“Yeah, well, these things happen. What can you do?”
“I’ll tell you what I can do,” Hart said, signaling the agents, who grabbed Feir again. “I
can tell you to go to hell. I can tell you that you’ll spend the rest of your life in jail.”
Even then, Feir appeared unfazed. “I said I knew who the mole is, Director.
Furthermore-and I believe this will be of especial interest you-I know where he’s
stationed.”
Hart was too enraged to care. “Get him out of my sight.”
As he was being led to the door, Feir said, “He’s inside the NSA safe house.”
The DCI felt her heart thumping hard in her chest. Feir’s goddamn smile was not only
understandable now, it was warranted.
Thirty-three hours, twenty-six minutes from now. Icoupov’s ominous words were still
ringing in Bourne’s ears when he saw a flicker of movement. He and Icoupov were
standing in the foyer, the front door was still open, and a shadow had for a moment
stained the opposite wall of the hallway. Someone was out there, shielded by the half-
open door.
Bourne, continuing to talk to Icoupov, took the other man by his elbow and moved him
back into the living room, across the rug, toward the hallway to the bedrooms and bath.
As they passed one of the windows, it exploded inward with the force of a man swinging
through. Bourne whirled, the SIG Sauer he’d taken from Icoupov coming to bear on the
intruder.
“Put the SIG down,” a female voice said from behind him. He turned his head to see
that the figure in the hallway-a young pale woman-was aiming a Luger at his head.
“Leonid, what are you doing here?” Icoupov seemed apoplectic. “I gave you express
orders-”
“It’s Bourne.” Arkadin advanced through the welter of glass littering the floor. “It was
Bourne who killed Mischa.”
“Is this true?” Icoupov turned on Bourne. “You killed Mikhail Tarkanian?”
“He left me no choice,” Bourne said.
Devra, her Luger aimed squarely at Bourne’s head, said, “Drop the SIG. I won’t say it
again.”
Icoupov reached out toward Bourne. “I’ll take it.”
“Stay where you are,” Arkadin ordered. His own Luger was aimed at Icoupov.
“Leonid, what are you doing?”
Arkadin ignored him. “Do as the lady says, Bourne. Drop the SIG.”
Bourne did as he was told. The moment he let go of the gun, Arkadin tossed his Luger
aside and leapt at Bourne. Bourne raised a forearm in time to block Arkadin’s knee, but
he felt the jolt all the way up into his shoulder. They traded punishing blows, clever
feints, and defensive blocks. For each move he employed, Arkadin had the perfect
counter, and vice versa. When he stared into the Russian’s eyes he saw his darkest deeds
reflected back at him, all the death and destruction that lay in his wake. In those
implacable eyes there was a void blacker than a starless night.
They moved across the living room as Bourne gave way, until they passed under the
archway separating the living room from the rest of the apartment. In the kitchen Arkadin
grabbed a cleaver, swung it at Bourne. Dodging away from the executioner’s lethal arc,
Bourne reached for a wooden block that held several carving knives. Arkadin brought the
cleaver down on the countertop, missing Bourne’s fingers by less than an inch. Now he
blocked the way to the knives, swinging the cleaver back and forth like a scythe reaping
wheat.
Bourne was near the sink. Snatching a plate out of the dish rack, he hurled it like a
Frisbee, forcing Arkadin to duck out of the way. As the plate shattered against the wall
behind Arkadin, Bourne withdrew a carving knife like a sword out of its scabbard. Steel
clashed against steel, until Bourne used the knife to stab directly at Arkadin’s stomach.
Arkadin brought the cleaver down precisely at the place where Bourne was gripping the
knife, and he had to let go. The knife rang as it hit the floor, then Arkadin rushed Bourne, and the two closed together.
Bourne managed to keep the cleaver away, and at such close quarters it was impossible
to swing it back and forth. Realizing it had become a liability, Arkadin dropped it.
For three long minutes they were locked together in a kind of double death grip.
Bloody and bruised, neither managed to gain the upper hand. Bourne had never
encountered someone of Arkadin’s physical and mental skill, someone who was so much
like him. Fighting Arkadin was like fighting a mirror image of himself, one he didn’t care
for. He felt as if he stood on the precipice of something terrible, a chasm filled with
endless dread, where no life could survive. He felt Arkadin had reached out to pull him
into this abyss, as if to show him the desolation that lurked behind his own eyes, the
grisly image of his forgotten past reflected back at him.
With a supreme effort Bourne broke Arkadin’s hold, slammed his fist against the
Russian’s ear. Arkadin recoiled back against a column, and Bourne sprinted out of the
kitchen, down the hall. As he did so, he heard the unmistakable sound of someone
racking the slide, and he flung himself headlong into the main bedroom. A shot splintered
the wooden door frame just over his head.
Scrambling up, he headed straight for Kirsch’s closet, even as he heard Arkadin shout
to the pale woman to hold her fire. Pushing aside a rack of clothes on hangers, Bourne
scrabbled at the plywood panel in the rear wall of the closet, searching for the clips
Kirsch had described to him at the museum. Just as he heard Arkadin rush into the
bedroom, he turned the clips, removed the panel, and, crouching almost double, stepped
through into a world filled to overflowing with shadow.
When Devra turned around after her attempt to wound Bourne, she found herself
looking at the muzzle of the SIG Sauer that Icoupov had retrieved from the floor.
“You fool,” Icoupov said, “you and your boyfriend are going to fuck everything up.”
“What Leonid is doing is his own business,” she said.
“That’s the nature of the mistake,” Icoupov said. “Leonid has no business of his own.
Everything he is he owes to me.”
She stepped out of the shadows of the hallway into the living room. The Luger at her
hip was pointed at Icoupov. “He’s quits with you,” she said. “His servitude is done.”
Icoupov laughed. “Is that what he told you?”
“It’s what I told him.”
“Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”
They circled each other, wary of the slightest move. Even so, Devra managed an icy
smile. “He’s changed since he left Moscow. He’s a different person.”
Icoupov made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “The first thing you need to
get through your head is that Leonid is incapable of change. I know this better than
anyone because I spent so many years trying to make him a better person. I failed.
Everyone who tried failed, and do you know why? Because Leonid isn’t whole.
Somewhere in the days and nights of Nizhny Tagil he was fractured. All the czar’s horses
and all the czar’s men can’t put him back together again; the pieces no longer fit.” He
gestured with the SIG Sauer’s barrel. “Get out now, get out while you can, otherwise, I
promise you he’ll kill you like he killed all the others who tried to get close to him.”
“How deluded you are!” Devra spat. “You’re like all your kind, corrupted by power.
You’ve spent so many years removed from life on the streets you’ve created your own
reality, one that moves only to the wave of your own hand.” She took a step toward him,
which prompted a tense response from him. “Think you can kill me before I kill you? I