Текст книги "The Bourne Sanction (Санкция Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

yeah, but it was skin-deep. Beneath it, she was a mass of fears.”

Devra put her head against the headrest as she continued, “In fact, the most vivid thing

I remember about my mother was her fear. It came off her like a stink. Even after she’d

bathed, I smelled it. Of course, for a long time I didn’t know what it was, and maybe I

was the only one who smelled it, I don’t know.

“Anyway, she used to tell me an old Ukrainian folktale. It was about the Nine Levels

of Hell. What was she thinking? Was she trying to frighten me or lessen her own fear by

sharing it with me? I don’t know. In any case, this is what she told me. There is one

heaven, but there are nine levels of hell where, depending on the severity of your sins,

you’re sent when you die.

“The first, the least bad, is the one familiar to everyone, where you roast in flames. The

second is where you’re alone on the summit of a mountain. Every night you freeze solid,

slowly and horribly, only to thaw out in the morning, when the process begins all over

again. The third is a place of blinding light; the fourth of pitch blackness. The fifth is a place of icy winds that cut you, quite literally, like a knife. In the sixth, you’re pierced by arrows. In the seventh, you’re slowly buried by an army of ants. In the eighth, you’re

crucified.

“But it was the ninth level that terrified my mother the most. There, you lived among

wild beasts that gorged themselves on human hearts.”

The cruelty of telling this to a child wasn’t lost on Arkadin. He was absolutely certain

that if his mother had been Ukrainian she’d have told him the same folktale.

“I used to laugh at her story-or at least I tried to,” Devra said. “I struggled against

believing such nonsense. But that was before a number of those levels of hell were visited

on us.”

Arkadin felt her presence inside him all the more deeply. The sense of wanting to

protect her seemed to bounce around inside him, increasing exponentially as his brain

tried to come to terms with what the feeling meant. Had he at last stumbled across

something big enough, bright enough, strong enough to put his demons to rest?

After Marlene’s death, Icoupov had seen the writing on the wall. He’d stopped trying

to peer into Arkadin’s past. Instead he’d shipped him off to America to be rehabilitated.

“Reprogrammed,” Icoupov had called it. Arkadin had spent eighteen months in the

Washington, DC, area going through a unique experimental program devised and run by

a friend of Icoupov’s. Arkadin had emerged changed in many ways, though his past-his

shadows, his demons-remained intact. How he wished the program had erased all

memory of it! But that wasn’t the nature of the program. Icoupov no longer cared about

Arkadin’s past, what concerned him was his future, and for that the program was ideal.

He fell asleep thinking about the program, but he dreamed he was back in Nizhny

Tagil. He never dreamed about the program; in the program he felt safe. His dreams

weren’t about safety; they were about being pushed from great heights.

Late at night, a subterranean bar called Crespi was the only option when he wanted to

get a drink in Nizhny Tagil. It was a reeking place, filled with tattooed men in tracksuits, gold chains around their necks, short-skirted women so heavily made up they looked like

store mannequins. Behind their raccoon eyes were vacant pits where their souls had been.

It was in Crespi where Arkadin at age thirteen was first beaten to a pulp by four burly

men with pig eyes and Neanderthal brows. And it was to Crespi that Arkadin, after

nursing his wounds, returned three months later and blew the men’s brains all over the

walls. When another crim tried to snatch his gun away, Arkadin shot him point-blank in

the face. That sight stopped anyone else in the bar from approaching him. It also gained

him a reputation, which helped him to amass a mini real estate empire.

But in that city of smelted iron and hissing slag success had its own particular

consequences. For Arkadin, it was coming to the attention of Stas Kuzin, one of the local

crime bosses. Kuzin found Arkadin one night, four years later, having a bare-knuckle

brawl with a giant lout whom Arkadin called out on a bet, for the prize of one beer.

Having demolished the giant, Arkadin grabbed his free beer, swigged half of it down,

and, turning, confronted Stas Kuzin. Arkadin knew him immediately; everyone in Nizhny

Tagil did. He had a thick black pelt of hair that came down in a horizontal slash to within an inch of his eyebrows. His head sat on his shoulders like a marble on a stone wall. His

jaw had been broken and reconstructed so badly-probably in prison-that he spoke with a

peculiar hissing sound, like a serpent. Sometimes what he said was all but unintelligible.

On either side of Kuzin were two ghoulish-looking men with sunken eyes and crude

tattoos of dogs on the backs of their hands, which marked them as forever bound to their

master.

