Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(94)
Rage roiled Morgana’s gut. As if that rage was a key opening a door, a way out, vivid, intense, and, yes, inevitable, revealed itself to her—the path—the only path—to invert her intolerable situation and escape the lions’ den.
“Dammit, Morgana, are you listening to me?”
Morgana blinked. “Yes. Of course.”
Elbowing her target’s head to one side, she pressed the smoking pillow down onto Fran?oise’s face and pulled the trigger of the Beretta not once, not twice, but three times.
“There.” Her voice was a guttural whisper as she placed the 9mm in Larry London’s right hand. She stood up straight and tall.
It would be natural to assume that she was observing the scene as if from a distance, outside herself, as if someone else had pulled the trigger four times. She was feeling none of those things. In fact, Morgana had never felt so vibrant, so alive, so in control. Every color throbbed with an intensity new and astonishing to her, the lamplight so brilliant it might have been able to cut glass. She felt the blood rushing through her arteries and veins as if it were a river, wide and deep, and almost intolerably beautiful. She felt her heart so intimately she might have been holding it in her hands.
She had passed beyond the veil, entered a life others never even dreamed of. She’d been blooded; she understood completely that she could never go back, even if she wished to. She was happy here in this new world, exhilarated, exalted. She felt herself initiated, anointed; she was now wreathed in shadows, her work hidden from the world at large. A child of the night.
Good God, she thought, I’ve taken to this new life like a fledgling to the air.
“There you go.”
She surely was talking as much to herself now as to Fran?oise.
35
If you go from Moscow to Budapest,” Bourne said, “‘you think you are in Paris.’”
Mala laughed. “Who said that?”
“Gy?rgy Ligeti,” Bourne replied, “the Hungarian composer of modern classical music.”
Mala stared out the window as the Sapsan bullet train, taking them from St. Petersburg to Moscow, sped at 155 miles per hour across what looked like a frozen landscape. But then the Russian landscape tended to look frozen even in summer.
“He was right.”
They had deplaned in St. Petersburg, passing through immigration without incident, which was a relief. Transferring to the Glavny train station was likewise easy enough. However, the only seats available on the Sapsan were in a private conference cabin; they were the most expensive tickets, especially in the current Russian economy, which was no doubt why they had remained unsold. Bourne had snapped them up, again paying cash. In less than four hours the Sapsan, the Russian word for peregrine falcon, would pull into Moscow’s Leningradsky Station. They had had time to buy themselves midweight sheepskin jackets for protection against the chill of late afternoons and evenings.
He was going to continue their conversation, but she had fallen asleep, just like that, from one moment to the next. For her, sleep was a blessing, he understood that, and he closed his eyes. But for him sleep was impossible now. He rose, left his seat vacant, stepped out of the compartment, and went along the aisle to the next car, needing to get away from the reverberations of her memories, which were making him claustrophobic.
He found himself in the first class car, filled mostly with businessmen hunched over their laptops and a smattering of American tourists, staring blankly out at the blurred landscape or reading their guidebooks, prepping for their days and nights in Russia’s capital.
He was about halfway down the car when he was brought up short as the door at the far end swung open and a man came through. There is a look to FSB agents that goes beyond cheap suits and grim expressions. It’s their thousand-yard stare, the look they give you that makes it clear they think you’re little people, that your life is virtually worthless, that they already have you in custody.
Without a second thought, Bourne turned around, only to find a second FSB agent coming toward him from the way he had come. This one opened his coat slightly, revealing his Arsenal Strizh, a full 9mm Parabellum pistol, the successor to the storied Makarov. Whatever he saw in Bourne’s eyes caused him to shake his head. His hand swept out, indicating the other passengers in the car. At that moment, Bourne felt the presence of the first agent, the taller and thinner one. The muzzle of his Strizh, hidden by the wings of his open greatcoat, pressed against the base of Bourne’s spine.
The stubbier one jerked his head, said, “Let’s go,” in a Russian accent that told Bourne he came from St. Petersburg.
With Stubby in the lead, they marched Bourne back to the conference cabin.
“Open it and step in,” Stubby said. “Just as if nothing’s happened.”
“Nothing has happened,” Bourne said, and received a hard poke in the back with the Strizh’s muzzle.
“Svóloch’!” Dick! the agent said from behind.
“Zatknís’!” Shut up! snapped Stubby, clearly the senior partner.
Bourne opened the door and entered the compartment. Mala was still fast asleep, her torso slumped, her head turned away from the door. The agents stepped in on Bourne’s heels.
“Don’t wake her,” Bourne said.
The taller agent snickered, as if to say he couldn’t care less about the woman. “We weren’t told about her.” He could not keep the salacious tone out of his voice as he eyed Mala.