“Would you mind taking our picture, sir?” the elderly Chinese man asked Bourne. He smiled, extending a Konica camera that looked as if it dated back to the 1980s.
Bourne took the camera and focused on the couple through the viewfinder. The man appeared to be in his seventies and leaned on a heavy wooden cane. He wore a wool sweater and dress slacks, both too heavy for the warm Arizona day. His wife was of similar vintage and wore a handmade yellow dress, with flat shoes and white lace socks. She stood stiffly next to her husband, not touching him. Behind them, a prickly, wizened saguaro cactus rose out of the desert terrain, even older than the Chinese couple.
“Smile,” Jason said, but neither of them did.
He handed the camera back to the old man, who slung the strap around his neck and then inclined his head in thanks.
With a few long steps on the dusty path, Bourne left the husband and wife behind. He climbed the low slope past more tall, multiarmed saguaro, interspersed with squat barrel cacti, organ pipes, and tufts of pink and purple flowers that grew between the rocks. In the distance, the stony peaks of the Tucson Mountains made a jagged line on the horizon. It was late afternoon. Sunset shadows stretched out over the up-and-down trails of the outdoor garden.
Somewhere among the cacti and high brush was Wilson Scott.
Bourne had arrived in Phoenix that morning on an overnight flight out of Heathrow. He’d allowed himself a one-hour nap in the terminal to combat jet lag, and then he’d located the former congressman’s estate home among the luxury golf courses of Scottsdale. But Wilson Scott, according to the maid who answered the door, was away on a weekend trip to paint watercolors at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. So Bourne had driven south out of the city toward Tucson.
Now, hours later, Bourne and the elderly Chinese couple on the trail behind him were among the few people still on the museum grounds in the last minutes before the area closed for the day. But Scott’s blue Corvette was still in the parking lot, so Bourne assumed the man was somewhere up ahead applying Winsor Orange to his canvas to match the clouds around the waning sun.
He walked quickly on the trail. A near-deserted desert landscape made a good place to talk about blackmail, but it was also a good place for a hit, if anyone wanted Wilson Scott dead. The vegetation rose high enough that he couldn’t see far ahead of him, and the landscape provided plenty of hiding places for an assassin. Every now and then, he pushed off the path into the brush, listening for threats, but he heard only the whistle of the desert wind and the occasional maraca music of a rattlesnake warning him away from the rocks.
Over the summit of the next slope, he found Scott.
The former congressman sat on a small wooden stool, a square canvas on a tripod in front of him, along with a palette of paints and brushes on a metal table. His vantage looked out over the tops of the cacti toward the mountains. His painting, which was almost done, was actually quite good, and Bourne stood behind the man, admiring it for a moment. Then he took a couple of steps past Scott and turned around.
“Congressman.”
The man wore half-glasses on a long, bumpy nose, and his squint didn’t deviate from his canvas at Bourne’s greeting. “Not anymore. That part of my life is over.”
“I see you’re a painter now,” Bourne said. “And a good one, too.”
Scott still didn’t look away from his work. “I don’t live in Washington anymore. Ass-kissing is no longer necessary or effective with me. You’re not a tourist, and you’re not an art lover, so who are you and why are you getting in the way of my light?”
Bourne smiled. He liked the man.
Scott was in his sixties, tall, and slightly cramped as he fit his gangly limbs around the wooden stool. He wore baggy cargo shorts, tan sandals, and a loose white T-shirt smeared with paint stains of various colors. His salt-and-pepper hair jutted up in spikes like the quills of a porcupine. He had the leathery dark skin of someone who’d spent most of his life baking under the Arizona sun.
“My name is Paul West,” Bourne told him, using the cover identity he’d presented on a passport at Heathrow the previous day.
“West, huh?” Scott said, sounding unconvinced. “Who are you, Mr. West? FBI? CIA? No offense, but after twenty-four years in Congress, I know the look.”
“It’s something like that,” Bourne admitted.
Scott wiped his brush on his shirt, dipped it in a milky slurry of water on the metal table, and dabbed at the bluish-gray paint on his board. He made a couple of tentative strokes across the canvas. “Something like that. Well, Mr. West, one of the few perks of being an ex-congressman is that I don’t have to talk to people like you anymore. I’m an old man, my wife is dead, I’ve got a fat pension and a seven handicap. I don’t want much else. So how about you leave me alone with my mountains, okay?”
“Actually, I’m worried about your safety.”
The man stripped off his half-glasses and finally focused his dark eyes on Bourne. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, I know about the Files. I think you know about the Files, too. Whatever you know may be enough to get you killed.”
Scott frowned. “What exactly do you want?”
“I’d like to know why you resigned your seat and what information they had about you.”
The congressman’s thick eyebrows wrinkled with anger. “Get away from me, Mr. West. Or whoever you are.”
“Anything you tell me stops right here.”
“Anything I don’t tell you stops right here. That’s the way secrets work.”
“I’m serious about the danger,” Bourne told him. “Did you read about the Saudi banker who was murdered in London a couple of nights ago? We think he was part of the Files, too. Somebody didn’t want him talking.”
Scott patted a bulge in the pocket of his cargo shorts. “I’m a Second Amendment Republican, my friend. Don’t worry about me.”
“Faisal al-Najjar had armed security. They got to him anyway.”
The congressman sighed. “Look, Mr. West. They’ve already done the worst they can do to me. I’m out. I quit. I don’t see why they’d come after me now. Once the horse is dead, you don’t keep shooting it.”
