The Bourne Sanction

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Kiki stood up, turned around to face them. “In other words all two thousand cameras have to be covered.”

  “That’s right,” Soraya said.

  “You don’t need a hacker, dear. You need the invisible man.”

  “But you can make them invisible, Kiki.” Deron slid his arm around her slender waist “Can’t you?”

  “Hmm.” Kiki peered again at the code on the terminal. “You know, there looks like there may be a recurring variance I might be able to exploit.” She hunkered down on a stool. “I’m going to transfer this upstairs.”

  Deron winked at Soraya, as if to say, I told you so.

  Kiki routed a number of files to her computer, which was separate from Deron’s. She spun around, slapped her hands on her thighs, and got up. “Okay, then, I’ll see you all later.”

  “How much later?” Soraya said, but Kiki was already taking the stairs three at a time.

  Moscow was wreathed in snow when Bourne stepped off the Aeroflot plane at Sheremetyevo. His flight had been delayed forty minutes, the jet circling while the runways were de-iced. He cleared Customs and Immigration and was met by a small, cat-like individual wrapped in a white down coat. Lev Baronov, Professor Specter’s contact.

  “No luggage, I see,” Baronov said in heavily accented English. He was as wiry and hyperactive as a Jack Russell terrier as he elbowed and barked at the small army of gypsy cab drivers vying for a fare. They were a sad-faced lot, plucked from the minorities in the Caucasus, Asians and the like whose ethnicity prevented them from getting a decent job with decent pay in Moscow. “We’ll take care of that on the way in to town. You’ll need proper clothes for Moscow’s winter. It’s a balmy minus two Celsius today.”

  “That would be most helpful,” Bourne replied in perfect Russian.

  Baronov’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “You speak like a native, gospadin Bourne.”

  “I had excellent instructors,” Bourne said laconically.

  Amid the bustle of the flight terminal, he was studying the flow of passengers, noting those who lingered at a newsagent or outside the duty-free shop, those who didn’t move at all. Ever since he emerged into the terminal he’d had the unshakable feeling that he was being watched. Of course there were CCTV cameras all over, but the particular prickling of his scalp that had developed over the years of fieldwork was unerring. Someone had him under surveillance. This fact was both alarming and reassuring—that he’d already picked up a tag meant someone knew he was scheduled to arrive in Moscow. NSA could have scanned the departing flight manifests back at New York and picked up his name from Lufthansa; there’d been no time to take himself off the list. He looked only in short touristic glances because he had no desire to alert his shadow that he was on to him.

  “I’m being followed,” Bourne said as he sat in Baronov’s wheezing Zil. They were on the M10 motorway.

  “No problem,” Baronov said, as if he was used to being tailed all the time. He didn’t even ask who was following Bourne. Bourne thought of the professor’s pledge that Baronov wouldn’t get in his way.

  Bourne paged through the packet Baronov had given him, which included new ID, a key, and the box number to get money out of the safe-deposit vault in the Moskva Bank.

  “I need a plan of the bank building,” Bourne said.

  “No problem.” Baronov exited the M10. Bourne was now Fyodor Ilianovich Popov, a midlevel functionary of GazProm, the gargantuan state-run energy conglomerate.

  “How well will this ID hold up?” Bourne asked.

  “Not to worry.” Baronov grinned. “The professor has friends in GazProm who know how to protect you, Fyodor Ilianovich Popov.”

  Anthony Prowess had come a long way to keep the ancient Zil in sight and he wasn’t about to lose it, no matter what evasive maneuvers the driver took. He’d been waiting at Sheremetyevo for Bourne to come through Immigration. General Kendall had sent a recent surveillance photo of Bourne to his cell. The photo was grainy and two-dimensional because of the long telephoto lens used, but it was a close-up; there was no mistaking Bourne when he arrived.

  For Prowess, the next few minutes were crucial. He had no illusions that he could remain unnoticed by Bourne for any length of time; therefore, in the short moments while his subject was still unselfconscious, he needed to drink in every tic and habit, no matter how minuscule or seemingly irrelevant. He knew from bitter experience that these small insights would prove invaluable as the surveillance ground on, especially when it came time to engage the subject and terminate him.

