Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (36 page)

I
t wasn’t the bomber
that concerned Bourne now; it was the bomb itself. Thirty feet down, it was caught in the V of a girder and a support strut. By some miracle it hadn’t exploded, but if it fell farther, the timing mechanism could be jarred into triggering the explosion. In that event, both Bourne and the Chechen bomber would become irrelevant.

A series of huge roars from the stands above shook the girders like ocean waves, making the footing far more treacherous on the lateral girder. To make matters worse, it was strewn with metal shavings. A slip on any of them could lead to defeat.

Enough blows had been struck for the Chechen to suspect that Bourne was wearing body armor, so he had changed tactics, aiming for Bourne’s head and neck. As Bourne had reached for the falling bomb he had gained the advantage, and was now straddling Bourne, a push dagger in his hand, its wicked wide spadelike blade swinging nearer and nearer to Bourne’s eyes, like Poe’s deadly pendulum. The blade sliced through the bridge of Bourne’s nose, and blood ran down either side. One more pass and the blade would reach Bourne’s eyes.

Bourne’s left hand scraped up some metal shavings from the girder. These he hurled into the bomber’s face. Several lodged in his eyes, and the man recoiled. Rubbing at the eyes only embedded the filings more firmly. The bomber’s eyes started to bleed, and all thought of Bourne was erased. Bourne rose up and shoved him off the girder.

The bomber fell. Whatever sound he might have made was overwhelmed by the frenzied excitement from the stands. Some or all of the dignitaries had reached the presidential box.

Swinging down the girders, Bourne reached the crook where the bomb had wedged itself. Far below, the body of the bomber lay splayed out, his head at an unnatural angle. Turning his attention to the bomb, Bourne at once saw that it contained twelve wires. It was totally different from the device he had found on the airplane.

He parted the red and black leaders to get a look at the guts of the bomb, only to discover there were no guts. No explosive material at all. The bomb was a dud. No, not a dud: a fake. But why?

Decoy.

Bourne sat back on his haunches for a moment. If El Ghadan’s and Borz’s plan did not involve blowing up the stands from the light array above or from the understructure below, then what was it? Bourne recalled that El Ghadan seemed fine with him searching for a bomb maker in Damascus, even Afghanistan. Was this all a ploy to keep security off Bourne’s back?

Possible.

But that would preclude El Ghadan being a deceitful son of a bitch, who hated Bourne as much as he hated the president of the United States.

Bourne didn’t buy it. Recalling the corner of the blueprint he had taken from the building in Waziristan, he pulled it out now. It marked the drainage system for the racetrack, but there were several items specified other than the network of pipes. Maintenance rooms most likely. They were small, without windows, and with only one egress. To Bourne’s mind they would make perfect temporary prison cells.

It had to come sooner or later, and frankly, Soraya was surprised at how long it had taken Sonya to have a full-fledged meltdown. Apart from the bathroom and shower breaks, they had been cooped up in the same featureless room for close to a week, maybe more, it was difficult to tell. Soraya had done her best to keep her daughter engaged in the Persian stories, figuring that the fantastic characters would allow Sonya’s imagination to become a window onto a larger world. But at last the breaking point had arrived, and no amount of cuddling or storytelling would satisfy her.

And contrary to what Soraya had assumed, Rebeka’s appearance had accelerated the breakdown.

“She can leave whenever she wants to,” Sonya sobbed. “Why can’t we?”

There was, of course, a very good reason, but it wasn’t one a two-year-old could absorb, let alone accept.

Soraya took her daughter onto her lap, stroked her hair, whispered to her, but Sonya was having none of it. She was far too upset to be mollified. Her sobbing became wails that bounced off the walls, seeming to gain in volume and terror with each echo.

It was at this point that Islam unlocked the door and walked in. Approaching the girl, he knelt on one knee, tried to talk to her, to reason with her. The wrong approach, Soraya thought, trying to reason with an unreasonable child. But she also knew that despite her best efforts, Sonya had slipped behind that wall mothers dread, to the place where chaos ruled. Only the physical could help now.

“I need to take her out of here,” she said as she stood up.

