Once in a while I actually like him and I realize I’ve told him my name is Lolita and Lolita doesn’t exist except in one of my favorite novels and I’m about to invite him home and then I think, What if he’s one of my father’s people, what if he’s been looking for me ever since I left the villa on Castelar Street, what if I’ll wind up dead in some back alley with my throat cut open? What it comes down to is that I have no family, no identity except my hacker handle.”

  “Lolita.”

  “That name’s a sick joke.”

  He resettled her beside him. “Isn’t it easier now that your father’s dead?”

  “Not really. His people still crisscross the city; his influence never dies. And everything is made more impossible because this is Mexico. I’m not a lady like Maricruz. I come from a humble background, peasant stock. I could never move in the circles she moves in.”

  “I don’t think you’d want to.”

  “You only say that because, like her, you can.”

  “And you really want that?”

  “I don’t know what I want,” she said with a deep sigh. “I only know something vital’s missing from my life and I can’t stand being without it.”

  They were quiet for a time, listening to the petty arguments running down the street, along with the barking dogs. The rain continued to pelt down.

  After some thought, he said, “It’s exhausting being tough as nails.”

  As if he had given her permission, she curled up against him. “Tell me a story,” she whispered. “Tell me a story about her—a happy story. I want to know about Rebeka.”

  The man had attached the bomb to the underside of your SUV when he was spotted,” Sergeant Rivera said.

  “Did you get a good look at him?” Carlos Danda Carlos, clad in a maroon silk dressing gown, stood in the grand marble entryway of his villa. His men had tried to hustle him to another location, but he had brushed their pleas aside, refusing to be displaced by any form of threat. He would not be seen as a coward, running for cover.

  “Unfortunately, no,” Rivera said. “He was fleeing the scene and was only in the truck’s headlight beam for a split second. I wanted to pursue him, but there was the utter chaos in the aftermath of the bomb, I had three comrades dead, and your safety came first. Besides, as you know, the weather was very bad. I would never have been able to find him.”

  “The sonofabitch bombed my car. He killed three of my men,” Carlos said, thinking the bombing had to be in retaliation for what had happened in San Luis Potosí.

  Rivera shifted from one foot to the other. “The good news, however, is that we discovered a fingerprint on a fragment of the interior of the bomb.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “There was shielding inside the bomb. Forensics says it’s very sophisticated.”

  “Find Lieutenant Rios,” Carlos ordered. “Bring him to me.”

  “At once.”

  Power had been restored, the lights were back on, but he could not shake the sense of foreboding that had electrified him like a lightning bolt when the power was cut. He had immediately pulled out of the girl beneath him, fearing the worst. He had been fearing the worst ever since Los Zetas had executed Raul Giron and his cartel lieutenants, ever since he had received official word that the four military helos he had ordered launched had been shot down, all soldiers lost. The cartel war that had been ripping the country to shreds had now taken on a new and malevolent urgency. Further, there was no doubt in his mind that Maricruz Encarnación Ouyang was the catalyst not only for the ratcheting up of the mayhem but for the radical altering of the playing field.

  When Lieutenant Rios, a dapper, mustachioed man whom Carlos both trusted and relied upon, arrived, Carlos said, “About the bomb. Follow it to forensics. I want that fingerprint run through the American systems—they’re always barking about how they can help us in the drug war. Take advantage of their eagerness.” He gripped Rios’s shoulder. “I want that fingerprint identified by sunup. I want to know who set that bomb.”

  What have we here?” Bourne said when at last he appeared in Maricruz’s room at more or less the same time as the day before.

  “So you have the courage to return. Good. Angél, meet Dr. Javvy,” Maricruz said. She kept one arm around the girl.

  “Hola.” Bourne smiled. Then to Maricruz in English, “Where did she come from?”

  “Keep smiling.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “And don’t direct any questions at her.”

  “As you wish.”

  Maricruz briefly told him why the girl was in the hospital.

  “Is she all right? I should examine her.”

  “She’s already been examined God alone knows how many times. I don’t think she’ll react well to another one, especially by a man.”

  Bourne nodded. “Does she have family left?”

  “So far no one’s claimed her.”

  “And if no one does?”

  “I’ll deal with that then.”

  He nodded again, then, squatting down so they were on eye level, said to the girl, “Angél, do you know why bees have sticky hair?”

  The girl stared at him for a moment, then slowly shook her head.

&n
bsp; Bourne grinned. “Because they use honeycombs.”

  Angél giggled, Bourne laughed, and Maricruz gave him a curious look.

  “Would you like to hear another? Maybe you’ll know the answer.”

  Angél nodded shyly.

  “Okay, let’s see.” Bourne pretended to ponder. “Why do cows wear bells?”

  The girl’s brow wrinkled. “I…I don’t know.”

  “Because their horns don’t work.”

  Now Angél laughed. It came from deep inside her, and Maricruz gave both of them a wondering look.

  As Bourne rose, the girl begged to hear another one.

  “Okay, one more,” Bourne said. “I really don’t know that many. Let’s see. Where do books like to sleep?”

  Angél thought a moment, then grinned broadly. “I know this one! Books like to sleep under their covers!”

  “That’s right.” Bourne reached out and tousled her hair.

  “Don’t!” Maricruz warned.

  But the child didn’t flinch. In fact, she held out a hand, which Bourne took. “I like you,” she said softly. “You’re funny.”

  Bourne smiled again as he stood up.

  “Thank you for making time for Angél,” Maricruz said. “So few have.”

  “So it seems.” The girl was still holding his hand. “You don’t have to tell me how she ended up in your room,” he said to Maricruz in English.

  Handled correctly, telling people they didn’t have to do something, Bourne thought, often led them to do precisely what you wanted them to do.

  “I found her shrieking in a pool of her own excrement.” Maricruz stroked the girl’s hair. “It was the middle of the night. The nurses’ station was deserted. It was a terrible thing.”

  “Yes,” Bourne said. “Terrible.” He could sense they were speaking now of two separate incidents.

  Their gazes met for a moment, then Maricruz’s eyes slid away.

  “You were right,” she said at last, “there was no bicycle accident. In fact, there was no accident at all.” Her eyes found his again, and this time there was a determination in them that would not be denied. “I was in San Luis Potosí, the guest, I suppose you could put it, of someone I had no business being with.”