The Bourne Initiative

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Bourne ignored him, lifted his head slightly, nostrils dilated. “The air smells fresher, too. Is target practice on headless corpses a thing of the past, too?”

  Keyre’s smile was stretched now, a veneer that Bourne was determined to crack.

  “What we have here now is a business,” Keyre said. “We even have a CFO.”

  “A chief financial officer,” Bourne echoed. “What’s next, a listing on the stock exchange?”

  “A lucrative idea.” Keyre reached for a date, held it on the tips of his fingers and thumb. “But I’m afraid it’s still imperative we fly under the radar.”

  Bourne grunted. “I can imagine.”

  At this point, the Angelmaker stepped forward, slathered a triangle of bread with hummus, handed it to Bourne. He waited a moment before taking it. Their eyes met for a moment before he popped it in his mouth, chewed slowly. Keyre ignored her as she returned to the spot of her vigil.

  “So…” The date disappeared into Keyre’s mouth. He ate it, pit and all. “Time to get down to business.”

  Bourne stared at him. “We have no business.”

  “So you say.” Keyre’s hands, fingers intertwined, lay in his lap, as if to emphasize his calm. “But the fact is, there is business between us—business you will want to discuss.”

  Leaning forward, Bourne dipped a triangle of bread into the hummus, ate it as slowly as the first, while regarding Keyre with a neutral expression.

  Keyre now lifted a hand as if he were carrying a tray. This must have been a signal; the Angelmaker turned, took the folder off the table and placed it in his hand before returning once again to her original position. He left it there, for a long moment, then plucked it off with his other hand. Opening it, he held up an eight-by-ten head shot, the features flattened, indicating it was taken with a long telephoto lens.

  “This man is known to you.”

  It was not a question, and Bourne didn’t take it as such. “Is he known to you?”

  At last the tiniest crack appeared in Keyre’s carefully constructed façade. “Gora.” He could not keep the disgust out of his voice.

  “Yegor Maslov, known to his friends as Gora. Son of the late Dimitri Maslov, head of the Kazanskaya.”

  “The fucking Russian mafia, yes. A thorn in both our sides.”

  “General Karpov took care of Dimitri.”

  Keyre took another date. “You know Gora has taken his father’s place at the summit of the Kazanskaya.”

  “I do.”

  Plucking another eight-by-ten from the folder, he handed it over. This one was not a head shot. It showed a young woman from the waist up. She was dark-haired, light-eyed, an intense expression on her face as she turned a three-quarter profile toward the telephoto lens. She was very beautiful, in an aggressive, almost warlike manner.

  “How about her?” Keyre said. “Also familiar?”

  As Bourne looked from the photo to Keyre, the ghost of a smile could be seen in the Somalian’s expression. Bourne did not know the young woman, but he sensed an unpleasant surprise coming.

  “No?” Keyre cocked his head. “The woman you can’t identify, Bourne, is none other than Alyosha Orlova, Dimitri’s illegitimate daughter, Gora’s half sister. She refused to take her father’s name, or he forbade her. Possibly both. They had a naturally contentious relationship, but it was nothing compared to the one Dimitri had with Alyosha’s mother, Ekaterina Orlova.”

  “So Alyosha, as well as Gora, has come to your attention.”

  Keyre delivered the briefest of grins. “The Maslov clan holds intense interest for me—as it does for you, Bourne. You see, we do have business to discuss.”

  “No, we—”

  “Business beneficial to both of us.”

  “Keyre, I cannot imagine how the stars could be aligned to allow that to happen.”

  “And yet they are aligned in this curious pattern, Bourne. Of this you can be assured.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  Keyre nodded. “As you wish.” He took back the photo of Alyosha Orlova, ran his fingertips over the glossy surface of her features. “There is something about a man on his knees that stirs my very heart,” he began in a softer, more contemplative tone. “It’s the white flag, you see. The white flag stinks of fear. I enjoy inhaling its scent, savoring its taste before I put a match to it and set it afire.”

  Silence in the room. They could all have been deep within the bowels of the Lubyanka prison for all that the outside world made itself known. Bourne’s eyes were locked with Keyre’s.

  “I sense how much you hate me, Bourne. I can feel it on my skin like an army of ants.”

  “Pleasure comes in such odd packages these days.”

  Keyre delivered a curious smile. “Two weeks ago, thirteen men knelt not a thousand yards from where we sit. I put a bullet in the head of each of them, one by one, going down the line. Then my men buried them. But they weren’t erased; the memory of them lingers like the taste of spoiled food in the mouth.

  “That’s because these thirteen men were Somalians co-opted by the Russians. And not any Russians, mind you.” Now he held up both photos, Gora Maslov in his right hand, Alyosha Orlova in his left hand.

  “Why would Gora and Alyosha want to attack you?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Keyre’s eyes gleamed eerily. “And it’s made more curious considering I have a highly lucrative business arrangement with Gora.”

  “He’s turned on you.”

  Keyre rustled the photo in his left hand. “Let’s not forget about Alyosha. To do so would be a grave error in judgment.”

  “Maybe she persuaded him to seek a better deal elsewhere.”

  “Half right, Bourne. You see, the thirteen didn’t set out to attack me. They infiltrated my cadre.”

  “They were looking for something you have.”

  “Also half right. Because I don’t have what they were sent to fetch. I believe it was Alyosha who persuaded her brother—excuse me, half brother—to risk his business arrangement with me to steal this item.”

  “This item must be highly prized.”

  “Oh, it is, Bourne. It’s so highly prized that everyone who knows of its existence—a handful of people, but that’s more than enough to ensure extreme danger, I assure you—wants it. They would do anything and everything to get their hands on it.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Bourne saw the Angelmaker stir uneasily. “And what exactly is this item?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea what it was originally called—possibly its only designation was a letter-number combination. But that’s of no import. It’s come to be known as the Bourne Initiative.”

  Bourne gave a start. “What?”

  Keyre continued as if he hadn’t heard Bourne’s interjection. “The name given it by someone high up in a division of the American NSA known as Dreadnaught.”

  “I’ve never heard of Dreadnaught.”

  “Of course you’d say that,” Keyre said silkily.

  “And I have no idea why an Initiative—whatever that might be—would be named after me.”

  “That’s easy enough to answer,” the Angelmaker said, stepping forward. “The initiative was the brainchild of your late friend, General Boris Illyich Karpov.”

  Keyre’s eyes narrowed. “You were good friends, weren’t you, Bourne. Close friends.”

  “What of it?”

  “Karpov willed you his boat.”

  “Again.”

  Keyre placed the photos back in the folder. “Did it ever occur to you that the Americans who were sent after you wanted to make sure that your friend’s boat was destroyed?”

  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.

  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.