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“Why do you want to know, Don Fernando?”
“Because,” he said calmly and evenly, “you came to me as the angel of death.” He caught the flash of her eyes, their ever so slight widening. “Now I’m wondering whether we have gone beyond that.”
“And if we haven’t?”
He smiled. “Then you must kill me.”
She sat back and wiped her lips. “So you know.”
“It would seem so.”
“When?”
He shrugged. “From the very begi
“And you let me go about it?”
“You intrigue me, Martha.”
Her serious eyes studied him for a moment, then she laughed raucously. “I must be losing my touch.”
“No,” he said. “You no longer wish to be alone. You want to belong.”
“I belong to Maceo Encarnación.”
There, she had said the dreaded name. It was out.
He shook his head. “That, my dear, is an illusion.”
“Now, I suppose, you’ll tell me it’s an illusion created by Maceo Encarnación.”
“In fact, it’s an illusion you yourself created.” Don Fernando, knowing she loved fresh-squeezed blood-orange juice, refilled her tall, narrow glass. “Maceo Encarnación does not possess that power.” He paused for a moment, as if in deep contemplation. “Unless, of course, you have given it to him.”
He shrugged again, his gaze tangling with hers. “You’re stronger than that. This I know without question.”
“How?” she said. “How do you know?”
He answered her with his eyes.
“I have been with Maceo Encarnación for a number of years, after a long line of—” She was about to say after a long line of men who used me and who I used, after I escaped Marrakech, but she bit her tongue instead. She could not recount those months of humiliation, even with this man, whom, she realized now, she had come to trust, an utterly astonishing revelation, considering she had been quite certain she could never trust a man. That included Maceo Encarnación, who paid so generously for her services, just as he had paid for her training. “You’re a natural at killing,”he had told her once. “All your skills need are more options to choose from, a bit of refining.”The concept of trust had never been raised between them. Theirs was a strictly transactional relationship, nothing more, but nothing less, either. The fact remained, however, that she had never once contemplated betraying him. Until now.
Don Fernando Hererra, the man sitting across from her, staring, it seemed, into her very soul, had changed everything, upending her life, causing her to transgress every rule she had imposed on herself.
But, on second thought, maybe not. Perhaps he was an emissary, perhaps he had just handed her the key. The rest had been her choice, as he had intimated. It was she who had opened the door, stepping through into an entirely new world. He hadn’t told her how to act or feel—he had been trying to tell her that she had already made her decisions.
She knew without having to ask that this was how Don Fernando saw it, and she was immensely grateful for that. He was the sort of man she had dreamed of, but had convinced herself she would never meet, that he could not possibly exist.
And yet...
Breaking her gaze away, she stared out over the rocking boats, the furled sails, the drying nets on the decks of the just-returned fishing fleet. The granite boulders rising like a giant’s shoulders from the sea. “When I was a child,” she said, “I used to think I lived at the end of the world.” She waited, afraid, almost, to go on. Then she took the next step into the brightly lit room.
“I was wrong. It was the begi
16
CONSTANZA CAMARGO LIVED at the corner of Alejandro Dumas and Luis G Urbina, in Colonia Polanco.
From her jalousied front windows Bourne looked out at the modernist, angular manmade pond in the center of Lincoln Park, beyond which, to the north, past the thick, geometric stands of trees, was Castelar Street. The interior of the colonial mansion was warm and comfortably furnished, made welcoming and even intimate by the profusion of personal items, photos, memorabilia, and souvenirs from half a lifetime of world travel.
“Someone in this family loves Indonesia,” Bourne said, as he and Rebeka followed Constanza into the dark wood-beamed dining room. It was wallpapered in a dark-green semi-abstract forest pattern and had French doors that led out to an i
“That would be me,” Constanza said. “In Java, I stood atop the Buddhist sanctuary, Borobudur, at sunrise. In the late afternoon, I heard the Muslim voices of the muezzin calling and echoing all across the dusky, sun-bronzed valley. Astonishing. I fell instantly in love.”
As they sat at the thick trestle table, they were surrounded by servants, each carrying a tureen of stew or a platter of food or bottles of tequila, wine, and spring water.
As lunch was methodically, almost ritualistically, served, Constanza said with that same twinkle in her eyes, “Now I’ve told you my history, you must tell me yours.”
“We’ve come to Mexico City looking for someone,” Bourne said before Rebeka could answer.
“Ah.” Constanza smiled. “Not on a vacation.”
“Sadly, no.”
She waited while a servant spooned a dark, rich pork moleonto her plate. “And may I assume that your search is urgent?”
“Why would you say that?” Rebeka asked.
Constanza turned to her. “Did you think I didn’t see that evil-looking man lurking in the arrivals hall? I may be getting on in years, but I’m not senile!”
“I want to be as sharp as you are,” Rebeka said, “when I’m your age.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Constanza said with a wink. “Why do you think I offered you a lift?” She leaned toward them, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “I want in on the action.”
“Action?”
“Whatever you two are up to. Whatever that evil-looking man wants to stop you from doing.”
“Since we’re speaking bluntly,” Bourne said, “that evil-looking man wants to kill us.”
Constanza frowned. “Now that I won’t put up with!”
Rebeka shook her head. “You’re not shocked?”
“After you’ve lived my life,” Constanza said, “nothing is shocking.” She turned to stare at Bourne. “Especially for people who say they’re in import-export. For many years, that was my husband’s line of work!”
She put her hands together, no longer interested in eating, if she ever had been. “So, tell me what you can and I will help you find whoever you’re looking for.”
“His name is Harry Rowland,” Bourne said.
“Or Manfred Weaving,” Rebeka added.
“Legends,” Constanza said, a sprightly gleam in her eye. “Oh, yes, I know about legends. Acevedo used them in the early days when we traveled abroad.”
“There’s something that may make this man easier to locate,” Bourne said. “We think he works for SteelTrap.”
Something new overcame Constanza’s expression, something powerful and dark and thoroughly unpleasant. She looked from one to the other. “This will undoubtedly sound overheated, even melodramatic. I wish it were either of those things.” Her eyes had turned dark and unfathomable with secrets best left untouched. “My best advice is to forget this man Rowland or Weaving. Whatever your business is with him, forget it. Leave Mexico City on the next flight.”
After enduring a restless night during which Charles Thorne was pursuing her through a labyrinth of dank corridors that smelled of anaesthetic and death, Delia awoke in her own bed with a pounding headache even three ibuprofen couldn’t quite eradicate.
She checked her phone to see if there had been any calls from Soraya’s ICU nurse, even though she knew there hadn’t been. One voicemail and two texts from Amy, wondering how she was. Amy and Soraya did not get along, which was a great sadness to her. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, but Amy was jealous of the intimacy she shared with Soraya. Even though she had assured Amy there was no physical component to their friendship, that Soraya was strictly hetero, she had come to the realization that Amy didn’t believe her. “I’ve read all the articles about how rampant homosexuality is in the Arab world,”Amy said in one of her less than finest moments. “It’s all been pushed underground, it’s all sub rosa, which makes the urge all the stronger.”Nothing Delia could say would dissuade Amy from her point of view, so she had stopped trying, and gradually the subject of Soraya dropped from their conversations.