The Bourne Retribution (17 page)

Curious, Ophir slid behind the wheel of his car and followed the Director as his car slid in and out of traffic. He had been pleased when Yadin had told him that he was going for a sail. The Director had looked pale and haggard—and was it his imagination or had he lost weight?

In front of him, the Director’s car had turned onto Weizmann Street, then parked in front of the Sourasky Medical Center.

What in the world?
thought Ophir as he watched Yadin stride up the ramp and enter the medical center itself. Pulling his car into a space, Ophir got out and hurried up the ramp, into the cool, quiet interior.

Heading over to the information desk, he asked for Eli Yadin, an outpatient at the center. The man behind the granite banc directed him to another banc on the right side of the immense glass-paneled entrance hall.

The woman behind this counter was young, fit, with that certain confident air only a stint in the Israeli Army could give her.

“How may I help you?” she said with a practiced smile.

“I’m looking for Eli Yadin,” Ophir said. “I believe he’s an outpatient here.”

“In what specialty?”

“I don’t know.”

The young woman wrinkled up her freckled nose, frowning at him. “Sir, we have sixteen separate outpatient clinics.”

Ophir considered for a moment. “Try oncology.”

She input the Director’s name. “Sorry, sir. I don’t find his name listed.”

“Surely you can cross-reference all of them.”

She looked both dubious and suspicious. “I can, but…”

Ophir flipped open his official ID. He hadn’t wanted to identify himself, but she had left him no choice.

The young woman, looking hard and long at the ID, finally said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Her fingers flew over her terminal keyboard, the end result of which was a firm shake of her head. “I’m sorry, sir, there’s no one in any of the outpatient clinics by that name.”

“But there must be,” Ophir said, baffled.

“I’ve done everything I can for you, sir,” the young woman said, and turned away to take a phone call.

Of course, Ophir thought as he retraced his steps and exited onto the ramp leading to Weizmann Street, if the Director had registered under an alias he’d never find him. But by the time he was back behind the wheel and driving away, the small mystery was far from his thoughts. His mind was already overtaken by the last crucial steps he needed to take in order to assure the safe return of the three Israelis held prisoner in the Sinai.

C
arlos is on board,” Maricruz said when she and Matamoros had retired to the Los Zetas compound.

They stood on the long veranda, sipping mescal
viejo
, staring out at the palm fronds clacking in the wind.

“You were with him a long time.”

“Jealous?”

Matamoros snorted.

It was past midnight. A horned moon appeared and disappeared behind scudding clouds that brought a humid wind presaging heavy rain. Around them, armed guards patrolled the periphery, just beyond the eight-foot stucco walls that enclosed the compound. Other guards paced through the gardens and oasis-like fistfuls of palms. Save for the cicadas, tree frogs, and the occasional harsh bark of a street dog, the night was blanketed with a velvety silence, as if they were at a resort on the Mayan coast. All that was missing was the soft splash of the waves onto the beach.

“It was a pleasure dealing with Carlos,” she went on. “He’s a businessman; he understood the benefits of my proposition without my having to go into a dog-and-pony show.”

“Giron wasn’t involved?”

“He wasn’t even mentioned.” Maricruz finished off her mescal. “The three of us will meet tomorrow morning at nine to finalize the alliance.”

Matamoros nodded. He seemed distracted. They went inside. He pointed out her room, then went down the wood-paneled corridor into his bedroom and shut the door behind him.

The bedroom designated for Maricruz was also wood-paneled, generously proportioned, with a king-size bed, oversize furniture, an odd combination of bullfight etchings and photos of exotic dancers on the walls. The en suite bathroom was luxurious—marble-clad, with separate shower and soaking tub from which the occupant could gaze at the floodlit gardens.

Stripping off her clothes, she stepped into the shower, let the needles of water sluice the dust and sweat off her skin, while she threw her head back, closed her eyes, and thought of nothing at all.

Toweled off and in bed between the soft sheets, she half expected Matamoros to knock on her door. When he didn’t, she was unsure whether she was relieved or disappointed.

That night she dreamed she was swimming in blood, a suffocating dream that not so much frightened her as left her feeling enervated. She opened her eyes, slowly surfacing, and thought she heard gunshots. But when she started fully awake, sitting up in bed, the early morning held only cocks’ crows and, again, the barking of dogs, foraging the streets of San Luis Potosí.

Swinging her long legs out of bed, she relieved herself, dressed quickly, and went out of the bedroom. Down the hallway and into the living room, which she found deserted, she looked around, and then proceeded to the kitchen. Also deserted. Turning back, and now with a mounting sense of urgency, she returned to the bedroom hallway, pushed open the door to Matamoros’s room. It was empty; the bed hadn’t been slept in.

Returning to her bedroom, she pulled out her Bersa Thunder .380, checked that it was fully loaded, then headed immediately to the entrance, where she pulled open the front door and stepped out into the courtyard. There were no guards, no one at all. The compound was blanketed by a deathly stillness, and she was reminded of her suffocating dream.

Hurrying through the gardens, past the clumps of palm trees, she hauled open the gate to the compound. A large black SUV was parked a hundred yards away. The rising sunlight spun off its windshield, turning it opaque.

Scanning the immediate vicinity, Maricruz approached the SUV with a measure of caution. She moved around to the left side of the vehicle, bending slightly to look in the windows, but they were smoked and she couldn’t see a thing.

She looked around again, hoping to see Matamoros or one of his men, but there was no one. Resisting an urge to run, she approached the SUV, reached out, and opened the passenger’s-side door.

A gasp escaped her half-parted lips. Crammed into the interior of the SUV were fourteen men. All had been beheaded. She jumped back as something came bouncing out, hit the SUV’s running board, then dropped to the ground.

