The Bourne Ultimatum jb-3

by Robert Ludlum

  "It's good to speak our language again," said Carlos, following the man inside the tiny church and turning stiffly to close the heavy door. "I'm in your debt, Enrique," he added, glancing around at the empty rows of pews and the soft lights playing upon the altar, the gold crucifix gleaming.

  "You've been in my debt for over thirty years, Ramirez, and a lot of good it does me," laughed the soldier quietly as they proceeded across to the right aisle and down toward the sacristy.

  "Then perhaps you're out of touch with what remains of your family in Baracoa. Fidel's own brothers and sisters don't live half so well."

  "Neither does crazy Fidel, but he doesn't care. They say he bathes more frequently now and I suppose that's progress. However, you're talking about my family in Baracoa; what about me, my fine international assassin? No yachts, no racing colors, shame on you! Were it not for my warning you, you would have been executed in this very compound thirty-three years ago. Come to think of it, it was right outside this idiotic dollhouse church on the Prado that you made your escape-dressed as a priest, a figure that perpetually bewilders the Russian, like most everyone else."

  "Once I was established, did you ever lack for anything?" They entered a small paneled room where supposed prelates prepared the sacraments. "Did I ever refuse you?" Carlos added, placing the heavy duffel bag on the floor.

  "I'm joking with you, of course," objected Enrique, smiling good-naturedly and looking at the Jackal. "Where is that lusty humor of yours, my infamous old friend?"

  "I have other things on my mind."

  "I'm sure you do, and, in truth, you were never less than generous where my family in Cuba was concerned, and I thank you. My father and mother lived out their lives in peace and comfort, bewildered naturally, but so much better off than anyone they knew. ... It was all so insane. Revolutionaries thrown out by their own revolution's leaders."

  "You were threats to Castro, as was Che. It's past."

  "A great deal has passed," agreed Enrique, studying Carlos. "You've aged poorly, Ramirez. Where's that once full head of dark hair and the handsome strong face with the clear eyes?"

  "We won't talk about it."

  "Very well. I grow fat, you grow thin; that tells me something. How badly are you wounded?"

  "I can function well enough for what I intend to do-what I must do."

  "Ramirez, what else is there?" asked the costumed soldier suddenly. "He's dead! Moscow takes credit over the radio for his death, but when you reached me I knew the credit was yours, the kill yours. Jason Bourne is dead! Your enemy is gone from this world. You're not well; go back to Paris and heal yourself. I'll get you out the same way I got you in. We'll head into 'France' and I'll clear the way. You will be a courier from the commandant of 'Spain' and 'Portugal' who's sending a confidential message to Dzerzhinsky Square. It's done all the time; no one trusts anyone here, especially his own gates. You won't even have to take the risk of killing a single guard."

  "No! A lesson must be taught."

  "Then let me phrase it another way. When you called with your emergency codes, I did what you demanded, for by and large you have fulfilled your obligations to me, obligations that go back thirty-three years. But now there is another risk involved-risks, to be precise-and I'm not sure I care to take them."

  "You speak this way to me?" cried the Jackal, removing the dead guard's jacket, his clean white bandages taut, holding his right shoulder firm with no evidence of blood.

  "Stop your theatrics," said Enrique softly. "We go back long before that. I'm speaking to a young revolutionary I followed out of Cuba with a great athlete named Santos. ... How is he, by the way? He was the real threat to Fidel."

  "He's well," answered Carlos, his voice flat. "We're moving Le Coeur du Soldat."

  "Does he still tend to his gardens-his English gardens?"

  "Yes, he does."

  "He should have been a landscaper, or a florist, I think. And I should have been a fine agricultural engineer, an agronomist, as they say-that's how Santos and I met, you know. ... Melodramatic politics changed our lives, didn't they?"

  "Political commitments changed them. Everywhere the fascists changed them."

  "And now we want to be like the fascists, and they want to take what's not so terrible about us Communists and spread a little money around-which doesn't really work, but it's a nice thought."

  "What has this to do with me-your monseigneur?"

