Page 28 of The Bourne Ultimatum (Jason Bourne 3)

  Sweat pouring down his face, his eyes barely focusing, Bourne ripped the distress flare out of his pocket, snapped the lighter and, trembling, held it to the red tip. Ignition was instant; the white fire spewed out in white heat, hissing like a hundred angry snakes. Jason threw it into the chapel toward the far end, leaped through the frame, pivoted, and slammed the heavy door shut behind him. He lunged to the floor below the last row, pulled the radio from his pocket and pushed the Send button.

  “Johnny, the chapel. Surround it!” He did not wait for St. Jacques’s reply; that there was a voice was enough. The automatic in his hand, the hissing flare continuously erupting as shafts of color shot down from the stained-glass windows, Bourne crept to the far aisle, his eyes moving constantly, seeking out everything he no longer remembered about Tranquility Inn’s chapel. The one place where he could not look again was the lectern that held the body of the child he had killed.… On both sides of the raised platform were narrow draped archways, like scenic doors on a stage leading to minimum wing space, entrances both left and right. Despite the anguish he felt, there welled up in Jason Bourne a deep sense of satisfaction, even of morbid elation. The lethal game was his for the winning. Carlos had mounted an elaborate trap and the Chameleon had reversed it, Medusa’s Delta had turned it around! Behind one of those two draped archways was the assassin from Paris.

  Bourne got to his feet, his back pressed against the right wall, and raised his gun. He fired twice into the left archway, the drapes fluttering with each shot, as he sprang behind the last row, scrambling to the far side, getting to his knees and firing twice more into the archway on the right.

  A figure lunged in panic through the drapes, clutching the cloth as it fell forward, the dark red fabric ripped from the hooks, bunched around the target’s shoulders as he fell to the floor. Bourne rushed forward, screaming Carlos’s name, firing again and again until the automatic’s magazine was empty. Suddenly, from above there was an explosion, blowing out a whole section of stained glass high on the left wall. As the colored fragments shot through the air and down onto the floor, a man on a ledge outside moved into the center of the open space above the hissing, blinding flare.

  “You’re out of bullets,” said Carlos to the stunned Jason Bourne below. “Thirteen years, Delta, thirteen loathsome years. But now they’ll know who won.”

  The Jackal raised his gun and fired.

  17

  The searing ice-cold heat ripped through his neck as Bourne lunged over the pews, crashing down between the second and third rows, smashing his head and his hips on the glistening brown wood as he clawed at the floor. His vision spun out of control as a cloud of darkness enveloped him. In the distance, far, far away, he heard the sound of voices shouting hysterically. Then the darkness was complete.

  “David.” There was no shouting now; the single voice was low and urgent and used a name he did not care to acknowledge. “David, can you hear me?”

  Bourne opened his eyes, instantly aware of two facts. There was a wide bandage around his throat and he was lying fully clothed on a bed. To his right, the anxious face of John St. Jacques came into focus; on his left was a man he did not know, a middle-aged man with a level, steady gaze. “Carlos,” Jason managed to say, finding his voice. “It was the Jackal!”

  “Then he’s still on the island—this island.” St. Jacques was emphatic. “It’s been barely an hour and Henry’s got Tranquility ringed. Patrols are hovering offshore, roving back and forth, all in visual and radio contact. He’s calling it a ‘drug exercise,’ very quiet and very official. A few boats come in, but none go out and none will go out.”

  “Who’s he?” asked Bourne, looking at the man on his left.

  “A doctor,” answered Marie’s brother. “He’s staying at the inn and he’s a friend of mine. I was a patient of his in—”

  “I think we should be circumspect here,” interrupted the Canadian doctor firmly. “You asked for my help and my confidence, John, and I give both gladly, but considering the nature of the events and the fact that your brother-in-law won’t be under my professional care, let’s dispense with my name.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more, Doctor,” added Jason, wincing, then suddenly snapping his head up, his eyes wide in an admixture of pleading and panic. “Ishmael! He’s dead—I killed him!”

