Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (21 page)

“I’m not sleeping with her.”

“Yet.” He gave a nonjudgmental laugh. “You still have a couple of days to rectify that.”

Hunter grinned, then said, “What’s doing in the world beyond the Dairy?”

He passed her a manila envelope. “For our mutual friend.”

“Really?”

“It will seal the deal.”

“Beautiful.” Hunter slipped the folder onto the seat beside her. “Okay, then.”

Terrier hunched forward. “The big boys are planning one massive spin on the drone strike debacle. Pulling out all the stops—the Americans were recruited on homeland soil, came to Syria of their own accord, indoctrinated by Faraj.”

“In other words, traitors.”

“Right. They posed a grave and imminent danger to America, blah, blah, blah.”

“It might work.”

He nodded. “Better than even chance.” He shrugged. “But then again maybe not. There’ll be plenty of outrage from overseas, not to mention the antidrone lobby.”

“Which we encourage in every way possible.”

Terrier leaned forward, lowered his voice. “But here’s the kicker. Finnerman wants me to roll up a local network as the extremists who did the local recruiting.”

“That’s a joke,” Hunter said.

Terrier nodded. “But only to us.”

“Have you picked a likely target?”

He smiled. “What d’you think?”

One of the racing bikes in the rack outside the barn went missing while Hunter was fetching her Imperial. Camilla was on a narrow pathway above the road that Hunter took to Jake’s World diner. The night was clear, and she had no difficulty in following the Imperial’s wide red trail. She knew that if Hunter was going more than five miles, she’d lose her, but intuition told her that wherever she was going was close enough to the Dairy.

The ways in and out of the Dairy were heavily manned, of course, and there was no way Camilla could pass through without showing her credentials, which was out of the question. She was going AWOL, at least for a short time, and she knew she needed to leave no trace of her leaving or returning.

On one of her horseback rides, she had spotted what she believed was a hole in the net that surrounded the Dairy like a castle moat. She might have thought about riding Dixon, but she had been afraid of the sound of his hooves. Plus, his absence from his stall at this time of night would inevitably be recorded. The bike was silent, as well as compact. She had made the right choice—the hole in the Dairy’s net proved impossible for a horse, even without its rider. A large buck had tried to leap over the net, but its underbelly had caught on the razor wire atop it, and it had bled to death. Its weight had brought the net down without causing a break in the electronic circuit—a definite design flaw. Camilla walked the bike over the deer’s back. Once, on the downslope, she had to reach out, grab hold of the tines of an antler to steady herself. She felt the innate power of the animal even in death, and briefly mourned its demise, which seemed as arbitrary and unnecessary as a soldier’s on the battlefield. Still holding on, she blessed the deer for providing the bridge to her exit.

It was inevitable that the Imperial would get ahead of her, but that too was no problem, for she saw it heading directly for the bright jukebox lights of the diner.

Hunkered down inside her leather jacket and pedaling for all she was worth, she arrived five or six minutes after Hunter pulled up and went inside. Wheeling around to the rear, she surprised a trio of fat raccoons, who leered toothily at her from their spot beside two green Dumpsters. She shone her flashlight into their eyes, forcing them to lumber grumpily into the shadows.

Dismounting, she leaned the bike against the rear stairs, then trotted up and through the door, striding through the kitchen as if she belonged there. The staff was too busy to notice her, and in any event, she had reached the corridor where the toilets were located before any of them had a chance to turn from their duties.

She spotted Hunter right away, sitting on one side of the booth, talking earnestly, but she had to maneuver a bit to catch a glimpse of the person she was huddled with.

When she did, a chill slithered down her spine, as if someone had slipped a snake inside her shirt. Hunter was in conversation with Vincent Terrier, the man she had claimed to loathe, and by the look of high animation on her face Camilla could tell that their discussion was of a highly clandestine nature.

She took another step to the side, could lip-read some of what they were saying. Fuck me, they’re in this ideological shit together. Terrier was the beater, driving me closer to Hunter, she thought, wiping away the beads of cold sweat that had formed at her hairline.

