The Bourne ultimatum (7 page)

“Do they need any waiters?”

“That’s good. Our scholar, Webb the waiter.”

“Jason Bourne’s been one.”

Conklin paused, then spoke seriously. “Let’s get to him,” he said, limping to an armchair. “By the way, you’ve had a rough day and it’s not even noon, so if you want a drink there’s a full bar behind those puce shutters next to the window. ...
Don’t
look at me like that, our black Brunhilde
said
they were puce.”

Webb laughed; it was a low, genuine laugh as he looked at his friend. “It doesn’t bother you a bit, does it, Alex?”

“Hell, no, you know that. Have you ever hid any liquor from me when I visited you and Marie?”

“There was never any stress—”

“Stress is irrelevant,” Conklin broke in. “I made a decision because there was only one other one to make. Have a drink, David. We have to talk and I want you calm. I look at your eyes and they tell me you’re on fire.”

“You once told me that it’s always in the eyes,” said Webb, opening the purplish shutters and reaching for a bottle. “You can still see it, can’t you?”

“I told you it was
behind
the eyes. Never accept the first level. ... How are Marie and the children? I assume they got off all right.”

“I went over the flight plan ad nauseam with the pilot and knew they were all right when he finally told me to get off his case or fly the run myself.” Webb poured a drink and walked back to the chair opposite the retired agent. “Where are we, Alex?” he asked, sitting down.

“Right where we were last night. Nothing’s moved and nothing’s changed, except that Mo refuses to leave his patients. He was picked up this morning at his apartment, which is now as secure as Fort Knox, and driven to his office under guard. He’ll be brought here later this afternoon with four changes of vehicles, all made in underground parking lots.”

“Then it’s open protection, no one’s hiding any longer?”

“That’d be pointless. We sprung a trap at the Smithsonian and our men were very obvious.”

“It’s why it might work, isn’t it? The unexpected? Backups behind a protection unit told to make mistakes.”

“The unexpected works, David, not the dumb.” Conklin quickly shook his head. “I take that back. Bourne could turn the dumbs into smarts, but not an officially mounted surveillance detail. There are too many complications.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As good as those men are, they’re primarily concerned with guarding lives, maybe saving them; they also have to coordinate with each other and make reports. They’re career people, not one-shot, prepaid lowlife with an assassin’s knife at their throats if they screw up.”

“That sounds so melodramatic,” said Webb softly, leaning back in the chair and drinking. “I guess I did operate like that, didn’t I?”

“It was more image than reality, but it was real to the people you used.”

“Then I’ll find those people again, use them again.” David shot forward, gripping his glass in both hands. “He’s forcing me
out
, Alex! The Jackal’s calling my cards and I have to show.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Conklin irritably. “Now you’re the one who’s being melodramatic. You sound like a grade-Z Western. You show yourself, Marie’s a widow and the kids have no father.
That’s
reality, David.”

“You’re wrong.” Webb shook his head, staring at his glass. “He’s coming after me, so I have to go after him; he’s trying to pull me out, so I have to pull him out first. It’s the only way it can happen, the only way we’ll get him out of our lives. In the final analysis it’s Carlos against Bourne. We’re back where we were thirteen years ago. ‘Alpha, Bravo, Cain, Delta ... Cain is for Carlos and Delta is for Cain.’ ”

“That was a crazy Paris code thirteen years ago!” interrupted Alex sharply. “Medusa’s
Delta
and his mighty challenge to the Jackal. But this
isn’t
Paris and it’s thirteen years
later
!”

“And in five more years it’ll be eighteen; five years after that, twenty-three. What the hell do you want me to do? Live with the specter of that son of a bitch over my family, frightened every time my wife or my children leave the house, living in fear for the rest of my life? ... No,
you
shut up, field man! You know better than that. The analysts can come up with a dozen strategies and we’ll use bits and pieces of maybe six and be grateful, but when it gets down to the mud, it’s between the Jackal and me. ... And I’ve got the advantage. I’ve got you on my side.”

Conklin swallowed while blinking. “That’s very flattering, David, maybe too flattering. I’m better in my own element, a couple of thousand miles away from Washington. It was always a little stifling for me here.”

