Page 13 of The Bourne Dominion (Jason Bourne 9)

  Essai frowned. “You think I’ve taken this too personally.”

  “I think you need to gain perspective.”

  “You ignore the differences between the Muslim and the Western worlds.”

  “It’s the Western world you’ve chosen to live in, Essai. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “He deserves—”

  “You’re using him to bring Estevan here; that’s enough. I know this man better than you do. It would be a mistake to push your luck.” Hererra pointed to the orange segment. “Don’t disappoint me.”

  After a moment, Essai pushed the fruit between his lips and bit down.

  Come, sit by the fire.” Estevan Vegas patted the raised stone hearth. “You’ll be dry in minutes.”

  Bourne stepped across the kitchen and sat beside the older man. Rosie was at the stove, seeing to dinner. Night had come on with a jaguar’s rush. Lashings of warm yellow light from the gas lamps Vegas had lit kept the dark from drifting in through the windows. The storm had abated, but the sky was still thick with filthy clouds. Outside, the blackness was absolute, it was as if they had been transported to the bottom of a well.

  “You were expecting Jalal Essai?”

  Vegas raised his eyebrows. “Is Essai in Colombia? I have no knowledge of that.”

  “Then these elaborate preparations—”

  Vegas’s eyes slid away. “For… others.”

  Bourne took the older man’s right hand in his, stretched out the forefinger. A pale circle of flesh bore witness to the ring that had been recently discarded. Vegas jerked his hand away as if Bourne had drawn it into the fire.

  “I know about the Domna,” Bourne said.

  “I have no idea—”

  “They are my enemies as well as yours.”

  Vegas rose abruptly. “This was a mistake.” He backed away from Bourne. “As soon as your clothes are dry you will leave.”

  Rosie turned from the oven. “Estevan, where are your manners? You can’t send this man out into the cold and dark.”

  “Rosie, stay out of this.” Vegas’s gaze remained on Bourne. “You don’t know—”

  “I know what it means to be a decent human being, mi amor.”

  She could have said more, but she didn’t. Instead, her eyes willed Vegas’s to meet her own. It was there the argument was decided.

  “Fine,” he grunted. “But first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Rosie’s smile burst across her face like sunlight. “Yes, mi amor. As you wish.” She pulled the roast out of the oven. “Now, por favor, offer our guest a drink before the poor man dies of thirst.”

  Bourne carried his cachaça—a fiery liquor made from fermented sugarcane—and stood by a window. Behind him, Rosie was making the final preparations for dinner and Vegas was adding another place setting at the table.

  He saw only his face in ghostly reflection, which was fitting, he thought. I’m only a shadow, moving through a world of shadows. His thoughts turned to Jalal Essai. Was he still working for the Domna? He had certainly been moving contraband through Suarez and his FARC cadre. Suarez was a member of the Domna, but he was also a political creature. FARC had been Suarez’s life, fighting against the Colombian government. So was Essai using him for his own purposes? But what could those purposes be? Was the story about his daughter a fabrication, as well? If so, then his plan for a murderous revenge against the Domna was also a lie. Bourne took a sip of the liquor. It was possible that Essai’s grudge was against Benjamin El-Arian personally and not the Domna collectively. That scenario put an entirely new spin on the situation. If it had any basis in fact. The truth was, Jalal Essai was a complete mystery. Neither his actions nor his motives were clear.

  Once again, Bourne thought, he was in a place where he could trust no one.

  He was called to dinner by Rosie. When he turned, she was smiling sweetly at him, her arm outstretched to the waiting chair. In her own unconventional way, she was quite beautiful, Bourne thought, with her long black hair, coffee-colored eyes, and dusky-rose skin. She was trim, with little fat on her, testament to living in the middle of nowhere. She wore no makeup nor any jewelry, save for a gold stud in each earlobe. Her teeth were white and even, her mouth generous, her smile as warm as her manner. Bourne liked her, liked as well the manner in which she handled Vegas. It wasn’t easy for females in such a macho society.

