The Bourne Ascendancy

  But in truth, those moments were few and far between. In the end, there were always his horses, who loved him, never failed him, and would never do anyone dirt. Sometimes Ohrent wished he had been born an animal. Life would have been so much simpler—and cleaner. No skullduggery, no backbiting, no jealousy, greed, or fear. Best of all, he would have lived his life completely ignorant of the inevitable end.

  * * *

  For her part, Camilla was immediately infatuated with the atmosphere of the Thoroughbred Club and Singapore in general. On her first day, as part of her orientation, after she had met and ridden Jessuetta for the first time, Ohrent took her to the National Orchid Garden, where her ecstasy over her fast furlongs-long ride around the racing oval was almost exceeded by the two hours she and her guide spent among hundreds of orchid species, each one more extraordinary than the last.

  Afterward, she asked him to take her to a mobile phone store, where she bought a cheap phone with a local SIM card and a half hour of talk time and Internet access.

  He took her to lunch at a second-floor restaurant in the Muslim quarter, across the street from a shop that sold alcohol-free perfumes—alcohol being forbidden to Muslims—to local clientele and curious tourists alike. Over seven dishes, each more incendiary than the next, they engaged one another in order to come to terms with their brief. They were both people who found discovering the humanity in their colleagues vital to accomplishing their work.

  “You’ve no family?” she said.

  “Oh, family.” He took a bite of curried chicken. “Well, it’s my experience that families are a nuisance, get me as cross as a frog in a sock, they do. Always earbashing, telling you what to do and how to do it. Now, my horses like everything I do, they like how I do them. No backtalk.”

  “Still, it must get lonely,” Camilla said, thinking as much of herself as of him.

  He shrugged. “It’s the life I chose.” He gave her a canny look. “But you’re still a young woman. Why would you choose to be alone?”

  “Who says I am?” she said, a bit too quickly.

  The well-tanned flesh at the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “You have the look.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “It’s unmistakable.”

  “How dispiriting.”

  “Well, I’ll give you the drum. There’s no shame in it. If you want the shadows, why not?”

  Why not, indeed? For so many reasons, she thought, not wanting to count the ways. She ate some food instead. Her lips were already numb, but the fire was just starting to kindle in her stomach. How fun!

  “But it seems to me,” he said, “that the shadow world is not your lucky country.”

  “My what?”

  “Your natural habitat.”

  “So what?” she said somewhat snappily. “I’ve adjusted.”

  “Like to high blood pressure?”

  Now it was her turn to smile. She liked this man, with his long, lean body, unbent by either age or disappointment. His informal, straightforward manner relaxed her, as did his slightly off-kilter humor.

  “Well, now that would be bad for me.”

  “So can this kind of life. And unlike with high blood pressure there’s no little pill you can take to normalize things. Here, where we are, nothing is ever normal, nor can it ever be.”

  More food, more heat, building into a bonfire. “All the people I know like it.”

  “Yes, but the question is whether you do.”

  She considered this for a moment, chewing slowly. “I tell myself I do every day.”

  He put down his fork. “Now that is a troubling sign.”

  She sat back, all at once overcome with a terrible foreboding.

  As if he could divine her thoughts, he said with some urgency, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” The last thing she wanted was her contact here in the target zone to report her as a risk.

  “Hmmm.”

  This sound, emanating from the back of his throat, made it clear he didn’t believe her. But neither did he press her, for which she was grateful. He glanced up as the waiter spoke to him in a language she did not understand.

  “There was a time,” he said, “when I was as far from here as I was from the place where I was born. I had joined a Bedouin caravan, about to cross the Negev Desert. Three pops! like this—” He put a finger in his open mouth and, pursing his lips, flicked it out. “Three pops,” he repeated, “and the heads next to me exploded like dropped melons.”

  He stared down at his food for a moment, but Camilla could tell that he was gazing back through time.

  “One, two, three. Blood and brains all over the place—on me, the camels, everything.” He looked up at her, his expression abruptly bleak. “Palestinians: Hamas, or the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Who knows? And anyway, it doesn’t matter. I killed one of them right away, tracked the two others down and shot them at point-blank range. What else was I to do? They were terrible shots. Aiming for me, the bleeding buggers had killed three of my hosts.” He wiped his hands, as if they were still covered in blood. “That’s the world we live in; the world you have talked yourself into.”

  “Or others have,” she said under her breath.

  “Finished?” he asked her, only half meaning the meal.

  When she made no reply, he spoke softly to the waiter, who cleared the dishes away, piled one atop another, a rickety tower.

  Ohrent’s gaze settled on her. “Well, now you’ve rocked up here, and here we be.”

  Camilla watched him for some time. Then she took out the envelope Hunter had given her. She had not opened it or even tried to imagine what was inside. Sliding it across the table, she kept her hand on it until one of his lifted, landing at its far edge.

  “Read it,” Camilla said, taking her hand away.

  He regarded her with a strange calmness that seemed to reach across the space between them and settle her. She felt perfectly at ease with him opening the envelope, though she could not have said why. Frankly, she didn’t care; it felt right.

