Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (9 page)

K
halifa Al Mohannadi,
the NTCC colonel, was not much of an office man, Hassim had told Sara. In fact, he was the antithesis of a paper-pushing bureaucrat, even though paper-pushing was the very heart of his job description. Three sergeants, specifically hired for the purpose, worked more or less around the clock in eight-hour shifts to dispense with the mountains of paperwork that daily flooded his office. After a week of being bothered by a fly-swarm of calls asking for his approval on this matter or that, he equipped each of them with a rubber stamp of his own signature he had had manufactured to employ in his absence. Now his days and nights were free of bureaucratic annoyances, leaving him free to pursue his own interests.

These included gambling and golf. Given that gambling was illegal in Qatar, Hassim said that the colonel often flew to Dubai to indulge that particular passion. But since most of his time was spent in Doha, Khalifa could most reliably be found at the Doha Golf Club.

Naturally enough, the two courses were not open at night, but the clubhouse, Hassim informed Sara, was always ablaze with light and local luminaries, who dined there and afterward enjoyed a cigar or two on the expansive terrace that overlooked the championship course’s eighteenth hole. In fact, evening was the best time to catch Khalifa, Hassim had said, as his parting bit of product. The colonel loved the clubhouse best when it was filled with Doha’s elite, when his very passing through the rooms caused ripples of conversation, when the eyes of beautiful young women turned in his direction. The colonel was a bachelor, and wielded his single status like a fisherman’s net to snare a new woman every week or, if the spirit moved him to keep one around long enough, every month.

Sara spied him the moment the solid Thai teak doors were opened for her and she entered a vast space—one of many—clad in polished gypsum and marble. A central fountain cooled the air, and beyond she could make out not one but two interior waterfalls cascading down walls of hand-hewn gypsum bricks.

The colonel cut a striking figure—slim and tall, with the well-turned legs of a fencer. His shoulders were square, his back ramrod straight. His curling black hair gleamed in the light, thick, luxuriant, with attractive speckles of gray here and there on the sides. Even while talking to a handsome young man, his deep-set coffee-colored eyes worked the room, skipping from one woman to the next, searching for what Sara intuited was a new conquest.

Then his gaze fell on her, and she almost staggered under the assault. Never before had she felt a man so completely undress her with his eyes. Her initial horror turned to anger as her sense of being violated came to the fore.

And yet, the field agent in her taking over, she walked directly toward him, returning his too frank gaze with a silent defiance that she suspected he would find intriguing.

Her instincts were, as usual, impeccable. She watched with the kind of fascination a mongoose has for a cobra as he broke off his conversation, excused himself, and strode confidently toward her. He wore a Valentino suit over a cream-colored silk shirt open too far down his chest. As for herself, she had gone shopping at a number of Doha’s best boutiques before deciding on a simple yet elegant spaghetti-strap Vera Wang dress in deep blue shantung silk with, in deference to the religious culture, a short jacket over it to cover her upper arms and shoulders. A slit up the side showed just enough leg, in her considered judgment, to be provocative without looking slutty. For that reason, too, she had chosen pumps with a medium heel.

“Good evening,” he said. “My name is Khalifa Al Mohannadi.”

She took his hand. His grip was dry and strong, just like his voice.

“Martine Heur,” Sara said in a perfect French Canadian accent.

“Welcome to the Doha Golf Club.”

“Are you the owner?”

Khalifa chuckled. “But, no, madam, you have mistaken me.”

“I was told the owner was tall, slim, and handsome.”

“And instead you have found me.” He looked pleased. “Shall I take you to the owner? I know him well.”

“No,” Sara said, eyeing him. “Not now.”

He smiled winningly. His teeth were strong and white. “Would you care to take a drink with me?”

“I’d like that.”

With a courtly nod, he led her through the room to a smaller one fitted out like an Arabian salon. Plush sofas, chairs, and loveseats were scattered about, each grouping with a low table and, it seemed, its own server. Sara chose a chair, and Khalifa sat across from her with the table as a barrier between them, as Sara wished. A server approached them.

“Have you eaten?” he asked. “The club has a full menu.”

“Tea will do me, thank you.” At this early stage, it would have been a mistake to get into a long evening with him. Leave ’em wanting more, her father had taught her.

The colonel ordered tea for both of them, then sat back, elbows on the chair arms, fingers steepled meditatively. They were the long fingers of a pianist or a strangler. The nails were neatly groomed, she saw, and gleaming. He had a small scar just below the outer corner of his left eye. It was white on his otherwise dusky face, almost livid.

