The Bourne Ascendancy (Jason Bourne 12)

“Levi briefed me the moment I arrived. How did you escape the massacre?”

Bourne told her.

“You and Soraya—”

“Worked together,” he finished for her.

“And you were close.”

“That was a long time ago,” he said, “in another lifetime.”

“Are they hurt?”

“Not so far as I could see.” He had deliberately omitted telling of his torture at El Ghadan’s hands. She already had enough on her plate.

She stood no more than a hand’s breadth away from him. She could feel his breath on her cheek, that familiar masculine scent she so adored. She wanted to ask if El Ghadan had hurt him, but immediately she checked herself. They had had their two weeks’ reunion following her stint in the hospital, and a more kind and gentle man she could not imagine. But now, a year later, they were both at work in the field. Moreover, in a red zone, teeming with the enemy. It would not do to be running on emotion. She also knew that if he sensed any sign of personal emotion he would take it as a flaw in her character and be repelled. That was a thought too terrible to contemplate.

“Okay, then.” She nodded. “So we go from here.”

* * *

“The second lesson to learn about horses,” Hunter said as they walked Starfall out of the paddock toward the empty ring, “is just how stupid they are. Forget Trigger or whatever other ideas Hollywood has put into your head. Horses are herd animals. They need to be led. If they sense you’re afraid or reluctant to take charge, chaos will ensue.”

“Chaos?”

“They’ll do whatever the hell they want. Stop, crop the grass, amble along, anything but what you want them to do. They’re lazy beasts, at heart.” Hunter had a voice as hard and raspy as the callused palm of her hand, as if she smoked three packs a day or had had some surgical procedure on her throat. “So the idea is intent.” She smacked the small English saddle with the flat of her hand. “Before you mount the horse know what you want him to do, where you want him to go, and at what pace—walk, trot, canter, gallop.” Her gray eyes shot Camilla a look. They looked as if she had been through innumerable battles—not weary as much as wise. “Got that?”

Camilla nodded.

“This horse likes you. I felt it from the moment you two met,” Hunter said. “He’s a gelding, powerful, fast—not a workhorse. See by his sleekness, his long, well-formed legs? He’s a racer. Exactly the kind of horse you’ll be riding in the field.” She patted Starfall’s flank fondly. “We’ll start you off on him, then graduate you to a horse that won’t be so fond of you. You’ll need proficiency on all of ’em. Where you’re headed you won’t get to choose.”

Camilla felt her heart thudding wildly in her chest. “You’re going to teach me how to win? Really?”

Hunter looked at her in a way that made Camilla believe she could see right through her to the fear.

“First things first, darlin’. Now c’mon, mount this beast. And remember, from the left, always from the left.”

* * *

The moment the door closed in his face, Levi Blum looked left and right down the alley. Finding he was alone, he drew out a small black box, placed it against the door. He fitted himself with a wireless earbud, switched on the Bluetooth connection, and began to fiddle with the dial on the front of the box. It took only moments to get the electronic ear focused on the two voices in the room beyond the door. He switched on the recording device hidden within the electronic ear.

“The problem is El Ghadan. How the hell does he know so much about you?” Rebeka’s voice came through loud and clear.

“That’s what I have to find out.” Now Bourne’s voice.

Rebeka: “You have less than seven days to carry out the mission. How can you—?”

Bourne: “Let me worry about that.”

Rebeka: “About the mission: You’re not actually going to kill the president of the United States?”

Bourne: “What choice do I have? El Ghadan was all too clear about what he’ll do to Soraya and Sonya if I don’t.”

Silence for several long beats. Blum, feeling pins and needles in his left leg, shifted from one foot to the other.

Rebeka: “You have another choice, you know.”

Bourne: “I don’t.”

Rebeka: “You could find them and—”

Bourne: “El Ghadan has already taken care of that possibility.”

Rebeka: “I know, but…”

Another silence.

Bourne: “I know what you’re implying. Tell me this, if it was Aaron who was being held captive, what would you do?”

