The Bourne ultimatum (100 page)

“Glass?” asked a bewildered Jason.

“At each end of the tunnel, five-inch-thick walls of glass, locked and sealed.”

“What are you talking about?” It was not necessary for the young Russian to explain. Suddenly, like a series of gigantic waves crashing against the walls of a huge aquarium, the tunnel was being filled with the waters of the Volkhov River. Then within the violence of the growing, swirling liquid mass, there was an object ... a thing, a form, a
body
! Bourne stared in shock, his eyes bulging, his mouth gaped, frozen in place, unable to disgorge the cry that was in him. He summoned what strength he had left, running unsteadily, twice falling to his knees, but gathering speed with each stride, and raced to the massive wall of glass that sealed the entrance beyond it. Breathlessly, his chest heaving, he placed his hands against the glass wall and leaned into it, bearing witness to the macabre scene barely inches in front of him. The grotesquely uniformed corpse of Carlos the Jackal kept crashing back and forth into the steel bars of the gate, his dark features twisted in hate, his eyes two glass orbs reviling death as it overtook him.

The cold eyes of Jason Bourne watched in satisfaction, his mouth taut, rigid, the face of a killer, a killer among killers, who had won. Briefly, however, the softer eyes of David Webb intruded, his lips parted, forming the face of a man for whom the weight of a world he loathed had been removed.

“He’s gone, Archie,” observed Benjamin at Jason’s side. “That bastard can’t come back.”

“You flooded the tunnel,” said Bourne simply. “How did you know it was him?”

“You didn’t have an automatic weapon, but he did. Frankly, I thought Krupkin’s prophecy was—shall we say—borne out? You were dead, and the man who killed you would take the quickest way out. This was it and the uniform confirmed it. Everything suddenly made sense from the ‘Spanish’ compound down.”

“How did you get that crowd away?”

“I told them barges were being sent to take them across the river—about two miles north. ... Speaking of Krupkin, I’ve got to get you out of here.
Now
. Come on, the helicopter pad’s about a half a mile away. We’ll use the jeep. Hurry up, for God’s sake!”

“Krupkin’s instructions?”

“Choked from his hospital bed, in as much anger as in shock.”

“What do you mean?”

“You might as well know. Someone up in the rarefied circle—Krupkin doesn’t know who—issued the order that you weren’t to leave here under any conditions. Put plainly, it was unthinkable, but then no one ever thought that the whole goddamned Novgorod would go up in flames, either, and that’s our cover.”

“
Ours
?”

“I’m not your executioner, somebody else is. The word never reached me and in this mess it won’t now.”

“
Wait
a minute! Where’s the chopper taking me?”

“Cross your fingers, Professor, and hope Krupkin and your American friend know what they’re doing. The helicopter takes you to Yelsk, and from there a plane to Zomosc across the Polish border, where an ungrateful satellite has apparently permitted a CIA listening post.”

“Christ, I’ll still be in Soviet bloc territory!”

“The implication was that your people are ready for you. Good luck.”

“Ben,” said Jason, studying the young man. “Why are you doing this? You’re disobeying a direct order—”

“I
received
no order!” broke in the Russian. “And even if I had, I’m no unthinking robot. You had an arrangement and you fulfilled your end. ... Also, if there’s a chance for my mother—”

“There’s more than a chance,” interrupted Bourne.

“Come on, let’s go! We’re wasting time. Yelsk and Zomosc are only the beginning for you. You face a long and dangerous journey, Archie.”

Sundown, and the out islands of Montserrat were growing darker, becoming patches of deep green surrounded by a shimmering blue sea and never-ending sprays of white foam erupting from coral reefs off the shorelines; all were bathed in the diaphanous orange of the Caribbean horizon. On Tranquility Isle, lamps were gradually turned on inside the last four villas in the row above the beach at Tranquility Inn, and figures could be seen, by and large walking slowly between the rooms and out on the balconies where the rays from the setting sun washed over the terraces. The soft breezes carried the scents of hibiscus and poinciana across the tropical foliage as a lone fishing boat weaved its way through the reefs with its late-afternoon catch for the inn’s kitchen.

Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine carried his Perrier out to the balcony of Villa Seventeen, where Johnny St. Jacques stood by the railing sipping a rum and tonic. “How long do you think it will take before you reopen?” asked the former judge of the Boston court, sitting down at the white wrought-iron table.

“The structural damage can be repaired in a matter of weeks,” replied the owner of Tranquility Inn, “but the aftertaste of what happened here will take longer, a lot longer.”

“Again, how long?”

“I’ll give it four or five months before I send out the initial brochures—it’ll be late for the season’s bookings, but Marie agrees. To do anything earlier would not only be tasteless, but the urgency would fuel all the gossip again. ... Terrorists, drug runners, corrupt island government—we don’t need that and we don’t deserve it.”

“Well, as I mentioned, I can pay my freight,” said the once honorable justice of the federal district court in Massachusetts. “Perhaps not to the extent of your highest seasonal prices, dear man, but certainly sufficient to cover the costs of a villa, plus a little for the inn’s kitty.”

“I told you, forget it. I owe you more than I can ever repay. Tranquility’s yours as long as you want to stay.” St. Jacques turned from the railing, his eyes lingering on the fishing boat below, and sat down opposite Prefontaine. “I worry about the people down there, in the boats and on the beach. I used to have three or four boats bringing in the freshest fish. Now I’ve only got one coming in for us and what’s left of the staff all of whom are on half salary.”

“Then you need my money.”

“Come on, Judge,
what
money? I don’t want to appear intrusive, but Washington gave me a pretty complete rundown on you. You’ve been living off the streets for years.”

“Ah, yes, Washington,” pronounced Prefontaine, raising his glass to the orange-and-azure sky. “As usual, it is twelve steps behind the crime—twenty steps where its
own
criminality is concerned.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Randolph Gates, that’s what I’m talking about—
who
I’m talking about.”

“That bastard from
Boston
? The one who put the Jackal on David’s trail?”

“The touchingly reformed Randolph Gates, Johnny. Reformed in all ways but monetary restitution, I might add. ... Still, nevertheless, with the mind and the conscience that I knew at Harvard years ago. Not the brightest, not the best, but with the literary and oratorical skills that camouflaged a brilliance that was never really there.”

“Now what the
hell
are you talking about?”

“I visited him the other day at his rehabilitation center in Minnesota, or Michigan, I can’t actually remember which, for I flew first class and the drinks were delivered on request. Regardless, we met and our arrangement was concluded. He’s changing
sides
, Johnny. He’s now going to fight—legally—for the people,
not
for the conglomerates who buy and sell on
paper
. He told me he’s going after the raiders and the merger brokers who make billions in the markets and cost thousands upon thousands in jobs.”

“How can he do that?”

“Because he was there. He did it all; he knows all the tricks and is willing to commit his considerable talents to the cause.”

“Why would he do it?”

“Because he’s got Edith back.”

“Who in God’s name is
Edith
?”

“His wife. ... Actually, I’m still in love with her. I was from the time we first met, but in those days a distinguished judge with a wife and a child, regardless of how repulsive both might be, did not pursue such longings. Randy the Grand never deserved her; perhaps now he’ll make up for all the lost years.”

“That’s very interesting, but what’s it got to do with your arrangement?”

“Did I mention that Lord Randolph of Gates made great sums of money during those lost but productive years?”

“Several times. So?”

“Well, in recognition of the services I rendered that undoubtedly contributed to the removal of a life-threatening situation in which he found himself, said threat emanating from Paris, he saw clearly the validity of compensating me. Especially in light of the knowledge I possess. ... You know, after a number of bloodletting courtroom battles, I think he’s going after a judgeship. Far higher than mine, I think.”

“
So
?”

“So, if I keep my own counsel, get out of Boston, and for the sake of a loose tongue stay off the sauce, his bank will forward me fifty thousand dollars a year for the rest of my life.”

“Jesus
Christ
!”

“That’s what I said to myself when he agreed. I even went to Mass for the first time in thirty-odd years.”

“Still, you won’t be able to go home again.”

