The Bourne Ultimatum

by Robert Ludlum

  The old man again looked at his watch, for everything now was timing; that was the way of the monseigneur—that was the way of the Jackal. Again two minutes passed and the aged courier got unsteadily up from his pew, sidestepped into the aisle, genuflected as best his body would permit, and made his way, step by imperfect step, to the second confessional booth on the left. He pulled back the curtain and went inside.

  “Angelus Domini,” he whispered, kneeling and repeating the words he had spoken several hundred times over the past fifteen years.

  “Angelus Domini, child of God,” replied the unseen figure behind the black latticework. The blessing was accompanied by a low rattling cough. “Are your days comfortable?”

  “Made more so by an unknown friend … my friend.”

  “What does the doctor say about your woman?”

  “He says to me what he does not say to her, thanks be for the mercy of Christ. It appears that against the odds I will outlive her. The wasting sickness is spreading.”

  “My sympathies. How long does she have?”

  “A month, no more than two. Soon she will be confined to her bed.… Soon the contract between us will be void.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You will have no further obligations to me, and I accept that. You’ve been good to us and I’ve saved a little and my wants are few. Frankly, knowing what’s facing me, I’m feeling terribly tired—”

  “You insufferable ingrate!” whispered the voice behind the confessional screen. “After all I’ve done, all I’ve promised you!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Would you die for me?”

  “Of course, that’s our contract.”

  “Then, conversely, you will live for me!”

  “If that’s what you want, naturally I will. I simply wanted you to know that soon I would no longer be a burden to you. I am easily replaced.”

  “Do not presume, never with me!” The anger erupted in a hollow cough, a cough that seemed to confirm the rumor that had spread through the dark streets of Paris. The Jackal himself was ill, perhaps deathly ill.

  “You are our life, our respect. Why should I do that?”

  “You just did.… Nevertheless, I have an assignment for you that will ease your woman’s departure for both of you. You will have a holiday in a lovely part of the world, the two of you together. You will pick up the papers and the money at the usual place.”

  “Where are we going, if I may ask?”

  “To the Caribbean island of Montserrat. Your instructions will be delivered to you there at the Blackburne Airport. Follow them precisely.”

  “Of course.… Again, if I may ask, what is my objective?”

  “To find and befriend a mother and two children.”

  “Then what?”

  “Kill them.”

  Brendan Prefontaine, former federal judge of the first circuit court of Massachusetts, walked out of the Boston Five Bank on School Street with fifteen thousand dollars in his pocket. It was a heady experience for a man who had lived an impecunious existence for the past thirty years. Since his release from prison he rarely had more than fifty dollars on his person. This was a very special day.

  Yet it was more than very special. It was also very disturbing because he had never thought for an instant that Randolph Gates would pay him a sum anywhere near the amount he had demanded. Gates had made an enormous error because by acceding to the demand he had revealed the gravity of his endeavors. He had crossed over from ruthless, albeit nonfatal, greed into something potentially quite lethal. Prefontaine had no idea who the woman and the children were or what their relationship was to Lord Randolph of Gates, but whoever they were and whatever it was, Dandy Randy meant them no good.

  An irreproachable Zeus-like figure in the legal world did not pay a disbarred, discredited, deniable alcoholic “scum” like one Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine an outrageous sum of money because his soul was with the archangels of heaven. Rather, that soul was with the disciples of Lucifer. And since this was obviously the case, it might be profitable for the scum to pursue a little knowledge, for as the bromide declared, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing—frequently more so in the eyes of the beholder than in the one possessing scant tidbits of information, so slanted as to appear many times more. Fifteen thousand today might well become fifty thousand tomorrow if—if a scum flew to the island of Montserrat and began asking questions.

  Besides, thought the judge, the Irish in him chuckling, the French sector in minor rebellion, he had not had a vacation in years. Good Christ, it was enough keeping body and soul together; who thought of an unenforced suspension of the hustle?

  So Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine hailed a taxi, which he had not done sober for at least ten years, and directed the skeptical driver to take him to Louis’s men’s store at Faneuil Hall.

  “You got the scratch, old man?”

  “More than enough to get you a haircut and cure the acne on your pubescent face, young fellow. Drive on, Ben Hur. I’m in a hurry.”

  The clothes were off the racks, but they were expensive racks, and after he had shown a roll of hundred-dollar bills, the purple-lipped clerk was extremely cooperative. A midsized suitcase of burnished leather soon held casual apparel, and Prefontaine discarded his worn-out suit, shirt and shoes for a new outfit. Within the hour he looked not unlike a man he had known years ago: the Honorable Brendan P. Prefontaine. (He had always dropped the second P., for Pierre, for obvious reasons.)

  Another taxi took him to his rooming house in Jamaica Plains, where he picked up a few essentials, including his passport, which he always kept active for rapid exits—preferable to prison walls—and then delivered him to Logan Airport, this driver having no concern regarding his ability to pay the fare. Clothes, of course, never made the man, thought Brendan, but they certainly helped to convince dubious underlings. At Logan’s information desk he was told that three airlines out of Boston serviced the island of Montserrat. He asked which counter was the nearest and then bought a ticket for the next available flight. Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine naturally flew first class.

