The Bourne Sanction (34 page)

Moira felt her blood rising. “You can’t withdraw, Noah. I’m not going to fail.”

“I’m afraid that’s no longer an option,” he said, “because the decision’s been made. As of oh seven hundred this morning we’ve officially notified NextGen that we’ve withdrawn from the project.”

He handed her a packet. “Here is your new assignment. You’re required to leave for Damascus this afternoon.”

Arkadin and Devra reached the Bosporus Bridge and crossed over into Istanbul just as the sun was rising. Since coming down from the cruel, snow-swept mountains along Turkey’s spine they had shed layers of clothes, and now the morning was exceptionally clear and mild. Pleasure yachts and huge tankers alike plowed the Bosporus on their way to various destinations. It felt good to roll down the windows. The air, fresh, moist, tangy with salt and minerals, was a distinct relief after the dry hard winter of the hinterlands. During the night they’d stopped at every gas station, beaten-down motel, or store that was open-though most were not-in an attempt to find Heinrich, the next courier in Pyotr’s network.

When it came time for him to spell her, she moved to the passenger’s side, put her head against the door, and fell into a deep sleep, from which emerged a dream. She was a whale, swimming in icy black water. No sun pierced the depths where she swam. Below her was an unfathomable abyss. Ahead of her was a shadowy shape. She didn’t know why, but it seemed imperative that she follow that shape, catch up with it, identify it. Was it friend or foe? Every so often she filled her head and throat with sound, which she sent out through the darkness. But she received no reply. There were no other whales around, so what was she chasing, what was she so desperate to find? There was no one to help her. She became frightened. The fright grew and grew…

It clung to her as she awoke with a start in the car beside Arkadin. The grayish predawn light creeping through the landscape rendered every shape unfamiliar and vaguely threatening.

Twenty-five minutes later they were in the seething, clamorous heart of Istanbul.

“Heinrich likes to spend the time before his flight in Kilyos, the beach community in the northern suburbs,” Devra said. “Do you know how to get there?”

Arkadin nodded. “I’m familiar with the area.”

They wove their way through Sultanahmet, the core of Old Istanbul, then took the Galata Bridge, which spanned the Golden Horn, to Karakцy in the north. In the old days, when Istanbul was known as Constantinople, seat of the Byzantine Empire, Karakцy was the powerful Genoese trading colony known as Galata. As they reached the center of the bridge Devra looked west toward Europe, then east across the Bosporus to Ьskьdar and Asia.

They passed into Karakцy, with its fortified Genoese walls and, rising from it, the stone Galata tower with its conical top, one of the monuments that, along with the Topkapi Palace and Blue Mosque, dominated the modern-day city’s skyline. Kilyos lay along the Black Sea coast twenty-two miles north of Istanbul proper. In the summer it was a popular beach resort, packed with people swimming, snacking in the restaurants that lined the beach, shopping for sunglasses and straw hats, sunbathing, or just dreaming. In winter it possessed a sad, vaguely disreputable air, like a dowager sinking into senility. Still, on this sun-splashed morning, under a cloudless cerulean sky, there were figures walking up and down the beach: young couples hand in hand; mothers with young children who ran laughing to the waterline, only to run back, screaming with terror and delight when the surf piled roughly in. An old man sat on a fold-up stool, smoking a crooked hand-rolled cigar that gave off a stench like the smokestack of a tannery.

Arkadin parked the car and got out, stretching his body after the long drive.

“He’ll recognize me the moment he sees me,” Devra said, staying put. She described Heinrich in detail. Just before Arkadin headed down to the beach, she added, “He likes putting his feet in the water, he says it grounds him.”

Down on the beach it was warm enough that some people had taken off their jackets. One middle-aged man had stripped to the waist and sat with knees drawn up, arms locked around them, facing up to the sun like a heliotrope. Kids dug in the sand with yellow plastic Tweety Bird shovels, poured sand into pink plastic Petunia Pig buckets. One pair of lovers had stopped at the shoreline, embracing. They kissed passionately. Arkadin walked on. Just behind them a man stood in the surf. His trousers were rolled up; his shoes, with socks stuffed into them, had been placed on a high point in the sand not far away. He was staring out at the water, dotted here and there with tankers, tiny as LEGOs, inching along the blue horizon.

Devra’s description was not only detailed, it was accurate. The man in the surf was Heinrich.