  For what seemed a long time, Ohrent did nothing. Then, slowly, carefully, as if he knew that what she had given him was of great value, he turned the envelope over, slit it open, and read the off-reservation brief that Hunter and Terrier had devised for her.

  His expression did not change, but she was aware that he had begun to read it all over again. Only when he was done did he look up.

  “Really?”

  “It’s real.” For a moment, she thought she had misread him, that that was not what he had meant.

  He dropped the paper onto the table. “Good God, woman, what pressure you must be under!”

  She stared at him, and something in her expression must have clued him in, because he said, “You haven’t read this, have you? You don’t know.”

  Heart in her mouth, she took up the paper, spun it around. She had only begun to read it when she blanched, feeling as if she were in an elevator whose cable had snapped.

  46

  Sara was ushered into Omega + Gulf Agencies without fanfare or even a word being spoken. She watched the young man El Ghadan had called Islam out of the corner of her eye. He was slim-hipped, hollowed-chested, with the ropy arms of someone born and bred to hardship and backbreaking work. More than anything, he looked like he could use a good meal—several of them, in fact.

  Sara had seen countless others like him; sad to say, she had zero sympathy for people whose credo was “I kill to know I’m alive.” Still and all, until she could get a grip on the nature of the test El Ghadan had set for her, she knew she needed to keep an open mind on everyone and everything she encountered here.

  Islam showed her three large open-plan rooms where busy people were working on…what?

  “Traffic scheduling, essentially,” Islam said without inflection, when she asked. “The company creates the routing and shipping calendars for any number of import-export firms all over the world. Doha is the central hub.”

&n
bsp; “What kinds of goods?” she asked.

  “All kinds,” he said, deliberately evasive.

  Those three large offices, plus a cluster of smaller ones for management, seemed to make up the extent of Omega + Gulf Agencies’ quarters.

  “What about the rest of the building’s space?”

  “Warehousing.”

  Using a magnetic key card, he led her through a door as thick as a bank vault’s. Ahead was a carpeted, well-lighted corridor hung with prints of trains, freighters, and cargo planes, worked in a rigorous engineering hand. It looked more like a hallway in an upscale hotel than an entry to a warehouse.

  Partway down, Islam pushed open a right-hand door with his shoulder and they were out of the air-conditioning. The courtyard in which she now found herself was surrounded on all sides by the building’s featureless concrete walls, mostly hidden by a fierce riot of climbing bougainvillea. It was dominated by a vast fig tree in its center, gnarled as a fisherman’s fist. Beneath the tree was a rough-hewn wooden table and chairs. As they approached, Sara saw that the table was set with a tea service and a number of small hand-hewn plates piled with fresh figs, pistachios, dried dates and apricots, and delicate honey pastries. The spread was more appropriate to a doyen’s salon.

  Islam ushered her to a chair. He sat at her left elbow, poured mint tea into tall, narrow glasses. The scent of fresh lemons perfumed the air. Somewhere high up in the fig tree a bird sang briefly, then fell silent.

  Islam gestured. “Help yourself. Please.”

  “This is very pleasant,” she said, looking around. “Do you work here every day?”

  “Are you not hungry? I assure you every bit of food is the freshest possible.”

  Sara drank some of the tea. Then she put down the glass and smiled at him. “Islam, what am I doing here?”

  “You have a man’s directness.”

  “And that’s a fault?”

  He shook his head. “I merely make an observation. It’s unusual.”

  “Are you uncomfortable sitting here with me?”

  “Should I be?”

  She watched him for a moment, silent and enigmatic.

  “You are El Ghadan’s emissary,” he said at last.

  “And that too is unusual.”

  “Unprecedented, I would say.”

  “It’s a pity I don’t know what being his emissary entails.”

  “You are his strong right arm,” Islam said. “You tell me what to do and I do it.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.”

  He frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

  Time to change the perspective. “I see you are unarmed.”

  “Here?” He spread his arms wide. “We are in the heart of a fortress.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, she thought. “I am to make a decision, then.”

  He showed her his teeth. “Precisely.” He popped a date into his mouth and seemed very pleased.

  “About you? Shall I interview you?”

  “Oh, no.” He laughed. “However, I imagine I would find it very pleasant to be interviewed by you.”

  That’s what you think, Sara thought. “If not you,” she said, “who?”

  He reached for a miniature honey cake. “I don’t know whether ‘interview’ is the correct term.”

  “Then what would be?”

  “That depends on your opinion of our guests.”

  She was a bit taken aback. “Guests? You have guests here?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the warehouse.”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me.”

  He ate the sweet, licked the honey from his fingers. “Imagine for a moment that you have an enemy. An implacable enemy. Now further suppose you have a mission to carry out. This mission, like all those facing you, is of vital importance. The problem is that neither you yourself nor anyone working for you can complete this mission.”

  He held a dried apricot that looked like a human ear. Biting it in half, he said, “Desperate times, would you not agree?” He did not wait for an answer. “But there is one person who can accomplish this mission for you. The only problem is he won’t ever do that. Why? Because he is that implacable enemy I mentioned. What to do?”

