You-you're just an obstructionist. This country will crack and fall if people like you are left to run it. I'm America's only salvation."
"Sit down," Hart said quietly but firmly, "before one of my 'leftist' people knocks you down."
LaValle glared at her for a moment, then slowly sank into the chair.
"Nice to be living in your own private world where you make the rules and you don't give a shit about reality."
"I'm not sorry for what I did. If you're expecting remorse, you're sorely mistaken."
"Frankly," Hart said, "I'm not expecting anything out of you until after you're waterboarded." She waited until all the blood had drained from his face, before she added, "That would be one solution-your solution-but it isn't mine." She shuffled the photos back into their envelope.
"Who's seen those?" LaValle asked.
The DCI saw him wince when she said, "Everyone who needs to see them."
"Well, then." He was unbowed, unrepentant. "It's over."
Hart looked past him to the front of the Library. "Not quite yet." She nodded. "Here come Soraya and Tyrone."
Semion Icoupov sat on the stoop of a building not far from where the shooting had taken place. His greatcoat hid the blood that had pooled inside it, so it he didn't draw a crowd, just a curious glance or two from pedestrians hurrying by. He felt dizzy and nauseated, no doubt from shock and loss of blood, which meant he wasn't thinking clearly. He looked around with bloodshot eyes. Where was the car that had brought him here? He needed to get out of here before Arkadin emerged from the building and spotted him. He'd taken a tiger from the wild and had tried to domesticate him, a historic mistake by any measure. How many times had it been attempted before with always the same result? Tigers weren't meant to be domesticated; neither was Arkadin. He was what he was, and would never be anything else: a killing machine of almost preternatural abilities. Icoupov had recognized the talent and, greedily, had tried to harness it to his own needs. Now the tiger had turned on him; he'd had a premonition that he would die in Munich, now he knew why, now he knew how.
Looking back toward Egon Kirsch's apartment building, he felt a sudden rush of fear, as if at any moment death would emerge from it, stalking him down the street. He tried to pull himself together, tried to rise to his feet, but a horrific pain shot through him, his knees buckled, and he collapsed back onto the cold stone.
More people passed, now ignoring him altogether. Cars rolled by. The sky came down, the day darkened as if covered with a shroud. A sudden gust of wind brought the onset of rain, hard as sleet. He ducked his head between his shoulders, shivered mightily.
And then he heard his name shouted and, turning his head, saw the nightmare figure of Leonid Danilovich Arkadin coming down the steps of Kirsch's building. Now more highly motivated, Icoupov once again tried to get up. He groaned as he gained his feet, but tottered there uncertainly as Arkadin began to run toward him.
At that moment, a black Mercedes sedan pulled up to the sidewalk. The driver hurried out and, taking hold of Icoupov, half carried him across the pavement. Icoupov struggled, but to no avail; he was weak with lost blood, and growing weaker by the moment. The driver opened the rear door, bundled him into the backseat. He pulled an HK 1911.45 and with it warned Arkadin away, then he hustled back around the front of the Mercedes, slid behind the wheel, and took off.
Icoupov, slumped in the near corner of the backseat, made rhythmic grunts of pain like puffs of smoke from a steam locomotive. He was aware of the soft rocking of the shocks as the car sped through the Munich streets. More slowly came the realization that he wasn't alone in the backseat. He blinked heavily, trying to clear his vision.
"Hello, Semion," a familiar voice said.
And then Icoupov's vision cleared. "You!"
"It's been a long time since we've seen each other, hasn't it?" Dominic Specter said.
The Empire State Building," Moira said as she studied the plans Bourne had managed to scoop up in Kirsch's apartment. "I can't believe I was wrong."
They were parked in a rest stop by the side of the autobahn on the way to the airport.
"What do you mean, wrong?" Bourne said.
She told him what Arthur Hauser, the engineer hired by Kaller Steelworks, had confessed about