Page 52 of The Bourne Ultimatum (Jason Bourne 3)

  “Loud and clear, Emperor Jones.”

  “It’s machine sixteen in what they call section twelve.”

  “Got it! You’ve earned your paycheck.”

  “You might at least say, ‘Outstanding, old chap.’ ”

  “Hey, you’re the guy who went to college over there, not me.”

  “Some of us are overachievers.… Hold it! I’ve got company!”

  Below on the bottom of the staircase a small compact black man appeared, his dark eyes bulging, staring up at the agent, a gun in his hand. The CIA man spun behind the edge of the wall as four successive gunshots shattered the corridor. Lunging across the open space, his revolver ripped from its holster, the agent fired twice, but once was enough. His assailant fell to the floor of the soiled lobby.

  “I caught a ricochet in my leg!” cried the agent. “But he’s down—deep dead or not I can’t tell. Sweep up the vehicle and get us both out. Pronto.”

  “On its way. Stay put!”

  It was shortly past eight o’clock the next morning when Alex Conklin limped into Peter Holland’s office. The guards at the CIA gates were impressed with his immediate access to the director.

  “Anything?” asked the DCI, looking up from the papers on his desk.

  “Nothing,” answered the retired field officer angrily, heading for the couch against the wall rather than a chair. “Not a goddamned thing. Jesus, what a fucked-up day and it hasn’t even begun! Casset and Valentino are down in the cellars sending out queries all over the Paris sewers but so far nothing.… Christ, look at the scenario and find me a thread! Swayne, Arm-bruster, DeSole—our mute son of a bitch, the mole. Then for God’s sake, Teagarten with Bourne’s calling card, when we know damned well it’s a trap for Jason set by the Jackal. But there’s no logic anywhere that ties Carlos to Teagarten and by extension to Medusa. Nothing makes sense, Peter. We’ve lost the spine—everything’s gone off the wire!”

  “Calm down,” said Holland gently.

  “How the hell can I? Bourne’s disappeared—I mean really disappeared, if he isn’t dead. And there’s no trace of Marie, no word from her, and then we learn that Bernardine was killed in a shoot-out only hours ago on the Rivoli—Christ, shot in broad daylight! And that means Jason was there—he had to be there!”

  “But since none of the dead or wounded fits his description, we can assume he got away, can’t we?”

  “We can hope, yes.”

  “You asked for a thread,” mused the DCI. “I’m not sure I can actually provide one, but I can give you something like it.”

  “New York?” Conklin sat forward on the couch. “The answering machine? That DeFazio hood in Brooklyn Heights?”

  “We’ll get to New York, to all of that—them. Right now let’s concentrate on that thread of yours, that spine you mentioned.”

  “I’m not the slowest kid on the block, but where is it?”

  Holland leaned back in his chair, gazing first at the papers on his desk and then up at Alex. “Seventy-two hours ago, when you decided to come clean with me about everything, you said that the idea behind Bourne’s strategy was to persuade the Jackal and this latter-day Medusa to join forces, with Bourne as the common target, one feeding the other. Wasn’t that basically the premise? Both sides wanted him killed. Carlos had two reasons—revenge and the fact that he believes Bourne could identify him; the Medusans because Bourne had pieced together so much about them?”

  “That was the premise, yes,” agreed Conklin, nodding. “It’s why I dug around and made those phone calls, never expecting to find what I did. Jesus, a global cartel born twenty years ago in Saigon, peopled by some of the biggest fish in and out of the government and the military. It was the kind of pay dirt I didn’t want and wasn’t looking for. I thought I might dig up maybe ten or twelve hotshot millionaires with post-Saigon bank accounts that couldn’t bear scrutiny, but not this, not this Medusa.”

  “To put it as simply as possible,” continued Holland, frowning, his eyes again straying down to the papers in front of him, then up at Alex. “Once the connection was made between Medusa and Carlos, word would be passed to the Jackal that there was a man Medusa wanted eliminated, and cost was no object. So far, yes?”

