The Bourne Ascendancy

by Robert Ludlum

  40

  Why would you send me as your emissary?” Sara said. “Do you trust me that much?”

  “My dear Ellie,” El Ghadan said, “I don’t trust you at all.”

  They were seated in a golden restaurant—walls, floor, and ceiling, all gold, all glittering as the early afternoon sunlight turned the floor molten, reflected upward, setting fire to the entire room. Apart from Sara, El Ghadan, and three of his men, no other patrons were in the restaurant, though it was the luncheon hour. Platoons of waiters with nothing else to do served them the food El Ghadan had ordered. Menus had not been provided.

  “Not at this point in time, anyway.” El Ghadan stirred honey into his tea. “I have devised a test for you, Ellie. This test can be given nowhere else but on Street Fifty-Two.” He took up his cup and, with a peculiarly delicate gesture, sipped his tea. “Tell me, have you been to the Industrial Area?”

  “I have.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was asked to find out if Arabian Switchgears was being used by al-Qaeda to transship weapons into Somalia.”

  He watched her as the food came, a kingly array of dishes set before them. He said nothing until the wait staff had retreated to their station at the rear of the restaurant. Outside, the sun had turned the water to thousands of tiny prisms.

  “Eat, eat,” he said, ladling mounds of food onto her plate like a mother who had taken a starving child in off the street. “This is the best food in Qatar.”

  “Better than what your followers get, holed up in the mountains.”

  “And what did you find at Arabian Switchgears?”

  She met his steady gaze with her own. “You know what I found.”

  “That was a Mossad-engineered incursion.”

  “Allegedly,” she said.

  His lips curled in a dark smile. “So you work for Mossad.”

  Watch it, girl, she told herself. You’re sailing too close to the wind. Now make this work. “I know people in the FSB, Al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah, CIB, MI6, BAIS, the Chinese Ministry of State Security, Mossad. Shall I go on?” She relaxed her face, laughing softly. “How do you suppose I obtained the product you wanted?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Still more to you than meets the eye, Ellie.”

  She needed to change both the topic and the atmosphere. Her gesture took in the entire table. “Such luxury for a man who purports to hate Doha and its decadent Western ways.”

  El Ghadan put down his fork and sat back. “I keep wondering why you continue to goad me.”

  “Let’s be honest, you and I hate each other—and yet we’re mysteriously drawn to each other.”

  “I don’t hate you,” El Ghadan said.

  “I’m being honest, why can’t you?”

  He took up his fork and began to eat.

  “Yes, I see,” Sara said. “It’s impossible for you to be honest.”

  For a moment, his gaze turned toward the golden heavens. “Honesty. Let me see, you say we are drawn together. But to me the reason is not so very mysterious. We live in the margins, you and I, nevertheless we refuse to be marginalized. Systems of government, religions, ideologies rule the world, but they are all flawed. And into these flaws flows corruption, seeking to take hold. We are all human, after all; therefore, all corrupt.”

  “I could not disagree more.”

  “You disagree, Ellie?”

  When he smiled—really smiled—as now, he became quite charming. From Sara’s point of view, frighteningly so.

  He spread his hands. “But corruption is the human condition. Every student of history knows this. C’mon, Ellie, you’re digging in your heels for the wrong reason.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “To spite me. To oppose me. To show you can fight me.” That disarming smile again. “I already know this.”

  She brought food to her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. The best food in Doha, and it tasted like ashes in her mouth. Being with him was like being too near a black hole—all your energy was focused on not getting sucked in. She felt mentally and emotionally spent. She missed Jason more than she could say, and this too frightened her.

  And yet from these depths inspiration sometimes came; she found it in herself to rally. “Tell me, what do you stand for? Sooner or later, we all have to make a stand, we who live in the margins. You’re no exception.” She looked at him shrewdly, beginning to warm to her subject. “You included religions as flawed, therefore corrupt. So you’re not a fundamentalist. What then?” And then she decided to play her ace. “I’m thinking now that you’re very much like your partner, Ivan Borz.”

