He sat on the rocks above the beach, knowing he had to think clearly. He had to define what was before him and what was expected of him and then how to outthink whoever was manipulating him. Above all, he knew he could not give in to panic, even the perception of panic—a panicked man was dangerous, a risk to be eliminated. If he went over the edge, he would only ensure the death of Marie and himself; it was that simple. Everything was so delicate—violently delicate.
David Webb was out of the question. Jason Bourne had to assume control. Jesus! It was crazy! Mo Panov had told him to walk on the beach—as Webb—and now he had to sit there as Bourne, thinking things out as Bourne would think them out—he had to deny one part of himself and accept the opposite.
Strangely, it was not impossible, nor even intolerable, for Marie was out there. His love, his only love—Don’t think that way. Jason Bourne spoke: She is a valuable possession taken from you! Get her back. David Webb spoke: No, not a possession, my life!
Jason Bourne: Then break all the rules! Find her! Bring her back to you!
David Webb: I don’t know how. Help me!
Use me! Use what you’ve learned from me. You’ve got the tools, you’ve had them for years. You were the best in Medusa. Above all, there was control. You preached that, you lived that. And you stayed alive.
Control.
Such a simple word. Such an incredible demand.
Webb climbed off the rocks and once again went up the path through the wild grass to the street, and started back toward the old Victorian house, loathing its sudden, frightening, unfair emptiness. As he walked a name flashed across his thoughts; then it returned and remained fixed. Slowly the face belonging to that name came into focus—very slowly, for the man aroused hatred in David that was no less acute for the sadness he also evoked.
Alexander Conklin had tried to kill him—twice—and each time he had nearly succeeded. And Alex Conklin—according to his deposition, as well as his own numerous psychiatric sessions with Mo Panov and what vague memories David could provide—had been a close friend of Foreign Service Officer Webb and his Thai wife and their children in Cambodia a lifetime ago. When death had struck from the skies, filling the river with circles of blood, David had fled blindly to Saigon, his rage uncontrollable, and it was his friend in the Central Intelligence Agency, Alex Conklin, who found a place for him in the illegitimate battalion they called Medusa.
If you can survive the jungle training, you’ll be a man they want. But watch them—every goddamned one of them, every goddamned minute. They’ll cut your arm off for a watch. Those were the words Webb recalled, and he specifically recalled that they had been spoken by the voice of Alexander Conklin.
He had survived the brutal training and become Delta. No other name, just a progression in the alphabet. Delta One. Then after the war, Delta became Cain. Cain is for Delta and Carlos is for Cain. That was the challenge hurled at Carlos the assassin. Created by Treadstone 71, a killer named Cain would catch the Jackal.
It was as Cain, a name the underworld of Europe knew in reality was Asia’s Jason Bourne, that Webb had been betrayed by Conklin. A simple act of faith on Alex’s part could have made all the difference, but Alex could not find it within himself to provide it; his own bitterness precluded that particular charity. He believed the worst of his former friend because his own sense of martyrdom made him want to believe it. It raised his own broken self-esteem, convincing him that he was better than his former friend. In his work with Medusa, Conklin’s foot had been shattered by a land mine, and his brilliant career as a field strategist was cut short. A crippled man could not stay in the field where a growing reputation might take him up the ladders scaled by such men as Allen Dulles and James Angleton, and Conklin did not possess the skills for the bureaucratic infighting demanded at Langley. He withered, a once extraordinary tactician left to watch inferior talents pass him by, his expertise sought only in secrecy, the head of Medusa always in the background, dangerous, someone to be kept at arm’s length.
Two years of imposed castration, until a man known as the Monk—a Rasputin of covert operations—sought him out because one David Webb had been selected for an extraordinary assignment and Conklin had known Webb for years. Treadstone 71 was created, Jason Bourne became its product and Carlos the Jackal its target. And for thirty-two months Conklin monitored this most secret of classified operations, until the scenario fell apart with Jason Bourne’s disappearance and the withdrawal of over five million dollars from Treadstone’s Zurich account.