“Home?” Prefontaine laughed softly. “Was it really? No matter, I may have found another. Through a gentleman named Peter Holland at the Central Intelligence Agency, I was given an introduction to your friend Sir Henry Sykes over in Montserrat, who in turn introduced me to a retired London barrister named Jonathan Lemuel, originally a native islander. We’re both getting on, but neither of us is ready for a different sort of ‘home.’ We may open a consulting firm, specialists in American and UK laws where export and import licensing is concerned. Of course, we’ll have to do some boning up, but we’ll manage. I expect I’ll be here for years.”

St. Jacques rose quickly from the table to replenish his drink, his eyes warily on the former, disbarred judge.

Morris Panov walked slowly, cautiously out of his bedroom and into the sitting room of Villa Eighteen, where Alex Conklin sat in a wheelchair. The bandages across the psychiatrist’s chest were visible under the light fabric of his white guayabera; they extended down his exposed left arm below the elbow. “It took me damn near twenty minutes to lift this useless appendage through the sleeve!” he complained angrily but without self-pity.

“You should have called me,” said Alex, spinning himself around in the chair, away from the telephone. “I can still roll this thing pretty damned fast. Of course, I had a couple of years’ experience prior to my Quasimodo’s boot.”

“Thank you, but I prefer to dress myself—as I believe you preferred to walk by yourself once the prosthesis was fitted.”

“That’s the first lesson, Doctor. I expect there’s something about it in your head books.”

“There is. It’s called dumb, or, if you like, obstinate stupidity.”

“No, it’s not,” countered the retired intelligence officer, his eyes leveled with Panov’s as the psychiatrist lowered himself slowly into a chair.

“No ... it’s not,” agreed Mo, returning Conklin’s look. “The first lesson is independence. Take as much as you can handle and keep grabbing for more.”

“There’s a good side, too,” said Alex, smiling and adjusting the bandage around his throat. “It gets easier, not harder. You learn new tricks every day; it’s surprising what our little gray cells come up with.”

“Do tell? I must explore that field one day. ... I heard you on the phone, who was it?”

“Holland. The wires have been burning on all the back channels between Moscow and Washington, every covert phone on both sides damn near paralyzed thinking there could be a leak and theirs would be held responsible.”

“Medusa?”

“You never heard that name,
I
never heard that name, and nobody we
know
has ever heard it. There’s been enough bloodletting in the international marketplace—to say nothing of a few buckets of real blood spilled—to call into question the sanity of both governments’ controlling institutions, which were obviously blind or just plain stupid.”

“How about just plain guilty?” asked Panov.

“Too few at the top to warrant the destruction of the whole—that’s the verdict of Langley and Dzerzhinsky Square. The chief pin-stripers at the State Department in the Kremlin’s Council of Ministers agree. Nothing can be served by pursuing or exposing the extent of the malfeasance—how do you like that,
malfeasance
? Murder, assassination, kidnapping, extortion and large-scale corruption using organized crime on both sides of the Atlantic are now conveniently slotted as ‘malfeasance’! They say it’s better to salvage what we can as quietly and as expeditiously as possible.”

“That’s obscene.”

“That’s reality, Doctor. You’re about to witness one of the biggest cover-ups in modern history, certainly among powerful sovereign nations. ... And the real obscenity is that they’re probably right. If Medusa were exposed to the fullest—and it would be fully exposed if it was exposed at all—the people in their righteous indignation would throw the bastards out—many of them the wrong bastards, tainted only by association. That sort of thing produces vacuums in high places, and these are not the times for vacuums of any kind. Better the Satans you know than the ones you don’t who come later.”

“So what’s going to happen?”

“Trade off,” said Conklin pensively. “The scope of Medusa’s operations is so far-ranging geographically and structurally that it’s almost impossible to unravel. Moscow’s sending Ogilvie back with a team of financial analysts, and with our own people they’ll start the process of dismantling. Eventually Holland foresees a quiet, unannounced economic minisummit, calling together various financial ministers of the NATO and Eastern bloc countries. Wherever Medusa’s assets can be self-sustaining or absorbed by their individual economies, that’ll be the case with restrictive covenants on all parties. The main point is to prevent financial panics through mass factory closings and wholesale company collapses.”

“Thus burying Medusa,” offered Panov. “It’s again history, unwritten and unacknowledged, the way it was from the beginning.”