The Bourne Sanction (37 page)

“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.

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-notwant-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.”

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.”