BOURNE ARRIVED IN Seville with his two passengers without further incident. Interpol hadn’t been waiting for the plane in Madrid, and in Seville the trio passed through the arrivals terminal unnoticed.
As promised, a rental car was waiting for them along with an Internet address. Bourne entered it into his cell phone’s browser and up came a map of the area from Seville to Cadiz. A purple line indicated the route Essai expected them to take. At the end was an address in Cadiz, the place, he assumed, where Don Fernando Hererra was waiting for their arrival.
They climbed into the car, and Bourne started it up then drove them out of the airport. He had spent the air time trying to figure out Jalal Essai’s game. There was no doubt that Essai had fed him a brew of truth and lies, so whether he was ally or enemy was still to be determined. Bourne had also spent much of the time brooding over his friend Boris Karpov. If it was true he had been ordered to kill Bourne, he hadn’t shown up yet. But would he? Essai wanted something from Bourne, something he knew Bourne wouldn’t do if Essai asked him straight-out. Did it have to do with Boris? Bourne felt a vast net beginning to tighten around him, but as yet he had no idea of its size or origin.
Someone wanted him—but why and for what?
“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” Rosie said from the seat next to him.
Bourne smiled, staring straight ahead as he navigated the road. He was concerned about tails, but so far the traffic behind them appeared normal.
“You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Dios mio, Rosie,” Vegas said from the backseat, “stop peppering him with questions.”
“I’m only making conversation, mi amor.” She turned to Bourne, but her eyes did not meet his, sliding away into shadow. “I know what it’s like to be alone—really alone, crouched in the shadows watching the sunlight.”
“Rosie!”
“Hush, mi amor.” She addressed Bourne again. “Here is what I can’t understand: Why would someone do this voluntarily?”
“You know,” Bourne said, “you don’t speak like someone from the backwater of Colombia.”
“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.
Soraya, 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.