  Prowess was no stranger to Moscow. He’d been born here to a British diplomat and his cultural attaché wife. Not until Prowess was fifteen did he understand that his mother’s job was a cover. She was, in fact, a spy for MI6, Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Four years later Prowess’s mother was compromised, and MI6 spirited them out of the country. Because his mother was now a wanted woman, the Prowesses were sent to America, to begin a new life with a new family name. The danger had been ground so deeply into Prowess that he’d actually forgotten what they were once called. He was now simply Anthony Prowess.

  As soon as he’d built up qualified academic credits, he applied to the NSA. From the moment he’d discovered that his mother was a spy, that was all he’d wanted to do. No amount of pleading from his parents could dissuade him. Because of his ease with foreign languages and his knowledge of other cultures, the NSA sent him abroad, first to the Horn of Africa to train, then to Afghanistan, where he liaised with the local tribes fighting the Taliban in rough mountain terrain. He was a hard man, no stranger to hardship, or to death. He knew more ways to kill a human being than there were days in the year. Compared with what he’d been through in the past nineteen months, this assignment was going to be a piece of cake.

  Seventeen

  BOURNE AND BARONOV sped down Volokolamskoye Highway. Crocus City was an enormous high-end mall. Built in 2002, it was a seemingly endless array of glittering boutiques, restaurants, car showrooms, and marble fountains. It was also an excellent place to lose a tail.

  While Bourne shopped for suitable clothes, Baronov was busy on his cell phone. There was no point in going to the trouble of losing the tail inside the maze of the mall only to have him pick them up again when they returned to the Zil. Baronov was calling a colleague to come to Crocus City. They’d take his car, and he’d drive the Zil into Moscow.

  Bourne paid for his purchases and changed into them. Baronov took him to the Franck Muller Café inside the mall, where they had coffee and sandwiches.

  “Tell me about Pyotr’s last girlfriend,” Bourne said.

  “Gala Nematova?” Baronov shrugged. “Not much to tell, really. She’s just another one of those pretty girls one sees around all the latest Moscow nightclubs. These women are a ruble a dozen.”

  “Where would I find her?”

  Baronov shrugged. “She’ll go where the oligarchs cluster. Really, your guess is as good as mine.” He laughed good-naturedly. “For myself, I’m too old for places like that, but I’ll be glad to take you on a round-robin tonight.”

  “All I need is for you to lend me a car.”

  “Suit yourself, miya droog.”

  A few moments later, Baronov went to the men’s room, where he’d agreed to make the switch of car keys with his friend. When he returned he handed Bourne a folded piece of paper on which was the plan for the Moskva Bank building.

  They went out a different direction from the way they’d come in, which led them to a parking lot on the other side of the mall. They got into a vintage black Volga four-door sedan that, to Bourne’s relief, started up immediately.

  “You see? No problem.” Baronov laughed jovially. “What would you do without me, gospadin Bourne?”

  The Frunzenskaya embankment was located southwest of Moscow’s inner Garden Ring. Mikhail Tarkanian had said that he could see the pedestrian bridge to Gorky Park from his living room window. He hadn’t lied. His apartment was in a building not far from Khlastekov
, a restaurant serving excellent Russian food, according to Baronov. With its two-story, square-columned portico and decorative concrete balconies, the building itself was a prime example of the Stalinist Empire style that raped and beat into submission a more pastoral and romantic architectural past.

  Bourne instructed Baronov to stay in the Volga until he returned. He went up the stone steps, under the colonnade, and through the glass door. He was in a small vestibule that ended in an inner door, which was locked. On the right wall was a brass panel with rows of bell pushes corresponding to the apartments. Bourne ran his finger down the rows until he found the push with Tarkanian’s name. Noting the apartment number, he crossed to the inner door and used a small flexible blade to fool the lock’s tumblers into thinking he had a key. The door clicked open, and he went inside.

  There was a small arthritic elevator on the left wall. To the right, a rather grand staircase swept up to the first floor. The first three treads were in marble, but these gave way to simple concrete steps that released a kind of talcum-like powder as the porous treads wore away.

