Текст книги "The Bourne Deception (Обман Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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―Jaws of Life. In his case, it didn‘t help.‖ Dave helped her to squat down beside the corpse, held her up as another wave of dizziness threatened to topple her. ―It might be my job for this,‖ he said.

―Relax. My friends will keep you safe.‖ Her eyes were roving over every inch of the wasteland that was Jay. ―Jesus, nothing could survive this mash-up.‖

―What are you looking for?‖

―I wish I knew, but his jacket…‖

Dave reached down, drew something out from underneath the wreckage. ―You mean this?‖

Moira‘s heart rate accelerated. It was Jay‘s sapphire-blue suede jacket, miraculously unscathed except for a couple of burned patches on the sleeves.

It stank of smoke and toasted cologne.

―Believe it or not, things like this happen all the time,‖ Dave said. He had deliberately positioned himself between Moira and the two cops who now brushed by Earl, having had their fill of his medical gobbledygook. ―We find things—wallets, keys, baseball caps, condoms—you wouldn‘t believe—in virtually mint condition, thrown clear of the most horrendous wrecks.‖

Moira was listening with only one ear as her nimble fingers rifled through the outer and inner pockets. Rolaids, two rubber bands, a paper clip, a pinch of lint. Inside pockets contained no wallet or ID of any kind, which was standard operating procedure. If he got into trouble or needed clearance he made a call. Money was somewhere on his person, burned to a crisp. But speaking of his cell, she palmed it as Dave rose to intercept the cops.

She was about to give up when she spotted the loose thread at one of the inside seams. Pulling it opened a small hole out of which she dug a two-gigabyte thumb drive. Hearing the sound of heavy footfalls coming up behind her, she made the sign of the cross over Jay‘s body and, with Dave‘s strong hand gripping her elbow, stood up to face her wearying interview with the Warm Jets.

Which turned out to be fully as stultifying and dunderheaded as she had foreseen, but at least she had the last laugh because before they got around to asking her the same questions for the third time she pulled out her Federal Securities Act ID, at which point they went silent. It was all Dave and Earl could do not to snicker into their red faces.

―About this traffic cop,‖ Moira said. ―I need to know who he was. I‘ve already told you twice even though you clearly didn‘t believe me, he discharged his weapon through the side window of Mr. Weston‘s Audi.‖

―And you say Mr. Weston worked for you?‖ The taller of the two cops was a badge named Severin.

When she said yes, he nodded at his partner, who stepped away to use his cell phone.

―What were you doing kneeling over the body?‖ Severin said. Maybe he was just marking time, because he‘d seen what she was doing and he‘d already asked her twice.

―Praying for my friend‘s soul.‖

Severin frowned, though he nodded, possibly in sympathy. Then he jerked his head at Dave and Earl. ―These yahoos shouldn‘t have let you anywhere near your friend. This is a crime scene.‖

―So I understand.‖

His frown deepened, but the nature of his thoughts remained a mystery as his partner returned to the huddle.

―Here‘s a kick in the groin,‖ he said facetiously. ―There‘s no record of a motorcycle police from traffic or from any other department, for that matter, in this vicinity in the time frame we have.‖

―Damn it to hell.‖

Moira palmed open her cell, but before she had a chance to make a call, two men strode up. They wore identical dark suits but had the slope-shouldered military bearing of NSA operatives. She knew she was in trouble the moment they showed their IDs to the detectives.

―We‘ve got it from here, boys,‖ Dark Suit Number One said while his partner gave the cops the thousand-yard stare. As the police backed off, Dark Suit Number One slipped his hand into Moira‘s pocket with the deftness of a professional pickpocket. ―I‘ll take that, Ms. Trevor,‖ he said, holding Jay‘s cell between the tips of his blunt fingers.

Moira lunged for it, but Dark Suit One snatched it out of her reach.