S
tars fell on the Mahsud’s valley
in Waziristan in such profusion that the sky seemed white in places. Deep in a night blanketed with an eerie silence devoid of either insect buzz or bird call, Bourne stood gazing at the wreckage of the C-17. The bracing air still reeked of burned insulation, burst-apart concrete, melted plastic, and the unmistakable horrific barbecue stench of charred human flesh.

“I can’t sleep either.”

Bourne turned to see Aashir slouching toward him, hands in pockets, head slightly tucked into his narrow shoulders. He stared mournfully at the ruined runway. “I never expected this.”

“What did you expect?” Bourne said.

Aashir shrugged. “I didn’t think about it. I was too busy planning my getaway.”

“From what?”

Aashir didn’t immediately answer, and when he did, it was obliquely. “I had a friend. A girl. That’s not supposed to happen—or, anyway, it’s not allowed. We met anyway. We thought we were being discreet, but, you know, there are so many wagging tongues, so many eagle eyes watching out for single men and women together. Spies, you know, with nothing else to do except enforce sharia law, tell their tales, and bring the hammer of justice down.” He laughed bitterly. “Hammer of sexism is more like it.”

Now Bourne was listening closely. This story interested him. It marked Aashir as someone other than an extremist. What he was doing embedded in Faraj’s jihadist cadre was still a mystery.

“You won’t tell anyone I said that, Yusuf.”

“Of course not. As I’ve pointed out to Borz, I’m a pragmatist, not a zealot.”

“Unlike Faraj and El Ghadan, whose infatuation with fanaticism is absolute.” Aashir’s voice, following his expression, had turned mournful, like a sax playing a minor-key melody. “They will kill and, eventually, be killed for it.”

“And what is it you want for yourself, Aashir?”

“Freedom, I suppose.” He shrugged again. “But, really, I don’t know what that means.”

“To be free.”

“Yes.”

Bourne wondered if anyone knew. Everyone was tied to their lives. Did that make them prisoners, or free men?

They walked side by side, staring straight ahead. It was a fact of life that it was easier to talk to a stranger about personal matters than it was to someone you knew.

“What are you doing here?” Bourne asked.

Aashir shrugged. “Can you think of a better place to hide?”

“You can’t hide here forever,” Bourne pointed out. “Besides, you know we’re moving out as soon as all the wounded are in stable condition.”

“Afghanistan is as good as here, I suppose.” Aashir gestured vaguely. “Where else should I go, Yusuf? To the West? To join the people who dropped napalm, white phosphorus, bunker busters, air-to-ground missiles, and the largest array of state-of-the-art engines and vehicles of death ever assembled upon millions of innocent Vietnamese, Cambodians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghans, not to mention Libyans and Yemenis?” He shook his head. “No. There is nowhere for me to go, except here with Faraj.”

“As you yourself pointed out, Aashir, this is temporary shelter at best. Faraj and El Ghadan are bent on the destruction of not only their enemies but themselves. Where will that lead you? Injured, or dead, like those being buried out on the side of the runway? You don’t want that. Go home. Home is where you belong. You have unfinished business there.”

Aashir shook his head as they continued to walk out toward the mountains, away from the killing field, where the stench of death was being superseded by quicklime. “You don’t understand.”

“Tell me, then.”

Instead, Aashir changed the subject. “I’ve heard you’re an ace marksman. Is that true?”

“It is.”

“Why do you do that?”

Bourne considered a moment. “There is a certain satisfaction in mastering a skill—any skill.”

“Would you teach me?”

Bourne nodded. “If you wish.”

Aashir cocked his head, regarded Bourne from the corners of his eyes. “What are
you
doing here, Yusuf?”

“I’m a misfit,” Bourne said truthfully. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like an outsider. I’m not like other people; I have different interests.”

“Like staring into the war from the other end of a long gun.”

“Yes, but that came later.”

This was another of Bourne’s innate skills, to listen to the questions, silences, and hesitations of another person, and from them intuit their secret histories.

Aashir, with his full attention on Bourne, said, “So tell me, what came first?”

