The Bourne Retribution (9 page)

She stared out the small, square window as she thought these thoughts. The bulletproof glass was so thick, so encoded with titanium filaments, that the world of her childhood bore no resemblance to her memories as it slid by.

She fingered the hand-hewn grips of the Bersa Thunder .380 holstered at her waist. A smaller pistol—a .25—was strapped to her leg at the top of her right boot. In fact, she carried more weapons than a Roman centurion marching onto the battlefield.

A battlefield was precisely where she was headed now. She had called Felipe Matamoros on her mobile. Matamoros was the head of Los Zetas, the one drug lord she needed to see. The Gulf cartel had been decimated by Los Zetas to the point that they were merely vestigial, and as for the Sinaloa—still the largest cartel in numbers—Los Zetas had for some months now been eating away at their traditional territory. It was only a matter of time before Raul Giron, head of the Sinaloa, would lose what control he had left. The strategies devised by the paramilitary minds at the core of Los Zetas were too much for the old-school peasant drug overlords. After she briefed Marsh, they had been met outside her father’s house by a contingent of fifteen heavily armed men, who led them to the waiting armored vehicle, and they had set off for the place Matamoros had indicated.

Marsh, stirring beside her, brought her back.

“Why did you do it?” he said.

“Do what?” Her mind was still on today’s strategies.

“Seduce me.”

She glanced over at him and shrugged. “How else was I to know what kind of man you are?”

“You mean it was a test?”

“To keep you or to send you packing, yes.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t see what you could—”

“In the throes of sex, men reveal parts of themselves even they are not aware of. There’s something in you, Wendell, something I don’t want to let go of.”

“You mean I can be of use to you.”

“That’s a poor and inaccurate way of putting it. I sensed I could trust you, that you might have learned from your transgression.”

“That I have.”

“Well then, our coupling was a success”—she smiled in that way that could shrivel another woman and send shivers down a man’s back—“for both of us.”

Marsh stared at the metal floor between his feet. She sensed him brooding and, before the fear set in, she said, “You’re perfect for your role in this little play of ours.”

“Play?” Marsh said. “Is that what you call a meeting with the most feared man in Mexico?”

She put a hand on his forearm. “
Cálmate, Juanito, por favor
.” She smiled in that winning way of hers. “This is all foreordained. My father’s power protects us better than these armed men.”

“Then why are they here?”

Her smile widened. “
Machismo
, Wendell, is the watchword by which I have lived my life. I had no choice. This is why I chose to leave Mexico, which still today is no place for a common woman. But now I come back to Mexico as a citizen of the world. This is an unknown to men like Matamoros. The world beyond Mexico is a mystery to men like him. They know what they know, and that’s all. Their knowledge of their world is complete, it’s what makes them secure. But it also limits them.”

“But Matamoros is different,” Marsh said. “He was trained by the Mexican military.”

“And you think the military is any different from the cartels?” She shook her head. “Only in how it wages war. But you see, Wendell, for all of the military’s superiority in weapons, helicopters, manpower, it is no match for the cartels, whose fervor of purpose makes them stronger. They bend the Mexican state to their will. Everything else is extraneous and of no interest to them.

“But I bring them a means to their end—drugs and money. Here in Mexico, these are the only two things that must be respected.”

By this time they had reached the northern precincts of the Distrito Federal. They made a right, then another, and finally a left. At the end of the street, they turned into a curving driveway that led to an enormous house of pale pink stucco, in the Mexican hacienda style. The instant their vehicle began to crunch over the crushed-shell drive, men appeared from the feathered palm-frond shadows around the house. They were grim-faced and clearly armed, but they made no threatening move. It was as if they were statues strewn about the property, but Maricruz was under no illusions. At the drop of a hat they could turn into land mines.

The vehicle ground to a stop in front of a country-style portico. Her men emerged first but, following her orders, stayed within a handbreadth of the vehicle.

