The Bourne Initiative

by Robert Ludlum

  One of the trio, he could not tell which, but he imagined it to be the woman with the feral smile, glanced behind them, where five men in trench coats, holding pistols in their hands, frowning deeply like old men at a comrade’s funeral, stood on the platform, discussing God alone knew what. Ivan did not want to know, just as he did not want to know the nature of the first minister’s current difficulty. His heart was filled with the opportunity—call it a gift!—he had been given to do his duty as a citizen and—his chest swelled with pride at the thought—as a patriot. He had never in his life felt more Russian, not when he had gotten married, not during the occasions of the births of his three sons, nor the wedding of the eldest. These were all beautiful moments in a man’s life, to be sure, but they were shared by almost every man. But this moment, this one was special. It was unique in his life—shared with no other. Only Ivan Ivanovich. And he would remember it and bask in its glory until his last dying breath.

  —

  “Come see me when this is all over,” Savasin told the old man as he let them off on the far side of the train yard, a place so vast the station itself was barely a smudge on the near horizon. Ivan Ivanovich smiled shyly, brushed some soot off the first minister’s lapel, and gave them a military salute. And that was how Bourne, Savasin, and the Angelmaker left him.

  They made their way through a gap in the cyclone fence the old man had pointed out to them. Daylight was dying, the last glimmers of sun sparking off the tops of Moscow’s tallest buildings, turning them to molten gold. A strong north wind had sprung up, sending the temperatures plummeting by at least ten degrees. Scattered clouds rushed by overhead, except for a gathering in the west, like birds seeking out the last rays of the sun before Moscow slipped into darkness.

  Across a narrow service road a municipal parking lot spread out like an old lady with too much weight. And like that old lady, the tarmac was cracked and pockmarked by time and harsh weather.

  It took them some time to find a car they could break into. Muscovites still maintained the habit of taking their steering wheels with them when they parked, to ensure their vehicles would still be there when they returned. But at last Bourne found one intact, broke in, and hot-wired the starter. Savasin climbed into the passenger’s seat and, without a word of protest, the Angelmaker occupied the backseat. It was the first minister who knew Dima’s new address and the best route to get them there unnoticed. They did not speak about the incident at Leningradsky Station. Savasin was sunk in gloom. Bourne felt it best not to disturb him, and the Angelmaker, uncharacteristically, refrained from mocking Savasin’s humiliation. Seeing with their own eyes how his own FSB had been turned against him, acting on orders from an older brother who, though in an inferior post, somehow wielded more power than he did seemed punishment enough.

  40

  Only two dead?” Konstantin’s glance bounced off the pair of corpses lying on the Sapsan platform of Leningradsky Station and up to the remaining five men. “Bourne must be losing his touch.”

  “Two dead is an unacceptable number, sir,” Viktor, the leader of the spetsnaz squad, said. “These are my people.”

  Konstantin’s eyes glittered, and his voice crackled with harsh energy. “No, Captain, you and everyone else in the FSB are my people. Never forget that.”

  Viktor stared stoically at Konstantin, perhaps in silent rebuke, perhaps not. Konstantin elided over it; the captain and all these men were beneath his notice. So far as he was concerned every member of spetsnaz was cannon fodder. On the front line, in enemy territory, theirs not to reason why.

  Besides, Konstantin had more important matters to attend to than standing around with the little people. Turning his back on the captain and what was left of his detail, he said, “Scrape the remains off the platform, Captain. The sooner the better. The Sapsan’s next departure has been delayed far too long as it is.”

  “And fuck you too, sir,” Viktor muttered under his breath as he watched Konstantin blur into the haze of the station.

  —

  “We’re being followed,” the Angelmaker said, half turned so she could look out the rear window.

  “For about a mile now,” Bourne replied.

  “Well?” Her voice was like a newly sharpened stick. “What do you propose to do about it?”

  This barbed exchanged brought Savasin out his self-imposed exile from the real world.

  “Nothing.”

  “Why the hell not?” the Angelmaker said.

