Steven DeSole, keeper of the deepest secrets for the Central Intelligence Agency, forced his overweight frame out of the driver’s seat. He stood in the deserted parking lot of the small shopping center in Annapolis, Maryland, where the only source of light was the storefront neons of a closed gas station, with a large German shepherd sleeping in the window. DeSole adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses and squinted at his watch, barely able to see the radium hands. As near as he could determine, it was between 3:15 and 3:20 in the morning, which meant he was early and that was good. He had to adjust his thoughts; he was unable to do so while driving, as his severe night blindness necessitated complete concentration on the road, and hiring a taxi or a driver was out of the question.
The information was at first … well, merely a name … a rather common name. His name is Webb, the caller had said. Thank you, he had replied. A sketchy description was given, one fitting several million men, so he had thanked the informer again and hung up the phone. But then, in the recesses of his analyst’s mind, by profession and training a warehouse for both essential and incidental data, an alarm went off. Webb, Webb … amnesia? A clinic in Virginia years ago. A man more dead than alive had been flown down from a hospital in New York, the medical file so maximum classified it could not even be shown to the Oval Office. Yet interrogation specialists talk in dark corners, as often to relieve frustration as to impress a listener, and he had heard about a recalcitrant, unmanageable patient, an amnesiac they called “Davey” and sometimes just a short, sharp, hostile “Webb,” formerly a member of Saigon’s infamous Medusa, and a man they suspected of feigning his loss of memory.… Loss of memory? Alex Conklin had told them that the Medusan they had trained to go out in deep cover for Carlos the Jackal, an agent provocateur they called Jason Bourne, had lost his memory. Lost his memory and nearly lost his life because his controls disbelieved the story of amnesia! That was the man they called “Davey” … David. David Webb was Conklin’s Jason Bourne! How could it be otherwise?
David Webb! And he had been at Norman Swayne’s house the night the Agency was told that poor cuckolded Swayne had taken his own life, a suicide that had not been reported in the papers for reasons DeSole could not possibly understand! David Webb. The old Medusa. Jason Bourne. Conklin. Why?
The headlights of an approaching limousine shot through the darkness at the far end of the parking lot, swerving in a semicircle toward the CIA analyst, causing him to shut his eyes—the refracted light through his thick lenses was painful. He had to make the sequence of his revelations clear to these men. They were his means to a life he and his wife had dreamed of—money. Not bureaucratic less-than-money, but real money. Education at the best universities for their grandchildren, not the state colleges and the begged-for scholarships that came with the government salary of a bureaucrat—a bureaucrat so much better than those around him it was pitiful. DeSole the Mute Mole, they called him, but would not pay him for his expertise, the very expertise that prohibited him from going into the private sector, surrounding him with so many legal restrictions that it was pointless to apply. Someday Washington would learn; that day would not come in his lifetime, so six grandchildren had made the decision for him. The empathetic new Medusa had beckoned with generosity, and in his bitterness he had come running.
He rationalized that it was no more an unethical decision on his part than those made every year by scores of Pentagon personnel who walked out of Arlington and into the corporate arms of their old friends the defense contractors. As an army colonel once said to him, “It’s work now and get paid later,” and God knew that one Steven DeSole worked like hell for his country, but his country hardly reciprocated in kind. He hated the name Medusa, though, and rarely if ever used it because it was a symbol from another time, ominous and misleading. The great oil companies and railroads sprang from the chicanery and the venality of the robber barons, but they were not now what they were then. Medusa may have been born in the corruption of a war-ravaged Saigon, its early funding may have been a result of it, but that Medusa no longer existed; it had been replaced by a dozen different names and companies.
“We’re not pure, Mr. DeSole, no American-controlled international conglomerate is,” said his recruiter, “and it’s true that we seek what some might call unfair economic advantage based on privileged information. Secrets, if you like. You see, we have to because our competitors throughout Europe and the Far East consistently have it. The difference between them and us is that their governments support their efforts—ours doesn’t.… Trade, Mr. DeSole, trade and profits. They’re the healthiest pursuits on earth. Chrysler may not like Toyota, but the astute Mr. Iacocca does not call for an air strike against Tokyo. At least not yet. He finds ways to join forces with the Japanese.”
Yes, mused DeSole as the limousine came to a stop ten feet away from him. What he did for the “corporation,” which he preferred to call it, as opposed to what he did for the Company, might even be considered benevolent. Profits, after all, were more desirable than bombs … and his grandchildren would go to the finest schools and universities in the country. Two men got out of the limousine and approached him.
“What’s this Webb look like?” asked Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, as they walked along the edge of the parking lot.
