As she went to work stripping the old bandage and cleaning the wound, she said, — My mother warned me about men like you.
— What about me?
— Always getting into trouble. Her fingers worked quickly, nimbly, surely. -The difference is that you know how to get yourself out of whatever mess blows up around you.
He grimaced at the pain but didn‘t flinch. -I have no choice.
— Oh, I don‘t think that‘s true. She bunched up a wad of soiled sterile pads, then took up another, soaking it in alcohol and applying it to the reddened flesh. -I think you go looking for trouble, I think that‘s who you are, I think you‘d be unhappy-and, worse for you, bored-if you didn‘t.
Bourne laughed softly, but he didn‘t think she was far off the mark.
She examined the newly cleaned wound. -Not so bad, I doubt you‘ll need a fresh round of antibiotics.
— Are you a doctor?
She smiled. -On occasion, when I have to be.
— That answer requires an explanation.
She palpated the flesh around his wound. -What the hell happened to you?
— I got shot, don‘t change the subject.
She nodded. -Okay, as a young woman-a very young woman-I spent two years in West Africa. There was unrest, fighting, horrible atrocities perpetrated. I was assigned to a field hospital where I learned triage, how to dress a wound. One day we were so overloaded with wounded and dying, the doctor put an instrument in my hand and said, ‗There‘s an entry wound but no exit wound. If you don‘t get the bullet out right away your patient will die.‘ Then he went off to work on two other patients at once.
— Did your patient die?
— Yes, but not because of his wound. He‘d been terminal before he‘d been shot.
— That must have helped some.
— No, she said, — it didn‘t. Throwing the last of the used pads into a wastebasket, she applied the antibiotic cream and began the bandaging process. -You must promise not to abuse this again. The next time the bleeding will be worse. She sat back inspecting her work. -Ideally, you should be in hospital, or at least see a doctor.
— This isn‘t an ideal world, he said.
— So I‘ve noticed.
She helped him to sit up. -Where are we? he asked.
— An apartment of mine. We‘re on the other side of town from Maestranza.
He transferred to a chair, sat back gingerly. His chest felt as if it were made of lead. It beat with a dull ache as if from pain remembered from long ago. -Don‘t you have an appointment with Don Fernando Hererra?
— I postponed it. She looked at him inquiringly. -I couldn‘t possibly go without you, Professor Alonzo Pecunia Zuiga. She was speaking of the Goya expert from the Prado he was going to impersonate. Then, abruptly, she smiled. -I like money too much to spend it when I don‘t have to.
She stood, moving him back to the bed. -But now you must rest.
He was going to answer her but his eyelids had already slid down. With the darkness came a deep and peaceful sleep.
Arkadin pushed his recruits through the desolate landscape of NagornoKarabakh, working them twenty-one hours a day. When they began to doze on their feet, he slammed them with his baton. He never had to hit any of them twice. For three hours they slept wherever they happened to be, sprawled on the ground, all except Arkadin himself for whom sleep had been completely banished months ago. Instead, his mind was filled with scenes from the past, from the end of his days in Nizhny Tagil, when Stas‘s men were closing in on him and it seemed as if his only choice was to kill as many of them as he could before they shot him to death.
He wasn‘t afraid to die, that was clear to him from the outset of his forced incarceration in the basement, venturing out only at night for quick forays for food and fresh water. Above him was a hive of activity as the remaining members of Stas‘s gang feverishly coordinated the ever-intensifying search for him. As the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, he might have had reason to think that the gang would move on to other matters, but no, they nursed their grudge like a colicky baby, inhaling its poison until to a man they were gripped by an unshakable obsession. They wouldn‘t rest until they dragged his corpse through the streets as an object lesson for anyone else who might think of interfering with their business.
Even the cops, who were, in any event, on the gang‘s payroll, had been co-opted into the citywide dragnet by the random storms of violence visited on Nizhny Tagil night after night. They were used to turning a blind eye, even at times laughed about it, but not now-the attacks had escalated to a level that made them a laughingstock in the eyes of the state police. It was typical of their thinking that rather than clamping down on Stas‘s gang, they took the easy way and capitulated to its demands. So almost everyone was on the lookout for Arkadin, there was no surcease, there could only be a nasty end.
That was when Mikhail Tarkanian, whom Arkadin would eventually call Mischa, arrived in Nizhny Tagil from Moscow. He had been sent by his boss, Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov, head of Kazanskaya, the most powerful family of the Moscow grupperovka, the Russian mafia, involved in drugs and black-market cars. Through his many eyes and ears Maslov had heard of Arkadin, had heard of the bloodbath he‘d single-handedly caused and its stalemate aftermath. He wanted Arkadin brought to him. -The problem, Maslov told his men, — is that Stas‘s men want to tear him limb from limb. He handed them a file. Inside were a sheaf of grainy black-and-white surveillance shots, a gallery of Stas‘s remaining crew, each with his name carefully written on the reverse. Maslov‘s eyes and ears had been busy, indeed, and it occurred to Tarkanian, even if it didn‘t to the scowling Oserov, that Maslov must want Arkadin very badly to go to so much trouble to extract him from what seemed like an intractable situation.
