The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,86
won?t be quick.?
?In that event, your wife and children will die.? Tarkanian?s voice had an edge now. ?Whatever you do to me will be done to them.?
Antonin glared at Tarkanian, then dropped the Stechkin on the desktop next to the cake box. He looked ready to tear his hair out.
?The idea with Neanderthals,? Tarkanian said to Arkadin later, ?is to lead them by the hand through all their possible responses, showing them the futility of each one.?
He said, ?Listen to me, Lev Antonin, you have what we bargained for. If you still want everything, try to remember that pigs get slaughtered.?
Then Tarkanian left the office to find Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.
Tracy Atherton and Alonzo Pecunia Zu?iga presented themselves on the front steps of Don Fernando Hererra?s house at precisely three o?clock in the afternoon, bathed in brilliant sunshine amplified by a virtually cloudless sky.
Bourne, with his spade beard and new hairstyle, had shopped for clothes suitable for a distinguished professor from Madrid. Their last stop was an optician?s, where he purchased a pair of contact lenses the color of the professor?s eyes.
Hererra lived in the Santa Cruz barrio of Seville, in a beautiful three-story stucco house painted white and yellow, whose upper-story windows were guarded by magnificent wrought-iron balconies. Its facade formed one side of a small plaza in the center of which was an old well that had been turned into an octagonal fountain. Small haberdashery and crockery shops lined the other three sides, their quaint fronts shaded by palm and orange trees.
The door opened at their knock, and when Tracy gave him their names a well-dressed young man escorted them into the high-ceilinged wood-and-marble entryway. There were fresh white and yellow flowers in a tall porcelain vase on a polished fruitwood table in the center, while on a marquetry sideboard an engraved silver bowl was filled to overflowing with fragrant oranges.
A piano melody, soft and sinuous, came to them. They could see an Old World drawing room with a wall of ebony bookshelves illuminated by raking light from a line of French doors that led out onto an inner courtyard. There was an elegant escritoire, a matching pair of sofas of cinnamon-colored leather, a sideboard on which were arranged five delicate orchids, like girls at a beauty pageant. But the drawing room was dominated by an antique spinet piano behind which sat a large man with an enormous shock of luxuriant white hair brushed straight back off his wide, intelligent forehead. His body was bent in an attitude of exacting concentration, and there was a pencil gripped between his teeth so that he looked like he was in pain. In fact, he was composing a song with a rather florid melody that owed a debt to any number of Iberian virtuosos, as well as to certain flamenco folk tunes.
As they entered, he looked up. Don Hererra had startling blue, slightly exophthalmic eyes, making him look something like a praying mantis as he rose, unfolding from the piano bench in stages. He had dark, leathery skin, wind-burned and sun-wrinkled, marking him as an inveterate outdoorsman. His body was lean and flat, as if he had been constructed in two dimensions instead of three. He appeared to wear the years he?d spent in the Colombian oil fields as a second skin.
Taking the pencil from between his teeth, he smiled warmly. ?Ah, my distinguished guests, what a pleasure.? He kissed the back of Tracy?s hand and shook Bourne?s. ?Dear lady. And Professor, it?s an honor to welcome you both to my house.? He gestured toward one of the leather sofas. ?Please make yourselves comfortable.? He was dressed in an open-neck white shirt under an immaculate cream-colored suit of lightweight silk that looked soft as a baby?s cheek. ?Would you care for sherry, or something stronger, perhaps??
?Sherry and some Garrotxa, perhaps, if you have it,? Bourne said, playing his part to the hilt.
?An excellent idea,? Hererra proclaimed, calling in the young man for the order. He wagged a long, tapered forefinger at Bourne. ?I like the way your palate works, Professor.?
Bourne looked fatuously pleased, while Tracy carefully hid her amusement from the older man.
The young man arrived carrying a chased silver salver on which was set a cut-crystal decanter of sherry, three glasses of the same cut crystal, along with a platter of the sheep cheese, crackers, and a wedge of deep orange quince jelly. He set the salver down on a low table and departed as silently as he had come.