Текст книги "The Bourne Sanction (Санкция Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

His driver was waiting for him at baggage claim. The man, heavily armed, took the one

piece of luggage Icoupov pointed out to him off the chrome carousel, carried it as he led

Icoupov through the crowded concourse and out into the dull Munich evening, gray as

morning. It wasn’t as cold as it had been in Switzerland, but it was wetter, the chill as

penetrating as Icoupov’s foreboding.

It wasn’t fear he felt so much as sorrow. Sorrow that he might not see this battle

finished, that his hated nemesis would win, that old grudges would not be settled, that his father’s memory would remain sullied, that his murder would remain unavenged.

To be sure, there had been attrition on both sides, he thought as he settled into the

backseat of the dove-gray Mercedes. The endgame had begun and already he sensed the

checkmate waiting for him not far off. It was difficult but necessary for him to admit that he had been outmaneuvered at every turn. Perhaps he wasn’t up to carrying the vision his

father had for the Eastern Brotherhood; perhaps the corruption and inversion of ideals

had gone too far. Whatever the case, he had lost a great deal of ground to his enemy, and

Icoupov had come to the bleak conclusion that he had only one chance to win. His chance

rested with Arkadin, the plans for the Black Legion’s attack on New York City’s Empire

State Building, and Jason Bourne. For he realized now that his nemesis was too strong.

Without the American’s help, he feared his cause was lost.

He stared out the smoked-glass window at the looming skyline of Munich. It gave him

a shiver to be back here, where it all began, where the Eastern Brotherhood was saved

from Allied war trials following the collapse of the Third Reich.

At that time his father-Farid Icoupov-and Ibrahim Sever were jointly in charge of what

was left of the Eastern Legions. Up until the Nazi surrender, Farid, the intellectual, ran

the intelligence network that infiltrated the Soviet Union, while Ibrahim, the warrior,

commanded the legions that fought on the Eastern Front.

Six months before the Reich’s capitulation, the two men met outside Berlin. They saw

the end, even if the lunatic Nazi hierarchy was oblivious. So they laid plans for how to

ensure their people would survive the war’s aftermath. The first thing Ibrahim did was to

move his soldiers out of harm’s way. By that juncture the Nazi bureaucratic infrastructure

had been decimated by Allied bombing, so it was not difficult to redeploy his people into

Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and Italy, where they were safe from the reflexive violence

of the first wave of invading Allies.

Because Farid and Ibrahim despised Stalin, because they were witness to the massive

scale of the atrocities ordered by him, they were in a unique position to understand the

Allied fear of communism. Farid argued persuasively that soldiers would be of no use to

the Allies, but an intelligence network already inside the Soviet Union would be

invaluable. He keenly understood how antithetical communism was to capitalism, that the

Americans and the Soviets were allies out of necessity. He felt it inevitable that after the war was over these uncomfortable allies would become bitter enemies.

Ibrahim had no recourse but to agree with his friend’s thesis, and indeed this was how

it turned out. At every step, Farid and Ibrahim brilliantly outmaneuvered the postwar

German agencies in keeping control of their people. As a result, the Eastern Legions not

only survived but in fact prospered in postwar Germany.

Farid, however, fairly quickly uncovered a pattern of violence that made him

suspicious. German officials who disagreed with his eloquent arguments for continued

control were replaced by ones who did. That was odd enough, but then he discovered that

those original officials no longer existed. To a one, they had dropped out of sight, never

to be seen or heard from again.

Farid bypassed the weakling German bureaucracy and went straight to the Americans

with his concerns, but he was unprepared for their response, which was one big shrug. No

one, it seemed, cared the least bit about disappeared Germans. They were all too busy

defending their slice of Berlin to be bothered.

It was about this time that Ibrahim came to him with the idea of moving the Eastern

Legions’ headquarters to Munich, out of the way of the increasing antagonism between

the Americans and the Soviets. Fed up with the American’s disinterest, Farid readily

agreed.

They found postwar Munich a bombed-out wreck, seething with immigrant Muslims.

Ibrahim wasted no time in recruiting these people into the organization, which by this

time had changed its name to the Eastern Brotherhood. For his part, Farid found the

American intelligence community in Munich far more receptive to his arguments. Indeed,

they were desperate for him and his network. Emboldened, he told them that if they

wanted to make a formal arrangement with the Eastern Brotherhood for intelligence from

behind the Iron Curtain, they had to look into the disappearances of the list of former

German officials he handed them.