  Bourne smiled. “Patience.”

  They were still on the Outer Ring Road, more than five miles from the address Savasin had given Bourne. With a jolt, the first minister looked around, their location snapping into place. “Bourne, we’re nowhere near the exit we need to get to Dima’s.”

  “That’s the point,” Bourne said, as he swung off the Outer Ring Road. He sped down the off ramp and onto the tangle of city streets.

  “They’re still on us,” the Angelmaker reported.

  Bourne said nothing, concentrating on the road ahead. He was looking for an anomaly: a detour, a construction site, an abandoned warehouse. Instead, he found a trestle train crossing.

  “Hang on,” he said tightly, as he turned the wheel hard to the right. The car rattled down the tracks.

  Savasin’s eyes opened wide, his mouth hung open in stupefaction. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Nobody asked you, your highness,” the Angelmaker snapped.

  When Mala had started to call the first minister “your highness” Bourne had not a clue. Perhaps when they had been walking and talking together on the platform in Leningradsky Station.

  The car behind them had turned onto the road that paralleled the tracks. Bourne could see its shadow flickering between the pine trees. Night had fallen, as suddenly as if an immense cloak had been thrown over the city. Lights burned, but dimly, as they were on the far outskirts where factories, power stations, and slums huddled against one another as if in an attempt to keep warm. The air was filled with soot and oil particulates; the pines were black with it. And then the moon, made hazy by the thickened atmosphere, lost its shape, vanishing altogether in the gathering clouds. It began to snow, a gray shower in the twin beams of the headlights, reminding Bourne of the photos he’d been shown during Treadstone training of the houses surrounding Auschwitz and Buchenwald half obscured by the pall of gray ash pluming from the tall brick chimneys of the crematoriums.

  Bourne increased his speed, even as the snow began to come down first in veils and then in sheets, inflicting multiple compressions on visibility. It was no longer possible, for instance, to be sure they were still being paralleled by the following vehicle. Then, all at once, a powerful spotlight pierced the snow and the pine needles. It swung back and forth like a maddened eye, before picking them out. It flickered, its dazzling light dancing off the side of their car, then leaving them in utter darkness for long moments at a time.

  Savasin appeared mesmerized by the blinding light.

  “How did they pick up our trail?” the Angelmaker asked.

  Bourne was too busy at the moment to give either of them attention. He was fully concentrated on the dimly glowing ball of light that hovered four feet above the tracks. It grew brighter as it rushed toward them. And then, as the Angelmaker cranked down her window, over the howling of the gusting wind they heard the distinct clickety-clack of the oncoming train, felt the strong push of the air it drove before it.

  “Bourne, what the hell are you doing?” Savasin shouted in clear distress. “You’re going to get us all killed!”

  Leaning forward, the Angelmaker clamped down on Savasin’s shoulders, said, “Shut up, your highness. Let him do what he does best.”

  The train was almost upon them now. The engineer must have seen them, finally, because he let out a blast on his air horn, and then, seeing that the car ahead wasn’t turning, sounded the horn again and again, until the searchlight from the car running parallel to them swung to illuminate the train so the o
ccupants could see what was coming.

  This was the moment Bourne had been awaiting. He turned the wheel hard over left. For a heart-stopping instant the car stalled as the tires hit the left-side rail. Then he gunned the engine and the car, bouncing upward, ran over the rail, and they were off the track, crunching down over the narrow cinder bed, still in danger of being clipped by the front of the train, which was so close now it loomed over their heads like a fire-breathing demon, a solid wall of flashing steel and grinding wheels.

  Then they were in the woods, jouncing between spindly pines, churning the gray snow to slush, the almost bald tires slipping and sliding until Bourne guided them beyond the far tree line, onto a country track that eventually led them to paved road. Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at a crossroad with signs enough to orient Savasin.

  “That way,” he said, pointing to their right.

  Instead of heading in that direction, Bourne pulled over onto the verge, though there was no traffic visible in either direction. He got out, leaned into the Angelmaker’s open window, and said, “Your turn.”

