The Bourne Ultimatum jb-3

by Robert Ludlum

  "Conveniently foundering the boat in reef waters," completed Jason. "Perhaps opening the throttle and setting a short high-speed course into the shoals. A tragedy at sea and a link to Carlos vanishes-that's vital to him."

  "That's also something I have trouble with," said St. Jacques. "I didn't go into it, but the section of reef north of Falmouth where he bought it is called Devil's Mouth, and it's not the kind of place that's advertised. Charters just stay away from it, and no one boasts about the number of lives and boats it's claimed."

  "So?"

  "So assuming the Jackal told the CG where to rendezvous, someplace obviously close to Devil's Mouth, how the hell did the Jackal know about it?"

  "Your two commandos didn't tell you?"

  "Tell me what? I sent them right over to Henry to give him a full report while we took care of you. There wasn't time to sit down and talk and I figured every moment counted."

  "Then Henry knows by now; he's probably in shock. He's lost two drug boats in two days, and only one is likely to be paid for, and he still doesn't know about his boss, the so honorable Crown governor, lackey of the Jackal who made fools of the Foreign Office by passing off a small-time Paris hit man as a venerable hero of France. The wires will be burning all night between Government House and Whitehall."

  "Another drug boat? What are you trying to tell me? What does Henry know now-what could my guards tell him?"

  "Your question a minute ago was how did the Jackal know about the reef off the coast of Antigua called Devil's Mouth."

  "Take my word for it, Doctor Webb, I remember the question. How could he?"

  "Because he had a third man here, that's what your Royal Commandos have told Henry by now. A blond-haired son of a bitch who heads up Montserrat's drug patrols."

  "Him? Rickman? The one-man British Ku Klux Klan? By-the-Rules-Rickman, scourge of anybody who's afraid to yell back at him? Holy Christ, Henry won't believe it!"

  "Why not? You just described a likely disciple of Carlos."

  "I suppose I did, but it seems so unlikely. He's the original sanctimonious deacon. Prayer meetings before work in the morning, calling on God to aid him in his battle against Satan, no alcohol, no women-"

  "Savonarola?"

  "I'd say that fits-from what I remember reading for history courses."

  "Then I'd say he's prime meat for the Jackal. And Henry will believe it when his lead boat doesn't come back to Plymouth and the bodies of the crew float up on shore or simply don't show up for the prayer meetings."

  "That's how Carlos got away?"

  "Yes." Bourne nodded and gestured at the couch several feet in front of him, the space between taken up by a glass-topped coffee table. "Sit down, Johnny. We have to talk."

  "What have we been doing?"

  "Not about what has happened, Bro, but about what's going to happen."

  "What's going to happen?" asked St. Jacques, lowering himself on the couch.

  "I'm leaving."

  "No!" cried the younger man, shooting to his feet as if propelled by a bolt of electricity. "You can't!"

  "I have to. He knows our names, where we live. Everything."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Paris."

  "Goddamn it, no! You can't do that to Marie! Or to the kids, for Christ's sake. I won't let you!"

  "You can't stop me."

  "For God's sake, David, listen to me! If Washington's too cheap or doesn't give a shit, believe me, Ottawa's cut from better stock. My sister worked for the government and our government doesn't kiss people off because it's inconvenient or too expensive. I know people-like Scotty, the Doc and others. A few words from them and you'll be put in a fortress in Calgary. No one could touch you!"

  "You think my government wouldn't do the same? Let me tell you something, Bro, there are people in Washington who've put their lives on the line to keep Marie and the children and me alive. Selflessly, without any reward for themselves or the government. If I wanted a safe house where no one could touch us, I'd probably get an estate in Virginia, with horses and servants and a full platoon of armed soldiers protecting us around the clock."

  "Then that's the answer. Take it!"

  "To what end, Johnny? To live in our own personal prison? The kids not allowed to go over to friends' houses, guards with them if they go to school and not tutored by themselves, no over nights, no pillow fights-no neighbors? Marie and I staring at each other, glancing over at the searchlights outside the windows, hearing the footsteps of the guards, the occasional cough or sneeze, or, heaven forbid, the crack of a rifle bolt because a rabbit disturbed a garden? That's not living, that's imprisonment. Your sister and I couldn't handle it."

