The Bourne Ascendancy

by Robert Ludlum

  He turned his fierce, feral gaze on Bourne. “And we have so many, my friend, so very many, all willing to die for our cause. The Americans can never kill enough of us. This war will have a very different outcome.”

  Some time ago, they had passed beyond the western boundary of the city, and now Bourne understood there was another reason for setting the recruitment in Nairabein Park. They swung off the highway, away from the seemingly endless line of rumbling trucks on their way into the city.

  They headed south, then southwest, into the countryside.

  “Tell me,” Faraj said, “are you prepared to leave Damascus? Are you prepared to leave your homeland?”

  “In your service, Abu Faraj Khalid, of course.”

  The leader nodded. “Good.”

  The journey continued. Bourne took out his prepaid mobile, dialed into the Mossad server. There was a message for him. It was encrypted. He retrieved the message, then spent the next ten minutes decrypting it in his head. It was from Sara, and it contained high-level product vital to him. Deleting the message, he cleared the phone’s history, then turned it off and put it away.

  He looked up to find Faraj regarding him levelly. “A love letter?”

  Bourne laughed. “If I had a woman I would only cause her grief.”

  Faraj nodded, as if in understanding, one warrior to another.

  Five minutes later, they stopped before a gate in a high cyclone fence. More jihadists appeared, hailed by Faraj. One of them unlocked the gate and the group followed the trucks into the compound, locking the gate behind them.

  They went around to their left and Bourne saw that what he had at first taken for a training facility was in fact an airfield. A Boeing C-17 military transport sat at one end of the runway, its rear door gaping open, waiting for its cargo to march on board.

  The trucks pulled up behind the plane. The troops on the ground helped the recruits down, guiding them into the belly of the C-17. Faraj climbed down, Bourne following, and they stood, waiting for the transport to fill up. Faraj spent a few moments in consultation with the pilot and navigator. The early morning air force sorties were causing a last-minute change in course until they cleared Syrian airspace.

  “Where are we headed?” Bourne asked, as he and Faraj followed the cockpit crew toward the C-17.

  “Home,” the leader said without breaking stride.

  But Bourne, following the jihadists up the stairway into the cockpit, had seen their destination on the revised flight plan, and he knew Faraj had told him his first lie. Western Pakistan, more specifically, Waziristan, wasn’t home for these people. It was sanctuary.

  23

  The eyes were pulled the moment news of Khalifa’s death reached his people.”

  “Are you certain of that?” Sara said.

  Blum nodded. “I was clean when I brought you here.”

  She regarded him critically. “Have you been here before since you arrived in Doha?”

  He shook his head. “This is the first time.”

  “Nevertheless, they might have pulled the old ones for new ones,” she told him. “It won’t hurt to take another look.”

  “We’re the watchers,” Blum said. “But who’s watching the watchers, eh?”

  She and Blum had been installed in the doctor’s private quarters, which he shared with his wife. She was a plump woman with a sunny disposition. She happily fed them, then went out to buy fresh clothes for them as if they were her own children. “Our two sons are off in England at college,” she had shyly confided to Sara. “And I always wanted a daughter.”

  Blum returned with news that the immediate vicinity was immaculate, which contented Sara, at least for the moment. As it turned out, he had done more than compile product on Khalifa. There was material on his six lieutenants for Sara to pore over.

  “This is A-prime product, Levi,” she said, glancing up from the text he had given her.

  He was like a puppy, eager to play. “Juicy, huh?”

  For though the product had little in the way of military secrets, it was chock-full of the private peccadilloes of four of the six men, more than enough for her immediate needs.

  “How did you find out all of this?” she asked, suitably impressed. “They had eyes on you the entire time.”

  “But not on the local network I assembled. I have five operatives, all fiercely loyal, fueled by their hatred of the government’s sub rosa policies.” He had stopped fidgeting. “That gave me breathing room.”

  “To pursue your personal fortune,” Sara said tartly.

