Crossing the red flagstone floor, they chose a table in one of the rooms, sat on wooden
benches. The person closest to them was an old man sucking on a pipe while he leisurely
read the paper.
Moira and Noah both ordered a Hefeweizen, a wheat beer still clouded with unfiltered
yeast, from a waitress dressed in the regional Dirndlkleid, a long, wide skirt and low-cut
blouse. She had an apron around her waist, along with a decorative purse.
“Noah,” Moira said when the beers had been served, “I don’t hold any illusions about
why we do what we do, but how do you expect me to ignore this intel I got right from the
source?”
Noah took a long draw of his Hefeweizen, fastidiously wiped his lips before
answering. Then he began to tick off points on his fingers. “First, this man Hauser told
you that the flaw in the software is virtually undetectable. Second, what he told you isn’t verifiable. He might simply be a disgruntled employee trying to get revenge on Kaller
Steelworks. Have you considered that possibility?”
“We could run our own tests on the software.”
“No time. There’s less than two days before the LNG tanker is scheduled to dock at the
terminal.” He continued ticking off points. “Third, we couldn’t do anything without
alerting NextGen, who would then turn around and confront Kaller Steelworks, which
would put us in the middle of a nasty situation. And, fourth and finally, what part of the
sentence We’ve officially notified NextGen that we’ve withdrawn from the project do you
not understand?”
Moira sat back for a moment and took a deep breath. “This is solid intel, Noah. It could
lead to the situation we were most worried about: a terrorist attack. How can you-”
“You’ve already taken several steps over the line, Moira,” Noah said sharply. “Get
your tail on that plane and your head into your new assignment, or you’re through at
Black River.”
It’s better for the moment that we don’t meet,” Icoupov said.
Arkadin was seething, barely holding down his rage, and only then because Devra,
canny witch that she was, dug her fingernails into the palm of his hand. She understood
him; no questions, no probing, no trying to pick over his past like a vulture.
“What about the plans?” He and Devra were sitting in a miserable, smoke-filled bar, in
a run-down part of the city.
“I’ll pick them up from you now.” Icoupov’s voice sounded thin and far away over the
cell phone, even though there could be only a mile or two separating them. “I’m
following Bourne. I’m going after him myself.”
Arkadin didn’t want to hear it. “I thought that was my job.”
“Your job is essentially over. You have the plans and you’ve terminated Pyotr’s
network.”
“All except Egon Kirsch.”
“Kirsch has already been disposed of,” Icoupov said.
“I’m the one who terminates the targets. I’ll give you the plans and then take care of
Bourne.”
“I told you, Leonid Danilovich, I don’t want Bourne terminated.”
Arkadin made an anguished animal sound under his breath. But Bourne has to be
terminated, he thought. Devra dug her claws deeper into his flesh, so that he could smell
the sweet, coppery scent of his own blood. And I have to do it. He murdered Mischa.
“Are you listening to me?” Icoupov said sharply.
Arkadin stirred within his web of rage. “Yes, sir, always. However, I must insist that
you tell me where you’ll be when you accost Bourne. This is security, for your own
safety. I won’t stand helplessly by while something unforseen happens to you.”
“Agreed,” Icoupov said after a moment’s hesitation. “At the moment, he’s on the
move, so I have time to get the plans from you.” He gave Arkadin an address. “I’ll be
there in fifteen minutes.”
“It’ll take me a bit longer,” Arkadin said.
“Within the half hour then. The moment I know where I’ll be intercepting Bourne,
you’ll know. Does that satisfy you, Leonid Danilovich?”
“Completely.”
Arkadin folded away his phone, disentangled himself from Devra, and went up to the
bar. “A double Oban on rocks.”
The bartender, a huge man with tattooed arms, squinted at him. “What’s an Oban?”
“It’s a single-malt scotch, you moron.”
The bartender, polishing an old-fashioned glass, grunted. “What does this look like, the
prince’s palace? We don’t have single-malt anything.”
Arkadin reached over, snatched the glass out of the bartender’s hands, and smashed it
bottom-first into his nose. Then, as blood started to gush, he hauled the dazed man over
the bar top and proceeded to beat him to a pulp.
I can’t go back to Munich,” Petra said. “Not for a while, anyway. That’s what he told
me.”
“Why would you jeopardize your job to kill someone?” Bourne said.
“Please!” She glanced at him. “A hamster couldn’t live on what they paid me in that
shithole.”
She was behind the wheel, driving on the autobahn. They had already passed the
outskirts of the city. Bourne didn’t mind; he needed to stay out of Munich himself until
the furor over Egon Kirsch’s death died down. The authorities would find someone else’s
ID on Kirsch, and though Bourne had no doubt they’d eventually find out his real
identity, he hoped by that time to have retrieved the plans from Arkadin and be flying
back to Washington. In the meantime the police would be searching for him as a witness
to the murders of both Kirsch and Jens.
“Sooner or later,” Bourne said, “you’re going to have to tell me who hired you.”
Petra said nothing, but her hands trembled on the wheel, an aftermath of their
harrowing chase.
“Where are we going?” Bourne said. He wanted to keep her engaged in conversation.
He felt that she needed to connect with him on some personal level in order to open up.
He had to get her to tell him who had ordered her to kill Egon Kirsch. That might answer
the question of whether he was connected to the man who’d gunned down Jens.
“Home,” she said. “A place I never wanted to go back to.”
“Why is that?”
“I was born in Munich because my mother traveled there to give birth to me, but I’m
from Dachau.” She meant the town, of course, after which the adjacent Nazi
concentration camp had been named. “No parent wants Dachau to appear on their child’s
birth certificate, so when their time comes the women check into a Munich hospital.”
Hardly surprising: Almost two hundred thousand people were exterminated during the
camp’s life, the longest of the war, since it was the first built, becoming the prototype for all the other KZ camps.
The town itself, situated along the Amper River, lay some twelve miles northwest of
Munich. It was unexpectedly bucolic, with its narrow cobbled streets, old-fashioned street
lamps, and quiet tree-lined lanes.
When Bourne observed that most of the people they passed looked contented enough,
Petra laughed unpleasantly. “They go around in a permanent fog, hating that their little
town has such a murderous burden to carry.”
She drove through the center of Dachau, then turned north until they reached what
once had been the village of Etzenhausen. There, on a desolate hill known at the
Leitenberg, was a graveyard, lonely and utterly deserted. They got out of the car, walked
past the stone stela with the sculpted Star of David. The stone was scarred, furry with
blue lichen; the overhanging firs and hemlocks blocked out the sky even on such a bright
midwinter afternoon.
As they walked slowly among the gravestones, she said, “This is the KZ-Friedhof, the