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Arkadin broke his neck, dragged him into the deepest shadows of the cargo bay, away
from the NextGen containers. He stripped and do
Then he stepped over to the work area, keeping the ID tag clipped to it out of full view so that no one could that see that his face didn’t match that on the tag. Not that it mattered: These people were here to get the cargo off-loaded and onto the waiting NextGen trucks
as quickly as possible. It never occurred to any of them that there might be an imposter
among them.
In this way, Arkadin worked his way to the open bay doors, onto the loading lifts with
the container. He hopped onto the tarmac as the cargo was being loaded onto the truck,
then ducked away beneath the wing. Finding himself alone on the opposite side of the
aircraft, he walked away at a brisk, business-like clip. No one challenged him, no one
even gave him a second look, because he moved with the authority of someone who
belonged there. That was the secret of assuming a different identity, even temporarily-
people’s eyes either ignored or accepted what looked correct to them.
As he went, he breathed deeply of the clear, salt air, the freshening breeze whipping his
pants against his legs. He felt free of all the leashes that had bound him to the earth: Stas Kuzin, Marlene, Gala, Icoupov, they were all gone now. The sea beckoned him and he
was coming.
NextGen had its own small terminal on the freight side of the Long Beach airport.
Moira had radioed ahead to NextGen headquarters, giving them a heads-up and asking
for a helicopter to be ready to take her and Bourne to the tanker.
Arkadin beat Bourne to the NextGen terminal. Hurrying now, he used the badge to
open the door to the restricted areas. Out on the tarmac he saw the helicopter right away.
The pilot was talking to a maintenance man. The moment they both squatted down,
examining one of the ru
around to the far side of the helicopter, and made himself busy there.
He saw Bourne and Moira emerge from the NextGen terminal. They paused for a
moment and he could hear their argument about whether or not she should come, but they
must have had it before, because the fight was hammered out in brief, staccato bursts, like shorthand.
“Face facts, Jason. I work for NextGen; without me you won’t get on that copter.”
Bourne turned away, and for an instant Arkadin felt a foreboding, as if Bourne had
seen him. Then Bourne turned back to Moira, and together they hurried across the
tarmac.
Bourne climbed in on the pilot’s side, while Moira headed to Arkadin’s side of the
copter. With a professional smile, he held out a hand, helping her up into the cockpit. He
saw the maintenance man about to come across, but waved him off. Looking up at Moira
through the curved Perspex door he thought of Devra and felt a lurch in his chest, as if
her bleeding head had fallen against him. He waved at Moira, and she lifted her hand in
return.
The rotors began to swirl, the maintenance man signaled for Arkadin to come away;
Arkadin gave him the thumbs-up sign. Faster and faster the rotors spun, and the copter’s
frame began to shudder. Just before it lifted off, Arkadin climbed onto the ru
curled himself into a ball as they swung out over the Pacific, buffeted by a stiff onshore
wind.
The tanker loomed large in the passengers’ vision as the copter sped toward it at top
speed. Only one other boat could be seen, a commercial fishing vessel several miles away
beyond the security limits imposed by the Coast Guard and Homeland Security. Bourne,
who was sitting directly behind the pilot, saw that he was working to keep the copter’s
pitch at the correct angle.
“Is everything okay?” he shouted over the roar of the rotors.
The pilot pointed to one of the gauges. “There’s a small anomaly in the pitch; probably
the wind, it’s gusting up quite a bit.”
But Bourne wasn’t so sure. The anomaly was constant, whereas the wind wasn’t. He
had an intuition what-or, more accurately, who-was causing the problem.
“I think we have a stowaway,” Bourne said to the pilot. “Take it in low when you get
to the tanker. Skim the tops of the containers.”
“What?” The pilot shook his head. “Too dangerous.”
“Then I’ll take a look myself.” Unstrapping himself, Bourne crept toward the door.
“Okay, okay!” the pilot shouted. “Just get back in your seat!”
They were almost at the bow of the tanker now. It was unbelievably big, a city
lumbering through the Pacific swells.
“Hang on!” the pilot shouted as he took them down far more quickly than normal.
They could see members of the crew racing across the deck, and someone-no doubt the
captain-emerged from the wheelhouse near the stern. Someone was shouting to pull up;
the tops of the containers were coming at them with frightening speed. Just before they
skimmed the top of the nearest container, the copter rocked slightly.
“The anomaly’s gone,” the pilot said.
“Stay here,” Bourne shouted to Moira. “Whatever happens stay on board.” Then he
gripped the weapon lying astride his knees, opened the door and, as she screamed his
name, jumped out of the copter.
He landed after Arkadin, who had already leapt down onto the deck and was scuttling
between containers. Crew members rushed toward them both; Bourne had no idea
whether one of them was Sever’s software engineer, but he raised a hunting crossbow
and they stopped in their tracks. Knowing that firing a gun would be tantamount to
suicide on a tanker full of liquid natural gas, he’d had Moira ask NextGen to have two
crossbows in the copter. How they procured them so quickly was anyone’s guess, but a
corporation of NextGen’s size could get just about anything at a moment’s notice.
Behind him, the chopper set down on the part of the foredeck that had been cleared,
and cut the engines. Doubled over to avoid the rotors, he opened the copter door and
looked up at Moira. “Arkadin is here somewhere. Please stay out of the way.”
“I need to report to the captain. I can take care of myself.” She, too, was cradling a
crossbow. “What does Arkadin want?”
“Me. I killed his friend. It doesn’t matter to him that it was in self-defense.”
“I can help, Jason. If we work together, two are better than one.”
He shook his head. “Not in this case. Besides, you see how slowly the tanker is
moving; its screws are in reverse. It’s within the five-mile limit. For every foot we travel forward, the danger to thousands of lives and the port of Long Beach itself grows
exponentially.”
She nodded stiffly, stepped down, and hurried along the deck to where the captain
stood, awaiting her orders.
Bourne turned, moving cautiously among the containers, in the direction he’d glimpsed
Arkadin heading. Moving along the aisles was like walking down the canyons of
Manhattan. Wind howled as it cut across corners, magnified, racing down the aisles as if
they were tu
Just before he reached the end of the first set of containers, he heard Arkadin’s voice,
speaking to him in Russian.
“There isn’t much time.”
Bourne stood still, trying to determine where the voice was coming from. “What d’you
know about it, Arkadin?”
“Why d’you think I’m here?”
“I killed Mischa Tarkanian, now you kill me. Isn’t that how you defined it back in
Egon Kirsch’s apartment?”
“Listen to me, Bourne, if that’s what I wanted I could have killed you anytime while
you and the woman slept aboard the NextGen 747.”