Korsolov's smile broke open his face again; it wasn't a pretty sight. "You love her, that's it, isn't it?"

"I just met her yesterday. You really are an idiot." Bourne looked up at him as he said this, noting with a flicker of pleasure the scowl that replaced the colonel's grin. It was a petty victory, he knew, just as he knew that he could only push Korsolov so far. And yet during the course of the next forty-seven hours he intended to find out just how far this imperious siloviki could be pushed. For Boris he would do this, and much more. But for now it was back to the nuts and bolts of the grisly business at hand.

"What have your forensic experts found under Boris's nails?"

"No fibers," Korsolov said, clearly pleased to have intel Bourne didn't. "The killer wore latex gloves, we know that much."

"So. A professional," Bourne said flatly. He was studying a pair of close-ups of Boris's palms. "DNA?"

"Not a trace. The general's nails weren't able to dig in that deep."

There was something on one of them. Looking closer without Korsolov asking what he'd seen wasn't easy. "Two pairs."

Korsolov bent down far enough for Bourne to smell the shreds of rotting meat between his teeth. "What?"

"The killer must have worn multiple layers of gloves, which meant he anticipated Boris's strength and determination." Bourne thought he recognized what was on Boris's right palm, but a crease-his heart line-was partially obscuring it. "This killer was a professional. He was meticulous in his planning."

"Which also tells us nothing." Korsolov's tone was as sour as his breath.

"On the contrary, it tells us a great deal. There are very few people capable of this obsessive level of planning."

Korsolov's eyebrows lifted. "You know their names?"

"I need to see Boris's body," Bourne said, rising so abruptly that Korsolov almost lost his balance. "Now."

- They had temporarily stored Boris's body in the kitchen's walk-in freezer. It wasn't the morgue, but it was the best they could do until everyone in the hotel had been completely cleared and they could safely transport the body to the morgue without attracting any attention. The space was huge, filled with sides of beef, racks of chops, and armies of aging steaks. To one side were shelves housing bins of ice cubes and sealed plastic bags filled with chopped liver, ground sausage meat, and pirogi filling.

Boris was laid out in the center, his thick brows rimed with frost. His lips were purple-blue, as if he had stayed in the Black Sea for too long. His eyes were staring up at the ceiling. The congealed blood, oil-black in the freezer's harsh fluorescent light, was like dried paint on an unfinished canvas. But there was no transmuting the dreadful blood-grin across the width of his throat, an appalling reminder of his violent death.

As Bourne stared into his friend's face he recalled their time in Reykjavk, the grave danger they had faced, and their private celebration afterward. Boris had poured them glasses of chilled vodka, but before Bourne could take his up Boris had shaken pepper into both glasses.

"In the old days," Boris had said in all seriousness, "you had to be careful with your vodka. Some of it was made with fusel oil, which is poisonous. The pepper, you see, drew the fusel oil out of the vodka, making it safe to drink." Boris was always full of useful warnings concerning life's little dangers.

Bourne missed him already. Boris had always been more than a vital resource; he'd been a true friend, despite being Russian down to the marrow of his bones. Like all the best people working in espionage, he was a master at compartmentalizing the different areas of his life. Without that ability you'd go mad, which was why often enough spies put their own guns into their mouths and pulled the trigger.

Bourne had fully expected his shadow to be right over his shoulder, but at the last moment Korsolov had received a mobile phone call and had stepped back out of the freezer, walking far enough away so that Bourne couldn't hear his end of the conversation.

Silently thanking his good fortune, Bourne took Boris's right hand in his, brought it up for closer inspection. Rigor mortis had not yet begun to set in so he was able to bend the wrist to bring the palm into the best light. He stretched the skin on either side of the heart line, did the same for the left hand, but found nothing.

It seemed barbaric to have his friend staring sightlessly, so he bent over to close his eyes for the final time. But as he did so, he noticed something shining deep in the slash across Boris's throat, a tiny golden bit, twinkling like a far-off star. Using a thin-bladed boning knife he found in a wooden rack of butcher's tools, he quickly dug out the star-for star it was: a Star of David. And not just any Star of David, he saw, as he wiped off the blood and gore clinging gooily to it. Sara's star, the one that was usually around her neck, the one she was, in any case, never without. He knew it was hers, because one of the six points was damaged, where it had scraped the orbital bone of the man trying to kill her in Doha last year, before she jammed the star through his eye, pushing it with her fingertip into his brain.

