Afterward, in a secluded part of the modest departures terminal, Bourne told the pair what he had discovered.
“Essai left tickets for all three of us to Bogotá with a connecting flight to Seville, via a stop in Madrid,” Bourne said quietly. “There’s also a rental car voucher for when we arrive in Seville. Essai says final instructions will be with the rental car agreement.” He looked from one to the other. “You have your passports?”
Rosie held up her satchel. “Packed days ago.”
“Good.” Bourne was relieved. He did not want to call Deron, his contact in DC, for forged passports because of the delay it would cause. Besides the Domna, he had to assume both FARC and the federaleswould at some point be after them. The fire in the tunnel and now the conflagration at Vegas’s house were signs that even the somnolent Colombian military could not ignore. On the other hand, they could not know whether Vegas and Rosie were alive or dead—the same for him, for that matter.
He checked the time. They had almost two hours before their flight left and then, in Bogotá, ninety minutes more until the departure of their overseas flight at 8:10 PM. He was certain they would make their plane here, but Bogotá might be a different story. He needed a plan.
He excused himself. Perales was a small, regional airport. He knew he would have better luck finding what he needed in Bogotá, but if the airport in the capital was being surveilled that would be too late. It was here or nowhere.
There were four shops in the departures terminaclass="underline" a drugstore, a clothing store, a newsstand that also sold sundries aimed at travelers’ needs, and a souvenir shop, the bright yellow, blue, and red horizontal strips of Colombia’s flag in evidence on everything from T-shirts to bandannas to pennants. They weren’t ideal, but then nothing ever was.
He spent the next fifteen minutes limping from shop to shop buying what he thought he would need. He paid cash for all of his purchases.
When he returned to where the couple were sitting, he divvied up the purchases. Then they all went off to the restrooms.
“Is this really necessary?” Vegas said as he set out the shaving paraphernalia on the stainless-steel ledge above the line of sinks.
“Get on with it,” Bourne said.
Shrugging, Vegas splashed his face with hot water, applied shaving cream, and began to take off his beard and mustache.
“I haven’t seen this part of my face in maybe thirty years,” he said as he rinsed off the disposable razor. “I won’t recognize myself.”
“No one else will, either,” Bourne said.
He took the buzzer he had bought and began to give himself a “high-and-tight,” the military haircut preferred by marines. Then he opened up the various pots of cosmetics he had purchased and started applying color to darken the lower half of Vegas’s newly shorn face to match the rest of it. He made his own lips ruddy, his cheeks hollow and sunken. By the time he was finished, Vegas had emerged from a stall in the new outfit Bourne had picked out for him: shorts, flip-flops, a straw porkpie hat with a yellow, blue, and red band, and a T-shirt with MEMBER: COLOMBIAN CARTEL emblazoned across the chest.
“ Hombre, what have you done to me?” he complained. “I look like a fool.”
Bourne had to stifle a laugh. “All anyone will notice is the T-shirt,” he said.
Taking up a pair of scissors, he slit the left leg of his new jeans. He threw a new roll of gauze at Vegas and said, “Bind up my leg from just below the knee to the bottom of my calf.”
Vegas did as he asked.
Bourne put on the pair of magnifying glasses he had bought and said, “Let’s go see how Rosie looks.”
“I can’t wait,” Vegas said with an exaggerated grimace.
At the last moment, he pulled Bourne away from the door and said in a low voice, “ Hombre, escuchamé. If anything should happen to me—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’re all going to talk to Don Fernando together.”
His grip on Bourne’s elbow tightened. “You’ll take care of Rosie.”
“Estevan—”
“What happens to me is of no concern. You’ll protect her no matter what. Promise me, amigo.”
The intensity in Vegas’s voice struck Bourne hard. He nodded. “You have my word.”
Vegas withdrew his grip. “ Bueno. Estoy satisfecho.”
Bourne opened the door and they stepped out into the terminal, Bourne limping noticeably.
Rosie was waiting for them. The clothes Bourne had bought for her fit her perfectly—maybe too perfectly, as Vegas’s eyes seemed about to pop out of his head when he saw her standing there, hands on shapely hips.
The clothes clung to her curves like a second skin, the low-cut shirt showing off the tops of her breasts to electrifying effect. The skirt was short enough that more than half her powerful thighs were revealed.
“ ¡Madre de Dios!” Vegas exclaimed. “With that display even dead men will get an erection.”
Rosie gave him what looked like a Marilyn Monroe moue before breaking out into giggles. “Now I’m ready, sugar,” she said to Vegas. “I feel as strong as Xena, the Warrior Princess.”
“That’s the spirit.” Bourne looked around. “Now all we need is the wheelchair.”
Hendricks, on his way to the conference room a floor below his office, was possessed with the desire to call his son, Jackie. Instead, he was stuck in his meeting with Roy FitzWilliams, the head of Indigo Ridge, who it seemed already had some problems with the details of Samaritan.
Last night, after dropping Maggie off, he had spent an hour tracking Jackie down. Good thing he was secretary of defense, otherwise he would have gotten nowhere with the Pentagon concerning his son’s deployment. Jackie, as it turned out, was in Afghanistan. Even worse, he was heading up black-ops patrols scouring the cave-riddled mountains between Afghanistan and western Pakistan, which were inhabited by both Taliban tribal chieftains and the elite al-Qaeda cadres guarding bin Laden. Hendricks had lain awake the rest of the night thinking alternately about Jackie and Maggie.
Entering the conference room with his satellite aides, he settled himself at the head of the table. One of his aides laid down the sheaf of folders dedicated to Samaritan and opened them for him. Hendricks stared down at the computer printouts, trying to anticipate FitzWilliams’s objections, but his mind was elsewhere.
Jackie. Jackie in the mountains of Afghanistan. Maggie had done this to him, opened up his heart. He had kept his desires locked up tight, but now he wanted his son back. His dinner with Maggie, such a simple thing, had been a night of normalcy after years of being out of the flow of life, of immersing himself so deeply in the sinkhole of his work. He had ignored—or was it resisted?—the current urging him onward.
FitzWilliams was late. Hendricks channeled his anger away from himself, toward the head of Indigo Ridge, so that when FitzWilliams came bustling in, all energy and bonhomie, Hendricks barked at him.
“Sit yourself down, Roy. You’re late.”
“Sorry about that,” FitzWilliams said, sinking into a chair like a punctured balloon. “It couldn’t be helped.”
“Of course it could have been helped; it can always be helped,” Hendricks said. “I’m sick of hearing people use excuses instead of taking responsibility for their actions.” He flipped the pages of the Samaritan file. “No one’s fault but your own, Roy.”