Something came over Irina’s face, but it was so enigmatic Bourne couldn’t tell precisely what it was.
“Really?” she said. The word was a placeholder, used when an idea or emotion wasn’t allowed free rein.
“Scout’s honor.” Ivan turned to Bourne. “Isn’t that what you Americans say?”
“Some of us,” Bourne allowed.
“Not you, I would think.”
Irina seemed to be mocking him, but as gently as a mother rocks a baby. Her face was devoid of cruelty or scorn. Could she be flirting? Bourne wondered. What could Dimitri Maslov’s death mean to her? Obviously, they had had some kind of relationship, since Ivan referred to him only by his given name. In any event, she did not appear to have been broken up by his sudden, violent demise. She must have hated him, Bourne thought. Was that enmity merely an echo of her krýsha’s feelings, or was it caused by her own encounter with Maslov? Another mystery that required solving.
However, with Irina here it was time to get to the heart of his business with Volkin. “I need a list of names, Ivan—politicians who had a reason, the will, and the wherewithal to plan Boris’s assassination.” But it wasn’t any of them, an insistent voice inside him whispered. It was Sara.
Ivan grunted. “Boris had a long, productive life, which, in Russia, means he had many enemies. Most of them, however, were so afraid of him they would never make a move against him.”
“This person,” Bourne said, “is a homicidal psychotic as well as a religious fanatic.”
This produced a deep laugh. “A religious fanatic? In Russia? You must be joking, Jason.”
“I am perfectly serious, Ivan. And, in this instance, our working definition of religious fanatic is a broad one. Our man might just as well be someone who harbors a deep grudge against organized religion as a closet Christian.”
“Psychotics are a dime a dozen in politics, never more so in Russia.” Ivan tapped a forefinger against his lower lip. “Give me a couple of hours to consider and draw up a list, for all the good it will do you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re looking in the wrong direction. I have it on good authority that Boris wasn’t killed by a Russian—politician or otherwise.”
There was no denying Ivan Volkin’s authority, Bourne knew.
“It seems likely that Boris was murdered by Ivan Borz.”
“Borz?”
“You know him?”
“I’ve tracked Ivan Borz from West Pak to Singapore. I’ve killed two men claiming to be him; neither of them were.”
“This is unsurprising.” Ivan crossed one leg over the other. “Let me explain. Boris was most recently in Cairo. He was running a top secret op—secret even, I think, from the Sovereign or the first minister.”
“Borz?”
Ivan nodded. “Boris had sworn to get the sonuvabitch. No one else has been able to get close to him, let alone know what he actually looks like. He’s got false Borzes all over, as you yourself discovered. But Boris got a lead he was certain was legitimate. That Borz is a Chechen and has set up an HQ in Cairo.”
“A Chechen?” Bourne said. “That sounds unlikely.”
“Precisely why Boris thought the lead was genuine.” He spread his hands. “And I mean, really, who would look for him in Cairo? The place is a stinking zoo, not to mention hot as Hades.”
“Do you have any evidence that Borz himself was in Moscow tonight?”
“Well, if he was, he’s gone now, that’s almost a certainty.” Ivan grunted. “In any event, I’ve got my antennae up, but I have to tell you that a svóloch like him is not on my compatriots’ radar screen. They don’t deal with Chechens, they don’t hire Chechens. They shoot Chechens on sight.”
13
In the dead of night Andrei Avilov awoke in an oversize, luxe room decorated with a definite feminine eye. Outside the curtained window, spotlights lit a thick forest of conical fir trees. It took him a moment to realize he was in the private clinic funded by the Sovereign, overseen by Timur Savasin himself. It was no wonder the décor was frilly enough to give Avilov the willies: the clinic usually housed the discarded mistresses of both the Sovereign and Savasin, the first-class plastic surgery a parting gift, supposed to lessen the blow of rejection for a young woman. The turnover, Avilov thought idly, must be remarkable, to keep three full-time surgeons on staff.