With no evidence to the contrary, Conklin presumed the worst. The legendary Bourne had turned; life in the nether world had become too much for him and the temptation to come in from the cold with over five million dollars had been too alluring to resist. Especially for one known as the chameleon, a multilingual deep-cover specialist who could change appearances and life-styles with so little effort that he could literally vanish. A trap for an assassin had been baited and then the bait had vanished, revealing a scheming thief. For the crippled Alexander Conklin this was not only the act of a traitor but intolerable treachery. Considering everything that had been done to him, his foot now no more than a painfully awkward dead weight surgically encased in stolen flesh, a once brilliant career a shambles, his personal life filled with a loneliness that only a total commitment to the Agency could bring about—a devotion not reciprocated—what right had anyone else to turn? What other man had given what he had given?
So his once close friend, David Webb, became the enemy, Jason Bourne. Not merely the enemy, but an obsession. He had helped create the myth; he would destroy it. His first attempt was with two hired killers on the outskirts of Paris.
David shuddered at the memory, still seeing a defeated Conklin limp away, his crippled figure in Webb’s gun-sight.
The second try was blurred for David. Perhaps he would never recall it completely. It had taken place at the Treadstone sterile house on New York’s Seventy-first Street, an ingenious trap mounted by Conklin, which was aborted by Webb’s hysterical efforts to survive and, oddly enough, the presence of Carlos the Jackal.
Later, when the truth was known, that the “traitor” had no treason in him, but instead a mental aberration called amnesia, Conklin fell apart. During David’s agonizing months of convalescence in Virginia, Alex tried repeatedly to see his once close friend, to explain, to tell his part of the bloody story—to apologize with every fiber of his being.
David, however, had no forgiveness in his soul.
“If he walks through that door, I’ll kill him” had been his words.
That would change now, thought Webb, as he quickened his pace down the street toward the house. Whatever Conklin’s faults and duplicities, few men in the Intelligence community had the insights and the sources he had developed over a lifetime of commitment. David had not thought about Alex in months; he thought about him now, suddenly remembering the last time his name came up in conversation. Mo Panov had rendered his verdict. “I can’t help him because he doesn’t want to be helped. He’ll carry his last bottle of sour mash up to that great big black operations room in the sky bombed out of his mercifully dead skull. If he lasts to his retirement at the end of the year, I’ll be astonished. On the other hand, if he stays pickled they may put him in a strait-jacket, and that’ll keep him out of traffic. I swear I don’t know how he gets to work every day. That pension is one hell of a survival therapy—better than anything Freud ever left us.” Panov had spoken those words more than five months ago. Conklin was still in place.
I’m sorry, Mo. His survival one way or the other doesn’t concern me. So far as I’m concerned, his status is dead.
It was not dead now, thought David, as he ran up the steps of the oversized Victorian porch. Alex Conklin was very much alive, whether drunk or not, and even if he was preserved in bourbon, he had his sources, those contacts he had cultivated during a lifetime of devotion to the shadow world that ultimately rejected him. Within that world debts were owed, and they were paid out of fear.
Alexander Conklin. Number one on Jason Bourne’s hit list.
He opened the door and once again stood in the hallway, but his eyes did not see the wreckage. Instead, the logician in him ordered him to go back into his study and begin the procedures; there was nothing but confusion without imposed order, and confusion led to questions—he could not afford them. Everything had to be precise within the reality he was creating so as to divert the curious from the reality that was.
He sat down at the desk and tried to focus his thoughts. There was the ever-present spiral notebook from the College Shop in front of him. He opened the thick cover to the first lined page and reached for a pencil.… He could not pick it up! His hand shook so much that his whole body trembled. He held his breath and made a fist, clenching it until his fingernails cut into flesh. He closed his eyes, then opened them, forcing his hand to return to the pencil, commanding it to do its job. Slowly, awkwardly, his fingers gripped the thin, yellow shaft and moved the pencil into position. The words were barely legible, but they were there.
The university—phone president and dean of studies. Family crisis, not Canada—can be traced. Invent—a brother in Europe, perhaps. Yes, Europe. Leave of absence—brief leave of absence. Right away. Will stay in touch.
House—call rental agent, same story. Ask Jack to check periodically. He has key. Turn thermostat to 60°.
Mail—fill out form at Post Office. Hold all mail.
