Bright lights shined in the windows in the four-story apartment building on Paul Kerese Street. Bourne waited in the trees at the center of a traffic circle across from the ground-floor Irish pub. Snow whipped in mini-tornadoes down the wide street, gathering in drifts against the building wall. Only a handful of cars cut trenches through the slippery street, and no footsteps disturbed the virgin snow on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. He could hear a faint din of music from inside.
He checked his watch. He’d waited in the darkness, invisible, for half an hour. No one else was watching the street. With his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, fingers curled around his Glock, he headed for the bar. His boots kicked through a couple of inches of snow. When he opened the door, warmth spilled from inside, along with the singsong twang of violins playing an Irish jig.
The pub was wide but not deep. He faced the bar, which glowed with neon, and every stool was taken. A few wooden tables stretched along the windows on his left and right. A wooden stage had been built against the east wall, and a small band played there, led by a redheaded singer who bore a resemblance to the model Ariel. The similarity was striking enough that Bourne wondered if they were sisters and whether Irina was hiding out in their apartment above the bar.
He approached the counter and flagged down the bartender, who was a thin, dour man in his forties, wearing a black Guinness T-shirt. The man sized him up as a foreigner and spoke in English.
“Want something?”
Bourne pointed at the man’s shirt. “Guinness.”
The bartender wiped his hands on a towel at his waist and slowly pulled a dark, chocolaty pint from the tap until foam overran the glass. Bourne took a sip, then put enough money on the counter to triple the price of the ale. He leaned closer to the man, speaking just loud enough to be heard over the music, and he took a chance that he was right about the redheaded sisters.
“Ariel sent me. I’m here to help Irina.”
The bartender studied Bourne with hooded, suspicious eyes. “I don’t know who you mean.”
“I think you do, and I think you know I’m not from Cody. Irina needs to get out of town. I can do that.”
Not blinking, the man drummed his fingers on the bar. His lips puckered into a frown, and he gestured at the singer on the small stage. “Talk to Sara. They’ve got a break coming up after this song.”
Bourne added another bill to the counter. Then he took his Guinness and found an empty window table close to the stage. He watched a meaningful look pass between the girl at the microphone and the man behind the bar, and the girl focused on Bourne and sized him up with her blue eyes as she sang. She was a few years older than her sister—if Ariel was her sister—but just as pretty, with fiery red hair to the middle of her back, a deeply freckled face, and a glow of sweat on her white skin. She wore a low-cut flowered blouse and a tattered jean skirt with multiple pockets. Her voice rose, warbling the high note at the end of the song, and a ripple of applause made its way through the bar. As it died down, the girl hopped off the stage and took a seat at the table, opposite Bourne. Without a word, she reached for his glass and drank a long slug of Guinness. A little bit of foam clung to her lip and she licked it off.
“Who the fuck are you?” she inquired in a thick Irish accent that matched her sister’s.
“Ariel told me about this place.”
“Oh, Ariel did, did she?” One of the girl’s hands disappeared under the table, and Bourne stiffened as the blade of a knife pressed against his femoral artery inches from his groin. He was impressed at her quickness.
“I’m not lying,” he told her. “Ariel asked me to get Irina out of the city.”
“And you thought you’d just come in here where everyone could see you? Did you not think Cody would have a spy in here who would spot a stranger? Particularly someone who fucking screams American?”
“Then let’s not waste time,” Bourne said. “Take me to Irina.”
The knife disappeared from his thigh.
“Give me two hundred euro,” the girl said. “Make it obvious. Everyone’s watching us.”
“What’s the money for?”
“First, because I want it. And second, because you don’t think my voice pays the rent, do you? My sister earns her money taking off her clothes for pigs like Kepler and his camera. Me, I earn it on my knees. Or at least that’s what the men around here think. They don’t need to know I’m Interpol, Cain.”
Bourne wasn’t often surprised in his life, but his jaw dropped. “Well, damn.”
He took two hundred-euro bills from his wallet and slapped them on the table. The girl grinned at his startled expression and shoved the money into her low-cut blouse between her breasts. “I’m Sara, by the way,” she said. “Now come on, I figure we’ve got ten minutes before Cody’s men storm this place.”
Sara took him by the hand. He felt the rest of the men in the bar watching them, and Sara gave them a wink. She led him to a rear door beside the counter, and the two of them went through to the other side. They were inside the apartment building here, with a corridor running the length of the building and stairs leading to the upper floors.
The Interpol agent led him up the stairs.
“We’ve been trying to penetrate Cody’s operation in Narva for almost a year,” she told him as they climbed. “Every time we get close or find someone who will talk to us, the witness disappears. You know about the Latvian agent who wound up in the lake?”
“I do.”