It took three months, but at the end of that time he was asked to appear before a man

named Brian Folks, whose official title was American attachй of something-or-other. In

fact, he was OSS chief of station in Munich, the man who received the intel Farid’s

network provided him from inside the Soviet Union.

Folks told him that the unofficial investigation Farid asked him to undertake had now

been completed. Without another word, he handed over a slim file, sat without comment

as Farid read it. The folder contained the photos of each of the German officials on the

list Farid had provided. Following each photo was a sheet detailing the findings. All the

men were dead. All had been shot in the back of the head. Farid read through this meager

material with an increasing sense of frustration. Then he looked up at Folks and said, “Is

this it? Is this all there is?”

Folks watched Farid from behind steel-rimmed glasses. “It’s all that appears in the

report,” he said. “But those aren’t all the findings.” He held out his hand, took the file

back. Then he turned, put the sheets one by one through a shredder. When he was

finished, he threw the empty folder into the wastebasket, the contents of which were

burned every evening at precisely 5 PM.

Following this solemn ritual, he placed his hands on his desk, said to Farid, “The

finding of most interest to you is this: Evidence collected indicates conclusively that the murders of these men were committed by Ibrahim Sever.”

Tyrone shifted on the bare concrete floor. It was so slippery with his own fluids that

one knee went out from under him, splaying him so painfully that he cried out. Of course,

no one came to help him; he was alone in the interrogation cell in the basement of the

NSA safe house deep in the Virginia countryside. He had to quite literally locate himself

in his mind, had to trace the route he and Soraya had taken when they’d driven to the safe

house. When? Three days ago? Ten hours? What? The rendition he’d been subjected to

had erased any sense of time. The hood over his head threatened to erase his sense of

place, so that periodically he had to say to himself: “I’m in an interrogation cell in the

basement of the NSA safe house in”-and here he would recite the name of the last town

he and Soraya had passed… when?

That was the problem, really. His sense of disorientation was so complete, there were

periods when he couldn’t distinguish up from down. Worse, those periods were becoming

both longer and more frequent.

The pain was hardly an issue because he was used to pain, though never this intense or

prolonged. It was the disorientation that was worming its way into his brain like a

surgeon’s drill. It seemed that with each bout he was losing more of himself, as if he were made up of grains of salt or sand trickling away from him. And what would happen when

they were all gone? What would he become?

He thought of DJ Tank and the rest of his former crew. He thought of Deron, of Kiki,

but none of those tricks worked. They’d slip away like mist and he’d be left to the void

into which, he was increasingly sure, he’d disappear. Then he thought of Soraya,

conjured her piece by piece, as if he were a sculptor, molding her out of a lump of clay.

And he found that as his mind lovingly re-created each minute bit of her, he miraculously

stayed intact.

As he struggled back to a position that was tolerably painful, he heard a metallic

scrape, and his head came up. Before anything else could transpire, the scents of freshly

cooked eggs and bacon came to him, making his mouth water. He’d been fed nothing but

plain oatmeal since he was brought here. And at inconsistent times-sometimes one meal

right after the other-in order to keep his disorientation absolute.

He heard the scuff of leather soles-two men, his ears told him.

Then General Kendall’s voice, saying imperiously, “Set the food on the table, Willard.

Right there, thank you. That will be all.”

One set of shoe soles clacked across the floor, the sound of the door closing. Silence.

Then the screech of a chair being hitched across the concrete. Kendall was sitting down,

Tyrone surmised.

“What have we here?” Kendall said, clearly to himself. “Ah, my favorite: eggs over

easy, bacon, buttered grits, hot biscuits and gravy.” The sound of cutlery being taken up.

“You like grits, Tyrone? You like biscuits and gravy?”

Tyrone wasn’t too far gone to be incensed. “On’y ting I like betta is watermelon, sah.”

“That’s a damn fine imitation of one of your brethren, Tyrone.” He was obviously

talking while eating. “This is damn fine chow. Would you like some?”

Tyrone’s stomach growled so loudly he was sure Kendall heard it.

“All you gotta do is tell me everything you and the Moore woman were up to.”

“I don’t rat anyone out,” Tyrone said bitterly.

“Um.” The sounds of Kendall swallowing. “That’s what they all say in the beginning.”

He chewed some more. “You do know this is just the beginning, don’t you, Tyrone? Sure

you do. Just like you know the Moore woman isn’t going to save you. She’s going to

hang you out to dry, sure as I’m sitting here eating the most mouthwatering biscuits I

ever had. You know why? Because LaValle gave her a choice: you or Jason Bourne. You

know her history with Bourne. She might claim she didn’t fuck him but you and I know

better.”

