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, München, 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 déjà 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 spe
ed,” 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.