connection with her going.
“What about your father?”
“I was born here, grew up here.” She stared down at her hands. “My father was a naval
engineer. He was thrown out of the shipyards when the Russians took it over. Then one
night they came for him, said he was spying on them, delivering technical information on
their ships to the Americans. I never saw him again. But the Russian security officer in
charge took a liking to my mother. When he’d used her up, he started on me.”
Arkadin could just imagine. “How did it end?”
“An American killed him.” She looked up at him. “Fucking ironic, because this
American was a spy sent to photograph the Russian fleet. When the American had
completed his assignment he should’ve gone back home. Instead he stayed. He took care
of me, nursed me back to health.”
“Naturally you fell in love with him.”
She laughed. “If I was a character in a novel, sure. But he was so kind to me; I was like
a daughter to him. I cried when he left.”
Arkadin found that he was embarrassed by her confession. To distract himself, he
looked around the ruined apartment one more time.
Devra watched him warily. “Hey. I’m dying for something to eat.”
Arkadin laughed. “Aren’t we all?”
His hawk-like gaze took in the street once more. This time the hairs on the back of his
neck stirred as he stepped to the side of the window. A car he’d heard approaching had
pulled up in front of the building. Devra, alerted by the sudden tension in his body,
moved to the window behind him. What caught his attention was that though its engine
was still running, all its lights had been extinguished. Three men exited the car, headed
for the building entrance. It was past time to leave.
He turned away from the window. “We’re going. Now.”
“Pyotr’s people. It was inevitable they’d find us.”
Much to Arkadin’s surprise she made no protest when he hustled her out of the
apartment. The hallway was already reverberating with the tribal beat of heavy shoes on
the concrete floor.
Bourne found walking unpleasant but hardly intolerable. He’d put up with a lot worse
than a flayed heel in his time. As he followed the professor down a metal staircase into
the basement, he reflected that this was proof again that there were no absolutes when it
came to people. He had assumed that Specter’s life was neat, tidy, dull, and quiet,
restricted by the dimensions of the university campus. Nothing could be farther from the
truth.
Halfway down, the staircase changed to stone treads, worn by decades of use. Their
way was guided by plenty of light from below. They entered a finished basement made
up of movable walls that separated what looked like office cubicles outfitted with laptop
computers attached to high-speed modems. All of them were staffed.
Specter stopped at the last cubicle, where a young man appeared to be decoding text
that scrolled across his computer screen. The young man, becoming aware of Specter,
pulled a sheet of paper out of the printer hopper, handed it to him. As soon as the
professor read it a change came over his demeanor. Though he kept his expression
neutral, a certain tension stiffened his frame.
“Good work.” He gave the young man a nod before he led Bourne into a room that
appeared to be a small library. Specter crossed to one section of the shelves, touched the
spine of a compilation of haiku by the master poet Matsuo BashoЇ. A square section of
the books opened to reveal a set of drawers. From one of these Specter pulled out what
looked like a photo album. All the pages were old, each one wrapped in archival plastic
to preserve them. He showed one of them to Bourne.
At the top was the familiar war eagle, gripping a swastika in its beak, the symbol of
Germany’s Third Reich. The text was in German. Just below was the word
OSTLEGIONEN, accompanied by a color photo of a woven oval, obviously a uniform
insignia, of a swastika encircled by laurel leaves. Around the central symbol were the
words TREU, TAPIR, GEHORSAM, which Bourne translated as “loyal, brave,
steadfast.” Below that was another color photo of a woven rampant wolf’s head, under
which was the designation: OSTMANISCHE SS-DIVISION.
Bourne noted the date on the page: 14 December 1941.
“I never heard of the Eastern Legions,” Bourne said. “Who were they?”
Specter turned the page and there, pinned to it, was a square of olive fabric. On it had
been sewn a blue shield with a black border. Across the top was the word
BERGKAUKASIEN-Caucasus Mountains. Directly beneath it in bright yellow was the
emblem of three horses’ heads joined to what Bourne now knew was a death’s head, the
symbol of the Nazi Schutzstaffel, the Protective Squadron, known colloquially as the SS.
It was exactly the same as the tattoo on the gunman’s arm.
“Not were, are.” Specter’s eyes glittered. “They’re the people who tried to kidnap me,
Jason. They want to interrogate me and kill me. Now that they’ve become aware of you,
they’ll want to do the same to you.”
Eight
THE ROOF or the basement?” Arkadin said.
“The roof,” she said at once. “There’s only one way in and out of the basement itself.”
They ran as fast as they could to the stairway, then took the steps two at a time.
Arkadin’s heart pounded, his blood raced, the adrenaline pumped into him with every
leap upward. He could hear his pursuers laboring up below him. The noose was
tightening around him. Racing to the far end of the narrow hallway, he reached up with
his right hand, pulled down the metal ladder that led to the roof. Soviet structures of this era were notorious for their flimsy doors. He knew he’d have no trouble breaking out
onto the roof. From there, it was a short jump to the next building and the next, then
down to the streets, where it would be easy to elude the enemy.
Boosting Devra’s body through the square hole in the ceiling, he clambered up. Behind
him, the shouted calls of the three men: Filya’s apartment had been searched. All of them
were coming after him. Gaining the tiny landing, he now faced the door to the roof, but
when he tried to push against the horizontal metal bar nothing happened. He pushed
harder, with the same result. Fishing a ring of slender metal picks out of his pocket, he
inserted one after another into the lock, fiddling it up and down, getting nowhere.
Looking more closely, he could see why: The interior of the cheap lock was rusted shut.
It wouldn’t open.
He turned back, staring down the ladder. Here came his pursuers. He had nowhere to
go.
On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded Soviet Russia,” Professor Specter said. “As they
did so they came upon thousands upon thousands of enemy soldiers who either
surrendered without a fight or were flat-out deserting. By August of that year the
invading army had interned half a million Soviet prisoners of war. Many of them were
Muslims-Tatars from the Caucasus, Turks, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakhs, others from the
tribes in the Ural Mountains, Turkestan, Crimea. The one thing all these Muslims had in
common was their hatred of the Soviets, Stalin in particular. To make a very long story
short, these Muslims, taken as prisoners of war, offered their services to the Nazis to fight alongside them on the Eastern Front, where they could do the most damage both by
infiltration and by decoding Soviet intelligence transmissions. The Fьhrer was elated; the
Ostlegionen became the particular interest of Reichsfьhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, who