Newspapers—cancel.
The little things, the goddamned little things—the unimportant daily trivia became so terribly important and had to be taken care of so that there would be no sign whatsoever of an abrupt departure without a planned return. That was vital; he had to remember it with every word he spoke. Questions had to be kept to a minimum, the inevitable speculations reduced to manageable proportions, which meant he had to confront the obvious conclusion that his recent bodyguards somehow led to his leave of absence. To defuse the connection, the most plausible way was to emphasize the short duration of that absence and to face the issue with a straightforward dismissal, such as “Incidentally, if you’re wondering whether this has anything to do with my concern for personal safety, well, don’t. That’s a closed book; it didn’t have much merit anyway.” He would know better how to respond while talking to both the university’s president and the dean; their own reactions would guide him. If anything could guide him. If he was capable of thinking! Don’t slide back—keep going. Move that pencil! Fill out the page with things to do—then another page, and another! Passports, initials on wallets or billfolds or shirts to correspond with the names being used; airline reservations—connecting flights, no direct routes—Oh, God! To where? Marie! Where are you?
Stop it! Control yourself. You are capable, you must be capable. You have no choice, so be what you once were. Feel ice. Be ice.
Without warning, the shell he was building around himself was shattered by the earsplitting sound of the telephone inches from his hand on the desk. He looked at it, swallowing, wondering if he was capable of sounding remotely normal. It rang again, a terrible insistence in its ring. You have no choice.
He picked it up, gripping the receiver with such force that his knuckles turned white. He managed to get out the single word “Yes?”
“This is the mobile-air operator, satellite transmission—”
“Who? What did you say?”
“I have a midflight radio call for a Mr. Webb. Are you Mr. Webb, sir?”
“Yes.”
And then the world he knew blew up in a thousand jagged mirrors, each an image of screaming torment.
“David!”
“Marie?”
“Don’t panic, darling! Do you hear me, don’t panic!” Her voice came through the static; she was trying not to shout but could not help herself.
“Are you all right? The note said you were hurt—wounded!”
“I’m all right. A few scratches, that’s all.”
“Where are you?”
“Over the ocean, I’m sure they’ll tell you that much. I don’t know; I was sedated.”
“Oh, Jesus! I can’t stand it! They took you away!”
“Pull yourself together, David. I know what this is doing to you, but they don’t. Do you understand what I’m saying? They don’t!”
She was sending him a coded message; it was not hard to decipher. He had to be the man he hated. He had to be Jason Bourne, and the assassin was alive and well and residing in the body of David Webb.
“All right. Yes, all right. I’ve been going out of my mind!”
“Your voice is being amplified—”
“Naturally.”
“They’re letting me speak to you so you’ll know I’m alive.”
“Have they hurt you?”
“Not intentionally.”
“What the hell are ‘scratches’?”
“I struggled. I fought. And I was brought up on a ranch.”
“Oh, my God—”
“David, please! Don’t let them do this to you!”
“To me? It’s you!”
“I know, darling. I think they’re testing you, can you understand that?”
Again the message. Be Jason Bourne for both their sakes—for both their lives. “All right. Yes, all right.” He lessened the intensity of his voice, trying to control himself. “When did it happen?” he asked.
“This morning, about an hour after you left.”
“This morning? Christ, all day! How?”
“They came to the door. Two men—”
“Who?”
“I’m permitted to say they’re from the Far East. Actually, I don’t know any more than that. They asked me to accompany them and I refused. I ran into the kitchen and saw a knife. I stabbed one of them in the hand.”
“The hand print on the door …”
“I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“A man wants to talk to you, David. Listen to him, but not in anger—not in a rage—can you understand that?”
“All right. Yes, all right. I understand.”
The man’s voice came on the line. It was hesitant but precise, almost British in its delivery, someone who had been taught English by an Englishman, or by someone who had lived in the U.K. Nevertheless, it was identifiably Oriental; the accent was southern China, the pitch, the short vowels and sharp consonants sounding Cantonese.
“We do not care to harm your wife, Mr. Webb, but if it is necessary, it will be unavoidable.”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said David coldly.
“Jason Bourne speaks?”
“He speaks.”
