Page 33 of The Bourne Ultimatum (Jason Bourne 3)

  “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.

  19

  The Air France 747 from Martinique circled Orly Airport in the early evening haze over Paris; it was five hours and twenty-two minutes behind schedule because of the severe weather patterns in the Caribbean. As the pilot entered his final approach the flight officer acknowledged their clearance to the tower, then switched to his prescribed sterile frequency and sent a last message in French to an off-limits communications room.

  “Deuxième, special cargo. Please instruct your interested party to go to his designated holding area. Thank you. Out.”

  “Instructions received and relayed” was the terse reply. “Out.”

  The special cargo in question sat in the left rear bulkhead seat in the first-class section of the aircraft; the seat beside him was unoccupied, on orders of the Deuxième Bureau in cooperation with Washington. Impatient, annoyed and unable to sleep because of the constricting bandage around his neck, Bourne, close to exhaustion, reflected on the events of the past nineteen hours. To put it mildly, they had not gone as smoothly as Conklin had anticipated. The Deuxième had balked for over six hours as phone calls went back and forth feverishly between Washington, Paris and, finally, Vienna, Virginia. The stumbling block, and it was more of a hard rock, was the CIA’s inability to spell out the covert operation in terms of one Jason Bourne, for only Alexander Conklin could release the name and he refused to do so, knowing that the Jackal’s penetrations in Paris extended to just about everywhere but the kitchens of the Tour d’Argent. Finally, in desperation and realizing it was lunchtime in Paris, Alex placed ordinary, unsafe overseas telephone calls to several cafés on the Rive Gauche, finding an old Deuxième acquaintance at one on the rue de Vaugirard.

  “Do you remember the tinamou and an American somewhat younger than he is now who made things a little simpler for you?”

  “Ah, the tinamou, the bird with hidden wings and ferocious legs! They were such better days, younger days. And if the somewhat older American was at the time given the status of a saint, I shall never forget him.”

  “Don’t now, I need you.”

  “It is you, Alexander?”

  “It is and I’ve got a problem with D. Bureau.”

  “It is solved.”

  And it was, but the weather was insoluble. The storm that had battered the central Leeward Islands two nights before was only a prelude to the torrential rain and winds that swept up from the Grenadines, with another storm behind it. The islands were entering the hurricane season, so the weather was n

ot astonishing, it was merely a delaying factor. Finally, when clearance for takeoff was around the chronological corner, it was discovered that there was a malfunction in the far starboard engine; no one argued while the problem was traced, found and repaired. The elapsed time, however, was an additional three hours.

  Except for the churning of his mind, the flight itself was uneventful for Jason; only his guilt interfered with his thoughts of what was before him—Paris, Argenteuil, a café with the provocative name of Le Coeur du Soldat, The Soldier’s Heart. The guilt was most painful on the short flight from Montserrat to Martinique when they passed over Guadeloupe and the island of Basse-Terre. He knew that only a few thousand feet below were Marie and his children, preparing to fly back to Tranquility Isle, to the husband and father who would not be there. His infant daughter, Alison, would, of course, know nothing, but Jamie would; his wide eyes would grow larger and cloud over as words tumbled out about fishing and swimming … and Marie—Christ, I can’t think about her! It hurts too much!

  She’d think he had betrayed her, run away to seek a violent confrontation with an enemy from long ago in another far-off life that was no longer their life. She would think like old Fontaine, who had tried to persuade him to take his family thousands of miles away from where the Jackal prowled, but neither of them understood. The aging Carlos might die, but on his deathbed he would leave a legacy, a bequest that would hinge on the mandatory death of Jason Bourne—David Webb and his family. I’m right, Marie! Try to understand me. I have to find him, I have to kill him! We can’t live in our personal prison for the rest of our lives!

  “Monsieur Simon?” said the stoutish well-tailored Frenchman, an older man with a close-cropped white chin beard, pronouncing the name Seemohn.

  “That’s right,” replied Bourne, shaking the hand extended to him in a narrow deserted hallway somewhere in Orly Airport.

  “I am Bernardine, François Bernardine, an old colleague of our mutual friend, Alexander the Saint.”

  “Alex mentioned you,” said Jason, smiling tentatively. “Not by name, of course, but he told me you might bring up his sainthood. It was how I’d know you were—his colleague.”

  “How is he? We hear stories, of course.” Bernardine shrugged. “Banal gossip, by and large. Wounded in the futile Vietnam, alcohol, dismissed, disgraced, brought back a hero of the Agency, so many contradictory things.”

  “Most of them true; he’s not afraid to admit that. He’s a cripple now, and he doesn’t drink, and he was a hero. I know.”

  “I see. Again stories, rumors, who can believe what? Flights of fancy out of Beijing, Hong Kong—some concerning a man named Jason Bourne.”

  “I’ve heard them.”

  “Yes, of course.… But now Paris. Our saint said you would need lodgings, clothes purchased en scène, as it were, French to the core.”

  “A small but varied closet,” agreed Jason. “I know where to go, what to buy, and I have sufficient money.”

  “Then we are concerned with lodgings. A hotel of your choice? La Trémoille? George Cinq? Plaza-Athénée?”

  “Smaller, much smaller and far less expensive.”

  “Money is a problem, then?”

  “Not at all. Only appearances. I’ll tell you what, I know Montmartre. I’ll find a place myself. What I will need is a car—registered under another name, preferably a name that’s a dead end.”

  “Which means a dead man. It’s been arranged; it is in the underground garage on the Capucines, near the Place Vendôme.” Bernardine reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys, and handed them to Jason. “An older Peugeot in Section E. There are thousands like them in Paris and the license number is on the tab.”

