The Bourne Enigma (Jason Bourne 13)

“To kill him.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“A terrorist perpetually in the shadows, who pays men to impersonate him. Do I need another reason?”

Irina gave him a hard look. “A man like you? Yes.”

Bourne hesitated. The worst thing he could do was to underestimate this woman. He didn’t trust her, but he had to respect both her intellect and her cunning. “Borz was behind a plot to force me to kill the president of the United States. He had a friend of mine and her two-year-old daughter abducted to make sure I did.”

“And yet the American president is alive and well.”

Bourne smiled. “Two Borzes down, one to go.”

“Otherwise it falls apart, the center doesn’t hold.”

“And what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem.”

“That would be Ivan Borz, a devil, it’s safe to say, that William Butler Yeats never met.”

“Though it seems he anticipated him.” In the intervening months since he had been in Singapore, the last stop in his hunt for Ivan Borz, Bourne had heard incessant chatter from many different sources all concerning the rapid rise of Ivan Borz, who had, it seemed, overnight, expanded from arms dealer to recruiting specifically for ISIS, which, to Bourne, made no sense. Why would a stone-cold businessman like Borz turn to recruiting terrorists, a time- and resource-consuming endeavor without rich remuneration? He knew he was missing a connection somewhere.

At the same time, he was continuing to work out who Irina really was, though it seemed increasingly clear that what she wanted from him was Boris’s coin. Why? What did it signify? And why did he harbor the growing suspicion that Borz and Irina were somehow tied together in a Gordian knot?

A peculiar silence grew up between them, like a stand of high grasses, through which they began to see flashes of each another from a different angle. There was something about her that reminded him of Sara—though her Kidon code name was Rebeka, which was how she had first introduced herself to him on the flight that had taken him to Damascus. Since then, he had seen her dying once and dead another time, in the back of a taxi in Mexico City. She had survived both times, and though they hadn’t spoken in a long while, there was a sense that their shadows intertwined. A powerful magnetism drew them together, a shared sorrow that dissolved only when they were together. With her, he felt a peacefulness that was so foreign, so complete, it seemed in some way forbidden, as if he was undeserving. And, strange to say, it seemed as fragile, as easily lost, as a whisper in a crowded stadium. Maybe it was that she and Irina were both constructed of secrets, both enigmas that defied solving. It was this tide of unknowing in Irina that reminded him so strongly of Sara.

In Irina’s case, however, there was the distinct sour tang of danger. Bourne saw in her a doorway into something dark and tragic, something as yet beyond his understanding. And even though he knew she was trying to play him—possibly even because of it—he continued to reel her in closer and closer, not only to find out the nature of her game, but to see beyond to the person who had instructed her.

“Well,” Irina said, breaking his train of thought, “the least I can do is help you.”

Again there was that sense of unknowing, of secrets within secrets. “You have an idea?”

Irina nodded. “I do. One Ivan doesn’t know about.”

—

Just past dawn Captain Pankin took a break and plodded the three flights down to the FSB commissary. Even by former Soviet standards the commissary was bleak and flyblown. Gray, gray, and more gray wherever you looked. Even the melamine tables and molded plastic chairs looked exhausted. In fact, only the lower-echelon FSB officers—the proles—inhabited it. Officers of Pankin’s rank and higher invariably went out of the building for their meals. FSB was nothing if not fiercely hierarchical.

Pankin was bleary-eyed from staring at a computer screen for hours, trying to glean information on the two men found murdered under the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge. He had come up empty, and was now in desperate need of fuel, though he was beginning to think that his search was going to remain fruitless. It was times like these, he reflected, as he took a tray that looked like it hadn’t been adequately washed in several months, when he hated being in the FSB, hated being a Russian, come to that. The levels of bureaucracy he had to deal with were soul crushing. But, on the other hand, one of the things you were taught in the FSB was to exile your soul to Siberia, never to be heard from again. Gulaged, Pankin thought now, as he halfheartedly placed plates of gray food on his gray tray, that’s what I am. He looked around the cavernous room at the smattering of young men hunched over their food. That’s what we all are. Workers of the Federation unite! he thought sardonically, knowing there was no desire for revolution left in the Russian people. They’d been bled white.