  “He isn’t and you didn’t,” said St. Jacques calmly. “He’s a goddamned mess but he’s not dead. He’s one tough kid, like his father, and he’ll make it. We’re flying him to the hospital in Martinique.”

  “Christ, he was a corpse!”

  “He was savagely beaten,” explained the doctor. “Both arms were broken, along with multiple lacerations, contusions, I suspect internal injuries and a severe concussion. However, as John accurately described the young man, he’s one tough kid.”

  “I want the best for him.”

  “Those were my orders.”

  “Good.” Bourne moved his eyes to the doctor. “How damaged am I?”

  “Without X rays or seeing how you move—symptomatically, as it were—I can only give you a cursory judgment.”

  “Do that.”

  “Outside of the wound, I’d say primarily traumatic shock.”

  “Forget it. That’s not allowed.”

  “Who says?” said the doctor, smiling kindly.

  “I do and I’m not trying to be funny. The body, not the head. I’ll be the judge of the head.”

  “Is he a native?” asked the doctor, looking at the owner of Tranquility Inn. “A white but older Ishmael? I’ll tell you he’s not a physician.”

  “Answer him, please.”

  “All right. The bullet passed through the left side of your neck, missing by millimeters several vital spots that would certainly have rendered you voiceless and probably dead. I’ve bathed the wound and sutured it. You’ll have difficulty moving your head for a while, but that’s only a superficial opinion of the damage.”

  “In short words, I’ve got a very stiff neck, but if I can walk … well, I can walk.”

  “In shorter words, that’s about it.”

  “It was the flare that did it, after all,” said Jason softly, carefully moving his neck back over the pillow. “It blinded him just enough.”

  “What?” St. Jacques leaned over the bed.

  “Never mind.… Let’s see how well I walk—symptomatically, that is.” Bourne slid off the bed, swinging his legs cautiously to the floor, shaking his head at his brother-in-law, who started to help him. “No thanks, Bro. This has got to be me on me.” He stood up, the inhibiting bandage around his throat progressively becoming more uncomfortable. He stepped forward, pained by the bruises on his thighs, but they were bruises—they were minor. A hot bath would reduce the pain, and medication, extra-strength aspirin and liniment, would permit more normal mobility. It was the goddamned dressing around his neck; it not only choked him but forced him to move his shoulders in order to look in any direction.… Still, he considered, he was far less incapacitated than he might have been—for a man of his age. Damn. “Can we loosen this necklace, Doctor? It’s strangling me.”

  “A bit, not much. You don’t want to risk rupturing those sutures.”

  “What about an Ace bandage? It gives.”

  “Too much for a neck wound. You’d forget about it.”

  “I promise not to.”

  “You’re very amusing.”

  “I don’t feel remotely amusing.”

  “It’s your neck.”

  “It certainly is. Can you get one, Johnny?”

  “Doctor?” St. Jacques looked at the physician.

  “I don’t think we can stop him.”

  “I’ll send someone to the pro shop.”

  “Excuse me, Doctor,” said Bourne as Marie’s brother went to the telephone. “I want to ask Johnny a few questions and I’m not sure you want to hear them.”

  “I’ve heard more than I care to already. I’ll wait in the other room.” The doctor crossed to t

he door and let himself out.

  While St. Jacques talked on the phone, Jason moved about the room raising and lowering his arms and shaking his hands to check the functioning of his motor controls. He crouched, then rose to his feet four times in succession, each movement faster than the previous one. He had to be ready—he had to be!

  “It’ll only be a few minutes,” said the brother-in-law, hanging up the phone. “Pritchard will have to go down and open the shop. He’ll bring different sizes of tape.”

  “Thanks.” Bourne stopped moving and stood in place. “Who was the man I shot, Johnny? He fell through the curtains in that archway, but I couldn’t see his face.”

  “No one I know, and I thought I knew every white man in these islands who could afford an expensive suit. He must have been a tourist—a tourist on assignment … for the Jackal. Naturally, there wasn’t any identification. Henry’s shipped him off to ’Serrat.”

