check had to be able to withstand the most vigorous scrutiny.
All this flashed through Willard’s mind as he walked the sacrosanct hallways and
corridors of the NSA’s safe house. He passed agent after agent and knew that he’d done
his job to perfection. He was the indispensable nobody, the person who was always
present, whom no one noticed.
He knew where Tyrone’s camera was because he’d been there when Kendall and
LaValle had spoken about its disposition, but even if he hadn’t, he’d have suspected
where LaValle had hidden it. He knew, for instance, that it wouldn’t have been allowed
to leave the safe house, even on LaValle’s person, unless the damaging images Tyrone
had taken of the rendition cells and the waterboarding tanks had been transferred to the
in-house computer server or deleted off the camera’s drive. In fact, there was a chance
that the images had been deleted, but he doubted it. In the short amount of time the
camera had been in the NSA’s possession, Kendall was no longer in residence and
LaValle had become obsessed with coercing Soraya Moore into giving him Jason
Bourne.
He knew all about Bourne; he’d read the Treadstone files, even the ones that no longer
existed, having been shredded and then burned when the information they held became
too dangerous for Conklin, as well as for CI. He knew there had been far more to
Treadstone than even the Old Man knew. That was Conklin’s doing; he’d been a man for
whom the word secrecy was the holy grail. What his ultimate plan for Treadstone had
been was anyone’s guess.
Inserting his passkey into the lock on LaValle’s office door, he punched in the proper
electronic code. Willard knew everyone’s code-what use would he be as a sleeper agent
otherwise? The door opened inward, and he slipped inside, shutting and locking it behind
him.
Crossing to LaValle’s desk, he opened the drawers one by one, checking for false
backs or bottoms. Finding none, he moved on to the bookcase, the sideboard with its
hanging files and liquor bottles side by side. He lifted the prints off the walls, searching behind them for a hidden cache, but there was nothing.
He sat on a corner of the desk, contemplated the room, unconsciously swinging his leg
back and forth while he tried to work out where LaValle had hidden the camera. All at
once he heard the sound the heel of his shoe made against the skirt of the desk. Hopping
off, he went around, crawled into the kneehole, and rapped on the skirt until he replicated the sound his heel had made. Yes, he was certain now: This part of the skirt was hollow.
Feeling around with his fingertips, he discovered the tiny latch, pushed it aside, and
swung open the door. There was Tyrone’s camera. He was reaching for it when he heard
the scratch of metal on metal.
LaValle was at the door.
Tell me you love me, Leonid Danilovich.” Devra smiled up at him as he knelt over her.
“What happened, Devra? What happened?” was all he could say.
He’d extricated himself at last from the sculpture, and would have gone after Bourne-
but he’d heard the shots coming from Kirsch’s apartment, then the sound of running feet.
The living room was spattered with blood. He saw her lying on the floor, the Luger still
in her hand. Her shirt was dyed red.
“Leonid Danilovich.” She’d called his name when he appeared in her limited field of
vision. “I waited for you.”
She started to tell him what had happened, but blood bubbles formed at the corners of
her mouth and she started to gurgle horribly. Arkadin lifted her head off the floor, cradled it on his thighs. He pushed matted hair off her forehead and cheeks, leaving red streaks
like war paint.
She tried to continue, stopped. Her eyes went out of focus and he thought he’d lost her.
Then they cleared, her smile returned, and she said, “Do you love me, Leonid?”
He bent down and whispered her in ear. Was it I love you? There was so much static in
his head, he couldn’t hear himself. Did he love her, and, if he did, what would it mean?
Did it even matter? He’d promised to protect her and failed. He stared down into her
eyes, into her smile, but all he saw was his own past rising up to engulf him once again.
I need more money,” Yelena said one night as she lay entangled with him.
“What for? I give you enough as it is.”
“I hate it here, it’s like a prison, girls are crying all the time, they’re beaten, and then they disappear. I used to make friends just to pass the time, to have something to do
during the day, but now I don’t bother. What’s the point? They’re gone within a week.”
Arkadin had become aware of Kuzin’s seemingly insatiable need for more girls. “I
don’t see how any of this has to do with you needing more money.”
“If I can’t have friends,” Yelena said, “I want drugs.”
“I told you, no drugs,” Arkadin said as he rolled away from her and sat up.
“If you love me, you’ll get me out of here.”
“Love?” He turned to stare at her. “Who said anything about love?”
She started to cry. “I want to live with you, Leonid. I want to be with you always.”
Feeling something unknown close around his throat, Arkadin stood up, backed away.
“Jesus,” he said, gathering up his clothes, “where do you get such ideas?”
Leaving her to her pitiful weeping, he went out to procure more girls. Before he
reached the front door of the brothel Stas Kuzin intercepted him.
“Yelena’s wailing is disturbing the other girls,” he said in his hissing way. “It’s bad for business.”
“She wants to live with me,” Arkadin said. “Can you imagine?”
Kuzin laughed, the sound like nails screeching against a blackboard. “I’m wondering
what would be worse, the nagging wife wanting to know where you were all night or the
caterwauling brats making it impossible to sleep.”
They both laughed at the comment, and Arkadin thought nothing more about it. For the
next three days he worked steadily, methodically combing Nizhny Tagil for more girls to
restock the brothel. At the end of that time he slept for twenty hours, then went straight to Yelena’s room. He found another girl, one he’d recently hijacked off the streets, sleeping
in Yelena’s bed.
“Where’s Yelena?” he said, throwing off the covers.
She looked up at him, blinking like a bat in sunlight. “Who’s Yelena?” she said in a
voice husky with sleep.
Arkadin strode out of the room and into Stas Kuzin’s office. The big man sat behind a
gray metal desk, talking on the phone, but he beckoned Arkadin to take a seat while he
finished his call. Arkadin, preferring to stand, gripped the back of a wooden chair,
leaning forward over its ladder back.
At length, Kuzin put down the receiver, said, “What can I do for you, my friend?”
“Where’s Yelena?”
“Who?” Kuzin’s frown knit his brows together, making him look something like a
cyclops. “Oh, yes, the wailer.” He smiled. “There’s no chance of her bothering you
again.”
“What does that mean?”
“Why ask a question to which you already know the answer?” Kuzin’s phone rang and
he answered it. “Hold the fuck on,” he said into it. Then he looked up at his partner.
“Tonight we’ll go to dinner to celebrate your freedom, Leonid Danilovich. We’ll make a
real night of it, eh?”
Then he returned to his call.
Arkadin felt frozen in time, as if he was now doomed to relive this moment for the rest
of his life. Mute, he walked like an automaton out of the office, out of the brothel, out of the building he owned with Kuzin. Without even thinking, he got into his car, drove north
into the forest of dripping firs and weeping hemlocks. There was no sun in the sky, the