mused.

Kirsch raised his eyebrows. “What do you know of this man?”

“I know a lot of dangerous people are terrified of him.”

“With good reason,” Kirsch said. “The man’s a homicidal maniac. He was born and

raised in Nizhny Tagil, a hotbed of homicidal maniacs.”

“So I’ve heard,” Bourne nodded.

“And there he would have stayed had it not been for Tarkanian.”

Bourne’s ears pricked up. He’d assumed that Maslov had put his man in Tarkanian’s

apartment because that’s where Gala was living. “Wait a minute, what does Tarkanian

have to do with Arkadin?”

“Everything. Without Mischa Tarkanian, Arkadin would never have escaped Nizhny

Tagil. It was Tarkanian who brought him to Moscow.”

“Are they both members of the Black Legion?”

“So I’ve been given to understand,” Kirsch said. “But I’m only an artist; the

clandestine life has given me an ulcer. If I didn’t need the money-I’m a singularly

unsuccessful artist, I’m afraid-I never would have stayed in this long. This was to be my

last favor for Specter.” His eyes continued to dart to the left and right. “Now that Arkadin has murdered Dieter Heinrich, last favor has taken on a new and terrifying meaning.”

Bourne was now on full alert. Specter had assumed that Tarkanian was Black Legion,

and Kirsch just confirmed it. But Maslov had denied Tarkanian’s affiliation with the

terrorist group. Someone was lying.

Bourne was about to ask Kirsch about the discrepancy when out of the corner of his

eye he spotted one of the men who’d come into the museum just after he had. The man

had paused for a moment in the vestibule, as if orienting himself, then strode purposefully off into the exhibition hall.

Because the man was close enough to overhear them in the museum’s hushed

atmosphere, Bourne took Kirsch’s arm. “Come this way,” he said, leading the German

contact into another room, which was dominated by a calcite statue of twins from the

Eighth Dynasty. It was chipped, time-worn, dating from 2390 BC.

Pushing Kirsch behind the statue, Bourne stood like a sentinel, watching the other

man’s movements. The man glanced up, saw that Bourne and Kirsch were no longer at

the statue of Senenmut, and looked casually around.

“Stay here,” Bourne whispered to Kirsch.

“What is it?” There was a slight quaver in Kirsch’s voice, but he looked stalwart

enough. “Is Arkadin here?”

“Whatever happens,” Bourne warned him, “stay put. You’ll be safe until I come get

you.”

As Bourne moved around the far side of the Egyptian twins, the man entered the

gallery. Bourne walked to the side opening and into the room beyond. The man,

sauntering nonchalantly, took a quick look around and, as if seeing nothing of interest,

followed Bourne.

This gallery held a number of high display cases but was dominated by a five-

thousand-year-old stone statue of a woman with half her head sheared off. The antiquity

was staggering, but Bourne had no time to appreciate it. Perhaps because it was toward

the rear of the museum, the room was deserted, save for Bourne and the man, who was

standing between Bourne and the one way in or out of the gallery.

Bourne placed himself behind a two-sided display case with a board in the center on

which were hung small artifacts-sacred blue scarabs and gold jewelry. Because of a

center gap in the board, Bourne could see the man, but the man remained unaware of his

position.

Standing completely still, Bourne waited until the man began to come around the right

side of the display case. Bourne moved quickly to his right, around the opposite side of

the case, and rushed the man.

He shoved him against the wall, but the man maintained his balance. As he took up a

defensive posture he pulled a ceramic knife from a sheath under his armpit, swung it back

and forth to keep Bourne at bay.

Bourne feinted right, moved left in a semi-crouch. As he did so, he swung his right arm

against the hand wielding the knife. His left hand grabbed the man by his throat. As the

man tried to drive his knee into Bourne’s belly, Bourne twisted to partially deflect the

blow. In so doing, he lost his block on the knife hand and now the blade swept in toward

the side of his neck. Bourne stopped it just before it struck, and there they stood, locked together in a kind of stalemate.

“Bourne,” the man finally got out. “My name is Jens. I work for Dominic Specter.”

“Prove it,” Bourne said.

“You’re here meeting with Egon Kirsch, so you can take his place when Leonid

Arkadin comes looking for him.”

Bourne let up on his grip of Jens’s neck. “Put away your knife.”

Jens did as Bourne asked, and Bourne let go of him completely.

“Now where’s Kirsch? I need to get him out of here and safely on a plane back to

Washington.”

Bourne led him back into the adjoining gallery, to the statue of the twins.

“Kirsch, the gallery’s clear. You can come out now.”

When the contact didn’t appear, Bourne stepped behind the statue. Kirsch was there all

right, crumpled on the floor, a bullet hole in the back of his head.

Semion Icoupov watched the receiver attuned to the electronic bug in Bourne’s

passport. As they approached the area of the Egyptian museum, he told the driver of his

car to slow down. A keen sense of anticipation coursed through him: He’d decided to

take Bourne by gunpoint into his car. It seemed the best way now to get him to listen to

what Icoupov had to tell him.

At that moment his cell phone sounded with the ringtone he’d assigned to Arkadin’s

number, and while on the lookout for Bourne he put the phone to his ear.

“I’m in Munich,” Arkadin said in his ear. “I rented a car, and I’m driving in from the

airport.”

“Good. I’ve got an electronic tag on Jason Bourne, the man Our Friend has sent to

retrieve the plans.”

“Where is he? I’ll take care of him,” Arkadin said in his typical blunt way.

“No, no, I don’t want him killed. I’ll take care of Bourne. In the meantime, stay

mobile. I’ll be in touch shortly.”

Bourne, kneeling down beside Kirsch, examined the dead body.

“There’s a metal detector out front,” Jens said. “How the hell could someone bring a

gun in here? Plus, there was no noise.”

Bourne turned Kirsch’s head so the back of it caught the light. “See here.” He pointed

to the entry wound. “And here. There’s no exit wound, which there would have been with

a shot fired at close range.” He stood up. “Whoever killed him used a suppressor.” He

went out of the gallery with a purposeful stride. “And whoever killed him works here as a

guard; the museum’s security personnel are armed.”

“There are three of them,” Jens said, keeping pace behind Bourne.

“Right. Two on the metal detector, one roaming the galleries.”

In the vestibule, the two guards were at their station beside the metal detector. Bourne

went up to one of them, said, “I lost my cell phone somewhere in the museum and the

guard in the second gallery said she’d help me locate it, but now I can’t find her.”

“Petra,” the guard said. “Yeah, she just took off for her lunch break.”

Bourne and Jens went through the front door, down the steps onto the sidewalk, where

they looked left and right. Bourne saw a uniformed female figure walking fast down the

block to their right, and he and Jens took off after her.

She disappeared around a corner, and the two men sprinted after her. As they neared

the corner Bourne became aware of a sleek Mercedes sedan as it came abreast of them.

Icoupov was appalled to discover Bourne exiting the museum in the company of Franz