The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,28
was large and muscular with the narrow hips of a swimmer or a climber. By contrast, he had the long, tapered fingers of a pianist or a surgeon. And yet something important had changed, because there was about him the sense of a fire barely banked. The nearer one got to him, the more one felt the quivering of his leashed rage. Now that she was sitting beside him, now that she felt the once familiar stirrings inside her, she realized why she hadnt told Veronica Hart the whole truth: because she wasnt at all certain that she could handle Amun.
So quiet. Are you not stirred by being back home?
Actually, I was thinking about the last time you took me to Wadi AlRayan.
That was eight years ago and I was simply trying to get at the truth, he said with a shake of his head. Admit it, you were in my country passing secrets
I admit nothing.
which by right belonged to the state. He tapped his chest. And I am the state.
Le Roi le Veut, she murmured.
The king wills it. Chalthoum nodded. Precisely. And momentarily he took his hands off the wheel and spread his arms wide to encompass the desert into which they were just now driving. This is the land of absolutism, Umm al-Dunya, the Mother of the Universe, but Im not telling you anything you dont already know. After all, youre Egyptian, like me.
Half Egyptian. She shrugged. Anyway, it doesnt matter. Im here to help my people find out what happened to the airliner.
Your people. Chalthoum spat out the words as if even the thought of them left a bitter taste in his mouth. What about your father? What about his people? Has America so thoroughly destroyed the wild Arabian inside you?
Soraya put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She knew shed better get her own feelings under control and soon, otherwise the entire mission could spiral out of control. Then she felt Amuns arm brush up against hers and the hair at the back of her neck stirred. Good God, she thought, I cant feel this way about him. And then she broke out in a cold sweat. Was this why I withheld the truth from Veronicabecause I knew that if I told her everything shed never have allowed me to come back here? And all at once she felt herself in jeopardy, not because of Amun but because of herself, her own runaway emotions.
In an effort to regain some form of equilibrium she said, My father never forgot he was Egyptian.
So much so he changed his family name from Mohammed to Moore, Chalthoum said bitterly.
He fell in love with America when he fell in love with my mother. The deep appreciation I have of it comes from him.
Chalthoum shook his head. Why hide it? It was your mothers doing.
Like all Americans, my mother took for granted everything her country had to offer. She couldnt have cared less about the Fourth of July; it was my father who took me to the fireworks celebrations on the Mall in Washington, DC, where he spoke to me about freedom and liberty.
Chalthoum bared his teeth. I have to laugh at his naďvetéand yours. Frankly, I assumed you had a more shall we say pragmatic outlook on America, the country that exports Mickey Mouse, war, and occupying armed forces with equal abandon.
How convenient of you to forget that were also the country that keeps you safe from extremists, Amun.
Chalthoum clenched his teeth and was about to respond when the jouncing vehicle rolled through a cordon of his men, armed with submachine guns, keeping the mass of clamoring international press at a safe remove from the crash site, and ground to a halt. Soraya was the first out, settling her sunglasses more firmly on the bridge of her nose and the lightweight hat on her head. Chalthoum had been right about one thing: The airliner had fallen out of the sky not six hundred yards from the southeastern tip of the wadi, a body of water, complete with waterfalls, all the more spectacular because it was surrounded by desert.
Dear God, Soraya murmured as she began a tour of the crash site, which had already been cordoned off, presumably by Amuns people. The fuselage was in two main chunks, embedded in the sand and rock like grotesque monuments to an unknown god, but other pieces, violently disjointed from the body, were scattered about in a widening circle, along with