AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“His death was a complete mystery.” Vegas’s words seemed squeezed out of him, as if each one gave him pain. “But what do I know? Only where I’ve been. I don’t know where I’m going.”
“They have to be protected, the children,” Rosie said. Something in what Vegas had just said disturbed her deeply.
The federales were only steps away.
Bourne said, “You can have the chance to protect another one.”
They both stared at him.
It was Rosie who spoke. “But the doctor said—”
“That was a doctor in the middle of Colombian nowhere. There are specialists in Seville, in Madrid. If I were you, I wouldn’t give up hope.”
The pair of federales swaggered past. Their eyes glancing over the tourists: the man in the wheelchair, whom they took to be an American war vet; the old man with the T-shirt emblazoned with its stupid logo that set them laughing. But mostly they let their gazes linger over the high breasts and long legs of the woman whose sensuality took their breaths away.
And then, like a storm cloud passing, they were gone, and the entire lounge seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
Maggie—Skara thought of herself as Maggie now; it was effortless—was due for her daily report to Benjamin El-Arian. She luxuriated in bed, only a top sheet covering her naked body, and regarded the encrypted cell phone she used only for communicating with El-Arian. Then she turned away and stared at the pale blue-gold light of morning pearling the loose-weave curtains of her bedroom. At this hour, it was so quiet she could almost hear the faint crackle and spark of the light, as if it were the only thing stirring, shifting easily as the sun slowly dissolved the darkness.
Her mind was filled with many thoughts, some of them conflicting. But mainly she knew she did not want to speak with Benjamin. He was like a tether, dragging her back to another life, one she had chosen, true enough, though far from willingly.
It was funny, she thought now, how the exigencies of life forced you to make decisions. That there could be any form of control was an illusion. Life was chaos; attempts to control or even contain it could only end in tears.
She had shed enough tears for several lifetimes. The last time, when she saw her mother on the coroner’s slab in the chill house of the dead, when she broke down sobbing with her two sisters, she had promised herself she would never shed another tear again. And she had kept that promise until last night. What was it about Christopher Hendricks that had shattered her resolve? For hours, while his presence still throbbed through her like a fever, she had lain awake thinking about this question. She had traced and retraced their evening together, combing through each nuance of voice and gesture like a starving tramp pawing through bags of garbage.
Around four o’clock she had finally given up, turning on her side, curling up, and closing her eyes, willing herself to drift off, as she often did, by thinking of her two sisters. Mikaela was dead now, killed in the pursuit of their revenge, but Kaja was very much alive, though, by mutual agreement, they’d had no contact with each other for years. Maggie imagined the two of them together, touching foreheads as the triplets had done when they were very young, that particular feeling of a shared warmth flowing through them, a closed circuit that made them special and kept the outside world—the hateful world of their childhood, of Iceland, the betrayal of their father—at bay. He’d left them and their mother to kill, to, finally, be killed, all in the name of what? The shadow organization to which their father belonged. She thought of their father now, walking out the door into the snow glare of a Stockholm winter. She had watched him go, never to return. And then nothing, until she had uncovered the news that he had been killed by his intended target, Alexander Conklin. A chill had flashed down her spine, a feeling she had not been able to share with her sisters. She closed her eyes on the bleakness of Stockholm, on the image of her father walking away from her—from all of them. She wanted to dream of him, which was why she held the memory of him close to her as she drifted.
With sleep drawing her into its arms, a dream rose like a ghost from the grave, but her father wasn’t in it. She and Christopher were at a sports complex. It was completely empty, save for them. Moonlight shone on a vast pool. She looked down and saw Christopher smiling at her. He waved up to her, and she realized that she was standing on a high-dive board.
Go on, he said. You needn’t wait for me.
She had no idea what he meant, but she knew she was going to dive. She stepped to the end of the board and curled her toes around the edge. She flexed her knees, felt the spring in the board, the coiled power of it, and it gave her great courage.
She sprang up and out in a beautiful arc. Her arms were in front of her, her palms together as if in prayer. She saw the water coming to meet her as she dropped through the night. Moonlight silvered the pool, turning it into glass, into a mirror. She saw herself diving down to meet the water, but it wasn’t her she saw just before she cleaved the water. It was Christopher.
That’s when her eyes flew open. Across the room, she saw the curtains patterned with dawn light, which to her half-dreaming mind looked thick and aqueous. For a moment, she thought she was underwater, deep in the belly of the pool, on her way up. Then recognition flooded her, and she knew with a certainty she felt in her bones. She and Christopher were so alike she felt chills ripple through her.
She sat up in bed, her pulse beating in her ears.
“Dear God,” she said aloud, “what is to become of me.”
Peter awoke in an ambulance, siren wailing, rocketing along the city streets. He was lying strapped to a gurney, feeling as weak as a preemie.
“Where am I? What happened?”
His voice was thin and reedy, unfamiliar against the insistent ringing in his ears.
A face bent over him, a young man with blond hair and an open smile.
“Not to worry,” the blond said, “you’re in good hands.”
