The Bourne Retribution (30 page)

“Like tree trunks.” She laughed softly, and Angél poked her head out from the covers. Maricruz laughed again for her benefit. The girl responded with the ghost of a smile.

Bourne didn’t believe Maricruz. Her gait was sure and strong.

Maricruz waited until they were as far away from the door as they could get. “You know, Javvy, I’ve put a lot of faith in you—telling you all these things.”

“Your secrets are safe with me, Maricruz.”

“I’m glad of that because you’ve seen me at my worst.”

“Surely your husband has seen you—”

“Not like this. Not bruised and in pain. Not without makeup and my hair unwashed for days.”

“Not even in the morning when you wake up?”

“He’s up at four in the morning, working. By the time we see each other I’m as I always appear to him. As far as he’s concerned I’m perfect.”

“And what would he think if he saw you like this?”

“Weak and vulnerable? It’d be a fatal loss of face. He thinks of me in a certain way. I work very hard to keep it that way.”

“That can’t be fun.”

“Who says marriage is fun?”

“I know it’s work, but—”

“Believe it or not, sometimes it’s just a job,” she said.

“Don’t let Angél hear you say that.”

Maricruz snorted. “Right.”

At that moment his mobile vibrated. It couldn’t be Tigger warning about Carlos; he would have popped his head in as he had done before.

“Excuse me, I have to take this.”

“Of course,” Maricruz said, turning back to Angél while Bourne went out of the room.

He strode down the corridor to the public toilet, locked himself inside. The call was from Anunciata.

“Trouble,” she said without preamble. “An urgent BOLO has gone out from Carlos’s office to all police and public transportation personnel including rental car companies.”

Bourne frowned. “What about?”

“A bomb went off last night outside Carlos’s residence, destroying his SUV and killing three of his men. You didn’t—”

“Of course not.”

“Well, the BOLO claims you did. The entire city’s looking for you. You’re wanted for terrorism and murder.”

Bourne was surprised that the
Federales
knew he was in-country. “Why are they fingering me?”

“Apparently, your fingerprint was found on a bomb fragment,” she said. “It was a sophisticated bomb, Jason, not anything the cartels use.”

“Even Los Zetas?”

“Even the deserters don’t have that expertise.” She took a breath. “You’re going to need help now, more than ever.”

“Not from you.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m not going to involve you any more than you are. As of this moment I’m toxic to be around. I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

“But no one knows who I really am or where I live.”

“And it’s going to stay that way. I’ll be fine. I know how to deal with these people.”

“But—”

“Stop!”

“Okay, okay. How are things going with Maricruz?”

“She’s not what I had imagined.”

“I know she hasn’t gotten under your skin. In your current state, you won’t allow it.”

Bourne knew she was speaking of his rejection of her physical advances. “She isn’t flirting,” he said. “She’s too busy plotting Carlos’s murder.”

“That sounds like her.”

“Does she know she has a half sister?” Bourne asked.

“Who would’ve told her? Not our father, and certainly not my mother. Apart from you, no one else knows.”

“There’s something else,” Bourne said.

“
Dígame
.”

He told her about Angél.

“I wouldn’t have believed it of her,” Anunciata said. “The child really has no family?”

“No one’s come to claim her, and Maricruz isn’t one to adopt her.”

There was a slight hesitation before Anunciata said, “You know, when it comes to children you never can tell with women. I had a friend—a hard, fierce girl—who claimed she’d never have kids. ‘
I’m just not cut out to be a mother
,’ she told me more than once. Then she got pregnant, and when the baby was born she melted like butter in the sun.”

Bourne knew Anunciata wasn’t talking about either her half sister or her friend; she was talking about herself.

31

C
olonel Sun arrived in Mexico City, under diplomatic cover. As he exited the arrivals building he was immediately hit with a foul taste in the back of his throat. The embassy limo took him into the city. Forty minutes later he dropped his single small suitcase in the modern hotel room one of Ouyang’s many obedient minions had booked for him high above the city.

It was Sun’s first time in Mexico, his first time in the Americas altogether. He’d been here less than an hour and already he despised everything about it, especially the alien smells, which made his stomach heave and left the slick remains of acid in his mouth. He could not stop washing his mouth out with bottled water from the mini-fridge. He ran the shower, wishing he could bathe in bottled water instead of the filth that came out of the showerhead. Maybe this trip would prove short enough that he wouldn’t bathe, but he doubted it.

He was on a private mission for Ouyang—completely dark, off the books. Having heard she was in the hospital and adhering to their strict protocol not to contact each other while she was in Mexico, the Minister was concerned about the state of his wife’s health.
This is what I’ve been reduced to
, Sun thought sourly,
checking up on his wife like a fucking private detective.
He’d even been provided with a special mobile with a twelve-megapixel camera to record Maricruz’s physical state. Ouyang’s paranoia surrounding his wife was already legendary among his inner circle. On the other hand, Sun felt for his boss. He could not even call the hospital to inquire after her health. With the Party Congress so close and Cho Xilan eager to pounce on any hint of impropriety, Ouyang needed to sit tight, something he was ill equipped to do when it came to his wife.

Not that Sun had any love for Maricruz—how could he? She was an alien—but he did not for one moment envy her job here. He shuddered. These people were animals.

To that end, he took himself to the address of an underground dealer in Iztapalapa whom Ouyang’s ministry had unearthed. The greasy owner stank of badly fried food. Holding his breath as best he could, he bought a tactical knife, a couple of handguns, along with several clips of ammunition for each. Sun was sure the owner sneered at him as he left.