  “Alex told you I’m traveling deep?”

  “He didn’t really have to. I believe our saint scoured the cemeteries for useful names when he worked here.”

  “I probably learned it from him.”

  “We all learned things from that extraordinary mind, the finest in our profession, yet so self-effacing, so … je ne sais quoi … so ‘why not try it,’ yes?”

  “Yes, why not try it.”

  “I must tell you, though,” said Bernardine, laughing. “He once chose a name, admittedly from a tombstone, that drove the Sûreté fou—crazy! It was the alias of an ax murderer the authorities had been hunting for months!”

  “That is funny,” agreed Bourne, chuckling.

  “Yes, very. He told me later that he found it in Rambouillet—in a cemetery on the outskirts of Rambouillet.”

  Rambouillet! The cemetery where Alex had tried to kill him thirteen years ago. All traces of a smile left Jason’s lips as he stared at Alex’s friend from the Deuxième Bureau. “You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked softly.

  “Yes,” answered Bernardine. “It was not so difficult to piece together, not with the rumors and the gossip out of the Far East. After all, it was here in Paris where you made your mark on Europe, Mr. Bourne.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “Mon Dieu, non! Nor will they. I must explain, I owe my life to Alexander Conklin, our modest saint of les opérations noires—the black assignments in your language.”

  “That’s not necessary, I speak French fluently … or didn’t Alex tell you that?”

  “Oh, my God, you doubt me,” said the Deuxième man, his gray eyebrows arched. “Take into account, young man—younger man—that I am in my seventieth year, and if I have lapses of language and try to correct them, it is because I mean to be kind, not subreptice.”

  “D’accord. Je regrette. I mean that.”

  “Bien. Alex is several years younger than I am, but I wonder how he’s handling it. The age, that is.”

  “Same as you. Badly.”

  “There was an English poet—a Welsh poet, to be exact—who wrote, ‘Do not go gently into that good night.’ Do you remember it?”

  “Yes. His name was Dylan Thomas and he died in his mid-thirties. He was saying fight like a son of a bitch. Don’t give in.”

  “I mean to do that.” Bernardine again reached into a pocket and pulled out a card. “Here is my office—merely consultant status, you understand—and on the back I’ve written down my home phone; it is a special telephone, actually unique. Call me; whatever you need will be provided. Remember, I am the only friend you have in Paris. No one else knows you are here.”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “Mais certainement.”

  “How can you do the things you’re doing for me when for all intents and purposes you’ve been put out to pasture?”

  “Ah,” exclaimed the consultant to the Deuxième Bureau. “The younger man grows older! Like Alex, I carry my credentials in my head. I know the secrets. How is it otherwise?”

  “You could be taken out, neutralized—have an accident.”

  “Stupide, young man! What is in both our heads we say is written down, locked away, to be revealed should such unnatural acts occur.… Of course, it’s all nonsense, for what do we really know that could not be denied, labeled as the ramblings of old men, but they do not know that. Fear, monsieur. It is the most potent weapon in our profession. Second, of course, is embarrassment, but that is usually reserved for the Soviet KGB and your Federal Bureau of Investigation, both of which fear embarrassment more than their nations’ enemies.”

  “You and Conklin come from the same street, don’t you?”

  “But of course. To the best of my knowledge, neither of us has a wife or a family, only sporadic lovers to fill our beds, and loud, annoying nephews and nieces to fill our flats on certain holidays; no really close friends except now and then an enemy we respect, who, for all we know and in spite of our truce, might shoot us or poison us with a drink. We must live alone, you see, for we are the professionals—we have nothing to do with the normal world; we merely use it as a couverture—as we slink around in dark alleys, paying or compromising people for secrets that mean nothing where summit conferences are concerned.”

>   “Then why do you do it? Why not walk away if it’s so useless?”

  “It’s in the blood rushing through our veins. We’ve been trained. Beat the enemy in the deadly game—he takes you or you take him, and it is better that you take him.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  “But of course. It’s all dumb. So why does Jason Bourne go after the Jackal here in Paris? Why doesn’t he walk away and say Enough. Complete protection is yours for the asking.”

  “So’s prison. Can you get me out of here and into the city? I’ll find a hotel and be in touch with you.”

  “Before you are in touch with me, reach Alex.”

  “What?”

  “Alex wants you to call him. Something happened.”

  “Where’s a phone?”

  “Not now. Two o’clock, Washington time; you have well over an hour. He won’t be back before then.”

  “Did he say what it was?”

  “I think he’s trying to find out. He was very upset.”

  The room at the Pont-Royal on the rue Montalembert was small and in a secluded corner of the hotel, reached by taking the slow, noisy brass elevator to the top floor and walking down two narrow intersecting hallways, all of which was satisfactory to Bourne. It reminded him of a mountain cave, remote and secure.

  To chew up the minutes before calling Alex, he walked along the nearby boulevard Saint-Germain, making necessary purchases. Various toiletries joined several articles of clothing; casual denims called for summer shirts and a lightweight safari jacket; dark socks required tennis shoes, to be scuffed and soiled. Whatever he could supply himself now would save time later. Fortunately, there was no need to press old Bernardine for a weapon. During the drive into Paris from Orly, the Frenchman had opened the glove compartment of his car in silence, withdrawn a taped brown box and handed it to Jason. Inside was an automatic with two boxes of shells. Underneath, neatly layered, were thirty thousand francs, in varying denominations, roughly five thousand dollars, American.

  “Tomorrow I will arrange a method for you to obtain funds whenever necessary. Within limits, of course.”