―Hey, that‘s the property of my company.‖

―Sorry,‖ Dark Suit One said, ―this has been impounded as a matter of national security.‖

Before Moira could say a word he took her arm. ―Now if you‘ll be kind enough to come with us.‖

―What?‖ Moira said. ―You have no right to do this.‖

―I‘m afraid we do,‖ Dark Suit One said as his partner positioned himself on her other side. He held aloft Jay‘s cell. ―You were tampering with a crime scene.‖

As she was taken away, Dave took a step toward her.

―Out of the way!‖ Dark Suit Number Two barked.

His sharp tone seemed to take the paramedic aback and he stumbled against her, mumbled an apology, then backed away.

Now Moira‘s view of the scene changed so that she was able to see the man standing behind the NSA agent. It was Noah, staring at her with a feral grin.

He took Jay‘s cell and put it in his inside jacket pocket.

As he walked away, he said, ―You can‘t say you weren‘t warned.‖

Astride the motorbike Dr. Firth had rented, Bourne drove up into the East Bali mountains—almost straight up at several points—until he arrived at the foot of Pura Lempuyang, the Dragon Temple complex. He parked under the watchful eye of a diminutive attendant in a canvas chair protected from the fierce sun by the dappled shade of a tree. Buying a bottle of water at one of the line of stands that served both pilgrims and curious tourists, he set off up the stiff incline, wrapped in his traditional sarong and sash.

The priest at the Bat Cave had not seen Suparwita, though he knew of him, but when Bourne had used him as a sounding board to describe his recurring dream, the priest had instantly identified the dragon staircases as those belonging to Pura Lempuyang. Bourne had left him after getting detailed directions to the temple complex high up on Mount Lempuyang.

It did not take him long to reach the first temple, a simple enough affair that seemed more like an anteroom to the steep steps that led up to the second temple. By the time he reached the intricately carved gateway, the ache in his chest had turned into a pain that obliged him to pause. Looking through the arched gate, he saw the three staircases, even steeper than the two he‘d just ascended. They were guarded by six enormous stone dragons whose sinuous and scaly bodies undulated up the stairway serving as banisters.

The priest hadn‘t steered him wrong. This was the place of his dream, this was where he‘d been when he‘d seen the figure framed in the archway turn toward him. Turning around, he peered through the archway at the breathtaking view of sacred Mount Agung, rising blue and misty, now wreathed in clouds, its iconic cone shape visible in all its monumental power.

Drawn to the dragon staircases, Bourne continued his ascent. Stopping midway, he turned to look back at the gateway. There was the volcano framed between the soaring teeth that formed the entrance. His heart skipped a beat as a figure was silhouetted against Mount Agung. Involuntarily, he took a step down, then saw the figure was that of a little girl in a red-and-yellow sarong. She turned, moving in that liquid, sinuous way of all Balinese children, and abruptly vanished, leaving only dusty sunlight in her wake.

Resuming his climb, Bourne soon reached the upper plaza of the temple.

There were a few people scattered here and there. A man knelt, praying.

Bourne wandered aimlessly among the heavily carved structures, feeling somehow that he was floating, as if he had entered his dream, his past, but as a stranger returning to a place of forgotten familiarity.

He wished this place struck a chord, but it didn‘t, which bothered him.

His experience with his form of amnesia was that a name, a sight, a smell often triggered a return of his lost memory about a place or a person. Why had he been in Bali? Being here in this place he had been dreaming about for months should have released the memories from the well of his mind. But those memories were like a fluke on a sandy sea bottom—that strange creature with two eyes on one side and none on the other—either all there or not at all.

The man at prayer was finished. He rose from his kneeling position and, as he turned around, Bourne recognized Suparwita.

His heart beating fast, he walked over to where Suparwita stood, contemplating him.

―You look well,‖ Suparwita said.