  "Horse droppings, Ramirez. As you may or may not know, my Russian wife died a number of years ago and I have three children in the Moscow University. Without my position they would not be there and I want them there. They will be scientists, doctors. ... You see, those are the risks you ask of me. I've covered myself up until this moment-and you deserve this moment-but perhaps no more. In a few months I will retire, and in recognition of my years of service in southern Europe and the Mediterranean, I will share a fine dacha on the Black Sea where my children will come and visit me. I will not unduly risk what life I have before me. So be specific, Ramirez, and I'll tell you whether you're on your own or not. ... I repeat, your getting in here cannot be traced to me, and, as I say, you deserved that much, but this is where I may be forced to stop."

  "I see," said Carlos, approaching the suitcase Enrique had placed on the sacristy table.

  "I hope you do and, further, I hope you understand. Over the years you've been good to my family in ways that I could never be, but then I've served you well in ways that I could. I led you to Rodchenko, fed you names in ministries where rumors abounded, rumors Rodchenko himself investigated for you. So, my old revolutionary comrade, I've not been idle on your behalf either. However, things are different now; we're not young firebrands in search of a cause any longer, for we've lost our appetites for causes-you long before me, of course."

  "My cause remains constant," interrupted the Jackal sharply. "It is myself and all those who serve me."

  "I've served you-"

  "You've made that clear, as well as my generosity to you and yours. And now that I'm here, you wonder if I deserve further assistance, that's it, isn't it?"

  "I must protect myself. Why are you here?"

  "I told you. To teach a lesson, to leave a message."

  "They are one and the same?"

  "Yes." Carlos opened the suitcase; it held a coarse shirt, a Portuguese fisherman's cap with the appropriate rope-belted trousers, and a seaman's shoulder-strapped canvas satchel. "Why these?" asked the Jackal.

  "They're loose-fitting and I haven't seen you in years-not since Málaga in the early seventies, I think. I couldn't very well have clothes tailored for you, and I'm glad I didn't try-you are not as I remembered you, Ramirez."

  "You're not much larger than I remember you," countered the assassin. "A little thicker around the stomach, perhaps, but we're still the same height, the same basic frame."

  "So? What does that mean?"

  "In a moment. ... Have things changed a great deal since we were together here?"

  "Constantly. Photographs arrive and construction crews follow a day later. The Prado here in 'Madrid' has new shops, new signs, even a few new sewers as they are changed in that city. Also 'Lisbon' and the piers along the 'Bay' and 'Tagus River' have been altered to conform to the changes that have taken place. We are nothing if not authentic. The candidates who complete the training are literally at home wherever they're initially sent. Sometimes I really believe it's all excessive, then I recall my first assignment at the naval base in Barcelona and realize how comfortable I was. I went right to work because the psychological orientation had already taken place; there were no major surprises."

  "You're describing appearances," broke in Carlos.

  "Of course, what else is there?"

  "More permanent structures that are not so apparent, not so much in evidence."

  "Such as?"

  "Warehouses, fuel depots, fire stations, that are not part of the duplicated scenery. Are they still where they were?"

  "By and
large, yes. Certainly the major warehouses and the fuel depots with their underground tanks. Most are still west of the 'San Roque' district, the 'Gibraltar' access."

  "What about going from one compound to another?"

  "Now that has changed." Enrique withdrew a small flat object from the pocket of his tunic. "Each border crossing has a computerized registration release that permits entry when this is inserted."

  "No questions are asked?"

  "Only at Novgorod's Capital Headquarters, if there are any questions."

  "I don't understand."

  "If one of these is lost or stolen, it's reported instantly and the internal codes are nullified."

  "I see."

  "I don't! Why these questions? Again, why are you here? What is this lesson, this message?"

  "The 'San Roque' district ... ?" said Carlos, as if remembering. "That's about three or four kilometers south of the tunnel, isn't it? A small waterfront village, no?"

  "The 'Gibraltar' access, yes."

  "And the next compound is 'France,' of course, and then 'England' and finally the largest, the 'United States.' Yes, it's all clear to me; everything's come back." The Jackal turned away, his right hand awkwardly disappearing beneath his trousers.

  "Yet nothing is clear to me," said Enrique, his low voice threatening. "And it must be. Answer me, Ramirez. Why are you here?"

