The Bourne Ascendancy

  She had always been a beautiful woman—magnificent, even, being half Egyptian. It was strange, Bourne thought, how her extreme distress had made her even more beautiful—underscoring both the height and the winglike shape of her cheekbones, magnifying her large, uptilted coffee-colored eyes, which were brimming with a cold fury as well as terror for Lipkin-Renais and Sonya. He knew her well enough to understand that the safety of her family was paramount to her.

  Unlike Soraya, Lipkin-Renais had his head turned, looking at something or someone just out of camera range.

  In the stinking conference room, El Ghadan pointed a callused forefinger. “You know these people, yes?”

  Bourne struggled now to keep his attention on the nuances of El Ghadan’s voice.

  “Well, you know the woman, for certain. Soraya. Soraya Moore. She is co-director of Treadstone—or rather, she was.”

  It was clear that he was boasting of his knowledge, a beating of his chest like a male mountain gorilla, but beneath that was a curious gloating Bourne needed to know more about.

  “Odd that she chose the Frenchman over you, Bourne. But then perhaps not so odd. I daresay you’d make as poor a father as you would a husband.”

  The personal belittling was a sign of insecurity—even of fear, Bourne knew. What could El Ghadan be afraid of?

  “Speaking of which, have you met Sonya? What a creature! Children of her tender age are completely innocent, don’t you think, Bourne? And as beautiful as her mother, possibly more so. As she grows into womanhood, who knows?”

  Here it comes, Bourne thought.

  “If she grows into womanhood.”

  Bourne looked straight ahead, said nothing.

  “Take him,” El Ghadan ordered.

  A hood was thrown over Bourne’s head, and he was hustled along the death-strewn corridor, down in the elevator, past the carnage in the lobby, and out into one of the waiting SUVs. Someone stuck a needle in his arm. Dumped into the backseat, he struggled to stay conscious, but the drug was too powerful, and as the SUV took off, he passed out.

  * * *

  Returning to consciousness, Bourne experienced a short interim when all was calm, all was serene. Then, as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning, the recent past came roaring back, jolting him into complete awareness.

  His first sense was that he was bound wrists and ankles to a ladder-back wooden chair. Looking around, he found himself inside a small room with bare concrete walls, no windows, one door, locked and guarded. The sole decoration was a thick afghan carpet hanging on the wall directly in front of him.

  On his right side, El Ghadan sat in another ladder-back chair, a small octagonal table inlaid with Arabic script in mother-of-pearl between them. Bourne noted his posture: draped across the chair, one leg over the other. He might have given the full illusion of nonchalance had not his upper leg been swinging back and forth with a nervous energy. He lifted a hand and one of his men scuttled away, returning with a tray filled with two mugs of coffee, cream and sugar, and a plate of dates rolled in coconut.

  El Ghadan gestured as the tray was set down. “Please, help yourself.” He shook his head. “My apologies.” He picked up one of the mugs. “Coffee? No.” He sipped it himself. “Dates, then?” He held one out, popped it in his mouth.

  He licked stray shreds of coconut off his fingertips. “I need something done,” he said. “I need it done quickly.”

  “You have your own men, your own resources.”

  El Ghadan ignored him. “A week from now, in Singapore, your American president is set to broker an historic peace treaty between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” He leaned forward even as he lowered his voice. “The treaty is hanging by a delicate thread. Without his help, without his guidance, it will never get done. I want you to see that the president never reaches the Golden Palace Hotel in Singapore, where the signing will take place.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Bourne said.

  “That is your response?” El Ghadan waited patiently, but when Bourne remained silent, he nodded. “So be it, then. A lesson in humility must be learned.”

  As if on cue, one of his men wheeled in a 24-volt car battery. Over his shoulder were two lengths of bare copper wire. He wore heavy-duty rubber gloves. He set the battery down beside Bourne, shrugged off the wire, and affixed one end to a battery terminal, leaving the other dangling off the corner.

