The Bourne Ascendancy

by Robert Ludlum

  He poured the tea himself. “Cream or lemon?”

  “Lemon, please.”

  As he handed her the tea, he said, “So, how is business?”

  Carefully, she placed a frown on her face. “It would have been brisk,” she said. “I had any number of appointments lined up. But then the terrorist attack drove all my clients underground, as it were. Now no one is interested in buying diamonds, or, it appears, much of anything else for that matter.”

  Khalifa nodded sagely. “True, it was a tragedy. But rest assured it was an isolated incident, never to be repeated.”

  Sara sighed. “I wish my clients felt as certain as you seem to. To a man, they’re terrified.”

  “Unfortunately, there is risk now, all through the Arab world. I am devastated your business has suffered at the hands of terrorists.”

  “It isn’t the first time.”

  The colonel raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Yes. Three years ago.” Sara took a sip of her tea, but it was too hot. She set the cup and saucer down on the tray, folded her hands demurely one atop the other. The pause was deliberate, to extend the anticipation, after she had whetted his appetite with the promise of a tale right up his alley.

  “I have a source in Botswana,” she continued now. “I have known him a long time. He’s a friend as well as a business contact. He and I were almost killed by a cadre that had crossed over from South Africa.”

  “I commend you on your escape.”

  “My friend lost an arm.”

  He inclined his head slightly. “My condolences. I am truly sorry, Martine.”

  And there it was, Sara thought, the transition from interrogation suspect to attractive woman. Nothing like an old war story to bring two soldiers closer together.

  “And now,” he said, leaning forward and taking her hand, “you must have dinner with me.”

  Sara feigned looking at her watch. “But I—”

  “No, no, I insist.” He grinned, one comrade to another. “We will have the best dinner in the Middle East, guaranteed. And while we eat, I will tell you some stories I think you will find most interesting.”

  * * *

  The blast split the office door apart, but it was an old door. It was made of hardwood, thick as a man’s forearm. Even as it shattered, it shielded Bourne from the full brunt of the explosion. As he was thrust backward, he grabbed hold of the handrail to stop himself from tumbling head over heels down the stairs. Though the rent slabs of wood clattered down the stairs, amid tinkling glass shards glittering like a hail of ice, Bourne did not. He held on, slipping once on the treads, righting himself, his free arm thrown up to cover his face.

  Then he launched himself up the remaining steps, hurtled into the gutted interior of the office. Smoke and flames obscured it for a moment, then he spied the door in the far wall. Leaping over a chair that had spilled on its side, legs crisped, back still burning, he reached the door, used fabric from his clothes to protect his hand from the heat as he turned the metal knob, wrenched open the door.

  He sped down a metal spiral staircase as fast as he could, listening to the clang of shoes on the treads below. The light was dim. He was obliged to be guided by sound alone. Pausing for a moment, he listened to the heavy tread, heard three sounds, overlapping.

  Three men: the sniper and the two others he had observed in the office before they blew it up. Slipping off his shoes, he continued down the spiral in utter silence. Down below, at the bottom of the well, a bare light bulb hanging from a length of flex burned fitfully. The sounds on the stairs had ceased, but shadows flickered like the dying flames in the office above.

  Bourne’s gaze rose up from the bulb to where the flex went into the ceiling between two water pipes that ran horizontally parallel to each other. He was quite certain that the men would wait in the sub-basement to be sure he was dead or wounded badly enough not to follow them, because this was what he would do in their place. In that event, their attention would be focused on the narrow twist of the stairs.

  Currently he was in darkness, but that would change the moment he descended far enough for the light bulb to pick up his legs. Putting his shoes back on, he calculated the distance to the water pipes, then leapt, grabbed them, swung toward the heads of the men, and let go.

  He landed in the midst of them, bowling over one, slamming his forearm into the throat of another. Both were down. As the first man rose up, using the wall as leverage, Bourne kicked out, burying his shoe in the man’s chest, cracking his sternum. The man went down again, and this time stayed down.

