Текст книги "The Bourne Sanction (Санкция Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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A broad grin broke out across Maslov’s face. “Fuck,” he said, “now we’re talking!”

After a time, Arkadin became aware that Devra was standing over him. Without

looking at her, he held up the cylinder he’d taken from Heinrich.

“Come out of the surf,” she said, but when Arkadin didn’t make a move, she sat down

on a crest of sand behind him.

Heinrich was stretched out on his back as if he were a sunbather who’d fallen asleep.

The water had washed away all the blood.

After a time, Arkadin moved back, first onto the dark sand, then up behind the

waterline to where Devra sat, her legs drawn up, chin on her knees. That was when she

noticed that his left foot was missing three toes.

“My God,” she said, “what happened to your foot?”

It was the foot that had undone Marlene. The three missing toes on Arkadin’s left foot.

Marlene made the mistake of asking what had happened.

“An accident,” Arkadin said with a practiced smoothness. “During my first term in

prison. A stamping machine came apart, and the main cylinder fell on my foot. The toes

were crushed, nothing more than pulp. They had to be amputated.”

It was a lie, this story, a fanciful tale Arkadin appropriated from a real incident that

took place during his first stint in prison. That much, at least, was the truth. A man stole a pack of cigarettes from under Arkadin’s bunk. This man worked the stamping machine.

Arkadin tampered with the machine so that when the man started it up the next morning

the main cylinder dropped on him. The result wasn’t pretty; you could hear his screams

clear across the compound. In the end, they’d had to take his right leg off at the knee.

From that day forward he was on his guard with Marlene. She was attracted to him, of

this he was quite certain. She’d slipped from her objective pedestal, from the job Icoupov

had given her. He didn’t blame Icoupov. He wanted to tell Icoupov again that he

wouldn’t harm him, but he knew Icoupov wouldn’t believe him. Why should he? He had

enough evidence to the contrary to make him suitably nervous. And yet, Arkadin sensed

that Icoupov would never turn his back on him. Icoupov would never renege on his

pledge to take Arkadin in.

Nevertheless, something had to be done about Marlene. It wasn’t simply that she’d

seen his left foot; Icoupov had seen it as well. Arkadin knew she suspected the maimed

foot was connected with his horrendous nightmares, that it was part of something he

couldn’t tell her. Even the story Arkadin told her did not fully satisfy her. It might have with someone else, but not Marlene. She hadn’t exaggerated when she’d told him that she

possessed an uncanny ability to sense what her clients were feeling, and to find a way to

help them.

The problem was that she couldn’t help Arkadin. No one could. No one was allowed to

know what he’d experienced. It was unthinkable.

“Tell me about your mother and father,” Marlene said. “And don’t repeat the pabulum

you fed the shrink who was here before me.”

They were out on Lake Lugano. It was a mild summer’s day, Marlene was in a two-

piece bathing suit, red with large pink polka dots. She wore pink rubber slippers; a visor

shaded her face from the sun. Their small motorboat lay to, its anchor dropped. Small

swells rocked them now and again as pleasure boats went to and fro across the crystal

blue water. The small village of Campione d’Italia rose up the hillside like the frosted

tiers of a wedding cake.

Arkadin looked hard at her. It annoyed him that he didn’t intimidate her. He

intimidated most people; it was how he got along after his parents were gone.

“What, you don’t think my mother died badly?”

“I’m interested in your mother before she died,” Marlene said airily. “What was she

like?”

“Actually, she was just like you.”

Marlene gave him a basilisk stare.

“Seriously,” he said. “My mother was tough as a fistful of nails. She knew how to

stand up to my father.”

Marlene seized on this opening. “Why did she have to do that? Was your father

abusive?”

Arkadin shrugged. “No more than any other father, I suppose. When he was frustrated

at work he took it out on her.”

“And you find that normal.”

“I don’t know what the word normal means.”

“But you’re used to abuse, aren’t you?”

“Isn’t that called leading the witness, Counselor?”

