The Bourne Ascendancy

  “Hassim.” She took a step toward him. “What’s going on?”

  “Something has changed,” he said.

  “Something? What, exactly?”

  “Maybe from the emir on down, I don’t know.” His eyes flicked toward her as he licked his lips. “There’s more money going to the Syrian rebels, for one thing.”

  “That’s hardly news.”

  “Well, but the money isn’t going to the rebels directly. It’s going to a middleman who uses it to arm the rebels—or so the emir and his people believe.”

  She took a step toward him, could sense the fear coming off him like a rank perfume. “But the truth is—”

  “Different,” he said. He licked his lips again. “Listen, I—”

  “Is it more money you want? I’ll get it for you. A bonus.”

  “Money.” He laughed nervously. “No. Not at all.”

  “Then what, Hassim? What can I give you in return for your complete cooperation in the matter?”

  “Assurance,” he said.

  “You have it.”

  “Protection.”

  She nodded. “As well.” What in the world has gotten him so spooked? she wondered.

  “Along with a promise to extract me at a moment’s notice.”

  “Okay. I can do that.”

  He nodded. “The money is going to this middleman. Tons of it.”

  “So you said, Hassim. Who is this middleman? An arms dealer? If so, I’m sure I know him.”

  “Oh, you know him, all right,” Hassim said. “The middleman is El Ghadan.”

  Sara was rocked back on her feet. So it wasn’t just the police who were colluding with El Ghadan, it was the Qatari government itself! No wonder Hassim had extracted those promises from her.

  She pulled herself together long enough to ask, “Who’s he dealing with in the police, Hassim?”

  “The whole department, probably.”

  “You’ve come this far,” she urged. “You might as well hit the finish line.”

  “Right, sure.” Hassim looked disgusted, but whether it was due to the tale he had to tell or with himself was impossible to say. “But for this I need to make a call.” He rose. “I’ll be right back.”

  Sara watched him pad out of the room. She desperately wanted to follow him, try to overhear at least his side of the phone conversation, but she didn’t dare take the chance. She was following a slender thread, and because it was the only thread she had, she was not prepared to put it in jeopardy by doing something rash.

  Instead, she stood up, roamed about the room, examining a cut crystal ashtray here, a bronze statuette there. She picked up a shell, pink as the inside of an ear. To her surprise, it was made of a kind of resin. She turned it over, but there was only the mark of another seashell, tiny, stamped in gold.

  She put it down as Hassim bustled back. “It wasn’t easy, but I got it.”

  “Do I note a hesitation in your voice?”

  Hassim cleared his throat. “I’m a restaurateur now, pure and simple. While you have been out of sight, I’ve been expanding my empire. That’s what I’m concentrating on now.”

  “Are we done, then?”

  He looked at her with a mixture of sadness and relief. “This is the last bit of product, Rebeka. I can’t afford to keep sticking my neck out.”

  Something inside her hardened. “I understand your position, Hassim, but calling it a day isn’t so easy.”

  “Nevertheless, that’s what I’m doing.” He regarded her steadily. “That’s the price of this product. I tell you, I’m out. That’s it.”

  “Take it or leave it, huh?”

  He licked his lips, nodded.

  Sara took a deep breath, let it out very slowly and evenly. “Let’s have it, then.”

  “I have your word?”

  “You do.”

  “His name is Khalifa Al Mohannadi,” Hassim said. “He’s a colonel in the National Tactical Command Center here in Doha.”

  “NTCC,” Sara mused. “He’s antiterrorist, then. You sure about this? Your source is reliable?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “A colonel in NTCC in bed with El Ghadan. That’s a joke.”

  “If it is,” Hassim said, “it’s a sad one for my country.”

  Sara’s look was unfocused, her mind far away, spinning like a top. “Qatar has always found a way to keep itself balanced amid constant Mideast turmoil,” she said. “I’m wondering why it feels a need to secretly align itself with the most dangerous terrorist alive.”

  13

  Zizzy ran to Hafiz and, keeping out of the line of fire through the shattered window, knelt down beside him.

