Director Yadin hadn’t meant to spend the night on the boat, but as his father had set in plenty of stores and with darkness coming down, he made no effort to head back to shore. Instead, he and his father reefed the sails, dropped anchor, and set about making dinner. Actually, it was Yadin’s father, Reuben, who prepared the food while his son set the table he pulled up off the cabin bulkhead.
“Wine?” Eli said.
Reuben shook his head. “My gout is acting up again.”
“Old age.”
“Age, period.” Reuben stirred the couscous as he dropped in golden raisins, chopped-up dates, and toasted almond slivers.
The Director sat against the bulkhead, facing his father. “You’ve become melancholy in your retirement.”
“If only you’d let me retire, Eli!”
“Ha, ha! Good one, Pop.”
Reuben glanced up sharply. “You know, Eli, sometimes I worry you’ve become too American.”
Eli reached out, grabbed a handful of almonds. “There’s no such thing.”
“You see? That’s precisely what I’m talking about!” the old man said in mock-horror.
The Director sighed deeply. “Abi, I fear I have set in motion an apocalyptic confrontation.”
“Try harder not to understate the case, Eli.”
The Director laughed without a trace of humor. “Ophir is going after Bourne.”
“Can you blame him after the way Bourne humiliated him in Damascus?”
“Amir needed to be humiliated. His secret mission was to keep General Wadi Khalid alive. Khalid, whom Minister Ouyang had taught to administer the most heinous torture techniques; Khalid, whom Amir and I were sent into Damascus to terminate. We didn’t, due to Amir’s treachery, but Bourne was also in Damascus, and it was he who killed Khalid.”
Reuben began to fry up some merguez sausage. “Ancient history.”
“Not for men with long memories and an exaggerated sense of outrage. I speak now of our friends, Ouyang, and Amir Ophir, Ouyang’s mole inside our family.”
“Are you saying Bourne is not among them?”
“Bourne can’t have a long memory, and as far as his sense of outrage is concerned, so far as I can tell, it’s reserved for those imperiling the ones he loves.”
Reuben looked at his son as he transferred the merguez to the couscous, and in doing so burned his hand. “Dammit!” He sucked on two fingertips.
“Butter,” the Director said.
“No butter aboard.”
Eli rose and went to the refrigerated larder, gabbed some ice cubes, wrapped them in a cloth, and handed it to his father. He brought the pot over to the table while his father nursed his burn.
“Bourne’s particular sense of outrage is the crux of your plan.” Reuben sat at the table while his son dished out the couscous.
“You know, Pop, this is just like when I was a boy. You used to make me this couscous every week.”
“Scandalizing your mother. ‘You boys,’ she’d say. ‘How can you eat meat?’”
“The first time, she ran out of the house.”
Reuben nodded. “That she did.”
The Director’s mood sobered. “Ophir’s run out of our house, abi. My old friend, working for the enemy.”
“Well, you’ve done the right thing, keeping him close.”
“But now he’s gone after Bourne himself.”
“And you don’t think that will be the end of him?”
Eli looked out into the darkness of the sea, which was different from any other form of darkness, rolling and thick, oversprayed with starlight, like sparks from a cold fire. He thought about the confidence he’d expressed in this afternoon’s conversation with Dani Amit.
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
The father put his gnarled hand briefly over his son’s. “Don’t lose your resolve now, Eli. The worst thing a Director can do is not fully commit to the plan he’s authorized. Disaster awaits such an indecisive man.”
Reuben cut a sausage in thirds with the edge of his fork, then speared a section. “Trust Bourne in the same way you trust yourself.”
“I have deceived him.”
“Your job, Eli, is to deceive people.”
“This is different.”
“Is it?” Reuben popped the merguez into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “All right, if that’s your determination, then when this is all over you’ll admit to him what you’ve done. That will be your aliyah.”
The Director nodded. “Thank you, abi.”
“I haven’t told you anything you yourself didn’t already know.” He shoveled couscous onto the tines of his fork. “Your real worry is Dani Amit—most particularly what you’ve told him.”
“I don’t suspect him.”
“You didn’t suspect Ophir until he proved himself worthy of it.”
“Well, I gave Dani the test.”
Reuben nodded as he chewed. “You’ve done the right thing.”
“We’ll see soon enough.”
“Moles are often like roaches—where there’s one…”
The old man didn’t have to finish the sentence, but the implications stayed with both of them all through the night, causing them troubled sleep, when they slept at all.
The dry click startled Maricruz.
“I took the liberty of emptying the gun,” Bourne said. “I didn’t think you’d learned your lesson.”
With a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, Maricruz threw the weapon into the foot well of the truck.
“Useless piece of shit.” Her eyes cut toward him. “I pulled the trigger for my father.”