  Outwardly, El Ghadan’s expression did not change, but Sara, trained in divining details in subjects whose demeanor ranged from recalcitrant to hostile, felt the changes beneath his skin. He grew tense, his heart rate increased as, she supposed, his blood pressure rose. Direct hit!

  “Borz is a businessman, plain and simple,” she went on. “Nothing complicated about his purpose. He wants to make money; he wants power. That’s you all over, isn’t it?”

  El Ghadan returned to his food, but he was attacking it now. “You have no idea what I want.”

  “Are you afraid to tell me?”

  Now he appeared piqued. “Listen to me, Ellie.” He leaned forward, his hands flat on the table, fingers spread. “While it’s true that you and I live in the margins, there we part company. Do you know why? Because you have everything and we have nothing. We have been thought pariahs for so long that this is precisely what we have become. So in a sense you have made us what we are.”

  His eyes, always wary, always calculating, seemed to burn in his skull. Something had changed in him. Naked emotion had laid his face bare, stripped it of artifice and bombast. “We have had nothing for so long that those who have everything become the target of our hatred and our violence. The fact that you want to push your values on us only enrages us more.”

  He appeared now to catch himself, to rein in his sudden outburst of anger, to retreat behind his implacable façade. “And as for me being here in Doha—I’m not here because I want to be in that SUV out there or eating this rich food. Wearing these Western clothes is a necessity, a disguise. It’s my job to be here now.”

  He reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, pulled out a slim wallet. “Look at this thing. It’s made of crocodile skin and cost five hundred dollars. Imagine! This is a coveted item in Western culture.” He shook his head. “Who can fathom such an atrocity!”

  The extremity of his rage had distanced him from her, had made of him a thunderous figure, at perfect odds with his civilized clothes. He looked as if he wanted to rip them off right then and there.

  Instead he said, in a low, ominous rumble, “My purpose is to destroy the people who carry their lives in this.” He shook the wallet. “Who live in expensive high-rises, wear expensive clothes, eat expensive food—the people who have everything, while the dispossessed of the world watch with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes.”

  Sara’s appetite flooded back. Her heart lifted. So she had done it. She had succeeded in getting him to reveal himself, at last, when all others had failed even to get near him.

  “Now you are going to give me the ‘This isn’t killing, this is war’ speech, right?”

  His features darkened, like the sky anticipating a storm front. “No woman has ever talked to me the way you do.”

  “You frighten everyone, El Ghadan, especially women.” She shrugged. “But then your stock-in-trade is intimidation—like Ivan Borz, like the worst criminal.”

  “Still you goad me.” His eyes narrowed. “Why? What is it you really want, Ellie?”

  She would not tell him that he had already given her what she wanted. “I want what all women want, El Ghadan: respect.”

  He wiped his lips with a napkin, took up an olive, glistening with oil, between his fingers. He was back on secure ground, back to having information she wanted. “When you get to Street Fifty-Two and a
ccomplish what is required of you,” he said, savoring the olive in the same way he savored his words, “you shall have it.”

  * * *

  “You see how it is now,” Hunter said as she wiped the sweat off the back of Camilla’s neck. They were sitting on the bed in Camilla’s room, the rumpled covers like sea foam caught in a single instant. “This is the world we’re both living in. This is reality.”

  “No,” Camilla said, her voice tiny and throttled by emotion. “This is deceit. This is hypocrisy. This is betrayal at the deepest level.”

  “Poor Cam.”

  Hunter stroked her back, but she twisted away. “Get off me. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

  Hunter heaved a sigh Camilla thought a bit too theatrical. She rose and padded to the bedroom door. With her hand on the knob, she said, “You say that now, Cam. But, actually, I’m the only one who can save you from this shitstorm.”

