"What did you expect?" she said. "You blew in like a f.u.c.king whirlwind."

Arkadin laughed then, breaking a tension that was stretched to the breaking point. This girl had a sense of humor, which meant she was clever as well as smart. His mind had made a connection between her and a woman who'd once been important to him.

"I still don't understand you." He shook his head. "We're on different sides of this conflict."

"That's where you're wrong. I was never part of this conflict. I didn't like it; I only pretended I did. At first it was a goal I set for myself: whether I could fool Pyotr, and then the others. When I did, it just seemed easier to keep going. I got paid well, I learned quicker than most, I got perks I never would have gotten from being a DJ."

"You could've left anytime."

"Could I?" She c.o.c.ked her head. "They would've come after me like they're coming after you."

"But now you've made up your mind to leave them." He c.o.c.ked his head. "Don't tell me it's because of me."

"Why not? I like sitting next to a whirlwind. It's comforting."

Arkadin grunted, embarra.s.sed again.

"Besides, the last straw came when I found out what they're planning."

"You thought of your American savior."

"Maybe you can't understand that one person can make a difference in your life."

"Oh, but I can," Arkadin said, thinking of Semion Icoupov. "In that, you and I are the same."

She gestured. "You look so uncomfortable."

"Come on," he said, standing. He led her back past the kitchen, poked his head in for a moment, then took her into the men's room.

"Get out," he ordered a man at the sink.

He checked the stall to make sure they were alone. "I'll tell you how to fix this d.a.m.nable shoulder."

When he gave her the instructions, she said, "Is it going to hurt?"

In answer, he put the handle of the wooden spoon he'd swiped from the kitchen between his teeth.

With great reluctance Bourne turned his back on the Gaboon viper. Many things flitted through his mind, not the least of which was Mikhail Tarkanian. He was the mole inside the professor's organization. Who knew how much intel he had about Specter's network; Bourne couldn't afford to let him get away.

The man before him now was flat-faced, his skin slightly greasy. He had a two-day growth of beard and bad teeth. His breath stank from cigarettes and rotting food. He pointed his suppressed Glock directly at Bourne's chest.

"Come out of there," he said softly.

"It won't matter whether or not I comply," Bourne answered. "The herpetologist down the corridor has surely phoned security. We're all about to be put into custody."

"Out. Now."

The man made a fatal error of gesturing with the Glock. Bourne used his left forearm to knock the elongated barrel aside. Slamming the gunman back against the opposite wall of the corridor, Bourne drove a knee into his groin. As the gunman gagged, Bourne chopped the gun out of his hand, grabbed him by his overcoat, flung him headlong into the Gaboon viper's case with such force that he skidded along the floor toward the corner where the viper lay coiled.

Bourne, imitating the viper, made a rhythmic hissing sound, and the snake raised its head. At the same moment it heard the hissing of a rival snake, it sensed something living thrust into its territory. It struck out at the terrified gunman.

Bourne was already pounding down the corridor. The door at the far end gaped open. He burst out into daylight. Tarkanian was waiting for him, in case he escaped the two gunmen; he had no stomach to prolong the pursuit. He drove a fist into Bourne's cheek, followed that up with a vicious kick. But Bourne caught his shoe in his hands, twisted his foot violently, spinning him off his feet.

Bourne could hear shouts, the slap and squeak of cheap soles against concrete. Security was on its way, though he couldn't see them yet.

"Tarkanian," he said, and coldc.o.c.ked him.

Tarkanian went down heavily. Bourne knelt beside him and was giving him mouth-to-mouth when three security guards rounded the corner, came pounding up to him.

"My friend collapsed just as we saw the men with the guns." Bourne gave an accurate description of the two gunmen, pointed toward the open door to the Reptile Discovery Center. "Can you get help? My friend is allergic to mustard. I think there must have been some in the potato salad we had for lunch."

One of the security guards called 911, while the other two, guns drawn, vanished into the doorway. The guard stayed with Bourne until the paramedics arrived. They took Tarkanian's vitals, loaded him onto the gurney. Bourne walked at Tarkanian's side as they made their way through the gawking crowds to the ambulance waiting on Connecticut Avenue. He told them about Tarkanian's allergic reaction, also that in this state he was hypersensitive to light. He climbed into the back of the ambulance. One of the paramedics closed the doors behind him while the other prepared the IV drip of phenothiazine. The vehicle took off, siren wailing.