“She never slept with him,” Tyrone said before he could stop himself.

“Sure. She told you that.” Munch, munch, munch went Kendall’s jaws, shredding the

crisp bacon. “What’d you expect her to say?”

The sonovabitch was playing mind games with him, Tyrone knew that for a fact.

Trouble was, he wasn’t lying. Tyrone knew how Soraya felt about Bourne-it was written

all over her face every time she saw him or his name came up. Though she’d said

otherwise, the question Kendall had just raised had gnawed at him like an addict at a

candy bar.

It was difficult not to envy Bourne with his freedom, his encyclopedic knowledge, his

friendship as equals with Deron. But all these things Tyrone dealt with in his own way. It

was Soraya’s love for Bourne that was so hard to live with.

He heard the scrape of chair legs and then felt the presence of Kendall as he squatted

down beside him. It was astonishing, Tyrone thought, how much heat another human

being gave off.

“I have to say, Tyrone, you really have taken a beating,” Kendall said. “I think you

deserve a reward for how well you’ve held up. Shit, we’ve had suspects in here who were

crying for their mamas after twenty-four hours. Not you, though.” The quick click-clack

of a metal utensil against a china plate. “How about some eggs and bacon? Man, this was

some big plate of food, I surely can’t finish it myself. So come on. Join me.”

As the hood was raised high enough to expose his mouth Tyrone was conflicted. His

mind told him to refuse the offer, but his severely shrunken stomach yearned for real

food. He could smell the rich flavors of bacon and eggs, felt the food warm as a kiss

against his lips.

“Hey, man, what’re you waiting for?”

Fuck it, Tyrone said to himself. The tastes of the food exploded inside his mouth. He

wanted to moan in pleasure. He wolfed down the first few forkfuls fed to him, then

forced himself to chew slowly and methodically, extracting every bit of flavor from the

hickory-smoked meat and the rich yolk.

“Tastes good,” Kendall said. He must have regained his feet because his voice was

above Tyrone when he said, “Tastes real good, doesn’t it?”

Tyrone was about to nod his assent when pain exploded in the pit of his stomach. He

grunted when it came again. He’d been kicked before, so he knew what Kendall was

doing. The third kick landed. He tried to hold on to his food, but the involuntary reaction had begun. A moment later he vomited up all the delicious food Kendall had fed him.

The Munich courier is the last one in the network,” Devra said. “His name is Egon

Kirsch, but that’s all I know. I never met him; no one I know did. Pyotr made sure that

link was completely compartmentalized. So far as I know Kirsch dealt directly with Pyotr

and no one else.”

“Who does Kirsch deliver his intel to?” Arkadin said. “Who’s at the other end of the

network?”

“I have no idea.”

He believed her. “Did Heinrich and Kirsch have a particular meeting place?”

She shook her head.

On the Lufthansa flight from Istanbul to Munich he sat shoulder-to-shoulder with her

and wondered what the hell he was doing. She’d given him all the information he was

going to get from her. He had the plans; he was on the last lap of his mission. All that

remained was to deliver the plans to Icoupov, find Kirsch, and persuade him to lead

Arkadin back to the end of the network. Child’s play.

Which begged the question of what to do with Devra. He’d already made up his mind

to kill her, as he’d killed Marlene and so many others. It was a fait accompli, a fixed

point detailed in his mind, a diamond that only needed polishing to sparkle into life.

Sitting in the jetliner he heard the quick report from the gun, leaves falling over her dead body, covering her like a blanket.

Devra, who was seated on the aisle, got up, made her way back to the lavatories.

Arkadin closed his eyes and was back in the sooty stench of Nizhny Tagil, men with filed

teeth and blurry tattoos, women old before their time, bent, swigging homemade vodka

from plastic soda bottles, girls with sunken eyes, bereft of a future. And then the mass

grave…

His eyes popped open. He was having difficulty breathing. Heaving himself to his feet,

he followed Devra. She was the last of the passengers waiting. The accordion door on the

right opened, an older women bustled out, squeezed by Devra then Arkadin. Devra went

into the lavatory, closed the door, and locked it. The OCCUPIED sign came on.

Arkadin walked to the door, stood in front of it for a moment. Then he knocked on it

gently.

“Just a minute,” her voice came to him.

Leaning his head against the door, he said, “Devra, it’s me.” And after a short silence,

“Open the door.”

