now he knew why, now he knew how.
Looking back toward Egon Kirsch’s apartment building, he felt a sudden rush of fear,
as if at any moment death would emerge from it, stalking him down the street. He tried to
pull himself together, tried to rise to his feet, but a horrific pain shot through him, his knees buckled, and he collapsed back onto the cold stone.
More people passed, now ignoring him altogether. Cars rolled by. The sky came down,
the day darkened as if covered with a shroud. A sudden gust of wind brought the onset of
rain, hard as sleet. He ducked his head between his shoulders, shivered mightily.
And then he heard his name shouted and, turning his head, saw the nightmare figure of
Leonid Danilovich Arkadin coming down the steps of Kirsch’s building. Now more
highly motivated, Icoupov once again tried to get up. He groaned as he gained his feet,
but tottered there uncertainly as Arkadin began to run toward him.
At that moment, a black Mercedes sedan pulled up to the sidewalk. The driver hurried
out and, taking hold of Icoupov, half carried him across the pavement. Icoupov struggled,
but to no avail; he was weak with lost blood, and growing weaker by the moment. The
driver opened the rear door, bundled him into the backseat. He pulled an HK 1911.45 and
with it warned Arkadin away, then he hustled back around the front of the Mercedes, slid
behind the wheel, and took off.
Icoupov, slumped in the near corner of the backseat, made rhythmic grunts of pain like
puffs of smoke from a steam locomotive. He was aware of the soft rocking of the shocks
as the car sped through the Munich streets. More slowly came the realization that he
wasn’t alone in the backseat. He blinked heavily, trying to clear his vision.
“Hello, Semion,” a familiar voice said.
And then Icoupov’s vision cleared. “You!”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, hasn’t it?” Dominic Specter said.
The Empire State Building,” Moira said as she studied the plans Bourne had managed
to scoop up in Kirsch’s apartment. “I can’t believe I was wrong.”
They were parked in a rest stop by the side of the autobahn on the way to the airport.
“What do you mean, wrong?” Bourne said.
She told him what Arthur Hauser, the engineer hired by Kaller Steelworks, had
confessed about the flaw in LNG terminal’s software.
Bourne thought a moment. “If a terrorist used that flaw to gain control of the software,
what could he do?”
“The tanker is so huge and the terminal is so complex that the docking is handled
electronically.”
“Through the software program.”
Moira nodded.
“So he could cause the tanker to crash into the terminal.” He turned to her. “Would that
set off the tanks of liquid gas?”
“Quite possibly, yes.”
Bourne was thinking furiously. “Still, the terrorist would have to know about the flaw,
how to exploit it, and how to reconfigure the software.”
“It sounds simpler than trying to blow up a major building in Manhattan.”
She was right, of course; and because of the questions he’d been pondering he grasped
implications of that immediately.
Moira glanced at her watch. “Jason, the NextGen plane with the coupling link is
scheduled to take off in thirty minutes.” She put the car in gear, nosed out onto the
autobahn. “We have to make up our minds before we get to the airport. Do we go to New
York or to Long Beach?”
Bourne said, “I’ve been trying to figure out why both Specter and Icoupov were so
hell-bent on retrieving these plans.” He stared down at the blueprints as if willing them to speak to him. “The problem,” he said slowly and thoughtfully, “is that they were
entrusted to Specter’s son, Pyotr, who was more interested in girls, drugs, and the
Moscow nightlife than he was in his work. As a consequence, his network was peopled
by misfits, junkies, and weaklings.”
“Why in the world would Specter entrust so important a document to a network like
that?”
“That’s just the point,” Bourne said. “He wouldn’t.”
Moira glanced at him. “What does that mean? Is the network bogus?”
“Not as far as Pyotr was concerned,” Bourne said, “but so far as Specter saw it, yes,
everyone who was a part of it was expendable.”
“Then the plans are bogus, too.”
“No, I think they’re real, and that’s what Specter was counting on,” Bourne said. “But
when you consider the situation logically and coolly, which no one does when it comes to
the threat of an imminent terrorist attack, the probability of a cell managing to get what it needs into the Empire State Building is very low.” He rolled up the plans. “No, I think
this was all an elaborate disinformation scheme-leaking communications to Typhon,
recruiting me because of my loyalty to Specter. It was all meant to mobilize American
security forces on the wrong coast.”
“So you think the Black Legion’s real target is the LNG terminal in Long Beach.”
“Yes,” Bourne said, “I do.”
Tyrone stood looking down at LaValle. A terrible silence had descended over the
Library when he and Soraya had entered. He watched Soraya scoop up LaValle’s cell
phone from the table.
“Good,” she said with an audible sigh of relief. “No one’s called. Jason must be safe.”
She tried him on her cell, but he wasn’t answering.
Hart, who had stood up when they’d come over, said, “You look a little the worse for
wear, Tyrone.”
“Nothing a stint at the CI training school wouldn’t cure,” he said.
Hart glanced at Soraya before saying, “I think you’ve earned that right.” She smiled.
“In your case, I’ll forgo the usual warning about how rigorous the training program is,
how many recruits drop out in the first two weeks. I know we won’t have to be concerned
about you dropping out.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Just call me Director, Tyrone. You’ve earned that as well.”
He nodded, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off LaValle.
His interest did not go unnoticed. The DCI said, “Mr. LaValle, I think it only just that
Tyrone decide your fate.”
“You’re out of your mind.” LaValle looked apoplectic. “You can’t-”
“On the contrary,” Hart said, “I can.” She turned to Tyrone. “It’s entirely up to you,
Tyrone. Let the punishment fit the crime.”
Tyrone, impaling LaValle in his glare, saw there what he always saw in the eyes of
white people who confronted him: a toxic mixture of contempt, aversion, and fear. Once,
that would have sent him into a frenzy of rage, but that was because of his own
ignorance. Perhaps what he had seen in them was a reflection of what had been on his
own face. Not today, not ever again, because during his incarceration he’d finally come
to understand what Deron had tried to teach him: that his own ignorance was his worst
enemy. Knowledge allowed him to work at changing other people’s expectations of him,
rather than confronting them with a switchblade or a handgun.
He looked around, saw the look of expectation on Soraya’s face. Turning back to
LaValle, he said: “I think something public would be in order, something embarrassing
enough to work its way up to Secretary of Defense Halliday.”
Veronica Hart couldn’t help laughing, she laughed until tears came to her eyes, and she
heard the Gilbert and Sullivan lines run through her head: His object all sublime, he will
achieve in time-let the punishment fit the crime!
Forty-Two
I SEEM TO HAVE you at quite a disadvantage, dear Semion.” Dominic Specter