Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(111)
Here, Bourne held them up. They stood, silent, deep in the shadows, while he accustomed himself to the cluster of small sounds—the boiler, water running through the pipes, floorboards creaking, the wind whistling through cracks in the windowpanes. It was like listening to a living thing. The building breathing in its own particular rhythm. Then a baby crying, a violin playing a soft, sad melody, a burst of laughter, quickly throttled. Footsteps on the stairs disappearing behind the sound of a closing door. Now no one on the stairs.
“Top floor,” Savasin whispered as they emerged from the service area, reaching the vestibule.
Bourne did not bother to turn on the thirty-second light to illuminate their way. Instead, he indicated to Savasin to follow his lead in slipping off his shoes. Carrying them in one hand, they ascended to the first floor, where Bourne kept them still as he listened. The baby had stopped crying, but the violin was scraping away, occasionally hitting sour notes that made Savasin wince.
Bourne held them again on the landing to the third floor. The violin was louder now, obviously coming from one of the third-floor apartments. The melody, such as it was, had started all over again from the beginning, note for note the same as before.
Halfway up to the top floor, Bourne halted them again. He wished he were alone; he did not like dragging Savasin around with him, but he’d needed him to get to Dima Orlov. Now, not so much.
He began again to ascend, but when the first minister began to follow him, he put an arm out. “Wait here,” he whispered.
“After coming all this way, after everything Konstantin has thrown at me to stop me, there’s no way I’ll be left standing on the threshold.”
Bourne studied him for a moment. The young violinist hit the same sour note. “You have the Strizh you took from the gunman?”
“Sure.” Savasin nodded, slipping it out to show Bourne. “But why would I need it? We’re in the one place in all of Moscow safe from my brother.”
Bourne said nothing, climbing up the last of the stairs, the first minister on his heels. Savasin had told him to expect the presence of the mountain-size protector named Cerberus and, as they reached the final landing with its riot of thick foliage, its magnificently turned wooden doors banded in iron and sporting the eagle bas-relief in the center of each door, wings spread, talons to the fore, Bourne saw that he hadn’t exaggerated. Cerberus was the largest human being he had ever come across. The guard dog’s raisin eyes regarded Savasin, lit up dully with recognition, then turned his attention on Bourne. He grunted.
“Hold that thought,” Bourne said. Taking out his sat phone, he dialed the second number Morgana had dictated to him over the phone, the one she found along with the one for Keyre’s mobile, the one without attribution.
He had noted that the number had a Russian prefix, as well as one of the very new Moscow exchanges created due to the proliferation of mobile phones. They heard a phone ring behind the decorative doors—a very distinctive melody, Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess.”
“I know that melody,” Savasin said before it cut out abruptly. “It’s Dima’s favorite.”
“No, it isn’t,” Bourne said, hearing the voice at the other end of the line say, “Gora?”
Bourne waved to Cerberus, who opened the doors, allowing them entrance to the Orlovs’ vast atelier-apartment.
“I told you not to use this number unless—” Ekaterina broke off as she and Dima watched in shock as Bourne strode toward them, his sat phone against his cheek.
“Not Gora,” he said with a millimeter-thin smile. “Gora’s dead, Ekaterina.” He pointed the Strizh at her heart. “This is the end of the line—for you, your father, for the auction, for the Bourne Initiative.”
He heard Savasin’s warning shout at the same time the immense blur came hurtling toward him.
How can someone so big move so fast? he wondered. Cerberus slammed into him, sending him tumbling across the floor. As his right shoulder struck the wooden boards, the Strizh flew out of his hand, skittering just out of reach. No matter, the mountain was upon him, battering him with fists as big and destructive as medieval maces. Bourne felt his left side go numb with the pounding he was taking. He tried to get to his knees, but Cerberus slapped him with the back of his hand. Bourne recoiled, and to the sound of splintering wood, he crashed into the stack of frames waiting to be assembled.
Giving him no respite, Cerberus closed in. Bourne got in three or four quick blows, which, astoundingly, appeared to have no effect whatsoever. Cerberus was bent over him, his raisin eyes filled with red rage: Bourne had threatened his mistress. Dimly, Bourne could make out Ekaterina calling her guard dog off, but he was beyond hearing, beyond anything but the simple principle of destruction.
His massive hand closed around Bourne’s neck, squeezing so hard Bourne thought his eyeballs would pop out of his head. His breathing was labored, his heart was racing too fast; black spots appeared before his eyes, clouding his vision. His left side was still numb, useless. All he had was his right hand and, even as his world closed in to a pulsing red spot and his lungs strained for oxygen that wasn’t coming, it scrabbled at his side, found a length of frame and, with the mitered end upward, with his last reserves of strength, drove it through Cerberus’s throat, severing his spinal cord at the spot between the second and third cervical vertebrae.
All the air seemed to come out of Cerberus along with his blood. He deflated like a balloon stuck with a vandal’s knifepoint.