The Bourne Ultimatum

by Robert Ludlum

  “Oh, my Goad!” cried Gates, visibly shaken. “Something happened … something’s gone wrong, someone lied!” With those enigmatic words the attorney whipped around and raced across the room, fumbling in his trousers pocket. He reached a section of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves where the center of the chest-high shelf had been converted into a safelike cupboard, a carved wooden door superimposed on the brown steel. In panic, as an afterthought stunned him further, he spun around and screamed at his wife. “Get out of here! Get out, get out, get out!”

  Edith Gates walked slowly to the study door, where she turned to her husband and spoke quietly. “It all goes back to Paris, doesn’t it, Randy? Seven years ago in Paris. That’s where something happened, isn’t it? You came back a frightened man, a man with a pain you won’t share.”

  “Get out of here!” shrieked the vaunted professor of law, his eyes wild.

  Edith went out the door, closing it behind her but not releasing the knob, her hand twisted so the latch would not close. Moments later she opened it barely a few inches and watched her husband.

  The shock was beyond anything she could imagine. The man she had lived with for thirty-three years, the legal giant who neither smoked nor drank a drop of alcohol, was plunging a hypodermic needle into his forearm.

  10

  Darkness had descended on Manassas, the countryside alive with nocturnal undercurrents, as Bourne crept through the woods bordering the “farm” of General Norman Swayne. Startled birds fluttered out of their black recesses; crows awoke in the trees and cawed their alarms, then, as if calmed by a foraging co-conspirator, kept silent.

  He reached it, wondering, if indeed it would be there. A fence—high, with thick crisscrossing links embedded in green plastic, a coiled-barbed-wire addition above slanting outward. Entry prohibited. Beijing. The Jing Shan Sanctuary. There had been things to conceal within that Oriental wildlife preserve, so it was protected by an all but impassable government barrier. But why would a desk-bound general on military pay erect such a barricade around a “farm” in Manassas, Virginia, an obstruction costing thousands of dollars? It was not designed to fence in livestock; it was, instead, built to keep out human life.

  As with the sanctuary in China, there would be no electric alarms threaded through the links, for the animals and the birds of the forest would set them off repeatedly. Nor would there be the unseen beams of trip lights for the same reason; instead, they would be on the flat ground nearer the house, and waist-high, if they existed. Bourne pulled the small wire cutters out of his rear pocket and started with the links at earth level.

  With each scissoring cut, he again understood the obvious, the inevitable, confirmed by his heavy breathing and the sweat that had formed on his hairline. No matter how hard he tried—not fanatically but at least assiduously—to keep himself in reasonably good shape, he was now fifty and his body knew it. Again, it was something to think about, not dwell upon, and with every inch of progress not think about at all. There were Marie and the children, his family; there was nothing he could not do as long as he willed it. David Webb was gone from his psyche, only the predator Jason Bourne remained.

  He was through! The parallel vertical links were cut, the ground wires as well. He gripped the fence and pulled the opening toward him, making each half foot of space an ordeal. He crawled inside this strangely fortified acreage and stood up, listening, his eyes darting in every direction, scanning the darkness—which was not complete darkness. He saw—filtered through the thick branches of the tall overlapping pines bordering the tamed grounds—flickerings of light coming from the large house. Slowly, he made his way toward what he knew was the circular drive. He reached the outer border of the asphalt and lay prone beneath a spreading pine, gathering his thoughts and his breath as he studied the scene in front of him. Suddenly there was a flash of light on his far right, deep inside the grounds at the end of a straight graveled road that branched off from the circular drive.

  A door had been opened; it belonged to what appeared to be a small house or a large cabin and it remained open. Two men and a woman came out and were talking … no, they were not just talking, they were arguing heatedly. Bourne ripped the short powerful binoculars out of their Velcro recess and put them up to his eyes. Quickly he focused on the trio, whose voices grew in volume, the words indistinguishable but the anger apparent. As the blurred image sharpened, he studied the three people, knowing instantly that the medium-sized, medium-built, ramrod-straight protesting man on the left was the Pentagon’s General Swayne, and the large-breasted woman with streaked dark hair his wife, but what struck him—and fascinated him—was the hulking overweight figure nearest the open door. He knew him! Jason could not remember from where or when, which was certainly not unusual, but his visceral reaction to the sight of the man was not usual. It was one of instant loathing and he did not know why, since no connection with anything in the past came to him. Only feelings of disgust and revulsion. Where were the images, the brief flashes of time or circumstance that so often illuminated his inner screen? They did not come; he only knew that the man he focused on in the binoculars was his enemy.