“An empty gesture.”
“As it turned out.”
“It always was, Maricruz. You didn’t want to kill me. In fact, somewhere in your subconscious you knew the gun wasn’t loaded.”
Her eyes sparked, her lips firmly set. “What if I did?”
“A grand gesture, signifying nothing.”
“I suppose you know what he did to Lolita.”
“I do.”
“There’s no excuse.” She shook her head. “My fucking father.”
In silence, he kept driving. After a while, he said, “How did you get along with your sister?”
“How is it you know more about my family than I do?”
“That’s the way it goes sometimes.”
She gave him a penetrating look. “Do you know who my mother is?”
“I met her last year when I was here.”
Maricruz stared at him, dumbfounded. “I never knew who she was. I assumed she was dead, don’t ask me why—maybe because everything would be easier that way. I wouldn’t have to think why she abandoned me.”
“Maybe she didn’t have a choice.”
“People always have a choice.”
“Even with your fucking father?”
She let out a sound somewhere between a cough and a dry laugh. “Several months ago, Jidan handed me a slip of paper with her name and address on it. I saw that she was living here in Mexico City.”
“But you haven’t gone to see her.”
She shook her head. “I can’t decide.”
“I have no idea who my parents were, if I have brothers or sisters. My past is a blank.”
Bourne wondered if there was a person in the world who knew about his family. Anyone would know more about them than he did, he thought bitterly. The anger burned in the core of him, a white-hot flame that chilled, rather than warmed. He saw the world—his life—through the lens of eternal loss, the endless wasteland of not knowing who he was or where he came from. An eternal nomad, he spent his days searching for the unfindable; his nights spent in the dark war when all debts must be repaid, when all obligations will be settled.
Retribution.
Thank you,” she said at last, “for bringing me and my sister together.” When Bourne made no reply, she said, “What’s her real name?”
“That’s for her to tell you.”
“Javvy.” She cocked her head. “Dr. Javvy, that’s how Angél knows you.”
“Does it matter?”
Maricruz rested her head against the side window. “I suppose not. But still…she is my sister.”
“Almost there,” Bourne said.
Maricruz sat up straight. “And where might that be?”
“A café. I’m supposed to meet an armorer.”
“An armorer? What the hell do you need an armorer for?”
“I was prepared to go after Matamoros to get to you. Now, with what’s happened, I have no doubt that Matamoros is going to come after you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What do you want with me?”
“I have a debt to settle with your husband.”
“And you think I’m going to lead you to him?”
“I think you already know he’s not the man you thought he was.”
“I never thought he was anything,” Maricruz said, “besides a means to an end.”
“A way to outdo your father.”
“Now Maceo is dead, I control all of his businesses.”
“What surprises me is how much energy you’re putting into this—his drug trade.”
“It’s lucrative.”
“So is everything else he owned.” Bourne sped up to overtake a lumbering semi. “You’ve been hiding out in Beijing in order to get as far away from him as possible. Now you don’t have to, but Mexico isn’t the place for you.”
“I never said it was.”
“And yet here you are, dealing with the underbelly of your father’s business, the link between him and your husband.” He gave her a quick look. “You see the irony, Maricruz. You fled halfway around the world to escape your father, only to meet him again in the form of Ouyang Jidan.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“The way you’re going, you’ll never be free of either of them.” He slowed for a light, then stopped. “Am I wrong in thinking you want to be your own person?”
When they passed through the intersection, she said, “Is there another way?”
“Help me do what has to be done.”
Her eyes raked his face. “What do I get out of it?”
“The satisfaction of knowing you helped give a young woman her vengeance for being murdered.”
“You’re joking.”
“Think of Angél, of someone causing her to bleed out in the back of a Mexico City taxi.”
They drove in silence for some time.
At last, she said, “Was your wife really knifed to death or was that a lie, part of your cover?”
“Not my wife, but it happened. Last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
He made a turn. “When it’s done, Maricruz, you will be free. You have the means to do and be whatever you want.”
She stared out the window, her hair blowing lightly, obscuring her cheek and her expression. “This trip to the armorer is really necessary?”
“I have no intention of meeting with Felipe Matamoros with just a 9 mm in my hand.”
She laughed harshly.
Bourne slowed the truck and pulled into a parking space. He pointed down the block and across the street. “That café’s the meeting place.”
Maricruz looked dubious. “Do you think it’s safe?”
Bourne stared at the target area through the windshield speckled with mud and bird droppings. “I don’t for a minute trust the man who set this in motion.”
“Then why are we here?”
“I need what the armorer is selling.” Bourne saw Hale, sitting at a table in the open, sipping espresso and reading on a tablet. “Under certain circumstances he’ll give me what I want.”
“What circumstances?”
“At the point of death.”