  "Neither could I, not the way you describe it. But what can Paris solve?"

  "I can find him. I can take him."

  "He's got the manpower over there."

  "I've got Jason Bourne," said David Webb.

  "I don't buy that crap!"

  "Neither do I, but it seems to work. ... I'm calling in your debt to me, Johnny. Cover for me. Tell Marie I'm fine, not hurt at all, and that I've got a lead on the Jackal that only old Fontaine could have provided-which is the truth, actually. A café in Argenteuil called Le Coeur du Soldat. Tell her I'm bringing in Alex Conklin and all the help Washington can provide."

  "But you're not, are you?"

  "No. The Jackal would hear about it; he's got ears up and down the Quai d'Orsay. Solo's the only way."

  "Don't you think she'll know that?"

  "She'll suspect it, but she can't be certain. I'll have Alex call her, confirming that he's in touch with all the heavy covert firepower in Paris. But first it comes from you."

  "Why the lie?"

  "You shouldn't have to ask that, Bro. I've put her through enough."

  "All right, I'll tell her, but she won't believe me. She'll see right through me, she always has. Since I was a kid, those big brown eyes would look into mine, most of the time pissed off, but not like our brothers', not-oh, I don't know-not with that disgust in their faces because the 'kid' was a screwup. Can you understand that?"

  "It's called caring. She's always cared for you-even when you were a screwup."

  "Yeah, Mare's okay."

  "Somewhat more than that, I think. Call her in a couple of hours and bring them back here. It's the safest place they can be.

  "What about you? How are you going to get to Paris? The connections out of Antigua and Martinique are lousy, sometimes booked days in advance."

  "I can't use those airlines anyway. I've got to get in secretly under a shroud. Somehow, a man in Washington will have to figure it out. Somehow. He's got to."

  Alexander Conklin limped out of the small kitchen in the CIA's Vienna apartment, his face and hair soaking wet. In the old days, before the old days fell into a distillery vat, he would calmly leave the office-wherever it was-when things got too heavy too fast and indulge himself in an unwavering ritual. He would seek out the best steak house-again, wherever he was-have two dry martinis and a thick rare slab of meat with the greasiest potatoes on the menu. The combination of the solitude, the limited intake of alcohol, the blood-rare hunk of beef and, in particular, the grease-laden potatoes, had such a calming effect on him that all the rushing, conflicting complexities of the hectic day sorted themselves out and reason prevailed. He would return to his office-whether a smart flat in London's Belgravia Square or the back rooms of a whorehouse in Katmandu-with multiple solutions. It was how he got the sobriquet of Saint Alex of Conklin. He had once mentioned this gastronomical phenomenon to Mo Panov, who had a succinct reply: "If your crazy head doesn't kill you, your stomach will."

  These days, however, with postalcoholic vacuum and various other impediments, such as high cholesterol and dumb little triglycerides, whatever the hell they were, he had to come up with a different solution. It came about by accident. One morning during the Iran-contra hearings, which he found to be the finest hours of comedy on television, his set blew out. He was furious, so
he turned on his portable radio, an instrument he had not used in months or perhaps years, as the television set had a built-in radio component-also inoperable at the time-but the portable radio's batteries had long since melted into white slime. His artificial foot in pain, he walked to his kitchen telephone, knowing that a call to his television repairman, for whom he had done several favors, would bring the man running to his emergency. Unfortunately, the call only brought forth a hostile diatribe from the repairman's wife, who screamed that her husband, the "customerfucker," had run off with a "horny rich black bitch from Embassy Row!" (Zaire, as it later turned out in the Puerta Vallarta papers.) Conklin, in progressive apoplexy, had rushed to the kitchen sink, where his stress and blood pressure pills stood on the windowsill above the sink, and turned on the cold water. The faucet exploded, surging out of its recess into the ceiling as a powerful gush of water inundated his entire head. Caramba! The shock calmed him down, and he remembered that the Cable Network was scheduled to rebroadcast the hearings in full that evening. A happy man, he called the plumber and went out and bought a new television set.

  So, since that morning, whenever his own furies or the state of the world disturbed him-the world he knew-he lowered his head in a kitchen sink and let the cold water pour over his head. He had done so this morning. This goddamned, fucked-up morning!