“A feeling of being set adrift on an endless sea.”

“Out of sight of land—and my parents.” Aashir seemed to be musing to himself.

“Are they so terrible?” Bourne asked.

“My mother cried when I tried to talk to her, and my father—well, there’s no talking to my father. His disappointment in me was like a third person in the room.”

“Did you tell him?”

Aashir gave a sad little snicker. “My father is deaf to what he doesn’t want to hear.”

Bourne had met too many of those kinds of men. In fact his shadow world was rife with them. “Where are you running away from?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

The conversation was drawing them inexorably closer, as often happens when strangers meet in extreme circumstances, bond, and become friends.

“Your accent is Yemeni,” Bourne said.

Aashir nodded. “You have a good ear, Yusuf. And you are Syrian, I hear. What part are you from?”

Bourne sensed it was time to draw the young man even closer. “I don’t know.”

Aashir laughed. “How could you not know?”

“I was shot.” Bourne showed him the scar. “I fell into the water, was picked up by fishermen, who saved my life. They brought me to a doctor, who fixed my body, but my mind was another matter. I have amnesia. I can’t remember anything before the time of the shooting.”

Aashir stared at him, making eye contact for the first time since they started their walk, since they had begun to speak of things that mattered to both of them. “You don’t remember your mother or father, if you had a family?”

“That’s right.”

“And your name?”

“I chose it.” Bourne gestured. “I would give anything to know what you know—where you were born and raised, who your parents are, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins. A place to call home. You shouldn’t run away from all that; it’s too precious.” He stepped in closer. “But listen, you mustn’t tell anyone. I gave Faraj a fiction about my background.”

Aashir shook his head. “There’s no need to worry. I don’t tell Faraj anything. He’s like my father. What would he understand, anyway?”

They continued to walk; Aashir scuffed at the ground with the toe of his boot. He appeared to be about to say something, then quickly, almost furtively, changed his mind. He looked up at the star-kissed mountains and said, “So what am I doing here, Yusuf?”

“That’s a good question, Aashir, but now that we know each other a bit it’s not so difficult to answer,” Bourne said. “You’re doing what every intelligent person your age does. You’re finding out who you really are.”

Aashir laughed then, and it was a laugh Bourne did not understand.

Sara was being followed. A man in front, a pair in back. For good measure, there was also a car. The owls were to be expected, and she was therefore reassured. The number of men El Ghadan had assigned to her was also reassuring, since it provided further proof that his base was in fact in Doha, as she had suspected. That meant Soraya and Sonya were still in Doha. Somehow, this comforted her, feeling closer to them. But she was still under strict orders from Jason to keep her distance. He had something planned, she knew that much. And frustrating though it might be, she had reconciled herself to not knowing what it was. Better for her, better for everyone, especially now that she had made contact with El Ghadan. It was imperative that he have no suspicion whatsoever that she had any connection to his hostages.

She turned down a street, passed under an ornate gate, entering the bustling Souq Waqif. Here the buildings were all traditional two-story structures of honey-colored stone or whitewashed limestone. Colorful awnings over the shop entrances fluttered in the breeze. Wares were set out—from spices to beaten brass to rugs, and small souvenirs for tourists, some made locally, other cheaper ones manufactured in China to Qatari specifications. Red, blue, yellow, and green parrots squawked on their wooden perches, pecking idly at their leashes or calling to passersby, seeking company or at least a few seeds to munch on.

The car was useless in the souq, which was one of the reasons Sara had come here. The other was Blum. She had successfully discredited him in El Ghadan’s eyes, in the process turning his attention to her and away from Levi. This was the plan—at least the first part of it. That it was working perfectly made her uneasy. Often, she had learned, it was when things appeared to be rolling along smoothly that the mission was closest to having the wheels come off.

She trusted El Ghadan about as far as she could lift him, but he was her handler now. That had been the plan she had formulated on the fly as soon as she had recognized him as the man calling her in Nite Jewel. The second part of the plan involved returning Blum to the shadows, where he could again work in secret without being observed.