  Islam finished off the apricot. “Then an idea springs into your head. What if you were to coerce your enemy into doing what he otherwise would never do? This person does not respond to force or interrogation. He would laugh in your face if you offered him money. But your enemy must have a weak spot, no? Every person does. So you find this weak spot and you exploit it. This forces him to comply.”

  He raised a forefinger. “Or so it at first seems. The fact is, new information comes to light that your enemy has somehow tricked you. You have given him a mobile phone with a GPS transponder that cannot be disabled. This will let you know where he is at all times. After days of tracking him, your people tell you that the GPS is in fact sending dual signals. One has broken off from the other and is degrading fast, leaving you with the true signal.

  “Instead of being in, let’s say, Singapore, where he should be, preparing to begin the mission, your enemy is in Afghanistan. Why? You do not know, but it cannot be good for either you or your mission. Your enemy has broken trust with you.”

  As he recounted this “hypothetical” scenario, his voice increased in tension, and fury came into it, turning it dark and ominous. For her part, Sara knew precisely who he was talking about, and her concern for Bourne increased exponentially.

  Careful not to reveal the slightest hint of emotion, she said, “What has all this to do with your guests?”

  “They are the coercion, the people who were supposed to force your enemy to comply.”

  “And who are they?”

  “A woman and her two-year-old daughter.”

  A scream, like an unwanted guest, rose up from Sara’s depths. She snapped it off the way a bear will bite off the head of a fish and swallow it whole.

  Her voice sounded thick and ungainly as she said, “What kind of decision am I being asked to make?”

  Islam lounged in his chair, another square of sticky pastry between his fingertips. “Life for them,” he said, contemplating her with a frightening intensity. “Or death.”

  47

  Knowing the target of Borz’s attack and knowing what he planned to do were two separate issues. The Singapore Thoroughbred Club was to be ground zero, and yet El Ghadan had set in motion a dangerous and elaborate scheme forcing Bourne to kill the president. What was to happen at the Singapore Thoroughbred Club and why? Who was Borz’s target? Or was it to be the Thoroughbred Club itself, Southeast Asian symbol of consumerist fat cats? Anything was possible. Suddenly, everything was in play.

  Bourne, sitting in the airplane just behind Borz, imagined a nightmare scenario where the peace process brokered by President Magnus was sabotaged beyond repair. The stability of the entire Middle East would be in jeopardy. Bourne recalled all too well how the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin had blown apart a nascent accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians that to this day had yet to be advanced. What had followed was bitterness, vengeance, war, and a reemergence of ancient enmity neither side could or would control. As a result, the Israelis had taken more land, the PLO was supplanted, replaced by the militant Hamas and worse. Hard-liners poured out of the woodwork, gaining power with every fresh incursion, every new death.

  Borz was in constant discussion with the pilot, a youngish, dark-haired man with a triangular face, bright blue eyes, and a fringe of beard. Borz brusquely introduced him as Musa Kadyrov. For a time, Bourne watched Musa’s hands on the controls. When he determined he was an excellent pilot, he rose and went back to where Aashir was reclining across three seats.

  “How are you feeling?” Bourne asked.

  The young man stared up at him. “I wouldn’t be here without you.”

  “Let’s make this about you.”

  Aashir smiled. ??
?The doctor gave me some pills for my headache. Don’t look so alarmed. They took the pain away. Apart from the soreness and the bump I feel fine.” He sat up, made a gesture. “Sit here next to me, Yusuf.”

  “Where did you hear all those stories the Chechens liked so much?”

  “My father. He used to tell us stories when we were little. The more fanciful the better I liked them.” He gave Bourne a shy smile. “I used to pretend I was far away in those mythical lands. How I would have loved to have been a djinn with a serpent to talk with. An animal, I thought, even a reptile, would understand how I felt, even if no one else could.”

  “No friends.”

  “Are you kidding? The day I had my first crush I knew I couldn’t allow myself to get close to any other boy, no matter how much I wanted to. My secret had to remain my secret.”

  “Until you met your friend.”

  “That was years later. Many years. And even then…” He looked away. “Even then it turned out to be a mistake.” He turned back to Bourne. “It was my fault he was killed.”

  “You’ve left that all behind,” Bourne said. “It’s part of growing up.”

  Aashir’s expression turned thoughtful. “I won’t be grown up until I go back home and see my father again.”

  “I’m sure he wants to see you.”

  “Desperately, so I hear. But he doesn’t know me, does he?”

  “I wonder,” Bourne said, wanting to draw Aashir out, “how well you know him. What happened to the man who told you stories when you were a child?”

  “International Zionism, the rabid dog of the region,” Aashir said. “And the American imperium.”

  Bourne immediately recognized the rhetoric. So Aashir and his father were Iranians. That answered some questions, especially how Aashir stood out among Faraj’s Arabs. Iranians were Persian in origin, Muslims, but Shia, a minority, whose members were always, it seemed, on the defensive in their eternal war against the Sunni majority. This imbalance made them desperate, willing at all costs to strike out against their enemies. And their enemies were legion.