“I only have a description from the gardener, who was hiding behind a fence thirty feet away.”
“What did he tell you?” The unidentified associate of the chairman, a short stocky man with penetrating dark eyes and dark eyebrows beneath dark hair, looked at DeSole. “Be precise,” he added.
“Now, just a minute,” protested the analyst defensively but firmly. “I’m precise in everything I say, and, frankly, whoever you are, I don’t like the tone of your voice one bit.”
“He’s upset,” said Armbruster, as if his associate was dismissible. “He’s a spaghetti head from New York and doesn’t trust anybody.”
“Who’s to trust in New Yawk?” asked the short, dark man, laughing and poking his elbow into the wide girth of Albert Armbruster. “You WASPs are the worst, you got the banks, amico!”
“Let’s keep it that way and out of the courts.… The description, please?” The chairman looked at DeSole.
“It’s incomplete, but there is a long-ago tie-in with Medusa that I’ll describe—precisely.”
“Go ahead, pal,” said the man from New York.
“He’s rather large—tall, that is—and in his late forties or early fifties and—”
“Has he got some gray around his temples?” asked Armbruster, interrupting.
“Well, yes, I think the gardener said something to that effect—graying, or gray in his hair, or something like that. It’s obviously why he judged him to be in his forties or fifties.”
“It’s Simon,” said Armbruster, looking at the New Yorker.
“Who?” DeSole stopped, as the other two stopped and looked at him.
“He called himself Simon, and he knew all about you, Mr. CIA,” said the chairman. “About you and Brussels and our whole thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“For starters, your goddamn fax machine exclusively between you and that fruitcake in Brussels.”
“It’s a buried, dedicated line! It’s locked up!”
“Someone found the key, Mr. Precision,” said the New Yorker, not smiling.
“Oh, my God, that’s terrible! What should I do?”
“Make up a story between you and Teagarten, but do it from public phones,” continued the mafioso. “One of you will come up with something.”
“You know about … Brussels?”
“There’s very little I don’t know.”
“That son of a bitch conned me into thinking he was one of us and he had me by the balls!” said Armbruster angrily, continuing to walk along the edge of the parking lot, the other two joining him, DeSole hesitantly, apprehensively. “He seemed to know everything, but when I think back, he only brought up bits and pieces—damned big bits and pieces like Burton and you and Brussels—and I, like a fucking idiot, filled in a hell of a lot more. Shit!”
“Now, just wait a minute!” cried the CIA analyst, once again forcing the others to stop. “I don’t understand—I’m a strategist, and I don’t understand. What was David Webb—Jason Bourne, if he is Jason Bourne—doing at Swayne’s place the other night?”
“Who the hell is Jason Bourne?” roared the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
“He’s the tie-in with Saigon’s Medusa that I just mentioned. Thirteen years ago the Agency gave him the name Jason Bourne, the original Bourne a dead man by then, and sent him out in deep cover on a Four Zero assignment—a termination with extreme prejudice, if you like—”
“A hit, if you want to speak English, paisan.”
“Yes, yes, that’s what it was.… But things went wrong; he had a loss of memory and the operation collapsed. It collapsed, but he survived.”
“Holy Christ, what a bunch of zucchinis!”
“What can you tell us about this Webb … or Bourne—this Simon or the ‘Cobra’? Jesus, he’s a walking vaudeville act!”
“Apparently that’s what he did before. He assumed different names, different appearances, different personalities. He was trained to do that when he was sent out to challenge the assassin called the Jackal—to draw him out and kill him.”
“The Jackal?” asked the astonished capo supremo of the Cosa Nostra. “Like in the movie?”
“No, not the movie or the book, you idiot—”
“Hey, easy, amico.”
“Oh, shut up.… Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, otherwise known as Carlos the Jackal, is a living person, a professional killer the international authorities have been hunting for over a quarter of a century. Outside of scores of confirmed hits, many think he was the puff of smoke on the grassy knoll in Dallas, the true killer of John Kennedy.”
“You’re shittin’ me.”
“I can assure you, I am not shitting you. The word we got at the Agency at the highest secure levels was that after all these years Carlos had tracked down the only man alive who could identify him, Jason Bourne—or, as I’m firmly convinced, David Webb.”
“That word had to come from somebody!” exploded Albert Armbruster. “Who was it?”
“Oh, yes. Everything’s so sudden, so bewildering.… He’s a retired field agent with a crippled leg, a man named Conklin, Alexander Conklin. He and a psychiatrist—Panov, Morris Panov—are close friends of Webb … or Jason Bourne.”
“Where are they?” asked the capo supremo grimly.
“Oh, you couldn’t reach either one, talk to either of them. They’re both under maximum security.”
