The Bourne Dominion (25 page)

“I sound educated, yes?”

“I admire your vocabulary.”

Her laughter was deep and rich. “Yes, someone like you would.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“No? You are alone, always alone. I think this is the essential thing about you—it defines how you think and everything you do.” She cocked her head. “You have no answer for this?”

“I don’t know a single thing about you.”

She touched the scars on her neck and chest. “But I think you do.”

“The margay.”

“She was so beautiful,” Rosie said, “but I got in her way.”

“No,” Bourne said. “You frightened her.”

Rosie looked away, out her window at the passing scenery, which was nothing much, a series of hypnotically undulating hills, some covered in groves of gnarled, dusty-looking olive trees.

Bourne glanced again in the rearview mirror. There was a red Fiat he was keeping an eye on, though he doubted any professional tail would be driving a red car.

“Stumbling over a margay’s den,” he said, “that doesn’t sound like the kind of behavior I’d expect from someone who was born and raised in the Cordilleras.”

“I was running. Crossing a stream, I slipped on a mossy rock and hurt my knee. I wasn’t looking where I was going; I was frightened.”

“You were running away.”

“Yes.”

“From whom?”

Rosie tossed her head. “You’re always running. You should know.”

“I was told you were running away from your family.”

She nodded. “That is true.”

“I’ve never done that.”

“And yet you’re alone, always alone,” she said. “It must be exhausting.”

Vegas leaned forward. “Rosie, for the love of God!” He turned to Bourne. “I apologize for her.”

Bourne shrugged. “The world is full of opinions.”

“I know why you run,” Rosie said. “It is so nothing will touch you.”

Bourne’s eyes flicked again to the rearview mirror, the red Fiat, then to Rosie’s face, but once again her eyes were averted.

“I suppose there’s not much call for a psychologist in Ibagué,” he said. “Is that where you were born?”

“I am Achagua,” Rosie said. “From the serpent line.”

Bourne, an expert in comparative languages, knew that the Achagua had named their different family lineages after animals: serpent, jaguar, fox, bat, tapir.

“Do you speak the language—Irantxe?”

A slow smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Nice try. I’m impressed. Really. But no, Irantxe is its own language. The Achagua spoke any number of Maipurean dialects depending on whether they lived in the mountains or the Amazon basin.” Her smile broadened. “Please tell me you don’t speak any of those languages.”

“I don’t,” Bourne said.

“Neither do I. They were spoken a very long time ago. Even my father had no knowledge of them.”

Bourne’s eyes returned to the rearview mirror. He could no longer see the red Fiat and, instead, began to concentrate on the black van up ahead. Over the past fifteen minutes, it had had several opportunities to change lanes and speed, but it hadn’t done so. Instead it had maintained its position four vehicles ahead of him.

Checking his side mirror, he waited for a break in the traffic, then, without signaling, shot forward into the left-hand lane. Within seconds he had passed the black van. He watched it firmly planted in his rearview, receding slowly from view. Then it changed lanes and accelerated.

Now he began to look for the box, a tailing maneuver extremely difficult to shake since it involved vehicles in front and behind.

“What’s happening?” Vegas said.

Bourne could feel the anxiety radiating from him like waves of heat.

“There are people on this road who shouldn’t be here,” Bourne said. “Sit back.”

Rosie gripped the handle above her door but said nothing. Her face was set in neutral. She knew when to keep quiet, Bourne thought.

The black van had established a position a car’s length behind him. Apparently, the driver understood he had been made.

Bourne checked ahead, but saw no other black van. He saw two-seater sports cars, a bus full of Japanese tourists, cameras held in front of their faces, and sedans with families. There were also a wide variety of trucks, including a semi, but none of these vehicles seemed likely to be part of the box.

He tried varying his speed, noting how each vehicle in front of him reacted, but he got no definitive read. He thought it interesting—and worrisome—that though the black van had announced itself, the second vehicle was still incognito. He wondered what that meant because it wasn’t part of the box playbook, which dictated all-in or all-out. Once one of the vehicles in the box was made, usually the two vehicles either peeled off or closed in.

