The Bourne Ascendancy

by Robert Ludlum

  Again, who would they want to coerce?

  And then the answer bloomed in her mind, as bright as the lights illuminating her and her daughter for the camera.

  Bourne.

  * * *

  Bourne didn’t return to consciousness until the western sunlight, striking the windowpane, crept across his face like a stealthy insect. He had dreamed of darkness falling, of eyes in the dark, of feeling an overwhelming urge to get away as they closed in, but he couldn’t—he was bound in wires. And then the light snapped on and he saw that he was in a spider’s cocoon of high-tension wires. A buzzing began, like a swarm of bees, rising in both volume and pitch. Then the pain hit him, arching his back and taking away his ability to breathe…

  He opened his eyes, anchored himself in the hotel room, in reality. As he sat up, he glanced at the mobile El Ghadan had given him. A message had come in while he was asleep.

  At midnight, he had been dead to the world.

  He watched the short video that had been sent him. He saw the newspaper’s date, then, as the paper was whipped away, Soraya and Sonya. Soraya looked dazed, her face sweat- and tear-streaked, haggard and careworn. The baby was crying. Then, all of a sudden, the sound switched on. He heard a rough, commanding voice, Soraya’s response, before she was cut off. Then the screen went black.

  He sat for a moment, thoughts chasing themselves down a black hole. Then he gathered himself, forced himself to play the video again. This time, he looked at the edges, searching for some detail that might give him a clue as to where they were being held, but the camera was so tight on the newspaper and faces that there was virtually nothing to see.

  Then he plugged in the pair of earbuds that had come with the burner phone. He listened from the instant the audio came on to the instant it was switched off with the video.

  He threw the mobile onto the bed as if it had bitten him. As he rose, about to pad into the bathroom, the mobile buzzed. He scooped it up, knowing who would be on the other end.

  “What are you doing in Damascus?” El Ghadan asked.

  “Looking for the right bomb maker,” Bourne said.

  “Ah, that’s how you’re going to do it?”

  Bourne turned to the window, stared out at the sun-bleached city. It was already afternoon; he had slept right through breakfast and lunchtime. Fighter jets screamed overhead. He could see their contrails writhing like sky serpents. “I don’t work well with someone looking over my shoulder.”

  “Get used to it,” El Ghadan said. “I’m tracking your every move.”

  Bourne tossed the mobile back onto the rumpled bed, shed his clothes, and stood in the shower for fifteen minutes. He tried to empty his mind, to think of nothing, but the image of Soraya and Sonya refused to be driven away. The image brought up anger, the anger made him want to return to Doha immediately, find out where they were being kept, and…and then what? That way lay only death for them. Hot water ran down him, inundating his face and head, pounding his shoulders and back. Patience, the told himself. Be patient. Because patience was the only thing that could save them now.

  11

  Thirty minutes later, Bourne showed up at Zizzy’s room.

  “The proof of life came in at midnight,” he said, brandishing the mobile.

  “Right on time. They’re both all right?”

  Bourne nodded.

  While Zizzy scared up Minister Hafiz, Bourne took his rucksack into the bathroom. Inside was an odd-looking vest. His entire complement of theatrical makeup and prosthetic devices were sewn into the lining. He removed his clothes so as not to mar them with the makeup he was about to apply.

  He paused as a mortar shock wave caused the building to tremble. That was close, he thought. Zizzy popped his head in. “We’re on. An hour from now. That give you enough time?”

  Bourne nodded, and Zizzy’s head vanished. A moment later, tinny music from the radio began to blare, drowning out the sporadic bursts of small-arms fire.

  Twenty minutes later, he emerged from the bathroom, transformed. He was dressed in robes and patterned headscarf. He no longer had need of a fake beard, as his own had filled in enough.

  “Who the hell are you?” Zizzy said, switching off the music. “You look like a Circassian warrior.”

