Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (24 page)

N
oreen?
Are you fucking kidding me?”

Camilla stared at the sheaf of photos Hunter had shaken out of a manila folder.

“Noreen?”

“Of course Noreen.” Hunter clucked like a mother hen. “Why d’you think Anselm goes through assistants like crap through a goose?”

“I haven’t been at the White House long enough to…” Camilla’s voice trailed off as she stared at a photo of Bill kissing Noreen—William Magnus, POTUS—while she was wrapped up in the American flag. “Was this taken in the Oval Office?” Her voice was sharp, pitched an octave higher than normal, with, to her chagrin, an edge of hysteria.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t told.”

Hunter, a pro through and through, kept her tone at the midway point between cynicism and pity. She didn’t say, I told you so, but she had every right to, Camilla knew.

The two women were in the barn, brushing down their respective steeds, following another perfect session on the racing oval. It was the dinner hour; they were alone. Hunter’s timing had once again proved flawless.

“The soft white underbelly of Anselm’s job.”

“He pimps for POTUS.”

“Crude,” Hunter said, “but accurate.”

Do I detect a whiff of triumph in her voice? Camilla wondered. She saw that these photos were meant as a coup de grâce, the hard evidence to push her all the way over to Hunter’s—and Terrier’s—side. If her background wasn’t enough to get her to accept their philosophy, then by God, good old-fashioned jealousy would do the trick. And of course, from jealousy would come the need for revenge—at least in their minds.

Was there nothing to which these people would not stoop? Camilla asked herself, but she already knew the answer. No, there was absolutely nothing. These people—and she included POTUS and Anselm in the mix—were amoral. Time and again she had found herself wondering how people of high position like Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer, not to mention the Secret Service agents she had canned because of their flagrant dalliances with South American whores, could do what they did, over and over. Did they not consider that they would be caught? No, they did not. She saw that now. Because, like POTUS, they believed themselves beyond judgment, above the law.

She experienced a sudden hallucinatory moment. She saw herself as she had been—as head of the Secret Service, as Bill’s lover, as a victim. At the same time, she was aware of what she had become—a false pawn, a realist, but also a cynic. And then she looked at Hunter and saw two of her as well: the trainer, the protector, but also the false friend, the latest person to want to carry Camilla in her pocket like a coin.

Now, Camilla thought, when she thinks I’m most angry and therefore most vulnerable, she’s going to make her pitch. Now I’ll find out the task she and Terrier have in mind for me.

Still, she needed to prove her thesis to herself, she needed Hunter to drive the last nail into her own coffin, because for Camilla betrayal was far more serious than it was for the people surrounding her; it was not to be embarked upon lightly, with no thought to its consequences.

“What will happen to those photos?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Hunter said in the most offhanded way. “These are the only copies. I’ll burn them. The digital images will be erased. No trace of them will remain.”

And there it was, Camilla thought. The last nail. The photos had been taken exclusively to induce her to act. And while she was about it, who was to say they were real? They might just as easily have been Photoshopped. She had no experience with fake photos, so there was no way to tell. And yet now that she considered it, there was a way for
her
to tell. The fact that Noreen was wrapped in the flag, just as POTUS had wished Camilla to be, was all the proof she needed. The photo was real, no question.

“Let’s take a walk,” Hunter said, ending Camilla’s train of thought.

They had finished grooming their horses, fed them, replenished their water. Hunter picked up a kerosene lantern and what appeared to be a wicker picnic hamper, and they set out, heading due east, past the racing oval, over a low ridge and down into a swale. In the distance, the meadow where the cows grazed and lazed during the day stretched away, a deep emerald sea, dotted here and there with the desert islet of a tree or two.

Camilla thought about her reaction to the photos. She felt no anger, and certainly no regret. What she did feel, however, was shame. Shame that she had been a part of this sad parade of young women mesmerized by Bill’s charisma, POTUS’s power. She felt as dirty as a used washcloth. More than anything the photos made her itch to scrub herself down under a very hot shower.

The eastern half of the swale fell away gently, then, without warning, more steeply. This was a section of the Dairy Camilla had not explored. As if someone had rung a bell, the sun slipped behind the western hills and twilight was ushered in. Their elongated shadows turned blue, then vanished altogether. They picked their way downward.