―I survived. Moira thinks it‘s because of you.‖

The healer smiled, looked beyond Bourne for a moment, at the temple. ―I see you‘ve found part of your past.‖

Bourne turned, looked as well. ―If I have,‖ he said, ―I don‘t know what it is.‖

―And yet you came.‖

―I‘ve been dreaming about this place ever since I got here.‖

―I‘ve been waiting for you, and the powerful entity who guides and protects you brought you.‖

Bourne turned back. ―Shiva? Shiva is the god of destruction.‖

―And of transformation.‖ Suparwita raised an arm, indicating that they should walk. ―Tell me about your dream.‖

Bourne looked around. ―I‘m here, looking back at Mount Agung through the entryway. Suddenly, there‘s a figure silhouetted there. It turns to look at me.‖

―And then?‖

―And then I wake up.‖

Suparwita nodded slowly, as if he half expected this answer. They had walked the entire circumference of the temple plaza, and now had reached the area just in front of the entryway. The angle of light was just as it was in his dream, and Bourne gave a little shiver.

―You were seeing the person you were here with,‖ Suparwita said. ―A woman named Holly Marie Moreau.‖

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Bourne couldn‘t place it. ―Where is she now?‖

―I‘m afraid she‘s dead.‖ Suparwita pointed to the space between the two heavily carved teeth of the gateway. ―She was there, just as you remember in your dream, and then she was gone.‖

―Gone?‖

―She fell.‖ Suparwita turned to him. ―Or was pushed.‖

7

GOD IN HEAVEN, it‘s hotter than Hades in there, even without these clean suits.‖ Delia wiped the sweat off her face. ―Good news. We‘ve recovered the black box.‖

Soraya, standing with Amun Chalthoum inside one of the tents his people had erected adjacent to the crash site, was grateful for the interruption.

Being with Amun in such close quarters had put her nerves on overload. That there were so many layers to their relationship—professional, personal, ethnic—was difficult enough, but they were also frenemies, ostensibly on the same side but underneath fierce competitors for intel, bound to governments with vastly different agendas. So their dance was complex, often dizzyingly so.

―What does it tell you?‖ Chalthoum said.

Delia gave him one of her Sphinx-like looks. ―We‘ve just begun analyzing the instrument data from the aircraft‘s last moments, but from the cockpit conversation it‘s perfectly clear the crew didn‘t see an aircraft of any kind. However, the copilot saw somethingat the very last minute. It was small, coming at them very fast.‖

―A missile,‖ Soraya said while looking into Amun‘s face. She wondered whether he already knew this. He would if al Mokhabarat had been complicit in the incident. But Chalthoum‘s dark face remained impassive.

Delia was nodding. ―A ground-to-air missile seems the likeliest scenario at this stage.‖

―So,‖ Chalthoum said in his native tongue even before Delia had left the tent, ―it seems as if the United States isn‘t protecting us from extremists, after all.‖

―I think it would better serve both of us to start figuring out who was responsible,‖ she said, ―rather than pointing fingers, don‘t you?‖

Chalthoum watched her carefully for a moment, then nodded, and they retreated to opposite sides of the tent to update their superiors. Using the Typhon satellite phone she‘d brought with her, Soraya called Veronica Hart.

―This is bad news,‖ Hart said from halfway around the world. ―The very worst.‖

―I can only imagine how Halliday is going to run with it.‖ While Soraya spoke, she assumed Chalthoum was briefing the Egyptian president with the same information Delia had provided. ―Why do good things happen to bad people?‖

―Because life is chaos, and chaos can‘t distinguish between good and evil.‖ There was a slight pause before Hart continued. ―Any news on the MIG?‖

She meant the Iranian militant indigenous group.

―Not yet. We‘ve had our hands full with the crash. The scene is horrific and the conditions are next to intolerable. Besides, I haven‘t had three minutes to myself.‖

―This can‘t wait,‖ Hart said firmly. ―Finding out about the Iranian indigenous group is your primary mission.‖

The two of you came to me,‖ Suparwita said. ―Holly was extremely agitated, but she wouldn‘t tell you why.‖

Bourne stared at the spot where the body must have ended up, where his new beginning lay shattered. Why had he been so foolish to think that his past was dead and buried when, even here in a remote corner of the world, it existed like an egg waiting to hatch? Another piece of his past, another death. Why was he always entwined with loss of life?