  “To a dual purpose. I led them on some merry chases,” he said, with the tone of a sixty-year-old agent nostalgically recalling his fieldwork. “Plus which, there were times I was working when they were certain I was debauching myself.”

  “At Nite Jewel.”

  He nodded. “As you can imagine, the eyes aren’t comfortable there.”

  “Good to know.” She glanced through the product. “This one,” she said, pointing to Lieutenant Mahmoud Tamer. “Call him. Set up a meet late tonight at Nite Jewel.”

  Blum looked doubtful. “I was Khalifa’s personal asset. Tamer doesn’t know me. Why would he come?”

  “He’ll come,” Sara said with absolute confidence. “Tell him you know who murdered his boss.”

  * * *

  She jolted awake into the glare of artificial light, but now, after days of captivity, Soraya was finally able to summon her wits. They had been days of fear and uncertainty. Now and then, her initial terror yielded to the banality of the evil that held her and Sonya captive. These were only men, after all—dangerous men, to be sure, but without superhuman powers.

  Soraya had been through the full Treadstone course of training, which included ways both physical and mental to combat abduction, incarceration, and enhanced interrogation. No course, however, could prepare you for having your two-year-old child kidnapped along with you.

  Which was why she needed to have all her faculties about her, to think things through clearly. God knew, she had enough quiet alone time in between meals, when Sonya was sleeping.

  Where was she? Still in Doha; they had not been transported out of the killing room.So, step one: in Doha.

  Step two: How many men were guarding them? She had encountered three already. Though their faces were always masked, everyone had a distinct natural scent, including the guard who was marginally more civil to her than the others. But beyond those three she had no idea how many more El Ghadan had installed outside the room.

  Step three: Were they in a warehouse, a fortress, a safe house? The only people who knew the answer were the jihadists themselves.

  She was sitting on a wooden chair with a ladder back. She rose, made a circumnavigation of the room, which, apart from the door, was entirely featureless. For a moment, she stood in front of the door. Then, as if with a will of its own, her hand reached out, turned the doorknob.

  At that moment, the lights were extinguished, and Sonya cried out.

  “Mommy!”

  “I’m here, muffin.” Soraya backed away from the door. “Remember what I told you. My voice is the voice of the wind. All you need to do is follow it.”

  When she was far enough away from the door, the light blinked back on. Sonya ran to her, and Soraya scooped her up in her arms. Sonya was trembling. Soraya carried her to the chair and sat down with her in her lap and as she soothed her child tried to order her thoughts.

  The lights winking out at the precise moment she grasped the doorknob was no coincidence. They were being observed, possibly from behind the mirror on the opposite wall. But could there be others means of observation she did not yet know about? She looked up at the four corners of the room, where the walls met the ceiling. At first she could discern nothing. But then she saw what appeared to be a small crack in the plaster, high up. She saw the end of a fiber optic cable, a tiny eye observing her with cruel indifference.

  Then the door opened. A jihadist entered with their breakfast.
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  Somewhere outside her prison, another morning had dawned.

  * * *

  Late in the day, when the sun was nothing more than a line of burnt sky on the western horizon, Dixon threw her. They were galloping full out across a rolling field. A thick stand of oaks flashed close by on their left. On their right, the field dipped down into a swale filled with wildflowers.

  A fox, sleek, ruddy, and muscular, dashed from out of the oaks directly across their path. Startled, Dixon pulled up short. Camilla lost her grip on the reins, tumbled head over heels over Dixon’s lowered head. Tucked in, she landed on one shoulder and rolled. All the breath was knocked out of her, but she was otherwise unhurt.

  She lay for a moment, staring up into the piebald sky, slightly dazed. What came to her mind was an afternoon much like this one, when she had been a girl of about eight. She had been running full tilt across a field, neck and neck with Beatriz, her older sister. All she saw ahead of her was the finish line: the yellow-green foliage of the weeping willow at the end of the field, a demarcation where the ground fell off precipitously onto the banks of a deep, still lake, filled with frogs and water skimmers with the angular legs of an architectural drawing.

