The Bourne Enigma

  “You move money for him, Mik.” Bourne did not know this for certain, but sometimes with these people a shot in the dark was better than keeping your ammunition dry.

  Mik pursed his lips, as if tasting a lemon. “I won’t even dignify that with a response.”

  “None is needed,” Bourne said as he approached the vosdushnik; the two guards moved away from the walls, closing in. “It’s the truth.”

  Mik, seeming truly annoyed now, angrily waved his guards to stand down. “If Ivan Borz is a client of mine, that’s no business of yours.”

  “It’s very much my business.”

  “Yob tvoyú mat’!” Go fuck your mother! “Ty menjá dostál!” I’m sick and tired of you!

  Bourne held out the Kalashnikov he had been pointing at Mik.

  “What is this?” Mik said warily. “Some kind of fucked-up peace offering?”

  “In your business,” Bourne said, “you need this more than I do.”

  A deathly silence pervaded the interior of the warehouse, after which Mik’s boisterous explosion of laughter sounded like a volley of rifle shots. As he took possession of the Kalashnikov, he said, “Jesus wept, I can see why you’re fucking this stvol, Irochka.” Referring to Bourne as a weapon was about as big a compliment as he was likely to pay anyone.

  He turned, motioned to his guards to deal with their fallen comrade, then bade Bourne and Irina to follow him across the empty floor of the warehouse, through a door he unlocked with a key around his neck. The door, Bourne observed, was as thick as that of a bank vault. Doorways on either side of a hallway revealed phalanxes of teenagers hunched over laptops, earbuds stuck in their ears. They were as oblivious of the outside world as Chinese factory workers. At the far end was an archway inscribed with snippets of Arabic from the Qur’an. The small room beyond was lined with prayer rugs aligned with Mecca.

  They stopped in front of a locked door on their left, which Mik opened with a second key. Inside was what appeared to be a room in a pasha’s seraglio. Large jewel-tone cushions were scattered about, an incised hookah sat on a low table, and the cloyingly sweet scent of pot hung in the close air, thick enough to get a small dog high.

  “Sit,” Mik said, gesturing. He picked up a pair of women’s panties and moved them so he could recline on his favorite pillows. “All right,” he continued when they were all seated. “Why do you want to find Ivan Borz?”

  Bourne told him.

  “Your friend and her daughter—they’re okay?”

  “They’re mourning their husband and father, who was shot to death in front of them.”

  Mik waved a hand. “The two-year-old will forget, but her mother…” He shook his head. “That’s another story. She will mourn a long time.”

  “Where is he?” Bourne said.

  “Listen, my friend, Ivan Borz is one of my best clients—I move millions of dollars around the world for him.” He spread his hands. “Where’s my incentive?”

  “Billions,” Irina said.

  “What?” Mik came out of his slough as fast as a missile out of a launcher.

  “Give us Ivan Borz’s location,” she said, “and I’ll deliver a client worth billions.”

  Mik laughed. “And who would that be, Irochka?”

  “The Sovereign’s inner circle, the Kremlin’s elite guard.”

  This set Mik off as if he had been watching a posse of clowns pour out of a VW Beetle and repeatedly strike each other with mallets. Russians loved clowns, the more idiotic their behavior the better. Otherwise, belly laughs were few and far between.

  “Please, Irochka.” He wiped tears from his eyes. “You’re killing me.”

  Bourne turned to Irina. “You mean he doesn’t know?”

  She gave him a lopsided smile. “Why give away for free what will one day demand a price?” She leaned forward, tapped Mik on a knee. “Finished with your fun?”

  “Unless you have another joke to tell me.”

  “Ivan Volkin is my grandfather. He knows everyone in the Kremlin personally. In fact, over the years he’s had dealings with most of them. He knows where all the skeletons are buried. He also knows that in the current climate anyone with hot money is desperate to stash it outside Russia.” Her smile was slow and enticing. “A few choice words from me…” She allowed the rest of the sentence to hang in the air, unspoken, and all the more powerful for that.

  Bourne watched the change come over the vosdushnik’s face in precisely the same way Irina did.

  “Is this the truth, stvol?”

