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“Let’s start with Jason Bourne,” she said, “and how he needs our help.”
26
LA GOULUE HAD BEEN the first of the Moulin Rouge’s famed Cancan Queens.
Each night she entered the famed theater via the well-hidden and almost unknown entrée des artistes, a tiny staircase that led to heaven from the grubby back alleys of Montmartre. The well-worn staircase, trod upon by generations of the Moulin’s dancers and cabaret artists for over a century, had in years past been supplanted by a newer backstage entrance. Don Fernando, however, knew not only of its existence, but the fact that it was still a useful way to gain access to the halcyon environs of the Moulin Rouge, when all other methods failed, or when one of the Doriss Girls of his acquaintance wanted to sneak him in for some backstage shenanigans between shows.
He called his current Doriss Girl, Cerise, who, he assured Bourne, was absolutely reliable.
Just after 8 pm, they exited Don Fernando’s building on the Quai de Bourbon. A driver and car from Don Fernando’s favored service were waiting.
“Tell the driver you’ve changed your mind,” Bourne said.
When Don Fernando dismissed the car and driver, he and Bourne crossed the nearby bridge to the Right Bank without incident.
“I don’t see him,” Don Fernando said.
“You won’t,” Bourne assured him. “But there was a better than even chance he had suborned someone inside the car company you frequent.”
The thing to avoid was crowds, so they headed for the taxi tête de stationnear the Hôtel de Ville and climbed into the waiting cab. Don Fernando gave the driver the address of the Moulin Rouge, and the Mercedes nosed out into traffic.
“You seem very sure of yourself, Jason,” Don Fernando said as he settled back into the seat.
“It never pays to be sure of anything,” Bourne replied, “apart from putting one foot in front of the other in the dark.”
Don Fernando nodded as he stared at the back of the driver’s head. “I never asked you about the female Mossad agent.”
“Rebeka,” Bourne said. “She and I were both after the same man, Semid Abdul-Qahhar, the head of the Mosque in Munich and one of the seminal players in the Muslim Brotherhood. We joined forces, we helped each other. She was a good person—someone trying to do the right thing, even though it might very well have cost her her position at Mossad.”
Don Fernando nodded absently. “There’s always a price to pay for doing the right thing,” he mused, “the only question is, how heavy is the price?” He rubbed his knuckles against the side of his face. “There’s also a price for not being able to do the right thing.” He sighed. “That’s the nature of life, I suppose.”
“Our life, especially.”
Their discussion was interrupted when they were rear-ended by the car behind them. It was at a slow speed and didn’t amount to much; nevertheless, their driver threw the Mercedes into park and got out and started an altercation with the driver of the other car. “Get out!” Bourne said suddenly. He pushed against Don Fernando. “Get out now!”
Bourne pulled on the door handle, but the central lock had been engaged from the driver’s console. The driver who had hit them handed the taxi driver a small packet.
Bourne launched himself over the front seatbacks, but at that moment a figure ducked into the Mercedes and pointed a Sig-Sauer at him, forcing him to return to the backseat.
“No escape now,” Nicodemo said, as he slid behind the wheel.
He nodded, and the taxi driver returned to the car. Keeping the Sig trained on them, Nicodemo disengaged the central lock. The driver wrenched open the rear door and bound Bourne’s wrists behind his back with a length of plastic zip cord, then did the same to Don Fernando.
“Take them to the trunk,” Nicodemo said.
“You came into us too hard,” the driver said. “The lock’s bashed in and the trunk won’t open.”
“Okay. Get out of here,” Nicodemo said.
The driver slammed the rear door shut, and went back to the car Nicodemo had been driving.
Nicodemo, behind the wheel of the Mercedes, gri
Bourne said nothing. He was testing the tensile strength of the zip cord. He wouldn’t be able to snap it without outside help.
Placing the Sig on the bench seat beside him, Nicodemo turned away from them to face front. “Much better to have tame animals,” he said, watching them in the rear view mirror as he put the Mercedes in gear and pulled out into the nighttime street,“ than wild ones to the slaughter.”
A fu
“And what would that be, Agent Anderson?”
“I just came from looking at a body fished out of the Potomac River. Hadn’t been there long, a couple of hours max.”
Tom Brick, sitting at ease behind his large, masculine desk in his massive office that took up an entire corner of the top floor of Core Energy, spread his hands. “Yeah? So?”
“Knifed twice in the side.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
“‘What’s it got to do with me?’ the man says.” Anderson, with James at his side, stood in the approximate center of the office. Having shown his government ID to the phalanx of secretaries, assistants, and assorted flunkies, they had been ushered into Brick’s office where, it appeared, he was having a meeting with a suit seated on a sofa facing the desk. Brick did not invite the newcomers to sit. Anderson checked the expression on the professionally scrubbed face of the suit before he returned his gaze to Brick.
“I’m curious, Mr. Brick, as to why you haven’t asked the victim’s name.”
Brick stared at him with dead-fish eyes. “His name is of no interest to me.”
“You said his, but I said a body.”
Brick snorted. “Don’t play NCISwith me, Anderson.”
“I’ll tell you anyway, because you know him. His name is Dick Richards.”
Brick sat for a moment, unmoving. Then he rose and gestured to the man with whom he had been talking when Anderson and James had entered.
“Perhaps it’s time you met Bill Pelham.”
“As in Pelham, Noble and Gu
Brick couldn’t contain a smile. “That’s right.”
Pelham, Noble and Gu
Anderson, trying his damnedest to ignore the broadside, said, “In any event, Mr. Brick, we need to talk. Now.”
“No talk,” Bill Pelham said, rising from his seat on the sofa. “No talk now, not ever.”
Three things I can’t abide,” A
Around them, in the postmodern spaciousness of the restaurant Li Wan had chosen, silverware clinked and glasses chimed. Voices were raised in small talk. People deep in conversations on their mobile phones ignored everyone around them. She stared deep into Li’s obsidian eyes. “Unfortunately, life is full of confusion, complication, and dissembling.” She smiled with crimson lips. “I like neatness—clean begi
Li inclined his narrow head. “As do I, Senator Ring.”
“And yet, here we both are in Washington, DC.” Her laugh was easy to like, meant to put the listener at ease. Li was not as easy a mark as that.
“Being at a center of power is like being in a magnetic storm.” He took a sip of white wine. “At once exhilarating and disorienting.”
A