Bars of pale sunlight slanted through the windows high up in the east-facing wall, adding to the impression of a prison. Pankin poured himself a cup of coffee, added creamer and more sugar than was good for him, then chose a table, and sat down. He stared at his food unhappily. Took a swig of coffee instead, which was just this side of ripping a hole in the lining of his stomach.

I should have left the building, he thought, to get food fit for humans, not dogs. He was just about to do that when he noticed Piotr at the next table. Piotr, one of the young-gun IT techs, a recent hire through General Karpov’s initiative to bring a cutting-edge sensibility to FSB hardware. Even Karpov had run into resistance from hidebound conservatives who loathed any innovation that reeked of American know-how. Piotr had widely abandoned his wedge of very bad pie. His pimply face was lit up by his laptop. The screen flickered with a face whose features kept changing, morphing it from Piotr’s to increasingly bizarre hybrids.

“Piotr,” Pankin said, “what the hell are you doing?”

The tech started as if given a galvanic shock, turned his head in Pankin’s direction as he slammed down the lid of his laptop. “Nothing, Captain,” he said breathlessly.

“That’s Herr Captain to you, sonny.” Pankin laughed, for the moment his frustration forgotten. Then, seeing the stricken expression on the young man’s face, he added, “At ease, Piotr. That was a joke.”

“Oh. Of course.” But the poor kid couldn’t even meet his superior’s gaze.

Pankin leaned over, intrigued. “No, let me see what you were doing.” He waved a hand. “This is all off the record.”

Piotr took a deep breath, reopened his laptop. The hybrid face popped back up onto the screen. “Me and a bunch of pals have this game we play. We each upload a selfie, pair up, and then keep changing one aspect of our partner’s face. When we’re finished, the other guys have to guess the identity of the original face.” He shrugged. “I suppose it sounds stupid.”

“To an old man like me,” Pankin said glumly.

“No, hardly.” Piotr’s throat and cheeks shone red. “I only meant…”

“Forget what you meant.” Pankin stood up, moved his chair closer, then sat next to Piotr, which seemed to alarm the boy. “How does it work?”

Piotr expelled a barely audible sigh of relief. “It’s simple, really.” His fingers flew over the keyboard, altering features of the image faster than Pankin’s eyes could follow. “It’s based on our facial recognition software.”

Facial recognition software. A light went on in Pankin’s head. “Is it any good?”

“The program? It sucks, light-years behind the times,” Piotr said. “Compared to the American or Interpol database, ours is pathetic. You couldn’t ID the Sovereign’s niece.”

Pankin felt a spark of excitement in his chest. What if he could find his two victims in the American or Interpol databases? “How could we expand it?”

“We can’t,” Piotr said flatly.

“There’s got to be a way.”

Piotr shrugged.

“Oh, come on, man.”

Piotr, finally picking up on Pankin’s urgency, turned shrewd. “Like I said, you’d need the

American and Interpol software, and we don’t have access to it.”

“But there is a way.”

“Not officially. And for me the danger would be extreme,” Piotr said steadfastly.

Pankin closed his eyes for a moment. “What?”

“I want to run the new IT department and I want the budget to run it correctly.”

“How about I throw in a night with Emma Stone and the Moon, as well?”

Piotr snickered. “Hey, Captain, wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to hack into another country’s servers to get your job done?”

Pankin knew it would, but there was a lesson for Piotr to learn first. “Or I could cite you for improper use of FSB software,” he said.

Piotr looked stricken. “I thought you said this conversation was off the record.”

“Sonny, one thing you’d better learn is that when it comes to the FSB nothing is ever off the record.” He grunted. “But okay, you have a point, especially if the program finds that, as I suspect, my two murder victims aren’t who their papers say they are.” He sighed, thinking of how he was going to convince Korsolov. “Whose servers are you going to hack into?”