“Let’s talk,” this monstrosity said to Arkadin, jerking his tiny head toward a table.

The men who’d been occupying the table rose as one when Kuzin approached, fleeing

to the other side of the bar. Kuzin hooked his shoe around a chair leg, dragged it around,

and sat down. Disconcertingly, he kept his hands in his lap, as if at any moment he’d

draw down on Arkadin and shoot him dead.

He began talking, but it took the seventeen-year-old Arkadin some minutes before he

could make heads or tails of what Kuzin was saying. It was like listening to a drowning

man going under for the third time. At length, he realized that Kuzin was proposing a

merger of sorts: half Arkadin’s stake in real estate for 10 percent of Kuzin’s operation.

And just what was Stas Kuzin’s operation? No one would speak about it openly, but

there was no lack of rumors on the subject. Everything from running spent nuclear fuel

rods for the big boys over in Moscow to white slave trading, drug trafficking, and

prostitution was laid at Kuzin’s doorstep. For his own part, Arkadin tended to dismiss the

more outlandish speculation in favor of what he very well knew would make Kuzin

money in Nizhny Tagil, namely, prostitution and drugs. Every man in the city had to get

laid, and if they had any money at all, drugs were far preferable to beer and bathtub

vodka.

Once again, want never appeared on Arkadin’s horizon, only need. He needed to do

more than survive in this city of permasoot, violence, and black lung disease. He had

come as far as he could on his own. He made enough to sustain himself here, but not

enough to break away to Moscow where he needed to go to grab life’s richest

opportunities. Outside, the rings of hell rose up: brick smokestacks, vigorously belching

particle-laden smoke, iron guard towers of the brutal prison zonas, bristling with assault

rifles, powerful spotlights, and bellowing sirens.

In here he was locked inside his own brutal zona with Stas Kuzin. Arkadin gave the

only sensible answer. He said yes, and so entered the ninth level of hell.

Thirty-One

WHILE ON LINE for passport control in Munich, Bourne phoned Specter, who

assured him everything was in readiness. Moments later he came in range of the first set

of the airport’s CCTV cameras. Instantly his image was picked up by the software

employed at Semion Icoupov’s headquarters, and before he’d finished his call to the

professor he’d been identified.

At once Icoupov was called, who ordered his people stationed in Munich to move from

standby to action, thus alerting both the airport personnel and the Immigration people

under Icoupov’s control. The man directing the incoming passengers to the different

cordoned-off lanes leading to the Immigration booths received a photo of Bourne on his

computer screen just in time to indicate Bourne should go to booth 3.

The Immigration officer manning booth 3 listened to the voice coming through the

electronic device in his ear. When the man identified to him as Jason Bourne handed over

his passport the officer asked him the usual questions-“How long do you intend to remain

in Germany? Is your visit business or pleasure?”-while paging through the passport. He

moved it away from the window, passed the photo under a humming purple light. As he

did so, he pressed a small metallic disk the thickness of a human nail into the inside back cover of the passport. Then he closed the booklet, smoothed its front and back covers,

and handed it back to Bourne.

“Have a pleasant stay in Munich,” he said without a trace of emotion or interest. He

was already looking beyond Bourne to the next passenger in line.

As in Sheremetyevo, Bourne had the sense that he was under physical surveillance. He

changed taxis twice when he arrived at the seething center of the city. In Marienplatz, a

large open square from which the historic Marian column ascended, he walked past

medieval cathedrals, through flocks of pigeons, lost himself within the crowds of guided

tours, gawping at the sugar-icing architecture and the looming twin domes of the

Frauenkirche, cathedral of the archbishop of Munich-Freising, the symbol of the city.

He inserted himself in a tour group gathered around a government building in which

was inset the city’s official shield, depicting a monk with hands spread wide. The tour

leader was telling her charges that the German name, Mьnchen, stemmed from an Old

High German word meaning “monks.” In 1158 or thereabouts, the current duke of

Saxony and Bavaria built a bridge over the Isar River, connecting the saltworks, for

which the growing city would soon become famous, with a settlement of Benedictine

monks. He installed a tollbooth on the bridge, which became a vital link in the Salt Route

in and out of the high Bavarian plains on which Munich was built, and a mint in which to

house his profits. The modern-day mercantile city was not so far removed from its

medieval beginnings.

When Bourne was certain he wasn’t being shadowed, he slipped away from the group

and boarded a taxi, which dropped him off six blocks from the Wittelsbach Palace.