Tears streamed down Arkadin's face, but he made no noise. The pain was excruciating, but at least the arm was back in its socket. He could move the fingers of his left hand, just barely. The good news was that the numbness was giving way to a peculiar tingling, as if his blood had turned to champagne.

Devra held the wooden spoon in her hand. "s.h.i.t, you almost bit this in two. It must've hurt like a b.i.t.c.h."

Arkadin, dizzy and nauseous, grimaced in pain. "I could never get food down now."

Devra tossed aside the spoon as they left the men's room. Arkadin paid their check, and they went out of the cafe. The rain had stopped, leaving the streets with that slick, just-washed look so familiar to him from old American films from the 1940s and 1950s.

"We can go to my place," Devra offered. "It's not far from here."

Arkadin shook his head. "I think not."

They walked, seemingly aimlessly, until they came to a small hotel. Arkadin booked a room. The flyblown night clerk barely looked at them. He was only interested in taking their money.

The room was mean, barely furnished with a bed, a hard-backed chair, and a dresser with three legs and a pile of books propping up the fourth corner. A circular threadbare carpet covered the center of the room. It was stained, pocked with cigarette burns. What appeared to be a closet was the toilet. The shower and sink were down the hall.

Arkadin went to the window. He'd asked for a room in front, knowing it would be noisier, but would afford him a bird's-eye view of anyone coming. The street was deserted, not a car in sight. Sevastopol glowed in a slow, cold pulse.

"Time," he said, turning back into the room, "to get some things straight."

"Now? Can't this wait?" Devra was lying crosswise on the bed, her feet still on the floor. "I'm dead on my feet."

Arkadin considered a moment. It was deep into the night. He was exhausted but not yet ready for sleep. He kicked off his shoes, lay down on the bed. Devra had to sit up to make room for him, but instead of lying down parallel to him, she resumed her position, head on his belly. She closed her eyes.

"I want to come with you," she said softly, almost as if in sleep.

He was instantly alert. "Why?" he said. "Why would you want to come with me?"

She said nothing in reply; she was asleep.

For a time, he lay listening to her steady breathing. He didn't know what to do with her, but she was all he had left of this end of Pyotr's network. He spent some time digesting what she had told him about Shumenko, Filya, and Pyotr, looking for holes. It seemed improbable to him that Pyotr could be so undisciplined, but then again he'd been betrayed by his girlfriend of the moment, who worked for Icoupov. That spoke of a man out of control, whose habits could indeed filter down to his subordinates. He had no idea if Pyotr had daddy issues, but given who his daddy was it certainly wasn't out of the question.

This girl was strange. On the surface she was so much like other young girls he'd come across: hard-edged, cynical, desperate, and despairing. But this one was different. He could see beneath her armor plating to the little lost girl she once had been and perhaps still was. He put his hand on the side of her neck, felt the slow pulse of her life. He could be wrong, of course. It could all be a performance put on for his benefit. But for the life of him he'd couldn't figure out what her angle might be.

And there was something else about her, connected to her fragility, her deliberate vulnerability. She needed something, he thought, as, in the end, we all did, even those who fooled themselves into thinking they didn't. He knew what he needed; it was simply that he chose not to think about it. She needed a father, that was clear enough. He couldn't help suspecting there was something about her he was missing, something she hadn't told him but wanted him to find. The answer was already inside him, dancing like a firefly. But every time he reached out to capture it, it just danced farther away. The feeling was maddening, as if he'd had s.e.x with a woman without reaching an o.r.g.a.s.m.

And then she stirred, and in stirring said his name. It was like a bolt of lightning illuminating the room. He was back on the rainy rooftop, with Mole-man standing over him, listening to the conversation between him and Devra.

"He was your responsibility," Mole-man said, referring to Filya.