  Bourne watched with the kind of stoicism bred in the Treadstone program and put to the test a number of times in the field. The man wound the copper wire several times around Bourne’s chest. When he was finished, he crouched down, nodded to his leader.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen, Bourne,” El Ghadan said. “Rashid is going to touch the unattached wire to the second terminal. When that happens twenty-four volts of electricity will run through your chest.

  “Not enough to electrocute you, of course, but then, that is not my aim. No one learns a lesson from dying. No, the twenty-four volts will make the intercostal muscles around your lungs seize up. If Rashid here isn’t careful, if the current stays on too long, you’ll asphyxiate. But that will take time, and in the meanwhile the pain will be excruciating, like being on the verge of dying.” He nodded. “Show him, Rashid.”

  El Ghadan’s man touched the wire to the second terminal. Bourne was certain he had prepared himself, but the blinding agony that lanced through him made his body jerk. A great fist clamped down on his lungs and squeezed until his eyes began to water.

  Rashid lifted the end of the wire off the terminal. Bourne’s body collapsed, sweat ran down the sides of his neck, burned his eyes, flooded his underarms and groin. He knew he had to keep his wits about him, had to maintain at least a modicum of control. Otherwise…

  Once again Rashid sent the current through Bourne. All the color leached out of the room, sounds were distorted. Bourne’s head lolled, chin on sweat-streaked chest. His mind was in chaos, his thoughts fractured. He needed to remember something. What was it?

  The current surged through him a third time, and all coherent thought fled him. The giant fist bore into him as if it were about to crush his rib cage, send the scimitar-shaped bones through his heart. The room turned red, then black.

  * * *

  “How are we feeling?” El Ghadan’s voice floated ghostlike through the darkness. “Back among the living?”

  All the lights in the room had been extinguished. Bourne took one shuddering breath after another, felt as if a freight train had run over his chest. Coarse fingers gripped his chin. A light shone in his eyes, blinding him. Someone pulled his lids apart.

  “Pupils normal,” another voice said. “A remarkable recovery.”

  “To be expected.” This from El Ghadan. “We’re ready for act two.”

  Someone pulled aside the carpet on the wall. Light flooded the room, coming through a one-way mirror. Bourne, struggling to focus, blinked furiously to clear his vision, then wished he hadn’t bothered. He was observing the room he had seen on the tablet’s screen. There were Soraya, Sonya, and Lipkin-Renais, bound, sitting in a line facing him.

  El Ghadan was just visible, his face limned in profile on the other side of the octagonal table. “The little girl is terrified, Bourne.”

  “Sonya.” Bourne’s mouth was full of sand. His tongue felt swollen to twice its normal size. He tried to gather saliva. “Her name is Sonya.”

  El Ghadan shifted and his chair creaked. “In a moment Sonya is going to be so much more terrified.”

  Bourne jerked his head around. The terrorist’s face was alight. “Don’t do anything stupid,” Bourne said.

  “Stupidity doesn’t enter into it.” El Ghadan shrugged. “This is on your head, Bourne, not mine.”

  He made a sign. Bourne saw Lipkin-Renais’s face go pale. A gunman stepped into view. Sonya screamed, her little body shaking as if with ague. Soraya’s eyes opened wide in horror; she knew what was coming.

  On either side of the glass, Soraya and Bourne shout
ed, “No!”

  Sonya kept on screaming.

  Bourne’s voice was hoarse. “You don’t need to do this.”

  El Ghadan settled back, as if about to watch his favorite movie. “Watch, Bourne. Your lesson in humility continues.”

  The pistol fired. Lipkin-Renais’s blood, bone, and brains splattered over the cringing Soraya like pink hail.

  * * *

  El Ghadan rose, stood in front of Bourne, blocking his view, but the wails of shock, anguish, and grief remained in the room.

  “Now,” he said, “your conscience holds yet another sin.”

  He folded his hands in front of him, fingers laced, like a priest about to deliver a homily. “Here is what will happen if you do not comply. First Sonya will be shot in front of Soraya. Then Soraya will be taken to an interrogation cell where she will be systematically stripped of her will, of her personality—her very self. She will become a nonperson, nothing more than a slab of meat. Then I personally will flay the flesh from her one strip at a time, until her body is a quivering mass of bleeding sinew and fat.”

