The Bourne Retribution (42 page)

“Then move,” she said, her voice at once steely. “Now!”

He looked at Matamoros, who had resumed his pacing. “Ruiz!” Matamoros bellowed.

Juan Ruiz looked up from his work and, seeing the storm clouds building in his boss’s face, flicked away his knife. “Yes, boss.”

“Go find that bitch. I don’t care what you have to do. Tear this fucking city apart if you have to, I don’t give a shit. Just find her.”

Juan Ruiz stood up. He seemed to occupy a third of the room. “And when I do?”

“Take your gravity knife,” Matamoros said. “I want her head!”

O
kay,” de la Luna said. “I’m outside on the terrace. But I don’t understand. Why have you called me? Why aren’t you here?”

“Why do you think?” Maricruz’s voice seemed to rattle around in his ear.

“Matamoros was right about you? You’ve been playing us all along?”

“Circumstances change, Diego. Now you’re the one I want to talk to.”

“Oh, no,” de la Luna said. “No, no, no. I’m not going to help you.”

“Then I’ll let your brother do it for me.”

“What…what are you talking about?”

“Your brother has been looking for a way to destroy the Los Zetas drug trade for years, but has failed to do so because of the power the cartel wields inside the police, army, and government. But I’m his way in, Diego. I can give him everything he needs to bring Los Zetas down. I have his mobile number right here. Do you want me to make that call?”

De la Luna swallowed hard. “Of course…of course not.”

“Then meet me.”

De la Luna looked back over his shoulder. Juan Ruiz was gone. Maybe he’d get lucky and Juan would find her before…

“When?”

“Now.”

“Now? I can’t—”

“You can; you will.” Maricruz bit off each word as if it were the head of a fish.

De la Luna passed a hand across his face. He was appalled to discover he was sweating like a farm animal. He couldn’t possibly return to the hotel room in this state; Matamoros, with the senses of a hawk, would pick up his distress in an instant.

Closing his eyes, de la Luna acquiesced. “Where?”

“The Pyramid of the Sun.”

Teotihuacán was more or less thirty miles northwest of the city, de la Luna calculated. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Forty-five minutes,” Maricruz said. “Don’t be late.”

The moment the connection was severed, de la Luna punched a
SPEED
DIAL
button. When Juan Ruiz answered, he said, “Any luck?”

“Too soon,” Juan Ruiz said in his usual terse style.

“No, it’s not,” de la Luna said. His skin felt prickly as the sweat dried on it. “I know where she is.”

44

T
eotihuacán
translated as “the place where man met the gods.” It was a gargantuan archaeological site of Mesoamerican culture, containing the Pyramid of the Sun—the largest such structure in the pre-Columbian Americas—but also enormous residential structures, the wide, central Avenue of the Dead, and the Pyramid of the Moon. The city was established around 100
BCE
. Its burgeoning inhabitants continued its expansion through 250
CE
until eventually it became, with a population of 125,000, one of the largest cities in the world.

This history was very much in evidence as Bourne and Maricruz went down the Avenue of the Dead toward the massive Pyramid of the Sun. Everything about Teotihuacán was on a mammoth scale, including the residences with apartments built one atop the other to accommodate the swiftly increasing population.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Maricruz said.

“I do.” Bourne was automatically scrutinizing the faces of every tourist and tour leader they passed. The place was packed with groups huddled around their guides or walking in clouds like gnats as they were led from structure to structure. “But he won’t come alone.”

“He can’t afford to let anyone know what he’s doing.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Bourne said. “All he has to do is tell someone he knows where you’ll be.”

Maricruz looked alarmed. “Then why did you tell me to set this up?”

“Matamoros can’t bring his crew here—too many foreign tourists. He can’t afford any undue attention now. No, he won’t send a crew and he won’t come himself. He’ll send someone he trusts, someone in his inner circle.”

“Juan Ruiz,” Maricruz said. “He’s Matamoros’s personal bodyguard.”

“All the better,” Bourne said as they approached the Pyramid of the Sun.

“He’s a huge man.” She described Juan Ruiz in detail. “You won’t be able to miss him.”

Bourne stopped in the middle of a gaggle of tourists, where they could stand and talk in as much protection as Teotihuacán was going to afford them.

“It’s time for you to go on alone,” Bourne said. “You understand how it will work?”

She nodded.

“Okay then.”

He watched her eel her way through the throng and then out onto its periphery where, here and there, people from the group were taking photos. She moved easily; no one could tell what was under her long coat.

He stayed within the heart of the group, which was beginning to move on toward the Pyramid of the Sun. Keeping one eye on Maricruz and the other on the lookout for Juan Ruiz, he went down the Avenue of the Dead.

Ahead of him, Maricruz had stopped at the corner of the stone wall that wrapped around the structure. To her left were the central steps, filled with awestruck people, ascending and descending, that rose up to the pyramid’s peak.

A short time later, a slim, almost effeminate man came up to where Maricruz stood. Diego de la Luna. Maricruz, keeping her hands in the pockets of her coat, turned to him and they began to talk. De la Luna looked extremely nervous. His tongue kept flicking, serpent-like, from between his bloodless lips.

Bourne kept moving, and when he spotted the big man Maricruz had described, he moved out from the shelter of a herd of Italian tourists. He strolled until he was behind Juan Ruiz. The assassin’s presence was proof enough for Bourne that Matamoros had lost faith in Maricruz and what she promised to do for him.

Juan Ruiz might be big, but he stalked Maricruz like a cat. He had small feet, and like a dancer he seemed to glide over the ancient paving stones of the avenue as if he were death itself.

He was very good at his work. Though he had fixed on his prey, he was acutely aware of his surroundings and those people coming within his proximity. Bourne knew he needed to be extremely careful. If Juan Ruiz spotted him too soon, the plan would fail.