  Then that huge man did an extraordinary thing. He reached for Swayne’s wife, throwing his large left arm protectively around her shoulders, his right hand accusingly jabbing the space between him and the general. Whatever he said—or yelled—caused Swayne to react with what seemed to be stoic resolve mixed with feigned indifference. He turned around, and in military fashion strode back across the lawn toward a rear entrance to the house. Bourne lost him in the darkness and swung back to the couple in the light of the door. The large obese man released the general’s wife and spoke to her. She nodded, brushed her lips against his, and rah after her husband. The obvious consort walked back into the small house and slammed the door shut, removing the light.

  Jason reattached the binoculars to his trousers and tried to understand what he had observed. It had been like watching a silent movie minus the subtitles, the gestures far more real and without exaggerated theatricality. That there was in the confines of this fenced acreage a ménage à trois was obvious, but this could hardly explain the fence. There was another reason, a reason he had to learn.

  Further, instinct told him that whatever it was, was linked to the huge overweight man who had walked angrily back into the small house. He had to reach that house; he had to reach that man who had been a part of his forgotten past. He slowly got to his feet, and ducking from one pine to the next, he made his way to the end of the circular drive, and then continued down the tree-lined border of the narrow graveled road.

  He stopped, lurching to the ground at a sudden sound that was no part of the murmuring woods. Somewhere wheels were spinning, crushing stone and displacing it; he rolled over and over into the dark recesses of the low-hanging, wide-spreading branches of a pine tree, swinging his body around to locate the disturbance.

  Within seconds he saw something racing out of the shadows of the circular drive, rushing over the gravel of the extended road. It was a small odd-shaped vehicle, half three-wheeled motorbike, half miniature golf cart, the tires large and deeply treaded, capable of both high speed and balance. It was also, in its way, ominous, for, in addition to a high flexible antenna, thick curved Plexiglas shields shot up from all sides, bulletproof windows that protected the driver from gunfire while alerting by radio anyone inside the residences of an assault. General Norman Swayne’s “farm” took on an even stranger ambience.… Then, abruptly, it was macabre.

  A second three-wheeled cart swung out from the shadows behind the cabin—and it was a cabin with split logs on the exterior—and came to a stop only feet from the first vehicle on the graveled road. Both drivers’ heads swung militarily toward the small house as if they were robots in a public gallery, and then the words shot out from an unseen speaker.

  “Secure the gates,” said the amplified voice, a voice in command. “Release the dogs and resume your rounds.”

  As if chore
ographed, the vehicles swung in unison, each in the opposite direction, the drivers gunning their engines as one, the strange-looking carts racing forward into the shadows. At the mention of dogs Bourne had automatically reached into his back pocket and removed the CO2 gun; he then crawled laterally, rapidly, through the underbrush to within feet of the extended fence. If the dogs were in a pack, he would have no choice but to scramble up the links and spring over the coiled barbed wire to the other side. His dual-chambered dart pistol could eliminate two animals, not more; there would be no time to reload. He crouched, waiting, ready to leap up on the fence, the sightlines beneath the lower branches relatively clear.