He continued to stare down the three steep staircases with the undulating dragon banisters. He tried to remember that day: if he‘d rushed to this spot, if the woman was already a bloody heap far away as he flew down the steps. He strained to recall anything about the incident, but his mind was enclosed by a gray fog, thick as the stone dragons, fierce and implacable guardians of the temple. Was the fog protecting him from the terrible event here?

The pain in his chest, his constant companion in the aftermath of the shooting, accelerated, spreading out into his entire torso.

His face must have gone gray because Suparwita said, ―This way.‖

They made their way from the lintel, from the chasm of the past, and walked back onto the temple plaza and into the cool shade of a towering wall into which was carved an army of demons being opposed by the local dragon spirits.

Bourne sat and drank water. The healer stood, hands folded together, waiting patiently. Bourne was reminded of what he liked so much about Moira—

no fussing, no coddling, just no-nonsense responses.

At length, Suparwita said, ―You came because of Holly. She‘d heard about me, I suppose.‖

As he breathed into the pain, taking long, deep, controlled breaths, he said, ―Tell me what happened.‖

―There was a shadow over her, as if she‘d brought something horrible with her.‖ Suparwita‘s liquid eyes rested gently on Bourne‘s face. ―She‘d always been placid, she said. No, that‘s the wrong word—lacking in affect, that‘s better. But now she was terrified. She was up at night, she started at loud noises, she bit her nails to the quick. She told me that she never sat near windows. When you went to a restaurant she‘d insist on a table in the rear, where she could look out at the rest of the room. Then you said that even in the shadows, you could see that her hands shook. She‘d tried to hide it by holding her glass in a death grip, but you would see it when she reached for a fork or pushed her plate away.‖

The soft thrum of an airplane engine could be heard briefly interrupting the bird chatter. Then all was still again. On an adjacent mountainside, thin streamers of smoke rose from the burn-off fires at the periphery of the rice paddies.

Bourne gathered himself. ―Perhaps she had somehow come un-hinged.‖

The healer nodded uncertainly. ―Possibly. But I can tell you that her terror came from a real source. I think you knew that, too, because you weren‘t humoring her, you were trying your best to help her.‖

―So she could have been running from something or someone. What happened next?‖

―I cleansed her,‖ Suparwita said. ―She was entangled with demons.‖

―Yet she died.‖

―And so did you—almost.‖

Bourne thought about Moira‘s insistence that they see the healer; he thought about Suparwita saying, “All this has happened before, and it will happen again.”Death following on the heels of life. ―Are you saying that the two incidents are somehow connected?‖

―That wouldn‘t be credible.‖ Suparwita sat beside him. ―But Shiva was here then, and Shiva is here now. We ignore these signs at our peril.‖

He was the last patient Benjamin Firth was scheduled to see that day. He was a tall, cadaverously thin New Zealander, with yellow skin and feverish eyes.

He wasn‘t from Manggis or any of the surrounding villages—a small enough area—because Firth knew them all. Yet he seemed familiar and when he gave his name as Ian Bowles, Firth recalled him coming in twice or three times over the past several months with massive migraines. Today he complained of stomach and bowel problems, so Firth had him lie down on the examining table.

As he took his vitals, he said, ―How‘re your migraines?‖

―Fine,‖ Bowles said absently, and then in a more focused tone, ―Better.‖

After palpating his stomach and abdomen, Firth said, ―I can‘t find anything wrong with you. I‘ll just do a blood workup and in a couple of days—

‖

―I require information,‖ Bowles said softly.

Firth stood very still. ―I beg your pardon.‖

Bowles stared up at the ceiling as if deciphering the shifting patterns of light. ―Forget the vampire tactics, I‘m right as rain.‖

The doctor shook his head. ―I don‘t understand.‖

Bowles sighed. Then sat up so abruptly, he startled Firth. He grabbed Firth‘s wrist with a horribly fierce grip. ―Who‘s the patient you‘ve had here for the last three months?‖

―What patient?‖

Bowles clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ―Hey, Doc, I didn‘t come here for my health.‖ He grinned. ―You‘ve got a patient stashed away here and I want to know about him.‖

―Why? What do you care?‖

The New Zealander jerked even harder on Firth‘s wrist, pulling the doctor closer to him. ―You operate here without interference, but all good things come to an end.‖ His voice lowered significantly. ―Now listen up, you idiot.