  Vegas was already at the head of the table, which was laden with stew, potatoes, two green leafy vegetables, and fresh bread that, as Rosie explained, she had made that morning. Vegas said a brief prayer, then they ate in silence for some time. A carved wooden crucifix observed them coolly from its place on one wall. The food was delicious, and Rosie beamed when Bourne said as much.

  “So,” Vegas said, wiping his lips with a soiled cloth, “where is he?”

  Bourne looked at him. “Where is who?”

  “Essai.”

  “Then you do know he was in Colombia.”

  “I hoped as much, anyway. I was told he would come and take us away before—” With a quick glance at Rosie he stopped short.

  “You can say the name, mi amor.” She was eating slowly, with very small bites, as if afraid if she ate her fill there wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her man and their guest. “I won’t curl up and die.”

  Vegas crossed himself. “God forbid!” He scowled. “Never say such a thing, Rosie. Never!”

  “As you wish.” Rosie lowered her gaze to her plate as she commenced eating again.

  Vegas redirected his attention to Bourne. “As you have witnessed, we are prepared for the inevitable, but I no longer want to stay where we will eventually become vulnerable.”

  “But the Domna is everywhere.”

  “Essai has promised us asylum.”

  “And you trust him?”

  “I do.” Vegas shrugged. “But honestly, what choice do we have?”

  Bourne thought about that and decided that they had no choice. “Why is the Domna attacking you inevitable?” He put down his fork. “What have you done?”

  Vegas was silent for a very long time. Just when Bourne was thinking he might not respond, he did.

  “It’s what I haven’t done that has the maricóns worried.” Vegas shoveled food into his mouth and chewed contemplatively.

  Bourne waited in vain for him to finish. As Vegas took a swig of peasant wine, he said, “What did the Domna want you to do?”

  Vegas smacked his lips. “Spy. They wanted me to spy on my employer and one of my oldest friends. He’s the man who gave me a job when I was broke, a drunkard being thrown out of bars in Bogotá. And spending nights in one alleyway or another. I was young, then, foolish and angry.” He shook his head. “Dios, so angry.” He took another swig of wine, perhaps to fortify himself. “I made my living—if you could call it that—putting my old trusty knife to the throats of nighttime passersby and stealing their money.”

  He looked up at the crucifix and scratched the back of his hand. “I was lost, a wastrel, no good for anything, or so I thought. One night, my fortune changed. This man—my intended victim—disarmed me in the blink of an eye. To tell you the truth, my heart wasn’t in that business—it wasn’t in anything. But I had nothing else.”

  He shrugged, staring at the dregs of the wine in his glass. He moved to refill it, but Rosie slid the bottle out of his reach. He didn’t go after it. Perhaps, Bourne thought, this was a daily ritual between them.

  “What spark of life this man saw in me I can’t say, but see it he did.” Vegas cleared his throat as if he was struggling to keep emotion at bay. “He cleaned me up, took me to his oil field, trained me from the ground up. I found something within me—call it a home, I don’t know. Anyway, it was a place where I felt safe, protected. I worked hard, I loved the hard work. It afforded me a pleasure so acute it was just shy of pain. And now here I am, many years later, having learned my lessons well, running his oil fields for him. I have an instinct for it. I believe he knew even when I did not.” His eyes shone a

s his gaze centered on Bourne. “And in all those years—it’s decades now—he never told me why he took me off the street.”

  “You never asked.”

  Vegas turned his head away, as if looking into Rosie’s face would calm him. “That would have been a breach of whatever it was that brought us together.” He sighed now, and pushed his plate away. “This is the man I was ordered to spy on.” His head swung around and now there was the flint of genuine anger in his eyes. “It was a test, you see. A test of my loyalty. And I passed. My loyalty, now and forever, is to Don Fernando.”

  For a moment, Bourne thought he had misheard. “What is Don Fernando’s family name?”

  “Hererra. Don Fernando Hererra.” Vegas continued eating.

