The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,67
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, thats 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 standsbeyond 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 Bournes 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 artery 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 guards 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 hed 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 guards 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 hed caught a glimpse of Scarface