Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (15 page)

“Where are we headed?” Bourne asked, as he and Faraj followed the cockpit crew toward the C-17.

“Home,” the leader said without breaking stride.

But Bourne, following the jihadists up the stairway into the cockpit, had seen their destination on the revised flight plan, and he knew Faraj had told him his first lie. Western Pakistan, more specifically, Waziristan, wasn’t home for these people. It was sanctuary.

T
he eyes were pulled
the moment news of Khalifa’s death reached his people.”

“Are you certain of that?” Sara said.

Blum nodded. “I was clean when I brought you here.”

She regarded him critically. “Have you been here before since you arrived in Doha?”

He shook his head. “This is the first time.”

“Nevertheless, they might have pulled the old ones for new ones,” she told him. “It won’t hurt to take another look.”

“We’re the watchers,” Blum said. “But who’s watching the watchers, eh?”

She and Blum had been installed in the doctor’s private quarters, which he shared with his wife. She was a plump woman with a sunny disposition. She happily fed them, then went out to buy fresh clothes for them as if they were her own children. “Our two sons are off in England at college,” she had shyly confided to Sara. “And I always wanted a daughter.”

Blum returned with news that the immediate vicinity was immaculate, which contented Sara, at least for the moment. As it turned out, he had done more than compile product on Khalifa. There was material on his six lieutenants for Sara to pore over.

“This is A-prime product, Levi,” she said, glancing up from the text he had given her.

He was like a puppy, eager to play. “Juicy, huh?”

For though the product had little in the way of military secrets, it was chock-full of the private peccadilloes of four of the six men, more than enough for her immediate needs.

“How did you find out all of this?” she asked, suitably impressed. “They had eyes on you the entire time.”

“But not on the local network I assembled. I have five operatives, all fiercely loyal, fueled by their hatred of the government’s sub rosa policies.” He had stopped fidgeting. “That gave me breathing room.”

“To pursue your personal fortune,” Sara said tartly.

“To a dual purpose. I led them on some merry chases,” he said, with the tone of a sixty-year-old agent nostalgically recalling his fieldwork. “Plus which, there were times I was working when they were certain I was debauching myself.”

“At Nite Jewel.”

He nodded. “As you can imagine, the eyes aren’t comfortable there.”

“Good to know.” She glanced through the product. “This one,” she said, pointing to Lieutenant Mahmoud Tamer. “Call him. Set up a meet late tonight at Nite Jewel.”

Blum looked doubtful. “I was Khalifa’s personal asset. Tamer doesn’t know me. Why would he come?”

“He’ll come,” Sara said with absolute confidence. “Tell him you know who murdered his boss.”

She jolted awake into the glare of artificial light, but now, after days of captivity, Soraya was finally able to summon her wits. They had been days of fear and uncertainty. Now and then, her initial terror yielded to the banality of the evil that held her and Sonya captive. These were only men, after all—dangerous men, to be sure, but without superhuman powers.

Soraya had been through the full Treadstone course of training, which included ways both physical and mental to combat abduction, incarceration, and enhanced interrogation. No course, however, could prepare you for having your two-year-old child kidnapped along with you.

Which was why she needed to have all her faculties about her, to think things through clearly. God knew, she had enough quiet alone time in between meals, when Sonya was sleeping.

Where was she? Still in Doha; they had not been transported out of the killing room.So, step one: in Doha.

Step two: How many men were guarding them? She had encountered three already. Though their faces were always masked, everyone had a distinct natural scent, including the guard who was marginally more civil to her than the others. But beyond those three she had no idea how many more El Ghadan had installed outside the room.

Step three: Were they in a warehouse, a fortress, a safe house? The only people who knew the answer were the jihadists themselves.

She was sitting on a wooden chair with a ladder back. She rose, made a circumnavigation of the room, which, apart from the door, was entirely featureless. For a moment, she stood in front of the door. Then, as if with a will of its own, her hand reached out, turned the doorknob.

