The Bourne Sanction Part 19

Prowess sat with his head back, his damaged eye numbed with drops so the d.a.m.n ophthalmologist could poke around. "Details, please."

Dr. Mitten was a tall, thin man with narrow shoulders, a wisp of a comb-over, and a neck with a prominent Adam's apple that bobbed comically when he spoke or swallowed. "I believe you'll be able to discern movement, differentiate light from dark."

"That's it?"

"On the other hand," Dr. Mitten said, "when the swelling goes down you may be completely blind in that eye."

"Fine, now I know the worst. Just fix me the h.e.l.l up so I can get out of here."

"I don't recommend-"

"I don't give a s.h.i.+t what you recommend," Prowess snapped. "Do as I tell you or I'll wring your scrawny little chicken neck."

Dr. Mitten puffed out his checks in indignation, but he knew better than to talk back to an agent. They seemed born with hair-trigger responses to everything, which their training further honed.

As the ophthalmologist worked on his eye, Prowess seethed inside. Not only had he failed to terminate Bourne, he'd allowed Bourne to permanently maim him. He was furious at himself for turning tail and running, even though he knew that when a victim gains the upper hand you have to exit the field as quickly as possible.

Still, Prowess would never forgive himself. It wasn't that the pain had been excruciating-he had an extremely high pain threshold. It wasn't even that Bourne had turned the tables on him-he'd redress that situation shortly. It was his eye. Ever since he was a child, he had a morbid fear of being blind. His father had been blinded in an accidental fall getting off a transit bus, when the impact had detached both his retinas. This was in the days before ophthalmologists could staple retinas back in place. At six years old the horror of watching his father deteriorate from an optimistic, robust man into a bitter, withdrawn nub had imprinted itself forever in his mind. That horror had kicked in the moment Jason Bourne had dug his thumb deep into his eye.

As he sat in the chair, brooding amid the chemical smells emitted by Dr. Mitten's ministrations, Prowess was filled with determination. He promised himself he'd find Jason Bourne, and when he did Bourne would pay for the damage he'd inflicted, he'd pay dearly before Prowess killed him.

Professor Specter was chairing a chancellors' meeting at the university when his private cell phone vibrated. He immediately called a fifteen-minute break, left the room, strode down the hall and outside onto the campus.

When he was clear, he opened his cell, and heard Nemetsov's voice buzzing in his ear. Nemetsov was the man Baronov had called to switch cars with at Crocus City.

"Baronov's dead?" Specter said. "How?"

He listened while Nemetsov described the attack in the car outside Tarkanian's apartment building. "An NSA a.s.sa.s.sin," Nemetsov concluded. "He was waiting for Bourne, to garrote him as he did Baronov."

"And Jason?"

"Survived. But the a.s.sa.s.sin escaped as well."

Specter felt a wave of relief wash over him. "Find that NSA man before he finds Jason, and kill him. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly. But shouldn't we also try to make contact with Bourne?"

Specter considered a moment. "No. He's at his best when working alone. He knows Moscow, speaks Russian fluently, and he has our fake IDs. He'll do what must be done."

"You've put your faith in this one man?"

"You don't know him, Nemetsov, otherwise you wouldn't make such a stupid statement. I only wish Jason could be with us permanently."

When, sweaty and entangled, Gala Nematova and her boy toy left the dance floor, so did Bourne. He watched as the couple made their way to a table where they were greeted by two other men. They all began to guzzle champagne as if it were water. Bourne waited until they'd refilled their flutes, then swaggered over in the style of these new-style gangsters.

Leaning over Gala's companion, he shouted in her ear, "I have an urgent message for you."

"Hey," her companion shouted back with no little belligerence, "who the f.u.c.k're you?"

"Wrong question." Glaring at him, Bourne pushed up the sleeve of his jacket just long enough to give him a glimpse of his fake Anubis tattoo.

The man bit his lip and sat back down as Bourne reached over, pulled Gala Nematova away from the table.