  * * *

  The ride across the city was like a fever dream. Streets of beautiful houses, mosques with slender minarets, shops selling silks and Damascus steel, then abruptly, blown-apart buildings, flattened vehicles. They passed a traffic sign so bullet-ridden it was impossible to read. A woman sat on a curb, head in her hands. Her wailing was like the scream of air-raid sirens. Smoke drifted, carrying the stench of oil and gasoline. They passed a wide boulevard filled with milling people. Bourne counted a dozen barbecued cars, blackened hulks, useless even as temporary shelters. Then they were back to neighborhoods untouched by violence and destruction. Normal life seemed to be going on here, as if in repudiation of the escalating crisis gripping the country.

  Mercedes were rolling cheek by jowl with armored cars, even a tank. Traffic slowed to a crawl. Up ahead two military jeeps were parked, their heavily armed occupants checking IDs before vehicles were allowed through. To one side, a shell crater caused everyone to merge right, further slowing the proceedings.

  A spray of screaming military jets winked silver across the sky.

  When their time at the barrier came, invoking Minister Hafiz’s name was enough to get them waved impatiently through. With the checkpoint behind them, the taxi driver returned to his voluble self. Zizzy had called him from the hotel. The wad of cash Zizzy had waved at him had almost made his mouth water.

  “Assad’s amnesty program has motivated pockets of rebels to drift back to his side now that it looks like foreign intervention is nothing but a fantasy. Meanwhile missiles, car bombs, who knows what else are killing our children all over the country, especially in Aleppo. Believe me, Damascus looks like the Garden of Eden compared to that hellpit.” He shook his head ruefully. “Every day the situation becomes more chaotic, and chaos is the mother of evil. There is no letup. What could be worse? My country is now the largest jihadist staging area in the world.”

  He dropped them in front of the Ministry of Interior, of which the Ministry of Industry was a part, a blocky multistory building with a filigreed façade. It was ringed with soldiers sporting AK-47s and shoulder-fired rocket launchers. Several mortar emplacements were visible behind sandbag barriers. Off to one side, a line of gleaming Mercedes, BMWs, and motorcycles were parked, waiting for their minister masters.

  Again, Zizzy invoked Hafiz’s name. They showed their IDs. Bourne was now Yusuf Al Khatib, one of the many legends whose documents were hidden within his rucksack. One of the soldiers thumbed a walkie-talkie, spoke into it, then nodded at his compatriot, who stepped aside so they could enter the ministry.

  The three-story entry was as chilly as a New England winter. All that was missing was snow. They took the elevator up to the third floor, accompanied by an armed guard who eyed them with paranoiac suspicion.

  Minister Hafiz, a slender, elegant man, sat behind a Louis XIV desk that looked as if it had been looted from the Louvre. A couple of chairs in the same style and a very expensive Isfahan carpet were the only other items in evidence. They were all that was required to make an impression on the average visitor. Apart from a dusting of plaster on the floor, no tangible evidence of the battle raging in the city existed here.

  Hafiz leapt up when he saw Zizzy, greeted him warmly. He wore a summer-weight Western suit that somehow did not quite fit him, as if he had pulled it out of someone else’s closet this morning. Smoke-hazed sunlight slanting through the window highlighted his deep-set eyes and hawk nose. His slicked-back hair gleamed richly. Through the window a nearby mosque raised its carved minaret like a flag of victory. The call to prayer, one of five times daily, was being sung by a muezzin.

  Bourne was introduced, but Hafiz did not wave them toward the chairs. Instead, he signed to them to fol
low him. They filed out of his office, past his secretary frowning over her computer terminal as she inputted the day’s information. Hafiz led them down the main corridor and into the fire stairwell. He waited until the metal door snapped closed. They were surrounded by bare concrete. The temperature had shot up to oven level. None of them seemed to notice.

  “It’s getting sketchy out there,” Zizzy said, hooking his thumb toward where a window might be if they had still been in the minister’s office.

  “Despite ruling for two decades, being Alawi has been no picnic,” Hafiz grumbled. “The Iraq war ruined the country. It disgorged thousands of Iraqi Sunni seeking refuge here. And what happened? The inevitable, that’s what. The Sunni majority became overwhelming. You think the rebels want democracy? Well, some of them, maybe. But there are a whole hell of a lot who are Iraqi Islamics, and others like the al-Qaeda-backed al-Nusra Front, Hezbollah, and El Ghadan’s Tomorrow Brigade—jihadists using the current chaos to spread more chaos.”

