Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (6 page)

E
verything go all right?”
Zizzy said when Bourne climbed into the shimmering leather and chrome interior of the Gulfstream G650.

Bourne seated himself across from Zizzy. “Nothing has gone right since I got here.”

Noting his grim expression, Zizzy said, “Should I be alarmed at Mossad’s presence in my city?”

“No one’s planning an invasion or a coup,” Bourne said shortly.

“Well, that’s a relief.” Zizzy grunted, picked up a phone, and called for the Gulfstream to get under way. “Strap yourself in.”

Bourne sat back, closed his eyes. The jet engines’ whine rose in pitch, the brakes came off, and the plane taxied, turned onto the head of the runway.

“You know, I’m getting worried about you,” Zizzy said, after takeoff.

“Who’s your contact at the ministry?” Bourne said, as if he hadn’t heard.

Zizzy regarded Bourne for a moment, as if trying to find the fly in the ointment. “A pig, that’s who,” he said, apparently giving up. “Bugger looks like one and acts like one. He’s as rich as Croesus, as degenerate as Caligula. Drinks in secret, and don’t get me started on his harem of young girls and boys.”

Bourne opened his eyes. “I didn’t know you were so indiscriminate about your friends, Zizzy.”

Zizzy laughed. “Business often makes for uncomfortable bedfellows. And believe me when I tell you that Nazim Hafiz is very good for my business. He knows how to keep my deals running smoothly and without interruption, no matter how shitty things get in Damascus.”

“What deals would those be, Zizzy?”

“You know perfectly well: platinum, palladium, my usual strategic metals. But I’ve more recently planted my flag in titanium—cars, planes—tough and lightweight. Titanium’s the future, Jason.”

Bourne swallowed, cleared his ears. “How does Hafiz feel about westerners?”

“Hates them like poison,” Zizzy admitted. “But you are my friend. He’ll make an exception.”

“I’m not going to take the chance.”

Zizzy flagged down an attendant, ordered sweet Moroccan tea for them both. “Please! Jason. He will have no choice.”

“Of course he’ll have a choice. People always have choices.”

Zizzy looked at Bourne queerly. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t. It’s all part of the game.”

“This isn’t a game.”

Bourne said this with such force that Zizzy looked taken aback. “What’s gotten into you, my friend?”

Bourne stared at Zizzy mutely.

“For the love of Allah, this is me who’s asking.”

Bourne looked away for a moment; when he turned back he looked stricken. “A year or so ago someone close to me died. I tried to save her, but couldn’t. After that…I don’t know, this shadow life seemed to lose its appeal. I was cajoled back with the prospect of revenge on the man who had her killed. But after that…” He shrugged. “I went into business for myself as a Blacksmith.”

“Until this dire threat reared its head.” The tea came, was poured into two narrow cups of colored glass woven with gold filigree. Zizzy handed one glass to Bourne, took up the other. He sipped meditatively. “You know, my friend, there is always going to be someone or some
thing
that will bring you back into what you call the shadow life. This is the way of it. You’ve lived so long in the margins you would not be comfortable in the light, living the rest of your days among civilians.”

“These civilians,” Bourne said, “have lives too.”

Zizzy leaned forward. “They exist in another world altogether, a place that can no longer support you. No point in fooling yourself, my friend. Neither of us would find happiness there.”

Bourne considered a moment; he seemed distinctly uncomfortable continuing the discussion. “I don’t want to be introduced to Hafiz as a westerner.”

Zizzy spread his hands. “What? You don’t trust me to handle him?”

“Why take the chance,” Bourne said, “when we don’t have to?”

In another half hour Bourne was asleep. He dreamed of Soraya and Sonya. They were in the water—a shallow part of a vast sea. Soraya was holding Sonya to keep her chest and head above the surface, but every once in a while a wave would swamp them. Sonya sputtered, then laughed, turning her head this way and that to see what had hit them and where it had gone.

In the manner of dreams, Bourne was not in the water with them—he was an observer. The sunlight that illuminated them, indeed, that sparked the tops of the waves, did not touch him. He was in shadow—permanent shadow. And even from within the dream he understood this much: Soraya, who had lived in the shadows with him, had chosen to leave, she had chosen to move into the sunlight. She had become a civilian.

