The Bourne Ascendancy

  “I’ve memorized the blueprint.”

  “When you reach the top of the stairs,” Musa repeated, undeterred, “do you turn left or right?”

  “Left,” Aashir said. “Until I reach the vertical ladder. Then up that. The roost will be ten feet away on my right.”

  Musa’s dark gaze bored into him. “All right, then.” He slapped him on the shoulder. “May Allah grant you success.”

  He watched Aashir until he was out of sight. Then he turned and went on his own way, which was in fact the only operational section of the plan that mattered.

  Outside, on the oval, the horses in the first race were thundering around the track.

  * * *

  For Kettle, Singapore was just another stop—one of many his briefs took him to. Like hotel rooms to a traveling salesman, the cities tended to blur one into another. But in some ways even he had to admit that Singapore was different. He knew if he were forced to live here he’d most likely wind up blowing his brains out. The rules and regulations, the strictures on citizenry and visitors alike were draconian, not to mention capricious. Who ever heard of an injunction against chewing gum in public? The importation of gum was banned. No swearing either. Insane. Truth be told, the quicker he finished with this brief the happier he’d be.

  He had received the call informing him of an addendum to the brief. A second hit had been ordered. After rising this morning following a deep and dreamless sleep, he had carefully, lovingly taken up the long gun, which in many ways was his closest friend. His only friend. He had other weapons he felt close to, but none had the gravitas of his sniper’s rifle. The special case he had made, holding the broken-down sections, looked like nothing more than an old-fashioned physician’s bag.

  Now he was here, invisible among the swirling, gesticulating throngs, making it child’s play for him to find the door marked SECURE AREA—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. It was metal, painted a bright red. It was also locked, but that proved no impediment to Kettle. He had a way with locks, even digital ones.

  Fifteen seconds later, he was inside. A minute and a half after that, Camilla, walking Jessuetta, spotted him.

  * * *

  Kettle, in the stables area, was warming to his task. It was always this way, he thought, when the kill was near. Finnerman had texted him that Camilla Stowe was going to jockey a horse in the second race—one of Jimmie’s horses.

  Jimmie is definitely getting old, he thought. Old and possibly senile. The girl had gotten to him somehow. In a stunning and, ultimately, pathetic example of breaking protocol, he had come to the mosque to beg for her life, but Kettle had been given the brief. It was his now, and he was going to carry it out to the letter as he’d done with all his previous briefs. Jimmie should have known that; clearly the girl had blinded him to good sense. Maybe he’d even lost his operational edge. In any case, he’d have to let Finnerman know; Jimmie needed to be replaced.

  He was heading toward the stables themselves when his mobile vibrated. He had only to think of Finnerman and there he was. He took the call. But it wasn’t Finnerman on the other end.

  “This is Robert Lonan, Department of Justice,” the deep voice in his ear said. “You should know that Martin Finnerman is in our custody. Your brief is hereby terminated, as is your position in DOD. You are to turn yourself in to the local authorities, who have been notified of your name and status.”

  “And if I don’t?” Kettle said.

  “Then you will immediately become a fugitive from justice. The full power and influence of the United States government will be directed at finding you. Clear? You have one hour to comply with this order.”

  “Fuck you!” Kettle said in reply, but the line was dead. Robert Lonan, Department of Justice, was no longer in the ether.

  Sensing movement to his right, he turned. “Are you Camilla Stowe?” he said to the figure that had emerged from the shadows. A horse stood by her side. The two of them seemed to be watching him.

  “Can I help you?” Camilla said.

  Kettle smiled, but he was having trouble getting into his legend’s skin. “Binder, Jack Binder, but my friends call me Jackie, Inverhalt Fabrications, we make all the racing silks for the jockeys.” He said all this far too quickly, speaking one long run-on sentence. What should have been a salesman’s breezy spiel came across as overeager, not to say overcaffeinated. The phone call had inflamed an anger he kept safely banked while in the field. The anger made him hurry, and in his haste he lost discipline. Appalled as he was, Kettle pressed on, the only thing to do. “Jimmie told me you’re his new jockey. Am I right?” He sidled ever closer. “I’m trying to find him.” He waved a hand. “But in all this madness, no matter how many times I come here I always get lost.” That was better, wasn’t it? he asked himself.

