Bourne said casually, “Did Pyotr have friends?”

“Of course he had friends. But none of them would betray him, if that’s what you’re

asking.” Tarkanian pushed his lips out. “On the other hand…” His words trailed off.

Bourne found his eyes, held them.

“Pyotr was seeing this woman. Gala Nematova. He was head-over-heels about her.”

“I assume she was properly vetted,” Bourne said.

“Of course. But, well, Pyotr was a bit, um, headstrong when it came to women.”

“Was that widely known?”

“I seriously doubt it,” Tarkanian said.

That was a mistake, Bourne thought. The habits and proclivities of the enemy were

always for sale if you were clever and persistent enough. Tarkanian should have said, I

don’t know. Possibly. As neutral an answer as possible, and closer to the truth.

“Women can be a weak link.” Bourne thought briefly of Moira and the cloud of

uncertainty that hovered over her from the CI investigation. The idea that Martin could

have been seduced into revealing CI secrets was a bitter pill to swallow. He hoped when

he read the communication between her and Martin that Soraya had unearthed, he could

lay the question to rest.

“We’re all sick about Pyotr’s death,” Tarkanian offered. Again the glance at Specter.

“No question.” Bourne smiled rather vaguely. “Murder’s a serious matter, especially in

this case. I’m talking to everyone, that’s all.”

“Of course. I understand.”

“You’ve been extremely helpful.” Bourne smiled, shook Tarkanian’s hand. As he did

so, he said in a sharp tone of voice, “By the way, how much did Icoupov’s people pay

you to call the professor’s cell this morning?”

Instead of freezing Tarkanian seemed to relax. “What the hell kind of question is that?

I’m loyal, I always have been.”

After a moment, he tried to extricate his hand, but Bourne’s grip tightened. Tarkanian’s

eyes met Bourne’s, held them.

Behind them, the silverback made a noise, growing restive. The sound was low, like

the sudden ripple of wind disturbing a field of wheat. The message from the gorilla was

so subtle, Bourne was the only one who picked up on it. He registered movement at the

extreme edge of his peripheral vision, tracked for several seconds. He leaned back to

Specter, said in a low, urgent voice. “Leave now. Go straight through the Small Mammal

House, then turn left. A hundred yards on will be a small food kiosk. Ask for help getting

to your car. Go back to your house and stay there until you hear from me.”

As the professor walked swiftly away, Bourne grabbed Tarkanian, pushed him in the

opposite direction. They joined a Home Sweet Habitat scavenger hunt comprising a score

of rowdy kids and their parents. The two men Bourne was tracking hurried toward them.

It was this pair and their rushed anxiety that had aroused the suspicion of the silverback, alerting Bourne.

“Where are we going?” Tarkanian said. “Why did you leave the professor

unprotected?”

A good question. Bourne’s decision had been instantaneous, instinct-driven. The men

headed toward Tarkanian, not the professor. Now, as the group moved down Olmsted

Walk, Bourne dragged Tarkanian into the Reptile Discovery Center. The lights were low

here. They hurried past glass cases that held dozing alligators, slit-eyed crocodiles,

lumbering tortoises, evil-looking vipers, and pebble-skinned lizards of all sizes, shapes,

and dispositions. Up ahead, Bourne could see the snake cases. At one of them, a handler

opened a door, prepared to set out a feast of rodents for the green tree pythons, which, in their hunger, had emerged from their stupor, slithering along the case’s fake tree

branches. These snakes used infrared heat sensors to target their prey.

Behind them, the two men wove their way through the crowd of children. They were

swarthy but otherwise unremarkable in feature. They had their hands plunged into the

pockets of their wool overcoats, surely gripping some form of weapon. They weren’t

hurrying now. There was no point in alarming the visitors.

Passing the European glass lizard, Bourne hauled Tarkanian into the snake section. It

was at that moment that Tarkanian chose to make a move. Twisting away as he lunged

back toward the approaching men, he dragged Bourne for a step, until Bourne struck him

a dizzying blow to the side of the head.

A workman knelt with his toolbox in front of an empty case. He was fiddling with the

ventilation grille at the base. Bourne swiped a short length of stiff wire from the box.

“The cavalry’s not going to save you today,” Bourne said as he dragged Tarkanian

toward a door set flush in the wall between cases that led to the work area hidden from

the public. One of the pursuers was closing in when Bourne jimmied the lock with the bit

of wire. He opened the door, stepped through. He slammed it shut behind him, set the

lock.

The door began to shudder on its hinges as the men pounded on it. Bourne found

himself in a narrow utility corridor, lit by long fluorescent tubes, that ran behind the

cases. Doors and, in the cases of the venomous snakes, feeding windows appeared at

regular intervals along the right-hand wall.

Bourne heard a soft phutt! and the lock popped out of the door. The men were armed

with small-caliber handguns fitted with suppressors. He pushed the stumbling Tarkanian

ahead of him as one of the men stepped through. Where was the other one? Bourne

thought he knew, and he turned his attention to the far end of the corridor, where any

moment now he expected the second man to appear.

Tarkanian, sensing Bourne’s momentary shift of attention, spun, slamming the side of

his body into Bourne’s. Thrown off balance, Bourne skidded through the open doorway

into the tree python case. With a harsh bark of laughter, Tarkanian rushed on.

A herpetologist in the case to check on the python was already protesting Bourne’s

appearance. Bourne ignored him, reached up, unwound one of the hungry pythons from

the branch nearest him. As the snake, sensing his heat, wrapped itself around his

outstretched arm, Bourne turned and burst out into the corridor just in time to drive a fist into the gunman’s solar plexus. When the man doubled over, Bourne slid his arm out of

the python’s coils, wrapped its body around the gunman’s chest. Seeing the python, the

man screamed. It began to tighten its coils around him.

Bourne snatched the handgun with its suppressor from his hand, took off after

Tarkanian. The gun was a Glock, not a Taurus. As Bourne suspected, these two weren’t

part of the same team that had abducted the professor. Who were they then? Members of

the Black Legion, sent to extract Tarkanian? But if that was the case, how had they

known he’d been blown? No time for answers: The second man had appeared at the far

end of the corridor. He was in a crouch, motioning to Tarkanian, who squeezed himself

against the side of the corridor.

As the gunman took aim at him Bourne covered his face with his folded forearms,

dived headfirst through one of the feeding windows. Glass shattered. Bourne looked up to

see that he was face-to-face with a Gaboon viper, the species with the longest fangs and

highest venom yield of any snake. It was black and ocher. Its ugly, triangular head rose,

its tongue flicked out, sensing, trying to determine if the creature sprawled in front of it was a threat.

Bourne lay still as stone. The viper began to hiss, a steady rhythm that flattened its

head with each fierce exhalation. The small horns beside its nostrils quivered. Bourne had