The Bourne ultimatum (83 page)

“It’s the number of a café on the Marais waterfront on the Seine. The routine is to ask for a blackbird—
un oiseau noir
—and somebody shouts out. If the blackbird’s there, contact is made. If he isn’t, you try again.”

“Why is it useful?”

“We’ll try again—and again and again—with a man inside.”

“What’s happening otherwise?”

“I can only give you a limited answer.”

“Goddamn you!”

“Marie can fill you in—”

“
Marie
?”

“She’s on her way home. She’s mad as hell, but she’s also one relieved wife and mother.”

“Why is she mad?”

“I’ve booked her low-key on several long flights back—”

“For Christ’s sake,
why
?” broke in the brother angrily. “You send a goddamned
plane
for her! She’s been more valuable to you than anyone in your dumb Congress or your corkscrew administration, and you send planes for
them
all over the place. I’m not joking, Holland!”

“
I
don’t send those planes,” replied the director firmly. “Others do. The ones I send involve too many questions and too much curiosity on foreign soil and that’s all I’ll say about it. Her safety is more important than her comfort.”

“We agree on that, honcho.”

The director paused, his irritation apparent. “You know something? You’re not really a very pleasant fellow, are you?”

“My sister puts up with me, which more than offsets your opinion. Why is she relieved—as a wife and mother, I think you said?”

Again Holland paused, not in irritation now, but searching for the words. “A disagreeable incident took place, one none of us could predict or even contemplate.”

“Oh, I hear those famous fucking words from the American establishment!” roared St. Jacques. “What did you miss
this
time? A truckload of U.S. missiles to the Ayatollah’s agents in Paris? What
happened
?”

For a third time, Peter Holland employed a moment of silence, although his heavy breathing was audible. “You know, young man, I could easily hang up the phone and dismiss your existence, which would be quite beneficial for my blood pressure.”

“Look, honcho, that’s my sister out there, and a guy she’s married to who I think is pretty terrific. Five years ago, you bastards—I repeat, you
bastards
—damn near killed them both over in Hong Kong and points east. I don’t know all the facts because they’re too decent or too dumb to talk about them, but I know enough to know I wouldn’t trust you with a waiter’s payroll in the islands!”

“Fair enough,” said Holland, subdued. “Not that it matters, but I wasn’t here then.”

“It
doesn’t
matter. It’s your subterranean system. You would have done the same thing.”

“Knowing the circumstances, I might have. So might you, if you knew them. But that doesn’t matter, either. It’s history.”

“And now is now,” broke in St. Jacques. “What happened in Paris, this ‘disagreeable incident’?”

“According to Conklin, there was an ambush at a private airfield in Pontcarré. It was aborted. Your brother-in-law wasn’t hurt and neither was Alex. That’s all I can tell you.”

“It’s all I want to hear.”

“I spoke to Marie a little while ago. She’s in Marseilles and will be here late tomorrow morning. I’ll meet her myself and we’ll be driven out to Chesapeake.”

“What about David?”

“Who?”

“My brother-in-law?”

“Oh ... yes, of course. He’s on his way to Moscow.”

“
What
?”

The Aeroflot jetliner reversed engines and swung off the runway at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. The pilot taxied down the adjacent exit lane, then stopped a quarter of a mile from the terminal as an announcement was made in both Russian and French.

“There will be a five- to seven-minute delay before disembarkation. Please remain seated.”

No explanation accompanied the information, and those passengers on the flight from Paris who were not Soviet citizens returned to their reading material, assuming the delay was caused by a backup of departing aircraft. However, those who
were
citizens, as well as a few others familiar with Soviet arrival procedures, knew better. The curtained-off front section of the huge Ilyushin jet, a small seating area that was reserved for special unseen passengers, was in the process of being evacuated, if not totally, at least in part. The custom was for an elevated platform with a shielded metal staircase to be rolled up to the front exit door. Several hundred feet away there was always a government limousine, and while the backs of those disembarked special passengers were briefly in view on their way to the vehicles, flight attendants roamed through the aircraft making sure no cameras were in evidence. There never were. These travelers were the property of the KGB, and for reasons known only to the Komitet, they were not to be observed in Sheremetyevo’s international terminal. It was the case this late afternoon on the outskirts of Moscow.