“What, may I ask, brings you to Doha?” Khalifa said.

“Diamonds,” Sara replied. “I buy and sell them.”

“Where are you based?”

“Mainly Amsterdam.”

“Amsterdam.” He raised his head to stare at the ceiling. “Such a beautiful city.”

“Do you know it well?”

He lowered his eyes to her. “Not well. No.”

“Pity.” She was aware that he was putting her through a light interrogation. She didn’t know whether to be alarmed or flattered. Perhaps he did this with all his potential conquests, although, interestingly, he had failed to mention his military rank or that he was in the military at all. “You should return sometime.”

The tea was presented on a chased silver tray; the service of pot, two cups and saucers, sugar bowl, creamer, and a small plate with an artful fan of lemon slices was exquisite. The server bent to pour, but Khalifa waved him away.

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.

K
halifa 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 point 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.

She peed in a stall, one among many, then went to the sink to wash her hands. Instead of a liquid in a dispenser, the soap, small and pink, came individually wrapped. She plucked one from a bowl, tore off the cellophane. She was about to put her hands under the faucet when she realized that the soap was in the shape of a shell. Pink as the inside of an ear, she thought. She turned the soap over, and there, imprinted on it, was a tiny gold shell, just like on the resin shell she had picked up in Hassim’s living room.

The drizzle had turned to mist, blotting out what would have been the sunrise. There was light on the fields of the Dairy, but that light was as gray and wan as an old wedding dress. The fields were wet with dew, the horses’ hooves obscured by mist pouring over the hills like watered-down milk.

Hunter had led Camilla not to the ring, nor the oval racetrack, both of which were far behind them, but into the lowlands in the south reaches of the Dairy’s vast acreage. The two rode side by side, their mounts at an easy canter. They were accompanied only by birdcalls and the chirp of crickets, muffled and mysterious in the mist.

“What you have to understand, first of all,” Hunter said, “is that Howard Anselm is the most powerful man in D.C.”

“Come on,” Camilla said skeptically. “More powerful than POTUS?”

“What you have to understand, second of all, is that POTUS has a fatal flaw that must at all costs be kept from the public. He’s a serial offender.” Hunter turned her head, her eyes glittery in the misty morning half-light. “You weren’t the first, Camilla, and you won’t be the last. But because of your position, you’re for sure the most dangerous.”

“I would never do anything to hurt Bill’s reputation.”

“But there it is, you see. You called him ‘Bill.’ The president of the United States. No one calls Magnus ‘Bill,’ unless—”

“I get it,” Camilla said with an uncomfortable upsurge in her heart rate. “But that’s over now. Bill—POTUS and I had it out before I left.”

“You told him it was over.”

“I did.”

“But here’s the thing, Camilla, he’s POTUS. It’s over only when he says it’s over.”

Camilla looked out over the partially obscured hills. “That’s a depressing thought.”

“Maybe, then, it’s a good thing you’re on your way out of the country.”

“Not if what you say about Anselm is the truth.”

“Of course, but I’m going to protect you from him.”

“Tell me more about Anselm.”

Hunter eyed her critically. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

They had entered the farthest reaches of the Dairy’s south boundary. Beyond were hidden fortifications and security measures best left unseen. The two women wheeled their horses around, heading west. Neither was ready to return to the inner precincts yet.

“Howard has been around Washington all his life,” Hunter said. “His father was a senator, his mother is a state supreme court justice. Both sides of his family are in the center of the Beltway power grid. Howard was snatched right out of Yale into Gravenhurst, D.C.’s most powerful conservative think tank. Its members include some of the most influential politicans, economists, industrialists, judges, and image makers in the country.”

“Yes, I know. But its origins and aims are as mysterious as those of the Masons.”

Hunter nodded. “That was where Anselm became aware of Magnus. He arranged a meeting. He saw something he liked. A lot. Howard guided Magnus’s every brilliant political move. And he protected Magnus against the man’s own worst instincts. Magnus is a great politician, no doubt there, but he’s as perpetually randy as a satyr.

“At first Howard tried to curb him of his habit. But that only led to a disaster Howard just managed to contain. After that, he was forced to change tactics.”

“Cleaning up after Magnus.”

Hunter nodded. “No other choice.”

“And that’s where you come in.”

“You know Anselm well enough to know he isn’t going to get shit on his shoes. He hires other people to rake out the stables.”