The Bourne Sanction

“Russia is corrupt, but Moscow, it’s more than corrupt. There isn’t a word for how bad things are here. The government is made up of thugs and criminals. The criminals plunder the natural resources of Russia-oil, natural gas, uranium. Everyone takes, takes, takes so they can have big foreign cars, a different dyev for every day of the week, a dacha in Miami Beach. And what’s left for us? Potatoes and beets, if we work eighteen hours a day and if we’re lucky.”

“I have no animosity toward you,” Bourne said. “You have a right to earn a living.” He handed Yakov a fistful of dollars.

“I see no one, sir. I swear. Just voices on my cell phone. All moneys come to a post office box in-”

Bourne carefully placed the muzzle of the Makarov in Yakov’s ear. The cabbie cringed, turned mournful eyes on Bourne.

“Please, please, sir, what have I done?”

“I saw you outside the Metropolya with the man who tried to kill me.”

Yakov squealed like a skewered rat. “Kill you? I’m employed merely to watch and report. I have no knowledge about-”

Bourne hit the cabbie. “Stop lying and tell me what I want to know.”

“All right, all right.” Yakov was shaking with fear. “The American who pays me, his name is Low. Harris Low.”

Bourne made him give a detailed description of Low, then he took Yakov’s cell phone.

“Get out of the car,” he said.

“But sir, I answered all your questions,” Yakov protested. “You’ve taken everything of mine. What more do you want?”

Bourne leaned across him, opened the door, then shoved him out. “This is a popular place. Plenty of bombily come and go. You’re a rich man now. Use some of the money I gave you to get a ride home.”

Sliding behind the wheel he put the Zhig in gear, drove back into the heart of the city.

Harris Low was a dapper man with a pencil mustache. He had the prematurely white hair and ruddy complexion of many blue-blooded families in the American Northeast. That he had spent the last eleven years in Moscow, working for NSA, was a testament to his father, who had trod the same perilous path. Low had idolized his father, had wanted to be like him for as long as he could remember. Like his father, he had the Stars and Stripes tattooed on his soul. He’d been a ru

During his eleven years in the capital of Russia, Low had made many friends, some of whom were the sons of his father’s friends. Suffice to say he had developed a network of apparatchiks and siloviks for whom a quid pro quo was the order of the day. Harris held no illusions. To further his country’s cause he would scratch anyone’s back-if they, in turn, scratched his.

He heard about the murders at the Metropolya Hotel from a friend of his in the General Prosecutor’s Office, who’d caught the police squeal. Harris met this individual at the hotel and was consequently one of the first people on the scene.

He had no interest in the corpse in the utility closet, but he immediately recognized Anthony Prowess. Excusing himself from the crime scene, he went into the stairwell off the seventeenth-floor hallway, punched in an overseas number on his cell. A moment later Luther LaValle answered.

“We have a problem,” Low said. “Prowess has been rendered inoperative with extreme prejudice.”

“That’s very disturbing,” LaValle said. “We have a rogue operative loose in Moscow who has now murdered one of our own. I think you know what to do.”

Low understood. There was no time to bring in another of NSA’s wet-work specialists, which meant terminating Bourne was up to him.

“Now that he’s killed an American citizen,” LaValle said, “I’ll bring the Moscow police and the General Prosecutor’s Office into the picture. They’ll have the same photo of him I’m sending to your cell within the hour.”

Low thought a moment. “The question is tracking him. Moscow is way behind the curve in closed-circuit TVs.”

“Bourne is going to need money,” LaValle said. “He couldn’t take enough through Customs when he landed, which means he wouldn’t try. He’ll have set up a local account at a Moscow bank. Get the locals to help with surveillance pronto.”

“Consider it done,” Low said.

“And Harris. Don’t make the same mistake with Bourne that Prowess did.”

Bourne took Gala to her friend’s apartment, which was lavish even by American standards. Her friend, Lorraine, was an American of Armenian extraction. Her dark eyes and hair, her olive complexion, all served to increase her exoticism. She hugged and kissed Gala, greeted Bourne warmly, and invited him to stay for a drink or tea.

As he took a tour through the rooms, Gala said, “He’s worried about my safety.”

“What’s happened?” Lorraine asked. “Are you all right?”

“She’ll be fine,” Bourne said, coming back into the living room. “This’ll all blow over in a couple of days.” Having satisfied himself of the security of the apartment, he left them with the warning not to open the door for anyone they didn’t know.

Ivan Volkin had directed Bourne to go to Novoslobodskaya 20, where the meet with Dimitri Maslov would take place. At first Bourne thought it lucky that the bombila he flagged down knew how to find the address, but when he was dropped off he understood. Novoslobodskaya 20 was the address of Motorhome, a new club jammed with young partying Muscovites. Gigantic flat-panel screens above the center island bar showed telecasts of American baseball, basketball, football, English rugby, and World Cup soccer. The floor of the main room was dominated by tables for Russian billiards and American pool. Following Volkin’s direction, Bourne headed for the back room, which was fitted out as an Arabian Nights hookah room complete with overlapping carpets, jewel-toned cushions, and, of course, gaily colored brass hookahs being smoked by lounging men and women.

Bourne, stopped at the doorway by two overdeveloped members of club security, told them he was here to see Dimitri Maslov. One of them pointed to a man lounging and smoking a hookah in the far left corner.

“Maslov,” Bourne said when he reached the pile of cushions surrounding a low brass table.

“My name is Yevgeny. Maslov isn’t here.” The man gestured. “Sit down, please.”

Bourne hesitated a moment, then sat on a cushion opposite Yev-geny. “Where is he?”

“Did you think it would be so simple? One call and poof! he pops into existence like a genie from a lamp?” Yevgeny shook his head, offered Bourne the pipe. “Good shit. Try some.”

When Bourne declined, Yevgeny shrugged, took a toke deep into his lungs, held it, then let it out with an audible hiss. “Why do you want to see Maslov?”

“That’s between me and him,” Bourne said.

Yevgeny shrugged again. “As you like. Maslov is out of the city.”

“Then why was I told to come here?”

“To be judged, to see whether you are a serious individual. To see whether Maslov will make the decision to see you.”

“Maslov trusts people to make decisions for him?”

“He is a busy man. He has other things on his mind.”

“Like how to win the war with the Azeri.”

Yevgeny’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you can see Maslov next week.”

“I need to see him now,” Bourne said.

Yevgeny shrugged. “As I said, he’s out of Moscow. But he may be back tomorrow morning.”

“Why don’t you ensure it.”

“I could,” Yevgeny said. “But it will cost you.”

“How much?”

“Ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand dollars to talk to Dimitri Maslov?”

Yevgeny shook his head. “The American dollar has become too debased. Ten thousand Swiss francs.”

Bourne thought a moment. He didn’t have that kind of money on him, and certainly not in Swiss francs. However, he had the information Baronov had given him on the safe-deposit box at the Moskva Bank. The problem was that it was in the name of Fyodor Ilianovich Popov, who was no doubt now wanted for questioning regarding the body of the man in his room at the Metropolya Hotel. There was no help for it, Bourne thought. He’d have to take the chance.