The Moskva Bank was housed in an enormous, ornate building that would pass for a palace in any other city but was run-of-the-mill by Moscow standards. It occupied a corner of a busy thoroughfare a stone’s throw from Red Square. The streets and sidewalks were packed with both Muscovites and tourists.

It was just before 9 AM. Bourne had been walking around the area for the last twenty minutes, checking for surveillance. That he hadn’t spotted any didn’t mean the bank wasn’t being watched. He’d glimpsed a number of police cars cruising the snow-covered streets, more than usual, perhaps.

As he walked along a street close to the bank, he saw another police cruiser, this one with its light flashing. Stepping back into a shop doorway, he watched as it sped by. Halfway down the block it stopped behind a double-parked car. It sat there for a moment, then the two policemen got out of their cruiser, swaggered over to the vehicle. Bourne took the opportunity to walk down the crowded sidewalk. People were wrapped and bundled, swaddled like children. Breath came out of their mouths and noses in cloud-like bursts as they hurried along with hunched shoulders and bent backs. As Bourne came abreast of the cruiser, he dipped down and glanced in the window. There he saw his face staring up at him from a tear sheet that had obviously been distributed to every cop in Moscow. According to the accompanying text he was wanted for the murder of an American government official.

Bourne walked quickly in the opposite direction, disappearing around a corner before the cops had a chance to return to their car.

He phoned Gala, who was parked in Yakov’s battered Zhig three blocks away awaiting his signal. After his call, she pulled out into traffic, made a right, then another. As they had surmised, it was slow going, the morning traffic sluggish. She checked her watch, saw she needed to give Bourne another ninety seconds. As she approached the intersection near the bank, she used the time to pick a likely target. A shiny Zil limousine, not a speck of snow on its hood or roof, was heading slowly toward the intersection at right angles to her.

At the appointed time she accelerated forward. The bombila’s tires, which she and Bourne had checked when they’d returned to Lorraine’s, were nearly bald, their treads worn down to a nub. Gala braked much too hard and the Zhig shrieked as the brakes locked, the old tires skidding along the icy street until its grille struck the front fender of the Zil limo.

All traffic came to a screeching halt, horns blared, pedestrians detoured from their appointed rounds, drawn by the spectacle. Within thirty seconds three police cruisers had converged on the site of the accident.

As the chaos mounted, Bourne slipped through the revolving door into the ornate lobby of the Moskva Bank. He immediately crossed the marble floor, passing under one of the three huge gilt chandeliers that hung from the vaulted ceiling high above. The effect of the room was to diminish human size, and the experience was not unlike visiting a dead relative in his marble niche.

There was a low banquette two-thirds of the way across the vast room, behind which sat a row of drones, their heads bent over their work. Before approaching, Bourne checked everyone inside the bank for suspicious behavior. He produced Popov’s passport, then wrote down the number of the safe-deposit box on a small pad kept for that specific purpose.

The woman glanced at him, took his passport and the slip of paper, which she ripped off the pad. Locking her drawer, she told Bourne to wait. He watched her walk over to the rank of supervisors and managers, who sat in rows behind identical wooden desks, and present Bourne’s documentation. The manager checked the number against his master list of safe-deposit boxes, then he checked the passport. He hesitated, then reached for the phone, but when he noticed Bourne staring at him, he returned to receiver to its cradle. He said something to the woman clerk, then rose and came over to where Bourne stood.

“Mr. Popov.” He handed back the passport. “Vasily Legev, at your service.” He was an oily Muscovite who continually scrubbed his palms together as if his hands had been somewhere he’d rather not reveal. His smile seemed as genuine as a three-dollar bill. Opening a door in the banquette, he ushered Bourne through. “It will be my pleasure to escort you to our vault.”

He led Bourne to the rear of the room. A discreet door opened onto a hushed carpeted corridor with a row of square columns on either side. Bad reproductions of famous landscape paintings hung on the walls. Bourne could hear the muted sounds of phones ringing, computer operators inputting information or writing letters. The vault was directly ahead, its massive door open; to the left a set of marble stairs swept upward. Vasily Legev showed Bourne through the circular opening and into the vault. The hinges of the door looked to be two feet long and as thick around as Bourne’s biceps. Inside was a rectangular room filled floor-to-ceiling with metal boxes, only the fronts of which could be seen.

