Page 35 of The Bourne Ascendancy (Jason Bourne 12)

  Surprisingly, the evidence of that answer wasn’t long in coming. Ohrent went directly to a mosque, entering through a side door. She heard the pattern he rapped out on the door, but knew she could not follow him without making some adjustments to her attire. She was wearing a pair of her favorite jeans, and she’d had the presence of mind to replace the tank top she had been wearing for a lightweight linen shirt with the cuffs pushed up her forearms.

  Now she took out the headscarf she had brought with her from Washington, for she had heard there were a number of beautiful mosques in Singapore she would want to visit. Wrapping it around her head, she approached the door, repeated the pattern Ohrent had used.

  The door swung open and she was admitted. However, she had no idea where he had gone, so after removing her shoes and washing her hands, she went down the hallway, past the main prayer room.

  Just above the murmured susurrus of the faithful, she heard what sounded like Ohrent’s voice in concert with an unfamiliar one. Turning right, she crept along the passageway, silent on her bare feet. Moving closer, she heard the voices more clearly—two men, one of them definitely Ohrent; his accent was unmistakable.

  “This brief is cut-and-dried. It will be done, no fuss, no muss.”

  Then she heard Ohrent reply, “This is Singapore. Nothing here is ever that simple, Kettle.”

  “Speak plainly, Jimmie. We’ve known each other too long to beat around the bush.”

  “I don’t give a fig about your primary target, but the girl—”

  “What? She’s gotten to you already.” Kettle snickered. “Christ, Jimmie, you’re old enough to be her father—her grandfather, in some cultures.”

  “She’s special, Kettle.” It seemed Ohrent was not to be baited. “Back off. Leave her alone.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “I’m asking you as a friend.”

  “And as a friend I’m telling you the brief is the brief. There can be no deviation.”

  “Of course there can. In special situations—”

  “Jimmie, the only way you can stop me is to kill me. You’re too old and we know each other too well for you to try it. Go home, Jimmie. That’s my advice. Go home and forget I’m even here.”

  A cold fist clenched Camilla’s lower belly. She had been right to follow Ohrent. She felt like the protagonist in a Kafka novel. Was there, in truth, no escape for her?

  She was inching her way even closer when she became aware that she was under surveillance. Sweating as if she were in a steam room, she swung her head around so quickly her vertebrae crackled.

  A small girl of about four or five regarded her from a shadowed corner. For a moment, Camilla was shocked that a small child would be up so late, but then she remembered that imams and their families often made their home in these mosques.

  Terrified that the girl would make a sound that would alert Ohrent or Kettle, Camilla put her forefinger across her lips in the universal sign for silence. The girl’s lips curled into a smile. She imitated Camilla’s gesture and then her smile widened until it seemed to take up almost all of her face.

  Despite her burgeoning anxiety, Camilla felt a smile bubbling up from inside her, and she could not help returning it. Absorbing the child’s beautiful face, the large, dark eyes regarding her without an iota of pretense or guile, she was pierced to the quick by the girl’s absolute innocence. Here was a creature who had not yet learned to lie or deceive or hate. Here was pure love, and this notion rocked Camilla back on her heels. It was as if a switch was thrown inside her head, as if this child had single-handedly lifted the fog of war that had clouded her mind for the past week, revealing the truth of her own life—what was important to her and what she rejected.

  When had her life sunk so deep in deceit, venality, and cynicism? Had it happened overnight while she was asleep or had it crept in so slowly day by day that she, with eyes wide shut, had not noticed until now? Either way, she knew she had to exorcise it immediately, before she succumbed to it or, worse, became part of it. This decision was her survival instinct coming to the fore.

  The innocence of this child plopped down in the center of the muddle her life had become was a sign, she was sure of it. Just as she was sure of what she wanted now: a chance to make her own bundle of innocence. To give a child of her own what had been denied her. She never had been so certain of anything in her life.