The stream, when they came upon it, was as slow-moving as the cows that had been up on the pasture all day. With a seductive ripple, it curved indolently away from them. Hunter settled them on a wide grassy knoll. She opened the basket, which was indeed filled with food, along with plates, glasses, utensils, and a bottle of wine with a twist-off cap.

“I’m not hungry yet. How about you?” Hunter said without caring about Camilla’s reply.

“What are you doing?” Camilla said as she watched Hunter shrug off her denim jacket, start to unbutton her shirt.

“Going for a swim.” She shucked off her jeans. “I’m hot and sweaty, aren’t you?”

She wore no underwear. Her body was lean, muscular as a teenage boy’s. She had narrow hips, a narrower waist. A constellation of pale freckles arced across her chest, just above her small, hard breasts. Her thighs were powerful in the way of all athletes.

Hunter half slid off the knoll, then turned back. “What’s the matter? Are you frightened of a little nudity?”

The splash of her compact body was small and sharp, like her words.

Camilla pondered a moment. This was 180 degrees from what she had expected. Still, she didn’t think she had a choice. Stay on the bank and she would leave the Dairy without Hunter’s aegis. Bad for her status no matter what she decided to do in Singapore.

She piled her clothes next to Hunter’s. In doing so, she had to move Hunter’s jeans. Feeling something in the back pocket, she slipped it out, unfolded it, and tipped it toward the orange-yellow corona of the sunset.

It was a photo of herself, a copy of the one taken when she had arrived at the Dairy. It was much creased, molded to the shape of Hunter’s buttock, but otherwise well preserved. Carefully and thoughtfully, Camilla slid it back into the pocket of Hunter’s jeans.

She started when Hunter yelled, “Are you coming, or what?”

Sliding down the edge of the knoll, she dropped the two feet or so into the stream. The cold water bit hard, forcing a gasp out of her. She surfaced, pushed her hair back off her face. Her skin was raised in goose bumps and her nipples were hard. She saw Hunter near her, and she felt heat rise up into her throat and cheeks.

“I thought you’d chickened out.”

Cupping her hands in the water, Hunter splashed her, laughing as Camilla splashed her in return. They bounced around like girls at summer camp, and Camilla’s hardheartedness began to slip away before she realized what was happening. She had been drawn closer to Hunter again, despite everything she now knew about her. Even more alarming, at the height of their innocent play, she felt the urgent rise of erotic need.

What is happening to me? she asked herself, just before Hunter took hold of her and kissed her hard on the lips. It was a different kiss than the one they had exchanged in the copse of trees, longer, both more erotic and more impassioned, so that Camilla found herself helpless to resist it. Maybe she didn’t want to. She liked the taste of Hunter’s lips and tongue—cinnamon and nutmeg (wasn’t nutmeg a hallucinogen?). She liked even better the press of her naked body—its perfect balance of softness and firmness, which spoke of both dependability and determination.

She was being seduced. She knew it, and didn’t care. At this precise moment, as Hunter bent to gently take her nipple between her even, white teeth, she wanted the other woman as much as she had wanted anything.

They toppled into the shallows, mud-spattered, entwined, and laughing. Camilla cupped the back of Hunter’s neck as she drew her head up, kissed her with open lips and a questing tongue. Along with the lust she felt rising in her the anger she had been unconsciously tamping down. The two rose and fell in concert—light and dark, yin and yang.

Alpha and omega.

A reptile, sensing danger, absorbs sounds via the ground to detect the number and movements of its enemies. Bourne, lying on the floor of the cave near its mouth, listened for the vibrations of the Taliban. He pressed his ear to the earth, trying to shut out the explosive cracks of automatic fire.

The Taliban were in the deepest recesses of the cave, where, he surmised, a passage must lead up and out into the open air. This no doubt was where they had crept in. But how did they know the cadre had sheltered here? Had the cadre been under surveillance from the moment they had been led through the mountain pass into Afghanistan?

Faraj had another idea. He ran past where Bourne lay, heading directly toward Khan Abdali’s men, crouched and firing back at the Taliban. He screamed and they turned just in time to receive facefuls of bullets from his AR-15.

Borz leaped up. “You fucking Arab idiot, what have you done?”

