on the seats Bourne was forced to abandon the Volga. Before he did, though, he took Baronov's cell phone, as well as his money. It was freezing. Within the preternatural afternoon winter darkness came the snow, swirling down in ever-heavier curtains. Bourne knew he had to get out of the area as quickly as possible. He took the SIM card out of his phone, put it in Baronov's, then threw his own cell phone down a storm drain. In his new identity as Fyodor Ilianovich Popov he couldn't afford to be in possession of a cell with an American carrier.
He walked, leaning into the wind and snow. After six blocks, huddled in a doorway, he used Baronov's cell phone to call his friend Boris Karpov. The voice at the end of the line grew cold.
"Colonel Karpov is no longer with FSB."
Bourne felt a chill go through him. Russia had not changed so much that lightning-swift dismissals on trumped-up charges were a thing of the past.
"I need to contact him," Bourne said.
"He's now at the Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency." The voice recited a local number before abruptly hanging up.
That explained the attitude, Bourne thought. The Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency was headed up by Viktor Cherkesov. But many believed he was much more than that, a silovik running an organization so powerful that some had taken to calling it FSB-2. Recently an internal war between Cherkesov and Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, the modern-day successor to the notorious KGB, had sprung up within the government. The silovik who won that war would probably be the next president of Russia. If Karpov had gone from the FSB to FSB-2, it must be because Cherkesov had gotten the upper hand.
Bourne called the office of the Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency, but he was told that Karpov was away and could not be reached.
For a moment he contemplated calling the man who had picked up Baronov's Zil in the Crocus City parking lot, but he almost immediately thought better of it. He'd already gotten Baronov killed; he didn't want any more deaths on his conscience.
He walked on until he came to a tram stop. He took the first one that appeared out of the gloom. He'd used the scarf he'd bought at the boutique in Crocus City to cover up the mark the wire had made across his throat. The small seepage of blood had dried up as soon as he'd hit the frigid air.
The tram jounced and rattled along its rails. Crammed inside with a stinking, noisy crowd, he felt thoroughly shaken. Not only had he discovered a Kazanskaya assassin waiting in Tarkanian's apartment, but his contact had been murdered by an NSA assassin sent to kill him. His sense of apartness had never been more extreme. Babies cried, men rustled newspapers, women chatted side by side, an old man, big-knuckled hands curled over the head of his walking stick, clandestinely ogled a young girl engrossed in a manga comic. Here was life, bustling all around him, a burbling stream that parted when it came to him, an immovable rock, only to come together when it passed him, flowing on while he remained behind, still and alone.
He thought of Marie, as he always did at times like this. But Marie was gone, and her memory was of little solace to him. He missed his children, and wondered whether this was the David Webb personality bubbling up. An old, familiar despair swept through him, as it hadn't since Alex Conklin had taken him out of the gutter, formed the Bourne identity for him to slip on like a suit of armor. He felt the crushing weight of life on him, a life lived alone, a sad and lonely life that could only end one way.
And then his thoughts turned to Moira, of how impossibly difficult that last meeting with her had been. If she had been a spy, if she had betrayed Martin and meant to do the same with him, what would he have done? Would he have turned her over to Soraya or Veronica Hart?
But she wasn't a spy. He would never have to face that conundrum.
When it came to Moira, his personal feelings were now bound up in his professional duty, inextricably combined. He knew that she loved him and, now, in the face of his despair, he understood that he loved her, as well. When he was with her he felt whole, but in an entirely new way. She wasn't Marie, and he