Which reminded him that the left side of his face felt like weasels had ripped his flesh.Not so far off the mark, he thought wryly. Dimly, he recalled his hurried consult with the plastic surgeon. At first, he had balked because she was a woman, even when he saw himself reflected in her canny eyes. He was in no mood for another female, but he’d had no choice. Orders from Timur Savasin himself. Now, hours later, he wished he had a mirror.
“Not to worry,” Dr. Nova had said, “I can save the original look of your left eye. If you had been taken to any hospital inside the Ring Road you’d have a permanent droop in that eye and it would water continually. You’d have to keep blotting it, especially outside in the wind.”
If she expected him to be grateful she was sorely mistaken. He’d been as sour as an unripe cherry.
“Cheer up, Andrei,” she’d said with what seemed to him a metallic smile, “you’ll come through this encounter relatively unscathed.”
He resented her calling him by his name instead of formally by his rank. “I’ll be scarred?”
“In the beginning.” She shrugged. “Then, who knows? It will depend on how elastic your skin and muscles are.” That sharp-edged smile again. “You can always tell the women you meet it’s a dueling scar. That should get them tumbling into bed.”
Quits with lying down and feeling woozy in the anesthetic’s aftermath, he levered himself up, froze as he felt an immediate throbbing, as if a fistful of pinballs was ricocheting around the inside of his skull. Black spots appeared in his vision, and he blinked them away with grim determination. He drank some water, held ice chips in his mouth, letting the frost soothe away the pain.
“I imagine you’re wanting a mirror.” He turned at the sound of her voice. Dr. Nova. She had entered the room without him being aware of it—another symptom.
“Didn’t I tell you I only wanted a local?”
“I didn’t hear that,” she said drily. She came and stood by the side of the bed. She seemed entirely unafraid of him. He didn’t like that at all.
“Now I need to flush whatever you gave me out of my system.”
She was dark-haired, raven-eyed, with an aggressive nose and jaw that helped form the illusion of her being taller than she actually was. “What are you going to do, Andrei? Report me to Daddy?”
Her laughter made him grind his teeth, which, considering his condition, was a mistake. He tried not to wince, missed by a mile.
Her mouth was wide, her lips like ripe fruit. “Face it, Andrei. You’re human, after all.”
That’s not what that bitch Svetlana Novachenko said, he thought darkly.
“You don’t think much of women, do you, Andrei.” That laugh again, so mocking, so knowing—almost like a man’s. “That’s all right. I’m used to men like you.”
Now she sounded downright contemptuous, and he felt a kind of panic to be trapped under her thumb.
“I’m getting out of here,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind.” Her hand on his shoulder was firm, strong, incontestable. “You’re under my care now, Andrei. Orders from on high.”
He knew what that meant. Savasin must have received a report about the incident in the hotel room, no doubt drawn up with all requisite venom by Colonel Korsolov or one of his damned minions. Avilov cursed the day he had ever been in the same room with Svetlana Novachenko. Was this Boris Karpov reaching out from the grave? He dismissed the thought almost as soon as it bubbled up, was furious with himself that it had ever occurred to him.
“Time to change your bandage,” Dr. Nova said. “I’ll just be a mom
ent.”
She crossed to the bathroom, closed the door behind her. The room was like a ticking clock or a body laid out on an operating table, turned inside out, its beating heart exposed. He looked over to the door, which, he saw, she had not fully closed. He moved from the position into which she had pushed him, edging down the bed. A gap between the edge of the door and its jamb revealed her to him, as if he were watching an X-rated movie. She had her skirt rucked up around her hips. One gleaming leg was exposed. Her thigh gleamed, substantial, hard-muscled, ending in the deep-shadowed dell of unfulfilled promise.