  Still smiling, she put her forefinger across her lips again. Again, the little girl copied her. As she began to giggle, Camilla, breathless with her revelation, turned and, fast as she could, padded back to the side door, where she gathered up her shoes and returned to the blood-warm Singapore night.

  * * *

  President Magnus was up at dawn. In truth, he had never gone to sleep, though he had tried more than a dozen times, while the illuminated clock by his bedside ticked off the minutes as slowly as if they were hours.

  Finally, after being able to think of nothing but Camilla straddling him, or Camilla with her lips wrapped around his erection, or Camilla naked, clothed only in the American flag, he had rolled out of bed, slipped on a robe, and entered the living room. Turning on a lamp, he had plopped himself onto the sofa, tried to read a biography of Lyndon Johnson, then the current issue of Foreign Affairs, before admitting to himself that he hadn’t absorbed anything he had read. And so his mind drifted back to Camilla. Not Charlie. Charlie was Charlie. She was growing up, and years from now, or maybe only months, she would change her opinions, or they would be changed for her. That was the way of the world. But Camilla…

  Magnus was one of those people who, having made up his mind about an issue or a person, could never be persuaded to change his opinion. Take Camilla, for instance. The moment he met her he had known he wanted her near him, and the job opening was a perfect way to legitimately get what he wanted. And when it was reported to him that she routinely stayed at her job until two or three in the morning, his mind was made up. Even before the fateful lunch that Anselm and Finnerman mistakenly assumed sealed the deal.

  It was untrue, Magnus thought, as he stood by the curtained window of his hotel suite, that he had fallen in lust with Camilla at first sight. Dead wrong. That had come later. And it wasn’t lust; it was love. Real love, such as he’d never felt for any other woman in his life. He would kill to protect Camilla, he knew that now, as sure as he found sleep a commodity without a price.

  And now he knew that he had been a fool to agree to her being the choice for the Black Queen brief. Far too late, he realized what Anselm and Finnerman had been up to in pushing her for the mission. They saw her as a threat. They had plotted to get her away from him, get her out of Washington altogether. But then why send her to the same city he was in? It didn’t make sense. He knew he was missing something.

  Dawn light rose like a shell cracking open. He ran a trembling hand through his hair, was appalled to find it slicked with sweat. A thought had occurred to him, one so awful, so heinous he could barely get his head around it. And yet it was all too plausible. In fact, it fit the scenario so neatly, so perfectly, that he was forced to admire its audacity before he was shocked all over again.

  Coming away from his vigil at the window, he returned to the living room sofa, where he had spent the latter part of the night going over the intelligence reports from the daily Eyes Only pouch delivered to him at midnight because of the distance and the time change. The pouch Anselm usually vetted first, for Anselm had established a habit of keeping a good deal of the daily intelligence chatter from him so that he would not be distracted from the important decisions on his plate.

  It was a routine not altogether without merit, but to have kept from him the hints and innuendos that the peace summit was a forgone failure was, to his way of thinking, just plain criminal. Also humiliating. And that was even before he read the latest reports on the revolt in his own party against the drone program. Christ almighty, what else was Anselm keeping from him? he asked himself.

  The answer w

as not long in making itself known. Minutes later, he heard the familiar ding of an email surfacing on his private mobile. Crossing to the sideboard where he had left it, he discovered a message from an unknown sender. He was about to delete it, when a kind of sixth sense made him pause. The account was so restricted and so heavily defended that no spam or phishing emails could get through.

  The email itself held no text, but two attachments were waiting for him. The first was a DOD file from Finnerman’s office dispatching the wetwork fieldman named Kettle to Singapore to find Jason Bourne and terminate him with extreme prejudice.

  Curious, he opened the second attachment, an audio file, and was stunned to hear a conversation between Anselm and Finnerman discussing a verbal extension to Kettle’s unsanctioned brief. When he heard Anselm utter Camilla’s name as an additional target, he went ballistic. Then, the first wave of fury having passed, he settled into a surface calm beneath which he was seething. There was much to do and little time to do it in.