According to the professor, Kirsch said he’d rather meet Bourne in a public setting. He

chose the State Museum for Egyptian Art on Hofgartenstrasse, which was housed within

the massive rococo facade of the Wittelsbach Palace. Bourne took a full circuit of the

streets around the palace, checking once more for tags, but he couldn’t recall being in

Munich before. He didn’t have that eerie sense of dйjа vu that meant he had returned to a

place he couldn’t remember. Therefore, he knew local tags would have the advantage of

terrain. There might be a dozen places to hide around the palace that he didn’t know

about.

Shrugging, he entered the museum. The metal detector was staffed by a pair of armed

security guards, who were also setting aside backpacks and picking through handbags.

On either side of the vestibule was a pair of basalt statues of the Egyptian god Horus-a

falcon with a disk of the sun on his forehead-and his mother, Isis. Instead of walking

directly to the exhibits, Bourne turned, stood behind the statue of Horus, watching for ten minutes as people came and went. He noted everyone between twenty-five and fifty,

memorizing their faces. There were seventeen in all.

He then made his way past a female armed guard, into the exhibition halls, where he

found Kirsch precisely where he told Specter he’d be, scrutinizing an ancient carving of a

lion’s head. He recognized Kirsch from the photo Specter had sent him, a snapshot of the

two men standing together on the university campus. The professor’s courier was a wiry

little man with a shiny bald skull and black eyebrows as thick as caterpillars. He had pale blue eyes that darted this way and that as if on gimbals.

Bourne went past him, ostensibly looking at several sarcophagi while using his

peripheral vision to check for any of the seventeen people who’d entered the museum

after him. When no one presented themselves, he retraced his steps.

Kirsch did not turn as Bourne came up beside him, but said, “I know it sounds

ridiculous, but doesn’t this sculpture remind you of something?”

“The Pink Panther,” Bourne said, both because it was the proper code response, and

because the sculpture did look astonishingly like the modern-day cartoon icon.

Kirsch nodded. “Glad you made it without incident.” He handed over the keys to his

apartment, the code for the front door, and detailed directions to it from the museum. He

looked relieved, as if he were handing over his burdensome life rather than his home.

“There are some features of my apartment I want to talk to you about.”

As Kirsch spoke they moved on to a granite sculpture of the kneeling Senenmut, from

the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

“The ancient Egyptians knew how to live,” Kirsch observed. “They weren’t afraid of

death. To them, it was just another journey, not to be undertaken lightly, but still they

knew there was something waiting for them after life.” He put his hand out, as if to touch

the statue or perhaps to absorb some of its potency. “Look at this statue. Life still glows within it, thousands of years later. For centuries the Egyptians had no equal.”

“Until they were conquered by the Romans.”

“And yet,” Kirsch said, “it was the Romans who were changed by the Egyptians. A

century after the Ptolemys and Julius Caesar ruled from Alexandria, it was Isis, the

Egyptian goddess of revenge and rebellion, who was worshipped throughout the Roman

Empire. In fact, it’s all too likely that the early Christian Church founders, unable to do away with her or her followers, transmogrified her, stripped her of her war-like nature,

and made from her the perfectly peaceful Virgin Mary.”

“Leonid Arkadin could use a little less Isis and a lot more Virgin Mary,” Bourne

mused.

Kirsch raised his eyebrows. “What do you know of this man?”

“I know a lot of dangerous people are terrified of him.”

“With good reason,” Kirsch said. “The man’s a homicidal maniac. He was born and

raised in Nizhny Tagil, a hotbed of homicidal maniacs.”

“So I’ve heard,” Bourne nodded.

“And there he would have stayed had it not been for Tarkanian.”

Bourne’s ears pricked up. He’d assumed that Maslov had put his man in Tarkanian’s

apartment because that’s where Gala was living. “Wait a minute, what does Tarkanian

have to do with Arkadin?”

“Everything. Without Mischa Tarkanian, Arkadin would never have escaped Nizhny

Tagil. It was Tarkanian who brought him to Moscow.”

“Are they both members of the Black Legion?”

“So I’ve been given to understand,” Kirsch said. “But I’m only an artist; the

clandestine life has given me an ulcer. If I didn’t need the money-I’m a singularly

unsuccessful artist, I’m afraid-I never would have stayed in this long. This was to be my

last favor for Specter.” His eyes continued to dart to the left and right. “Now that Arkadin has murdered Dieter Heinrich, last favor has taken on a new and terrifying meaning.”

