Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

Corellos stubbed out his cigar. When he made a gesture someone-significantly, not a guard-came in with a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses, which he placed between Corellos and Moira. “I’m ordering food. What would you like?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

He nodded, spoke to the young man, who nodded and slipped unobtrusively out. He leaned forward and poured tequila. When they had both drained their glasses, he said, “You have to understand the depth of my hatred for Narsico.”

She shrugged. “I’m a gringa, we don’t take such things so seriously. What I do know is that you haven’t had him killed.”

He waved away her words. “This is what I mean by understanding. Killing’s too good for a shithead like him.”

She was beginning to get a glimmer of where this conversation was going. “So you have something else planned.”

That macaw laugh again. “It’s already done. Whoever said that revenge is a dish best served cold had no Colombian blood running through him. Why wait when opportunity stares you in the face?”

The young man returned with a tray laden with food-an array of small dishes, from rice and beans to fried chilies and smoked seafood. He set the tray down, and Corellos waved him away. Immediately Corellos picked out a plate of shrimp in a fiery red sauce and ate them, head and all. As he sucked the sauce off his fingertips, he continued. “Do you know the best way to get to a man, señorita? It’s through his woman.”

Now she understood. “You seduced Berengária.”

“Yes, I cuckolded him, I shamed him, but that’s not all I did. Narsico wanted desperately to outrun his family, so I made sure that he couldn’t.” Corellos’s eyes sparkled. “I set Berengária Moreno up as her brother’s successor.”

And you did it damn well, Moira thought. Essai said there was no hint of her involvement. “Do you think she had the mole inside her brother’s operation?”

“If she wanted a list of Gustavo’s clients she only had to ask him, which she didn’t, at least while he was alive.”

“Then who would?”

He looked at her skeptically. “Oh, I don’t know, a thousand people, maybe more. You want me to write you a list?”

Moira ignored his sarcasm. “What about you?”

He laughed. “What? Are you kidding? Gustavo was making me a fortune by doing all the heavy lifting. Why would I fuck with that?”

Did Corellos know that Moreno’s client list was on the laptop, or had he assumed it? Moira wondered. Essai didn’t look like the kind of man who was after a Colombian drug lord’s business; he had the aspect of someone who’d been ripped off and wanted his property back. She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “ Escúchame, hombre. Someone made off with that laptop. If it wasn’t Berengária then it has to be someone else who wants Gustavo’s business, and it’s just a matter of time before he acts.”

Corellos took up a plate of fried chilies and popped them one after another into his mouth. His expressive lips were slick with grease. He didn’t appear interested in wiping them off.

“I don’t know anything about this,” Corellos said coldly.

Moira believed him. If he had known, he would already have done something about it. She rose. “Maybe Berengária does.”

His eyes narrowed. “The fuck she does. Whatever she knows, I know.”

“You’re a long way from Jalisco.”

Corellos laughed unpleasantly. “You don’t know me very well, do you, chica. ”

“I want that laptop, hombre. ”

“That’s the spirit!” He made a sound deep in his throat astonishingly like a tiger purring. “The hour’s growing late, chica. Why don’t you stay the night? I guarantee my accommodations are better than any this city has to offer you.”

She smiled. “I think not. Thank you for your hospitality-and your honesty.”

Corellos grinned. “Anything for a beautiful señorita.” He lifted a warning finger. “ Cuidad, chica. I don’t envy you. Berengária’s a fucking piranha. Give her the slightest opening and she’ll eat you up, bones and all.”

When Peter Marks arrived at Noah Perlis’s flat, he found it crawling with CI agents, two of whom he knew. One, Jesse McDowell, he knew very well. He and McDowell had worked together on two field assignments before Marks was promoted upstairs into management.

When McDowell saw Marks, he beckoned to him and, taking him aside, said in a hushed tone of voice, “What the hell are you doing here, Peter?”

“I’m on assignment.”

“Well, so are we, so you better get the hell out of here before one of Danziger’s gung-ho newbies gets curious about you.”

“Can’t do that, Jesse.” Peter craned his neck, peering over McDowell’s shoulder. “I’m looking for Jason Bourne.”

“Good bleeding luck with that, laddie.” McDowell shot him a sardonic look. “How many roses should I send to the funeral?”

“Listen, Jesse, I just flew in from DC, I’m tired, hungry, cranky, and in no fucking mood to play games with you or any of Danziger’s little tin soldiers.” He made to take a step around McDowell. “D’you think I’m afraid of any of them, or of Danziger?”

McDowell raised his hands, palms outward. “Okay, okay. You’ve made your point, laddie.” He took Marks by the elbow. “I’ll fill you in on everything, but not here. Unlike you, Danziger still owns my ass.” He steered Marks out the door and into the hallway. “Let’s go down to the pub and lift a few. When I get a pint or two in me, I’ll screw me courage to the wall.”

The Slaughtered Lamb was just the sort of London pub that had been written about for centuries. It was low, dark, ripe with the scents of fermented beer and very old cigarette smoke, some of which still seemed to hang in the air in a boozy mist.

McDowell chose a table against one wood-paneled wall, ordered them pints of the room-temperature brew and, for Marks, a plate of bangers and mash. When the food came, Marks took one whiff of the meat and his stomach turned. He had the waiter take the plate away, and settled for a couple of cheese rolls.

“This investigation’s part of Justice’s ongoing case against Black River,” McDowell said.

“I thought that case had been wrapped up.”

“So did everyone else.” McDowell drained his pint and ordered another. “But it appears that someone very high up is gunning for Oliver Liss.”

“Liss left Black River before any of the shit hit the fan.”

McDowell took possession of the new pint. “Suspicion has been thrown his way. Point being that he may have gotten out, but it still is likely that he was one of the architects of Black River’s dirty dealings. Our job is to confirm that conjecture with hard evidence, and since Noah Perlis was Liss’s personal lapdog, we’re tossing his place.”

“Needle in a haystack,” Marks said.

“Mebbe so.” McDowell gulped down his beer. “But one thing we did find there was a photo of this bloke Diego Hererra. You heard he was knifed to death last night in a posh West End casino by the name of the Vesper Club?”

“I hadn’t heard,” Marks said. “What’s it to me?”

“Everything, laddie. The man who was seen knifing Diego Hererra was with Jason Bourne. They left the club together just minutes after the murder.”

Soraya drove due south as, she intuited, Arkadin-going by the name Frank N. Stein-had. Twilight was falling gently as a leaf as she pulled into Nogales. She was still in Arizona. Just across the border was the sister town, Nogales, in the Mexican state of Sonora.

She parked and strolled through the dusty central square. Finding an open-air café, she sat and ordered a plate of tamales and a Corona. Her Spanish was a good deal better than her French or her German, which meant that it was very good, indeed. And here her dark skin, Egyptian blood, and prominent nose were easily mistaken for Aztec. She sat back and allowed herself to breathe while she watched the comings and goings of people on errands, shopping, strolling hand in hand. There were many old people, sitting on benches, playing cards or chatting. Vehicles passed-old, dented cars and dusty, rusting trucks loaded with produce. Nogales’s business was agriculture, shipments from its sister town continuously coming across the border for packaging and transshipping all across the United States.