Страница 50 из 115
The tram jounced and rattled along its rails. Crammed inside with a stinking, noisy
crowd, he felt thoroughly shaken. Not only had he discovered a Kazanskaya assassin
waiting in Tarkanian’s apartment, but his contact had been murdered by an NSA assassin
sent to kill him. His sense of apartness had never been more extreme. Babies cried, men
rustled newspapers, women chatted side by side, an old man, big-knuckled hands curled
over the head of his walking stick, clandestinely ogled a young girl engrossed in a manga
comic. Here was life, bustling all around him, a burbling stream that parted when it came
to him, an immovable rock, only to come together when it passed him, flowing on while
he remained behind, still and alone.
He thought of Marie, as he always did at times like this. But Marie was gone, and her
memory was of little solace to him. He missed his children, and wondered whether this
was the David Webb personality bubbling up. An old, familiar despair swept through
him, as it hadn’t since Alex Conklin had taken him out of the gutter, formed the Bourne
identity for him to slip on like a suit of armor. He felt the crushing weight of life on him, a life lived alone, a sad and lonely life that could only end one way.
And then his thoughts turned to Moira, of how impossibly difficult that last meeting
with her had been. If she had been a spy, if she had betrayed Martin and meant to do the
same with him, what would he have done? Would he have turned her over to Soraya or
Veronica Hart?
But she wasn’t a spy. He would never have to face that conundrum.
When it came to Moira, his personal feelings were now bound up in his professional
duty, inextricably combined. He knew that she loved him and, now, in the face of his
despair, he understood that he loved her, as well. When he was with her he felt whole, but
in an entirely new way. She wasn’t Marie, and he didn’t want her to be Marie. She was
Moira, and it was Moira he wanted.
By the time he swung off the tram in Moscow Center, the snow had abated to veils of
drifting flakes whirled about by stray gusts of wind across the huge open plazas. The
city’s lights were on against the long winter evening, but the clearing sky turned the
temperature bitter. The streets were clogged with gypsy cabbies in their cheap cars
manufactured during the Brezhnev years, trundling slowly in bumper-to-bumper lines so
as to not miss a fare. They were known in local slang as bombily-those who bomb-
because of the bowel-loosening speed with which they bombed around the city’s streets
as soon as they had a passenger.
He went into a cybercafй, paid for fifteen minutes at a computer terminal, typed in
Kitaysky Lyotchik. Kitaysky Lyotchik Zhao-Da, the full name-or The Chinese Pilot in its
English translation-turned out to be a throbbing elitny club at proyezd Lubyansky 25. The
Kitai-Gorod metro stop let Bourne out at the end of the block. On one side was a canal,
frozen solid; on the other, a row of mixed-use buildings. The Chinese Pilot was easy
enough to spot, what with the BMWs, Mercedeses, and Porsche SUVs, as well as the
ubiquitous gaggle of bombily Zhigs clustered on the street. The crowd behind a velvet
rope was being held in check by fierce-looking face-control bullies, so that waiting
partygoers spilled drunkenly off the pavement. Bourne went up to the red Caye
rapped on the window. When the driver scrolled the window down, Bourne held out three
hundred dollars.
“When I come out that door, this is my car, right?”
The driver eyed the money hungrily. “Right you are, sir.”
In Moscow, especially, American dollars talked louder than words.
“And if your client comes out in the meantime?”
“He won’t,” the driver assured Bourne. “He’s in the champagne room till four at the
earliest.”
Another hundred dollars got Bourne past the shouting, unruly mob. Inside, he ate an
indifferent meal of an Oriental salad and almond-crusted chicken breast. From his perch
along the glowing bar, he watched the Russian siloviki come and go with their diamond-
studded, mini-skirted, fur-wrapped dyevochkas-strictly speaking, young women who had
not yet borne a child. This was the new order in Russia. Except Bourne knew that many
of the same people were still in power-either ex-KGB siloviki or their progeny lined up
against the boys from Sokolniki, who came from nothing into sudden wealth. The
siloviki, derived from the Russian word for “power,” were men from the so-called power
ministries, including the security services and the military, who had risen during the Putin era. They were the new guard, having overthrown the Yeltsin-period oligarchs. No
matter. Siloviki or mobster, they were criminals, they’d killed, extorted, maimed,
blackmailed; they all had blood on their hands, they were all strangers to remorse.
Bourne sca
who might have fit the bill, especially in this low light. It was astonishing to observe
firsthand this wheat field of tall, willowy young women, one more striking than the next.
There was a prevalent theory, a kind of skewed Darwinism-survival of the prettiest-that
explained why there were so many startlingly handsome dyevochkas in Russia and
Ukraine. If you were a man in his twenties in these countries in 1947 it meant that you’d
survived one of the greatest male bloodbaths in human history. These men, being in the
vast minority, had their pick of women. Who had they chosen to marry and impregnate?
The answer was obvious, hence the acres of dyevs partying here and in every other
nightclub in Russia.
Out on the dance floor, a crush of gyrating bodies made identification of individuals
impossible. Spotting a redheaded dyev on her own, Bourne walked over to her, gestured
if she wanted to dance. The earsplitting house music pumped out of a dozen massive
speakers made small talk impossible. She nodded, took his hand, and they shoved,
elbowed, and squeezed their way into a cramped space on the dance floor. The next
twenty minutes could have substituted for a vigorous workout. The dancing was nonstop,
as were the colored flashing lights and the chest-vibrating drumming of the high-octane
music spewed out by a local band called Tequilajazz.
Over the top of the redhead Bourne caught a glimpse of yet another blond dyev. Only
this one was different. Grabbing the redhead’s hand, Bourne eeled deeper into the
gyrating pack of dancers. Perfume, cologne, and sour sweat mixed with the raw tang of
hot metal and blazing monster amplifiers.
Still dancing, Bourne maneuvered around until he was certain. The blonde dyev
dancing with the broad-shouldered mobster was, indeed, Gala Nematova.
It’ll never be the same,” Dr. Mitten said.
“What the hell does that mean?” Anthony Prowess, sitting in an uncomfortable chair in
the NSA safe house just outside Moscow, barked at the ophthalmologist bent over him.
“Mr. Prowess, I don’t think you’re in the best shape to hear a full diagnosis. Why not
wait until the shock-”
“A, I’m not in shock,” Prowess lied. “And B, I don’t have time to wait.” That was true
enough: Having lost Bourne’s trail, he needed to get back on it ASAP.
Dr. Mitten sighed. He’d been expecting just such a response; in fact, he would’ve been
surprised at anything else. Still, he had a professional responsibility to his patient even if he was on retainer to the NSA.
“What it means,” he said, “is that you’ll never see out of that eye again. At least, not in any way that’ll be useful to you.”