The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne 14)

Finally, one of the eagle doors opened, and the frame filled with the gargantuan creature. He stared balefully at Savasin out of his raisin eyes. Then he raised a hand. Savasin’s Makarov looked like a child’s toy in his fist. The mountain gestured with the barrel of Savasin’s own handgun, beckoning him on.

Unlike the rest of the dank, murky building, the interior of the apartment was awash in light. His gaze traveled upward to the immense skylight. Two clusters of halogen lamps hung from the ceiling like chandeliers. They were a corrective, their blazing illumination draining the natural light of its sulfurous hue. The apartment had been carved out of the entire top floor. Open doorways led left and right, but the vast space into which the mountain led him was the entire apartment’s raison d’être. It was filled with yet more foliage, traveler’s palms chief among them. On either side of the large, open room rose a pair of fruit trees, lemon on the right, fig on the left. An old man—apparently a gardener—was busy at the fig tree, pruning and fussing. He ignored the guest completely, as did the mountain, now that Savasin had been granted permission to enter the inner sanctum. In fact, the massive man was in the ungainly process of seating himself on a stoutly reinforced bench in front of a baby grand piano. His massive hands hovered over the keyboard, then struck the first chords of Maurice Ravel’s heartbreakingly beautiful “Pavane for a Dead Princess.”

Astonished, Savasin stood transfixed as the mountain played the piece with consummate skill and a tenderness impossible to comprehend coming from such a hulking creature.

“I see you’ve met Cerberus.”

At the sound of the smoky voice, Savasin tore himself away from the transfixing scene and turned his attention to the woman who, having stepped from behind a tree, now planted herself before a large artist’s easel. She held a brush in one hand, a palette in the other. Beside her was a paint-spattered stepladder whose top was an open case filled with tubes of oil paint and a can of turpentine, the time-tested old-school thinner of oils.

Even in her mid-fifties Ekaterina Orlova was a beautiful woman—pale, oval face, eyes of a blue akin to the deepest ocean, an aggressive nose, and wide lips, which were now turned up in an ironic smile.

“Timur Ludmirovich. Shall I say it’s good to see you? Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t.” She turned to regard the half-finished painting of a swimmer half submerged in what?—a pool, the sea? It was impossible to tell. Possibly that was the point. The swimmer was in her element and yet out of sight of land.

“The painting is lovely,” Savasin said, partly because he meant it, partly because he could think of nothing else to say. He had come all this way, fended off an attack, risen through the stench of an abattoir, and now what? He had conveniently forgotten how intimidating Ekaterina Orlova was. But perhaps that had been deliberate.

The artist, putting brush to canvas, said, “Tell me, Timur Ludmirovich, why have you come?” She wore a smock that once had been light-blue but now displayed all the colors of the rainbow, and some in between.

Savasin lifted the bottle. “I brought you a present.”

She laughed, a guttural, utterly erotic sound that came from deep in her throat. She turned. “Now I know you came to ask a favor.”

“Just to talk,” Savasin said, a touch too hastily.

That laugh again, making him feel things best not spoken of in the area below his belt. She set her brush in a smeared jar of colorless liquid and set the palette on the top of the stepladder. Then she crossed to the piano, where the mountain had placed Savasin’s Makarov. Expertly, she ejected the magazine, checked the number of bullets. Then she sniffed the business end. “Whom did you shoot?”

“No one of import.”

She smiled, her bared teeth like knives. “Your situation must be very, very bad for you to brave coming here, Timur Ludmirovich.”

“Well, I suppose it is.”

“Boris is dead.”

Her voice had abruptly turned cold as ice, sending a shiver down his spine. Plus, she still held the Makarov.

“‘The center cannot hold. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’”

She was quoting Yeats, though Savasin was too ignorant to know it. Never mind, the words sent another, deeper chill through him.

“I’m afraid you’re right, Ekaterina.”

“You did nothing to save him.” Her eyes flashed like warning lights. “You who had the means to stop—”

“No one could have stopped his murder.” This he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. “Not all his bodyguards, not all the FSB in attendance. Not even his best friend, Jason Bourne.”