  The Air France steward rolled the wheelchair slowly, gently through the ramp and onto the 747 jet in Paris’s Orly Airport. The frail woman in the chair was elderly and overly made-up with an imbalance of rouge; she wore an outsized feather hat made of Australian cockatoo. She might have been a caricature except for the large eyes beneath the bangs of gray hair imperfectly dyed red—eyes alive and knowing and filled with humor. It was as if she were saying to all who observed her, Forget it, mes amis, he likes me this way and that’s all I care about. I don’t give a pile of merde about you or your opinions. The he referred to the old man walking cautiously beside her, every now and then touching her shoulder, lovingly as well as perhaps for balance, but in the touch there was a volume of poetry that was theirs alone. Closer inspection revealed a sporadic welling of tears in his eyes that he promptly wiped away so she could not see them.

  “Il est ici, mon capitaine,” announced the steward to the senior pilot, who greeted his two preboarding passengers at the aircraft’s entrance. The captain reached for the woman’s left hand and touched his lips to it, then stood erect and solemnly saluted the balding gray-haired old man with the small Légion d’honneur medal in his lapel.

  “It is an honor, monsieur,” said the captain. “This aircraft is my command, but you are my commander.” They shook hands and the pilot continued. “If there’s anything the crew and I can do to make the flight most comfortable for you, don’t hesitate to ask, monsieur.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “We are all beholden—all of us, all of France.”

  “It was nothing, really—”

  “To be singled out by Le Grand Charles himself as a true hero of the Résistance is hardly nothing. Age cannot dull such glory.” The captain snapped his fingers, addressing three stewardesses in the still-empty first-class cabin. “Quickly, mesdemoiselles! Make ev
erything perfect for a brave warrior of France and his lady.”

  So the killer with many aliases was escorted to the wide bulkhead on the left, where his woman was gently transferred from the wheelchair to the seat on the aisle; his was next to the window. Their trays were set up and a chilled bottle of Cristal was brought in their honor and for their enjoyment. The captain raised the first glass and toasted the couple; he returned to the flight deck as the old woman winked at her man, the wink wicked and filled with laughter. In moments, the passengers began boarding the plane, a number of whom glancing appreciatively at the elderly “man and wife” in the front row. For the rumors had spread in the Air France lounge. A great hero … Le Grand Charles himself … In the Alps he held off six hundred Boche—or was it a thousand?

  As the enormous jet raced down the runway and with a thump lumbered off the ground into the air, the old “hero of France”—whose only heroics he could recall from the Résistance were based on theft, survival, insults to his woman, and staying out of whatever army or labor force that might draft him—reached into his pocket for his papers. The passport had his picture duly inserted, but that was the only item he recognized. The rest—name, date and place of birth, occupation—all were unfamiliar, and the attached list of honors, well, they were formidable. Totally out of character, but in case anyone should ever refer to them, he had better restudy the “facts” so he could at least nod in self-effacing modesty. He had been assured that the individual originally possessing the name and the achievements had no living relatives and few friends, and had disappeared from his apartment in Marseilles supposedly on a world trip from which he presumably would not return.

  The Jackal’s courier looked at the name—he must remember it and respond whenever it was spoken. It should not be difficult, for it was such a common name. And so he repeated it silently to himself over and over again.

  Jean Pierre Fontaine, Jean Pierre Fontaine, Jean Pierre …

  A sound! Sharp, abrasive. It was wrong, not normal, not part of a hotel’s routine noise of hollow drumming at night. Bourne grabbed the weapon by his pillow and rolled out of bed in his shorts, steadying himself by the wall. It came again! A single, loud knock on the bedroom door of the suite. He shook his head trying to remember.… Alex? I’ll knock once. Jason lurched half in sleep to the door, his ear against the wood.

  “Yes?”

  “Open this damn thing before somebody sees me!” came Conklin’s muffled voice from the corridor. Bourne did so and the retired field officer limped quickly into the room, treating his cane as if he loathed it. “Boy, are you out of training!” he exclaimed as he sat on the foot of the bed. “I’ve been standing there tapping for at least a couple of minutes.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Delta would have; Jason Bourne would have. David Webb didn’t.”

  “Give me another day and you won’t find David Webb.”

  “Talk. I want you better than talk!”

  “Then stop talking and tell me why you’re here—at whatever time it is.”

  “When last I looked I met Casset on the road at three-twenty. I had to gimp through a bunch of woods and climb over a goddamned fence—”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. A fence. Try it with your foot in cement.… You know, I once won the fifty-yard dash when I was in high school.”

  “Cut the digression. What happened?”

  “Oh, I hear Webb again.”

  “What happened? And while you’re at it, who the hell is this Casset you keep talking about?”

  “The only man I trust in Virginia. He and Valentino.”

  “Who?”

  “They’re analysts, but they’re straight.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Jesus, there are times when I wish I could get pissed—”

  “Alex, why are you here?”

  Conklin looked up from the bed as he angrily gripped his cane. “I’ve got the books on our Philadelphians.”