  Irina took out her mobile phone, showed him the selfie she had taken of Ivan and herself just before they left Eyrie. Ivan’s eyes were gleaming as he kissed his granddaughter on the cheek.

  “And your grandfather can deliver these apparatchiks?” Mik was practically licking his chops. “If you can do that, then I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  17

  You called me over here to listen to this pathetic shitbird?”

  Colonel Korsolov was still fulminating over the humiliation his men had heaped on him by their carelessness and stupidity. He glared at Captain Pankin. If he was to disappoint him as well, there would surely be hell to pay.

  “And by the way,” he said, peering more closely at Pankin’s face in the pallid light at the rear of the store, “are you on amphetamines?”

  “No sir,” Pankin said. “What you’re seeing is lack of sleep.”

  “Because if your judgment is in any way impaired—”

  “No worries there, sir.”

  Korsolov sniffed, disdainful as the fucker who had defecated in his Skoda. “The next few minutes will tell the tale, Captain. Proceed.”

  Pankin pointed to the man behind the filthy counter. He was small and emaciated. His hair seemed to be falling out. Behind them, the shop sold plumbing supplies, but back here in the fetid dimness of what stunk like a sewer, Anatoly Levkin sold black-market pistols and ammunition.

  “This is the man who sold this Makarov.” Pankin meant the murder weapon, which he had placed like an unwanted guest on the counter’s glass top, scored as an old man’s face.

  Korsolov squinted at Levkin. “You’re sure about this? There are a million old Makarovs hiding in plain sight in Moscow.”

  “No doubt.” Levkin bobbed his head like any servant worth his salt when confronting his master. “But this one I sold two days ago.” A forefinger curved as a talon reached out, showed them the tiny letter-number combination stamped on the underside of the trigger guard. “There is no doubt.”

  “And who, pray tell, did you sell it to, comrade?”

  “Well, here’s where it gets interesting,” Pankin broke in. He withdrew a photo of the two victims found under the bridge. His finger tapped a spot on the photo. “He identified one of the victims.”

  Korsolov’s face screwed up. “That makes no sense. Captain, I am not in the mood for another enigma, piled on top of the ones I’m already dealing with.”

  The wisp of a smile passed across Pankin’s lips. “You’re right, sir. It wouldn’t make sense if this man who bought the Makarov was who his ID papers claimed he was.”

  “But he’s not.”

  “No, sir.”

  Suddenly, Colonel Korsolov’s morning turned significantly brighter. “Have you identified him?”

  “I have, sir. With the help of the Chinese.”

  Korsolov looked alarmed. “The Chinese?”

  “It’s a long story.” Pankin drew out of his breast pocket a sheet of paper. “The man who bought the Makarov, the man who is now dead, is named Lev Isaacs.”

  “A Jew.”

  “Better.”

  “An Israeli.”

  Pankin’s eyes glittered in the low light. “Better still.” He was clearly enjoying himself. “Lev Isaacs was a Mossad agent.”

  —

  Andrei Avilov, having checked himself out of the siloviki clinic in the densely forested countryside, sat in his car, waiting. Checking his watch, he knew the night shift was ove
r. He had already seen one of the surgeons on call drive away from the clinic. Where was Dr. Nova, the surgeon who had worked on him?

  He lit a cigarette, drew smoke deep into his lungs. He was not normally a smoker, but when he was anxious or nervous it became a compulsion. His eyes went from the front door of the clinic to his hand holding the cigarette. It was trembling—not much, but enough to alarm him. What had gotten into him? But he knew. Dr. Nova had gotten into him just as if she had stitched a part of herself to him while sewing him up. The entire left side of his face was a mask of pain, stiff as if it had been dipped in plaster. His left eye throbbed, seemed to be about three times its normal size even though the upper lid remained at half-mast. He clutched the wheel and the tremor ceased.

  Movement at the door, and his gaze sprang toward it. His heart labored like a trip-hammer when he saw her coming down the stairs. She crossed to her car, wrapped in a coat of maroon cloth in which she appeared lost, like a little girl wearing her mother’s clothes.

