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.

“Right,” Bourne said. “Which means that Mogilovich stands to make a king’s ransom

through the American buy-in, by means the president wouldn’t want made public.”

“Who knows what the president’s own involvement is in the deal?”

Bourne nodded.

“Wait a minute,” Maslov said. “Last week a RAB Bank officer was found tied up,

tortured, and asphyxiated in his dacha garage. I remember because the General

Prosecutor’s Office claimed he’d committed suicide. We all got a good laugh out of that

one.”

“He just happened to be the head of RAB’s loan division to the timber industry.”

“The man with the smoking gun that could ruin Mogilovich and, by extension, the

president,” Maslov said.

“My boss tells me this man had access to the smoking gun, but he never actually had it

in his possession. His assistant absconded with it days before his assassination, and now

can’t be found.” Bourne hitched his chair forward. “When you find him for us and hand

over the papers incriminating Mogilovich, my boss is prepared to end the war between