The Bourne ultimatum (55 page)

Conklin and Peter Holland looked at each other. The second period of waiting began.

To their astonishment, it ended barely ten minutes later. A nurse came out into the lounge and asked them to follow her. They walked through what appeared to be a maze of antiseptic white walls broken up only by recessed white panels with glass knobs that denoted doors. Only once on their brief journey did they see another human being; it was a man in a white smock, wearing a white surgical mask, who walked out of yet another white door, his sharp, intense eyes above the white cloth somehow accusing, determining them to be aliens from some different world that had not been cleared for Sterile House Five.

The nurse opened a door; there was a blinking red light above its top frame. She put her index finger to her lips, indicating silence. Holland and Conklin walked quietly inside a dark room and confronted a drawn white curtain concealing a bed or an examining table beyond, a small circle of intense light shining through the cloth. They heard the softly spoken words of Dr. Walsh.

“You are going back, Doctor, not far back, just a day or so, just when you began to feel the dull, constant pain in your arm ... your
arm
, Doctor. Why are they inflicting pain on
your
arm? You were in a farmhouse, a small farmhouse with fields outside your window, and then they put a blindfold on you and began hurting your arm. Your
arm
, Doctor.”

Suddenly, there was a muted flashing of green light reflected on the ceiling. The curtain parted electronically several feet, revealing the bed, the patient and the doctor. Walsh took his finger off a bedside button and looked at them, gesturing slowly with his hands as if to say, There’s no one else here. Confirmed?

Both witnesses nodded, at first mesmerized, then repelled at the sight of Panov’s grimacing pale face and the tears that began to flow from his wide-open eyes. Then, as one, they saw the white straps that emerged from under the white sheet, holding Mo in place; the order had to be his.

“The
arm
, Doctor. We have to begin with the
physically
invasive procedure, don’t we? Because you know what it does, Doctor, don’t you? It leads to another invasive procedure that you cannot permit. You must stop its progression.”

The ear-shattering scream was a prolonged shriek of defiance and horror. “No,
no
!
I won’t tell you
! I
killed
him once, I won’t kill him
again
! Get away from
meeeee
... !”

Alex slumped, falling to the floor. Peter Holland grabbed him and gently the strong, broad-shouldered admiral, a veteran of the darkest operations in the Far East, led Conklin silently through the door to the nurse. “Get him away from here, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

“
Peter
,” coughed Alex, trying to stand, collapsing on his false foot. “I’m sorry, Christ, I’m
sorry
!”

“What for?” whispered Holland.

“I should watch but I
can’t
watch!”

“I understand. It’s all too close. If I were you, I probably couldn’t either.”

“No, you
don’t
understand! Mo said he killed David, but of course he didn’t. But
I
meant to, I really
wanted
to kill him! I was wrong, but I tried with all the expertise in my bones to
kill
him! And now I’ve done it again. I sent him to Paris. ... It’s not Mo, it’s
me
!”

“Put him against the wall, miss. Let him sink to the floor and leave us alone.”

“Yes,
sir
!” The nurse did as she was ordered and fled, leaving Holland and Alex alone in the antiseptic maze.

“Now, you listen to me, Field Man,” whispered the gray-haired director of the Central Intelligence Agency, kneeling in front of Conklin. “This fucking merry-go-round of guilt had better stop—has
got
to stop—or nobody’s going to be any good to
anybody
. I don’t give a good goddamn what you or Panov did thirteen years ago, or five years ago, or
now
! We’re all reasonably bright people, and we did what each of us did because we thought they were the right moves at the time. ... Guess what,
Saint
Alex? Yes, I’ve heard the term. We make
mistakes
. Fucking inconvenient, isn’t it? Maybe we’re not so
brilliant
after all. Maybe Panov isn’t the greatest behavioral whatever-the-hell-it-is; maybe you’re not the shrewdest son of a bitch in the field, the one who got canonized, and maybe
I’m
not the superjock behind-the-lines strategist they’ve made me out to be. So
what
? We take our baggage and go where we have to go.”