He kept circling, keeping himself out of range of the big man’s peripheral vision. Juan Ruiz was very close to de la Luna, who had engaged Maricruz in an argument that, as Bourne had suspected, was designed to keep her fully occupied.

Bourne had to admire Juan Ruiz, even as he was working his way toward Ruiz’s broad back. He was close enough now that Maricruz became aware of him. Her head jerked, as she began to turn, but it was too late. Juan Ruiz already had his gravity knife flicked open.

As Maricruz opened her mouth in surprise, he plunged the blade into the soft spot just beneath her sternum.

45

W
hen Minister Ouyang was angry or at a crossroads in his life, he inevitably withdrew to the Kunlun Mountain Fist training facility in Beijing. As he traveled by car to the facility, Ouyang could not remember a moment in his life when he had been as enraged as he was now.

Being told that he had to form an alliance with his nemesis was bad enough, but that this order came from the mouth of Deng Tsu—his mentor and, in the parlance of the West, his rabbi—was a humiliation not to be borne.

He needed to clear his mind, and the only way he knew to do that was to fight.

The Kunlun Mountain Fist training facility was located within sight of the Great Wall. This site was deliberate, as the elders were quick to point out to their novitiates. The Great Wall was a symbol, they preached, of the walls we built inside our minds to keep us from seeing the Truth—a Truth that practicing Kunlun Mountain Fist wushun would in due course illumine.

Ouyang was welcomed within the complex as the first-draft master he was. With great deliberation, he changed into the loose-fitting uniform reserved for all wushun practitioners. He chose a
jian
—the slender double-edged gentleman’s sword he had wielded to such fine effect in the Kunlun Mountain Fist training facility in Shanghai.

Assigned an opponent, he moved out onto the mats. He began, as he almost always did, with Sacred Stone Form, standing immobile and steadfast while the opponent attacked, employing the White Snake Form, an advanced method often favored by Ouyang himself.

At first it was interesting to counter the moves he knew so well. But it wasn’t long before his opponent’s blade started slipping through his defenses. He was half a step faster than Ouyang, and at the four-minute mark his weapon slapped Ouyang hard on the chest.

Rocked back a pace, Ouyang felt himself overcome with a blind rage. Out the window went no-mind, the sense of calm and order in a world filled with disharmony. A whirlwind of chaos devoured it all in a heartbeat. Without another thought, he switched to the little-used Fire Ghost Form, performed a vicious lunge as his opponent withdrew his sword.

Ouyang’s
jian
passed through his unprepared opponent’s defenses. The point of the sword pierced the man’s chest. Instead of withdrawing it, Ouyang completed the lunge, skewering his opponent upon the
jian
’s blade.

The man cried out, blood bloomed like a field of poppies, and soundless footsteps came running.

J
uan Ruiz had just worked out that something was wrong. Then Bourne was on him. He reacted by reversing his bloodless gravity knife and stabbing backward with it. He almost caught Bourne—the blade pierced his jacket, but not his flesh. Bourne delivered a vicious blow to Juan Ruiz’s kidney, which would have felled anyone else. Juan Ruiz was unfazed. He withdrew the knife and slashed backward a second time.

Bourne was prepared. He twisted Juan Ruiz’s forefinger at the apex of the strike, when his hand was farthest from his body. Jamming it backward, he broke the finger, then the one next to it.

Ignoring the pain, Juan Ruiz turned and delivered a massive blow to Bourne’s shoulder, almost spinning him completely around. Juan Ruiz, a street fighter by nature, grinned as he smashed his fist into Bourne’s side. Bourne staggered, the breath fairly knocked out of him. He felt like he broke his hand on the next blow to Juan Ruiz’s ribs. A sharp stab of pain shot through his wrist, all the way to his shoulder.

Juan Ruiz clamped a hand as large as a meat hook onto Bourne’s throbbing shoulder and squeezed so hard the bones beneath his fingers ground together. Blackness formed around the edges of Bourne’s vision, the center of which was ablaze with showers of sparks, each one accompanied by pinpricks of electric agony.

Determined to crush Bourne’s shoulder, Juan Ruiz became convinced he was on the verge of victory. He was unconcerned when Bourne twisted, assuming he was continuing to writhe in pain. He never saw the blow that felled him: a hand-edge kite to the place on his neck protecting the carotid artery.

Bourne caught him before he could fall to the ground. Diego de la Luna stared from Bourne to Maricruz, his mouth half open in shock.

“How,” he stammered. “How?”

“Show him,” Bourne said.

Maricruz opened her coat, revealing one of the Kevlar vests Bourne had gotten from the armorer.

“You were going to fuck me over, Diego.” She stepped up to him. “Now I’m going to have to hurt you.”

She took her right hand out of her pocket. A small blade in the shape of a beech leaf protruded from between her forefinger and her middle finger—a gleaming push-dagger that Bourne had also requested.

De la Luna, staring fixedly at the blade approaching his nether regions, swallowed convulsively.

“There’s only one punishment for a traitor,” Maricruz said in a soft tonal burr.

“Wait, Maricruz. Think of where we are,” Bourne said, still holding Juan Ruiz’s bulk.

“I don’t care.” Maricruz grabbed hold of de la Luna. “This fucker deserves a radically altered life.”

“She has a point there, Diego.”

“She’s crazy. Do something,” de la Luna implored.

“Sorry,” Bourne said, continuing their play-acting. “At the moment, my hands are full.”

“There must be something—”

“Give me Matamoros.”

De la Luna was clearly terrified. “What?”

“You give me Matamoros and I’ll see what I can do about changing Maricruz’s mind.”

“Fuck that.” Maricruz pressed the point of the push-dagger against de la Luna’s trousers.