“The acknowledgment is the first step in our understanding.”
“What understanding?”
“You took something of great value from a man.”
“You’ve taken something of great value from me.”
“She is alive.”
“She’d better stay that way.”
“Another is dead. You killed her.”
“Are you sure about that?” Bourne would not agree readily unless it served his purpose to do so.
“We are very sure.”
“What’s your proof?”
“You were seen. A tall man who stayed in the shadows and raced through the hotel corridors and across fire escapes with the movements of a mountain cat.”
“Then I wasn’t really seen, was I? Nor could I have been. I was thousands of miles away.” Bourne would always give himself an option.
“In these times of fast aircraft, what is distance?” The Oriental paused, then added sharply, “You canceled your duties for a period of five days two and a half weeks ago.”
“And if I told you I attended a symposium on the Sung and Yuan dynasties down in Boston—which was very much in line with my duties—”
“I am startled,” interrupted the man courteously, “that Jason Bourne would employ such a lamentably feeble excuse.”
He had not wanted to go to Boston. That symposium was light years away from his lectures, but he had been officially asked to attend. The request came from Washington, from the Cultural Exchange Program and filtered through the university’s Department of Oriental Studies. Christ! Every pawn was in place!
“Excuse for what?”
“For being where he was not. Large crowds mingling among the exhibits, certain people paid to swear you were there.”
“That’s ridiculous, not to say patently amateurish. I don’t pay.”
“You were paid.”
“I was? How?”
“Through the same bank you used before. In Zurich. The Gemeinschaft in Zurich—on the Bahnhofstrasse, of course.”
“Odd I haven’t received a statement,” said David, listening carefully.
“When you were Jason Bourne in Europe, you never needed one, for yours was a three-zero account—the most secret, which is very secret indeed in Switzerland. However, we found a draft transfer made out to the Gemeinschaft among the papers of a man—a dead man, of course.”
“Of course. But not the man I supposedly killed.”
“Certainly not. But one who ordered that man killed, along with a treasured prize of my employer.”
“A prize is a trophy, isn’t it?”
“Both are won, Mr. Bourne. Enough. You are you. Get to the Regent Hotel in Kowloon. Register under any name you wish, but ask for Suite six-nine-zero—say you believe arrangements were made to reserve it.”
“How convenient. My own rooms.”
“It will save time.”
“It’ll also take me time to make arrangements here.”
“We are certain you will not raise alarms and will move as rapidly as you can. Be there by the end of the week.”
“Count on both. Put my wife back on the line.”
“I regret I cannot do that.”
“For Christ’s sake, you can hear everything we say!”
“You will speak with her in Kowloon.”
There was an echoing click, and he could hear nothing on the line but static. He replaced the phone, his grip so intense a cramp had formed between his thumb and forefinger. He managed to remove his clenched hand and shook it violently. He was grateful that the pain allowed him to reenter reality more gradually. He grabbed his right hand with his left, held it steady, and pressed his left thumb into the cramp, and as he watched his fingers spread free he knew what he had to do—do without wasting an hour on the all-important unimportant trivia. He had to reach Conklin in Washington, the gutter rat who had tried to kill him in broad daylight on New York’s Seventy-first Street. Alex, drunk or sober, made no distinction between the hours of day and night, nor did the operations he knew so well, for there was no night and day where his work was concerned. There was only the flat light of fluorescent tubes in offices that never closed. If he had to, he would press Alexander Conklin until the blood rolled out of the gutter rat’s eyes; he would learn what he had to know, knowing that Conklin could get the information.
Webb rose unsteadily from the chair, walked out of his study and into the kitchen, where he poured himself a drink, grateful again that although his hand still trembled, it did so less than before.
He could delegate certain things. Jason Bourne never delegated anything, but he was still David Webb and there were several people on campus he could trust—certainly not with the truth but with a useful lie. By the time he returned to his study and the telephone he had chosen his conduit. Conduit, for God’s sake! A word from the past he thought he had been free to forget. But the young man would do what he asked; the graduate student’s master’s thesis would ultimately be graded by his adviser, one David Webb. Use the advantage, whether it’s total darkness or blinding sunlight, but use it to frighten or use it with compassion, whatever worked.