  Bourne smiled, still trying to figure out the vectors and implications of this crucial nugget of information. Suarez was moving contraband for Essai. Essai was somehow tied to Hererra, who owned the oil fields Vegas was managing. Hererra had also, somehow, come under the scrutiny of the Domna. Still to be determined: why. Not to mention how Jalal Essai and Hererra had hooked up.

  Rosie cocked her head. “Why are you smiling, señor?”

  “Don Fernando is a friend,” Bourne said.

  Vegas looked up. “How fateful! Essai did well in sending you here. You’ll be our shepherd. Tomorrow we will begin our long journey to Don Fernando.”

  After dinner, Hendricks offered to drive Maggie home.

  “Let’s go to your place,” she said. “I want to check up on the roses.”

  “Do I have to pay you overtime?”

  She smiled. “This is for me.”

  She got out of the car as they pulled up to his town house. The following car slid to a halt a discreet distance down the block, but still well within range of getting to Hendricks before anything untoward could happen to him. He could imagine his guards worrying that Maggie would hit him over the head with one of her spiked heels.

  In fact, Maggie, on the grass, had just taken off her shoes. They dangled from the crook of her forefinger as she stepped lightly across the jewel-box lawn to the rose bed. Kneeling, she whispered to the bushes, touching each one as if they were her children.

  When she rose and turned to him, she was smiling. “They’ll be fine. Better than fine. You’ll see.”

  “I have no doubt.” Hendricks led her up the brick stairs and opened the front door. All the lights were off for security reasons, and, as he shut the door behind them, they were bathed in a darkness striped intermittently by the streetlights. Occasionally, a powerful beam from one of the guards’ flashlights passed across one of the windows.

  “Just like prison,” Maggie said.

  “What?” He turned to her, startled by her comment.

  “The guard towers. The searchlights. You know.”

  He stared at her, the hairs at the base of his neck stirring. She was right, of course, he—and all politicians at his level and above—lived in a kind of prison. He had never thought of it that way before. Or maybe he had. Hadn’t Amanda mentioned something of the sort during their dinner at Vermilion? He passed a hand across his forehead. This evening and the one with Amanda were becoming confused in his mind, blurring. But that was utter nonsense.

  Suddenly he became acutely aware that the two of them were standing in the semi-darkness. “Would you like a drink?”

  “I don’t know. How long am I staying?”

  “That depends on you.”

  She laughed lightly. “What will your bodyguards say?”

  “They’re trained to be discreet.”

  “You mean our sex tape won’t end up on Perez Hilton or Defamer?”

  Hendricks felt a fluttering at the base of his belly. “I don’t… I don’t know who those people are.”

  She came over to him and he breathed deeply of her special scent. His throat constricted so badly he could barely get the words out. “Do you want to sleep with me?” He sounded like such a schoolboy!

  But she didn’t laugh. “Yes, but not tonight. Tonight I’d like to talk. Is that all right?”

  “Yes. Of course.” He cleared his throat. “But I haven’t talked to a woman since…” He could not evoke Amanda’s name, not here, not now. “In a long time.”

  “It’s all right, Christopher. Neither have I.”

  He led her to one of the sofas—his favorite. He often fell asleep on it, late at night, with a report open on his chest. His bed still felt cold without Amanda lying beside him. He liked that Maggie called him Christopher, no one did these days, not even the president. He despised the term Mr. Secretary. It seemed to him something to hide behind.

  As they had settled on the cushions, he reached for a lamp on the end table closest to him, but she stopped him.

  “Please. I prefer it just the way it is.”

  The glare from the guards’ flashlights had become more intermittent as they returned to their constant patrol. Pale bars of streetlight striped the rug at their feet, illuminated the bottoms of their legs. He saw that she had not put her shoes back on. She had beautiful feet. What was the rest of her like, he wondered.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he said. “What were your parents like?” He paused. “Was that too personal?”