“It wasn’t when you saw me off on that plane to Hong Kong five years ago. You’d put together half the equation by then.”

“That was easier. It was a down-and-dirty D.C. operation that had the smell of rotten halibut, so rotten it offended my nostrils. This is different; this is Carlos.”

“That’s my point, Alex. It
is
Carlos, not a voice over the telephone neither of us knew. We’re dealing with a known quantity, someone predictable—”

“
Predictable
?” broke in Conklin, frowning. “That’s also crazy. In what way?”

“He’s the hunter. He’ll follow a scent.”

“He’ll examine it first with a very experienced nose, then check the spoors under a microscope.”

“Then we’ll have to be authentic, won’t we?”

“I prefer foolproof. What did you have in mind?”

“In the gospel according to Saint Alex, it’s written that in order to bait a trap one has to use a large part of the truth, even a dangerous amount.”

“That chapter and verse referred to a target’s microscope. I think I just mentioned it. What’s the relevance here?”

“Medusa,” said Webb quietly. “I want to use Medusa.”

“Now you’re
out
of your mind,” responded Conklin, no louder than David. “That name is as off-limits as you are—let’s be honest, a hell of a lot more so.”

“There were rumors, Alex, stories all over Southeast Asia that floated up the China Sea to Kowloon and Hong Kong, where most of those bastards ran with their money. Medusa wasn’t exactly the secret evil you seem to think it was.”

“Rumors, yes, and stories, of course,” interrupted the retired intelligence officer. “Which of those animals didn’t put a gun or a knife to the heads of a dozen or two dozen or two
hundred
marks during their so-called ‘tours’? Ninety percent were killers and thieves, the original death squads. Peter Holland said that when he was a SEAL in the northern operations he never met a member of that outfit he didn’t want to waste.”

“And without them, instead of fifty-eight thousand casualties, there could well have been sixty-plus. Give the animals their due, Alex. They knew every inch of the territories, every square foot of jungle in the triangle. They—
we
—sent back more functional intelligence than all the units sent out by Saigon put together.”

“My
point
, David, is that there can never be any connection between Medusa and the United States government. Our involvement was never logged, much less acknowledged; the name itself was concealed as much as possible. There’s no statute of limitations on war crimes, and Medusa was officially determined to be a private organization, a collection of violent misfits who wanted the corrupt Southeast Asia back the way they knew it and used it. If it was ever established that Washington was behind Medusa, the reputation of some very important people in the White House and the State Department would be ruined. They’re global power brokers now, but twenty years ago they were hotheaded junior staffers in Command Saigon. ... We can live with questionable tactics in time of war, but not with being accomplices in the slaughter of noncombatants and the diversion of funds totaling millions, both unknowingly paid for by the taxpayers. It’s like those still-sealed archives that detail how so many of our fat-cat financiers bankrolled the Nazis. Some things we never want out of their black holes, and Medusa’s one of them.”

Webb again leaned back in the chair—now, however, taut, his eyes steady on his old friend, who was once briefly his deadly enemy. “If what memory I have left serves me, Bourne was identified as having come out of Medusa.”

“It was an entirely believable explanation and a perfect cover,” agreed Conklin, returning David’s gaze. “We went back to Tam Quan and ‘discovered’ that Bourne was a paranoid Tasmanian adventurer who disappeared in the jungles of North Vietnam. Nowhere in that very creative dossier was there the slightest clue of a Washington connection.”

“But that’s all a lie, isn’t it, Alex? There was and is a Washington connection, and the Jackal
knows
it now. He knew it when he found you and Mo Panov in Hong Kong—found your names in the ruins of that sterile house on Victoria Peak where Jason Bourne was supposedly blown away. He confirmed it last night when his messengers approached you at the Smithsonian and—your words—‘our men were very obvious.’ He knew finally that everything he’s believed for thirteen years is true. The member of Medusa who was called Delta was Jason Bourne, and Jason Bourne was a creation of American intelligence—and he’s still alive. Alive and in hiding and protected by his government.”