At that moment, the lights were extinguished, and Sonya cried out.

“Mommy!”

“I’m here, muffin.” Soraya backed away from the door. “Remember what I told you. My voice is the voice of the wind. All you need to do is follow it.”

When she was far enough away from the door, the light blinked back on. Sonya ran to her, and Soraya scooped her up in her arms. Sonya was trembling. Soraya carried her to the chair and sat down with her in her lap and as she soothed her child tried to order her thoughts.

The lights winking out at the precise moment she grasped the doorknob was no coincidence. They were being observed, possibly from behind the mirror on the opposite wall. But could there be others means of observation she did not yet know about? She looked up at the four corners of the room, where the walls met the ceiling. At first she could discern nothing. But then she saw what appeared to be a small crack in the plaster, high up. She saw the end of a fiber optic cable, a tiny eye observing her with cruel indifference.

Then the door opened. A jihadist entered with their breakfast.

Somewhere outside her prison, another morning had dawned.

Late in the day, when the sun was nothing more than a line of burnt sky on the western horizon, Dixon threw her. They were galloping full out across a rolling field. A thick stand of oaks flashed close by on their left. On their right, the field dipped down into a swale filled with wildflowers.

A fox, sleek, ruddy, and muscular, dashed from out of the oaks directly across their path. Startled, Dixon pulled up short. Camilla lost her grip on the reins, tumbled head over heels over Dixon’s lowered head. Tucked in, she landed on one shoulder and rolled. All the breath was knocked out of her, but she was otherwise unhurt.

She lay for a moment, staring up into the piebald sky, slightly dazed. What came to her mind was an afternoon much like this one, when she had been a girl of about eight. She had been running full tilt across a field, neck and neck with Beatriz, her older sister. All she saw ahead of her was the finish line: the yellow-green foliage of the weeping willow at the end of the field, a demarcation where the ground fell off precipitously onto the banks of a deep, still lake, filled with frogs and water skimmers with the angular legs of an architectural drawing.

Camilla was winning—six steps ahead of her sister, seven—when she tripped, trying to avoid a startled rabbit. She fell hard into the thick grass, where, as now, she lay, dazed and gasping for breath. Her knees were scraped up and bloody, burning as if an iron had been pressed into them. Still, she did not cry.

At length, she rolled over onto her stomach, lifted herself onto her elbows, and looked for Beatriz, whom she expected to see crouched over her, a worried look on her face. Instead, she saw her sister at the finish line, dancing up and down, her arms raised in victory. “I won! I won! I won!” Beatriz’s excited voice cut like a buzzsaw through the birdsong and the insects’ hum. Camilla was about to shout at her to come back, tell her she was hurt, but then she clamped her mouth shut grimly. Beatriz wasn’t coming back for her; no one was. And with that her tears slipped their bonds, rolled down her cheeks in hot rivulets.

Now, as she heard hoofbeats coming slowly toward her, she wanted to tell Hunter to stay away, that she didn’t need her help, certainly didn’t want her pity. She needed nothing and no one; she was an adult now, could take care of herself, thank you very much. Read as a child, remembered in adulthood, the words of Queen Elizabeth I, Tudor, resounded again in her mind:
I have found treason in trust
.

Long moments passed. As she continued to stare upward, repeating her shining idol’s words, Dixon’s great head came into view. He stared down at her, snorted, shook his head. His huge eye observed her with a clear and certain intelligence, Hunter’s theory to the contrary be damned.

“It’s all right, Dixon, really, it is.”

She rose on one knee. The horse lowered his head toward her.

Reaching up, Camilla’s hand found his muzzle, stroked it. “It’s okay, Dixon. I know you didn’t mean to stop short, I know you didn’t mean to throw me. And I’m fine, see?” She rose slowly, put her arm over the horse’s back, leaned against him, her cheek against his. He whinnied, bobbed his head up and down, as if in agreement.