  He jammed his hands into his trouser pockets, his shoulders rising, which made the suit jacket appear even more ill-fitting. “Do you know what will happen to us Alawis if the Sunnis ever gain power? We’ll all be rounded up, set against a wall, and shot. That’s no exaggeration.”

  He craned his neck, peering as far down the stairs as he could, as if he expected an enemy lurking in the shadows. Satisfied, he turned back to them. “The West hates Bashar, but do you know the current president’s history? He went to England to study and work. He was happy there. He’d washed his hands of Syria altogether. Then his older brother—the heir to their father’s rule—went and slammed his two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar convertible into a roundabout, totaling it and himself. Bashar was recalled under enormous pressure.”

  Hafiz shrugged, his expression turning more mournful by the moment. “He was a reformer. For five years he gave the Syrian people a taste of freedom. Then the war came and, along with it, the Sunni refugees. His father’s old-line inner circle threatened him. They told him that if he didn’t clamp down on the Sunnis they would kill him. So what choice did he have? Not only were the reforms rolled back but the Iraqi Sunnis were persecuted—tortured and, in many instances, killed. Now you see the result—over one hundred thousand Sunnis killed.”

  “Once the genie is out of the bottle…” Zizzy let the first part of the statement speak for itself.

  “No kidding.” Hafiz’s look of disgust was unmistakable. “We’re holding on with everything we have against both the rebels and the jihadists. I’m afraid it’s a losing battle.”

  “That’s the reason I came in person,” Zizzy said. “I want to get you and your family out of here before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late,” Hafiz said. “I appreciate the offer, Zizzy, but Damascus is my home. I cannot abandon it to the ravening hordes.”

  Zizzy allowed a moment of silence to underscore the gravity of the situation before he nodded. “I understand, Nazim.” He gestured toward Bourne. “However, as long as we’re here, I’m wondering if you could do me a favor.”

  Hafiz spread his hands. “Anything, Zizzy. You have only to ask.”

  “Actually, it’s a favor for my friend, Yusuf.”

  Now Hafiz stared at Bourne with keen interest. “How can I be of assistance to you, Yusuf Al Khatib?”

  “You know, I am sure, Minister Qabbani.”

  Hafiz nodded. “Naturally. Though we are in different departments, we manage to cross paths now and again. Budget meetings and so forth.” His eyes narrowed. “There was a recent incident in Doha, I believe. The minister would have been killed had he not had the foresight to hire a Blacksmith.”

  “You know about that,” Bourne said.

  “But of course.” The ghost of a smile played around Hafiz’s wide mouth. “Qabbani fought tooth and nail to gain the funding to pay for the Blacksmith.”

  Interesting, thought Bourne. “Minister, why do you think he fought so hard?” A less seasoned agent might have added, “Could he have had foreknowledge of the incident?” But Bourne wanted to see if Hafiz would come to this conclusion on his own.

  “To be honest, Qabbani wanted to weasel out of the summit,” Hafiz said. “When that didn’t work, he went the Blacksmith route. He argued he’d be safer here in Damascus than at the Doha summit. As it happened, he was correct.”

  “Lucky guess,” Bourne said.

  “I’m not so sure it was a guess.”

  “What do you mean?” Bourne said.

  Hafiz returned to his recon of the lower staircase before answering. “It may be nothing, but there was some chatter—” He stopped abruptly. “You know, I’m not sure I should be repeating unattributed rumor.”

  “Humor me,” Bourne said.

  Hafiz appeared to consider this a moment. “Well, hall gossip had it that there was an ulterior motive behind the Doha summit.”

  “Was there anything more detailed?”

  Hafiz heaved a sigh. “According to the rumor, the summit had an artificial air to it, that it was planned for a specific purpose.”

  “Which would be?”

