The Bourne Sanction

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Tarkanian’s dead,” Bourne said. “Now do you want to help the man you say you love?”

  “I do love Leonid! I don’t care what he did.”

  At that moment, the driver cursed mightily, turned in his seat. “My client’s coming.”

  “Go on,” Bourne urged Gala. “Write his name down.”

  “Something must’ve happened in the VIP,” the driver said. “Shit, he looks pissed. You gotta get outta here now.”

  Bourne grabbed Gala, opened the street-side door, nearly burying it in the fender of a hurtling bombily. He flagged it down with a fistful of rubles, made the transfer from Western luxury to Eastern poverty in one stride. Gala Nematova broke away from him as he was entering the Zhig. He clutched her by the back of her fur coat, but she shrugged it off, began to run. The cabbie stepped on the gas, the stench of diesel fumes foaming up into the interior, choking them so badly Bourne had to crank open a window. As he did so, he saw two men who’d been at her table come out of the club. They looked right and left. One of them spotted Gala’s running figure, gestured to the other one, and they took off after her.

  “Follow those men!” Bourne shouted to the cabbie.

  The cabbie had a flat face with a distinctly Asian caste. He was fat, greasy, and spoke Russian with an abominable accent. Clearly, Russian wasn’t his first language. “You’re joking, yes?”

  Bourne thrust more rubles at him. “I’m joking, no.”

  The cabbie shrugged, crashed the Zhig into first gear, depressed the gas pedal.

  At that moment the two men caught up with Gala.

  Twenty

  AT PRECISELY that moment, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin and Devra were deciding how to get to Haydar without Devra’s people knowing about it.

  “Best would be to extract him from his environment,” Arkadin said. “But for that we need to know his habitual movements. I don’t have time—”

  “I know a way,” Devra said.

  The two of them were sitting side by side on a bed on the ground floor of a small inn. The room wasn’t much to look at—just a bed, a chair, a broken-down dresser—but it had its own bathroom, a shower with plenty of hot water, which they’d used one after the other. Best of all, it was warm.

  “Haydar’s a gambler,” she continued. “Almost every evening he’s hunkered down in the back room of a local café. He knows the owner, who lets them play without imposing a fee. In fact, once a week he joins them.” She glanced at her watch. “He’s sure to be there now.”

  “What good is that? Your people are sure to protect him there.”

  “Right, that’s why we aren’t going to go near the place.”

  An hour later, they were sitting in their rented car on the side of a two-lane road. All their lights were off. They were freezing. Whatever snow had seemed imminent had passed them by. A half-moon rode in the sky, an Old World lantern revealing wisps of clouds and bluish crusty snowbanks.

  “This is the route Haydar takes to and from the game.” Devra tilted her watch face so it was illuminated by the moonglow coming off the banked snow. “He should show any minute now.”

  Arkadin was behind the wheel. “Just point out the car, leave the rest to me.” One hand was on the ignition key, the other on the gearshift. “We have to be prepared. He might have an escort.”

  “If he’s got guards they’ll be in the same car with him,” Devra said. “The roads are so bad it will be extremely difficult to keep him in sight from a trailing vehicle.”

  “One car,” Arkadin said. “All the better.”

  A moment later the night was momentarily lit by a moving glow below the rise in the road.

  “Headlights.” Devra tensed. “That’s the right direction.”

  “You’ll know his car?”

  “I’ll know it,” she said. “There aren’t many cars in the area. Mostly old trucks for carting.”

  The glow brightened. Then they saw the headlights themselves as the vehicle crested the rise. From the position of the headlights, Arkadin could tell this was a car, not a truck.

  “It’s him,” she said.

  “Get out,” Arkadin ordered. “Run! Run now!”

  Keep moving,” Bourne told the cabbie, “in first gear only till I tell you different.”

  “I don’t think—”

  But Bourne had already swung open the curbside door, was sprinting toward the two men. One had Gala, the other was turning, raising his hand, perhaps a signal for one of the waiting cars. Bourne chopped his midsection with his two hands, brought his head down to his raised knee. The man’s teeth clacked together and he toppled over.

