Free The Bourne Deception by Robert Ludlum, Eric Van Lustbader Page B

else.”

    He didn’t laugh, nor would he ever during the time she was with him.
    “It’s in your head. Give it to me.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “We’ll stay out here until you give me the intel.”

    She recognized his threat, recognized, too, the impetus behind it. In his eyes she was an Egyptian female. As such, she was brought up to unquestioningly obey males; why should she be any different from any of the other females he knew? Because she was half American? He spit on Americans. Immediately she saw the advantage his mistake gave her. She stood up to him; she kept to her story; she defied him every step of the way; most importantly, she proved she couldn’t be intimidated.

    In the end, he’d backed down, had taken her back to Cairo, to the airport. At the boarding gate he handed back her passport as a gentleman might. It was a formal and somehow touching gesture. She turned away, certain she’d never see him again.

    The DCI nodded. “If you can use his attraction for you to your advantage, do so, because I have an uncomfortable feeling that Halliday is about to propose a major new military initiative based on the premise of an armed insurrection from inside Iran.”
    Leonid Arkadin was sitting in a café in Campione d’Italia, a picturesque Italian tax haven tucked away in the Swiss Alps. The tiny municipality rose steeply off the glassy ultramarine-blue surface of a clear mountain lake, studded with vessels of all sizes from rowboats to multimillion-dollar yachts, complete with the helipads, the copters, and, on the largest of these, the females to go with them.

    In a haze of detached amusement, Arkadin watched two long-stemmed models with the kind of perfectly bronzed skin only the privileged and wealthy know how to acquire. As he sipped a small cup of espresso, which was all but lost in his large, square hand, the two models climbed on top of a bald man with an exceedingly hairy body, stretched out on the sea-blue cushions of the yacht’s rear deck.

    He lost interest because for him pleasure was such an ephemeral concept, it lacked both form and function. His mind and his body were still bound to the iron-and-fire wheel of Nizhny Tagil, which just went to prove the old saw: You can take the man out of hell but you can’t take hell out of the man.

    The acrid taste of the toxic Nizhny Tagil sky was still in his mouth when, moments later, a man with skin the color of his espresso approached. Arkadin glanced up with an air close to indifference even as the man slithered into the chair across from him.

    “My name is Ismael,” the espresso man said. “Ismael Bey.”

    “Khoury’s right hand.” Arkadin finished off his cup, set it down on the small round table. “I’ve heard of you.”

    Bey, a rather young man, thin and bony as a starving dog, sported a dreadfully haunted look. “It’s done, Arkadin. You’ve won. With the death of Abdulla Khoury, I’m now the head of the Eastern Brotherhood, but I value my life more than my predecessor did. What do you want?”

    Arkadin took hold of his empty cup, moved it to the precise center of its saucer, all without taking his eyes from the other man’s. When he was ready, he said, “I don’t want your position, but I am going to take your power.”

    His lips formed the ghost of a smile, but there was something in the expression that sent a visible shiver of presentiment down the other’s spine.
    “To everyone in the outside world you have assumed the mantle of your fallen leader. However, everything—every decision, every action you will take from this moment on—originates with me; every dollar the Brotherhood makes flows through me. This is the new order of battle.”

    His smile turned lupine, and Bey’s face took on a green and shiny cast.
    “First in the order of battle is to choose a contingent of one hundred men from the Black Legion. Within the week I want them at a camp I’ve set up in the Ural Mountains.”

    Bey