dug in the sand with yellow plastic Tweety Bird shovels, poured sand into pink plastic Petunia Pig buckets. One pair of lovers had stopped at the shoreline, embracing. They kissed passionately.
Arkadin walked on. Just behind them a man stood in the surf. His trousers were rolled up; his shoes, with socks stuffed into them, had been placed on a high point in the sand not far away. He was staring out at the water, dotted here and there with tankers, tiny as LEGOs, inching along the blue horizon.
Devra's description was not only detailed, it was accurate. The man in the surf was Heinrich.
The Moskva Bank was housed in an enormous, ornate building that would pass for a palace in any other city but was run-of-the-mill by Moscow standards. It occupied a corner of a busy thoroughfare a stone's throw from Red Square. The streets and sidewalks were packed with both Muscovites and tourists.
It was just before 9 AM. Bourne had been walking around the area for the last twenty minutes, checking for surveillance. That he hadn't spotted any didn't mean the bank wasn't being watched. He'd glimpsed a number of police cars cruising the snow-covered streets, more than usual, perhaps.
As he walked along a street close to the bank, he saw another police cruiser, this one with its light flashing. Stepping back into a shop doorway, he watched as it sped by. Halfway down the block it stopped behind a double-parked car. It sat there for a moment, then the two policemen got out of their cruiser, swaggered over to the vehicle.
Bourne took the opportunity to walk down the crowded sidewalk. People were wrapped and bundled, swaddled like children. Breath came out of their mouths and noses in cloud-like bursts as they hurried along with hunched shoulders and bent backs. As Bourne came abreast of the cruiser, he dipped down and glanced in the window. There he saw his face staring up at him from a tear sheet that had obviously been distributed to every cop in Moscow. According to the accompanying text he was wanted for the murder of an American government official.
Bourne walked quickly in the opposite direction, disappearing around a corner before the cops had a chance to return to their car.
He phoned Gala, who was parked in Yakov's battered Zhig three blocks away awaiting his signal. After his call, she pulled out into traffic, made a right, then another. As they had surmised, it was slow going, the morning traffic sluggish.
She checked her watch, saw she needed to give Bourne another ninety seconds. As she approached the intersection near the bank, she used the time to pick a likely target. A shiny Zil limousine, not a speck of snow on its hood or roof, was heading slowly toward the intersection at right angles to her.
At the appointed time she accelerated forward. The bombila's tires, which she and Bourne had checked when they'd returned to Lorraine's, were nearly bald, their treads worn down to a nub. Gala braked much too hard and the Zhig shrieked as the brakes locked, the old tires skidding along the icy street until its grille struck the front fender of the Zil limo.
All traffic came to a screeching halt, horns blared, pedestrians detoured from their appointed rounds, drawn by the spectacle. Within thirty seconds three police cruisers had converged on the site of the accident.
As the chaos mounted, Bourne slipped through the revolving door into the ornate lobby of the Moskva Bank. He immediately crossed the marble floor, passing under one of the three huge gilt chandeliers that hung from the vaulted ceiling high above. The effect of the room was to diminish human size, and the experience was not unlike visiting a dead relative in his marble niche.
There was a low banquette two-thirds of the way across the vast room, behind which sat a row of drones, their heads bent over their work. Before approaching, Bourne checked everyone inside the bank for suspicious behavior. He produced Popov's passport, then wrote down the number of the safe-deposit box on a small pad kept for that specific purpose.
The woman glanced at him, took his passport and the slip of paper, which she ripped off the pad. Locking her drawer, she told Bourne to wait. He watched her walk over to the rank of supervisors and managers, who sat in rows behind identical wooden desks, and present Bourne's documentation. The manager checked the number against his master list of safe-deposit boxes, then he checked