  “The key here was the caliber and the status of those reaching Carlos,” explained Conklin. “They had to be as close to bona fide Olympians as we could find, the kind of clients the Jackal doesn’t get and never got.”

  “Then the name of the target is revealed—say, in a way such as ‘John Smith, once known years ago as Jason Bourne’—and the Jackal is hooked. Bourne, the one man he wants dead above all others.”

  “Yes. That’s why the Medusans reaching Carlos had to be so solid, so above questioning that Carlos accepts them and dismisses any sort of a trap.”

  “Because,” added the CIA’s director, “Jason Bourne came out of Saigon’s Medusa—a fact known to Carlos—but he never shared in the riches of the later, postwar Medusa. That’s the background scenario, isn’t it?”

  “The logic’s as clean as it can be. For three years he was used and damn near killed in a black operation, and along the way he supposedly discovered that more than a few undistinguished Saigon pricks were driving Jaguars and were sailing yachts and pulling down six-figure retainers while he went on a government pension. That could try the patience of John the Baptist, to say nothing of Barabbas.”

  “It’s a terrific libretto,” allowed Holland, a slow smile breaking across his face. “I can hear the tenors soaring in triumph and the Machiavellian bassos slinking offstage in defeat.… Don’t scowl at me, Alex, I mean it! It’s really ingenious. It’s so inevitable it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your Bourne was right from the beginning. It all took place the way he saw it, but not in any way he could have imagined. Because it was inevitable; somewhere there had to be a cross-pollinator.”

  “Please come down from Mars and explain to an earthling, Peter.”

  “Medusa’s using the Jackal! Now. Teagarten’s assassination proves it unless you want to concede that Bourne actually blew up that car outside of Brussels.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then Carlos’s name had to surface for someone in Medusa who already knew about Jason Bourne. It couldn’t be otherwise. You didn’t mention either one to Armbruster, or Swayne, or Atkinson in London, did you?”

  “Again, of course not. The time wasn’t right; we weren’t ready to pull those triggers.”

  “Who’s left?” asked Holland.

  Alex stared at the DCI. “Good Lord,” he said softly. “DeSole?”

  “Yes, DeSole, the grossly underpaid specialist who complained amusingly but incessantly that there was no way a man could properly educate his children and grandchildren on government pay. He was brought in on everything we discussed, starting with your assault on us in the conference room.”

  “He certainly was, but that was limited to Bourne and the Jackal. There was no mention of Armbruster or Swayne, no Teagarten or Atkinson—the new Medusa wasn’t even in the picture. Hell, Peter, you didn’t know about it until seventy-two hours ago.”

  “Yes, but DeSole did because he’d sold out; he was part of it. He had to have been alerted. ‘… Watch it. We’ve been penetrated. Some maniac says he’s going to expose us, blow us apart.’ … You told me yourself that panic buttons were punched from the Trade Commission to Pentagon Procurements to the embassy in London.”

  “They were punched,” agreed Conklin. “So hard that two of them had to be taken out along with Teagarten and our disgruntled Mole. Snake Lady’s elders quickly decided who their vulnerable people were. But where does Carlos or Bourne fit in? There’s no attribution.”

  “I thought we agreed that there was.”

  “DeSole?” Conklin shook his head. “It’s a provocative thought, but it doesn’t wash. He couldn’t have presumed that I knew about Medusa’s penetration because we hadn’t e

ven started it.”

  “But when you did, the sequence had to bother him if only in the sense that although they were poles apart, one crisis followed too quickly upon another. What was it? A matter of hours?”

  “Less than twenty-four … Still, they were poles apart.”

  “Not for an analyst’s analyst,” countered Holland. “If it walks like an odd duck and sounds like an odd duck, look for an odd duck. I submit that somewhere along the line DeSole made the connection between Jason Bourne and the madman who had infiltrated Medusa—the new Medusa.”

  “For Christ’s sake, how?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because you told us Bourne came out of the old Saigon Medusa—that’s one hell of a connection to begin with.”

