The Bourne Sanction
Eric Van Lustbader
Contents
Book One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Book Two
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Book Three
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
For Dan and Linda Jariabka,
with thanks and love.
My thanks to:
The intrepid reporters at The Exile.
Bourne’s adventures in Moscow
and Arkadin’s history in Nizhny Tagil
would not have existed without their help.
Gregg Winter for turning me on to the logistics of transporting LNG.
Henry Morrison for clutch ideating at all hours.
A note to my readers:
I try to be as factual as possible in my novels,
but this is, after all, a work of fiction.
In order to make the story as exciting as possible,
I’ve inevitably taken artistic license
here and there, with places, objects, and,
possibly, even time.
I trust readers will overlook these small anomalies
and enjoy the ride.
Prologue
High Security Prison Colony 13, Nizhny Tagil, Russia/Campione d’Italia, Switzerland
WHILE THE FOUR inmates waited for Borya Maks to appear, they lounged against
filthy stone walls whose cold no longer affected them. Out in the prison yard where they
smoked expensive black-market cigarettes made from harsh black Turkish tobacco, they
talked among themselves as if they had nothing better to do than to suck the acrid smoke
into their lungs, expel it in puffs that seemed to harden in the freezing air. Above their
heads was a cloudless sky whose glittering starlight turned it into a depthless enamel
shell. Ursa Major, Lynx, Canes Venatici, Perseus-these same constellations burned the
heavens above Moscow, six hundred miles to the southwest, but how different life was
here from the gaudy, overheated clubs of Trehgorny val and Sadovnicheskaya street.
By day the inmates of Colony 13 manufactured parts for the T-90, Russia’s formidable
battle tank. But at night what do men without conscience or emotion talk to one another
about? Strangely, family. There was a stability to coming home to a wife and children
that defined their previous lives like the massive walls of High Security Colony 13
defined their present ones. What they did to earn money-lie, cheat, steal, extort,
blackmail, torture, and kill-was all they knew. That they did these things well was a
given, otherwise they would have been dead. Theirs was a life outside civilization as
most people knew it. Returning to the warmth of a familiar woman, to the homey smells
of sweet beets, boiled cabbage, stewed meat, the fire of peppery vodka, was a comfort
that made them all nostalgic. The nostalgia bound them as securely as the tattoos of their
shadowy profession.
A soft whistle cut through the frosty night air, evaporated their reminiscences like
turpentine on oil paint. The night lost all its imagined color, returned to blue and black as Borya Maks appeared. Maks was a big man-a man who lifted weights for an hour,
followed by ninety minutes of skipping rope every single day he’d been inside. As a
contract killer for Kazanskaya, a branch of the Russian grupperovka trafficking in drugs
and black-market cars, he held a certain status among the fifteen hundred inmates of
Colony 13. The guards feared and despised him. His reputation preceded him like a
shadow at sunset. He was not unlike the eye of a hurricane, around which swirled the
howling winds of violence and death. The latest being the fifth man in the group that was
now four. Kazanskaya or no Kazanskaya, Maks had to be punished, otherwise all of them
knew their days in Colony 13 were numbered.
They smiled at Maks. One of them offered him a cigarette, another lit it for him as he
bent forward, cupping a hand to keep the tiny flame alive in the wind. The other two men
each grabbed one of Maks’s steel-banded arms, while the man who had offered the
cigarette drove a makeshift knife he’d painstakingly honed in the prison factory toward
Maks’s solar plexus. At the last instant Maks slapped it away with a superbly attuned
flick of his hand. Immediately the man with the burned match delivered a vicious
uppercut to the point of Maks’s chin.
Maks staggered back into the chests of the two men holding his arms. But at the same
time, he stomped the heel of his left boot onto the instep of one of the men holding him.
Shaking his left arm free, he swung his body in a sharp arc, driving his cocked elbow into
the rib cage of the man holding his right arm. Free for the moment, he put his back
against the wall deep in shadow. The four closed ranks, moving in for the kill. The one
with the knife stepped to the fore, another slipped a curved scrap of metal over his
knuckles.
The fight began in earnest with grunts of pain and effort, showers of sweat, smears of
blood. Maks was powerful and canny; his reputation was well deserved, but though he
delivered as good as he got, he was facing four determined enemies. When Maks drove
one to his knees another would take his place, so that there were always two of them
beating at him while the others regrouped and repaired themselves as best they could.
The four had had no illusions about the task ahead of them. They knew they’d never
overcome Maks at the first or even the second attack. Their plan was to wear him down
in shifts; while they took breaks, they allowed him none.
And it appeared to be working. Bloody and bruised, they continued their relentless
assault, until Maks drove the edge of his hand into the throat of one of the four-the one
with the homemade knife-crushing his cricoid cartilage. As the man staggered back into
the arms of his compatriots, gasping like a hooked fish, Maks grabbed the knife out of his
hand. Then his eyes rolled up and he became a deadweight. Blinded by rage and
bloodlust, the remaining three charged Maks.
Their rush almost succeeded in getting inside Maks’s defenses, but he dealt with them
calmly and efficiently. Muscles popped along his arms as he turned, presenting his left
side to them, giving them a smaller target, even as he used the knife in short, flicking
thrusts and stabs to inflict a picket line of wounds that, though not deep, produced a
welter of blood. This was deliberate, Maks’s counter to their tactic of trying to wear him