Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (19 page)

“Leave me alone, Islam.”

He grunted, leaned over her. “What is the matter with you?”

“Please,” she said. “Please leave me alone.” She despised the weak, begging tone, but it was necessary. “I’m ill.”

“Ill? What do you mean?”

“I want to sleep.”

“You just woke up.”

“Yes, yes, I’m ill. I have no appetite.”

Crouching down, he stared hard into her eyes. “You’re very pale.”

She looked back at him, mute and unmoving.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll return in a couple of hours. If you’re still feeling ill or are worse I will call in a physician.” He continued to watch her, abruptly uncertain, it seemed. “You must miss your husband.”

“Please.” Soraya closed her eyes to keep back the tears.

“This is war, Soraya. He was the enemy, even if you and your daughter are not.”

Soraya’s eyes flew open. “Then let us go.”

His smile seemed to have no emotion behind it, and again she was chilled by how alien his extremist views had made this young man. In another life he could have had a good job, gone back to his family every evening for a hot meal, and, once in a while, a clandestine bout of sex with a like-minded young woman. Instead, here he was, on the brink of death, his fondest wish to die a martyr. How horrible the world has become, she thought, to allow the creation of this man and thousands just like him, an army of unfeeling golems, marching to their certain deaths without a care or a flicker of emotion.

She shuddered.

“What is it?” Islam said. “Do you feel more ill already?”

I am ill, Soraya thought, because I have been a part of this work—a willing participant—and what toll has that extracted from me? Already, her few years with Aaron seemed like a dream, a life that belonged to someone else she had once glimpsed on the street. It was her former life at Treadstone that loomed large in her memory—vivid in every detail as if she had lived it all yesterday. There was nothing about those years she had forgotten or would forget. Each decision, brief, mission, every hour of her fieldwork was etched into her brain, never to be excised until the day she died. With a sinking heart, she understood that despite her best efforts, their incarceration had begun to get to her, to play tricks with her mind. If only Sonya wasn’t with her. If only the sky was green, as in her stories about the djinn.

“Soraya?”

“It’s nothing, Islam.”

She could tell, even through his headscarf, that he didn’t believe her. And that was good: She was drawing him closer to her.

T
he stars had aligned
for Sara. She had dealt harshly with Levi Blum’s controller, and, through Blum’s unorthodox but effective methodology, had inveigled her way into El Ghadan’s inner circle.

And yet her enthusiasm was curbed by her field sense, now returned to her in full force, that something was not right. Feeling like the princess atop her stack of comfy mattresses still discomfited by the presence of the pea, she walked along the windswept Corniche alone and in a kind of permanent agony for Aaron, Soraya, and their daughter. The thought of Aaron’s death and the others’ continuing incarceration gnawed at her.

Having come this far, she felt as if she were in a trap, able neither to go on, because of Bourne’s warning not to attempt to free Soraya and Sonya, nor to retreat, because of how near she was to her target.

With vivid clarity, she remembered her father’s repeated admonition that sailing too close to the wind, though exhilarating, could capsize your boat. That was the situation in which she now found herself. With El Ghadan she was sailing very close to the wind indeed. One false move and she could find herself without a craft, and drowning.

She was still in her Qatari robes and headscarf, not daring to be seen in public without them now. She had contacted her father via their ultra-secure line, giving him the new lay of the land. In response, he had sent her two pieces of product to pass on to El Ghadan. She was contemplating which one to lead with when a black American SUV slowed beside her.

The instant it drew to a halt, the shotgun door opened and a slim young man stepped out. He wore a Western suit and looked good in it. He didn’t look like a jihadist, but Sara supposed that was the point.

Smiling, he opened the rear door, said, “Weapons?”

“In Doha?” Sara held her arms out from her body. “You tell me.”

“Get in,” he said with the kind of contemptuousness she had become inured to in Arab men.

She came off the Corniche, ducked, and climbed into the backseat. The interior of the SUV seemed as large as a studio apartment. Across the burnished leather seat from her sat El Ghadan, looking for all the world like a sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

“Good evening, Ellie Thorson,” he said, using the name she had given him before departing Nite Jewel. “Are you well?”