“I didn’t ask for the rules of engagement, paisan, I asked where they were.”
“Well, Conklin’s at a condominium in Vienna, a proprietary of ours no one could penetrate, and Panov’s apartment and office are both under round-the-clock surveillance.”
“You’ll give me the addresses, won’t you?”
“Certainly, but I guarantee they won’t talk to you.”
“Oh, that would be a pity. We’re just looking for a guy with a dozen names, asking questions, offering assistance.”
“They won’t buy it.”
“Maybe I can sell it.”
“Goddamn it, why?” spouted Armbruster, then immediately lowered his voice. “Why was this Webb or Bourne or whoever the hell he is at Swayne’s?”
“It’s a gap I can’t fill,” said DeSole.
“A what?”
“That’s an Agency term for no answer.”
“No wonder the country’s up shit’s creek.”
“That’s not true—”
“Now you shut up!” ordered the man from New York, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small notepad and a ballpoint pen. “Write out the addresses of this retired spook and the yid shrink. Now!”
“It’s difficult to see,” said DeSole, writing, angling the small pad of paper toward the neon lights of the closed gas station. “There. The apartment number may be wrong but it’s close, and Panov’s name will be on the mailbox. But I tell you again, he won’t talk to you.”
“Then we’ll just have to apologize for interrupting him.”
“Yes, you probably will. I gather he’s very dedicated where his patients are concerned.”
“Oh? Like that telephone line into your fax machine.”
“No, no, that’s a technical term. Number Three wire, to be precise.”
“And you’re always precise, aren’t you, paisan?”
“And you’re very irritating—”
“We’ve got to go,” broke in Armbruster, watching the New Yorker take back the pad and the ballpoint pen. “Stay calm, Steven,” he added, obviously suppressing his anger and heading back to the limousine. “Remember, there’s nothing we can’t handle. When you talk to Jimmy T in Brussels, see if you two can come up with a reasonable explanation, okay? If not, don’t worry, we’ll figure it out upstairs.”
“Of course, Mr. Armbruster. But if I may ask? Is my account in Bern ready for immediate release—in case … well, you understand … in case—”
“Of course it is, Steven. All you have to do is fly over and write out the numbers of your account in your own handwriting. That’s your signature, the one on file, remember?”
“Yes, yes, I do.”
“It must be over two million by now.”
“Thank you. Thank you … sir.”
“You’ve earned it, Steven. Good night.”
The two men settled back in the rear seat of the limousine, but there was no lack of tension. Armbruster glanced at the mafioso as the chauffeur, beyond the glass partition, turned on the ignition. “Where’s the other car?”
The Italian switched on the reading light and looked at his watch. “By now he’s parked less than a mile down the road from the gas station. He’ll pick up DeSole on his way back and stay with him until the circumstances are right.”
“Your man knows exactly what to do?”
“Come on, a virgin he’s not. He’s got a searchlight mounted on that car so powerful it can be seen in Miami. He comes alongside, switches it on high, and wiggles the handle. Your two-million-dollar flunky is blinded and out of business, and we’re only charging a quarter of that amount for the job. It’s your day, Alby.”
The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission sat back in the shadows of the left rear seat and stared out the window at the dark, rushing images beyond the smoked glass. “You know,” he said quietly, “if anyone had ever told me twenty years ago that I’d be sitting in this car with someone like you, saying what I’m saying, I would’ve told him it was impossible.”
“Oh, that’s what we like about you class-act characters. You look down your noses and drip your snot on us until you need us. Then all of a sudden we’re ‘associates.’ Live and be well, Alby, we’re eliminating another problem for you. Go back to your big federal commission and decide which companies are clean and which aren’t—decisions not necessarily based on soap, right?”
“Shut up!” roared Armbruster, pounding his hand on the armrest. “This Simon—this Webb! Where’s he coming from? What’s he on our case for? What’s he want?”
“Something to do with that Jackal character maybe.”
“That doesn’t make sense. We don’t have anything to do with the Jackal.”
“Why should you?” asked the mafioso, grinning. “You got us, right?”
“It’s a very loose association and don’t you forget it.… Webb—Simon, goddamn it, whoever he is, we’ve got to find him! With what he already knew, plus what I told him, he’s a fucking menace!”
“He’s a real major item, isn’t he?”
“A major item,” agreed the chairman, again staring out the window, his right fist clenched, the fingers of his left hand drumming furiously on the armrest.
“You want to negotiate?”
“What?” snapped Armbruster, turning and looking at the calm Sicilian face of his companion.
“You heard me, only I used the wrong word and I apologize for that. I’ll give you a nonnegotiable figure and you can either accept it or reject it.”