  “Is he dead?” Bourne said, staring out the window.

  “Still breathing.”

  “Stay with him.” Bourne sprinted to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Zizzy asked, but Bourne was already gone.

  * * *

  One motorcycle in the line parked outside the ministry had keys in the ignition. Mounting the cycle, Bourne fired it up, racing away before any of the guards had a chance to react. Heading toward the barrier at speed, he waved at the soldiers manning it. They lifted the barrier just enough for him to duck under it as he thundered down the street, heading for the mosque from which he judged the shot had been fired.

  Arriving, he slowed, circled the building several times while studying it. To use a mosque as cover for a violent act was strictly forbidden, but he knew that wouldn’t stop a rebel, for whom the exigencies of war overrode his moral code, or a jihadist, who had only death in his heart.

  Similarly, he knew the sniper would not be in a hurry to leave his cover. In the first place, any haste would make him stand out among the worshippers, and might even incur their wrath. In the second place, he would doubtless be assured that no one had an inkling where the shot had come from, let alone set out to find him. It was Bourne’s good luck to be in Hafiz’s office when the minister was killed. The sniper’s line of sight was readily available to his keen and practiced eye.

  The day was waning, the sun already sunk beneath the smoldering skyline. Overhead, a pair of jet fighters returning from their strafing mission twinkled like stars, high up enough to catch the sun’s last rays.

  Bourne watched the first of the worshippers, prayer rugs tucked beneath their arms, slipping on their shoes as they exited the mosque. He waited, his eyes seeming to penetrate the burgeoning mass of men, searching for the one man of interest to him.

  As the crowd thinned somewhat, he saw him. He was a tall man, with the build of a wrestler. His hair was dark, curled and oiled, and he buried his knuckles in his thick beard as, no doubt out of habit, he glanced around.

  Bourne turned away, bent down, asked a passing boy the way to the Technical Computer Institute at Bostan Addour. The boy had no idea, but that hardly mattered. The sniper had not gotten a look at Bourne’s face as he scanned the immediate environment.

  As Bourne turned back, he noted that the sniper’s prayer rug was larger than most, in order to conceal his rifle, Bourne surmised, even though he had doubtless broken it down, unscrewing the long barrel, placing it beside the stock. The man had the face of a wolf, his eyes wary, his manner calm and methodical. His skin was as rough as sandpaper, dark as stained mahogany, pocked as if from a scourge that had attacked the populace of his boyhood village.

  Bourne tracked him as he ducked into a beat-up beetle-brown Skoda sedan that slid to a stop in front of the mosque. The driver was the only other person in the vehicle. Choosing a safe distance, Bourne followed the car as it slid through the evening traffic. Blue shadows lay in the street like exhausted dogs. The shelling had stopped, at least for the time being, and an eerie calm had descended over the city. To some, huddled in doorways or looking up to the sky, the quiet seemed more unsettling than the mortar bursts and the small-arms fire, and their terror made the air shimmer with bleak anticipation. At any moment, the shelling would begin again, but when? For civilian
s, the pause was an effective form of torture, fraying nerves to the breaking point.

  The Skoda led Bourne down narrow streets lined with concrete-block houses with overhanging upper stories, their blank faces marred by spray-painted graffiti proclaiming the victories of the rebels or the self-righteousness of the jihadists. Beyond, the dusky hills were coming alive with thousands of lights, as if they were home to swarms of fireflies.

  At length the Skoda turned down a darkened street, poorer than those that had come before. On the left, Bourne could see a difference in the buildings’ façades. The structures were larger and lacked windows, which led him to believe the street was lined with warehouses. At least half of them had sustained damage, a few were crumbling altogether. Many had been abandoned.

  Which was the point, he saw, as the Skoda stopped in front of one such warehouse. The sniper hopped out, his prayer rug and its unholy contents left behind. The Skoda drove slowly off.

  The sniper gave a series of rhythmic knocks on a worm-eaten wooden door, and it was opened immediately. He stepped inside and the door slammed shut behind him. Bourne slipped off the motorcycle, walked the hundred or so yards to the warehouse door. He repeated the rhythmic knocks. Again, the door was opened immediately. Bourne stepped inside, struck the man he saw in the side of the neck, then slammed his head against the wall.