Arkadin's heart beat faster. Your responsibility Your responsibility. Why would Mole-man say that if Filya was the courier in Sevastopol? As if of their own accord, his fingertips stroked the velvet flesh of Devra's neck. The crafty little b.i.t.c.h! Filya was a soldier, a guard. She She was the courier in Sevastopol. She'd handed the doc.u.ment off to the next link. She knew where he had to go next. was the courier in Sevastopol. She'd handed the doc.u.ment off to the next link. She knew where he had to go next.

Holding her tightly, Arkadin at last let go of the night, the room, the present. On a tide of elation, he drifted into sleep, into the blood-soaked clutches of his past.

Arkadin would have killed himself, this was certain, had it not been for the intervention of Semion Icoupov. Arkadin's best and only friend, Mischa Tarkanian, concerned for his life, had appealed to the man he worked for. Arkadin remembered with an eerie clarity the day Icoupov had come to see him. He had walked in, and Arkadin, half crazed with a will to die, had put a Makarov PM to his head-the same gun he was going to use to blow his own brains out.

Icoupov, to his credit, didn't make a move. He stood in the ruins of Arkadin's Moscow apartment, not looking at Arkadin at all. Arkadin, in the grip of his sulfurous past, was unable to make sense of anything. Much later, he understood. In the same way you didn't look a bear in the eye, lest he charge you, Icoupov had kept his gaze focused on other things-the broken picture frames, the smashed crystal, the overturned chairs, the ashes of the fetishistic fire Arkadin had lit to burn his clothes.

"Mischa tells me you're having a difficult time."

"Mischa should keep his mouth shut."

Icoupov spread his hands. "Someone has to save your life."

"What d'you know about it?" Arkadin said harshly.

"Actually, I know nothing about what's happened to you," Icoupov said.

Arkadin, digging the muzzle of the Makarov into Icoupov's temple, stepped closer. "Then shut the f.u.c.k up."

"What I am concerned about is the here and now." Icoupov didn't blink an eye; he didn't move a muscle, either. "For f.u.c.k's sake, son, look at you. If you won't pull back from the brink for yourself, do it for Mischa, who loves you better than any brother would."

Arkadin let out a ragged breath, as if he were expelling a dollop of poison. He took the Makarov from Icoupov's head.

Icoupov held out his hand. When Arkadin hesitated, he said with great gentleness, "This isn't Nizhny Tagil. There is no one here worth hurting, Leonid Danilovich."

Arkadin gave a curt nod, let go of the gun. Icoupov called out, handed it to one of two very large men who came down the hallway from the far end where they had been stationed, not making a sound. Arkadin tensed, angry at himself for not sensing them. Clearly, they were bodyguards. In his current condition, they could have taken Arkadin anytime. He looked at Icoupov, who nodded, and an unspoken connection sprang up between them.

"There is only one path for you now," Icoupov said.

Icoupov moved to sit on the sofa in Arkadin's trashed apartment, then gestured, and the bodyguard who had taken possession of Arkadin's Makarov held it out to him.

"Here, now, you will have witnesses to your last spasm of nihilism. If you wish it."

Arkadin for once in his life ignored the gun, stared implacably at Icoupov.

"No?" Icoupov shrugged. "Do you know what I think, Leonid Danilovich? I think it gives you a measure of comfort to believe that your life has no meaning. Most times you revel in this belief; it's what fuels you. But there are times, like now, when it takes you by the throat and shakes you till your teeth rattle in your skull." He was dressed in dark slacks, an oyster-gray shirt, a long black leather coat that made him look somewhat sinister, like a German SS-Sturmbannfuhrer. "But I believe to the contrary that you are searching for the meaning of your life." His dark skin shone like polished bronze. He gave the appearance of a man who knew what he was doing, someone, above all, not to be trifled with.

"What path?" Arkadin said dully, taking a seat on the sofa.

Icoupov gestured with both hands, encompa.s.sing the self-inflicted whirlwind that had torn apart the rooms. "The past for you is dead, Leonid Danilovich, do you not agree?"

"G.o.d has punished me. G.o.d has abandoned me," Arkadin said, regurgitating by rote a lament of his mother's.