“We’re good,” she whispered. “I promise we’re good.”

And then, hugging him all the tighter, she had herself a little cry for the loss of herself in the vast arena dominated by men. What could her life have been if she had chosen another path? But what path? she asked herself. Be a wealth manager, like her father had wanted? Be a deeply unhappy fighter pilot instructor, her best days behind her, like her mother? Or be a surgeon like Beatriz, bone weary, twice divorced? She shuddered. Those were lives for other women, not her.

Trust, she thought. In an animal, once given, trust is never corrupted or overthrown. It abides.

“Are you hurt?” Hunter called. She had wisely stopped her mount a distance away. “Shall I call an ambulance?”

Camilla shook her head, her face buried in the horse. “I’m fine.” Her voice was clear and strong. “We’re both fine.”

Their room was still cloaked in darkness when she heard the door creak open. By smell alone, Soraya knew who had come in. She also knew what kind of food he was carrying.

Willing herself to breathe deeply and slowly, she waited for him to cross the room. The light came on and she blinked, her eyes narrowed against the glare. Sonya slept on, curled in her lap. Instinctively she wrapped an arm around her daughter.

“I know it’s you,” she said. It was the man she had spoken to yesterday. She peered up into his eyes, which were all that was visible of his face. “Won’t you tell me your name? Then we can talk more freely.”

“Move the child,” he ordered.

“She’s still sleeping,” Soraya said. “Leave her in peace.”

After a small hesitation he centered the tray of food on her upturned palm. “Call me Islam,” he said then.

Soraya began to eat. “You’re always here, it seems,” she said between bites. “You must hate it almost as much as we do.”

“Of course…Well, what do you expect being cooped up in this place for days on end? I’m not used to it.”

“Who is?”

He bent toward her. He reeked of cheap cigarettes and stale sweat. These people didn’t know the meaning of showers, she thought. It had been at least two days since she or Sonya had cleaned themselves. The thought depressed her, so she banished it. She needed to keep herself positive at all costs, not only for herself but for Sonya as well. It was the only way to survive.

“What is that face you’re making?” he said. And then, more forcefully, “You are offended by my smell, infidel, is that it?”

Soraya paused with a bit of food halfway to her mouth. Abrupt changes in a captor’s demeanor were also a part of the hostage process. She knew she would have to inure herself to it. But his sharp, menacing tone had awakened Sonya. There was fear in her eyes as she looked from the jihadist to her mother.

“Mommy?”

“It’s all right, muffin,” she said in as calm a voice as she could muster. “Everything’s fine.”

“Fine? No, it’s not fine. I think you can’t stand the sight of me,” Islam shouted. He ripped the tray from her hands.

“Islam, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Truly.”

He bent toward her again, his nose almost touching hers. “Did it ever occur to you that you’re the one who smells, that I can’t stand the stink coming off you, that I gag repeatedly while I’m in here with you?”

Soraya knew she had made a mistake by letting her feelings show, even for an instant. She gestured. “The tray, please. At least let me feed Sonya.”

Islam leaned over the little girl, but when he spoke it was to Soraya. “From now on, you’ll smile when you see me, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Soraya said, but her attention was on her daughter. “Of course I will.”

But it was too late. Sonya was crying inconsolably.

F
irst order of business,”
Eli Yadin said, “is to get you out of Doha now. I’m assembling a Kidon extraction team even as we speak.”

“Director, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sara said.

She had instructed Blum to fetch them a pair of prepaid mobile phones. It was the only way she could be certain their conversations would not be overheard by Khalifa’s NTCC people. He might be dead, but she was certain his orders regarding Blum remained in effect. Her first call was to her father, through a scrambled circuit. The moment she had finished briefing him, he hung up on her.

It was an hour before he called back. During that time, she composed an encrypted text containing Blum’s golden product: the connection between El Ghadan, Khalifa Al Mohannadi, and Ivan Borz. This she sent to a private mailbox on an encrypted server, to which Bourne had access twenty-four/seven.