Maslov could have sent his chief enforcer, Vylacheslav Germanovich Oserov, at the head of a raiding party to take Arkadin by force, but Maslov was a canny dispenser of his power. Far better to make Stas‘s gang part of his empire than to start a blood feud with whoever was left after his own people got through with them.
So instead he sent Tarkanian, his chief political negotiator. He ordered Oserov along to protect Tarkanian, an assignment Oserov openly despised, adamant that if Maslov had listened to him he, Oserov, could easily have taken Arkadin from the hick baboons of Nizhny Tagil, as he called them. -I‘d have this Arkadin back in Moscow within forty-eight hours, guaranteed, he told Tarkanian several times during their tedious journey into the foothills of the Ural Mountains.
By the time they arrived in Nizhny Tagil, Tarkanian was sick to death of Oserov who, as he later told Arkadin, — felt like a woodpecker attached to my head.
In any event, even before Maslov‘s emissaries left Moscow, Tarkanian had formed the outline of the plan to extract Arkadin from his predicament. He was a man with a natural Machiavellian mind. The deals he made for Maslov were legendary in both their bewildering complexity and their unerring effectiveness.
— The mission is misdirection, Tarkanian told Oserov as they approached their destination. -To that end we need to create a straw man for Stas‘s gang to go after.
— What do you mean we? Oserov said with typical surliness.
— I mean you‘re the perfect man to establish the straw man for me.
— Oserov looked at me with that dark look of his, Tarkanian told Arkadin much later, — but he was powerless to do more than yelp like a kicked dog. He knew my importance to Dimitri, and this kept him in line. Barely.
— You‘re right about one thing, we‘re dealing with baboons, he told Oserov, throwing him a bone. -And baboons are motivated by only two things: the carrot and the stick. I‘m going to provide the carrot.
— Why should they want anything to do with you? Oserov said.
— Because the moment you hit town you‘re going to do what you do best: make life a living hell for them.
This answer drew a rare smile from Oserov‘s face.
— And do you know what he s
aid to me then? Tarkanian whispered to Arkadin much later. -He said, ‗The more blood, the better.‘
And he meant it. Forty-three minutes from the moment he entered Nizhny Tagil, Oserov found his first victim, one of Stas‘s oldest, most loyal soldiers. He put a bullet through one ear at close range, then went to work butchering him. The head he left intact, looking out from the chest cavity in a gruesome parody of a cheap horror film.
Needless to say, the rest of Stas‘s men were incensed. Business ground to a halt. Three death squads with three men each were sent out, searching for this new killer. They knew it wasn‘t Arkadin because the killing wasn‘t his typical method.
They weren‘t frightened yet, but that would come. If there was anything Oserov knew how to engender in others, it was fear. Choosing another victim at random among the photos in the dossier Maslov had given them, Oserov stalked the gang member. Finding him on the doorstep of his house, with the door open and his children peeping out, Oserov shot him, shattering the bone in his right thigh. With his victim‘s children screaming and his wife running to the front door from the kitchen, Oserov sprinted across the pavement, leapt up the concrete steps, and put three bullets in the man‘s abdomen in precisely the places where he‘d bleed most heavily.
That was day two. Oserov was just warming up, there was far worse to come.
Pinprick, Humphry Bamber said. -What do you mean, Pinprick?
Veronica Hart shot Moira a nervous look. -I was hoping you could tell us, she said.
Hart‘s cell buzzed and she walked out of earshot to take it. When she returned, she said, — The backup I ordered is waiting outside.
Moira nodded, leaned forward, toward Bamber, forearms resting on her crossed knee. -The word pinprick was paired with the name of your software program.
He looked from her to the DCI. -I don‘t understand.
Moira felt the air go out of her. -I met with Steve just before… before he disappeared. He was terrified of what was going on at the DoD and the Pentagon. He intimated that the fog of war had already started to permeate the atmosphere at both places.
— And, what, you think Bardem has something to do with that fog of war?
— Yes, Moira said firmly. -I do.
Bamber had begun to sweat. -Christ, he said, — if I had any idea the real-world situation Noah was going to use the program for included war-
— Excuse me, Moira said hotly, — but Noah Perlis is a high-ranking member of Black River. How could you not know-or at least suspect?
— Back off, Moira, Hart said.
— I will not back off. This-idiot savant-has given Noah the keys to the castle. Because of Bamber‘s stupidity Noah and the NSA are planning something.
— Something what? Bamber‘s voice was almost pleading. He seemed desperate to know what he was complicit in.
Moira shook her head. -That‘s just it, we don‘t know what, but I‘ll tell you one thing: Unless we find out and stop them I‘m afraid that we‘ll all live to regret it.
