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“She’s dead, Aleksandr,” Ivan Volkin said. “Irina is dead.”
Aleksandr Vasilýev Volkin felt as though he could not breathe. The void inside him wasn’t a figment of his imagination, just as it wasn’t a manifestation of missing her with a lover’s fervor.
“Aleksandr,” Volkin said. “Are you there? Did you hear me?”
“How?” The Serpent could scarcely squeeze out the single word. His mouth felt as if it were filled with cotton wool, his tongue swollen to twice its size. As opposed to his mind, which seemed scalded by his grandfather’s words, boiling with too many emotions for him to properly assimilate. “How?” he said again.
“She was uncharacteristically stupid,” Volkin said with a growl. There seemed to be no sorrow in his voice, only a low-simmering anger typical of him at his lowest ebb. “She took Bourne to see Mik.”
Aleksandr felt as if his eyeballs had been put to the fire. “He shot her?”
“He might as well have,” Volkin said. “He blew up the warehouse. She was caught inside the blast radius.”
“And Bourne?”
“Escaped,” Volkin said. “As he always manages to do. The man’s a full-on sorcerer.”
“Where is he now, do you know?”
“Of course I know,” Volkin said. “He’s in Cairo. He’s still after Ivan Borz.”
“That’s a good one.” Aleksandr watched the bodies being carried away, the smears of blood, the twisted limbs left behind. He told his grandfather about his latest commission. “It looks like his luck is about to run out,” he concluded.
“I find it instructive that Malachev called you,” Volkin said. “I’d be surprised if Savasin wasn’t grooming him to be the new head of FSB.”
“Over Korsolov? He was Karpov’s choice.”
“What you don’t know about Kremlin politics, Aleksandr. You’re an outsider, after all. Boris Karpov, whom I loved like a brother and hated like my worst enemy, was wary of Korsolov. Boris locked Korsolov to him to keep him nearby—maybe he had other reasons, too. Knowing Boris as I did, that wouldn’t surprise me, either. But whatever the case, Korsolov is going to be thrown to the dogs. Savasin has been wanting to grab control of FSB for years. Only Boris kept him at bay. Savasin feared Boris like no other.”
“Why?”
“That, my brilliant grandson, is a mystery. And now that Boris is dead it will remain a mystery.”
Which brought Aleksandr’s thoughts full circle—to the Roman coin he had delivered into Jason Bourne’s hand. But that just led him back to thoughts of Irina. Their grandfather never suspected the intimate relationship he enjoyed with Irina. Had enjoyed. Dear God! Don’t think about Irina now! a silent shout that reverberated inside the raw wound in his skull, in a heart as black and shriveled as the ash of all hope.
“Why did she take Bourne to see Mik?” he asked.
“You know perfectly well why. Mik was vosdushnik for Borz, as well as for your father. He could have told Bourne where Borz is now.”
“If Bourne somehow made Mik talk about Borz, he was sure to tell him about what my father and brother had been up to. Why would Irina take such a terrible risk?”
“I’m sorry,” Volkin said, “my crystal ball is broken.”
A terrible fury was once again building inside the Serpent. “It had to be Bourne.”
“Very possibly. There was a definite rapport between them,” Volkin said, for once the naïf. “On the other hand I cannot imagine Irina betraying us.”
Aleksandr had another definition of “Irina betraying us,” and it didn’t include their grandfather. Always secretly the rebels, the two of them had been for years talking about forming their own business, but it wasn’t until their father and brother were caught and executed by the FSB that their talk turned to action. What they planned was dangerous in and of itself, but combine that with the possibility of being found out by their supremely powerful grandfather and anyone else would have considered them insane. And possibly we were, Aleksandr thought now. Perhaps I still am. But, if so, what of it? Who in the shadows isn’t a little bit insane? It was the crazies who got to run the asylum in the fringes of normal society; he only had to look at his grandfather as a prime example. Volkin was a different person to virtually everyone he came in contact with. His genius was in becoming what those people wanted him to be. Easy to change your spots when the reflection is already provided for you.
