Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Sanction

BOURNE AND BARONOV sped down Volokolamskoye Highway. Crocus City was an enormous high-end mall. Built in 2002, it was a seemingly endless array of glittering boutiques, restaurants, car showrooms, and marble fountains. It was also an excellent place to lose a tail.

While Bourne shopped for suitable clothes, Baronov was busy on his cell phone. There was no point in going to the trouble of losing the tail inside the maze of the mall only to have him pick them up again when they returned to the Zil. Baronov was calling a colleague to come to Crocus City. They’d take his car, and he’d drive the Zil into Moscow.

Bourne paid for his purchases and changed into them. Baronov took him to the Franck Muller Cafй inside the mall, where they had coffee and sandwiches.

“Tell me about Pyotr’s last girlfriend,” Bourne said.

“Gala Nematova?” Baronov shrugged. “Not much to tell, really. She’s just another one of those pretty girls one sees around all the latest Moscow nightclubs. These women are a ruble a dozen.”

“Where would I find her?”

Baronov shrugged. “She’ll go where the oligarchs cluster. Really, your guess is as good as mine.” He laughed good-naturedly. “For myself, I’m too old for places like that, but I’ll be glad to take you on a round-robin tonight.”

“All I need is for you to lend me a car.”

“Suit yourself, miya droog .”

A few moments later, Baronov went to the men’s room, where he’d agreed to make the switch of car keys with his friend. When he returned he handed Bourne a folded piece of paper on which was the plan for the Moskva Bank building.

They went out a different direction from the way they’d come in, which led them to a parking lot on the other side of the mall. They got into a vintage black Volga four-door sedan that, to Bourne’s relief, started up immediately.

“You see? No problem.” Baronov laughed jovially. “What would you do without me, gospadin Bourne?”

The Frunzenskaya embankment was located southwest of Moscow’s inner Garden Ring. Mikhail Tarkanian had said that he could see the pedestrian bridge to Gorky Park from his living room window. He hadn’t lied. His apartment was in a building not far from Khlastekov, a restaurant serving excellent Russian food, according to Baronov. With its two-story, square-columned portico and decorative concrete balconies, the building itself was a prime example of the Stalinist Empire style that raped and beat into submission a more pastoral and romantic architectural past.

Bourne instructed Baronov to stay in the Volga until he returned. He went up the stone steps, under the colonnade, and through the glass door. He was in a small vestibule that ended in an inner door, which was locked. On the right wall was a brass panel with rows of bell pushes corresponding to the apartments. Bourne ran his finger down the rows until he found the push with Tarkanian’s name. Noting the apartment number, he crossed to the inner door and used a small flexible blade to fool the lock’s tumblers into thinking he had a key. The door clicked open, and he went inside.

There was a small arthritic elevator on the left wall. To the right, a rather grand staircase swept up to the first floor. The first three treads were in marble, but these gave way to simple concrete steps that released a kind of talcum-like powder as the porous treads wore away.

Tarkanian’s apartment was on the third floor, down a dark corridor, dank with the odors of boiled cabbage and stewed meat. The floor was composed of tiny hexagonal tiles, chipped and worn as the steps leading up.

Bourne found the door without trouble. He put his ear against it, listening for sounds within the apartment. When he heard none, he picked the lock. Turning the glass knob slowly, he pushed open the door a crack. Weak light filtered in past half-drawn curtains framing windows on the right. Behind the smell of disuse was a whiff of a masculine scent-cologne or hair cream. Tarkanian had made it clear he hadn’t been back here in years, so who was using his apartment?

Bourne moved silently, cautiously through the rooms. Where he’d expected to find dust, there was none; where he expected the furniture to be covered in sheets, it wasn’t. There was food in the refrigerator, though the bread on the counter was growing mold. Still, within the week, someone had been living here. The knobs to all the doors were glass, just like the one on the front door, and some looked wobbly on their brass shafts. There were photos on the wall: high-toned black-and-whites of Gorky Park in different seasons.

Tarkanian’s bed was unmade. The covers lay pulled back in unruly waves, as if someone had been startled out of sleep or had made a hasty exit. On the other side of the bed, the door to the bathroom was half closed.

As Bourne stepped around the end of the bed, he noticed a five-by-seven framed photo of a young woman, blond, with a veneer of beauty cultivated by models the world over. He was wondering whether this was Gala Nematova when he caught a blurred movement out of the corner of his eye.

A man hidden behind the bathroom door made a run at Bourne. He was armed with a thick-bladed fisherman’s knife, which he jabbed at Bourne point-first. Bourne rolled away, the man followed. He was blue-eyed, blond, and big. There were tattoos on the sides of his neck and the palms of his hands. Mementos of a Russian prison.

The best way to neutralize a knife was to close with your opponent. As the man lunged after him, Bourne turned, grabbed the man by his shirt, slammed his forehead into the bridge of the man’s nose. Blood spurted, the man grunted, cursed in guttural Russian, “ Blyad! ”

He drove a fist into Bourne’s side, tried to free his hand with the knife. Bourne applied a nerve block at the base of the thumb. The Russian butted Bourne in the sternum, drove him back off the bed, into the half-open bathroom door. The glass knob drilled into Bourne’s spine, causing him to arch back. The door swung fully open and he sprawled on the cold tiles. The Russian, regaining use of his hand, pulled out a Stechkin APS 9mm. Bourne kicked him in the shin, so he went down on one knee, then struck him on the side of the face, and the Stechkin went flying across the tiles. The Russian launched a flurry of punches and hand strikes that battered Bourne back against the door before grabbing the Stechkin. Bourne reached up, felt the cool octagon of the glass doorknob. Grinning, the Russian aimed the pistol at Bourne’s heart. Wrenching off the knob, Bourne threw it at the center of the Russian’s forehead, where it struck full-on. His eyes rolled up and he slumped to the floor.

Bourne gathered up the Stechkin and took a moment to catch his breath. Then he crawled over to the Russian. Of course, he had no conventional ID on him, but that didn’t mean Bourne couldn’t find out where he’d come from.

Stripping off the big man’s jacket and shirt, Bourne took a long look at a constellation of tattoos. On his chest was a tiger, a sign of an enforcer. On his left shoulder was a dagger dripping blood, a sign that he was a killer. But it was the third symbol, a genie emerging from a Middle Eastern lamp, that interested Bourne the most. This was a sign that the Russian had been put in prison for drug-related crimes.

The professor had told Bourne that two of the Russian Mafia families, the Kazanskaya and the Azeri, were vying for sole control of the drug market. Don’t get in their way , Specter had warned. If they have any contact with you, I beg you not to engage them. Instead, turn the other cheek. It’s the only way to survive there .

Bourne was about to get up when he saw something on the inside of the Russian’s left elbow: a small tattoo of a figure with a man’s body and a jackal’s head. Anubis, Egyptian god of the underworld. This symbol was supposed to protect the wearer from death, but it had also latterly been appropriated by the Kazanskaya. What was a member of such a powerful Russian grupperovka family doing in Tarkanian’s apartment? He’d been sent to find him and kill him. Why? That was something Bourne needed to find out.