You‘re wanted for negligent homicide by the Perth police.‖

―I was drunk,‖ Firth whispered. ―I didn‘t know what I was doing.‖

―You operated on a patient while under the influence, Doc, and he died.

That‘s it in a nutshell.‖ He shook Firth violently. ―Isn‘t it?‖

The doctor closed his eyes and whispered, ―Yes.‖

―So?‖

―I have nothing to tell you.‖

Bowles moved to slide off the table. ―Then off we go to the cops, bud.

Your life is toast.‖

Firth, trying to squirm away, said, ―I don‘t know anything.‖

―Never gave you a name, did he?‖

―Adam,‖ Firth said. ―Adam Stone.‖

―That‘s what he said? Adam Stone.‖

Firth nodded. ―I confirmed it when I saw his passport.‖

Bowles dug in a pocket, produced a cell phone. ―Doc, here‘s all you have to do in order to stay out of jail for life.‖ He held out the cell. ―Get me a picture of this Adam Stone. A good, clear one of his face.‖

Firth licked his lips. His mouth was so dry he could scarcely speak. ―And if I do this you‘ll leave me alone?‖

Bowles winked. ―Bank on it, Doc.‖

Firth took the cell with a hollow feeling in his chest. What else was he to do? He had no expertise with these kinds of people. He tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that at least he hadn‘t divulged Jason Bourne‘s real name, but that gesture would become meaningless the moment he gave this man Bourne‘s photo.

Bowles jumped off the table, but he still hadn‘t let go of Firth‘s wrist.

–Don‘t get any stupid ideas, Doc. You tell anyone about our little arrangement and sure as I‘m standing here someone will put a bullet in the back of your head, follow?‖

Firth nodded mechanically. A numbness had spread through him, rooting him to the spot.

Bowles let him go at last. ―Glad you could make room for me, Doc,‖ he said in a louder voice for anyone who might be around. ―Tomorrow, same time.

You‘ll have the test results by then, isn‘t that right?‖

8

NAGORNO-KARABAKH was in the west of Azerbaijan, a hotly contested area of the country ever since Joseph Stalin tried to ethnically cleanse this part of the former Soviet Union of Armenians. The advantage for Arkadin of staging a strike force in Azerbaijan was that it bordered on the northwestern edge of Iran. The advantage of choosing this particular area was threefold: It was rugged terrain, identical to that of Iran; it was sparsely populated; and the people here knew him because he‘d made more than a dozen runs for Dimitri Maslov and then Semion Icoupov, trading semi-automatic rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, and so forth to the Armenian tribal leaders who were waging a continuous guerrilla war against the Azerbaijani regime, just as they had against the Soviets until the fall of the Soviet empire. In exchange, Arkadin received packets of brownish morphine bricks of exceedingly high quality, which he transported overland to the port city of Baku, where they were loaded onto a merchant ship that would take them due north across the Caspian Sea to Russia.

All in all, Nagorno-Karabakh was as secure a place as Arkadin could possibly find. He and his men would be left alone, and the tribesmen would protect him with their lives. Without the weapons provided by him and the people he worked for they would have been beaten into the dry red dirt of their homeland, exterminated like vermin. Armenians had settled here, between the Kura and Araxes rivers, during Roman times and had remained here ever since. Arkadin understood their fierce homeland pride, which was why he‘d decided that Nagorno-Karabakh was the place to commence trading. It was a politically savvy move as well. Since the weapons sold to the Armenian tribesmen helped destabilize the country and thus gave it a rude shove back toward Moscow‘s orbit, the Kremlin was all too happy to turn a blind eye to the trades.

Now his strike force was going to train here.

It was hardly a surprise that when he arrived the leaders greeted him like a conquering hero.

