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He was responsible for Martha Christiana’s death, he had no doubts on that score. He had manipulated her, put her in what turned out to be an untenable position, pitting himself against Maceo Encarnación. He had twisted the screws on her, slowly to be sure, but in the end that hadn’t mattered. In the end, she hadn’t been able to follow either him or her employer. She had taken the only way out that would give her surcease. Perhaps this had been her destiny from the moment she was born into a loveless home and ran away, she thought, to save herself. Instead, she had run pell-mell toward her destiny, toward this apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, toward her death on the cobbles of the Quai de Bourbon.
Perhaps it had nothing to do with him, but he did not believe that. In Martha Christiana desire had warped her destiny. Now she was dead. Turning in a slow circle, he felt the lack of her, as if there were more shadows in these rooms he had come to know so well, as if there were suddenly another room he had never noticed and hadn’t explored, a room whose contents frightened him.
He checked once more to be certain he was alone even though the rational part of his brain told him that he was. Padding silently into the bathroom, he knelt down on creaky joints and extracted Martha Christiana’s handbag from the narrow space between the claw-foot tub and the marble-tiled floor, where he had shoved it before the cops had asked for entrance.
Putting down the toilet seat cover, he sat, placing the handbag on his thighs. He stayed like that for long minutes, his fingers exploring the soft leather, his nostrils dilated to take in her scent, which rose from the handbag’s interior and caused tears to form in his eyes.
Though he had been acting out of self-preservation, he had genuinely liked Martha. He had also felt sorry for her, trapped as she was. But what good had his empathy done, except to drive her the last few yards to her destiny?
He sighed, and his head came up abruptly. He had heard a sound, and he listened, as if for her soft bare footfalls, as if she might still be alive, as if the last several hours had been a nightmare from which he had just this second awakened, her handbag in his lap. Then he looked down and knew with absolute clarity that what he held between his hands was all that was left of her.
Slowly, he opened the bag and, with a curious trepidation, peered inside. He encountered the usual tools of the female trade: lipstick, compact, eyeliner, a small pack of tissues, her wallet, astonishingly thin, as if what little was inside might evaporate as quickly as her life. He opened it briefly, then fished out her mobile phone.
It was locked, but he knew many of the things she liked, and he tried several of them on the keypad until he stumbled upon the right one, and the mobile opened to him as it had so many times to her. This door opening, as it were, moved him deeply. It was as if she were inviting him into the guarded part of herself.
“ Mea culpa, Martha,” he said. “I wish you were here.”
Just outside the front door, Nicodemo heard these words as they wafted through the apartment, and he pressed his ear harder against the door. In doing so, he caused the old wooden panels to creak.
He froze, scarcely allowing himself to breathe.
Don Fernando’s head came up, and, like a dog on point, his body began to quiver. The creak from the front door had arrowed through the apartment, piercing his heart like a presentiment of death.
Placing Martha’s handbag aside, he rose and, leaving the bathroom, went through the bedroom to the living area. There he stood for a moment, immobile, scenting the air for a new spoor. He stared hard at the front door, which he had been careful to lock the moment the last of the detectives had vacated the premises. He watched the wooden boards, as if they might tell him what or who was on the other side of the door.
At length, he crept to the door and, with his back arched, bent to put his ear to the old wood. He heard breathing, but whether it was the building or someone standing on the other side of the door, he could not tell. He felt, if not frightened, then profoundly uneasy. He did not keep a handgun in the apartment, which was lucky for him. The cops would have confiscated it, and it might have aroused their suspicions that Martha Christiana’s death was murder rather than suicide. Now, though, he regretted not having stashed one somewhere. He did not feel safe.
After taking another fruitless listen through the door, he backed away, returning to the bathroom, where he took up Martha’s handbag and resumed his melancholy journey through its contents.
He checked her mobile’s call log first. The last incoming call had been made perhaps fifty minutes before she went out the window. Considering the hour it had been made, he thought that significant, especially because it was from a number in Martha’s phonebook. The name attached had been reduced to initials, but there was no doubt to whom “ME” belonged: Maceo Encarnación.
What had Maceo Encarnación said to her that had made her snap, caused her to decide to kill herself? There was no doubt in his mind that she had felt trapped between himself and Encarnación with no way out.
He checked her voicemails, texts, all the usual stuff that almost invariably clogged up people’s mobiles, but there was nothing. Martha Christiana had been too careful. As he was scrolling through her phonebook, his own mobile buzzed. He picked it up. Christien was calling.
“Are you still dead?” Christien said with a chuckle.
“Sadly, no.” Don Fernando took a breath. “But Martha Christiana is.”
“What happened?”
Don Fernando told him.
“Well, at least she won’t be a threat to you anymore. I’ll take care of the press release correcting the news of your death.” There was a slight pause. “Do you know where Bourne is?”
“I thought you were keeping track of him?”
“No one can keep track of him, Don Fernando. You know that better than anyone.”
Don Fernando grunted. Without thinking, he slid Martha’s mobile back into her handbag. His fingers found the compact, smooth and warm, as from contact with Martha’s skin. He found that circling his thumb over its lacquered surface gave him a measure of solace.
“Our enemies are on the move,” Christien said. “Maceo Encarnación and Harry Rowland have left Mexico City. They landed in Paris over an hour ago. I thought I’d better warn you.”
“Something’s happening.”
“Yes, but I hope it’s not what we have been afraid of.”
Don Fernando ran a hand across his face. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“With Maceo Encarnación in Paris, I’m concerned about you.”
“Maceo Encarnación knows better than to show his face in Paris. I have too many eyes and ears on the ground. Rowland is, however, another matter.”
“Jason and that Mossad woman, Rebeka, were following Rowland.”
Don Fernando stared at his bare feet on the bathroom tiles. Martha had liked his feet. She said they were sexy. “If that’s the case, then they’ve failed.”
“I don’t want to think about Jason failing.”
“Neither do I.” Don Fernando’s heart grew even heavier as he stared at the lapis face of Martha’s compact. “Listen, Christien, there must be something we can do for Jason.”
“It’s progressed too rapidly, gone too far. It’s out of our hands,” Christien said. “All we can do now is have faith that Bourne will come through.”
“If anyone can...” Vaya con Dios, hombre, Don Fernando thought as he disco
He was tired—beyond tired. He rose and, still holding the compact, padded back to the bedroom. It was early morning, when the city, still wrapped in sleep, began to shudder with the rumble of the first of the day’s traffic, when people queued up at bakeries to buy breakfast baguettes and croissants, when bicyclists crossed the bridges, taking their owners to work.