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Bourne instructed Baronov to stay in the Volga until he returned. He went up the stone
steps, under the colo
ended in an i
of bell pushes corresponding to the apartments. Bourne ran his finger down the rows until
he found the push with Tarkanian’s name. Noting the apartment number, he crossed to
the i
There was a small arthritic elevator on the left wall. To the right, a rather grand
staircase swept up to the first floor. The first three treads were in marble, but these gave way to simple concrete steps that released a kind of talcum-like powder as the porous
treads wore away.
Tarkanian’s apartment was on the third floor, down a dark corridor, dank with the
odors of boiled cabbage and stewed meat. The floor was composed of tiny hexagonal
tiles, chipped and worn as the steps leading up.
Bourne found the door without trouble. He put his ear against it, listening for sounds
within the apartment. When he heard none, he picked the lock. Turning the glass knob
slowly, he pushed open the door a crack. Weak light filtered in past half-drawn curtains
framing windows on the right. Behind the smell of disuse was a whiff of a masculine
scent-cologne or hair cream. Tarkanian had made it clear he hadn’t been back here in
years, so who was using his apartment?
Bourne moved silently, cautiously through the rooms. Where he’d expected to find
dust, there was none; where he expected the furniture to be covered in sheets, it wasn’t.
There was food in the refrigerator, though the bread on the counter was growing mold.
Still, within the week, someone had been living here. The knobs to all the doors were
glass, just like the one on the front door, and some looked wobbly on their brass shafts.
There were photos on the wall: high-toned black-and-whites of Gorky Park in different
seasons.
Tarkanian’s bed was unmade. The covers lay pulled back in unruly waves, as if
someone had been startled out of sleep or had made a hasty exit. On the other side of the
bed, the door to the bathroom was half closed.
As Bourne stepped around the end of the bed, he noticed a five-by-seven framed photo
of a young woman, blond, with a veneer of beauty cultivated by models the world over.
He was wondering whether this was Gala Nematova when he caught a blurred movement
out of the corner of his eye.
A man hidden behind the bathroom door made a run at Bourne. He was armed with a
thick-bladed fisherman’s knife, which he jabbed at Bourne point-first. Bourne rolled
away, the man followed. He was blue-eyed, blond, and big. There were tattoos on the
sides of his neck and the palms of his hands. Mementos of a Russian prison.
The best way to neutralize a knife was to close with your opponent. As the man lunged
after him, Bourne turned, grabbed the man by his shirt, slammed his forehead into the
bridge of the man’s nose. Blood spurted, the man grunted, cursed in guttural Russian,
“Blyad!”
He drove a fist into Bourne’s side, tried to free his hand with the knife. Bourne applied
a nerve block at the base of the thumb. The Russian butted Bourne in the sternum, drove
him back off the bed, into the half-open bathroom door. The glass knob drilled into
Bourne’s spine, causing him to arch back. The door swung fully open and he sprawled on
the cold tiles. The Russian, regaining use of his hand, pulled out a Stechkin APS 9mm.
Bourne kicked him in the shin, so he went down on one knee, then struck him on the side
of the face, and the Stechkin went flying across the tiles. The Russian launched a flurry of punches and hand strikes that battered Bourne back against the door before grabbing the
Stechkin. Bourne reached up, felt the cool octagon of the glass doorknob. Gri
Russian aimed the pistol at Bourne’s heart. Wrenching off the knob, Bourne threw it at
the center of the Russian’s forehead, where it struck full-on. His eyes rolled up and he
slumped to the floor.
Bourne gathered up the Stechkin and took a moment to catch his breath. Then he
crawled over to the Russian. Of course, he had no conventional ID on him, but that didn’t
mean Bourne couldn’t find out where he’d come from.
Stripping off the big man’s jacket and shirt, Bourne took a long look at a constellation
of tattoos. On his chest was a tiger, a sign of an enforcer. On his left shoulder was a
dagger dripping blood, a sign that he was a killer. But it was the third symbol, a genie
emerging from a Middle Eastern lamp, that interested Bourne the most. This was a sign
that the Russian had been put in prison for drug-related crimes.
The professor had told Bourne that two of the Russian Mafia families, the Kazanskaya
and the Azeri, were vying for sole control of the drug market. Don’t get in their way,
Specter had warned. If they have any contact with you, I beg you not to engage them.
Instead, turn the other cheek. It’s the only way to survive there.
Bourne was about to get up when he saw something on the inside of the Russian’s left
elbow: a small tattoo of a figure with a man’s body and a jackal’s head. Anubis, Egyptian
god of the underworld. This symbol was supposed to protect the wearer from death, but it
had also latterly been appropriated by the Kazanskaya. What was a member of such a
powerful Russian grupperovka family doing in Tarkanian’s apartment? He’d been sent to
find him and kill him. Why? That was something Bourne needed to find out.
He looked around the bathroom at the sink with its dripping faucet, pots of eye cream
and powder, makeup pencils, the stained mirror. He pulled back the shower curtain,
plucked several blond hairs from the drain. They were long; from a woman’s head. Gala
Nematova’s head?
He made his way to the kitchen, opened drawers, pawed through them until he found a
blue ballpoint pen. Back in the bathroom, he took one of the eyeliner pencils. Crouching
down beside the Russian, he drew a facsimile of the Anubis tattoo on the inside of his left elbow; when he got a line wrong, he rubbed it off. When he was satisfied, he used the
blue ballpoint pen to make the final “tattoo.” He knew it wouldn’t withstand a close
inspection, but for a flash of identification he thought it would suffice. At the sink, he
delicately rinsed off the makeup pencil, then shot some hair spray over the ink outline to
further fix it on his skin.
He checked behind the toilet tank and in it, favorite hiding places for money,
documents, or important materials, but found nothing. He was about to leave when his
eyes fell again on the mirror. Peering more closely, he could see a trace of red here and
there. Lipstick, which had been carefully wiped off, as if someone-possibly the
Kazanskaya Russian-had sought to erase it. Why would he do that?
It seemed to Bourne the smears formed a kind of pattern. Taking up a pot of face
powder, he blew across the top of it. The petroleum-based powder sought its twin, clung
to the ghost image of the petroleum-based lipstick.
When he was done, he put the pot down, took a step backward. He was looking at a
scrawled note:
Off to the Kitaysky Lyotchik. Where R U? Gala.
So Gala Nematova, Pyotr’s last girlfriend, did live here. Had Pyotr used this apartment
while Tarkanian was away?
On his way out, he checked the Russian’s pulse. It was slow but steady. The question