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“At last we find something in Munich that even you can be proud of,” Bourne said.
“I suppose so.” Petra laughed, almost sadly. “But I among all of my friends was the
only one who stayed a revolutionary. The others are corporate functionaries or Hausfraus
now. They lead sad, gray lives. I see them sometimes, trudging to and from work. I walk
by them; they don’t even look up. In the end, they all disappointed me.”
Kirsch’s apartment was on the top floor of a beautiful house of stone-colored stucco,
arched windows, and a terra-cotta tile roof. Between two of his windows was a niche
holding a stone statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus.
Petra pulled into the curb in front of the building. “I wish you well, American,” she
said, deliberately using Virgil Pelz’s phrasing. “Thank you… for everything.”
“You may not believe it, but we helped each other,” Bourne said as he got out of the
car. “Good luck, Petra.”
When she’d driven off, he turned, went up the steps to the building, and used the code
Kirsch had given him to open the front door. The interior was neat and spotlessly clean.
The wood-paneled hallway gleamed with a recent waxing. Bourne climbed the carved
wooden staircase to the top floor. Using Kirsch’s key, he let himself in. Though the
apartment itself was light and airy, with many windows overlooking the street, it was
steeped in a deep silence, as if it existed on the bottom of the sea. There was no TV, no
computer. Bookcases lined one entire wall of the living room, holding volumes by
Nietzsche, Kant, Descartes, Heidegger, Leibniz, and Machiavelli. There were also books
by many of the great mathematicians, biographers, fiction writers, and economists. The
other walls were covered with Kirsch’s framed and matted line drawings, so detailed and
intricate that at first glance they seemed to be architectural plans, but then suddenly they came into focus and Bourne realized the drawings were abstracts. Like all good art, they
seemed to move back and forth from reality to an imagined dream world where anything
was possible.
After taking a brief tour of all the rooms, he settled down in a chair behind Kirsch’s
desk. He thought long and hard about the professor. Was he Dominic Specter, the
nemesis of the Black Legion, as he claimed to be, or was he, in fact, Asher Sever, the
leader of the Black Legion? If he was Sever, he’d staged the attack on himself-an
elaborate scheme that had cost a number of lives. Could the professor be guilty of such an
irrational act? If he was the leader of the Black Legion, certainly. The second question
Bourne had been asking himself was why the professor would entrust the stolen plans to
Pyotr’s thoroughly undependable network. But there was another enigma: If the professor
was Sever, why was he so anxious to get those plans? Wouldn’t he already have them?
These two questions went around and around in Bourne’s head without producing a
satisfactory solution. Nothing about the situation he found himself in appeared to make
sense, which meant that a vital part of the picture was missing. And yet he had the
nagging suspicion that, like Egon Kirsch’s drawings, he was being shown two separate
realities-if only he could decipher which was real and which one was false.
At length, he turned his mind to something that had been bothering him ever since the
incident at the Egyptian Museum. He knew that Franz Jens had been the only one to
follow him into the museum, so how on earth did Arkadin know where he was? Arkadin
had to have been the one to kill Jens. He also must have given the order to kill Egon
Kirsch, but, again, how did he know where Kirsch was?
The answers to both questions were firmly rooted in time and place. He hadn’t been
tailed to the museum, then… As a chill spread through him, Bourne went very still. With
no physical tail, there had to be an electronic tail somewhere on his person. But how had
it been put there? Someone could have brushed up against him in the airport. He rose,
slowly undressed. As he did so, he went through every item of clothing, looking for an
electronic tag. Finding nothing, he dressed, sat again in the chair, deep in thought.
With his eidetic memory, he went through every step of his journey from Moscow to
Munich. When he recalled the German Immigration officer, he realized that his passport
had been out of his possession for close to half a minute. Taking it out of his breast
pocket, he began to leaf through it, checking each page both by sight and by touch. On
the inside of the back cover, stuck in the fold of the binding, he found the tiny transmitter.
Thirty-Seven
HOW WONDERFUL it is to breathe the good night air,” Veronica Hart said as she
stood on the pavement just outside the Pentagon.
“Diesel fumes and all,” Stu Gold said.
“I knew LaValle’s charges wouldn’t stick,” she said as they crossed to his car.
“They’re patently trumped up.”
“I wouldn’t begin celebrating just yet,” the attorney said. “LaValle’s put me on notice
that he’s going to take those surveillance photos of you and Bourne to the president
tomorrow for an executive order to have you removed.”
“Come on, Stu, those were private conversations between Martin Lindros and a
civilian, Moira Trevor. There’s nothing in them. LaValle’s banking on hot air.”
“He’s got the secretary of defense,” Gold said. “Under the circumstances that alone is
enough to make trouble for you.”
The wind was whipping up and Hart caught her hair, pushed it off her face. “Coming
into CI and marching me out in cuffs… LaValle made a big mistake grandstanding like
that.” She turned, looked back at the headquarters of the NSA in which she’d been
incarcerated for three hours until the moment Gold showed up with his order from a
federal judge for her temporary release. “He’ll pay for humiliating me.”
“Veronica, don’t do anything rash.” Gold opened the car door, ushered her inside.
“Knowing LaValle as I do it’s more than likely that he wants you to go off half-cocked.
That’s how fatal mistakes are made.”
He went around the front of the car, got behind the wheel, and they drove off.
“We can’t let him get away with this, Stu. Unless we stop him he’s going to hijack CI
right out from under us.” She watched the Virginia night turn into the district night as
they crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge. The Lincoln Memorial rose up before them.
“I made a pledge when I signed on.”
“Like all DCIs.”
“No, I’m talking about a personal pledge.” She very much wanted to see Lincoln
sitting on his chair, contemplating all the unknowns that lay before every human being.
She asked Gold to make a stop there. “I never told anyone this, Stu, but the day I
officially became DCI I went to the Old Man’s grave. Have you ever been to the
Arlington National Cemetery? It’s a sobering place, but in its own way a joyous place as
well. So many heroes, so much courage, the bedrock of our freedom, Stu, every one of
us.”
They’d come to the memorial. They both got out, walked up to the majestic floodlit
granite statue, stood gazing up into Lincoln’s stern, wise face. Someone had left a
bouquet of flowers at his feet, withered heads nodding in the wind.
“I stayed at the Old Man’s grave for a long time,” Hart continued in a faraway voice.
“I swear I could feel him, I swear I felt something stir against me, then inside me.” Her
gaze swung around to fix on the attorney. “There’s a long, exemplary legacy at CI, Stu. I