As she was passing the bathroom, she heard a sound like talking, but Bourne was in there by himself. Curious, she moved closer, then put her ear to the door. She could hear the rushing of the shower more clearly, but also Bourne’s voice. He must be on his cell phone.
She heard him say “Medvedev did what?” He was talking politics to whoever was on the other end of the line. She was about to take her ear away from the door when she heard Bourne say, “It was bad luck with Tarkanian… No, no, I killed him… I had to, I had no other choice.”
Gala pulled away as if she’d touched her ear to a hot iron. For some time, she stood staring at the closed door, then she backed away. Bourne had killed Mischa! My God, she said to herself. How could he? And then, thinking of Arkadin, Mischa’s best friend, My God.
Twenty-Six
DIMITRI MASLOV had the eyes of a rattlesnake, the shoulders of a wrestler, and the hands of a bricklayer. He was, however, dressed like a banker when Bourne met him inside a warehouse that could have doubled as an aircraft hanger. He was wearing a chalk-striped three-piece Savile Row suit, an Egyptian cotton shirt, and a conservative tie. His powerful legs ended in curiously dainty feet, as if they’d been grafted on from another, far smaller body.
“Don’t bother telling me your name,” he said as he accepted the ten thousand Swiss francs, “as I always assume they’re fake.”
The warehouse was one among many in this soot-laden industrial area on the outskirts of Moscow, and therefore anonymous. Like its neighbors, it had a front area filled with boxes and crates on neat stacks of wooden pallets piled almost to the ceiling. Parked in one corner was a forklift. Next to it was a bulletin board on which had been tacked overlapping layers of flyers, notices, invoices, advertisements, and announcements. Bare lightbulbs at the ends of metal flex burned like miniature suns.
After Bourne had been expertly patted down for weapons and wires, he’d been escorted through a door to a tiled bathroom that stank of urine and stale sweat. It contained a trough with water running sluggishly along its bottom and a line of stalls. He was taken to the last stall. Inside, instead of a toilet, was a door. His escort of two burly Russians took him through to what appeared to be a warren of offices, one of which was raised on a steel platform bolted onto the far wall. They climbed the staircase to the door, at which point his escort had left him, presumably to go stand guard.
Maslov was seated behind an ornate desk. He was flanked on either side by two more men, interchangeable with the pair outside. In one corner sat a man with a scar beneath one eye, who would have been unprepossessing save for the flamboyant Hawaiian print shirt he wore. Bourne was aware of another presence behind him, his back against the open door.
“I understand you wanted to see me.” Maslov’s rattlesnake eyes shone yellow in the harsh light. Then he gestured, holding out his left arm, his hand extended, palm-up, as if he were shoveling dirt away from him. “However, there’s someone who insists on seeing you.”
In a blur, the figure behind Bourne hurled himself forward. Bourne turned in a half crouch to see the man who’d attacked him at Tarkanian’s apartment. He came at Bourne with a knife extended. Too late to deflect it, Bourne sidestepped the thrust, grabbed the man’s right wrist with his left hand, using his own momentum to pull him forward so that his face met Bourne’s raised elbow flush-on.
He went down. Bourne stepped on the wrist with his shoe until the man let go of the knife, which Bourne took up in his hand. At once the two burly bodyguards drew down on him, pointing their Glocks. Ignoring them, Bourne held the knife in his right palm so the hilt pointed away from him. He extended his arm across the desk to Maslov.
Maslov stared instead at the man in the Hawaiian print shirt, who rose, took the knife from Bourne’s palm.
“I am Dimitri Maslov,” he said to Bourne.
The big man in the banker’s suit rose, nodded deferentially to Maslov, who handed him the knife as he sat down behind the desk.
“Take Evsei out and get him a new nose,” Maslov said to no one in particular.
The big man in the banker’s suit pulled the dazed Evsei up, dragged him out of the office.
“Close the door,” Maslov said, again to no one in particular.
Nevertheless, one of the burly Russian bodyguards crossed to the door, closed it, turned and put his back against it. He shook out a cigarette, lit it.
“Take a seat,” Maslov said. Sliding open a drawer, he took out a Mauser, laid it on the desk within easy reach. Only then did his eyes slide up to engage Bourne’s again. “My dear friend Vanya tells me that you work for Boris Karpov. He says you claim to have information I can use against certain parties who are trying to muscle in on my territory.” His fingers tapped the grips of the Mauser. “However, I would be inexcusably naive to believe that you were willing to part with this information without a price, so let’s have it. What do you want?”
“I want to know what your connection is with the Black Legion?”
“Mine? I have none.”
“But you’ve heard of them.”
“Of course I’ve heard of them.” Maslov frowned. “Where is this going?”
“You posted your man Evsei in Mikhail Tarkanian’s apartment. Tarkanian was a member of the Black Legion.”
Maslov held up a hand. “Where the hell did you hear that?”
“He was working against people-friends of mine.”
Maslov shrugged. “That might be so-I have no knowledge of it one way or another. But one thing I can tell you is that Tarkanian wasn’t Black Legion.”
“Then why was Evsei there?”
“Ah, now we get to the root of the matter.” Maslov’s thumb rubbed against his forefinger and middle finger in the universal gesture. “Show me the quid pro quo, to co-opt what Jerry Maguire says.” His mouth grinned, but his yellow eyes remained as remote and malevolent as ever. “Though to tell you the truth I’m doubting very much there’s any money at all. I mean to say, why would the Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency want to help me? It’s anti-fucking-intuitive.”
Bourne finally pulled over a chair, sat down. His mind was rerunning the long conversation he’d had with Boris at Lorraine’s apartment, during which Karpov had briefed him on the current political climate in Moscow.
“This has nothing to do with narcotics and everything to do with politics. The Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency is controlled by Cherkesov, who’s in the midst of a parallel war to yours-the silovik wars,” Bourne said. “It seems as if the president has already picked his successor.”
“That pisspot Mogilovich.” Maslov nodded. “Yeah, so what?”
“Cherkesov doesn’t like him, and here’s why. Mogilovich used to work for the president in the St. Petersburg city administration way back when. The president put him in charge of the legal department of VM Pulp and Paper. Mogilovich promptly engineered VM’s dominance to become Russia’s largest and most lucrative pulp and timber company. Now one of America’s largest paper companies is buying fifty percent of VM for hundreds of millions of dollars.”
During Bourne’s discourse Maslov had taken out a penknife, was busy paring grime from under his manicured nails. He did everything but yawn. “All this is part of the public record. What’s it to me?”
“What isn’t known is that Mogilovich cut himself a deal giving him a sizable portion of VM’s shares when the company was privatized through RAB Bank. At the time, questions were raised about Mogilovich’s involvement with RAB Bank, but they magically went away. Last year VM bought back the twenty-five percent stake that RAB had taken to ensure the privatization would go through without a hitch. The deal was blessed by the Kremlin.”
“Meaning the president.” Maslov sat up straight, put away the penknife.