“I don’t care what you think, I’m pulling you,” Eli said hotly when he called back. He had not bothered with the niceties of a salutation. “I never should have let you go in the first place, Rebeka.” On a live op he would no more think of calling her Sara than she would refer to him as Father.

“I’m glad I came here, otherwise we never would have unearthed the connection between El Ghadan and Ivan Borz, through Khalifa.”

“The immediate problem is that Khalifa is dead, a colonel in the Qatari National Tactical Command Center, no less. From what you’ve told me, there are witnesses who saw you and Khalifa get on the boat together. The harbormaster can identify you. Khalifa’s people will come after you with everything they’ve got.” There came the sound of shuffling papers. “The Kidon team is operational. In three hours you will be picked up. In the meantime, stay inside and don’t show yourself at the windows.”

Eli cleared his throat, as if he were about to choke on his own rage. “Now I want to talk to that prick Blum.”

Sara opened her mouth in order to continue her defense, then thought better of it. When her father was in a red mood there was no talking rationally to him. Perhaps it had not been such a good idea to allow his daughter to become an agent of his, she thought morosely, as she shoved the mobile at Blum.

“Here,” she barked.

Blum took the phone gingerly, as if it were a bomb about to explode. He looked like he wanted to chuck it out the window, anything but get ripped to shreds by Director Yadin.

“Listen, you little shit, I ought to have Rebeka shoot you on the spot, but since our people have confirmed your product—at least the bones of it—I am of a mind to keep using you.”

“Thank you, Director.”

“Don’t thank me, Blum. You’re still on probation. We’ve pulled our people out of Waziristan, burned the residence. We have to start all over because of you.”

“Rebeka told you I couldn’t risk contacting you.”

“There were ways, Blum, if you thought about it, but you were too lazy. I always felt that about you, that’s why you were posted to deadhead Doha.”

“Supposedly deadhead.”

“Don’t editorialize.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The question is whether you’re simply lazy or whether you’re nuts.”

“I might be both, Director,” Blum said with no little sheepishness. “But I also put my life on the line redoubling on Khalifa. He was one tricky bastard.”

“Even so,” Yadin said, “the jury’s still out on you, Blum. Just do as I tell you. I informed Rebeka that I was going to extract her, but that was just to scare the pants off her.”

“If that’s even possible,” Blum said, glancing her way.

“Well, you’re right there. She’s fearless. But that’s sometimes to her detriment, which is why I’m assigning you to protect her.”

“What?”

“You looked out for yourself pretty well in a difficult situation, Blum. You’re to help her any way you can. You’re to guard her with your life. If she dies on your watch, Blum, no matter the circumstances, I will stake you out in the desert, no joke. Are we clear?”

“I understand, Director.”

“I hope to God you do. Now, put her back on the line.”

The moment Blum handed her the mobile, she said, “I believe the recent events have given us an extraordinary opportunity here in Doha.”

“How d’you mean?” Yadin said tersely.

Then she told him, step by step, detail by detail, with the particular brilliance no other field agent could hope to duplicate.

Five hours later, the doctor’s printer chattered to life again.

Lifting off, the C-17 swung over the city in a northeasterly direction. Bourne, peering out the Perspex window, watched the long lines of people, carts, and rattletrap vehicles heading out of Damascus, out of Syria, out of the war, for refugee camps in other countries, including, ironically enough, Iraq. He heard Faraj give the pilot a sharp order, and the plane banked slowly, for the moment heading due east.

Then Faraj clambered out of his seat, crouched beside Bourne. “Listen, Yusuf, my friend, I just got word of something and I want you to see it. I want you to see what is really happening in your poor country.”

On Faraj’s orders, the pilot took the C-17 lower still, until houses rose up before them. People looked like no more than ants scurrying over the ground, away from a fierce rocket barrage. Oddly, the impacts sounded soft, almost muffled. What kind of ordnance, Bourne wondered, was in the payloads?

