“Inside your shoe.” Arkadin sat perfectly still. “Very low-tech, very good.”
“Listen, you fucking goon, I don’t take kindly to being fucked over-you set me up to fail at the warehouse. Now Maslov has been warned, he’s going to be on his guard, which is going to make bringing him down all the more difficult. You’ve done nothing but treat me with disrespect. You’re a fucking murderer, the lowest form of what passes for life in a whole stinking pile of shit. You intimidate people, torture them, torment them, then kill them as if human life has no meaning. I feel unclean just being near you, but I want Dimitri Maslov more than I want to kill you, so I’ll just have to live with the decision. Life is full of compromises and with each one your hands dip deeper into blood, I’ve come to terms with that. But if you and I are going to work together, you’re going to give me the respect I deserve or I swear on my father’s grave I’ll slit your throat right here, right now, turn my back and forget I ever met you.” He put his face next to Arkadin’s. “Are we clear, Leonid Danilovich?”
“You’re not going to be able to make a move against Maslov with the moles in place.” Arkadin was looking straight ahead, which meant up at the night sky, where stars glittered like faraway eyes, watching the foibles of humankind with contempt or at least indifference.
Karpov jerked his head. “Are we clear?”
“Crystal.” He relaxed somewhat as the colonel put away the blade. He had been correct about Karpov’s essential nature: This was no man to be bullied, not even by the fearsome Russian bureaucracy. Arkadin silently saluted him. “Your first problem is to poison the moles in the FSB-2’s kitchen.”
“You mean the baseboards.”
Arkadin shook his head. “If that were the case, my dear Colonel, your problems would all be simple ones. However, I do mean the kitchen, because Maslov owns one of the chefs.”
There was silence for a time, just the soft lapping of the water, the last of the gulls’ cries as they bedded down for the night. The moon emerged from behind a low bank of clouds, casting a bluish mantle over them even as it chipped away at the black sea, strewing pinpoints of light across its choppy surface.
“Which one?” Karpov said after a long time.
“I’m not sure you want to hear this.”
“I’m not sure, either, but what the fuck, it’s too late to stop now.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Arkadin took out a pack of Turkish cigarettes and offered one to the colonel.
“I’m trying to cut down on my bad habits.”
“A futile preoccupation.”
“Say that when you have high blood pressure.”
Arkadin lit up, put the pack away, and took a deep drag. As the smoke drifted out of his nostrils, he said, “Melor Bukin, your boss, reports to Maslov.”
Karpov’s eyes blazed. “You shit, are you fucking with me again?”
Without a word Arkadin dug out the plastic bag he’d stowed in the bottom of the ice chest, zipped it open, and handed over the contents. Then he added several pieces of driftwood to the fire, which was waning.
Karpov moved a bit nearer to the fire in order to have a better look. Arkadin had handed him one of those cheap cell phones bought in any convenience store, a burner, which meant its calls couldn’t be traced. He thumbed it on.
“Audio and video,” Arkadin said as he used a stick to better arrange the wood. Planning for this day or one like it, he had used this cell to clandestinely record certain meetings between Maslov and Bukin that he’d attended. He knew there would be no doubt in the colonel’s mind when he finished viewing the evidence.
At length, Karpov looked bleakly up from the tiny screen. “I’ll need to keep this.”
Arkadin waved a hand. “All part of the service.”
Somewhere far off, the drone of a small plane came to them, a sound no more significant than a mosquito’s whine.
“How many more?” Karpov asked.
“I know of two-their names are in the phone’s directory-but there may be more. I’m afraid you’re going to have to ask your boss.”
Karpov’s brow furrowed. “That won’t be easy.”
“Even with this evidence?”
Karpov sighed. “I’m going to have to take him by surprise, cut him off completely before he has a chance to contact anyone.”
“Chancy,” Arkadin said. “On the other hand, if you go to President Imov with the evidence he’ll be so outraged he’s sure to let you do whatever you want with Bukin.”
Karpov appeared to be considering this approach. Good. Arkadin smiled inwardly. Melor Bukin had risen up through the apparatchik ranks mainly because of the president, before he’d been chosen by Viktor Cherkesov, the head of FSB-2. Inside the Kremlin a war was being waged between Cherkesov and the FSB’s Nikolai Patrushev, a well-known disciple of Imov’s. Cherkesov had built a formidable power base without the president’s patronage. Arkadin had his own reason for wanting Bukin disgraced. When Karpov threw Bukin in prison, his mentor, Cherkesov, would not be far behind. Cherkesov was the one thorn in his side he hadn’t been able to extricate, but now Karpov would take care of that for him.
Yet he had no time to gloat. His restless mind had already turned to more personal matters. Namely, the various routes he might take to avenge himself on Karpov for holding a knife to his throat. His mind was already afire with visions of slitting the colonel’s throat with his own razor blade.
MOIRA AND JALAL Essai sat together in the temporary quarters of his DC hotel suite. Between them were Essai’s netbook and the netbook that Moira had bought the day before, one she knew was absolutely clean. She had already souped it up far beyond its original specs.
She was going to ask him how to get started, because she had to assume that all her systems had been compromised, but she needn’t have bothered. As it turned out he had a lot of information about the laptop, all of which he shared with her. Latterly it had fallen into the hands of Gustavo Moreno, a Colombian drug lord living in the outskirts of Mexico City. Moreno had been killed some months ago when his compound had been raided by a party of officers disguised as Russian oilmen.
“The raiding party was headed by Colonel Boris Karpov,” Essai said.
Curious, Moira thought. But then she knew how small and insular this world was. She knew about the colonel from Bourne; they were friends, as much as two people like that could be friends.
“So Karpov has the laptop.”
“Unfortunately, no,” Essai said. “The laptop was taken from Moreno’s compound, by one of his own people, sometime before the raid.”
“One of his own people who was obviously working for who-a rival?”
“Possibly,” Essai said. “I don’t know.”
“What’s the thief’s name?”
“Name, photo, everything.” Essai turned the laptop’s screen toward her and brought up the image. “But it’s a dead end, literally. His body was found a week after the raid.”
“Where?” Moira said.
“Outside of Amatitán.” Essai pulled up Google Earth and punched in a set of coordinates. The globe of the planet revolved until the northwest coast of Mexico came into view. He pointed. Amatitán was in Jalisco, in the heart of tequila country. “Right here. As it happens on the estancia of Moreno’s sister, Berengária, although now that she’s married Narsico Skydel, the tequila magnate, she goes by the name of Barbara Skydel.”
“I seem to recall a memo at Black River about Narsico. He’s the cousin of Roberto Corellos, the jailed Colombian drug lord, isn’t that right?”
Essai nodded. “Narsico has been trying to distance himself from his infamous cousin for some time. He hasn’t been back in Colombia in ten years. Five years ago, apparently finding it too difficult to outrun his family’s reputation, he changed his name and bought into the largest tequila distillery in Mexico. Now he owns it outright and over the past two years has been expanding its reach.”