  Suddenly a black Doberman raced by on the graveled road, no hesitation in his pace, no scent picked up, the animal’s only objective apparently to reach a given place. Then another dog appeared, this a long-haired shepherd. It slowed down, awkwardly yet instinctively, as if programmed to halt at a specific area; it stopped, an obscure moving silhouette up the road. Standing motionless, Bourne understood. These were trained male attack dogs, each with its own territory, which was constantly urinated upon, forever its own turf. It was a behavioral discipline favored by Oriental peasants and small landowners who knew too well the price of feeding the animals who guarded their minuscule fiefdoms of survival. Train a few, as few as possible, to protect their separated areas from thieves, and if alarms were raised the others would converge. Oriental. Vietnam.… Medusa. It was coming back to him! Vague, obscure outlines—images. A young, powerful man in uniform, driving a Jeep, stepping out, and—through the mists of Jason’s inner screen—yelling at what was left of an assault team that had returned from interdicting an ordnance route paralleling the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That same man, older, larger, had been in his binoculars only moments ago! And years ago that same man had promised supplies. Ammunition, mortars, grenades, radios. He had brought nothing! Only complaints from Command Saigon that “you fucking illegals fed us crap!” But they hadn’t. Saigon had acted too late, reacted too late, and twenty-six men had been killed or captured for nothing.

  As if it were an hour ago, a minute ago, Bourne remembered. He had yanked his .45 out of his holster and, without warning, jabbed the barrel into the approaching noncom’s forehead.

  “One more word and you’re dead, Sergeant.” The man had been a sergeant! “You bring us our requisitions by O-five-hundred tomorrow morning or I’ll get to Saigon and personally blow you into the wall of whatever whorehouse you’re frequenting. Do I make myself clear or do you care to save me a trip to publicity city? Frankly, in light of our losses, I’d rather waste you now.”

  “You’ll get what you need.”

  “Très bien!” had yelled the oldest French member of Medusa, who years later would save his life in a wildlife sanctuary in Beijing. “Tu es formidable, mon fils!” How right he was. And how dead he was. D’Anjou, a man legends were written about.

  Jason’s thoughts were abruptly shattered. The long-haired attack dog was suddenly circling in the road, its snarls growing louder, its nostrils picking up the human scent. Within seconds, as the animal found its directional bearings, a frenzy developed. The dog lunged through the foliage, its teeth bared, the snarls now the throated growls of a kill. Bourne sprang back into the fence, pulling the CO2 pistol out of its nylon shoulder holster with his right hand; his left arm crooked, extended, prepared for a vital counterassault that if not executed properly would cost him the night. The crazed animal leaped, a hurling mass of rage. Jason fired, first one cartridge and then the second, and as the darts were embedded, he whipped his left arm around the attack dog’s head, yanking the skull counterclockwise, slamming his right knee up into the animal’s body to ward off the lashing sharp-nailed paws. It was over in moments—moments of raging, panicked, finally disintegrating fury—without the howling sounds that might have carried across the lawn of the general’s estate. The long-haired dog, its narcotized eyes wide, fell limp in Bourne’s arms. He lowered it to the ground and once again waited, afraid to move until he knew that no converging inhuman alarms had been sent to the other animals.

  There were none; there was only the constant murmuring of the forest beyond the prohibiting fence. Jason replaced the CO2 pistol in his holster and crept forward, back to the graveled road, beads of sweat rolling down his face and into his eyes. He had been away too long. Years ago such a feat as silencing an attack dog would have rolled off him—un exercise ordinaire, as the legend d’Anjou would have said—but it was no longer ordinary. What permeated his being was fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. Where was the man that was? Still, Marie and the children were out there; that man had to be summoned. Summon him!

  Bourne stripped out the binoculars and raised them to his eyes again. The moonlight was sporadic, low-flying clouds intercepting the rays, but the yellow wash was sufficient. He focused on the shrubbery that fronted the stockade fence that bordered the road outside. Pacing back and forth on a bisecting dirt path like an angry, impatient panther was the black Doberman, stopping now and then to urinate and poke its long snout into the bushes. As he had been programmed to do, the animal roamed between the opposing closed iron gates of the enormous circular drive. At each halting checkpoint it snarled, spinning around several times as if both expecting and loathing the sharp electrical shock it would receive through its collar if it transgressed without cause. Again, the method of training went back to Vietnam; soldiers disciplined the attack dogs around ammunition and matériel depots with such remote-signaling devices. Jason focused the binoculars on the far side of the expansive front lawn. He zeroed in on a third animal, this a huge Weimaraner, gentle in appearance but lethal in attack. The hyperactive dog raced back and forth, aroused perhaps by squirrels or rabbits in the brush, but not by human scent; it did not raise a throated growl, the signal of assault.