  “My God, you may be right,” said Alex, falling back on the couch. “The driving force we gave our unnamed madman was that he’d been cut off from the new Medusa. I used the words myself with every phone call. ‘He’s spent years putting it together.…’ ‘He’s got names and ranks and banks in Zurich.…’ Jesus, I’m blind! I said those things to total strangers on a telephone fishing expedition and never even thought about having mentioned Bourne’s origins in Medusa at that meeting when DeSole was here.”

  “Why should you have thought about it? You and your man decided to play a separate game all by yourselves.”

  “The reasons were goddamned valid,” broke in Conklin. “For all I knew, you were a Medusan.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Come on, don’t give me that shit. ‘We’ve got a top max out at Langley’… those were the words I heard from London. What would you have thought, what would you have done?”

  “Exactly what you did,” answered Holland, a tight grin on his lips. “But you’re supposed to be so bright, so much smarter than I’m supposed to be.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Don’t be hard on yourself; you did what any of us would have done in your place.”

  “For that I do thank you. And you’re right, of course. It had to be DeSole; how he did it, I don’t know, but it had to be him. It probably went back years inside his head—he never really forgot anything, you know. His mind was a sponge that absorbed everything and never let a recollection drip away. He could remember words and phrases, even spontaneous grunts of approval or disapproval the rest of us forgot.… And I gave him the whole Bourne-Jackal history—and then someone from Medusa used it in Brussels.”

  “They did more than that, Alex,” said Holland, leaning forward in his chair and picking up several papers from his desk. “They stole your scenario, usurped your strategy. They’ve pitted Jason Bourne against Carlos the Jackal, but instead of the controls being in your hands, Medusa has them. Bourne’s back where he was in Europe thirteen years ago, maybe with his wife, maybe not, the only difference being that in addition to Carlos and Interpol and every other police authority on the continent ready to waste him on sight, he’s got another lethal monkey on his back.”

  “That’s what’s in those pages you’re holding, isn’t it? The information from New York?”

  “I can’t guarantee it, but I think so. It’s the cross-pollinator I spoke about before, the bee that went from one rotten flower to another carrying poison.”

  “Deliver, please.”

  “Nicolo Dellacroce and the higher-ups above him.”

  “Mafia?”

  “It’s consistent, if not socially acceptable. Medusa grew out of Saigon’s officer corps and it still relegates its dirty work to the hungry grunts and corrupt NCOs. Check out Nicky D. and men like Sergeant Flannagan. When it comes to killing or kidnapping or using drugs on prisoners, the starched-shirt boys stay far in the background; they’re nowhere to be found.”

  “But I gather you found them,” said the impatient Conklin.

  “Again, we think so—we being our people in quiet consultation with New York’s anticrime division, especially a unit called the U.S. platoon.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “They’re mostly Italian Americans; they gave themselves the name Untouchable Sicilians. Thus the U.S. initials with a dual connotation.”

  “Nice touch.”

  “Unnice work.… According to the Reco-Metropolitan’s billing files—”

  “The who?”

  “The company that installed the answering machine on One Hundred Thirty-eighth Street in Manhattan.”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “According to the files, the machine was leased to a small importing firm on Eleventh Avenue several blocks from the piers. An hour ago we got the telephone records for the past two months for the company, and guess what we found?”

  “I’d rather not wait,” said Alex emphatically.

  “Nine calls to a reasonably acceptable number in Brooklyn Heights, and three in the space of an hour to an extremely unlikely telephone on Wall Street.”

  “Someone was excited—”

  “That’s what we thought—we in this case being our own unit. We asked the Sicilians to give us what they had on Brooklyn Heights.”

  “DeFazio?”

  “Let’s put it this way. He lives there, but the phone is registered to the Atlas Coin Vending Machine Company in Long Island City.”

  “It fits. Dumb, but it fits. What about DeFazio?”

  “He’s a middle-level but ambitious capo in the Giancavallo family. He’s very close, very underground, very vicious … and very gay.”

  “Holy Christ …!”

  “The Untouchables swore us to secrecy. They intend to spring it themselves.”

