“Come here, love,” she said, her arms reaching out. “Your tie is too tight.”
He shook his head. “Don’t make me regret—”
“What?” Her eyes flashed a warning. “This plan would be a nonstarter if it weren’t for me.”
He remained silent for a time, as if trying to reset the temperature in the room, which had turned decidedly frosty. At length he sighed. “All apologies, Lana. Perhaps my impatience—”
“—is showing like a slip beneath a skirt,” she cut in curtly. “And is just as careless.”
“Mea culpa.” He laced his fingers. “Mea maxima culpa.”
This produced a smile from her and, though small, managed to raise the temperature of the room. “With such fluency you could infiltrate the Vatican hierarchy with ease.”
Belov relaxed visibly. “Your assessment of the general’s state of mind, then.”
Svetlana frowned. “Frankly, I don’t know. With Boris facts are in short supply. Always.” She wet her lips. “He evinces the Sovereign’s line, even here with me in private.”
“Disappointing. He has a reputation for being his own man.”
“However”—Svetlana raised a forefinger—“were I to hazard a guess, I would be willing to bet that his personal opinions are the polar opposite.”
“Aligned with ours, in other words.” Belov tapped a long, narrow finger against his lower lip. “How much would you be willing to bet on the general?”
“What do you imagine?” She shrugged her shapely shoulders. “I’m all in.”
Something in her tone must have struck a chord inside him. “Lana, please don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with him.”
“That’s none of your business,” she said a shade too quickly.
“Oh, but it is.” He perched on the edge of the sofa cushion nearest her. “Love has a way of distorting reality. I know you understand this. We’ve been through it with other people. You’ve seen the failures caused by the distortions. We are all counting on you; you’re the straw that stirs the drink. In the eleventh hour where we find ourselves, you cannot afford to make a mistake.”
Svetlana drew herself up. “And now in the eleventh hour have you lost faith in me, Veniamin Nazarovich?”
“That was a gut check.”
“Nothing wrong with my guts.”
“Good.” Belov rose. “Because without the general—”
“Don’t say it,” she admonished, unfurling off the sofa at last. “Don’t you dare even think it.”
2
Boris strode along the tapestried hallway through thrown open double doors, Army and FSB guards on either side, into the glittering ballroom mobbed with people in fancy dress. He felt a wild surge of pride. They were all here: the president, the first minister, the prime minister, the head of the presidential administration, the first chief of staff, the foreign secretary, and so many others—they were all here to honor him on his day of marriage. Champagne and caviar were flowing, along with copious shots of the finest triple-filtered vodka, passed around on silver trays by uniformed waiters. In one corner a string quartet was playing a transliteration of a Tchaikovsky symphony that, to his ears, sounded strained and ridiculous.
But in all the seething ocean of Kremlin hierarchy and elite members of the oligarchic nomenklatura, the men who feasted off the Federation’s economy, the one person he searched for and found was his old friend and comrade in arms Jason Bourne.
As he waded through the hand clasps, the shoulder grips, the murmured words of congratulations, the barely hidden looks of jealousy and, yes, fear—for he was a feared man within the Federation as well as in far-flung climes—he was surprised to see that Bourne wasn’t alone. By his side was a small, slender, catlike woman in a deep-purple dress whose bodice was slit so far down that the inner halves of her heavy, globular breasts were visible in a most inflammatory manner.
Boris flattered himself that he knew Bourne as well as anyone on the planet, which was not to say in any way completely. No one did, not even Bourne himself, Boris surmised—not since his memory loss. But one thing he was sure of was that Bourne was the quintessential loner. He never had a woman on his arm, yet the way this handsome woman had wrapped her arm possessively around his it didn’t look as if she was about to let him go anytime soon. Even more oddly, Bourne didn’t seem to notice. He moved as if she were not there at all. An enigma, to be sure, Boris thought pensively, that he must ask Bourne about after the ceremony when they could slip out for a quiet, unsurveilled talk. He felt a measure of shame that he had had an ulterior motive when he had extended the wedding invitation to Bourne. Wouldn’t life be nice, he thought, if the only reason he wanted Bourne here was to celebrate the marriage. Nice, perhaps, he reflected, but that was someone else’s life, not his.