“Hello, James? It’s David Webb.”
“Hi, Mr. Webb. Where’d I screw up?”
“You haven’t, Jim. Things have screwed up for me and I could use a little extracurricular help. Would you be interested? It’ll take a little time.”
“This weekend? The game?”
“No, just tomorrow morning. Maybe an hour or so, if that. Then a little bonus in terms of your curriculum vitae, if that doesn’t sound too horseshit.”
“Name it.”
“Well, confidentially—and I’d appreciate the confidentiality—I have to be away for a week, perhaps two, and I’m about to call the powers that be and suggest that you sit in for me. It’s no problem for you; it’s the Manchu overthrow and the Sino-Russian agreements that sound very familiar today.”
“1900 to around 1912,” said the master’s candidate with confidence.
“You can refine it, and don’t overlook the Japanese and Port Arthur and old Teddy Roosevelt. Line it up and draw parallels; that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“Can do. Will do. I’ll hit the sources. What about tomorrow?”
“I have to leave tonight, Jim; my wife’s already on her way. Have you got a pencil?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know what they say about piling up newspapers and the mail, so I want you to call the newspaper delivery and go down to the post office and tell them both to hold everything—sign whatever you have to sign. Then call the Scully Agency here in town and speak to Jack or Adele and tell them to …”
The master’s candidate was recruited. The next call was far easier than David expected, as the president of the university was at a dinner party in his honor at the president’s residence and was far more interested in his upcoming speech than in an obscure—if unusual—associate-professor’s leave of absence. “Please reach the dean of studies, Mr.—Wedd. I’m raising money, damn it.”
The dean of studies was not so easily handled. “David, has this anything to do with those people who were walking around with you last week? I mean, after all, old boy, I’m one of the few people here who know that you were involved with some very hush-hush things in Washington.”
“Nothing whatsoever, Doug. That was nonsense from the beginning; this isn’t. My brother was seriously injured, his car completely totaled. I’ve got to get over to Paris for a few days, maybe a week, that’s all.”
“I was in Paris two years ago. The drivers are absolute maniacs.”
“No worse than Boston, Doug, and a hell of a lot better than Cairo.”
“Well, I suppose I can make arrangements. A week isn’t that long, and Johnson was out for nearly a month with pneumonia—”
“I’ve already made arrangements—with your approval, of course. Jim Crowther, a master’s candidate, will fill in for me. It’s material he knows and he’ll do a good job.”
“Oh, yes, Crowther, a bright young man, in spite of his beard. Never did trust beards, but then I was here in the sixties.”
“Try growing one. It may set you free.”
“I’ll let that go by. Are you sure this hasn’t anything to do with those people from the State Department? I really must have the facts, David. What’s your brother’s name? What Paris hospital is he in?”
“I don’t know the hospital, but Marie probably does; she left this morning. Good-bye, Doug. I’ll call you tomorrow or the next day. I have to get down to Logan Airport in Boston.”
“David?”
“Yes?”
“Why do I feel you’re not being entirely truthful with me?”
Webb remembered. “Because I’ve never been in this position before,” he said. “Asking a favor from a friend because of someone I’d rather not think about.”
David hung up the phone.
The flight from Boston to Washington was maddening because of a fossilized professor of pedantry—David never did get the course—who had the seat next to his. The man’s voice was as irritatingly authentic as the ponderous tones of the accomplished actor on television who assumed the role of the learned elder of a brokerage house and insisted, “They earn it!” The phrase kept repeating itself over and over again in Webb’s mind regardless of what the professor said, and he kept saying a great deal. It was only when they landed at National Airport that the pedant admitted the truth. “I’ve been a bore, but do forgive me. I’m terrified of flying, so I just keep chattering. Silly, isn’t it?”
“Not at all, but why didn’t you say so? It’s hardly a crime.”
“Fear of peer pressure, or scoffing condemnation, I imagine.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I’m sitting next to someone like you.” Webb smiled briefly. “Maybe I could help.”
“That’s kind of you. And very honest. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome.”