  He waited while she started the car, backed out, and drove away. Then he fired the ignition and left the clinic behind, intent on following her. They drove in a kind of tandem, with him matching her speed as if their two vehicles were connected by a stout line. He kept three or four cars between them. He was very good. There was no way she knew she was being followed.

  When she pulled into the Gorki-Intern Medical Clinic on Soloslovo in the Odintsovsky district, he was unsurprised. She was a surgeon, after all. It was not uncommon for the medical personnel at the siloviki clinic to have second jobs at the hospitals and clinics inside the Garden Ring Road.

  He watched, smoking his third cigarette in a row, as she parked her car. He got out, took a last, deep drag, then dropped the butt onto the tarmac, went after her as she trotted through the automatic sliding glass doors.

  Inside, he might have been in an aquarium: blue walls, green chairs, a fish stenciled onto the information booth dribbling bubbles up toward the stern-looking woman on duty. She was as wide as a weight lifter and twice as ugly. She stopped him with a scowl as he tried to pass. Scanning his official ID did nothing to improve her mood, but she wasn’t his concern—Dr. Nova was.

  He saw her step into an elevator alone. It rose to the sixth floor and stopped. He took the next elevator in the bank up to the same floor, and stepped out onto the gleaming linoleum floor. He looked one way, then the other, and was just in time to see her turn a corner to the left.

  Striding down the hall, past the sick rooms, he wondered what he was doing. He hadn’t run after a girl since he was a teenager. He’d been a pole vaulter and a sprinter. Boys like him were the apple of the girls’ eyes. Girls came to him like bees to flowers. All except the one he wanted. Tanya. It was Tanya he ran after, and it was Tanya he finally got. Now he wanted Dr. Nova in the same highly charged hormonal way, and he was certain he would get her as he had Tanya.

  He turned left at the corner, went slowly down the new corridor, checking the open doors to the rooms as he passed. A bit more than halfway down he saw a flash of maroon—her coat. He remembered with vivid clarity how he had followed Tanya into the section of the gymnasium used by the ballerinas. She was at the barre, one leg up, the underside of her ankle resting on it. She was engaged in herself or in her stretches. He was able to take advantage of a vulnerable moment to ask her out. She said yes, mouthing her answer to him in the mirrored wall.

  As he hurried along the hospital corridor, he imagined himself catching Dr. Nova at such a vulnerable moment, her turning and saying yes to him. He entered the room she was in.

  The moment he did so, the door closed behind him, and he looked from Dr. Nova to the figure sitting up in bed. It was Svetlana Novachenko.

  18

  Time for you to be judged,” Svetlana said.

  “Who by?” Avilov grinned. “You?” His eyes shifted. “Dr. Nova?”

  “Neither of us.” Svetlana swung her legs over the side of the bed. “You will be judged by God.”

  Avilov laughed. “I don’t believe in God.”

  A curious Mona Lisa–like smile played at the corners of Svetlana’s mouth, despite the pain movement caused her. “Then you will be left with nothing when you die.”

  “What are you saying?” Avilov shook his head. “I’m not dying.”

  Svetlana cocked her head. “By the look of you, you got the worst of our… encounter.”

  “Huh! I doubt it. Dr. Nova here said when I heal fully even I will hardly be able to tell anything happened.”

  “You’re never going to heal fully.” Grabbing the sheets with both fists Svetlana let herself down onto the cool floor. “In fact, you’re never going to heal, period.”

  Avilov’s brows knit together. “Your foolish attempts at frightening me are useless.”

  Svetlana’s gaze moved to Dr. Nova, who had remained silent all through the dialogue, and Avilov turned toward her now with a smug expression on his face. “Yes, Dr. Nova, please tell this poor deluded woman the truth.”

  “The truth, Andrei.” Her eyes were never larger or darker than they were at this moment. “The truth is that you will, in fact, die ten minutes from now.”

  “What? I don’t believe you.” And yet he looked stricken. And then, as if a switch had been thrown, anger replaced consternation. “The federation takes a very dim view of lying to its personnel.” Contempt added itself to his anger. “Punishment will be exacted and, trust me, it won’t be pretty.”

  “Neither will you be, Andrei,” Dr. Nova said without inflection.

