“I don’t know,” Bourne said. “But you noticed the scar on the side of his neck that runs up into his jaw?”
She risked another glance in the mirror, then nodded.
“Whoever sent him wants me to know he’s there.”
“Your rivals?”
“Yes. They’re thugs,” he improvised. “It’s a typical intimidation tactic.”
A look of alarm crossed Tracy’s face and she shrank away from him. “What kind of dirty business are you in?”
“It’s precisely what I told you,” Bourne said. “But the venture capital business is riddled with industrial espionage because being first to market with a new product or idea can often mean the difference between Google or Microsoft buying you out for half a billion dollars or going bust.”
This explanation appeared to calm her slightly, but she was clearly still on edge. “What are you going to do?”
“For the moment, nothing.”
Bourne crossed the floor and sat down, and Tracy followed him. As he brought up the Museo del Prado on Google, she bent low over his shoulder and said, “Don’t bother. The man you want is Professor Alonzo Pecunia Zuñiga.”
This was the Prado’s Goya expert who’d authenticated Hererra’s Goya. Bourne recalled seeing his letter in her attaché case.
Without a word, he typed in the name. He had to scroll through several news items before he came upon a photo of the professor, who was accepting an award from one of the many Spanish foundations concerned with promoting Goya’s history and work worldwide.
Alonzo Pecunia Zuñiga was a slim man who appeared to be in his midfifties. He had a dapper spade-shaped beard and thick eyebrows that shaded his eyes like a visor. Bourne checked the date of the photo to be certain it was current. Zooming in on the photo, he printed it out, which cost him an extra couple of euros. Using Google Local, he looked up the addresses of a number of shops.
“Our first stop,” he said to Tracy, “is just off Paseo de Cristóbal Colón, around the corner from the Teatro Maestranza.”
“What about the man with the scar?” she whispered.
Bourne closed out the screen, then went into the browser cache and deleted both the site history and the cookies from the sites he’d visited. “I’m counting on him following us,” he said.
“God.” Tracy gave a brief shudder. “I’m not.”
The broad paseo ran beside the eastern branch of the Guadalquivir River in the El Arenal barrio of the city. It was the historical district called home by many of the Semana Santa brotherhoods. From the beautiful Maestranza bullring, next door to the massive theater, they could see the thirteenth-century Torre del Oro, the great tower, once clad in gold, part of the fortifications to protect Seville from its ancient enemies, the Muslims of North Africa, the fundamentalist Almohads, Berbers from Morocco who were driven out of Seville and all of Andalusia in 1230 by the armies of the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragón.
“Have you ever been to a corrida?” Bourne asked.
“No. I hate the idea of bullfighting.”
“Here’s your chance to see for yourself.” Taking her by the hand, he went to the ticket office by the main gate and bought two sol barreras, the only front seats left, which were in the sun.
Tracy hung back. “I don’t think I want to do this.”
“You either come with me,” Bourne said, “or I leave you here to be questioned by Scarface.”
She stiffened. “He’s followed us here?”
Bourne nodded. “Come on.” As he handed his tickets over and pushed her through the entrance, he added, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. Trust me.”
A ferocious roaring signaled that the corrida had already begun. The place was filled with tiers of seats, above which rose a continuous line of decorative arches. As they made their way down the aisle, the first bull was in the process of being tenderized via the suerte de picar. The picadores, mounted on horses, padded and blindfolded for the animals’ protection, drove their short lances into the bull’s neck while he expended energy attempting to toss their mounts. The horses had oil-soaked cloths in their ears to keep them from shying at the roaring of the crowd. Their vocal cords had been cut to render them mute so as not to distract the bull.
“Okay,” Bourne said, handing her a ticket. “I want you to go get a beer from the stand over there. Drink it in back with plenty of people around you, then make your way to our seats.”
“And where will you be?”
“Never mind,” he said, “just do as I’ve told you and wait for me in the seat.”