Then, as he moved closer, his heart skipped a beat. Was that…? Could it be…? And then the thought exploded behind his eyes: What the hell was Jason Bourne doing with Irina Vasilýevna? It didn’t seem possible that the two of them could know each other. And if they did, why hadn’t Jason mentioned it? Surely he knew… Boris’s eyes became slits. But the way he was acting, Boris was almost certain he didn’t know.
Irina’s father, Vasily, had been a wealthy and powerful oligarch, but even the wealthy and powerful could run into serious trouble if they were in business with the wrong people. This was what had happened to Vasily and his older son, his firstborn. Boris had not ordered the dual termination; he’d been in Damascus with Jason, as their interests had intersected. The order, so he had been told subsequently, had come from the president himself. He returned in time to save the twins from the same fate, arguing truthfully that, unlike the firstborn, they could not be blamed for Vasily’s crimes. Of course, the twins never knew how close they had come to death, or who had saved them. But their grandfather did, and he had been grateful.
Now, with a titanic effort of will, Boris broke out in a broad smile as the two men embraced one another, not only as old friends but also as brothers who had shared peril after peril, who had saved each other’s life not once but numerous times. This was the world in which they both lived, and the embrace was to acknowledge their mutual survival to see this momentous day dawn. At least this much is genuine, Boris thought.
He kissed Bourne on each cheek, and when he did so on the cheek away from the woman at his side, he whispered in his ear: “You received the coin in good order?”
Bourne gave a slight nod.
“Good. We have urgent matters to discuss. Meet me at the far end of the hotel loggia directly after the appetizer is served.” As an added measure of security, he had spoken in Arabic, a tongue they both knew well.
The moment of intimacy over, he pulled back, and with an official smile now plastered on his face, moved off to a flurry of handshakes and well wishes from knots of guests clamoring to congratulate him.
—
Though Bourne was acutely uncomfortable with Irina clinging to him, no one—not even his friend Boris Karpov, and certainly not Irina herself—was aware of his inner turmoil. She exuded sex the way other people gave off body odor. She smelled as if she had just had sex or was enflamed by it. It was a constant strain to keep his mind clear.
He had called her after he had cleared customs and immigration at Sheremetyevo. She had offered to send a car for him, but Bourne was not in the habit of climbing into cars sent for him. He gave her an address where he’d meet her in the city center, and took a taxi in past the Garden Ring Road.
She had smiled when she saw him—a megaton smile as heavy as it was wide. “Good evening,” she’d said in Moscow-accented Russian, and kissed him on both cheeks, just as if they were old friends. “Your flight was acceptable, I trust?”
“It was fine,” Bourne had said, getting his first exposure to her heady musk.
She saw his nostrils flare, and the answering curl of her lips told him all he needed to know about her self-awareness.
“Captain Vanov described you perfectly,” she had said, t
aking his arm in the possessive way she had.
Bourne did not trust her, much as he hadn’t fully trusted Vanov. For one thing, Boris had never mentioned this woman, would not have had someone waiting for him. Knowing Bourne’s preference for being alone, it was out of character. On the other hand, Vanov had given him Boris’s coin. So right away he was confronted by an anomaly that only Boris could clear up. In the meantime, it seemed best to allow the string to play out with Irina, to see what she really wanted from him. There were so many cross-currents—political as well as business—in Moscow, more treacherous than anything in Washington, it was easy to lose your way and find yourself entangled in a web of someone else’s making. This possibility seemed magnified to him as Boris had chosen this moment of his marriage to send Bourne a mysterious coin and refer to it as his lifeline.