  “What?” His anger was undercut by a terrible vertiginous sense of betrayal. “I…What have you done to me? When—”

  “Before I so carefully and, I must say, beautifully stitched you up I inserted venom from a Komodo dragon into your wound.”

  Involuntarily, Avilov clapped a palm to his cheek, unmindful of the pain. And then, abruptly, his eyes cleared. “You’re lying. This is just something cooked up between you two—”

  “Cousins,” Svetlana said. “Rada and I are cousins.”

  “I rushed from the wedding to be at the clinic to treat you.”

  Avilov smirked. “And you just happened to have a drop of—what was it?—Komodo dragon venom on hand? I never even heard of a Komodo dragon.”

  “They are the largest living lizards,” Dr. Nova said, as if speaking to an ignorant student. “They live on an island—Komodo—in the Indonesia archipelago. Their venom contains several poisonous proteins which cause shock, severely lowered blood pressure, swift blood loss, muscle paralysis that will affect your ability to breathe. When one bites you it’s a toss-up as to whether your lungs will be paralyzed or you’ll go into shock first.”

  Avilov snorted. “Women! You make me laugh, the two of you.”

  “Actually,” Dr. Nova said, “we have a number of rare and exotic poisons in an iso chamber. If you were FSB you would know that the clinic isn’t just for Kremlin siloviki and discarded women. It’s also for field agents sent overseas on termination contracts. The poisons are useful when neither a pistol nor a rifle is practical.”

  Avilov’s face grew ashen. Dr. Nova kicked a chair over, and he slithered into it.

  “Did you think I didn’t see you outside the clinic, smoking your cigarettes, waiting for me? I could feel your lust even from that distance. When I was standing next to you it was all I could do not to be sick.” She sighed. “But I think a man like you, a pragmatist so far from the benevolence of a god in whatever form he or she might take, requires a practical demonstration.” She gestured. “Take a deep breath. Please.”

  “Why?” he asked dully.

  “See for yourself.” Svetlana had taken two small, careful steps away from the bed, and now she swayed a little as she watched, as up close and personal as he had been with her during the assault. “Let’s see how you’re doing.”

  Avilov tried to suck in air. This effort produced a fit of coughing so racking it brought up blood.

  “Andrei,” Dr. Nova s
aid, backing away, “you are going to die. Very, very soon.”

  “Christ,” Avilov said, head in hands. “Jesus Christ.”

  “You don’t believe in God,” Svetlana said, and turned away.

  —

  Three of Mik’s men lounged around Irina’s Range Rover, admiring it as if it were a hip-sprung dyevushka. As Bourne and Irina approached, she began to shoo them away. Wrapping his fingers lightly around her wrist, he said softly, “This isn’t going to end well.”

  “For us or for them?” she asked. At that moment, her mobile vibrated. A text from Aleksandr. Not now, she hastily texted him back.

  Bourne let go of her wrist, moved in front of her. He could see the tats writhing on the backs of the men’s hands as if they were parts of a serpent. These were gimlet-eyed, battle-hardened men, once the property of the brutal Russian prison system, and very likely experts at bare-knuckle fighting.

  “What is going on here, Irina?”

  “You know—”

  “All I know is that you’ve been lying to me from the moment we met. Boris didn’t send you. I saw his expression at the wedding. He was stunned to see you. All you’re interested in is the coin.”

  Irina’s eyes flicked over his shoulder to where Mik’s men stood. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

  “It’s now or never, Irina. Otherwise, I walk away and you’ll never see me again.”

  “No! I… There are records in there you need to see. Something terrible has been going on. What I’ll make Mik show you will explain everything.”

  The level of alertness in Mik’s men ratcheted up, their eyes watchful, their muscles taut, as they approached.

  Bourne turned to them. “Keep your distance,” he warned.

  “I don’t think so,” the one in the middle responded. He was the tallest. A livid scar ran down the side of his face, tugging the outer corner of his eye down. “Not until you’ve paid for what you did to Foka.”

  “Maybe,” the one with the torn earlobe said with a grin, “you won’t leave here at all.”

  The third one, with a forest of facial hair down to his chest, drew his Makarov. “Let’s just give him a third eye.”