Islam, rising, stood his ground between her and the door. “You know that is impossible.”

“Then I’m asking for the impossible. Not for me, but for Sonya. You see how she is. The only way to calm her down is for me to take her out of here. Now.”

Islam’s attention was on Sonya, which was good. The child’s hysteria continued to mount.

“If this continues,” he said, “I will have to tie her up and gag her.”

“Don’t even,” Soraya said in a voice that cut through her daughter’s cries. “You do that and she will never be the same. Is that what you want on your conscience, Islam? To turn a child mad?”

Islam passed a hand across his forehead. He drew a handgun, let it hang by his side. “You see this?”

“Yes.”

“You know what it can do.”

“Of course.”

“Then remember.” He gestured with his head. “Come on, then. Ten minutes in the sunshine.” The gun swung up, away from his thigh. “But that’s it, I promise you.”

It was Bourne’s nose that guided him. A short time ago, the corridor ahead of him had been flooded with gas. He turned a corner and saw the Secret Service agents lying on the floor. Proceeding cautiously, he picked his way down the corridor at the end of which was one of the small rooms he had seen on his triangle of plan.

He went from body to body. Each one had succumbed to the gas, all right, but they also had had their throats slit, as if whoever was responsible had wanted to inflict the worst kind of damage. He had just turned over the third agent when a terrific blow struck the nerve bundle behind his right ear, and the floor came up to smack him in the face. Not that he felt it; he was already unconscious.

H
e awoke in the middle
of a stage set: lights, a canvas backdrop. Several feet in front of him was a microphone attached to an expensive video camera. He was one of two actors the camera was aimed at. The other, sitting close beside him, was the president of the United States.

Bourne, wrists bound behind his back with a hard plastic tie, was sitting on a chair. POTUS’s wrists were identically bound. The backdrop was artfully painted to resemble a cave. Whoever saw this video would believe it emanated a long way from Singapore—the mountains of Afghanistan, perhaps, or western Pakistan. In one corner, crumpled up, he saw his body armor, which had been stripped off him while he was unconscious.

Three men were in the room: Borz and the two men he was supposed to have left outside the Thoroughbred Club. It was clear now that everything Bourne had been told was a lie, just as it was clear that the dummy bomb was a diversion to keep him from the main event. A more daring and terrible act of terror he could not imagine. While it was true that the terrorist playbook called for large-scale attacks, nothing could vie for people’s attention the world over than the public execution of the president of the United States.

Then his attention was drawn to the woman crumpled on the floor to one side. Who was she? What had she been doing here with POTUS? His press secretary, or had she been the one to unwittingly lure him here? Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

“How many lives do you have?” Borz, leaning forward on the balls of his feet, peered into Bourne’s face. “I think we’re about to find out. Your death here in this room—your real death—will serve a higher purpose.”

POTUS’s chin lolled on his chest. He was still out of it. Bourne knew they couldn’t get started until he was both conscious and cognizant of his surroundings. Borz stepped forward, took out a stiff leather case that looked like a cigar carrier. Instead, it held a number of small syringes. He removed one, stuck it in POTUS’s arm, and depressed the plunger. Moments later, the president stirred, his head lifted off his chest, and his eyes sprang open.

“What the hell is this?” he said in his most imperial tone of voice.

“What does it look like?” Musa’s voice was the opposite of POTUS’s, casual in the extreme. He might have been paring dirt from under his fingernails. “We are about to make history, President Magnus. You and your top paid assassin will be beheaded over a live feed. Anyone can plant a bomb, anyone can send a suicide bomber into a crowd, but what is about to happen here is real terrorist theater: the so-called leader of the free world beheaded while billions around the world witness his just humiliation. The United States citizenry will be in paralytic shock for years to come.”

“Good God!” POTUS’s eyes were all but spinning in his head. “You can’t!” He looked as if he was about to succumb to a heart attack. He turned to look at Bourne. “This is a sham! I don’t know who the hell this man is,” he shouted, “but he sure as hell isn’t on the payroll of the United States.”

Musa laughed. “Come, come, President Magnus, it is unseemly to die with a lie on your lips.”