They went over to Bourne’s box number. There were two locks, two keyholes. Vasily Legev inserted his key in the left-hand lock, Bourne inserted his into the right-hand lock. The two men turned their keys at the same time, and the box was free to be pulled out of its niche. Vasily Legev brought the box to one of a number of small viewing rooms. He set it down on a ledge, nodded to Bourne, then left, pulling the privacy curtain behind him.

Bourne didn’t bother sitting. Opening the box, he discovered a great deal of money in American dollars, euros, Swiss francs, and a number of other currencies. He pocketed ten thousand Swiss francs, along with some dollars and euros, before he closed the box, pulled aside the curtain, and emerged into the vault proper.

Vasily Legev was nowhere to be seen, but two plainclothes cops had placed themselves between Bourne and the doorway to the vault. One of them aimed a Makarov handgun at him.

The other, smirking, said, “You will come with us now, gospadin Popov.”

Arkadin, hands in his pockets, strolled down the crescent beach, past a happily barking dog whose owner had let it off the leash. A young woman pulled her auburn hair off her face and smiled at him as they passed each other.

When he was fairly near Heinrich, Arkadin kicked off his shoes, peeled off his socks, and, rolling up his trousers, picked his way down to the surf line, where the sand turned dark and crusty. He moved at an angle, so that as he ventured into the surf he was within earshot of the courier.

Sensing someone near him, Heinrich turned and, shading his eyes from the sun, nodded at Arkadin before turning away.

Under the pretext of stumbling as the surf rolled in, Arkadin edged closer. “I’m surprised that someone besides me likes the winter surf.”

Heinrich seemed not to hear him, continued his contemplation of the horizon.

“I keep wondering what it is that feels so good about the water rushing over my feet and pulling back out.”

After a moment, Heinrich glanced at him. “If you don’t mind, I’m trying to meditate.”

“Meditate on this,” Arkadin said, sticking a knife very carefully in his side. Heinrich’s eyes opened wide. He staggered, but Arkadin was there to catch him. They sat down together in the surf, like old friends communing with nature. Heinrich’s mouth made gasping sounds. They reminded Arkadin of a fish hauled out of the water.

“What… what?”

Arkadin cradled him with one hand as he searched beneath his poplin jacket with the other. Just as he thought, Heinrich had the package on him, not trusting it to be out of his sight for an instant. He held it in his palm for a moment. It was in a rolled cardboard cylinder. So small for something with that much power.

“A lot of people have died for this,” Arkadin said.

“Many more will die before it’s over,” Heinrich managed to get out. “Who are you?”

“I’m your death,” Arkadin said. Plunging the knife in again, he turned it between Heinrich’s ribs.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Heinrich whispered as his lungs filled with his own blood. His breathing turned shallow, then erratic. Then it ceased altogether.

Arkadin continued to shelter him with a comradely arm. When Heinrich, nothing more than deadweight now, slumped against him, Arkadin held him up as the surf crashed and ebbed around them.

Arkadin stared out at the horizon, as Heinrich had done, certain that beyond the demarcation was nothing save a black abyss, endless and unknowable. Bourne went willingly with the two plainclothes policemen out of the vault. As they stepped into the corridor, Bourne slammed the edge of his hand down on the cop’s wrist, causing the Makarov to drop and slide along the floor. Whirling, Bourne kicked the other cop, who was flung back against the edge of a square column. Bourne grabbed hold of the arm of the first cop. Lifting it, he slammed his elbow into the cop’s rib cage, then smashed his hand into the back of his neck. With both cops down, Bourne hurried along the corridor, but another man came sprinting toward him, blocking the way to the front of the bank, a man who fit Yakov’s description of Harris Low.

Reversing course, Bourne leapt up the marble staircase, taking the steps three at a time. Racing around the turn, he gained the landing of the second floor. He’d memorized the plans Baronov’s friend had procured for him and had planned for an emergency, not trusting to chance that he’d get in and out of the bank without being identified. It was clear Vasily Legev, having recognized gospadin Popov, would blow the whistle on him while he was inside the safe-deposit viewing cubicle. As Bourne broke out into the corridor he encountered one of the bank’s security men. Grabbing him by the front of his uniform, Bourne jerked him off his feet, swung him around, and hurled him down the stairs at the ascending
NSA
agent.