Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Sanction

“Tarkanian,” he said, and coldcocked him.

Tarkanian went down heavily. Bourne knelt beside him and was giving him mouth-to-mouth when three security guards rounded the corner, came pounding up to him.

“My friend collapsed just as we saw the men with the guns.” Bourne gave an accurate description of the two gunmen, pointed toward the open door to the Reptile Discovery Center. “Can you get help? My friend is allergic to mustard. I think there must have been some in the potato salad we had for lunch.”

One of the security guards called 911, while the other two, guns drawn, vanished into the doorway. The guard stayed with Bourne until the paramedics arrived. They took Tarkanian’s vitals, loaded him onto the gurney. Bourne walked at Tarkanian’s side as they made their way through the gawking crowds to the ambulance waiting on Connecticut Avenue. He told them about Tarkanian’s allergic reaction, also that in this state he was hypersensitive to light. He climbed into the back of the ambulance. One of the paramedics closed the doors behind him while the other prepared the IV drip of phenothiazine. The vehicle took off, siren wailing.

Tears streamed down Arkadin’s face, but he made no noise. The pain was excruciating, but at least the arm was back in its socket. He could move the fingers of his left hand, just barely. The good news was that the numbness was giving way to a peculiar tingling, as if his blood had turned to champagne.

Devra held the wooden spoon in her hand. “Shit, you almost bit this in two. It must’ve hurt like a bitch.”

Arkadin, dizzy and nauseous, grimaced in pain. “I could never get food down now.”

Devra tossed aside the spoon as they left the men’s room. Arkadin paid their check, and they went out of the cafй. The rain had stopped, leaving the streets with that slick, just-washed look so familiar to him from old American films from the 1940s and 1950s.

“We can go to my place,” Devra offered. “It’s not far from here.”

Arkadin shook his head. “I think not.”

They walked, seemingly aimlessly, until they came to a small hotel. Arkadin booked a room. The flyblown night clerk barely looked at them. He was only interested in taking their money.

The room was mean, barely furnished with a bed, a hard-backed chair, and a dresser with three legs and a pile of books propping up the fourth corner. A circular threadbare carpet covered the center of the room. It was stained, pocked with cigarette burns. What appeared to be a closet was the toilet. The shower and sink were down the hall.

Arkadin went to the window. He’d asked for a room in front, knowing it would be noisier, but would afford him a bird’s-eye view of anyone coming. The street was deserted, not a car in sight. Sevastopol glowed in a slow, cold pulse.

“Time,” he said, turning back into the room, “to get some things straight.”

“Now? Can’t this wait?” Devra was lying crosswise on the bed, her feet still on the floor. “I’m dead on my feet.”

Arkadin considered a moment. It was deep into the night. He was exhausted but not yet ready for sleep. He kicked off his shoes, lay down on the bed. Devra had to sit up to make room for him, but instead of lying down parallel to him, she resumed her position, head on his belly. She closed her eyes.

“I want to come with you,” she said softly, almost as if in sleep.

He was instantly alert. “Why?” he said. “Why would you want to come with me?”

She said nothing in reply; she was asleep.

For a time, he lay listening to her steady breathing. He didn’t know what to do with her, but she was all he had left of this end of Pyotr’s network. He spent some time digesting what she had told him about Shumenko, Filya, and Pyotr, looking for holes. It seemed improbable to him that Pyotr could be so undisciplined, but then again he’d been betrayed by his girlfriend of the moment, who worked for Icoupov. That spoke of a man out of control, whose habits could indeed filter down to his subordinates. He had no idea if Pyotr had daddy issues, but given who his daddy was it certainly wasn’t out of the question.

This girl was strange. On the surface she was so much like other young girls he’d come across: hard-edged, cynical, desperate, and despairing. But this one was different. He could see beneath her armor plating to the little lost girl she once had been and perhaps still was. He put his hand on the side of her neck, felt the slow pulse of her life. He could be wrong, of course. It could all be a performance put on for his benefit. But for the life of him he’d couldn’t figure out what her angle might be.

And there was something else about her, connected to her fragility, her deliberate vulnerability. She needed something, he thought, as, in the end, we all did, even those who fooled themselves into thinking they didn’t. He knew what he needed; it was simply that he chose not to think about it. She needed a father, that was clear enough. He couldn’t help suspecting there was something about her he was missing, something she hadn’t told him but wanted him to find. The answer was already inside him, dancing like a firefly. But every time he reached out to capture it, it just danced farther away. The feeling was maddening, as if he’d had sex with a woman without reaching an orgasm.

And then she stirred, and in stirring said his name. It was like a bolt of lightning illuminating the room. He was back on the rainy rooftop, with Mole-man standing over him, listening to the conversation between him and Devra.

“He was your responsibility,” Mole-man said, referring to Filya.

Arkadin’s heart beat faster. Your responsibility . Why would Mole-man say that if Filya was the courier in Sevastopol? As if of their own accord, his fingertips stroked the velvet flesh of Devra’s neck. The crafty little bitch! Filya was a soldier, a guard. She was the courier in Sevastopol. She’d handed the document off to the next link. She knew where he had to go next.

Holding her tightly, Arkadin at last let go of the night, the room, the present. On a tide of elation, he drifted into sleep, into the blood-soaked clutches of his past.

Arkadin would have killed himself, this was certain, had it not been for the intervention of Semion Icoupov. Arkadin’s best and only friend, Mischa Tarkanian, concerned for his life, had appealed to the man he worked for. Arkadin remembered with an eerie clarity the day Icoupov had come to see him. He had walked in, and Arkadin, half crazed with a will to die, had put a Makarov PM to his head-the same gun he was going to use to blow his own brains out.

Icoupov, to his credit, didn’t make a move. He stood in the ruins of Arkadin’s Moscow apartment, not looking at Arkadin at all. Arkadin, in the grip of his sulfurous past, was unable to make sense of anything. Much later, he understood. In the same way you didn’t look a bear in the eye, lest he charge you, Icoupov had kept his gaze focused on other things-the broken picture frames, the smashed crystal, the overturned chairs, the ashes of the fetishistic fire Arkadin had lit to burn his clothes.

“Mischa tells me you’re having a difficult time.”

“Mischa should keep his mouth shut.”

Icoupov spread his hands. “Someone has to save your life.”

“What d’you know about it?” Arkadin said harshly.

“Actually, I know nothing about what’s happened to you,” Icoupov said.

Arkadin, digging the muzzle of the Makarov into Icoupov’s temple, stepped closer. “Then shut the fuck up.”

“What I am concerned about is the here and now.” Icoupov didn’t blink an eye; he didn’t move a muscle, either. “For fuck’s sake, son, look at you. If you won’t pull back from the brink for yourself, do it for Mischa, who loves you better than any brother would.”