“What did your father do?”

“He was consiglieri-the counselor-to the Kazanskaya, the family of the Moscow

grupperovka that controls drug trafficking and the sale of foreign cars in the city and

surrounding areas.” He’d been nothing of the sort. Arkadin’s father had been an

ironworker, dirt-poor, desperate, and drunk as shit twenty hours a day, just like everyone

else in Nizhny Tagil.

“So abuse and violence came naturally to him.”

“He wasn’t on the streets,” Arkadin said, continuing his lie.

She gave him a thin smile. “All right, where do you think your bouts of violence come

from?”

“If I told you I’d have to kill you.”

Marlene laughed. “Come on, Leonid Danilovich. Don’t you want to be of use to Mr.

Icoupov?”

“Of course I do. I want him to trust me.”

“Then tell me.”

Arkadin sat for a time. The sun felt good on his forearms. The heat seemed to draw his

skin tight over his muscles, making them bulge. He felt the beating of his heart as if it

were music. For just a moment, he felt free of his burden, as if it belonged to someone

else, a tormented character in a Russian novel, perhaps. Then his past came rushing back

like a fist in his gut and he almost vomited.

Very slowly, very deliberately he unlaced his sneakers, took them off. He peeled off

his white athletic socks, and there was his left foot with its two toes and three miniature stumps, knotty, as pink as the polka dots on Marlene’s bathing suit.

“Here’s what happened,” he said. “When I was fourteen years old, my mother took a

frying pan to the back of my father’s head. He’d just come home stone drunk, reeking of

another woman. He was sprawled facedown on their bed, snoring peacefully, when

whack!, she took a heavy cast-iron skillet from its peg on the kitchen wall and, without a

word, hit him ten times in the same spot. You can imagine what his skull looked like

when she was done.”

Marlene sat back. She seemed to have trouble breathing. At length, she said, “This

isn’t another one of your bullshit stories, is it?”

“No,” Arkadin said, “it’s not.”

“And where were you?”

“Where d’you think I was? Home. I saw the whole thing.”

Marlene put a hand to her mouth. “My God.”

Having expelled this ball of poison, Arkadin felt an exhilarating sense of freedom, but

he knew what had to come next.

“Then what happened?” she said when she had recovered her equilibrium.

Arkadin let out a long breath. “I gagged her, tied her hands behind her, and threw her

into the closet in my room.”

“And?”

“I walked out of the apartment and never went back.”

“How?” There was a look of genuine horror on her face. “How could you do such a

thing?”

“I disgust you now, don’t I?” He said this not with anger, but with a certain

resignation. Why wouldn’t she be disgusted by him? If only she knew the whole truth.

“Tell me in more detail about the accident in prison.”

Arkadin knew at once that she was trying to find inconsistencies in his story. This was

a classic interrogator’s technique. She would never know the truth.

“Let’s go swimming,” he said abruptly. He shed his shorts and T-shirt.

Marlene shook her head. “I’m not in the mood. You go if-”

“Oh, come on.”

He pushed her overboard, stood up, dived in after her. He found her under the water,

kicking her legs to bring herself to the surface. He wrapped his thighs around her neck,

locked his ankles, tightening his grip on her. He rose to the surface, held on to the boat, swung water out of his eyes as she struggled below him. Boats thrummed past. He waved

to two young girls, their long hair flying behind them like horses’ manes. He wanted to

hum a love song, but all he could think of was the theme to Bridge on the River Kwai.

After a time, Marlene stopped struggling. He felt her weight below him, swaying

gently in the swells. He didn’t want to, really he didn’t, but unbidden the image of his old apartment resurrected itself in his mind’s eye. It was a slum, the filthy crumbling Soviet-era piece of shit building teeming with vermin.

Their poverty didn’t stop the older man from banging other women. When one of them

became pregnant, she decided to have the baby. He was all for it, he told her. He’d help

her in any way he could. But what he really wanted was the child his barren wife could

never give him. When Leonid was born, he ripped the baby from the girl’s arms, brought

Leonid to his wife to raise.