“Oh, for
Christ’s
sake,
shut
up!” yelled Conklin, struggling against the wall.

“
Shhh
!”

“Oh, shit! The last thing I need is a sermon from you! If I had a foot, I’d take you.”

“Now we’re physical?”

“I was Black Belt. First class, Admiral.”

“Golly, gee. I don’t even know how to wrestle.”

Their eyes met and Alex was the first to laugh quietly. “You’re too much, Peter. I got your message. Help me up, will you? I’ll go back to the lounge and wait for you. Come on, give me a hand.”

“The hell I will,” said Holland, getting to his feet and standing over Conklin. “Help yourself. Someone told me that the Saint made it back through a hundred and forty miles in enemy territory, through rivers and streams and jungle, and arrived at the Foxtrot base camp asking if anybody had a bottle of bourbon.”

“Yeah, well, that was different. I was a hell of a lot younger and I had another foot.”

“Pretend you got one now, Saint Alex.” Holland winked. “I’m going back inside. One of us has to be there.”

“
Bastard
!”

For an hour and forty-seven minutes Conklin sat in the lounge. His attachable footless foot never throbbed, but it was throbbing now. He did not know what the impossible feeling meant, but he could not dismiss the beat that surged through his leg. If nothing else, it was something to think about, and he thought wistfully of the younger days, when he had both feet, and before. Oh, how he had wanted to change the world! And how he had felt so
right
in a destiny that forced him to become the youngest valedictorian in his high school’s history, the youngest freshman ever accepted at Georgetown, a bright,
bright
light that shimmered at the end of the tunnels of academe. His decline started when someone, somewhere, found out that his name at birth was not Alexander Conklin but Aleksei Nikolae Konsolikov. That now faceless man had casually asked him a question, the answer to which had changed Conklin’s life.

“Do you by any chance speak Russian?”

“Of course,” he had replied, amused that his visitor would even think he might not. “As you obviously know, my parents were immigrants. I grew up not only in a Russian home but in a Russian neighborhood—at least in the early years. You couldn’t buy a loaf of bread at the
ovoshchnoi otdel
if you didn’t. And at church school the older priests and nuns, like the Poles, held ferociously on to the language. ... I’m sure it contributed to my leaving the faith.”

“Those were the early years, however, as I believe you mentioned.”

“Yes.”

“What changed?”

“I’m sure it’s in your government report somewhere and will hardly satisfy. your iniquitous Senator McCarthy.”

The face came back to Alex with the memory of those words. It was a middle-aged face and it had suddenly become expressionless, the eyes clouded but with suppressed anger in them. “I assure you, Mr. Conklin, I am in no way associated with the senator. You call him iniquitous, I have other terms, but they’re not pertinent here. ... What changed?”

“Quite late in his life my father became what he had been in Russia, a highly successful merchant, a capitalist. At last count he owned seven supermarkets in upscale malls. They’re called Conklin’s Corners. He’s over eighty now, and although I love him dearly, I regret to say he’s an ardent supporter of the senator. I simply consider his years, his struggles, his hatred of the Soviets, and avoid the subject.”

“You’re very bright and very diplomatic.”

“Bright and diplomatic,” Alex had agreed.

“I’ve shopped at a couple of Conklin’s Corners. Kind of expensive.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Where did the ‘Conklin’ come from?”

“My father. My mother says he saw it on a billboard advertising motor oil, she thinks, about four or five years after they got here. And, of course, the Konsolikov had to go. As my considerably bigoted father once said, ‘Only the Jews with Russian names can make money over here.’ Again, I avoid the subject.”

“
Very
diplomatic.”

“It’s not difficult. He has his share of good points as well.”

“Even if he didn’t, I’m sure you could be convincing in your diplomacy, in the concealment of your feelings.”

“Why do I think that’s a leading statement?”

“Because it is, Mr. Conklin. I represent a government agency that’s extremely interested in you, and one in which your future would be as unlimited as that of any potential recruit I’ve spoken to in a decade. ...”