  Tarkanian’s apartment was on the third floor, down a dark corridor, dank with the odors of boiled cabbage and stewed meat. The floor was composed of tiny hexagonal tiles, chipped and worn as the steps leading up.

  Bourne found the door without trouble. He put his ear against it, listening for sounds within the apartment. When he heard none, he picked the lock. Turning the glass knob slowly, he pushed open the door a crack. Weak light filtered in past half-drawn curtains framing windows on the right. Behind the smell of disuse was a whiff of a masculine scent—cologne or hair cream. Tarkanian had made it clear he hadn’t been back here in years, so who was using his apartment?

  Bourne moved silently, cautiously through the rooms. Where he’d expected to find dust, there was none; where he expected the furniture to be covered in sheets, it wasn’t. There was food in the refrigerator, though the bread on the counter was growing mold. Still, within the week, someone had been living here. The knobs to all the doors were glass, just like the one on the front door, and some looked wobbly on their brass shafts. There were photos on the wall: high-toned black-and-whites of Gorky Park in different seasons.

  Tarkanian’s bed was unmade. The covers lay pulled back in unruly waves, as if someone had been startled out of sleep or had made a hasty exit. On the other side of the bed, the door to the bathroom was half closed.

  As Bourne stepped around the end of the bed, he noticed a five-by-seven framed photo of a young woman, blond, with a veneer of beauty cultivated by models the world over. He was wondering whether this was Gala Nematova when he caught a blurred movement out of the corner of his eye.

  A man hidden behind the bathroom door made a run at Bourne. He was armed with a thick-bladed fisherman’s knife, which he jabbed at Bourne point-first. Bourne rolled away, the man followed. He was blue-eyed, blond, and big. There were tattoos on the sides of his neck and the palms of his hands. Mementos of a Russian prison.

  The best way to neutralize a knife was to close with your opponent. As the man lunged after him, Bourne turned, grabbed the man by his shirt, slammed his forehead into the bridge of the man’s nose. Blood spurted, the man grunted, cursed in guttural Russian, “Blyad!”

  He drove a fist into Bourne’s side, tried to free his hand with the knife. Bourne applied a nerve block at the base of the thumb. The Russian butted Bourne in the sternum, drove him back off the bed, into the half-open bathroom door. The glass knob drilled into Bourne’s spine, causing him to arch back. The door swung fully open and he sprawled on the cold tiles. The Russian, regaining use of his hand, pulled out a Stechkin APS 9mm. Bourne kicked him in the shin, so he went down on one knee, then struck him on the side of the face, and the Stechkin went flying across the tiles. The Russian launched a flurry of punches and hand strikes that battered Bourne back against the door before grabbing the Stechkin. Bourne reached up, felt the cool octagon of the glass doorknob. Grinning, the Russian aimed the pistol at Bourne’s heart. Wrenching off the knob, Bourne threw it at the center of the Russian’s forehead, where it struck full-on. His eyes rolled up and he slumped to the floor.

  Bourne gathered up the Stechkin and took a moment to catch his breath. Then he crawled over to the Russian. Of course, he had no conventional ID on him, but that didn’t mean Bourne couldn’t find out where he’d come from.

  Stripping off the big man’s jacket and shirt, Bourne took a long look at a constellation of tattoos. On his chest was a tiger, a sign of an enforcer. On his left shoulder was a dagger dripping blood, a sign that he was a killer. But it was the third symbol, a genie emerging from a Middle Eastern lamp, that interested Bourne the most. This was a sign that the Russian had been put in prison for drug-related crimes.

  The professor had told Bourne that two of the Russian Mafia families, the Kazanskaya and the Azeri, were vying for sole control of the drug market. Don’t get in their way, Specter had warned. If they have any contact with you, I beg you not to engage them. Instead, turn the other cheek. It’s the only way to survive there.

  Bourne was about to get up when he saw something on the inside of the Russian’s left elbow: a small tattoo of a figure with a man’s body and a jackal’s head. Anubis, Egyptian god of the underworld. This symbol was supposed to protect the wearer from death, but it had also latterly been appropriated by the Kazanskaya. What was a member of such a powerful Russian grupperovka family doing in Tarkanian’s apartment? He’d been sent to find him and kill him. Why? That was something Bourne needed to find out.