  DeSole! Killed in an accident on a deserted country road in Maryland at 4:30 that morning. What the hell was Steven DeSole, a man whose driver's license clearly stated that he was afflicted with night blindness, doing on a backcountry road outside Annapolis at 4:30 in the morning? And then Charlie Casset, a very angry Casset, calling him at six o'clock, yelling his usually cool head off, telling Alex he was going to put the commander of NATO on the goddamned spit and demand an explanation for the buried fax connection between the general and the dead chief of clandestine reports, who was not a victim of an accident but of murder! Furthermore, one retired field officer named Conklin had better damned well come clean with everything he knew about DeSole and Brussels and related matters, or all bets were off where said retired field agent and his elusive friend Jason Bourne were concerned. Noon at the latest! And then, Ivan Jax! The brilliant black doctor from Jamaica phoned, telling him he wanted to put Norman Swayne's body back where he had found it because he did not want to be loused up by another Agency fiasco. But it was not Agency, cried Conklin to himself, unable to explain to Ivan Jax the real reason he had asked for his help. Medusa. And Jax could not simply drive the corpse back to Manassas because the police, on federal orders-the orders of one retired field agent using appropriated codes he was not entitled to use-had sealed off General Norman Swayne's estate without explanation.

  "What do I do with the body?" Jax had yelled.

  "Keep it cold for a while, Cactus would want it that way."

  "Cactus? I've been with him at the hospital all night. He's going to be okay, but he doesn't know what the hell is going on any more than I do!"

  "We in the clandestine services can't always explain things," Alex said, wincing as he spoke the ridiculous words. "I'll call you back."

  So he had gone into the kitchen and put his head under a spray of cold water. What else could go wrong? And naturally the telephone rang.

  "Dunkin' Donuts," said Conklin, the phone to his ear.

  "Get me out of here," said Jason Bourne, not a trace of David Webb in his voice. "To Paris!"

  "What happened?"

  "He got away, that's what happened, and I have to get to Paris under a cover, no immigration, no customs. He's got them all wired and I can't give him the chance to track me. ... Alex, are you listening to me?"

  "DeSole was killed last night, killed in an accident that was no accident at four o'clock in the morning. Medusa's closing in."

  "I don't give a damn about Medusa! For me it's history; we made a wrong turn. I want the Jackal and I've got a place to start. I can find him, take him!"

  "Leaving me with Medusa ..."

  "You said you wanted to go higher-you said you'd only give me forty-eight hours until you did. Shove the clock ahead. The forty-eight hours are over, so go higher, just get me out of here and over to Paris."

  "They'll want to talk to you."

  "Who?"

  "Peter Holland, Casset, whoever else they bring in ... the attorney general, Christ, the President himself."

  "About what?"

  "You spoke at length with Armbruster, with Swayne's wife and that sergeant, Flannagan. I didn't. I just used a few code words that triggered responses from Armbruster and Ambassador Atkinson in London, nothing substantive. You've got the fuller picture firsthand. I'm too deniable. They'll have to talk to you."

  "And put the Jackal on a back burner?"

  "Just for a day, two at the most."

  "Goddamn it, no. Because it doesn't work that way and you know it! Once I'm back there I'm their only material witness, shunted from one closed interrogation to another; and if I refuse to cooperate, I'm in custody. No way, Alex. I've got only one priority and he's in Paris!"

  "Listen to me," said Conklin. "There are some things I can control, others I can't. We needed Charlie Casset and he helped us, but he's not someone you can con, nor would I want to. He knows DeSole's death was no accident-a man with night blindness doesn't take a five-hour drive at four o'clock in the morning-and he also knows that we know a lot more about DeSole and Brussels than we're telling him. If we want the Agency's help, and we need it for things like getting you on a military or a diplomatic flight into France, and God knows what else when you're there, I can't ignore Casset. He'll step on us and by his lights, he should."

  Bourne was silent; only his breathing was heard. "All right," he said. "I see where we're at. You tell Casset that if he gives us whatever we ask for now, we'll give him-no, I'll give him; keep yourself cleaner than me-enough information for the Department of Justice to go after some of the biggest fish in the government, assuming Justice isn't part of Snake Lady. ... You might add that'll include the location of a cemetery that might prove enlightening."

