Free The Bourne Retribution by Eric Van Lustbader

airport,” Amit said. “Bourne boarded the flight on the ticket we provided for him, deplaned, and, as you can see, arrived safely in Shanghai as Lawrence Davidoff, the legend we concocted for him.”
    Yadin spread his hands. “So what’s the problem?”
    Amit passed a hand across his forehead. “Ever since then, he’s been going around the city, stopping here and there, in what seems to be a completely random pattern.”
    “You have a printout of the stops?” Ophir said.
    Amit touched the tablet’s screen and the video vanished, supplanted by a list of street addresses.
    “Maybe he’s trying to shake a tail,” Ophir said.
    Amit shook his head. “It’s been going on for hours now.”
    Director Yadin’s frown deepened. “Our agent in place hasn’t checked in yet.” He glanced at his watch. “He and Bourne should be meeting anytime now.” He looked away from the screen to the faces of the two other men in the room. “I want to give Bourne his lead. Let’s give him some more time.”
    “What if Bourne has gone off the grid?” Amit said. “It would mean he’s repeating a dangerous pattern he was known for with the Americans.”
    “He knows too much of our plans, Director.” Ophir’s tone, if not his words, was a subtle rebuke of Yadin’s faith in the foreigner. “As I’ve said before, he’s not one of us.”
    The Director absorbed everything that had been said. Abruptly, his expression changed. He had made up his mind.
    “Amit, this is a surveillance matter. I think we ought to let Collections take charge.”
    Ophir did not want to let this happen. “Sir, Retzach is an hour’s flight from Shanghai.”
    “Retzach is an assassin,” Amit said.
    “He’s much more,” Ophir said, pressing hard to keep the assignment. “And he has a great deal of experience in China.”
    The Director pondered for some time. “For the moment, do nothing, Amir. Understand?”
    “ Elef Ahuz ,” a thousant percent, Ophir said as, behind his back, he punched in Retzach’s number on his mobile.
      
    T here was a time, Maricruz thought, sitting next to Wendell Marsh in the backseat of a heavily defended armored vehicle, when she would have relished this kind of confrontation. When she would have, in fact, demanded that her father take her along instead of her brother, who had never been a great military mind. Now it was just business. Now her life was far away, on the Pacific Rim. Now she lived and worked and schemed with grown-ups.
    These perpetual adolescents with their guns and knives and machetes were tin soldiers, preying on the weak, the cowed, the defenseless. It enraged her that they murdered women. In Ciudad Juárez alone, thousands of women and girls had either disappeared or been killed from 2008 to the present. And while it was true that some of them had been killed in family disputes, the truth was a vast majority fell easy victims to the drug cartels.
    So what did the cartel leaders know of the world beyond Mexico’s bloodied borders? They would only act—and react—one way. That she could predict their moves and decisions did not necessarily make them any less deadly. Their guns were always loaded, their rage constantly at hair-trigger level. She knew they would not hesitate to kill anyone, at any time. Not only were they lawless, they were uncivilized. They simply did not give a shit.
    She stared out the small, square window as she thought these thoughts. The bulletproof glass was so thick, so encoded with titanium filaments, that the world of her childhood bore no resemblance to her memories as it slid by.
    She fingered the hand-hewn grips of the Bersa Thunder .380 holstered at her waist. A smaller pistol—a .25—was strapped to her leg at the top of her right boot. In fact, she carried more weapons than a Roman centurion marching onto the battlefield.
    A battlefield was precisely where she was headed now. She had called Felipe Matamoros on her mobile. Matamoros was the head of Los Zetas, the