“This is the child I always wanted, but you couldn’t give me,” he told her.

She raised Arkadin dutifully, without complaint, because where could a barren woman

go in Nizhny Tagil? But when her husband wasn’t home, she locked the boy in the closet

of his room for hours at a time. A blind rage gripped her and wouldn’t let her go. She

despised this result of her husband’s seed, and she felt compelled to punish Leonid

because she couldn’t punish his father.

It was during one of these long punishments that Arkadin woke to awful pain in his left

foot. He wasn’t alone in the closet. Half a dozen rats, large as his father’s shoe, scuttled back and forth, squealing, teeth gnashing. He managed to kill them, but not before they

finished what they’d started. They ate three of his toes.

Twenty-Seven

IT ALL STARTED with Pyotr Zilber,” Maslov said. “Or rather his younger brother,

Aleksei. Aleksei was a wise guy. He tried to muscle in on one of my sources for foreign

cars. A lot of people were killed, including some of my men and my source. For that, I

had him killed.”

Dimitri Maslov and Bourne were sitting in a glassed-in greenhouse built on the roof of

the warehouse where Maslov had his office. They were surrounded by a lush profusion of

tropical flowers: speckled orchids, brilliant carmine anthurium, birds-of-paradise, white

ginger, heliconia. The air was perfumed with the scents of the pink plumeria and white

jasmine. It was so warm and humid, Maslov looked right at home in his bright-hued

short-sleeved shirt. Bourne had rolled up his sleeves. There was a table with a bottle of

vodka and two glasses. They’d already had their first drink.

“Zilber pulled strings, had my man Borya Maks sent to High Security Prison Colony

13 in Nizhny Tagil. You’ve heard of it?”

Bourne nodded. Conklin had mentioned the prison several times.

“Then you know it’s no picnic in there.” Maslov leaned forward, refilled their glasses,

handed one to Bourne, took the other himself. “Despite that, Zilber wasn’t satisfied. He

hired someone very, very good to infiltrate the prison and kill Maks.” Drinking vodka,

surrounded by a riot of color, he appeared totally at his ease. “Only one person could

accomplish that and get out alive: Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.”

The vodka had done Bourne a world of good, returning both warmth and strength to

his overtaxed body. There was still a smear of blood on the point of one cheek, dried

now, but Maslov had neither looked at it nor commented on it. “Tell me about Arkadin.”

Maslov made an animal sound in the back of his throat. “All you need to know is that

the sonovabitch killed Pyotr Zilber. God knows why. Then he disappeared off the face of

the earth. I had Evsei stake out Mischa Tarkanian’s apartment. I was hoping Arkadin

would come back there. Instead, you showed up.”

“What’s Zilber’s death to you?” Bourne said. “From what you’ve told me, there was

no love lost between the two of you.”

“Hey, I don’t have to like a person to do business with him.”

“If you wanted to do business with Zilber you shouldn’t have had his brother

murdered.”

“I have my reputation to uphold.” Maslov sipped his vodka. “Pyotr knew what kinds of

shit his brother was into, but did he stop him? Anyway, the hit was strictly business.

Pyotr took it far too personally. Turns out he was almost as reckless as his brother.”

There it was again, Bourne thought, the slurs against Pyotr Zilber. What, then, was he

doing running a secret network? “What was your business with him?”

“I coveted Pyotr’s network. Because of the war with the Azeri, I’ve been looking for a

new, more secure method to move our drugs. Zilber’s network was the perfect solution.”

Bourne put aside his vodka. “Why would Zilber want anything to do with the

Kazanskaya?”

“There you’ve given away the extent of your ignorance.” Maslov eyed him curiously.

“Zilber would have wanted money to fund his organization.”

“You mean his network.”

“I mean precisely what I say.” Maslov looked hard and long at Bourne. “Pyotr Zilber

was a member of the Black Legion.”