He’d caught sight of the man with the pink scar, who’d entered the corrida high up to give himself a better vantage point. Bourne watched Tracy picking her way back to the refreshment stalls, then he took out his cell phone and pretended to talk to a contact he wanted Scarface to believe he was meeting here. With an emphatic nod, he put the cell away and made his way around the ring. He had to find a place in shadow, private enough for a meet, where he could handle Scarface without interference.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scarface glance briefly at Tracy before moving down one of the aisles that intersected with the lowest tier where Bourne was heading.
Bourne had been here before and knew the basic layout. He was looking for the toril, the enclosure where the bulls were kept, because he knew a corridor near it led to the toilets on this side of Maestranza. A couple of young toreros were leaning on the bull gate. Beside them the matador, having exchanged his pink-and-gold cape for the red one, stood still as death, waiting for the moment of suerte de matar, when he would enter the ring with nothing but his sword, his cape, and his athletic skill to bring down the snorting, panting beast. At least, that’s how these corrida fans saw it. Others, like the Asociación para la defensa del anima, saw quite another picture.
As he neared the toril, there came a jolt against the door that sent the young toreros scattering in fright. The matador briefly turned his attention to the animal in the pen.
“Good, you are eager to come out,” he said in Spanish, “into the smell of blood.”
Then he returned his attention to the corrida proper where, as the bull tired, his moment was upon him.
“¡Fuera!” came the fevered cries from the aficionados. “¡Fuera!” Get out! they called to the picadores, for fear their lances were weakening the bull too much, that the final confrontation would not be the blood match they craved.
Now, as the picadores backed their mounts away from the beast, the matador was on the move, entering the corrida as his underlings exited it. The tumult from the crowd was almost ear shattering. No one paid the slightest attention to Bourne as he reached the area near the toril, save for Scarface who, Bourne could see now, had the tattoo of three skulls on the opposite side of his neck. They were crude, ugly, without doubt prison tattoos, most likely received inside a Russian penitentiary. And this man was more than an intimidator. A skull meant that he was a professional killer: three skulls, three kills.
Bourne was at the very end of this section of the stands—beyond was a decorative archway that led back to the area under the stands. Just below him was the wall that divided the pit where the toreros crouched to evade the charges of the bull. At the end of that, to Bourne’s right, was the toril.
Scarface was rapidly approaching, moving down the aisle and across the tiers like a ghost or a wraith. Bourne turned and passed through the archway and down an incline into the shadowed interior. Immediately he was hit by a miasma of human urine and strong animal musk. To his left was the concrete corridor that led to the toilets. There was a door along the wall to his right, outside of which was a uniformed guard.
As he walked toward this tall, slim man a figure blotted out the daylight: Scarface. Bourne approached the guard, who told him, rather brusquely, he had no business being in an area so close to the bulls. Smiling, Bourne placed himself between the guard and Scarface, then reached out and, talking amiably to the guard, pressed the arter
y at the side of his neck. Even as the guard reached for his weapon, Bourne blocked him with his other hand. The man tried to fight, but Bourne, moving swiftly, used an elbow to temporarily paralyze the guard’s right shoulder. He was rapidly losing consciousness from loss of blood to his brain and, as he fell forward, Bourne held him up, continued talking to him because he wanted Scarface to think that this was the man he’d spoken to on his cell, a colleague of the man Bourne had come here to see. It was essential that he keep the fiction going now that Scarface was closing in.
Taking the key from the chain at the guard’s hip, he unlocked the door and pushed the guard into the darkened interior. As he followed him in, he shut the door behind him, but not before he’d caught a glimpse of Scarface hurrying down the ramp. Now that he’d ascertained the place of Bourne’s meet, he was prepared to close in on his quarry.
Bourne found himself in a small anteroom filled with wooden bins containing food for the bulls and an enormous soapstone sink with outsize zinc spout and taps, beneath which sat buckets, cloths, mops, and plastic bottles of cleaning fluids. The floor was covered with straw, which absorbed only a minuscule part of the stench. The bull, hidden behind a concrete barrier that rose to Bourne’s chest, snorted and bellowed, scenting his presence. The frenzied shouts of the crowd broke like waves over the toril, above which sunlight, multicolored from the reflections spinning off the costume of the matador and the outfits of the patrons, splashed across the upper walls of the pen like an artist’s broad and reckless brushstrokes.
