Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (4 page)

“Bill, for Christ’s sake!”

“That’s a compliment, dammit!”

Shaking her head, she smiled, but it was a rueful smile. “Time to end it, once and for all.” How many layers of meaning in that statement?

Magnus frowned, still clearly concerned. “The operation may not be as straightforward as the brief makes it out to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Briefs have a tendency to make everything seem cut-and-dried. Do
x
, and
y
happens. One move follows the next in logical progression. But the field doesn’t always progress that way. The field is chaos; people who are logical by nature die out there, wondering how it could be that their life is ending because the mission went off the rails in an insane twist the brief never covered. In the field, other, hidden factors are always at play. Factors the authors of the brief know nothing about.”

“I’ll be careful, Bill. I told you.”

“I want you to come home,” he said, “with or without Bourne’s head. But don’t you dare tell Howard I said that.”

“I make it a rule never to tell Howard squat.”

“Good girl.” He nodded. “And you’re sure you’re up to this?”

“Bill,” she said, rising, “if I had a cock it would always be up.”

She went to the door, turned to him, and smiled sadly. “You see how emotions fuck things up? We’re fearing for each other’s lives instead of concentrating on the situation at hand.”

I
t was a terrible thing
to wake up in Doha alone and in despair.

“If you look for them,” El Ghadan had told Bourne before they slipped the hood over his head and took him away, “you will not find them.”

It was a terrible thing to wake up in Doha alone and helpless.

“If you look for them,” El Ghadan had said just before they had dumped him at the edge of the desert, “I will kill them myself, one slow inch at a time.”

The heat was intense, the sun blinding, almost hallucinatory. And perhaps it actually was, because, squinting into the white glare, Bourne saw an Arabian oryx, its body white as milk, legs black as night, a splash of the same ebon hue pigmenting the center of its muzzle. The oryx stared at him with a rare intelligence, as if to say, You fool. Then it tossed its head, as if in contempt, its magnificent, impossibly long horns seeming to rake the sky.

Bourne blinked and it was gone. Picking himself up off the dusty verge, he commenced to walk in the direction of the city, until, hours later, a truck stopped beside him. Drenched in sweat, he climbed in beside the driver.

“What are you doing way out here in the middle of nowhere?” the driver said in Arabic, as he ground the gears out of neutral.

“Having a conversation with an oryx,” Bourne replied, staring ahead at the city towers shimmering in the heat haze.

The Museum of Weaponry, in the Al Luqta quarter of Doha, was not open to the public. A letter was required from the Museums Authority before entrance could be gained. No such permission was needed, however, for Abdul Aziz, or Zizzy, as his intimates called him.

Abdul Aziz lived like a pasha. Not a modern-day pasha, whatever that might be, but a pasha from the opulent days of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, for him the Ottoman Empire was in many ways still alive, for his shipping empire extended as far as the Ottomans’ had in its heyday. It was almost as lucrative, too, though in reality, what could compare to the wealth of the Ottomans? Apart, of course, from that of the Vatican.

Zizzy was an Arab who successfully negotiated the modern world while keeping the seven pillars of Islamic culture vibrantly alive. How he managed this almost superhuman metaphysical juggling act was a mystery to all, including his family. But everyone who knew him was grateful for his ability to defy gravity, as it were.

Jason Bourne was one of those. Bourne had encountered Zizzy some years earlier when both men were on assignment in the Sinai. Zizzy was inspecting a site he was considering buying. Bourne had penetrated the site in pursuit of a small cadre of terrorists who had blown an Egyptian church sky high, killing almost a hundred worshipping Copts, many of them women and children.

Zizzy had proved his astonishing marksmanship by shooting dead the last of the terrorists who had lain in wait for Bourne. Zizzy had used an L115A3 AWM sniper rifle, arguably the best in the business. One shot, one kill. That was the sniper’s code—one, as it turned out, Zizzy adhered to religiously.

Zizzy was fiercely loyal, well connected, a man with an irreverent sense of humor who did not automatically view all westerners as inherent enemies of Islam. He possessed a deep and abiding hatred of extremism, of terrorists who, in his opinion, distorted the teachings of Islam to suit their own purposes. “Islam is a religion of peace,” he was fond of saying with a ferocity that could keep a pack of jackals at bay.

But straddling past and present had its price. He was, in his own way, as much an outsider as Bourne. The two men had hit it off at once.

After the truck driver let him off, Bourne made his way back to Minister Qabbani’s hotel room, took a long shower, first hot, then cold, shaved, and dressed. The pain hit him the instant he toweled himself off. The hot water had lulled him into believing the aftermath of his torture wouldn’t be so bad. He was dead wrong. The pain flashed through him, constricting his chest, bringing back the session with the car battery.