Like a sailor who senses an onrushing storm, Devra stopped herself from asking

Arkadin again about his maimed foot. There was about him at this moment the same

slight tremor of intent of a bowstring pulled back to its maximum. She transferred her

gaze from his left foot to the corpse of Heinrich, taking in sunlight that would no longer

do him any good. She felt the danger beside her, and she thought of her dream: her

pursuit of the unknown creature, her sense of utter desolation, the building of her fear to an unbearable level.

“You’ve got the package now,” she said. “Is it over?”

For a moment, Arkadin said nothing, and she wondered whether she’d left her

deflecting question too late, whether he would now turn on her because she had asked

about what had happened to that damn foot.

The red rage had gripped Arkadin, shaking him until his teeth rattled in his skull. It

would have been so easy to turn to her, smile, and break her neck. So little effort; nothing to it. But something stopped him, something cooled him. It was his own will. He-did-not-want-to-kill-her. Not yet, at least. He liked sitting here on the beach with her, and there were so few things he liked.

“I still have to shut down the rest of the network,” he said, at length. “Not that I think it actually matters at this point. Christ, it was put together by an out-of-control commander

too young to have learned caution, peopled by drug addicts, inveterate gamblers,

weaklings, and those of no faith. It’s a wonder the network functioned at all. Surely it

would have imploded on its own sooner or later.” But what did he know? He was simply

a soldier engaged in an invisible war. His was not to reason why.

Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed Icoupov’s number.

“Where are you?” his boss said. “There’s a lot of background noise.”

“I’m at the beach,” Arkadin said.

“What? The beach?”

“Kilyos. It’s a suburb of Istanbul,” Arkadin said.

“I hope you’re having a good time while we’re in a semi-panic.”

Arkadin’s demeanor changed instantly. “What happened?”

“The bastard had Harun killed, that’s what happened.”

He knew how much Harun Iliev meant to Icoupov. Like Mischa meant to him. A rock,

someone to keep him from drifting into the abyss of his imagination. “On a happier

note,” he said, “I have the package.”

Icoupov gave a short intake of breath. “Finally! Open it,” he commanded. “Tell me if

the document is inside.”

Arkadin did as he was told, breaking the wax seal, prying open the plastic disk that

capped off the cylinder. Inside, tightly rolled sheets of pale blue architectural paper

unfurled like sails. There were four in all. Quickly, he scanned them.

Sweat broke out at his hairline. “I’m looking at a set of architectural plans.”

“It’s the target of the attack.”

“The plans,” Arkadin said, “are for the Empire State Building in New York City.”

Book Three

Twenty-Eight

IT TOOK ten minutes for Bourne to get a decent connection to Professor Specter, then

another five for his people to rouse him out of bed. It was 5 AM in Washington. Maslov

had gone downstairs to see to business, leaving Bourne alone in the greenhouse to make

his calls. Bourne used the time to consider what Maslov had told him. If it was true that

Pyotr was a member of the Black Legion, two possibilities arose: One was that Pyotr was

running his own operation under the professor’s nose. That was ominous enough. The

second possibility was far worse, namely that the professor was, himself, a member. But

then why had he been attacked by the Black Legion? Bourne himself had seen the tattoo

on the arm of the gunman who had accosted Specter, beat him, and hustled him off the

street.

At that moment Bourne heard Specter’s voice in his ear. “Jason,” he said, clearly out of

breath, “what’s happened?”

Bourne brought him up to date, ending with the information that Pyotr was a member

of the Black Legion.

For a long moment, there was silence on the line.

“Professor, are you all right?”

Specter cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

But he didn’t sound fine, and as the silence stretched on Bourne strained to catch a hint

of his mentor’s emotional state.

“Look, I’m sorry about your man Baronov. The killer wasn’t Black Legion; he was an

NSA agent sent to murder me.”

“I appreciate your candor,” Specter said. “And while I grieve for Baronov, he knew the

risks. Like you, he went into this war with his eyes open.”