Korsolov's voice rose. He was ending his conversation, coming back toward the meat locker. Bourne's time had almost run out. Quickly and expertly, he pocketed the star, washed the blade in the slop sink, dried it, and returned it to its rack.

Korsolov stepped into the freezer, and from his now familiar too-close perch said, "Well?"

Bourne stepped away from Boris's corpse. He was rattled-shaken to the core, more accurately. The thought that Sara had murdered Boris was unthinkable, unendurable. But the more he thought about it, the more likely it became. The FSB was one of Mossad's main antagonists. The two organizations had been at each other's throats for decades over the treatment of Russian Jews. Sara, a trained Kidon assassin, would have been able to handle Boris without difficulty. And it would be just like her to use the trappings of a psychopath and religious fanatic to deflect suspicion away from Kidon.

"I need a car," he said, masking his feelings entirely. His heartbeat drummed maddeningly in his ears. "An official car. I don't want to be hassled by the police."

"Of course." Korsolov grinned. "An official car you shall have."

- Bourne drove the FSB vehicle out of the hotel parking lot, along the Ring Road, and into the heart of Moscow. Night was in full flower; the moon seemed to follow Bourne as he drove very fast and very accurately through the maze of the city. He was looking for something specific, and when he found it he pulled into the curb and parked a block ahead. Walking back, he thought of why Korsolov had been only too happy to lend him an official car-all FSB vehicles had a powerful tracking device hidden in their undercarriage. Korsolov had no need to suggest a driver for Bourne; he'd know where he was at every moment.

Until now.

Bourne mounted the motorcycle, hot-wired the ignition, and took off, leaving the FSB car and its tracker behind.

It took him twenty-three minutes to find the correct apartment building, but repeated rings on the buzzer went unanswered. He checked the time, then returned to the motorcycle, and drove it a half mile southeast to Kutuzovskiy Street. He parked down the block from where Eyrie's uniformed valets were taking charge of behemoth SUVs and limousines disgorging a mix of sleek dyevushkas in short skirts, plunging tops, and five-inch heels and the sons of overstuffed oligarchs, whose night was just starting. Expensive cars cruised by at five miles an hour. Young men whistled at the dyevushkas, most of whom had the decency to give the guys the finger before turning away, laughing into their palms. The atmosphere was sweaty, grimy with menace. Which appeared to be just how the denizens of the Eyrie liked it.

Bourne was stopped at the door by a bald-headed bouncer with more muscles than Arnold Schwarzenegger. He put a mitt on Bourne's chest, said with a sneer, "American, English, Dutch?"

"I'm here to see Ivan Volkin," Bourne said in perfect Moscow Russian.

A blank face. "Who?"

Bourne repeated the name.

"Never heard of him."

"Then you should be fired. Ivan owns this club."

Bourne's reply brought the glimmer of expression to Muscles's craggy face.

"Tell Ivan that Fyodor wants to see him. Fyodor Ilianovich Popov."

Muscles squinted at him. The line behind Bourne, lengthening every second, was growing restless. "And if I don't?"

Bourne shrugged. "It's your funeral." He began to turn away when Muscles said, "Hold on."

He tapped his wireless earpiece, then spoke several words Bourne couldn't make out over the rising noise of the crowd clamoring to get in. He tapped his earpiece again, finished. His eyes snagged Bourne's for an instant, a sign that he might be human after all. "Upstairs," he said laconically. "All the way."

- The best action-and, paradoxically, the quietest space-was a roped-off section of Eyrie's rooftop, which had earned it its name. Two permanent tents took up the bulk of the space. Inside there was music, dancing, and who knew what else. The views from the open section of the roof were unmatched: the wide moonlit Moscow River, the massive tiered juggernaut of the Stalin-era Ukraina Hotel at the bend in the river, and the White House, from where the prime minister and his deputy steered the Federation.