“A … contract? On Simon—Webb?”
“No,” replied the mafioso, slowly shaking his head. “On a character named Jason Bourne. It’s cleaner to kill someone who’s already dead, isn’t it?… Since we just saved you one and a half mill, the price of the contract is five.”
“Five million?”
“The cost of eliminating problems in the category of major items is high. Menaces are even higher. Five million, Alby, half on acceptance within the usual twenty-four hours.”
“That’s outrageous!”
“Then turn me down. You come back, it’s seven-fifty; and if you come back again, it’s double that. Fifteen million.”
“What guarantee do we have that you can even find him? You heard DeSole. He’s Four Zero, which means he’s out of reach, buried.”
“Oh, we’ll dig him up just so we can replant him.”
“How? Two and a half million is a lot to pay on your word. How?”
Again smiling, the Mafia supremo reached into his pocket and pulled out the small notebook Steven DeSole had returned to him. “Close friends are the best sources, Alby. Ask the sleazes who write all those gossip books. I got two addresses.”
“You won’t get near them.”
“Hey, come on. You think you’re dealing with old Chicago and the animals? With Mad Dog Capone and Nitti, the nervous finger. We got sophisticated people on the payroll these days. Geniuses. Scientists, electronics whiz kids—doctors. By the time we get finished with the spook and the yid, they won’t know what happened. But we’ll have Jason Bourne, the character who doesn’t exist because he’s already dead.”
Albert Armbruster nodded once and turned to the window in silence.
“I’ll close up for six months, change the name, then start a promotional campaign in the magazines before reopening,” said John St. Jacques, standing by the window as the doctor worked on his brother-in-law.
“There’s no one left?” asked Bourne, wincing as he sat in a chair dressed in a bathrobe, the last suture on his neck being pincered.
“Sure, there is. Seven crazy Canadian couples, including my old buddy, who’s needlepointing your throat at the moment. Would you believe they wanted to start up a brigade, Renfrews of the Mounties, after the evil people.”
“That was Scotty’s idea,” interrupted the doctor softly, concentrating on the wound. “Count me out. I’m too old.”
“So’s he but he doesn’t know it. Then he wanted to advertise a reward to the tune of a hundred thousand for information leading to the et cetera! I finally convinced him that the less said the better.”
“Nothing said is the best,” added Jason. “That’s the way it’s got to be.”
“That’s a little tough, David,” said St. Jacques, misunderstanding the sharp glance Bourne leveled at him. “I’m sorry, but it is. We’re deflecting most of the local inquiries with an ersatz story about a massive propane-gas leak, but not too many people are buying it. Of course, to the world outside, an earthquake down here wouldn’t rate six lines buried in the last pages of the want ads, but rumors are flying around the Leewards.”
“You said local inquiries … what about that world outside? Has there been anything from it?”
“There will be but not about here, not about Tranquility. Montserrat, yes, and the news will get a column in the London Times and maybe an inch in the New York and Washington papers, but I don’t think it’ll touch us.”
“Stop being so cryptic.”
“We’ll talk later.”
“Say whatever you like, John,” broke in the doctor. “I’m just about finished, so I’m not paying much attention, and even if I heard you, I’m entitled to.”
“I’ll make it brief,” said St. Jacques, walking to the right of the chair. “The Crown governor,” he continued. “You were right, at least I have to assume you were right.”
“Why?”
“The news came in while you were getting cleaned up. The CG’s boat was found smashed on one of the nastier reefs off Antigua, halfway to Barbuda. There was no sign of survivors. Plymouth assumes it was one of those whipsaw squalls that can come out of south Nevis, but it’s hard to swallow. Not a squall necessarily, but the circumstances.”
“Which were?”
“His usual two crewmen weren’t with him. He dismissed them at the yacht club, saying he wanted to take the boat out by himself, yet he told Henry he was going out for the running big fish—”
“Which means he would’ve had to have a crew,” interrupted the Canadian physician. “Oh, sorry.”
“Yes, he would’ve,” agreed the owner of Tranquility Inn. “You can’t fish the big fellas and skipper a boat at the same time—at least the CG couldn’t. He was afraid to take his eyes off the charts.”
“But he could read them, couldn’t he?” asked Jason. “The charts?”
“As a navigator, he was no Captain Bligh sailing by the Pacific stars, but he was good enough to stay out of trouble.”
“He was told to go out alone,” said Bourne. “Ordered to rendezvous with a boat in waters that called for him to really keep his eyes on the charts.” Jason suddenly realized that the doctor’s nimble fingers were no longer touching his neck; instead, there was the constricting bandage and the physician was standing beside him looking down. “How are we doing?” asked Bourne, looking up, an appreciative smile creasing his lips.
