The Bourne Ultimatum jb-3

by Robert Ludlum

  The screen was suddenly filled with the face of a man, somewhat irregular and lacking definition.

  "It's not David!" said John St. Jacques.

  "It could be, Bro," said his sister.

  "And now to other news. The drought that has plagued large areas of Ethiopia-"

  "Turn that goddamned thing off!" shouted Marie, lurching out of the chair and heading for the telephone as her brother switched off the set. "Where's Conklin's number? I wrote it down here on your desk somewhere. ... Here it is, on the blotter. Saint Alex has a hell of a lot to explain, that son of a bitch!" She dialed angrily but accurately, sitting in St. Jacques's chair, tapping her clenched fist as the tears continued to roll down her cheeks. Tears of sorrow and fury. "It's me, you bastard! ... You've killed him! You let him go-helped him to go-and you've killed him!"

  "I can't talk to you now, Marie," said a cold, controlled Alexander Conklin. "I've got Paris on the other line."

  "Screw Paris! Where is he? Get him out!"

  "Believe me, we're trying to find him. All fucking hell has broken out here. The British want Peter Holland's ass for even hinting at a Far East connection, and the French are in an up roar over something they can't figure out but suspect, like special Deuxième cargo on a plane from Martinique, which was originally rejected. I'll call you back, I swear it!"

  The line was disconnected, and Marie slammed down the phone. "I'm flying to Paris, Johnny," she said, breathing deeply and wiping the tears from her face.

  "You're what?"

  "You heard me. Bring Mrs. Cooper over here. Jamie loves her and she's better with Alison than I could ever be-and why not? She's had seven children, all grown up who still come back to her every Sunday."

  "You're crazy! I won't let you!"

  "Somehow," said Marie, giving her brother a withering look, "I have an idea you probably said something like that to David when he told you he was going to Paris."

  "Yes, I did!"

  "And you couldn't stop him any more than you can stop me."

  "But why?"

  "Because I know every place he knows in Paris, every street, every café, every alley, from Sacré-Coeur to Montmartre. He has to use them, and I'll find him long before the Deuxième or the Sûreté." The telephone rang; Marie picked it up.

  "I told you I'd call you right back," said the voice of Alex Conklin. "Bernardine has an idea that might work."

  "Who's Bernardine?"

  "An old Deuxième colleague and a good friend who's helping David."

  "What's his idea?"

  "He got Jason-David-a rental car. He knows the license-plate number and is having it radioed to all the Paris police patrols to report it if seen, but not to stop the car or harass the driver. Simply keep it in sight and report directly to him."

  "And you think David-Jason-won't spot something like that? You've got a terrible memory, worse than my husband's."

  "It's only one possibility, there are others."

  "Such as?"

  "Well ... well, he's bound to call me. When he hears the news about Teagarten, he's got to call me."

  "Why?"

  "Like you say, to get him out!"

  "With Carlos in the offing? Fat chance, fathead. I've got a better idea. I'm flying to Paris."

  "You can't!"

  "I don't want to hear that anymore, I won't hear that anymore. Are you going to help me or do I do it by myself?"

  "I couldn't get a postage stamp from a dispensing machine in France, and Holland couldn't get the address of the Eiffel Tower."

  "Then I'm on my own, which, frankly, under the circumstances, makes me feel a lot safer."

  "What can you do, Marie?"

  "I won't give you a litany, but I can go to all those places he and I went to, used when we were running. He'll use them again, somehow, some way. He has to because in your crazy jargon they were 'secure,' and in his crazy frame of mind he'll return to them because he knows they're secure."

  "God bless, favorite lady."

  "He abandoned us, Alex. God doesn't exist."

  Prefontaine walked through the terminal at Boston's Logan Airport to the crowded platform and raised his hand to hail a cab. But after looking around, he lowered his hand and stood in line; things had changed in thirty years. Everything, including airports, had become cafeterias; one stood in line for a plate of third-rate mulligan stew, as well as for a taxi.

