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looking as if they’d had little to do in the past year. From one of them Shumenko
received a city map, which he drew on. Then he handed it to Arkadin, pointing at a star
he’d marked.
“There’s the winery.” He glanced outside. “The sky’s clearing. Who knows, by the
time you get there, you may even see some sun.”
Bourne walked the streets of Georgetown securely hidden within the crowds of college
and university kids prowling the cobbles, looking for beer, girls, and guys. He was
discreetly shadowing the man in the restaurant, who was, in turn, following Moira.
Once he had determined that the man was her tail, he’d backed away and returned to
the street, where he’d called Moira.
“Can you think of anyone who wants to keep tabs on you?”
“I guess several,” she said. “My own company, for one. I told you they’ve become
paranoid ever since we started to build the LNG station in Long Beach. NoHold Energy
might be another. They’ve been waving a vice president’s job at me for six months. I
could see them wanting to know more about me so they can sweeten their offer.”
“Other than those two?”
“No.”
He’d told her what he wanted her to do, and now in the Georgetown night she was
doing it. They always had habits, these watchers in the shadows, little peculiarities built up from all the boring hours spent at their lonely jobs. This one liked to be on the inside of the sidewalk so he could duck quickly into a doorway if need be.
Once he had the shadow’s idiosyncracies down, it was time to take him out. But as
Bourne worked his way through the crowds, moving closer to the shadow, he saw
something else. The man wasn’t alone. A second tail had taken up a parallel position on
the opposite side of the street, which made sense. If Moira decided to cross the street in
this throng, the first shadow might run into some difficulty keeping her in sight. These
people, whoever they were, were leaving little to chance.
Bourne melted back, matching his pace to that of the crowd’s. At the same time, he
called Moira. She’d put in her Bluetooth earpiece so she could take his call without being
conspicuous. Bourne gave her detailed instructions, then broke off following her
shadows.
Moira, the back of her neck tingling as if she were in the crosshairs of an assassin’s
rifle, crossed the street, walked over to M Street. The main thing for her to keep in mind, Jason said, was to move at a normal pace, neither fast nor slow. Jason had alarmed her
with the news that she was being followed. She had merely maintained the illusion of
being calm. There were many people from both present and past who might be following
her-a number of whom she hadn’t mentioned when Jason had asked. Still, so close to the
opening of the LNG terminal it was an ominous sign. She had desperately wanted to
share with Jason the intel that had come to her today about the possibility of the terminal being a terrorist target, not in theory, but in reality. However, she couldn’t-not unless he was an employee of the company. She was bound by her ironclad contract not to tell
anyone outside the firm any confidential information.
At 31st Street NW, she turned south, walking toward the Canal Towpath. A third of the
way down the block, on her side, was a discreet plaque on which the word JEWEL was
etched. She opened the ruby-colored door, entered the high-priced new restaurant. This
was the kind of place where dishes were accessorized with kaffir lime foam, freeze-dried
ginger, and ruby grapefruit pearls.
Smiling sweetly at the manager, she told him that she was looking for a friend. Before
he could check his reservation book, she said her friend was with a man whose name she
didn’t know. She’d been here several times, once with Jason, so she knew the layout. At
the rear of the second room was a short corridor. Against the right-hand wall were two
unisex bathrooms. If you kept on going, which she did, you came to the kitchen, all bright
lights, stainless-steel pans, copper pots, huge stovetops raging at high heat. Young men
and women moved around the room in what seemed to her like military precision-sous-
chefs, line cooks, expediters, the pastry chef and her staff, all performing under the stern commands of the chef de cuisine.
They were all too concentrated on their respective tasks to give Moira much notice. By
the time her figure did register she’d already disappeared out the rear door. In a back
alley filled with Dumpsters, a White Top cab was waiting, its engine purring. She
climbed in and the cab took off.
Arkadin drove through the hills of rural Nakhimovskiy district, lush even in winter. He
passed checkered farmland, bounded by low forested areas. The sky was lightening, the
dark, rain-laden clouds already disappearing, replaced by high cumulus that glowed like
embers in the sunlight that broke through everywhere. A golden sheen covered the acres
of vineyards as he approached the Sevastopol Winery. At this time of year there were no
leaves or fruit, of course, but the twisted, stunted boles, like the trunks of elephants, bore a life of their own that gave the vineyard a certain mystery, a mythic aspect, as if these
sleeping vines needed only the spell of a wizard to come awake.
A burly woman named Yetnikova introduced herself as Oleg Ivanovich Shumenko’s
immediate supervisor-there was, apparently, no end to the tiers of supervisors in the
winery. She had shoulders as wide as Arkadin’s, a red, round, vodka face with features as
curiously small as those of a doll. She wore her hair tied up in a peasant babushka, but
she was all bristling business.
When she demanded to know Arkadin’s business, he whipped out one of many false
credentials he carried. This one identified him as a colonel in the SBU, the Security
Service of Ukraine. Upon seeing the SBU card, Yetnikova wilted like an unwatered plant
and showed him where to find Shumenko.
Arkadin, following her direction, went down corridor after corridor. He opened each
door he came to, peering inside offices, utility closets, storerooms, and the like,
apologizing to the occupants as he did so.
Shumenko was working in the fermentation room when Arkadin found him. He was a
reed-thin man, much younger than Arkadin had imagined-no more than thirty or so. He
had thick hair the color of goldenrod that stood up from his scalp like a series of
cockscombs. Music spilled out from a portable player-a British band, the Cure. Arkadin
had heard the song many times in Moscow clubs, but it seemed startling here in the hind
end of the Crimea.
Shumenko stood on a catwalk four yards in the air, bent over a stainless-steel apparatus
as large as a blue whale. He seemed to be sniffing something, possibly the latest batch of
champagne he was concocting. Rather than turn down the music, Shumenko gestured for
Arkadin to join him.
Without hesitation Arkadin mounted the vertical ladder, climbed swiftly up to the
catwalk. The yeasty, slightly sweet odors of fermentation tickled his nostrils, causing him to rub the end of his nose vigorously to stave off a sneezing fit. His practiced gaze swept the immediate vicinity taking in every last detail, no matter how minute.
“Oleg Ivanovich Shumenko?”
The reedy young man put aside a clipboard on which he was taking notes. “At your
service.” He wore a badly fitting suit. He placed the pen he had been using in his breast
pocket, where it joined a line of others. “And you would be?”
“A friend of Pyotr Zilber’s.”
“Never heard of him.”