his youth. Part of him was still in the brothel he and Stas Kuzin had owned, part of him still stalked the nighttime streets, abducting young girls, their pale, fearful faces turned toward him as deer turn toward headlights. But what they’d needed from him he couldn’t-or wouldn’t-give them. Instead, he’d sent them to their deaths in the quicklime pit Kuzin’s regime had dug amid the firs and the weeping hemlocks. Many snows had passed since he’d dragged Yelena from the rats and the quicklime, but the pit remained in his memory, vivid as a blaze of fire. If only he could have his memory wiped clean.
He started at the sound of Stas Kuzin screaming at him.
But it was Bourne, descending the steel companionway to the engine room. “It’s over, Arkadin. The disaster has been averted.”
Arkadin nodded, but inside he knew better: The disaster had already occurred, and it was too late to stop its consequences. As he walked toward Bourne he tried to fix him in his mind, but he seemed to morph, like an image seen through a prism.
When he was within arm’s length of him, he said, “Is it true what Sever told Icoupov, that you have no memory beyond a certain point in time?”
Bourne nodded. “It’s true. I can’t remember most of my life.”
Arkadin felt a terrible pain, as if the very fabric of his soul was being torn apart. With an inchoate cry, he flicked open his switchblade, lunged forward, aiming for Bourne’s belly.
Turning sideways, Bourne grabbed his wrist, began to turn it in an attempt to get Arkadin to drop the weapon. Arkadin struck out with his other hand, but Bourne blocked it with his forearm. In doing so, the crossbow clattered to the deck. Arkadin kicked it into the shadows.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Bourne said. “There’s no reason for us to be enemies.”
“There’s every reason.” Arkadin broke away, tried another attack, which Bourne countered. “Don’t you see it? We’re the same, you and me. The two of us can’t exist in the same world. One of us will kill the other.”
Bourne stared into Arkadin’s eyes, and even though his words were those of a madmen Bourne saw no madness in them. Only a despair beyond description, and an unyielding will for revenge. In a way, Arkadin was right. Revenge was all he had now, all he lived for. With Tarkanian and Devra gone, the only meaning life had for him lay in avenging their deaths. There was nothing Bourne could say to sway him; that was a rational response to an irrational impulse. It was true, the two of them couldn’t exist in the same world.
At that moment Arkadin feinted right with his knife, drove left with his fist, rocking Bourne back onto his heels. At once he stabbed out with the switchblade, burying it in the meat of Bourne’s left thigh. Bourne grunted, fought the buckling of his knee, and Arkadin jammed his boot into Bourne’s wounded thigh. Blood spurted, and Bourne fell. Arkadin jumped on him, using his fist to pummel Bourne’s face when Bourne blocked his knife stabs.
Bourne knew he couldn’t take much more of this. Arkadin’s desire for revenge had filled him with an inhuman strength. Bourne, fighting for his very life, managed to counterpunch long enough to roll out from under Arkadin. Then he was up and running in an ungainly limp to the companionway.
Arkadin reached up for him as he was half a dozen rungs off the engine room deck. Bourne kicked out with his bad leg, surprising Arkadin, catching him under the chin. As he fell back, Bourne scrambled up the rungs as fast as he could. His left leg was on fire, and he was trailing blood as the wounded muscle was forced to work overtime.
Gaining the next deck, he continued up the companionway, up and up, until he came to the first level belowdecks, which according to Moira was where the galley was. Finding it, he raced in, grabbed two knives and a glass saltshaker. Stuffing the shaker into his pocket, he wielded the knives as Arkadin loomed in the doorway.
They fought with their knives, but Bourne’s unwieldy carving knives were no match for Arkadin’s slender- bladed switchblade, and Bourne was cut again, this time in the chest. He kicked Arkadin in the face, dropped his knives in order to wrest the switchblade out of Arkadin’s hand, to no avail. Arkadin stabbed at him again and Bourne nearly suffered a punctured liver. He backed away, then ran out the doorway, up the last companionway to the open deck.
The tanker was at a near stop. The captain was busy coordinating the hookups with the tugboats that would bring it the final distance to the LNG terminal. Bourne couldn’t see Moira, which was a blessing. He didn’t want her anywhere near Arkadin.
Bourne, heading for the sanctuary of the container city, was bowled over as Arkadin leapt on him. Locked together, they rolled over and over until they fetched up against the port railing. The sea was far below them, churning against the tanker’s hull. One of the tugs signaled with its horn as it came alongside, and Arkadin stiffened. To him it was the siren sounding an escape from one of Nizhny Tagil’s prisons. He saw the black skies, tasted the sulfur smoke in his lungs. He saw Stas Kuzin’s monstrous face, felt Marlene’s head between his ankles beneath the water, heard the terrible reports when Semion Icoupov shot Devra.
He screamed like a tiger, pulling Bourne to his feet, pummeling him over and over until he was bent back over the railing. In that moment, Bourne knew that he was going to die as he had been born, falling over the side of a ship, lost in the depth of the sea, and only by the grace of God being brought in to a fishing boat with their catch. His face was bloody and swollen, his arms felt like lead weights, he was going over.
Then, at the last instant, he pulled the shaker from his pocket, broke it against the rail, and threw the salt in Arkadin’s eyes. Arkadin bellowed in shock and pain, his hand flew up reflexively, and Bourne snatched the switchblade from him. Blinded, Arkadin still fought on, and he grasped the blade. With a superhuman effort, not caring that the edges cut into his fingers, he wrested the switchblade away from Bourne. Bourne heaved him backward. But Arkadin had control of the knife now, he had partial vision back through his tearing eyes, and he ran at Bourne with his head tucked into his shoulders, all his weight and determination behind the charge.
Bourne had one chance. Stepping into the charge, he ignored the knife, grabbed Arkadin by his uniform jacket and, using his own momentum against him, pivoted from the hip as he swung him around and up. Arkadin’s thighs struck the railing, his upper body continuing its flight, so that he toppled head-over-heels over the side.
Falling, falling, falling… the equivalent of twelve stories, before plunging beneath the waves.
Forty-Five
I NEED A VACATION, “Moira said. “I’m thinking Bali would do me quite well.”
She and Bourne were in the NextGen clinic in one of the campus buildings that overlooked the Pacific. The
“I wish I knew what a vacation felt like,” Bourne said when he’d finished the call.
“Well…” Moira smiled at him. “You’ve only to ask.”
Bourne considered for a long time. Vacations were something he’d never contemplated, but if ever there was a time to take one, he thought, this was it. He looked back at her and nodded.
Her smile broadened. “I’ll have NextGen make all the arrangements. How long do you want to go for?”
“How long?” Bourne said. “Right now, I’ll take forever.”
On his way to the airport, Bourne stopped at the Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, where Professor Sever had been admitted. Moira, who had declined to come up with him, was waiting for him in the chauffeured car NextGen had hired for them. They’d put Sever in a private room on the fifth floor. The room was deathly still, except for the respirator. The professor had sunk deeper into a coma and was now unable to breathe on his own. A thick tube emerged from his throat, snaking to the respirator that wheezed like an asthmatic. Other, smaller tubes were needled into Sever’s arms. A catheter attached to a plastic bladder hooked to the side of the bed caught his urine. His bluish eyelids were so thin Bourne thought he could see his pupils beneath them.