Bamber, clearly shaken, rose. -Whatever I can do, however I can help, just tell me.
— Go get dressed, Hart said. -Then we‘d like to take a look at Bardem. My hope is that we‘ll get a better idea from the program itself what Noah and the NSA have in mind.
— It won‘t take me a minute, he said. He ducked out of the office.
For a time, the two women sat in silence. Then Hart said, — Why do I get the feeling that I‘m being outmaneuvered?
— You mean Halliday?
Hart nodded. -The secretary of defense has decided to reach out to the private sector for whatever he has in mind-and make no mistake, no matter how clever Noah Perlis is, he‘s taking his orders from Bud Halliday.
— Taking his money, too, Moira said. -I wonder what Black River‘s bill for this little escapade is going to be.
— Moira, whatever differences we‘ve had in the past, we agree on one thing-that our former employer is without scruples. Black River will do anything if the price is right.
— Halliday has a virtually unlimited source, the US Mint. You and I both saw the flats of hundred-dollar bills Black River transshipped from here to Iraq during the first four years of the war.
Hart nodded. -One hundred million in each flat, and where did the money go? To fight the insurgents? To pay off the army of indigenous informers Black River claimed to get their intel from? No, you and I know, because we saw it, that ninety percent of it went into blind bank accounts in Liechtenstein and the Caymans of dummy corporations owned by Black River.
— Now they don‘t have to steal it, Moira said with a cynical laugh,
— because Halliday is giving it to them.
A moment later they rose and went out of the office as Humphry Bamber emerged from the men‘s locker room. He was dressed in neatly pressed jeans, polished loafers, a blue-and-black-checked shirt, and a gray suede car coat.
— Is there another exit? Moira asked him.
He pointed. -There‘s an employee and delivery entrance behind the administrative offices.
— I‘ll get my car, Moira said.
— Hold on. Hart opened her phone. -It‘s better for me to do it; my people are outside and I need to instruct them to deploy outside the front entrance to make it look as if we‘re taking Bamber out that way. She held out her hand and Moira gave her the keys. -Then I‘ll go get your car and pick you two up around back. Moira?
Moira drew her custom Lady Hawk from its thigh holster while Bamber goggled with his mouth half open.
— What the hell is going on? he said.
— You‘re getting the protection you wanted, Hart said.
As she disappeared down the corridor, Moira motioned to Bamber, allowing him to lead her back toward the admin offices. She used her DoD-issue ID on the few managers who questioned their presence in the health club‘s back office.
When they approached the rear door, she pulled out her phone and dialed Hart‘s private number. Once the DCI answered, she said, — We‘re in position.
— Count to twenty, Hart‘s reply came in her ear, — then bring him out.
Moira snapped shut her phone and put it away. -Ready?
Bamber nodded even though it wasn‘t really a question.
She counted off the rest of the time, then wrenched the door open with her free hand and, with her gun at the ready, moved out, presenting only her profile. Hart had stopped the white Buick directly in front of the entrance. She‘d opened the near-side rear door.
Moira took a look around. They were in a remote section of the parking lot. The blacktop was surrounded by a twelve-foot Cyclone fence topped with razor wire. To the left was a row of huge lidded bins to hold the health club‘s trash and recyclables between garbage pickups. To the right was the turnaround to exit the lot. Beyond rose blocks of anonymous-looking apartment and mixed-use buildings. No other vehicles were in this section of the lot, and a view of the street was blocked off by screening on the outside of the fence.
Glancing back over her shoulder, Moira made eye contact with Bamber.
— Okay, she said, — keep your head low and get into the backseat as quickly as you can.
Crouching down, he scuttled across the short distance from the doorway to the Buick, Moira covering him the whole way. Within the safety of the car, he scrambled across the seat to the far side.
— Get your head down! Hart ordered as she swiveled her torso around the front bucket seat. -And keep it down no matter what.
Then she called to Moira. -Come on, come on! What are you waiting for?
Let‘s get the hell out of Dodge!
Moira went around the back of the Buick and took one last surveillance look at the garbage bins up against the Cyclone fence. Had there been some movement there or was it just a shadow? She took several steps toward the bins, but Veronica Hart stuck her head out the window.
— Dammit, Moira, would you get into the car!
Moira turned back. Ducking her head, she came around the back of the Bu
ick and stopped dead in her tracks. Kneeling down, she peered into the tailpipe. There was something there, something with a tiny red eye, an LED
that now began to blink rapidly…
Jesus, she thought. Oh, God!
Tearing around to the open door, she yelled, — Out! Get out now!
She bent, pulling Bamber across the leather seat, hauling him out of the car. -Ronnie, she called, — get out! Get out of the fucking car!
She saw Hart turn, momentarily bewildered, then move to un-buckle her seat belt. In a moment it became clear that something was wrong because she couldn‘t get free; something was in the way or the locking mechanism was malfunctioning.
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