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Bourne raised his hands and the man with the gashed cheek ripped the gun from his grip, then punched him in the jaw.
“¡Basta!” the man behind Bourne commanded. “Él no quiere ser lastimado.” He’s not to be hurt.
Bourne calculated that he could take these three, but he remained unmoving. These people weren’t out to kill him. They had started the fire. The one lurking outside his door could have kicked it down and tried to shoot him, but he didn’t. The fire was to herd him, as were the shots fired in the hallway. He hadn’t been expected to engage the gunman in the hallway.
Bourne had a strong suspicion who had sent these men, so he allowed them to tie his hands behind his back and jam a hemp sack over his head. He was bundled into a hot, cramped vehicle that stank of gasoline, sweat, and oil. They rumbled off into the jungle, the lack of shocks telling him that he was in some sort of run-down military vehicle. Bourne memorized the turns, counting to himself to get a rough approximation of how far they had come. All the while, he used the sharp metal edge behind his back to begin sawing through the flex that bound his wrists together.
After perhaps twenty minutes, the vehicle came to a halt. For some time, nothing happened, except a sharp and sometimes vitriolic exchange in idiomatic Spanish. He tried to make out what was being said, but the thick hemp and the peculiar acoustics of the vehicle’s interior made it virtually impossible. He was summarily hauled out into the coolness of deep shade. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed, a falling leaf brushed against the back of his hand as he was pulled forward. The acrid stench of a latrine, then the odors of gun oil, cordite, and sour sweat. He was pushed down onto what felt like the rough canvas of a folding camp stool and there he sat for another half an hour, listening. He could hear movement, but no one spoke, a sign of ironclad discipline.
Then, abruptly, the hemp sack was removed and he blinked in the dusky light of the forest. Looking around, he found himself in a makeshift camp. He noted thirteen men—and that was just in his field of vision.
One man approached, flanked by two uniformed counterparts, heavily armed with semi-automatics, handguns, and ammo belts. Bourne recognized Roberto Corellos from Moira’s detailed description. He was handsome in a rough, hard-muscled way. And with his dark, smoldering eyes and intensely masculine presence, he possessed a certain charisma that was certain to resonate with these men.
“So…” He drew a cigar from the breast pocket of his beautifully embroidered guayabera shirt, bit off the end, and lit up, using a heavy Zippo lighter. “Here we are, hunter and prey.” He blew out a cloud of aromatic smoke. “But which is which, I wonder?”
Bourne studied him with great care. “Fu
A grin split Corellos’s face and he made a broad gesture. “That, my friend, is because my friends at FARC were good enough to spring me from La Modelo.”
FARC, Bourne knew, stood for “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,” the left-wing guerrillas.
“Interesting,” he said, “you’re one of the most powerful drug lords in Latin America.”
“In the world!” Corellos corrected, his cigar lifted high.
Bourne shook his head. “Left-wing guerrillas and right-wing capitalists, I don’t get it.”
Corellos shrugged. “What’s to get? FARC hates the government, so do I. We have a deal. Every now and again we do each other favors and, as a result, the government fuckers suffer. Otherwise we leave each other alone.” He puffed out another fragrant cloud. “It’s business, not ideological. I make money. I don’t give a fuck about ideology.
“Now to business.” Corellos bent over, hands on knees, his face on a level with Bourne’s. “Who sent you to kill me, señor? Which one of my enemies, eh?”
This man was a danger to Moira and to her friend Berengária. In Phuket, Moira had asked him to find Corellos and deal with him. Moira had never asked him for anything before, so he knew this must be extremely important, possibly a matter of life or death.
“How did you find out I was sent to kill you?” Bourne said.
“This is Colombia, my friend. Nothing happens here that I don’t know about.”
But there was another reason he hadn’t hesitated. His epic encounter with Leonid Arkadin had taught him something about himself. He was not happy in the spaces between, the dark, solitary, actionless moments when the world came to a standstill and all he, an outsider, could do was observe it and feel nothing at the sight of marriages, graduations, memorial services. He lived for the periods when he sprang into action, when both his mind and his body were fully engaged, sprinting along the precipice between life and death.
“Well?” Corellos was almost nose-to-nose with Bourne. “What do you have to tell me?”
Bourne slammed his forehead into Corellos’s nose. He heard the satisfying crack of cartilage being dislodged as he freed his hands from the flex bindings he’d surreptitiously sawed through. Grabbing Corellos, he swung him around in front of him and locked the crook of his arm around the drug lord’s throat.
Gun muzzles swung up but no one made a move. Then another man strode into the arena.
“That’s a bad idea,” he said to Bourne.
Bourne tightened his grip. “It certainly is for Señor Corellos.”
The man was large, well built, with walnut-colored skin and windswept eyes, dark as the inside of a well. He had a great shock of dark hair, almost ringlets, and a beard as long, thick, and curly as an ancient Persian’s. He emitted a certain energy that affected even Bourne. Though he was much older, Bourne recognized him from the photo he’d been shown so many years ago.
“Jalal Essai,” Bourne said now. “I’m wondering what you’re doing here in the company of this drug lord. Is Severus Domna moving heroin and cocaine now?”
“We need to talk, you and I.”
“I doubt that will happen.”
“Mr. Bourne,” Essai said slowly and carefully, “I murdered Frederick Willard.”
“Why would you tell me that?”
“Were you an ally of Mr. Willard’s? No, I think not. Not after he spent so much time and energy pitting you against Leonid Arkadin.” He waved a hand. “But in any event, I killed Willard for a very specific reason: He’d made a deal with Benjamin El-Arian, the head of the Domna.”
“That’s difficult to believe.”
“Nevertheless, it’s true. You see, Willard wanted Solomon’s gold as badly as your old boss at Treadstone, Alexander Conklin, did. He sold his soul to El-Arian to get a piece of it.”
Bourne shook his head. “This from a member of the Domna?”
A slow smile spread across Essai’s face. “I was when Conklin sent you to invade my house,” he said. “But that was a long time ago.”
“Now—”
“Now Benjamin El-Arian and the Domna are my sworn enemies.” His smile turned complicit. “So you see, we have a great deal to talk about after all.”
Friendship,” Ivan Volkin said as he took down two water glasses and filled them with vodka. “Friendship is highly overrated.” He handed one to Boris Karpov and took up the other, holding it high in a toast. “Unless it’s between Russians. Friendship is not entered into lightly. Only we, of all the peoples of the world, understand what it means to be friends. Nostrovya!”
Volkin was old and gray, his face sunken in on itself. But his blue eyes still danced merrily in his head, proof if any was needed that, even in his retirement, he retained every fiber of the superbly clever mind that had made him the most influential negotiator among the heads of the grupperovka, the Russian mafia.
Boris poured himself more. “Ivan Ivanovich, how long have we known each other?”
Volkin smacked his livery lips and held out his empty glass. His hands were large, the veins on their backs ropy, popped out, a morbid blue-black. “If memory serves, we wet our diapers together.” Then he laughed, a gurgling sound in the back of his throat.