  It was Conklin's turn to be silent for a moment. "He may want more than that, considering your current pursuits."

  "Oh ... ? Oh, I see. In case I lose. Okay, add that when I get to Paris I'll hire a stenographer and dictate everything I know, everything I've learned, and send it to you. I'll trust Saint Alex to carry it from there. Maybe a page or two at a time to keep them cooperative."

  "I'll handle that part. ... Now Paris, or close by. From what I recall, Montserrat's near Dominica and Martinique, isn't it?"

  "Less than an hour to each, and Johnny knows every pilot on the big island."

  "Martinique's French, we'll go with that. I know people in the Deuxième Bureau. Get down there and call me from the airport terminal. I'll have made the arrangements by then."

  "Will do. ... There's a last item, Alex. Marie. She and the children will be back here this afternoon. Call her and tell her I'm covered with all the firepower in Paris."

  "You lying son of a bitch-"

  "Do it!"

  "Of course I will. On that score and not lying, if I live through the day, I'm having dinner with Mo Panov at his place tonight. He's a terrible cook, but he thinks he's the Jewish Julia Child. I'd like to bring him up to date; he'll go crazy if I don't."

  "Sure. Without him we'd both be in padded cells chewing rawhide."

  "Talk to you later. Good luck."

  The next day at 10:25 in the morning, Washington time, Dr. Morris Panov, accompanied by his guard, walked out of Walter Reed Hospital after a psychiatric session with a retired army lieutenant suffering from the aftereffects of a training exercise in Georgia that took the lives of twenty-odd recruits under his command eight weeks before. There was not much Mo could do; the man was guilty of competitive overachievement, military style, and had to live with his guilt. The fact that he was a financially privileged black and a graduate of West Point did not help. Most of the twenty dead recruits were also black and they ha
d been underprivileged.

  Panov, muddling over the available options with his patient, looked at his guard, suddenly startled. "You're a new man, aren't you? I mean, I thought I knew all of you."

  "Yes, sir. We're often reassigned on short notice, keeps all of us on our toes."

  "Habit-oriented anticipation-it can lull anybody." The psychiatrist continued across the pavement to where his armor-plated car was usually waiting for him. It was a different vehicle. "This isn't my car," he said, bewildered.

  "Get in," ordered his guard, politely opening the door.

  "What?" A pair of hands from inside the car grabbed him and a uniformed man pulled him into the backseat as the guard followed, sandwiching Panov between them. The two men held the psychiatrist as the one who had been inside yanked Mo's seersucker jacket off his shoulder and shoved up the short sleeve of his summer shirt. He plunged a hypodermic needle into Panov's arm.

  "Good night, Doctor," said the soldier with the insignia of the Medical Corps on the lapels of his uniform. "Call New York," he added.

  19

  The Air France 747 from Martinique circled Orly Airport in the early evening haze over Paris; it was five hours and twenty-two minutes behind schedule because of the severe weather patterns in the Caribbean. As the pilot entered his final approach the flight officer acknowledged their clearance to the tower, then switched to his prescribed sterile frequency and sent a last message in French to an off limits communications room.

  "Deuxième, special cargo. Please instruct your interested party to go to his designated holding area. Thank you. Out."

  "Instructions received and relayed" was the terse reply. "Out."

  The special cargo in question sat in the left rear bulkhead seat in the first-class section of the aircraft; the seat beside him was unoccupied, on orders of the Deuxième Bureau in cooperation with Washington. Impatient, annoyed and unable to sleep because of the constricting bandage around his neck, Bourne, close to exhaustion, reflected on the events of the past nineteen hours. To put it mildly, they had not gone as smoothly as Conklin had anticipated. The Deuxième had balked for over six hours as phone calls went back and forth feverishly between Washington, Paris And, finally, Vienna, Virginia. The stumbling block, and it was more of a hard rock, was the CIA's inability to spell out the covert operation in terms of one Jason Bourne, for only Alexander Conklin could release the name and he refused to do so, knowing that the Jackal's penetrations in Paris extended to just about everywhere but the kitchens of the Tour d'Argent. Finally, in desperation and realizing it was lunchtime in Paris, Alex placed ordinary, unsafe overseas telephone calls to several cafés on the Rive Gauche, finding an old Deuxième acquaintance at one on the rue de Vaugirard.