Back at the hotel, he climbed into the waiting limousine. Once, as he had emerged from the dealer’s filthy den, he was certain he was being followed. Drawing one of the guns he had just purchased, he whirled around. If there had been anyone behind him, they had melted into the storefront shadows.

Still, he was grateful for the diplomatic protection of the embassy vehicle. Ouyang had traced Maricruz’s whereabouts from Mexico City to San Luis Potosí and back here again. He had remained in the embassy just long enough to fulfill the necessary protocol, a complete waste of time, so far as he was concerned. On the other hand, he had picked up a curious bit of intel: A bomb had been detonated outside the residence of Carlos Danda Carlos, chief of Mexico’s anti-drug enforcement agency. Three of Carlos’s men had died in the blast. The city was on high alert. They passed a number of army jeeps crammed with heavily armed soldiers.

“Even though you are officially part of the ambassador’s diplomatic staff,” the ambassador had told him, “keep your head down. These people are trigger-happy in the best of circumstances, and today is far from the best of anything.”

Now, well armed, Colonel Sun was heading straight for Hospital Ángeles Pedregal, where he would see for himself what had happened to Maricruz and what shape she was in. The problem here, Sun brooded, was he was on alien ground. Apart from what mileage he could get from being on the ambassadorial staff, he had no leverage at all. Plus, he stood out like a sore thumb, though some of the Mexicans he saw with Indian blood had nearly the same epicanthic folds to their eyelids as he did. Much as he hated to admit it, the adjutant was right: He needed to step carefully and keep his head down. In a state of high alert the last thing Ouyang would need was for him to get into trouble with the
Federales
.

At length, they had crossed the city and the limo drew to a stop in front of the busy hospital. Telling the driver to wait for him, Sun emerged onto the sidewalk and went through the front doors. Inside, he went to the information booth and joined the short line. When it came his turn, he produced his false diplomatic credentials and asked the female attendant for Maricruz Ouyang.

“I’m afraid I have no information on that patient.” She had scarcely looked at his official ID.

“What do you mean, you have no information?” Sun said in his painfully accented Spanish. “You didn’t even bother looking her up. I know she’s a patient here.”

The woman shrugged. She was middle-aged, with a face like a lion’s cage, lined and confined. “Absolutely no visitors. Orders from the anti-drug enforcement agency,” she said with no little obstinacy.

“This is outrageous.”

She shrugged. “Take your outrage to the ADEA. I can’t help you.” She peered around him. “Next?”

Colonel Sun retreated. Even though he was unused to being treated like a peon, he knew enough about the Western world to keep his own counsel and bury his sense of outrage and shame. Though he had made several journeys outside the Middle Kingdom, he had yet to catch the harsh and jolting rhythm of Western civilization, which, he thought now, was something of an oxymoron.

His last trip to the West had been more than a year ago, when he’d traveled to Rome, following the Mossad agent Rebeka, in whom Minister Ouyang was intensely and mysteriously interested. Coming upon her, he had discovered Jason Bourne in her company. Following them down into the catacombs off Rome’s Appian Way had not turned out well for him, and he was not about to forget the humiliating defeat he had suffered at Bourne’s hands.

Now, standing against a pillar in the hospital lobby, he was at a loss as to how to proceed when he saw a young man stride through the front doors. He was not in uniform, but he might as well have been. Colonel Sun recognized the type immediately—a soldier, like him, in civilian attire. As he passed the two guards in front he smiled and waved at them—a half salute, which they returned in kind.

Pushing himself away from the column, Colonel Sun followed the man into an elevator, riding up with him to the second floor. He let the soldier exit before following him down the corridor, past door after door, until up ahead he saw another soldier in civilian dress, sitting on a folding chair just to the right of the entrance to a room. The man was reading
Contralinea
, which he put aside as soon as he saw the man Colonel Sun had been following. They exchanged greetings, then the guard took his newspaper and left, while his replacement—the soldier Colonel Sun had been following—sat down in the chair and began to text someone on his mobile.

Colonel Sun was certain he was guarding Maricruz’s room. He strode past the nurses’ station. The soldier guarding the door to the room must have seen him out of the corner of his eye, because he immediately stuck his mobile in his pocket and rose, assuming the classic defensive stance as he sought to bar Sun’s way.

“Back up,” the soldier said in Spanish, then English. “Turn around and leave.”

“I’m here to see Maricruz Ouyang,” Colonel Sun said in English.

The soldier shook his head. “You’ve lost your way, señor.” One hand slipped ominously inside his jacket. “You won’t be warned again.”

“You don’t understand,” Colonel Sun said. “I’m from the Chinese embassy.” He showed the soldier his ID. “Minister Ouyang Jidan, Maricruz’s husband, is concerned about her health.”

“The señora’s health is fine.”

“And yet, she’s still in here.” Colonel Sun stitched a smile to his face he did not feel. “Minister Ouyang sent me from Beijing to see her and talk with her.”

The soldier continued to eye Sun as if he were a scorpion who had just crawled out from beneath a rock. “A moment,” he said as he pulled out his mobile and poked at a
SPEED
DIAL
key. “Boss,” he said into the phone, “there’s someone here who claims Minister Ouyang sent him all the way from Beijing to see the señora.” He listened for a moment, then said, “He showed me his credentials. They look legit…Okay.” He looked at Sun. “My boss is calling the embassy. We’ll see…Yeah, boss, right here…Okay, right, right. I’ll tell him.”

The soldier disconnected. “You have five minutes.”

“That’s not even time to—”

“If what you said is true, that’s all the time you’ll need to assure Minister Ouyang that his wife is on the mend.”

I’ll take it
, Colonel Sun thought.
But what can happen in five minutes?