Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(56)
Savasin continued on his way as if nothing untoward had occurred. Irresolute in the offices of the Kremlin and Moscow Center, he was by every measure assured on the streets of the city. The simple fact was that he wasn’t cut out for bureaucratic work, which he found dull and extraordinarily tedious. He harbored the suspicion that the Sovereign had appointed him to the post of first minister for the sole reason of blocking Konstantin from the post. Konstantin, whose mind, like that of the fictional Mycroft Holmes, was perfectly suited to bureaucratic brilliance, and so considered an ally. The Sovereign had already been down a treacherous road with Boris Karpov, too smart by half; he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. The Sovereign couldn’t care less that Savasin muddled along. In fact, it suited him, since the first minister was neither expected nor allowed to administer any important decisions. Any advice he was foolish enough to offer the Sovereign was duly ignored with a smile of such condescension it set Savasin’s teeth on edge. So he stopped, which was the point.
The first minister proceeded on, light of heart and, for the first time in a long while, optimistic about his future. The sky above Kapotnya, what he could make out, anyway, was a sickly, sulfurous yellow. Visibility was low. Neither sun nor cloud could be seen. Fire and black smoke plumed from the multiple stacks of the oil plant. It was like being inside a vast man-made dome, which, in a sense, was true enough.
Everyone he passed had scarves wrapped around their noses and mouths. They scurried past him, shoulders hunched, eyes on the ground. Occasionally car horns blared, as if that would get the traffic moving.
After trekking for fifteen minutes through this mini hell, he came to the street he needed, turned left into what would, in brighter parts of the city, be an alleyway. Here, it was a side street. Concrete buildings in the Brutalist Soviet style shouldered the alley into insignificance. The street stank of garbage and human waste. A dead dog had been kicked to the curb. It lay there stiff as a board, its fur, what was left of it, standing up like porcupine quills.
That’s me. A dead dog in the Kremlin gutter, Savasin thought in an unseemly spasm of self-pity. And then in another spasm, this time of glee: At least, it was me.
No numbers here—he had to count the buildings, fifth on the left, just before the street elbowed to the left. When he pulled the door open, he was attacked by a stench so vile he nearly vomited. He crossed the vestibule as quickly as he was able, then vaulted up the steep staircase. He wished he had had the foresight to bring gloves. The sounds echoing through the stairwell were more suited to a hospital ER or, on the third floor, an insane asylum: the unnerving noises of the human mind at the breaking point and beyond.
It was as if as he rose he was really descending into the pit of hell. But at last he came to the fourth and final floor, and it was like stepping from a mountain of trash into a serene garden. By some quirk of the building’s acoustics, not a sound traveled up from below. Here, it was quiet, here the air was fresh and clean. This was beyond his ken until he saw that the hallway was filled with a profusion of plants and flowers in huge stone pots, breathing in carbon dioxide, breathing out oxygen. Depending from the entire length of the ceiling was a line of grow lights, artificial suns that bathed the foliage in warmth and energy.
A mountain appeared through the thickets, seemed to be heading in Savasin’s direction. He came very fast—so fast, in fact, that he plucked the Makarov out of Savasin’s hand before he had a chance to react. Not that he had any intention of shooting someone in here.
“You,” the mountain said. He was a massive creature with a chest like a bull, legs like tree trunks, and arms like anacondas. His brow was low, his eyes small, his demeanor intimidating. “You,” he repeated.
“Timur Ludmirovich.”
“More,” the mountain rumbled. He spoke Russian as a peasant would. He definitely wasn’t a Muscovite.
“Savasin. Timur Ludmirovich Savasin.”
The mountain regarded him, and for that moment Savasin felt as a field mouse must feel as an eagle swoops down on him from on high.
“Stay.”
Savasin thought of the dog, dead and stiff in the gutter, as he watched the creature turn on his heel, disappear through a double door in the center of the hallway—a magnificently turned wooden door banded in iron—visible now through the foliage that was shockingly out of place in this dismal dump. With a start, Savasin noted the eagle bas-relief, wings spread, talons to the fore, in the center of each door. And now it occurred to him that the name Orlova was derived from the Russian word for eagle.
Moments ticked by. Savasin lifted the bottle, reread the label, hoping he’d brought the right gift. Time passed without any sense of whether he would gain the interview he sought or would be turned away by the movable mountain.
Finally, one of the eagle doors opened, and the frame filled with the gargantuan creature. He stared balefully at Savasin out of his raisin eyes. Then he raised a hand. Savasin’s Makarov looked like a child’s toy in his fist. The mountain gestured with the barrel of Savasin’s own handgun, beckoning him on.
Unlike the rest of the dank, murky building, the interior of the apartment was awash in light. His gaze traveled upward to the immense skylight. Two clusters of halogen lamps hung from the ceiling like chandeliers. They were a corrective, their blazing illumination draining the natural light of its sulfurous hue. The apartment had been carved out of the entire top floor. Open doorways led left and right, but the vast space into which the mountain led him was the entire apartment’s raison d’être. It was filled with yet more foliage, traveler’s palms chief among them. On either side of the large, open room rose a pair of fruit trees, lemon on the right, fig on the left. An old man—apparently a gardener—was busy at the fig tree, pruning and fussing. He ignored the guest completely, as did the mountain, now that Savasin had been granted permission to enter the inner sanctum. In fact, the massive man was in the ungainly process of seating himself on a stoutly reinforced bench in front of a baby grand piano. His massive hands hovered over the keyboard, then struck the first chords of Maurice Ravel’s heartbreakingly beautiful “Pavane for a Dead Princess.”