sport a prominent strippers' stage complete with poles and a rather unusual leather swing that looked like a horse's harness.
An open audition for pole dancers was in full swing. The lineup of eye-poppingly-built young blond women snaked around the four walls of the club, which was painted in glossy black enamel. Massive sound speakers, lines of vodka bottles on mirrored shelves, and vintage mirror balls were the major accoutrements.
After the two men were finished slapping each other on the back, Maslov led them across the cavernous room, through a door, and down a wood-paneled hallway. Mixed in with the scent of the cedar was the unmistakable waft of chlorine. It smelled like a health club, and with good reason. They went through a translucent pebbled glass door into a locker room.
"The sauna's just over there," Maslov pointed. "We meet inside in five minutes."
Before Maslov would continue the conversation with Bourne, he insisted on meeting with Boris Karpov. Bourne had thought such a conference unlikely, but when he called Boris, his friend readily agreed. Maslov had given Bourne the name of Bar-Dak, nothing more. Karpov had said only, "I know it. I'll be there in ninety minutes."
Now, stripped down to the buff, white Turkish towels around their loins, the three men reconvened in the steamy confines of the sauna. The small room was lined, like the hallway, in cedar paneling. Slatted wooden benches ran around three walls. In one corner was a heap of heated stones, above which hung a cord.
When Maslov entered, he pulled the cord, showering the rocks with water, which produced clouds of steam that swirled up to the ceiling and down again, engulfing the men as they sat on the benches.
"The colonel has assured me that he will take care of my situation if I take care of his," Maslov said. "Perhaps I should say that I will take care of Cherkesov's problem."
There was a twinkle in his eye as he said this. Stripped of his outsize Hawaiian shirt, he was a small, wiry man with ropy muscles and not an ounce of fat on him. He wore no gold chains around his neck or diamond rings on his fingers. His tattoos were his jewelry; they covered his entire torso. But these were not the crude and often blurred prison tattoos found on so many of his kind. They were among the most elaborate designs Bourne had ever seen: Asian dragons breathing fire, coiling their tails, spreading their wings, grasping with claws outstretched.
"Four years ago I spent six months in Tokyo," Maslov said. "It's the only place to get tattoos. But that's just my opinion."
Boris rocked with laughter. "So that's where you were, you bastard! I scoured all of Russia for your skinny butt."
"In the Ginza," Maslov said, "I hoisted quite a few saki martinis to you and your law enforcement minions. I knew you'd never find me." He made a sweeping gesture. "But that bit of unpleasantness is behind us; the real perpetrator confessed to the murders I was suspected of committing. Now we find ourselves in our own private glasnost."
"I want to know more about Leonid Danilovich Arkadin," Bourne said.
Maslov spread his hands. "Once he was one of us. Then something happened to him, I don't know what. He broke away from the grupperovka. People don't do that and survive for long, but Arkadin is in a class by himself. No one dares to touch him. He wraps himself in his reputation for murder and ruthlessness. This is a man-let me tell you-who has no heart. Yes, Dimitri, you might say to me, but isn't that true of most of your kind? To this I answer, Yes. But Arkadin is also without a soul. This is where he parts company with the others. There is no one else like him, the colonel can back me up on this."
Boris nodded sagely. "Even Cherkesov fears him, our president as well. I personally don't know anyone in either FSB-1 or FSB-2 who'd be willing to take him on, let alone survive. He's like a great white shark, the murderer of killers."
"Aren't you being a bit melodramatic?"
Maslov sat forward, elbows in knees. "Listen, my friend, whatever the hell your real name is, this man Arkadin was born in Nizhny Tagil. Do you know it? No? Let me tell you. This fucking excuse of a city east of here in the southern Ural Mountains is hell on earth. It's filled with smokestacks belching sulfurous fumes from its ironworks. Poor is