door, ducked in behind the wheel. The keys were already in the ignition. He started the
car and drove off. When he reached the autobahn, he put on the siren and drove at top
speed toward the airport.
I won’t have a problem getting you on board,” Moira said as she turned off onto the
four-lane approach to the freight terminal. She showed her NextGen ID at the guard
booth, then drove on toward the parking lot outside the terminal. During the drive to the
airport she’d thought long and hard about whether to tell Jason about whom she really
worked for. Revealing that she was with Black River was a direct violation of her
contract, and right now she prayed there’d be no reason to tell him.
After passing through security, Customs, and Immigration, they arrived on the tarmac
and approached the 747. A set of mobile stairs rose up to the high passenger door, which
stood open. On the far side of the plane, the truck from Kaller Steelworks Gesellschaft
was parked, along with an airport hoist, which was lifting crated parts of the LNG
coupling link into the jet’s cargo area. The truck was obviously late, and the loading
process was necessarily slow and tedious. Neither Kaller nor NextGen could afford an
accident at this late stage.
Moira showed her NextGen ID to one of the crew members standing at the bottom of
the stairs. He smiled and nodded, welcoming them aboard. Moira breathed a sigh of
relief. Now all that stood between them and the Black Legion attack was the ten-hour
flight to Long Beach.
But as they neared the top of the stairs, a figure appeared from the plane’s interior. He
stood in the doorway, staring down at her.
“Moira,” Noah said, “what are you doing here? Why aren’t you on your way to
Damascus?”
Manfred Holger, Icoupov’s man in Immigration, met them at the checkpoint to the
freight terminals, got in the car with them, and they lurched forward. Icoupov had called
him using Sever’s cell phone. He’d been about to go off duty, but luckily for them had
not yet changed out of his uniform.
“There’s no problem.” Holger spoke in the officious manner that had been drummed
into him by his superiors. “All I have to do is check the recent immigration records to see if she’s come through the system.”
“Not good enough,” Icoupov said. “She may be traveling under a pseudonym.”
“All right then, I’ll go on board and check everyone’s passports.” Holger was sitting in
the front seat. Now he swiveled around to look at Icoupov. “If I find that this woman,
Moira Trevor, is on board, what would you have me do?”
“Take her off the plane,” Sever said at once.
Holger looked inquiringly at Icoupov, who nodded. Icoupov’s face was gray again, and
he was having more difficulty keeping the pain at bay.
“Bring her here to us,” Sever said.
Holger had taken their diplomatic passports, passed them quickly through security.
Now the Mercedes was sitting just off the tarmac. The 747 with the NextGen logo
emblazoned on its sides and tail was at rest, still being loaded from the Kaller Steelworks truck. The driver had pulled up so that the truck shielded them from being seen by
anyone boarding the plane or already inside it.
Holger nodded, got out of the Mercedes, and walked across the tarmac to the rolling
stairs.
Kriminalpolizei,” Arkadin said as he stopped the police car at the freight terminal
checkpoint. “We have reason to believe a man who killed two people this afternoon has
fled here.”
The guards waved him past Customs and Immigration without asking for ID; the car
itself was proof enough for them. As Arkadin rolled past the parking lot and onto the
tarmac, he saw the jet, crates from the NextGen truck being hoisted into the cargo bay,
and the black Mercedes idling some distance away from both. Recognizing the car at
once, he nosed the police cruiser to a spot directly behind the Mercedes. For a moment,
he sat behind the wheel, staring at the Mercedes as if the car itself were his enemy.
He could see the silhouettes of two male figures in the backseat; it wasn’t a stretch for
him to figure that one of them was Semion Icoupov. He wondered which of the handguns
he had with him he should use to kill his former mentor: the SIG Sauer 9mm, the Luger,
or the.22 SIG Mosquito. It all depended on what kind of damage he wanted to inflict and
to what part of the body. He’d shot Stas Kuzin in the knees, the better to watch him
suffer, but this was another time and, especially, another place. The airport was public
space; the adjacent passenger terminal was crawling with security personnel. Just because
he had been able to get this far as a member of the kriminalpolizei, he knew better than to overstep his luck. No, this kill needed to be quick and clean. All he desired was to look
into Icoupov’s eyes when he died, for him to know who’d ended his life and why.
Unlike the moment of Kuzin’s demise, Arkadin was fully aware of this moment, keyed
in to the importance of the son overtaking the father, of revenging himself for the
psychological and physical advantages an adult takes with a child. That he hadn’t, in fact, been a child when Mischa had sent Semion Icoupov to resurrect him never occurred to
him. From the moment the two had met, he had always seen Icoupov as a father figure.
He’d obeyed him as he would a father, had accepted his judgments, had swallowed whole
his worldview, had been faithful to him. And now, for the sins Icoupov had visited on
him, he was going to kill him.
When you didn’t show for your scheduled flight, I had a hunch you’d show up here.”
Noah stared at her, completely ignoring Bourne. “I won’t allow you on the plane, Moira.
You’re no longer a part of this.”
“She still works for NextGen, doesn’t she?” Bourne said.
“Who is this?” Noah said, keeping his eyes on her.
“My name is Jason Bourne.”
A slow smile crept over Noah’s face. “Moira, you didn’t introduce us.” He turned to
Bourne, stuck out his hand. “Noah Petersen.”
Bourne shook his hand. “Jason Bourne.”
Keeping the same sly smile on his face, Noah said, “Do you know she lied to you, that
she tried to recruit you to NextGen under false pretenses?”
His eyes flicked toward Moira, but he was disappointed to see neither shock nor
outrage on her face.
“Why would she do that?” Bourne said.
“Because,” Moira said, “like Noah here, I work for Black River, the private security
firm. We were hired by NextGen to oversee security on the LNG terminal.”
It was Noah who registered shock. “Moira, that’s enough. You’re in violation of your
contract.”
“It doesn’t matter, Noah. I quit Black River half an hour ago. I’ve been made chief of
security at NextGen, so in point of fact it’s you who isn’t welcome aboard this flight.”
Noah stood rigid as stone, until Bourne took a step toward him. Then he backed away,
descending the flight of rolling stairs. Halfway down, he turned to her. “Pity, Moira. I
once had faith in you.”
She shook her head. “The pity is that Black River has no conscience.”
Noah looked at her for a moment then turned, clattered down the rest of the stairs, and
stalked off across the tarmac without seeing the Mercedes or the police car behind it.
Because it would make the least noise, Arkadin decided on the Mosquito. Hand curled
around the grips, he got out of the police car, stalked to the driver’s side of the Mercedes.
It was the driver-who doubtless doubled as a bodyguard-he had to dispense with first.
Keeping his Mosquito out of sight, he rapped on the driver’s window with a bare