The Bourne ultimatum (10 page)

“Like in crony appointment.”

“Oh? ... Thanks, Alex. How about you? Any progress?”

Conklin paused, and when he answered his quiet voice conveyed his fear; it was controlled but the fear was there. “Let’s put it this way. ... I’m not equipped for what I’ve learned. I’ve been away too long. I’m afraid, Jason—sorry ... David.”

“You’re right the first time. Have you discussed—”

“
Nothing
by name,” broke in the retired intelligence officer quickly, firmly.

“I see.”

“You couldn’t,” contradicted Alex. “
I
couldn’t. I’ll be in touch.” With these cryptic words Conklin abruptly hung up.

Slowly Bourne did the same, frowning in concern. Alex was the one now sounding melodramatic, and it was not like him to think that way or act that way. Control was his byword, understatement his persona. Whatever he had learned profoundly disturbed him ... so much so as to make it seem to Bourne that he no longer trusted the procedures he himself had set up, or even the people he was working with. Otherwise he would have been clearer, more forthcoming; instead, for reasons Jason could not fathom, Alexander Conklin did not want to talk about Medusa or whatever he had learned in peeling away twenty years of deceit. ... Was it
possible
?

No time! No use, not now, considered Bourne, looking around the huge department store. Alex was not only as good as his word, he lived by it, as long as one was not an enemy. Ruefully, suppressing a short throated laugh, Jason remembered Paris thirteen years ago. He knew
that
side of Alex, too. But for the cover of gravestones in a cemetery on the outskirts of Rambouillet, his closest friend would have killed him. That was then, not now. Conklin said he’d “be in touch.” He would. Until then the Chameleon had to build several covers. From the inside to the outside, from underwear to outerwear and everything in between. No chance of a laundry or a cleaning mark coming to light, no microscopic chemical evidence of a regionally distributed detergent or fluid—
nothing
. He had given too much. If he had to kill for David’s family ... oh, my
God
! For
my
family! ... he refused to live with the consequences of that killing or those killings. Where he was going there were no rules; the innocent might well die in the cross fire. So be it. David Webb would violently object, but Jason Bourne didn’t give a goddamn. He’d been there before; he knew the statistics, Webb knew nothing.

Marie
, I’ll
stop
him! I
promise
you I’ll rip him out of your lives. I’ll take the Jackal and leave a dead man. He’ll never be able to touch you again—you’ll be
free
.

Oh,
Christ
, who
am
I? Mo, help me! ... No, Mo,
don’t
! I am what I have to be. I am cold and I’m getting colder. Soon I’ll be ice ... clear, transparent ice, ice so cold and pure it can move anywhere without being seen. Can’t you understand, Mo—you, too, Marie—I
have
to! David has to go. I can’t have him around any longer.

Forgive me, Marie, and you forgive me, Doctor, but I’m thinking the truth. A truth that has to be faced right now. I’m not a fool, nor do I fool myself. You both want me to let Jason Bourne get out of my life, release him to some infinity, but the
reverse
is what I have to do now. David has to leave, at least for a while.

Don’t bother me with such considerations! I have
work
to do.

Where the hell is the men’s department? When he was finished making his purchases, all paid for in cash with as many different clerks as possible, he would find a men’s room where he would replace every stitch of clothing on his body. After that he would walk the streets of Washington until he found a hidden sewer grate. The Chameleon, too, was back.

It was 7:35 in the evening when Bourne put down the single-edged razor blade. He had removed all the labels from the assortment of new clothes, hanging up each item in the closet when he had finished except for the shirts; these he steamed in the bathroom to remove the odor of newness. He crossed to the table, where room service had placed a bottle of Scotch whisky, club soda and a bucket of ice. As he passed the desk with the telephone he stopped; he wanted so terribly to call Marie on the island but knew he could not, not from the hotel room. That she and the children had arrived safely was all that mattered and they had; he had reached John St. Jacques from another pay phone in Garfinkel’s.

“Hey, Davey, they’re bushed! They had to hang around the big island for damn near four hours until the weather cleared. I’ll wake Sis if you want me to, but after she fed Alison she just crashed.”