"We're going outside to talk."

"Are you crazy?" She tried to squirm away from his grip. "It's freezing out there."

Bourne continued to steer her by her elbow. "We'll talk in my limo."

"Well, that's something." Gala Nematova bared her teeth, clearly unhappy. Her teeth were very white, as if scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. Her eyes were a remote chestnut, large with uptilted corners that revealed the Asian blood in her ancestry.

A frigid wind swept off the ca.n.a.l, blocked only partially by the gridlock of expensive cars and bombily bombily. Bourne rapped on the Porsche's door and the driver, recognizing him, unlocked the doors. Bourne and the dyev dyev piled in. piled in.

Gala, s.h.i.+vering, hugged her inadequately short fur coat around her. Bourne asked the driver to turn up the heat. He complied, sank down in his fur-collared greatcoat.

"I don't care what message you have for me," Gala said sullenly. "Whatever it is, the answer's no."

"Are you sure?" Bourne wondered where she was going with this.

"Sure I'm sure. I've had it with you guys trying to find out where Leonid Danilovich is."

Leonid Danilovich, Bourne said to himself. There's a name the professor never mentioned There's a name the professor never mentioned.

"The reason we keep hounding you is he's sure you know." Bourne had no idea what he was saying, but he felt if he kept running with her he'd be able to open her up.

"I don't." Now Gala sounded like a little girl in a snit. "But even if I did I wouldn't rat him out. You can tell Maslov that." She fairly spat out the name of the Kazanskaya's leader, Dimitri Maslov.

Now we're getting somewhere, Bourne thought. But why was Maslov after Leonid Danilovich, and what did any of this have to do with Pyotr's death? He decided to explore this link.

"Why were you and Leonid Danilovich using Tarkanian's apartment?"

Instantly he knew he'd made a mistake. Gala's expression changed dramatically. Her eyes narrowed and she made a sound deep in her throat. "What the h.e.l.l is this? You already know why we were camped out there."

"Tell me again," Bourne said, improvising desperately. "I've only heard it thirdhand. Maybe something was left out."

"What could be left out? Leonid Danilovich and Tarkanian are the best of friends."

"Is that where you took Pyotr for your late-night trysts?"

"Ah, so that's what this is all about. The Kazanskaya want to know all about Pyotr Zilber, and I know why. Pyotr ordered the murder of Borya Maks, in prison, of all places-High Security Prison Colony 13. Who could do that? Get in there, kill Maks, a Kazanskaya contract killer of great strength and skill, and get out without being seen."

"That's precisely what Maslov wants to know," Bourne said, because it was the safe comment to make.

Gala picked at her nail extensions, realized what she was doing, stopped. "He suspects Leonid Danilovich did it because Leonid is known for such feats. No one else could do that, he's sure."

Time to press her, Bourne decided. "He's right on the money."

Gala shrugged.

"Why are you protecting Leonid?"

"I love him."

"The way you loved Pyotr?"

"Don't be absurd." Gala laughed. "I never loved Pyotr. He was a job Semion Icoupov paid me handsomely for."

"And Pyotr paid for your treachery with his life."

Gala seemed to peer at him in a different light. "Who are you?"

Bourne ignored her question. "During that time where did you meet Icoupov?"

"I never met him. Leonid served as intermediary."

Now Bourne's mind raced to put the building blocks Gala had provided into their proper order. "You know, don't you, that Leonid murdered Pyotr." He didn't of course know that, but given the circ.u.mstances it seemed all too likely.

"No." Gala blanched. "That can't be."

"You can see how it must be what happened. Icoupov didn't kill Pyotr himself, surely that much must be clear to you." He observed the fear mounting behind her eyes. "Who else would Icoupov have trusted to do it? Leonid was the only other person to know you were spying on Pyotr for Icoupov."

The truth of what he said was written on Gala's face like a road sign appearing out of the fog. While she was still in shock, Bourne said, "Please tell me Leonid's full name."