He and Irina both learned that particular feat of legerdemain, which was the probable explanation for why Irina had led Bourne to Mik. She gave him what he wanted from her—but either Mik or she herself ended things before Bourne could learn anything damaging to them.
“Aleksandr.” His grandfather broke in on his ruminations. “I’m starting to worry about you.”
“How d’you think I feel learning Irina is dead?” he said, a bit too defensively. “Twins have a special bond. I feel as if half of myself is gone.”
“I never should have sanctioned your father’s dealings with Ivan Borz. I should never have used him as a proxy, but he was the only one in this shithole of a world I could trust.”
Aleksandr’s ears pricked up. This was the first time he had ever heard his grandfather admit to making a mistake.
“Now look.” His voice had turned mournful. “My son, two of my grandchildren are dead. That leaves only you, Aleksandr. The field has become too dangerous.”
“I have my commission to execute.”
“Forget what Savasin wants, Aleksandr. He’s like all the rest. You already have your orders.”
Suddenly he sounded like an old man to Aleksandr—not a grandfather, but someone who has seen too much of life, someone who was tired of the great game.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Volkin said. “You think I’m ready to roll over and die.” He laughed. “Did I make you start, Aleksandr? I read your mind, didn’t I?” He laughed again, the sound of leathery wings brushing against a cave’s walls. “I’m pleased I can still surprise you. And here’s another surprise. I know what you and Irina were up to. I know you wanted the coin’s secret for yourselves.”
“I don’t—”
“Stop! Don’t embarrass yourself further. You and Irina knew the coin held the location. Somehow, fucker.” His voice had hardened to steel. “But I tell you this: consider crossing me and, grandson or no grandson, I won’t hesitate to have you killed within the next three hours. Am I making myself clear?”
Aleksandr could hardly bring himself to make a noise, let alone speak. If his grandfather knew that he actually had had the coin in his possession… His mind recoiled from peering into that future.
“Answer me!” Volkin shouted through the ether.
“Y…” Aleksandr swallowed hard. His mouth was as dry as the desert outside Cairo. “I understand.”
“Savasin is meaningless now. All that matters is the secret held in that coin. I wish you to find it.”
“I need to find Bourne.”
“That’s right. Find Bourne, get the coin, discover the location. Once we have that, we have everything.” The old man made a sound in the back of his throat that was open to interpretation. “I know you understand me, Aleksandr. You know what’s at stake: everything. Absolutely everything.”
32
When Svetlana arrived at the dock in Amsterdam and took her first look at the cruise ship on which First Minister Savasin had booked her, she knew that if she sailed on it she would be killed. She knew this as surely as she knew she needed oxygen to breathe; it was something instinctual, buried deep in the most primitive part of her brain, the part connected irrevocably to survival. So she tore up her ticket, she turned on her heel, and strode away. With every step she took she felt freer, as if for the first time in her life.
The skies were a deep cerulean blue, the lights of the city had come on, glimmering in the waters of the canals. Bike riders flashed by her and, for a moment, she wished she were one of them. It took her some minutes to realize that she could be—that s
he could be anything she wanted to be. Surely Boris would have loved that; he was so un-Russian in his belief in her. He harbored a certainty that she would be successful in anything she put her mind to. Dear, dear Boris. To her dismay, she found herself brushing away tears again. And here she had been sure she had cried herself out during the flight from Moscow. Was it so very bad to cry? She knew she wasn’t a weak person; her tears were a kind of memorial to a man she had loved, betrayed, then loved all the more—loved with all her heart and soul, and now, in the aftermath of his death both were broken, perhaps beyond repair.