“Come,” Maricruz said to Marsh as she stepped out onto cartel soil. The front door was painted the particular shade of blue the Mexicans referred to as
azul
. It swung inward, and a massive human being stepped across the lintel.
This must be Juan Ruiz
, she thought, one of Matamoros’s right-hand men. He was as big as a sumo wrestler and, according to her information, as deadly as a puff adder.

Any hesitation would be perceived as a sign of weakness, she knew, so she strode purposely forward. She had not been exaggerating her father’s power and influence with these people to Marsh, but she had perhaps underplayed the innate disadvantage of being a female in this world of primal crime and animal mayhem. She had her father’s reputation to uphold, something she had vowed to do from the moment news of his death had reached her in Beijing.

“Juan Ruiz?” Maricruz said.

Juan Ruiz nodded almost imperceptibly as Maricruz stepped up to his level. Then his dead-stone eyes refocused on Wendell Marsh.

“Who?” he said. “Why?”

Language was not his forte. That, she knew, would be left to Diego de la Luna, Matamoros’s other right-hand man.

“Juan Ruiz, I am pleased to introduce Wendell Marsh.”

“Señor Matamoros said one person. Here are two.”

“Señor Marsh was my father’s longtime adviser, and now mine. Where I go, he goes.”

Juan Ruiz’s eyes seemed to close as if he were about to fall asleep on his feet. In fact, Maricruz could see that behind those lowered lids, the big man was scrutinizing Marsh. At length, he gave another scarcely perceptible nod, then stood aside, an invitation for them to enter.

When they did so, it was as if they had entered a modern-day emperor’s palace. There was such a dazzling array of cut-crystal chandeliers, jasper-topped side tables, marble statues, porcelain pots, Aztec jade masks, ivory utensils, Olmec stone heads, scrimshawed whales’ teeth, and ormolu clocks in just the vast two-story entryway, as well as the hallway that yawned beyond, she soon stopped counting. A majestic mahogany staircase spiraled up to a second floor guarded by an ornate balustrade that would not have been out of place in Versailles.

“Weapons,” Juan Ruiz said in his peculiar monosyllabic style.

Maricruz handed over both her guns.

Juan Ruiz motioned with a jut of his monumental chin. “Him?”

“Wendell isn’t armed,” she said.

Juan Ruiz set her guns on the jasper-topped table.

“Arms up.”

Juan Ruiz frisked them both with rapid, expert pats and slides of his hands. Finding no other weapons, he led them down the hall, through a drawing room, a formal library, and the living room, each space larger and more ornately decorated than the last, as if from the hidden coffers of the world’s finest museums. By the time they reached the study, she was exhausted with a surfeit of visible wonders, which was undoubtedly the point. Felipe Matamoros wanted to lay out his power and wealth for her to see in the most tangible way.

The man himself stood with his back to the doorway, facing out to the vista of long sloping emerald lawn that led to a sparkling pool. A waterfall cascaded at one end and a bevy of startlingly young, bikini-clad women with bronzed, well-oiled flesh lounged at the other. His hands were behind his back. One held an oversize old-fashioned glass containing, Maricruz guessed, aged tequila.

A moment after Juan Ruiz escorted them into the study, a slender, almost willowy man detached himself from the shadows on the right side of the room and stepped across what appeared to be an heirloom Tabriz carpet to confront them. He, too, held an old-fashioned glass of liquor.

“Señorita Encarnación,” he said, “may I get you and your guest a drink?”

“It’s
señora
now,” she said in a perfectly neutral tone.

“Ah, yes,” the man said, “Señora Ouyang, isn’t it?”

“Agave,” Maricruz said with an unaffected smile, “for both of us.”

“Of course.”

The willowy man crossed to a sideboard. Through this all, Matamoros hadn’t stirred. In fact, he seemed not even to have drawn a breath.

As the willowy man was pouring their drinks, Maricruz said, “I am still my father’s daughter. Still an Encarnación.”

