Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Dead is dead. I’ll take it,” Robbinet said, in his usual matterof-fact fashion. “I’m just grateful no harm has come to you or Don Fernando.” He grunted. “This has been quite a day, what with the abduction attempt and Don Fernando risen from the grave twice now, it seems. I was instrumental in doctoring the report of the crash of his private jet outside Paris.” He regarded Bourne attentively. “It seems the two of you are made for each other.”

  Bourne turned to Stephanie. “Apologies for spoiling your evening.”

  “With Jacques, I’m used to such interruptions.” Her smile was dazzling. When she stepped across the carpet to the minibar, her hips swayed ever so slightly. “It can’t be helped. Besides, Jacques and I have all night.”

  Bourne and Robbinet conferred about the upcoming flight. Using Google Earth, Robbinet brought up the area around Dahr El Ahmar on his iPad. “I can’t see this Israeli encampment.”

  “It’s all camouflaged,” Bourne said. “Plus, as you can see, the Lebanese have blocked out parts of the area so the Google cameras can’t see them in detail. Try looking at the White House and its grounds using the program—you can’t see a thing.”

  Robbinet nodded. “For security purposes, we do that in certain parts of Paris.” His forefinger tapped the screen. “There’s an airstrip in Rachaiya, here.” His forefinger stabbed out. “It has the advantage of being both secluded and less than two miles from Dahr. There will be a driver and vehicle waiting for you when you land.”

  “I don’t need them,” Bourne said.

  “This man, Fadi, has intimate knowledge of the area,” Robbinet said. “My advice is to use him.”

  By that time Don Fernando had exited the bathroom, resplendent in the outfit Stephanie had purchased for him.

  “A perfect fit,” Robbinet said, admiring Don Fernando. “It’s a good thing I know you both so well.”

  Bourne had spent the next twenty minutes scrubbing the grit, grime, and smell of the Seine off himself. Discovering a cache of disposable razors, he shaved, and by the time he climbed into his new clothes he felt reborn.

  There was room for only one passenger in the Mirage jet Robbinet had ordered up, so Bourne was saved from arguing Don Fernando out of coming. They said goodbye to Robbinet and Stephanie, took the tiny elevator down to the lobby, and out onto the street, where the minister’s car was waiting for them.

  They traveled through Paris, out onto the Périphérique, in silence.

  But in the last moments, as they crossed the tarmac at the military airfield, Don Fernando turned to Bourne.

  “You know, when I was younger I firmly believed that when I grew old, looking back on my life, I’d have no regrets, none at all. How idiotic! Now that I’ve more or less reached that age, I find that I have many regrets, Jason. More than I care to think of all at once.” The airfield was quiet. Apart from the sleek Mirage, crouched at the head of a runway, lights blinking, jets starting up, there was no activity.

  Robbinet must have ordered the area cleared for security purposes. “But the one regret that stings me more than any other concerns

  Maceo Encarnación,” Don Fernando continued. “Now, before you board, is the time to tell you.”

  The wind ruffled his hair. It was an unnaturally warm night, as if spring had overtaken winter before its time, as if emotions supposed dead were rising to the surface.

  Don Fernando took out a cigar and, in deliberate violation of the laws, lit up. Bourne knew from past experience that smoking cigars calmed him down.

  “In my lifetime, Jason, I have been loved many times. That isn’t a boast, by the way, simply a fact. Many women have come and gone.”

  He stared at the slowly smoldering end of his cigar. “And now they seem only like wisps of smoke—here, and then before you know it, gone.” He stuck the cigar back in his mouth and sucked on it, producing a faintly blue aromatic nimbus around his head. “But in all that time, there was only one woman I ever loved.”

  Don Fernando’s eyes filled with the past. “We met in Mexico City. She was very young, very beautiful, very charismatic. There was something about her...” He ducked his head. “Well, I don’t know.”

  He stared at the glowing end of his cigar again, as if it could rekindle the past. “She had not been born in Mexico City, not in any city at all, for that matter, but the way she moved and spoke you would not have known that she was a peasant. I came to learn that she was a natural mimic—she picked up accents, vocabulary, style, body movements almost instantaneously.”

