The Bourne Identity jb-1

by Robert Ludlum

  “Then why are you calling me? What have you got to do with it?”

  “I don’t have time to explain. Just get those people out of there. Call New York and get them out! Those are Four-Zero orders.”

  “Make them a hundred and four and you can still blow smoke. Look, Conklin, we both know you can get what you want if I get what I need. Do it right. Make it legitimate.”

  “I can’t involve the Agency!”

  “You’re not going to involve me, either.”

  “Those people have got to get out! I’m telling you—” Conklin stopped, his eyes on the brownstone below and across the street, his thoughts suddenly paralyzed. A tall man in a black overcoat had walked up the concrete steps; he turned and stood motionless in front of the open door. It was Crawford. What was he doing? What was he doing here? He had lost his senses; he was out of his mind! He was a stationary target; he could break the trap!

  “Conklin? Conklin …?” The voice floated up out of the phone as the CIA man hung up.

  Conklin turned to a stocky man six feet away at an adjacent window. In the man’s large hand was a rifle, a telescopic sight secured to the barrel. Alex did not know the man’s name and he did not want to know it; he had paid enough not to be burdened.

  “Do you see that man down there in the black overcoat standing by the door?” he asked.

  “I see him. He’s not the one we’re looking for. He’s too old.”

  “Get over there and tell him there’s a cripple across the street who wants to see him.”

  Bourne walked out of the used clothing store on Third Avenue, pausing in front of the filthy glass window to appraise what he saw. It would do; everything was coordinated. The black wool knit hat covered his head to the middle of his forehead; the wrinkled, patched army field jacket was several sizes too large; the red-checked flannel shirt, the wide-bulging khaki trousers and the heavy work shoes with the thick rubber soles and huge rounded toes were all of a piece. He only had to find a walk to match the clothing. The walk of a strong, slow-witted man whose body had begun to show the effects of a lifetime of physical strain, whose mind accepted the daily inevitability of hard labor, reward found with a six-pack at the end of the drudgery.

  He would find that walk; he had used it before. Somewhere. But before he searched his imagination, there was a phone call to make; he saw a telephone booth up the block, a mangled directory hanging from a chain beneath the metal shelf. He started walking, his legs automatically more rigid, his feet pressing weight on the pavement, his arms heavy in their sockets, the fingers of his hands slightly spaced, curved from years of abuse. A set, dull expression on his face would come later. Not now.

  “Belkins Moving and Storage,” announced an operator somewhere in the Bronx.

  “My name is Johnson,” said Jason impatiently but kindly. “I’m afraid I have a problem, and I hope you might be able to help me.”

  “I’ll try, sir. What is it?”

  “I was on my way over to a friend’s house on Seventy-first Street—a friend who died recently, I’m sorry to say—to pick up something I’d lent him. When I got there, your van was in front of the house. It’s most embarrassing, but I think your men may remove my property. Is there someone I might speak to?”

  “That would be a dispatcher, sir.”

  “Might I have his name, please?”

  “What?”

  “His name:”

  “Sure. Murray. Murray Schumach. I’ll connect you.”

  Two clicks preceded a long hum over the line.

  “Schumach.”

  “Mr. Schumach?”

  “That’s right.”

  Bourne repeated his embarrassing tale. “Of course, I can easily obtain a letter from my attorney, but the item in question has little or no value—”

  “What is it?”

  “A fishing rod. Not an expensive one, but with an old-fashioned casting reel, the kind that doesn’t get tangled every five minutes.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. I fish out of Sheepshead Bay. They don’t make them reels like they used to. I think it’s the alloys.”

  “I think you’re right, Mr. Schumach. I know exactly in which closet he kept it.”

  “Oh, what the hell—a fishing rod. Go up and see a guy named Dugan, he’s the supervisor on the job. Tell him I said you could have it, but you’ll have to sign for it. If he gives you static, tell him to go outside and call me; the phone’s disconnected down there.”