  In the small hours of the morning he made a series of calls, issued orders. Now, unable to wait a moment longer, and with one hand closed in a fist, he went to the door, opened it.

  “Wake the chief of staff in an hour,” he said to the Secret Service agent closest to him. “Now bring me my press secretary. And breakfast for three.”

  53

  Returned to the safe house in which Ohrent had stashed her, Camilla punched in a number on her mobile. Hunter answered at once, as if she had been waiting for Camilla’s call.

  “It’s you.”

  She sounded slightly out of breath, which Camilla knew only happened when her emotions were running high and hot.

  “I was worried you wouldn’t call me back.”

  “I need you to listen to me, Hunter. Something’s happened I’m sure you didn’t count on.”

  “What do you mean?” Hunter said with a catch in her throat.

  “I read the brief you and Terrier drew up.”

  There was a short silence, during which Camilla imagined many things passing through Hunter’s mind, none of them good.

  “And?” Hunter said, after a time.

  “You need to leave the Dairy.”

  “Jesus, Cam.”

  “Leave the Dairy, leave D.C., leave the country.”

  “You’re not going to turn us in. You can’t possibly…We are asking you to do nothing, to stand aside, to let whatever was going to happen happen. Is that so terrible?”

  “Do you hear yourself, Hunter? Listen to what I’m saying. I am here to protect the president. I will not violate my brief. I will not kill for you; I will not stand aside, as you put it.” Her voice was rising, shrill even. She had wanted to keep everything on an even keel, but now in the middle of the conversation she understood how impossible that was. “Hunter, leave now, this instant.”

  “And throw Terrier under the bus?”

  “He’s more than likely going to do that to you the moment he’s in custody.”

  “You can’t—”

  “You won’t get a second chance.”

  Another pause, this one taut as a bowstring.

  “Cam, I can’t. I believe what we’re doing is the right thing, the only humane thing, to stop—”

  “I’m sorry, Hunter. Really, I am.”

  She disconnected before the conversation could get overemotional, out of hand. She couldn’t deal with that now. She had to come to terms with something that had been in her face for some time: Hunter and Terrier were fanatics. And because their plot concerned the president, she called Tony Levinson at the Secret Service, a senior supervisor she had brought in and so could trust absolutely, told him about Hunter and Terrier. She answered his barrage of questions as best she could. “Get on them now,” she said, then rang off.

  In the aftermath, Camilla felt nothing, less than nothing. It was as if a void had opened up inside her. Then, without warning, the storm hit, and she wept, sobbing as she had not done since she was a little child in her mother’s arms. Even at that tender age, she remembered, her mother had admonished her not to cry, ideally not to show her emotions at all.

  “That makes you weak,” her mother had said, “and in a man’s world you can’t afford to appear weak.” But a dam long held in place had been shattered, and she wept unashamedly until there was not a single tear left to shed.

  She was bone weary. Part of her ached to go to bed, pull the covers over her head, and sleep for a week, but of course she didn’t. She couldn’t; she was not that kind of person. She poured herself a drink, held it without taking a sip. She was that kind of person, too. Still, she drew comfort from its weight and its aroma, which reminded her of better, less frightening times.

  As the sky was beginning to turn gray and pink, she heard a key in the lock and dumped the liquor in the sink. Ohrent, presumably finished with his business with Kettle, stepped in, softly closing the door behind him.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked when he came into the kitchen.

  “Like a baby,” she replied with a smile she had once seen on a crocodile.

  “It’s London to a brick you’ll need some food.” Ohrent seemed not to notice the remnants of her tears. “But not too much; don’t want your weight on, do we?”

  Camilla hesitated. “What about Kettle? Did you find him?”

  “You needn’t worry about him,” Ohrent said. He clapped his hands sharply. “Now come on. We’re due at the club in two hours. It’s race day.”

  * * *

  “Come in, Howard,” POTUS said in a jovial voice as Anselm appeared in the doorway. “Good to see you so early in the morning.”

