Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (13 page)

His newfound wealth had attracted Darlene—a shallow triumph, it was true, but for an opposite-sex also-ran like Blum, a satisfying one nonetheless. Now that he had caught his prize, he wasn’t about to curtail their time together for anyone or anything, but then the phone rang again, this time with a special ringtone he had devised to alert him to the identity of the caller.

Groaning, he broke his intimate contact with Darlene, rolled over, reached for the mobile on his bedside table. Crawling after him, Darlene slid her mouth all the way down his phallus. Then, in a way he had yet to understand, her tongue began to swipe him up and down. Then she started making those sounds deep in her throat that always egged him on, faster and faster…

He closed his eyes for a moment, the ecstasy sweeping away all thought and sense of obligation. Far more quickly than he could have imagined, his pelvis lifted off the bed and he pulsed in her throat, again and again, while she emitted a long, drawn-out sigh.

Too soon, he flipped over the mobile, confirmed the identity of the caller. He had left no message, but then he never did. Checking the previous call, he heard Rebeka’s voice asking him to pick her up at the marina immediately. His heart skipped a beat. Why the hell was she calling on Khalifa’s mobile?

With heavy thighs and lips that felt bee-stung, he rolled out of bed, padded across the room into the bath. He turned on the shower taps, stepped in, and began to soap up. Moments later, Darlene joined him, rubbing herself along the length of his back and thighs.

But there were some things that trumped even his time with Darlene, and with an inward groan, he broke their connection, stepped out of the shower, and quickly dried himself.

“Where are you going at this time of night?” she said with a sexy pout. “To see another woman?”

B
ourne left Eisa
at a late-night café. He called Zizzy to check in, told him to come as quickly as he could and to bring certain items with him.

“Hafiz is dead,” Zizzy said mournfully when he arrived by taxi twenty minutes later. He handed the driver a fistful of money and told him to wait.

“So’s his killer.” Bourne redressed himself, shoved all the other items Zizzy had brought into the pockets of the wide trousers he wore underneath the robes, then turned to his friend. “Zizzy, I want you to check out of both our rooms, call your pilot, and fly back home to Doha.”

“Without you?” Zizzy was aghast. “Are you crazy?”

“That’s yet to be determined,” Bourne said.

Zizzy regarded Bourne for some minutes before giving way. “And you?” he said with genuine concern. “Where are you going?”

“The less you know the better. Now get on with it.”

“But really—”

“Do as I say,” Bourne ordered. “You’ve done enough.”

With Eisa in tow, Bourne drove through rain- and windswept streets.

Nairabein Park was not large. It was ringed by parked cars, and it was surrounded on three sides by apartment blocks. Nevertheless, it held several advantages, chief among them that it was deserted at this time of the very early morning. It was also located close to the western edge of Damascus, and was therefore out of the line of fire between the antagonist forces, at least for the time being.

In any event, according to what Furuque had told Eisa, it was the place of choice for the Tomorrow Brigade’s recruiting efforts. The leaders had chosen well, as the park was unlovely even by the lowest of urban standards. There were trees, true enough, but they were broken up by concrete barriers topped with crescent iron bars. Lately, much of it had become a staging area for abandoned earthmoving equipment, idled by the civil war that had brought construction and real estate investment to a standstill.

The rain had subsided to a barely felt drizzle by the time Bourne parked the stolen motorcycle near Zee Qar Battle Square. He and Eisa crossed the virtually deserted road, heading toward where a group of young men were ranged around a makeshift podium on which stood three men, their bodies clothed in white, their heads and faces wrapped so only their eyes and mouths were visible. The man in the middle, clearly the cadre leader, was in mid-spiel. The men flanking him were armed with assault rifles, as were approximately a dozen terrorists patrolling the periphery of the park.

Bourne spoke to one of the jihadists who emerged from the shadows to accost them. He used Furuque’s name, placed his hand on Eisa’s shoulder, calling him Furuque’s latest recruit, saved at the last moment from the raid on the underground club.

The terrorist nodded and they were through, approaching the fringes of the semicircle surrounding the leader, whose sonorous voice was raised and perfectly audible without the assistance of amplification.

“We must fully understand the role of the Muslim Brother in the West,” he was saying as they edged through the crowd of upturned young faces. “The process of settlement, of being embedded, is a jihadist process. You
ikhwan
”—here he invoked the Arabic word for brothers, especially brothers in a militia—“must understand that your work is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable structure by your hand and the hands of like believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all others.”

His eyes blazed and his face seemed to be alight with the inner fire of his fervor. He was a tall man with a face like a fist. Like all demagogues, he employed his voice like a weapon, at times blunt, at others surgical.

