Page 12 of The Bourne Dominion (Jason Bourne 9)

  He didn’t have long to wait. Vegas came upon Suarez’s head. Using the end of the shotgun barrel, he turned the thing around so it faced him. Immediately he reared back and, raising the shotgun to the ready, backed away, peering through the downpour with an ominous look in his eyes.

  That was all Bourne needed. Vegas had recognized Suarez and had been unsurprised by his presence in the jeep. If Essai had been telling the truth, it was possible that Vegas had been preparing himself for an assault by the Domna. If Bourne was reading the situation correctly, Vegas was quits with the Domna and had been preparing himself for their violent response. This would explain why he and Rosie hadn’t cut and run. There was nowhere he could go that the Domna couldn’t find him. At least here he was on familiar territory; he knew it better than anyone they would send. And he was prepared.

  Vegas was someone whom Bourne could respect. He was his own man; he’d made a difficult and obviously dangerous decision, but he’d made it nonetheless.

  “Estevan,” he said, stepping out of the towering pine’s shadow.

  Vegas swung the shotgun in his direction and Bourne raised his hands, palms outward.

  “Easy,” Bourne said, standing absolutely still. “I’m a friend. I’ve come to help you.”

  “Help me? What you mean is help me into my grave.”

  The noise of the rain was so great the two men were obliged to shout at each other, as if they were in a stadium filled with screaming fans.

  “We have something in common, you and I,” Bourne said. “Severus Domna.”

  In reply, Vegas hawked and spit at a spot almost exactly between them.

  “Yes,” Bourne said.

  Vegas stared at him for a moment, and that was when Rosie appeared through the pines. She held a Glock in one hand. Her arm was extended, straight as an arrow, pointed at Bourne.

  Vegas’s eyes opened wide. “Rosie—!”

  But his warning came too late. She had let herself get too close to Bourne. He grabbed her outstretched arm, swung her around, and, as he disarmed her, held her tight against him.

  “Estevan,” Bourne said. “Lower the shotgun.”

  Bourne could see Vegas’s love for Rosie in the older man’s eyes, and he felt a fleeting twinge of envy. The normalcy of the world of sunlight would never be his. There was no point dreaming about it.

  The moment Vegas lowered the shotgun, Bourne released Rosie, who ran to her man. Vegas wrapped one arm around her.

  “I told you to stay inside.” Vegas’s voice was gruff with worry. “Why did you disobey me?”

  “I was worried for you. Who knows how many men they sent?”

  Apparently, Vegas had no answer for that. He turned his bleak gaze on Bourne and the Glock still in his possession. “Now what?”

  Bourne walked toward them. Seeing Vegas tense, he reversed the Glock in his grip. “Now I give you your gun back.” He held it out. “I have no need of it.”

  “It was just you and Suarez?”

  Bourne nodded.

  “Why were you with him?”

  “I ran into a FARC roadblock and took him hostage,” Bourne said.

  Vegas seemed impressed.

  “We weren’t followed,” Bourne added. “I made sure of that.”

  Vegas looked at the Glock, then up into Bourne’s face. Surprise was replaced by a spark of curiosity. He took the Glock and said, “I’ve had enough of this rain. I think we all have.”

  Hendricks almost didn’t recognize Maggie when they met at the restaurant he had chosen. She had on an indigo dress and black high heels. But she wore no jewelry, just an inexpensive but functional watch. Her hair was loose, longer than had seemed possible when she was wearing a hat. In her baggy gardener’s overalls she had seemed to have a tomboy’s figure, but the dress shattered that illusion. Her long legs tapered to tiny ankles. Whoever invented high heels, Hendricks thought, must have been a man in love with the female form. Amanda had worn them only infrequently, complaining of how uncomfortable they were. When he had pointed out that her friend Micki always wore high heels, Amanda told him that Micki had been wearing them for so long she could no longer wear flats—the high heels had foreshortened the tendons in her arches. “Barefoot, she walks on tiptoes,” Amanda had told him.

  Hendricks found himself wondering what Maggie would look like barefoot.

