The cacophony spun out of control as the crowds swelled through the amusement park in the countryside on the outskirts of Baltimore. The summer night was hot, and nearly everywhere faces and necks were drenched with sweat, except for those screaming as they plunged over the crests of a roller coaster, or shrieking as they plummeted down the narrow, twisting gullies of racing water in torpedo sleds. The garishly colored, manically blinking lights along the midway were joined by the grating sounds of emphatic music metallically erupting out of an excess of loudspeakers—calliopes presto, marches prestissimo. Pitchmen yelled above the din, nasally hawking their wares in monotonic harangues while erratic explosions in the sky lit up the darkness, sending sprays of myriad fireworks cascading over a small adjacent black lake. Roman candles bright, arcing bursts of fire blinding.
A row of Hit-the-Gong machines drew contorted faces and thick necks bulging with veins as men sought furiously and frequently in frustration to prove their manhood, crashing heavy wooden mallets down on the deceitful planks that too often refused to send the little red balls up to the bells. Across the way, others shrieked with menacing enthusiasm as they crashed their Dodge ’Em carts into the whirling, surrounding vehicles, each collision a triumph of superior aggression, each combatant a momentary movie star who overcomes all odds against him. Gunfight at O. K. Corral at 9:27 in the evening in a conflict that meant nothing.
Farther along was a minor monument to sudden death, a shooting gallery that bore little resemblance to the innocent minimum-caliber variety found in state fairs and rural carnivals. Instead, it was a microcosm of the most lethal equipment of modern weaponry. There were mocked-up versions of MAC-10 and Uzi machine pistols, steel-framed missile launchers and antitank bazookas, and, finally, a frightening replica of a flamethrower spewing out harsh, straight beams of light through billowing clouds of dark smoke. And again there were the perspiring faces, continuous beads of sweat rolling over maniacal eyes and down across stretched necks—husbands, wives and children—their features grotesque, twisted out of shape as if each were blasting away at hated enemies—wives, husbands, parents and offspring. All were locked in a never-ending war without meaning—at 9:29 in the evening, in an amusement park whose theme was violence. Unmitigated and unwarranted, man against himself and all his hostilities, the worst, of course, being his fears.
A slender figure, a cane gripped in his right hand, limped past a booth where angry, excited customers were hurling sharp-pointed darts into balloons on which were stenciled the faces of public figures. As the rubber heads exploded the bursts gave rise to fierce arguments for and against the sagging, pinched remnants of political icons and their dart-wielding executioners. The limping man continued down the midway, peering ahead through the maze of strollers as if he were looking for a specific location in a hectic, crowded, unfamiliar part of town. He was dressed casually but neatly in a jacket and sport shirt as though the oppressive heat had no effect on him and the jacket was somehow a requirement. His face was the pleasant face of a middle-aged man, but worn with premature lines and deep shadows under the eyes, all of which was the result more of the life he had led than of the accumulated years. His name was Alexander Conklin, and he was a retired covert operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. He was also at this moment apprehensive and consumed with anxiety. He did not wish to be in this place at this hour, and he could not imagine what catastrophic event had taken place that forced him to be there.
He approached the pandemonium of the shooting gallery and suddenly gasped, stopping all movement, his eyes locked on a tall, balding man about his own age with a seersucker jacket slung over his shoulder. Morris Panov was walking toward the thunderous counter of the shooting gallery from the opposite direction! Why? What had happened? Conklin snapped his head around in every direction, his eyes darting toward faces and bodies, instinctively knowing that he and the psychiatrist were being watched. It was too late to stop Panov from entering the inner circle of the meeting ground but perhaps not too late to get them both out! The retired intelligence officer reached under his jacket for the small Beretta automatic that was his constant companion, and lurched rapidly forward, limping and flailing his cane against the crowd, smashing kneecaps and prodding stomachs and breasts and kidneys until the stunned, angry strollers erupted in successive cries of shock, a near riot in the making. He then rushed forward, slamming his frail body into the bewildered doctor and shouting into Panov’s face through the roars of the crowd, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“The same thing I assume you are. David, or should I say Jason? That’s what the telegram said.”
“It’s a trap!”
There was a piercing scream overriding the surrounding melee. Both Conklin and Panov instantly looked over at the shooting gallery only yards away. An obese woman with a pinched face had been shot in the throat. The crowd went into a frenzy. Conklin spun around trying to see where the shot came from, but the panic was at full pitch; he saw nothing but rushing figures. He grabbed Panov and propelled him through the screaming, frantic bodies across the midway and again through the strolling crowds to the base of the massive roller coaster at the end of the park, where excited customers were edging toward the booth through the deafening noise.
“My God!” yelled Panov. “Was that meant for one of us?”
“Maybe … maybe not,” replied the former intelligence officer breathlessly as sirens and whistles were heard in the distance.
“You said it was a trap!”