  The second man grabbed him from behind, sought a choke hold on his windpipe. Bourne shoved him backward, his spine smacked the facing wall, and the air went out of him. Bourne grabbed the wrist curled around his throat and twisted it down and back, breaking the arm at the elbow.

  The man cried out, scrabbled for the pistol tucked into his belt, but Bourne shoved his head down until the chin cracked against Bourne’s rising knee. The man groaned, his eyes rolled up, and he collapsed.

  A quick glance affirmed that neither of these men was the sniper. That left the third man. He heard a door slam, and took off, but the hard truth was his torture at the hands of El Ghadan’s men had hurt him more than he had been willing to admit. His pain threshold was exceedingly high, but even he could not endure a near asphyxiation without consequence, and he felt it now as he ran down the darkened corridor and up two flights of rickety wooden stairs. Slower than he’d like, slower than he needed to be in order to catch up to the sniper. Pain gripped his chest as if the cruel electric hand El Ghadan had put to him was again squeezing the breath out of him. He stopped, nauseated and dizzy, slammed his fist against the concrete wall in rageful frustration.

  Pushing through a metal door, he found himself in an unfamiliar back alley, deserted in both directions. From not far away came the cough of a car engine starting up, the screech of tires laying rubber, then nothing but the myriad background groans and sighs of the partially blacked-out city, as it experienced another exhausting lull in the continuing civil war.

  As he went back inside, his own mobile buzzed. A text from Deron. Inside. Awaiting instructions. Some small bit of good news, anyway. Bourne texted back details as to where he wanted the tainted mobile’s GPS to point to over the next week. It occurred to him then that he could return to Doha and start his inquiry into where the jihadists were holding Soraya and Sonya, but instinct told him that their lives were too precious to leave to chance. One false move on his part, one whispered word to the wrong person, and they would die horrible deaths. This was a path he refused to take. No, he decided, far better to remain on the course he had chosen: wend his way through the labyrinth into the dark heart of El Ghadan’s network, in the hope of discovering leverage he could use against him to secure Soraya’s and Sonya’s release.

  He returned to the two fallen terrorists. One was still alive. Crouching down, Bourne hauled him to a sitting position, slapped his face twice. The man’s eyes opened. Bourne struck him again, and the eyes focused on him.

  “The sniper,” Bourne said in Syrian-accented Arabic. “Who is he and where did he go?”

  The terrorist looked at him dully.

  “There is no way to avoid telling me what I want to know.”

  The terrorist’s expression did not change, nor did his lips move.

  Bourne pulled out the dirk he had taken off the driver in the warehouse proper. The curved blade caught the wavering light of the light bulb above their heads.

  “In two minutes,” Bourne said, “you’ll tell me everything.”

  Actually, it took four minutes, but all things considered, Bourne thought, that was acceptable.

  15

  Khalifa Al Mohannadi took Sara to dinner at Red Pearl, an elegant restaurant nestled within a posh resort on its own island. The trip by launch took only five minutes, but as the boat glided between two piers decked out with electronic torches, Sara found herself in another world.

>   They headed into the very heart of the resort, along an artificial river lit up in shades of red and hot orange. Above them curved what could only be described as a shell lined with mother-of-pearl. A brace of uniformed female attendants who looked like runway models greeted them with wide smiles, helped them off the launch, and ushered them to a table beside a lagoon stocked with exotic fish, whose astonishing colors glimmered like gems in a sunken treasure chest.

  “Well,” Khalifa said, after they were seated, “what do you think?”

  “There’s nothing like this in Amsterdam,” Sara replied, looking around.

  “Or anywhere else,” Khalifa said proudly. “Not even in Dubai.”

  Salads came, filled with exotic seafoods, then lobsters that Khalifa said were flown in from Zanzibar, “because they’re the best in the world,” and they were, too, at least in Sara’s estimation.