Alex Conklin limped out of the shielded staircase followed by Bourne, who carried the two outsized flight bags that served as their minimum luggage. Dimitri Krupkin emerged from the limousine and hurried toward them as the steps were rolled away from the aircraft and the noise of the huge jet engines began growing in volume.

“How is your friend the
doctor
?” asked the Soviet intelligence officer, shouting to be heard over the roar.

“Holding his own!” yelled Alex. “He may not make it, but he’s fighting like hell!”

“It’s your own fault, Aleksei!” The jet rolled away and Krupkin lowered his voice accordingly, still loud but not shouting. “You should have called Sergei at the embassy. His unit was prepared to escort you wherever you wished to go.”

“Actually, we thought that if we did, we’d be sending out an alert.”

“Better a prohibiting alert than inviting an assault!” countered the Russian. “Carlos’s men would never have dared to attack you under our protection.”

“It wasn’t the
Jackal
—the Jackal,” said Conklin, abruptly resuming a conversational tone as the roar of the aircraft became a hum in the distance.

“Of course it wasn’t him—he’s here. It was his goons following orders.”

“Not his goons, not his orders.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’ll go into it later. Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait.” Krupkin arched his brows. “We’ll talk first—and first, welcome to Mother Russia. Second, it would be most appreciated if you would refrain from discussing certain aspects of my life-style while in the service of my government in the hostile, war-mongering West with anyone you might meet.”

“You know, Kruppie, one of these days they’ll catch up with you.”

“Never. They adore me, for I feed the Komitet more useful gossip about the upper ranks of the debauched, so-called free world than any other officer in a foreign post. I also entertain my superiors in that same debauched world far better than any other officer
anywhere
. Now, if we corner the Jackal here in Moscow, I’ll no doubt be made a member of the Politburo, hero status.”

“Then you can really steal.”

“Why not? They all do.”

“If you don’t mind,” interrupted Bourne curtly, lowering the two flight bags to the ground. “What’s happened? Have you made any progress in Dzerzhinsky Square?”

“It’s not inconsiderable for less than thirty hours. We’ve narrowed down Carlos’s mole to thirteen possibles, all of whom speak French fluently. They’re under total surveillance, human and electronic; we know exactly where they are every minute, also who they meet and who they talk to over the telephone. ... I’m working with two ranking commissars, neither of whom can remotely speak French—they can’t even speak literate Russian, but that’s the way it is sometimes. The point is they’re both failsafe and dedicated; they’d rather be instrumental in capturing the Jackal than re-fight the Nazi. They’ve been very cooperative in mounting surveillance.”

“Your surveillance is rotten and you know it,” said Alex. “They fall over toilet seats in the women’s room when they’re chasing a guy.”

“Not this time, for I chose them myself,” insisted Krupkin. “Outside of four of our own people, each trained in Novgorod, they’re defectors from the UK, America, France and South Africa—all with intelligence backgrounds who could lose their dachas if they screw up, as you Westerners say. I really would like to be appointed to the Presidium, perhaps even the Central Committee. I might be posted to Washington or New York.”

“Where you could really steal,” said Conklin.

“You’re wicked, Aleksei, very, very wicked. Still, after a vodka or six, remind me to tell you about some real estate our chargé d’affaires picked up in Virginia two years ago. For a
song
, and financed by his lover’s bank in Richmond. Now a developer wants the property at ten times the price! ... Come, the car.”

“I don’t
believe
this conversation,” said Bourne, picking up the flight bags.

“Welcome to the real world of high-tech intelligence,” explained Conklin, laughing quietly. “At least from one point of view.”

“From
all
points of view,” continued Krupkin as they started toward the limousine. “However, we will dispense with this conversation while riding in an official vehicle, won’t we, gentlemen? Incidentally, you have a two-bedroom suite at the Metropole on the Marx Prospekt. It’s convenient and I’ve personally shut down all listening devices.”

“I can understand why, but how did you manage it?”