Rebeka: “I’d do what needs to be done. Mossad does not negotiate with terrorists.”

Bourne: “And if in the process he died?”

Rebeka: “Then so be it.”

Bourne: “There is a two-year-old child involved.”

Rebeka: “I understand that.”

Bourne: “You are as remorseless as the God of Abraham.”

Rebeka: “That was how I was raised. That is how I need to be. My people are given no choice. Are you surprised?”

Bourne: “Not in the least.”

A third silence. No, not quite a silence. Blum tried dialing in more closely, but all he seemed to hear was what might be the sliding of fabric against fabric, or possibly something else altogether. A hissing like the imagined conversation between two serpents.

Then, abruptly, Rebeka spoke: “That’s it, then.”

Her voice was louder, closer to the door, and Blum hurriedly detached the box, plucked the bud from his ear, jammed them both deep in the pocket of his trousers.

Not a moment too soon. The door swung open and Rebeka emerged, Bourne several paces behind her. Their business completed, they exchanged no words of farewell.

“This way,” Rebeka said, leading Blum down the alley in the opposite direction Bourne took.

“Do we have an assignment?” he said, hurrying to keep up with her.

“Yeah,” she said tersely. “Keep the fuck out of the way.”

8

Everything go all right?” Zizzy said when Bourne climbed into the shimmering leather and chrome interior of the Gulfstream G650.

Bourne seated himself across from Zizzy. “Nothing has gone right since I got here.”

Noting his grim expression, Zizzy said, “Should I be alarmed at Mossad’s presence in my city?”

“No one’s planning an invasion or a coup,” Bourne said shortly.

“Well, that’s a relief.” Zizzy grunted, picked up a phone, and called for the Gulfstream to get under way. “Strap yourself in.”

Bourne sat back, closed his eyes. The jet engines’ whine rose in pitch, the brakes came off, and the plane taxied, turned onto the head of the runway.

“You know, I’m getting worried about you,” Zizzy said, after takeoff.

“Who’s your contact at the ministry?” Bourne said, as if he hadn’t heard.

Zizzy regarded Bourne for a moment, as if trying to find the fly in the ointment. “A pig, that’s who,” he said, apparently giving up. “Bugger looks like one and acts like one. He’s as rich as Croesus, as degenerate as Caligula. Drinks in secret, and don’t get me started on his harem of young girls and boys.”

Bourne opened his eyes. “I didn’t know you were so indiscriminate about your friends, Zizzy.”

Zizzy laughed. “Business often makes for uncomfortable bedfellows. And believe me when I tell you that Nazim Hafiz is very good for my business. He knows how to keep my deals running smoothly and without interruption, no matter how shitty things get in Damascus.”

“What deals would those be, Zizzy?”

“You know perfectly well: platinum, palladium, my usual strategic metals. But I’ve more recently planted my flag in titanium—cars, planes—tough and lightweight. Titanium’s the future, Jason.”

Bourne swallowed, cleared his ears. “How does Hafiz feel about westerners?”

“Hates them like poison

,” Zizzy admitted. “But you are my friend. He’ll make an exception.”

“I’m not going to take the chance.”

Zizzy flagged down an attendant, ordered sweet Moroccan tea for them both. “Please! Jason. He will have no choice.”

“Of course he’ll have a choice. People always have choices.”

Zizzy looked at Bourne queerly. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t. It’s all part of the game.”

“This isn’t a game.”

Bourne said this with such force that Zizzy looked taken aback. “What’s gotten into you, my friend?”

Bourne stared at Zizzy mutely.

“For the love of Allah, this is me who’s asking.”

Bourne looked away for a moment; when he turned back he looked stricken. “A year or so ago someone close to me died. I tried to save her, but couldn’t. After that…I don’t know, this shadow life seemed to lose its appeal. I was cajoled back with the prospect of revenge on the man who had her killed. But after that…” He shrugged. “I went into business for myself as a Blacksmith.”

