Page 58 of The Bourne Ultimatum (Jason Bourne 3)

  “What?”

  “Medusa, the new one.”

  “How’s it going?” interrupted Conklin.

  “We’re doing our own cross-pollinating between the Sicilians and a number of European banks. It’s dirtying up everything it touches, but we’ve now got more wires into that high-powered law firm in New York than in a NASA lift-off. We’re closing in.”

  “Good hunting,” said Jason. “May I have the number at Tannenbaum’s so I can reach John St. Jacques?”

  Holland gave it to him; Alex wrote it down and hung up. “The horn’s all yours,” said Conklin, awkwardly getting out of the chair by the console and moving to the one at the right corner of the table.

  Bourne sat down and concentrated on the myriad buttons below him. He picked up the telephone and, reading the numbers Alex had recorded in his notebook, touched the appropriate digits on the console.

  The greetings were abrupt, Jason’s questions harsh, his voice demanding. “Who did you talk to about the Tannenbaum house?”

  “Back up, David,” said St. Jacques, instinctively defensive. “What do you mean who did I talk to?”

  “Just that. From Tranquility to Washington, who did you speak to about Tannenbaum’s?”

  “You mean after Holland told me about it?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Johnny, it couldn’t be before, could it?”

  “No, it couldn’t, Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Then who?”

  “You. Only you, esteemed Brother-in-law.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Everything was happening so fast I probably forgot Tannenbaum’s name anyway, and if I remembered it, I certainly wasn’t going to advertise it.”

  “You must have. There was a leak and it didn’t come from Langley.”

  “It didn’t come from me, either. Look, Dr. Academic, I may not have an alphabet after my name, but I’m not exactly an idiot. That’s my niece and nephew in the other room and I fully expect to watch them grow up.… The leak’s why we’re being moved, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How severe?”

  “Maximum. The Jackal.”

  “Jesus!” exploded St. Jacques. “That bastard shows up in the neighborhood, he’s mine!”

  “Easy, Canada,” said Jason, his voice now softer, conveying thought, not anger. “You say, and I believe you, that you described the Tannenbaum place only to me and, if I recall, I was the one who identified it.”

  “That’s right. I remember because when Pritchard told me you were on the phone, I was on the other line with Henry Sykes in ’Serrat. Remember Henry, the CG’s aide?”

  “Of course.”

  “I was asking him to keep half an eye on Tranquility because I had to leave for a few days. Naturally, he knew that because he had to clear the U.S. aircraft in here, and I distinctly recall his asking me where I was going and all I said was Washington. It never even occurred to me to say anything about Tannenbaum’s place, and Sykes didn’t press me because he obviously figured it had something to do with the horrible things that had happened. I suppose you could say he’s a professional in these matters.” St. Jacques paused, but before Bourne could speak he uttered hoarsely, “Oh, my God!”

  “Pritchard,” supplied Jason. “He stayed on the line.”

  “Why? Why would he do it?”

  “You forget,” explained Bourne. “Carlos bought your Crown governor and his Savonarola drug chief. They had to cost heavy money; he could have bought Pritchard for a lot less.”

  “No, you’re wrong, David. Pritchard may be a deluded, self-inflated jackass but he wouldn’t turn on me for money. It’s not that important in the islands—prestige is. And except when he drives me up the wall, I feed it to him; actually he does a pretty damn good job.”

  “There’s no one else, Bro.”

  “There’s also one way to find out. I’m here, not there, and I’m not about to leave here.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I want to bring in Henry Sykes. Is that all right with you?”

  “Do it.”

  “How’s Marie?”

  “As well as can be expected under the circumstances.… And, Johnny, I don’t want her to know a thing about any of this, do you understand me? When she reaches you, and she will, just tell her you’re settled in and everything’s okay, nothing about the move or Carlos.”

  “I understand.”

  “Everything is all right, isn’t it? How are the kids—how’s Jamie taking everything?”

  “You may resent this, but he’s having a grand time, and Mrs. Cooper won’t even let me touch Alison.”

  “I don’t resent either piece of information.”

  “Thanks. What about you? Any progress?”

  “I’ll be in touch,” said Bourne, hanging up and turning to Alex. “It doesn’t make sense, and Carlos always makes sense if you look hard enough. He leaves me a warning that drives me crazy with fear, but he has no means of carrying out his threat. What do you make of it?”

  “The sense is in driving you crazy,” replied Conklin. “The Jackal’s not going to take on an installation like Tannenbaum’s sterile house long-distance. That message was meant to panic you and it did. He wants to throw you off so you’ll make mistakes. He wants the controls in his hands.”

  “It’s another reason for Marie to fly back to the States as soon as possible. She’s got to. I want her inside a fortress, not having lunch out in the open in Barbizon.”

  “I’m more sympathetic to that view than I was last night.” Alex was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Krupkin walked into the room carrying several computer printouts.

  “The number you gave me is disconnected,” he said, a slight hesitancy in his voice.

  “Who was it connected to?” asked Jason.