  She walked out, timing her exit as perfectly as a veteran actor. And what, Camilla thought now, was the world she was caught in but a stage and all the players actors? Master performers. And what was she? An emotional wreck, an expendable walk-on. In terms of war, cannon fodder.

  Putting her head in her hands, she bent over and wept, not only for this current act of betrayal, but for her broken childhood, the disciplinarian mother, the philandering father, the diffident and aloof sister. The Secret Service had been a way to wall herself off from all of them, a way to take a new path, a way to make a new life for herself.

  Now here she was, on the vast, lonely stage, with nothing left for her.

  She rose, slogged into the bathroom, splashed cold water onto her face until she felt on the verge of drowning. And that’s when it came to her. She lifted her head, stared at herself in the mirror, and didn’t like what she saw. She didn’t like it at all.

  “Fuck you,” she said. And then more forcefully, “Fuck you!”

  She was addressing herself, but also all those actors around her who had purported to be her friends. Their masks were down; she heard the lines they uttered for what they were.

  “Fuck you!” she shouted, then turned, walked back into her room, pulled on jeans and her favorite sweatshirt, the one with Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, holding a scepter, an emperor’s crown on his head, above which was emblazoned the motto “Born to Rule.” In bare feet, she went out of her room, along the hall, and down the stairs, determined that her days of self-pity were at an end.

  She found Hunter in the industrial-size kitchen, a stainless steel rectangle with three refrigerators, four dishwashing machines, two sinks, walk-in pantry, and freezer. Hunter was sitting on a wooden stool at the central much-used butcher-block island. In front of her was an enormous bowl of vanilla ice cream onto which she was squeezing U-Bet from a giant brown plastic bottle.

  “Whipped cream’s in the fridge on the right,” she said.

  Camilla noticed not one spoon on the island, but two. Returning from the refrigerator, she set the whipped cream down and pulled up a stool next to Hunter.

  “Stewie,” Hunter said. “Is that your power shirt?”

  “Something like that.” Camilla wanted to smile, but didn’t. Nevertheless, the feeling of animosity that had been eating away at her insides vanished, and she felt more at ease.

  When Hunter reached for the whipped cream, she stopped her.

  “No more sex,” she said.

  “Are you punishing me, or yourself?”

  “And no more lies.”

  Hunter nodded. “Okay.”

  Camilla took her hand away, and Hunter laid on the whipped cream.

  “I saw you with that shitbag Terrier at Jake’s World,” Camilla said.

  Hunter passed the second spoon over. “Dig in.”

  “That’s all you have to say? ‘Dig in’?”

  Hunter took a huge mound of the sundae on her spoon and crammed it into her mouth. For a moment her eyes closed in ecstasy. Then she made a humming sound, which jolted Camilla almost off her seat. That same vocalization signaled Hunter’s orgasm, the first of a chain reaction.

  Camilla’s temper was up. “Hunter, answer me!”

  “What d’you want me to say, ‘Guilty as charged’?”

  “That would do, yes.”

  “You’re not eating the sundae,” Hunter pointed out. “Come on. Enjoy yourself.”

  “I didn’t come down here to have dessert.”

  “Why did you come down here?”

  “How did you know I would?” A good interrogator answered a question with another.

  “I know you.”

  “I’ll admit you think you do.”

  Hunter turned to her. “Okay. What am I guilty of, exactly?”

  “Of lying to me, for starters.”

  “Didn’t you lie to me?”

  “What? When?”

  “You said you’d never been with a woman before.”

  Into Camilla’s mind flew Helena and the memory of their college tryst.

  “Jesus, how did you—?”

  “Who cares? It doesn’t matter. That’s the point, isn’t it?” Hunter picked up the second spoon, placed it in Camilla’s hand. “Now, let’s have some fun, and eat together from this enchanted bowl. Nothing better on earth than a chocolate sundae.”

  41

  It seemed a long, agonizing trail through the labyrinth of the Afghan cave before Bourne reached Borz and the Chechens. The remnants of the cadre were on the point of moving out.