  “A Mr. Dugan. Thank you very much, Mr. Schumach.”

  “Christ, that place is a ballbreaker today!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. Some whacko called telling us to get out of there. And the job’s firm, cash guaranteed. Can you believe it?”

  Carlos. Jason could believe it.

  “It’s difficult, Mr. Schumach.”

  “Good fishing,” said the Belkins man.

  Bourne walked west on Seventieth Street to Lexington Avenue. Three blocks south he found what he was looking for: an army navy surplus store. He went inside.

  Eight minutes later he came out carrying four brown, padded blankets and six wide canvas straps with metal buckles. In the pockets of his field jacket were two ordinary road flares. They had been there on the counter looking like something they were not, triggering images beyond memory, back to a moment of time when there had been meaning and purpose. And anger. He slung the equipment over his left shoulder and trudged up toward Seventy-first Street. The chameleon was heading into the jungle, a jungle as dense as the unremembered Tam Quan.

  It was 10:48 when he reached the corner of the tree-lined block that held the secrets of Treadstone Seventy-One. He was going back to the beginning—his beginning—and the fear that he felt was not the fear of physical harm. He was prepared for that, every sinew taut, every muscle ready; his knees and feet, hands and elbows weapons, his eyes trip-wire alarms that would send signals to those weapons. His fear was far more profound. He was about to enter the place of his birth and he was terrified at what he might find there—remember there.

  Stop it! The trap is everything. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain!

  The traffic had diminished considerably, the rush hour over, the street in the doldrums of midmorning quiescence. Pedestrians strolled now, they did not hasten; automobiles swung leisurely around the moving van, angry horns replaced by brief grimaces of irritation. Jason crossed with the light to the Treadstone side; the tall, narrow structure of brown, jagged stone and thick blue glass was fifty yards down the block. Blankets and straps in place, an already weary, slow-witted laborer walked behind a well-dressed couple toward it.

  He reached the concrete steps as two muscular men, one black, one white, were carrying a covered harp out the door. Bourne stopped and called out, his words halting, his dialect coarse.

  “Hey! Where’s Doogan?”

  “Where the hell d’you t’ink?” replied the white, angling his head around. “Sittin’ in a fuckin’ chair.”

  “He ain’t gonna lift nothin’ heavier than that clipboard, man,” added the black. “He’s an executive, ain’t that right, Joey?”

  “He’s a crumbball, is what he is. Watcha’ got there?”

  “Schumach sent me,” said Jason. “He wanted another man down here and figured you needed this stuff. Told me to bring it.”

  “Murray the menace!” laughed the black. “You new, man? I ain’t seen you before. You come from shape-up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Take that shit up to the executive,” grunted Joey, starting down the steps. “He can allocate it, how about that, Pete? Allocate—you like it?”

  “I love it, Joey. You a regular dictionary.”

  Bourne walked up the reddish brown steps past the descending movers to the door. He stepped inside and saw the winding staircase on the right, and the long narrow corridor in front of him that led to another door thirty feet away. He had climbed those steps a thousand times, walked up and down that corridor
thousands more. He had come back, and an overpowering sense of dread swept through him. He started down the dark, narrow corridor; he could see shafts of sunlight bursting through a pair of French doors in the distance. He was approaching the room where Cain was born.

  That room. He gripped the straps on his shoulder and tried to stop the trembling.

  Marie leaned forward in the back seat of the armor-plated government sedan, the binoculars in place. Something had happened; she was not sure what it was, but she could guess. A short, stocky man had passed by the steps of the brownstone a few minutes ago, slowing his pace as he approached the general, obviously saying something to him. The man had then continued down the block and seconds later Crawford had followed him.

  Conklin had been found.

  It was a small step if what the general said was true. Hired gunmen, unknown to their employer, he unknown to them. Hired to kill a man … for all the wrong reasons! Oh, God, she loathed them all! Mindless, stupid men. Playing with the lives of other men, knowing so little, thinking they knew so much.