  “How many here know what’s going on?”

  “Outside of the staff, there are only fourteen guests, and no one’s got a clue. I’ve sealed off the chapel—the word is storm damage. And even those who have to know something—like the doctor and the two guys from Toronto—they don’t know the whole story, just pieces, and they’re friends. I trust them. The others are heavy into island rum.”

  “What about the gunshots at the chapel?”

  “What about the loudest and lousiest steel band in the islands? Also, you were a thousand feet away in the woods.… Look, David, most everyone’s left but some diehards who wouldn’t stay here if they weren’t old Canadian buddies showing me loyalty, and a few casuals who’d probably take a vacation in Teheran. What can I tell you except that the bar is doing a hell of a business.”

  “It’s like a mystifying charade,” murmured Bourne, again carefully arching his neck and staring at the ceiling. “Figures in silhouette playing out disconnected, violent events behind white screens, nothing really making sense, everything’s whatever you want it to be.”

  “That’s a little much for me, Professor. What’s your point?”

  “Terrorists aren’t born, Johnny, they’re made, schooled in a curriculum you won’t find in any academic catalog. Leaving aside the reasons why they are what they are—which can range from a justifiable cause to the psychopathic megalomania of a Jackal—you keep the charades going because they’re playing out their own.”

  “So?” St. Jacques frowned in bewilderment.

  “So you control your players, telling them what to act out but not why.”

  “That’s what we’re doing here and that’s what Henry’s doing out on the water all around Tranquility.”

  “Is he? Are we?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “I thought I was too, but I was wrong. I overestimated a big clever kid doing a simple, harmless job and underestimated a humble, frightened priest who took thirty pieces of silver.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Ishmael and Brother Samuel. Samuel must have witnessed the torture of a child through the eyes of Torquemada.”

  “Turkey who?”

  “The point is we don’t really know the players. The guards, for instance, the ones you brought to the chapel—”

  “I’m not a fool, David,” protested St. Jacques, interrupting. “When you called for us to surround the place, I took a small liberty and chose two men, the only two I would choose, figuring a pair of Uzis made up for the absence of one man and the four points of the compass. They’re my head boys and former Royal Commandos; they’re in charge of all the security here and, like Henry, I trust them.”

  “Henry? He’s a good man, isn’t he?”

  “He’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s the best in the islands.”

  “And the Crown governor?”

  “He’s just an ass.”

  “Does Henry know that?”

  “Sure, he does. He didn’t get to be a brigadier on his looks, potbelly and all. He’s not only a good soldier, he’s a good administrator. He covers for a lot around here.”

  “And you’re certain he hasn’t been in touch with the CG.”

  “He told me he’d let me know before he reached the pompous idiot and I believe him.”

  “I sincerely hope you’re right—because that pompous idiot is the Jackal’s contact in Montserrat.”

  “What? I don’t believe it!”

  “Believe. It’s confirmed.”

  “It’s incredible!”

  “No, it’s not. It’s the way of the Jackal. He finds vulnerability and he recruits it, buys it. There are very few in the gray areas beyond his ability to purchase them.”

  Stunned, St. Jacques wandered aimlessly to the balcony doors coming to terms with the unbelievable. “I suppose it answers a question a lot of us have asked ourselves. The governor’s old-line landed gentry with a brother high up in the Foreign Office who’s close to the prime minister. Why at his age was he sent out here, or, maybe more to the point, why did he accept it? You’d think he’d settle for nothing less than Bermuda or the British Virgins. Plymouth can be a stepping-stone, not a final post.”

  “He was banished, Johnny. Carlos probably found out why a long time ago and has him on a list. He’s been doing it for years. Most people read newspapers and books and magazines for diversion; the Jackal pores over volumes of in-depth intelligence reports from every conceivable source he can unearth, and he’s unearthed more than the CIA, the KGB, MI-Five and Six, Interpol and a dozen other services even want to think about.… Those seaplanes flew in four or five times after I got back here from Blackburne. Who was on them?”