Bourne assessed the man’s stubborn independence and concluded that he wasn’t going to get any further on his first attempt. He jotted down a cell phone number on a blank white card and put it on the metal table next to Scott’s paints.
“If you see anything that concerns you, call me,” Bourne said. “I’ll be hanging out in the area for a while. Just to be sure no one comes after you.”
“I know, spooks don’t give up easy. Then again, neither do I, Mr. West. If I find you leaning against my Corvette when I get out of here, the answer’s going to be the same. Just don’t scratch the car or I’ll have to kill you.”
Bourne smiled again.
He retreated across the top of the trail and nearly bumped into the elderly Chinese couple coming the other way. The old man leaned into his cane and nodded at him; his wife’s face was stolid and unmoving, her eyes studying him with naked suspicion. Bourne shot a quick look across the couple from top to bottom in a routine way, then continued past them as they disappeared down the other side of the slope.
He took a few more steps before his brain caught up with what he’d seen.
Always look at the hands.
Treadstone.
People wearing disguises paid special attention to their faces, but they often forgot about their hands. Bourne had noticed the Chinese man’s wrinkled face, but the hand clutching tightly to the cane wasn’t the hand of an old man. It was smooth, with strength in its grip. And the woman! She had her hands folded behind her back, but a narrow patch of skin showed between the hem of her dress and the lace tops of her white stockings, and the skin there was unblemished and young.
Bourne bolted back up the trail. As he cleared the top of the slope again, he spotted the two Chinese killers, still in character, only steps away from Wilson Scott. The congressman paid no attention; his focus was on his painting. Bourne heard the heavy, singsong tap of the Chinese man’s cane on the dirt as he neared the congressman and spotted Scott’s bare feet in his sandals, jutting far enough out on the trail that it would be easy to prick him with an accidental jab of the cane.
Poison.
“Stop!” Bourne shouted, drawing his new Glock G47 into his hand.
All three people below him turned in surprise. Scott began to get to his feet, then stumbled backward, tipping over his palette of paints and splashing color on the ground. The accident saved him. The Chinese man took a look at Bourne and knew the game was up, and he picked up the cane and jabbed it toward Scott, only to have the man fall out of reach. Before the man could rear back for another assault, Bourne fired his Glock, needing only one shot. The bullet drilled through the man’s neck, dropping him where he stood. The cane toppled, too, a glint of metal at its tip.
The Chinese woman yanked up her yellow dress to reveal black panties and a holster on her thigh, like a garter, that held an enormous Desert Eagle semiautomatic. Bourne fired, but missed wide as she danced sideways with all the speed and grace of a ballerina. In the same instant, she drew the pistol, and he found himself staring down its silver barrel. The huge gun looked ridiculous in her tiny hand, but she wielded it like a pro, and Bourne had to throw himself to the ground as bullets sang around him. If she’d kept firing, she would probably have killed him with a headshot in the next couple of seconds, but instead, she sensed movement on the ground and swung back to her primary target.
Second Amendment Scott, propped on one elbow on the ground, had his Smith & Wesson revolver in his hand, the hammer already cocked. His bullet blasted an arm off a saguaro cactus but missed the Chinese woman entirely. She drew a dead aim on the congressman, but Bourne fired first. The round from his Glock hit the meat of her shoulder, jigging her arm and sending her next two shots into the air. He didn’t let her fire again. He squeezed the trigger three more times in succession, landing two shots in her neck and one in the side of her skull above her ear.
The Desert Eagle hit the ground. So did she.
Bourne scrambled to his feet. He ran to Scott, who was staring wide-eyed at the two bodies sprawled in the rocks, his revolver loose in his hand. The tripod with his watercolor painting lay face down in the dust.
“Come on,” Bourne said, extending a hand. “We need to go. There may be others. They may have backup.”
“The police,” Scott murmured.
“You can call the police when we’re clear.”
He helped the congressman to his feet. He kept his Glock aimed and ready as he dragged the man along the Desert Loop Trail. In the waning light, he saw no one else; the two killers had apparently been working alone. As they neared the museum entrance, a man in a brown zoo uniform sprinted toward them, but the man skidded to a stop and threw his hands in the air when he saw Bourne’s gun.
“FBI,” Bourne told him, holding up an ID folder at a distance. “There’s been an attempt on the congressman’s life. Call 911. I’ve got to get Mr. Scott to safety. Tell the police he’ll make a statement once I’m sure the threat is past. Go.”
“Yes! Yes, right away!”
The museum employee disappeared in the opposite direction.
Scott, breathing heavily, steadied himself on the trail. He glanced at Bourne with appreciation on his face. “I guess you were right. Thank you. Sorry to be a stubborn fool, but it comes with the territory after a couple of decades in Washington.”
“It was my mistake to let them get close to you,” Bourne said. “I passed them once before. I should have spotted them immediately.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know, but obviously they were trying to make sure you never had a chance to tell your story.” Bourne dragged the man forward again, but Scott had the strength now to walk on his own. “I need the truth, Congressman. Somebody had enough leverage on you to get you to give up your seat. I’m trying to figure out who it is and how they got the information they did. I can’t do that without knowing what you’re hiding. Tell me what happened. Believe me, a sex scandal isn’t worth getting killed over.”
“It was never about sex,” Scott replied with a rumbling sigh. “I think I would have weathered the storm if it were just that. But this was much worse.”
“What was it?” Bourne asked.
Scott drew himself up to his full height and closed his eyes. The paint smears on his shirt made it look as if he’d been shot multiple times. “They had evidence that I’d hired a hit man to kill my wife.”