Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Sanction

Deron sighed. “All right, then. We’re all adults here.” He reached for his cell. “Kiki’s upstairs in her lair. She doesn’t like to be interrupted, but in this case I think she’ll be intrigued.” He spoke briefly into the cell, then put it down. Moments later a slim woman with a beautiful African face and deep chocolate skin appeared. She was as tall as Deron, with the upright carriage of proud and ancient royalty.

Her face split into a ferocious grin when she saw Tyrone. “Hey,” they said to each other. That one word seemed all that was needed.

“Kiki, this is Soraya,” Deron said.

Kiki’s smile was wide and dazzling. “My name’s actually Esiankiki. I’m Masai. But in America I’m not so formal; everyone calls me Kiki.”

The two women touched hands. Kiki’s grip was cool and dry. She regarded Soraya out of large coffee-colored eyes. She had the smoothest skin Soraya had ever seen, which she instantly envied. Her hair was very short, marvelously cut like a cap to fit her elongated skull. She wore a brown ankle-length dress that clung provocatively to her slim hips and small breasts.

Deron briefly outlined the problem while he brought up the DARPA software architecture on one of his computer terminals. While Kiki checked it out, he filled her in on the basics. “We need something that can bypass the firewall, and is undetectable.”

“The first isn’t all that difficult.” Kiki’s long, delicate fingers were flying over the keyboard as she experimented with the computer code. “The second, I don’t know.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not the end of it.” Deron positioned himself so he could peer over her shoulder at the terminal. “This particular software controls two thousand CCTV cameras. Our friends here need to get in and out of the facility without being detected.”

Kiki stood up, turned around to face them. “In other words all two thousand cameras have to be covered.”

“That’s right,” Soraya said.

“You don’t need a hacker, dear. You need the invisible man.”

“But you can make them invisible, Kiki.” Deron slid his arm around her slender waist “Can’t you?”

“Hmm.” Kiki peered again at the code on the terminal. “You know, there looks like there may be a recurring variance I might be able to exploit.” She hunkered down on a stool. “I’m going to transfer this upstairs.”

Deron winked at Soraya, as if to say, I told you so .

Kiki routed a number of files to her computer, which was separate from Deron’s. She spun around, slapped her hands on her thighs, and got up. “Okay, then, I’ll see you all later.”

“How much later?” Soraya said, but Kiki was already taking the stairs three at a time.

Moscow was wreathed in snow when Bourne stepped off the Aeroflot plane at Sheremetyevo. His flight had been delayed forty minutes, the jet circling while the runways were de-iced. He cleared Customs and Immigration and was met by a small, cat-like individual wrapped in a white down coat. Lev Baronov, Professor Specter’s contact.

“No luggage, I see,” Baronov said in heavily accented English. He was as wiry and hyperactive as a Jack Russell terrier as he elbowed and barked at the small army of gypsy cab drivers vying for a fare. They were a sad-faced lot, plucked from the minorities in the Caucasus, Asians and the like whose ethnicity prevented them from getting a decent job with decent pay in Moscow. “We’ll take care of that on the way in to town. You’ll need proper clothes for Moscow’s winter. It’s a balmy minus two Celsius today.”

“That would be most helpful,” Bourne replied in perfect Russian.

Baronov’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “You speak like a native, gospadin Bourne.”

“I had excellent instructors,” Bourne said laconically.

Amid the bustle of the flight terminal, he was studying the flow of passengers, noting those who lingered at a newsagent or outside the duty-free shop, those who didn’t move at all. Ever since he emerged into the terminal he’d had the unshakable feeling that he was being watched. Of course there were CCTV cameras all over, but the particular prickling of his scalp that had developed over the years of fieldwork was unerring. Someone had him under surveillance. This fact was both alarming and reassuring-that he’d already picked up a tag meant someone knew he was scheduled to arrive in Moscow. NSA could have scanned the departing flight manifests back at New York and picked up his name from Lufthansa; there’d been no time to take himself off the list. He looked only in short touristic glances because he had no desire to alert his shadow that he was on to him.

“I’m being followed,” Bourne said as he sat in Baronov’s wheezing Zil. They were on the M10 motorway.

“No problem,” Baronov said, as if he was used to being tailed all the time. He didn’t even ask who was following Bourne. Bourne thought of the professor’s pledge that Baronov wouldn’t get in his way.

Bourne paged through the packet Baronov had given him, which included new ID, a key, and the box number to get money out of the safe-deposit vault in the Moskva Bank.

“I need a plan of the bank building,” Bourne said.

“No problem.” Baronov exited the M10. Bourne was now Fyodor Ilianovich Popov, a midlevel functionary of GazProm, the gargantuan state-run energy conglomerate.

“How well will this ID hold up?” Bourne asked.

“Not to worry.” Baronov grinned. “The professor has friends in GazProm who know how to protect you, Fyodor Ilianovich Popov.”

Anthony Prowess had come a long way to keep the ancient Zil in sight and he wasn’t about to lose it, no matter what evasive maneuvers the driver took. He’d been waiting at Sheremetyevo for Bourne to come through Immigration. General Kendall had sent a recent surveillance photo of Bourne to his cell. The photo was grainy and two-dimensional because of the long telephoto lens used, but it was a close-up; there was no mistaking Bourne when he arrived.

For Prowess, the next few minutes were crucial. He had no illusions that he could remain unnoticed by Bourne for any length of time; therefore, in the short moments while his subject was still unself-conscious, he needed to drink in every tic and habit, no matter how minuscule or seemingly irrelevant. He knew from bitter experience that these small insights would prove invaluable as the surveillance ground on, especially when it came time to engage the subject and terminate him.

Prowess was no stranger to Moscow. He’d been born here to a British diplomat and his cultural attachй wife. Not until Prowess was fifteen did he understand that his mother’s job was a cover. She was, in fact, a spy for MI6, Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Four years later Prowess’s mother was compromised, and MI6 spirited them out of the country. Because his mother was now a wanted woman, the Prowesses were sent to America, to begin a new life with a new family name. The danger had been ground so deeply into Prowess that he’d actually forgotten what they were once called. He was now simply Anthony Prowess.

As soon as he’d built up qualified academic credits, he applied to the NSA. From the moment he’d discovered that his mother was a spy, that was all he’d wanted to do. No amount of pleading from his parents could dissuade him. Because of his ease with foreign languages and his knowledge of other cultures, the NSA sent him abroad, first to the Horn of Africa to train, then to Afghanistan, where he liaised with the local tribes fighting the Taliban in rough mountain terrain. He was a hard man, no stranger to hardship, or to death. He knew more ways to kill a human being than there were days in the year. Compared with what he’d been through in the past nineteen months, this assignment was going to be a piece of cake.