She laughed. “You’re not one for small talk, are you?”

El Ghadan made a face. “What gave me away?”

“Your lack of sincerity.”

“I’ll have to work on that.”

“Don’t bother.”

The SUV pulled away from the curb, began its slow circuit of the city’s crescent harborfront. Sara could tell the driver had no particular destination in mind. Not yet, anyway.

El Ghadan, head turned away from her, stared out the window. “You don’t seem to exist, Ellie.” His head swung around, his eyes fully on her. “Can you explain this?”

“I don’t think I have to,” Sara said.

“I don’t like dealing with people whose identities are unknown to me.”

“I don’t like dealing with jihadists,” Sara said evenly, “and yet here we are. Strange bedfellows.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“What is your real name?”

“I imagine El Ghadan is not the name you were born with.”

“You must tell me.”

“My anonymity guarantees my effectiveness.”

She sat very still. He seemed to be weighing her words carefully.

“I have product for you, El Ghadan. Either we do business or we don’t.” She shrugged. “You’re the one who needs an eye on the Israelis.”

“I had one,” El Ghadan said. “Or rather, Khalifa did. He was running the man who brought you to Nite Jewel.”

“Blum.” She nodded. “He wanted me to vet Khalifa’s lieutenant.”

El Ghadan grunted. “It seemed to me he also wanted you there for protection.”

Sara allowed the ghost of a smile to cross her lips. “Perhaps that as well.”

“That does not speak well of him, as either a Semite or a man.”

Sara chose not to respond.

El Ghadan sighed. “I may as well tell you that my current thinking is to take you in and sweat you.”

“Sure,” she said. “What do you need me for? Did you clean house here? Yes? No? Go back to using Blum. Khalifa did that and where is he now?”

El Ghadan’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying Blum set up Khalifa’s death?”

“I’m saying you’ll never know. Does that make continuing with Blum a decent bet?”

“As it happens, Khalifa’s house was rotten to the core.”

“You’re welcome.”

He shook his head. “You’re too smart to be a woman.”

With no little effort, Sara kept her ghost of a smile, but her expression seemed frozen in place, as if she had looked upon Medusa. “For all the women of the world I take offense.”

“You cannot fathom how offensive it is to have you in my vehicle.” El Ghadan showed her his teeth. “Now I will see the product you have for me.”

“I suppose it’s offensive as well for you to have a woman as your eyes.”

He looked away, staring out at the city through the smoked glass window. “You have a price, I imagine.”

Sara named it, knowing it was very high. But then cheap product was of interest to no one.

El Ghadan snapped his fingers, and the man riding shotgun up front handed over an ostrich-leather case. Rolling the lock tumblers beneath his finger, El Ghadan opened the case, counted out the money, put it on the seat between them. Then he looked expectantly at Sara.

She handed over the part of the product her father had sent—an ultra-secret file the Scrivener Directorate at Mossad had cooked up. El Ghadan read it through twice before folding the sheet and putting it away. She waited for a comment. Outside, the Corniche flickered past, neon lights skimming the waves like flying fish. She longed to be out in the sea-soaked air, away from this monstrous creature who frightened her more than she cared to admit.

He gave her a portion of the bills on the car seat, put the rest back in the case. “The other half after your product is checked for accuracy.”

“It’s good as gold.”

He appeared unmoved. “This is what we shall do. My choice is Blum or you, is that right?”

“Frankly,” she said crisply, boldly, “I don’t see that you have a choice at all.” She was all in now, every chip she had on the table, riding on this one hand, winner take all.

“You see, if your product is good, then I believe you,” El Ghadan said. “In that event, I must think the worst of Blum, and he will be shot dead, just like Khalifa’s lieutenants.”

Bourne was given a new robe, which more or less fit him. He declined a new pair of trousers, not wanting to transfer what he had in his pockets. In the meantime, Ivan Borz spoke to the wounded Faraj, left him in charge of the devastated field. He directed Bourne to a jeep undamaged in the twin blasts. Aashir, the group leader who had spoken to Bourne directly after the drone attack, was already behind the wheel. With Bourne and Borz in the back, Aashir drove them west for just over an hour. He drove with seriousness and complete command; it was clear he knew their destination and how to get there. Very possibly, Bourne thought, he had been there before with Borz.