Suddenly the black van made its move, coming up on Bourne’s left. He switched into the center lane and, moments later, it followed. He kept going, into the right-hand lane even though the semi was now in
front of him. If the black van followed, he could always swing around the semi’s left.

With a burst of speed, the black van cut off a chugging sedan as it swerved into the right-hand lane behind Bourne. Bourne looked for a break in the traffic to switch to the center lane, but even as he plotted vectors the black van came up dangerously close behind him. He accelerated, and, at that precise moment, the rear of the semi slammed down, its edge casting off a shower of sparks as it dragged along the roadbed.

The moment Bourne saw it, he understood. The rear panel had been retrofitted as a ramp. The black van then gently rear-ended him, urging his rental car farther toward the ramp and the yawning empty interior of the semi, the box’s second vehicle. These people never meant to tail him, never meant to kill him: They meant to capture him, seal him in, and take him out of the field permanently.

S
oraya, struggling to stay conscious, dug her heels into the grit of the staircase. At the same time, she swiveled her hips to the left, moving them out of the way of her right elbow, which she drove into the soft spot in Marchand’s throat.

Marchand reared back, so shocked that he took his hands off the flex to belatedly protect his vulnerable throat. With her right hand, she tore the flex away from her throat. She slammed her knee into Marchand’s crotch. He gasped, bent over double, and she wrapped the flex around his neck, pulling on both ends so hard he collapsed to his knees.

He made little gasping sounds like a fish on the deck of a boat. He looked up at her, his watering eyes bloodshot and bulging. He tried to swipe at her with his right hand, then his left, but her grip on him was terminal.

She bent over, shoving her grim face in his. “Now, M. Marchand, you’re going to tell me what I want to know. You’re going to tell me now or by Allah I will take your life and your soul and I will grind them both to dust.”

He stared at her. His face was becoming bloated, dark with pooled
blood. Tears of pain spilled out of his eyes. She could see the whites all the way around.

“Ak, ak, ak” was all he could manage.

The moment she loosened the flex the smallest amount he lashed out at her, but she slammed her forehead into the bridge of his nose, resulting in a spray of blood that covered his upper lip, cheeks, and chin.

“Now talk,” she said. “Who did you call after we left your office?”

His eyes opened even wider. “How… how did you know?”

“Tell me.”

“Why bother? You will kill me anyway.” His voice sounded sodden, as if he were speaking to her from underwater.

“And why not? You were planning my death,” she said. “But unlike you, I might have a measure of mercy inside me. That’s the chance you’ll have to take.”

All of a sudden his shoulders slumped and he shrugged. “So I tell you. What does it matter? You won’t get out of here alive.”

Soraya had had enough of him. Her desire to break him into little pieces became overwhelming. Taking his broken nose in her hand, she turned it like a water faucet until new tears sprang from his eyes and he was panting like a pack animal about to collapse. Then and only then did she loosen the flex sufficiently.

She stared hard into his eyes. “Five seconds, four, three—”

He jabbed upward, his fist connecting with her left breast. Soraya saw stars and, staggering back, almost pitched off the stairs. Seizing his moment, Marchand sprang at her, his face purple, his cheeks blotchy, and his breath sawed raggedly from his throat. His hands throttled her, bending her backward as he attempted to pitch her off the staircase down into the blackness at the bottom.

Also struggling for breath, Soraya cursed herself for letting down her guard, while working to spread his forearms and mitigate his attack. But Marchand was out for blood.

Soraya punched and punched, but she lacked leverage, so her blows were having a minimal effect. Lights were bursting behind her eyes and she was having trouble thinking. She struggled mightily, but that only
seemed to worm her deeper into his grip. Slowly, inexorably, he pushed her backward against the railing, until her back was arched painfully.

Light and shadow danced spastically, eerily, as the bulb swung to her ever more desperate movements. She found herself staring at the light bulb, a miniature sun emanating from the coils. Then she blinked. She was at the tipping point and felt him marshaling his energy to heave her over the side. Her arm shot up. Grasping the base of the bulb, she slammed it into Marchand’s left eye.

