“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