  Bourne had a terrible premonition. “Like any great actress,” he said.

  Don Fernando nodded, pulling fiercely on his cigar. “When I asked her to marry me, she laughed, kissed me, and said her destiny lay elsewhere.”

  “Let me guess,” Bourne said. “She went on to marry Acevedo Camargo.”

  Don Fernando spun on his heel to face Bourne. “How did you—?”

  “I met Constanza in Mexico City. She was doing Maceo Encarnación’s work. She fooled me completely.”

  Don Fernando produced a grim smile. “She’s fooled everyone, Jason. It’s a long line, beginning with Acevedo. She married him on Maceo Encarnación’s orders. Maceo didn’t trust Acevedo, and since Acevedo’s star was rising as a drug lord, Maceo considered him a security risk—possibly worse, a rival. That he would not tolerate, so he set a fox in the henhouse, so to speak.”

  “Constanza.”

  Don Fernando nodded. “She told her new spouse that she couldn’t conceive, but at the same time, she was bedding Maceo as often as possible. The age when a man considers his living legacy had come upon Maceo early; he was desperate to have a child. Within a month Constanza found that she was pregnant. Of course, Acevedo couldn’t know, so she went to her aunt’s in Mérida for a protracted stay until she had the boy, which, according to their agreement, she gave to Maceo to raise.”

  Don Fernando ground what was left of his cigar underfoot and started to move toward the waiting Mirage fighter, by which Bourne surmised their discussion was nearing its end.

  “Naturally enough, I found this out after the fact. I had left Mexico City the very same night I fucked her for the last time. Pardon the crudity, but that’s what one did with Constanza: fuck. She had no room in her vocabulary for making love.” He shrugged. “Perhaps that was a reason I found her so irresistible. One could never believe what came out of her mouth. She was a serial liar. Much later, I came to suspect that she believed every one of her lies.”

  “That belief is what makes her so effective.”

  “Doubtless.” Don Fernando jammed his hands in his pockets. He was trembling with emotion. “Still, I wanted her more than any other woman I’ve ever met.” He looked up into the night sky, streaked with light from the Eiffel Tower. “Martha Christiana reminded me of Constanza. There was a certain—I don’t know...It was as if their cores were made of the same material.”

  “It was hard to lose Martha.”

  “I killed her, Jason. That’s what I’m still struggling with. Perhaps I wanted her too badly. Perhaps I thought she would make up for Maceo Encarnación taking Constanza away from me.”

  Bourne thought it was just as much Constanza Camargo’s fault as it was Maceo Encarnación’s. On the other hand, this human drama had played out in Mexico City, where anything seemed possible. They were near the Mirage’s curving flank and could smell the rich fumes of the fuel.

  “Time for me to go, Don Fernando.”

  “I know.”

  They shook hands as they parted. Bourne climbed into the cockpit, the ladder was whisked away, and Don Fernando stepped backward, making his way across the tarmac without ever taking his eyes off the Mirage as it flung itself down the runway, nose up, and lifted off into the night sky, vanishing like the moon in eclipse.

  "You’ll take her into custody.”

  “That’s what I said, yes.”

  Li, standing outside the front door to his apartment, looked hard at Ann Ring. “There’s no other w
ay?”

  “What other way?”

  They were close to each other, speaking in whispers.

  “You know what I mean, Senator.” Li licked his lips. “What happened to Charles. A break-in, a death.”

  Ann Ring took a step back. “I’m not going to be party to murder, Li. I can’t believe you’re even bringing up the possibility.”

  He breathed softly, snorting like a horse. “It’s just that there are people with keen ears. I cannot afford to have my reputation compromised.”

  “Believe me, Li, I will not let that happen.” Ann indicated the apartment with her head. “You’re certain she’s in there.”

  “She sleeps between photo shoots. She’s been going non-stop for almost two weeks.”

  “All right, then.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then, slipping his key in the lock, opened the door, and pushed inside. The interior was dark and still. They crept through the rooms until they reached his bedroom. There they found Natasha Illion fast asleep. She was on her side, the curve of her cheek, the brushed shadow of her lowered lash softly illuminated by a bedside lamp.