  She was practiced at small talk, polished at subtle flirting, and she did both through the first two courses, but she was troubled that after an hour and a half she knew Khalifa no better than she had at the golf club. He was as practiced as she was at engaging small talk that revealed nothing of himself.

  He had promised her “stories,” and, patient as a spider, she waited for him to begin. He was like a wild animal, untrusting of strangers, and she knew that any sudden move on her part would startle him into a silence from which she might not be able to coax him.

  “What was the name of your contact in Kenya?” he said at length.

  “Botswana,” she said, knowing his mistake was deliberate, knowing too that he remembered she had not mentioned her contact’s name.

  “That’s right, Botswana.”

  Between them rested the empty carcasses of spiny red lobsters, glistening tufts of pink-white flesh tucked here and there, the only meat left on shells otherwise picked clean.

  “There are three kinds of people one encounters,” he said, seemingly changing subjects. “People you can trust, people you can’t trust, and people you kill.”

  “That’s a cynical view of life.” She almost added, Isn’t that the view of a soldier? But she wasn’t about to let on that she knew who he really was.

  He shrugged. “One’s view of life is shaped by one’s experiences, isn’t that so?”

  “To a degree.”

  “No,” he said, the flat of his hand cutting through the air. “It is so. Period.”

  The waiter came and cleared away their plates. He returned with the dessert menu and left them to decide.

  Because Khalifa had presented her with an opening, she said, “Now you’ve made me curious. What sort of experiences are you referring to?”

  “Why are you curious?”

  She shrugged. “It isn’t every day I meet a man who mentions killing, let alone so offhandedly.”

  He regarded her levelly. “Amsterdam is an oasis of calm in an otherwise war-torn world. Here in the Middle East, here in Doha, we do not have the luxury of being calm.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Not at all. I’m trying to get at a truth.”

  So am I, Sara thought, but you’re being obdurate. “So does this mean you have killed people?”

  “If I have, it’s been for a good reason.”

  “You’ve never told me what you do, Khalifa.”

  He smiled. “I’m a businessman.”

  “Everyone I meet is a businessman,” she said. “What kind are you?”

  “The successful kind,” he said, and dropped his eyes to study the menu. “Something sweet to end the evening?”

  * * *

  Hunter refilled her mug. She took her coffee strong and black, no sugar. “There’s a man I want you to meet when you get there.”

  Camilla regarded Hunter from across the table, her forkful of poached eggs halfway to her mouth. “Get where?”

  Hunter took a mammoth bite out of a square of buttered toast onto which she had loaded a heaping tablespoonful of scrambled eggs. “Where you’re being sent.” She chewed and swallowed in a convulsive gesture. “Singapore.”

  Camilla resumed eating. Her inner thighs and lower back ached so much she already assumed she’d never be rid of the pain, though Hunter had assured her otherwise. Outside, it was still dark, but sunrise was not far away.

  “Why?”

  “Jimmie Ohrent will take care of you.”

  Camilla frowned. “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

  Hunter sipped her steaming coffee, her eyes slitted. She had the look of a carnivore, which at this moment meant she wanted more bacon. “As I understand it, you’re Howard Anselm’s creature.”

  “Where in the world did you get that idea?”

  “From Howard.”

  Camilla was taken aback. “Howard Anselm is chief of staff, not director of the Company.” She tossed her head. “Anyway, I work at Secret Service.”

  “And yet here you are at a Company facility.” Hunter rose, crossed the room, got herself several more slices of bacon, came back, and sat down. She ate one strip in two bites, folding the meat over on itself. “I know who and what you work for.”

  Camilla felt herself bristle. “Do you?”

  Seemingly unfazed, Hunter said, “Let me ask you a question. How well do you know Howard Anselm?”

  Camilla shrugged. “Well enough, I suppose.”

  Hunter pursed her lips. “You poor thing.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Hunter wiped grease off her lips, stood up. “Let’s get over to the stables.”