“Well, he’s not the only one. We lost one of our agents, too. That’s why my sister and I have been undercover here since the summer. Cody has a stranglehold on Narva, and the crime ring he’s operating ripples through Eastern Europe. He’s into everything. Drugs. Prostitution. Smuggling. Murder.”
“You know about the website?” Bourne asked.
“Mygirlnextdoor? Sure. But that’s just one piece in the puzzle. Cody’s ambitions go way beyond that.”
“What about Irina? How does she fit in?”
“As far as we can tell, she’s just a pawn for the app. She seduces customers, gets information out of them, and then Cody figures out how to make it work for him.”
“So is that what the Files are all about?”
Sara shook her head. “Don’t think so, no. The Files are bigger than this one app. But there’s a connection somewhere. Cody thinks Irina sold out one of his hit men in the U.S., but Irina swears she didn’t. So maybe someone is watching the watchers. Whoever has the Files may be spying on Cody and his girls.”
“Can we trust Irina?”
“Judge for yourself,” Sara said.
They reached the top level of the building, and the Interpol agent rapped her knuckles on the first door on the left side of the hallway. Then she added a code phrase in Russian to assure the person inside that everything was clear. A few seconds later, the door opened. A woman in her early thirties, with a rough bob of blond hair streaked in purple and thick black glasses that slipped down her nose, stood in the doorway. She was tall and skinny to the point of malnourishment, wearing tight blue jeans and an untucked red flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. A gold pendant dangled from her neck, with a Russian cameo hanging from the chain. She had a very pretty face, but with the solemn, distracted expression of a woman who didn’t pay much notice to her own looks.
She stared at Sara. Then her gaze went over Sara’s shoulder, and she spotted Bourne.
Seeing him, her eyes suddenly widened with surprise and joy. Her serious mouth broke into a huge, excited smile. In a voice loud enough to be heard down the hallway, she shouted in thick accented English, “Jason! Oh my God, Jason, it’s you! You’ve come to save me!”
Her long arms reached out and grabbed him by the neck. She threw herself against him, and her full lips pressed into his mouth. The kiss went on long enough that Bourne found it hard to breathe, and when he finally peeled away the woman’s arms, he looked into her gray eyes again and finally remembered who she was.
“Tati.”
*
Three years earlier, Bourne had found a Russian climate scientist named Tatiana Reznikova in the little town of Whitby in northeast England. She was escaping with her husband—who turned out to be an environmental terrorist—from a gang of Russian assassins. Bourne had saved her life, but when he’d given her the opportunity to take American asylum, Tati had chosen instead to go back home to her scientific work at a university in St. Petersburg. The last time he’d seen her had been on a California beach as she took a Zodiac out to a Russian submarine off shore.
Tati was Irina, and Irina was Tati.
“I take it you two know each other,” the Interpol agent said sarcastically.
Tati continued to kiss Jason all over his face, leaving lipstick smears on his cheeks and forehead. “Oh my God, I love this man, he save me, he give me my life back! Jason, I can’t believe you are here! How did you know I needed you?”
“I had no idea you were here,” Bourne admitted. “I’m as surprised as you are.”
She pawed him as if she had to convince herself he was real. “I think about you every day, I pray you come! I want to reach out to you, but I do not know how to find you!”
“Well, I’m here,” Bourne said, trying and failing to keep Tati’s roaming hands off his body.
“This is real sweet and everything,” Sara interrupted, “but we need to get the fuck out of here right now. Irina—Tati—whoever the hell you are—grab your go bag and let’s move before Cody’s men get here.”
Tati’s pretty faced paled at Cody’s name. “Yes! Yes, right away!”
She disappeared inside the apartment and returned seconds later wearing a worn, unzipped down jacket, with a small canvas backpack slung over her shoulder. Sara unholstered a Ruger from her inner thigh, and Bourne drew his Glock. Tati clung to his left hand, and the three of them took the stairs down to the ground floor of the apartment building.
“Not through the pub,” Sara said. “We’ll use the side exit. I’ve got a car across the street.”
She led them down the hallway, her Ruger cocked at her waist. At the end of the building, a door opened onto the tree-lined street, and they pushed outside into the cold. Snow poured over them, hitting their faces like the prick of needles. The whistling wind drowned out other sounds. Bourne saw no vehicles, and the tire ruts on the street had softened as more snow began to cover them up.
Sara gestured toward a grassy park near a gas station. It looked like a white meadow. “My car’s there.”
The three of them single-file tramped through the drifts. Tati stayed in the middle, and Bourne brought up the rear, circling every few steps to check behind them. In the trees lining the sidewalk, a few Christmas lights blinked in dots of red and green. The sheeting snow began to gather on their clothes, and Bourne had to keep wiping his eyes to see. He squinted at the roads leading in and out of the traffic circle, but they were empty. No one lurked in the doorways of the buildings around them.
