Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (17 page)

W
aziristan was a place
of no one’s dreams. Caught between Afghanistan and Pakistan, seen from above it looked like it had been expelled by both countries. It bordered the state of Peshawar, was cracked by mountains, many of them impenetrable. It was inhabited by Pashtun tribes, who now shared their spiky, unlovely territory with elements of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and possibly other hard-core jihadists. The Waziri, a rough, warlike people, kept these disparate cadres separated, like Siamese fighting fish, lest they wage a continuous war, one against the other, and in the process turn the country to ruin.

The C-17 circled the pressed dirt airstrip once, then pulled itself down in stomach-churning fashion before the nose could smack into the wall of granite that rose steeply at the far end. The plane hit hard, the tires smoking, the brakes shrieking like the ghosts of the Waziri dead.

Even in this great valley, they were high up. The air was clear, clean, and thin. The sky was very blue, almost dark overhead. Clouds clung to the mountaintops to the east, churning and gloomy. Occasionally, lightning flickered in their depths and deep rumbles of thunder like beaten drums rolled ominously through the valley.

Faraj’s men were unloading the C-17 through its massive rear door. The American would-be jihadists marched down, stiff-legged from their uncomfortable journey seated on wooden benches. Most trotted off to relieve themselves, as the C-17 had no facilities on board. To one side of the strip was a line of buildings, looking more like temporary shelters, camouflaged in order to be invisible from above.

From these buildings men emerged. Bourne immediately caught their difference from the men with whom he had been traveling. Chechens, he thought. And he thought of Sara’s encrypted text, which confirmed Nebby’s intel: the invisible line connecting Khalifa, El Ghadan, and Ivan Borz, the Chechen arms dealer who had ably stepped into Viktor Bout’s enormous shoes.

“This is the edge of nowhere,” Faraj said, breaking into Bourne’s musings, “the margin of society. The mountains of western Pakistan are crawling with people who have been forced out of the cities to the east for religious and ethnic reasons. They are treated like pariahs, and so they become pariahs.”

It seemed to Bourne, listening to this thesis, that Faraj and perhaps many of his jihadist brethren were invested in being pariahs, a unique status that allowed them to preach to all and sundry just how awful their lives were, how little they had to lose because they owned nothing, and never would. So why not join the pariahs, why not embrace the status, why not allow it to empower you? This was the real message Faraj and his ilk were preaching. All the talk of Allah and the Great Satan was so much trapping. The Great Satan was what gave them pariah status in the first place. It seemed to Bourne that being a pariah gave Faraj a reason for being; that without it he would be nothing.

“But you have your plan,” Bourne said. “Or should I say El Ghadan’s plan. It’s not really yours, is it? And if it works out, if I follow you correctly, neither you nor El Ghadan will be pariahs for much longer. I definitely want to be on the winning side.”

Faraj watched his men form the new recruits up into ranks. “Once again, Yusuf, I don’t know what to make of you. Are you a sniper, a philosopher, a would-be lieutenant?”

“Perhaps I’m all of these.”

“And if you’re not? If you’re none of these?”

Bourne grinned. “You have already seen my skills as a sniper.”

“And you have demonstrated your language skills. Furuque had no such aptitude.”

“Furuque was limited. He was a pawn on a chessboard.”

“But you’re not.”

“You have to make that determination, Abu Faraj Khalid, not I.”

Faraj eyed him for some moments, as if struggling to reach a decision. “Come,” he said at length, and without another word strode off toward the line of buildings.

“Stay out here,” Faraj ordered before he ducked inside. Bourne watched the procedures the new recruits were being subjected to. Right now they were being armed with AK-47s. Several moment later, Faraj emerged, beckoned to Bourne.

Bourne entered the middle building of five. It was long and low, like an Indian lodge in the American Southwest. But inside, it had more of the aspect of a Roman army tent. A man sat on a camp chair before a desk made of what appeared to be aluminum. Across the desktop were strewn various topographical and city maps, building blueprints, charts of all kinds, including city plats of sewer systems. These were marked up with a charcoal pencil—notes, connecting lines, queries. Battle plans, Bourne thought. And then he recognized the city against which Borz had set himself: It was Singapore.