There was another silence, more awkward than the last one.

Finally, Specter said, “Jason, I’m afraid I’ve withheld some rather vital information

from you. Pyotr Zilber was my son.”

“Your son? By why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”

“Fear,” the professor said. “I’ve kept his real identity a secret for so many years it’s

become habit. I needed to protect Pyotr from his enemies-my enemies-the enemies who

were responsible for murdering my wife. I felt the best way to do that was to change his

name. So in the summer of his sixth year, Aleksei Specter drowned tragically and Pyotr

Zilber came into being. I left him with friends, left everything and came to America, to

Washington, to begin my life anew without him. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever

had to do. But how can a father renounce his son when he can’t forget him?”

Bourne knew precisely what he meant. He’d been about to tell the professor what he’d

learned about Pyotr and his cast of misfits and fuckups, but this didn’t seem the right time to bring up more bad news.

“So you helped him?” Bourne guessed. “Secretly.”

“Ever so secretly,” Specter said. “I couldn’t afford to have anyone link us together, I

couldn’t allow anyone to know my son was still alive. It was the least I could do for him.

Jason, I hadn’t seen him since he was six years old.”

Hearing the naked anguish in Specter’s voice, Bourne waited a moment. “What

happened?”

“He did a very stupid thing. He decided to take on the Black Legion himself. He spent

years infiltrating the organization. He discovered that the Black Legion was planning a

major attack inside America, then he spent months worming his way closer to the project.

And finally, he had the key to bringing them down: He stole the plans to their target.

Since we had to be careful about direct communication, I suggested he use his network

for the purpose of getting me information on the Black Legion’s movements. This is how

he meant to send me the plans.”

“Why didn’t he simply photograph them and send them to you digitally?”

“He tried that, but it didn’t work. The paper the plans are printed on is coated with a

substance that makes whatever’s printed on it impossible to copy by any means. He had

to get me the plans themselves.”

“Surely he told you the nature of the plans,” Bourne said.

“He was going to,” the professor said. “But before he could he was caught, taken to

Icoupov’s villa, where Arkadin tortured and killed him.”

Bourne considered the implications in light of the new information the professor had

given him. “Do you think he told them he was your son?”

“I’ve been concerned about that ever since the kidnapping attempt. I’m afraid Icoupov

might know our blood connection.”

“You’d better take precautions, Professor.”

“I plan to do just that, Jason. I’ll be leaving the DC area in just over an hour.

Meanwhile, my people have been hard at work. I’ve gotten word that Icoupov sent

Arkadin to fetch the plans from Pyotr’s network. He’s leaving a trail of bodies in his

wake.”

“Where is he now?” Bourne said.

“Istanbul, but that won’t do you any good,” Specter said, “because by the time you get

there he’ll surely have gone. It’s now more imperative than ever that you find him,

though, because we have confirmed that he’s taken the plans from the courier he

murdered in Istanbul, and time is running out before the attack.”

“This courier came from where?”

“Munich,” the professor said. “He was the last link in the chain before the plans were

to be delivered to me.”

“From what you tell me, it’s clear that Arkadin’s mission is twofold,” Bourne said.

“First, to get the plans; second, to permanently shut down Pyotr’s network by killing its

members one by one. Dieter Heinrich, the courier in Munich, is the only one remaining

alive.”

“Who was Heinrich supposed to deliver the plans to in Munich?”

“Egon Kirsch. Kirsch is my man,” Specter said. “I’ve already alerted him to the

danger.”

Bourne thought a moment. “Does Arkadin know what Kirsch looks like?”

“No, and neither does the young woman with him. Her name is Devra. She was one of

Pyotr’s people, but now she’s helping Arkadin kill her former colleagues.”

“Why would she do that?” Bourne asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” the professor said. “She was something of a cipher in

Sevastopol, where she fell in with Arkadin-no friends, no family, an orphan of the state.

So far my people haven’t turned up anything useful. In any event, I’m going to pull

Kirsch out of Munich.”

