“He’s found something?”
“He won’t say for certain, but I know this man—best to give him the time he needs.”
“All right.” Soraya nodded reluctantly. “Then let’s go to the murder scene.”
“As you wish, mademoiselle.”
She grimaced. “Call me Soraya. Please.”
“Only if you call me Aaron.”
“It’s a deal.”
D ocumentos de identidad, por favor.”
Bourne handed over his passport to the armed soldier. The man stared hard at Bourne while he flipped the passport open. This was the second roadblock Bourne had encountered. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia had been extremely active in the past six months, much to the vexation of the country’s president. And then had come the invasion of La Modelo prison that had led to Roberto Corellos’s escape. In a fit of pique, El Presidente had begun flexing his military muscle. Bourne was sure the federaleswere looking to summarily execute any FARC rebels they came across.
The soldier handed back Bourne’s passport and, without a word, waved him through. Bourne put the car in gear and set off after the caravan of semis in front of him. He’d been on the road several hours and was now high in the mountains.
Ibagué lay along the National Route 40 that connected Bogotá with Cali, then continued to the Pacific coast. It was on a plateau forty-two hundred feet above sea level on the eastern slopes of the Cordillera Central, the central range of the Andes Mountains.
The highway snaked back and forth in perilous switchbacks. Narrow shoulders plunged down hundreds of feet into needle-pointed pine forests or the remains of gigantic rockslides. Now and again he spotted great charred slashes in the pines, evidence of lightning strikes. The sky was enormous, a kaleidoscope of swiftly moving cloud formations and dazzling sunlight. The elevation and the Southern Hemisphere sun combined to lend everything an astonishing clarity, knife-edged and vivid. Above him, the black crosses of condors wheeled and banked in the high thermals.
According to Jalal Essai, he would soon come to La Línea—the longest tunnel in Latin America. It cut through the mountain known as Alta de La Línea and was meant to ease the traffic on the truck-clogged highway to the Pacific port of Buenaventura. The tunnel was so new it wasn’t on his map, which lay open on the seat beside him. As Essai had warned, there was no cell service here, and his sat phone had no GPS function.
The traffic was heavy, the caravans of semis moving at identical speed, rolling around a long curve, following the contour of the mountain. And then, viewed at the apex of the bend, the mouth of La Línea gaped, a black hole into which the snaking traffic disappeared and, on the eastbound side, reappeared.
Bourne headed into the tunnel, a long, sleek tube that bored straight through the mountain. It was lit on either side with strings of argon lights whose cool, bluish light spun off the hoods of oncoming vehicles.
The traffic slowed, as was normal in tunnels, but the progress was steady. He passed the three-quarters mark and was beginning to see a glimmering of daylight in the distance when the line of trucks abruptly slowed. A sea of glowing ruby brake lights appeared and traffic came to a standstill.
Had there been an accident? Was there another roadblock? Bourne strained in his seat, craning his neck. There were no flashing lights, no sign of the telltale sawhorses the military used to block the highway.
He slipped out of the car. A moment later he saw a group of men threading their way between the lanes of vehicles, coming toward him. They were heavily armed with submachine guns, but they weren’t wearing the uniforms of the Colombian army. A cadre of FARC insurgents had stopped the traffic. Why?
He saw the leader now, a broad-shouldered man with a full beard and coffee-colored eyes even the lurid glow thrown by the argon lights couldn’t wash out. One man stopped at each vehicle, holding up a faxed photo to show the driver while the others checked out the car’s backseat and trunk. The trucks took longer, as the soldiers compelled the drivers, often at gunpoint, to open the backs so they could inspect the contents.
Bourne cautiously walked closer, passing other drivers who had climbed down from their cabs and were talking nervously among themselves. All at once he saw the fax sheet clearly. He was staring at himself. The rebels were looking for him. No time to wonder why. Turning on his heel, he walked back to his car and rummaged through the glove box, which offered up a screwdriver and a wrench, both useful weapons.
Retreating on foot, he ducked down, slid underneath a semi, crawling backward. Three vehicles behind him, he came out at the rear of an open-bed truck. Grabbing onto the nylon cords that tied down a canvas cover, he swung up onto the rear. From that vantage point he saw more FARC soldiers approaching from the rear. Ahead or behind, there was no exit.
Untying a section of canvas, he dropped down into the truck bed. The hemp sacks were stamped with the name of a well-known plantation. He used the screwdriver to rip open a corner. The truck was transporting green coffee beans. Leaving the items he’d taken from his car, he reemerged onto the canvas and took a cautious look ahead. The FARC rebels were making headway. They were almost at his car. Once they saw that it was empty, they’d know their prey was somewhere close at hand. He needed to be on his way before then.
Stealing down to the tarmac of the highway, he crept along the side of the open-bed truck. The driver was standing against the side of the semi in front, talking nervously with another man, probably the driver of the semi or his relief. The door to the cab was open and Bourne slithered in. As Bourne watched, the driver took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and put it between his lips. He dug in his pocket for a light, but couldn’t find one. He turned around and began to walk back toward the cab of his truck.
Bourne froze.
Aaron stood in the street on Place de l’Iris. “This is where M. Laurent was hit,” he said.
“Anything on the car that hit him?”
“Not much. The eyewitnesses disagree on the manufacturer. BMW, Fiat, Citroën.”
“None of those cars look alike.”
“Eyewitnesses,” he lamented. “But we did get black paint off the victim.”
Soraya was studying the roadbed. “Not much help there, either.”
Aaron crouched down beside her. “The same eyewitnesses claimed he had just stepped off the sidewalk.”
“He stepped out into traffic without looking?” Soraya looked doubtful.
Aaron shrugged. “He might have been distracted. Maybe someone called to him, maybe he remembered he had to pick up the dry cleaning.” He shrugged in that totally Gallic manner. “Who knows?”
“Someone knows,” she said. “The person who killed him.” Something occurred to her and she stood suddenly. “Where was his cell phone found?”
Aaron showed her and she went back onto the sidewalk several paces. “Now, when I step down into the street, run into me.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” she said a bit impatiently. “Just do it.”
She took out her phone and put it to her ear, then walked at a brisk pace to the edge of the curb and down onto the street, whereupon Aaron, running, hit her. Her right arm flew diagonally out, and if she had not held on to it her phone would have hit the street more or less where they found Laurent’s.
A slow smile spread across her face. “He was talking on his cell when he was hit.”
“So what? Businesspeople are on their cell phones constantly.” Aaron appeared unimpressed. “It was a coincidence.”
“Maybe it was,” Soraya said, “maybe it wasn’t.” She turned toward his car. “Let’s talk to your tech and see if he managed to pull anything from the phone or its SIM card.”
As they were walking back to Aaron’s car, she stopped and turned around. She looked at the building directly across the sidewalk from where the hit-and-run took place. Her gaze rose up the gleaming green-glass and stainless-steel facade.