The instant he realized the barrier that had come between them, he saw an enormous shadow cutting through the water. It was huge, this shadow, like a drowned ship. But it wasn’t a ship.

The thing was making directly toward mother and child. Soraya and Sonya were in mortal danger. Bourne tried to call out to Soraya, but either his voice box was paralyzed or she couldn’t hear him from the other side of the barrier. Then he tried to get to her, but even though he saw the scene before him with perfect clarity, he could not reach them. He was the only one aware of the danger. He tried to will himself into the water, to move heaven and earth in a last-ditch attempt to save them, but it was to no avail.

Then the shadow was upon them, Sonya’s face twisted in the same terror and fear he had seen in her when her father was shot in the head, except it wasn’t Sonya and she wasn’t being held by Soraya. He was watching the demise of Sara and the little girl that was their dream child.

At that precise instant he jerked violently awake. Ignoring Zizzy’s curious gaze, he rose, went unsteadily up the aisle to the toilet, where he splashed water on his sweat-streaked face.

For a long time, he stared at himself in the mirror. It occurred to him then that he’d been happier as Minister Qabbani, despite the brevity of his time in the disguise. Being someone else, someone other than Jason Bourne, seemed peculiarly appealing, and he had to wonder whether that was why he had told Zizzy he wanted to meet Hafiz in disguise.

After a time, he returned to his seat, where he was subjected to Zizzy’s concerned scrutiny.

Zizzy handed him a glass of ice water, watched him gulp it down. “So she’s gotten that deep under your skin,” he observed.

Bourne put the glass down. “Who?”

“The woman you tried to save; the woman who was killed.”

“Why are you so concerned?”

“We’re heading into a war zone—do I have to remind you? My life is on the line as well as yours. If you’re having nightmares that make you cry out in your sleep, I could easily become worried that your mind isn’t focused correctly.”

“It’s nothing. Forget it.”

“Carrying a dead person on your back isn’t nothing, my friend. I should know.”

Bourne remembered now. Zizzy’s sister had fallen in love with a Danish engineer. Their older brother had gotten the engineer kicked out of Qatar, then he had killed their sister, for which he had been hailed as a true enforcer of Islam. Zizzy had been so incensed that he had broken off all ties with his family and to this day had not seen or spoken to any member. He had not gone to his father’s funeral or, several years later, his mother’s.

“On the day she discovered our brother had found out about her liaison, my sister came to me in private,” Zizzy had once told Bourne. “‘I love him,’ she told me. ‘I want to marry him. He has promised to take me away from this godforsaken country.’ Tears leaked out of her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. ‘I want my own life. Only you can understand this. Brother, I beg you to help us. I beg you to shield me from what I know is coming.’ And what did I do? I went about my business, hid my head in the sand, telling myself that our brother could never do such a barbaric thing, that that was not the kind of family I had been born into. Then, before I knew it, it was over. She was dead and her lover was gone. ‘Now it is as if nothing happened,’ my brother said to me. ‘I have erased the shame our sister brought upon this family.’”

Bourne asked now, “Have you been to your brother’s grave?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

Zizzy’s brother had died under mysterious circumstances two years after he had killed their sister. It was unclear to Bourne whether Zizzy had murdered him. He had never asked and Zizzy had certainly never volunteered the information.

“I dug the grave myself,” Zizzy added, as if suddenly struck by the memory. “That was more than enough.”

There was a silence between them, thickening like glue.

“I should never have questioned you about the woman,” Zizzy said at length. It seemed clear he had realized Bourne’s motivation for bringing up his brother. “That was wrong of me.”

“Forget it,” Bourne said.

Zizzy stared at Bourne for a moment. “I did it,” he said so softly Bourne had to strain to hear him. “I killed him.” He looked Bourne straight in the eye. “I had to. I hadn’t protected my sister in life. I had to protect her in death.”

“I understand, Zizzy.”

Zizzy let out a long-held breath. It was like the scrape of the desert wind over an endless ocean of sand. “With what you did for that woman I knew you would.”