Faraj turned to him. “I did what you should’ve done the moment we set out.”

“Really?” Borz stepped forward and shot him twice through the heart.

Faraj fell where he stood, his head in the lap of one of the Waziri, a fitting place for him to find his mythical angels.

Bourne, watching this interplay with fierce interest, shouted to Borz, “You’ve got to kill Faraj’s men before they shoot your people.”

Borz, it seemed, agreed wholeheartedly. He turned his attention from what was left of the Taliban and began to take down the remnants of Faraj’s men as if they were pigeons in a shooting gallery.

Grabbing Aashir, Bourne pulled him around behind him, then pitched in, keeping his attention on the three remaining Taliban. “I have your back,” he shouted to Borz. He advanced on the Taliban, the last request of Khan Abdali to take their heads echoing in his mind.

Then Aashir was beside him, gunning down an attacking Taliban, who had been coming at Borz from his left side. Bourne shot the second man, but the third took cover deeper inside the cave, beyond the firefight between Faraj’s people and the Chechens. Both sides were fearless, but the jihadists, without their leader and in hostile territory, were vulnerable. One by one, the Chechens picked them off while sustaining a minimum of casualties. Still, many of them had been killed in the Taliban’s initial surprise fusillade.

Aashir ran through the melee after the last remaining Taliban soldier. Bourne shouted at him to come back, but Aashir called, “Let me do this, Yusuf. I’ll get him.”

The young man wanted to bloody himself in the age-old ritual of becoming a man. As a result, he could get himself killed. Bourne took off after him, brushing past Chechens, bringing down a jihadist on his left, then another on his right. The Chechens laughed, tried to pat him on the shoulder or back as he and Aashir flew by. They were clearly impressed by the young man’s courage and fortitude against the Taliban. After all, he had saved their leader.

He reached the stygian inner recesses of the cave without encountering either Aashir or the Taliban soldier. He had only a penlight Borz had given him. The pea-sized beam was worse than useless: Illuminating next to nothing, it yet served to pinpoint his precise location as accurately as a laser. He didn’t turn it on.

Fingertips on rocks, feeling his way forward, he noticed the black turned to charcoal, then, in spots, to light gray. The cave roof was dotted with fissures through which light seeped down. This unearthly illumination allowed him to proceed forward with a good measure of confidence. Shortly, the sounds of soft footfalls against the pumice-like floor of the cave reached him.

The floor sloped down, even as the way tapered until it had narrowed to a width of perhaps two young boys standing side by side. Bourne paused for a moment, listening intently, but now that the firefight behind him had come to its bloody end, a ringing silence reigned, punctured now and again by echoes of questioning voices.

Not much farther on, Bourne identified Aashir’s voice. Who was he with? Bourne had heard no gunshots, no moans of pain.

Despite the presence of light, he picked his way even more cautiously. Several times, hearing a pebble or small rock bounce along the floor, he froze, his entire mind tuned to the sounds. Always he continued on, into the silence, deeper and deeper into the living rock.

“Yusuf.”

He stopped, waited.

“Yusuf, are you there?”

“Yes,” Bourne said, and moved.

“Yusuf, please, I’m injured.”

“What happened?” Bourne said, moving again.

“It’s my leg. But I got him. The Taliban is dead.”

He was sure now; it wasn’t Aashir’s voice. Was Aashir dead? Bourne looked around, found a ledge onto which he laid his penlight. “Tell me where you are, Aashir, and I’ll come get you.” He turned on the penlight, quickly moved aside.

A burst of automatic fire splintered the ledge, disintegrating the light. But Bourne was already on the move, sprinting forward. A bit of white material caught the light, then a sleeve. He leaped, driving his left shoulder into the Taliban soldier. They both tumbled backward onto the floor. Having dropped his assault rifle, the Taliban reached up, gripped Bourne’s throat with his two hands, and gave a mighty squeeze.

Bourne drove his fist into the Taliban’s abdomen, then against the point of his sternum, cracking it. Still, the Taliban only tightened his grip. Bourne could not breathe. Stars danced at the corners of his vision. His third strike shattered the sternum completely, driving bone into the Taliban’s right lung, which immediately emptied of air and filled with blood.