Coven was breathing heavily but still managed to say, “All right, get up. You have five seconds to put your hands behind your head. Then I shoot the girl.”
“Please, Jason, please. Do what he says.” Chrissie’s voice was high, tight with a mortal terror that bordered on hysteria. “Don’t let him hurt Scarlett.”
Bourne looked at Chrissie, then delivered a scissors kick that jerked Coven’s extended gun arm down and away from Scarlett.
Coven cursed under his breath as he struggled to regain control of the Glock. That was his mistake. Keeping the scissors grip on Coven’s arm, Bourne jackknifed his body. He head-butted Coven in his already broken and bloody nose. Coven howled in pain but still tried extricating his arm. Bourne smashed the sole of his shoe into Coven’s kneecap, shattering it. Coven collapsed, and Bourne stepped on the knee. Coven’s eyes watered and his jowls shook so hard, shivers went down his body.
Wrenching the Glock away from him, Bourne pressed its muzzle into Coven’s right eye.
When Coven tried to make a countermove, Bourne said, “If you do that, you’ll never walk out of the room. Who will take care of your wife and children then?”
Coven, his visible eye bloodshot and staring, subsided. But as Bourne removed the muzzle, he exploded upward, using his shoulder and hip. Bourne bore the attack with equanimity, allowed Coven to drive him backward, to expend whatever reserve of energy he had left, then brought the butt of the Glock down on Coven’s skull, shattering the orbital bone. Coven tried to scream, but no sound emerged from his mouth. His eyes rolled up into his head as he fell at Bourne’s feet.
19
BORIS KARPOV WALKED through a windblown Red Square, breathing deeply while he thought of how to proceed against Bukin and, by association, the very dangerous Cherkesov. President Imov had given him everything he asked for, including absolute secrecy until he could ferret out all the moles in FSB-2. The place to start was Bukin. He knew he could break Bukin. Once he did, the other moles would come to light without difficulty.
A light snow was falling, the flakes, small and dry, swirling in the wind. Lights twinkled off the golden and striped onion domes, and tourists took flash photos of one another against the ornate architecture. He took a moment to drink in the peaceful scene, all too rare in Moscow these days.
Retracing his steps, he plodded back to his limo. The driver, seeing him returning, fired the ignition. He got out from behind the wheel and opened the rear door for his boss. A tall blonde in a ruddy fox coat and knee-high boots strode past. The driver’s eyes lingered on her as Karpov ducked and climbed in. The door slammed shut behind him.
He said, “HQ,” when the driver slid behind the wheel. The driver nodded wordlessly, put the limo in gear, and they drove out of the Kremlin.
It was an eleven-minute drive to FSB-2 headquarters on ulitsa Znamenka, depending on traffic-which, at this hour, wasn’t as bad as it could be. Karpov was lost in thought. He was figuring out a way to get Bukin alone, to cut him off from his contacts. He decided to invite him to dinner. On the way, he would instruct his driver to divert their car to the vast construction site on ulitsa Varvarka, a dead zone for cell phone traffic, so he and Bukin could “discuss” his treachery undisturbed.
The driver stopped at a red light, but when it turned green he did not put the car in gear. Now, through his smoked-glass window, Karpov saw that a Mercedes limo had drawn up beside them. As he watched, the rear door opened and a figure emerged. It was too dark to see who it was, but a moment later the door to his car was wrenched open-odd since his driver always auto-locked all doors-and the figure, ducking its head, slid onto the seat beside him.
“Boris Illyich, always a pleasure to see you,” Viktor Cherkesov said.
He had a smile like a hyena, and he smelled like one, too, Karpov observed.
Cherkesov, whose yellow eyes made him look ravenous, even bloodthirsty, leaned forward slightly to speak to the driver. “The ulitsa Varvarka, I think. The construction site.” Then he sat back, his repellent smile glimmering in the semi-darkness of the limo’s interior. “We don’t want to be disturbed, do we, Boris Illyich.”
It was not a question.
Mandy and Michelle were asleep, entwined around each other, which was how they always slept after a long erotic workout. In contrast, Bud Halliday and Jalal Essai had retired to the living room of the apartment they jointly owned under a pseudonym so well documented that the ownership could never be traced back to them.
Out of courtesy rather than choice, Halliday was sipping a glass of sweet mint tea as he sat opposite Essai.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Halliday said in his most casual voice. “Oliver Liss is in federal custody.”
Essai sat up. “What? Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
Halliday gestured toward the bedroom, where the twins were sound asleep.
“But… what happened? It seemed he was safe.”
“These days, it seems, no one is safe.” Halliday was searching for the humidor. “Quite without warning, the Justice Department has opened a new investigation into his associations when he was running Black River.” He looked up suddenly, impaling Essai with his gaze. “Will the investigation ripple out to you?”
“I’m completely insulated,” Jalal Essai said. “I made certain of this from the beginning.”
“Okay then. Fuck Liss. We move on.”
Jalal Essai seemed nonplussed. “You’re not surprised?”
“I think Oliver Liss has been skating on thin ice for some time.”
“I need him,” Jalal Essai said.
“Correction: You needed him. When I said move on, I meant it.”
Halliday found the leather-bound humidor and extracted a cigar. He offered it to Essai, who declined. Then he nipped off the end, stuck it in his mouth, and lit up. He rolled the cigar through the flame as he puffed away.
Essai said, “I suppose Liss had outlived his usefulness.”
“That’s the spirit.” Halliday felt calmer now that he had the smoke inside him. Sex with Michelle always got his heart hammering to the point of pain. The woman was a fucking gymnast.
Essai helped himself to more tea. “With Liss, I was just following orders from an organization I’ve left behind.”
“Now the two of us are in business,” Halliday observed.
Essai nodded. “The business of a hundred billion in gold.”
Halliday frowned as he stared at the glowing end of his cigar. “You feel no remorse at betraying the Severus Domna? After all, they’re your own kind.”
Essai ignored the racist remark. He’d become inured to Halliday the way one comes to ignore the ache of a cyst. “My kind are no different from your kind, inasmuch as there are those who are good, those who are bad, and those who are ugly.”
Halliday guffawed so hard he almost choked on the smoke. He sat forward laughing and coughing. His eyes watered.
“I must say, Essai, for an Arab you’re quite all right.”
“I’m Berber-Amazigh.” Essai stated this as fact, without a trace of rancor.
Halliday eyed him through the smoke. “You speak Arabic, don’t you?”
“Among other languages, including Berber.”
Halliday spread his hands, as if the other’s answer proved his point. He and Jalal Essai had met in college, where Essai spent two years as an exchange student. In fact, it was because of Essai that Halliday became interested in what he perceived as the growing Arab threat to the Western world. Essai was Muslim, but strictly speaking an outsider in the highly splintered and religicized Arab world. Through the lens of Essai’s worldview, Halliday recognized that it was only a matter of time before the Arab world’s sectarian battles spilled over their boundaries and became a series of wars. For that very reason he cultivated Essai as a friend and adviser, realizing only much later, when Essai was becoming disinterested in Severus Domna’s objectives, that Essai had been dispatched to the States, to his college specifically, to cultivate him as a friend and ally.