“Because we both got a crazy telegram from David using a name he hasn’t used in five years—Jason Bourne! And if I’m not mistaken, your message also said that under no condition should we call his house.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s a trap.… You move better than I do, Mo, so move those legs of yours. Get out of here—run like a son of a bitch and find a telephone. A pay phone, nothing traceable!”
“What?”
“Call his house! Tell David to pack up Marie and the kids and get out of there!”
“What?”
“Someone found us, Doctor! Someone looking for Jason Bourne—who’s been looking for him for years and won’t stop until he’s got him in his gun sight.… You were in charge of David’s messed-up head, and I pulled every rotten string in Washington to get him and Marie out of Hong Kong alive.… The rules were broken and we were found, Mo. You and me! The only officially recorded connections to Jason Bourne, address and occupation unknown.”
“Do you know what you’re saying, Alex?”
“You’re goddamned right I do.… It’s Carlos. Carlos the Jackal. Get out of here, Doctor. Reach your former patient and tell him to disappear!”
“Then what’s he to do?”
“I don’t have many friends, certainly no one I trust, but you do. Give him the name of somebody—say, one of your medical buddies who gets urgent calls from his patients the way I used to call you. Tell David to reach him or her when he’s secure. Give him a code.”
“A code?”
“Jesus, Mo, use your head! An alias, a Jones or a Smith—”
“They’re rather common names—”
“Then Schicklgruber or Moskowitz, whatever you like! Just tell him to let us know where he is.”
“I understand.”
“Now get out of here, and don’t go home!… Take a room at the Brookshire in Baltimore under the name of—Morris, Phillip Morris. I’ll meet you there later.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Something I hate.… Without my cane I’m buying a ticket for this fucking roller coaster. Nobody’ll look for a cripple on one of these things. It scares the hell out of me, but it’s a logical exit even if I have to stay on the damn thing all night.… Now get out of here! Hurry!”
The station wagon raced south down a backcountry road through the hills of New Hampshire toward the Massachusetts border, the driver a long-framed man, his sharp-featured face intense, the muscles of his jaw pulsating, his clear light-blue eyes furious. Beside him sat his strikingly attractive wife, the reddish glow of her auburn hair heightened by the dashboard lights. In her arms was an infant, a baby girl of eight months; in the first backseat was another child, a blond-haired boy of five, asleep under a blanket, a portable guardrail protecting him from sudden stops. The father was David Webb, professor of Oriental studies, but once part of the notorious, unspoken-of Medusa, twice the legend that was Jason Bourne—assassin.
“We knew it had to happen,” said Marie St. Jacques Webb, Canadian by birth, economist by profession, savior of David Webb by accident. “It was merely a question of time.”
“It’s crazy!” David whispered so as not to wake the children, his intensity in no way diminished by his whisper. “Everything’s buried, maximum archive security and all the rest of that crap! How did anyone find Alex and Mo?”
“We don’t know, but Alex will start looking. There’s no one better than Alex, you said that yourself—”
“He’s marked now—he’s a dead man,” interrupted Webb grimly.
“That’s premature, David. ‘He’s the best there ever was,’ those were your words.”
“The only time he wasn’t was thirteen years ago in Paris.”
“Because you were better—”
“No! Because I didn’t know who I was, and he was operating on prior data that I didn’t know a damn thing about. He assumed it was me out there, but I didn’t know me, so I couldn’t act according to his script.… He’s still the best. He saved both our lives in Hong Kong.”
“Then you’re saying what I’m saying, aren’t you? We’re in good hands.”
“Alex’s, yes. Not Mo’s. That poor beautiful man is dead. They’ll take him and break him!”
“He’d go to his grave before giving anyone information about us.”
“He won’t have a choice. They’ll shoot him up to the moon with Amytals and his whole life will be on tape. Then they’ll kill him and come after me … after us, which is why you and the kids are heading south, way south. The Caribbean.”
“I’ll send them, darling. Not me.”
“Will you stop it! We agreed when Jamie was born. It’s why we got the place down there, why we damn near bought your kid brother’s soul to look after it for us.… Also, he’s done pretty damn well. We now own half interest in a flourishing inn down a dirt road on an island nobody ever heard of until that Canadian hustler landed there in a seaplane.”
“Johnny was always the aggressive type. Dad once said he could sell a broken-down heifer as a prime steer and no one would check the parts.”
“The point is he loves you … and the kids. I’m also counting on that wild man’s—Never mind, I trust Johnny.”
“While you’re trusting so much in my younger brother, don’t trust your sense of direction. You just passed the turn to the cabin.”
“Goddamn it!” cried Webb, braking the car and swerving around. “Tomorrow! You and Jamie and Alison are heading out of Logan Airport. To the island!”
“We’ll discuss it, David.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.” Webb breathed deeply, steadily, imposing a strange control. “I’ve been here before,” he said quietly.
Marie looked at her husband, his suddenly passive face outlined in the dim wash of the dashboard lights. What she saw frightened her far more than the specter of the Jackal. She was not looking at David Webb the soft-spoken scholar. She was staring at a man they both thought had disappeared from their lives forever.