  Camilla was winning—six steps ahead of her sister, seven—when she tripped, trying to avoid a startled rabbit. She fell hard into the thick grass, where, as now, she lay, dazed and gasping for breath. Her knees were scraped up and bloody, burning as if an iron had been pressed into them. Still, she did not cry.

  At length, she rolled over onto her stomach, lifted herself onto her elbows, and looked for Beatriz, whom she expected to see crouched over her, a worried look on her face. Instead, she saw her sister at the finish line, dancing up and down, her arms raised in victory. “I won! I won! I won!” Beatriz’s excited voice cut like a buzzsaw through the birdsong and the insects’ hum. Camilla was about to shout at her to come back, tell her she was hurt, but then she clamped her mouth shut grimly. Beatriz wasn’t coming back for her; no one was. And with that her tears slipped their bonds, rolled down her cheeks in hot rivulets.

  Now, as she heard hoofbeats coming slowly toward her, she wanted to tell Hunter to stay away, that she didn’t need her help, certainly didn’t want her pity. She needed nothing and no one; she was an adult now, could take care of herself, thank you very much. Read as a child, remembered in adulthood, the words of Queen Elizabeth I, Tudor, resounded again in her mind: I have found treason in trust.

  Long moments passed. As she continued to stare upward, repeating her shining idol’s words, Dixon’s great head came into view. He stared down at her, snorted, shook his head. His huge eye observed her with a clear and certain intelligence, Hunter’s theory to the contrary be damned.

  “It’s all right, Dixon, really, it is.”

  She rose on one knee. The horse lowered his head toward her.

  Reaching up, Camilla’s hand found his muzzle, stroked it. “It’s okay, Dixon. I know you didn’t mean to stop short, I know you didn’t mean to throw me. And I’m fine, see?” She rose slowly, put her arm over the horse’s back, leaned against him, her cheek against his. He whinnied, bobbed his head up and down, as if in agreement.

  “We’re good,” she whispered. “I promise we’re good.”

  And then, hugging him all the tighter, she had herself a little cry for the loss of herself in the vast arena dominated by men. What could her life have been if she had chosen another path? But what path? she asked herself. Be a wealth manager, like her father had wanted? Be a deeply unhappy fighter pilot instructor, her best days behind her, like her mother? Or be a surgeon like Beatriz, bone weary, twice divorced? She shuddered. Those were lives for other women, not her.

  Trust, she thought. In an animal, once given, trust is never corrupted or overthrown. It abides.

  “Are you hurt?” Hunter called. She had wisely stopped her mount a distance away. “Shall I call an ambulance?”

  Camilla shook her head, her face buried in the horse. “I’m fine.” Her voice was clear and strong. “We’re both fine.”

  * * *

  Their room was still cloaked in darkness when she heard the door creak open. By smell alone, Soraya knew who had come in. She also knew what kind of food he was carrying.

  Willing herself to breathe deeply and slowly, she waited for him to cross the room. The light came on and she blinked, her eyes narrowed against the glare. Sonya slept on, curled in her lap. Instinctively she wrapped an arm around her daughter.

  “I know it’s you,” she said. It was the man she had spoken to yesterday. She peered up into his eyes, which were all that was visible of his face. “Won’t you tell me your name? Then we can talk more freely.”

  “Move the child,” he ordered.

  “She’s still sleeping,” Soraya said. “Leave her in peace.”

  After a small hesitation he centered the tray of food on her upturned palm. “Call me Islam,” he said then.

  Soraya began to eat. “You’re always here, it seems,” she said between bites. “You must hate it almost as much as we do.”

  “Of course…Well, what do you expect being cooped up in this place for days on end? I’m not used to it.”

  “Who is?”

  He bent toward her. He reeked of cheap cigarettes and stale sweat. These people didn’t know the meaning of showers, she thought. It had been at least two days since she or Sonya had cleaned themselves. The thought depressed her, so she banished it. She needed to keep herself positive at all costs, not only for herself but for Sonya as well. It was the only way to survive.