David retrieved his suitcase from the luggage belt and went outside for a taxi, annoyed that the cabs were not taking single fares but insisting on two or more passengers going in the same direction. His backseat companion was a woman, an attractive woman who used body language in concert with imploring eyes. It made no sense to him, so he made no sense of her, but thanked her for dropping him off first.
He registered at the Jefferson Hotel on Sixteenth Street under a false name invented at the moment. The hotel, however, was carefully chosen; it was a block and a half from Conklin’s apartment, the same apartment the CIA officer had lived in for nearly twenty years when he was not in the field. It was an address David made sure to get before he left Virginia—again instinct, visceral distrust. He had a telephone number as well, but knew it was useless; he could not phone Conklin. The once deep-cover strategist would mount defenses, more mental than physical, and Webb wanted to confront an unprepared man. There would be no warning, only a presence demanding a debt that was owed and must now be paid.
David glanced at his watch; it was ten minutes to midnight, as good a time as any and better than most. He washed, changed his shirt, and finally dug out one of the two dismantled guns from his suitcase, removing it from the thick, foil-lined bag. He snapped the parts in place, tested the firing mechanism, and shoved the clip into the receiving chamber. He held the weapon out and studied his hand, satisfied that there was no tremor. It felt clean and unremarkable. Eight hours ago he would not have believed he could hold a gun in his hand for fear he might fire it. That was eight hours ago, not now. Now it was comfortable, a part of him, an extension of Jason Bourne.
He left the Jefferson and walked down Sixteenth Street, turning right at the corner and noting the descending numbers of the old apartments—very old apartments, reminding him of the brownstones on the Upper East Side of New York. There was a curious logic in the observation, considering Conklin’s role in the Treadstone project, he thought. Treadstone 71’s sterile house in Manhattan had been a brownstone, an odd, bulging structure with upper windows of tinted blue glass. He could see it so clearly, hear the voices so clearly, without really understanding—the incubating factory for Jason Bourne.
Do it again!
Who is the face?
What’s his background? His method of kill?
Wrong! You’re wrong! Do it again!
Who’s this? What’s the connection to Carlos?
Damn it, think! There can be no mistakes!
A brownstone. Where his other self was created, the man he needed so much now.
There it was, Conklin’s apartment. He was on the second floor, facing front. The lights were on; Alex was home and awake. Webb crossed the street, aware that a misty drizzle had suddenly filled the air, diffusing the glare of the streetlamps, halos beneath the orbs of rippled glass. He walked up the steps and opened the door to the short foyer; he stepped inside and studied the names under the mailboxes of the six flats. Each had a webbed circle under the name into which a caller announced himself.
There was no time for complicated invention. If Panov’s verdict was accurate, his voice would be sufficient. He pressed Conklin’s button and waited for a response; it came after the better part of a minute.
“Yes? Who’s there?”
“Harry Babcock heah,” said David, the accent exaggerated. “I’ve got to see you, Alex.”
“Harry? What the hell …? Sure, sure, come on up!” The buzzer droned, broke off once—a finger momentarily displaced.
David went inside and ran up the narrow staircase to the second floor, hoping to be outside Conklin’s door when he opened it. He arrived less than a second before Alex, who, with his eyes only partially focused, pulled back the door and began to scream. Webb lunged, clamping his hand across Conklin’s face, twisting the CIA man around in a hammerlock, and kicking the door shut.
He had not physically attacked a person for as long as he could remember with any accuracy. It should have been strange, even awkward, but it was neither. It was perfectly natural. Oh, Christ!
“I’m going to take my hand away, Alex, but if you raise your voice it goes back. And you won’t survive if it does, is that clear?” David removed his hand, yanking Conklin’s head back as he did so.
“You’re one hell of a surprise,” said the CIA man, coughing, and lurching into a limp as he was released. “You also call for a drink.”
“I gather it’s a pretty steady diet.”
“We are what we are,” answered Conklin, awkwardly reaching down for an empty glass on the coffee table in front of a large, well-worn couch. He carried it over to a copper-plated dry bar against the wall where identical bottles of bourbon stood in a single row. There were no mixers, no water, just an ice bucket; it was not a bar for guests. It was for the host in residence, its gleaming metal proclaiming it to be an extravagance the resident permitted himself. The rest of the living room was not in its class. Somehow that copper bar was a statement.