He leaned forward, held out his hand. “Are we good?”

Bourne took it in his. “Good as gold.”

Blum breathed a sigh of relief when he and Rebeka parted company. Something about her made him question himself, as if her presence caused him to peer into his own insidious nature. That was all nonsense, he told himself as he turned the corner and entered a crowded marketplace. His own guilt was imbuing her with supernatural powers.

It was natural, his handler had warned him, to feel guilt, even remorse, at what he was doing. The important thing was to keep those feelings in perspective, to remember the account that had been opened for him in a venerable Gibraltar bank. Each and every month an agreed-upon amount was deposited—money that when it reached a certain level would become what he thought of as his trajectory money: the means by which he could escape the constant pressures and terrors of his current double life. His handler had generously provided the scenario: Blum basking in the sun of some tropical South Pacific island, a fat joint in one hand, a lissome young thing in the other, with nothing on the horizon but to eat, drink, swim, sleep, get high, and fuck. “All this can be yours,” his handler had said. But what had come to Blum was product useful to Mossad gleaned from his handler and, very slowly, a local network he had cobbled together, making sure of cutouts along the way so no one member knew of the other’s existence. The problem had been sending the product home. Being watched so closely he had yet to find a way to do it.

Passing between a silk merchant and a coppersmith, he pulled out the electronic ear he had used at the diamond cutter’s. The audio data was recorded onto the phone’s 64GB micro SD card. This was the moment when his life split in two. Minor product was one thing; it kept his handler at bay. But this was major. If he failed to deliver this product he would immediately come under suspicion, but if he did send it he would be betraying the people he worked for, the country that had raised and nurtured him. Perhaps this moment was inevitable: the moment when a vital piece of intel would fall into his hands. There were two paths to follow now, and he must step out onto one or the other.

The market spun on around him, people going about their daily lives, shopping, chatting, laughing, even. He felt cut off from them, as if he were living in another dimension. He could see and hear them, but he stood firmly outside them, apart—he was Other, and the sheer loneliness was overwhelming.

He had been fed this fantasy of nirvana from the moment of his recruitment, but was it how he really felt now that he had begun to betray his country? There was another way out, but it did not involve wild riches, sun-splashed beaches, and bikinied women flitting around him like butterflies. It was a darker road, filled with peril, and perhaps death.

He held the SD card in his hand for a moment before he dropped it on the ground, and stepped hard on it, grinding it to pieces. Then, filled with dread for his own safety, he walked on. Pausing at a stall, he bought a half pound of fresh-roasted pistachios, popping them one by one into his mouth as he strolled deeper into the market’s maze.

A moment later, he abruptly stopped, turned away from the flood of people, and vomited into a dust-coated corner.

C
amilla was sore all over
. She ached in places she hadn’t thought about in years. She felt as if Starfall had stomped all over her. When she told Hunter this, her trainer said, “That’s what hot baths and liniment massages are for. Get used to it. This is only the beginning.”

Camilla might be complaining to Hunter, but she was pleased with her progress. By the end of the day, with a deep blue dusk settling over the Virginia mountains, she had been urging Starfall into an easy gallop around the ring. Uncertainty had given way to an incredible sense of elation. As Hunter had predicted, the feel of the muscular beast between her legs provided her with a surge of power. She wanted to charge into battle, to sweep aside the enemy, to keep going until she reached the foothills of the darkening mountains.

Of course, she did no such thing, and as if divining her thoughts and emotions, Hunter admonished her when she at last drew Starfall to a stop and dismounted beside her trainer.

“Don’t allow your emotions to run away with you.” She took the reins, walking Starfall out of the ring, back to the paddock. “It’s easy, to do that, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Never lose the sense of who you are and what the horse is. Though he may seem like more, Starfall is only a vehicle, that’s all. If you lose your perspective you’ll botch the end of it, the most important part. Sure as we’re walking here you’ll get hurt, possibly very badly. You need to keep your wits about you, remember everything I’ll be teaching you. Then, when the moment comes, you’ll be all right. You’ll be perfectly safe, I promise.”