  “Pilots,” answered St. Jacques, turning around. “They were taking people out, not bringing anyone in, I told you that.”

  “Yes, you told me. Were you watching?”

  “Watching who?”

  “Each plane when it came in.”

  “Hey, come on! You had me doing a dozen different things.”

  “What about the two black commandos? The ones you trust so much.”

  “They were checking and positioning the other guards, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Then we don’t really know who may have come in on those planes, do we? Maybe slipping into the water over the pontoons as they taxied through the reefs—perhaps before the sandbar.”

  “For God’s sake, David, I’ve known those charter jocks for years. They wouldn’t let anything like that happen. No way!”

  “You mean it’s kind of unbelievable.”

  “You bet your ass.”

  “Like the Jackal’s contact in Montserrat. The Crown governor.”

  The owner of Tranquility Inn stared at his brother-in-law. “What kind of world do you live in?”

  “One I’m sorry you ever became a part of. But you are now and you’ll play by its rules, my rules.” A fleck, a flash, an infinitesimal streak of deep red light from the darkness outside! Infrared! Arms extended, Bourne lunged at St. Jacques, propelling him off his feet, away from the balcony doors. “Get out of there!” Jason roared in midair as both crashed to the floor, three successive snaps crackling the space above them as bullets thumped with finality into the walls of the villa.

  “What the hell—”

  “He’s out there and he wants me to know it!” said Bourne, shoving his brother-in-law into the lower molding, crawling beside him, and reaching into the pocket of his guayabera. “He knows who you are, so you’re the first corpse, the one he realizes will drive me to the edge because you’re Marie’s brother—you’re family and that’s what he’s holding over my head. My family!”

  “Jesus Christ! What do we do?”

  “I do!” replied Jason, pulling the second flare out of his pocket. “I send him a message. The message that tells him why I’m alive and why I will be when he’s dead. Stay where you are!” Bourne pulled his lighter out of his right pocket and ignited the flare. Scrambling, he raced across the balcony doors hurling the hissing, blinding missile out into the darkness. Two s

naps followed, the bullets ricocheting off the tiled ceiling and shattering the mirror of a dressing table. “He’s got a MAC-ten with a silencer,” said Medusa’s Delta, rolling into the wall, grabbing his inflamed neck as he did so. “I have to get out of here!”

  “David, you’re hurt!”

  “That’s nice.” Jason Bourne got to his feet and raced to the door; slamming it back, he rushed into the villa’s living room, only to face a frowning Canadian physician.

  “I heard some noise in there,” said the doctor. “Is everything all right?”

  “I have to leave. Get to the floor.”

  “Now, see here! There’s blood on your bandage, the sutures—”

  “Get your ass on the floor!”

  “You’re not twenty-one, Mr. Webb—”

  “Get out of my life!” shouted Bourne, running to the entrance, letting himself outside, and rushing up the lighted path toward the main complex, suddenly aware of the deafening steel band, its sound amplified throughout the grounds by a score of speakers nailed to the trees.

  The undulating cacophony was overwhelming, and that was not to his disadvantage, thought Jason. Angus McLeod had been true to his word. The huge glass-enclosed circular dining room held the few remaining guests and the fewer staff, and that meant the Chameleon had to change colors. He knew the mind of the Jackal as well as he knew his own, and that meant that the assassin would do exactly what he himself would do under the circumstances. The hungry, salivating wolf went into the cave of its confused, rabid quarry and pulled out the prized piece of meat. So would he, shedding the skin of the mythical chameleon, revealing a much larger beast of prey—say, a Bengal tiger—which could rip a jackal apart in his jaws.… Why were the images important? Why? He knew why, and it filled him with a feeling of emptiness, a longing for something that had passed—he was no longer Delta, the feared guerrilla of Medusa; nor was he the Jason Bourne of Paris and the Far East. The older, much older, David Webb kept intruding, invading, trying to find reason within insanity and violence.