Free Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy by Eric Van Lustbader

would find happiness there.”
    Bourne considered a moment; he seemed distinctly uncomfortable continuing the discussion. “I don’t want to be introduced to Hafiz as a westerner.”
    Zizzy spread his hands. “What? You don’t trust me to handle him?”
    “Why take the chance,” Bourne said, “when we don’t have to?”
    *  *  *
    In another half hour Bourne was asleep. He dreamed of Soraya and Sonya. They were in the water—a shallow part of a vast sea. Soraya was holding Sonya to keep her chest and head above the surface, but every once in a while a wave would swamp them. Sonya sputtered, then laughed, turning her head this way and that to see what had hit them and where it had gone.
    In the manner of dreams, Bourne was not in the water with them—he was an observer. The sunlight that illuminated them, indeed, that sparked the tops of the waves, did not touch him. He was in shadow—permanent shadow. And even from within the dream he understood this much: Soraya, who had lived in the shadows with him, had chosen to leave, she had chosen to move into the sunlight. She had become a civilian.
    The instant he realized the barrier that had come between them, he saw an enormous shadow cutting through the water. It was huge, this shadow, like a drowned ship. But it wasn’t a ship.
    The thing was making directly toward mother and child. Soraya and Sonya were in mortal danger. Bourne tried to call out to Soraya, but either his voice box was paralyzed or she couldn’t hear him from the other side of the barrier. Then he tried to get to her, but even though he saw the scene before him with perfect clarity, he could not reach them. He was the only one aware of the danger. He tried to will himself into the water, to move heaven and earth in a last-ditch attempt to save them, but it was to no avail.
    Then the shadow was upon them, Sonya’s face twisted in the same terror and fear he had seen in her when her father was shot in the head, except it wasn’t Sonya and she wasn’t being held by Soraya. He was watching the demise of Sara and the little girl that was their dream child.
    At that precise instant he jerked violently awake. Ignoring Zizzy’s curious gaze, he rose, went unsteadily up the aisle to the toilet, where he splashed water on his sweat-streaked face.
    For a long time, he stared at himself in the mirror. It occurred to him then that he’d been happier as Minister Qabbani, despite the brevity of his time in the disguise. Being someone else, someone other than Jason Bourne, seemed peculiarly appealing, and he had to wonder whether that was why he had told Zizzy he wanted to meet Hafiz in disguise.
    After a time, he returned to his seat, where he was subjected to Zizzy’s concerned scrutiny.
    Zizzy handed him a glass of ice water, watched him gulp it down. “So she’s gotten that deep under your skin,” he observed.
    Bourne put the glass down. “Who?”
    “The woman you tried to save; the woman who was killed.”
    “Why are you so concerned?”
    “We’re heading into a war zone—do I have to remind you? My life is on the line as well as yours. If you’re having nightmares that make you cry out in your sleep, I could easily become worried that your mind isn’t focused correctly.”
    “It’s nothing. Forget it.”
    “Carrying a dead person on your back isn’t nothing, my friend. I should know.”
    Bourne remembered now. Zizzy’s sister had fallen in love with a Danish engineer. Their older brother had gotten the engineer kicked out of Qatar, then he had killed their sister, for which he had been hailed as a true enforcer of Islam. Zizzy had been so incensed that he had broken off all ties with his family and to this day had not seen or spoken to any member. He had not gone to his father’s funeral or, several years later, his mother’s.
    “On the day she discovered our brother had found out about her liaison, my sister came to me in private,” Zizzy had once told Bourne. “‘I love him,’