  She dutifully got out, went around to slide behind the wheel. Bourne opened the front passenger’s door, told Savasin to get in the back. Then he took his place beside the Angelmaker.

  “Now,” he said to Savasin, “direct us to the closest metro station that will get us nearest to Dima’s place.”

  “The Kapotnya Oblast has no nearby metro stop,” Savasin said. “No municipal buses, either.”

  “Just get us closest you can then,” Bourne said.

  Savasin considered a minute, then said to the Angelmaker, “Go left.” And then, as if to himself, “We’re just inside the Outer Ring Road, eastern Moscow. We need to travel south, but not too far.”

  He directed them to the Domodedovskaya metro station.

  “This is where you and I get off, Timur.” Bourne turned to the Angelmaker. “Considering how far we’ve been followed, it will be more secure if we split up. Take the car. Change it for another, if you deem it wise. You know Dima’s address. Meet us there.”

  The Angelmaker nodded. “Take care of yourself. And do me a favor, keep his highness in line.” With that, she was off, a thick cloud of exhaust trailing after her.

  Bourne led Savasin down the steps. The Domodedovskaya station was Brutalist modern. It had none of the opulent charm of the metro stations in and around the Inner Ring Road, where a magical mystery tour of old czarist Russia, post–World War II exuberance, lit by bulbous chandeliers, awaited the gawking tourist.

  They took the metro in a leisurely northeasterly direction, emerging in the Alma-Atkinskaya station, in the Brateyvo District, across the Moskva River from Kapotnya. The Alma-Atkinskaya station was even more modern, having an almost space-age look. But that was to be expected from the newest of Moscow’s outlier stations.

  Out in the gray night, the snow continued to fall, blurring the ranks of identical gray modern residential high-rises, and haloing the light from the occasional sodium light that wasn’t smashed.

  Bourne saw the car first—a black Zil, with a long snout and blacked-out windows. They shot first—two men pointing pistols through zipped-down windows. Pulling Savasin down behind the bulk of the station’s entrance that emerged from underground like a boil spoiling to be lanced, Bourne squeezed off three shots, two of which hit their mark. The hostile fire ceased as quickly as it had begun. The driver put the Zil in gear but made the mistake of flooring the accelerator. The Zil began to skid sideways on the thin coating of ice concealed by the snow. That error in judgment allowed Bourne to fire three times at the driver’s side of the windshield; the third trigger pull told him the magazine was empty. The Zil screamed as if it felt pain, and Bourne was running hard toward the car, Savasin fast on his heels. The Zil, driverless, was still making tight circles when Bourne wrenched open the driver’s door and hauled the dead man out. One bullet had struck his chest, the other his head.

  Launching himself forward, Bourne gained control of the car, stopped it long enough for Savasin to scramble in beside him. Bourne went through the clothes of the two shooters, looking for identification, found none. The two men exchanged clothes with the dead shooters. Blood spatters aside, the new outfits suited them better. Plus, the overcoats made them instantly warmer.

  Abandoning the Strizh on the backseat, Bourne grabbed the shooter’s pistol. Then he turned to Savasin, who had turned up his collar against the rising wind.

  “Shit,” Bourne said.

  Savasin, knotting his tie, said, “What is it?”

  “The Angelmaker asked how they were able to follow us.” Bourne picked up the train worker’s coat that the first minister had been wearing, pulled out a pin with a gleaming head from the underside of the collar.

  “What the hell is that?” Savasin asked, alarmed.

  “A miniature GPS tracker,” Bourne said. Dropping the pin, he ground it beneath the heel of his shoe.

  “That fucking Ivan Ivanovich,” Savasin said.

  “It looks as if your brother has been one step ahead of us.”

  “But how the hell would he know we’d run into Ivan Ivanovich?”

  “He didn’t,” Bourne said. “But thinking ahead like a chess master, Ivan Ivanovich was just one of his plans. If we escaped his men—which we did—we’d seek out someone who could help us, someone in uniform who could lead us to other uniforms we could put on. The shattered window was his good fortune. The men in uniforms were more or less right in front of us.”