A moment later, the door folded back. She stood in front of him.

“I want to come in,” he said.

Their eyes locked for the space of several heartbeats as each tried to gauge the intent of

the other.

Then she backed up against the tiny sink, Arkadin stepped inside, with some difficulty

shut the door behind him, and turned the lock.

Thirty

IT’S STATE-OF-THE-ART,” Gunter Mьller said. “Guaranteed.”

Both he and Moira were wearing hard hats as they walked through the series of semi-

automated workshops of Kaller Steelworks Gesellschaft, where the coupling link that

would receive the LNG tankers as they nosed into the NextGen Long Beach terminal had

been manufactured.

Mьller, the team leader on the NextGen coupling link project, was a senior vice

president of Kaller, a smallish man dressed impeccably in a conservatively cut three-

piece chalk-striped suit, expensive shoes, and a tie in black and gold, Munich’s colors

since the time of the Holy Roman Empire. His skin was bright pink, as if he’d just had his

face steam-cleaned, and thick brown hair, graying at the sides. He talked slowly and

distinctly in good English, though he was rather endearingly weak with modern

American idioms.

At each step he explained the manufacturing process with excruciating detail, great

pride. Spread out before them were the design drawings, along with the specs, to which

Mьller referred time and again.

Moira was listening with only one ear. How her situation had changed now that the

Firm was out of the picture, now that NextGen was on its own with the security of its

terminal operations in Long Beach, now that she had been reassigned.

But the more things change, she thought, the more they stay the same. The moment

Noah had handed her the packet for Damascus she knew she wouldn’t disengage herself

from the Long Beach terminal project. No matter what Noah or his bosses had

determined she couldn’t leave NextGen or this project in jeopardy. Mьller, like everyone

else at Kaller and, for that matter, nearly everyone at NextGen, had no idea she worked

for the Firm. Only she knew she should be on a flight to Damascus, not here with him.

She had a grace period of mere hours before her contact at NextGen would begin to ask

questions as to why she was still on the LNG terminal project. By then, she hoped to

convince NextGen’s president of the wisdom of her disobeying the Firm’s orders.

Finally, they reached the loading bay where the sixteen parts of the coupling link were

being packed for shipment by air to Long Beach on the NextGen 747 jet that had brought

her and Bourne to Munich.

“As specified in the contract, our team of engineers will be accompanying you on the

homeward journey.” Mьller rolled up the drawings, snapped a rubber band around them,

and handed them to Moira. “They’ll be in charge of putting the coupling link together on

site. I have every confidence that all will go smoothly.”

“It had better,” Moira said. “The LNG tanker is scheduled to dock at the terminal in

thirty hours.” She shot Mьller an unpleasant look. “Not much leeway for your engineers.”

“Not to worry, Fraulein Trevor,” he said cheerfully. “They’re more than up to the

task.”

“For your company’s sake, I sincerely hope so.” She stowed the roll under her left arm,

preparatory to leaving. “Shall we speak frankly, Herr Mьller?”

He smiled. “Always.”

“I wouldn’t have had to come here at all had it not been for the string of delays that set

your manufacturing process back.”

Mьller’s smile seemed immovable. “My dear Fraulein, as I explained to your

superiors, the delays were unavoidable-please blame the Chinese for the temporary

shortage of steel, and the South Africans for the energy shortages that is forcing the

platinum mines to work at half speed.” He spread his hands. “We’ve done the best we

could, I assure you.” His smile widened. “And now we are at the end of our journey

together. The coupling link will be in Long Beach within eighteen hours, and eight hours

later it will be in one piece and ready to receive your tanker of liquid natural gas.” He

stuck out his hand. “All will have a happy ending, yes?”

“Of course it will. Thank you, Herr Mьller.”

Mьller nearly clicked his heels. “The pleasure is all mine, Fraulein.”

Moira walked back through the factory with Mьller at her side. She said good-bye to

him once more at the gates to the factory, walked across the gravel drive to where her

chauffeured car sat waiting for her, its precisely engineered German engine purring

quietly.

They pulled out of the Kaller Steelworks property, turned left toward the autobahn

back to Munich. Five minutes later, her driver said, “There’s a car following us,

Fraulein.”

Turning around, Moira peered out the back window. A small Volks-wagen, no more

than fifty yards behind them, flashed its headlights.

“Pull over.” She pushed aside the hem of her long skirt, took a SIG Sauer out of the

holster strapped to her left ankle.

