trigger,” he said, “we become equal partners.”

There was something in Kuzin’s eyes that at this close range gave Arkadin the shivers.

It seemed to him that Kuzin’s eyes were smiling in the way the devil smiled, without

warmth, without humanity, because the pleasure that animated the smile was of an evil

and perverted nature. It was at this precise moment that Arkadin thought of the prisons

ringing Nizhny Tagil, because he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was

locked within his own private prison, with no idea if there was a key, let alone how to use it.

The gun-an old Luger with the Nazi swastika imprinted on it-was greasy with Kuzin’s

excitement. Arkadin raised it to the height of the girl’s head. She was whimpering and

crying. Arkadin had done many things in his young life, some of them unforgivable, but

he’d never shot a girl in cold blood. And yet now, in order to prosper, in order to survive the prison of Nizhny Tagil, this was what he had to do.

He was aware of Kuzin’s avid eyes boring into him, red as the fire of Nizhny Tagil’s

foundries themselves, and then he felt the muzzle of a gun at the nape of his neck and

knew that the driver was standing behind him, no doubt on Kuzin’s orders.

“Do it,” Kuzin said softly, “because one way or another in the next ten seconds

someone’s going to fire his gun.”

Arkadin aimed the Luger. The shout of the report echoed on and on through the deep

and forbidding forest, and the girl slid along the leaves, into the pit with her friend.

Thirty-Five

THE SOUND of the bolt being thrown on the 8mm Mauser K98 rifle echoed through

the Dachau air raid bunker. That was the end of it, however.

“Damn!” Old Pelz groaned. “I forgot to load the thing!”

Petra took out her handgun, pointed it in the air, and squeezed the trigger. Because the

result was the same as what had happened to him, Old Pelz threw down the K98.

“Scheisse!” he said, clearly disgusted.

She approached him then. “Herr Pelz,” she said gently, “as I said, my name is Petra.

Do you remember me?”

The old man stopped muttering, peered at her carefully. “You do look an awful lot like

a Petra-Alexandra I once knew.”

“Petra-Alexandra.” She laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “Yes, yes, that’s me!”

He recoiled a little, put a hand on his cheek where she’d planted her lips. Then,

skeptical to the end, he looked past her at Bourne. “Who’s this Nazi bastard? Did he force

you to come here?” His hands curled into fists. “I’ll box his ears for him!”

“No, Herr Pelz, this is a friend of mine. He’s Russian.” She used the name Bourne had

given her, which was on the passport Boris Karpov had provided.

“Russians’re no better than Nazis in my book,” the old man said sourly.

“Actually, I’m an American traveling under a Russian passport.” Bourne said this first

in English and then in German.

“You speak English very well, for a Russian,” Old Pelz said in excellent English. Then

he laughed, showing teeth yellowed by time and tobacco. At the sight of an American, he

seemed to perk up, as if coming out of a decades-long drowse. This was the way he was,

a rabbit being drawn out of a hat, only to withdraw again into the shadows. He wasn’t

mad, just living both in the drab present and in the vivid past. “I embraced the Americans

when they liberated us from tyranny,” he continued proudly. “In my time I helped them

root out the Nazis and the Nazi sympathizers pretending to be good Germans.” He spat

out the last words, as if he couldn’t stand to have them in his mouth.

“Then what are you doing here?” Bourne said. “Don’t you have a home to go to?”

“Sure I do.” Old Pelz smacked his lips, as if he could taste the life of his younger self.

“In fact, I have a very nice house in Dachau. It’s blue and white, with flowers all around

a picket fence. A cherry tree stands in back, spreading its wings in summer. The house is

rented out to a fine young couple with two strapping children, who send their rent check

like clockwork to my nephew in Leipzig. He’s a big-shot lawyer, you know.”

“Herr Pelz, I don’t understand,” Petra said. “Why not stay in your own home? This is

no place to live.”

“The bunker is my health insurance.” The old man cocked a canny eye her way. “Do

you have any idea what would happen to me if I went back to my house? They’d spirit

me away in the night, and that’s the last anyone would ever see of me.”

“Who would do that to you?” Bourne said.

Pelz seemed to consider his answer, as if he needed to remember the text of a book

he’d read in high school. “I told you I was a Nazi hunter, a damn fine one, too. In those

days I lived like a king-or, if I’m honest, a duke. Anyway, that’s before I got cocky and

made my mistake. I decided to go after the Black Legion, and that one intemperate

decision was my downfall. Because of them I lost everything, even the trust of the

Americans, who at that time needed those damn people more than they needed me.

“The Black Legion kicked me into the gutter like a piece of garbage or a mangy dog.

From there it was only a short crawl down here into the bowels of the earth.”

“It’s the Black Legion I came here to talk to you about,” Bourne said. “I’m a hunter,

too. The Black Legion isn’t a Nazi organization anymore. They’ve turned into a Muslim

terrorist network.”

Old Pelz rubbed his grizzled jaw. “I’d say I’m surprised, but I’m not. Those bastards

knew how to play all the cards in all the hands-the Germans, the Brits, and, most

importantly, the Americans. They toyed with all of ’em after the war. Every Western

intelligence service was throwing money at them. The thought of having built-in spies

behind the Iron Curtain had them all salivating.

“It didn’t take the bastards long to figure out it was the Americans who had the upper

hand. Why? ’Cause they had all the money and, unlike the Brits, weren’t being tight-

fisted with it.” He cackled. “But that’s the American way, isn’t it?”

Not waiting for an answer to a question that was self-evident, he plowed on. “So the

Black Legion took up with the American intelligence machine. First off, it wasn’t

difficult to convince the Yanks that they’d never been Nazis, that their only goal was to

fight Stalin. And that was true, as far as it went, but after the war they had other goals in mind. They’re Muslims, after all; they never felt comfortable in Western society. They

wanted to build for the future, and like a lot of other insurgents they created their power base with American dollars.”

He squinted up at Bourne. “You’re American, poor bastard. None of these modern-day

terrorist networks would’ve existed without your country’s backing. Fucking ironic, that

is.”

For a time he lapsed into muttering, broke into a song whose lyrics were so melancholy

tears welled up in his rheumy eyes.

“Herr Pelz,” Bourne said, trying to get the old man to focus. “You were talking about

the Black Legion.”

“Call me Virgil,” Pelz said, nodding as he came out of his fugue state. “That’s right,

my Christian name is Virgil, and for you, American, I will hold my lamp high enough to

throw light on those bastards who ruined my life. Why not? I’m at a stage in my life

when I should tell someone, and it might as well be you.”

They’re in the back,” Bev said to Drew Davis. “Both of them.” A woman in her

midfifties with a thick frame and a quick wit, she was The Glass Slipper’s girl wrangler,

as she wryly called herself-part disciplinarian, part den mother.