Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(112)
Bourne rolled him off and scrambled to his feet as best he could. His training allowed him to go into prana, using long, slow breaths to reoxygenate his system. Not that it mattered. The violin melody from downstairs was gone. In the ensuing silence Konstantin Savasin appeared seemingly out of nowhere, surrounded by two of his men, trench-coated and armed with short-barreled Uzis. One of them had disarmed the first minister who, with his arms behind his back, looked white as a sheet.
“Taste.” Konstantin, suave, slim, and saturnine, sauntered toward Bourne. “There’s no accounting for it.” He turned to his brother. “When you lie down with dogs, dear brother, you’re sure to get fleas.”
Responding to a hand signal, his other man came toward Bourne, the muzzle of the Uzi pointed at his midsection.
“Keep still,” Konstantin admonished, seeing Bourne’s muscles tense. “The thing will cut you in half in about three seconds.” He shrugged. “Besides, from the look of you, I doubt you have much fight left in you.”
At that, his man slammed the metal butt of his Uzi into Bourne’s chin, and Bourne went down like a sack of cement. The last he knew a booted foot was closing in on the side of his head.
Then the silence of a vast and unfathomable night.
42
When Bourne awoke it was to see Ekaterina Orlova’s face hovering over him like a full moon in all its glory.
“Usually,” she said, in her smoky voice, “it’s the last person to speak who’s the mole. Isn’t that the way it works in your world, gospodin Bourne?” She nodded. “But here, in my world, I’m the first to speak with you. I, the mole. The one who’s made the alliances my father was too old or too hidebound to make himself. He couldn’t see how much the world had changed, how much faster it was going to change. Like all old people, he’s not a fan of change.”
Her smile was like that of a badger—territorial and belligerent. And like a badger she had small, sharp teeth. She eased herself down onto a straight-backed chair, and Bourne realized he was similarly seated, save that his wrists were tied behind his back, his ankles strapped to the front chair legs. It was a metal chair, very heavy, which he discovered when he tried to rock it back and forth without success.
“I had a choice, you see—between the two brothers. Once Boris was gone, my father’s power crumbled into so much sand. We could not stand alone; he did not understand that.” She shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he didn’t choose to understand. His fire is banked low; most days he’s content to cozy up to his plants and his painting. Pasture work, if you catch my drift. So I chose the stronger of the brothers. Konstantin has plans and, with the Somali’s help, the wherewithal to implement them. Plans poor Timur Ludmirovich could not even comprehend.” She pursed her lips. “He tries, poor dear, but, well, we both know his elevator’s not going too high.”
Her laugh sent shivers down Bourne’s spine, not that Bourne could feel them. The numbness on his left side had spread to his spine—not a good sign.
“Actually, much as I liked Boris, his death was an unexpected blessing. We were slated to make a great deal of money when the cyber weapon he’d had made shut down the ten targeted banks worldwide. Now, however, there is far more money to be made by going to auction. Including us, there are fifteen entities—individuals, governments, rogue military entities, industrial conglomerates—drooling to get their hands on it.”
He was split in two now. Part of him was listening carefully to every word Ekaterina said while the other part was working on repairing whatever the hell Cerberus had done to him.
“One of those is, of course, Konstantin. He wants the Bourne Initiative so that he can present it to the Sovereign, thereby cementing his power in the Federation for a very long time.” She wrinkled her nose, leaned close enough for him to smell her stale breath. “The fly in the ointment, and where I come in, is that Konstantin and the Somali, Keyre, are at war. Konstantin was stupid enough to have underestimated Keyre, delivering a shipment of Kalashnikovs of which some were defective. He claimed innocence, of course, but Keyre didn’t believe him. Then, several weeks ago, Konstantin blundered again. Responding to actionable intel that it was Keyre who had taken the Initiative and was trying to short-circuit the auction, he had Gora send a cadre of men into the Somali’s camp to steal the Initiative. Big mistake. Keyre caught them and beheaded them all. He sent the heads back to Konstantin packaged in dry ice via DHL.”
Having been partially revived by his inner self, the outer self bestirred, albeit creakily. “So Konstantin had become a liability.”
“In the medium term,” Ekaterina confirmed. “But as for now, he still serves an important purpose.” She reached out, drew her fingertips along Bourne’s cheek. “One piece is still missing: whatever it is Boris left you regarding the Initiative. We all think the coding is complete, but we can’t be sure until you tell us.”
“Why don’t you ask the coders?”
“Why don’t I? That would be so simple.” Ekaterina rested her elbows on her knees. “Unfortunately, life’s never simple. The fact is I don’t know what group of hackers Boris dug up on the dark web and paid to build this cyber weapon, and neither does anyone else.” She pointed a finger at him. “That leaves you.”