At Bourne’s name, Ekaterina relinquished the icy rage with which she had been temporarily gripped. Unbuttoning the smock, she set it and the Makarov aside. She was wearing a pearl-colored silk blouse and black, wide-legged trousers of the same luscious material. Ekaterina had always known how to dress well. “Let me see.”

Savasin handed over the bottle of absinthe. Ekaterina, having read the label, said, “How on earth did you get this, Timur Ludmirovich? Not at GUM, I’ll warrant.” She meant the central department store on Dzerzhinsky Square.

“The same avenue where you buy your clothes. A private source.”

She nodded in acceptance. “Come,” she said, indicating a curved sofa clad in deep-purple velvet.

As if being directed by telepathy, the mountain ceased his playing, rose, and brought to the table in front of the sofa a pair of cut-glass cordial glasses that looked very old and very expensive. Having completed this task, he returned to the baby grand, taking up the reins of another Ravel piano piece, not nearly as sad as the first.

Savasin watched Ekaterina put the bottle aside, pour out glasses of vodka. The toast and draining of the vodka having been accomplished with the minimum of pomp, Savasin set down his glass and turned to his hostess.

“Ekaterina,” he said, “I’ve come to talk to you about Alyosha, your daughter.”

21

There followed a peculiar silence, the kind found in a graveyard at night. It was broken by a laugh from Keyre, like the trumpet of an elephant. He slapped his knee in mirth; he was grinning from ear to ear.

“You see, my dear Angelmaker, I was right all along. The story put about that the Bourne Initiative is the ultimate cyber weapon is so much smoke. And here before us is the only living human being who can confirm my suspicion. Which he has done.”

He leaned forward abruptly, elbows parked on his knobby knees. “Here is my second gift to you, Bourne. I’ve cleared up—well, one essential matter, anyway—why the Americans and the Russians are hot on your trail.”

“Mala could have told me all this back on Skyros,” Bourne pointed out.

“True enough.” Keyre spread his hands. “But where’s the fun in that?” He wagged his forefinger again. “You and I both know that we aren’t done with each other; we were fated to meet again. But who could have imagined it would be under circumstances where we’re in the star-crossed position to help each other.”

Bourne turned to the Angelmaker. “I’d like something more substantial to eat.”

She took up the walkie-talkie on the table, spoke into it briefly. No one spoke another word until one of Keyre’s people arrived with a tray on which sat a bowl of stew and a round of unleavened bread with which to eat it.

Bourne took the bowl off the tray as it was being set down, sniffed it.

“It’s goat, Bourne,” Keyre said with a wry smile. “You won’t find a morsel of human flesh in there.”

As Bourne ripped off a piece of bread, scooped up the stew, and began to eat, Keyre said, “So here, in a nutshell, is what we are dealing with: you and I are both under attack because of something your friend, Karpov, dreamed up. Neither of us know what it is, let alone have possession of it. But we won’t have any peace until we find out what the general was up to.” He steepled his long, spidery fingers. “I think we agree on that, yes?”

r />   Bourne looked up into Keyre’s face, swallowed. “With your far-flung network I would think it should be easy enough for you to find out.”

“Normally that would be the case, more or less.” Keyre sighed. “But these are not normal times, Bourne. Even I cannot infiltrate an American NSA black site.”

Bourne stopped eating, put the bowl aside. “What are you talking about?”

“The gist of it is this: it was General MacQuerrie, the head of Dreadnaught, who dubbed this mysterious data the Bourne Initiative. He set one of his private people, Morgana Roy, by all accounts a cyber genius, to the task of decoding the data. The problem is we only have MacQuerrie’s word for what this data is. Was he telling Roy the truth? We can’t ask her because she’s disappeared. Was he lying, and, if so, for what reason? No one knows the answer to that but MacQuerrie himself, and he’s been arrested, due to a damning server leak disseminated by LeakAGE while you were in dreamland.

