The Bourne Ascendancy

  “When?”

  The taxi had stopped. Bourne leaned across Zizzy, opened the door for him. “When I get back.”

  * * *

  It was no wonder Zizzy had never heard of the Golden Horn. It was hidden away in a shattered neighborhood, in the basement of a bombed-out metalwork factory. No one was around to see Bourne clamber out of the taxi and pick his way across cracked concrete and tufts of weeds that, like jihadists, were too tenacious to die out.

  Spotlights lit the night. The tramp of foot soldiers on the move soiled the silence of the all but abandoned neighborhood. Small-arms fire started up, at first short, sporadic bursts, then longer, sustained ones that made it clear the shooters had found their targets. A boom! and the ground shook, and a plume of black smoke rose lazily into the night sky, blotting out lights, turning the city darker.

  Bourne had been told to enter the wreckage of the factory from the west. He could see why: All the other entrances were either blocked by brickfalls or had been obliterated entirely. A large truck lay on its side, like an extinct dinosaur. Firebombs had brought it down, tossed it into the air like so much confetti. The hulk was as bare as a skeleton picked clean by jackals. Tires, headlights, radio, steering column, engine were all gone. As he passed, a brace of yellow dogs that had made it their home reared their feral heads, bared their teeth at him, and barked hysterically.

  The factory’s interior was a maze of corridors, half-hallways, offices without ceilings, sometimes without walls as well. Rubble lay strewn everywhere, and not a soul in sight. Behind him, the sky lit up a lurid red, then came the whump! and subsequent percussion of another rocket landing.

  He found the interior staircase. Apart from an initial fall of concrete and glass, kept in place as camouflage, it had been swept clean. He descended to a square landing from which the stairs turned back on themselves. As soon as he started down again, he felt the thump-thump-thump of the music’s electronic backbeat. Drums kicked in, then the wisp of a melody. A heavily amplified and reverbed voice started to scream what were likely meant to be lyrics. On the other hand, the singer might have been in his death throes.

  The area below him was as luridly lit as the agonized sky above the city. A series of red bulbs illuminated a concrete landing only slightly larger than the one above and a metal door so dented it looked like it had taken a beating from a charging rhino.

  Standing in front of the door were two shadows, smoking. Hooded eyes regarded him. As he headed for the door, Bourne heard the click of a hammer being cocked. One of the shadows pointed a revolver at him. It looked old enough to have come from the Russian Revolution.

  “Business?” the armed shadow said. Either he was thirteen or he was a natural soprano.

  “Meeting Furuque.” Furuque was the name of the sniper, divulged to Bourne under extreme duress.

  “Who?” said the armed shadow.

  “Furuque isn’t here,” his companion said at precisely the same time.

  “Shit!” one of them exclaimed.

  “Get your story straight, boys,” Bourne said. “I know he’s here. I just spoke with him.” He brushed past them and opened the door so quickly they had no time to answer, let alone stop him.

  Instantly he was slammed by a wall of sound, amplified to an earsplitting level. The place was packed with pogo-jumping teenagers. The unmistakable scent of pot mingled with the reek of sweat. Somewhere along the long slab of bar to his left liquor was being poured. In a country of strict rules, it was clear there were none here.

  Bourne moved through the crowd. Again, patience was going to be his best friend. It was impossible to proceed quickly through a room jammed wall to wall with writhing people. He cut the space into quarters, then into eighths and sixteenths, looking for Furuque, methodically eliminating people in ones, twos, and threes.

  Twenty sweat-stained minutes later, he was nowhere. He was on his way to the bar—the only section he hadn’t checked out—when the door to the men’s lavatory swung open. Two young men emerged, hand in hand, the afterglow of sex surrounding them like an air bubble. Beyond them, just before the door swung shut, Bourne saw Furuque. He was standing alongside the line of sinks, half turned away from the door, talking to two earnest-looking young men wearing knitted Muslim kufi hats. Bourne pushed the door open little by little until he could see the trio again.