“I’m going to need, um, unofficial help on this.”

“Money is no problem,” Pankin said, knowing it would be, but he’d deal with that some other time. “Again. The American federal government’s or Interpol’s?”

“Neither,” Piotr said, regaining his equilibrium. “You’ll like this.” His head bobbed up and down, a sign of his building excitement. “We’ll be drilling into China’s servers. Those People’s Liberation Army pricks have hacked into practically every important database on the planet. They’re aces at it, but my friend claims that for him their own firewalls are porous as shit.”

“And you believe him?”

“Captain, this guy is my mentor. Computer-wise, he can run rings around everyone I know.”

“My age, more or less?”

Piotr burst out laughing. “He’s fifteen years old.”

16

Colonel Korsolov was in the process of chewing his lower lip into hamburger meat when the FSB courier rode up on his motorcycle. Pale lemon sunlight shouldered its way through the morning’s low-hanging cloud cover. Korsolov was standing on the sidewalk in front of the burned-out building that, so far as it was able, anchored the crippled block in a neighborhood so foul he could imagine only Chechens living in such abject squalor. Before him were the three savaged bodies of the guards he had sent to take Irina Vasilýevna to detention. They were sprawled in the filthy gutter by the side of the blackened skeleton of the Skoda SUV.

“Look at this. Have you ever witnessed such desecration?” He gestured as the courier dismounted and stepped to his side. “A fresh turd on the floorboards, a sign of their utter contempt for law and order.”

The courier stared wide-eyed at the massacre. “Sir, what happened to our men?”

“What happened to them?” Korsolov rounded on him, his face inflated with rage. “They were stupid, that’s what happened to them.” He lifted a hand, let it fall to his side. “In our business, stupidity deserves its fate.”

“But, I mean, look at them.”

“Rent by wolves.” Korsolov was still staring into the bare, blackened interior of what had once been the Skoda. “So what the fuck are you doing here in this shithole? I have to be here, at least temporarily, but you…?”

The courier handed over a manila envelope. “Ballistics report on the weapon used in the Kamenny Carnage.”

“Is that what we’re calling the murders now? It’s been given a headline?”

The courier was justifiably rattled. “Just internally, sir.”

“Where are we? America?” Korsolov ripped open the envelope. “I’ll soon put a stop to that.”

The courier, eager to atone for his transgressions, though he hardly knew what they were, said, “One of the murder weapons was found in the river, not a hundred yards from the bridge. A Makarov. The groove markings indicate that it’s an old weapon, well used. The bullet that killed victim number one came from that pistol, sir.”

“But not the other one?”

“No, sir. The bullet that killed victim number two was from a Glock.”

“And?”

“We’ve combed the area, dredged the river. No sign of that weapon.”

Korsolov nodded dolefully; half a glass was better than an empty one. “The Makarov was probably bought locally on the black market.” He ran his forefinger down the pages as if he were scanning them. But at the moment he had no patience for words, so he was grateful for the verbal summary. Not that he would tell the courier that. He was rageful at every member of his department, even the ones scrubbing out the toilets at three in the morning. Briefly, he was annoyed that these three were dead; he would have felt a modicum of pleasure assigning them to latrine duty.

Korsolov came to the end of the report, which was brief and concise. “Why are you still standing here with your mouth half open?”

“A message from Captain Pankin.”

“Well?” Korsolov snapped his fingers. “Cough it up.”

“It’s verbal, sir.”

This caught Korsolov’s attention, which it was supposed to do. He looked around at his men in riot gear returning from scouting the nearby buildings. They were carrying nothing; they had found no one. What a surprise.

“Tell me.”

“Captain Pankin has possession of the Makarov. He wishes you to meet him at this address at your earliest convenience.” The courier dutifully recited the address the captain had made him memorize.

“Though I welcome any excuse to bid adieu to this sewer, why the fuck should I? Did he elucidate on his request?”