  The second man swung Gala around so that she was between him and Bourne. He scrabbled for his gun, but Bourne was too quick. Reaching around Gala, Bourne went for him. He moved to block Bourne and Gala stamped her heel on his instep. That was all the distraction Bourne needed. With a hand around her waist, he pulled her away, delivered a vicious uppercut to the man’s throat. Reflexively, he put two hands up, choking and gagging. Bourne delivered two quick blows to his stomach and he, too, hit the pavement.

  “Come on!”

  Bourne grabbed Gala by the hand, made for the bombila, moving slowly along the street with its door open. Bourne swung her inside, climbed in after her, slammed the door shut.

  “Take off!” he shouted at the cabbie. “Take off now!”

  Shivering with the cold, Gala rolled up the window.

  “My name is Yakov,” the cabbie said, craning his neck to look at them in the rearview mirror. “You make much excitement for me tonight. Is there more? Where can I take you?”

  “Just drive around,” Bourne said.

  Several blocks on he discovered Gala staring at him.

  “You weren’t lying to me,” she said.

  “Neither were you. Clearly, the Kazanskaya think you know where Leonid is.”

  “Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.” She was still trying to catch her breath. “That’s his name. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “What I want,” Bourne said, “is a meeting with Dimitri Maslov.”

  “The head of the Kazanskaya? You’re insane.”

  “Leonid has been playing with a very bad crowd,” Bourne said. “He’s put you in harm’s way. Unless I can persuade Maslov that you don’t know where Arkadin is you’ll never be safe.”

  Shivering, Gala struggled back into her fur jacket. “Why did you save me?” She pulled the jacket tight around her slender frame. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I can’t let Arkadin throw you to the wolves.”

  “That’s not what he’s done,” she protested.

  “What would you call it?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again, bit her lip as if she could find an answer in her pain.

  They had reached the inner Garden Road. Traffic whizzed by at dizzying speeds. The cabbie was about to earn his bombily name.

  “Where to?” he said over his shoulder.

  There was silence for a moment. Then Gala leaned forward, gave him an address.

  “And where the fuck might that be?” the cabbie asked.

  That was another oddity about bombily. Since almost none of them were Muscovites, they had no idea where anything was. Unfazed, Gala gave him directions and, with a horrific belching of diesel fumes, they lurched into the madly spinning traffic.

  “Since we can’t go back to the apartment,” Gala said, “we’ll crash at my girlfriend’s place. I’ve done it before. She’s cool with it.”

  “Do the Kazanskaya know about her?”

  Gala frowned. “I don’t think so, no.”

  “We can’t take the chance.” Bourne gave the cabbie the address of one of the new American-run hotels near Red Square. “That’s the last place they’ll think to look for you,” he said as the cabbie changed gears and they hurtled through the spangled Moscow night.

  Alone in the car, Arkadin fired the ignition and pulled out. He stamped on the gas pedal, accelerating so quickly his h
ead jerked back. Just before he slammed into the right corner of Haydar’s car, he switched on his headlights. He could see Haydar’s bodyguards in the rear seat. They were in the process of turning around when Arkadin’s car made jarring contact. The rear end of Haydar’s car slewed to the left, beginning its spin; Arkadin braked sharply, rammed the right back door, staving it in. Haydar, who had been struggling with the wheel, completely lost control of the car. It spun off the road, its front now facing the way it had come. Its rear struck a tree, the bumper broke in two, the trunk collapsed, and there it sat, a crippled animal. Arkadin drove off the road, put his car in park, got out, stalking toward Haydar. His headlights were shining directly into the wrecked car. He could see Haydar behind the wheel, conscious, clearly in shock. Only one of the men in the backseat was visible. His head was thrown back and to one side. There was blood on his face, black and glistening in the harsh light.

  Haydar cringed fearfully as Arkadin made for the bodyguards. Both rear doors were so buckled they could not be opened. Using his elbow, Arkadin smashed the near-side rear window and peered in. One man had been caught in Arkadin’s broadside hit. He’d been thrown clear across the car, lay half on the lap of the bodyguard still sitting up. Neither one moved.