  “What happened?” Borz said as Bourne set Aashir down. “I thought you were lost…or dead.”

  When Bourne told him, he said, “They’re dead—all three of them. You’re sure?”

  Bourne glanced around. “Where’s your physician?”

  “Also among the dead,” Borz intoned. “Along with more than half my men.”

  Indeed, there seemed more corpses than soldiers standing awaiting the recommencement of orders. None of Faraj’s men had made it. Bourne counted five Chechens and Borz, the only survivors of the ambush.

  Bourne turned to one of the Chechens. “Fetch the physician’s kit, would you?”

  The man looked at his leader, and when Borz nodded his assent, he trotted over to where the physician lay, snatched up his pack, and returned to where Bourne knelt beside Aashir.

  “How badly is he injured?” Borz asked. He appeared unusually ill at ease.

  “He was hit with a stone at close range.” Bourne opened the pack, took out antiseptic and sterile cotton pads. He turned Aashir’s head gently to one side, exposing the wound, which continued to seep blood. Cleaning the wound gave him a clear idea of how deep it went. No stitches were needed and the bleeding was near to stopping on its own. As he went about bandaging the wound, he spoke to Borz.

  “We can’t be sure the men in the owl’s nest didn’t radio for help, though I don’t think they did. Still, best to post lookouts on higher ground until we can head out.”

  Borz barked his orders, then squatted down on the other side of Aashir. “The boy won’t die, will he?”

  “Not from the wound itself,” Bourne said. “The worry is concussion. He’s gone in and out of consciousness.” He sat Aashir up, spoke to him directly. The eyes fluttered open. “Good,” Bourne said. “Aashir, do you know where you are?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember what happened to you?”

  The eyes fluttered closed.

  “Aashir! Do you remember—?”

  “What happened to me? Yes. The Taliban hit me with a rock.”

  “That’s right.”

  The boy’s eyes opened, focusing on Bourne. He smiled. “I’m happy to see you, Yusuf.”

  Bourne turned his head. “He’ll be fine,” he said under his breath to Borz.

  “Good.” The Chechen slapped his thighs as he rose. “When can we leave this accursed place?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Bourne said, “maybe twenty.”

  “Make it quick as you can, Yusuf. I don’t want to r
un into more of these people if I can help it.” He went off to see to what was left of his men.

  “How are you, Yusuf?” Aashir said softly.

  “Me?” Bourne laughed. “I’m fine. And you will be too, in a day or two.”

  “I don’t know. My head is pounding.”

  “Try not to move it too much.” Bourne pawed through the physician’s bag, found a painkiller, and handed Aashir two. “Here. Swallow.”

  Aashir did, wincing as he was obliged to tip his head back to get them down. He must have become a bit dizzy; he grabbed at Bourne’s arm to steady himself. Bourne held him until the blood returned to the boy’s face.

  “That wasn’t so good,” he said in a voice pinched by his pain and fear.

  “It will get better.”

  Aashir took several deep breaths. “I screwed up back there.”

  “You made up for it,” Bourne said with a reassuring smile. “You did better than most.”

  Aashir looked at him for a long time. “Yusuf.”

  “What is it?”

  “I know I can trust you.”

  “Of course you can.”

  The boy licked his lips. Now he looked truly frightened. “So now I’ll tell you a secret no one else knows.” He looked around to make sure no one was near them. He took another deep breath, let it out. “That girl I told you about? The one I wanted to run away with? Well, it wasn’t a girl. It was a boy my age.” He looked at Bourne, searching his face, it seemed, for either disapproval or validation. A laugh turned into a sob. “Some man I turned out to be.”

  So this was what Aashir had been wanting to tell Bourne for some time. It had been on his lips at least twice before, but he had lacked the courage or the faith in Yusuf to confide in him. The compressed time that comes with life-and-death situations had cemented his trust in their friendship.

  Bourne was still holding him. Though Borz was getting restless, it was not yet time to let him go.

  “What happened to your friend?”