Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Sanction

“I want to know what your connection is with the Black Legion?”

“Mine? I have none.”

“But you’ve heard of them.”

“Of course I’ve heard of them.” Maslov frowned. “Where is this going?”

“You posted your man Evsei in Mikhail Tarkanian’s apartment. Tarkanian was a member of the Black Legion.”

Maslov held up a hand. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

“He was working against people-friends of mine.”

Maslov shrugged. “That might be so-I have no knowledge of it one way or another. But one thing I can tell you is that Tarkanian wasn’t Black Legion.”

“Then why was Evsei there?”

“Ah, now we get to the root of the matter.” Maslov’s thumb rubbed against his forefinger and middle finger in the universal gesture. “Show me the quid pro quo, to co-opt what Jerry Maguire says.” His mouth grinned, but his yellow eyes remained as remote and malevolent as ever. “Though to tell you the truth I’m doubting very much there’s any money at all. I mean to say, why would the Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency want to help me? It’s anti-fucking-intuitive.”

Bourne finally pulled over a chair, sat down. His mind was rerunning the long conversation he’d had with Boris at Lorraine’s apartment, during which Karpov had briefed him on the current political climate in Moscow.

“This has nothing to do with narcotics and everything to do with politics. The Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency is controlled by Cherkesov, who’s in the midst of a parallel war to yours-the silovik wars,” Bourne said. “It seems as if the president has already picked his successor.”

“That pisspot Mogilovich.” Maslov nodded. “Yeah, so what?”

“Cherkesov doesn’t like him, and here’s why. Mogilovich used to work for the president in the St. Petersburg city administration way back when. The president put him in charge of the legal department of VM Pulp and Paper. Mogilovich promptly engineered VM’s dominance to become Russia’s largest and most lucrative pulp and timber company. Now one of America’s largest paper companies is buying fifty percent of VM for hundreds of millions of dollars.”

During Bourne’s discourse Maslov had taken out a penknife, was busy paring grime from under his manicured nails. He did everything but yawn. “All this is part of the public record. What’s it to me?”

“What isn’t known is that Mogilovich cut himself a deal giving him a sizable portion of VM’s shares when the company was privatized through RAB Bank. At the time, questions were raised about Mogilovich’s involvement with RAB Bank, but they magically went away. Last year VM bought back the twenty-five percent stake that RAB had taken to ensure the privatization would go through without a hitch. The deal was blessed by the Kremlin.”

“Meaning the president.” Maslov sat up straight, put away the penknife.

“Right,” Bourne said. “Which means that Mogilovich stands to make a king’s ransom through the American buy-in, by means the president wouldn’t want made public.”

“Who knows what the president’s own involvement is in the deal?”

Bourne nodded.

“Wait a minute,” Maslov said. “Last week a RAB Bank officer was found tied up, tortured, and asphyxiated in his dacha garage. I remember because the General Prosecutor’s Office claimed he’d committed suicide. We all got a good laugh out of that one.”

“He just happened to be the head of RAB’s loan division to the timber industry.”

“The man with the smoking gun that could ruin Mogilovich and, by extension, the president,” Maslov said.

“My boss tells me this man had access to the smoking gun, but he never actually had it in his possession. His assistant absconded with it days before his assassination, and now can’t be found.” Bourne hitched his chair forward. “When you find him for us and hand over the papers incriminating Mogilovich, my boss is prepared to end the war between you and the Azeri once and for all in your favor.”

“And how the fuck is he going to do that?”

Bourne opened his cell phone, played back the MP3 file Boris had sent to him. It was a conversation between the kingpin of the Azeri and one of his lieutenants ordering the hit on the RAB Bank executive. It was just like the Russian in Boris to hold on to the evidence for leverage, rather than go after the Azeri kingpin right away.

A broad grin broke out across Maslov’s face. “Fuck,” he said, “now we’re talking!”

After a time, Arkadin became aware that Devra was standing over him. Without looking at her, he held up the cylinder he’d taken from Heinrich.

“Come out of the surf,” she said, but when Arkadin didn’t make a move, she sat down on a crest of sand behind him.

Heinrich was stretched out on his back as if he were a sunbather who’d fallen asleep. The water had washed away all the blood.

After a time, Arkadin moved back, first onto the dark sand, then up behind the waterline to where Devra sat, her legs drawn up, chin on her knees. That was when she noticed that his left foot was missing three toes.

“My God,” she said, “what happened to your foot?”

It was the foot that had undone Marlene. The three missing toes on Arkadin’s left foot. Marlene made the mistake of asking what had happened.

“An accident,” Arkadin said with a practiced smoothness. “During my first term in prison. A stamping machine came apart, and the main cylinder fell on my foot. The toes were crushed, nothing more than pulp. They had to be amputated.”

It was a lie, this story, a fanciful tale Arkadin appropriated from a real incident that took place during his first stint in prison. That much, at least, was the truth. A man stole a pack of cigarettes from under Arkadin’s bunk. This man worked the stamping machine. Arkadin tampered with the machine so that when the man started it up the next morning the main cylinder dropped on him. The result wasn’t pretty; you could hear his screams clear across the compound. In the end, they’d had to take his right leg off at the knee.

From that day forward he was on his guard with Marlene. She was attracted to him, of this he was quite certain. She’d slipped from her objective pedestal, from the job Icoupov had given her. He didn’t blame Icoupov. He wanted to tell Icoupov again that he wouldn’t harm him, but he knew Icoupov wouldn’t believe him. Why should he? He had enough evidence to the contrary to make him suitably nervous. And yet, Arkadin sensed that Icoupov would never turn his back on him. Icoupov would never renege on his pledge to take Arkadin in.

Nevertheless, something had to be done about Marlene. It wasn’t simply that she’d seen his left foot; Icoupov had seen it as well. Arkadin knew she suspected the maimed foot was connected with his horrendous nightmares, that it was part of something he couldn’t tell her. Even the story Arkadin told her did not fully satisfy her. It might have with someone else, but not Marlene. She hadn’t exaggerated when she’d told him that she possessed an uncanny ability to sense what her clients were feeling, and to find a way to help them.

The problem was that she couldn’t help Arkadin. No one could. No one was allowed to know what he’d experienced. It was unthinkable.

“Tell me about your mother and father,” Marlene said. “And don’t repeat the pabulum you fed the shrink who was here before me.”

They were out on Lake Lugano. It was a mild summer’s day, Marlene was in a two-piece bathing suit, red with large pink polka dots. She wore pink rubber slippers; a visor shaded her face from the sun. Their small motorboat lay to, its anchor dropped. Small swells rocked them now and again as pleasure boats went to and fro across the crystal blue water. The small village of Campione d’Italia rose up the hillside like the frosted tiers of a wedding cake.