  He leaned forward, his hands still clasped, his voice low and conversational over Soraya’s wails and Sonya’s crying. “I have it on good authority that you are something of an expert in these matters, Bourne.”

  He stepped aside, once more revealing the horrific scene in the other room. Soraya was trying to take her hysterical daughter into her arms, but the restraints held her fast.

  “Please,” she shouted at the gunman. “I just want to hold Sonya.” She stared up into his implacable eyes, the only part of his face visible through the scarf wrapped around his neck and head. “Please let me hold her!”

  “Rejoice,” the gunman said. “Your two-year-old hasn’t been incinerated in a drone strike.”

  “How long do you think it will take her to die?” El Ghadan said. “Four days? A week? She looks a hardy soul, so I think longer, don’t you, Bourne? And all the while the flies will land on her flesh, feeding.”

  “Enough,” Bourne said.

  El Ghadan cocked his head. “Are you certain, Bourne? I warn you, there can be no going back from this decision.”

  “Give me the details.”

  El Ghadan released a great sigh. “Gladly.” He leaned across the table, his tone conversational, one friend to another. “Keep this truth close to your heart: You’re mine now, Bourne. Mind, body, and soul.”

  3

  Camilla Stowe arrived at the West Wing while D.C. was still dark. She had never been much for sleeping, even as a child. Ever since President Magnus had asked her to join his inner circle as head of the Secret Service, she slept no more than an hour or two a night. That was fine by her. She always said, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

  A natural redhead, with green eyes shot through with brown flecks and skin looking like it had been dipped in milk, Camilla cut an enviable figure inside the Beltway. The effect of her pale face and petite, curvy body on the male population of D.C. politics on both sides of the aisle was startlingly lustful. Those who did not know her often mistook her delicate looks as a reflection of an inner fragility.

  Her father was British, the immensely wealthy scion of an aristocratic family that for decades oversaw the expansion of the British Empire in Africa and India. He had insisted that she be schooled in England in a vain effort to keep her from returning to the States to join her mother in the military. Carla Stowe had been an ace marine fighter pilot in her day. By the time her daughter returned to her she was an ace flight instructor. Her classes were always full; everyone wanted a slice of her knowledge and war expertise.

  Camilla had other ideas, joining Marine Intelligence as a lieutenant. She served in the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq, twice. She quickly made captain, before being aggressively recruited by the CIA. She left after eighteen months, unhappy with the Company’s treatment of women. That was when she caught the attention of POTUS. He was looking for a new top cop to deal with the moral quagmire the Secret Service had become enmeshed in. He wanted someone to clean house, to reset the machine closest to him, which was responsible for his public and private safety. She was one of five candidates for the position, and the only female.

  Magnus interviewed her for over ninety minutes, though he had made up his mind to hire her after ten. The truth was, he didn’t want to let her go. At the end of her intake interview, he offered her the job, and she accepted. Later, he confided in Howard Anselm, his chief of staff, that Camilla had a core of steel that would bend but not break. “She’s just what the West Wing needs,” he said.

  At the conclusion of her intake interview, POTUS promptly took Camilla to lunch, which meant a meal sent up from POTUS’s private kitchen.

  Magnus was a family man. Initially his telegenic wife ruffled conservative feathers by wearing sleeveless dresses, showing off her well-turned shoulders and upper arms, of which she was justly proud. But she carried herself with such spirited grace and was so unafraid to make fun of herself that even her worst critics eventually retreated into their bunkers, emitting only the occasional muted grumble. They had two children, an older girl and a younger boy, both of whom presented well for the cameras and were unafraid of either questions or crowds.

  All this notwithstanding, it was noted by both Anselm and Marty Finnerman, the under secretary of defense for policy, both of whom had the most access to POTUS, that he was infatuated with Camilla. Whether POTUS and Camilla had had sex or were going to could not yet be divined, but putting their heads together, Anselm and Finnerman determined to keep an eagle eye on the two, the better to head off even the tiniest whiff of scandal.