  “You’re right. I’m jockeying the horse Jimmie trains,” Camilla said in a kind of dreamy voice. “I’ll take you to him.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Before he could edge still closer, Camilla drew Jessuetta around so the animal was between them. Kettle immediately stepped forward, following her, but skittishly. He was clearly uncomfortable around horses, which made it a good bet he knew nothing about them.

  Jessuetta stepped sideways, toward a wall she might have mistaken for her stall. It seemed she wanted to get away from Kettle as badly as Camilla did. But her movement put Camilla’s back against the wall. Camilla had nowhere to go except past Kettle. One of her hands slid behind her back, her fingers wrapping around the hilt of Ohrent’s knife.

  Kettle leaned forward. “Listen,” he said. “Listen, the truth is…the reason I’m here, see, is to take your measurements, get you fitted with your own set of Ingerhalt silks.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have time now. Maybe later.”

  “But, I mean, you can’t! Wait, that is.” He pushed against Jessuetta’s side to get all the closer to her. “You’re in borrowed silks now, am I right? Jimmie won’t like that. You got to get your own, know what I mean? And ASAP.” His voice had now completely slipped the leash of his legend. Instead of overeager, it became manic, something dark and ominous. “Come on now, it won’t take but a couple minutes, promise.” As he pushed more urgently, Jessuetta stamped her hooves and snorted through widened nostrils.

  Camilla hesitated a moment more, then said, “Okay. Sure.” She started to come around Jessuetta’s rear, but as Kettle all but rushed to meet her, she stepped smartly back.

  Unmindful, he came on. He was behind Jessuetta when Camilla slapped the horse hard on her flank, just as Ohrent had warned her not to. The result was instantaneous and decisive. Jessuetta kicked out hard with her hind legs. One of her hooves caught Kettle in the left temple. He went down as if struck by lightning, which, in a way, he had been.

  Camilla was so shocked that for a moment she felt paralyzed. Then, gathering herself, she whispered to Jessuetta, apologizing, promising her that she would never strike her again. As the horse settled, Camilla moved toward her rear, always keeping a gentling hand on her to let her know where she was.

  Kettle lay where he had fallen. There was a deep indentation on his head where Jessuetta’s hoof had struck him with the force of a jackhammer. Is he, is he…? Good Lord, she thought, he’s really dead. She stood in a kind of daze, momentarily incapable of further action, not wanting to think of cause and effect.

  People were running toward them, and with a spasmodic movement of self-preservation, she pushed the handle of the knife down past the waistband of her jeans, where it could not be seen.

  56

  Kettle’s dead,” Camilla said, when she had returned to the stables and put Jessuetta in her stall.

  “Kettle?” Ohrent’s cheeks became mottled with shock and emotion. “Are you all right?”

  She made a face. “Of course I’m all right.”

  He leaned on the stall door, arms crossed. “Well, you don’t look all right.”

  “What are you, my daddy?”

  Her irritation m
asked the horror of how quickly everything had happened. Thoughts and emotions eddied inside her, muddled and unnerving. She had never caused another person’s death. Though she had trained for it, tried her best to prepare herself mentally, how could she have really known its effects beforehand? She bore down, concentrating on the fact that he had come after her, would have killed her had she not stopped him. Yet still in the aftermath she had to admit she was feeling slightly queasy.

  Apparently, Ohrent decided to take a different tack with her. “What happened?” he said in the crisp, terse tone of a control debriefing his fieldman. “Don’t tell me he was the man Jessuetta kicked to death.”

  When she nodded, Ohrent said, “Well, fuck me dead!” Then, returning to his role as her local control, he said, “Details, please.”