  “She’s like a child,” Li whispered in Ann’s ear. “She can’t sleep in absolute darkness.”

  Ann nodded, then gestured for them to return to the living room, where she called Hendricks to send agents to take Tasha into custody. Li padded into the kitchen to get some water. She was still updating Hendricks when Li brushed past her, heading back into the bedroom.

  “Wait, where—?” Without putting Hendricks on hold, she rushed in behind Li, just in time to see him stab downward with a longbladed carving knife he must have fetched from the kitchen.

  Ann screamed as he plunged the blade between Tasha’s perfect shoulder blades. The girl arched up, torn out of sleep by pain and shock. Ann ran toward Li, but he had already wrenched the blade free and was now plunging it down into the side of her neck.

  Ann was shouting, pulling him roughly away; blood was pouring out of Natasha Illion at a hideous rate. Within seconds, she was awash in her own blood, and Ann knew there was nothing she could do for her. Still she tried, for four long minutes, while Li stood still as a statue, his back to what he had done.

  At length, Ann got off the bed. She was covered in blood. She picked up her mobile and, walking out of Li’s earshot, said, “Natasha Illion’s gone. Li stabbed her to death.”

  “Did you get it all on tape?” Hendricks seemed to be breathing fast.

  Ann touched the minirecorder at her waist. “Every last frame,” she said. “Li’s ours now.”

  "Making our approach.”

  The pilot’s voice sounded through the intercom, and Bourne opened his eyes. Peering out through the windscreen, he could see nothing, not even a single light. Lebanon, near the border with Syria. Desert. Mountains in the distance. The parched wind. The nothingness.

  It felt like coming home.

  29

  IT SEEMED TO Maceo Encarnación, as he sat brooding in his private jet, that he had left a great many people behind.

  Now he could add Nicodemo to the list. Even though that was not Nicodemo’s real name, he had a difficult time thinking of him as anything else. Now, with him gone, left behind in Paris, dead or alive, he did not know, he understood why that was so. It was always easier to leave someone behind when he distanced himself from them, in one way or another.

  Dead or alive. He thought about this phrase, while the cauldron in the pit of his stomach informed him that Nicodemo was dead. He must be dead; death was the only thing that would have kept him from returning to the plane.

  He had made Nicodemo. He was wholly Maceo Encarnación’s creature in a way his sister, Maricruz, never was and never would be. Maricruz was very much her own person. Even though Nicodemo had his uses, he was never the person his sister was. Maceo Encarnación loved Maricruz in a way he could never love Nicodemo. Nicodemo was a tool, a means to an end; Maricruz was the entire workshop, the end itself. Maricruz knew he was her father; Nicodemo didn’t. Neither knew who their mother was.

  He dozed for a while, dreaming of Constanza Camargo in the form of the great serpent that founded Tenochtitlán. Constanza opened her mouth, her forked tongue flicked out, revealing destiny and desire, and Maceo Encarnación, himself a little boy, knew he was meant to choose one or the other. Destiny or desire. He had chosen destiny, and all desire had been excised out of him. In this way, leaving people behind was as easy and, in its way, as pleasurable as swallowing a mouthful of mellow aged tequila.

  When, hours later, he awoke, the jet was descending out of the sky like a great eagle toward the small airfield on the outskirts of the mountain town of Rachaiya. The plane began to judder and dip, and he fastened his seat belt. Peering out the window, he saw that the weather had changed. There was windblown snow on the ground here, as well as in the higher elevations, and more snow was falling out of the gunmetal sky. Colonel Ben David did not disappoint: one of the two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters under his command was standing by, ready to take Maceo Encarnación to the Mossad camp outside Dahr El Ahmar.

  Reaching across the aisle, Encarnación drew to him the suitcase fitted with the thumbprint lock. As the plane hit the runway and began to slow, taxiing toward the copter, he released the lock, then opened the suitcase to stare one last time at thirty million dollars.

  The call came in while Soraya and Peter, both exhausted, had fallen into a deep, drug-like sleep. Delia, having taken some of her built-up sick days, was watching over them. She crossed to the table beside Soraya’s bed, picked up her mobile, and saw that the call was from Secretary Hendricks.