  He entered, went to the first sink, turned on the taps. As he washed his hands, he strained to listen to what Furuque was saying. The sniper was speaking very slowly and distinctly in order to be heard over the amplified ruckus.

  Bourne heard only snatches: “disbelievers…fighting in the cause of taghut…” Taghut was the Islamic word for anything worshipped other than Allah—in other words, Satan. “It is the Quran that will remain unchanged, preserved for all time by its holy protectors, after all the other so-called divine books have turned to dust…The Jew, the American, the infidel has caused expulsion, destruction, and devastation…blood pouring out of Palestine must be avenged…calling you to Islam…complete submission to his laws…To right the injustices, we must pledge ourselves to death and more death until we are free of…”

  Furuque was in the full throes of his jihadist manifesto, oblivious to anyone around him save the two young men. Bourne was about to grab him, when the world crashed in. The music screamed to an abrupt halt, replaced immediately by shouted orders and the tramp of military boots massing at the edge of the dance floor. In an instant, semiautomatic fire began just beyond the lavatory door. Cries of shock, shrieks of agony, the imprecations of an aborted counterattack were met only by a withering spray of bullets.

  The sounds of mass hysteria could be heard beyond the closed door. Then the door was abruptly wrenched open by the stoned and sex-besotted teenagers racing out of the line of stalls as if their lives depended on it. And it did, but like lemmings they were racing directly into the jaws of death that awaited them on the bloody, corpse-strewn dance floor. The sobbing of the shocked and wounded rose, the backbeat of a new form of music, mechanized and terrible.

  The Syrian army had found them and, true to its nature, was determined to leave no one alive.

  18

  Khalifa’s powerboat, a beautifully sleek thirty-three-foot pleasure craft with a water-level aft platform for diving, was waiting for them at the head of the artificial river that had brought them to Red Pearl.

  As she was pulled aboard, Sara finally understood that the trajectory of her investigation in Doha had been preordained, that she had been led to this moment from the instant she stepped over Hassim’s threshold.

  And in fact, here was Hassim himself, because this powerboat belonged to him, not to Colonel Khalifa. He did not speak to her, could not even meet her gaze. He busied himself piloting the boat down the river and out into freer water.

  It was no surprise to her that they were not headed back to Doha. Not yet, anyway. Certain matters had to be resolved, and she had no doubt the colonel was going to do his best to resolve them.

  The Persian Gulf was vast, its dark waters here and there spotted with oil tankers lumbering to or from the straits that led out into the Gulf of Oman and thence to the Arabian Sea. This was the major route for bringing Middle Eastern oil to the West. Out here, there was no one to see them, no small craft to intercept them or question the powerboat being in these waters. And if there were, the two men aboard would only have to exert a fraction of their authority to exempt themselves from official scrutiny.

  “Please sit,” Khalifa ordered, leading her to a white vinyl cushion. Turning to Hassim, he said, “Slow it down now. We’re in the deep water.”

  Sara knew what that meant. They were going to drown her.

  To her surprise, Khalifa sat down beside her, as if the two of them had embarked on a nighttime pleasure cruise just as he’d falsely promised at Red Pearl.

  “It’s peaceful out here, no?” He lifted an arm in a sweeping gesture. “We’re cut off from everyone and everything. No one need ever know wha
t will transpire here tonight.” He smiled at her. “Every word, every deed…Everything will be lost, hidden, drowned for all time. As far as the three of us are concerned, tonight will become a mystery, a page torn out of history and destroyed.”

  He turned his head, spoke again to Hassim. “That’s enough now. Power down and drop anchor.”

  He rose, opened one of the storage lockers, dragged out a set of thick chains. Sara shuddered. She could already feel the cold links being wrapped around her like an industrial cocoon. With that weight, she would plummet a long way into the black depths of the gulf. No chance to escape; no way out. She crossed one leg over the other, bent down to grope for the gold Star of David attached to the thin gold necklace wound around her left ankle. Just the touch of it comforted her, but it was cold comfort. She had nearly died once; she had no desire to repeat the process to its conclusion.

