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Now, breaking his brief reverie, Colonel Ben David looked from Maceo Encarnación to Colonel Han Cong, commander of the sixman cadre Minister Ouyang had sent as his representatives.
“Your report, Colonel?” he said.
“The enemy Jeep has been destroyed,” Han said.
Maceo Encarnación addressed himself to the Chinese. “Bourne
and the driver?”
“The deaths have not yet been confirmed.”
“And why would that be?” Ben David asked.
Colonel Han cleared his throat. “I have not yet heard from my men.”
At once Ben David lost interest in him. He turned to Maceo Encarnación. “They’re dead,” he said. “Bourne is coming.”
“Excuse me,” Colonel Han said. “How do you know that?”
A slow smile spread across Colonel Ben David’s face, as if he had been waiting for that question. “I know Bourne, Colonel Han.”
Colonel Han frowned. “But three soldiers, highly trained and heavily armed...”
“I know what Bourne is capable of.” Ben David touched the livid scar on the side of his face. “Intimately.”
The dubious expression on Han’s face turned into a shrug. “Then we should complete our transaction as swiftly as possible.” He nodded to Maceo Encarnación, who hefted a hard-sided suitcase onto the trestle table. The fingerprint lock was duly opened, the top swung back, and the thirty million American dollars were revealed.
“It’s all there. You have Minister Ouyang’s word.” Colonel Han held out his hand. “Now the formula.”
Ben David dug into the pocket of his fatigues and drew out a USB drive, which he placed in the Chinese’s palm. “It’s all there,” he said dryly. “You have my word.”
The Mossad agent’s hesitation on first seeing the Chinese uniform gave Bourne the chance to duck away.
Dropping the launcher, he grabbed the agent by the front of his vest and flung him out of the vehicle onto the ground in a flurry of snow. The agent rolled onto his back, firing the Tavor, almost severing Bourne’s head from his neck. The sting of the bullets’ heat burned Bourne’s cheek as he jabbed the butt of his QBZ down onto the agent’s sternum. The agent smashed the butt of his own weapon against Bourne’s, deflecting it at the last instant so that it slipped off his ribs and onto the ground. Kicking upward, he struck Bourne’s left hip, throwing him off balance.
Bouncing to his feet, he came at Bourne, driving the Tavor crosswise into Bourne’s neck, sending him stumbling into the side of the vehicle. The agent bent him backward as he pressed the weapon so hard into Bourne’s throat that all air was cut off. Gri
It was this intent, so fervent, that caused him to miss Bourne’s right heel hooking into his. As Bourne drew back his leg, the agent lost his balance. But even as he fell, he swung the Tavor around, aiming it at Bourne’s chest. He pulled the trigger as he landed, the bullets firing wide when Bourne smashed the butt of his weapon into the agent’s face. The second strike shattered his sternum and rib cage, driving a rib through his chest. It must have punctured a lung because pink foam boiled between the agent’s lips, followed by a gout of blood, thick and clotted.
Colonel Han, having given no indication that he had registered Ben David’s barb, inserted the drive into his tablet and switched it on.
Maceo Encarnación’s lips twitched. “Believe it or not, Colonel Han is an expert in physics and in laser excitation in particular.”
The two men watched as Colonel Han brought up the files on the USB drive and sca
At that moment, Colonel Ben David’s satphone buzzed. He listened for a moment, the frown on his face deepening. “No, do nothing. Just keep him in sight.” He closed the co
“Bourne?” Maceo Encarnación said.
“He’s wearing Dov’s uniform.” Ben David shook his head. “But I doubt it’s Dov.” He turned to the Chinese. “Colonel Han, I believe it’s past time for you to leave.”
Han looked up from his scrutiny of the equations, nodded, and closed down his tablet. Pocketing the USB drive and sticking the tablet under his arm, he nodded curtly to the two men, then stepped smartly out of Ben David’s field tent.
Bourne, wearing the agent’s clothes, drove the vehicle toward the Mossad encampment outside Dahr El Ahmar. The loaded launcher lay in the footwell behind him. He had a clear idea of the layout of the camp, having seen it from the air on his previous visit with Rebeka.
He found his mind, normally so calculating and pragmatic, turning back to Rebeka. He remembered the first time he had seen her, on the commercial flight to Damascus, a flight attendant about whom swirled a mystery he wanted to unravel. It was only later that she revealed herself as a Mossad agent. During their joint assault on the terrorist Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s stronghold, she had proved herself to be fierce, intelligent, and brave. He felt her loss as keenly as if Maceo Encarnación had knifed him in the ribs. Constanza Camargo had told him that Maceo Encarnación was protected by the ancient Aztec gods, but the truth as he knew it now was something both more mundane and more sinister. Maceo Encarnación was protected by all those people he had seduced, suborned, coerced, tricked, and beaten into submission. Armor enough for the modern world.
As he drove, Bourne became aware of sharp glinted sunlight reflected off coated glass lenses. He was being observed by the Mossad, by Maceo Encarnación’s men, or by what was left of the Chinese military contingent.
Maceo Encarnación followed Colonel Han out of Ben David’s tent, walking beside him as he headed for the aircraft that would take him and what remained of his cadre back to Beijing, where Minister Ouyang waited for the bounty for which he had delivered thirty million to Maceo Encarnación.
“You played your part well,” Colonel Han said in the condescending tone of the true Celestial that set Maceo Encarnación’s teeth on edge.
Encarnación, imagining himself swinging a machete in the powerful horizontal arc that would sever Colonel Han’s head from his body, replied, “I’ll take my fee now.”
Colonel Han, looking straight ahead as if he walked alone, tugged out a thick envelope from the inside breast pocket of his tunic. He held it, apparently not ready to hand it over. “What is it you did to deserve this generous payment, Encarnación?”
Feeling the blood rushing through his head, Maceo Encarnación pressed his fingertips to his temple where he could feel a distended vein beating like a second heart. He calmed himself before answering. “I acted as the go-between. I introduced Minister Ouyang to Colonel Ben David and oversaw the negotiations. Ouyang never would have got to Ben David without me.”
“He might have.” Colonel Han slapped the envelope against his knuckles. “ MinisterOuyang is both powerful and resourceful.” He shrugged, as if he had his orders to fulfill even though he did not agree with them. He held out the envelope, and Maceo Encarnación, made to feel like a paid employee instead of a partner, took the envelope and, in the Colonel’s presence, laboriously counted the bills.
“The five million is all there,” Han said in precisely the same voice he had used inside Ben David’s tent.
“But is it real?” Maceo Encarnación removed three bills at random and, using eyedroppers from tiny vials he carried, subjected them to two chemical tests.
“Satisfied?” Han said with a wry smile. “They’re real. Unlike the thirty million you delivered to the Zionist Ben David. He sold his precious formula for a suitcase full of counterfeit money.”