  Leaning over Soraya, she shook her. Then, seeing that her friend was slow to rouse herself, she leaned farther and kissed her on the forehead. Soraya’s eyes opened, and she saw Delia holding up her mobile so she could see Hendricks’s name on the caller ID.

  When Soraya took the mobile from her, Delia nodded, smiling, and went out of the room.

  “Mr. Secretary,” Soraya said, formally.

  “Soraya, are you all right?”

  “Fine, sir. I fell asleep.”

  “No one’s more entitled to sleep than you, but I’ve got some pressing news regarding Tom Brick. Sam Anderson brought him into custody a couple of hours ago. Forensics found traces of Dick Richards’s blood on the cuffs of his trousers.”

  Soraya sat up straight. “Sir?”

  “Brick’s rolled over. He doesn’t want to go to jail.”

  “He’s made a deal.”

  “Given us the person who knifed Richards,” Hendricks said. “But there’s more—much more. I’m certain you recall the mysterious counterfeit thirty million Peter discovered.”

  “I do, sir.” Soraya listened to what Hendricks had to say on the subject, delivered to him in writing by Sam Anderson in Tom Brick’s own hand.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, when Hendricks was finished.

  “My thought, exactly. Get your agents in Lebanon on this ASAP.”

  “Will do,” Soraya said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Thank Anderson when you see him. The man’s done a stellar piece of work.”

  The moment Soraya cut the connection with her boss, she punched in Bourne’s number on speed dial. When she heard his voice at the other end of the ether line, she said, “I have the answer to the counterfeit thirty million.”

  Sir,” Bourne’s pilot said, “I won’t be able to set you down at the airfield in Rachaiya. There’s a private jet sitting on the runway.”

  Maceo Encarnación, Bourne thought. “Options.”

  “Only one,” the pilot said. “There’s a flat space a mile to the east.”

  “Can you do it?”

  The pilot grinned. “I’ve set this down in worse.”

  Bourne nodded. “Let’s do it.” Using his satphone, he dialed the number Robbinet had given him, and, after a coded exchange, gave the driver waiting for him the new coordinates.

  “You understand I won’t be able to wait for you,” t
he pilot said as the Mirage banked to the east. “Even with Minister Robbinet’s influence, the less time this plane is in Lebanese airspace, the better.” The field in view, he began a rapid descent. “These days, the Lebanese government is understandably jumpy.”

  “Any idea how long that plane’s been on the ground?” “No more than twenty minutes, sir. It took off from Paris an hour and thirty-five minutes before we did, but the Mirage is far faster. A commercial flight takes approximately four hours. We’ve covered that distance in two hours and forty-five minutes. That jet is considerably slower. I calculated the respective speeds of the two planes before we took off.”

  “Good man,” Bourne said.

  “Thank you, sir.” The pilot engaged the controls. “Now hold on, this is bound to be a bit of a bone-shake.”

  The Mirage came down very fast, but contrary to what the pilot had said, the landing was as smooth as could be expected under the circumstances. Bourne unbuckled as soon as they began to taxi and was ready with the backpack Robbinet had provided him so that the moment the Mirage came to a halt, he popped the canopy and climbed down the curved side. He ran, half hunched over, as quickly as he could, giving the pilot a clear space in which to take off. As he reached the far edge of the field, the jet turned, paused, then was released down the flat expanse and rose quickly into the air.

  Bourne turned away and made for a thin stand of ratty-looking pines, beyond which the vehicle and driver would be waiting. His shoes crunched over the several inches of snow that lay on the ground, but in among the trees the snow was patchy, as if eroded away by the bed of pine needles. A chilly wind wandered with a mournful sound through the trees; the air was dry and thin, tinged with the unmistakable scent of pine tar.

  Peering through a gap in the trees, he looked out to the northwest. Sure enough, there was the vehicle, an old military Jeep with open sides and a canvas top. By its side, smoking languidly, was Fadi, Robbinet’s asset, a small, dark, muscular man with rounded shoulders and a shock of black hair. He must have heard the plane land because he was looking toward the field, as if anticipating Bourne’s imminent arrival.