The Bourne Dominion (15 page)

The infrared setup was a surprise. Bourne didn’t want another, so he had decided to have Suarez drive the jeep the rest of the way while he explored Vegas’s property on foot.

T
he proof of Bourne’s prudence was at this moment staring up at him with empty eye sockets. He felt no remorse at having sent Suarez to his death. The commander was a stone-cold killer, and given half a chance he would have shot Bourne through the heart.

He watched Vegas move cautiously around the wreckage, poking here and there with the shotgun barrel. When Vegas found one of Suarez’s arms, he crouched down, examining it closely. From that point on, he concentrated on body parts. Slowly, methodically, his search took him in concentric circles, farther and farther from ground zero, closer and closer to Bourne’s position under the pine.

The rain was still torrential, the hidden sky coming apart with scars of lightning and booming thunder. Bourne’s vision wavered, blended with a newly risen memory shard, which took over. Bourne had slogged through a near blizzard to get to the disco where Alex Conklin had sent him to terminate the target. The fast-melting remnants lay on the fur collar of his coat as he made his way through the packed club. In the ladies’ room, he had fitted the silencer to his handgun, kicked open the door.

The icy blonde’s face was set, almost resigned. Even though she was armed, she had no illusions about what was about to happen. Was that why she had opened her mouth, why she had spoken to him just before he had ended her life?

What was it she had said? He combed through the memory shard, trying to hear her voice. In Colombia, in the intense downpour, he heard a woman’s voice shouting across the thunder, and now he heard the icy blonde’s voice, so similar in pitch and in desperation.

“
There is no—
”

There is no what?
Bourne asked himself. What had she been trying to tell him? He searched through what was left of the memory but it was already breaking up like an ice floe in summer, the images fading, becoming gauzy and indistinct.

A sound close by startled him back into the present. Vegas had found one of Suarez’s legs, and, rising from his scrutiny of it, was looking around. He spotted Suarez’s head and began to make his way toward it, a deep frown furrowing his brow. Bourne wondered whether he would recognize the burn-mutilated face.

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.”

H
endricks 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.

Y
ou’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 creases 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.”

W
HEN 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 Q
dis between 711 and 1262. It was from the Arabic that the modern name,
Cadiz
, was derived.