Opening the room’s safe, he pulled out a small rucksack. He stared at it a moment, thinking of his last, abortive identity, thinking of Soraya and Sonya, thinking of Aaron, his brains exploding from a head that resembled a dropped melon. With a supreme effort he blocked all the flashing images. Then he made the call.

Zizzy met Bourne at the entrance to the Museum of Weaponry, where they were let in by a wizened old man with a hunchback and a mad gleam in his eye. Being in constant contact with such a display of exquisite weapons dating back to the sixteenth century could do that to you, Bourne supposed.

Swords from all the great dynastic families of the Middle East were represented, including one belonging to King Faisal of Saudi. But by far Zizzy’s favorite was the dagger once belonging to Lawrence of Arabia. To him it was the crown jewel of the collection, the weapon he returned to over and over.

“A great man, that Lawrence,” Zizzy said as they stood in front of the case housing the dagger. “A man who understood Islam, a man who appreciated the seven pillars of Islam’s wisdom. Of course, he was considered mad by the British. They said he’d gone native. Poor things. They never understood.”

He pointed to the scabbarded dagger, curved as a houri’s slipper. “It doesn’t look like much, does it? If you saw it in a bazaar, you’d most likely pass it by. You wouldn’t think that the future of Islam in the desert resided there. But it did. It does.”

Having spoken his heart, Zizzy turned to Bourne, his expression somber, even worried. “My friend, what has happened?”

“Anything of mine is yours for the asking.”

Bourne, sitting across from Zizzy in a café that was a small part of a shopping arcade Zizzy owned, nodded. “I appreciate that. As always.”

In sharp contrast to the hypermodern boutiques surrounding it, the café was done up in authentic
Arabian Nights
style. Walking in was like stepping into a sultan’s palace of three hundred years ago. The place was packed with westerners and locals alike, its reputation for excellent food known throughout Doha’s hotels as well as its expat community. Its buzzy atmosphere was perfect for keeping important conversations private.

Unlike Bourne, who was in Western gear, Zizzy was in traditional dress—watery blue
thoube
over loose white cotton trousers. His head was covered in the traditional
ghutra
, in a black-and-white check, held in place by a doubled black coil, the
iqal
. To show his Bedouin roots, Zizzy’s
iqal
had two tassels hanging from it, which Bedouins used to tic—or hobble—their camels at night to keep them from wandering off.

Sweet mint tea was poured and an array of small dishes were set out until the entire tabletop was covered. When they were alone again, Zizzy said, “Now, tell me what brings you to my great city.”

“Work,” Bourne said.

“Yes, work.” Zizzy nodded. “Always work with you, my friend.” He scooped up a bit of hummus with a triangle of pita, toasted a golden brown, chewed reflectively. “Eat, my friend. Eat! You cannot starve yourself! Nothing can be as bad as that.”

Zizzy gave the aspect of a mythical creature—his goggle eyes and beaked nose dominated a sun- and wind-darkened face. He had a wide forehead, as prominent as the prow of a fast ship. When he smiled, which was often, his teeth gleamed like little cakes of sugar.

As he watched Bourne pick at his food, he said, “I worry about you, Jason. I worry that one day I will find your perfectly preserved corpse half buried in the side of a sand dune.” He laughed. “But then I console myself with the sure and certain knowledge that you are far too tough for that to happen.” Popping an enormous date into his mouth, he sat back and said, “Now, tell me what has befallen you.”

Bourne told him what had transpired at the hotel, both before and after the massacre. As he finished, he put a mobile on the table. “El Ghadan gave this to me. Every day at midnight he will send me a short video of Soraya and Sonya, along with the day’s newspaper.”

“Proof of life.”

Bourne nodded. “It also contains a GPS that cannot be turned off.”

“So he can monitor your every move.” Zizzy shook his head. “He’s got you in an escape-proof box. This is a disaster, Jason. A complete and utter disaster.” He spread his hands, the food and drink forgotten. “How can I help, my friend?”

“My first impulse was of course to go find them, despite El Ghadan’s explicit warning,” Bourne said. “But then I forced myself to take several steps back and look at the situation objectively.”

“That’s good,” Zizzy said. “Because as of now you have seven days until the Singapore summit, seven days before El Ghadan goes to work on your friend and her daughter, seven days before he reshapes your world.”

Bitterness squeezed Bourne’s heart. It was a fact, hard but true, that everyone who had ever mattered to him had been either exposed to mortal danger or killed. Pulling his mind back to the problem at hand, he said, “Zizzy, I need to know as much as I can about him.”