“Never mind, I’ll call later. Tell her I’m fine and take care of them, Johnny.”

“Will do, fella. Now you tell
me
. Are you okay?”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Sure, you can say it and she can say it, but Marie’s not just my only sister, she’s my favorite sister, and I know when that lady’s shook up.”

“That’s why you’re going to take care of her.”

“I’m also going to have a talk with her.”

“Go easy, Johnny.”

For a few moments he had been David Webb again, mused Jason, pouring himself a drink. He did not like it; it felt wrong. An hour later, however, Jason Bourne was back. He had spoken to the clerk at the Mayflower about his reservation; the night manager had been summoned.

“Ah, yes, Mr.
Simon
,” the man had greeted him enthusiastically. “We understand you’re here to argue against those terrible tax restrictions on business travel and entertainment. Godspeed, as they say. These politicians will ruin us all! ... There were no double rooms, so we took the liberty of providing you with a suite, no additional charge, of course.”

All that had taken place over two hours ago, and since then he had removed the labels, steamed the shirts and scuffed the rubber-soled shoes on the hotel’s window ledge. Drink in hand, Bourne sat in a chair staring blankly at the wall; there was nothing to do but wait and think.

A quiet tapping at the door ended the waiting in a matter of minutes. Jason walked rapidly across the room, opened the door and admitted the driver who had met him at the airport. The CIA man carried an attaché case; he handed it to Bourne.

“Everything’s there, including a weapon and a box of shells.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want to check it out?”

“I’ll be doing that all night.”

“It’s almost eight o’clock,” said the agent. “Your control will reach you around eleven. That’ll give you time to get started.”

“My control ... ?”

“That’s who he is, isn’t he?”

“Yes, of course,” replied Jason softly. “I’d forgotten. Thanks again.”

The man left and Bourne hurried to the desk with the attaché case. He opened it, removing first the automatic and the box of ammunition, then picking up what had to be several hundred computer printouts secured in file folders. Somewhere in those myriad pages was a name that linked a man or a woman to Carlos the Jackal. For these were the informational printouts of every guest currently at the hotel, including those who had checked out within the past twenty-four hours. Each printout was supplemented by whatever additional information was found in the data banks of the CIA, Army G-2 and naval intelligence. There could be a score of reasons why it might all be useless, but it was a place to start. The hunt had begun.

Five hundred miles north, in another hotel suite, this on the third floor of Boston’s Ritz-Carlton, there was another tapping on another hotel door. Inside, an immensely tall man, whose well-tailored pin-striped suit made him appear even larger than his nearly six feet five inches of height, came rushing out of the bedroom. His bald head, fringed by perfectly groomed gray hair above his temples, was like the skull of an anointed éminence grise of some royal court where kings, princes and pretenders deferred to his wisdom, delivered no doubt with the eyes of an eagle and the soaring voice of a prophet. Although his rushing figure revealed a vulnerable anxiety, even that did not diminish his image of dominance. He was important and powerful and he knew it. All this was in contrast to the older man he admitted through the door. There was little that was distinguished about this short, gaunt, elderly visitor; instead, he conveyed the look of defeat.

“Come in.
Quickly
! Did you bring the information?”

“Oh, yes, yes, indeed,” answered the gray-faced man whose rumpled suit and ill-fitting collar had both seen better days perhaps a decade ago. “How grand you look, Randolph,” he continued in a thin voice while studying his host and glancing around at the opulent suite. “And how grand a place this is, so proper for such a distinguished professor.”

“The information, please,” insisted Dr. Randolph Gates of Harvard, expert in antitrust law and highly paid consultant to numerous industries.

“Oh, give me a moment, my old friend. It’s been a long time since I’ve been near a hotel suite, much less stayed in one. ... Oh, how things have changed for us over the years. I read about you frequently and I’ve watched you on television. You’re so—erudite, Randolph, that’s the word, but it’s not enough. It’s what I said before—‘grand,’ that’s what you are, grand and erudite. So tall and imperious.”

“You might have been in the same position, you know,” broke in the impatient Gates. “Unfortunately, you looked for shortcuts where there weren’t any.”