Not that this homecoming of sorts was simply pleasant; nothing in Arkadin‘s life was simple. Possibly he had misremembered the landscape or perhaps something had changed inside him. Either way, the moment he drove into the Nagorno-Karabakh area it was as if he‘d been hurled back into Nizhny Tagil.

The camp had been set up precisely to his specifications: Ten tents made of camouflage material ringed a large oval compound. To the east was the landing strip where his plane had touched down. At the other end of it was a short L-shaped extension on which was sitting a Air Afrika Transport cargo plane. The tents had an aspect he hadn‘t anticipated: They reminded him of the ring of high-security prisons that girdled Nizhny Tagil, the town in which he‘d been born and raised, if you could call living with psychotic parents being raised.

But again, memory was not a simple matter. Twenty minutes after arriving, having entered one of the tents that had been set up as his command station, he was inspecting the impressive array of weaponry he‘d had transshipped: AK-47 Lancasters, AR15 Bushmasters and LWRC SRT 6.8mm assault rifles, World War II US Marine M2A1-7 flamethrowers, armor-piercing grenades, shoulder-fired FIM-92 Stinger missiles, mobile howitzers, and, the key to his mission, three AH-64 Apache helicopters loaded with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles with specially made dual-charge nose cones of depleted uranium, unconditionally guaranteed by the seller to penetrate even the most heavily armored vehicle.

Dressed in camo fatigues, armed with a metal baton on one hip and an American Colt .45 on the other, Arkadin emerged from the largest of the tents and was met by Dimitri Maslov, the head of the Kazanskaya, the most powerful family of the Moscow mob. Maslov looked like a street fighter who was calculating how to pin you in the least amount of time and with the maximum pain. His hands were large, thick, and broad, and looked like they could wring the neck of anyone and anything. His muscular legs ended in outlandishly dainty feet, as if they‘d been grafted on from someone else‘s body. He‘d grown his hair since the last time Arkadin had seen him and, dressed in lightweight camo fatigues, had something of the anarchic air of Che Guevara.

―Leonid Danilovich,‖ Maslov said with false heartiness, ―I see you‘ve wasted no time in putting our war matériel to use. Well, good, it cost a fucking fortune.‖

With Maslov were two no-neck bodyguards, their fatigues sporting immense sweat rings, clearly out of their element in this hot climate.

Looking past the human weapons, Arkadin eyed the grupperovkachief with a kind of impersonal distrust. Ever since he‘d defected from being the Kazanskaya‘s main enforcer to working exclusively for Semion Icoupov, he wasn‘t sure where he stood with the man. That they were doing business now meant nothing; a combination of compelling circumstance and powerful partner thrust them together. Arkadin had the impression that they were two pit bulls deciding how to finish the other off. This was borne out when Maslov said, ―I still haven‘t gotten over the loss of my Mexican pipeline. I can‘t help feeling that if you‘d been available, I wouldn‘t have lost it.‖

―Now I believe you‘re exaggerating, Dimitri Ilyinovich.‖

―But instead you dropped out of sight,‖ Maslov continued, deliberately ignoring Arkadin. ―You were unreachable.‖

Arkadin thought he‘d better pay attention now. Did Maslov suspect that he had taken Gustavo Moreno‘s laptop, a prize that Arkadin was certain Maslov thought was rightfully his?

Arkadin thought it best to change the subject. ―Why are you here?‖

―I always like to see my investments firsthand. Besides, Triton, the man coordinating the entire operation, wanted a firsthand report on your progress.‖

―Triton need only have called me,‖ Arkadin said.

―He‘s a cautious man, our Triton, or so I‘ve heard. I‘ve never met him myself—frankly, I don‘t know who he is, only that he‘s a man with deep pockets and the wherewithal to mount this ambitious project. And don‘t forget, Arkadin, it was I who recommended you to Triton. ‗There‘s no one better to train these men,‘ I told him in no uncertain terms.‖

Arkadin thanked Maslov, even though privately it pained him to do so. On the other side of the ledger, it warmed him to know that Maslov had no idea who Triton was or who he worked for, whereas he himself knew everything.