  Having turned off the engine, Hassim unbolted the anchor and heaved it over the side. The boat rocked gently. Apart from the slap of the waves against the hull, all was silent. Not a single bird flew overhead; all the gulls were tucked in safely for the night.

  More than I can say for myself, Sara thought. Lucky gulls!

  The horizon was suddenly lit up with blinding electricity, but it was only heat lightning. No sound accompanied it, making it seem unreal, as if it belonged to another world. In the same vein, Sara could feel herself standing apart from her body as her mind retreated from what she knew was going to happen.

  The end of all things, at least for her.

  Hassim turned from his chores. “What now, Khalifa?”

  The colonel smacked his hands together to rid them of the thin layer of muck from the chains, which were old, rusty, looking like they had been salvaged from a bombed-out garage.

  “Now,” he said, drawing a CZ-99 semiautomatic pistol, “we deal with people who cannot be trusted.”

  Colonel Khalifa pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  In the chaos, Bourne lunged for Furuque, but he was thwarted by the flood of young men attempting to flee the lavatory. All were in a panic—all except Furuque, who, slithering like a serpent, managed to reach the rear wall of the lavatory, break out the window with an elbow, and crawl through in a clatter of glass shards.

  Semiautomatic fire was now a steady crackle on the other side of the door. Cries and shouts were intermittently audible, but these eventually fell away, then ceased altogether.

  Bourne grabbed one of the two young men Furuque had been haranguing and, pulling him by the back of his shirt, dragged him against the lessening tide, toward the back wall. Boosting him through the window, he leaped up, quickly following him.

  They found themselves in a narrow concrete canyon that had once been used to stack crates but was now thick with rubble. On the far wall was a metal ladder leading up to ground level. The kid headed for it, but Bourne pushed him back, flattened him against the wall of the club. Just in time, too, as a powerful handheld searchlight probed the canyon, picked up the shattered window, then the ladder, and, with a raised shout from just behind it, winked out. The sound of pounding boots slowly receded, replaced by the grinding of gears as various heavy vehicles pulled out.

  When the night had returned to an uneasy silence, Bourne signaled to the young man. They picked their way across the blasted ground. He went up the ladder first, poking his head over the top, taking in the immediate environment. It was as deserted as it had been when he had arrived. No one would know what had taken place just below—unless one was unlucky enough to enter the underground club, strewn with the dead and dying. They were just kids. Now their short lives had been snuffed out.

  Looking over his shoulder, he gestured for the recruit to follow him. He gained the surface, reached down, hauled the young man up the last several rungs.

  They crouched in the scraggly tufts of grass for long moments. Bourne listened, watched a dog snuffle its way among the rubble, then lift its hind leg, urinate on a lump of concrete. It scented, turned its narrow head, its yellow eyes, in their direction. It growled, then padded on, forgetting all about them.

  But someone else remembered, and he came at them now out of the shadows, striking Bourne a full body blow. They were both cast backward to the edge of the concrete canyon.

  Bourne smelled him, felt him, saw him at last in the feeble light dribbling out of the lavatory window below them.

  It was Furuque, the sniper.

  * * *

  The roar of the pistol was momentarily deafening.

  Sara lurched to one side, but it was Hassim who received a bullet through the heart, not her.

  “Good God!” she cried. “Why did you kill him?”

  “A man who can be turned is a man who cannot be trusted.” The colonel holstered his pistol. “A trader in secrets who cannot be trusted must be killed.”

  Sara remembered Khalifa’s discourse at dinner on how he divided people into three categories. She couldn’t say that he hadn’t warned her. It was simply that she had been too out of touch to get it. Silently, she berated herself for her stupidity, vowed it would never happen again. Her operational edge was coming back, fast. But was it already too late?

  He came and sat with her again, but this time she was acutely aware of the gun in his armpit. She watched Hassim’s body roll back and forth, with each pass spreading more blood across the deck. Khalifa appeared indifferent to the mess.