Bourne was now on full alert. Specter had assumed that Tarkanian was Black Legion,

and Kirsch just confirmed it. But Maslov had denied Tarkanian’s affiliation with the

terrorist group. Someone was lying.

Bourne was about to ask Kirsch about the discrepancy when out of the corner of his

eye he spotted one of the men who’d come into the museum just after he had. The man

had paused for a moment in the vestibule, as if orienting himself, then strode purposefully off into the exhibition hall.

Because the man was close enough to overhear them in the museum’s hushed

atmosphere, Bourne took Kirsch’s arm. “Come this way,” he said, leading the German

contact into another room, which was dominated by a calcite statue of twins from the

Eighth Dynasty. It was chipped, time-worn, dating from 2390 BC.

Pushing Kirsch behind the statue, Bourne stood like a sentinel, watching the other

man’s movements. The man glanced up, saw that Bourne and Kirsch were no longer at

the statue of Senenmut, and looked casually around.

“Stay here,” Bourne whispered to Kirsch.

“What is it?” There was a slight quaver in Kirsch’s voice, but he looked stalwart

enough. “Is Arkadin here?”

“Whatever happens,” Bourne warned him, “stay put. You’ll be safe until I come get

you.”

As Bourne moved around the far side of the Egyptian twins, the man entered the

gallery. Bourne walked to the side opening and into the room beyond. The man,

sauntering nonchalantly, took a quick look around and, as if seeing nothing of interest,

followed Bourne.

This gallery held a number of high display cases but was dominated by a five-

thousand-year-old stone statue of a woman with half her head sheared off. The antiquity

was staggering, but Bourne had no time to appreciate it. Perhaps because it was toward

the rear of the museum, the room was deserted, save for Bourne and the man, who was

standing between Bourne and the one way in or out of the gallery.

Bourne placed himself behind a two-sided display case with a board in the center on

which were hung small artifacts-sacred blue scarabs and gold jewelry. Because of a

center gap in the board, Bourne could see the man, but the man remained unaware of his

position.

Standing completely still, Bourne waited until the man began to come around the right

side of the display case. Bourne moved quickly to his right, around the opposite side of

the case, and rushed the man.

He shoved him against the wall, but the man maintained his balance. As he took up a

defensive posture he pulled a ceramic knife from a sheath under his armpit, swung it back

and forth to keep Bourne at bay.

Bourne feinted right, moved left in a semi-crouch. As he did so, he swung his right arm

against the hand wielding the knife. His left hand grabbed the man by his throat. As the

man tried to drive his knee into Bourne’s belly, Bourne twisted to partially deflect the

blow. In so doing, he lost his block on the knife hand and now the blade swept in toward

the side of his neck. Bourne stopped it just before it struck, and there they stood, locked together in a kind of stalemate.

“Bourne,” the man finally got out. “My name is Jens. I work for Dominic Specter.”

“Prove it,” Bourne said.

“You’re here meeting with Egon Kirsch, so you can take his place when Leonid

Arkadin comes looking for him.”

Bourne let up on his grip of Jens’s neck. “Put away your knife.”

Jens did as Bourne asked, and Bourne let go of him completely.

“Now where’s Kirsch? I need to get him out of here and safely on a plane back to

Washington.”

Bourne led him back into the adjoining gallery, to the statue of the twins.

“Kirsch, the gallery’s clear. You can come out now.”

When the contact didn’t appear, Bourne stepped behind the statue. Kirsch was there all

right, crumpled on the floor, a bullet hole in the back of his head.

Semion Icoupov watched the receiver attuned to the electronic bug in Bourne’s

passport. As they approached the area of the Egyptian museum, he told the driver of his

car to slow down. A keen sense of anticipation coursed through him: He’d decided to

take Bourne by gunpoint into his car. It seemed the best way now to get him to listen to

what Icoupov had to tell him.

At that moment his cell phone sounded with the ringtone he’d assigned to Arkadin’s

number, and while on the lookout for Bourne he put the phone to his ear.

“I’m in Munich,” Arkadin said in his ear. “I rented a car, and I’m driving in from the

airport.”

“Good. I’ve got an electronic tag on Jason Bourne, the man Our Friend has sent to

retrieve the plans.”

“Where is he? I’ll take care of him,” Arkadin said in his typical blunt way.

“No, no, I don’t want him killed. I’ll take care of Bourne. In the meantime, stay

mobile. I’ll be in touch shortly.”

Bourne, kneeling down beside Kirsch, examined the dead body.