  So she told him. How he had appeared out of nowhere, taking her by surprise. The people who showed up first had called a doctor, who arrived shortly thereafter. As she suspected, the doctor found no breath, no pulse. Kettle was dead. Moments later, a security team arrived, asked a number of questions, which she answered calmly. No, she didn’t know the man. Yes, he had accosted her. Yes, she had tried to get away from him, but she didn’t want to leave her horse. When he came around behind the horse, the horse spooked and kicked him. That was all. Witnesses corroborated her story. No one had seen her strike Jessuetta. The security officers checked her passport, asked for her address in Singapore, then thanked her and said she was free to go.

  “Afterward, I apologized to Jessuetta,” she said in conclusion.

  Ohrent stared at her with a grief-stricken look.

  “What?” she said. “Do I need to do more? I think she’s forgiven me.”

  All his life he had wondered whether it was possible to laugh and cry at the same time. “Bugger all, I’ve failed you, Cam.”

  She handed the knife back to him in a gesture that was almost ceremonial. “You were between a rock and a hard place.” Stepping forward, she kissed his cheek. “No worries, Jimmie, you did your best to protect me.”

  “Trouble was, this time my best wasn’t very good.” Then a shy smile crept across his face. “And to think you didn’t even need protecting.”

  “I was glad to have it, Jimmie, believe me. It lent me courage when I needed it most.”

  At that moment, two men entered the stables. It was perfectly clear they did not belong among horses or jockeys. They were not owners, nor owners’ representatives. They were as far from tourists as Camilla was from D.C.

  For an awful moment Camilla thought she was about to be arrested. Her heart pounded painfully against her rib cage.

  “What can I do for you gentlemen?” she said.

  “Please come with us,” the one on the left said, showing his Secret Service ID. He looked very much like the one on the right. She thought it curious that she did not recognize either man. They must have come on after she had begun her brief.

  “Wait a minute.” Ohrent interjected himself between them. “What is this?”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” the one on the right said, with absolutely no inflection in his voice.

  “The hell it doesn’t!” Ohrent took a belligerent step toward them, which put them on alert.

  “Jimmie, stop,” Camilla said. These were her people, after all. At least they were until she had taken the Black Queen brief.

  “Please come with us, Ms. Stowe,” the one on the left said. “There’s not much time. POTUS requires your presence.”

  Ms. Stowe. She was their boss, but not while undercover. She felt herself relax.

  “‘He requires her presence,’” Ohrent mimicked with no little derision. “Does POTUS know she’s jockeying my horse in the next race?”

  The one on the left gave him a jaundiced eye. “Cool your barbie, Matilda,” he said.

  “Agent,” Camilla said, “what’s your name?”

  “Morris, ma’am.”

  “Shut it, Morris.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Morris looked properly abashed. “The thing is, ma’am, we’re in the sixty-minute interval between races. The sooner we bring you to POTUS the sooner you can get back here.”

  “Bugger all!” Ohrent said, throwing up his hands. “Go on, then. What POTUS wants…” He let the rest of that sentence hang in the air as Camilla prepared to leave.

  “I’ll be back in plenty of time, Jimmie,” she said as Morris and his partner took up position flanking her.

  He glared at Morris. “Bollocks to you, sonny-Jim. You’d bloody well have her back in time or this Matilda will have your hide.” He turned away, stared at Jessuetta, who looked back at him, bobbed her head and snorted.

  “You can say that again!” he muttered as he fingered the knife Camilla had returned to him. “They give me the shits too.”

  * * *

  POTUS, nervous as a fox at a hound convention, was waiting for Camilla in a bunkerlike room well below ground. It was the place his Secret Service detail had chosen as the most secure inside the Thoroughbred Club. There was no time to go anywhere outside it.

  His heart turned over the moment he saw her; he felt like a teenager with his first real crush, when nothing else in the universe mattered except this girl, filling the room with her intoxicating beauty and sexuality. He was already hard, and forgot to be embarrassed by it.

  No one else was in the room besides them. Somewhere close by, they heard the sound of water gurgling through pipes. The place smelled of mineral dust and disinfectant.

