The Bourne Objective

Willard tensed. “So who am I actually working for?”

El-Arian’s smile held a sardonic edge. “Well, like all things in the matter, it’s complicated. The man who has been providing his funding and intel is Jalal Essai.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Nor should you have. Jalal Essai does not move in your circles. In fact, like me, Essai makes it his business to remain unknown to people like you. He’s a member of the Monition Club-or, rather, he was. You see, for some years this particular ring was presumed lost. It’s the only one of its kind, for reasons that will become clear to you momentarily.”

El-Arian rose and, crossing to a section of the bookcases, pressed a hidden stud. The section swung outward, revealing a tea service consisting of a chased brass pot, a plate with an array of tiny powdered cakes, and six glasses, each narrow as a shot glass but perhaps three times its height. He loaded them onto a tray and brought them back to the table.

In a ceremonial ma

“Back to the matter at hand.” El-Arian took a sweet and popped it in his mouth. “What the ring’s engraving told us was this: King Solomon’s gold is fact, not fiction. The engraving contains specific Ugaritic symbols. Solomon employed a platoon of seers. These seers, or some of them at any rate, were versed in alchemy. They had discovered that intoning certain Ugaritic words and phrases in conjunction with scientific procedures they developed could turn lead into gold.”

Willard sat stu

“Literally.” El-Arian popped another sweet into his mouth. “This is the answer to the seemingly unsolvable mystery I proposed before, namely, how Solomon amassed such a hoard of gold in his short lifetime.”

Willard shifted in his seat. “Is that what you people do here? Chase fairy tales?”

El-Arian produced one of his enigmatic smiles. “As I said, you’re free to leave anytime you wish. And yet you won’t.”

Out of sheer spite, Willard got to his feet. “How do you know that?”

“Simply because, even if you aren’t yet convinced, the idea is too compelling.”

Willard produced his own enigmatic smile. “Even if it is a fairy tale.”

El-Arian pushed his chair back and crossed to the part of the bookcases where he had gotten the tea and cakes. Reaching into the shadows, he pulled something out, brought it back, and placed it on the table in front of Willard.

Willard held El-Arian’s eyes for a moment, then dropped his gaze. He picked up a gold coin. It appeared ancient. On it was imprinted a pentagram star, along with the inscription GRAM, MA, TUM, TL, TRA in the spaces between the points. In the center of the star was a symbol so worn away as to be incomprehensible.

“That pentagrammic star is the symbol of King Solomon, though various sources depict it as a six-pointed star, a cross engraved with Hebrew letters, even a Celtic knot. But it was the pentagrammic star that was engraved on the ring he always wore, which was said to have magic properties. Among them, it allowed him to trap demons and speak to animals.”

Willard laughed. “You don’t believe such claptrap.”

“Certainly not,” El-Arian said. “On the other hand, that gold coin is without doubt part of Solomon’s hoard.”

“I don’t see how you could be certain,” Willard said. “No expert exists who could verify such a thing.”

El-Arian’s curious smile returned. “For one thing we have verified its age. But more importantly we discovered something else,” he said. “Turn the coin over please.”

To Willard’s surprise and bewilderment, the obverse of the coin was totally different.

“You see, this side isn’t made of gold,” El-Arian said. “It’s made of lead, the original metal before it was transformed into gold.”

[15]

MOIRA SET OUT from Guadalajara early in the morning, driving into the heart of blue agave country in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The sky was huge, with just a few brushstrokes of cloud floating in the vivid blue. The sun was searing, and the morning grew hot very quickly. Toward noon she was obliged to roll up the windows and turn on the air conditioner. She lost cell service several times, and without her GPS she had some difficulty finding Amatitán.

She used the time to put her interview with Roberto Corellos into its proper perspective. Why did he tell her that he’d chosen Berengária to keep her brother’s business going? Why on earth would he trust a woman to handle his livelihood? Moira had met many men like Corellos, and none of them was enlightened when it came to females. Screwing, cooking, having babies, that was the extent of their expectations of women.

She mulled these questions over for hours until at last she caught sight of Amatitán. Corellos had a burning need for revenge. In a hot-tempered man of his blood, revenge was a matter of honor. Cuckolding his cousin wouldn’t be enough for him. It made sense that Corellos would want to ensnare Narsico in the kind of life his cousin had tried so desperately to put behind him. That was revenge.

If Berengária was, indeed, heir to the drug business, then it followed a man must be ru

The endless fields of blue agave passed by on either side. Workers toiled in the fields, sweating and grunting with their efforts. The Skydel estancia was just ahead.

If, as she now believed, Essai’s laptop-the computer stolen from Gustavo Moreno-contained the drug lord’s client list, then there must be something else on it of great importance to her employer, and she was willing to bet that it wasn’t simply his family history, as he’d claimed. Then why had Essai lied to her? What was he hiding?

Oliver Liss has lied to you from the first day he met you,” Benjamin El-Arian said.

“I expect everyone to lie to me,” Willard said. “It’s a necessary evil of the life I lead.”

The two men were walking in the Moorish cloister outside the Monition Club library. Here they were sheltered from the wind. The sun, high in the sky, spilled its warmth onto their shoulders.

“So you’re at peace with it.”

“Of course not.” Willard inhaled deeply. There was something planted in the cloister, an herb or spice, whose scent he found pleasant and familiar. “My life is a war. I sift through the lies, I’ve trained myself to see past them. Then I act accordingly.”

“You already know that Oliver Liss has no intention of allowing you to run Treadstone as you see fit.”

“Of course, but I needed someone to get Treadstone off flatline. His agenda and mine were never going to coincide. However, it was Liss or no one.”

“Now there’s someone else,” El-Arian said. “Liss is owned by Jalal Essai. As I told you. Essai was a member of the Monition Club. Currently he’s on his own.”

“What would make him do that?” Willard asked.

“The same thing that kept you from walking out of the library.”

“King Solomon’s gold?”

El-Arian nodded. “Once he discovered that the Solomon ring wasn’t lost, he decided he wanted the gold for himself.”