The Bourne ultimatum (26 page)

“She was only brilliant, David—Jason. You were owed every dollar.”

“Don’t press the point, Alex.
She
claimed at least twice the amount.”

“She was right. It’s why everyone shut up. ... What are you going to do now?”

“Wait for Cactus’s call, then make one of my own.”

“
Oh
?”

“To my wife.”

Marie sat on the balcony of her villa at Tranquility Inn staring out at the moonlit Caribbean, trying with every controlling instinct in her not to go mad with fear. Strangely, perhaps stupidly or even dangerously, it was not the fear of physical harm that consumed her. She had lived in both Europe and the Far East with the killing machine that was Jason Bourne; she knew what that stranger was capable of and it was brutally efficient. No, it wasn’t Bourne, it was David—what Jason Bourne was doing to David Webb. She had to
stop
it! ... They could go away, far away, to some remote safe haven and start a new life with new names, create a world for themselves that Carlos could never penetrate. They had all the money they would ever need, they could
do
it! It was done all the time—hundreds, thousands of men and women and children whose lives were threatened were shielded by their governments; and if ever a government anywhere had reason to protect a man, that man was David Webb! ... Thoughts conceived in frenzy, reflected Marie, getting up from her chair and walking to the balcony’s railing. It would never happen because David could never accept the solution. Where the Jackal was concerned, David Webb was ruled by Jason Bourne and Bourne was capable of destroying his host body. Oh,
God
, what’s
happening
to us?

The telephone rang. Marie stiffened, then rushed into the bedroom and picked it up. “Yes?”

“Hello, Sis, it’s Johnny.”

“
Oh
…”

“Which means you haven’t heard from David.”

“No, and I’m going a little crazy, Bro.”

“He’ll call when he can, you know that.”

“But you’re not calling to tell me that.”

“No, I’m just checking in. I’m stuck over here on the big island and it looks like I’ll be here for a while. I’m at Government House with Henry, waiting for the CG to personally thank me for accommodating the Foreign Office.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying—”

“Oh, sorry. Henry Sykes is the Crown governor’s aide who asked me to take care of that old French war hero down the path from you. When the CG wants to thank you, you wait until you’re thanked—when the phones go out, cowboys like me need Government House.”

“You’ve totally lost me, Johnny.”

“A storm out of Basse-Terre will hit in a few hours.”

“Out of
whom
?”

“It’s a what, but I should be back before then. Have the maid make up the couch for me.”

“John, it’s not necessary for you to stay here. Good heavens, there are men with guns outside the hedge and down on the beach and God knows where else.”

“That’s where they’re going to stay. See you later, and hug the kids for me.”

“They’re asleep,” said Marie as her younger brother hung up. She looked at the phone as she replaced it, unconsciously saying out loud, “How little I know about you, little Bro ... our favorite, incorrigible Bro. And how much more does my husband know. Damn the
both
of you!”

The telephone instantly rang again, stunning her. She grabbed it. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Thank
God
!”

“
He’s
out of town, but everything’s fine. I’m fine, and we’re making headway.”

“You don’t have to
do
this!
We
don’t have to!”

“Yes, we do,” said Jason Bourne—no evidence of David Webb. “Just know I love you,
he
loves you—”

“
Stop
it! It’s
happening
—”

“I’m sorry, I apologize—
forgive
me.”

“You’re
David
!”

“Of course I’m David. I was just joking—”

“No, you
weren’t
!”

“I was talking to Alex, that’s all. We argued, that’s
all
!”

“No, it
isn’t
! I want you back, I want you
here
!”

“Then I can’t talk any longer. I love you.” The line went dead and Marie St. Jacques Webb fell on the bed, her cries of futility muffled by the blankets.