  "The Ritz-Carlton," said the judge to the driver.

  "You h'ain'd got no luggage?" asked the man. "Nudding but d'liddle bag?"

  "No, I do not," replied Prefontaine and, unable to resist a follow-up added, "I keep wardrobes wherever I go."

  "Tutti-fruitee," said the driver, removing an outsized, wide-toothed comb from his hair as he swung out into the traffic.

  "You have a reservation, sir?" asked the tuxedoed clerk behind the counter at the Ritz.

  "I trust one of my law clerks made it for me. The name's Scofield, Justice William Scofield of the Supreme Court. I'd hate to think that the Ritz had lost a reservation, especially these days when everyone's screaming for consumer protection."

  "Justice Scofield ... ? I'm sure it's here somewhere, sir."

  "I specifically requested Suite Three-C, I'm sure it's in your computer."

  "Three-C ... it's booked-"

  "What?"

  "No, no, I'm wrong, Mr. Justice. They haven't arrived ... I mean it's an error ... they're in another suite." The clerk pounded his bell with ferocity. "Bellboy, bellboy!"

  "No need for that, young fella, I travel light. Just give me the key and point me in the right direction."

  "Yes, sir!"

  "I trust you've got a few bottles of decent whisky up there, as usual?"

  "If they're not, they will be, Mr. Justice. Any particular brands?"

  "Good rye, good bourbon and good brandy. The white stuff is for sissies, right?"

  "Right, sir. Right away, sir!"

  Twenty minutes later, his face washed and a drink in his hand, Prefontaine picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Randolph Gates.

  "The Gates residence," said the woman on the line.

  "Oh, come on, Edie, I'd know your voice under water and it's been almost thirty years."

  "I know yours, too, but I simply can't place it."

  "Try a rough adjunct professor at the law school who kept beating the hell out of your husband, which made no impression upon him and he was probably right because I ended up in jail. The first of the local judges to be put away, and rightfully so."

  "Brendan? Dear God, it's you! I never believed all those things they said about you."

  "Believe, my sweet, they were true. But right now I have to speak to the lord of the Gates. Is he there?"

  "I suppose he is, I don't really know. He doesn't speak to me very much anymore."

  "Things are not well, my dear?"

  "I'd love to talk to you, Brendan. He's got a problem, a problem I never knew about."

  "I suspect he has, Edie, and of course we'll talk. But at the moment I have to speak with him. Right now."

  "I'll call him on the intercom."

  "Don't tell him it's me, Edith. Tell him it's a man named Blackburne from the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean."

  "What?"

  "Do as I say, dear Edie. It's for his sake as well as yours-perhaps more for you, if truth were told."

  "He's sick, Brendan."

  "Yes, he is. Let's try to make him well. Get him on the line for me."

  "I'll put you on hold."

  The silence was interminable, the two minutes more like two hours until the graveled voice of Randolph Gates exploded on the line. "Who are you?" whispered the celebrated attorney.

  "Relax, Randy, it's Brendan. Edith didn't recognize my voice, but I sure remembered hers. You're one lucky fellow."

  "What do you want? What's this about Montserrat?"

  "Well, I just came back from there-"

  "You what?"

  "I decided I needed a vacation."

>   "You didn't ... !" Gates's whisper was now essentially a cry of panic.

  "Oh, but I did, and because I did your whole life is going to change. You see, I ran into the woman and her two children that you were so interested in, remember them? It's quite a story and I want to tell it to you in all its fascinating detail. ... You set them up to be killed, Dandy Randy, and that's a no-no. A dreadful no-no."

  "I don't know what you're talking about! I've never heard of Montserrat or any woman with two children. You're a desperate sniveling drunk and I'll deny your insane allegations as the alcoholic fantasies of a convicted felon!"

  "Well done, Counselor. But denying any allegations made by me isn't the core of your dilemma. No, that's in Paris."