“Yessir. He said he’d tracked down the man who sold the gun to the Kamenny—” The courier swallowed hard. “To the murderer.”

“You mean one of the murderers. Two guns, two shooters.” On the other hand, good news does come once in a while, he thought. Even here, waist deep in excrement. He dismissed the courier with a curt “That will be all.”

Then he beckoned to the leader of his team. As the man was about to report, he said, “Don’t bother.” He held up three fingers. “Three dead comrades. Three blocks. You are to raze them entirely, starting with this one. Use grenades and flamethrowers and whatever other ordinance you deem necessary. Not a brick, not a building stone left standing. When the fuckers who did this return home, they’ll find whatever shit they own or have stolen as useless as this Skoda.”

—

Mik was not a man you would care to meet in a dark alley. In fact, he was not a man you would choose to meet anywhere, any time. But this wasn’t any time, this was, so far as Bourne was concerned, the end-time for Ivan Borz.

He and Irina confronted the large man with the sloped shoulders, overlong arms, and low brow of a simian. He was hairy as hell—black fur sprouting everywhere, including from small ears high up on the sides of his egg-shaped head. His shaved skull made him look older, no doubt the idea, since Bourne judged him to be no more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old.

They were in a warehouse owned by this vosdushnik—an airman, so called because he made dollars appear out of thin air through false bank accounts running across the globe, transferring money electronically stolen from legitimate accounts so fast the authorities couldn’t catch up to it or to him.

“Watcha bring me, Irochka?” he said to Irina, in the harsh accent of the city’s slums.

Two muscle-bound ex-cons with oiled biceps, tats up and down their arms and necks, and submachine guns at the ready stood off to their right and left. Another appeared behind them, blocking the exit.

“It’s your turn, Mik,” she said, clearly unintimidated. “I brought the goods last time.”

He laughed, showing yellow teeth better suited to a horse. “Right, right, right. I forgot.”

“As if you forget anything, Mik. Your memory is your business.”

“

So true, Irochka.” He shifted from one huge foot to the other. “If I ever get Alzheimer’s they’ll have to take me out to a meadow and blow my faltering brains out.”

He didn’t ask for Bourne’s name and Irina didn’t offer it. In fact, he scarcely looked at Bourne, not even giving him the once-over. This spoke to the intimacy and trust he had with Irina. Bourne wondered whether Ivan knew anything of his granddaughter’s wild-child life in Moscow’s new wave underbelly.

It was at this moment Bourne felt the presence of one of Mik’s guards behind him. A moment later he felt the muzzle of the submachine gun in the small of his back.

At the same time, Mik said, “Irochka, you know better than to bring a stranger here.”

“He’s a friend, Mik.”

The vosdushnik shook his head. “Strangers are a security risk. You never know what they’re gonna—”

He got no further in his thought. Bourne had taken a step backward. With the heel of his shoe he stamped hard on the guard’s instep. At the same time, he twisted his torso. One forearm shoved the submachine gun to the side and, as he spun, he drove his fist into the guard’s side with such force the blow cracked two lower ribs. The guard buckled, and Bourne grabbed his weapon.

The two side guards brought their Kalashnikovs to bear, but Bourne’s was aimed directly at Mik’s chest. “Which one of you wants to be responsible for your leader’s death?” he said to them in idiomatic Russian. No one moved; no one said a word.

Mik lifted a hand slowly and carefully. “You bring this psikh into my midst?”

Irina shrugged. “What can I say, Mik? He’s a scorpion. You know what they’re like when provoked.” Her gaze dropped to the man writhing on the concrete floor, holding his side. “Your man made a mistake.”

“I suppose he was lucky it wasn’t a fatal mistake, eh?” Mik was now staring openly at Bourne. “Why are you here, Irochka?”

“I’m looking for Ivan Borz,” Bourne said.

Mik laughed. “You and three hundred thousand people.” He shook his head. “Sorry, you came to the wrong roost.”