“So. It seems to me that we have only one way forward. We have to penetrate the NSA black site where MacQuerrie is being held and interrogate him.”

Bourne gave a harsh laugh. “It’s you who’s in dreamland, Keyre.”

Once again, Keyre chose to ignore Bourne’s comment. “Only one man on earth can get to MacQuerrie, interrogate him, and get out alive. That’s you, Bourne. The chameleon.”

“Even I—”

“My people have discovered where he’s being held, so part of your job has been done for you.” Keyre sat forward. “Bourne, there’s no other way out for us; much as you despise me, much as you want to see me dead, you know this to be true.”

Bourne did. Much as he hated to admit it, there was a lot to be said for Keyre’s plan. He kept his gaze fixed steadily on the Somalian. He did not look at the Angelmaker; did not want to see what she held in her eyes for him. There was nothing he wanted more than to be wherever Sara was, even if it wasn’t a sun-splashed beach in Bali or Thailand. He missed her with an ache that penetrated to the very marrow of his bones. But they had realized that becoming attached in that way was a liability, too much danger for them both. In their line of business, love was the ultimate liability. Now that it had happened to them, it was better to live in denial than to allow the perilous truth to overwhelm them. But rationality did not diminish Bourne’s ache for her.

But he wasn’t with Sara, didn’t even know where in the world she was. He was here, the present danger to him was acute, and a solution, though extremely treacherous, had been presented to him.

“Bourne, can you come up with an alternative?” Keyre prompted. When Bourne said nothing, he nodded, continuing, “I and my people will provide transportation and all the support you might need.”

“I work alone.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Bourne rose, stretched his legs. He had already begun strenuous workouts. “Where is the NSA holding MacQuerrie?”

Keyre rose, studied Bourne for a moment. “Seriously, you won’t believe it when I tell you.”

—

“My daughter?” Ekaterina had gone very still. “What have you to do with Alyoshka?” She jumped up, her agitation setting Cerberus into motion, like the mechanical creature of a clock about to chime the hour. “Do you have her in custody on some trumped-up charge? That’s the Sovereign’s way, after all.”

Savasin held up his hands, palms outward, both to placate Ekaterina and to ward off an anticipated blow from Cerberus. “Calm yourself. Nothing of the sort has happened. Your Alyosha is as free as a bird.”

Ekaterina made a gesture. Cerberus came to an immediate halt but, Savasin observed with no little trepidation, did not return to his place at the piano. He maintained his position, his baleful glare striking the first minister like a series of hammer blows, causing him to rise off the sensuously comfortable sofa.

“However,” Savasin began.

“However what?” Ekaterina exploded.

“I’m afraid to inform you that Alyosha has put herself in grave danger.”

Ekaterina stared at him for a moment, her anger causing her to tremble.

“Continue,” she said when she had collected herself.

He gestured. “Shall we be seated?”

“I’d rather stand,” Ekaterina said icily. “So would you.”

“Indeed, yes.” Oh, how this vexing woman cowed him, he thought in anguish. He wished he were back on the dismal streets of Kapotnya, Makarov in hand, like Gary Cooper in High Noon, about to settle old scores.

He spread his hands. “Well, here it is in a nutshell. Alyosha has got herself involved with some high-grade criminals, in an enterprise that—”

“Impossible!” Another explosion.

“My dear Ekaterina, for some unknown reason, your daughter has gone and hooked herself up with her brother.”

“Alyoshka has no brother.”

“All right, then. Her half brother.”

Ekaterina’s eyes opened wide. “Gora?” An emphatic shake of her head. “No, you must be mistaken. She and I see eye-to-eye on Gora: we both hate him.”

“I assure you I’m not.” He dug into his breast pocket. This gesture caused Cerberus to start into motion again until he withdrew his hand, held up the mobile phone so both Ekaterina and her giant minion could see. “I have the proof right here.”

“Fuck you.” With fists dug into her flaring hips, she said: “Show me.”

With the mobile held in front of him, screen first, he activated a video. “We are in Kalmar.”

“Where the hell is that?”