“Embarrassment, as you well know, is the Komitet’s greatest enemy. I explained to internal security that what might be recorded could prove most embarrassing to the wrong people, who would undoubtedly transfer any who overheard the tapes to Kamchatka.” They reached the car, the left rear door opened by a driver in a dark brown business suit identical with the one worn by Sergei in Paris. “The fabric’s the same,” said Krupkin in French, noting his companions’ reaction to the similar apparel. “Unfortunately the tailoring is not. I insisted Sergei have his refitted in the Faubourg.”

The Hotel Metropole is a renovated, prerevolutionary structure built in the ornate style of architecture favored by the czar who had visited fin-de-siècle Vienna and Paris. The ceilings are high, the marble profuse, and the occasional tapestries priceless. Intrinsic to the elaborate lobby is a defiance aimed at a government that would permit so many shabby citizens to invade the premises. The majestic walls and the glittering, filigreed chandeliers seem to stare at the unworthy trespassers with disdain. These impressions, however, did not apply to Dimitri Krupkin, whose baronial figure was very much at ease and at home in the surroundings.

“Comrade!” cried the manager sotto voce as the KGB officer accompanied his guests to the elevators. “There is an urgent message for you,” he continued, walking rapidly up to Dimitri and thrusting a folded note into Krupkin’s hand. “I was told to deliver it to you personally.”

“You have done so and I thank you.” Dimitri watched the man walk away, then opened the paper as Bourne and Conklin stood behind him. “I must reach Dzerzhinsky immediately,” he said, turning. “It’s the extension of my second commissar. Come, let us hurry.”

The suite, like the lobby, belonged to another time, another era, indeed another country, marred only by the faded fabrics and the less than perfect restoration of the original moldings. These imperfections served to accentuate the distance between the past and the present. The doors of the two bedrooms were opposite each other, the space between a large sitting room complete with a copper dry bar and several bottles of spirits rarely seen on Moscow shelves.

“Help yourselves,” said Krupkin, heading for a telephone on an ersatz antique desk that appeared to be a cross between Queen Anne and a later Louis. “Oh, I forgot, Aleksei, I’ll order some tea or spring water—”

“Forget it,” said Conklin, taking his flight bag from Jason and heading into the left bedroom. “I’m going to wash up; that plane was filthy.”

“I trust you found the fare agreeable,” responded Krupkin, raising his voice and dialing. “Incidentally, you ingrate, you’ll find your weapons in your bedside table drawers. Each is a .38 caliber Graz Burya automatic. ... Come, Mr. Bourne,” he added. “You’re not abstemious and it was a long trip—this may be a long conversation. My commissar number two is a windy fellow.”

“I think I will,” said Jason, dropping his bag by the door to the other bedroom. He crossed to the bar and chose a familiar bottle, pouring himself a drink as Krupkin began talking in Russian. It was not a language he understood, so Bourne walked to a pair of tall cathedral windows overlooking the wide avenue known as the Marx Prospekt.

“
Dobryi dyen
. ...
Da, da pochemu
? ...
Sadovaya togda. Dvadtsat minus
.” Krupkin shook his head in weary irritation as he hung up the telephone. The movement caused Jason to turn toward the Soviet. “My second commissar was not talkative on this occasion, Mr. Bourne. Haste and orders took precedent.”

“What do you mean?”

“We must leave immediately.” Krupkin glanced at the bedroom to the left and raised his voice. “
Aleksei
, come out here! Quickly! ... I tried to tell him that you’d just this second arrived,” continued the KGB man, turning back to Jason, “but he was having none of it. Leven went so far as to say that one of you was already taking a shower, and his only comment was ‘Tell him to get out and get dressed.’ ” Conklin limped through the bedroom door, his shirt unbuttoned and blotting his wet face with a towel. “Sorry, Aleksei, we must go.”

“Go where? We just got here.”

“We’ve appropriated a flat on the Sadovaya—that’s Moscow’s ‘Grand Boulevard,’ Mr. Bourne. It’s not the Champs-Elysées, but neither is it inconsequential. The czars knew how to build.”

“What’s over there?” pressed Conklin.

“Commissar number one,” replied Krupkin. “We’ll be using it as our, shall we say, our headquarters. A smaller and rather delightful annex of Dzerzhinsky Square—only nobody knows about it but the five of us. Something’s come up and we’re to go there immediately.”