The Bourne Deception by Robert Ludlum, Eric Van Lustbader
Authors: Robert Ludlum, Eric Van Lustbader
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least fifteen people in seven different divisions were consulted and agreed on it. Soraya debated only a moment as to how to answer. “It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.”
Chalthoum nodded. “Yes, because the world wants to know,
needs
to know. But my question to you is this: What then?”
A typically astute query, she thought. “I don’t know. What happens then is not up to me.”
She spotted Delia, signaled to her. Her friend nodded, picked her way through the debris and hunched-over workers, with their bright task lamps, to where she and Chalthoum stood just inside the roasting gloom.
“Anything to report?” Soraya said.
“We’re just beginning the prelim stages.” Delia’s pale eyes flicked toward the Egyptian and back to her friend.
“It’s all right,” Soraya assured her. “If you have anything, even if it’s speculation, I need to know.”
“Okay.” Delia’s mother was an aristocratic Colombian from Bogotá, and the daughter carried much of her maternal ancestors’ fiery blood. Her skin was as deep-toned as Soraya’s, but there the similarity ended. She had a plain face and a boyish figure, with blunt-cut hair, strong hands, and a nononsense manner that was often interpreted as rudeness. Soraya thought it refreshing; Delia was someone with whom she could let her hair down. “My sense is that it wasn’t a bomb. The explosion very clearly didn’t emanate from the luggage bay.”
“So, what, a mechanical failure?”
“Kylie says no,” Delia said. She meant the dog.
There was that hesitation again, and it made Soraya uneasy. She considered pressing her friend, but then thought better of it. She’d have to find a way to talk to her without Amun hanging on their every word. She nodded, and Delia went back to her work.
“She knows more than she’s telling,” Chalthoum said. “I want to know what’s going on.” When Soraya said nothing, he continued. “Go talk to her. Alone.”
Soraya turned to him. “And then?”
He shrugged. “Report back to me, what else?”
It was very late by the time Moira was ready to leave the office. With a weary hand she switched off CNN , which she’d had on with the volume muted ever since the news of the airliner incident in Egypt broke. The incident unnerved her, as it had many people in the security field. No word on what had really happened—not even from her back-channel, not-for-attribution sources, whose terse responses were so brittle they set her teeth on edge. Meanwhile the press was having a typically monstrous field day—talking heads on TV speculating terrorist attack scenarios. And that didn’t even count the more out-and-out fabrications posing as “the truth they don’t want you to know” on thousands of Internet sites, including the toxic chestnut trotted out since 9/11 that the American government was behind the incident in order to advance its own
casus belli
, its case for war.
As she took the elevator down to the underground garage, Moira’s mind was in two places at once: here with the new organization she was building and in Bali with Bourne. His grave wounds had made it more difficult to separate herself from him. What had seemed so simple when they’d discussed her future in the pool at the resort now seemed nebulous and vaguely anxiety producing. It wasn’t that she felt the need to take care of him—God knows she would not have made a decent nurse—but that within the eternity when his life had hung in the balance, she’d been forced to reassess her feelings for him. The possibility that he would be snatched from her filled her with dread. At least, she assumed it was dread, since she’d never before felt anything like it: a suffocating blackness that blotted out the sun at noon, the stars at midnight.
Was this love? she wondered. Could love produce this madness that transcended time and space, that caused her heart to expand beyond its known limits, that turned her bones to jelly?
Chalthoum nodded. “Yes, because the world wants to know,
needs
to know. But my question to you is this: What then?”
A typically astute query, she thought. “I don’t know. What happens then is not up to me.”
She spotted Delia, signaled to her. Her friend nodded, picked her way through the debris and hunched-over workers, with their bright task lamps, to where she and Chalthoum stood just inside the roasting gloom.
“Anything to report?” Soraya said.
“We’re just beginning the prelim stages.” Delia’s pale eyes flicked toward the Egyptian and back to her friend.
“It’s all right,” Soraya assured her. “If you have anything, even if it’s speculation, I need to know.”
“Okay.” Delia’s mother was an aristocratic Colombian from Bogotá, and the daughter carried much of her maternal ancestors’ fiery blood. Her skin was as deep-toned as Soraya’s, but there the similarity ended. She had a plain face and a boyish figure, with blunt-cut hair, strong hands, and a nononsense manner that was often interpreted as rudeness. Soraya thought it refreshing; Delia was someone with whom she could let her hair down. “My sense is that it wasn’t a bomb. The explosion very clearly didn’t emanate from the luggage bay.”
“So, what, a mechanical failure?”
“Kylie says no,” Delia said. She meant the dog.
There was that hesitation again, and it made Soraya uneasy. She considered pressing her friend, but then thought better of it. She’d have to find a way to talk to her without Amun hanging on their every word. She nodded, and Delia went back to her work.
“She knows more than she’s telling,” Chalthoum said. “I want to know what’s going on.” When Soraya said nothing, he continued. “Go talk to her. Alone.”
Soraya turned to him. “And then?”
He shrugged. “Report back to me, what else?”
It was very late by the time Moira was ready to leave the office. With a weary hand she switched off CNN , which she’d had on with the volume muted ever since the news of the airliner incident in Egypt broke. The incident unnerved her, as it had many people in the security field. No word on what had really happened—not even from her back-channel, not-for-attribution sources, whose terse responses were so brittle they set her teeth on edge. Meanwhile the press was having a typically monstrous field day—talking heads on TV speculating terrorist attack scenarios. And that didn’t even count the more out-and-out fabrications posing as “the truth they don’t want you to know” on thousands of Internet sites, including the toxic chestnut trotted out since 9/11 that the American government was behind the incident in order to advance its own
casus belli
, its case for war.
As she took the elevator down to the underground garage, Moira’s mind was in two places at once: here with the new organization she was building and in Bali with Bourne. His grave wounds had made it more difficult to separate herself from him. What had seemed so simple when they’d discussed her future in the pool at the resort now seemed nebulous and vaguely anxiety producing. It wasn’t that she felt the need to take care of him—God knows she would not have made a decent nurse—but that within the eternity when his life had hung in the balance, she’d been forced to reassess her feelings for him. The possibility that he would be snatched from her filled her with dread. At least, she assumed it was dread, since she’d never before felt anything like it: a suffocating blackness that blotted out the sun at noon, the stars at midnight.
Was this love? she wondered. Could love produce this madness that transcended time and space, that caused her heart to expand beyond its known limits, that turned her bones to jelly?
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