The Bourne Imperative

by Robert Ludlum

  There was a silence, broken by the soft push forward as the brakes came off, and the jet hurtled down the runway. They lifted off, the wheels retracted, they rose higher.

  Rebeka put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Of course I’m joking.”

  During the meal service, she pushed away her tray, unsnapped her seat belt, rose, and went forward, standing out of the flight attendants’ way. When she made no move to use the restroom after the OCCUPIED light flicked off and a middle-aged woman emerged, Bourne followed her. A sense of melancholy, sharp as the scent of burning leaves, seemed to have enveloped her.

  They stood side by side, shoulders pressed together in the cramped space. Neither of them spoke until Rebeka said, “Have you been to Mexico City?”

  “Once that I can remember.”

  She had wrapped herself in the protection of her own arms. “It’s a fucking snake pit. A gorgeous snake pit, admittedly, but a snake pit nonetheless.”

  “It’s gotten worse in the last five years.”

  “The cartels are no longer underground since they’ve integrated with the Colombians. There’s so much money that all the right officials, even the police, are in on the action. The drug trade is out of control. It’s threatening to inundate the entire country, and the government doesn’t have either the will or the inclination to stem the rising tide. Anyway, any time someone in authority pops up trying to take charge, he gets his head lopped off.”

  “Not much incentive to swim against the tide.”

  “Unless you’re swinging the hammer of God.”

  Another silence descended, as if from the high, clear sky through which they were flying. Bourne listened to her soft, even breathing, as if he were lying in bed next to her. Despite this, he was acutely aware of how separate from her—from everyone—he felt. And, abruptly, he understood what she was trying to get out of him. Was he incapable of feeling any deep emotion about anyone? It seemed to him now that each death, each parting he had memory of, had inoculated him over and over, until he was now fully anaesthetized, incapable of doing anything more meaningful than putting one foot in front of the other in the darkness. There was no escape for him, and Rebeka knew it. That was why she had brought up the notion of an island in the sun. Leaving the darkness behind was not an option for him. He had spent so many years negotiating its mysterious byways that he would only be blinded in the sunlight. This realization, he understood, was what had saddened her, wrapping her in melancholy. Whether it was because she had seen herself in him or because she actually desired the exile for herself remained to be seen.

  “We should go back to our seats,” he said.

  She nodded distractedly. They left the bathroom and went back down the aisle. That was when he saw Ilan Halevy, the narrow brim of a hat pulled low, sitting in the last row of first class, reading a copy of the Financial Times. The Babylonian looked up over the rim of the newspaper, delivering a wicked grin.

  14

  What d’you mean I can’t see her?”

  “She’s crashing, Charles.” Delia put her hands against his chest, pushing Thorne back from the recovery room.

  He stood against the wall as doctors and nurses pushing stainless-steel carts hurried past.

  He followed them with his eyes. His mouth was half open and he seemed to have trouble breathing. “What’s happening, Delia?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You were in there.” His restless gaze lit on her. “You must know something.”

  “We were talking and she just collapsed. That’s all I know.”

  “The baby.” He licked his lips. “What about the baby?”

  Delia reared back. “Ah, now I get it.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Why you’re here. I get it. It’s the baby.”

  Thorne appeared confused—or was that alarm on his face? “What are you talking—”

  “If the baby dies, all your troubles die with it.”

  He came off the wall, his eyes blazing. “Where the hell do you come off—?”

  “The baby dies and you don’t have problems with Ann, do you? No explanations needed, it’s as if the baby never existed, your affair with Soraya a distant memory, far away from the press and the bloggers, looking for dirt twenty-four–seven.”

  “You’re nuts, you know that? I care about Soraya. Deeply. Why can’t you accept that?”

  “Because you’re a cynical, self-centered sonofabitch.”

  Thorne took a breath, gathering himself. His eyes narrowed. “You know, I thought we could be friends.”

  “You mean you thought you could recruit me.” She produced a steely laugh. “Fuck off.”