Of course, at some point in the near future she would have to kill him in order to satisfy El Ghadan. She knew without the jihad leader having to tell her that he would insist she do it; he was furious at having to use a woman as his eyes on Mossad.

Killing Blum posed no problem for her, but it might for Levi. That kind of internal joke was necessary now for her to keep her spirits up as she groped her way through the thorny labyrinth of being a double agent. She was used to leading a double life—if you actually ever got used to such a thing—but handling a triple life was a complication of an entirely different magnitude. If your mind wasn’t meticulously and absolutely compartmentalized your artful play-acting could easily fray at the seams, exposing the truth beneath.

All the while she had been musing, she had been strolling at a leisurely pace through the vast market. The idea was to forget about her owls while at the same time keeping strict track of them. They needed to be lulled into a state of boredom more or less like that of the parrots.

She bought a silk scarf, a very old small bronze incense-holder, and an earthenware bowl. After her shopping spree, she sat at a café and spent forty minutes sipping an espresso that could have stripped the verdigris off her incense-holder.

While she sat, face tilted up into a stripe of sunlight falling onto the café terrace, she spotted Blum not once, but twice. He was moving along the second-floor balconies of several buildings across the dusty street. She could tell by the tension in his frame that he was aware of her owls. He never once looked in her direction. He was heading toward their planned rendezvous point.

With a deep sigh, she finished her espresso, dropped a few coins on the table, and, gathering up her parcels, rose and left the café. Her owls came with her. The three men, still one in front, two behind. Very unimaginative. By now they were like boarders who had overstayed their welcome—familiar but annoying, especially at this moment.

Keeping to her unhurried pace, she popped into another shop, checking out robes, then an adjacent one that displayed silver jewelry so well crafted she bought a bracelet, wide and gaudy, which she immediately slipped onto her left wrist. She paid too much but she didn’t care; there was no time to haggle.

Exiting the shop, she made sure her owls caught a full view of her changed profile: parcels on one arm, the silver bracelet on the other. She turned down the main thoroughfare, which was thick with both locals and tourists. The constant crush made it difficult for the men behind her to keep her in sight; the one in front of her lost her completely. Picking up her pace, she brushed her way through the throng. Timing was everything.

At the very heart of the most congested section of the souq, she ducked into a shadowed doorway, where she stashed her packages in a cobwebbed corner, then skipped lightly up the narrow stone staircase to the second floor.

Behind her, on the thoroughfare, her three owls, front and back, converged on a woman laden with packages, the silver bracelet Sara had purchased on her left wrist. In the crush, Sara had transferred it to join two others. The woman turned, bewildered, but not half as much as Sara’s owls.

Above them, Sara crossed one balcony onto another, where Blum was seated at one of the souq’s most venerable cafés.

Taking command of the table next to his, she settled herself on a chair away from the balustrade and a view of the souq below. She took another espresso, but asked for a plate of almond cookies to help defray the damage to her stomach lining.

“How goes it?” Blum said

“I’m plotting your imminent demise.”

He winced. “Will it hurt?”

“Think of a spiny lobster placed in a pot of water. The heat is slowly turned up. The lobster goes quietly to sleep, dreaming of whatever it is lobsters dream about.”

They spoke in undertones, in voices that could not be heard over the murmur of the café patrons and the singsong calls of the merchants below.

Leaning over, she said at a more normal volume, “Pardon me, but I seem to be out of sugar.”

He passed her the container stuffed with sugar packets. She plucked three out of the middle, then handed it back. “Thank you.”

He saw a tiny hotel tube of toothpaste where the packets had been.

“The first squeeze,” she said, back to the undertone.

“And that’s it?”

She nodded. “That’s it. Now for your update.”

“Everything’s in place.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re sure.”

“Sure I’m sure.”

“And there were no owls on you.”

“None whatsoever.” Blum glanced over the railing at the milling throng. As he did so, he took possession of the toothpaste tube. In the souq, the owls had split up, on the hunt for their missing target. A smile curved his lips like a bow. “I don’t know what you said to El Ghadan, but I’m no longer a person of interest.”