“Not an easy task, my friend. El Ghadan’s past is as heavily guarded as his real identity.” Zizzy pulled at his lower lip, as he was wont to do when he had sunk deep in thought. “Well, I do think there is someone who might be able to help.” He checked his watch. “And, as luck would have it, this is just about the right time to catch him.”

“He might be Jordanian or Omani—there are people who believe that—but I’m not one of them.”

So said the tiny man—he was barely five feet tall—with a huge head, a nose like a hawk’s beak, the ears of an Indian elephant, and a halo of white hair tangled as a thorny bush. This was Nebuchadnezzar, known as Nebby. He could have been seventy or a hundred and seventy, it was impossible to tell. His eyes were bright with a mischievous intelligence rare in men a quarter his age.

Bourne and Abdul Aziz were sitting on a circular rug in the center of Nebby’s living room. He had a small apartment on the outskirts of the city, where, as he put it, he could study the desert. What there was to see in the expanse of sand and wind was anyone’s guess. According to Zizzy, the old man dealt in information, traded item for item. He owed Zizzy several favors, so in this case no payment from Bourne was expected.

Tea had been served by a young woman with dark hair and a ready smile. All around them were shelves containing artifacts from Nebby’s long and varied life: shells from Zanzibar, carvings from Namibia and Ethiopia, strange voodoo-like dolls from Uganda that looked like preserved babies, Moroccan tiles and pottery. A Maasai chieftain’s polished wooden stick, strange deep-sea fish, dried and preserved. The array was dizzying, virtually endless. The air vibrated to the energies of these shards of his past.

Nebby sipped his tea as daintily as an English nanny, set his glass down, and continued. “No, I’m not one of them. I think El Ghadan is Persian, and this is why. Unlike other extremists who hate the Saudis as much as they do the Americans, his fury is directed solely at the United States and Israel. This, to my mind, marks him out as Persian.”

The ensuing silence went on so long that Bourne felt obliged to say, “What else can you tell me?”

“This is not enough?” Nebby cocked his head like a bird eyeing a choice bit of food. “No, I suppose for a man in your position it is not.” He raised a finger, as if testing the direction of the wind. “There is a story I’ve heard, though whether to credit it is strictly your choice. This story concerns El Ghadan’s son. Now, what makes this story interesting is that it is widely known in some circles that, though married, the man is an inveterate womanizer. Doubtless, these escapades have led to issue, both male and female. However, the story says that El Ghadan has one legitimate son. The boy, who might be in his early twenties by now, ran away when he was perhaps sixteen, give or take a year. Ever since then, El Ghadan has been desperately searching for him. To no avail.” A cackling laugh issued from Nebby’s lips. “Can you imagine? A child disappears and the great and powerful El Ghadan cannot find him.”

“What is known of this son?” Bourne said.

“Practically nothing,” Nebby admitted, “though several things can be intuited. I believe he is hiding in plain sight, which is why his father’s people cannot locate him. They’re looking in the wrong places.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

Nebby finished his tea. “Well, if I were him I’d have joined a terrorist cell—under a different name, of course. One that’s as close as possible to his father’s cells.”

“Such as?”

Nebby shrugged. “It is believed that from time to time El Ghadan partners with people who can be of particular use to him. Currently, that would be Ivan Borz.”

“The arms dealer?”

Nebby nodded.

“Do you know where Borz is now?”

“Rumor has it Waziristan, working with one of El Ghadan’s cadres.”

“I’m hungry,” Zizzy said. “What about you?”

Zizzy led him to an opulent restaurant whose owner Zizzy knew well. Even though at this hour the room was packed, Zizzy’s friend ushered them to the best table in the house, had a kettle of rare silver-tip white tea brought to their table, and spoke to them effusively for several moments before departing with a smile and a deferential incline of his head.

“Sorry, Jason,” Abdul Aziz said. “Difficult to know whether our little visit to Nebby was of any use.”

“Any bit of insight into El Ghadan I can glean is important,” Bourne said. “Especially the news that he has a wayward son he’s desperate to find.”

“Leverage, yes?” Zizzy said.

“If he exists,” Bourne said. “If I could find him.”

They paused to order.

“Of most concern now,” Bourne said when they were alone again, “is how El Ghadan knew I was impersonating Minister Qabbani.”

“Do you think Qabbani himself is a conduit for El Ghadan?”

“Possibly. Qabbani was instrumental in making the summit happen.”

“Yet he didn’t want to go himself.”

“That in itself means nothing. I was watching his face the entire time. I wouldn’t have taken the commission otherwise.”