Robert Ludlum - Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

He had been married twice, had two daughters, both of whom lived in Colombia, and a son, Jaime, whom Don Fernando had installed as the managing director of Aguardiente‘s London branch. He seemed to be clever, sober, and serious; Bourne could find not the remotest hint of anything sinister about either him or AB, as it was known inside international banking circles.

He felt Tracy‘s return before her scent of fern and citrus reached him. With a whisper of silk, she slid into the seat beside him.

— Feeling better?

She nodded.

— How long have you been working at the Prado? he said.

— About seven months.

But she‘d hesitated a moment too long and he knew she was lying. Again, why? What did she have to hide?

— If I remember correctly, Bourne said, — didn‘t some of Goya‘s later works come under a cloud of suspicion?

— In 2003, Tracy said, nodding. -But since then the fourteen Black Paintings have been authenticated.

— But not the one you‘re going to see.

She pursed her lips. -No one has seen it yet, except for the collector.

— And who is he?

She looked away, abruptly uncomfortable. -I‘m not at liberty to say.

— Surely-

— Why are you doing this? Turning back to him, she was abruptly angry.

— Do you think me a fool? Color rose up her neck into her cheeks. -I know why you‘re on this flight.

— I doubt you do.

— Please! You‘re on your way to see Don Fernando Hererra, just like I am.

— Don Hererra is your collector?

— You see? The light of triumph was in her eyes. -I knew it! She shook her head. -I‘ll tell you one thing: You‘re not going to get the Goya. It‘s mine; I don‘t care how much I have to pay.

— That doesn‘t sound like you work at the Prado, Bourne said, — or any museum for that matter. And why do you have an unlimited budget to buy a fake?

She crossed her arms over her breasts and bit her lip, determined to keep her own counsel.

— The Goya isn‘t a fake, is it?

Still she said nothing.

Bourne laughed. -Tracy, I promise I‘m not after the Goya. In fact, until you mentioned it, I had no idea it existed.

She shot him a look of fear. -I don‘t believe you.

He took a packet out of his breast pocket, handed it over. -Go on, read it, he said. -I don‘t mind. Willard really did extraordinary work, he thought, as Tracy opened the document and scanned it.

After a moment, she glanced up at him. -This is a prospectus for a startup e-commerce company.

— I need backing and I need it quickly, before our rivals get a jump on the market, Bourne lied. -I was told Don Fernando Hererra was the man to cut through the red tape and get the balance of the seed money my group requires yesterday. He couldn‘t tell her the real reason he needed to see Hererra, and the sooner he convinced her he was an ally the faster she‘d take him where he needed to go. -I don‘t know him at all. If you get me in to see him I‘d be grateful.

She handed back the document, which he put away, but her expression remained wary.

— How do I know I can trust you?

He shrugged. -How do you know anything?

She thought about this for a moment, then nodded. -You‘re right. Sorry, I can‘t help you.

— But I can help you.

She raised an eyebrow skeptically. -Really?

— I‘ll get you the Goya for a song.

She laughed. -How could you possibly do that?

— Give me an hour when we get to Seville and I‘ll show you.

All leaves have been canceled, all personnel have been recalled from vacations, Amun Chalthoum said. -I‘ve put my entire force to work on finding how the Iranians crossed my border with a ground-to-air missile.

This situation was bad for him, Soraya knew, even if he hadn‘t already been on shaky ground with some of his superiors. This breach of security had personal disaster written all over it. Or did it? What if everything he‘d told her was disinformation meant to distract her from the truth: that with the knowledge either of the Egyptian government or of certain ministers too afraid of raising their own voice against Iran, al Mokhabarat had chosen to use the United States as a bellicose proxy?

They‘d left Delia, left the crash site, driven through the phalanx of media vultures circling the perimeter, and were now racing along the road at top speed in Amun‘s four-wheel-drive vehicle. The sun was just above the horizon, filling the bowl of the sky with a pellucid light. Pale clouds lay across the western horizon as if exhausted from swimming through the darkness of the night. A wind blew the last of the morning‘s coolness against their faces. Soon enough, Amun would have to crank up the windows and put the air on.

After sifting through all the pieces of the blast site in the belly of the plane, the forensics team had put together a 3-D computer rendering of the last fifteen seconds of the flight. As Amun and Soraya huddled around a laptop inside a tent, the head of the team had begun the playback.

— The modeling is still somewhat crude, he‘d cautioned, — because of how fast we needed to put this together. When the streaking missile came into the frame, he pointed. -Also, we can‘t be one hundred percent certain of the missile‘s actual trajectory. We could be off by a degree or two.

The missile struck the airliner, breaking it in two and sending it earthward in several fiery spirals. Despite what the leader had said the effect was realistic, and chilling.

— What we do know is the Kowsar‘s maximum range. He pressed a key on the laptop, and the imaging changed to a satellite topographic map of the area. He pointed to a red X. -This is the crash site. Pressing another key caused a blue ring to be superimposed on the area around the site. -The circle shows the missile‘s maximum range.

— Meaning the weapon had to be fired within that space, Chalthoum said.

Soraya could see that he was impressed.

— That‘s right. The leader nodded. He was a beefy man, balding, with a typical American beer gut and too-small glasses he kept pushing back up the bridge of his nose. -But we can narrow it down for you even more. His forefinger pressed still another key and a yellow cone appeared on the screen. -The point at the top is where the missile impacted the plane. The bottom is wider because we factored in an error of three percent for our trajectory site.

Once again his finger depressed a key and the scene zoomed in on a square of nearby desert. -As well as we can determine, the missile was launched from somewhere within this area.

Chalthoum took a closer look. -That‘s, what, a square kilometer?

— Just under, the leader had said with a small smile of triumph.

This relatively small section of the desert was where they were headed now, hoping to find some sign of the terrorists and their identities. They were part of a convoy, in fact, of five jeeps filled with al Mokhabarat personnel. Soraya found it strange and vaguely disquieting that she was getting used to having them around. She had a map unfolded on her lap. The area they‘d seen on the laptop was marked off, and another zoomed image had grid lines through it. A navigator in each of the other jeeps had similar material. Chalthoum‘s plan was to send a jeep to each corner of the section and work inward, while he and Soraya drove straight to the center and started their part of the search there.

As they rattled along at a breathtaking pace she looked over at Amun, whose face was grim and tight as a fist. But what was he leading her to?

Surely if al Mokhabarat was involved, he wouldn‘t allow her even the faintest glimmering of the truth. Were they on a wild goose chase?

— We‘ll find them, Amun, she said, more to alleviate the tension than because of any strong conviction.