  Turning her back on him, Delia went to talk to Dr. Santiago as he emerged from Soraya’s room.

  “How is she?”

  “Stable,” Dr. Santiago said. “She’s being moved to the ICU.”

  Delia was aware that Thorne had come up behind her. She could almost hear him listening. “What happened?”

  “A slight blockage developed at the surgical site. Rare, but it happens sometimes. We’ve cleared it and we’re giving her a low dose of blood thinner. We’ll try to get her off it as soon as we deem it safe.”

  “Safe for her,” Delia said. “What about what’s safe for the baby?”

  “Ms. Moore is our primary patient, her life takes precedence. Besides, the fetus—”

  “Her baby,” Delia said.

  Dr. Santiago regarded her enigmatically for a moment. “Right. Excuse me.”

  Delia, melancholy and forlorn, watched him disappear down the hallway.

  Thorne sighed. “Now I see how it is between you and me, I’ll lay my cards on the table.”

  “When will you learn I don’t give a shit about your cards?”

  “I’m wondering whether Amy will feel the same way.”

  Delia spun on him. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” The challenge in his voice was unmistakable. “I have transcripts of your voicemails with Amy Brandt.”

  “What?”

  “Surprised? It’s a simple hack. We use a software program that imitates caller ID. It’s how we can gain access to your mobile phone—anyone’s, really—and bypass the password protection.”

  “So you have—”

  “Every message you and Amy have left for each other.” He could not hide a smirk. “Some of it’s pretty hot.”

  She slapped him across the face so hard he rocked back on his heels.

  “You hit like a guy, you know that?”

  “How the hell d’you live with yourself?”

  He laughed thinly. “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.”

  She eyed him warily. “If you have a point, make it.”

  “We each have something on the other.” He shrugged. “Just something to remember.”

  “I don’t care—”

  “But Amy does, doesn’t she? In her line of work she has to be careful. A shitload of parents don’t like their kids being taught by a lesbian.”

  Delia thought of several choice things to say, but at that moment a pair of grim-faced nurses wheeled Soraya out of recovery, past them, down the hall to the ICU. There was silence for a time after that.

  “So there’s our truce,” Thorne said, “laid out for you.”

  Delia turned back to him. “Did you ever care about Soraya, even for a moment?”

  “She’s a hellcat in bed.”

  “What’s the matter? Ann’s not enough for you?”

  “Ann has sex with her job. Otherwise she’s a cold fish.”

  “My heart goes out to you,” she said acidly.

  He gave her a lupine grin. “And mine to you.” He grabbed his crotch. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Maceo Encarnación, staring out the Perspex window as his jet circled Mexico City prior to landing, saw the familiar fug of brown effluvia that hovered over the sprawling metropolis like a filthy carpet. A combination of the h
appenstance of geography and the unbridled emissions of modern progress formed this almost permanent atmospheric layer. Mexico City, built upon the ruins of the great Aztec megalopolis Tenochtitlán, seemed to be drowning in its own future.

  The first thing his lungs inhaled when he stepped onto the rolling stairs was the stink of human shit, used to fertilize many of the crops. In the street markets where fruits and vegetables were laid out on the ground, dogs and toddlers alike pissed and shat on the wares without consequence.

  Encarnación ducked into a black armored SUV, its motor running so that it sped off the moment he had settled into the backseat. His elaborate colonial California-style house, with its pseudo-baroque quarry windows, front garden, and elaborate wood-clad interior hallways, was on Castelar Street, in Colonia Polanco. Situated less than a mile from Chapultepec Park and the Museum of National History, it was constructed of pale yellow stone and tezontle, the indigenous reddish volcanic stone that marked so many of the city’s great structures.

  The ground on which his urban estancia sat was the most valuable in all of Mexico City, but because it was protected from development by the powerful National Fine Arts Institute, of which Encarnación was, not coincidentally, an influential member, no high-rises could be built there, as they had been in Lomas de Chapultepec or Colonia Santa Fe.