  The man collapsed. Bourne quickly went through his clothes, retrieved a dirk with a wicked-looking curved blade and an old Russian Stechkin automatic pistol. The tiny entry gave way to the vast interior, now reeking of rot and neglect and human sweat. Metal barrels lined the wall on his left, a crate or two on his right. Otherwise the warehouse was empty. The stench of vehicular exhaust came to him, not as stale as one might have expected.

  Against the far wall, a steep flight of narrow wooden stairs led up to a second-floor office with a line of windows that overlooked the warehouse proper. Through one of the windows, Bourne could see the sniper. He was talking animatedly with two men, neither of whom Bourne could make out clearly.

  Cleaving to the left wall, he made his way toward the office, using the stacked barrels as cover. He passed small puddles on the concrete floor, black, viscous as pitch: automotive oil. Clearly, heavy trucks of some sort were being run in and out of here on a regular basis.

  Up ahead, the figures in the office were still in deep discussion. None had yet turned to look out the windows. Bourne was moving, half bent over, between the stacks of barrels, when the driver of the Skoda tried to slip a knife blade between two of his ribs. They were the correct ribs—the ones safeguarding his lungs.

  At the last instant Bourne’s senses had prickled, and he was turning as the tip of the blade flashed toward him. Grabbing the extended wrist, he jerked the arm toward him, turning back away from the attack, using the driver’s own momentum to lead him around and down.

  He slammed the edge of his hand into the driver’s collarbone. The driver groaned, and Bourne knocked the knife out of his fist. He was cadaverously thin, all ropy muscle, without an ounce of fat on him.

  Completely ignoring the pain of Bourne’s blow, the man whipped his wrist free. Using his left shoulder, sharp as a pointed stick, as a cudgel, he jolted Bourne back into the barrels. Reaching up, he brought one of the teetering barrels down on Bourne’s neck and shoulder, driving him to his knees. Time enough for him to draw a Tokarev pistol and point it at Bourne’s forehead.

  As his finger tightened on the trigger Bourne pressed the Stechkin into his abdomen at an upward angle and fired. The driver stumbled backward. He tried to re-aim his pistol but the bullet Bourne had fired point-blank had torn through his innards, lodging in his heart. His eyes rolled up as he fell backward onto the oily cement.

  The noise of the shot ricocheted around the nearly bare space, catching the attention of the three men in the office. They stared out of the windows as Bourne covered the rest of the distance to the rear of the warehouse.

  They were all in motion as he mounted the stairs two at a time. He couldn’t see them now, but the reverse was also true. He reached the top without incident and hauled the rickety door open.

  Then the blast blew the office apart.

  14

  Khalifa Al Mohannadi, the NTCC colonel, was not much of an office man, Hassim had told Sara. In fact, he was the antithesis of a paper-pushing bureaucrat, even though paper-pushing was the very heart of his job description. Three sergeants, specifically hired for the purpose, worked more or less around the clock in eight-hour shifts to dispense with the mountains of paperwork that daily flooded his office. After a week of being bothered by a fly-swarm of calls asking for his approval on this matter or that, he equipped each of them with a rubber stamp of his own signature he had had manufactured to employ in his absence. Now his days and nights were free of bureaucratic annoyances, leaving him free to pursue his own interests.

  These included gambling and golf. Given that gambling was illegal in Qatar, Hassim said that the colonel often flew to Dubai to indulge that particular passion. But since most of his time was spent in Doha, Khalifa could most reliably be found at the Doha Golf Club.

  Naturally enough, the two courses were not open at night, but the clubhouse, Hassim informed Sara, was always ablaze with light and local luminaries, who dined there and afterward enjoyed a cigar or two on the expansive terrace that overlooked the championship course’s eighteenth hole. In fact, evening was the best time to catch Khalifa, Hassim had said, as his parting bit of product. The colonel loved the clubhouse best when it was filled with Doha’s elite, when his very passing through the rooms caused ripples of conversation, when the eyes of beautiful young women turned in his direction. The colonel was a bachelor, and wielded his single status like a fisherman’s net to snare a new woman every week or, if the spirit moved him to keep one around long enough, every month.