"What?"

"Just do as I tell you," Bourne said. "It may be the only way to save him from being killed by the Kazanskaya."

"But you're you're Kazanskaya." Kazanskaya."

Pus.h.i.+ng up his sleeve, Bourne gave her a close-up look at the false tattoo. "A Kazanskaya was waiting for Leonid in Tarkanian's apartment this evening."

"I don't believe you." Her eyes widened. "What were you doing there?"

"Tarkanian's dead," Bourne said. "Now do you want to help the man you say you love?"

"I do do love Leonid! I don't care what he did." love Leonid! I don't care what he did."

At that moment, the driver cursed mightily, turned in his seat. "My client's coming."

"Go on," Bourne urged Gala. "Write his name down."

"Something must've happened in the VIP," the driver said. "s.h.i.+t, he looks p.i.s.sed. You gotta get outta here now."

Bourne grabbed Gala, opened the street-side door, nearly burying it in the fender of a hurtling bombily bombily. He flagged it down with a fistful of rubles, made the transfer from Western luxury to Eastern poverty in one stride. Gala Nematova broke away from him as he was entering the Zhig. He clutched her by the back of her fur coat, but she shrugged it off, began to run. The cabbie stepped on the gas, the stench of diesel fumes foaming up into the interior, choking them so badly Bourne had to crank open a window. As he did so, he saw two men who'd been at her table come out of the club. They looked right and left. One of them spotted Gala's running figure, gestured to the other one, and they took off after her.

"Follow those men!" Bourne shouted to the cabbie.

The cabbie had a flat face with a distinctly Asian caste. He was fat, greasy, and spoke Russian with an abominable accent. Clearly, Russian wasn't his first language. "You're joking, yes?"

Bourne thrust more rubles at him. "I'm joking, no."

The cabbie shrugged, crashed the Zhig into first gear, depressed the gas pedal.

At that moment the two men caught up with Gala.

Twenty.

AT PRECISELY that moment, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin and Devra were deciding how to get to Haydar without Devra's people knowing about it.

"Best would be to extract him from his environment," Arkadin said. "But for that we need to know his habitual movements. I don't have time-"

"I know a way," Devra said.

The two of them were sitting side by side on a bed on the ground floor of a small inn. The room wasn't much to look at-just a bed, a chair, a broken-down dresser-but it had its own bathroom, a shower with plenty of hot water, which they'd used one after the other. Best of all, it was warm.

"Haydar's a gambler," she continued. "Almost every evening he's hunkered down in the back room of a local cafe. He knows the owner, who lets them play without imposing a fee. In fact, once a week he joins them." She glanced at her watch. "He's sure to be there now."

"What good is that? Your people are sure to protect him there."

"Right, that's why we aren't going to go near the place."

An hour later, they were sitting in their rented car on the side of a two-lane road. All their lights were off. They were freezing. Whatever snow had seemed imminent had pa.s.sed them by. A half-moon rode in the sky, an Old World lantern revealing wisps of clouds and bluish crusty s...o...b..nks.

"This is the route Haydar takes to and from the game." Devra tilted her watch face so it was illuminated by the moonglow coming off the banked snow. "He should show any minute now."

Arkadin was behind the wheel. "Just point out the car, leave the rest to me." One hand was on the ignition key, the other on the gears.h.i.+ft. "We have to be prepared. He might have an escort."

"If he's got guards they'll be in the same car with him," Devra said. "The roads are so bad it will be extremely difficult to keep him in sight from a trailing vehicle."

"One car," Arkadin said. "All the better."

A moment later the night was momentarily lit by a moving glow below the rise in the road.

"Headlights." Devra tensed. "That's the right direction."

"You'll know his car?"

"I'll know it," she said. "There aren't many cars in the area. Mostly old trucks for carting."

The glow brightened. Then they saw the headlights themselves as the vehicle crested the rise. From the position of the headlights, Arkadin could tell this was a car, not a truck.

"It's him," she said.