The Bourne Objective

“The border station’s just a couple miles south-”

“I don’t want to go that way.”

The punk squinted, eyeing her as if for the first time. “I’m hungry,” he said. “How about buying me a meal?”

“Okay,” she said, “but don’t expect anything else.”

When he laughed, the brittle shell of his forced bravado cracked open. His face was transformed into that of a simple kid who looked at the world through sad eyes.

She took him back to the café, where he ordered burritos de machaca and a huge plate of cowboy beans larded with chiles pasados. His name was Álvaro Obregón. He was from Chihuahua. His family had migrated north in search of work and had ended up here. Through the intervention of his mother’s brother, his parents worked at a maquiladora packaging fruit and vegetables. According to him, his sister was a slut and his brothers goofed off all day instead of working. He himself was employed by a rancher. He’d come into town to pick up an order of supplies the rancher had phoned in.

“At first, I was excited about coming here,” he said. “I’d read up about American Nogales and discovered that a lot of really cool people were born here, like Charlie Mingus. His music sounds like shit to me, but you know, he’s famous and all. And then there’s Roger Smith. Imagine banging A

When Soraya said she hadn’t, he gri

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smacked his lips. “It didn’t take long for the shine to wear off. I mean, just look around you. What a fucking dump!”

“You seem to have a good job,” Soraya pointed out.

“Yeah, you try it. It sucks.”

“It’s steady work.”

“A rat makes more money than I do.” He gave a wry, lopsided smile. “But that doesn’t mean I starve to death.”

“Which brings us back to my original question. I want to get into Mexico.”

“Why? The place is a fucking shithole.”

Soraya smiled. “Who do I see?”

Álvaro Obregón made a show of having to think about it, but Soraya suspected he already knew. He looked out over the square. The lights had come on, people were on their way to di

On that score Soraya had no doubt. “I’d like you to set up the meet with your compadre Contreras.”

“It’ll cost you. A hundred American dollars.”

“Highway robbery. Fifty.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Sixty. That’s my last offer.”

Álvaro Obregón put his hand on the table palm-up, and Soraya laid a twenty and a ten onto it. The bills disappeared so fast they might never have existed.

“The rest when you deliver,” she said.

“Wait here,” Álvaro Obregón said.

“Save time and call him, why don’t you?”

Álvaro Obregón shook his head. “No cell contact, ever. Rules of the game.” He rose and, seemingly in no particular hurry, sauntered off at the leisurely pace endemic to Nogales.

For just over an hour Soraya sat alone, soaking up the spangle of the night and the lilt of songs of a local banda, playing a form of brass-heavy music from Sinaloa. A couple of men asked her to dance; politely but firmly she turned them down.

Then, just as the banda segued into its second cumbia, she saw Álvaro Obregón emerge out of the shadows. He was accompanied by a man, presumably Contreras, the pollero, whom she judged to be in his early to midforties with a face like a map that had been folded and refolded too many times. Contreras was tall and rangy with slightly bowed legs, like a lifetime cowboy. And like a cowboy he wore a wide-brimmed hat, stovepipe jeans, and a western shirt with piping and pearl snaps.

The man and the boy sat down without a word. Up close Contreras had the sun-bleached eyes of a man used to sagebrush, dust, and the scorching desert. His skin resembled overta

“Boy tells me you want to go south.” Contreras spoke to her in English.

“That’s right.” Soraya had seen eyes like his before in professional gamblers. They seemed to bore into your skull.

“When?”

A man of few words, that was all right with her. “The sooner the better.”

Contreras lifted his head to the moon, as if he were a coyote about to howl at it. “Just a sliver,” he said. “Tonight’ll be better than tomorrow, tomorrow’ll be better than the next. After that…” He shrugged, as if to say the door would close.

“What’s your fee?” she asked.

He gazed at her again in a neutral way. “Can’t bargain with me like you did with the boy.”

“All right.”

“Fifteen hundred, half up front.”

“A quarter, the rest when you’ve brought me safely across.”

Contreras’s mouth gave a little twitch. “You were right, boy, she is some kinda bitch.”

Soraya wasn’t offended; she knew it was meant as a compliment. That’s how these people spoke, she wasn’t going to change it and she wasn’t about to try.

Contreras shrugged then and began to stand up. “I told you.”

“Tell you what,” Soraya said, “I’ll meet your terms if you take a look at a photo for me.”

Contreras studied her for a moment, then eased back into the chair. He held out his hand, just as Álvaro Obregón had. The boy learned quickly.

Soraya scrolled through the photos on her cell until she found the surveillance shot of Arkadin. She laid the phone in the pollero’s palm. “Have you seen him? You might have taken him south maybe nine or ten days ago.” That’s what she surmised from Álvaro Obregón’s tale of the black Chevy abandoned in the desert: Arkadin had found a way into Mexico that bypassed official scrutiny.

Contreras did not look down at the photo, but kept his colorless eyes on her. “I don’t bargain,” he repeated. “Are you asking me for a favor?”

Soraya hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I suppose I am.”

“Don’t do favors.” He glanced down at the photo. “My fee is now two thousand.”

Soraya sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Now you’re taking advantage of me.”

“Decide,” Contreras said. “A minute more and we’ll call it an even three thousand.”

Soraya exhaled. “Okay, okay.”

“Let’s see the color.”

He meant he wanted to see the money, all of it, to make sure she’d be able to pay. When she had unrolled the hundred-dollar bills to his satisfaction, he nodded.

“Took him across ten days ago.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

Contreras snorted. “Didn’t say a fucking thing, not even when he handed me the money. That was fine by me.”

Soraya played her last card. “Where do you think he was going?”

Contreras lifted his head a moment, as if sniffing something on the wind. “Man like him, not into the desert, that’s for sure. I could see he hated the heat. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to work at one of the maquiladoras in Sonora. This was a boss, his own man.” His gaze lowered and he squinted at her. “Like you.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“The coast, lady boss. Sure as we’re sitting here he was going to the coast.”

Bourne was asleep when the call from Chrissie came in. The sound of his cell woke him instantly, and he pressed a thumb against his eye as he answered the call.