“To what,” continued Conklin, pouring himself a drink, “do I owe this dubious pleasure? You refused to see me in Virginia—said you’d kill me, and that’s a fact. That’s what you said. You’d kill me if I walked through the door, you said that.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Probably. But then I usually am around this time. Do you want to start out with a lecture? It won’t do a hell of a lot of good, but give it the old college try if you want to.”
“You’re sick.”
“No, I’m drunk, that’s what you said. Am I repeating myself?”
“Ad nauseam.”
“Sorry about that.” Conklin replaced the bottle, took several swallows from his glass and looked at Webb. “I didn’t walk through your door, you came through mine, but I suppose that’s immaterial. Did you come here to finally carry out your threat, to fulfill the prophecy, to put past wrongs to rights or whatever you call it? That rather obvious flat bulge under your jacket I doubt is a pint of whisky.”
“I have no overriding urge to see you dead any longer, but yes, I may kill you. You could provoke that urge very easily.”
“Fascinating. How could I do that?”
“By not providing me with what I need—and you can provide it.”
“You must know something I don’t.”
“I know you’ve got twenty years in gray to black operations and that you wrote the book on most of them.”
“History,” muttered the CIA man, drinking.
“It’s revivable. Unlike mine, your memory’s intact. Mine’s limited, but not yours. I need information, I need answers.”
“To what? For what?”
“They took my wife away,” said David simply, ice in that simplicity. “They took Marie away from me.”
Conklin’s eyes blinked through his fixed stare. “Say that again. I don’t think I heard you right.”
“You heard! And you bastards are somewhere deep down in the rotten scenario!”
“Not me! I wouldn’t—I couldn’t! What the hell are you saying? Marie’s gone?”
“She’s in a plane over the Pacific. I’m to follow. I’m to fly to Kowloon.”
“You’re crazy! You’re out of your mind!”
“You listen to me, Alex. You listen carefully to everything I tell you.…” Again the words poured forth, but now with a control he had not been able to summon with Morris Panov. Conklin drunk had sharper perceptions than most sober men in the Intelligence community, and he had to understand. Webb could not allow any lapses in the narrative; it had to be clear from the beginning—from that moment when he spoke to Marie over the gymnasium phone and heard her say, “David, come home. There’s someone here you must see. Quickly, darling.”
As he talked, Conklin limped unsteadily across the room to the couch and sat down, his eyes never once leaving Webb’s face. When David had finished describing the hotel around the corner, Alex shook his head and reached for his drink.
“It’s eerie,” he said after a period of silence, of intense concentration fighting the clouds of alcohol, and put the glass down. “It’s as though a strategy was mounted and went off the wire.”
“Off the wire?”
“Out of control.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” went on the former tactician, weaving slightly, trying not to slur his words. “You’re given a script that may or may not be accurate, then the targets change—your wife for you—and it’s played out. You react predictably, but when you mention Medusa, you’re told in no uncertain terms that you’ll be burned if you persist.”
“That’s predictable.”
“It’s no way to prime a subject. Suddenly your wife’s on a back burner, and Medusa’s the overriding danger. Someone miscalculated. Something’s off a wire, something happened.”
“You’ve got what’s left of tonight and tomorrow to get me some answers. I’m on the seven P.M. flight to Hong Kong.”
Conklin sat forward, shaking his head slowly and, with his right hand trembling, again reached for his bourbon. “You’re in the wrong part of town,” he said, swallowing. “I thought you knew; you made a tight little allusion to the sauce. I’m useless to you. I’m off limits, a basket case. No one tells me anything, and why should they? I’m a relic, Webb. Nobody wants to have a goddamned thing to do with me. I’m washed out and up and one more step I’ll be beyond-salvage—which I believe is a phrase locked in that crazy head of yours.”
“Yes, it is. ‘Kill him. He knows too much.’ ”
“Maybe you want to put me there, is that it? Feed him, wake up the sleeping Medusa, and make sure he gets it from his own. That would balance.”
“You put me there,” said David, taking the gun out of the holster under his jacket.