  They had not listened! They never listened until it was too late, and then only with stern forbearance and strong reminders of what might have been—had things been as they were perceived to be, which they were not. The corruption came from blindness, the lies from obstinacy and embarrassment. Do not embarrass the powerful; the napalm said it all.

  Marie focused the binoculars. A Belkins man was approaching the steps, blankets and straps over his shoulder, walking behind an elderly couple, obviously residents of the block out for a stroll. The man in the field jacket and the black knit hat stopped; he began talking to two other movers carrying a triangular-shaped object out the door.

  What was it? There was something … something odd. She could not see the man’s face; it was hidden from view, but there was something about the neck, the angle of the head … what was it?

  The man started up the steps, a blunt man, weary of his day before it had begun … a slovenly man.

  Marie removed the binoculars; she was too anxious, too ready to see things that were not there.

  Oh, God, my love, my Jason. Where are you? Come to me. Let me find you. Do not leave me for these blind, mindless men. Do not let them take you from me.

  Where was Crawford? He had promised to keep her informed of every move, everything. She had been blunt. She did not trust him, any of them; she did not trust their intelligence, that word spelled with a lower-case i. He had promised … where was he?

  She spoke to the driver. “Will you put down the window, please. It’s stifling in here.”

  “Sorry, miss,” replied the civilian-clothed army man. “I’ll turn on the air conditioning for you, though.”

  The windows and doors were controlled by buttons only the driver could reach. She was in a glass and metal tomb in a sun-drenched, tree-lined street.

  “I don’t believe a word of it!” said Conklin, limping angrily across the room back to the window.

  He leaned against the sill, looking out, his left hand pulled up to his face, his teeth against the knuckle of his index finger. “Not a goddamned word!”

  “You don’t want to believe it, Alex,” countered Crawford. “The solution is so much easier. It’s in place, and so much simpler.”

  “You didn’t hear that tape. You didn’t hear Villiers!”

  “I’ve heard the woman; she’s all I have to hear. She said we didn’t listen … you didn’t listen.”

  “Then she’s lying!” Awkwardly Conklin spun around. “Christ, of course she’s lying! Why wouldn’t she? She’s his woman. She’ll do anything to get him off the meathook.”

  “You’re wrong and you know it. The fact that he’s here proves you’re wrong, proves I was wrong to accept what you said.”

  Conklin was breathing heavily, his right hand trembling as he gripped his cane. “Maybe … maybe we, maybe …” He did not finish; instead he looked at Crawford helplessly.

  “We ought to let the solution stand?” asked the officer quietly. “You’re tired, Alex. You haven’t slept for several days; you’re exhausted. I don’t think I heard that.”

  “No.” The CIA man shook his head, his eyes closed, his face reflecting his disgust. “No, you didn’t hear it and I didn’t say it. I just wish I knew where the hell to begin.”

  “I do,” said Crawford, going to the door and opening it. “Come in, please.” The stocky man walked in, his eyes darting to the rifle leaning against the wall. He looked at the two men, appraisal in his expression. “What is it?”

  “The exercise has been called off,” Crawford said. “I think you must have gathered that.”

  “What exercise? I was hired to protect him.” The gunman looked at Alex. “You mean you don’t need protection anymore, sir?”

  “You know exactly what we mean,” broke in Conklin. “All signals are off, all stipulations.”

  “What stipulations? I don’t know about any stipulations. The terms of my employment are very clear. I’m protecting you, sir.”

  “Good, fine,” said Crawford “Now what we have to know is who else out there is protecting him.”

  “Who else where?”

  “Outside this room, this apartment. In other rooms, on the street, in cars, perhaps. We have to know.”

  The stocky man walked over to the rifle and picked it up. “I’m afraid you gentlemen have misunderstood. I was hired on an individual basis. If others were employed, I’m not aware of them.”

  “You do know them!” shouted Conklin. “Who are they? Where are they?”