  He was about to give his car over to the valet when Maggie waved the boy away. When she slid into the passenger’s seat, she said, “I’d rather eat at Vermilion, so I made reservations there. Do you know it?”

  “In Alexandria?”

  She nodded. “Eleven-twenty King Street.”

  He put the car in gear.

  “Have you been there before?”

  “Once.” He was thinking of his first-anniversary celebration with Amanda. What an amazing night that had been, starting with Vermilion and ending at dawn curled and drowsing in each other’s arms.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m willful,” she said.

  He smiled. “I don’t know you well enough.”

  She settled back in the seat as he pulled out into traffic, heading for the Key Bridge and Alexandria. Her hands were very still in her lap. “The fact is, I’m a dessertaholic—is that a word?”

  “It is now.”

  Her laugh was low and liquid. He drank in her scent as if it were the bouquet given off by a single-malt scotch. His nostrils flared and he felt a stirring in his core.

  “Anyway, there’s a dessert at Vermilion—salted profiteroles—that’s my favorite. I haven’t had them in a long time.”

  “You’ll have them tonight.” Hendricks maneuvered around traffic, the car containing his detail for the night right behind him. “Two portions if that’s your desire.”

  She looked at him. The oncoming headlights turned her eyes glittery.

  “I like that,” she said softly. “A man who’s not afraid of turning me into a glutton.”

  They were on the bridge now, the city’s monuments lit up, turning the evening sky gold and gray.

  “I can’t imagine you being a glutton.”

  Maggie sighed. “Sometimes,” she said, “there’s a certain excitement in overindulging.”

  He frowned. “I’m not sure I—”

  “It’s the forbidden nature of the act, do you know what I mean?”

  Hendricks didn’t, but he was beginning to wish that he did.

  You’ve never done anything forbidden, have you?”

  Maggie, a martini in her hand, watched him from across the table at Vermilion, an atmospheric town house. Their table was beside a window, and from their second-floor perch they could watch the nighttime parade of young people—tourists and residents alike—as they passed by on the sidewalk below.

  “You’ve always been the good fellow.”

  Hendricks was both nettled and fascinated that she had nailed him so quickly. “What makes you say that?”

  She took a sip of her drink. It looked like it had twinkly lights in the center of it. “You smell like one of the good ones.”

  He smiled uncertainly. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

  She put her drink down and, leaning forward, took his free hand in hers. Turning it over, she smoothed open his fingers so she could study his palm. The instant she took hold of him, Hendricks felt an electric pulse travel up his arm, into his chest, before settling in his groin. He felt as if he had stepped into a tub of warm water.

  Her eyes flicked up to engage his, and he had the distinct sense that she knew precisely what he was feeling. A slow smile spread across her face, but it was without irony or guile.

  “You’re an older brother or else an only child. Either way, you were the firstborn.”

  “That’s true,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation.

  “That’s why you have such a strong sense of duty and responsibility. Firstborns always do; it’s like it’s hardwired into them before birth.”

  Slowly and sensually, her forefinger traced the crea

ses on his palm. “You were the good son, the good man.”

  “I wasn’t such a good husband—at least the first time. And I certainly wasn’t a good father.”

  “Your duty is to job and country.” Her eyes seemed to gather him in. “Those things come first—they always did, yes?”

  “Yes,” Hendricks said. He found that he was inexplicably hoarse.

  He cleared his throat, took his hand from hers, and drank half of his single-malt. This intemperate act caused his eyes to water, and he almost choked.

  “Careful,” Maggie said. “You’ll bring your babysitters running.”

  Hendricks, his cheeks pink, nodded. He wiped his eyes with his napkin and cleared his throat again.

  “Better,” Maggie said.

  He wasn’t sure whether that was a question, in which case it would require a response. He let it go and sipped the remains of his scotch.

  “So how many languages do you speak?”

  She shrugged. “Seven. Does it matter?”

  “Merely curious.”