It wasn’t long before he got his answer. Swirling clouds of dust arose from the strikes, rolling along the streets and byways of the suburb of Ghouta, where men, women, and children ran screaming, stumbled and fell, clawing at their faces, gasping for breath, convulsing as the dust clouds converged, swirled over them, undulating like some many-headed serpent.

The serpent devoured the men, the women running with their arms thrown around the narrow, bony shoulders of their sons and daughters. A pregnant woman fell behind, then fell permanently, crying out, clutching her belly. People stumbled over her, in their desperation to escape trampling those who had already succumbed. But there was no escape; the invisible serpent, borne by the winds, traveled faster than they could.

As the plane swung around to the north again, away from the horrific effects of the barrage, Faraj said, “This is your army at work, Yusuf, the so-called defenders of Syria. Not content with bombing their populace, they are employing sarin gas, a weapon of mass destruction.”

Bourne checked himself from grabbing a parachute and jumping out of the C-17, but what could he do against the army’s attack? So he sat and watched, helpless and in turmoil, as the plane banked away, leaving the grim massacre behind.

“This is what we have to deal with, Yusuf,” Faraj said. “Every day another atrocity. And not just here—Yemen, Iraq, Iran, the list goes on and on.” His hand gripped Bourne’s shoulder. “Which is why we will do what we can, in every way we can, to bring Allah’s will to Muslims everywhere.”

“You said we were headed home,” Bourne said.

“Home. My friend, people like us, we have no home. We are ejected from one place to another. We are pariahs, forced out of the places of our birth, always on the run, squeezed into the margins of society.”

“But you have a plan.”

A dark glint came to Faraj’s eyes. “A plan, yes. Years in the making, now about to come to fruition. I won’t lie to you, Yusuf, it is a daring plan, a plan only people kicked to the curb, people with nothing to lose, could imagine, let alone execute.

“But we have, my friend, and we will. We will execute this plan. Our time has arrived. The Great Satan has sung his siren song.”

It was almost two thousand miles due east from Damascus to Waziristan. The C-17, not the fastest plane, rumbled along through a cloud-filled sky. Bourne was still brooding over what he had been witness to. He had seen many atrocities in his time—and no doubt more that he could not remember—but this one stood out as the most heinous. Chemical warfare had been internationally outlawed for a long time. Like poisoning wells, it was an offense that could not be excused, an offense that demanded the most severe punishment. His utter helplessness ate at him. He was a man who, having lost his own self in the fog of a forgotten past, saved himself by saving others. There was nothing he could do, and yet he was moved to do something. He looked over at Faraj and thought that there must be a way to find a chink in El Ghadan’s armor through him.

He rose, crossed to where Faraj sat, crouched beside him as, before, Faraj had hunkered down beside him, providing commentary to the sarin gas attack. “Matters are not as simple as they used to be,” he said over the roar and jangling vibration of the engines.

“I disagree,” Faraj stated flatly. “There is us and there is the Great Satan.”

Bourne countered. “All this hatred of the Great Satan disguises the complexity of the problem.”

Faraj turned to him, his thick eyebrows raised. “Which is?”

“Islam itself,” Bourne said. “We are like a soldier, fractured in a battle eons ago, whose parts are now warring with one another. Sunni against Shia, Alawi against Sunni. And then there are the Saudi, their sticky fingers in everyone’s pies, whom we all hate and fear. The Iranians, Afghans, the Pashtun warlords of western Pakistan, hounded into the mountains, the Punjabis, who bow to no one. The list goes on and on. The bloodshed isn’t simply the Great Satan’s doing, Faraj. We also have to take responsibility.”

Faraj grunted. “You are a man with strange ideas, Yusuf.”

“Strange ideas are what’s needed now. I have not come to this conclusion lightly or over a short period of time.”

“You talk like a leader, not a loner, a sniper.”