At this, Matamoros turned to look at her. He was darkly handsome in a brutish sort of way. His eyes were clear, dark, and intelligent. He had a hawk’s nose and a jaguar’s mouth. His cheeks were pocked or scarred, in the low light, Maricruz could not tell which.

“This is good.” He had a deep, rolling voice like thunder through mountain valleys. “Your skin hasn’t turned yellow, your eyes haven’t become slanted.”

“What a relief!” Maricruz cried.

Matamoros’s thin, blue jaguar lips twitched in what might have been the semblance of a smile. It could just as easily be a smirk, Maricruz decided, but turned her mind in a different direction. Matamoros might be baiting her, testing her to gauge her toughness, the quality of her strength.

The willowy man brought them their agave. As he was about to hand her the drink, Maricruz said, “I’ve met your brother, Señor de la Luna.”

The slight tremble of the glass as it was passed from his hand to hers told her that she had scored bonus points.

“My brother,” de la Luna said, vamping for time to recover.

“Elizondo de la Luna.” She took a sip of the agave, keeping her gaze on him over the rim of the glass. “He
is
your brother, is he not?”

De la Luna stared at her as if he had found a deadly insect in his bed. “Where did you meet?”

“Manila.” Maricruz wondered what Manila was like, never having set foot in the Philippines. Advance intel was invaluable, she thought. Never more so than at this moment. “You and Elizondo haven’t seen each other in some time, I gather.” She savored the flavors of the aged agave on the back of her tongue. “Nor have you spoken.”

“Señora Encarnación,” Matamoros intervened, smiling cat-like, “I agreed to fly in from Nuevo Laredo to meet with you. We have important business to discuss.”

Maricruz nodded without taking her eyes off de la Luna. He seemed to have gone pale beneath his glossy Mexican skin.

“Manila,” she repeated, “where Elizondo and his Interpol team were in the process of shutting down an illegal pharmaceutical factory.” Her eyes at last turned to the head of Los Zetas. “Lucky for you, Señor Matamoros, that your business interests lie strictly within Mexican borders.”

Now Matamoros did smile, an unpleasant sight by any measure. “I get by.” He gestured to a pair of large tobacco-colored leather chairs. “Please.”

Maricruz chose the chair with its back to the French doors that overlooked the pool and sat. The afternoon light streamed in from behind her. Matamoros seated himself opposite. Marsh and Juan Ruiz stood side by side, as if guarding the two, while de la Luna retreated into the shadows.

“Your father was a good man,” he said. “I respected him. My heartfelt condolences. It’s a great pity he’s gone.”

“You never met my father.”

“I dealt with him through an intermediary.”

“Tulio Vistoso. The Aztec.”

Matamoros inclined his head. “This was by his request.”

“Vistoso is dead, too,” Maricruz said. “And you have appropriated his organization.”

“Well…” Matamoros spread his hands. “What would you have had me do? Without the Aztec and your father’s guiding hands, the men were rudderless. Giron had his eye on them. I couldn’t let them fall into the lap of the Sinaloa.” He finished off his drink and put the glass aside. “However, awkwardly that leaves the Encarnación family without a presence in the world of cartels.”

Maricruz, having known this moment would come, said, “Awkwardly, that leaves you without our lines of supply.”

“I have my own lines of supply.”

“Not direct from China, you don’t. You have to deal with a succession of middlemen, all of whom dip their beak into your stew, diminishing it significantly.”

“Not significantly.”

Maricruz knew he was lying, but then she hadn’t expected anything like the truth from him. Not at this point, anyway.

“I wonder,” she said, “what your costs are for your meth business.” She looked at Matamoros. “Meth is the future, so I hope that segment is growing exponentially.”

Matamoros was silent for several moments, apparently deciding which way to play her new foray.

She did not wait for a reply. “Meth would be more profitable if it weren’t such a low-margin business, isn’t that right?” She sipped her drink. “I have direct access to all the required chemicals—a virtually unlimited supply.”