Icoupov smiled a perfectly innocent smile, one that could not possibly be misinterpreted. He had an uncanny ability to engage others one-on-one. "And what G.o.d is that?"

Arkadin had no answer because this G.o.d he spoke of was his mother's G.o.d, the G.o.d of his childhood, the G.o.d that had remained an enigma to him, a shadow, a G.o.d of bile, of rage, of split bone and spilt blood.

"But no," he said, "G.o.d, like heaven, is a word on a page. h.e.l.l is the here and now."

Icoupov shook his head. "You have never known G.o.d, Leonid Danilovich. Put yourself in my hands. With me, you will find G.o.d, and learn the future he has planned for you."

"I cannot be alone." Arkadin realized that this was the truest thing he'd ever said.

"Nor shall you be."

Icoupov turned to accept a tray from one of the bodyguards. While they had been talking, he'd made tea. Icoupov poured two gla.s.ses full, added sugar, handed one to Arkadin.

"Drink with me now, Leonid Danilovich," he said as he lifted his steaming gla.s.s. "To your recovery, to your health, to the future, which will be as bright for you as you wish to make it."

The two men sipped their tea, which the bodyguard had astutely fortified with a considerable amount of vodka.

"To never being alone again," said Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.

That was a long time ago, at a way station on a river that had turned to blood. Was he much changed from the near-insane man who had put the muzzle of a gun to Semion Icoupov's head? Who could say? But on days of heavy rain, ominous thunder, and twilight at noon, when the world looked as bleak as he knew it to be, thoughts of his past surfaced like corpses in a river, regurgitated by his memory. And he would be alone again.

Tarkanian was coming around, but the phenothiazine that had been administered to him was doing its job, sedating him mildly and impairing his mental functioning enough so that when Bourne bent over him and said in Russian, "Bourne's dead, we're in the process of extracting you," Tarkanian dazedly thought he was one of the men at the reptile house.

"Icoupov sent you." Tarkanian lifted a hand, felt the bandage the paramedics had used to keep light out of his eyes. "Why can't I see?"

"Lie still," Bourne said softly. "There are civilians around. Paramedics. That's how we're extracting you. You'll be safe in the hospital for a few hours while we arrange the rest of your travel."

Tarkanian nodded.

"Icoupov is on the move," Bourne whispered. "Do you know where?"

"No."

"He wants you to be most comfortable during your debriefing. Where should we take you?"

"Moscow, of course." Tarkanian licked his lips. "It's been years since I've been home. I have an apartment on the Frunzenskaya embankment." More and more he seemed to be speaking to himself. "From my living room window you can see the pedestrian bridge to Gorky Park. Such a peaceful setting. I haven't seen it in so long."

They arrived at the hospital before Bourne had a chance to continue the interrogation. Then everything happened very quickly. The doors banged open and the paramedic leapt into action, getting the gurney down, rushing it through the automatic gla.s.s doors into a corridor leading to the ER. The place was packed with patients. One of the paramedics was talking to a harried overworked intern, who directed him to a small room, one of many off the corridor. Bourne saw that the other rooms were filled.

The two paramedics rolled Tarkanian into the room, checked the IV, took his vitals again, unhooked him.

"He'll come around in a minute," one of them said. "Someone will be in shortly to see to him." He produced a practiced smile that was not unlikable. "Don't worry, your friend's going to be fine."

After they'd left, Bourne went back to Tarkanian, said, "Mikhail, I know the Frunzenskaya embankment well. Where exactly is your apartment?"

"He's not going to tell you."

Bourne whirled just as the first gunman-the one he'd wrapped the python around-threw himself on top of him. Bourne staggered back, bounced hard against the wall. He struck at the gunman's face. The gunman blocked it, punched Bourne hard on the point of his sternum. Bourne grunted, and the gunman followed up with a short chop to Bourne's side.

Down on one knee, Bourne saw him pull out a knife, swipe the blade at him. Bourne shrank back. The gunman attacked with the knife point-first. Bourne landed a hard right flush on his face, heard the satisfying crack of the cheekbone fracturing. Enraged, the gunman closed, the blade swinging through Bourne's shirt, bringing out an arc of blood like beads on a string.