“We’re done,” said the Canadian.
“Well … then I think we’d better meet later, for a drink, all right?”
“Good heavens, you’re just getting to the good part.”
“It’s not good, Doctor, it’s not good at all, and I’d be a very ungrateful patient—which I’m not—if I even unwittingly let you hear things I don’t think you should hear.”
The elderly Canadian locked his eyes with Jason’s. “You mean that, don’t you? In spite of everything that’s happened, you really don’t want to involve me any further. And you’re not playing melodramatic games, secrecy for secrecy’s sake—an old dodge for inferior doctors, incidentally—but you’re really concerned, aren’t you?”
“I guess I am.”
“Considering what’s happened to you, and I don’t just mean these past few hours, which I’ve been a part of, but what the scars on your body tell me you’ve been through before, it’s rather remarkable that you can be concerned for anyone but yourself. You’re a strange man, Mr. Webb. At times you even sound like two different people.”
“I’m not strange, Doctor,” said Jason Bourne, momentarily closing his eyes, his lids briefly tight. “I don’t want to be strange or different or anything exotic at all. I want to be as normal and ordinary as the next fellow, no games at all. I’m just a teacher, and that’s all I want to be. But in the present circumstances, I have to do things my way.”
“Which means I leave for my own benefit?”
“Yes, it does.”
“And if I ever learn all the facts, I’ll realize that your instructions were very educational.”
“I hope so.”
“I’ll bet you’re one hell of a teacher, Mr. Webb.”
“Doctor Webb,” interjected John St. Jacques spontaneously, as if the clarification were mandatory. “My brother-in-law’s a doctor, too. Like my sister, he’s got a Ph. D.; he speaks a couple of Oriental languages and is a full professor. Places like Harvard, McGill and Yale have been after him for years, but he won’t budge—”
“Will you please be quiet,” said Bourne, close to laughing, albeit kindly, at his wife’s brother. “My entrepreneurial young friend is impressed with any alphabet after a name despite the fact that left to my own resources I couldn’t afford one of these villas for more than a couple of days.”
“That’s a crock.”
“I said my own resources.”
“You’ve got a point.”
“I’ve got a rich wife.… Forgive us, Doctor, it’s an old family argument.”
“Not only a good teacher,” the physician repeated, “but under the grim exterior I suspect a very engaging one.” The Canadian walked to the door; he turned and added, “I’ll take you up on that drink later, I’d really like that.”
“Thanks,” said Jason. “Thanks for everything.” The doctor nodded and left, closing the door firmly behind him. Bourne turned to his brother-in-law. “He’s a good friend, Johnny.”
“Actually, he’s a cold fish but a hell of a doctor. That’s the most human I’ve ever seen him.… So you figure the Jackal had the Crown governor meet him somewhere off the Antigua coast, got the CG’s information, killed him, and fed him to the sharks.”
“Conveniently foundering the boat in reef waters,” completed Jason. “Perhaps opening the throttle and setting a short high-speed course into the shoals. A tragedy at sea and a link to Carlos vanishes—that’s vital to him.”
“That’s also something I have trouble with,” said St. Jacques. “I didn’t go into it, but the section of reef north of Falmouth where he bought it is called Devil’s Mouth, and it’s not the kind of place that’s advertised. Charters just stay away from it, and no one boasts about the number of lives and boats it’s claimed.”
“So?”
“So assuming the Jackal told the CG where to rendezvous, someplace obviously close to Devil’s Mouth, how the hell did the Jackal know about it?”
“Your two commandos didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what? I sent them right over to Henry to give him a full report while we took care of you. There wasn’t time to sit down and talk and I figured every moment counted.”
“Then Henry knows by now; he’s probably in shock. He’s lost two drug boats in two days, and only one is likely to be paid for, and he still doesn’t know about his boss, the so honorable Crown governor, lackey of the Jackal who made fools of the Foreign Office by passing off a small-time Paris hit man as a venerable hero of France. The wires will be burning all night between Government House and Whitehall.”
“Another drug boat? What are you trying to tell me? What does Henry know now—what could my guards tell him?”
“Your question a minute ago was how did the Jackal know about the reef off the coast of Antigua called Devil’s Mouth.”
“Take my word for it, Doctor Webb, I remember the question. How could he?”
“Because he had a third man here, that’s what your Royal Commandos have told Henry by now. A blond-haired son of a bitch who heads up Montserrat’s drug patrols.”
“Him? Rickman? The one-man British Ku Klux Klan? By-the-Rules-Rickman, scourge of anybody who’s afraid to yell back at him? Holy Christ, Henry won’t believe it!”