  “That’s why? Who are they?”

  “No, that’s not why. I mean it’s interesting, but it’s not why I’m here.”

  “Then why?” asked Jason, crossing to a chair next to a window and sitting down, frowning, perplexed. “My erudite friend from Cambodia and beyond doesn’t climb over fences with his foot in cement at three o’clock in the morning unless he thinks he has to.”

  “I had to.”

  “Which tells me nothing. Please tell.”

  “It’s DeSole.”

  “What’s the soul?”

  “Not ‘the,’ DeSole.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “He’s the keeper of the keys at Langley. Nothing happens that he doesn’t know about and nothing gets done in the area of research that he doesn’t pass on.”

  “I’m still lost.”

  “We’re in deep shit.”

  “That doesn’t help me at all.”

  “Webb again.”

  “Would you rather I took a nerve out of your neck?”

  “All right, all right. Let me get my breath.” Conklin dropped his cane on the rug. “I didn’t even trust the freight elevator. I stopped two floors below and walked up.”

  “Because we’re in deep shit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Because of this DeSole?”

  “Correct, Mr. Bourne. Steven DeSole. The man who has his finger on every computer at Langley. The one person who can spin the disks and put your old virginal Aunt Grace in jail as a hooker if he wants her there.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “He’s the connection to Brussels, to Teagarten at NATO. Casset learned down in the cellars that he’s the only connection—they even have an access code bypassing everyone else.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Casset doesn’t know, but he’s goddamned angry.”

  “How much did you tell him?”

  “The minimum. That I was working on some possibles and Teagarten’s name came up in an odd way—most likely a diversion or used by someone trying to impress someone else—but I wanted to know who he talked to at the Agency, frankly figuring it was Peter Holland. I asked Charlie to play it out in the dark.”

  “Which I assume means confidentially.”

  “Ten times that. Casset is the sharpest knife in Langley. I didn’t have to say any more than I did; he got the message. Now he’s also got a problem he didn’t have yesterday.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “I asked him not to do anything for a couple of days and that’s what he gave me. Forty-eight hours, to be precise, and then he’s going to confront DeSole.”

  “He can’t do that,” said Bourne firmly. “Whatever these people are hiding we can use it to pull out the Jackal. Use them to pull him out as others like them used me thirteen years ago.”

  Conklin stared first down at the floor, then up at Jason Bourne. “It comes down to the almighty ego, doesn’t it?” he said. “The bigger the ego the bigger the fear—”

  “The bigger the bait, the bigger the fish,” completed Jason, interrupting. “A long time back you told me that Carlos’s ‘spine’ was as big as his head, which had to be swollen all out of proportion for him to be in the business he’s in. That was true then and it’s true now. If we can get any one of these high government profiles to send a message to him—namely, to come after me, kill me—he’ll jump at it. Do you know why?”

  “I just told you. Ego.”

  “Sure, that’s part of it, but there’s something else. It’s the respect that’s eluded Carlos for more than twenty years, starting with Moscow cutting him loose and telling him to get lost. He’s made millions, but his clients have mainly been the crud of the earth. For all the fear he’s engendered he still remains a punk psychopath. No legends have been built around him, only contempt, and at this stage it’s got to be driving him close to the edge. The fact that he’s coming after me to settle a thirteen-year-old score supports what I’m saying.… I’m vital
to him—his killing me is vital—because I was the product of our covert operations. That’s who he wants to show up, show that he’s better than all of us put together.”

  “It could also be because he still thinks you can identify him.”

  “I thought that at first, too, but after thirteen years and nothing from me—well, I had to think again.”

  “So you moved into Mo Panov’s territory and came up with a psychiatric profile.”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Compared with most, yes, but where’s all this leading us?”

  “Because I know I’m right.”

  “That’s hardly an answer.”

  “Nothing can be false or faked,” insisted Bourne, leaning forward in the armchair, his elbows on his bare knees, his hands clasped. “Carlos would find the contrivance; it’s the first thing he’ll look for. Our Medusans have to be genuine and genuinely panicked.”

  “They’re both, I told you that.”

  “To the point where they’d actually consider making contact with someone like the Jackal.”

  “That I don’t know—”

  “That we’ll never know,” broke in Jason, “until we learn what they’re hiding.”

  “But if we start the disks spinning at Langley, DeSole will find out. And, if he’s part of whatever the hell it is, he’ll alert the others.”

  “Then there’ll be no research at Langley. I’ve got enough to go on anyway, just get me addresses and private telephone numbers. You can do that, can’t you?”

  “Certainly, that’s low-level. What are you going to do?”

  Bourne smiled and spoke quietly, even gently. “How about storming their houses or sticking needles in their asses between the appetizers and the entrées?”

  “Now I hear Jason Bourne.”

  “So be it.”

  7

  Marie St. Jacques Webb greeted the Caribbean morning by stretching in bed and looking over at the crib several feet away. Alison was deep in sleep, which she had not been four or five hours ago. The little dear had been a basket case then, so much so that Marie’s brother Johnny had knocked on the door, walked cowardly inside, and asked if he could do anything, which he profoundly trusted he could not.