Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(115)
Bourne reacted. “Then who has the Initiative?”
“Ekaterina wouldn’t have kept it here,” the Angelmaker said. “Too insecure.”
“That leaves Keyre.”
“It always comes back to him, doesn’t it?”
Bourne stood at the open doorway. He was never so happy to get out of anywhere. At that moment, the Angelmaker turned back to the curled body of Konstantin Savasin. She leaned over. “You dead yet? Well, just to make sure…” Flexing her right knee, she stamped down hard on his neck.
The sound of vertebrae cracking was not a pleasant one. Except, possibly, to her.
44
Somalia. The Horn of Africa. A gleaming citadel on the oceanic edge of a poverty-stricken, burnt-out landscape. Before, there had been nothing but fishermen and the maimed remnants of constant war, until hunters of another sort, led by the Yibir magus, Keyre, arrived. Pitching their tents, they set about creating a port, first of all, and then the warehouses to house the bounty brought in by Mexican and Colombian cartel drug money. Then the warlords of African and Mideast nations got wind and wanted to join the party. After them traipsed the Russian grupperovka, oligarchs, and elite Kremlin siloviki, the Eastern European mafiosi, the deeply corrupt politicos and greedy merchant bankers from Western Europe and, last and best of all, all manner of quick-buck merchants, including a smattering of crafty espiocrats from the United States. And like everything the United States stuck its snout into, the sky then became the limit—for Keyre and everyone else enjoying the fruits of his illegitimate labors. Now there was peace. Keyre’s peace. Now there was prosperity. Keyre’s prosperity. Now the war was exported all over the world. The killing, carpet-bombing, gassing continued, only not here in Keyre’s haven.
Bourne and the Angelmaker arrived very early in the morning. Bourne had slept the whole way. Under the names Arnold and Mary Winstead, the fictitious couple whose passports Deron had had made for them before leaving D.C., they had taken a commercial flight from Moscow to Istanbul. Before leaving Russia, Bourne had phoned Abdul Aziz, a longtime friend and importer-exporter with connections all over the Middle East and Africa.
Zizzy, as he was known to his friends and family, was more than happy to accommodate Bourne’s requests. In Istanbul, they had transferred to the private airstrip reserved for VIPs and visiting dignitaries, where Zizzy had one of his company’s jets standing by, along with a doctor and nurse to treat Bourne. When he heard that Bourne was injured, it was all Bourne could do to keep Zizzy from getting on the plane himself. But he did meet his friend and female companion at the private airstrip to see for himself that his friend wasn’t on death’s door. “Because,” he said, his usually sunny face an aggrieved mask, “then, my friend, I would have no choice but to take you straightaway to my home where both the doctor and my wife would nurse you back to health.”
By the time Zizzy’s plane touched down in Somalia, Bourne had been treated, filled with fluids of various sorts, shot full of antibiotics, and, with a shot of morphine, sent off to slumberland while doctor and nurse worked to patch him up.
A salmon-pink slash heralded the rising of the sun. Having danced across the Arabian Sea from the southern tip of Kerala Province in India, a warm onshore breeze ruffled their hair. Apart from a low bank to the west, the sky was almost cloudless. The sun was going to be merciless.
A jeep, battered and dusty but with a full tank of gas, was waiting for them, courtesy of one of Zizzy’s trading partners in Mogadishu. It took them just over an hour to reach the area. That left no more than two hours to get to Keyre and somehow stop the Bourne Initiative’s zero-day trigger from self-actualizing.
The perimeter of the citadel had expanded even since the last time they had been here. Cranes and earthmoving machinery were hard at work among the pyramids of sunbaked bricks, sandstone, sacks of dry concrete, and various tile roofing materials.
They were stopped at the main gates. As the Angelmaker negotiated with the guards, Bourne caught a glimmer in the corner of his eye, a quick shard of light from the rising sun glancing off a metallic or glass surface. He might have thought nothing of it, but it was out past the perimeter of the cyclone fencing and the Uzi-toting guards who patrolled ceaselessly, day and night. He might have mentioned this to the Angelmaker, but he didn’t. Instead, as they passed through the perimeter into the citadel itself, he said, “Keyre has done nothing but lie to me. He told me that the Maslovs were the ones he was doing business with.”
“They are.”
“But he also told me that Gora and Alyosha sent the thirteen men to infiltrate this village. In fact, it was Konstantin Savasin who sent the men. It was Konstantin he was at war with.”
“Who told you that?”
“Ekaterina Orlova.”
“And you believe her?”
“She had no reason to lie.”
“And Keyre does.”
“It’s a way of life with him.”
They passed supply depots with doors open as men on forklifts filled them with barrels of oil and other liquids used in construction and demolition. They passed immense generators housed in concrete structures, open-topped for venting, food halls, barracks, even a parade ground of earth pounded flat, with a flag flying from a forty-foot pole in the center and, where in more peaceful settings decorative fountains might be, four anti-aircraft weapons at the corners. Keyre’s quarters were, of course, in the center of the compound.