Much to Camilla’s surprise, after the promised hot shower and massage, she was instructed to meet Hunter back at the stables, where she was taught how to brush down Starfall and feed him. Then it was time for dinner, which was served—again, a surprise—in the barn. She and Hunter ate with the horses all around them.

Then it was time for sleep—or so Camilla thought. It wasn’t long, however, before Hunter’s purpose was made clear to her.

Night riding.

“There is a strict deadline,” Hunter said. “It’s crucial you spend as much time around horses as possible before you’re inserted into the field.” She led Camilla back to the stalls. “You’ll be among professionals—all experts. Forget this for even a moment and you’re finished. They will smell a plant six furlongs away. My job is to make you as genuine as a copper penny.”

She grinned. “When you arrived this morning, you asked me whether we really had enough time to get you battle-ready.” Her grin widened as she opened the door to Starfall’s stall. “Darlin’, believe me, when you leave here, you won’t have a worry in the world.”

Sara Yadin, who had reassumed her role as Rebeka, who once again thought of herself as Rebeka, slid behind the wheel of her rented car, but she did not fire the ignition. Instead, she stared sightlessly out the windshield and thought about the last moments of her meeting with Bourne.

She had been about to tell him that she was going after Soraya and Sonya when he had pulled her to him, given her a spine-tingling kiss, then had whispered in her ear, “Don’t go after Soraya and Sonya, and don’t go near El Ghadan.”

When she had tried to pull away far enough to look him in the eye, he had held her fast. “He’s going to expect that sort of frontal assault.” Bourne’s words filled her ear. “He’s already prepared for it, believe me.”

“Then what?” she whispered back. “I’m not going to stand idly by while—”

“No one’s asking you to, least of all me. You’re far too valuable an asset.”

“What are you proposing?” she asked.

“Go sandcrabbing. You’re in the perfect place to dig up dirt on El Ghadan.”

“Every secret service on earth has been trying to do that for years, without success.”

“But here you are in Qatar, in the center of the web.”

“You think Qatar is his territory?”

“I’ve been working as a Blacksmith for a year. He had fifteen chances to trap me before this one. Why would
you
choose the summit in Doha?”

“He was running a difficult operation. It demanded complex logistics,” she whispered. “The hotel had to be secured, the personnel suborned, the surrounding area swept clean. And the police—”

“Yes,” Bourne had whispered in her ear. “The police is the place to start.”

The police, Rebeka thought now. El Ghadan could not have pulled off such a complicated raid without involving elements within the Doha police.

Pushing her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose, she switched on the ignition, put the car in gear, and pulled out into traffic.

Bourne was right. It was time to go sandcrabbing.

Barring a White House crisis, Howard Anselm and Marty Finnerman made it a habit to meet for a late dinner three times a week. Both men, being creatures of strict routine, always ate at RNR Steak on 22nd Street NW. Partly this was because RNR Steak was one of the newest power spots inside the Beltway, but mainly it was because Finnerman and the chef, Richard Renaldo, were longtime friends. There was always a table for them, no matter how crowded the room. Often, when they were finished with their business, Renaldo would join them for an after-dinner drink, but in any event he always sent out special plates of food. The two men never bothered to consult the menu.

A sultry evening hung heavily over Washington, so it was a relief for Anselm and Finnerman to enter the cool, dim restaurant interior. They were greeted by the manager, who led them to their usual table. They sat in plush chairs, surrounded by dove-gray walls with butter-yellow accents. Here and there, large paintings of indeterminate age and dubious quality adorned the walls, interspersed with brass sconces radiating indirect lighting.

Finnerman, who always chose the wine, picked an Argentine rosé, and the men settled in for the rest of the evening.

Their discussion followed a particular form. As the chief architect of the administration’s national security policy, Finnerman always began, while Anselm listened, inserting an appropriate or pointed comment when required. Tonight, however, it was Anselm who made the first comment.

He leaned forward, his forehead creased with worry. “Marty, I think we ought to find a way to postpone the peace summit.”

Finnerman goggled. “Have you lost your mind? We can do no such thing. You know it as well as I do. The planning has been in the works for more than a year.”