  “Welcome home, Don Maceo. You have been missed.”

  The man sitting beside Encarnación was short, squat as a frog, with dark skin, a belligerent hooked Aztec nose, and pomaded black hair swept back from his wide forehead, thick and lustrous as a horse’s mane.

  His name was Tulio Vistoso; he was one of the three most powerful drug lords in Mexico, but almost everyone except Encarnación called him the Aztec.

  “There is tequila to share, Don Tulio,” Encarnación said amiably, “and news to digest.”

  At once the Aztec was on guard. “Problems?”

  “There are always problems.” Encarnación fluttered a hand back and forth. “What matters is the level of difficulty these problems present in the solving.”

  The Aztec grunted. He was wearing a black linen suit over an elaborate guayabera shirt. His feet were clad in caiman-skin huaraches dyed the color of polished mahogany. The driver was Encarnación’s bodyguard, the stolid armed man beside him belonged to the Aztec.

  Nothing more was said on the drive to Encarnación’s mansion. Both men knew the value of silence and of presenting business at the proper time and place. Neither man was possessed of an impetuous nature. They were not prone to make a move before its time.

  The familiar streets, avenues, and squares slid by in a blur of color and cacophonous noise. Bursts of bougainvillea crawled up the stucco sides of restaurants and tavernas, lumbering buses belched carbonized particulates. They passed by the square of Santo Domingo, inhabited by evangelistas with their old bulky typewriters, banging out for the city’s illiterates letters of love or condolences, simple contracts to be explained and signed, eviction notices to be delivered orally, occasionally short, stark missives of bile and hate. The sleek armored SUV maneuvered nimbly in the rattling sea of taxis painted in violent colors and trucks and buses packed with stinking men, women, children, and animals. While church and cathedral bells clanged incessantly, it passed through the thick, grainy, wallowing morass of the city on its way to the cleanly exalted Colonia Polanco, and nestled within its heart, the villa, screened by high walls and pines, secured by electrified fences.

  Beautiful as it was, with finely wrought designs and magnificent scrollwork, Encarnación’s mansion was built like a fortress, an absolute necessity, even for him, in the city’s crime-ridden environs. Yet it wasn’t the increasingly powerful drug lords the premises were fortified against, but the shifting political landscape, unstable as quicksand. Over the years, Encarnación had witnessed too many of his supposedly invulnerable friends plowed under by regime changes. He had vowed that would never happen to him.

  It was the time of la comida, the grand theatrical lunch of the City of the Aztecs, a meal taken as seriously as a saint’s festival and with an almost religious fervor. It started at 2:30, often lasting until 6 PM. Grilled meat with assertive pasilla chilies; baby eels, white as sugar, in a thick, vinegary stew; grilled fish; flour tortillas, hot and steaming from the griddle; chicken mole; and, of course, bottles of aged tequila set the long plank table in Encarnación’s paneled, light-filled dining room to groaning.

  The two men sat opposite each other, drank a toast with tequila the color of sherry, then set about sating their immense appetites, at least for the time being. They were served by Anunciata, the nubile daughter of Maria-Elena, Encarnación’s longtime cook. Seeing something special in her, he had relieved her of learning the finer points of cooking with the thousand varieties of fried peppers and exquisite moles, and was instead teaching her the finer points of disruptive technology in cyberspace. Her mind was as active and nubile as her body.

  When their bellies were full, the dishes cleared, and the espressos and cigars served, Anunciata brought in enormous mugs of hot chocolate laced with chilies, which she proceeded to whip into a froth with a traditional wooden molinillo. This was the most important part of the ritual. Mexicans believe that the powerful spirit of the drink lives in the foam. Placing a mug in front of each man, she vanished as silently as she had appeared, leaving the two men alone to discuss their Machiavellian plans.

  The Aztec was in a jovial mood. “Little by little, like hair falling from an aging scalp, the president is ceding power to us.”

  “We run this city.”

  “We have control, yes.” Don Tulio cocked his head. “This does not please you, Don Maceo?”