That conversation had taken place nearly thirty years ago, mused Alex, his eyes drifting up once again to the inner door of Sterile Five’s waiting lounge in its own private medical center. And how crazy the intervening years had been. In a stress-defying bid for unrealistic expansion, his father had overextended himself, committing enormous sums of money that existed only in his imagination and in the minds of avaricious bankers. He lost six of his seven supermarkets, the smallest and last supporting a life-style that he found unacceptable, so he conveniently had a massive stroke and died as Alex’s own adult life was about to begin.

Berlin—East and West. Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent and Kamchatka. Vienna, Paris, Lisbon and Istanbul. Then back across the world to stations in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Cambodia, Laos, and finally Saigon and the tragedy that was Vietnam. Over the years, with his facile mastery of languages and the expertise that came with survival, he had become the Agency’s point man in clandestine operations, its primary scout and often the on-scene strategist for covert activities. Then one morning with the mists hanging over the Mekong Delta, a land mine shattered his life as well as his foot. There was little left for a field man who depended on mobility in his chosen work; the rest was downhill and out of the field. His excessive drinking he accepted, and excused as genetic. The Russian’s winter of depression carried over into spring, summer and autumn. The skeletal, trembling wreck of a man who was about to go under was given a reprieve. David Webb—Jason Bourne—came back into his life.

The door opened, mercifully cutting short his reverie, and Peter Holland walked slowly into the lounge. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes glazed, and in his left hand were two small plastic containers, each presumably holding a cassette tape.

“As long as I live,” said Peter, his voice low and hollow, barely above a whisper, “I hope to Christ I never go through anything like this again, never witness anything like this again.”

“How’s Mo?”

“I didn’t think he’d live. ... I thought he’d kill himself. Every now and then Walsh would stop. Let me tell you, he was one frightened doctor.”

“Why didn’t he call it
off
, for God’s sake?”

“I asked him that. He said Panov’s instructions were not only explicit but that he’d written them out and signed them and expected them to be followed to the letter. Maybe there’s some kind of unwritten code of ethics between doctors, I don’t know, but I do know Walsh hooked him up to an EKG, which he rarely took his eyes off. Neither did I; it was easier than looking at Mo. Jesus, let’s get
out
of here!”

“Wait a minute. What about Panov?”

“He’s not ready for a welcome-home party. He’ll stay here for a couple of days under observation. Walsh will call me in the morning.”

“I’d like to see him. I want to see him.”

“There’s nothing to see but a human dishrag. Believe me, you don’t and he wouldn’t want you to. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Your place in Vienna—our place in Vienna. I assume you’ve got a cassette machine.”

“I’ve got everything but a moon rocket, most of which I can’t operate.”

“I want to stop and get a bottle of whisky.”

“There’s whatever you want at the apartment.”

“It doesn’t bother you?” asked Holland, studying Alex.

“Would it matter if it did?”

“Not a bit. ... If I remember, there’s an extra bedroom, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We may be up most of the night listening to these.” The director held up the cassettes. “The first couple of times won’t mean anything. All we’ll hear is the pain, not the information.”

It was shortly past five o’clock in the afternoon when they left the estate known within the Agency as Sterile House Five. The days were growing shorter, September on the cusp, the descending sun announcing the forthcoming change with an intensity of color that was the death of one season and the birth of another.

“The light’s always brightest before we die,” said Conklin, leaning back in the seat beside Holland in the limousine, staring out the window.

“I find that not only inappropriate but quite possibly sophomoric,” declared Peter wearily. “I won’t commit to the latter until I know who said it. Who was it?”

“Jesus, I think.”

“The Scriptures were never edited. Too many campfires, no on-scene confirmation.”

Alex laughed softly, reflectively. “Did you ever actually read them? The Scriptures, I mean.”

“Most of it—most of them.”

“Because you had to?”

“Hell, no. My father and mother were as agnostic as any two people could be without being branded godless pariahs. They shut up about it and sent me and my two sisters to a Protestant service one week, a Catholic mass on another, and a synagogue after that. Never with any regularity, but I guess they figured we should catch the whole scene.
That’s
what makes kids want to read. Natural curiosity wrapped in mysticism.”