Two huge, glowering Chechens flanked Borz’s battle desk, as if they were bookends. Their narrowed eyes were wholly concentrated on Bourne; it was as if Faraj—known to them, and trusted—did not exist.

The seated man looked up as they entered. He unhooked his reading glasses, set them atop his work. He was a burly individual, with a bull chest and virtually no neck. His arms were short, as were his legs, evident when he rose and came around to the front of the desk, more to block sight of his workspace than for any form of courtesy.

This was Ivan Borz. Bourne recognized him from the photos accompanying news stories about him and his burgeoning alleged empire.

While Faraj made the introductions, Bourne studied Borz more closely. He had a wide nose that appeared to have been broken at least once. His ears were small, set high up on his head. His forearms were as matted with curling black hair as his skull was bald. His eyes, gray as the clouds that ringed the mountaintops outside, were extraordinary. Set deeply in his face, they were ringed with dark circles, pouched beneath. They maintained the absolute stillness emblematic of psychopaths and natural-born killers. It was as if all emotion had been leached from them.

He snapped his fingers. “Passport.”

Bourne handed over his Yusuf Al Khatib passport.

As Borz leafed through it, Faraj said, “He’s a first-rate sniper.”

“Did I ask for your opinion?” Borz snapped. He sounded as if he had been gargling with glass, his voice deep and thick, and somehow strangled.

Faraj said nothing in return, keeping a silence that told Bourne more about Faraj’s standing with Borz than any response could have done.

“Leave us,” Borz said without looking up.

With a glance at Bourne, Faraj turned on his heel.

“You know what to do, Faraj,” Borz said, just before the other left, followed, surprisingly, by the Chechen muscle.

Borz regarded Bourne as he took a pack of cigarettes off the crowded desktop, shook one out, lit it, and drew smoke into his lungs slowly and thoughtfully. He slapped the passport against the palm of his hand.

“Yusuf, do I know you?”

“We have never met,” Bourne said.

“No? Are you sure we haven’t run into each other somewhere?” Then without warning, Borz switched to Russian. “Is Yusuf Al Khatib your real name?”

Bourne looked blankly at the Chechen, shook his head, just as he would have if he did not in fact speak Russian. “Can you please use Arabic? You speak it very well.”

“Is Yusuf Al Khatib your real name?” Borz repeated in Arabic.

“It is.”

The Chechen took a sharp right turn, moving to an altogether different subject. “How well do you know Faraj?”

“Hardly at all,” Bourne said, unperturbed. He would have been surprised if he hadn’t been subjected to an interrogation. “We spoke briefly in Damascus, then more at length on the flight here.”

“What is your impression of him?”

“As I told you, I haven’t known him long.”

“Precisely.” Borz crossed his arms over his chest. “You have no dog in this hunt, as the Americans say. I’m going by instinct here, but you don’t strike me as an ideologue. You don’t follow blindly. Am I correct?”

“As it happens, you are.” Borz had inadvertently given Bourne a gift of great value. It was clear that Borz was not an ideologue either. He was a clear-eyed pragmatist, following the scent of money wherever it might lead him. Kindred spirits—or, in this case, the illusion of them—were of vital importance out here at the edge of the world, beyond the sway of even the most powerful exemplars of law and order.

“Then answer me this: How is it you hooked yourself onto Faraj?”

“Happenstance,” Bourne said. “I got caught in a Syrian army raid, along with one of Faraj’s people and two of his would-be recruits. I managed to escape with one of the recruits. He didn’t know his way around Damascus, so I took him to Faraj’s recruitment gathering. Faraj became interested in my skill as a sniper and asked me to come along.”

“No,” Borz said in precisely the same tone of voice. “I think you’re a spy.”

This was a well-traveled interrogator’s trick: sharp turns in subject, only to return time and again to the core matter of interest. It was a proven method of separating truth from lies.

“I should take offense. Is this your famous intuition again?” Bourne said neutrally. “Who would I be spying for?”

“The Israelis are prime suspects. Until a few days ago, Mossad had a presence here; now it’s gone. You could be the replacement.”

“I could be,” Bourne said, “but I’m not.”

“Well, it’s certain you’re not American.”

Bourne wondered how Borz could know that.