  Camilla sat for a moment, too shocked to move.

  “Oh, come on,” Hunter said. “Sulking doesn’t become you.”

  * * *

  On the way over, rain began to fall—just a drizzle, really, but a certain gloom hung over the Dairy that seemed to seep into Camilla’s bones. She felt as if she had stepped into a hole she hadn’t noticed before. The feeling of helplessness did not sit well with her.

  At the stables, Hunter watched her saddle Starfall. “I’ve known Howard Anselm a long time. He uses me like he would use a sponge, to soak up the messes people make—him included.”

  Camilla tightened the cinch. “I don’t see how that applies to me.”

  “Still in a pet, I see.” She opened an adjoining stall, led out a horse named Dagger, and made ready to saddle him. “Of course it applies to you—and to POTUS.”

  Camilla froze. Her heart thundered in her breast. “What…what are you talking about?”

  “This little caper Anselm cooked up with the connivance of Marty Finnerman.”

  “Howard told me it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who—”

  Hunter snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  Camilla hung on to Starfall as if without him her knees would buckle. “So what are you saying?”

  “Camilla, darlin’, your boss—the man who really runs you, pulling the strings from on high—has decided that you pose too great a danger to his boss. Which is why he’s sending you to the other side of the world.”

  “That makes no sense. They’re sending me to the place where Bill is going to be. Why not leave me here?”

  “You’re the head of the Secret Service. Your job is to be by POTUS’s side. You will be in Singapore with him, but they’ve ensured you will be apart from him. The brief they’ve given you directs you to find and terminate Jason Bourne. You won’t have time to engage with POTUS and it will lead you into potentially lethal danger.” Hunter took a step closer to her. “Listen to me. If you find Bourne—and that’s a big if—he most certainly will kill you.”

  Camilla opened her mouth, seemed to have lost her voice, then started over again. “How many people know?” Her voice was somewhere between a whisper and a croak.

  “Besides you and POTUS? Just the three of us: Howard, Finnerman, and me.”

  Camilla rested her forehead against Starfall’s great curving neck, taking what solace she could in the strength of its musculature. “Jesus.”

  “The p
oint is,” Hunter said, “the damage is contained.”

  “Why not just fire me?”

  “And risk POTUS’s reputation, not to mention his ire? For one thing, it’s POTUS himself who must fire you. For another, you’d still be in D.C., still close at hand, and, out of the limelight, that much more available.”

  God, Camilla thought, she’s right. “I’ve become a locked box, hidden away in some dark and deserted corner where no one will look.”

  Hunter looked at her with a kind of pity that frightened Camilla. No one had ever looked at her quite that way.

  But then Starfall stamped his right foreleg, lifting his head and snorting, and she put her palm against his soft muzzle, and he settled. She looked into his huge, pure brown eye, saw herself reflected there. The reflection resolved itself in her mind’s eye.

  In that moment, she saw the conversation from a different angle, and a thought occurred to her, like a light bulb turned on in a comic book thought balloon.

  She turned to Hunter. “You don’t like Anselm much, do you?”

  A slow smile spread across Hunter’s face. “A dirtbag who treats me like a sponge and you like a clay pigeon? I hate his fucking guts.”

  * * *

  Sara excused herself. Her bladder was full. Maybe it was from the juice she had drunk at Hassim’s, but that seemed like ages ago. More likely, Khalifa was making her nervous, which in turn made her more nervous. She hadn’t been in the field for over a year. She felt rusty, a step behind where she needed to be. She squared her shoulders. There were remedies for that, and she knew how to employ all of them.

  An attendant escorted her to the W.C., which she thought silly and way over the top until she discovered how convoluted the path was. On her own, she would have needed a map and a compass.

  Unsurprisingly, the W.C. was as big as most medium-size cafés. It was altogether possible, she surmised, to get lost in here as well, not the least because all the walls were either mirrored or pure white marble polished to such a gloss that in a pinch they could have stood in for mirrors.