Bourne drew a cloth from one of the buckets and was halfway across the anteroom when the door behind him opened so slowly one needed to be looking straight at it to be aware of the movement. Putting his back to the barrier, he moved to his left, toward the part of the room where the opening door would block Scarface’s view of him.
The bull, frightened, angered, or both by the sudden new human scents, struck the concrete barrier with its hooves, the force so powerful it sent bits of stucco flying on Bourne’s side. Scarface seemed to hesitate, no doubt trying to identify the noise. Bourne was almost certain that he had no idea that the next bull was waiting here for its turn to die a bellowing death in the corrida. It was a creature of pure muscle and instinct, easily provoked, easily bewildered, fast and deadly unless brought low by exhaustion and a hundred wounds out of which its life dribbled into the dust of the corrida.
Bourne crept behind the door as it slowly opened, as Scarface’s left hand appeared holding a knife with a long, slender blade shaped like that of the matador’s sword. The wicked tip was tilted slightly up, a position from which he could thrust it, slash it, or throw it with equal ease.
Bourne wrapped the cloth around the knuckles of his left hand, providing sufficient padding. He let Scarface take one tentative step into the anteroom and then rushed him from the side. The killer’s instinct caused the blade to come up and out in a semicircular sweep as he turned toward the blur of motion he detected at the extreme corner of his field of vision.
Deflecting the blade with wrapped knuckles caused Scarface’s defense to open up, and Bourne stepped in, planting his feet, turning from his hips, and drove his right fist into Scarface’s solar plexus. The killer gasped almost inaudibly and his eyes opened in a moment of shock, but an instant later he’d wrapped his right arm around Bourne’s, locking the back of his hand against the inside of Bourne’s elbow. Instantly he applied both pressure and leverage in an attempt to break the bones in Bourne’s forearm.
Pain shot up Jason’s arm, and he faltered. Scarface took the opening and brought the knife blade down, inside Bourne’s wrapped left hand so that the point was directed at Bourne’s rib cage. He couldn’t concentrate on both motions at once, so he let up fractionally on Bourne’s forearm long enough to drive the blade inward toward Bourne’s heart.
Bourne stepped into the lunge, surprising him. Bourne was suddenly too close and the blade passed along his side, allowing him to trap Scarface’s hand between his side and his left arm. At the same time, he kept his forward momentum going, driving Scarface across the room at an angle, backing him up against the stucco barrier.
Scarface, enraged, redoubled his efforts to break Bourne’s arm. A moment more and the bones would snap. On the other side of the barrier, the bull scented the blood in the air, which further maddened it. Once again, its great hooves struck the barrier. The shock reverberated down Scarface’s spine and jolted him from his position of superior leverage.
For a moment Bourne broke free, but Scarface had maneuvered the knife in his trapped hand so that the blade raked down Bourne’s back, drawing blood. Bourne swiveled, but the knife blade followed him, jabbing ever closer until he vaulted over the barrier.
Scarface followed without hesitation, and now both of them were in unknown territory, facing not only each other but the enraged bull as well.
Bourne had the immediate advantage of knowing it was there, but even he was surprised by its size. Like the corrida, the pen was divided by sunlight and shadow. Dust motes hung in the light in the upper half of the pen, but below was the darkness of the Minotaur’s cave. He saw the bull in the shadows, red eyes glittering, black lips flecked with foam. It was staring at him, pawing the ground with massive hooves. Its tail switched back and forth, its massive shoulders were bunched with muscle and sinew. Its head lowered ominously.