Maslov‘s amassed millions had made him overconfident and sloppy, which in Arkadin‘s opinion made him ripe for the slaughter. That would come, he told himself, in time.

When Maslov had phoned him with the proposition laid out by Triton, he‘d at first refused. Now that he was the power behind the Eastern Brotherhood he neither needed nor wanted to hire himself out as a free-lancer. When Maslov‘s flattery, describing Arkadin and the Black Legion‘s crucial part in the plan, had failed to move him, the twenty-million-dollar fee was dangled in front of his face. Still, he hesitated, until he‘d learned that the target was Iran, the objective to overthrow the current regime. Then the dazzling prospect of Iran‘s oil pipeline danced through his head: untold billions, untold power.

This prize took his breath away. He was canny enough to know, though Maslov was careful not to mention it, that Triton‘s aim must be the pipeline, too.

His endgame was to double-cross Triton at the last minute, to snatch the pipeline for himself, but to do that he needed to properly assess his enemy‘s resources. He needed to know who Triton was.

He saw someone emerge from the interior of the jeep that he‘d been warned by tribal lookouts had brought Maslov and his thugs here. At first the heat rising from the freshly laid tarmac obscured the man‘s face. Not that it mattered; Arkadin recognized that easy, loping gait, so deliberately like Clint Eastwood‘s in A Fistful of Dollars.

―What‘s he doing here?‖ Arkadin struggled to keep the sharp edge out of his voice.

―Who? Oserov?‖ Maslov said in all innocence. ―Vylacheslav Germanovich is now my second in command.‖ He shook his head ingenuously. ―Did I fail to mention that? I would have if I‘d been able to get hold of you to protect my Mexican interests.‖ He shrugged. ―But, alas…‖

Oserov was smiling now, in that half-ironic, half-condescending expression that had been tattooed into Arkadin‘s brain in Nizhny Tagil. Was graduating Oxford a license to act superior to every other grupperovkamember in Russia? Arkadin didn‘t think so.

―Arkadin, really?‖ Oserov said in British English. ―Bloody shocking you‘re still alive.‖

Arkadin hit him hard on the point of the chin. Oserov, that vile smile still stitched to his face, was already on his knees, his eyes rolling, by the time Maslov‘s bodyguards stepped in.

Maslov held up one hand to stay them. Nevertheless, his face was dark and congested with anger. ―You shouldn‘t have done that, Leonid Danilovich.‖

―You shouldn‘t have brought him.‖

Unmindful of the weapons drawn on him, Arkadin knelt beside Oserov. ―So here you are in the blazing Azerbaijani sun, so far from home. How does it feel?‖

Oserov‘s eyes were bloodshot and a thin trail of pink drool descended like a strand of a spider‘s web from one corner of his mouth, but he never stopped smiling. All at once, he reached out and grabbed Arkadin by his shirtfront, jerking him closer.

―You‘ll live to regret this insult, Leonid Danilovich, now that Mischa is no longer alive to protect you.‖

Arkadin sprang away and rose to his feet. ―I told you what I‘d do to him if I saw him again.‖

Maslov‘s eyes narrowed. His face still had that congested look. ―That was a long time ago.‖

―Not for me,‖ Arkadin said.

Now he had made his stand, made an unequivocal statement that Maslov couldn‘t ignore. Nothing would be the same between them, which came as a distinct relief to Arkadin, who had the captive‘s innate horror of inaction.

To him, change was life. Dimitri Maslov had always thought of Arkadin as a workman, someone he hired and then forgot about. That perception needed to change. Maslov had to be made aware that the two men were now equals. Arkadin didn‘t have the luxury of time to finesse his new, elevated status.

As Oserov regained his feet, Maslov threw his head back and laughed, but he sobered quickly enough. ―Get back to the car, Vylacheslav Germanovich,‖ he said under his breath to Oserov.

Oserov was about to say something, but changed his mind. With a murderous look at Arkadin, he turned on his heel and stalked away.