  “So,” he said with a heavy sigh, “there is the matter of what to do with you.”

  Sara almost said, What do you mean? But that would have been stupid, and she had already made enough stupid mistakes this evening. “What did Hassim tell you?”

  “That you’re a Jew.” Khalifa’s broad shoulders lifted and fell. “That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”

  To these fanatics, she thought bitterly, it always was.

  The colonel’s gaze turned toward Hassim. “You know, this man would still be alive now if not for you.”

  “You shot him.”

  “Because you turned him into a spy.”

  “He did that himself.”

  “Did he?” The colonel fairly spat out the words. “Get up now and drag him aft.”

  Sara did as she was told. Khalifa pushed with his shoe while she hauled Hassim’s corpse onto the aft platform.

  “Now get back here.”

  There was no question of jumping ship; this far out she’d never survive. She did contemplate rushing Khalifa, but that was precisely what he wanted her to do; she could see the wicked desire in his eyes. She was damned if she was going to make this any easier for him.

  “I never used coercion,” she said now.

  “Of course not. You people never do.” He pursed his sensual blood-darkened lips as he shoved her back onto the bench. “Filthy Jews! You’ve taken everything from us, and then, as if that weren’t enough of an affront, you brought the Americans to our doorstep to kill our men, women, and children. The Americans are like an infection, crawling into everything, corrupting it, debasing it.” He hawked onto the deck, his spittle turning pink as it mingled with Hassim’s blood. “I’ve hated you Jews all my life, but never as much as I do at this moment.”

  “Too bad for you.”

  The colonel grunted. “I’m not the one who is about to die, Jewess.” He stood up abruptly, drew his gun. “Take off your clothes.”

  “I only get naked for gentlemen.”

  Khalifa dealt her a backhanded blow with the barrel of the gun. It was both casual and devastating, knocking her clear off the bench and onto her knees. The metal bit into her flesh cruelly, drawing blood. He unwound the short jacket from around her, flicked the straps off her shoulders.

  “And take it slow, rotate your hips.”

  “Really, Colonel, I’m one hundred percent kosher.” She righted herself, would not wipe the blood off her cheek. It dripped off her chin onto the dress. “I’m too pure for the likes of you.”

  Growling, he grabbed her elbow, his fingers
digging painfully into bone as he hauled her to her feet. He brandished the gun. “No more talk. Just do it.”

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?” Her eyes appeared luminescent as she glowered at him. “That seems preferable to whatever you have planned.”

  “Not if I put a bullet into your knees, one after another. I’ll shatter them, then go after your other joints. That is a long, slow, painful death, I can assure you.”

  Sara could imagine this wasn’t the first time he had made that same threat—or carried it out. She did nothing for a moment, to give herself one last bit of dignity. She stood still as a statue, her shoulders and back bare.

  “Now roll those hips,” Khalifa said. “Swivel them like you mean it.”

  “Your own private porno film.”

  “Snuff film is more like it.” He kissed the side of his pistol. “Your time pretending to be a lady is at an end. Get it going, filthy Jewess. You know how. You’re nothing more than an animal anyway.”

  With a sigh, she moved and the dress fell away from her torso, pooled onto her hips. The freshening wind caused her nipples to stiffen. With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she pushed the dress over her hips. It cascaded around her ankles.

  Now Khalifa could not disguise his lust. “No underwear.”

  “In this heat what’s the point?”

  She had meant to distract him, even for a moment, but she needn’t have bothered. Khalifa was no longer looking at her. She turned, following his gaze aft.

  She gave a little scream as Hassim’s body jerked and shuddered, as if it had been reanimated. Was he still alive? It couldn’t be; he had taken a bullet through the heart. Then he jerked again, his body drawn farther aft, and she saw the triangular dorsal fin. Hassim lay on his side, his left arm in the water. The shark came up and snapped at the arm. The corpse was now half in the water, writhing as the enormous, prehistoric jaws ripped hunks of flesh from him. Blood spread in the water, attracting the shark’s brethren. Hassim was slowly being turned into chum.