  “What is that face you’re making?” he said. And then, more forcefully, “You are offended by my smell, infidel, is that it?”

  Soraya paused with a bit of food halfway to her mouth. Abrupt changes in a captor’s demeanor were also a part of the hostage process. She knew she would have to inure herself to it. But his sharp, menacing tone had awakened Sonya. There was fear in her eyes as she looked from the jihadist to her mother.

  “Mommy?”

  “It’s all right, muffin,” she said in as calm a voice as she could muster. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Fine? No, it’s not fine. I think you can’t stand the sight of me,” Islam shouted. He ripped the tray from her hands.

  “Islam, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Truly.”

  He bent toward her again, his nose almost touching hers. “Did it ever occur to you that you’re the one who smells, that I can’t stand the stink coming off you, that I gag repeatedly while I’m in here with you?”

  Soraya knew she had made a mistake by letting her feelings show, even for an instant. She gestured. “The tray, please. At least let me feed Sonya.”

  Islam leaned over the little girl, but when he spoke it was to Soraya. “From now on, you’ll smile when you see me, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Soraya said, but her attention was on her daughter. “Of course I will.”

  But it was too late. Sonya was crying inconsolably.

  24

  First order of business,” Eli Yadin said, “is to get you out of Doha now. I’m assembling a Kidon extraction team even as we speak.”

  “Director, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sara said.

  She had instructed Blum to fetch them a pair of prepaid mobile phones. It was the only way she could be certain their conversations would not be overheard by Khalifa’s NTCC people. He might be dead, but she was certain his orders regarding Blum remained in effect. Her first call was to her father, through a scrambled circuit. The moment she had finished briefing him, he hung up on her.

  It was an hour before he called back. During that time, she composed an encrypted text containing Blum’s golden product: the connection between El Ghadan, Khalifa Al Mohannadi, and Ivan Borz. This she sent to a private mailbox on an encrypted server, to which Bourne had access twenty-four/seven.

  “I don’t care what you think, I’m pulling you,” Eli said hotly when he called back. He had not bothered wi
th the niceties of a salutation. “I never should have let you go in the first place, Rebeka.” On a live op he would no more think of calling her Sara than she would refer to him as Father.

  “I’m glad I came here, otherwise we never would have unearthed the connection between El Ghadan and Ivan Borz, through Khalifa.”

  “The immediate problem is that Khalifa is dead, a colonel in the Qatari National Tactical Command Center, no less. From what you’ve told me, there are witnesses who saw you and Khalifa get on the boat together. The harbormaster can identify you. Khalifa’s people will come after you with everything they’ve got.” There came the sound of shuffling papers. “The Kidon team is operational. In three hours you will be picked up. In the meantime, stay inside and don’t show yourself at the windows.”

  Eli cleared his throat, as if he were about to choke on his own rage. “Now I want to talk to that prick Blum.”

  Sara opened her mouth in order to continue her defense, then thought better of it. When her father was in a red mood there was no talking rationally to him. Perhaps it had not been such a good idea to allow his daughter to become an agent of his, she thought morosely, as she shoved the mobile at Blum.

  “Here,” she barked.

  Blum took the phone gingerly, as if it were a bomb about to explode. He looked like he wanted to chuck it out the window, anything but get ripped to shreds by Director Yadin.

  “Listen, you little shit, I ought to have Rebeka shoot you on the spot, but since our people have confirmed your product—at least the bones of it—I am of a mind to keep using you.”

  “Thank you, Director.”

  “Don’t thank me, Blum. You’re still on probation. We’ve pulled our people out of Waziristan, burned the residence. We have to start all over because of you.”

  “Rebeka told you I couldn’t risk contacting you.”

  “There were ways, Blum, if you thought about it, but you were too lazy. I always felt that about you, that’s why you were posted to deadhead Doha.”

  “Supposedly deadhead.”