  Hafiz shrugged. “My best guess would be that someone here inside the ministry knew the massacre was going to happen. Ever since Qatar has been providing arms and materiel to the rebels here, it’s been on our shit list.”

  Bourne shot Zizzy a quick glance before he said to Hafiz, “Could there be any hint of the foreknowledge in the ministry files?”

  Hafiz frowned. “I doubt it.”

  “Personal emails? Appointments? Missing periods from a minister’s calendar?”

  “Who knows?” Hafiz said. “But it would be easy enough to check.”

  He led them out of the fire stairs, back into the refrigerated hallway. In his office, he crossed the Isfahan on his way to his desk.

  “I have access to almost every level of electronic communication,” he said. “And what I don’t have ready access to, I can obtain, no prob—”

  A tinkling of window glass, a spray of blood as Hafiz’s body spun around and fell to the carpet.

  12

  Sandcrabbing was not a particularly glamorous undertaking. In fact, it was shunned by many field operatives, or at least shunted off onto underlings. It was also never less than difficult, depending as much on raw intuition as on grubby digging. For Sara Yadin, the difficulty was compounded by the fact that she was a female in an Arab country. Had she been in Riyadh, for instance, where women were not even allowed to drive a car, instead of in Doha, a far less restrictive city, her job would have been impossible.

  But Sara was unflaggingly intrepid. Even her few detractors, who thought that too often she flew too close to the sun, grudgingly admitted to that.

  Start with what you know, her training had taught her, and move on from there.

  The reason her father hadn’t objected to her coming to Doha was that he knew she ran a number of reliable contacts and conduits here. The trouble was, having been recuperating in hospital for months, she hadn’t been in touch with them for a while. The first one was out of the country, the second knew nothing, and the third was in hospital and unconscious, the victim of a stroke. She moved on to a man named Hassim, who owned Vongole, an upscale restaurant on a tony strip known as La Croisette.

  Hassim wasn’t at the restaurant, so she drove to his house, a walled villa of pale gold, beyond which could be seen the tops of date palms clattering in the hot wind. Through the open gate, she could see that the place was three-tiered, with flat tiled roofs and a shaded entry portico. Hassim’s silver Rolls was in the driveway. She pulled up next to it, emerged into the blistering desert heat, and in the blessed shade beneath the portico rang the bell.

  Hassim himself, rather than one of his servants, answered the door.

  “Were you expecting me?” Sara said, half in jest.

  “It happened I saw you drive up,” he said as he ushered her inside. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Rebeka, though your presence here seems a bit i
nsecure.”

  “I know, but I don’t have time for the usual dead-drop protocol.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.”

  He led her through the octagonal entryway and into a large seating area. He was a small man, neat and fastidious. He and his family had made their fortune in oil, but, sensing the decline in fossil fuels, he had felt the need to diversify away from energy. Vongole was his third restaurant in Doha, the newest and the most successful, though as far as Sara knew they were all packed nightly.

  “May I offer you a drink? Some chilled fruit juice, perhaps?”

  “Thanks, Hassim.” As pressed for time as she was, it would have been unforgivable to decline. “Whatever you have will be fine.”

  Crossing to a sideboard, he opened a small refrigerator, poured out passionfruit juice from a frosty glass pitcher. He brought the slim glasses over and they drank silently.

  “So,” Hassim said, “how can I help?”

  Briefly, Sara recounted what she knew from Bourne about the massacre at the Al-Bourah Hotel, which was much more than had been reported in the local papers and TV stations.

  “The inference I have made,” she concluded, “is that the raid would not have been possible without police collusion.”

  “And you want a name.”

  “That’s why I’ve come to you in all due haste.”

  Hassim nodded, but he didn’t look confident. “That’s not an easy question to answer.”

  “It’s an eminently easy question to answer.” She set down her empty glass and peered at him. “You get top police brass eating at Vongole virtually every night of the week. The emir’s people as well, if I’m not mistaken. Surely you’ve heard something that can help me.”

  “I never said I didn’t.” But he had trouble meeting her eye.