“Oh, there were lots of them. I just chose the wrong ones.”

“I gather things haven’t gone well for you—”

“You don’t ‘gather,’ Randy, you
know
. If your spies didn’t inform you, certainly you can tell.”

“I was simply trying to find you.”

“Yes, that’s what you said on the phone, what a number of people said to me in the street—people who had been asked a number of questions having nothing to do with my residence, such as it is.”

“I had to know if you were capable. You can’t fault me for that.”

“Good heavens, no. Not considering what you had me do, what I
think
you had me do.”

“Merely act as a confidential messenger, that’s all. You certainly can’t object to the money.”

“Object?” said the visitor, with a high-pitched and tremulous laugh. “Let me tell you something, Randy. You can be disbarred at thirty or thirty-five and still get by, but when you’re disbarred at fifty and your trial is given national press along with a jail sentence, you’d be shocked at how your options disappear—even for a learned man. You become an untouchable, and I was never much good at selling anything but my wits. I proved that, too, over the last twenty-odd years, incidentally. Alger Hiss did better with greeting cards.”

“I haven’t time to reminisce. The information, please.”

“Oh, yes, of course. ... Well, first the money was delivered to me on the corner of Commonwealth and Dartmouth, and naturally I wrote down the names and the specifics you gave me over the phone—”

“
Wrote down
?” asked Gates sharply.

“Burned as soon as I’d committed them to memory—I
did
learn a few things from my difficulties. I reached the engineer at the telephone company, who was overjoyed with your—excuse me—
my
largess, and took his information to that repulsive private detective, a sleaze if I ever saw one, Randy, and considering his methods, someone who could really use my talents.”

“
Please
,” interrupted the renowned legal scholar. “The facts, not your appraisals.”

“Appraisals often contain germane facts, Professor. Surely you understand that.”

“If I want to build a case, I’ll ask for opinions. Not now. What did the man find out?”

“Based on what you told me, a lone woman with children—how many being undetermined—and on the data provided by an underpaid telephone company mechanic, namely, a narrowed-down location based on the area code and the first three digits of a number, the unethical sleaze went to work at an outrageous hourly rate. To my astonishment, he was productive. As a matter of fact, with what’s left of my legal mind, we may form a quiet, unwritten partnership.”

“Damn you, what did he
learn
?”

“Well, as I say, his hourly rate was beyond belief, I mean it really invaded the corpus of my own well-deserved retainer, so I think we should discuss an adjustment, don’t you?”

“Who the hell do you think you
are
? I sent you three thousand dollars! Five hundred for the telephone man and fifteen hundred for that miserable keyhole slime who calls himself a private detective—”

“Only because he’s no longer on the public payroll of the police department, Randolph. Like me, he fell from grace, but he obviously does very good work. Do we negotiate or do I leave?”

In fury, the balding imperious professor of law stared at the gray-faced old disbarred and dishonored attorney in front of him. “How
dare
you?”

“Dear me, Randy, you really do believe your press, don’t you? Very well, I’ll tell why I dare, my arrogant old friend. I’ve read you, seen you, expounding on your esoteric interpretations of complex legal matters, assaulting every decent thing the courts of this country have decreed in the last thirty years, when you haven’t the vaguest idea what it is to be poor, or hungry, or have an unwanted mass in your belly you neither anticipated nor can provide a life for. You’re the darling of the royalists, my unprofound fellow, and you’d force the average citizen to live in a nation where privacy is obsolete, free thought suspended by censorship, the rich get richer, and for the poorest among us the beginnings of potential life itself may well have to be abandoned in order to survive. And you expound on these unoriginal, medieval concepts only to promote yourself as a brilliant maverick—of disaster. Do you want me to go on,
Doctor
Gates? Frankly, I think you chose the wrong loser to contact for your dirty work.”

“How ...
dare
you?” repeated the perplexed professor, sputtering as he regally strode to the window. “I don’t have to listen to this!”

“No, you certainly don’t, Randy. But when I was an associate at the law school and you were one of my kids—one of the best but not the brightest—you damn well had to listen. So I suggest you listen now.”