Staring up at her with gray, glazed eyes and a terrified expression was the severed head of Raul Giron.

Y
ou need somewhere safe,” Sam Zhang said. “A place where neither Captain Lim nor anyone else can find you.” He tapped his driver on the shoulder and spoke to him in a voice that didn’t carry back to Bourne and Yue. Then he sat back, his bulk squeezing his two passengers together. “I know such a place. We’re going there now.”

Yue was slung across the seat, her head and shoulders against Bourne’s chest.

“Lim cut our conversation short,” Bourne said to Zhang.

“Is that so? What were we talking about?”

“Ouyang Jidan.”

Zhang pursed his thick lips. “I don’t remember that.”

“I had heard he had come here from Beijing.”

“Why does that concern you?”

“He and I have a reckoning. He’s responsible for the murder of someone I knew.”

Zhang turned his head. “That sounds properly lacking in details.” He shrugged. “Minister Ouyang has been responsible for many deaths.”

“I only care about this one,” Bourne said.

They went across the bridge, heading back to Pudong, Shanghai’s glittering modern half. The car turned down the Bund, then rolled to a stop in front of the glass-and-steel facade of one of the city’s finest hotels.

Zhang asked for a wheelchair when the door was opened by one of the uniformed attendants. Moments later Bourne placed Yue in the wheelchair and, with the man who brought it pushing it, the four of them went through the doors, past gleaming polished marble and Maw-Sit-Sit—a green stone mined in Burma—to the bank of elevators. They rose in silence until they reached the twenty-first floor.

“I’ll take it from here,” Zhang said, slipping a bill to the man and replacing his hands on the wheelchair’s handlebars.

They left the attendant in the elevator. Bourne followed Zhang down the lushly carpeted hallway, past the shell-shaped sconces emitting mellow light, to the double doors of a suite. Zhang used an electronic key-card to enter the room, then wheeled Yue in.

As Bourne stepped across the threshold, he felt the quick jab of a needle in the side of his neck. He tried to whirl, but whatever had been injected into him had already slowed his reflexes. He was in midturn when his knees buckled. Someone caught him from behind. His balance failed, his vision blurred, and his thoughts swam away from him like a school of fish.

The last thing he saw was Yue rising from the wheelchair, a wolfish smile on her face. She kissed him on the lips, then struck him hard across the face, plunging him into oblivion.

Book Two

18

J
in put his foot between the elevator doors, preventing them from closing. When the doors retracted, he hit the
EMERGENCY
STOP
button. By straining, he could hear the soft click of the wheelchair as it progressed down the carpeted hallway.

Bending down, he removed the 5.8 mm QSZ-92 pistol from the holster affixed to his ankle and called in via wireless.

“Captain,” he whispered, barely able to contain his excitement, “we’ve caught two birds with one stone. Cho Xilan’s emissary and Jason Bourne.”

“Proceed with caution,” Captain Lim’s voice buzzed in his ear. “Backup is on site and will be on your floor within minutes.”

“Apart from clearing the surrounding rooms, which should be done in conjunction with the hotel manager, too many people are going to be a hindrance, rather than a help.” Jin stepped out into the hallway, which was now deserted.

“I don’t want you unprotected,” Lim said.

“With all due respect, Captain, you don’t know me well enough to have that worry.” Jin grinned to himself. “I do better on my own.”

“There’s no room for error,” Lim said.

“I don’t make errors, Captain.”

“You understand the directive regarding Jason Bourne.”

“‘Detain, do not harm.’ Got it, Captain.”

“All right.” There was a short pause. “See you on the other side.”

Cutting the connection, Jin crept down the hall on the outsides of his soles. He held the QSZ-92 tilted slightly upward, at the ready. When he reached the double doors to the suite, he stopped, remained motionless for a space of twenty seconds, then put his ear to the polished wood.

G
o back into the bedroom and close the door,” Yue ordered the man who had accompanied her from Beijing as her husband. He nodded and complied.

When she was alone with Sam Zhang, she glanced down at Bourne’s inert body lying at her feet, and said to Zhang, “You have been playing a dangerous game.”

With a sigh, the fat man lowered himself into a Mandarin chair. “Does this warning come from you or from Cho Xilan?”

Her lips twitched in the semblance of a smile. “Pulling both ends against the middle can get you killed. Just look at Wei-Wei.”

“Did you have to kill him?”

“By definition, Sam, everything I do, I have to do.”

“And Sergeant Amma?”

“An honest cop is a dangerous cop, Sam. You know that.”

Zhang shook his head. “The trouble with you, little sister, is that you have no ethics.”

“I have plenty of ethics,” Yue said. “What I lack is remorse, and thank the gods for that.”

The fat man tilted his head back and spoke to the ceiling. “What have I done to deserve this morass of immorality?”

“Don’t kid yourself, Sam,” Yue said as she kicked Bourne to make certain he was still unconscious. “Like me, you’ve done everything humanly possible to survive in this cesspit of a city.”

Her eyes lowered to Bourne. “I kind of like this fellow. He’s got something of value burning inside him. I envy him that.” When Zhang grunted, she glanced up at him. “He did save my life, Sam.”

“What does it matter now? We have to turn him over to Colonel Sun, as instructed.”

“Not yet.” Yue squatted down beside Bourne, put a hand on his head. “He intrigues me.”

“Come on, little sister, no one intrigues you.”

“Oh, but he does, Sam. Truly. He has a history not only with Sun, but with Minister Ouyang.” She smiled. “Now, that
is
intriguing.” She caressed Bourne’s head. “I’m not letting him go until I find out what that history is and whether it can benefit me.”