Anselm licked his lips as if they were chapped and dry. “I’m concerned we’ve pushed Camilla into the deep end.”

“Of course we’ve pushed her into the deep end. That’s the point of the brief. Where the fuck is this coming from all of a sudden?”

“I got a call from Hunter.”

Finnerman grunted. “Hunter!”

The wine came, the waiter uncorked it, went through what Anselm felt was the pretentious and boring ritual of smelling the bottom of the cork, pouring a bit into Finnerman’s glass, watching indulgently while Finnerman swirled the wine around, smelled it, swirled some more, then tasted it. Anselm began to grind his teeth.

“I know what you think of her,” Anselm said when they were alone again, “but she’s the best horse trainer at the Dairy.”

“Also our best butch since Janet Napolitano.”

Anselm picked up his glass and took a nice swig of the wine, which was refreshing but a bit too mineral for his taste. “You know what they say about hard-core homophobes.”

“I do,” Finnerman said, “but don’t let that stop you from telling me.”

“Any boys in your closet, Marty?”

“Very funny,” Finnerman said sourly.

Anselm set his glass down. “I’m not kidding. If there is one you’d best fess up now so we can deal with it before it stains POTUS.”

“Stop it,” Finnerman said tartly.

“I know, you don’t allow homos in the Pentagon. What? You have a machine at the entrance that—”

“For Christ’s sake, enough!”

“Then give a serious listen when I voice some concern about our plan.”

The first course was laid out before them: gleaming stone crab claws set amid a profusion of micro-greens.

“Okay, okay.” Finnerman reached for the nutcracker that had been delivered with the claws. “Christ almighty, Howard.” He split apart a claw with uncommon violence.

Across from him, Anselm allowed himself a secret smile.

“My concern is for the aftermath.”

“The aftermath?”

“Hunter told me that Camilla is exceeding all expectations.”

“So?”

“What if she survives?” he said.

Finnerman dipped a chunk of pink-white flesh into a small bowl of drawn butter. “The way we set things up that’s not possible.”

“But what if she does?”

Finnerman sighed. “If you don’t get to the point soon I’ll be too old to understand it.”

“We need to enlarge the dinger’s brief,” Anselm said, using the accepted marine slang for a crack marksman.

Finnerman bisected the piece of flesh in a mincing bite. “In what way?”

“He’s to dispatch both of them—Bourne
and
Camilla.”

Finnerman, chewing meditatively, stared hard at Anselm. “You’re not joking.”

“You know me better than that, Marty.”

Slowly and deliberately, Finnerman set down his fork. He waved away the waiter who was coming to ask how they were enjoying their stone crab claws. “Well, fuck me.”

“It has to be done,” Anselm said, “when you consider the big picture.”

Finnerman sat back. “The big picture is the threat assessment we got from our old friends at Gravenhurst. The entire structure of POTUS’s initiative toward the peace summit in Singapore is built on their product.”

“I’m talking POTUS and the girl.”

“Oh, for shit’s sake, Howard, the girl’s a minor graft onto the larger scheme of things.”

Anselm’s eyes were glittering. “She’s a constant temptation. And you know POTUS.”

Finnerman’s mood had turned distinctly gloomy. “I know as you see it your primary job is to keep POTUS from all temptation, but dammit, you’ve got to keep your eye on the bigger prize.”

“And yet it’s always the small things that put a spanner in the works, as our Brit cousins like to say. That was why I chose Camilla for this brief: Get her out of D.C., put her in a dangerous position, let her self-destruct.” Anselm, warming to his thesis, completely ignored his food. “But after Hunter’s call I got to thinking: What if Camilla doesn’t self-destruct? Why, then we need someone on-site to make certain she never returns to D.C.”

“The dinger.”

Anselm nodded. “The dinger will leave her in the dust.”

“And there’s no other way?” Finnerman knew there was no other way, but he was the kind of person who needed reassurance.

“Not if we want to be sure to close the circle,” Anselm said. “Not if we want to keep POTUS safe.”

“You really are the limit, Howard.”

“You know I’m right.”

Anselm took up his fork and began to attack his crab claws. Soon enough, Finnerman joined him.