“Why not? You just described a likely disciple of Carlos.”
“I suppose I did, but it seems so unlikely. He’s the original sanctimonious deacon. Prayer meetings before work in the morning, calling on God to aid him in his battle against Satan, no alcohol, no women—”
“Savonarola?”
“I’d say that fits—from what I remember reading for history courses.”
“Then I’d say he’s prime meat for the Jackal. And Henry will believe it when his lead boat doesn’t come back to Plymouth and the bodies of the crew float up on shore or simply don’t show up for the prayer meetings.”
“That’s how Carlos got away?”
“Yes.” Bourne nodded and gestured at the couch several feet in front of him, the space between taken up by a glass-topped coffee table. “Sit down, Johnny. We have to talk.”
“What have we been doing?”
“Not about what has happened, Bro, but about what’s going to happen.”
“What’s going to happen?” asked St. Jacques, lowering himself on the couch.
“I’m leaving.”
“No!” cried the younger man, shooting to his feet as if propelled by a bolt of electricity. “You can’t!”
“I have to. He knows our names, where we live. Everything.”
“Where are you going?”
“Paris.”
“Goddamn it, no! You can’t do that to Marie! Or to the kids, for Christ’s sake. I won’t let you!”
“You can’t stop me.”
“For God’s sake, David, listen to me! If Washington’s too cheap or doesn’t give a shit, believe me, Ottawa’s cut from better stock. My sister worked for the government and our government doesn’t kiss people off because it’s inconvenient or too expensive. I know people—like Scotty, the Doc and others. A few words from them and you’ll be put in a fortress in Calgary. No one could touch you!”
“You think my government wouldn’t do the same? Let me tell you something, Bro, there are people in Washington who’ve put their lives on the line to keep Marie and the children and me alive. Selflessly, without any reward for themselves or the government. If I wanted a safe house where no one could touch us, I’d probably get an estate in Virginia, with horses and servants and a full platoon of armed soldiers protecting us around the clock.”
“Then that’s the answer. Take it!”
“To what end, Johnny? To live in our own personal prison? The kids not allowed to go over to friends’ houses, guards with them if they go to school and not tutored by themselves, no overnights, no pillow fights—no neighbors? Marie and I staring at each other, glancing over at the searchlights outside the windows, hearing the footsteps of the guards, the occasional cough or sneeze, or, heaven forbid, the crack of a rifle bolt because a rabbit disturbed a garden? That’s not living, that’s imprisonment. Your sister and I couldn’t handle it.”
“Neither could I, not the way you describe it. But what can Paris solve?”
“I can find him. I can take him.”
“He’s got the manpower over there.”
“I’ve got Jason Bourne,” said David Webb.
“I don’t buy that crap!”
“Neither do I, but it seems to work.… I’m calling in your debt to me, Johnny. Cover for me. Tell Marie I’m fine, not hurt at all, and that I’ve got a lead on the Jackal that only old Fontaine could have provided—which is the truth, actually. A café in Argenteuil called Le Coeur du Soldat. Tell her I’m bringing in Alex Conklin and all the help Washington can provide.”
“But you’re not, are you?”
“No. The Jackal would hear about it; he’s got ears up and down the Quai d’Orsay. Solo’s the only way.”
“Don’t you think she’ll know that?”
“She’ll suspect it, but she can’t be certain. I’ll have Alex call her, confirming that he’s in touch with all the heavy covert firepower in Paris. But first it comes from you.”
“Why the lie?”
“You shouldn’t have to ask that, Bro. I’ve put her through enough.”
“All right, I’ll tell her, but she won’t believe me. She’ll see right through me, she always has. Since I was a kid, those big brown eyes would look into mine, most of the time pissed off, but not like our brothers’, not—oh, I don’t know—not with that disgust in their faces because the ‘kid’ was a screwup. Can you understand that?”
“It’s called caring. She’s always cared for you—even when you were a screwup.”
“Yeah, Mare’s okay.”
“Somewhat more than that, I think. Call her in a couple of hours and bring them back here. It’s the safest place they can be.”
“What about you? How are you going to get to Paris? The connections out of Antigua and Martinique are lousy, sometimes booked days in advance.”
“I can’t use those airlines anyway. I’ve got to get in secretly under a shroud. Somehow, a man in Washington will have to figure it out. Somehow. He’s got to.”