  That very early morning when Camilla arrived at the West Wing, the city had not begun to stir. Anselm’s new assistant, Noreen, as young and beautiful as the previous one, informed her that he was already in his office. The door was open, the lights burning brightly, and the scent of freshly brewed coffee from his Nespresso machine wafted down the hallway, drawing Camilla toward it, away from the occupied Oval Office, as it was meant to do.

  “Did you even go home, Howard?” Camilla said as she strode into his office.

  “Frankly, I didn’t see the point,” he replied without looking up. His divorce was writhing through its final convolutions. “Too damn much to do for the Singapore peace summit.”

  He stopped writing, put down his pen, and flexed his fingers. He was a man who never used electronic means of communication. Not after the Snowden affair. Too insecure, despite the repeated reassurances of the cyber-guardians. It was handwritten drafts and typewritten finals for him and everyone on his staff. Back to the future. The really great thing about typewriters, he told anyone who would listen, was that each one had a signature as unique and distinct as a human fingerprint. If some memo went wayward, it was easy enough to trace it to the machine on which it had been typed. “The impreciseness of mechanics,” he’d say, and Camilla, for one, believed him, switching over all Secret Service correspondence to mechanical means.

  Now Anselm looked up. “Help yourself.” As she went about fixing herself a triple espresso, he eyed her contemplatively. “And your plans?”

  “You know my plans, Howard.” She opened the half-fridge, poured a dollop of half-and-half into the white porcelain cup with the presidential seal emblazoned on either side. “I submitted them to you ten days ago. They’ve already been implemented. The guys regularly fucking those Colombian whores have been shit-canned. The rest of the crew is on lockdown, pending the final stage of my investigation.” She added sugar, stirred, then lifted the cup to her lips and sipped. “Mmmm. That’ll get a rush of blood to my head.”

  Then she turned to face him, a small, round man with short arms and legs and thin sandy hair brushed over his bald spot. He was round-shouldered, had the face of a bulldog, a nose like a mushroom or a failed prizefighter. Even in D.C.’s swampiest months, he wore thick wool suits, much-rumpled black suspenders, and heavy brogues that everyone suspected of containing lifts, indicative
of his stern countenance and lack of a sense of humor. He appeared, in short, to be the perfect bureaucrat: half political engine, half desk.

  “But you knew that, Howard. What’s up?”

  He gestured for her to sit. She was wearing a smart beige suit with matching pumps, an oyster-colored silk blouse, and a simple gold cuff. A Hermès scarf wound loosely around her neck like a pet serpent.

  After she had settled herself and taken another dose of caffeine, he said, “I’d like you to clear your schedule for the next week, at least.”

  “My entire schedule? Why? What for?”

  He had prepared himself for her.

  “New information has come to light.” Anselm took his time sipping his coffee, while his watery brown eyes behind round gold-rimmed spectacles scoured her face.

  Instead of showing any sign of irritation, Camilla finished her coffee, rose, went back to the Nespresso, and made herself another double shot. When she was finished, she tasted it, then returned and sat down. Only then did she say, “Care to share?”

  “There’s been an incident in Doha,” he said in a perfectly neutral voice, “involving ministers from seven Arab nations, who were holding a high-level summit there.”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  “For the moment, it’s being kept from the newswires and Internet termites.”

  “That can’t last.”

  “POTUS is determined to use what little head start he’s been given.”

  Camilla regarded him over the rim of her cup. “What happened, exactly?”

  “Six ministers dead, exactly. Along with over a dozen mercenary bodyguards and four jihadists.”

  “Christ. Do we know which—?”

  “The cadre was led by El Ghadan himself, by all accounts.”

  “He hasn’t been seen in over a year.”

  “But his people, the Tomorrow Brigade, have been mighty active in Somalia, the Congo, Iraq, Syria, India, Pakistan, Indonesia—all over the fucking globe. He’s a one-man wrecking ball.”