  He looked around the bathroom at the sink with its dripping faucet, pots of eye cream and powder, makeup pencils, the stained mirror. He pulled back the shower curtain, plucked several blond hairs from the drain. They were long; from a woman’s head. Gala Nematova’s head?

  He made his way to the kitchen, opened drawers, pawed through them until he found a blue ballpoint pen. Back in the bathroom, he took one of the eyeliner pencils. Crouching down beside the Russian, he drew a facsimile of the Anubis tattoo on the inside of his left elbow; when he got a line wrong, he rubbed it off. When he was satisfied, he used the blue ballpoint pen to make the final “tattoo.” He knew it wouldn’t withstand a close inspection, but for a flash of identification he thought it would suffice. At the sink, he delicately rinsed off the makeup pencil, then shot some hair spray over the ink outline to further fix it on his skin.

  He checked behind the toilet tank and in it, favorite hiding places for money, documents, or important materials, but found nothing. He was about to leave when his eyes fell again on the mirror. Peering more closely, he could see a trace of red here and there. Lipstick, which had been carefully wiped off, as if someone—possibly the Kazanskaya Russian—had sought to erase it. Why would he do that?

  It seemed to Bourne the smears formed a kind of pattern. Taking up a pot of face powder, he blew across the top of it. The petroleum-based powder sought its twin, clung to the ghost image of the petroleum-based lipstick.

  When he was done, he put the pot down, took a step backward. He was looking at a scrawled note:

  Off to the Kitaysky Lyotchik. Where R U? Gala.

  So Gala Nematova, Pyotr’s last girlfriend, did live here. Had Pyotr used this apartment while Tarkanian was away?

  On his way out, he checked the Russian’s pulse. It was slow but steady. The question of why the Kazanskaya sent this prison-hardened assassin to an apartment where Gala Nematova had once lived with Pyotr loomed large in his mind. Was there a connection between Semion Icoupov and the grupperovka family?

  Taking another long look at Gala Nematova’s photo, Bourne slipped out of the apartment as silently as he’d entered it. Out in the hallway he listened for human sounds, but apart from the muted wailing of a baby in an apartment on the second floor, all was still. He descended the stairs and went through the vestibule, where a little girl holding her mother’s hand was trying to drag her upstairs. Bourne and the mother exchanged the meaningless smiles of st
rangers passing each other. Then Bourne was outside, emerging from under the colonnade. Save for an old woman gingerly picking her way through the treacherous snow, no one was about. He slipped into the passenger’s seat of the Volga and shut the door behind him.

  That was when he saw the blood leaking from Baronov’s throat. At the same instant a wire whipped around his neck, digging into his windpipe.

  Four times a week after work, Rodney Feir, chief of field support for CI, worked out at a health club a short walk from his house in Fairfax, Virginia. He spent an hour on the treadmill, another hour weight training, then took a cold shower and headed for the steam room.

  This evening General Kendall was waiting for him. Kendall dimly saw the glass door open, cold air briefly sucked in as tendrils of steam escaped into the men’s locker room. Then Feir’s trim, athletic body appeared through the mist.

  “Good to see you, Rodney,” General Kendall said.

  Feir nodded silently, sat down beside Kendall.

  Rodney Feir was Plan B, the backup the general had put in place in the event the plan involving Rob Batt blew up. In fact, Feir had been easier to land than Batt. Feir was someone who’d drifted into security work not for any patriotic reason, not because he liked the clandestine life. He was simply lazy. Not that he didn’t do his job, not that he didn’t do it damn well. It was just that government life suited him down to his black wing-tip shoes. The key fact to remember about him was that whatever Feir did, he did because it would benefit him. He was, in fact, an opportunist. He, more than any of the others at CI, could see the writing on the wall, which is why his conversion to the NSA cause had been so easy and seamless. With the death of the Old Man, the end of days had arrived. He had none of Batt’s loyalty to contend with.

  Still, it didn’t do to take anyone for granted, which is why Kendall met him here occasionally. They would take a steam, then shower, climb into their civvies, and go to dinner at one of several grungy barbecue joints Kendall knew in the southeast section of the district.