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Don Fernando’s eyes filled with the past. “We met in Mexico City. She was very young, very beautiful, very charismatic. There was something about her...” He ducked his head. “Well, I don’t know.”
He stared at the glowing end of his cigar again, as if it could rekindle the past. “She had not been born in Mexico City, not in any city at all, for that matter, but the way she moved and spoke you would not have known that she was a peasant. I came to learn that she was a natural mimic—she picked up accents, vocabulary, style, body movements almost instantaneously.”
Bourne had a terrible premonition. “Like any great actress,” he said.
Don Fernando nodded, pulling fiercely on his cigar. “When I asked her to marry me, she laughed, kissed me, and said her destiny lay elsewhere.”
“Let me guess,” Bourne said. “She went on to marry Acevedo Camargo.”
Don Fernando spun on his heel to face Bourne. “How did you—?”
“I met Constanza in Mexico City. She was doing Maceo Encarnación’s work. She fooled me completely.”
Don Fernando produced a grim smile. “She’s fooled everyone, Jason. It’s a long line, begi
“Constanza.”
Don Fernando nodded. “She told her new spouse that she couldn’t conceive, but at the same time, she was bedding Maceo as often as possible. The age when a man considers his living legacy had come upon Maceo early; he was desperate to have a child. Within a month Constanza found that she was pregnant. Of course, Acevedo couldn’t know, so she went to her aunt’s in Mérida for a protracted stay until she had the boy, which, according to their agreement, she gave to Maceo to raise.”
Don Fernando ground what was left of his cigar underfoot and started to move toward the waiting Mirage fighter, by which Bourne surmised their discussion was nearing its end.
“Naturally enough, I found this out after the fact. I had left Mexico City the very same night I fucked her for the last time. Pardon the crudity, but that’s what one did with Constanza: fuck. She had no room in her vocabulary for making love.” He shrugged. “Perhaps that was a reason I found her so irresistible. One could never believe what came out of her mouth. She was a serial liar. Much later, I came to suspect that she believed every one of her lies.”
“That belief is what makes her so effective.”
“Doubtless.” Don Fernando jammed his hands in his pockets. He was trembling with emotion. “Still, I wanted her more than any other woman I’ve ever met.” He looked up into the night sky, streaked with light from the Eiffel Tower. “Martha Christiana reminded me of Constanza. There was a certain—I don’t know...It was as if their cores were made of the same material.”
“It was hard to lose Martha.”
“I killed her, Jason. That’s what I’m still struggling with. Perhaps I wanted her too badly. Perhaps I thought she would make up for Maceo Encarnación taking Constanza away from me.”
Bourne thought it was just as much Constanza Camargo’s fault as it was Maceo Encarnación’s. On the other hand, this human drama had played out in Mexico City, where anything seemed possible. They were near the Mirage’s curving flank and could smell the rich fumes of the fuel.
“Time for me to go, Don Fernando.”
“I know.”
They shook hands as they parted. Bourne climbed into the cockpit, the ladder was whisked away, and Don Fernando stepped backward, making his way across the tarmac without ever taking his eyes off the Mirage as it flung itself down the runway, nose up, and lifted off into the night sky, vanishing like the moon in eclipse.
"You’ll take her into custody.”
“That’s what I said, yes.”
Li, standing outside the front door to his apartment, looked hard at A
“What other way?”
They were close to each other, speaking in whispers.
“You know what I mean, Senator.” Li licked his lips. “What happened to Charles. A break-in, a death.”
A
He breathed softly, snorting like a horse. “It’s just that there are people with keen ears. I ca
“Believe me, Li, I will not let that happen.” A
“She sleeps between photo shoots. She’s been going non-stop for almost two weeks.”
“All right, then.”
He hesitated for a moment, then, slipping his key in the lock, opened the door, and pushed inside. The interior was dark and still. They crept through the rooms until they reached his bedroom. There they found Natasha Illion fast asleep. She was on her side, the curve of her cheek, the brushed shadow of her lowered lash softly illuminated by a bedside lamp.
“She’s like a child,” Li whispered in A
A
“Wait, where—?” Without putting Hendricks on hold, she rushed in behind Li, just in time to see him stab downward with a longbladed carving knife he must have fetched from the kitchen.
A
A
At length, A
“Did you get it all on tape?” Hendricks seemed to be breathing fast.
A
"Making our approach.”
The pilot’s voice sounded through the intercom, and Bourne opened his eyes. Peering out through the windscreen, he could see nothing, not even a single light. Lebanon, near the border with Syria. Desert. Mountains in the distance. The parched wind. The nothingness.
It felt like coming home.
29
IT SEEMED TO Maceo Encarnación, as he sat brooding in his private jet, that he had left a great many people behind.
Now he could add Nicodemo to the list. Even though that was not Nicodemo’s real name, he had a difficult time thinking of him as anything else. Now, with him gone, left behind in Paris, dead or alive, he did not know, he understood why that was so. It was always easier to leave someone behind when he distanced himself from them, in one way or another.
Dead or alive.He thought about this phrase, while the cauldron in the pit of his stomach informed him that Nicodemo was dead. He must be dead; death was the only thing that would have kept him from returning to the plane.