It wasn't long before Bourne spotted Ivan. He wasn't hard to pick out, a furry bear of a man, salt-and-pepper hair standing straight up like a madman's, a full beard white as snow, small but cheerful eyes the color of a rainstorm. Even sitting, it was clear that he was slightly bandy-legged, as if he'd been riding a horse all his life. His lined and leathery face lent him a certain dignified aspect, as if in his life he'd earned the respect of many, which he had, being the eminence gris of the most powerful Moscow families in the grupperovka, the Russian mob.

Bourne had met Ivan some years ago through a mutual friend, and though he hadn't seen him in years, the old man looked as if he hadn't aged a single day. As was his wont, he was sitting in a remote corner, away from the two permanent tents, amid the shadows of potted palm trees, surely dragged out of hothouses only when the beastly Moscow weather permitted. With him were a pair of dyevushkas-twins: svelte, blonde, and looking very young-who rose and, on hypnotically swaying hips, vanished the moment Bourne was let through by a porcine bouncer. Not so the man sitting with Volkin. He looked like a younger version of the late, unlamented Dimitri Maslov, and for good reason. After rising and enveloping Bourne in his bearlike hug, Volkin introduced his companion as Yegor Maslov, Dimitri's son, though Volkin called him by the familiar diminutive, Gora, a sign of how close the two were.

"Gora, I'd like you to meet an old friend, Fyodor Ilianovich Popov," Volkin said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye only Bourne noticed. "He works for Gazprom. Upper management now, isn't it, Fyodor Ilianovich?"

Bourne presented his card. "Second vice president," he said, playing along with the legend's profession as he had described it to Volkin. Shaking Gora's hand was like trying to crush a lobster claw.

The last time Bourne had spent time in Moscow Dimitri had been head of the Kazanskaya grupperovka. Now, clearly, his son, Gora, had taken over. In those days, the Kazanskaya had majored in drug-running and black market cars. These days, who knew what they were into? One thing was for certain: with the greeting Gora gave him, he had no idea that Bourne had been responsible for his father's death.

Volkin waved a hand to an empty seat, "Please, Fyodor, join us."

When Gora smiled he looked like a little boy, so different than his father. "I'm afraid it will be just you, Uncle Ivan. I have a pressing engagement."

Volkin raised an ironic eyebrow. "At this hour? You should be in bed, Gora."

"That's just where I plan to be," Gora said with a laugh. And then he was off, crossing into one of the tents presumably to take the elevator down to the ground floor.

Bourne sat in the seat Gora had vacated. Ivan didn't even need to lift a hand. A waiter appeared, took their drink orders, and vanished into the tent where techno music pulsed and young men and women danced, drank, and got high.

"So. It's been some time." Volkin rubbed his hands together with a kind of grim anticipation. "What do you have for me this time?"

9.

Kakgo chrta!" Colonel Korsolov said. What the hell!

Captain Pankin handed Korsolov two passports.

The FSB officers were standing under the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, where Belov and Yasha had had their clandestine meeting and had met their abrupt end. Now, however, it was a brightly lit crime scene.

Korsolov paged through the documents disinterestedly. His nose wrinkled. "Two men meeting under the bridge. Homosexuals. A perfect end to this shitstick night. Frankly, I applaud whoever shot these degenerates." He tossed his head in the direction of the three uniforms standing at the edge of the cordoned-off area awaiting orders. "Let those fucking govnjuki at the MVD handle this mess." He meant the bastards at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. "Why the hell did you call me out here? Two less pussies in Russia is a cause for celebration, not an investigation."

"Homosexuals, possibly," Captain Pankin said.

Korsolov screwed up his face. "What are you getting at?"

"Take a look around," Pankin said. "See any closed-circuit TV cameras?"

"Perfect for their degenerate trysts. Yes, so?"

"Knowing your directive regarding homosexuals I thought it prudent to call you in."

"You did the right thing, Captain, but as of this moment, as I said, my plate is full." Korsolov considered. "Well, as long as we're here we might as well do some good. Get a CCTV camera for this dead spot." He chuckled at his double entrendre.

Pankin got on his mobile immediately, barking orders in double-quick time, which pleased Korsolov. It was about the only thing that had pleased him tonight. Nevertheless, he made a mental note of the captain's name. These days, smart young men who took the initiative when they saw an opportunity were increasingly hard to find.

