Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(55)
Bourne sat very still. Frankly, in the crisis of the moment, it hadn’t occurred to him. Now he kicked himself for not considering the possibility. “There was nothing on the boat,” he said flatly. “I searched it from stem to stern.”
“What were you looking for?” Keyre asked.
Bourne shrugged.
“You see, there you have it.” Keyre gestured for Bourne to continue eating. He poured him more tea. “You had no idea what you were looking for.” He tilted his head. “But I must ask you: Why did you search Karpov’s boat in the first place?”
Bourne, eating his hummus, said nothing at all.
Keyre supplied the answer. “Because you knew your friend better than anyone. You suspected he left something for you other than the boat itself.” Keyre did not smirk, or even smile. His expression was perfectly serious, as befitted one businessman talking to another. “Your friend was like that, wasn’t he?”
“You don’t know anything about Boris.”
“Enough, Bourne. I know enough.”
“Tell me about him, then.”
Keyre shook his head. “This is not the correct trajectory of this meeting.”
Bourne laughed. “Meeting? Interesting choice of words.”
Keyre gave him a pained smile, the smallest one Bourne had ever seen. “Back to the Bourne Initiative.”
“Which doesn’t exist.”
“Oh, it exists all right,” Keyre said.
“In the minds of very small men.”
Keyre lifted a forefinger, shaking it. “You know, Bourne, I never realized you had a sense of humor.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised you’re able to recognize it.”
“The Bourne Initiative.” Keyre held up a hand. “Please. It does exist. It’s a cyber initiative cooked up by General Karpov. No, don’t interrupt. The reason the very small circle of people who know about it either want it or want to destroy it is because it’s a cyber weapon capable of penetrating the American government’s many firewalls and malware-killers to open up the codes to the country’s nuclear arsenal.” He sat back with the kind of self-satisfied air that made him insufferable. “What do you think of that, Bourne?”
“I think it’s bullshit,” Bourne said. “In fact, I know it is.” He watched Keyre’s self-satisfaction slowly slink away into the shadows at their feet. “Boris would never, under any circumstance, countenance creating such a cyber weapon.”
“So everyone is wrong except you.”
“That’s right.”
“I wonder. Would you stake your life on it, Bourne?”
“I would, indeed.”
“Well, get ready, because that’s precisely what you’re going to have to do.”
20
After a brief stop at a shop in the Arbat, Savasin’s driver drew the Zil to the curb at the address Savasin had given him, a gray, nondescript office building in a gray, nondescript raion, as Moscow’s districts were called. Ordering the Zil to return in three hours, Savasin exited the car, passed inside the building, which smelled of stale sweat and fear, and called a bombila, one of the city’s fleet of taxis so run-down they deserved the nickname, bomb.
Twenty minutes later, he was deposited in Kapotnya, twelve miles southeast of the center of Moscow, hard up against the MKAD, the Moscow ring road. Savasin was a native Muscovite. Still and all, there were any number of raions—especially the seedier ones, where trash lined the streets, the gutters stank of urine, and where in the brutal winters, people froze to death huddled in shallow doorways and beneath parked cars—he had no clear knowledge of, let alone had visited. Kapotnya was one such raion—the worst in Moscow, in fact.
It was a crime-and drug-infested district, overstuffed with migrants best ignored by the government. Twenty-seven thousand souls were crammed into a shit-box of crumbling low-rise brick buildings dating back to the fifties and seventies, overshadowed by a monstrous oil processing plant. Not a metro station nor a municipal bus route dared come anywhere near Kapotnya. As a result, the streets and surrounding roads were clogged around the clock with vehicles spewing diesel particulates into the already oil-polluted atmosphere.
After only twenty seconds in the famously foul air, Savasin started coughing. Another twenty and his eyes began to burn, thirty more and his throat felt raw. Pulling a woolen scarf out of the pocket of his overcoat, he wrapped it around the lower half of his face, as if he were passing through a fire. Not much help, but it was something. In his right hand he carried his loaded Makarov, in his left the bottle of a green liqueur he had purchased in the Arbat. He might have been safer on the streets if he had chosen to wear his military greatcoat with the general’s shoulder boards, but that surely would be a mistake at his destination. As for his Makarov, his mood, pressing hard against the border of giddiness, gave way to a pressing desire to fire it. And just like that, as if he’d conjured it out of thin air, an opportunity reared its head four and a half blocks from where the bombila had dropped him. Three young toughs hanging out across the street with nothing to do but drink beer, smoke cigarettes, show off their tattoos, and generally act like cartoon versions of Mick Jagger perked up at his approach. They called to him in the nastiest manner possible. Wait, he thought. Let them come to you. When he ignored them, one of them smashed his beer bottle on the stoop, swinging the jagged-edged remainder menacingly. Another slipped out a switchblade. Spewing a chain of epithets his way, each one more obscene than the last, they crossed the street, slipping between vehicles, heading directly for him. Savasin raised his Makarov and shot the leading tough through the heart. He went down between two cars stalled in the traffic. His mates, giving Savasin looks of shock, pulled at their friend as if he were a slab of meat, hurriedly carting him off without either a word or a backward glance.