  “No, no.” When she shook her head, her hair floated around her face like a liquid frame. “But there’s not much to tell, really. My mother was Swedish, my father American, but they divorced when I was little and my mother took me to Iceland for five years or so, before returning to Sweden.” This was true, enabling her to better sell the lie of her Maggie Penrod legend. “I came to the States when I was twenty-one, mainly to see my father, whom I hadn’t seen since the divorce.” She paused for a moment, staring into space. More truth was emerging than she had intended. What did that say about her? “I don’t know who or what I expected to find here, but my father wasn’t happy to see me. Maybe it was the illness—he was dying of emphysema—but really, it seemed to me that his imminent death would make him all the more grateful for my presence.”

  Hendricks waited a moment before speaking. “He wasn’t, though.”

  “Something of an understatement.”

  Her smile was grim. It did something to her face he didn’t like. He wanted to put his arm around her. But he made no move.

  “He had forgotten I existed. In fact, he denied who I was, said I was an impostor out to get his money after he died. He said he’d never had a daughter. In the end, his nurse showed me the door. She was big and burly—I guess she had to be in order to carry him around. But she was so intimidating that I left without saying another word.”

  “Did you try to go back?”

  “I was so hurt I couldn’t make up my mind. By the time I decided to try again, he was already dead.” She hated her father, hated everything about him, including his American crudeness at fucking another woman while he was still with Skara’s mother, his arrogance at leaving her alone in Sweden with a small child he cared nothing about, his narcissism that insisted he had never given life to her. Leaving a wife was one thing, and might under any number of circumstances be excused, but to deny your child’s existence was unforgivable.

  Much to her dismay, she discovered tears rolling down her cheeks. Leaning over, elbows on thighs, she put her face into her hands. Her head was about to explode. She felt crushed underfoot, as if her heart was breaking all over again. But, so strangely that it made her dizzy, a part of her had separated itself, as if she were watching her own grief the way she might watch the rushes of a film, raw and overfilled with emotion.

  Now Hendricks did touch her. He put a hand lightly on her shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t be,” she said, not unkindly. “I can’t—I won’t be sorry for myself.” Picking her head up, she turned to him. Her tear-streaked face seemed suddenly very young and vulnerable. “I don’t often remember the past—and I never tell anyone about it.”

  Naturally, Hendricks was flattered. Recognizing that, she felt

the divide within herself widen. In deep-cover work, there existed the possibility of wanting to be your legend, of feeling as if you never wanted to leave the circumstances in which you found yourself. This, Skara sensed, was what might be happening to her now. She was being drawn toward her Maggie identity and away from Skara. She was comfortable in this house, comfortable with Christopher Hendricks. He was not at all how she pictured him—the cynical, double-dealing, greedy American politician. The human face on the target was, she knew, the most dangerous aspect of cover work.

  Hendricks, sitting next to her, was of course unaware of her thoughts. And yet, the connection between them he had sensed when they first met had strengthened and deepened during the course of the evening to such an extent that he felt the conflict within her, though he was unable to divine its nature.

  “Maggie,” he said now, “is there anything I can do?”

  “Take me home, Christopher.”

  And she meant it from the bottom of her cynical, double-dealing, greedy heart.

  Karpov took the U-bahn to the Milbertshofen stop and walked several blocks to Knorrstrasse. The watchmaker Hermann Bolger’s shop was on the second floor of a narrow old-fashioned building incongruously sandwiched between an ultramodern branch of Commerzbank and the garish facade of a fast-food chain sandwich shop.

  Outside, an ancient sign depicting clockwork innards creaked in the fitful filthy wind. The stairs were steep and very narrow, the gray marble hollowed by decades of foot treads. The stairway smelled faintly of oil and hot metal. A radio was playing somewhere above him, a sad Germanic song that made him clench his teeth. Boris passed a small window, through whose grimy panes he could just make out a cramped back alley lined with galvanized garbage cans.

  Bolger’s shop door was open and Karpov stepped in. It was a small space. The sad German song sung by a sad and smoky female voice swirled around the shop, emanating from the innards of the place. Three walls were filled with clocks on shelves. Boris peered at them; they all seemed to be genuine antiques. In front of him was a low counter with a glass top and sides. Inside were watches in stainless steel and gold—all, he saw, as he bent to take a closer look, custom-made, presumably by Herr Bolger himself.