The Bourne Sanction

“That’s not what he’s done,” she protested.

“What would you call it?”

She opened her mouth, closed it again, bit her lip as if she could find an answer in her pain.

They had reached the i

“Where to?” he said over his shoulder.

There was silence for a moment. Then Gala leaned forward, gave him an address.

“And where the fuck might that be?” the cabbie asked.

That was another oddity about bombily. Since almost none of them were Muscovites, they had no idea where anything was. Unfazed, Gala gave him directions and, with a horrific belching of diesel fumes, they lurched into the madly spi

“Since we can’t go back to the apartment,” Gala said, “we’ll crash at my girlfriend’s place. I’ve done it before. She’s cool with it.”

“Do the Kazanskaya know about her?”

Gala frowned. “I don’t think so, no.”

“We can’t take the chance.” Bourne gave the cabbie the address of one of the new American-run hotels near Red Square. “That’s the last place they’ll think to look for you,” he said as the cabbie changed gears and they hurtled through the spangled Moscow night.

Alone in the car, Arkadin fired the ignition and pulled out. He stamped on the gas pedal, accelerating so quickly his head jerked back. Just before he slammed into the right corner of Haydar’s car, he switched on his headlights. He could see Haydar’s bodyguards in the rear seat. They were in the process of turning around when Arkadin’s car made jarring contact. The rear end of Haydar’s car slewed to the left, begi

Haydar cringed fearfully as Arkadin made for the bodyguards. Both rear doors were so buckled they could not be opened. Using his elbow, Arkadin smashed the near-side rear window and peered in. One man had been caught in Arkadin’s broadside hit. He’d been thrown clear across the car, lay half on the lap of the bodyguard still sitting up. Neither one moved.

As Arkadin moved to haul Haydar out from behind the wheel, Devra came hurtling out of the darkness. Haydar’s eyes opened wide as he recognized her. She tackled Arkadin, her momentum knocking him off his feet.

Haydar watched in amazement as they rolled over through the snow, now visible, now not in the headlight beams. Haydar could see her striking him, the much larger man fighting back, gradually gaining the upper hand by dint of his superior bulk and strength. Then Devra reared back. Haydar could see a knife in her hand. She drove it down into darkness, stabbing again and again.

When she rose again into the headlight beams he could see her breathing heavily. Her hand was empty. Haydar figured she must have left the knife buried in her adversary. She staggered for a moment with the aftereffects of her struggle. Then she made her way over to him.

Yanking open the car door, she said, “Are you okay?”

He nodded, shrinking away from her. “I was told you’d turned on us, joined the other side.”

She laughed. “That’s just what I wanted that sonovabitch to think. He managed to get to Shumenko and Filya. After that I figured the only way to survive was to play along with him until I got a chance to take him down.”

Haydar nodded. “This is the final battle. The thought that you’d turned traitor was dispiriting. I know some of us thought your status was earned on your back, in Pyotr’s bed. But not me.” The shock was coming out of his eyes. The old ca

“Where is the package?” she said. “Is it safe?”

“I handed it off to Heinrich this evening -at the card game.”

“Has he left for Munich?”

“Why the hell would he stay a minute more than he had to? He hates it here. I assume he was driving to Istanbul for his usual early-evening flight.” His eyes narrowed. “Why d’you want to know?”

He gave a little yelp as Arkadin loomed out of the night. Looking from Devra to Arkadin and back again, he said, “What is this? I saw you stab him to death.”

“You saw what we wanted you to see.” Arkadin handed Devra his gun, and she shot Haydar between the eyes.

She turned back to him, handed him the gun butt-first. There was clear defiance in her voice when she said, “Have I proved myself to you now?”

Bourne checked into the Metropolya Hotel as Fyodor Ilianovich Popov. The night clerk didn’t bat an eye at Gala’s presence, nor did he ask for her ID. Having Popov’s was enough to satisfy hotel policy. The lobby, with its gilt sconces and accents, and glittering crystal chandeliers, looked like something out of the czarist era, the designers thumbing their nose at the architecture of Soviet Brutalism.

They took one of the silk-lined elevators to the seventeenth floor. Bourne opened the door to their room with an electronically coded plastic card. After a thorough visual check, he allowed her to enter. She took off her fur jacket. The act of sitting on the bed rode her mini-skirt farther up her thighs, but she appeared unconcerned.

Leaning forward, elbows on knees, she said, “Thank you for saving me. But to be honest, I don’t know what I’ll do now.”

Bourne pulled out the chair that went with the desk, sat facing her. “The first thing you have to do is tell me whether you know where Arkadin is.”

Gala looked down at the carpet between her feet. She rubbed her arms as if she was still cold, though the temperature in the room was warm enough.

“All right,” Bourne said, “let’s talk about something else. Do you know anything about the Black Legion?”

Her head came up, her brows furrowed. “Now, that’s odd you should mention them.”

“Why is that?”

“Leonid would speak about them.”

“Is Arkadin one of them?”

Gala snorted. “You must be joking! No, he never actually spoke about them to me. I mean, he mentioned them now and again when he was going to see Ivan.”

“And who is Ivan?”

“Ivan Volkin. He’s an old friend of Leonid’s. He used to be in the grupperovka. Leonid told me that from time to time the leaders ask him for advice, so he knows all the players. He’s a kind of de facto underworld historian now. Anyway, he’s the one Leonid would go to.”

This interested Bourne. “Can you take me to him?”

“Why not? He’s a night owl. Leonid used to visit him very late.” Gala searched in her handbag for her cell phone. She scrolled through her phone book, dialed Volkin’s number.

After speaking to someone for several minutes, she terminated the co

“Good.”

She frowned, put away her phone. “If you’re thinking that Ivan knows where Leonid is, you’re mistaken. Leonid told no one where he was going, not even me.”

“You must love this man a great deal.”

“I do.”

“Does he love you?”

When she turned back to him, her eyes were full of tears. “Yes, he loves me.”

“Is that why you took money to spy on Pyotr? Is that why you were partying with that man tonight at The Chinese Pilot?”

“Christ, none of that matters.”

Bourne sat forward. “I don’t understand. Why doesn’t it matter?”

Gala regarded him for a long time. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know anything about love?” A tear overflowed, ran down her cheek. “Whatever I do for money allows me to live. Whatever I do with my body has nothing to do with love. Love is strictly a matter of the heart. My heart belongs to Leonid Danilovich. That’s sacred, pure. No one can touch it or defile it.”