“She’s like a child,” Li whispered in Ann’s ear. “She can’t sleep in absolute darkness.”
Ann nodded, then gestured for them to return to the living room, where she called Hendricks to send agents to take Tasha into custody. Li padded into the kitchen to get some water. She was still updating Hendricks when Li brushed past her, heading back into the bedroom.
“Wait, where—?” Without putting Hendricks on hold, she rushed in behind Li, just in time to see him stab downward with a longbladed carving knife he must have fetched from the kitchen.
Ann screamed as he plunged the blade between Tasha’s perfect shoulder blades. The girl arched up, torn out of sleep by pain and shock. Ann ran toward Li, but he had already wrenched the blade free and was now plunging it down into the side of her neck.
Ann was shouting, pulling him roughly away; blood was pouring out of Natasha Illion at a hideous rate. Within seconds, she was awash in her own blood, and Ann knew there was nothing she could do for her. Still she tried, for four long minutes, while Li stood still as a statue, his back to what he had done.
At length, Ann got off the bed. She was covered in blood. She picked up her mobile and, walking out of Li’s earshot, said, “Natasha Illion’s gone. Li stabbed her to death.”
“Did you get it all on tape?” Hendricks seemed to be breathing fast.
Ann touched the minirecorder at her waist. “Every last frame,” she said. “Li’s ours now.”
"Making our approach.”
The pilot’s voice sounded through the intercom, and Bourne opened his eyes. Peering out through the windscreen, he could see nothing, not even a single light. Lebanon, near the border with Syria. Desert. Mountains in the distance. The parched wind. The nothingness.
It felt like coming home.
29
IT SEEMED TO Maceo Encarnación, as he sat brooding in his private jet, that he had left a great many people behind.
Now he could add Nicodemo to the list. Even though that was not Nicodemo’s real name, he had a difficult time thinking of him as anything else. Now, with him gone, left behind in Paris, dead or alive, he did not know, he understood why that was so. It was always easier to leave someone behind when he distanced himself from them, in one way or another.
Dead or alive. He thought about this phrase, while the cauldron in the pit of his stomach informed him that Nicodemo was dead. He must be dead; death was the only thing that would have kept him from returning to the plane.
He had made Nicodemo. He was wholly Maceo Encarnación’s creature in a way his sister, Maricruz, never was and never would be. Maricruz was very much her own person. Even though Nicodemo had his uses, he was never the person his sister was. Maceo Encarnación loved Maricruz in a way he could never love Nicodemo. Nicodemo was a tool, a means to an end; Maricruz was the entire workshop, the end itself. Maricruz knew he was her father; Nicodemo didn’t. Neither knew who their mother was.
He dozed for a while, dreaming of Constanza Camargo in the form of the great serpent that founded Tenochtitlán. Constanza opened her mouth, her forked tongue flicked out, revealing destiny and desire, and Maceo Encarnación, himself a little boy, knew he was meant to choose one or the other. Destiny or desire. He had chosen destiny, and all desire had been excised out of him. In this way, leaving people behind was as easy and, in its way, as pleasurable as swallowing a mouthful of mellow aged tequila.
When, hours later, he awoke, the jet was descending out of the sky like a great eagle toward the small airfield on the outskirts of the mountain town of Rachaiya. The plane began to judder and dip, and he fastened his seat belt. Peering out the window, he saw that the weather had changed. There was windblown snow on the ground here, as well as in the higher elevations, and more snow was falling out of the gunmetal sky. Colonel Ben David did not disappoint: one of the two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters under his command was standing by, ready to take Maceo Encarnación to the Mossad camp outside Dahr El Ahmar.
Reaching across the aisle, Encarnación drew to him the suitcase fitted with the thumbprint lock. As the plane hit the runway and began to slow, taxiing toward the copter, he released the lock, then opened the suitcase to stare one last time at thirty million dollars.
The call came in while Soraya and Peter, both exhausted, had fallen into a deep, drug-like sleep. Delia, having taken some of her built-up sick days, was watching over them. She crossed to the table beside Soraya’s bed, picked up her mobile, and saw that the call was from Secretary Hendricks.
Leaning over Soraya, she shook her. Then, seeing that her friend was slow to rouse herself, she leaned farther and kissed her on the forehead. Soraya’s eyes opened, and she saw Delia holding up her mobile so she could see Hendricks’s name on the caller ID.
When Soraya took the mobile from her, Delia nodded, smiling, and went out of the room.
“Mr. Secretary,” Soraya said, formally.
“Soraya, are you all right?”
“Fine, sir. I fell asleep.”
“No one’s more entitled to sleep than you, but I’ve got some pressing news regarding Tom Brick. Sam Anderson brought him into custody a couple of hours ago. Forensics found traces of Dick Richards’s blood on the cuffs of his trousers.”
Soraya sat up straight. “Sir?”
“Brick’s rolled over. He doesn’t want to go to jail.”
“He’s made a deal.”
“Given us the person who knifed Richards,” Hendricks said. “But there’s more—much more. I’m certain you recall the mysterious counterfeit thirty million Peter discovered.”
“I do, sir.” Soraya listened to what Hendricks had to say on the subject, delivered to him in writing by Sam Anderson in Tom Brick’s own hand.
“Oh, my God,” she said, when Hendricks was finished.
“My thought, exactly. Get your agents in Lebanon on this ASAP.”
“Will do,” Soraya said. “Thank you, sir.”
“Thank Anderson when you see him. The man’s done a stellar piece of work.”
The moment Soraya cut the connection with her boss, she punched in Bourne’s number on speed dial. When she heard his voice at the other end of the ether line, she said, “I have the answer to the counterfeit thirty million.”
Sir,” Bourne’s pilot said, “I won’t be able to set you down at the airfield in Rachaiya. There’s a private jet sitting on the runway.”
Maceo Encarnación, Bourne thought. “Options.”
“Only one,” the pilot said. “There’s a flat space a mile to the east.”
“Can you do it?”
The pilot grinned. “I’ve set this down in worse.”
Bourne nodded. “Let’s do it.” Using his satphone, he dialed the number Robbinet had given him, and, after a coded exchange, gave the driver waiting for him the new coordinates.
“You understand I won’t be able to wait for you,” the pilot said as the Mirage banked to the east. “Even with Minister Robbinet’s influence, the less time this plane is in Lebanese airspace, the better.” The field in view, he began a rapid descent. “These days, the Lebanese government is understandably jumpy.”
“Any idea how long that plane’s been on the ground?” “No more than twenty minutes, sir. It took off from Paris an hour and thirty-five minutes before we did, but the Mirage is far faster. A commercial flight takes approximately four hours. We’ve covered that distance in two hours and forty-five minutes. That jet is considerably slower. I calculated the respective speeds of the two planes before we took off.”
“Good man,” Bourne said.
“Thank you, sir.” The pilot engaged the controls. “Now hold on, this is bound to be a bit of a bone-shake.”
The Mirage came down very fast, but contrary to what the pilot had said, the landing was as smooth as could be expected under the circumstances. Bourne unbuckled as soon as they began to taxi and was ready with the backpack Robbinet had provided him so that the moment the Mirage came to a halt, he popped the canopy and climbed down the curved side. He ran, half hunched over, as quickly as he could, giving the pilot a clear space in which to take off. As he reached the far edge of the field, the jet turned, paused, then was released down the flat expanse and rose quickly into the air.