“Where is the package?” she said. “Is it safe?”
“I handed it off to Heinrich this evening -at the card game.”
“Has he left for Munich?”
“Why the hell would he stay a minute more than he had to? He hates it here. I assume he was driving to Istanbul for his usual early-evening flight.” His eyes narrowed. “Why d’you want to know?”
He gave a little yelp as Arkadin loomed out of the night. Looking from Devra to Arkadin and back again, he said, “What is this? I saw you stab him to death.”
“You saw what we wanted you to see.” Arkadin handed Devra his gun, and she shot Haydar between the eyes.
She turned back to him, handed him the gun butt-first. There was clear defiance in her voice when she said, “Have I proved myself to you now?”
Bourne checked into the Metropolya Hotel as Fyodor Ilianovich Popov. The night clerk didn’t bat an eye at Gala’s presence, nor did he ask for her ID. Having Popov’s was enough to satisfy hotel policy. The lobby, with its gilt sconces and accents, and glittering crystal chandeliers, looked like something out of the czarist era, the designers thumbing their nose at the architecture of Soviet Brutalism.
They took one of the silk-lined elevators to the seventeenth floor. Bourne opened the door to their room with an electronically coded plastic card. After a thorough visual check, he allowed her to enter. She took off her fur jacket. The act of sitting on the bed rode her mini-skirt farther up her thighs, but she appeared unconcerned.
Leaning forward, elbows on knees, she said, “Thank you for saving me. But to be honest, I don’t know what I’ll do now.”
Bourne pulled out the chair that went with the desk, sat facing her. “The first thing you have to do is tell me whether you know where Arkadin is.”
Gala looked down at the carpet between her feet. She rubbed her arms as if she was still cold, though the temperature in the room was warm enough.
“All right,” Bourne said, “let’s talk about something else. Do you know anything about the Black Legion?”
Her head came up, her brows furrowed. “Now, that’s odd you should mention them.”
“Why is that?”
“Leonid would speak about them.”
“Is Arkadin one of them?”
Gala snorted. “You must be joking! No, he never actually spoke about them to me. I mean, he mentioned them now and again when he was going to see Ivan.”
“And who is Ivan?”
“Ivan Volkin. He’s an old friend of Leonid’s. He used to be in the grupperovka. Leonid told me that from time to time the leaders ask him for advice, so he knows all the players. He’s a kind of de facto underworld historian now. Anyway, he’s the one Leonid would go to.”
This interested Bourne. “Can you take me to him?”
“Why not? He’s a night owl. Leonid used to visit him very late.” Gala searched in her handbag for her cell phone. She scrolled through her phone book, dialed Volkin’s number.
After speaking to someone for several minutes, she terminated the connection and nodded. “He’ll see us in an hour.”
“Good.”
She frowned, put away her phone. “If you’re thinking that Ivan knows where Leonid is, you’re mistaken. Leonid told no one where he was going, not even me.”
“You must love this man a great deal.”
“I do.”
“Does he love you?”
When she turned back to him, her eyes were full of tears. “Yes, he loves me.”
“Is that why you took money to spy on Pyotr? Is that why you were partying with that man tonight at The Chinese Pilot?”
“Christ, none of that matters.”
Bourne sat forward. “I don’t understand. Why doesn’t it matter?”
Gala regarded him for a long time. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know anything about love?” A tear overflowed, ran down her cheek. “Whatever I do for money allows me to live. Whatever I do with my body has nothing to do with love. Love is strictly a matter of the heart. My heart belongs to Leonid Danilovich. That’s sacred, pure. No one can touch it or defile it.”
“Maybe we have different definitions of love,” Bourne said.
She shook her head. “You’ve no right to judge me.”
“Of course you’re right,” Bourne said. “But that wasn’t meant as a judgment. I have difficulty understanding love, that’s all.”
She cocked her head. “Why is that?”
Bourne hesitated before continuing. “I’ve lost two wives, a daughter, and many friends.”
“Have you lost love, too?”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“My brother died protecting me.” Gala began to shake. “He was all I had. No one would ever love me the way he did. After our parents were killed we were inseparable. He swore he’d make sure nothing bad happened to me. He went to his grave keeping that promise.” She sat up straight. Her face was defiant. “Now do you understand?”
Bourne realized that he’d seriously underestimated this dyev. Had he done the same with Moira? Despite admitting his feelings for Moira, he’d unconsciously made the decision that no other woman could be as strong, as imperturbable as Marie. In this, he was clearly mistaken. He had this Russian dyevochka to thank for the insight.
Gala peered at him now. Her sudden anger seemed to have burned itself out. “You’re like Leonid Danilovich in many ways. You no longer will walk off the cliff, you no longer trust in love. Like him, you were damaged in terrible ways. But now, you see, you’ve made your present as bleak as your past. Your only salvation is to find someone to love.”
“I did find someone,” Bourne said. “She’s dead now.”
“Is there no one else?”
Bourne nodded. “Maybe.”
“Then you must embrace her, instead of running away.” She clasped her hands together. “Embrace love. That’s what I would tell Leonid Danilovich if he were here instead of you.”
Three blocks away, parked at the curb, Yakov, the cabbie who had dropped Gala and Bourne off, opened his cell phone, pressed a speed-dial digit on the keypad. When he heard the familiar voice, he said, “I dropped them off at the Metropolya not ten minutes ago.”
“Keep an eye out for them,” the voice said. “If they leave the hotel, tell me. Then follow them.”
Yakov gave his assent, drove back around, installed himself opposite the hotel entrance. Then he dialed another number, delivered precisely the same information to another of his clients.
We just missed the package,” Devra said as they walked away from the wreck. “We’d better get on the road to Istanbul right away. The next contact, Heinrich, has a good couple of hours’ head start.”
They drove through the night, negotiating the twists, turns, and switchbacks. The black mountains with their shimmering stoles of snow were their silent, implacable companions. The road was as pockmarked as if they were in a war zone. Once, hitting a patch of black ice, they spun out, but Arkadin didn’t lose his head. He turned into the skid, tamped gently on the brakes several times while he threw the car into neutral, then turned the engine off. They came to a stop in the side of a snowdrift.
“I hope Heinrich had the same difficulty,” Devra said.
Arkadin restarted the car but couldn’t build up enough traction to get them moving. He walked around to the rear while Devra took the wheel. He found nothing useful inside the trunk, so he trudged several paces into the trees, snapped off a handful of substantial branches, which he wedged in front of the right rear tire. He slapped the fender twice and Devra stepped on the gas. The car wheezed and groaned. The tires spun, sending up showers of granular snow. Then the treads found the wood, rolled up onto it and over. The car was free.
Devra moved over as Arkadin took the wheel. Clouds had slid across the moon, steeping the road in dense shadow as they made their way through the mountain pass. There was no traffic; the only illumination for many miles was the car’s own headlights. Finally, the moon rose from its cloud bed and the hemmed-in world around them was bathed in an eerie bluish light.