Bourne’s mind was working overtime. “Don’t do that. Get him out of his apartment to

a safe place somewhere in the city. I’ll take the first flight out to Munich. Before I leave here I want all the information on Kirsch’s life you can get me-where he was born, raised,

his friends, family, schooling, every detail he can give you. I’ll study it on the flight over, then meet with him.”

“Jason, I don’t like the way this conversation is headed,” Specter said. “I suspect I

know what you’re planning. If I’m right, you’re going to take Kirsch’s place. I forbid it. I won’t let you set yourself up as a target for Arkadin. It’s far too dangerous.”

“It’s a little late for second thoughts, Professor,” Bourne said. “It’s vital I get these

plans, you said so yourself. You do your part and I’ll do mine.”

“Fair enough,” Specter said after a moment’s hesitation. “But my part includes

activating a friend of mine who operates out of Munich.”

Bourne didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve already made it clear that you work alone, Jason, but this man Jens is

someone you want at your back. He’s intimately familiar with wet work.”

A professional killer for hire, Bourne thought. “Thank you, Professor, but no.”

“This isn’t a request, Jason.” Specter’s voice held a stern warning not to cross him.

“Jens is my condition for you taking Kirsch’s place. I won’t allow you to walk into this

bear trap on your own. My decision is final.”

Dimitri Maslov and Boris Karpov embraced like old friends while Bourne stood on,

silent. When it came to Russian politics nothing should surprise him, but it was

nevertheless astonishing to see a high-ranking colonel in the Federal Anti-Narcotics

Agency cordially greeting the kingpin of the Kazanskaya, one of the two most notorious

narcotics grupperovka.

This bizarre reunion took place in Bar-Dak, near the Leninsky Prospekt. The club had

opened for Maslov; hardly surprising, since he owned it. Bar-Dak meant both “brothel”

and “chaos” in current Russian slang. Bar-Dak was neither, though it did sport a

prominent strippers’ stage complete with poles and a rather unusual leather swing that

looked like a horse’s harness.

An open audition for pole dancers was in full swing. The lineup of eye-poppingly-built

young blond women snaked around the four walls of the club, which was painted in

glossy black enamel. Massive sound speakers, lines of vodka bottles on mirrored shelves,

and vintage mirror balls were the major accoutrements.

After the two men were finished slapping each other on the back, Maslov led them

across the cavernous room, through a door, and down a wood-paneled hallway. Mixed in

with the scent of the cedar was the unmistakable waft of chlorine. It smelled like a health club, and with good reason. They went through a translucent pebbled glass door into a

locker room.

“The sauna’s just over there,” Maslov pointed. “We meet inside in five minutes.”

Before Maslov would continue the conversation with Bourne, he insisted on meeting

with Boris Karpov. Bourne had thought such a conference unlikely, but when he called

Boris, his friend readily agreed. Maslov had given Bourne the name of Bar-Dak, nothing

more. Karpov had said only, “I know it. I’ll be there in ninety minutes.”

Now, stripped down to the buff, white Turkish towels around their loins, the three men

reconvened in the steamy confines of the sauna. The small room was lined, like the

hallway, in cedar paneling. Slatted wooden benches ran around three walls. In one corner

was a heap of heated stones, above which hung a cord.

When Maslov entered, he pulled the cord, showering the rocks with water, which

produced clouds of steam that swirled up to the ceiling and down again, engulfing the

men as they sat on the benches.

“The colonel has assured me that he will take care of my situation if I take care of his,”

Maslov said. “Perhaps I should say that I will take care of Cherkesov’s problem.”

There was a twinkle in his eye as he said this. Stripped of his outsize Hawaiian shirt,

he was a small, wiry man with ropy muscles and not an ounce of fat on him. He wore no

gold chains around his neck or diamond rings on his fingers. His tattoos were his jewelry;

they covered his entire torso. But these were not the crude and often blurred prison

tattoos found on so many of his kind. They were among the most elaborate designs

Bourne had ever seen: Asian dragons breathing fire, coiling their tails, spreading their

wings, grasping with claws outstretched.