Peter tried to sit up, but the restraints prevented him from moving. Then, all at once, like an oncoming locomotive hurtling out of the mist, he remembered walking across the underground garage, pressing the button on his key fob to start his car’s engine, and then a crack like the end of the world. His mouth felt dry and sticky. There was a metallic smell in his nostrils that made him queasy.
Peter thought about Hendricks. He needed to brief his boss on what had happened. He also needed to find out why he had been targeted and by whom. He moved his right hand, forgetting that he was restrained.
“Hey,” he said thickly, “take off the straps. I need to get to my cell.”
“Sorry, buddy, no can do.” The blond smiled down at him. “Can’t free you while the vehicle is in motion. Rules and regs. If you get hurt you can sue my ass off.”
“Then have the driver pull over.”
“Can’t do that, either,” Blondie said. “Time is of the essence.”
Peter was regaining his wits with every second, but he still felt physically exhausted, as if he’d just finished running a marathon. “I assure you I’m feeling much better.”
Blondie produced a rueful expression. “I’m afraid that you’re not in the best position to judge. You’re still in shock and not thinking clearly.”
Peter raised his head. “I said, have the driver pull over. I’m a federal agent reporting directly to the secretary of defense.”
The smile faded from Blondie’s face. “We know that, Mr. Marks.”
Peter’s heart began to race as he struggled with the restraining straps. “Let me the fuck up!”
That’s when Blondie showed him the Glock. He laid the barrel gently against Peter’s cheek. “This says lie back and enjoy the ride. We’ve got some time to go.”
Which meant he wasn’t being taken to a hospital. Peter stared up into Blondie’s face, which was now as blank as a bank vault door. Were these the people responsible for wiring his car with explosives?
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Blondie looked down at him, too
k the Glock away from his cheek.
“I know you expected me to die in the explosion.”
Blondie stroked the barrel of the Glock lovingly.
“What impresses me is how you got past security to wire my car.”
Blondie delivered a wry smile to someone out of Peter’s field of vision. “Who says it was wired in the garage?”
So these were the people who had targeted his car, and they knew where he lived. He still didn’t know who they were working for or—more to the immediate point—how many of them were in the ambulance with him. He assumed three—Blondie, the driver, and whoever Blondie had grinned at just now—but maybe there was a fourth riding shotgun up front. One thing was clear: These people were well trained and well funded.
The ambulance swerved around a corner. Peter felt the gurney wanting to slide to one side, but it was locked down. Fortunately, the turn loosened the straps so that he could get his left hand free. Moving it down off the top of the gurney, he searched for the lever that would unlock it. A bit of surreptitious fumbling brought his fingers to the right spot, and he held on tight.
Blocks passed, and Peter was despairing of ever getting his chance, but then he felt the centrifugal force begin to kick in as the ambulance went into another turn. He pushed down on the lever at the apex of the turn. The gurney slammed into Blondie’s knees, then caromed back the other way. Peter freed his right hand, and when Blondie fell over him, Peter grabbed his Glock. As Blondie tried to right himself, Peter slammed the pistol into the side of his head.
The second man came into Peter’s view, lunging at him. Peter fired and the man spun backward. His heavyset frame careened into the rear doors. Peter unsnapped the straps holding him down and slid off the gurney.
At the same time, the ambulance was slowing; the driver was probably alarmed by the gunshot. Peter wasted no time. Leaping over the two bodies, he wrenched open the doors and jumped out. He hit the ground and rolled on his hip, but having used the last reserves of his strength, he was having difficulty even getting to his knees.
Several yards farther on, the ambulance had pulled over. The driver jumped out, running back toward where Peter lay. Peter knew his only chance was the Glock, but he had lost it during his fall. He desperately looked around and saw it lying in the gutter. But the driver was on him before he had a chance to crawl the few feet toward it.
He was plowed under by the driver’s fists. He had no strength left with which to adequately defend himself, let alone retaliate. Bright spots of light exploded behind his eyes and waves of blackness rolled over him. He struggled against unconsciousness, but it was a losing battle.
A drowning man going under for the last time could not have felt more despairing than Peter did. He never imagined a moment like this, a defeat this unexpected and complete. And then, after a maelstrom of violence, a concentration of pain, the last wave reaching up to pull him down, there was a soft breeze on his face. Sunlight. The sweet smell of a motorcycle’s exhaust.
And a face, blurry and indistinct as a dark cloud, loomed large in his limited field of vision.
“Not to worry, Chief, you’re not dead yet.”
15
IN THE DEWY light of morning, Jalal Essai went for a walk along the curving seaside streets of Cadiz. The day was already bright, with only a handful of white fluffy clouds way off to the south. The air was fresh, tangy with salt and phosphorus. Out on the water, several sailboats tacked, taking advantage of the wind. Many of the tourist shops were still closed, their metal gates rolled down like castle walls, and Essai caught a glimpse of the melancholy that invades coastal cities in the winter.
He carefully chose the seaside café, passing up a cluster of others nearer to Don Fernando’s house for the one with the blue-and-white-striped awning emblazoned with a red anchor. Seating himself at a small round table in the second row from the sidewalk, he ordered breakfast.
