focused on other things-the broken picture frames, the smashed crystal, the overturned chairs, the ashes of the fetishistic fire Arkadin had lit to burn his clothes.
“Mischa tells me you’re having a difficult time.”
“Mischa should keep his mouth shut.”
Icoupov spread his hands. “Someone has to save your life.”
“What d’you know about it?” Arkadin said harshly.
“Actually, I know nothing about what’s happened to you,” Icoupov said.
Arkadin, digging the muzzle of the Makarov into Icoupov’s temple, stepped closer. “Then shut the fuck up.”
“What I am concerned about is the here and now.” Icoupov didn’t blink an eye; he didn’t move a muscle, either. “For fuck’s sake, son, look at you. If you won’t pull back from the brink for yourself, do it for Mischa, who loves you better than any brother would.”
Arkadin let out a ragged breath, as if he were expelling a dollop of poison. He took the Makarov from Icoupov’s head.
Icoupov held out his hand. When Arkadin hesitated, he said with great gentleness, “This isn’t Nizhny Tagil. There is no one here worth hurting, Leonid Danilovich.”
Arkadin gave a curt nod, let go of the gun. Icoupov called out, handed it to one of two very large men who came down the hallway from the far end where they had been stationed, not making a sound. Arkadin tensed, angry at himself for not sensing them. Clearly, they were bodyguards. In his current condition, they could have taken Arkadin anytime. He looked at Icoupov, who nodded, and an unspoken connection sprang up between them.
“There is only one path for you now,” Icoupov said.
Icoupov moved to sit on the sofa in Arkadin’s trashed apartment, then gestured, and the bodyguard who had taken possession of Arkadin’s Makarov held it out to him.
“Here, now, you will have witnesses to your last spasm of nihilism. If you wish it.”
Arkadin for once in his life ignored the gun, stared implacably at Icoupov.
“No?” Icoupov shrugged. “Do you know what I think, Leonid Danilovich? I think it gives you a measure of comfort to believe that your life has no meaning. Most times you revel in this belief; it’s what fuels you. But there are times, like now, when it takes you by the throat and shakes you till your teeth rattle in your skull.” He was dressed in dark slacks, an oyster-gray shirt, a long black leather coat that made him look somewhat sinister, like a German SS-Stьrmbannfьhrer. “But I believe to the contrary that you are searching for the meaning of your life.” His dark skin shone like polished bronze. He gave the appearance of a man who knew what he was doing, someone, above all, not to be trifled with.
“What path?” Arkadin said dully, taking a seat on the sofa.
Icoupov gestured with both hands, encompassing the self-inflicted whirlwind that had torn apart the rooms. “The past for you is dead, Leonid Danilovich, do you not agree?”
“God has punished me. God has abandoned me,” Arkadin said, regurgitating by rote a lament of his mother’s.
Icoupov smiled a perfectly innocent smile, one that could not possibly be misinterpreted. He had an uncanny ability to engage others one-on-one. “And what God is that?”
Arkadin had no answer because this God he spoke of was his mother’s God, the God of his childhood, the God that had remained an enigma to him, a shadow, a God of bile, of rage, of split bone and spilt blood.
“But no,” he said, “God, like heaven, is a word on a page. Hell is the here and now.”
Icoupov shook his head. “You have never known God, Leonid Danilovich. Put yourself in my hands. With me, you will find God, and learn the future he has planned for you.”
“I cannot be alone.” Arkadin realized that this was the truest thing he’d ever said.
“Nor shall you be.”
Icoupov turned to accept a tray from one of the bodyguards. While they had been talking, he’d made tea. Icoupov poured two glasses full, added sugar, handed one to Arkadin.
“Drink with me now, Leonid Danilovich,” he said as he lifted his steaming glass. “To your recovery, to your health, to the future, which will be as bright for you as you wish to make it.”
The two men sipped their tea, which the bodyguard had astutely fortified with a considerable amount of vodka.
“To never being alone again,” said Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.
That was a long time ago, at a way station on a river that had turned to blood. Was he much changed from the near-insane man who had put the muzzle of a gun to Semion Icoupov’s head? Who could say? But on days of heavy rain, ominous thunder, and twilight at noon, when the world looked as bleak as he knew it to be, thoughts of his past surfaced like corpses in a river, regurgitated by his memory. And he would be alone again.
Tarkanian was coming around, but the phenothiazine that had been administered to him was doing its job, sedating him mildly and impairing his mental functioning enough so that when Bourne bent over him and said in Russian, “Bourne’s dead, we’re in the process of extracting you,” Tarkanian dazedly thought he was one of the men at the reptile house.
“Icoupov sent you.” Tarkanian lifted a hand, felt the bandage the paramedics had used to keep light out of his eyes. “Why can’t I see?”
“Lie still,” Bourne said softly. “There are civilians around. Paramedics. That’s how we’re extracting you. You’ll be safe in the hospital for a few hours while we arrange the rest of your travel.”
Tarkanian nodded.
“Icoupov is on the move,” Bourne whispered. “Do you know where?”
“No.”
“He wants you to be most comfortable during your debriefing. Where should we take you?”
“Moscow, of course.” Tarkanian licked his lips. “It’s been years since I’ve been home. I have an apartment on the Frunzenskaya embankment.” More and more he seemed to be speaking to himself. “From my living room window you can see the pedestrian bridge to Gorky Park. Such a peaceful setting. I haven’t seen it in so long.”
They arrived at the hospital before Bourne had a chance to continue the interrogation. Then everything happened very quickly. The doors banged open and the paramedic leapt into action, getting the gurney down, rushing it through the automatic glass doors into a corridor leading to the ER. The place was packed with patients. One of the paramedics was talking to a harried overworked intern, who directed him to a small room, one of many off the corridor. Bourne saw that the other rooms were filled.
The two paramedics rolled Tarkanian into the room, checked the IV, took his vitals again, unhooked him.
“He’ll come around in a minute,” one of them said. “Someone will be in shortly to see to him.” He produced a practiced smile that was not unlikable. “Don’t worry, your friend’s going to be fine.”
After they’d left, Bourne went back to Tarkanian, said, “Mikhail, I know the Frunzenskaya embankment well. Where exactly is your apartment?”
“He’s not going to tell you.”
Bourne whirled just as the first gunman-the one he’d wrapped the python around-threw himself on top of him. Bourne staggered back, bounced hard against the wall. He struck at the gunman’s face. The gunman blocked it, punched Bourne hard on the point of his sternum. Bourne grunted, and the gunman followed up with a short chop to Bourne’s side.
Down on one knee, Bourne saw him pull out a knife, swipe the blade at him. Bourne shrank back. The gunman attacked with the knife point-first. Bourne landed a hard right flush on his face, heard the satisfying crack of the cheekbone fracturing. Enraged, the gunman closed, the blade swinging through Bourne’s shirt, bringing out an arc of blood like beads on a string.
Bourne hit him so hard he staggered back, struck the gurney on which Tarkanian was stirring out of his drugged stupor. The man took out his handgun with the suppressor. Bourne closed with him, grabbing him tightly, depriving him of space to aim the gun.
Tarkanian ripped off the bandage the paramedics had used to keep light out of his eyes, blinked heavily, looking around. “What the hell’s going on?” he said drowsily to the gunman. “You told me Bourne was dead.”
The man was too busy fending off Bourne’s attack to answer. Seeing his firearm was of no use to him he