Still, he didn’t like it.
The most dangerous threat is the one you can’t see.
Treadstone.
They were in the middle of the street when a voice shrieked above the wind. “Sara!”
Bourne and Sara both swung their pistols toward a tan brick building bordering the roundabout. A woman bolted around the corner, screaming and waving her arms at them. Her red hair glistened through the downpour of snow, and she was underdressed for the cold in a tank top and shorts. Frozen blood made streaks down her arms and legs.
It was Ariel, the model from the auto garage.
“Sara! Run!”
Sara froze as she recognized her sister making a desperate attempt to warn them away. In the next instant, automatic-weapons fire erupted behind Ariel from the same corner. The bullets riddled her and made her body twitch like a puppet on strings. She staggered, then collapsed, red hair and red blood shining in the midst of six inches of snow.
The bullets kept coming.
Bourne threw himself against Tati and Sara, spreading his arms and taking both women down into the cold drifts covering the street. Two men stood near the building, aiming machine pistols their way and filling the winter air with a burnt smell. With his Glock, Bourne fired back, and Sara did, too, her shots accompanied by a guttural, angry wail for her dead sister on the ground. But they were outgunned. The men began to advance, rounds zeroing in on their position and blowing up silver spray with each ricochet. One bullet ripped through the shoulder of Tati’s coat in a mixture of down, snow, and blood. Tati screamed.
They were sitting ducks on the street. In a few seconds, they’d all be dead.
Sara reached into one of her skirt pockets and pushed a cold piece of metal into Bourne’s hand. Car keys.
“It’s the Citroën in the last space. Get Irina out of here. I’ll cover you.”
“Sara, don’t—”
He knew what she was going to do. He reached out to grab her, but the Interpol agent was already on her feet, running an awkward zigzag pattern through the snow directly at the two men. Her shots momentarily forced them back. Jason grabbed Tati off the ground and dragged her toward the park on the opposite side of the street. Sara’s revenge fire bought them time to reach the sidewalk and jump over the low railing. Ahead of them was a lineup of snow-covered cars.
On the street, he heard a cry of pain.
He glanced sideways and saw Sara frozen in place over Ariel’s body, not even twenty feet from Cody’s men. The shooters fired nonstop, eviscerating her with deadly aim from their machine pistols, but somehow she stayed standing and kept firing her Ruger. She was close enough to take one of the men down with a bullet in the middle of his face, but the man’s partner kept firing. Sara was done, her whole body a mass of blood. The gun slipped from her hand, and her knees bent, and she crumpled to the snow on top of her sister.
Bourne and Tati kept running. The other shooter retrained his gun, and bullets chased them across the snow, getting closer with each round. In another second, they cleared the side of the building, and the wall temporarily blocked them from the machine-pistol fire as they charged down the alley beside parked cars. The shooter followed, and the gunfire began again when they were near the end of the alley. Bourne threw Tati sideways between two vehicles, and they crouched as they hurried to the Citroën a few yards away.
The lock was frozen. The key wouldn’t go in. Bourne had no time to waste. He simply lifted his Glock and shot out the driver’s-side window and opened the door from inside. He lofted Tati across the seat to the passenger’s side and got behind the wheel. When he turned the key, the engine chugged without catching. He tried again, and again, listening to the starter whine, and finally the motor rattled to life.
“Stay down!” he barked at Tati.
Bourne shoved the Citroën into gear and stamped on the accelerator. The car fishtailed in the snow as he swung into the alley and then shot forward, kicking up waves of snow as he headed for the street. With slick ice under the snow, he had almost no control, and the car swerved, bouncing between the parked cars and the curb beside the building.
The shooter was directly in front of him, his weapon aimed at the car. Bourne ducked down just as the entire windshield exploded and showered them with glass. His foot stayed on the gas, his hand on the wheel. An instant later, he felt a heavy thud as the front bumper hit the man and somersaulted him over the roof of the Citroën. The gunfire stopped. The car crashed through the metal barrier near the sidewalk and spun in circles into the middle of the lanes of the E20.
Bourne threw open the driver’s door. He ran to the bodies of the two Interpol agents, who lay prone in the street. When he checked their pulses, he felt nothing.
Sara and Ariel were both dead.
Slowly now, his steps heavy, he returned to the Citroën. The snow kept falling, and the wind roared, blowing away the acrid stench of the gun battle. He got inside the frigid car, and Tati stared at him, her gray eyes wide and sad, but neither one of them said a word. He pushed the accelerator, listening to the tires grind for traction on the slippery pavement. Finally, the car lurched forward, and he sped down the highway that led out of town.