“So you blindly followed Faraj out of Damascus, is that it?”

Again, the sharp turn of subject.

Bourne smiled. “Not blindly at all. At that moment my continued presence in Damascus was too great a risk. I weighed the probabilities and used Faraj as my way out.”

“In other words, you were opportunistic.”

Bourne nodded. “By necessity, yes.”

“Pragmatic as well. No one can understand this state of affairs better than me.” His cigarette was almost burned through, but Borz ignored the lengthening ash at its end. “You weighed the probabilities.” He chuckled. It sounded like he had swallowed his cigarette butt. “Let’s sit and talk about probabilities.”

At that moment, Bourne’s keen hearing picked up a dreadful song. It was neither the muffled shouts of Borz’s men, which had ceased some moments earlier, nor the keening of the wind swooping off the mountains.

“Down!” Bourne shouted as he leaped on Borz, driving both of them under the metal table. A heartbeat later, the world exploded all around them. The earth trembled, clods of flying debris punctured the building. Then the building itself disintegrated, and a wall of fire rose, roaring in their ears.

Camilla headed west. About a mile out, the diamond shadows vanished as clouds tumbled in, as if being pursued by the devil himself. The wind freshened, rustling the trees, and she felt the rain coming.

She altered course toward a thick stand of birches north of her. For a breathless moment, the tips flamed gold and silver in the last shard of sunlight before the clouds irised closed.

Approaching the trees, Camilla saw a figure on horseback off to her left, atop a small hammock shaded by a giant oak. The figure was entirely in shadow. For a moment, Camilla wondered if it was Terrier, or someone else dispatched by Howard Anselm, perhaps at Bill’s behest. What if she had been deemed unreliable? What if she was never going to make it to Singapore? What if they meant to kill her right here on their own property? Suddenly, she felt alone and vulnerable. If she were thrown—or if she were shot—no one would know. She would disappear as surely as if her body was dropped into the ocean. She shivered at the gruesome thought.

Then, as she entered the tree line, the figure urged its horse forward, down off the hammock, heading directly toward her. She had a heart-stopping moment before she recognized Dagger, and then she knew.

Turning Dixon, she headed back out into the rain. The figure drew up beside her.

“What are you doing here?” Camilla said. “I was told you were gone.”

“In the future,” Hunter said, “after you leave here, you’ll be told many things. Most of them will be lies. You need to be able to recognize them.”

Camilla stared at her for a moment. “You mean that shit Terrier was a test.”

Hunter grinned her huge, tomboyish grin. “That’s precisely what I mean.”

By mutual consent, they directed their mounts into the stand of birches, dismounted where the trees clustered most thickly, protecting themselves from the downpour.

All around them, the tiny forest swayed and glittered, but there was a coziness to it that sent Camilla straight back to her childhood, a house in the woods—just a hut, really—she had made, into which she retreated when her sister and father became too much for her.

“I said I would protect you,” Hunter said, “and I meant it.”

“I know.”

They stood very close. The smell of the horses mingled with that of the wet leather of their saddles. There was also an undertone of something more intimate: Hunter’s scent of clean, sun-washed skin.

“We made a pact,” Hunter said.

Camilla nodded. “Yes, we did.”

Hunter stepped forward, cupped the nape of Camilla’s neck with her palm, kissed her. Lips soft as petals, half opened, tasting of apricots. They trembled slightly. Then both women pulled back.

Hunter’s eyes searched hers. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Camilla didn’t know what she was feeling. “It was a natural thing to do, I suppose.”

Hunter laughed, deep in her throat. “There are so many reasons why I like you.”

“I’m not gay,” Camilla said.

“This isn’t about being gay or being straight.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Not for me.” Hunter said this tenderly, with no trace of snarkiness.

Camilla tried to kiss her back, a short, sharp, indecisive movement like a bird hopping out from the cover of a tree into broad daylight, but Hunter held her back, hands on her upper arms.

“Cam, do you trust me?”

Camilla nodded. “I do.”

“Then you’re a fool.” Hunter’s eyes searched hers. “I’ve lied to you.”

“About what?”

“I was never a jet pilot. I said that because I’d been given your file and knew your mother was a marine pilot. It was a shortcut, a way to quickly bond with you.”