As the gunman took aim at him Bourne covered his face with his folded forearms, dived headfirst through one of the feeding windows. Glass shattered. Bourne looked up to see that he was face-to-face with a Gaboon viper, the species with the longest fangs and highest venom yield of any snake. It was black and ocher. Its ugly, triangular head rose, its tongue flicked out, sensing, trying to determine if the creature sprawled in front of it was a threat.
Bourne lay still as stone. The viper began to hiss, a steady rhythm that flattened its head with each fierce exhalation. The small horns beside its nostrils quivered. Bourne had definitely disturbed it. Having traveled extensively in Africa, he knew something of this creature’s habits. It was not prone to bite unless severely provoked. On the other hand, he couldn’t risk moving his body at all at this point.
Aware that he was vulnerable from behind as well as in front, he slowly raised his left hand. The hissing’s steady rhythm didn’t change. Keeping his eyes on the snake’s head, he moved his hand until it was over the snake. He’d read about a technique meant to calm this kind of snake but had no idea whether it would work. He touched the snake on the top of its head with a fingertip. The hissing stopped. It did work!
He grasped it at its neck. Letting go of the gun, he supported the viper’s body with his other hand. The creature didn’t struggle. Walking gingerly across the case to the far end, he set it carefully down in a corner. A group of kids were staring, openmouthed, from the other side of the glass. Bourne backed away from the viper, never taking his eyes from it. Near the shattered feeding window he knelt down, grasped the Glock.
A voice behind him said, “Leave the gun where it is and turn around slowly.”
The damn thing’s dislocated,” Arkadin said.
Devra stared at his deformed shoulder.
“You’ll have to reset it for me.”
Drenched to the bone, they were sitting in a late-night cafй on the other side of Sevastopol, warming themselves as best they could. The gas heater in the cafй hissed and hiccupped alarmingly, as if it were coming down with pneumonia. Glasses of steaming tea sat before them, half empty. It was barely an hour after their hair’s-breadth escape, and both of them were exhausted.
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“Absolutely, you will,” he said. “I can’t go to a proper doctor.”
Arkadin ordered food. Devra ate like an animal, shoving dripping pieces of stew into her mouth with her fingertips. She looked as if she hadn’t eaten in days. Perhaps she hadn’t. Seeing how she laid waste to the food, Arkadin ordered more. He ate slowly and deliberately, conscious of everything he put into his mouth. Killing did that to him: All his senses were working overtime. Colors were brighter, smells stronger, everything tasted rich and complex. He could hear the acrid political argument going on in the opposite corner between two old men. His own fingertips on his cheek felt like sandpaper. He was acutely aware of his own heartbeat, the blood rushing behind his ears. He was, in short, a walking, talking exposed nerve.
He both loved and hated being in this state. The feeling was a form of ecstasy. He remembered coming across a dog-eared paperback copy of
Meanwhile the ecstasy he was in was a burden as well as a revelation, but he knew he couldn’t long stand being that exposed nerve. Everything from a car backfiring to the chirrup of a cricket crashed against him, as painful as if he’d been turned inside out.
He studied Devra with an almost obsessive concentration. He noticed something he hadn’t seen before-likely, with her gesticulating, she’d distracted him from noticing. But now she’d let down her guard. Perhaps she was just exhausted or had relaxed with him. She had a tremor in her hands, a nerve that had gone awry. Clandestinely, he watched the tremor, thinking it made her seem even more vulnerable.
“I don’t get you,” he told her now. “Why have you turned against your own people?”
“You think Pyotr Zilber, Oleg Shumenko, and Filya were my own people?”
“You’re a cog in Zilber’s network. What else would I think?”
“You heard how that pig talked to me up on the roof. Shit, they were all like that.” She wiped grease off her lips and chin. “I never liked Shumenko. First it was gambling debts I had to bail him out of, then it was drugs.”
Arkadin’s voice was offhand when he said, “You told me you didn’t know what the last loan was for.”
“I lied.”
“Did you tell Pyotr?”
“You’re joking. Pyotr was the worst of the lot.”
“Talented little bugger, though.”
Devra nodded. “So I thought when I was in his bed. He got away with an awful lot of shit because he was the boss-drinking, partying, and, Jesus, the girls! Sometimes two and three a night. I got thoroughly sick of him and asked to be reassigned back home.”
So she’d been Pyotr’s squeeze for a short time, Arkadin thought. “The partying was part of his job, though, forging contacts, ensuring they came back for more.”
“Sure. Trouble was he liked it all too much. And inevitably, that attitude infected those who were close to him. Where d’you think Shumenko learned to live like that? From Pyotr, that’s who.”
“And Filya?”
“Filya thought he owned me, like chattel. When we’d go out together he’d act as if he was my pimp. I hated his guts.”
“Why didn’t you get rid of him?”
“He was the one supplying Shumenko with coke.”
Quick as a cat, Arkadin leaned across the table, looming. “Listen,
“What did you expect?” she said. “You blew in like a fucking whirlwind.”
Arkadin laughed then, breaking a tension that was stretched to the breaking point. This girl had a sense of humor, which meant she was clever as well as smart. His mind had made a connection between her and a woman who’d once been important to him.
“I still don’t understand you.” He shook his head. “We’re on different sides of this conflict.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I was never part of this conflict. I didn’t like it; I only pretended I did. At first it was a goal I set for myself: whether I could fool Pyotr, and then the others. When I did, it just seemed easier to keep going. I got paid well, I learned quicker than most, I got perks I never would have gotten from being a DJ.”
“You could’ve left anytime.”
“Could I?” She cocked her head. “They would’ve come after me like they’re coming after you.”
“But now you’ve made up your mind to leave them.” He cocked his head. “Don’t tell me it’s because of me.”
“Why not? I like sitting next to a whirlwind. It’s comforting.”
Arkadin grunted, embarrassed again.
“Besides, the last straw came when I found out what they’re planning.”
“You thought of your American savior.”
“Maybe you can’t understand that one person can make a difference in your life.”
“Oh, but I can,” Arkadin said, thinking of Semion Icoupov. “In that, you and I are the same.”
She gestured. “You look so uncomfortable.”
“Come on,” he said, standing. He led her back past the kitchen, poked his head in for a moment, then took her into the men’s room.
“Get out,” he ordered a man at the sink.
He checked the stall to make sure they were alone. “I’ll tell you how to fix this damnable shoulder.”
When he gave her the instructions, she said, “Is it going to hurt?”
In answer, he put the handle of the wooden spoon he’d swiped from the kitchen between his teeth.
With great reluctance Bourne turned his back on the Gaboon viper. Many things flitted through his mind, not