“Without this level of understanding,” he continued, “we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes and there is no escape from that destiny.”

Bourne looked around at all the rapt faces, Eisa’s included, and a terrible suspicion crept over him, one that was soon enough borne out by the leader’s words.

“
Ikhwan
, our plan for you in North America is good, our plan for you in North America is solid. We have five phases to our plan. Phase One: a discreet and secret establishment of elite leadership. Phase Two: a gradual appearance on the public scene…establishing a shadow government. Phase Three: escalation prior to conflict and confrontation with the rulers. Phase Four: training in the use of weapons domestically and overseas in anticipation of zero hour. Phase Five: open public confrontation with the government through exercising political pressure. Seizing power to establish an Islamic Nation.”

The leader paused, his head turning slowly as if looking into the eyes of each and every recruit. “You are here now to begin Phase Four.”

In the small hours of the morning Doha’s Corniche was all but deserted. The scimitar sweep, the march of needle-sharp high-rises lit up like New Year’s fireworks was breathtaking, making the cityscape look like a colossal carnival from another planet of the distant future. But as the government liked to say, “In Qatar the future is here.”

Sara, feeling as if all she wanted was to sleep for the next twelve hours, walked along the water, watching a slow-moving fishing boat parallel her route, the crew making ready the giant nets before swinging away, moving out into deeper water. Watching it sail off, Sara shuddered, remembering her literal brush with the shark. Her side burned horribly.

Having reached the Corniche, she had directed Blum to park, then, without a word to him, had got out and begun to walk. At some point she heard him trotting after her to make up the distance between them. She had Khalifa’s mobile in one hand.

When he reached her side, he said, “You look like you’ve been to war. Will you tell me now what the hell happened?”

That was when she pressed the redial key on Khalifa’s mobile. A moment later, Blum’s mobile buzzed. Automatically he brought it out, took the call without looking at the screen.

“Hello?”

Sara, turning to him, held up the colonel’s mobile for him to see. “Khalifa’s dead, Levi. That’s what happened to me tonight.”

Blum looked from one mobile screen to the other. “
Ben zona
.” Son of a bitch.

“Just so. What did you tell him about me?”

“Nothing. I swear. He knew about you already.”

Hassim, she thought dully. And then, “You and Hassim.”

Out in the gulf, the fishing boat was now no more than a smudge against the horizon along which oil tankers crawled like a line of ants, bearing their burdens.

“Part of the job,” he said, nervously licking his lips. “Let me explain.”

“What job? Levi, what fucking job!”

Her voice, powerful rather than raised, caused him to wince. “
Kus-emec!
” God-fucking-dammit!

“If you’re going to explain, do it now.”

“Not while you’re ready to bite my head off.”

Grabbing hold of his arm, she swung him around to face her. “That’s not the only thing I’ll bite off. Give it the fuck up.”

She watched his face, pale and drawn, grow as big as a moon. Then it started to shimmer like the moon’s reflection on the water. Streaks of blinding light crossed her vision field, as if she were moving at the speed of light.

Then a pool of darkness opened up in front of her, into which she pitched. She fell, and kept on falling.

“No,” Hunter said, leading Camilla away from Starfall’s stall. “Tonight you’ll be riding Dixon.”

The stable was ablaze with light, as if awaiting their arrival. They stopped in front of a stall near the end. A black stallion lifted his head, eyes blazing. His nostrils dilated as he scented her. He bared his teeth.

“Lovely,” Camilla said.

A sly smile informed Hunter’s face. “Lead him out and saddle him.”

The instant Camilla unlatched the door, Dixon stepped back, tossed his head, and snorted in a most unfriendly manner.

“Has anyone ridden him?” she asked.

Hunter laughed. “I have. You want me to saddle him for you?”

Camilla held up her hand. “To what end?”

“Atta girl!” Hunter stepped back, leaned against the far side of the stall area.

Camilla entered, reached up to grab the horse’s bridle, and almost got her fingers bitten off.

“Fuck me!”

Hunter, unconcerned, crossed her arms over her breasts. “You know how to approach him, Cam. Take it from there.”

Camilla nodded, moved to the side of the stall so Dixon had a better view of her. She smiled at him, started to talk to him softly the way she talked to Starfall. The great eye observed her with what seemed to be a fiendish intensity. Then the horse moved, pinning her against the side of the stall.

“Hunter!” Camilla called softly, her heart pulsing wildly in her throat. She craned her neck, only to find that Hunter had disappeared. She was on her own.