  "Paris ... ?"

  "A certain man in Paris, someone I didn't realize was a living person, but I learned otherwise. It's somewhat murky how it came about, but a strange thing happened in Montserrat. I was mistaken for you."

  "You were ... what?" Gates was barely audible, his thin voice tremulous.

  "Yes. Odd, isn't it? I imagine that when this man in Paris tried to reach you here in Boston, someone told him your imperial presence was out or away and that's how the mix-up began. Two brilliant legal minds, both with an elusive connection to a woman and her two children, and Paris thought I was you."

  "What happened?"

  "Calm down, Randy. At the moment he probably thinks you're dead."

  "What?"

  "He tried to have me killed-you killed. For transgression,"

  "Oh, my God!"

  "And when he finds out you're very much alive and eating well in Boston, he won't permit a second attempt to fail."

  "Jesus Christ ... !"

  "There may be a way out, Dandy Boy, which is why you must come and see me. Incidentally, I'm in the same suite at the Ritz that you were in when I came to see you. Three-C; just take the elevator. Be here in thirty minutes, and remember, I have little patience with clients who abuse schedules, for I'm a very busy man. By the way, my fee is twenty thousand dollars an hour or any part thereof, so bring money, Randy. Lots of it. In cash."

  He was ready, thought Bourne, studying himself in the mirror, satisfied with what he saw. He had spent the last three hours getting ready for his drive to Argenteuil, to a restaurant named Le Coeur du Soldat, the message center for a "blackbird," for Carlos the Jackal. The Chameleon had dressed for the environment he was about to enter; the clothes were simple, the body and the face less so. The first required a trip to the secondhand stores and pawn shops in Montmartre, where he found faded trousers and a surplus French army shirt, and an equally faded small combat ribbon that denoted a wounded veteran. The second, somewhat more complex, demanded hair coloring, a day's growth of beard, and another constricting bandage, this bound around his right knee so tight he could not forget the limp he had quickly perfected. His hair and eyebrows were now a dull red-dirty, unkempt red, which fit his new surroundings, a cheap hotel in Montparnasse whose front desk wanted as little contact as possible with its clientele.

  His neck was more an irritant now than an impediment; either he was adjusting to the stiff, restricted movement or the healing process was doing its mysterious work. And that re stricted movement was not a liability where his current appearance was concerned; in truth, it was an asset. An embittered wounded veteran, a discarded son of France, would be hard pressed to forget his dual immobility. Jason shoved Bernardine's automatic into his trousers pocket, checked his money, his car keys, and his scabbarded hunting knife, the latter purchased at a sporting goods store and strapped inside his shirt, and limped to the door of the small, filthy, depressing room. Next stop, the Capucines and a nondescript Peugeot in an underground garage. He was ready,

  Out on the street, he knew he had to walk a number of blocks before he found a taxi station; cabs were not the fashion in this section of Montparnasse. ... Neither was the commotion around a newspaper kiosk at the second corner. People were shouting, many waving their arms, clutching papers in their fists, anger and consternation in their voices. Instinctively, he quickened his pace, reached the stand, threw down his coins and grabbed a newspaper.

  The breath went out of him as he tried to suppress the shock waves that swept through him. Teagarten killed! The assassin, Jason Bourne! Jason Bourne! Madness, insanity! What had happened? Was it a resurrection of Hong Kong and Macao? Was he losing what was left of his mind? Was he in some nightmare so real he had entered its dimensions, the horror of demented sleep, the fantasy of conjured, improvised terror turned into reality? He broke away from the crowd, reeled across the pavement, and leaned against the stone wall of a building, gasping for air, his neck now in pain, trying desperately to find a reasonable train of thought. Alex! A telephone!

  "What happened?" he screamed into the mouthpiece to Vienna, Virginia.