“There’s a metal detector out front,” Jens said. “How the hell could someone bring a

gun in here? Plus, there was no noise.”

Bourne turned Kirsch’s head so the back of it caught the light. “See here.” He pointed

to the entry wound. “And here. There’s no exit wound, which there would have been with

a shot fired at close range.” He stood up. “Whoever killed him used a suppressor.” He

went out of the gallery with a purposeful stride. “And whoever killed him works here as a

guard; the museum’s security personnel are armed.”

“There are three of them,” Jens said, keeping pace behind Bourne.

“Right. Two on the metal detector, one roaming the galleries.”

In the vestibule, the two guards were at their station beside the metal detector. Bourne

went up to one of them, said, “I lost my cell phone somewhere in the museum and the

guard in the second gallery said she’d help me locate it, but now I can’t find her.”

“Petra,” the guard said. “Yeah, she just took off for her lunch break.”

Bourne and Jens went through the front door, down the steps onto the sidewalk, where

they looked left and right. Bourne saw a uniformed female figure walking fast down the

block to their right, and he and Jens took off after her.

She disappeared around a corner, and the two men sprinted after her. As they neared

the corner Bourne became aware of a sleek Mercedes sedan as it came abreast of them.

Icoupov was appalled to discover Bourne exiting the museum in the company of Franz

Jens. Jens’s appearance told him that his enemy wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Jens’s

job was to keep Icoupov’s people away from Bourne, so that Bourne had a clear shot at

retrieving the attack plans. A certain dread gripped Icoupov. If Bourne was successful all

was lost; his enemy would have won. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

Leaning forward in the backseat, he drew a Luger.

“Pick up speed,” he told the driver.

Bracing himself against the door frame, he waited until the last instant before

depressing the button that slid the window down. He took aim at the running figure of

Jens, but Jens sensed him, slowed as he turned. With Bourne now safely three paces

ahead, Icoupov squeezed off two shots in succession.

Jens slipped to one knee, skidded off the sidewalk as he went down. Icoupov fired a

third shot, just to be sure Jens didn’t survive the attack, then he slid the window up.

“Go!” he said to the driver.

The Mercedes shot forward, down the street, screeching away from the bloody body

tangled in the gutter.

Thirty-Two

ROB BATT sat in his car, a pair of night-vision binoculars to his eyes, chewing over

the recent past as if it were a piece of gum that had lost its flavor.

From the time that Batt had been called into Veronica Hart’s office and confronted

with his treacherous actions against CI, he’d gone numb. At the moment, he’d felt

nothing for himself. Rather, his enmity toward Hart had morphed into pity. Or maybe, he

had thought, he pitied himself. Like a novice, he’d stepped into a bear trap; he’d trusted

people who never should have been trusted. LaValle and Halliday were going to have

their way, he had absolutely no doubt of it. Filled with self-disgust, he’d begun his long

night of drinking.

It wasn’t until the morning after that Batt, waking up with the father of all hangovers,

realized that there was something he could do about it. He thought about that for some

time, while he swallowed aspirins for his pounding head, chasing them down with a glass

of water and angostura bitters to calm his rebellious stomach.

It was then that the plan formed in his mind, unfolding like a flower to the rays of the

sun. He was going to get his revenge for the humiliation LaValle and Kendall had caused

him, and the real beauty part was this: If his scheme worked, if he brought them down,

he’d resuscitate his own career, which was on life support.

Now, sitting behind the wheel of a rented car, he swept the street across from the

Pentagon, on the lookout for General Kendall. Batt was canny enough to know better

than to go after LaValle, because LaValle was too smart to make a mistake. The same,

however, couldn’t be said for the general. If Batt had learned one thing from his abortive

association with the two it was that Kendall was a weak link. He was too tied to LaValle,

too slavish in his attitude. He needed someone to tell him what to do. The desire to please was what made followers vulnerable; they made mistakes their leaders didn’t.

He suddenly saw life the way it must appear to Jason Bourne. He knew the work that

Bourne had done for Martin Lindros in Reykjavik and knew that Bourne had put himself

on the line to find Lindros and bring him home. But like most of his former co-workers,

Batt had conveniently dismissed Bourne’s actions as collateral happenstance, choosing to

stick to the common wisdom that Bourne was an out-of-control paranoid who needed to

be stopped before he committed some heinous act that would disgrace CI. And yet,

people in CI had had no compunction about using him when all else failed, coercing him

into playing as their pawn. But at last he, Batt, was no one’s pawn.