Slowing her breathing, she returned to talking low to Dixon—a kind of singsong that one might croon to a colicky baby. “There, there, big boy, you and I are going to be friends, I know that, I can feel it, there’s something between us. Yes, you can feel it too, can’t you?” And with that, she reached up very slowly, running the flat of her hand along his jawline, gentling him. “There, you see, it’s just me, me and you, we’re gonna ride today, aren’t we, we’re gonna have fun, just the two of us, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, big boy, I bet you would.”

That huge eye continued its enigmatic contemplation of her as she continued her melodious litany, and, as if by magic, Dixon stepped back. She did not move, but the breath came easily to her now, and she slid her hand down his face to his muzzle. He snorted and his head bent to her.

Then, grabbing two handfuls of his mane, she vaulted up onto his back and, without saddling him, rode him out of the stables, into the star-filled night, where Hunter, already astride her mount, was waiting.

The recruitment meeting was at an end, the armed jihadists taking the young Americans under their wing, guiding them to a pair of large military trucks with tarp tops and wooden benches beneath. Bourne, still with Eisa at his side, moved ever closer to the vehicle into which the recruits were climbing. Herded like cattle, Bourne thought.

When the first truck was filled, the jihadists began to stock the second. At length, Eisa was helped into the back of the vehicle. Bourne was about to follow, when one of the jihadists took his arm and stayed him.

“This way,” he said, leading Bourne around to the side of the truck, to where the leader stood, flanked by two bodyguards.

“
La ilaha illa Allah
,” the leader said. There is no God but Allah. “One of my men came to me. He told me you are a friend of Furuque’s.”

“Furuque is dead,” Bourne said. “Eisa was one of the two recruits he was talking with when the club we were in was raided by the army.”

“And how did the club come to be raided?” the leader asked.

“That I could not tell you.”

“Then tell me your name, please.”

Bourne did.

“Yusuf Al Khatib, I have never heard of you. I have never heard Furuque speak of you.” He wiped at his beard just beneath his ruby lower lip. “Further, I am unaware that Furuque had any friends.”

“First of all,” Bourne said, “now that you know mine, may I know your name?”

The leader stared at him for a long moment. “Abu Faraj Khalid.”

“I never said I was a friend of Furuque’s, Abu Faraj Khalid. You did. Snipers like Furuque do not have friends, that’s a truism. Snipers are loners.”

“Hmm. And how would you know that, Yusuf Al Khatib?”

“I, too, am a sniper,” Bourne said. “Furuque and I knew each other in that way.” He smiled. “It is like a fraternity. A closed fraternity.”

Faraj stroked his beard, his black eyes never leaving Bourne’s face. “Well, that is an interesting story, my friend. If it is true.”

“Why would it not be true?”

“Yes indeed, why?” Faraj snapped his fingers and one of his bodyguards held out his weapon for Bourne to take.

“That’s an AK-47,” Bourne said. “What do you expect me to do with it, mow down that line of trees?”

“You have your own weapon?” Faraj said. “Where is it then, sniper?”

“Back at the club. I was fortunate to escape with Eisa. A recruit is more important than a rifle.”

“
Mashalla
.” What Allah wishes.

“
Allahu Akbar
,” Bourne replied. God is great.

“Tell me, Yusuf, what weapon were you obliged to leave behind?”

“An L115A3 AWM.”

Faraj cocked his head. “American, is it?”

“British.” Bourne knew very well the leader knew it was British.

A slow smile curved Faraj’s wide mouth into the shape of a dirk’s blade. He snapped his fingers again, and a moment later, out of the lifting gloom of night, a weapon was handed to him. He held it for a moment, then lofted it to Bourne.

Bourne caught the AWM properly, pulled back the bolt, checked that the .300 Winchester Magnum was in the chamber, that it was a live round, then switched down the bolt.

Faraj turned. He pointed to a distant streetlamp, its fizzing bulb dimmed and about to go. Bourne judged it to be about five hundred yards away, well within the limit of the AWM’s effective range. But there was still a bit of fog, moving in slow undulations across the park. The light waxed, then waned, vanishing for moments into the mist, before reappearing like a sad moon, past its prime.

Bracing himself against the side of the truck, he took aim through the scope. Ignoring the fog, he concentrated on the light, waited while the mist thickened and then pulled apart like gossamer strands. Waited, then slowly squeezed the trigger. The report sounded just before the light blew out.

Faraj turned back to him. On his face was a wide smile.

“This is excellent,” he said. “Most excellent!”

He took the rifle from Bourne, tossed it to one of his men. “You are a man whose skills we can use. Is that of interest to you?”