She passed a bike shop, its cycles glowing in window lights against the sapphire twilight, and she stopped, deciding whether or not to join the cliques of cyclists speeding past, to become one of them, to lose herself in their carefree midst. But she made no move to enter the shop. Her feet were glued to the sidewalk, and she knew why. She knew it wouldn’t matter if she bought a bike, sold or gave away the bulk of her clothes and possessions, went on the road, became a latter-day bohemian. There was no losing oneself, except in death. And there was certainly no losing her vertiginous sense of loss. Wherever she went, she knew it would be with her. You can’t outrun life; it was foolish and counterproductive to try.
So what would be productive? she wondered as she crossed to a bridge, stood leaning against its wrought-iron railing. She stared down into the greenish-black water, purling against the curved wooden side of a passing boat. A young man in a woolen cap waved to her smiling. Reflexively, she waved back, but she could not muster even the ghost of a smile.
Then, as she shifted from one leg to the other, she felt the tiny weight of the micro-card move against her thigh. Instinctively, she put her hand into her pocket, felt it there, warm between her finger and thumb. Boris’s operation, black as pitch, secret as a doge’s mistress, and she had it all.
Pulling out her mobile, her forefinger hovered over the virtual keyboard for a long moment while the darkness closed in around her, while she listened to the accelerated rush of her heartbeat. Then she turned, hurried off the bridge. It took her fifteen minutes to find a mobile shop. It was just closing, but she managed to purchase a cheap pay-as-you-go phone that could not possibly be traced to her. She paid cash as added security.
Back out in the street, she dodged more cyclists until she made her way, Frogger style, to the relative calm of another bridge. On the opposite bank tourists were taking selfies and pictures of each other with their phone cameras, using the beautiful buildings of Amsterdam as background. Flashes lit up the evening, bright splotches against the stone and brick facades.
Leaning against the railing of the bridge, she punched in a series of eleven digits, tap-tap-tapping out the number Boris had made her memorize. With a trembling hand, she put the phone to her ear. It rang and rang. Instants before she lost her nerve and disconnected, a male voice answered.
“Yes?”
“This is Svetlana Karpova,” she said in a rush. “Boris’s wife—widow—I…”
“Are you all right?”
The terrible drumbeat in her ears. “Boris gave me your number. He said in an emergency I should—”
“Are you in danger?”
“We met at the reception,” she said foolishly, because her head was suddenly in a muddle. “I don’t know whether you remember—”
“Of course I remember you, Svetlana. I should have sought you out, but afterward I was very busy.”
“Knowing what Boris told me about you, I can imagine.” Another silence, and now she was truly afraid. Afraid to go forward. But she could not now go back. For better or for worse, she was committed. “Boris said I could trust you.”
“You can, Svetlana. I promise you that.”
She closed her eyes, heart in her throat. She could hear the cyclists whirring by her, busy on their appointed errands or in mindless enjoyment. Not that either meant anything to her; she was as walled off from them as Boris had been, as surely the man she was talking to was. They inhabited a different world entirely.
“Jason,” she said.
“I’m here, Svetlana.”
“Where are you?”
“Cairo.”
“I have something …” It was decided then, all at once, like a searchlight switched on in the dark. “I need to see you. It’s urgent.”
“What is it you—?”
Then she told him the gist of what she had found in Boris’s dacha—the dreadful plan hatched by the Sovereign. It was her worst nightmare come true—no, no, it was even worse.
“You have to stop it, Jason,” she concluded.
“If what you’re telling me is true—”
“It is. I have everything here with me.”
“I don’t see there’s any way to stop it, Svetlana.”
“But you must! Boris had found a way.”
“What way?”
“I don’t know!” she cried. “It’s not on the material I found.”
“Maybe it’s the material itself. Does it contain incriminating evidence against the Sovereign?”
“I think so… Yes. There are official top secret papers containing his signature. There are e-mails. Even transcripts of phone conversations.”
“This is good. Very good. You need to get them to me as quickly as possible.”
“I’m in Amsterdam, but I’ll book the first flight to Cairo.”