Alexander Conklin limped out of the small kitchen in the CIA’s Vienna apartment, his face and hair soaking wet. In the old days, before the old days fell into a distillery vat, he would calmly leave the office—wherever it was—when things got too heavy too fast and indulge himself in an unwavering ritual. He would seek out the best steak house—again, wherever he was—have two dry martinis and a thick rare slab of meat with the greasiest potatoes on the menu. The combination of the solitude, the limited intake of alcohol, the blood-rare hunk of beef and, in particular, the grease-laden potatoes, had such a calming effect on him that all the rushing, conflicting complexities of the hectic day sorted themselves out and reason prevailed. He would return to his office—whether a smart flat in London’s Belgravia Square or the back rooms of a whorehouse in Katmandu—with multiple solutions. It was how he got the sobriquet of Saint Alex of Conklin. He had once mentioned this gastronomical phenomenon to Mo Panov, who had a succinct reply: “If your crazy head doesn’t kill you, your stomach will.”
These days, however, with postalcoholic vacuum and various other impediments, such as high cholesterol and dumb little triglycerides, whatever the hell they were, he had to come up with a different solution. It came about by accident. One morning during the Iran-contra hearings, which he found to be the finest hours of comedy on television, his set blew out. He was furious, so he turned on his portable radio, an instrument he had not used in months or perhaps years, as the television set had a built-in radio component—also inoperable at the time—but the portable radio’s batteries had long since melted into white slime. His artificial foot in pain, he walked to his kitchen telephone, knowing that a call to his television repairman, for whom he had done several favors, would bring the man running to his emergency. Unfortunately, the call only brought forth a hostile diatribe from the repairman’s wife, who screamed that her husband, the “customerfucker,” had run off with a “horny rich black bitch from Embassy Row!” (Zaire, as it later turned out in the Puerta Vallarta papers.) Conklin, in progressive apoplexy, had rushed to the kitchen sink, where his stress and blood pressure pills stood on the windowsill above the sink, and turned on the cold water. The faucet exploded, surging out of its recess into the ceiling as a powerful gush of water inundated his entire head. Caramba! The shock calmed him down, and he remembered that the Cable Network was scheduled to rebroadcast the hearings in full that evening. A happy man, he called the plumber and went out and bought a new television set.
So, since that morning, whenever his own furies or the state of the world disturbed him—the world he knew—he lowered his head in a kitchen sink and let the cold water pour over his head. He had done so this morning. This goddamned, fucked-up morning!
DeSole! Killed in an accident on a deserted country road in Maryland at 4:30 that morning. What the hell was Steven DeSole, a man whose driver’s license clearly stated that he was afflicted with night blindness, doing on a backcountry road outside Annapolis at 4:30 in the morning? And then Charlie Casset, a very angry Casset, calling him at six o’clock, yelling his usually cool head off, telling Alex he was going to put the commander of NATO on the goddamned spit and demand an explanation for the buried fax connection between the general and the dead chief of clandestine reports, who was not a victim of an accident but of murder! Furthermore, one retired field officer named Conklin had better damned well come clean with everything he knew about DeSole and Brussels and related matters, or all bets were off where said retired field agent and his elusive friend Jason Bourne were concerned. Noon at the latest! And then, Ivan Jax! The brilliant black doctor from Jamaica phoned, telling him he wanted to put Norman Swayne’s body back where he had found it because he did not want to be loused up by another Agency fiasco. But it was not Agency, cried Conklin to himself, unable to explain to Ivan Jax the real reason he had asked for his help. Medusa. And Jax could not simply drive the corpse back to Manassas because the police, on federal orders—the orders of one retired field agent using appropriated codes he was not entitled to use—had sealed off General Norman Swayne’s estate without explanation.
“What do I do with the body?” Jax had yelled.
“Keep it cold for a while, Cactus would want it that way.”
“Cactus? I’ve been with him at the hospital all night. He’s going to be okay, but he doesn’t know what the hell is going on any more than I do!”
“We in the clandestine services can’t always explain things,” Alex said, wincing as he spoke the ridiculous words. “I’ll call you back.”
So he had gone into the kitchen and put his head under a spray of cold water. What else could go wrong? And naturally the telephone rang.
“Dunkin’ Donuts,” said Conklin, the phone to his ear.
“Get me out of here,” said Jason Bourne, not a trace of David Webb in his voice. “To Paris!”
“What happened?”
“He got away, that’s what happened, and I have to get to Paris under a cover, no immigration, no customs. He’s got them all wired and I can’t give him the chance to track me.… Alex, are you listening to me?”
“DeSole was killed last night, killed in an accident that was no accident at four o’clock in the morning. Medusa’s closing in.”
“I don’t give a damn about Medusa! For me it’s history; we made a wrong turn. I want the Jackal and I’ve got a place to start. I can find him, take him!”
