The Bourne Ascendancy

by Robert Ludlum

  The passage was lit by a string of spiral fluorescent bulbs protected by steel cages. The concrete undersides of the tiers of seats rose above him, connected by a supporting network of steel beams and girders. Bourne looked up. Through the gloom he could make out a figure hunched over a black oblong the size and shape of an electrician’s toolbox. It was shiny, made out of metal or plastic, and as the man settled it into place on one of the lateral beams, it seemed very heavy. A tremor passed along Bourne’s spine. It was all too possible the bomb was loaded with high explosives in order to blast through the reinforced concrete underside of the stands.

  Bourne knew where the presidential box was located. The spot mandated for the bomb looked to be directly under it. Reaching up, he swung onto one of the lateral beams over his head, then grabbed the next one up and so began his climb to the level where the bomb was sitting. He was moving through patches of shadow and light, but as he rose, the shadows deepened and the light dimmed to a sepia shade.

  Above him, the bomber’s fingers were long, white, bony, spidery in their movements. Bourne’s approach was as silent as an owl’s. Nevertheless, the bomber sensed Bourne’s presence. In an instant, he had a switchblade out and had thrown it with deadly accuracy.

  Bourne spun to the left. The blade shredded the cloth over his right arm, then continued on its way, its downward flight erratic now, slowed considerably. It cartwheeled into the gloom below.

  In one leap, Bourne reached the bomber’s level. The Chechen rose, but not fully. His knees were bent, his arms cocked as Bourne closed with him. He expected Bourne to strike first and was prepared to counter. Only the span of an arm away, Bourne brought himself up short. The man, caught off balance, made a belated lunge that, had it not been awkward, might well have shattered two of Bourne’s ribs if he had not been wearing body armor. As it was, the blow landed heavily, below the ribs and in the armor’s seam. Bourne buckled. Sensing an opening, the Chechen lashed out at him. Bourne grasped his forearm and spun, using his own momentum against him, pulling him around and down in an aikido move.

  The Chechen landed on his back, already half off the beam, and Bourne struck him twice on the sternum. But the man immediately drew up his knees, got his feet under him, levered himself up, throwing Bourne off and coming at him in a whirlwind of callused knuckles and steel-tipped boots. Bourne was driven back a step, then another. One foot slipped off the beam, hung for a moment in midair. The Chechen pressed his advantage, but Bourne swung so his left side was toward his adversary. The Chechen’s strikes missed their target, and Bourne, grasping his wrist, swung him around, using his body as a counterweight to bring himself fully back on the beam.

  Now the two men squared off. The Chechen was not big, but his upper body was wide and well muscled, his arms like steel bands. He was wary now, having been suckered by the aikido move. Bourne knew he wouldn’t be able to get away with that surprise twice.

  Feinting to his right, the Chechen struck at Bourne from the left. A ferocious gust of blows was delivered by both men. Then the struggle seemed to come to a standstill as the two men’s physical prowess locked together, like an inexorable force straining against an immovable object.

  The Chechen broke free first, and immediately struck out, not realizing that this was what Bourne wanted. He overreached as Bourne slipped sideways, and, off balance, he stumbled. Bourne, bent, grabbed him, but the Chechen twisted over onto his back. His foot hooked behind Bourne’s knees, whipped forward, taking Bourne off his feet.

  Bourne reached up, but the Chechen slapped his hands away, and Bourne fell. He grabbed the lateral beam just below, hung there, swinging precariously, watching as the Chechen began to climb back up to where he had left the bomb.

  Kicking out, Bourne increased his swing until his momentum was such that his feet struck the vertical girder on his left. As they did so, he let go of the lateral beam and flexed his knees. With the power of his legs, he launched himself up to where the Chechen crouched over the bomb. He struck the Chechen, but the sole of one boot knocked the bomb out of the Chechen’s hands. The bomber managed to hold on to the beam, if just barely, but the bomb struck an adjacent girder, then arced down through the webwork of steel.

  * * *

  Camilla, deep in POTUS’s grip, did the only thing she could think of: She kneed him hard in the groin. With a groan, Magnus let her go as he slipped to his knees. He squatted there, rocking gently back and forth, his hands cupping his genitals.

  He looked up at her. “Why are you doing this to me?” Both his face and his voice were stripped of the perfect photo-op expressions and inflections Howard Anselm and the mandarins at Gravenhurst had indoctrinated him in. The imperial mask had slipped off his face and, as at the end of a Greek tragedy, the sorrowful bare bones beneath were revealed. For the first time he was naked to her.

  “Cam, I love you,” he said like a besotted Montague.

  She crouched down in front of him. “Bill, you are the president of the United States. You’re married. You have two beautiful children.”

  “One of whom knows about us,” he said miserably.

  “What?” Camilla said, like a Capulet. “Who?”

  “Who do you think? My genius daughter, Charlie.” He looked at her beseechingly. “She knows I’m a bad horse, Cam. She’s never going to bet on me again.”

  Camilla shook her head. “You don’t know that, Bill. She’s young; you still have time to make things right.”

  “But it’s you I want, Cam. Only you.”

  “But your wife—”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “Maggie and I haven’t said three meaningful words to each other in ten months. And as for sex—”

  “That’s enough, Bill.”

  This was more than Camilla had bargained for, more than she wanted to hear. For many reasons, she did not want to be embroiled in Magnus’s sexual angst. For one thing, she knew it would never end. In a week, a month or two, he’d become infatuated with someone else and cheat on her. For another, Camilla had made her decision to put as much space between her and the Washington Beltway as humanly possible. This was her last brief; she was damned if she was going to allow Bill to rope her into another.

  To this end, she rose, twisting away from his outstretched arms and grasping fingers.

  “Come on, Cam,” he pleaded. “You can’t leave me like this.”

  Involuntarily, she glanced down. The long bulge of the presidential phallus was all too visible. As she stepped past him, Magnus’s hand almost grasped her ankle. But he had used that trick on her before, and she was ready for it, high-stepping like a horse at dressage. His fingers closed around air, and he groaned in his misery.

  “Cam, where are you going? Don’t leave me. I need you. I can’t sleep, I can’t think. You’re all I want.”

  “Bill, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “You think not?” His voice had a belligerent edge to it, like a child who realizes he’s not getting what he wants. “I’ll give you anything you want. Anything. Just name it. I’m the president; I can do anything for you.”

  With her hand on the doorknob, she turned and looked back over her shoulder. “I know you won’t believe this, Bill, but there’s nothing you have that I want.”

  It was the perfect line, preparatory to the perfect exit. The only problem was when she opened the door she smelled a familiar odor. Her mind just had time to register POTUS’s three Secret Service agents on the corridor floor before she was struck in the chest.

  She reeled back, lost her balance, and fell. Her heart and her mind seemed to beat a vicious tattoo like a war drum. Then she passed into unconsciousness.

  58

  It 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 be
come 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.

  59

  He 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.