  “Camilla,” he said softly.

  He moved to take her in his arms, but she drew back.

  “Bill, are you crazy? What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”

  “None of it. I know when you say no you really mean yes.”

  She recoiled as if he had slapped her. “Like hell I do!”

  He reached out for her. He was still vibrating with the heady power he had exerted in his hotel room. He wanted everything, and he wanted it now. And why not? Was he not the most powerful man in the world?

  She turned her head away as he lunged to kiss her. “Bill, you can’t—”

  “I’m POTUS, Cam.” He pulled her, resisting, into his arms. “I can do anything I want.”

  “Don’t I get any say in this?”

  “Of course you do.” He began to wrestle with her to keep her in his embrace. “But I know you better than you know yourself.” He pressed his crotch against her. “You want this, I know you do.” He kissed her throat, the side of her neck. “You’re just scared is all.”

  “You’re wrong, Bill.” She was still trying to twist away from him. “I admit I was scared, back at the White House.” It was like struggling with an octopus. “But that’s a million miles away. I’m different now.”

  “Nonsense.” He was licking her ear. “People don’t change in the matter of a week.”

  “You don’t, Bill.” She reared her head back, away from him. “You’re as immovable as a boulder. But other people—I do. I have. And I’m telling you I don’t want this—not anymore.”

  “But I love you, Cam. I love you and no one else.”

  She froze. She felt as if he were about to consume her, swallow her alive. She felt his erection, huge and thick as a cudgel, and she shuddered at the thought of it slamming up inside her.

  Then he had his hands on her jeans, unsnapping them, pulling them down over her hips.

  “No, Bill,” she said, trying to pull them up. “No, no, no!”

  57

  Bourne had passed through security and gained the interior of the Thoroughbred Club by the time a beautiful Thoroughbred was led into the orchid-bedecked winner’s circle by his owner. The jockey, clad in purple-and-cream-striped silks, was crouched atop his mount, waving his short crop in triumph.

  Excited chatter filled the stands, and long lines had already formed in front of the betting windows for the second race. It looked like Percolate, the ruling family’s horse, was the clear favorite.

  Bourne made the climb
up to the rooftop light array, which at first looked deserted. Then he spotted someone—a Secret Service agent. He froze. Then he saw another and another. It was clear the cadre had not been here, possibly it had never intended to be here.

  Borz had played him. Perhaps Nazyr had seen Bourne’s interest in the Thoroughbred Club when they had first met, and told Borz. Perhaps Borz had never really trusted him. In either case, at this very moment members of the cadre were planting a deadly bomb in another location—one where it would do the most damage to the dignitaries in the president’s box.

  Before beginning his descent, Bourne looked across the oval. He spotted Aashir, but only because he knew where to look. Aashir’s attention appeared to be focused on the stands across the racetrack.

  Climbing down from the aerie, Bourne brought to mind the blueprints of the club. If Borz wasn’t planting the bomb on the light array, where would be the best place to put it, the place most likely to kill as many people sitting in the stands as possible? The stands. Of course! The bomb was going to be placed beneath the stands.

  Following the blueprint from memory, Bourne made his way down through the security and maintenance tunnels. Three times he was obliged to freeze, squeezing back into the shadows as security personnel passed by. But finally he found the correct tunnel that led underneath the stands. Above him roared the cheers and excited shouts of the patrons, and every once in a while the jostling mass caused what felt like a minor earthquake.

  He pushed through a door and came face-to-face with the Chechen with the scar along his chin. The man was so surprised to see Bourne he was paralyzed for an instant. Bourne chopped down with the edge of his hand to render him unconscious, but Scarface shoved him back against the wall, using his assault rifle as a bar across Bourne’s chest. At once, Bourne slashed in on the sides of Scarface’s neck with both his fists. The Chechen’s eyes rolled up in his head as he collapsed. Stepping over his prone form, Bourne crept forward in a half crouch, and almost stumbled over a pair of security guards. He checked them. Both dead. He pressed on.