The Bourne Sanction

Passing the European glass lizard, Bourne hauled Tarkanian into the snake section. It was at that moment that Tarkanian chose to make a move. Twisting away as he lunged back toward the approaching men, he dragged Bourne for a step, until Bourne struck him a dizzying blow to the side of the head.

A workman knelt with his toolbox in front of an empty case. He was fiddling with the ventilation grille at the base. Bourne swiped a short length of stiff wire from the box.

“The cavalry’s not going to save you today,” Bourne said as he dragged Tarkanian toward a door set flush in the wall between cases that led to the work area hidden from the public. One of the pursuers was closing in when Bourne jimmied the lock with the bit of wire. He opened the door, stepped through. He slammed it shut behind him, set the lock.

The door began to shudder on its hinges as the men pounded on it. Bourne found himself in a narrow utility corridor, lit by long fluorescent tubes, that ran behind the cases. Doors and, in the cases of the venomous snakes, feeding windows appeared at regular intervals along the right-hand wall.

Bourne heard a soft phutt! and the lock popped out of the door. The men were armed with small-caliber handguns fitted with suppressors. He pushed the stumbling Tarkanian ahead of him as one of the men stepped through. Where was the other one? Bourne thought he knew, and he turned his attention to the far end of the corridor, where any moment now he expected the second man to appear.

Tarkanian, sensing Bourne’s momentary shift of attention, spun, slamming the side of his body into Bourne’s. Thrown off balance, Bourne skidded through the open doorway into the tree python case. With a harsh bark of laughter, Tarkanian rushed on.

A herpetologist in the case to check on the python was already protesting Bourne’s appearance. Bourne ignored him, reached up, unwound one of the hungry pythons from the branch nearest him. As the snake, sensing his heat, wrapped itself around his outstretched arm, Bourne turned and burst out into the corridor just in time to drive a fist into the gunman’s solar plexus. When the man doubled over, Bourne slid his arm out of the python’s coils, wrapped its body around the gunman’s chest. Seeing the python, the man screamed. It began to tighten its coils around him.

Bourne snatched the handgun with its suppressor from his hand, took off after Tarkanian. The gun was a Glock, not a Taurus. As Bourne suspected, these two weren’t part of the same team that had abducted the professor. Who were they then? Members of the Black Legion, sent to extract Tarkanian? But if that was the case, how had they known he’d been blown? No time for answers: The second man had appeared at the far end of the corridor. He was in a crouch, motioning to Tarkanian, who squeezed himself against the side of the corridor.

As the gunman took aim at him Bourne covered his face with his folded forearms, dived headfirst through one of the feeding windows. Glass shattered. Bourne looked up to see that he was face-to-face with a Gaboon viper, the species with the longest fangs and highest venom yield of any snake. It was black and ocher. Its ugly, triangular head rose, its tongue flicked out, sensing, trying to determine if the creature sprawled in front of it was a threat.

Bourne lay still as stone. The viper began to hiss, a steady rhythm that flattened its head with each fierce exhalation. The small horns beside its nostrils quivered. Bourne had definitely disturbed it. Having traveled extensively in Africa, he knew something of this creature’s habits. It was not prone to bite unless severely provoked. On the other hand, he couldn’t risk moving his body at all at this point.

Aware that he was vulnerable from behind as well as in front, he slowly raised his left hand. The hissing’s steady rhythm didn’t change. Keeping his eyes on the snake’s head, he moved his hand until it was over the snake. He’d read about a technique meant to calm this kind of snake but had no idea whether it would work. He touched the snake on the top of its head with a fingertip. The hissing stopped. It did work!

He grasped it at its neck. Letting go of the gun, he supported the viper’s body with his other hand. The creature didn’t struggle. Walking gingerly across the case to the far end, he set it carefully down in a corner. A group of kids were staring, openmouthed, from the other side of the glass. Bourne backed away from the viper, never taking his eyes from it. Near the shattered feeding window he knelt down, grasped the Glock.

A voice behind him said, “Leave the gun where it is and turn around slowly.”

The damn thing’s dislocated,” Arkadin said.

Devra stared at his deformed shoulder.

“You’ll have to reset it for me.”

Drenched to the bone, they were sitting in a late-night cafй on the other side of Sevastopol, warming themselves as best they could. The gas heater in the cafй hissed and hiccupped alarmingly, as if it were coming down with pneumonia. Glasses of steaming tea sat before them, half empty. It was barely an hour after their hair’s-breadth escape, and both of them were exhausted.

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“Absolutely, you will,” he said. “I can’t go to a proper doctor.”

Arkadin ordered food. Devra ate like an animal, shoving dripping pieces of stew into her mouth with her fingertips. She looked as if she hadn’t eaten in days. Perhaps she hadn’t. Seeing how she laid waste to the food, Arkadin ordered more. He ate slowly and deliberately, conscious of everything he put into his mouth. Killing did that to him: All his senses were working overtime. Colors were brighter, smells stronger, everything tasted rich and complex. He could hear the acrid political argument going on in the opposite corner between two old men. His own fingertips on his cheek felt like sandpaper. He was acutely aware of his own heartbeat, the blood rushing behind his ears. He was, in short, a walking, talking exposed nerve.

He both loved and hated being in this state. The feeling was a form of ecstasy. He remembered coming across a dog-eared paperback copy of The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda, had learned to read English from it, a long, torturous path. The concept of ecstasy had never occurred to him before reading this book. Later, in emulation of Castaneda, he thought of trying peyote-if he could find it-but the idea of a drug, any drug, set his teeth on edge. He was already lost quite enough. He held no desire to find a place from which he could never return.

Meanwhile the ecstasy he was in was a burden as well as a revelation, but he knew he couldn’t long stand being that exposed nerve. Everything from a car backfiring to the chirrup of a cricket crashed against him, as painful as if he’d been turned inside out.

He studied Devra with an almost obsessive concentration. He noticed something he hadn’t seen before-likely, with her gesticulating, she’d distracted him from noticing. But now she’d let down her guard. Perhaps she was just exhausted or had relaxed with him. She had a tremor in her hands, a nerve that had gone awry. Clandestinely, he watched the tremor, thinking it made her seem even more vulnerable.

“I don’t get you,” he told her now. “Why have you turned against your own people?”

“You think Pyotr Zilber, Oleg Shumenko, and Filya were my own people?”

“You’re a cog in Zilber’s network. What else would I think?”

“You heard how that pig talked to me up on the roof. Shit, they were all like that.” She wiped grease off her lips and chin. “I never liked Shumenko. First it was gambling debts I had to bail him out of, then it was drugs.”

Arkadin’s voice was offhand when he said, “You told me you didn’t know what the last loan was for.”

“I lied.”

“Did you tell Pyotr?”

“You’re joking. Pyotr was the worst of the lot.”