  As Arkadin moved to haul Haydar out from behind the wheel, Devra came hurtling out of the darkness. Haydar’s eyes opened wide as he recognized her. She tackled Arkadin, her momentum knocking him off his feet.

  Haydar watched in amazement as they rolled over through the snow, now visible, now not in the headlight beams. Haydar could see her striking him, the much larger man fighting back, gradually gaining the upper hand by dint of his superior bulk and strength. Then Devra reared back. Haydar could see a knife in her hand. She drove it down into darkness, stabbing again and again.

  When she rose again into the headlight beams he could see her breathing heavily. Her hand was empty. Haydar figured she must have left the knife buried in her adversary. She staggered for a moment with the aftereffects of her struggle. Then she made her way over to him.

  Yanking open the car door, she said, “Are you okay?”

  He nodded, shrinking away from her. “I was told you’d turned on us, joined the other side.”

  She laughed. “That’s just what I wanted that sonovabitch to think. He managed to get to Shumenko and Filya. After that I figured the only way to survive was to play along with him until I got a chance to take him down.”

  Haydar nodded. “This is the final battle. The thought that you’d turned traitor was dispiriting. I know some of us thought your status was earned on your back, in Pyotr’s bed. But not me.” The shock was coming out of his eyes. The old canny light was returning.

  “Where is the package?” she said. “Is it safe?”

  “I handed it off to Heinrich this evening—at the card game.”

  “Has he left for Munich?”

  “Why the hell would he stay a minute more than he had to? He hates it here. I assume he was driving to Istanbul for his usual early-evening flight.” His eyes narrowed. “Why d’you want to know?”

  He gave a little yelp as Arkadin loomed out of the night. Looking from Devra to Arkadin and back again, he said, “What is this? I saw you stab him to death.”

  “You saw what we wanted you to see.” Arkadin handed Devra his gun, and she shot Haydar between the eyes.

  She turned back to him, handed him the gun butt-first. There was clear defiance in her voice when she said, “Have I proved myself to you now?”

  Bourne checked into the Metropolya Hotel as Fyodor Ilianovich Popov. The night clerk didn’t bat an eye at Gala’s presence, nor did he ask for her ID. Having Popov’s was enough to satisfy hotel policy. The lobby, with its gilt sconces and accents, and glittering crystal chandeliers, looked like something out of the czarist era, the designers thumbing their nose at the architecture of Soviet Brutalism.

  They took one of the silk-lined elevators to the seventeenth floor. Bourne opened the door to their room with an electronically coded plastic card. After a thorough visual check, he allowed her to enter. She took off her fur jacket. The act of sitting on the bed rode her mini-skirt farther up her thighs, but she appeared unconcerned.

  Leaning forward, elbows on knees, she said, “Thank you for saving me. But to be honest, I don’t know what I’ll do now.”

  Bourne pulled out the chair that went with the desk, sat facing her. “The first thing you have to do is tell me whether you know where Arkadin is.”

  Gala looked down at the carpet between her feet. She rubbed her arms as if she was still cold, though the temperature in the room was warm enough.

  “All right,” Bourne said, “let’s talk about something else. Do you know anything about the Black Legion?”

  Her head came up, her brows furrowed. “Now, that’s odd you should mention them.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Leonid would speak about them.”

  “Is Arkadin one of them?”

  Gala snorted. “You must be joking! No, he never actually spoke about them to me. I mean, he mentioned them now and again when he was going to see Ivan.”

  “And who is Ivan?”

  “Ivan Volkin. He’s an old friend of Leonid’s. He used to be in the grupperovka. Leonid told me that from time to time the leaders ask him for advice, so he knows all the players. He’s a kind of de facto underworld historian now. Anyway, he’s the one Leonid would go to.”

  This interested Bourne. “Can you take me to him?”

  “Why not? He’s a night owl. Leonid used to visit him very late.” Gala searched in her handbag for her cell phone. She scrolled through her phone book, dialed Volkin’s number.

  After speaking to someone for several minutes, she terminated the connection and nodded. “He’ll see us in an hour.”