Bourne drank in the sight of Irina. She wore a flared coat in deep red, high black boots, spit-shined, high-heeled. Her hair, loose and dark, framed a face that seemed made to kiss. He felt the press of her breast as she walked with him through the reddish-green Moscow night, filled with flashing lights and the roving eyes of members of every state agency imaginable.
A black Land Rover 5.0L SUV was waiting for them two blocks away, idling at the curb, its enormous 510 hp V-8 engine panting like a lion after a kill. A uniformed chauffeur opened the rear door as they approached. The uniform was unfamiliar to Bourne; it was certainly not from any official government agency. He must be employed by a private company, then, or an extremely wealthy oligarch.
The SUV cut its way through the heavy traffic, heading out of the heart of the city. The driver took an exit on the north side, onto an impeccably maintained road, something of a novelty in Moscow, lined with flowering cherry trees. Up ahead was a dense pine forest into which the road plunged, as if into a mountain tunnel. The SUV’s headlights split the otherwise impenetrable darkness, picking out a blur of needles and upthrust branches. Not even the star-strewn sky was visible.
Just as abruptly they emerged from the forest. The headlights picked out a glossy green wall at least twenty feet high. As the vehicle slowed electronic gates opened, then closed behind it. Before them was another world, entirely separate from the rest of Russia, in which enormous gilded mansions sprawled over gracious estate grounds. Some looked Victorian, others Georgian, Japanese, Art Deco. There was even a mansion built like a Bavarian castle.
They passed all these over-the-top residences, turned into a long driveway composed of white marble chips that glittered like stars in the headlights. On the way, they passed a pair of great stone sphinxes amid the exquisitely manicured gardens, their enigmatic smiles exactly duplicating the Egyptian originals.
The mansion, lit up as if for a holiday, was in the Art Nouveau style: ornate stone facade, sculpted female faces crowning windows that looked like eyes, hemispheric balconies iced with swirling verdigris copper railings that seemed to be melting, like something out of a Dali painting—or a drug-fueled fever dream.
“Thirty-two thousand square feet, indoor pool and ice skating rink, two movie theaters, a ballroom,” Irina had said as if reciting a multiplication table. “What else? At the moment, I can’t remember.” The SUV rolled to a stop opposite the front door. She had turned to him, smiling. “Home.”
Now, as the crowd made its slow march into the ballroom where the marriage ceremony would take place, Bourne was put in mind of a Financial Times article he had read on the flight over: not only were there more billionaires living in Moscow than in any other city on earth, but fully one-third of the Federation’s economy was owned and controlled by just thirty-six men, all of whom stood in the shadow of one man: the president. The concentration of wealth was one of the main reasons dealing with anyone with power in Moscow was so treacherous: their enemies instantly became your enemies.
They paraded between two lines of guards, grim-faced and certainly armed despite the festive occasion. They scrutinized every face that passed them by, save for those who could have their heads with one spoken word.
The ballroom was huge; nevertheless, it was filled to capacity. Pinpoints of light from the ornate chandeliers caused disco fireworks to spark off the luxe jewelry hanging from the women’s necks, ears, and wrists, and from the brillantined hair of their husbands, lovers, and escorts.
As the last to enter took their seats, ten guards moved into the ballroom, ringing the walls while the remaining six kept their stations in the wide, wood-paneled hallway. Bourne had not had to count; his eyes, surveying the immediate environment, had communicated the information, along with a boatload of other trivia to his brain, to be sorted at lightning speed, filed away should it be needed.
He had done the same with the interior of Irina’s mansion, from the marble statue of Michelangelo’s David, spewing recycled water from the tip of his penis into a carved alabaster shell three feet across, to the antique Isfahan carpet in the study, to the titles of the books on the oiled teak shelves.
She had ushered him to a seat on one of twin hand-stitched Italian leather sofas. A servant entered with a silver serving tray stocked with small plates of caviar and a variety of drinks—from tea to vodka. Everything screamed money—vaults of it. Bourne had a brief but amusing vision of Scrooge McDuck diving into his swimming pool of silver dollars.