  “I haven’t any idea … sir.” The courteous gunman held the rifle in his right arm, the barrel angled down toward the floor. He raised it perhaps two inches, no more than that, the movement barely perceptible. “If my services are no longer required, I’ll be leaving.”

  “Can you reach them?” interrupted the brigadier. “We’ll pay generously.”

  “I’ve already been paid generously, sir. It would be wrong to accept money for a service I can’t perform. And pointless for this to continue.”

  “A man’s life is at stake out there!” shouted Conklin.

  “So’s mine,” said the gunman, walking to the door, the weapon raised higher. “Goodbye, gentlemen.” He let himself out.

  “Jesus!” roared Alex, swinging back to the window, his cane clattering against a radiator. “What do we do?”

  “To start with, get rid of that moving company. I don’t know what part it played in your strategy, but it’s only a complication now.”

  “I can’t. I tried. I didn’t have anything to do with it. Agency Controls picked up our sheets when we had the equipment taken out. They saw that a store was being closed up and told GSA to get us the hell out of there.”

  “With all deliberate speed,” said Crawford, nodding. “The Monk covered that equipment by signature; his statement absolves the Agency. It’s in his files.”

  “That’d be fine if we had twenty-four hours. We don’t even know if we’ve got twenty-four minutes.”

  “We’ll still need it. There’ll be a Senate inquiry. Closed, I hope… Rope off the street.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me—rope off the street! Call in the police, tell them to rope everything off!”

  “Through the Agency? This is domestic.”

  “Then I will. Through the Pentagon, from the Joint Chiefs, if I have to. We’re standing around making excuses, when it’s right in front of our eyes! Clear the street, rope it off, bring in a truck with a public address system. Put her in it, put her on a microphone! Let her say anything she likes, let her scream her head off. She was right. He’ll come to her!”

  “Do you know what you’re saying?” asked Conklin. “There’ll be questions. Newspapers, television, radio. Everything will be exposed. Publicly.”

  “I’m aware of that,” said the brigadier. “I’m also aware that she’ll do it for us if this goes down. She may do it anyway, no matter what happens, but I’d rather try to sav
e a man I didn’t like, didn’t approve of. But I respected him once, and I think I respect him more now.”

  “What about another man? If Carlos is really out there, you’re opening the gates for him. You’re handing him his escape.”

  “We didn’t create Carlos. We created Cain and we abused him. We took his mind and his memory. We owe him. Go down and get the woman. I’ll use the phone.”

  Bourne walked into the large library with the sunlight streaming through the wide, elegant french doors at the far end of the room. Beyond the panes of glass were the high walls of the garden … all around him objects too painful to look at; he knew them and did not know them. They were fragments of dreams—but solid, to be touched, to be felt, to be used—not ephemeral at all. A long hatch table where whiskey was poured, leather armchairs where men sat and talked, bookshelves that housed books and other things—concealed things—that appeared with the touch of buttons. It was a room where a myth was born, a myth that had raced through Southeast Asia and exploded in Europe.

  He saw the long, tubular bulge in the ceiling and the darkness came, followed by flashes of light and images on a screen and voices shouting in his ears.

  Who is he? Quick. You’re too late! You’re a dead man! Where is this street? What does it mean to you? Whom did you meet there? … Methods of kills. Which are yours? No! … You are not Delta, you are not you! … You are only what you are here, became here!

  “Hey! Who the hell are you?” The question was shouted by a large, red-faced man seated in an armchair by the door, a clipboard on his knees. Jason had walked right past him.

  “You Doogan?” Bourne asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Schumach sent me. Said you needed another man.”

  “What for? I got five already, and this fuckin’ place has hallways so tight you can’t hardly get through ‘em. They’re climbing asses now.”

  “I don’t know. Schumach sent me, that’s all I know. He told me to bring this stuff.” Bourne let the blankets and the straps fall to the floor.

  “Murray sends new junk? I mean, that’s new.”