She was at her wit’s end. She had to do something. My people, my people, a voice inside her cried. “I’m coming as fast as I can. I’ll call you as soon as I land.”
She disconnected, threw the new mobile into the canal, as if it were radioactive. She was shaking so badly her teeth began to chatter.
33
When Svetlana called, Bourne and Sara were on their way to Amira’s. Amira had contacted him earlier to tell him that a man named Goga—a diminutive form of Georgi—was looking not for Feyd, Amira’s father, but for Boris himself. Had Boris planned to come to Cairo? Bourne had asked Amira. If he had, she said, she had no knowledge of it. But she had met Goga once before when he had come to confer with her father not long before Feyd’s death.
Amira, being highly intelligent and savvy, having been taught not only by her father but by Bourne himself, had not told Goga that Boris was dead, but instead was suspicious that he had not known. If he was part of Boris’s group in Cairo, why wasn’t he in touch with the FSB in Moscow? So she had him sit in her living room and, while she prepared mint tea and small cakes for him, called Bourne to ask what she should do.
“Perfect. You’ve done everything you should have done,” Bourne had told her, a bolt of pride running through him. “Keep him occupied. I’ll be there with a friend of mine as soon as I can.”
When he knocked on her door, she opened it immediately. He could see the anxiety in her eyes, and smiled to reassure her as he introduced Sara by her field name, Rebeka.
The two women eyed each other warily—Sara because, as Bourne had told her on the way over, of Amira’s father’s connection with Boris, Amira because she was rightfully mistrustful of anyone new in her environment, even one brought by uncle Samson. There may have been, to Bourne’s keen eye, a touch of jealousy on the part of Amira. She was now of an age to view her uncle Samson in a more adult light. Harboring a crush was certainly not out of the question.
Goga stood as Bourne and Sara entered. He had a tic in the muscle just beneath his right eye that made it water. He kept wiping it with the length of his forefinger, which was as filthy as a coal miner’s or a car mechanic’s.
“General Karpov,” he said in a rough and gravelly voice. “I must talk with him, but I can’t raise him.”
He was speaking Russian, and Bourne answered him in kind: “I am the general’s representative.”
“He was supposed to come himself,” Goga said doubtfully.
“It is my sad duty to inform you the general is dead,” Bourne said, using the formal locutions of the Russian military.
Goga remained unmoving. “How,” he sa
id dully.
Bourne told him as much as he knew. Also that he believed Ivan Borz was responsible. “So,” he said, sitting down at the table and inviting Goga to do the same, “what you had to say to the general you say to me.”
Goga squinted at him as he sat. “You don’t talk like FSB. You don’t act like it, either.”
“That’s because I’m not,” Bourne said. “I’m an outsider. That’s the point. You understand the general’s plan must keep going forward. It’s even more imperative now that nothing stops us.”
It was as if a lightbulb had switched on behind Goga’s eyes. “Of course.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “Tell me your name.”
“Jason Bourne.”
“Ah, the general told me that sooner or later you would come.”
“And here I am.”
Goga’s eyes turned to slits. “You must present me with the parole.”
“What parole?”
“The general said that Jason Bourne would know the parole—a private parole he used with Bourne.”
Bourne knew the parole—of course he knew. For a moment, his mind sidetracked him. He had carefully put aside thoughts of his own acute sense of loneliness and grief at Boris’s passing, but now they came rushing back at the thought of their old, private parole, the one they used as friends as well as compatriots when they worked outside the strict boundaries of their respective governments. No matter that he was a creature of the shadows at the fringes of the world, a loner, an outsider. Humans were not meant to live alone. When they did, they paid a terrible price. But there was no time for any of that now. For Bourne, it was always the present. The past was unknown, the future unthinkable.
Bourne gave the parole just as if it were Boris sitting across from him, not Goga.
Goga, grim-faced, called for vodka and two glasses. Silently, he poured the drinks and the two men toasted the fallen hero.
“To the general,” Goga said.