The driver did as he was told, and the car came to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

The Volkswagen pulled in behind. Moira sat waiting for something to happen; she was

too well trained to get out of the car.

At length, the Volkswagen drove off the shoulder, into the underbrush, where it

disappeared from sight. A moment later a man became visible tramping out onto the side

of the road. He was tall and narrow, with a pencil mustache and suspenders holding up

his trousers. He was in his shirtsleeves, oblivious to the German winter chill. She could

see that he had no weapons on him, which, she reasoned, was the point. When he came

abreast of her car, she leaned across the backseat, opened the door for him, and he slipped inside.

“My name is Hauser, Fraulein Trevor. Arthur Hauser.” His expression was morose,

bitter. “I apologize for the incivility of this impromptu meeting, but I assure you the

melodrama is necessary.” As if to underscore his words, he glanced back down the road

toward the factory, his expression fearful. “I do not have much time so I shall come

straight to the point. There is a flaw in the coupling link-not, I hasten to add, in the

hardware. That, I assure you, is absolutely sound. But there is a problem with the

software. Nothing that will interfere with the operation of the link, no, not at all. It is, rather, a security flaw-a window, if you will. The chances are it might never be

discovered, but all the same it’s there.”

When Hauser glanced again out the back window a car was coming toward them. He

clamped his jaws shut, watched as the vehicle passed by, then visibly relaxed as it drove

on down the road.

“Herr Mьller was not altogether truthful. The delays were caused by this software flaw,

nothing else. I should know, since I was part of the software design team. We tried for a

patch, but it’s been devilishly difficult, and we ran out of time.”

“Just how serious is this flaw?” Moira said.

“It depends on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist.” Hauser ducked his head,

embarrassed. “As I said, it might never be discovered.”

Moira glanced out the window for a time, thinking that she shouldn’t ask the next

question because, as Noah told her in no uncertain terms, the Firm was now out of

ensuring the security of NextGen’s LNG terminal.

And then she heard herself say, “What if I’m a pessimist?”

Peter Marks found Rodney Feir, chief of field support, in the CI caff, eating a bowl of

New England clam chowder. Feir looked up, gestured to Marks to sit. Peter Marks had

been elevated to chief of operations after the ill-starred Rob Batt was outed as an NSA

rat.

“How’s it going?” Feir said.

“How d’you think it’s going?” Marks parked himself on the chair opposite Feir. “I’ve

been vetting every one of Batt’s contacts for any sign of NSA taint. It’s daunting and

frustrating work. You?”

“As exhausted as you, I expect.” Feir sprinkled oyster crackers into the chowder. “I’ve

been briefing the new DCI on everything from agents in the field to the cleaning firm

we’ve used for the past twenty years.”

“D’you think she’ll work out?”

Feir knew he had to be careful here. “I’ll say this for her: She’s a stickler for detail. No stone unturned. She’s not leaving anything to chance.”

“That’s a relief.” Marks twiddled a fork between his thumb and fingers. “What we

don’t need is another crisis. I’d be happy with someone who can right this listing ship.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“The reason I’m here,” Marks said, “is I’m having a staffing problem. I’ve lost some

people to attrition. Of course, that’s inevitable. I thought I’d get some good recruits

graduating from the program, but they went to Typhon. I’m in need of a short-term fix.”

Feir chewed on a mouthful of gritty clam bits and soft potato cubes. He’d diverted

those graduates to Typhon and had been waiting for Marks to come to him ever since.

“How can I help?”

“I’d like some of Dick Symes’s people to be assigned to my directorate.” Dick Symes

was the chief of intelligence. “Just temporarily, you understand, until I can get some raw

recruits through training and orientation.”

“Have you talked to Dick?”

“Why bother? He’ll just tell me to go to hell. But you can plead my case to Hart. She’s

so snowed under that you’re the one best suited to get her to listen to me. If she makes the call Dick can yell all he wants, it won’t matter.”

Feir wiped his lips. “What number of personnel are we talking here, Peter?”

“Eighteen, two dozen tops.”

“Not inconsiderable. The DCI is going to want to know what you have in mind.”

“I’ve got a brief detailing it all ready to go,” Marks said. “I shoot it to you

electronically, you walk it in to her personally.”

Feir nodded. “I think that can be arranged.”

Relief flooded Marks’s face. “Thanks, Rodney.”

“Don’t mention it.” He began to dig into what was left of the chowder. As Marks was

about to rise, he said, “Do you by any chance know where Soraya is? She’s not in her

office and she’s not answering her cell.”

