Halevy sighed, longing for a shwarma whose delicious muttony grease he could dribble over a pile of Israeli couscous. He hated the Nordic countries—Sweden in particular. He hated their women, blond, blue-eyed, upholding the abhorrent Aryan ideal of the superman. There wasn’t a Swedish runway model he didn’t feel compelled to kick in her perfect, chiseled face. Give him a dark-skinned, darkhaired Amazon with Mediterranean features any day.
He was still enmeshed in these sour thoughts when he saw the late-model Volvo draw up to the building under his surveillance. Rebeka stepped out, crossing the pavement to the front door. He was about to emerge from his car when he saw Bourne striding after her.
Why the hell are they still together? he asked himself. She’s working with him? He ground his teeth in fury and sat back against the seat, forcing himself to wait. A familiar state for him, but sometimes, as now, it maintained its power to drive him crazy.
Along the E4 motorway, Christien turned off into a fast-food and gas lay-by. Since stopping off briefly at Rebeka’s apartment, they had been heading steadily north out of Gamla Stan, where Christien had picked them up. Bourne wondered where they were going.
Sovard, the bodyguard-messenger, handed a slim packet to his boss as soon as he had parked in a spot away from other cars.
“Two tickets,” Christien said, handing the packet to Bourne.
Rebeka accepted hers with a certain reluctance. “Where to?”
Fishing an iPad out of Sovard’s briefcase, Christien used the touch screen to access a video. “In this instance, Sweden’s fetish for surveillance has served us well,” he observed.
The three of them watched a video that had obviously been quickly and roughly spliced together from several fixed CCTV cameras at various locations. In the beginning there was nothing of much interest: a swath of tarmac, overalled workers with ear-dampening headphones in small motorized carts heading back and forth. Arlanda airport.
Then, in a flurry of activity, a sudden backwash sent people scurrying. A moment later, the disguised SteelTrap copter descended into view, settling onto the ground. Almost immediately, the side door slid back and three men clambered down. One of them was clearly Harry Rowland. He hustled between the two men, moving left to right, vanishing out of camera range.
Jump-cut to another camera in another area of the airport. Three men were seen hustling across the tarmac. Though the view was from farther away, it was clear from their gait that these were the same three men from the SteelTrap copter. A long-range private jet was waiting for them. An immigration official checked their passports, stamped them, and nodded them up the mobile stairs.
Another jump-cut, this time a different angle on the same scene, closer up, probably through a telephoto lens, judging by the jittery images. One by one, the men bent down, disappearing into the belly of the jet.
A final jump-cut to the jet rolling down the runway, gathering speed. When it lifted off out of the frame, Christien stopped the video and stowed the iPad.
“The pilot was required to file a flight plan with the tower at Arlanda. The plane is headed to Mexico City via Barcelona.” Christien smiled. “It so happens that Maceo Encarnación, the president of SteelTrap, has his main residence in Mexico City.”
“Nice work,” Bourne acknowledged.
Christien nodded. “Your AeroMexico flight will be following virtually the same route as the SteelTrap jet, but they’ll have a two-hour head start. Jason, I know you have a passport. Rebeka?”
“Don’t leave home without it,” she said with a wry smile.
He nodded. “Good. We’re set then.”
Putting the Volvo in gear, he rolled out of the lay-by, back onto the E4, heading for the Arlanda airport.
Sovard was on his way back from security, to which he had accompanied Christien’s VIP guests when a man asked him for the time. The moment he glanced at his watch, he felt an immense pain at the nape of his neck. As he pitched forward, the man caught him under the arms and half-dragged him into an airline lost-luggage office. It was currently unlighted and unmanned, beyond its hours of operation. In his current semi-paralyzed state, Sovard had no idea how he had gotten into the locked office. In any event, he was set down against a pile of suitcases, duffel bags, and backpacks. His equilibrium shot, he teetered. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the livid scars on the man’s neck. When he tried to right himself, the man delivered a massive blow to both ears that caused Sovard’s eyes to roll up in their sockets. He felt sick, incapable of stringing two thoughts together, let alone trying to figure a way out of his imprisonment.
“I have little time.” The man touched Sovard on a nerve bundle behind his right ear, and a firework of pain exploded in Sovard’s brain. “Where are they going?”
Sovard stared up at him blankly. A sliver of drool escaped the corner of his mouth, discolored his shirt. It was pinkish with his own blood.
“I will only ask you one more time.” Again, the Babylonian used only one finger, this time stopping the flow of blood through Sovard’s carotid artery, then released it. “You have ten seconds to answer my question. After that, I will bring you to the point of unconsciousness, over and over until you beg me to kill you. Frankly, I’d like that, but I’m thinking altruistically, I’m thinking of you.”
He repeated the procedure twice more before Sovard lifted a trembling hand. He’d had enough. The Babylonian leaned forward. Sovard opened his mouth and spoke two words.
Eighty minutes later, Bourne and Rebeka were settling into their first-class seats, accepting hot towels and flutes of champagne from the flight attendant.
“Feel nostalgic?” Bourne said, his gaze following the attendant back down the aisle.
Rebeka laughed. “Not at all. My life as a flight attendant seems like a lifetime ago.”
Bourne stared out the window as the crew made its last-minute preparations, then they strapped themselves in. The massive engines revved as the jet taxied toward the head of the runway. Over the intercom the captain announced that the plane was number two for takeoff.
“Jason,” she said softly, “what are you thinking?”
It was the first time she had called him anything but Bourne. That made him turn toward her. There was a softness—almost a vulnerability—in her eyes he hadn’t seen before.
“Nothing.”
She watched him for a moment. “Do you ever ask yourself whether it’s time to get out?”
“Get out of what?”
“Don’t do that. You know. The great game.”
“And do what?”
“Find an island in the sun, kick back, drink a beer, eat fresh-caught fish, make love, sleep.”
The plane slowed, turning onto the runway, strings of yellow lights running away in front of it.
“And then?”
“Then,” she said, “do it all over again the next day.”
“You’re joking.”
There was a silence, broken by the soft push forward as the brakes came off, and the jet hurtled down the runway. They lifted off, the wheels retracted, they rose higher.
Rebeka put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Of course I’m joking.”
During the meal service, she pushed away her tray, unsnapped her seat belt, rose, and went forward, standing out of the flight attendants’ way. When she made no move to use the restroom after the occupied light flicked off and a middle-aged woman emerged, Bourne followed her. A sense of melancholy, sharp as the scent of burning leaves, seemed to have enveloped her.
They stood side by side, shoulders pressed together in the cramped space. Neither of them spoke until Rebeka said, “Have you been to Mexico City?”