  But it was more than that. Part of him, already infatuated, sat back with eyes closed, but the other part, the always vigilant good fellow, as Maggie herself put it, wanted to vet her. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the government’s vetting process—though he could name numerous cases where it had missed something vital—but rather he trusted his own instincts more.

  He handed her a menu and opened his own. “What do you feel like? Or would you prefer to have the profiteroles first?”

  She looked past the menu and smiled. “You’re so sad. Is it me? Would you rather we do this another time, or not at all? Because that would be—”

  “No, no.” Hendricks found himself raising his voice to ensure that he stopped her. “Please, Maggie. Just…” He looked away, his eyes losing their focus for a moment.

  As if sensing his shift in mood, she tapped the menu. “You know what I love here? The soft-shell crab BLT.”

  His gaze swung back to her, and he smiled. “No profiteroles?”

  She returned his smile. “Now I think of it, tonight I just might want another kind of dessert.”

  11

  WHEN JALAL ESSAI left Bourne, he boarded a flight to Bogotá and then ninety minutes later transferred to an overseas flight, just as he told Bourne he would do. After that, however, it was a different story.

  He flew to Madrid and then to Seville, where he hired a car and began his journey to Cadiz on the southwest coast of Spain. Cadiz had a storied history. Depending on whom you believed, it was founded either by the Phoenicians or, following Greek legend, by Hercules. The Phoenicians called it Gadir, the Walled City. The Greeks knew it as Gadira. According to legend, Hercules built the city after he had killed the three-headed monster, Geryon, completing his tenth labor. In any event, Cadiz was Western Europe’s oldest continuously settled city. It had passed through the hands of a number of legendary conquerors—the Carthaginians, Hannibal, the Romans, the Visigoths, and the Moors, who ruled Qdis between 711 and 1262. It was from the Arabic that the modern name, Cadiz, was derived.

  Essai had cause to think on this history as his car jounced the seventy-some-odd miles from the Seville airport to the sandy spit on which Cadiz was built. The Moors had spent the most time in control of the city, and it looked it. Because of the sandy soil, there were no high-rises in Cadiz, so the skyline looked more or less the same as it had in medieval times. Though in Spain, the city had a distinctly North African aspect and feel to it.

  Following the map engraved in his mind, he entered the walls of Casco Antiguo, the old city. The cream-colored house off the Avenida de Duque de Nájera overlooked Playita de las Mujeres, one of the city’s most beautiful beaches. From the second-story rear windows all of Casco Antiguo presented itself like the history of southern Spain.

  Essai had called from the airport in Seville. Consequently, Don Fernando Hererra was expecting him. He opened the thick medieval wooden door as soon as Essai turned off the car’s engine.

  Don Fernando, who lived in Seville but maintained this second home as an occasional getaway, wore an immaculate summer-weight linen suit the exact shade of cream as the outside of his house. Though he was in his early seventies, his body was nevertheless lean and flat, as if he had been constructed in two dimensions instead of three, the vivid blue eyes made all the more prominent by his leathery skin, dark, wind-burned, and sun-wrinkled. Apart from his eyes, he might have been mistaken for a Moor.

  Essai got out of the car, stretched, and the two men embraced in the European style.

  Then Hererra frowned. “Where is Estevan?”

  “Estevan is fine. He’s being protected,” Essai said. “It’s a long story.”

  Hererra nodded, ushering Essai into the cool interior, but his worried expression did not abate.

  The house was built in the Moorish style, with a central open space cooled by fountains and the fronds of slender date palms, which clashed softly in the sea breeze.

  Hererra had set out food and drink on a beaten-brass tray atop a folding wooden table. After Essai had washed, the two men sat amid the shifting shadows and the musical plinking of the fountains, eating the foodstuffs of the desert bedouins with only their right hands, as the Arabs do.

  Hererra plucked a Valencia orange from a bowl. “Ahora,” he said. “Digame, por favor.” Taking out a folding knife with a long, thin blade, he began to peel the orange. “Estevan is not simply an employee of mine, he’s an old friend. I sent you to Colombia to fetch him and the woman and bring them back here before the Domna killed them.”

  “So it was a test.”