  "Come down and stay cold," said Conklin in a low monotone. "Listen to me. I want to know exactly where you are. Bernardine will pick you up and get you out. He'll make the arrangements and put you on the Concorde to New York."

  "Wait a minute-wait a minute! ... The Jackal did this, didn't he?"

  "From what we're told, it was a contract from a crazy jihad faction out of Beirut. They're claiming it was their kill. The actual executioner is unimportant. That may be true and it may not. At first I didn't buy it, not after DeSole and Armbruster, but the numbers add up. Teagarten was forever sounding off about sending NATO forces into Lebanon and leveling every suspected Palestinian enclave. He's been threatened before; it's just that the Medusa connection is too damned coincidental for me. But to answer your question, of course it was the Jackal."

  "So he laid it on me, Carlos laid it on me!"

  "He's an ingenious fucker, I'll say that for him. You come after him and he uses a contract that freezes you in Paris."

  "Then we turn it around!"

  "What the hell are you talking about? You get out!"

  "No way. While he thinks I'm running, hiding, evading-I'm walking right into his nest."

  "You're nuts! You get out while we can still get you out!"

  "No, I stay in. Number one, he figures I have to in order to reach him, but, as you say, he's locked me in ice. He thinks that after all these years I'll panic in my fashion and make stupid moves-God knows I made enough on Tranquility-but so stupid here that his army of old men will find me by looking in the right places and knowing what to look for. Christ, he's good! Shake the bastard up so he'll make a mistake. I know him, Alex. I know the way he thinks and I'll outthink him. I'll stay on course, no prolonged safe cave for me."

  "Cave? What cave?"

  "A figure of speech, forget it. I was in place before the news of Teagarten. I'm okay."

  "You're not okay, you're a fruitcake! Get out!"

  "Sorry, Saint Alex, this is exactly where I want to be. I'm going after the Jackal."

  "Well, maybe I can move you off that place you're clinging to. I spoke to Marie a couple of hours ago. Guess what, you aging Neanderthal? She's flying to Paris. To find you."

  "She can't!"

  "That's what I said, but she wasn't in a listening mode. She said she knew all the places you and she used when you were running from us thirteen years ago. That you'd use them again."

  "I have. Several. But she mustn't!"

  "Tell her, not me."

  "What's the Tranquility number? I've been afraid to call her-to be honest, I've tried like hell to put her and the kids out of my mind."

  "That's the most reasonable statement you've made. Here it is." Conklin recited the 809 area code number, and the instant he had done so, Bourne slammed down the phone.

  Frantically, Jason went through the agonizing process of relaying destination and credit card numbers, accompanied by the beeps and stutters of an overseas call to the Caribbean, and, finally, after subduing some idiot at the front desk of Tranquility Inn, got through to his brother-in-law.

  "Get Marie for me!" he ordered.

  "David?"

  "Y
es ... David. Get Marie."

  "I can't. She's gone. She left an hour ago."

  "Where to?"

  "She wouldn't tell me. She chartered a plane out of Blackburne, but she wouldn't tell me what international island she was going to. There's only Antigua or Martinique around here, but she could have flown to Sint Maarten or Puerto Rico. She's on her way to Paris."

  "Couldn't you have stopped her?"

  "Christ, I tried, David. Goddamn it, I tried!"

  "Did you ever think about locking her up?"

  "Marie?"

  "I see what you mean. ... She can't get here until tomorrow morning at the earliest."

  "Have you heard the news?" cried St. Jacques. "General Teagarten was killed and they say it was Jason-"

  "Oh, shut up," said Bourne, replacing the phone and leaving the booth, walking down the street to collect what thoughts he could generate.

  Peter Holland, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to his feet behind his desk and roared at the crippled man seated in front of him. "Do nothing? Have you lost your fucking senses?"

  "Did you lose yours when you issued that statement about a joint British-American operation in Hong Kong?"

  "It was the goddamned truth!"

  "There are truths, and then again there are other truths, such as denying the truth when it doesn't serve the service."