“I suppose you could say that being alone is what has given me the time to formulate my strange ideas.”

“And do you seek to impose these ideas on others?”

“How would I do that, Faraj? I have no power over others, nor do I seek it.”

“Then how do you propose to implement your ideas?”

Bourne smiled. “By exposing them to those in power. People who do hold sway over others. People like you, Faraj.” He almost added, “El Ghadan,” but it was too soon for that. The last thing he needed was for this necessarily paranoid man to become suspicious.

“What exactly are you getting at?” Faraj said now.

“Let me go at this from a different direction,” Bourne said, after some time, though in truth he had already thought this idea through. “Why are you hiding out in Waziristan?”

“You know why. To keep the Great Satan’s eyes off us while we are in the final stage of our plan.”

“With half a dozen American drones per day raining missiles down on the area?” Bourne shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Faraj’s eyes blazed in fury, and Bourne knew he was playing this game very close to the edge. Unfortunately, it was the only play he had.

“Tell me then,” Faraj said, “if you’re so smart.”

“You are besieged on all sides by the other powerful jihadist cadres—ISIS, as you yourself told me. Al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, the Muslim Brotherhood, KOMPAK, Ansar al-Sharia, the Islamic Front in Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, shall I go on? No, I thought not. This is the problem you must face, Faraj. All these other cadres say they want the same thing as you do, but do they? They won’t use your methods or your rhetoric, and they surely don’t want you to gain in power and influence.”

Faraj nodded sagely. “All this is true, Yusuf.”

“Do you like hiding out in Waziristan?”

“Have you been to Waziristan?”

Bourne grinned. “That’s what I thought. I have ideas.”

“I’ll bet you do.” Faraj scratched fiercely at his beard. “But I’m not the one to talk with.”

“No? But you are the leader.”

“Of what you have seen, of what you will see when we land,” Faraj said. “El Ghadan is the supreme leader of the Tomorrow Brigade.”

“Will he be in Waziristan?”

Faraj continued to gaze at Bourne. Then he turned away.

“Are you certain?” Howard Anselm said.

“Here is the raw product,” Marty Finnerman said, “straight from DOD’s listening posts in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.”

And there it was, Anselm thought, staring down at the intel in stark black and white.

“The Israeli Knesset has agreed to continue the settlement building in occupied territories. And the number of Hamas-related bombings in Tel Aviv has escalated to an unconscionable level. Fifty-five killed so far in just the past week.”

Finnerman and Anselm were in one of the SITCOM rooms in the Pentagon. The lights were low. All the eight screens ranged around them were active, showing lists of personnel, troop movements, animated maps of Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Syria, along with surveillance tape—via both drones and CCTV on the ground—as well as dizzying raw footage from mobile phones at the front lines in these countries.

Finnerman stood, bent over Anselm. “Events are coming about as our Gravenhurst colleagues predicted,” he said. “We don’t want peace. Gravenhurst’s members and alumni, of which we are a part, are the political-industrial axis that makes this country run. Frankly, the concept of compromise isn’t in our lexicon. Despite POTUS having come this far with the peace talks, they are going to end in failure.”

“Which is why we came up with the contingency plan that depends on the summit’s failure.”

Finnerman nodded. “Look, we both know the Gravenhurst threat assessment is correct: Syria is the doorway to Iran, and whether we like it or not, Iran is the next stage in the war on terror. We neutralize Syria, we deprive Iran of one of its prime client nations in the spread of jihadism. We are taking this drastic step to ensure the security of the world—the security of our own country, which, according to Gravenhurst, has never been at higher risk, not even just before 9/11.”

Extreme distaste had transformed Finnerman’s face. “We’re all but out of Iraq and we’ll soon be leaving Afghanistan. We have six hundred and fifty billion dollars’ worth of high-tech weaponry at our disposal. It’s high time we used it against a target that truly must be crushed.”

Anselm shook his head. “You know what POTUS is going to say. The people have had their fill of war. More than.”