  Jason tried to analyze what he observed, for that analysis would determine his moves. He had to assume that there was a fourth or a fifth, or even a sixth animal patrolling the perimeters of Swayne’s grounds. But why this way? Why not a pack roaming at will and in unison, a far more frightening and inhibiting sight? The expense that concerned the Oriental farmer was no object.… Then the explanation struck him; it was so basic it was obvious. He shifted the binoculars back and forth between the Weimaraner and the Doberman, the picture of the longhaired German shepherd still all too clear in his mind. Beyond the fact that these were trained attack dogs, they were also something else. They were the top of their breeds, groomed to a fare-thee-well—vicious animals posing as champion show dogs by day, violent predators at night. Of course. General Norman Swayne’s “farm” was not unrecorded property, not concealed real estate, but very much out in the open and undoubtedly, jealously perhaps, visited by friends, neighbors and colleagues. During the daylight hours, guests could admire these docile champions in their well-appointed kennels without realizing what they really were. Norman Swayne, Pentagon Procurements and alumnus of Medusa, was merely a dog aficionado, attested to by the quality of his animals’ bloodlines. He might very well charge stud fees, but there was nothing in the canon of military ethics that precluded the practice.

  A sham. If one such aspect of the general’s “farm” was a sham, it had to follow that the estate itself was a sham, as false as the “inheritance” that made its purchase possible. Medusa.

  One of the two strange three-wheeled carts appeared far across the lawn, out of the shadows of the house and down the exit road of the circular drive. Bourne focused on it, not surprised to see the Weimaraner romp over and playfully race beside the vehicle, yapping and seeking approval from the driver. The driver. The drivers were the handlers! The familiar scent of their bodies was calming to the dogs, reassuring them. The observation formed the analysis and the analysis determined his next tactic. He had to move, at least more freely than he was moving now, about the general’s grounds. To do so he had to be in the company of a handler. He had to take one of the roving patrols; he raced back in the cover of the pine tr
ees to his point of penetration.

  The mechanized, bulletproof vehicle stopped on the narrow path at midpoint between the two front gates nearly obscured by the shrubbery; Jason adjusted his binoculars. The black Doberman was apparently a favored dog; the driver opened the right panel as the animal sprang up, placing his huge paws on the seat. The man chucked biscuits or pieces of meat into the wide, anticipating jaws, then reached over and massaged the dog’s throat.

  Bourne knew instantly that he had only moments to put his uncertain strategy together. He had to stop the cart and force the driver outside but without alarming the man, without giving him any reason whatsoever to use his radio and call for help. The dog? Lying in the road? No, the driver might assume it had been shot from the other side of the fence and alert the house. What could he do? He looked around in the near-total darkness feeling the panic of indecision, his anxiety growing as his eyes swept the area. Then, again, the obvious struck him.

  The large expanse of close-cropped manicured lawn, the precisely cut shrubbery, the swept circular drive—neatness was the order of the general’s turf. Jason could almost hear Swayne commanding his groundskeepers to “police the area!”

  Bourne glanced over at the cart by the Doberman; the driver was playfully pushing the dog away, about to close the shielded panel. Only seconds now! What? How?

  He saw the outlines of a tree limb on the ground; a rotted branch had fallen from the pine above him. He crossed quickly to it and crouched, yanking it out of the dirt and debris and dragged it toward the paved asphalt. To lay it across the drive might appear too obvious a trap, but partially on the road—an intrusion on the pervasive neatness—would be offensive to the eye, the task of removing it better done now than later in the event the general drove out and saw it upon his return. The men in Swayne’s compound were either soldiers or ex-soldiers still under military authority; they would try to avoid reprimands, especially over the inconsequential. The odds were on Jason’s side. He gripped the base of the limb, swung it around and pushed it roughly five feet into the drive. He heard the panel of the cart slam shut; the vehicle rolled forward, gathering speed as Bourne raced back into the darkness of the pine tree.