In response, Moira handed over the thumb drive she‘d gotten from Jay Weston‘s corpse. Ten minutes later the DCI looked up from her computer and said, ―Moira, so far as I can make out all you have is a motorcycle cop no one can find, and a thumb drive full of nonsense.‖
―Jay Weston didn‘t die in an automobile accident,‖ Moira said hotly, ―he was shot to death. And Steve Stevenson, the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics at the DoD, confirmed that Jay was killed because he was on to something. He told me that ever since the news of the jetliner explosion hit the wires the atmosphere at DoD and the Pentagon has been shrouded in a toxic fog. Those were his words exactly.‖
Still staring at Moira, Hart picked up the phone and asked her assistant to connect her to Undersecretary Stevenson at the Department of Defense.
―Don‘t,‖ Moira said. ―He was scared shitless. I had to beg him to even meet with me, and he‘s a client.‖
―I‘m sorry,‖ the DCI said, ―but it‘s the only way.‖ She waited a moment, drumming her fingers on the desktop. Then her expression shifted. ―Yes, Undersecretary Stevenson, this is—Oh, I see. When is he expected back?‖ Her gaze returned to Moira. ―Surely you have to know when—Yes, I see. Never mind, I‘ll try again later. Thank you.‖
She replaced the receiver and her finger drumming began again.
―What happened?‖ Moira asked. ―Where‘s Stevenson?‖
―Apparently, no one knows. He left the office at eleven thirty-five this morning.‖
―That was to meet me.‖
―And as yet hasn‘t returned.‖
Moira dug out her phone, called Stevenson‘s cell, which went right to voice mail. ―He‘s not answering.‖ She put her phone away.
Hart stared hard at the screen of her computer terminal and mouthed the word Pinprickbardem,then returned her gaze to Moira. ―I think we‘d better find out what the hell has happened to the undersecretary.‖
Wayan, well pleased with his sales for the day, was in the enclosed rear of his stall, preparing the one or two pigs left unsold to take back to his farm, when the man appeared. He didn‘t hear him for all the shouted cacophony as the huge market began to close for the night.
―You‘re the pig man named Wayan.‖
―Closed,‖ Wayan said without looking up. ―Please come back tomorrow.‖
When he discerned no movement he began to turn, saying, ―And in any event, you cannot come back—‖
The powerful blow caught him square on the jaw, sending him reeling into the piglets, which squealed in alarm. So did Wayan. He barely had time to see the man‘s rough-edged face when he was hauled upright. The second punch buried itself in his stomach, sending him breathless, to his knees.
He peered up through watering eyes, gasping and retching pitifully, at the impossibly tall man. He wore a black suit so shiny and ill fitting it was hideous. There was stubble on his face, blue as the shadows of evening, and coal-black eyes that regarded Wayan without either pity or conscience. One side of his neck was imprinted with a rather delicate scar, like a pink ribbon on a child‘s birthday present, that ran up into his jaw where the muscle had been severed and was now puckered. The other side of his neck was tattooed with a clutch of three skulls: one looking straight out, the other two in profile, looking forward and behind him.
―What did you tell Bourne?‖
The man spoke English with a guttural accent that Wayan, in his addled state, couldn‘t place. A European, but not British or French. Perhaps a Romanian or a Serb.
―What did you tell Bourne?‖ he repeated.
―W-who?‖
The man shook Wayan until his teeth rattled. ―The man who came to see you. The American. What did you tell him?‖
―I don‘t know what y—‖
Wayan‘s attempt at a denial turned into a grunt of pain as the man took his right forefinger and bent it back until it snapped. The rush of blood from Wayan‘s head almost made him lose consciousness, but the man slapped him twice so that his eyes focused on his tormentor.
The man leaned in so that Wayan could smell his sour odor, knew that he must have just flown in without having showered or changed his clothes.
―Do not fuck with me, you little prick.‖ He already had a grip on the middle finger of Wayan‘s right hand. ―You have five seconds.‖
―Please, you‘re wrong about this!‖
He gave a little yelp as the man snapped his middle finger. All the blood seemed to have left his head. As before, the man slapped his jowls several times.
―Two down, eight to go,‖ the man said, trapping Wayan‘s right thumb.
Wayan‘s mouth opened wide, like a fish gasping for air. ―All right, all right. I told him where to find Don Fernando Hererra.‖
The man sat back on his haunches and let out a short breath. ―You are so fucking unreliable.‖ Then he turned, picked up a length of bamboo pole, and without the slightest expression drove it through Wayan‘s right eye.
13
FOR THE NEXT eighteen hours Arkadin did nothing but train his recruits. He did not allow them to eat, to sleep, or to do more than take breaks to urinate. Thirty seconds, that‘s all they had to empty their bladders into the red Azerbaijani dust. The first man who took longer received a solid whack from Arkadin‘s baton behind his knee; the first man became the only man to disobey that or any other order, for that matter.
As Triton had warned him, he had five days to turn these killers into a platoon of shock troops. Easier said than done, true, but Arkadin had plenty of experience to draw from, because something similar had been done to him when he was a young man in Nizhny Tagil and on the run from having killed Stas Kuzin and a third of his gang.
Nizhny Tagil was more or less founded on iron ore so rich that an enormous quarry was immediately dug. This was in 1698. By 1722 the first copper-smelting plant was established and a town began to stretch its bones, groaning around the plant and the quarry, a vice- and crime-ridden machine to service and house exhausted workers. A hundred thirteen years later the first Russian steam locomotive was constructed there. Like most frontier towns ruled by industry and its money-hungry barons, there was a raw and lawless nature about the place that the semi-civilizing influence of the modern-day city never was able to tame, let alone eradicate. Possibly that was why the federal government had ringed the toxic site with high-security penitentiaries, blinding spotlights bleaching the night.
There were only lonely sounds in Nizhny Tagil, or else frightening, like the faraway hoot of the train whistle echoing off the Ural Mountains or the sudden shriek of one of the prison sirens; like the wail of a child lost in the filthy streets or the wet snap of bones breaking during a drunken brawl.
As Arkadin sought to evade the armada of gang members fanning out through the streets and slums of the city, he learned to follow the yellow curs slinking through shadowed alleyways, their tails curled between their legs.