“Yes, I did,” agreed Conklin, nodding his head, and gazing at the weapon. “Because I knew Delta, and as far as I was concerned, anything was possible—I’d seen you in the field. My God, you blew a man’s head off—one of your own men—in Tam Quan because you believed—you didn’t know, you believed—he was radioing a platoon on the Ho Chi Minh! No charges, no defense, just another swift execution in the jungle. It turned out you were right, but you might have been wrong! You could have brought him in; we might have learned things, but no, not Delta! He made up his own rules. Sure, you could have turned in Zurich!”
“I don’t have the specifics about Tam Quan, but others did,” said David in quiet anger. “I had to get nine men out of there—there wasn’t room for a tenth who could have slowed us down or bolted, giving away our position.”
“Good! Your rules. You’re inventive, so find a parallel here and for Christ’s sake pull the trigger like you did with him—our bona fide Jason Bourne! I told you in Paris to do it!” Breathing hard, Conklin paused and leveled his bloodshot eyes at Webb; he spoke in a plaintive whisper. “I told you then and I tell you now. Put me out of it. I don’t have the guts to.”
“We were friends, Alex!” shouted David. “You came to our house! You ate with us and played with the kids! You swam with them in the river.…” Oh my God! It was all coming back. The images, the faces … Oh, Christ, the faces … The bodies floating in circles of water and blood … Control yourself! Reject them! Reject! Only now. Now!
“That was in another country, David. And besides—I don’t think you want me to complete the line.”
“ ‘Besides the wench is dead.’ No, I’d prefer you didn’t repeat the line.”
“No matter what,” said Conklin hoarsely, swallowing most of his whisky. “We were both erudite, weren’t we?… I can’t help you.”
“Yes, you can. You will.”
“Get off it, soldier. There’s no way.”
“Debts are owed you. Call them in. I’m calling yours.”
“Sorry. You can pull that trigger anytime you want, but if you don’t, I’m not putting myself beyond-salvage or blowing everything that’s coming to me—legitimately coming to me. If I’m allowed to go to pasture, I intend to graze well. They took enough. I want some back.” The CIA officer got up from the couch and awkwardly walked across the room toward the copper bar. His limp was more pronounced than Webb remembered it, his right foot no more serviceable than an encased stump dragged at an angle across the floor, the effort painfully obvious.
“The leg’s worse, isn’t it?” asked David curtly.
“I’ll live with it.”
“You’ll die with it too,” said Webb, raising his automatic. “Because I can’t live without my wife and you don’t give a goddamn. Do you know what that makes you, Alex? After everything you did to us, all the lies, the traps, the scum you used to nail us with—”
“You!” interrupted Conklin, filling his glass, and staring at the gun. “Not her.”
“Kill one of us, you kill us both, but you wouldn’t understand that.”
“I never had the luxury.”
“Your lousy self-pity wouldn’t let you! You just want to wallow in it all by yourself and let the booze do the thinking. ‘There but for a fucking land mine goes the Director, or the Monk or the Gray Fox—the Angleton of the eighties.’ You’re pathetic. You’ve got your life, your mind—”
“Jesus, take them away! Shoot! Pull the goddamn trigger but leave me something!” Conklin suddenly swallowed his entire drink; an extended, rolling, retching cough followed. After the spasm, he looked at David, his eyes watery, the red veins pronounced. “You think I wouldn’t try to help if I could, you son of a bitch?” he whispered huskily. “You think I like all that ‘thinking’ I indulge myself in? You’re the one who’s dense, the one who’s stubborn, David. You don’t understand, do you?” The CIA man held the glass in front of him with two fingers and let it drop to the hardwood floor; it shattered, fragments flying in all directions. Then he spoke, his voice a high-pitched singsong, as below the rheumy eyes a sad smile crept across his lips. “I can’t stand another failure, old friend. And I’d fail, believe me. I’d kill you both and I just don’t think I could live with that.”
Webb lowered the gun. “Not with what you’ve got in your head, not with what you’ve learned. Anyway, I’ll take my chances; my options are limited, and I choose you. To be honest, I don’t know anyone else. Also, I’ve several ideas, maybe even a plan, but it’s got to be set up at high speed.”
“Oh?” Conklin held on to the bar to steady himself.
“May I make some coffee, Alex?”