  Hererra separated an orange segment from the sphere. “If you want to think of it that way.”

  “How else should I think of it?” Essai was clearly upset. “You don’t trust me.”

  “Estevan isn’t here.” Hererra popped the orange segment into his mouth, then in a blur of motion pressed the knife blade against Essai’s throat. He pointed westward with his other hand. “Out there are the Pillars of Hercules. Legend says there is a phrase engraved on them: Non plus ultra.”

  “ ‘Nothing further beyond,’ ” Essai said.

  “Unless you explain yourself, Essai, there is nothing further for you beyond this point.”

  “You have no cause for either anger or concern.” Essai’s head was tilted back in a vain attempt to get away from the blade. He could feel the cool metal pressing against the pulse in his neck, and he fought the urge to swallow, a sure sign of his fear. “You sent me to bring Estevan Vegas back. But in Colombia I got a better idea. In Colombia I met Jason Bourne.”

  Hererra’s eyes opened wide. “You sent Bourne to fetch Estevan?”

  “You know Bourne personally, Don Fernando. Is there anyone better for the task? He’s certainly a better choice than I am, especially once I discovered that the Domna had readied its attack on Vegas.”

  Hererra’s eyes darkened. He put the knife away, but he was far from relaxed. “What did you tell Bourne?”

  “Not the truth, if that’s what you’re worried about. I told him that Vegas is a weak link in the Domna chain.”

  “That much is true.”

  “Lies require a certain amount of truth in order to be believable.”

  Hererra stared at the incomplete sphere of the orange and shook his head. “It’s never wise to lie to Bourne.”

  “He’ll never find out.”

  Hererra’s eyes flicked up. “How do you know? Estevan—”

  “Vegas isn’t going to say a word to Bourne. He has no reason to and every reason not to.”

  Hererra appeared to consider this for a moment. “I still don’t like it. You’ll have to contact Bourne, tell him to bring Estevan and the woman here. It’s too dangerous.”

  “There are tickets waiting for him in his name at a regional airport. When he gets to Seville, there will be a packet with the rest of the details.” Essai shrugged. “It’s the best I could do, under the circumstances.”

&

nbsp; “You should have manipulated the circumstances better,” Hererra said sourly. “You had Corellos in your pocket. What more did you need?”

  “Corellos is about as stable as a boat taking on water. The man’s a walking time bomb.”

  “All this may be true,” Hererra said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that Corellos is still useful to me.”

  “Owning Aguardiente Bancorp isn’t enough for you? It’s one of the largest financial institutions outside the United States.”

  Hererra looked up into the clattering fronds beyond which the sky shone as blue as his eyes. “Aguardiente is my day job.” He broke off another orange segment. “I need to be engaged at night.” His gaze, lowering like the sun, settled on Essai’s face. “You should understand that better than most.”

  Popping the segment into his mouth, he chewed reflectively for a moment, savoring the sweet-tart juice, then swallowed the pulp. “But this isn’t about me, Essai. It’s about Bourne.”

  He broke off a third segment, but instead of eating it he handed it to Essai. Then he waited, patient as a rshi in a Zen retreat.

  Essai sat with the segment balanced on the fingertips of his right hand, staring as if it were a sculpture he had just bought, not something to eat. “You know what he did to me.”

  “Invading your house is not something one forgives easily.”

  Essai was still staring at the orange segment. “Or at all.”

  Hererra grunted and put aside what was left of the orange. “Now I’ll tell you a secret, Essai. Bourne invaded my house, too.”

  Essai’s eyes snapped up to meet his, and Hererra nodded.

  “It’s true. He came to the house in Seville with a woman named Tracy Atherton, posing as—” He waved a hand dismissively. “What matters is that it was as much an invasion as his stealing into your home.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I?” Hererra appeared surprised by the question. “I did nothing. Bourne was doing what he had to do. He had no reason to trust me and every reason not to.” He allowed his echo of Essai’s own phrase to sink in before he continued. “There was nothing to do. It’s all part of the territory you and I and he inhabit.”