Bicyclists whirred by like giant insects and occasionally a car or a delivery truck rumbled past, otherwise the early hour had scoured the sidewalks clean. His coffee and pastry arrived. He sipped the coffee tentatively, deemed it good, and added just a touch of milk. Then he bit into his chewy, sweet pastry and sat back, breathing the humid air deep into his lungs.
He began his ritual of plan review. Every day variables cropped up that interfered with the plan or caused it to be altered in vital ways. It was like working out a delicately balanced puzzle that subtly changed each time you looked at it. Human beings were usually at fault—those involved both voluntarily and unwittingly. They were far too often unpredictable in their responses, and therefore had to be monitored carefully. It was exhausting work, worth the trouble only if the payoff was sufficiently valuable or desirable. In this case, Essai thought, the payoff was both.
Unfortunately, monitoring each human element was not always possible. Estevan Vegas, for instance, was an old friend of Don Fernando, but he meant nothing to Essai. But Bourne—well, Bourne was the constant in Essai’s plan. Bourne’s innate honor made him utterly predictable in life-or-death situations. This current situation was a case in point. Benjamin El-Arian had finally made a major mistake by assigning Boris Karpov to kill Bourne, had failed to understand that the results of a collision between Bourne and Karpov were unpredictable and would likely be wholly unexpected. El-Arian did not know Bourne the way Essai did—in fact, he knew next to nothing about him. Essai was counting on that, just as he was counting on Bourne to bring back Vegas and the woman from Colombia.
He was congratulating himself when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He did not turn, he did not move. He simply stared straight ahead and watched Marlon Etana emerge out of the trembling morning sunshine and make his way beneath the blue-and-white-striped awning with the red anchor.
This way,” Lana Lang said. “Quickly!”
Karpov followed her through the cluttered streets of Munich until they reached a small, dark green Opel. Fitful showers fell from a swollen sky the color of sheet metal.
“Get in,” she said as she slid behind the wheel. Then she looked up at him, still standing on the sidewalk. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”
Boris was waiting for inspiration. Walking down the street with someone he didn’t know was one thing, but getting into a small, enclosed, mobile space with her was something else altogether. Every instinct was screaming its paranoia in his mind.
“Hey,” she said, clearly irritated. “We don’t have time for this.”
There’s never time for anything, Karpov thought, getting in. Leastways, anything important. His life was filled with a constant flow of needs, obligations, accommodations, and reciprocal gestures—large, small, and everything in between. A political dance, in other words, that he could never ignore, or even take the least little break from, for fear that when the music stopped his chair would be taken over by someone else. And then, despite all his years of devotion, hard work, and the accretion of small atrocities for the state that hung invisibly on his uniform like medals of the secret wars, he would be looking at life from the outside in, which, in Russia, meant no life at all.
Lana Lang drove very hard and very fast through the maze of city streets. She drove, Boris observed, like a man, with great competence, nerve, and not a lick of fear, even though the rain fell harder, the streets slick. Here was her area of competence, he thought, whereas in the biergarten she had seemed like a silly, fashion-obsessed female whom he had no business accompanying, let alone trusting with his life.
Every few seconds her eyes alternated between the rearview and side mirrors. She went through lights at the last possible instant, and often doubled back on what Boris assumed was their route.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
She smiled a secret smile, and that, too, was different about her.
“Somewhere no one can find me, I assume.”
“Not exactly.” That secret smile expanded. “I’m taking you to the one place no one would think to look for you.”
She put on a burst of speed, and Boris felt his torso pressed back into the seat. “And that would be where?”
She shot him a mischievous look, then returned her gaze to the traffic ahead. “Where else?” she said. “The Mosque.”
Paris was laid out like a shell in the water of the Seine. Each district—or arrondisement—spiraled out from the center, the higher the number, the farther from the heart of the city. The outermost arrondisements were inhabited by immigrants—Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cambodians. Just beyond were the banlieues, or outskirts, which were given grudgingly over to the North African Arabs. Isolated on the cramped, unsightly fringes of the city, these disenfranchised were denied jobs or any meaningful contact with everyday Parisian life, culture, schooling, or art.
Aaron followed Marchand’s BMW into one of the northernmost banlieues—the filthiest, most congested and degraded outskirt any of them had ever seen.
“Allah, this stinking place looks like Cairo,” Amun muttered under his breath.
Indeed, the streets were narrow, the sidewalks cracked, the ugly whitish buildings looking like the worst of the British council flats, tumbled one on top of the other without any space between them.
Soraya, still on high alert, felt a renewal of tension between the two men and wondered at its origins. She sensed that Aaron was becoming more and more uncomfortable. As they rolled down the unlovely street, faces dark and tight with a toxic mingling of hatred and fear turned in their direction. Old women, their arms dragged down by bulging mesh shopping sacks, hurried away from them. Groups of young men came off the walls where they had been lounging or crouched, smoking, pulled toward the unfamiliar car like street dogs to a scrap of meat. She could feel the hostility directed at them from waves of black eyes, coffee-colored lips. Once, a bottle, thrown in a high arc, smashed against the Citroën’s flank.
