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