  “On the contrary.” Encarnación sipped his hot chocolate meditatively. It wasn’t until he tasted this magnificent drink that he truly knew he was home. “But gaining control and maintaining it are two very different animals. Succeeding at the one does not guarantee the other. The country abides, Don Tulio. Long after you and I are dust, Mexico remains.” Like a professor in a classroom, he lifted a finger. “Do not make the mistake of taking on the country, Don Tulio. Governments can be toppled, regimes can be replaced. To defy Mexico itself, to take it on, to think you can overthrow it, is hubris, a fatal mistake that will bury you, no matter the length and breadth of your power.”

  The Aztec, not quite seeing where the conversation was going, opened his spatulate hands. Besides, he wasn’t altogether certain what hubris meant. “Is this the problem?”

  “It is a problem, a discussion for another day. It is not the problem.” Encarnación savored a draft of the chilied chocolate foam, sweet and spicy. “Yes,” he said, licking his lips. “The problem.”

  Extracting a pen and pad from his breast pocket, he scribbled something on the top sheet, tore it off, folded it in half, and passed it across the table. The Aztec looked at him for a moment, then lowered his gaze as his fingers took hold of the folded sheet and opened it to read what Encarnación had written.

  “Thirty million dollars?” he said.

  Encarnación bared his teeth.

  “How could this happen?”

  Encarnación, rolling the hot chocolate around his mouth, looked up at the ceiling. “This is why I asked you to meet me at the airport. Somewhere between Comitán de Dominguez and Washington, DC, the thirty million disappeared.”

  The Aztec put down his cup. He looked distressed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Our partner claims the thirty million is counterfeit. I know, I couldn’t believe it myself, so much so that I sent two experts, not one. Our partner is right. The real thirty million that started its journey in Comitán de Dominguez ended up counterfeit.”

  The Aztec grunted. “How did the partner find out?”

  “These people are different, Don Tulio. Among other things, they have a great deal of experience counterfeiting money.”

  Don Tulio wet his lips, his brow furrowed in concentration. “The thirty million changed hands a number of times
over many thousands of miles.” Comitán de Dominguez, in the south of Mexico, was the first distribution point for the drug shipments originating in Colombia, transshipped through Guatemala, crossing the border into Mexico. “It means there is a thief inside.”

  At that, Encarnación’s fist slammed down on the table, upsetting his cup, spilling hot chocolate over the embroidered lace tablecloth, a present his paternal grandmother had received on her wedding day. The Aztec’s eyes opened wide even as his body froze.

  “A thief inside,” Encarnación echoed. “Yes, Don Tulio, you have caught the essence of the problem in its entirety. A very clever thief, indeed. A traitor!” His eyes blazed, his hand trembled with barely suppressed rage. “You know who that thirty million belongs to, Don Tulio. It’s taken me five years of the most delicate, frustrating, and nerve-racking negotiations to get to this point. Our buyers must take possession of that money within forty-eight hours or the deal, everything I’ve worked toward, will be flushed. Have you any idea what it took to make those people trust me? Dios de diablos, Don Tulio! There is no reasoning with those people. Their word is ironclad. There is no wiggle room, no elasticity whatsoever. We are bound to them, and them to us. Till death do us part, comprende, hombre?”

  His fist came down again, rattling cups and saucers. “This does not happen in my house, this cannot happen. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Absolutely, Don Maceo.” The Aztec knew when he was being dismissed. He rose. “Rest assured this problem will be solved.”

  Encarnación’s eyes followed the Aztec as a predator will its prey. “Within the next twenty-four hours you will bring me both the thirty million and the head of this traitor. This is the solution I demand, Don Tulio. The only solution possible.”

  The Aztec, eyes as opaque as those of a dead fish, inclined his head. “Your will, Don Maceo, my hand.”

  When Bogs reached the area surrounding the Treadstone headquarters, he pulled the car up to the curb but restrained Dick Richards as he was about to get out.