Alexander Conklin, his eyes red with strain, kept touching the letters and the numbers of his computer, his head turned to the open pages of the ledgers sent over by Bourne from General Norman Swayne’s estate. Two shrill beeps suddenly intruded on the silence of the room. It was the inanimate machine’s robotic signal that another dual reference had been calculated. He checked the entry.
R.G.
What did it mean? He back-taped and found nothing. He pressed forward, typing like a mindless automaton.
Three beeps
. He kept punching the irritatingly beige buttons, faster and faster.
Four beeps ... five ... six
. Back space—stop—forward.
R.G. R.G. R.G. R.G.
What the hell was
R.G.
?

He cross-checked the data with the entries from the three different leather-bound notebooks. A common numeral sprang out in green letters on the screen.
617-202-0011
. A telephone number. Conklin picked up the Langley phone, dialed the night watch, and told the CIA operator to trace it.

“It’s unlisted, sir. It’s one of three numbers for the same residence in Boston, Massachusetts.”

“The name, please.”

“Gates, Randolph. The residence is—”

“Never mind, Operator,” interrupted Alex, knowing that he had been given the essential information. Randolph Gates, scholar, attorney for the privileged, advocate of the bigger the better, the biggest the best. How right that Gates should be involved with amassing hundreds of millions in Europe controlled by American interests. ... No, wait a moment. It wasn’t right at all, it was
wrong
! It was completely illogical for the scholarly attorney to have any connection whatsoever to a highly questionable, indeed illegal, operation like Medusa. It did not make sense! One did not have to admire the celebrated legal giant to grant him just about the cleanest record for propriety in the Bar Association. He was a notorious stickler for the most minute points of law, often using those minutiae of his craft to obtain favorable decisions, but no one ever dared question his integrity. So unpopular were his legal and philosophical opinions to the brightest lawyers in the liberal establishment that he would have been gleefully discredited years ago at the slightest hint of impropriety.

Yet here was his name appearing six times in the appointments calendar of a Medusan responsible for untold millions in the nation’s defense expenditures. An unstable Medusan whose apparent suicide was in fact murder.

Conklin looked at the screen, at the date of Swayne’s last entry referring to R.G. It was on August second, barely a week ago. He picked up the leather-bound diary and turned to the day. He had been concentrating on names, not comments, unless the information struck him as relevant—to what he was not sure, but he was trusting to instinct. If he had known up front who R.G. was, the abbreviated handwritten notation beside the last entry would have caught his eye.

RG will nt cnsider app’t fr Maj. Crft. Need Crft on hs stff. Unlock. Paris—7 yrs ago. Two file out and bur’d.

The
Paris
should have alerted him, thought Alex, but Swayne’s notes throughout were filled with foreign or exotic names and places as if the general had been trying to impress whoever might read his personal observations. Also, Conklin regretfully considered, he was terribly tired; were it not for his computer he probably would not have centered in on Dr. Randolph Gates, legal Olympian.

Paris—7 yrs ago. Two file out and bur’d.

The first part was obvious, the second obscure but hardly concealed. The “Two” referred to the army’s intelligence arm, G-2, and the “file” was just that, an event or a revelation uncovered by intelligence personnel in
Paris—7 yrs ago
and removed from the data banks. It was an amateur’s attempt to use intelligence gibberish by misusing it. “Unlock” meant “key”—
Jesus
, Swayne was an idiot! Using his notepad, Alex wrote out the notation as he knew it to be:

“Randolph Gates will not consider the appointment for a Major Craft or Croft or even Christopher, for the
f
could be an
s
. (But) we need Crft on his staff. The key is to use the information in our G-2 file about Gates in Paris seven years ago, said file removed and in our possession.”

If that was not the exact translation of Swayne’s insertion, it was certainly close enough in substance to act upon, mused Conklin, turning his wrist and glancing at his watch. It was twenty past three in the morning, a time when even the most disciplined person would be shaken by the shrill bell of a telephone. Why not? David—
Jason
—was right. Every hour counted now. Alex picked up the phone and touched the numbers for Boston, Massachusetts.