He saw General Kendall exit a side door of the building and, huddled in his trench-

coat, hurry across the lot to his car. He kept the general in his sights as he put one hand on the keys he’d already inserted in the ignition. At the precise moment Kendall leaned

his right shoulder forward to start his engine, Batt flipped his own ignition, so Kendall

didn’t hear another car start when his did.

As the general pulled out of the lot, Batt set aside the night glasses and put his car in

gear. The night seemed quiet and still, but maybe that was simply a reflection of Batt’s

mood. He was a sentinel of the night, after all. He’d been trained by the Old Man himself;

he’d always been proud of that fact. After his downfall, though, he realized that it was

this pride that had distorted his thinking and his decision making. It was his pride that

made him rebel against Veronica Hart, not because of anything she said or did-he hadn’t

even given her the chance-but because he’d been passed over. Pride was his weakness,

one that LaValle had recognized and exploited. Twenty-twenty hindsight was a bitch, he

thought as he followed Kendall toward the Fairfax area, but at least it provided the

humility he needed to see how far he’d strayed from his sworn duties at CI.

He kept well back of the general’s car, varying his distance and his lane the better to

avoid detection. He doubted that Kendall would consider that he might be followed, but it

paid to be cautious. Batt was determined to atone for the sin he’d committed against his

own organization, against the memory of the Old Man.

Kendall turned in at an anonymous modern-looking building whose entire ground floor

was taken up by the In-Tune health club. Batt observed the general park, take out a small

gym bag, and enter the club. Nothing useful so far, but Batt had long ago learned to be

patient. On stakeouts it seemed nothing came quickly or easily.

And then, because he had nothing better to do until Kendall reappeared, Batt stared at

the IN-TUNE sign while he bit hunks off a Snickers bar. Why did that sign seem

familiar? He knew he had never been inside, had never, in fact, been in this part of

Fairfax. Maybe it was the name: In-Tune. Yes, he thought, it sounded maddeningly

familiar, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of why.

Fifty minutes had passed since Kendall had gone in; time to train his night glasses on

the entrance. He watched people of all description and build come in and out. Most were

solitary figures; occasionally two women came out talking, once a couple emerged,

headed in tandem for their car.

Another fifteen minutes passed and still no Kendall. Batt had taken the glasses away

from his eyes to give them a rest when he saw the gym door swung open. Fitting the

binoculars back to his eyes he saw Rodney Feir step out into the night. Are you kidding

me? Batt thought.

Feir ran his hand through his damp hair. And that’s when Batt remembered why the

name In-Tune was so familiar. All CI directors were required to post their whereabouts

after hours so if they were needed the duty officer could calculate how long it would take

them to get back to headquarters.

Watching Feir walk over and get into his car, Batt bit his lip. Of course it might be

sheer coincidence that General Kendall used the same health club as Feir, but Batt knew

that in his trade there was no such thing as coincidence.

His suspicion was borne out when Feir did not fire up his car, but sat silent and still

behind the wheel. He was waiting for something, but what? Maybe, Batt thought, it was

someone.

Ten minutes later, General Kendall emerged from the club. He looked neither to the

right nor the left, but went immediately to his car, started it up, and began to back out of his space. Before he’d exited the lot, Feir started his car. Kendall turned right out of the lot and Feir followed.

Excitement flared in Batt’s chest. Game on! he thought.

After the first two shots struck Jens, Bourne turned back toward him, but the third shot

fired into Jens’s head made him change his mind. He ran down the street, knowing the

other man was dead, there was nothing he could do for him. He had to assume that

Arkadin had followed Jens to the museum and had been lying in wait.

Turning the same corner as the museum guard, Bourne saw that she had hesitated, half

turned to the sound of the shots. Then, seeing Bourne coming after her, she took off. She

darted into an alley. Bourne, following, saw her vault up a corrugated steel fence, beyond

which was a cleared building site bristling with heavy machinery. She grabbed hold of

the top of the fence, levered herself up and over.

Bourne scaled the fence after her, jumping down onto the packed earth and concrete

rubble on the other side. He saw her duck behind the mud-spattered flank of a bulldozer,

and ran toward her. She swung up into the cab, slid behind the wheel, and fumbled with

the ignition.

Bourne was quite close when the engine rumbled to life. Throwing the bulldozer into

reverse, she backed up directly at him. She’d chosen a clumsy vehicle, and he leapt to

one side, reached for a handhold, and swung up. The bulldozer lurched, the gears

grinding as she struggled to shove it into first, but Bourne was already inside the cab.