Tarkanian kissed Bourne on both cheeks, thanking him effusively.
There came a shuffling of the gorilla family as some grooming got under way.
“Damn sad life.” Tarkanian hooked his thumb at the silverback.
Bourne noted that his English was heavily accented in the manner of the tough Sokolniki slum of northeast Moscow.
“Look at the poor bastard,” Tarkanian said.
The gorilla’s expression was glum-resigned rather than defiant.
Specter said, “Jason’s here on a bit of a fact-finding mission.”
“Is he now?” Tarkanian was fleshy in the way of ex-athletes-neck like a bull, wary eyes sunk in yellow flesh. He kept his shoulders up around his ears, as if to ward off an expected blow. Enough hard knocks in Sokolniki to last a lifetime.
“I want you to answer his questions,” Specter said.
“Of course. Anything I can do.”
“I need your help,” Bourne said. “Tell me about Pyotr Zilber.”
Tarkanian, appearing somewhat taken aback, glanced at Specter, who had retreated a pace in order to center his man’s full attention on Bourne. Then he shrugged. “Sure. What d’you want to know?”
“How did you find out he’d been killed?”
“The usual way. Through one of our contacts.” Tarkanian shook his head. “I was devastated. Pyotr was a key man for us. He was also a friend.”
“How d’you figure he was found out?”
A gaggle of schoolgirls pranced by. When they had passed out of earshot, Tarkanian said, “I wish I knew. He wasn’t easy to get to, I’ll tell you that.”
Bourne said casually, “Did Pyotr have friends?”
“Of course he had friends. But none of them would betray him, if that’s what you’re asking.” Tarkanian pushed his lips out. “On the other hand…” His words trailed off.
Bourne found his eyes, held them.
“Pyotr was seeing this woman. Gala Nematova. He was head-over-heels about her.”
“I assume she was properly vetted,” Bourne said.
“Of course. But, well, Pyotr was a bit, um, headstrong when it came to women.”
“Was that widely known?”
“I seriously doubt it,” Tarkanian said.
That was a mistake, Bourne thought. The habits and proclivities of the enemy were always for sale if you were clever and persistent enough. Tarkanian should have said,
“Women can be a weak link.” Bourne thought briefly of Moira and the cloud of uncertainty that hovered over her from the CI investigation. The idea that Martin could have been seduced into revealing CI secrets was a bitter pill to swallow. He hoped when he read the communication between her and Martin that Soraya had unearthed, he could lay the question to rest.
“We’re all sick about Pyotr’s death,” Tarkanian offered. Again the glance at Specter.
“No question.” Bourne smiled rather vaguely. “Murder’s a serious matter, especially in this case. I’m talking to everyone, that’s all.”
“Of course. I understand.”
“You’ve been extremely helpful.” Bourne smiled, shook Tarkanian’s hand. As he did so, he said in a sharp tone of voice, “By the way, how much did Icoupov’s people pay you to call the professor’s cell this morning?”
Instead of freezing Tarkanian seemed to relax. “What the hell kind of question is that? I’m loyal, I always have been.”
After a moment, he tried to extricate his hand, but Bourne’s grip tightened. Tarkanian’s eyes met Bourne’s, held them.
Behind them, the silverback made a noise, growing restive. The sound was low, like the sudden ripple of wind disturbing a field of wheat. The message from the gorilla was so subtle, Bourne was the only one who picked up on it. He registered movement at the extreme edge of his peripheral vision, tracked for several seconds. He leaned back to Specter, said in a low, urgent voice. “Leave now. Go straight through the Small Mammal House, then turn left. A hundred yards on will be a small food kiosk. Ask for help getting to your car. Go back to your house and stay there until you hear from me.”
As the professor walked swiftly away, Bourne grabbed Tarkanian, pushed him in the opposite direction. They joined a Home Sweet Habitat scavenger hunt comprising a score of rowdy kids and their parents. The two men Bourne was tracking hurried toward them. It was this pair and their rushed anxiety that had aroused the suspicion of the silverback, alerting Bourne.
“Where are we going?” Tarkanian said. “Why did you leave the professor unprotected?”
A good question. Bourne’s decision had been instantaneous, instinct-driven. The men headed toward Tarkanian, not the professor. Now, as the group moved down Olmsted Walk, Bourne dragged Tarkanian into the Reptile Discovery Center. The lights were low here. They hurried past glass cases that held dozing alligators, slit- eyed crocodiles, lumbering tortoises, evil-looking vipers, and pebble-skinned lizards of all sizes, shapes, and dispositions. Up ahead, Bourne could see the snake cases. At one of them, a handler opened a door, prepared to set out a feast of rodents for the green tree pythons, which, in their hunger, had emerged from their stupor, slithering along the case’s fake tree branches. These snakes used infrared heat sensors to target their prey.
Behind them, the two men wove their way through the crowd of children. They were swarthy but otherwise unremarkable in feature. They had their hands plunged into the pockets of their wool overcoats, surely gripping some form of weapon. They weren’t hurrying now. There was no point in alarming the visitors.
Passing the European glass lizard, Bourne hauled Tarkanian into the snake section. It was at that moment that Tarkanian chose to make a move. Twisting away as he lunged back toward the approaching men, he dragged Bourne for a step, until Bourne struck him a dizzying blow to the side of the head.
A workman knelt with his toolbox in front of an empty case. He was fiddling with the ventilation grille at the base. Bourne swiped a short length of stiff wire from the box.
“The cavalry’s not going to save you today,” Bourne said as he dragged Tarkanian toward a door set flush in the wall between cases that led to the work area hidden from the public. One of the pursuers was closing in when Bourne jimmied the lock with the bit of wire. He opened the door, stepped through. He slammed it shut behind him, set the lock.
The door began to shudder on its hinges as the men pounded on it. Bourne found himself in a narrow utility corridor, lit by long fluorescent tubes, that ran behind the cases. Doors and, in the cases of the venomous snakes, feeding windows appeared at regular intervals along the right-hand wall.
Bourne heard a soft
Tarkanian, sensing Bourne’s momentary shift of attention, spun, slamming the side of his body into Bourne’s. Thrown off balance, Bourne skidded through the open doorway into the tree python case. With a harsh bark of laughter, Tarkanian rushed on.
A herpetologist in the case to check on the python was already protesting Bourne’s appearance. Bourne ignored him, reached up, unwound one of the hungry pythons from the branch nearest him. As the snake, sensing his heat, wrapped itself around his outstretched arm, Bourne turned and burst out into the corridor just in time to drive a fist into the gunman’s solar plexus. When the man doubled over, Bourne slid his arm out of the python’s coils, wrapped its body around the gunman’s chest. Seeing the python, the man screamed. It began to tighten its coils around him.
Bourne snatched the handgun with its suppressor from his hand, took off after Tarkanian. The gun was a Glock, not a Taurus. As Bourne suspected, these two weren’t part of the same team that had abducted the professor. Who were they then? Members of the Black Legion, sent to extract Tarkanian? But if that was the case, how had they known he’d been blown? No time for answers: The second man had appeared at the far end of the corridor. He was in a crouch, motioning to Tarkanian, who squeezed himself against the side of the corridor.