“Leaving me with Medusa …”
“You said you wanted to go higher—you said you’d only give me forty-eight hours until you did. Shove the clock ahead. The forty-eight hours are over, so go higher, just get me out of here and over to Paris.”
“They’ll want to talk to you.”
“Who?”
“Peter Holland, Casset, whoever else they bring in … the attorney general, Christ, the President himself.”
“About what?”
“You spoke at length with Armbruster, with Swayne’s wife and that sergeant, Flannagan. I didn’t. I just used a few code words that triggered responses from Armbruster and Ambassador Atkinson in London, nothing substantive. You’ve got the fuller picture firsthand. I’m too deniable. They’ll have to talk to you.”
“And put the Jackal on a back burner?”
“Just for a day, two at the most.”
“Goddamn it, no. Because it doesn’t work that way and you know it! Once I’m back there I’m their only material witness, shunted from one closed interrogation to another; and if I refuse to cooperate, I’m in custody. No way, Alex. I’ve got only one priority and he’s in Paris!”
“Listen to me,” said Conklin. “There are some things I can control, others I can’t. We needed Charlie Casset and he helped us, but he’s not someone you can con, nor would I want to. He knows DeSole’s death was no accident—a man with night blindness doesn’t take a five-hour drive at four o’clock in the morning—and he also knows that we know a lot more about DeSole and Brussels than we’re telling him. If we want the Agency’s help, and we need it for things like getting you on a military or a diplomatic flight into France, and God knows what else when you’re there, I can’t ignore Casset. He’ll step on us and by his lights, he should.”
Bourne was silent; only his breathing was heard. “All right,” he said. “I see where we’re at. You tell Casset that if he gives us whatever we ask for now, we’ll give him—no, I’ll give him; keep yourself cleaner than me—enough information for the Department of Justice to go after some of the biggest fish in the government, assuming Justice isn’t part of Snake Lady.… You might add that’ll include the location of a cemetery that might prove enlightening.”
It was Conklin’s turn to be silent for a moment. “He may want more than that, considering your current pursuits.”
“Oh …? Oh, I see. In case I lose. Okay, add that when I get to Paris I’ll hire a stenographer and dictate everything I know, everything I’ve learned, and send it to you. I’ll trust Saint Alex to carry it from there. Maybe a page or two at a time to keep them cooperative.”
“I’ll handle that part.… Now Paris, or close by. From what I recall, Montserrat’s near Dominica and Martinique, isn’t it?”
“Less than an hour to each, and Johnny knows every pilot on the big island.”
“Martinique’s French, we’ll go with that. I know people in the Deuxième Bureau. Get down there and call me from the airport terminal. I’ll have made the arrangements by then.”
“Will do.… There’s a last item, Alex. Marie. She and the children will be back here this afternoon. Call her and tell her I’m covered with all the firepower in Paris.”
“You lying son of a bitch—”
“Do it!”
“Of course I will. On that score and not lying, if I live through the day, I’m having dinner with Mo Panov at his place tonight. He’s a terrible cook, but he thinks he’s the Jewish Julia Child. I’d like to bring him up to date; he’ll go crazy if I don’t.”
“Sure. Without him we’d both be in padded cells chewing rawhide.”
“Talk to you later. Good luck.”
The next day at 10:25 in the morning, Washington time, Dr. Morris Panov, accompanied by his guard, walked out of Walter Reed Hospital after a psychiatric session with a retired army lieutenant suffering from the aftereffects of a training exercise in Georgia that took the lives of twenty-odd recruits under his command eight weeks before. There was not much Mo could do; the man was guilty of competitive overachievement, military style, and had to live with his guilt. The fact that he was a financially privileged black and a graduate of West Point did not help. Most of the twenty dead recruits were also black and they had been underprivileged.
Panov, muddling over the available options with his patient, looked at his guard, suddenly startled. “You’re a new man, aren’t you? I mean, I thought I knew all of you.”
“Yes, sir. We’re often reassigned on short notice, keeps all of us on our toes.”
“Habit-oriented anticipation—it can lull anybody.” The psychiatrist continued across the pavement to where his armor-plated car was usually waiting for him. It was a different vehicle. “This isn’t my car,” he said, bewildered.
“Get in,” ordered his guard, politely opening the door.
“What?” A pair of hands from inside the car grabbed him and a uniformed man pulled him into the backseat as the guard followed, sandwiching Panov between them. The two men held the psychiatrist as the one who had been inside yanked Mo’s seersucker jacket off his shoulder and shoved up the short sleeve of his summer shirt. He plunged a hypodermic needle into Panov’s arm.
“Good night, Doctor,” said the soldier with the insignia of the Medical Corps on the lapels of his uniform. “Call New York,” he added.