“Until this dire threat reared its head.” The tea came, was poured into two narrow cups of colored glass woven with gold filigree. Zizzy handed one glass to Bourne, took up the other. He sipped meditatively. “You know, my friend, there is always going to be someone or something that will bring you back into what you call the shadow life. This is the way of it. You’ve lived so long in the margins you would not be comfortable in the light, living the rest of your days among civilians.”

“These civilians,” Bourne said, “have lives too.”

Zizzy leaned forward. “They exist in another world altogether, a place that can no longer support you. No point in fooling yourself, my friend. Neither of us would find happiness there.”

Bourne considered a moment; he seemed distinctly uncomfortable continuing the discussion. “I don’t want to be introduced to Hafiz as a westerner.”

Zizzy spread his hands. “What? You don’t trust me to handle him?”

“Why take the chance,” Bourne said, “when we don’t have to?”

* * *

In another half hour Bourne was asleep. He dreamed of Soraya and Sonya. They were in the water—a shallow part of a vast sea. Soraya was holding Sonya to keep her chest and head above the surface, but every once in a while a wave would swamp them. Sonya sputtered, then laughed, turning her head this way and that to see what had hit them and where it had gone.

In the manner of dreams, Bourne was not in the water with them—he was an observer. The sunlight that illuminated them, indeed, that sparked the tops of the waves, did not touch him. He was in shadow—permanent shadow. And even from within the dream he understood this much: Soraya, who had lived in the shadows with him, had chosen to leave, she had chosen to move into the sunlight. She had become a civilian.

The instant he realized the barrier that had come between them, he saw an enormous shadow cutting through the water. It was huge, this shadow, like a drowned ship. But it wasn’t a ship.

The thing was making directly toward mother and child. Soraya and Sonya were in mortal danger. Bourne tried to call out to Soraya, but either his voice box was paralyzed or she couldn’t hear him from the other side of the barrier. Then he tried to get to her, but even though he saw the scene before him with perfect clarity, he could not reach them. He was the only one aware of the danger. He tried to will himself into the water, to move heaven and earth in a last-ditch attempt to save them, but it was to no avail.

Then the shadow was upon them, Sonya’s face twisted in the same terror and fear he had seen in her when her father was shot in the head, except it wasn’t Sonya and she wasn’t being held by Soraya. He was watching the demise of Sara and the little girl that was their dream child.

At that precise instant he jerked violently awake. Ignoring Zizzy’s curious gaze, he rose, went unsteadily up the aisle to the toilet, where he splashed water on his sweat-streaked face.

For a long time, he stared at himself in the mirror. It occurred to him then that he’d been happier as Minister Qabbani, despite the brevity of his time in the disguise. Being someone else, someone other than Jason Bourne, seemed peculiarly appealing, and he had to wonder whether that was why he had told Zizzy he wanted to meet Hafiz in disguise.

After a time, he returned to his seat, where he was subjected to Zizzy’s concerned scrutiny.

Zizzy handed him a glass of ice water, watched him gulp it down. “So she’s gotten that deep under your skin,” he observed.

Bourne put the glass down. “Who?”

“The woman you tried to save; the woman who was killed.”

“Why are you so concerned?”

“We’re heading into a war zone—do I have to remind you? My life is on the line as well as yours. If you’re having nightmares that make you cry out in your sleep, I could easily become worried that your mind isn’t focused correctly.”

“It’s nothing. Forget it.”

“Carrying a dead person on your back isn’t nothing, my friend. I should know.”

Bourne remembered now. Zizzy’s sister had fallen in love with a Danish engineer. Their older brother had gotten the engineer kicked out of Qatar, then he had killed their sister, for which he had been hailed as a true enforcer of Islam. Zizzy had been so incensed that he had broken off all ties with his family and to this day had not seen or spoken to any member. He had not gone to his father’s funeral or, several years later, his mother’s.