The mountains, blue and purple, bearded crests barely visible behind clouds, reared up in front of them like wild horses. The air was as sharp as a knife edge.

“We are in Mahsud territory,” Borz said. “All the tribes hate one another. No one can move freely in Waziristan without a chief malik’s assurance of safe passage.” He spat over the side. “It’s like living in fucking Nazi Germany.” Turning to Bourne, he said, “D’you know much about the tribes hereabouts, Yusuf? Speaking the lingo, you must.”

“The Waziri fear dishonor over death,” Bourne said. “They’ll lie, cheat, steal, and flee in order not to be bested by any enemy. The most common mistake outsiders make about them is that they’re cowards, when the opposite is true.”

“So how would you handle them?”

“If you don’t become one of them,” Bourne said, “you have no standing with them.”

Borz shot him a quick look. “How the fuck do you do that?”

“Good Lord,” POTUS exclaimed. “This has disaster written all over it!”

His hand trembled as he read the SITREP Marty Finnerman had brought over from the Pentagon, along with Vincent Terrier, the fieldman whose network had tracked Faraj’s C-17 to the remote valley of the Mahsud in Waziristan.

Morning light slanted in through the Oval Office windows. The reinforced concrete antiterrorist blocks, still in shadow, loomed larger than ever, marking the perimeter of the public sector of which the White House was the center.

“A hundred casualties—all of them young American boys.” POTUS looked up at Anselm, Finnerman, and Terrier as if they were a trio of giant owls that had roosted on the corners of his desk. “How the fuck can this be justified, Marty? For the love of God, my drone program has just blown up in my face.”

“Not so,” Anselm said, knowing that the faster they fed POTUS their spin the quicker they could deflect him from his path to PR ruin. “First, we remind the public of the full list of terrorist leaders the drones have dispatched. We emphasize how much more secure the United States is now that these extremists are dead.”

Finnerman took up the baton. “Next, we point out as simply and clearly as possible that these Americans were not only defectors, they were traitors to their country.”

“We play up the fact that they were recruited here at home,” Anselm went on. “We parade the recruiter, fill the press with photos of him, background on how insidious his network was until we rolled it up.”

“Is this true?” POTUS looked from Finnerman to Anselm. “Do we have him? Have we rolled up his network?”

“We will have done,” Finnerman said in the tone, both authoritative and soothing, POTUS responded to best, “when we go public with the story. Terrier here will make sure of that, won’t you, Vinnie.”

Terrier nodded. “You can count on it, sir.”

Anselm gestured. “There, you see? The point is to get out in front of this, turn a potentially damaging story into one that underscores your administration’s continuing dedication to national security.”

POTUS wiped sweat from his upper lip. “But these young men—”

“Are traitors,” Finnerman said. “And in times of war traitors are summarily executed.”

“The point we’ll make,” Anselm said, leaning forward to better bring their plan home to POTUS, “is that these Americans were recruited at home, voluntarily and illegally, I might add, and traveled to Syria to be trained by Abu Faraj Khalid, one of the most notorious terrorist leaders.”

“Who Terrier’s network assiduously tracked from Damascus to Waziristan,” Finnerman continued, “where we unleashed two drones to destroy him and interdict his plan to return these brainwashed American men as parts of local terrorist cells.”

“By the time our media blitz is over,” Anselm said, “you’ll be hailed by conservatives and liberals alike as a hero. I’ll wager even the Tea Party will be pleased.”

“And then,” Finnerman said when they were alone in the privacy of Anselm’s office, “we can get on with our real business.”

Anselm nodded. “Making POTUS look good when the peace summit falls apart next week.”

“When Jason Bourne is shot dead in Singapore during his attempt to assassinate POTUS, we will release the photo of him with Faraj. That’s all we’ll need to convince POTUS and Congress that we need to go to war in order to protect him, the United States, and the free world.”