While Pankin had been on his call, Korsolov took another look at the victims' documents. One of them, Veniamin Nazarovich Belov, was a Russian citizen. He went closer to the two bodies, took a good look at the two faces. He frowned. Neither of them rang a bell, but of course there was blood and dirt all over them. Still. He looked back at Belov's passport photo, stared at it.

Pankin looked at him quizzically. "Is there something wrong, Colonel?"

"There is," Korsolov said, "but I'm damned if I know what it is."

- "I was very sorry to hear about Boris Illyich." Ivan sipped his heavily sugared tea. "He was a constant pain in my ass, for certain, but he was a good man."

"I wasn't aware you knew the general that well."

Ivan grunted. "The sentiment is mutual." He eyed Bourne with that amused twinkle in his eyes. "I highly doubt a Gazprom bureaucrat such as Fyodor Popov would have known the general, either."

Ivan watched Bourne sipping his tea, possibly waiting for a response. When none was forthcoming, he shrugged, and said, "You know, it was impossible not to like Boris. When he was just a lieutenant, I recognized a man on the way up. He was smart and ambitious. I wanted him, so one night I took him to dinner and then to a brothel I own. Do you know he was offended? Can you picture it?"

"Knowing him as I did, I certainly can."

Ivan shook his head. "I don't think you can. Do you know he hit me? Even in those days he was canny enough to wait until I had taken him into a private room of the brothel. We were alone, waiting for the girls I had picked out. And he sucker-punched me." He chuckled. "It was a smart move, because if he hit me in public, so to speak, in front of my men I would have had no choice but to have them hold him while I beat him senseless."

Ivan swallowed some tea, stared down into the glass as if he could see the past reflected in it. When he looked up, his eyes seemed brighter, more alive. "Even as a young lieutenant he understood the nature of power, the consequences of losing face. That was our Boris." He shook his head ruefully. "I tell you this. He will be missed."

Ivan shook his shaggy head. "If we're being melancholy we need vodka." He lifted a hand, and at once a waiter was by his side. Ivan ordered. By unspoken mutual consent and a deep sense of respect the two men remained silent until the bottle of vodka arrived in a container of ice. Ivan waved the waiter away, filled two shot glasses with the icy liquor.

The two men lifted their glasses, clinked the rims together in a silent toast. The full moon hung low in the sky, paled out, as was the rest of the night, by the glittering lights of the leviathan Ukraina Hotel.

Ivan sighed. "Up until then I had never met a man who couldn't be bribed. Everyone covets something. But for Boris there was only Mother Russia in all her resplendent heritage and mysteries." Ivan swirled the dregs of vodka, coating the bottom of his glass. "That night at the brothel, well for him. He had principles; it was easy to admire such a man. That was the beginning of an on-and-off friendship that lasted-well, until tonight. Poor bastard. No one should die in that fashion." He cocked his head. "Is that why you've come to see me? Are you a detective now instead of a bureaucrat?"

"Partly," Bourne acknowledged.

Ivan leaned forward, refilled their glasses, lifted his. "Let us now toast Fyodor Ilianovich Popov. He had a short and happily uneventful life."

The two men drank.

Ivan smacked his lips. "You know, I didn't believe your legend when you first came to me, and that was before I discovered who you really are, Jason." He smiled at Bourne's stony expression. "Oh, come on, it wasn't so difficult-not for a man like me."

Bourne put down his empty glass. "Does it matter who I am?"

"Not to me. You were Boris's friend." Ivan shrugged. "What else do I need to know?"

"I killed Dimitri Maslov."

"Yes, well, he was a shit, wasn't he?" Ivan refilled their glasses again. "The son's another matter altogether."

"Meaning you can control him."

Ivan smiled, shaking a forefinger at Bourne. "I genuinely like him. He's got excellent instincts." He tipped his head. "Like you."

He sat back and sighed deeply. "Do you know who garroted Boris?"

"I think I'm headed in the right direction." A direction that would lead everyone away from Sara.

"Difficult to believe he could be taken by surprise like that."

"Which makes me think he knew his assailant."

"Ah." Ivan tipped his glass, drank, swallowed. "Enlighten me, please."

"Here's a riddle for you. What do you get when you combine a meticulous homicidal mind with one psychopathically obsessed with ritual?"

"Obviously you have the answer," Ivan said.

Bourne smiled grimly. "A Russian politician."