He screamed as the glass shattered, piercing his eyeball. Soraya, feeling the pressure come off, shoved the broken base deeper in.

The corona of the electric shock spun her backward like a giant hand slap. She sucked in deep, shuddering breaths, desperate to return oxygen to her system. She felt harrowed, hollowed out.

Then she smelled burning flesh and almost gagged. She stood up straight, groaning, every muscle in her torso sore and aching. Marchand was on his knees. His hands were glued to the base of the bulb, which was buried in his eye socket. Muscles jumped and spasmed even as he fell over, his heart short-circuiting.

T
HE ONCOMING BLACK
van was behind Bourne, the semi ready to scoop them up in front. To the right was a two-foot shoulder ending in a galvanized-steel guardrail, beyond which was a steep drop-off into an olive grove clinging to the side of a hill. On his left was a convertible Mercedes, the oblivious driver bobbing his head to the music pouring out of his speakers. There was no time for thought, only instinct forged by years of training and hard experience.

Bourne accelerated, closing the car’s-length distance between him and the ramp. Then he was on the ramp itself, the nose of the rental car pointed up.

“What the hell are you doing?” Vegas shouted.

Halfway up the ramp Bourne turned the wheel hard to his left and, at the same time, stamped the accelerator to the floor. The car shot up and off the ramp. Airborne, it passed over the Mercedes, the undercarriage clearing the driver’s head by inches even before he instinctively ducked. Horns blared, brakes screeched. Bourne clipped the rear end of the car in the far left lane, regained control, and kept going. Behind him, cars piled into one another in a chain reaction, but the rental car was free
now, accelerating away from the semi and the black van, both of which were caught in the expanding chaos of a massive crash.

“
¡Madre de Dios!
” Vegas cried. “Is my poor heart still beating?”

Rosie released her grip on the handle above the door. “What Estevan means is thank you.”

“What I mean is I need a drink,” Vegas muttered from behind them.

The day was spent, the sun, yellow bordering on orange, pressed down against the hills in the west like a fried egg. Twilight swept across the olive groves, lending their tortured branches a spooky aspect. They were racing west, toward the darkness of night and a sprinkling of first-magnitude stars.

The atmosphere in the car had altered. Bourne could feel it as surely as you feel the onset of winter, a drop in the pressure, a tiny shiver of a premonition. Following their escape from the box, a subtle shift in the balance of his two charges had occurred. It was as if Vegas, the competent oil man, felt like a fish out of water away from his mountains and his oil fields. Whereas their journey away from Ibagué had caused Rosie to blossom like a flower in sunlight.

He thought about the elaborate box, which had the hand of the Domna all over it. The Domna had tracked him down. Had Jalal Essai told them? Bourne wouldn’t put it past him. Essai remained a complete mystery to Bourne.

Painful as it might be, everything Rosie had said was true: He was running away from everything and everyone. And of course, it was clear why. Once, he had cared deeply for a handful of people. Now all of them save Moira and Soraya were dead. Perhaps some of them, because of him.
No more
, an insistent voice inside of him cried.
No more
. His new philosophy, developed without his even being aware of it, was simple: Keep running. He knew he couldn’t get hurt running. But the downside, the collateral damage that Rosie had so cleverly pointed out to him, was that he felt nothing. Was that living? Was he even alive? And if he wasn’t, what was the state of being in which he found himself?

To distract himself, he turned to Rosie. “Why were you running away?”

“The usual reasons.”

She had a knack of answering questions as he would have, without revealing any pertinent information. “There are no usual reasons,” he shot back.

This made her laugh, a sound he found intriguing. It was deep and rich, launched from her stomach. There was nothing shallow or phony about that laugh. “Well, you’re right about that.”

She was silent for some time. Bourne caught a look at Vegas, asleep in the backseat. He looked drawn, exhausted, as if he’d traveled from the Cordilleras to just outside Cadiz on foot.

“I was not a good girl,” Rosie said, after a time. She was staring out her side window. “I was, what do you call it, the black sheep. Whatever I did made the people around me angry.”

“Your family.”

“Not just my family. There were friends affected, too. That was one of the things my family couldn’t forgive me for.”