  Sara spied him the moment the solid Thai teak doors were opened for her and she entered a vast space—one of many—clad in polished gypsum and marble. A central fountain cooled the air, and beyond she could make out not one but two interior waterfalls cascading down walls of hand-hewn gypsum bricks.

  The colonel cut a striking figure—slim and tall, with the well-turned legs of a fencer. His shoulders were square, his back ramrod straight. His curling black hair gleamed in the light, thick, luxuriant, with attractive speckles of gray here and there on the sides. Even while talking to a handsome young man, his deep-set coffee-colored eyes worked the room, skipping from one woman to the next, searching for what Sara intuited was a new conquest.

  Then his gaze fell on her, and she almost staggered under the assault. Never before had she felt a man so completely undress her with his eyes. Her initial horror turned to anger as her sense of being violated came to the fore.

  And yet, the field agent in her taking over, she walked directly toward him, returning his too frank gaze with a silent defiance that she suspected he would find intriguing.

  Her instincts were, as usual, impeccable. She watched with the kind of fascination a mongoose has for a cobra as he broke off his conversation, excused himself, and strode confidently toward her. He wore a Valentino suit over a cream-colored silk shirt open too far down his chest. As for herself, she had gone shopping at a number of Doha’s best boutiques before deciding on a simple yet elegant spaghetti-strap Vera Wang dress in deep blue shantung silk with, in deference to the religious culture, a short jacket over it to cover her upper arms and shoulders. A slit up the side showed just enough leg, in her considered judgment, to be provocative without looking slutty. For that reason, too, she had chosen pumps with a medium heel.

  “Good evening,” he said. “My name is Khalifa Al Mohannadi.”

  She took his hand. His grip was dry and strong, just like his voice.

  “Martine Heur,” Sara said in a perfect French Canadian accent.

  “Welcome to the Doha Golf Club.”

  “Are you the owner?”

  Khalifa chuckled. “But, no, madam, you have mi
staken me.”

  “I was told the owner was tall, slim, and handsome.”

  “And instead you have found me.” He looked pleased. “Shall I take you to the owner? I know him well.”

  “No,” Sara said, eyeing him. “Not now.”

  He smiled winningly. His teeth were strong and white. “Would you care to take a drink with me?”

  “I’d like that.”

  With a courtly nod, he led her through the room to a smaller one fitted out like an Arabian salon. Plush sofas, chairs, and loveseats were scattered about, each grouping with a low table and, it seemed, its own server. Sara chose a chair, and Khalifa sat across from her with the table as a barrier between them, as Sara wished. A server approached them.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked. “The club has a full menu.”

  “Tea will do me, thank you.” At this early stage, it would have been a mistake to get into a long evening with him. Leave ’em wanting more, her father had taught her.

  The colonel ordered tea for both of them, then sat back, elbows on the chair arms, fingers steepled meditatively. They were the long fingers of a pianist or a strangler. The nails were neatly groomed, she saw, and gleaming. He had a small scar just below the outer corner of his left eye. It was white on his otherwise dusky face, almost livid.

  “What, may I ask, brings you to Doha?” Khalifa said.

  “Diamonds,” Sara replied. “I buy and sell them.”

  “Where are you based?”

  “Mainly Amsterdam.”

  “Amsterdam.” He raised his head to stare at the ceiling. “Such a beautiful city.”

  “Do you know it well?”

  He lowered his eyes to her. “Not well. No.”

  “Pity.” She was aware that he was putting her through a light interrogation. She didn’t know whether to be alarmed or flattered. Perhaps he did this with all his potential conquests, although, interestingly, he had failed to mention his military rank or that he was in the military at all. “You should return sometime.”

  The tea was presented on a chased silver tray; the service of pot, two cups and saucers, sugar bowl, creamer, and a small plate with an artful fan of lemon slices was exquisite. The server bent to pour, but Khalifa waved him away.