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of why the Kazanskaya sent this prison-hardened assassin to an apartment where Gala
Nematova had once lived with Pyotr loomed large in his mind. Was there a co
between Semion Icoupov and the grupperovka family?
Taking another long look at Gala Nematova’s photo, Bourne slipped out of the
apartment as silently as he’d entered it. Out in the hallway he listened for human sounds,
but apart from the muted wailing of a baby in an apartment on the second floor, all was
still. He descended the stairs and went through the vestibule, where a little girl holding
her mother’s hand was trying to drag her upstairs. Bourne and the mother exchanged the
meaningless smiles of strangers passing each other. Then Bourne was outside, emerging
from under the colo
treacherous snow, no one was about. He slipped into the passenger’s seat of the Volga
and shut the door behind him.
That was when he saw the blood leaking from Baronov’s throat. At the same instant a
wire whipped around his neck, digging into his windpipe.
Four times a week after work, Rodney Feir, chief of field support for CI, worked out at
a health club a short walk from his house in Fairfax, Virginia. He spent an hour on the
treadmill, another hour weight training, then took a cold shower and headed for the steam
room.
This evening General Kendall was waiting for him. Kendall dimly saw the glass door
open, cold air briefly sucked in as tendrils of steam escaped into the men’s locker room.
Then Feir’s trim, athletic body appeared through the mist.
“Good to see you, Rodney,” General Kendall said.
Feir nodded silently, sat down beside Kendall.
Rodney Feir was Plan B, the backup the general had put in place in the event the plan
involving Rob Batt blew up. In fact, Feir had been easier to land than Batt. Feir was
someone who’d drifted into security work not for any patriotic reason, not because he
liked the clandestine life. He was simply lazy. Not that he didn’t do his job, not that he
didn’t do it damn well. It was just that government life suited him down to his black
wing-tip shoes. The key fact to remember about him was that whatever Feir did, he did
because it would benefit him. He was, in fact, an opportunist. He, more than any of the
others at CI, could see the writing on the wall, which is why his conversion to the NSA
cause had been so easy and seamless. With the death of the Old Man, the end of days had
arrived. He had none of Batt’s loyalty to contend with.
Still, it didn’t do to take anyone for granted, which is why Kendall met him here
occasionally. They would take a steam, then shower, climb into their civvies, and go to
di
the district.
These places were no more than shacks. They were mainly the pit out back, where the
pitmaster lovingly smoked his cuts of meat-ribs, brisket, burnt ends, sweet and hot
sausages, sometimes a whole hog-for hours on end. The old, scarred wooden picnic
tables, topped with four or five sauces of varying ingredients and heat, were a kind of
afterthought. Most folk had their meat wrapped up to take out. Not Kendall and Feir.
They sat at a table, eating and drinking beer, while the bones piled up along with the
wadded-up napkins and the slices of white bread so soft, they disintegrated under a few
drops of sauce.
Now and again Feir stopped eating to impart to Kendall some bit of fact or scuttlebutt
currently going around the CI offices. Kendall noted these with his steel-trap military
mind, occasionally asking questions to help Feir clarify or amplify a point, especially
when it came to the movements of Veronica Hart and Soraya Moore.
Afterward, they drove to an old abandoned library for the main event. The
Renaissance-style building had been bought at fire sale prices by Drew Davis, a local
businessman familiar in SE but otherwise unknown within the district, which was
precisely how he liked it. He was one of those people savvy enough to fly under the
Metro police radar. Not so simple a matter in SE, because like almost everyone else who
lived there he was black. Unlike most of those around him, he had friends in high places.
This was mainly due to the place he ran, The Glass Slipper.
To all intents and purposes it was a legit music club, and an extremely successful one
to boot, attracting many big-name R&B acts. But in the back was the real business: a
high-end cathouse that specialized in women of color. To those in the know, any flavor of
color, which in this case meant ethnicity, could be procured at The Glass Slipper. Rates
were steep but nobody seemed to mind, partly because Drew Davis paid his girls well.
Kendall had frequented this cathouse since his senior year in college. He’d come with
a bunch of well-co
him, and he knew how much he’d be ridiculed if he failed to take them up on it.
Ironically he stayed, over the years having developed a taste for, as he put it, walking on the wild side. At first he told himself that the attraction was purely physical. Then he
realized he liked being there; no one bothered him, no one made fun of him. Later, his
continued interest was a reaction to his role as outsider when it came to working with the
power junkies like Luther LaValle. Christ, even the fallen Ron Batt had been a member
of Skull & Bones at Yale. Well, The Glass Slipper is my Skull & Bones, Kendall thought as he was ushered into the back room. This was as clandestine, as outrй as things got
inside the Beltway. It was Kendall’s own little hideaway, a life that was his alone. Not
even Luther knew about The Glass Slipper. It felt good to have a secret from LaValle.
Kendall and Feir sat in purple velvet chairs-the color of royalty, as Kendall pointed
out-and were treated to a soft parade of women of all sizes and colors. Kendall chose
Imani, one of his favorites, Feir a dusky-ski
They retired to spacious rooms, furnished like bedrooms in European villas, with four-
poster beds, tons of chintz, velvet, swags, drapes. There Kendall watched as, in one
astonishing shimmy, Imani slid out of her chocolate silk spaghetti-strap dress. She wore
nothing underneath. The lamplight burnished her dark skin.
Then she opened her arms and, with a deep-felt groan, General Richard P. Kendall
melted into the sinuous river of her flawless body.
The moment Bourne felt his air supply cut off, he levered himself up off the front
bench seat, arching his back so that he could put first one foot, then the other on the
dashboard. Using his legs, he launched himself diagonally into the backseat, so that he
landed right behind the ill-fated Baronov. The strangler was forced to turn to his right in order to keep the wire around Bourne’s throat. This was an awkward position for him; he
now lacked the leverage he had when Bourne was directly in front of him.
Bourne planted the heel of his shoe in the strangler’s groin and ground down as hard as
he could, but his strength was depleted from the lack of oxygen.
“Die, fucker,” the strangler said in a hard-edged Midwestern accent.
White lights danced in his vision, and a blackness was seeping up all around him. It
was as if he were looking down a tu
looked real; his sense of perspective was skewed. He could see the man, his dark hair, his