When they were alone, Bourne said, “Do you live in this place all by yourself?”
Irina’s smile was both cunning and prurient. “So Captain Vanov tells me you don’t know why the coin was sent to you,” she said, ignoring his question.
“That’s right.” Bourne noted her reluctance to talk about herself, filed it away for further reflection.
“May I see it?” She held out a perfectly manicured hand. She was studying him with the almost obsessive intensity of a lepidopterist.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Instantly, she pouted, using coyness to try and mask her interest. “I simply want to look at it. What harm could that do?”
“Tell me about this house,” Bourne said, a half smile fixed to his face.
She regarded him for a moment from beneath half-closed lids, then shrugged. “As you wish. I respect your need for privacy.” She offered him a small pile of Beluga on a tiny blini, balancing it on her fingertip. “I’ll talk while we eat.” Her smile turned prurient again. “I don’t want to be accused of letting you go to bed hungry.”
3
Such a horror to be good friends with the head of the FSB,” Irina said.
“What?”
“I said it’s an honor to be good friends with General Karpov.”
“What you said was ‘Such a horror to be good friends’ with him.”
Irina laughed. “I can’t imagine I would say such a thing. In any event, it’s not at all what I meant.”
“We’ve known each other a long time,” Bourne replied, “so he tells me.”
“And you believe him.”
“I do.”
“Why would you? Government men are trained to lie.”
“I live in that world,” Bourne said. “I know it from the inside out.”
She shook her head. “I simply find it odd that the general would be so close with an American.”
“I suppose we’ve found our own private détente. It’s been beneficial for both of us.”
“You didn’t ask him about the coin.”
Bourne found her intense interest in the coin curious. “There’ll be time after the ceremony.”
The invitees had settled. The string quartet had been replaced by musicians who played a song that seemed vaguely martial. An odd choice for a wedding—though in Moscow, maybe not.
“And yet this man, General Karpov,” Irina said under her breath, “he is frightening, yes? He and many others like him.”
“There is no one like him,” Bourne said.
“You are not Russian. You wouldn’t understand.”
“There you’re wrong.”
Her gaze was cautious and
reappraising. “It seems improbable, but…you two are aligned in your politics?”
“We talk ethics, not politics.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.” But her eyes still radiated caution.
“Just think,” Bourne said, “if Boris and I weren’t good friends you wouldn’t be here now, rubbing shoulders with the Moscow elite.”
“Now you’re cross.”
“I’m never cross,” Bourne said shortly.
Irina took a breath. “I suppose I’m having trouble seeing you as a friend of that man—of anyone in the FSB, for that matter.”
Bourne turned to her briefly. “In my line of work you tend to meet the strangest people. Often it’s the ones you least expect that wind up helping you.”
She hesitated a moment. “That’s what happened with you and the general?”
Bourne nodded. “Many times.”
Her eyes were still clouded over. “Well, that’s something to think about.”
“Here’s another,” he said. “Boris assigned you to me, but you seem to hold a dim view of him.”
She laughed. “He’s FSB. I hold a dim view of them all. Doesn’t mean I haven’t learned to work with them. I mean, is there an alternative that doesn’t get me killed?”
Before Bourne could ponder her reply in earnest, a pair of French horns heralded the beginning of the ceremony.
—
As Bourne held Irina in his arms he was wondering what the Kremlin siloviki had thought of the Russian Orthodox ceremony. For that matter, he wondered what Boris had made of it. So far as Bourne knew, his friend had never shown the slightest interest in any organized religion. The idea must have come from his new bride, whom Bourne had yet to meet.
The chamber orchestra was playing a waltz, and Bourne and Irina were dancing along with scores of other couples across the vast ballroom floor, beneath glittering chandeliers as big as meteors. The ceremony was over, and the newly married couple had yet to make an appearance. In another part of the grand hotel photos were no doubt being taken of the wedding party.