  “Good.”

  She frowned, put away her phone. “If you’re thinking that Ivan knows where Leonid is, you’re mistaken. Leonid told no one where he was going, not even me.”

  “You must love this man a great deal.”

  “I do.”

  “Does he love you?”

  When she turned back to him, her eyes were full of tears. “Yes, he loves me.”

  “Is that why you took money to spy on Pyotr? Is that why you were partying with that man tonight at The Chinese Pilot?”

  “Christ, none of that matters.”

  Bourne sat forward. “I don’t understand. Why doesn’t it matter?”

  Gala regarded him for a long time. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know anything about love?” A tear overflowed, ran down her cheek. “Whatever I do for money allows me to live. Whatever I do with my body has nothing to do with love. Love is strictly a matter of the heart. My heart belongs to Leonid Danilovich. That’s sacred, pure. No one can touch it or defile it.”

  “Maybe we have different definitions of love,” Bourne said.

  She shook her head. “You’ve no right to judge me.”

  “Of course you’re right,” Bourne said. “But that wasn’t meant as a judgment. I have difficulty understanding love, that’s all.”

  She cocked her head. “Why is that?”

  Bourne hesitated before continuing. “I’ve lost two wives, a daughter, and many friends.”

  “Have you lost love, too?”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  “My brother died protecting me.” Gala began to shake. “He was all I had. No one would ever love me the way he did. After our parents were killed we were inseparable. He swore he’d make sure nothing bad happened to me. He went to his grave keeping that promise.” She sat up straight. Her face was defiant. “Now do you understand?”

  Bourne realized that he’d seriously underestimated this dyev. Had he done the same with Moira? Despite admitting his feelings for Moira, he’d unconsciously made the decision that no other woman could be as strong, as imperturbable as Marie. In this, he was clearly mistaken. He had this Russian dyevochka to thank for the insight.<
br />
  Gala peered at him now. Her sudden anger seemed to have burned itself out. “You’re like Leonid Danilovich in many ways. You no longer will walk off the cliff, you no longer trust in love. Like him, you were damaged in terrible ways. But now, you see, you’ve made your present as bleak as your past. Your only salvation is to find someone to love.”

  “I did find someone,” Bourne said. “She’s dead now.”

  “Is there no one else?”

  Bourne nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Then you must embrace her, instead of running away.” She clasped her hands together. “Embrace love. That’s what I would tell Leonid Danilovich if he were here instead of you.”

  Three blocks away, parked at the curb, Yakov, the cabbie who had dropped Gala and Bourne off, opened his cell phone, pressed a speed-dial digit on the keypad. When he heard the familiar voice, he said, “I dropped them off at the Metropolya not ten minutes ago.”

  “Keep an eye out for them,” the voice said. “If they leave the hotel, tell me. Then follow them.”

  Yakov gave his assent, drove back around, installed himself opposite the hotel entrance. Then he dialed another number, delivered precisely the same information to another of his clients.

  We just missed the package,” Devra said as they walked away from the wreck. “We’d better get on the road to Istanbul right away. The next contact, Heinrich, has a good couple of hours’ head start.”

  They drove through the night, negotiating the twists, turns, and switchbacks. The black mountains with their shimmering stoles of snow were their silent, implacable companions. The road was as pockmarked as if they were in a war zone. Once, hitting a patch of black ice, they spun out, but Arkadin didn’t lose his head. He turned into the skid, tamped gently on the brakes several times while he threw the car into neutral, then turned the engine off. They came to a stop in the side of a snowdrift.

  “I hope Heinrich had the same difficulty,” Devra said.

  Arkadin restarted the car but couldn’t build up enough traction to get them moving. He walked around to the rear while Devra took the wheel. He found nothing useful inside the trunk, so he trudged several paces into the trees, snapped off a handful of substantial branches, which he wedged in front of the right rear tire. He slapped the fender twice and Devra stepped on the gas. The car wheezed and groaned. The tires spun, sending up showers of granular snow. Then the treads found the wood, rolled up onto it and over. The car was free.