Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy Read Free

the subject’s personality. With fanatics like El Ghadan—and he was far and away the worst of the extremist bunch—understanding their personalities was the key to defeating them. Therefore, Bourne extended all his senses, focusing his attention strictly on El Ghadan.
    “Aren’t you concerned about the police?” he said.
    “The police.” El Ghadan laughed, the sound as harsh and dry as a desert wind. “I own the police here.”
    Bourne noted his response. Arrogance and contempt. When adversaries felt so in control of a situation that they considered you beneath them, you held a certain advantage. Bourne was building an invaluable knowledge base.
    El Ghadan snapped his fingers and the two men holding Bourne sat him down on a chair between two of the fallen terrorists. He held out his hand, and his second in command slipped a tablet into it.
    El Ghadan swiped the screen and turned it to face Bourne. On the screen was a live image of Soraya Moore, her daughter, and her husband—Aaron Lipkin-Renais, an inspector in the French Quai d’Orsay. The three were seated in a row, hands tied behind their backs. Soraya’s daughter, not more than two years old, looked panicked; she started to cry.
    Bourne felt his stomach contract painfully. His relationship with Soraya Moore was long, complicated, and, at times, intimate. How had El Ghadan captured her and her family? His estimation of the terrorist rose exponentially.
    Soraya was looking straight at the lens. Bourne had not seen her in over three years, but knew she had given up her co-directorship of Treadstone after marrying Lipkin-Renais. Not long afterward, she had moved to Paris permanently, starting the next phase of her life with him and her daughter, Sonya, who was born in the City of Lights. Nevertheless, her image was forever etched into his memory.
    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