“But I’m telling the truth.” Sweat was pouring down POTUS’s face, staining the collar of his white shirt. “You have to believe me.”

“Believe an American lie?” Musa laughed again, gestured to the Chechen acting as cameraman. “Time to go live,” he said. “The end of American hegemony is at hand.”

“It will take a minute or two to link up with the Al Jazeera network,” the cameraman said.

In the corner, the young woman stirred.

“Cam,” POTUS called, his attention focused on her. “Camilla! Are you all right?” When she did not reply he exhaled a “Jesus,” though whether it was a prayer or an expletive was unclear.

“Almost ready,” the cameraman said. “But what is the assassin doing?”

Musa looked at Bourne, who was doubled over.

“Get him upright,” he ordered his other man. “The camera must record his face as he is beheaded.”

The Chechen approached Bourne, grabbed the hair at the top of his head, and pulled. When Bourne’s head came up, he mumbled something in Russian. When the Chechen bent closer to hear what Bourne was saying, Bourne smashed his forehead into the Chechen’s face. The man reared back, blood pouring from his nose, stumbled as his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and fell beside Camilla.

Musa shouted, headed straight for Bourne, while the cameraman grabbed the heavy .45 at his hip and drew it. He was fully concentrated on Bourne and POTUS. As a consequence, he failed to notice Camilla’s hand reach out, draw the fallen Chechen’s weapon from its holster. She lay on the floor, used two hands, steadied by her elbows. The narcotic she had been shot with was still in her system. Her vision kept fading in and out, and there was a peculiar buzzing in her ears that at some point she began to recognize as human voices, shouting.

Nevertheless, her training took firm hold, and she sighted, inhaled deeply, let it out, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet slammed into the cameraman’s side, the second one took him off his feet in a fountain of blood.

Bourne was ready for Musa as he came toward him. Launching himself to his feet, he leaped backward with all his strength, was rewarded as the chairback struck the concrete wall at an angle and shattered. With his arms free, Bourne drew his knees up, passed his legs between his arms. Now his bound hands were in front of him, and as Musa drew his pistol, he threw a section of the chairback. It struck Musa under the chin. He gagged, was driven back a pace, but did not lose his grip on the pistol.

He fired, but Bourne, already on the move, was outside the trajectory of the bullet. Lifting his arms, he brought his balled fists down on the crown of Musa’s head, at the place where, as a baby, the parts of the skull knit together. The blow should have driven Borz to his knees, but miraculously, ominously, he remained on his feet.

The handgun was useless to him now, and he let it drop to the floor, used both his hands in simultaneous kites. Bourne, his hands still bound, was at a distinct disadvantage.

“Let’s see how you do without the armor,” Musa whispered. The straightened tips of his fingers drove into Bourne’s midsection just under the sternum. Almost at the same instant, he slammed the edge of his other hand into Bourne’s ear, rocking him backward.

Following up the attack, he closed with Bourne, who met him with a cocked elbow, then a short, sharp swing of his forearm. Unfortunately, he was forced to use two hands, and Musa’s fists broke underneath the blow, hammering at the spot over Bourne’s heart. It was an old KGB hand-to-hand method that was supposed to interfere with the electrical flow to the organ, inducing a heart attack.

Bourne could feel his pulse pause, as if suspended in time, then flutter, as if having lost its natural rhythm. His breath was hot in his throat, bitter as if with poisonous gases needing to be expelled.

With an extreme effort of will, he ignored both and, looping his bound wrists behind Musa’s neck, twisted them with a vicious torque that spun the Chechen around. Now the plastic tie that bound his wrists dug deeply into Musa’s throat.

Hauling with all his might brought the Chechen’s head back until he was staring at the ceiling. Bourne slammed his chest into the back of Musa’s head and slowly began to squeeze the air out of him, tighter and tighter, until the Chechen’s face became empurpled.

Musa’s mouth opened, working spastically, trying and failing to inhale. Then a curious smile informed his lips.

“You won’t ever know,” he whispered in Russian, “until it’s too late.”

He fell heavily against Bourne, who lifted his arms and stepped away, allowing Musa’s corpse to crash to the floor.