“East coast of Sweden. Close to Russia.” He watched her face closely as the video showed her Alyosha moving along the docks to lean against a railing and, moments later, being joined by a man.

“Who’s that?” Ekaterina said, squinting. “Who is Alyoshka talking with?”

“A man named Larry London,” Savasin said. “Although that’s a legend. His real name is Nikolay Ivanovich Rozin.”

“Never heard of either of them.”

“Information is my business. For the past ten years, Nikolay Ivanovich has been out in the cold, as we say in the trade. Deep undercover in the West. But my brother recently named him head of spetsnaz.”

Ekaterina’s indrawn gasp was audible. “What is she doing with him?”

“I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it, Ekaterina. Please watch.”

Her gaze was fixed to the screen as her daughter took her leave of the false Larry London and stepped down to one of the floating docks where strings of boats were docked on either side. Just before Alyosha stepped aboard a boat near the far end and the video ended, the camera was able to pick out its name, stenciled on the stern.

Ekaterina gave another, deeper gasp. “Yegor Maslov!” She put a hand to her mouth. “Carbon Neutral. That’s Gora’s boat.”

“I’m very much afraid it is.” Savasin shut down the file. “And there you have it.”

Ekaterina, eyes glazed over, sank back down onto the sofa cushion. Cerberus returned to the piano. Taking this as a cue, Savarin perched beside her on the edge, all the while keeping an eye on Cerberus’s profile. He had switched from classical to pop, was in the middle of a curious slowed-down rendition of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” As a pianist he had a knack for bringing out the heartache in a melody.

Savasin filled his host’s glass, handed it to her. She drank it as if in a trance.

“What are we to do, Timur Ludmirovich? Alyoshka has fallen into the wrong hands.”

“First, we must determine how far she has fallen,” Savasin said briskly, all business now that he had delivered his hammer blow. “Then we must determine how to extricate her.”

He watched Ekaterina’s dark-blue eyes turn toward him. “We are at a distinct disadvantage.”

“Perhaps,” he acknowledged. “But then again perhaps not.”

“What are you babbling about?” Ekaterina snapped. She was coming out of her shock with almost superhuman alacrity.

“Don?

??t you see? My brother has appointed a man to be the chief of FSB’s special operations who is clandestinely in collusion with the head of the Kazanskaya mafia.” He grinned broadly. “The whole thing is—I don’t know, what’s the right word—delicious!”

“I don’t believe that would be my word,” Ekaterina sniffed. “But I take your point.” Then, turning, she addressed the old gardener. “Papa, did you get all this?”

When the old man stood up straight, Savasin could see that he was ex-military. He had steel-gray hair, cropped very short, and eyes of the same color as his daughter’s.

“Every word,” he said in a surprisingly strong voice. Without being beckoned forward, he crossed the atelier, bringing a wooden, round-topped stool with him, warding off Cerberus, who had leapt up in mid-melody in order to assist Ekaterina’s father.

“What a world,” he said, as he sat on the stool facing them across the low table. “I hope I die before it gets much worse.”

“Papa, shush!” Ekaterina said in mock dismay. Turning to Savasin, she said, “He’s always saying things like that. It doesn’t mean he means it.”

“Hah!” her father interjected, draining Savasin’s glass of what was left of the vodka. He made a face. “Vile stuff. I don’t know how you drink it.”

Ekaterina shook her head with a small smile. Clearly, Savasin thought, she was used to indulging the old man’s whims.

“Timur Ludmirovich Savasin, First Minister of the Russian Federation,”—her arm swept out—“may I introduce you to my father, Dima Vladimirovich Orlov.”

Orlov sat with straight spine on the backless stool, crossed his arms over his chicken chest. “Such an exalted figure here in my daughter’s humble atelier.” He wagged his head from side to side. “The modern world moves in mysterious ways; its wonders to perform.”

“I wonder,” Savasin said, wanting to regain control of the situation before this dotty old man ran it off the rails, “do you think it wise to paraphrase the Christian Bible to me?”