And then Scarface was on him. The man, solely intent on Bourne, was as yet unaware of the creature with which they shared the pen. The three skulls, each peering in a different direction, filled Bourne’s vision. He brought an elbow up, aiming for the throat, slammed it into Scarface’s chin instead as the killer partially deflected the blow. At almost the same time Scarface smashed his fist into the side of Bourne’s head, bringing him down to the packed-dirt floor. Rolling over, he grabbed Bourne’s ears, pulled Bourne’s head off the ground, then slammed it back down.
Bourne was rapidly losing consciousness. Scarface was astride him, his bulk painfully pressed down on Bourne’s rib cage. There was a moment when Scarface grinned. He slammed Bourne’s head down again and again, taking increasing pleasure.
Bourne thought, Where’s his knife?
He felt around on the floor with both hands, but there were flashes behind his eyes, the light and dark of the room were spinning, merging into a pinwheel of silver sparks. He felt his breath laboring, his heart hammering in his chest, but as his head was once again slammed into the dirt even these vital sensations began to slip away, replaced by a numbing warmth that flooded inward from his extremities. This warmth was soothing, taking away all pain, all effort, all will. He saw himself floating on a river of white light, moving away from his world of shadows and darkness.
And then something cold intruded and for a moment he was certain it was the breath of Shiva, the destroyer, whose face he sensed hovering over him. Then he knew the blade of cold for what it was. Taking hold of the knife’s hilt brought him back from the brink, and he plunged the blade into Scarface’s side, piercing the flesh between his ribs, skewering his heart.
Scarface reared up, his shoulders trembling, but perhaps, Bourne thought, they weren’t trembling at all, because his head was still spinning from the pounding it had taken. He had trouble focusing. How else to explain Scarface’s head being replaced by that of a bull? This wasn’t Crete, he wasn’t in the Minotaur’s cave. He was in Seville, at the Maestranza corrida.
Then full consciousness returned and, with it, the knowledge of precisely where in the corrida he was.
The pen!
And as he looked up from his prone position he saw the bull, huge and menacing, its head lowered, its razor-tipped horns angled to disembowel him.
Undersecretary Stevenson did not look at all well when Moira and Veronica Hart found him, but then no one looks particularly good stretched out on a slab in the cold room of the DC morgue. The two women had been searching the area surrounding the Fountain of the Court of Neptune sculpture near the entrance to the Library of Congres
s. As fieldwork protocol dictated, they began at the point of origin—in this case, the fountain—and began moving outward in a spiral, hoping to spot some clue that Stevenson might have left as to what had happened to him.
Moira had already called Stevenson’s wife and married daughter, neither of whom had seen or heard from him. She had just looked up the number of Humphry Bamber, Stevenson’s friend and old college roommate, when Hart got the call that a corpse fitting the undersecretary’s description had just been brought into the morgue. The Metro police wanted a positive ID. The DCI had turned to Moira, who said she’d give the prelim. If it was Stevenson, the cops could call his wife to make the formal ID.
“He looks like shit,” Hart said now as they stood over the cadaver of the late Steve Stevenson. “What happened to him?” she asked the associate ME.
“Hit-and-run. C1 to C4 of his spine crushed, as well as most of his pelvis, so the vehicle must’ve been something big: an SUV or a truck.” The AME was a small, compact woman with an enormous coppery halo of wild curls. “He never felt a thing, if that’s any consolation.”
“I doubt it will be to his family,” Moira said.
The AME went on unperturbed; she’d seen and heard it all before. It wasn’t that she was callous, just that her job demanded dispassion. “The cops are investigating now but I doubt they’ll find anything.” She shrugged. “In these cases they rarely do.”
Moira stirred. “Did you find anything out of the ordinary?”
“Not in the prelim, anyway. His alcohol level was almost two, more than double the legal limit, so it’s all too likely he became disoriented and walked off the curb when he should have stayed put,” the AME said. “We’re waiting on the formal ID to begin the full autopsy.”
As the two women turned away, Hart said, “What I find curious is they found no wallet on him, no keys, nothing to indicate who he was.”
“If he was deliberately hit,” Moira said, “his killers wouldn’t necessarily want him identified right away.”