Funny, he didn‘t feel like a victor, and he never had. Who had ever stood up and spoken for him? Weren‘t your parents supposed to be your advocates, weren‘t they supposed to protect you, not imprison you and abandon you? There was something about Joškar that touched a place inside him that, as she‘d said, he hadn‘t known existed.
— I‘m a Russian in name only, he said. -There is nothing inside me, Joškar. I‘m a hollow man. In fact, when we place Yasha on the funeral pyre and light the wood I‘ll envy him the pure and honorable method of his dissolution.
She looked at him with her bourbon eyes and he thought, If I see pity in her face I’ll have to strike her. But no pity was evident to him, just a singular curiosity. He glanced down and saw that she was holding out her hand to him. Without knowing why, he took it, felt her warmth, almost as if he could hear the blood singing in her veins. Then she turned, went back to the car, and gently drew out one of her daughters, whom she deposited in his arms.
— Hold her like this, she directed. -That‘s right, shape your arms into a cradle.
She turned and stared up into the night sky where the first saltings of stars were becoming visible.
— The brightest ones come out first, because they‘re the bravest, she said in the same voice she used when telling her stories of gods, elves, and fairies. -But my favorite time is when the most timid appear, like a band of gossamer lace, the last decoration of night before morning comes and spoils it all.
Through this all, Arkadin held the slender-limbed child in his arms, his skin brushed by her diaphanous hair, her small fist already curled around one of his calloused forefingers. She lay within the heart of him. He could feel her deep, even breathing, and it was as if a core of innocence had been returned to him.
Without turning around, Joškar said softly, — Don‘t make me go back to him.
— No one is sending you back. What makes you say that?
— Your friend wants no part of us. I know, I see how he looks at me, I feel his contempt burning my skin. If it weren‘t for you, he‘d have dumped us at one of the rest stops and I‘d have no choice but to go back to Lev.
— You‘re not going back to him, Arkadin said, hearing the sleeping girl‘s heartbeat close to his own. -I‘ll die before I let that happen.
This is where we part company, Bourne said to Tracy the next morning. As close as he could tell, they were five blocks from 779 El Gamhuria Avenue. -I told you I wasn‘t going to put you at risk. I‘ll make my own way into the building.
They had exited their raksha when El Gamhuria Avenue had become permanently blocked by a military rally that had attracted a huge, vocal crowd, gathered around a portable dais on which stood a pantheon of officers in khaki, dark green, and blue uniforms, depending on their rank. These officers, their freshly shaved faces shining in the sun, huge smiles on their faces, waved to the crowd as if they were genial uncles. With all the noise and confusion it was impossible to understand what they were shouting or celebrating. Nearby, on a side street, a manned tank, bristling with weaponry, hunkered like a fat tomcat licking its chops. They paid their fare and, skirting the agitated crowd, picked their way along the palm-lined avenue.
Bourne glanced at his watch. -What time do you have?
— Nine twenty-seven.
— Do me one favor. Bourne adjusted his watch slightly. -Give me fifteen minutes, then walk directly to Seven Seventy-nine, go in through the front door, and announce yourself to the receptionist. Hold the receptionist‘s attention and don‘t let go until either Noah sends for you or he comes out to get you.
She nodded. Her nervousness had returned. -I don‘t want anything to happen to you.
— Listen to me, Tracy. I‘ve told you that I don‘t trust Noah Perlis. I particularly don‘t like the fact that he wouldn‘t come to the hotel last night to complete the deal.
With him as a shield, she raised her dress to reveal a gun in a sleek holster strapped to a thigh. -When you‘re a transporter of precious objects, you can‘t be too careful.
— If Seven Seventy-nine Gamhuria has any kind of security, they‘d find that, he said.
— No, they won‘t. She tapped the butt. -It‘s ceramic.
— Clever girl. I assume you know how to use it.
She laughed at the same time she gave him a withering look. -Please be careful, Adam.
— You, too.
Then he walked off into the crowd, disappearing almost at once.
27
SEVEN SEVENTY-NINE El Gamhuria Avenue was a large, three-tiered structure of modernist lines constructed of chunky concrete and green-glass blocks. Above the first floor, the second and third stepped back, like a ziggurat. There was about the building the unmistakable feeling of a fortress, both in design and in intent, which the rooftop garden, whose treetops were visible from the street, did little to allay.
However, it was the garden that seemed most vulnerable to Bourne, who, immersed in the hectic street traffic, had quickly made two circuits of the building. There were, of course, entrances other than the gleaming wenge-wood front doors-two for deliveries, in fact-but they were both exposed and guarded.
A large truck was parked at one of these freight entrances, made humpbacked by the oversize refrigeration unit on its top. Bourne judged distances and vectors as he crossed the street, approaching the truck from the side facing away from the building. Two men were busy unloading large crates from the open back of the truck, overseen by a grim-looking security guard. Bourne made a mental note of everyone‘s position relative to the truck as he passed by.
Several hundred yards down the street, one of the city‘s numerous doorway lurkers leaned in the shadows, smoking languidly. He watched with bored suspicion as Bourne approached him.
— Tour? he said in very bad English. -Best guide in all of Khartoum. Anything you want to see I take, even forbidden. His grin seemed like more of a yawn. -You like forbidden, yes?
— How about a cigarette?
The sound of his own language surprised the lurker so much he righted himself and his half-glazed eyes seemed to clear. He handed Bourne a cigarette, which he lit with a cheap plastic lighter.
— You like money better than you like standing in this doorway?
The lurker nodded with a quick, disjointed bob of his head. -Show me a man who doesn‘t revere money and I‘ll mourn his death.
Bourne fanned out some bills and the lurker‘s eyes widened; the poor man couldn‘t help it, it was a reflex action. Bourne was willing to bet he‘d never imagined possessing so much money.
— Certainly. The man licked his lips. — All the forbidden places in Khartoum will be open to you.
— I‘m only interested in one, Bourne said. -Seven Seventy-nine El Gamhuria Avenue.
For a moment the man blanched, then he licked his lips again and said,
— Sir, there is forbidden and then there is forbidden.