horizon was rimmed with smokestacks. The air was hazed with carbon and sulfur
particles, tinged a lurid orange-red, as if everything were on fire.
Arkadin pulled off the road and walked down the rutted track, following the route the
van had taken previously. Somewhere along the line he found that he was running as fast
as he could through the evergreens, the stench of decay and decomposition billowing up,
as if eager to meet him.
He brought himself up abruptly at the edge of the pit. In places, sacks of quicklime had
been shaken out in order to aid the decomposition; nevertheless it was impossible to
mistake the content. His eyes roved over the bodies until he found her. Yelena was lying
in a tangle where she’d landed after being kicked over the side. Several very large rats
were picking their way toward her.
Arkadin, staring into the mouth of hell, gave a little cry, the sound a puppy might make
if you mistakenly stepped on its paw. Scrambling down the side, he ignored the appalling
stench and, through watering eyes, dragged her up the slope, laid her out on the forest
floor, the bed of brown needles, soft as her own. Then he trudged back to the car, opened
the trunk, and took out a shovel.
He buried her half a mile away from the pit, in a small clearing that was private and
peaceful. He carried her over his shoulder the whole way, and by the time he was finished
he smelled like death. At that moment, crouched on his hamstrings, his face streaked with
sweat and dirt, he doubted whether he’d ever be able to scrub off the stench. If he knew a
prayer, he would have said it then, but he knew only obscenities, which he uttered with
the fervor of the righteous. But he wasn’t righteous; he was damned.
For a businessman there was a decision to be made. Arkadin was no businessman,
though, so from that day forward his fate was sealed. He returned to Nizhny Tagil with
his two Stechkin handguns fully loaded and extra rounds of ammunition in his breast
pockets. Entering the brothel, he shot the two ghouls dead as they stood at guard. Neither
had a chance to draw his weapon.
Stas Kuzin appeared in the doorway, gripping a Korovin TK pistol. “Leonid, what the
fuck?”
Arkadin shot him once in each knee. Kuzin went down, screaming. As he tried to raise
the Korovin, Arkadin trod heavily on his wrist. Kuzin grunted heavily. When he wouldn’t
let go of the pistol, Arkadin kicked him in the knee. The resulting bellow brought the last of the girls from their respective rooms.
“Get out of here.” Arkadin addressed the girls, though his gaze was fixed on Kuzin’s
monstrous face. “Take whatever money you can find and go back to your families. Tell
them about the lime pit north of town.”
He heard them scrambling, babbling to one another, then it was quiet.
“Fucking sonovabitch,” Kuzin said, staring up at Arkadin.
Arkadin laughed and shot him in the right shoulder. Then, jamming the Stechkins in
their holsters, he dragged Kuzin across the floor. He had to push one of the dead ghouls
out of the way, but at last he made it down the stairs and out the front door with the
moaning Kuzin in tow. In the street one of Kuzin’s vans screeched to a halt. Arkadin
drew his guns, emptied them into the interior. The car rocked on its shocks, glass
shattered, its horn blared as the dead driver fell over onto it. No one got out.
Arkadin dragged Kuzin to his car and dumped him in the backseat. Then he drove out
of town to the forest, turning off at the rutted dirt track. At the end of it, he stopped,
hauled Kuzin to the edge of the pit.
“Fuck you, Arkadin!” Kuzin shouted. “Fuck-”
Arkadin shot him point-blank in the left shoulder, shattering it and sending Kuzin
down into the quicklime pit. He peered over. There was the monster, lying on the
corpses.
Kuzin’s mouth drooled blood. “Kill me!” he shouted. “D’you think I’m afraid of
death? Go on, do it now!”
“It’s not for me to kill you, Stas.”
“Kill me, I said. For fuck’s sake, finish it now!”
Arkadin gestured at the corpses. “You’ll die in your victims’s arms, hearing their
curses echoing in your ears.”
“What about all your victims?” Kuzin shouted when Arkadin disappeared from view.
“You’ll die choking on your own blood!”
Arkadin paid him no mind. He was already behind the wheel of his car, backing out of
the forest. It had begun to rain, gunmetal-colored drops that fell like bullets out of a
colorless sky. A slow booming coming from the smelters starting up sounded like the
thunder of cannons signaling the beginning of a war that would surely destroy him unless
he found a way out of Nizhny Tagil that wasn’t in a body bag.
Forty
WHERE ARE YOU, Jason?” Moira said. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I’m in Munich,” he said.
“How wonderful! Thank God you’re close by. I need to see you.” She seemed slightly
out of breath. “Tell me where you are and I’ll meet you there.”
Bourne switched his cell phone from one ear to the other, the better to check his
immediate surroundings. “I’m on my way to the Englischer Garten.”
“What are you doing in Schwabing?”
“It’s a long story; I’ll tell you about it when I see you.” Bourne checked his watch.
“But I’m due to meet up with Soraya at the Chinese pagoda in ten minutes. She says she
has new intel on the Black Legion attack.”
“That’s odd,” Moira said. “So do I.”
Bourne crossed the street, hurrying, but still alert for tags.
“I’ll meet you,” Moira said. “I’m in a car; I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Not a good idea.” He didn’t want her involved in a professional rendezvous. “I’ll call
you as soon as I’m through and we can-” All of a sudden, he realized he was talking to
dead air. He dialed Moira’s number, but got her voice mail. Damn her, he thought.
He reached the outskirts of the garden, which was twice the size of New York’s
Central Park. Divided by the Isar River, it was filled with jogging and bicycle paths,
meadows, forests, and even hills. Near the crown of one of these was the Chinese pagoda,
which was actually a beer garden.
He was naturally thinking of Soraya as he approached the area. It was odd that both
she and Moira had intel on the Black Legion. Now he thought back over his phone
conversation with her. Something about it had been bothering him, something just out of
reach. Every time he strained for it, it seemed to move farther away from him.
His pace was slowed by the hordes of tourists, American diplomats, children with
balloons or kites riding the wind. In addition, a rally of teenagers protesting new rulings on curriculum at the university had begun to gather at the pagoda.
He pushed his way forward, past a mother and child, then a large family in Nikes and
hideous tracksuits. The child glanced at him and, instinctively, Bourne smiled. Then he
turned away, wiped the blood off his face, though it continued to seep through the cuts
opened during his fight with Arkadin.
“No, you can’t have sausages,” the mother said to her son in a strong British accent.
“You were sick all night.”
“But Mummy,” he replied, “I feel right as rain.”
Right as rain. Bourne stopped in his tracks, rubbed the heel of his hand against his
temple. Right as rain; the phrase rattled around in his head like a steel ball in a pachinko machine.
Soraya.
Hi, it’s me, Soraya. That’s how she’d started off the call
Then she’d said: Actually, I’m in Munich.
And just before she’d hung up: Right as rain. I can make it. Can you?