As he watched, she rose slightly, wiping herself, and his eyes were transfixed by the erotic boundary of curling hair, black as a moonless night. Her legs were spread as she hunched down, her pelvis canted slightly forward. Had she been aware he was watching he would have sworn she was offering herself to him. But that invitation was merely a product of his fevered thoughts.
Then she was finished, the toilet flushed, the water ran. When she emerged he was precisely where he had been when she had left.
She came over to the bed. “Ready?”
Her hands rose, pink and fresh from her thorough scrubbing.
“This might hurt, but only a little.”
He felt a tremor begin along the insides of his thighs, traveling inward and outward at the same time.
She bent over him. Involuntarily, his nostrils flared: she smelled of gardenias and musk. “Is that perfume you’re wearing?” Hyperaware of his lengthening penis, he was having trouble breathing normally.
“I don’t wear perfume.”
He closed his eyes, his senses swirling with the scent of her. He drew his knees up.
“Stay still, please.”
He was as hard as a rock. “Couldn’t a nurse do this?” he asked as he felt her cool fingers, and then the surgical scissors on his skin.
“I like to admire my own work,” she said, her mocking laugh reduced to an impertinent smile. “An impulse you can surely understand, Andrei.”
Stung, his eyes flew open. “I’d prefer you call me by my rank.”
“I’d have preferred not to work on you, Andrei, but we all have our crosses to bear.” Having peeled the last layer off, she stood back. “There.”
“How does it look?”
Only afterward, when he was alone again, did it occur to him how much like a child he had sounded. And then he couldn’t get Dr. Nova out of his mind. Or any part of his body.
14
No,” Irina said when they returned to her mansion, “don’t turn on the lights.”
“Are you worried that the FSB has staked out the property?” Bourne asked.
She shook her head. “You took care of that. It’s just…”
He stood close to her, felt rather than saw her shrug.
“Sometimes I prefer being in the dark.”
Perfect, Bourne thought. My normal state of being.
She moved, and he saw the glitter in her eyes. The illumination from the security lights, striped through the curtains, limned her in profile like an old-fashioned cameo. He thought she might take his arm then, but she didn’t. Instead, she headed for the marble-and-gilt staircase.
“Time for sleep,” she said, and he didn’t contradict her.
But an hour or so later, when she was safely tucked in bed, Bourne crept out of his room barefoot, down the curved, baronial stairs, along the hallways until he reached the room that had been her father’s study. It smelled of old cigar smoke, leather book bindings, and carpet fibers.
—
On the floor above him, Irina was on the phone with Aleksandr.
“He’s here with me now,” she said softly into her mobile.
“What about the coin?”
“Patience, my love.”
“Patience is not my strong suit.”
She gave a low, seductive chuckle. “Except in the most important area.” She lay back against the pillows, one hand behind her head. “Not to worry. This is a man who cannot be hurried. He is suspicious of everything. I need to move slowly and with exceptional caution. As we have discussed, gaining his trust won’t be a simple thing.”
“If you move too slowly,” her brother said, “we’ll never find out the secret of that coin.”
“Without Bourne we would never find out. And I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve for when the time is right. He’ll come around, you’ll see.”
“And when will I see you? I’m dying for—”
“Not now, my love.” She rose off the bed. She had not changed out of her clothes. “It’s time for me to see what there is to see.”
“Keep me apprised.”
“Always.”
“Wherever you go,” Aleksandr said, “my love is with you.”
—
Closing the heavy wooden door behind him, Bourne crossed the Isfahan carpet to the oversize burlwood desk, where with a small squeak he sat in the old-fashioned swivel chair and switched on the task light. Rummaging through the drawers he found a magnifying glass, set it on the leather-framed baize blotter, drew out from his pocket the Star of David. Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps the point wasn’t damaged. Perhaps this wasn’t Sara’s star. Setting it on a clean sheet of notepaper, he held it under the light, peering at it in its small puddle through the magnifying glass.