  “Bullshit,” said Conklin softly. “One of the first things we learn in this business is to lie to anyone and everyone, especially anyone who’s foolish enough to trust us. We’ll use it anytime it gets us a square forward.… What’s the other telephone number, the unlikely one?”

  “Just about the most powerful law firm on Wall Street.”

  “Medusa,” concluded Alex firmly.

  “That’s the way I read it. They’ve got seventy-six lawyers on two floors of the building. Which one is it—or who among them are they?”

  “I don’t give a goddamn! We go after DeFazio and whatever controls he’s sending over to Paris. To Europe to feed the Jackal. They’re the guns after Jason and that’s all I care about. Go to work on DeFazio. He’s the one under contract!”

  Peter Holland leaned back in his chair, rigid, intense. “It had to come to this, didn’t it, Alex?” he asked quietly. “We both have our priorities.… I’d do anything within my sworn capacity to save the lives of Jason Bourne and his wife, but I will not violate my oath to defend this country first. I can’t do it and I suspect you know that. My priority is Medusa, in your words a global cartel that intends to become a government within our government over here. That’s whom I have to go after. First and immediately and without regard to casualties. To put it plainly, my friend—and I hope you’re my friend—the Bournes, or whoever they are, are expendable. I’m sorry, Alex.”

  “That’s really why you asked me to come over here this morning, isn’t it?” said Conklin, planting his cane on the floor and awkwardly getting to his feet.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You’ve got your own game plan against Medusa—and we can’t be a part of it.”

  “No, you can’t. It’s a fundamental conflict of interest.”

  “I’ll grant you that. We’d louse you up in a minute if it’d help Jason and Marie. Naturally, my personal and professional opinion is that if the whole fucking United States government can’t rip out a Medusa without sacrificing a man and a woman who’ve given so much, I’m not sure it’s worth a damn!”

  “Neither am I,” said Holland, standing up behind the desk. “But I swore an oath to try—in order of my sworn priorities.”

  “Have I got any perks left?”

  “Anything I can get you that doesn’t compromise our going after Medusa.”

  “How about two seats on a military aircraft, Agency-cleared, to Paris.”

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  “Two seats?”

  “Panov and me. We went to Hong Kong together, why not Paris?”

  “Alex, you’re out of your goddamned mind!”

  “I don’t think you understand, Peter. Mo’s wife died ten years after they were married, and I never had the courage to give it a try. So you see, ‘Jason Bourne’ and Marie are the only family we have. She makes a hell of a meat loaf, let me tell you.”

  “Two tickets to Paris,” said Holland, his face ashen.

  29

  Marie watched her husband as he walked back and forth, the pacing deliberate, energized. He tramped angrily between the writing table and the sunlit curtains of the two windows over-looking the front lawn of the Auberge des Artistes in Barbizon. The country inn was the one Marie remembered, but it was not part of David Webb’s memory; and when he said as much, his wife briefly closed her eyes, hearing another voice from years ago.

  “Above everything, he’s got to avoid extreme stress, the kind of tension that goes with survival under life-threatening circumstances. If you see him regressing into that state of mind—and you’ll know it when you see it—stop him. Seduce him, slap him, cry, get angry … anything, just stop him.” Morris Panov, dear friend, doctor and the guiding force behind her husband’s therapy.

  She had tried seduction within minutes after they were alone together. It was a mistake, even a touch farcical, awkward for both of them. Neither was remotely aroused. Yet there was no embarrassment; they held each other on the bed, both understanding.

  “We’re a couple of real sexpots, aren’t we?” said Marie.

  “We’ve been there before,” replied David Webb gently, “and I’ve no doubt we’ll be there again.” Then Jason Bourne rolled away and stood up. “I have to make a list,” he said urgently, heading for the quaint country table against the wall that served as a desk and a place for the telephone. “We have to know where we are and where we’re going.”

  “And I have to call Johnny on the island,” added Marie, rising to her feet and smoothing her skirt. “After I talk to him I’ll speak to Jamie. I’ll reassure him and tell him we’ll be back soon.” The wife crossed to the table; she stopped, blocked by her husband—her husband yet not her husband.