“On the day she discovered our brother had found out about her liaison, my sister came to me in private,” Zizzy had once told Bourne. “‘I love him,’ she told me. ‘I want to marry him. He has promised to take me away from this godforsaken country.’ Tears leaked out of her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. ‘I want my own life. Only you can understand this. Brother, I beg you to help us. I beg you to shield me from what I know is coming.’ And what did I do? I went about my business, hid my head in the sand, telling myself that our brother could never do such a barbaric thing, that that was not the kind of family I had been born into. Then, before I knew it, it was over. She was dead and her lover was gone. ‘Now it is as if nothing happened,’ my brother said to me. ‘I have erased the shame our sister brought upon this family.’”

Bourne asked now, “Have you been to your brother’s grave?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

Zizzy’s brother had died under mysterious circumstances two years after he had killed their sister. It was unclear to Bourne whether Zizzy had murdered him. He had never asked and Zizzy had certainly never volunteered the information.

“I dug the grave myself,” Zizzy added, as if suddenly struck by the memory. “That was more than enough.”

There was a silence between them, thickening like glue.

“I should never have questioned you about the woman,” Zizzy said at length. It seemed clear he had realized Bourne’s motivation for bringing up his brother. “That was wrong of me.”

“Forget it,” Bourne said.

Zizzy stared at Bourne for a moment. “I did it,” he said so softly Bourne had to strain to hear him. “I killed him.” He looked Bourne straight in the eye. “I had to. I hadn’t protected my sister in life. I had to protect her in death.”

“I understand, Zizzy.”

Zizzy let out a long-held breath. It was like the scrape of the desert wind over an endless ocean of sand. “With what you did for that woman I knew you would.”

He leaned forward, held out his hand. “Are we good?”

Bourne took it in his. “Good as gold.”

* * *

Blum breathed a sigh of relief when he and Rebeka parted company. Something about her made him question himself, as if her presence caused him to peer into his own insidious nature. That was all nonsense, he told himself as he turned the corner and entered a crowded marketplace. His own guilt was imbuing her with supernatural powers.

It was natural, his handler had warned him, to feel guilt, even

remorse, at what he was doing. The important thing was to keep those feelings in perspective, to remember the account that had been opened for him in a venerable Gibraltar bank. Each and every month an agreed-upon amount was deposited—money that when it reached a certain level would become what he thought of as his trajectory money: the means by which he could escape the constant pressures and terrors of his current double life. His handler had generously provided the scenario: Blum basking in the sun of some tropical South Pacific island, a fat joint in one hand, a lissome young thing in the other, with nothing on the horizon but to eat, drink, swim, sleep, get high, and fuck. “All this can be yours,” his handler had said. But what had come to Blum was product useful to Mossad gleaned from his handler and, very slowly, a local network he had cobbled together, making sure of cutouts along the way so no one member knew of the other’s existence. The problem had been sending the product home. Being watched so closely he had yet to find a way to do it.

Passing between a silk merchant and a coppersmith, he pulled out the electronic ear he had used at the diamond cutter’s. The audio data was recorded onto the phone’s 64GB micro SD card. This was the moment when his life split in two. Minor product was one thing; it kept his handler at bay. But this was major. If he failed to deliver this product he would immediately come under suspicion, but if he did send it he would be betraying the people he worked for, the country that had raised and nurtured him. Perhaps this moment was inevitable: the moment when a vital piece of intel would fall into his hands. There were two paths to follow now, and he must step out onto one or the other.

The market spun on around him, people going about their daily lives, shopping, chatting, laughing, even. He felt cut off from them, as if he were living in another dimension. He could see and hear them, but he stood firmly outside them, apart—he was Other, and the sheer loneliness was overwhelming.

He had been fed this fantasy of nirvana from the moment of his recruitment, but was it how he really felt now that he had begun to betray his country? There was another way out, but it did not involve wild riches, sun-splashed beaches, and bikinied women flitting around him like butterflies. It was a darker road, filled with peril, and perhaps death.