The telephone kept ringing and the
bitch
would not pick it up in her room! Then Gates looked at the lighted square and the blood drained from his head. It was his unlisted number, a number that was restricted to a very few. He thrashed wildly in the bed, his eyes wide; the strange call from Paris unnerved him the more he thought about it. It concerned Montserrat, he
knew
it! The information he had relayed was
wrong
. ... Prefontaine had
lied
to him and now Paris wanted an accounting! My
God
, they’d come after him,
expose
him! ... No, there was a way, a perfectly acceptable explanation, the
truth
. He would deliver the liars to Paris, to Paris’s man here in Boston. He would trap the drunken Prefontaine and the sleazeball detective and force them to tell their lies to the one person who could absolve him. ... The phone! He had to answer it. He could not appear as if he had anything to hide! He reached out and grabbed the incessantly ringing instrument, pulling it to his ear. “Yes?”

“Seven years ago, Counselor,” began the quiet voice on the line. “Do I have to remind you that we’ve got the entire file. The Deuxième Bureau was extremely cooperative, far more than you have been.”

“For God’s sake, I was
lied
to!” cried Gates, swinging his legs onto the floor in panic, his voice hoarse. “You can’t
believe
I’d forward erroneous information. I’d have to be insane!”

“We know you can be obstinate. We made a simple request—”

“I
complied
, I swear I did! Good Christ, I paid fifteen thousand dollars to make certain everything was silent, absolutely untraceable—not that the money matters, of course—”

“You
paid
... ?” interrupted the quiet voice.

“I can show you the bank withdrawals!”

“For what?”

“The information, naturally. I hired a former judge who has contacts—”

“For information about Craft?”

“What?”

“Croft. ... Christopher.”

“
Who
?”

“Our major, Counselor.
The
major.”

“If that’s her code name, then yes, yes I did!”

“A code name?”

“The woman. The two children. They flew to the island of Montserrat. I swear that’s what I was
told
!”

There was a sudden click and the line went dead.

His hand still on the telephone, Conklin broke out in a sweat. He released the phone and got up from his chair, limping away from the computer, looking back at it, down at it, as if it were some monstrous thing that had taken him into a forbidden land where nothing was as it appeared to be or
should
be. What had
happened
? How did Randolph Gates know anything about Montserrat, about Marie and the children?
Why
?

Alex lowered himself into the armchair, his pulse racing, his thoughts clashing, no judgments emerging, only chaos. He gripped his right wrist with his left hand, his nails digging into his flesh. He had to get hold of himself, he had to
think
—he had to act! For David’s wife and children.

Associations. What were the conceivable
associations
? It was difficult enough to consider Gates as even unwittingly a part of Medusa, but impossible to think he was also connected to Carlos the Jackal.
Impossible
! ... Yet both appeared to
be
; the connections existed. Was Carlos himself part of Swayne’s Medusa? Everything they knew about the Jackal would deny it emphatically. The assassin’s strength was in his total
disassociation
with any structured entity, Jason Bourne had proved that thirteen years ago in Paris. No group of people could ever reach
him
; they could only send out a message and he would reach
them
. The single organization the international killer for hire permitted was his army of old men, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, lost misfits, criminals whose impoverished last days were made better by the assassin’s largess, fealty unto death demanded and received. Where did—
could
—a man like Randolph Gates fit in?

He didn’t, concluded Alex as the outer limits of his imagination explored an old territory—Be skeptical of the apparent. The celebrated attorney was no more part of Carlos than he was of Medusa. He was the aberration, the flaw in the lens, an otherwise honorable man with a single weakness that had been uncovered by two disparate parties both with extraordinary resources. It was common knowledge that the Jackal could reach into the Sûret
é
and Interpol, and it took no clairvoyance to assume that Medusa could penetrate the army’s G-2. It was the only
possible
explanation, for Gates had been too controversial, too powerful for too long to function as spectacularly as he did in the courts if his vulnerability was easily uncovered. No, it would take predators like the Jackal and the men of Medusa to bore deep enough to dredge up a secret so devastating as to turn Randolph Gates into a valuable pawn. Clearly, Carlos had gotten to him first.