  A string of Russian curses exploded from Savasin’s mouth. Then he said: “He’ll pay for this.”

  “Forget Konstantin for the moment.” Bourne checked his watch. “We need to get to Dima as quickly as possible.”

  Savasin pointed to the section of the Outer Ring Road. “Head north. Good thing I know all the shortcuts in Kapotnya.”

  If Morgana was right, they had sixteen hours until the zero-day trigger of the Bourne Initiative was engaged.

  41

  Soraya, connected to Morgana via her wireless earwig, made all the arrangements. A car was waiting for Morgana and Natalie. However, Natalie asked to be let off before the car got to the airfield where the Dreadnaught jet was standing by.

  “But you can’t stay here,” Morgana said. “It’s far too dangerous. You’ve been seen boarding Gora’s boat multiple times. The police are going to be looking for you.”

  “I can’t leave my son, Morgana.”

  “Then that wasn’t a line.”

  Natalie smiled. “No. I’m not going anywhere without Karl.” She squeezed Morgana’s arm. “Don’t look so alarmed. This is my country. I know how to get around. I know how to evade the police.” She laughed. “I’ve been doing it almost all my life.”

  “This is different,” Morgana said. “You know it is. Three people dead, my God. I’ll take you and Karl back to the States with me.”

  “So I can do what, exactly?” Natalie shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks. Sweden’s my home. I’m not leaving.”

  With her hand on the door handle, she turned back. “Morgana, I know I fucked up.” Her brows knit together. “Why aren’t you angry with me?”

  “I know what Gora did to you, how far he pushed you, how he humiliated you.”

  Natalie bowed her head. “Thank you.” And she was out the door, walking down the street before Morgana had a chance to say anything more.

  —

  As it turned out, it was just as well Natalie didn’t want to come back to D.C. with her. Inside the Dreadnaught plane, as it was readying to take off, Soraya’s voice buzzed in her ear. “Sat phone. Now.”

  “Change of plans,” Soraya said when Morgana had dialed in on the sat phone. “I hope you’re not homesick, because you’re not coming back to Washington, at least not right away. Things are still too hot and everything is happening so fast now I haven’t had a chance to smooth the way for your return.”

  The plane had taxied to the head of the runway. The engines were revvi
ng up.

  “Where are you sending me?” Morgana asked as she strapped herself in.

  The plane hurtled down the runway and lifted off. With a hum of hydraulics, the wheels retracted.

  “Somalia,” Soraya said. “I want you to keep an eye on the arms dealer, Keyre, whose mobile number you found on Gora’s boat. There’s been an awful lot of chatter surrounding him all of a sudden. The storage lockers are filled with a wide range of arms and electronic listening devices; use anything you need. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Will do.”

  “And Morgana. Keep your distance, at all costs. I can’t overemphasize the danger this man represents.”

  “I hear you.”

  “I mean it,” Soraya said before signing off. “Keyre’s a fucking nightmare.”

  —

  The filthy air enveloped them, soot fell from the sky and turned the snow black before it hit the ground, cinders crunched under their soles, and evil-smelling eruptions belched from the immense smokestacks of hapless Kapotnya. As Bourne and Savasin picked their way along the sidewalks, the sky was so low it was impossible to tell whether it was composed of clouds or smoke. The sunless afternoon had slid unnoticed into turbulent twilight. Street lights—those that worked—cast a dim and fitful illumination on the sulphurous atmosphere.

  Vehicles crawled slowly forward, then stopped for long minutes. The hellacious traffic had forced them to abandon the Zil. The sidewalks were bloated with people making their way home. Old men sat on icy stoops with their heads in their hands, exhausted simply by breathing. Teenagers zigzagged through the crowds, picking pockets or selling the latest iterations of cheap and dangerous drugs. No music, no car horns tonight, only small noises that constituted a deathly silence.