“Four years ago I spent six months in Tokyo,” Maslov said. “It’s the only place to get

tattoos. But that’s just my opinion.”

Boris rocked with laughter. “So that’s where you were, you bastard! I scoured all of

Russia for your skinny butt.”

“In the Ginza,” Maslov said, “I hoisted quite a few saki martinis to you and your law

enforcement minions. I knew you’d never find me.” He made a sweeping gesture. “But

that bit of unpleasantness is behind us; the real perpetrator confessed to the murders I was suspected of committing. Now we find ourselves in our own private glasnost.”

“I want to know more about Leonid Danilovich Arkadin,” Bourne said.

Maslov spread his hands. “Once he was one of us. Then something happened to him, I

don’t know what. He broke away from the grupperovka. People don’t do that and survive

for long, but Arkadin is in a class by himself. No one dares to touch him. He wraps

himself in his reputation for murder and ruthlessness. This is a man-let me tell you-who

has no heart. Yes, Dimitri, you might say to me, but isn’t that true of most of your kind?

To this I answer, Yes. But Arkadin is also without a soul. This is where he parts company

with the others. There is no one else like him, the colonel can back me up on this.”

Boris nodded sagely. “Even Cherkesov fears him, our president as well. I personally

don’t know anyone in either FSB-1 or FSB-2 who’d be willing to take him on, let alone

survive. He’s like a great white shark, the murderer of killers.”

“Aren’t you being a bit melodramatic?”

Maslov sat forward, elbows in knees. “Listen, my friend, whatever the hell your real

name is, this man Arkadin was born in Nizhny Tagil. Do you know it? No? Let me tell

you. This fucking excuse of a city east of here in the southern Ural Mountains is hell on

earth. It’s filled with smokestacks belching sulfurous fumes from its ironworks. Poor is

not even a word you can apply to the residents, who swill homemade vodka that’s almost

pure alcohol and pass out wherever they happen to land. The police, such as they are, are

as brutal and sadistic as the citizens. As a gulag is ringed by guard towers, Nizhny Tagil

is surrounded by high-security prisons. Since the prison inmates are released without

even train fare they settle in the town. You, an American, cannot imagine the brutality,

the callousness of the residents of this human sewer. No one but the worst of the crims-as

the criminals are called-dares be on the streets after 10 PM.”

Maslov wiped the sweat off his cheeks with the back of his hand. “This is the place

where Arkadin was born and raised. It was from this cesspit that he made a name for

himself by kicking people out of their apartments in old Soviet-era projects and selling

them to criminals with a bit of money stolen from regular citizens.

“But whatever happened to Arkadin in Nizhny Tagil in his youth-and I don’t profess to

know what that might be-has followed him like a ghoul. Believe me when I tell you that

you’ve never met a man like him. You’re better off not.”

“I know where he is,” Bourne said. “I’m going after him.”

“Christ.” Maslov shook his head. “You must have a mighty fucking large death wish.”

“You don’t know my friend here,” Boris said.

Maslov eyed Bourne. “I know him as much as I want to, I think.” He stood up. “The

stench of death is already on him.”

Twenty-Nine

THE MAN who stepped off the plane in Munich airport, who dutifully went through

Customs and Immigration with all the other passengers from the many flights arriving at

more or less the same time, looked nothing like Semion Icoupov. His name was Franz

Richter, his passport proclaimed him as a German national, but underneath all the

makeup and prosthetics he was Semion Icoupov just the same.

Nevertheless, Icoupov felt naked, exposed to the prying eyes of his enemies, whom he

knew were everywhere. They waited patiently for him, like his own death. Ever since

boarding the plane he’d been haunted by a sense of impending doom. He hadn’t been

able to shake it on the flight, he couldn’t shake it now. He felt as if he’d come to Munich to stare his own death in the face.