  Anselm, hair tousled, was still tying the belt around the plush bathrobe with the Golden Palace’s sea-blue merlion embroidered on the chest. “It’s a big day for us, Bill.”

  He pulled up short as he saw Marie Engle, the press secretary, smiling at him from the sofa opposite where POTUS sat. A sumptuous food cart stood at POTUS’s left elbow.

  He greeted Engle, then returned his attention to Magnus. “We have to meet the Palestinian president and the Israeli prime minister at the Thoroughbred Club in a couple of hours.”

  “Oh, but surely we have time for a bite of breakfast, Howard. Come on now”—he patted the sofa cushion next to him—“take a load off and we’ll break bread like friends should.”

  Anselm sat as directed. In front of him, the coffee table was laden with plates of fruit and eggs and toast, cups, and glasses of fresh orange juice laid out for three.

  POTUS reached over, poured him some coffee. Engle already had hers held between her two hands. Anselm noticed no one else in the room—no stewards, no security personnel. Definitely odd.

  “Believe it or not, the coffee here is fantastic,” POTUS said in the breezy way he handled interviewers. “They say it’s from Bali. Who knew the Balinese grew coffee? But I’m telling you it packs a punch. Here.”

  He handed his chief of staff the cup, and as Anselm brought it to his lips said, “Did you know that I’m a big John Le Carré fan?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t.” Anselm’s eyebrows lifted. “Wow, this is strong.”

  He reached for the milk, but POTUS stopped him. “Trust me, its strength is best savored black.” POTUS winked. “It’ll put hair on your chest.”

  Anselm obediently took another sip, made a face as if he were drinking slivovitz.

  POTUS sat back against the cushions, crossed one leg over the other, as if they were two pals sitting down to breakfast after a particularly active boys’ night out. He swallowed some more coffee, said, “Did you know that Le Carré is a nom de plume?”

  “I think I heard something about that.”

  “Yes indeed.” POTUS regarded Anselm over the rim of his cup. “Turns out his real name is Cornwell. David Cornwell.” Another sip of coffee, his eyes never leaving those of his chief of staff. “It also turns out that Cornwell’s father was a con man. That’s right. Can you believe it? I imagine that’s why the son changed his name. It

seems Cornwell père was caught, tried, convicted, and sent to gaol. That’s what they call prison in England, isn’t it, Howard?”

  Anselm, whose pale and waxy complexion attested to his being caught by surprise, said nothing for a moment. “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “I thought so!” POTUS cried in the voice of a child coming down the stairs on Christmas morning, but his tone changed on a dime. “When were you going to tell me that the drone program was under attack?”

  “I have that under control, Bill. It’s taken care of.”

  “Uh-huh. Just like you took care of this?” Opening the top of the serving cart, he took out a copy he had had made of the Kettle brief, spun it across in a perfect arc so that it landed on Anselm’s lap.

  Anselm glanced down, then away, as if his boss had thrown him a live cobra.

  “Kill it, Howard.” POTUS’s voice was now as hard and unyielding as a marine’s steel sword. “Kill all of it.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Howard, call Finnerman. Since you two are such asshole buddies, this task falls to you. Tell him to call off his snapper or whatever those idiots at DOD call snipers these days.”

  “A dinger, sir.” Anselm looked stricken, as if he was about to have a heart attack. “A snapper’s a prostitute.”

  “Seems to me snapper’s the correct word, then.” He bared his teeth. “Get to it, Howard. Or do you want me to make the call for you?”

  “Bill—”

  “You’ve lost the right to call me by my Christian name.”

  “Sir. You’re making a huge mistake. If the dinger doesn’t take care of Bourne—”

  “My security detail is on high alert for Bourne.”

  “Well, that’s good, I suppose. Though, in my opinion, not nearly as good as Kettle.”

  “Cut the crap, Howard.” Magnus raised a forefinger, the stern paterfamilias. “There’s something you’re not telling me, an addendum you and Finnerman added to the Kettle brief, isn’t there?”