  "How dare you question me like this?" continued Carlos, his back to his old associate. "How dare any of you question the monseigneur from Paris."

  "You listen to me, Priest Piss Ant. You answer me or I walk out of here and you're a dead monseigneur in a matter of minutes!"

  "Very well, Enrique," answered Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, addressing the paneled wall of the sacristy. "My message will be triumphantly clear and will shake the very foundations of the Kremlin. Not only did Carlos the Jackal kill the weak pretender Jason Bourne on Soviet soil, he left a reminder to all Russia that the Komitet made a colossal error in not utilizing my extraordinary talents."

  "Really now," said Enrique, laughing softly, as if humoring a far less than extraordinary man. "More melodramatics, Ramirez? And how will you convey this reminder, this message, this supreme statement of yours?"

  "Quite simply," replied the Jackal, turning, a gun in his hand, the silencer intact. "We have to change places."

  "What?"

  "I'm going to burn Novgorod." Carlos fired a single shot into the upper throat of Enrique. He wanted as little blood as possible on the tunic.

  Dressed in combat fatigues with the insignias of an army major on the shoulders of his field jacket, Bourne blended in with the sporadic appearances of military personnel as they crisscrossed the American compound from one sector to another on their night patrols. There were not many, perhaps thirty men, covering the entire acreage of the eight square miles, according to Benjamin. In the "metropolitan" areas they were generally on foot, in pairs; in the "rural" districts they drove military vehicles. The young trainer had requisitioned a jeep.

  From the Commissars Suite at U.S. headquarters they had been taken to a military warehouse west of the river where Benjamin's papers gained them entrance and the jeep. Inside, the astonished interior guards watched as the silent Bourne was outfitted with a field uniform complete with a carbine bayonet, a standard .45 automatic and five clips of live ammunition, this last obtained only after an authorization call was placed to Krupkin's unknowing subordinates at Capital HQ. Once again outside, Jason complained: "What about the flares I wanted and at least three or four grenades? You agreed to get me everything I needed, not half of it!"

  "They're coming," answered Benjamin, speeding out of the warehouse parking lot. "The flares are over at Motor Vehicles and grenades aren't part of normal ordnance. They're in steel vaults down at the tunnel-all the tunnels-under Emergency Weapons." The young trainer glanced at Bourne, a glimmering of humor seen on his face in the glow of the headlights washing over the roofless jeep. "In anticipation of a NATO assault, most likely."

  "That's stupid. We'd come in from the sky."

  "Not with the air base ninety seconds' flying time away."

  "Hurry up, I want those grenades. Will we have any trouble getting them?"

  "Not if Krupkin keeps up the good work." Krupkin had; with the flares in hand, the tunnel was their last supply stop. Four Russian army grenades were counted out and counter signed by Benjamin. "Where to?" he asked as the soldier in an American uniform returned to the concrete guardhouse.

  "These aren't exactly U.S. general issue," said Jason, putting the grenades carefully, one by one, into the pockets of his field jacket.

  "They're not for training, either. The compounds aren't military-oriented but basically civilian. If those are ever used, it's not for indoctrination purposes. ... Where do we go now?"

  "Check with headquarters first. See if anything's happened at any of the border checkpoints."

  "My beeper would have gone off-"

  "I don't trust beepers, I like words," interrupted Jason. "Get on the radio."

  Benjamin did so, switching to the Russian language and using the codes that only senior staff were assigned. The terse Soviet reply came over the speaker; the young trainer replaced the microphone and turned to Bourne. "No activity at all," he said. "Just some intercompound fuel deliveries."

  "What are they?"

  "Petrol distribution mainly. Some compounds have larger tanks than others, so logistics call for routine apportionments until the main supplies are shipped downriver."

  "They distribute at night?"

  "It's far better than those trucks clogging up the streets during the day. Remember, everything's scaled down here. Also, we've been driving through the back roads, but there's a maintenance army in the central locations cleaning up stores and offices and restaurants, getting ready for tomorrow's assignments. Large trucks wouldn't help."

  "Christ, it is Disneyland. ... All right, head for the 'Spanish' border, Pedro."

  "To get there we have to pass through 'England' and 'France.' I don't suppose it matters much, but I don't speak French. Or Spanish. Do you?"