Conklin slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. “How did he find us, find
me
? Everything,
everything
, was under a black drape. McAllister and I made sure of it!”

“I can think of several ways, but that’s a question we can postpone, we haven’t time for it now. We have to move now on what we know Carlos knows. ...
Medusa
, Alex.”

“What? Move
how
?”

“If Bourne was plucked from Medusa, it has to follow that our covert operations were working with it—with them. Otherwise, how could the Bourne switch be created? What the Jackal doesn’t know or hasn’t put together yet is how far this government—especially certain people in this government—will go to keep Medusa in its black hole. As you pointed out, some very important men in the White House and the State Department could get burned, a lot of nasty labels branded on the foreheads of global power brokers, I think you called them.”

“And suddenly we’ve got a few Waldheims of our own.” Conklin nodded, frowning and looking down, his thoughts obviously racing.

“
Nuy Dap Ranh
,” said Webb, barely above a whisper. At the sound of the Oriental words, Alex’s eyes snapped back up at David. “That’s the key, isn’t it?” continued Webb. “
Nuy Dap Ranh
—Snake Lady.”

“You remembered.”

“Just this morning,” replied Jason Bourne, his eyes cold. “When Marie and the kids were airborne, the plane disappeared into the mists over Boston harbor and suddenly I was there. In another plane, in another time, the words crackling out of a radio through the static. ‘Snake Lady, Snake Lady, abort. ... Snake Lady, do you read me?
Abort
!’ I responded by turning the damn thing off and looked around at the men in the cabin, which seemed ready to break apart in the turbulence. I studied each man, wondering, I guess, whether this one or that one would come out alive, whether I’d come out alive, and if we didn’t, how we would die. ... Then I saw two of the men rolling up their sleeves, comparing those small ugly tattoos on their forearms, those lousy little emblems that obsessed them—”

“
Nuy Dap Ranh
,” said Conklin flatly. “A woman’s face with snakes for strands of hair. Snake Lady. You refused to have one done on you—”

“I never considered it a mark of distinction,” interrupted Webb-Bourne, blinking. “Somewhat the reverse, in fact.”

“Initially it was meant for identification, not a standard or a banner of any distinction one way or the other. An intricate tattoo on the underside of the forearm, the design and the colors produced by only one artist in Saigon. No one else could duplicate it.”

“That old man made a lot of money during those years; he was special.”

“Every officer in Command Headquarters who was connected to Medusa had one. They were like manic kids who’d found secret code rings in cereal boxes.”

“They weren’t kids, Alex. Manic, you can bet your ass on it, but not kids. They were infected with a rotten virus called unaccountability, and more than a few millionaires were made in the ubiquitous Command Saigon. The real kids were being maimed and killed in the jungles while a lot of pressed khaki in the South had personal couriers routed through Switzerland and the banks on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse.”

“Careful, David. You could be speaking of some very important people in our government.”

“Who are they?” asked Webb quietly, his glass poised in front of him.

“The ones I knew who were up to their necks in garbage I made damn sure faded after Saigon fell. But I was out of the field a couple of years before then, and nobody talks very much about those months and nothing at all about Snake Lady.”

“Still, you’ve got to have some ideas.”

“Sure, but nothing concrete, nothing even close to proof. Just possibilities based on life-styles, on real estate they shouldn’t have or places they go they shouldn’t be able to afford or the positions some hold or held in corporations justifying salaries and stock options when nothing in their backgrounds justified the jobs.”

“You’re describing a network,” said David, his voice now tight, the voice of Jason Bourne.

“If it is, it’s very tight,” agreed Conklin. “Very exclusive.”

“Draw up a list, Alex.”

“It’d be filled with holes.”

“Then keep it at first to those important people in our government who were attached to Command Saigon. Maybe even further to the ones who have real estate they shouldn’t have or who held high-paying jobs in the private sector they shouldn’t have gotten.”

“I repeat, any such list could be worthless.”

“Not with your instincts.”

“David, what the
hell
has any of this to do with Carlos?”

“Part of the truth, Alex. A dangerous part, I grant you, but foolproof and irresistible to the Jackal.”

Stunned, the former field officer stared at his friend. “In what way?”