him, moving closer until Bourne slammed his fist into the side of the gunman's head, which snapped back against the rear doorpost. Bourne heard the crack as his neck broke. The gunman's eyes rolled up and he slumped against the door.
Bourne locked his crooked arm around the driver's neck, pulled back hard. The driver began to choke. He whipped his head back and forth, trying to free himself. As he did so, the car swerved from one lane to another. The car began to swerve dangerously as he lost consciousness. Bourne climbed over the seat, pushing the driver off, down into the passenger's-side foot well, so that he could slide behind the wheel. The trouble was though Bourne could steer, the driver's body was blocking the pedals.
The Cadillac was now out of control. It hit a car in the left lane, bounced off to the right. Instead of fighting against the resulting spin, Bourne turned into it. At the same time, he shifted the car into neutral. Instantly the transmission disengaged; the engine was no longer being fed gas. Now its immediate momentum was the issue. Bourne, struggling to gain control, found his foot blocked from the brake by part of a leg. He steered right, jouncing over the divider and into an enormous parking lot that lay between the freeway and the Potomac.
The Cadillac sideswiped a parked SUV, careened farther to the right toward the water. Bourne kicked the unconscious driver's inert body with his bare left foot, at last finding the brake pedal. The car finally slowed, but not enough-they were still heading toward the Potomac. Whipping the wheel hard to the right caused the Cadillac's tires to shriek as Bourne tried to turn the car away from the low barrier that separated the lot from the water. As the front end of the Cadillac went up over the barrier, Bourne jammed the brake pedal to the floor, and the car came to a halt partway over the side. It teetered precariously back and forth. Specter, still huddled in the backseat behind Bourne, moaned a little, the right sleeve of his Harris Tweed jacket spattered with blood from his captor's broken nose.
Bourne, trying to keep the Cadillac out of the Potomac, sensed that the front wheels were still on the top of the barrier. He threw the car into reverse. The Cadillac shot backward, slamming into another parked car before Bourne had a chance to shift back into neutral.
From far away he could hear the seesaw wail of sirens.
"Professor, are you all right?"
Specter groaned, but at least his voice was more distinct. "We have to get out of here."
Bourne was freeing the pedals from the strangled man's legs. "That tattoo I saw on the gunman's arm-"
"No police," Specter managed to croak. "There's a place we can go. I'll tell you."
Bourne got out of the Caddy, then helped Specter out. Limping over to another car, Bourne smashed the window with his elbow. The police sirens were coming closer. Bourne got in, hot-wired the ignition, and the car's engine coughed to life. He unlocked the doors. The instant the professor slid into the passenger's seat Bourne took off, heading east on the freeway. As quickly as he could he moved into the left-hand lane. Then he turned abruptly to his left. The car jumped the central divider and he accelerated, heading west now, in the opposite direction the sirens were coming from.
Chapter Six
ARKADIN TOOK his evening meal at Tractir on Bolshaya Morsekay, halfway up the steep hill, a typically unlovely place with roughly varnished wooden tables and chairs. Almost one entire wall was taken up by a painting of three-masted ships in Sevastopol harbor circa 1900. The food was unremarkable, but that wasn't why Arkadin was here. Tractir was the restaurant whose name he'd found in Oleg Ivanovich Shumenko's wallet. No one here knew anyone named Devra, so after the borscht and the blini, he moved on.
Along the coast was a section called Omega, filled with caf泄s and restaurants. As the hub of the city's nightlife culture, it featured every variety of club one could want. Calla was a club a short stroll from the open-air car park. The night was clear and brisk. Pinpoints dotted the Black Sea as well as the sky, making for a dizzying vista. Sea and sky seemed to be virtually interchangeable.
Calla was several steps down from the sidewalk, a place filled with the sweet scent of marijuana and an unearthly din. A roughly square