At once, his heart sank. There was the damage—the same damage he’d seen on the star the last time he and Sara were in Jerusalem. Quickly tucking the star away, he drew out the Roman coin.
“We have urgent matters to discuss,” Boris had whispered in his ear when they had met in the ballroom. Had he already had intimations of his death? Was that why he’d had the coin prepared, just in case he couldn’t tell Bourne in person what was so urgent?
Bourne peered at it through the lens, turning it this way and that. It took him some moments but at length he saw it, and moved the coin on end, closer to the lens. There it was: a hairline juncture running all the way around the coin’s edge. It was a fake, then, but a damn fine one. And what had Boris secreted inside it?
He was just thinking of trying to open the coin when the door swung open and Irina floated through.
“I couldn’t sleep, either.”
The task lamp lit the lower half of her, leaving her in shadow from the waist up. She had not turned on any of the lights on her way downstairs to find him. Not that it mattered. Sometime previous a troubled dawn had stumbled past the heavy drapes, and now spilled across the floor like mercury.
“May I ask what you’re doing?” she said, as she rounded the desk and came to stand over his left arm.
He lifted the coin. “It’s genuine. A Dupondius—that’s a measure of its worth—from sometime after twenty-five BCE.”
“Very old, then.”
“Yes.”
“As you said.”
He watched her as she plucked the coin from his fingers, rolled it around. “Again, why did the general send it to you?”
“I still have no clue.”
She threw him a hard look. “How is that possible?”
Bourne sighed. “I told you that I had to take Boris’s word that we were old friends. Remember?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Years ago, I was shot in Marseilles. I was pitched into the Med, lost consciousness. I would have died if fishermen hadn’t pulled me out, if their doctor hadn’t nursed me back to life. One thing he couldn’t do was give me back my memory. Everything from before I was shot is lost to me, including, I’m thinking, what this means.”
He took the coin back from her. It was too precious for her to keep long, especially with the magnifier around. He put both the coin and the magnifier away, switched off the task lamp.
Sunlight shimmered through the gap in the drapes. A new day, a new mystery.
15
Why didn’t you ask Ivan about the coin?” Irina asked now in the ghostly, dawn-lit study.
“How do you know I didn’t?” When she didn’t reply, Bourne said, ?
??I was waiting to see if you would ask him. Why didn’t you?”
“I think you can work that out for yourself.”
“Why didn’t you want him to know about its existence?”
She sighed. “Because then he’d take it away from me, just like he’s taken everything away from me.” She looked hard at Bourne. “He thinks he’s doing me a favor, making things easier.” The tip of her forefinger made tight circles on the desktop. “I don’t want that kind of help—from him or from anyone.”
“Meaning me,” Bourne said, rising.
Her eyes held steady on him. “When I ask for help that’s another matter entirely.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
She made a disdainful face. “Whoever said ‘All’s fair in love and war’ never read Tolstoy.”
“Or any other Russian novelist, for that matter.”
She gave him a wry smile. “True. We Russians aren’t ones for happy endings. So few of us ever had one. You can’t fill your belly on hope.”
It was odd, Bourne thought, hearing these proletariat sentiments from a scion of a wealthy father. But he’d already figured out that Irina wasn’t like any other member of her family. Defiantly so, if he was any judge of character. What had happened to her along the way to make her so filled with rage, so fiercely independent?
Irina watched him with a curious expression. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m interested in Ivan’s theory of who killed Karpov.”
“Ivan’s evidence is circumstantial. Until we determine that Borz is in Moscow—or was up until last night—we can’t be sure of anything.”
“But it’s a theory that makes perfect sense,” Bourne said. “General Karpov had made Borz a target. If he discovered something vital about him, it figures Borz would want him dead.”
“Now that the general has been murdered you should be more interested in the mystery of the coin, but you’re not. Why?”
“I already told you.”
“Meaning?”
“Borz,” Bourne said. “He’s the real reason I came to Moscow. To find him.”