“Unh-unh.” Marks resettled himself. “Why?”

“No reason.”

Something in Feir’s voice gave him pause. “No reason? Really?”

“Just, you know how office scuttlebutt can be.”

“Meaning?”

“You two are tight, aren’t you.”

“Is that what you heard?”

“Well, yeah.” Feir placed his spoon into the empty bowl. “But if it isn’t true-”

“I don’t know where she is, Rodney.” Marks’s gaze drifted off. “We never had that

kind of thing going.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

Marks waved away his apology. “Forget it. I have. So what do you want to talk with

her about?”

This was what Feir was hoping he’d say. According to the general, he and LaValle

required intel on the nuts and bolts of how Typhon worked. “Budgets. She’s got so many

agents in the field, the DCI wants an accounting of their expenses-which, frankly, hasn’t

been done since Martin died.”

“That’s understandable, given what’s been going on in here lately.”

Feir shrugged deferentially. “I’d do it myself; Soraya’s got more on her plate than she

can handle, I imagine. Trouble is, I don’t even know where the files are.” He was going

to add: Do you? but decided that would be overselling it.

Marks thought a minute. “I might be able to help you there.”

How badly does your shoulder hurt?” Devra said.

Arkadin, pressed against her body, his powerful arms around her, said, “I don’t know

how to answer that. I have an extremely high tolerance for pain.”

The airplane’s cramped bathroom allowed him to concentrate exclusively on her. It

was like being in a coffin together, like being dead, but in a strange afterlife where only they existed.

She smiled up at him as one of his hands traced its way from the small of her back to

her neck. His thumb pressed against her jaw, gently tilted her head up while his fingers

tightened on the nape of her neck.

He leaned in, his weight arching her torso backward above the sink. He could see the

back of her head in the mirror, his face about to eclipse hers. A flame of emotion

flickered to life, illuminating the soulless void inside him.

He kissed her.

“Gently,” she whispered. “Relax your lips.”

Her moist lips opened beneath his, her tongue searched for his, tentatively at first, then

with an unmistakable hunger. His lips trembled. He had never felt anything when kissing

a woman. In fact, he’d always done his best to avoid it, not knowing what it was for, or

why women sought it so relentlessly. An exchange of fluids, that’s all it was to him, like

a procedure performed in a doctor’s office. The best he could say was that it was painless, that it was over quickly.

The electricity that shot through him when his lips met hers stunned him. The sheer

pleasure of it astonished him. It hadn’t been like this with Marlene; it hadn’t been like

this with anyone. He did not know what to make of the tremor in his knees. Her sweet,

moaning exhalations entered him like silent cries of ecstasy. He swallowed them whole,

and wanted more.

Wanting was something Arkadin was unused to. Need was the word that had driven his

life up to this moment: He needed to revenge himself on his mother, he needed to escape

home, he needed strike out on his own, no matter the course, he needed to bury rivals and

enemies, he needed to destroy anyone who got close to his secrets. But want? That was

another matter entirely. Devra defined want for him. And it was only when he was certain

he no longer needed her that his desire revealed itself. He wanted her.

When he lifted her skirt, probing underneath, her leg drew up. Her fingers nimbly freed

him from his clothing. Then he stopped thinking altogether.

Afterward, when they’d returned to their seats, making their way through the line of

glaring passengers queued up to use the lavatory, Devra burst into laughter. Arkadin sat

watching her. This was another thing unique about her. Anyone else would have asked,

Was that your first time? Not her. She wasn’t interested in prying his lid open, peering

inside to see what made him tick. She had no need to know. Because he was someone

who had always needed something, he couldn’t tolerate that trait in anyone else.

He was aware of her next to him in a way he was unable to understand. It was as if he

could feel her heartbeat, the rush of blood through her body, a body that seemed frail to

him, even though he knew how tough she could be, after all she’d suffered. How easily

her bones could be broken, how easily a knife slipped through her ribs might pierce her

heart, how easily a bullet could shatter her skull. These thoughts sent him into a rage, and he shifted closer to her, as if she were in need of protection-which, when it came to her

former allies, she most certainly was. He knew then that he’d do everything in his power

to kill anyone who sought to do her harm.

Feeling him edge closer, she turned and smiled. “You know something, Leonid, for the

first time in my life I feel safe. All that prickly shit I give off is something I learned early on to keep people away.”

“You learned to be tough like your mother.”

She shook her head. “That’s the really shitty part. My mother had this tough shell,