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NextGen truck rumbled to life, heading away from the plane, back the way it had come.
That was when Bourne saw the black Mercedes and a police car directly behind it.
“Where did that police car come from?” The officer tore himself away from Bourne
and broke into a run toward the parked cars.
Bourne, who saw the driver’s-side doors on both vehicles standing open, was at the
officer’s heels. It was clear as they approached that no one was in the police car, but
looking through the Mercedes’s door, they saw the driver, slumped over. It looked as if
he’d been kicked to the passenger’s side of the seat.
Bourne pulled open the rear door, saw Icoupov with the top of his head blown off.
Another man had fallen forward against the front seat rests. When Bourne pulled him
gently backward, he saw that it was Dominic Specter-or Asher Sever-and everything
became clear to him. Beneath the public enmity, the two men were secret allies. This
answered many questions, not the least of which was why everyone Bourne had spoken
to about the Black Legion had a different opinion about who was a member and who
wasn’t.
Sever looked small and frail, old beyond his years. He’d been shot in the chest with
a.22. Bourne took his pulse, listened to his breathing. He was still alive.
“I’ll call for an ambulance,” the officer said.
“Do what you have to do,” Bourne said as he scooped Sever up. “I’m taking this one
with me.”
He left the Immigration officer to deal with the mess, crossing the tarmac and
mounting the rolling stairs.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said as he laid Sever down across three seats.
“What happened to him?” Moira said with a gasp. “Is he alive or dead?”
Bourne knelt beside his old mentor. “He’s still breathing.” As he began to rip off the
professor’s shirt, he said to Moira. “Get us moving, okay? We need to get out of here
now.”
Moira nodded. As she went up the aisle, she spoke to one of the flight attendants, who
ran for the first-aid kit. The door to the cockpit was still open, and she gave the order for takeoff to the captain and the co-pilot.
Within five minutes the rolling stairs had been removed and the 747 was taxiing to the
head of the runway. A moment later the control tower cleared it for takeoff. The brakes
were let out, the engines revved up, and, with increasing velocity, the jet hurtled down
the runway. Then it lifted off, its wheel retracted, flaps were adjusted, and it soared into a sky filled with the crimson and gold of the setting sun.
Forty-Three
IS HE DEAD?” Sever stared up at Bourne, who was cleaning his chest wound.
“You mean Semion?”
“Yes. Semion. Is he dead?”
“Icoupov and the driver, both.”
Bourne held Sever down while the alcohol burned off everything that could cause the
wound to suppurate. No organs had been struck, but the injury must be extremely painful.
Bourne applied an antiseptic cream from a tube in the first-aid kit. “Who shot you?”
“Arkadin.” Tears of pain rolled down Sever’s cheeks. “For some reason, he’s gone
completely insane. Maybe he was always insane. I thought so anyway. Allah, that hurts!”
He took several shallow breaths before he went on. “He came out of nowhere. The driver
said, ‘A police car has pulled up behind us.’ The next thing I know he’s rolling down the
window and a gun is fired point-blank in his face. Neither Semion nor I had time to think.
There was Arkadin inside the car. He shot me, but I’m certain it was Semion he’d come
for.”
Intuiting what must have happened in Kirsch’s apartment, Bourne said, “Icoupov
killed his woman, Devra.”
Sever squeezed his eyes shut. He was having trouble breathing normally. “So what?
Arkadin never cared what happened to his women.”
“He cared about this one,” Bourne said, applying a bandage.
Sever stared up at Bourne with an expression of disbelief. “The odd thing was, I think I
heard him call Semion ‘Father.’ Semion didn’t understand.”
“And now he never will.”
“Stop your fussing; let me die, dammit!” Sever said crossly. “It doesn’t matter now
whether I live or die.”
Bourne finished up.
“What’s done is done. Fate has been sealed; there’s nothing you or anyone else can do
to change it.”
Bourne sat on a seat opposite Sever. He was aware of Moira standing to one side,
watching and listening. The professor’s betrayal only went to prove that you were never
safe when you let personal feelings into your life.
“Jason.” Sever’s voice was weaker. “I never meant to deceive you.”
“Yes, you did, Professor, that’s all you know how to do.”
“I came to look upon you as a son.”
“Like Icoupov looked upon Arkadin.”
With an effort, Sever shook his head. “Arkadin is insane. Perhaps they both were,
perhaps their shared insanity is what drew them together.”
Bourne sat forward, “Let me ask you a question, Professor. Do you think you’re sane?”
“Of course I’m sane.”
Sever’s eyes held steady on Bourne’s, a challenge still, at this late stage.
For a moment, Bourne did nothing, then he rose and, together with Moira, walked
forward toward the cockpit.
“It’s a long flight,” she said softly, “and you need your rest.”
“We both do.”
They sat next to each other, silent for a long time. Occasionally, they heard Sever utter
a soft moan. Otherwise, the drone of the engines conspired to lull them to sleep.
It was freezing in the baggage hold, but Arkadin didn’t mind. The Nizhny Tagil
winters had been brutal. It was during one of those winters that Mischa Tarkanian had
found him, hiding out from the remnants of Stas Kuzin’s regime. Mischa, hard as a knife
blade, had the heart of a poet. He told stories that were beautiful enough to be poems.
Arkadin had been enchanted, if such a word could be ascribed to him. Mischa’s talent for
storytelling had the power to take Arkadin far away from Nizhny Tagil, and when Mischa
smuggled him out past the i
prisons, his stories took Arkadin to places beyond Moscow, to lands beyond Russia. The
stories gave Arkadin his first inkling of the world at large.
As he sat now, his back against a crate, knees drawn up to his chest in order to
conserve warmth, he had good cause to think of Mischa. Icoupov had paid for killing
Devra, now Bourne must pay for killing Mischa. But not just yet, Arkadin brooded,
though his blood called out for revenge. If he killed Bourne now, Icoupov’s plan would
succeed, and he couldn’t allow that, otherwise his revenge against him would be
incomplete.
Arkadin put his head back against the edge of the crate and closed his eyes. Revenge
had become like one of Mischa’s poems, its meaning flowering open to surround him
with a kind of ethereal beauty, the only form of beauty that registered on him, the only
beauty that lasted. It was the glimpse of that promised beauty, the very prospect of it, that allowed him to sit patiently, curled between crates, waiting for his moment of revenge,
his moment of inestimable beauty.
Bourne dreamed of the hell known as Nizhny Tagil as if he’d been born there, and
when he awoke he knew Arkadin was near. Opening his eyes, he saw Moira staring at
him.
“What do you feel about the professor?” she said, by which he suspected she meant,
What do you feel about me?
“I think the years of obsession have driven him insane. I don’t think he knows good
from evil, right from wrong.”
“Is that why you didn’t ask him why he embarked on this path to destruction?”