  "French fluently, Spanish acceptably. Anything else?"

  "Maybe you'd better drive."

  The Jackal braked the huge fuel truck at the "West German" border; it was as far as he intended to go. The remaining northernmost areas of "Scandinavia" and "The Netherlands" were the lesser satellites; the impact of their destruction was not comparable to that of the lower compounds and the time element spared them. Everything was timing now, and "West Germany" would initiate the wholesale conflagrations. He adjusted the coarse Portuguese shirt that covered a Spanish general's tunic beneath, and as the guard came out of the gatehouse Carlos spoke in Russian, using the same words he had used at every other crossing.

  "Don't ask me to speak the stupid language you talk here. I deliver petrol, I don't spend time in classrooms! Here's my key."

  "I barely speak it myself, comrade," said the guard, laughing as he accepted the small, flat, card-like object and inserted it into the computerized machine. The heavy iron barrier arced up into the vertical position; the guard returned the key and the Jackal sped through into a miniaturized "West Berlin."

  He raced through the narrow replica of the Kurfürstendamm to the Budapesterstrasse, where he slowed down and pulled out the petcock release. The fuel flowed into the street. He then reached into the open duffel bag on the seat beside him, ripped out the small pretimed plastique explosives and, as he had done throughout the southern compounds to the border of "France," hurled them through the lowered windows on both sides of the truck into the foundations of the wooden buildings he thought most flammable. He sped into the "Munich" sector, then to the port of "Bremerhaven" on the river, and finally into "Bonn" and the scaled-down versions of the embassies in "Bad Godesberg," flooding the streets, distributing the explosives. He looked at his watch; it was time to head back. He had barely fifteen minutes before the first detonations took place in all of "West Germany," followe
d by the explosions in the combined compounds of "Italy-Greece," "Israel-Egypt" and "Spain-Portugal," each spaced eight minutes apart, timed to create maximum chaos.

  There was no way the individual fire brigades could contain the flaming streets and buildings in the disparate sectors of their compounds north of "France." Others would be ordered in from adjacent compounds only to be recalled when the fires erupted on their own grounds. It was a simple formula for cosmic confusion, the cosmos being the false universe of Novgorod. The border gates, would be flagged open, frantic traffic unimpeded, and to complete the devastation, the genius that was Ilich Ramirez Sanchez-brought into the world of terror as Carlos the Jackal by the errors of that same Novgorod-had to be in "Paris." Not his Paris, but the hated Novgorod's "Paris," and he would burn it to the ground in ways the maniacs of the Third Reich never dreamed of. Then would come "England," and finally, ultimately, the largest compound in the despised, isolated, illusionist Novgorod, where he would leave his triumphant message-the "United States of America," breeder of the apostate assassin Jason Bourne. The statement would be as pure and as clear as Alpine water washing over the blood of a destroyed false universe.

  I alone have done this. My enemies are dead and I live.

  Carlos checked his duffel bag; what remained were the most lethal instruments of death found in the arsenal of Kubinka. Four layered rows of short-packaged, heat-seeking missiles, twenty in all, each capable of blowing up the entire base of the Washington Monument; and once fused and unshielded, each would seek the sources of fire and do its work. Satisfied, the Jackal shut off the fuel release, turned around and sped back to the border gate.

  The sleepy technician at Capital Headquarters blinked his eyes and stared at the green letters on the screen in front of him. What he read did not really make sense, but the clearances went unchallenged. For the fifth time the "commandant" of the "Spanish" compound had crossed and recrossed the north borders up into "Germany" and was now heading back into "France." Twice before, when the codes were transmitted and in accord with the maximum alert that was in force, the technician had phoned the gates of "Israel" and "Italy" and was told that only a fuel truck had passed through. That was the information he had given to a code-cleared trainer named Benjamin, but now he wondered. Why would such a high-ranking official be driving a fuel truck? ... On the other hand, why not? Novgorod was rife with corruption, everyone suspected that, so perhaps the "commandant" was either seeking out the corrupters or collecting his fees at night. Regardless, since there was no report of a lost or stolen card, and the computers raised no objections, it was better to leave well enough alone. One never knew who his next superior might be.