  “You will not like this any more than I do, and I’d lie to you if I could invent a plausible alternate, but I cannot and I undoubtedly should not.… As of five days ago it was transferred from an obviously false organization to the name of Webb. David Webb.”

  Conklin and Bourne stared in silence at the Soviet intelligence officer, but in that silence were the unheard static cracks of high-voltage electricity. “Why are you so certain we won’t like the information?” asked Alex quietly.

  “My fine old enemy,” began Krupkin, his gentle voice no louder than Conklin’s. “When Mr. Bourne came out of that café of horror with the brown paper clasped in his hand, he was hysterical. In trying to calm him, to bring him under control, you called him David.… I now have a name I sincerely wish I did not possess.”

  “Forget it,” said Bourne.

  “I shall do my best to, but there are ways—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” broke in Jason. “I have to live with the fact that you know it and I’ll manage. Where was that phone installed, the address?”

  “According to the billing computers, it’s a mission home run by an organization called the Magdalen Sisters of Charity. Again obviously false.”

  “Obviously not,” corrected Bourne. “It exists. They exist. It’s legitimate down to their religious helmets, and it’s also a usable drop. Or was.”

  “Fascinating,” mused Krupkin. “So much of the Jackal’s various façades is tied to the Church. A brilliant if overdone modus operandi. It’s said that he once studied for the priesthood.”

  “Then the Church is one up on you,” said Alex, angling his head in a humorously mocking rebuke. “They threw him out before you did.”

  “I never underestimate the Vatican,” laughed Dimitri. “It ultimately proved that our mad Joseph Stalin misunderstood priorities when he asked how many battalions the Pope had. His Holiness doesn’t need them; he achieves more than Stalin ever did with all his purges. Power goes to the one who instills the greatest fear, not so, Aleksei? All the princes of this earth use it with brutal effectiveness. And it all revolves around death—the fear of it, before and after. When will we grow up and tell them all to g

o to the devil?”

  “Death,” whispered Jason, frowning. “Death on the Rivoli, at the Meurice, the Magdalen Sisters … my God, I completely forgot! Dominique Lavier! She was at the Meurice—she may still be there. She said she’d work with me!”

  “Why would she?” asked Krupkin sharply.

  “Because Carlos killed her sister and she had no choice but to join him or be killed herself.” Bourne turned to the console. “I need the telephone number of the Meurice—”

  “Four two six zero, three eight six zero,” offered Krupkin as Jason grabbed a pencil and wrote down the numbers on Alex’s notepad. “A lovely place, once known as the hotel of kings. I especially like the grill.”

  Bourne touched the buttons, holding up his hand for quiet. Remembering, he asked for Madame Brielle’s room, the name they had agreed upon, and when the hotel operator said “Mais oui,” he nodded rapidly in relief to Alex and Dimitri Krupkin. Lavier answered.

  “Yes?”

  “It is I, madame,” said Jason, his French just slightly coarse, ever so minimally Anglicized; the Chameleon was in charge. “Your housekeeper suggested we might reach you here. Madame’s dress is ready. We apologize for the delay.”

  “It was to have been brought to me yesterday—by noon—you ass! I intended to wear it last evening at Le Grand Véfour. I was mortified!”

  “A thousand apologies. We can deliver it to the hotel immediately.”

  “You are again an ass! I’m sure my maid also told you I was here for only two days. Take it to my flat on the Montaigne and it had better be there by four o’clock or your bill will not be paid for six months!” The conversation was believably terminated by a loud crack at the other end of the line.

  Bourne replaced the phone; perspiration had formed at his slightly graying hairline. “I’ve been out of this too long,” he said, breathing deeply. “She has a flat on the Montaigne and she’ll be there after four o’clock.”

  “Who the hell is Dominique whatever her name is?” fairly yelled the frustrated Conklin.

  “Lavier,” answered Krupkin, “only, she uses her dead sister’s name, Jacqueline. She’s been posing as her sister for years.”

  “You know about that?” asked Jason, impressed.

  “Yes, but it never did us much good. It was an understandable ruse—look-alikes, several months’ absence, minor surgery and programming—all quite normal in the abnormal world of haute couture. Who looks or listens to anyone in that superficial orbit? We watch her, but she’s never led us to the Jackal, she wouldn’t know how. She has no direct access; everything she reports to Carlos is filtered, stone walls at every relay. That’s the way of the Jackal.”

  “It’s not always the way,” said Bourne. “There was a man named Santos who managed a run-down café in Argenteuil called Le Coeur du Soldat. He had access. He gave it to me and it was very special.”

  “Was?” Krupkin raised his eyebrows. “Had? You employ the past tense?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “And that run-down café in Argenteuil, is it still flourishing?”

  “It’s cleaned out and closed down,” admitted Jason, no defeat in his admission.

  “So the access is terminated, no?”

  “Sure, but I believe what he told me because he was killed for telling it to me. You see, he was getting out, just as this Lavier woman wants to get out—only, his association went back to the beginning. To Cuba, where Carlos saved a misfit like himself from execution. He knew he could use that man, that huge imposing giant who could operate inside the world of the dregs of humanity and be his primary relay. Santos had direct access. He proved it because he gave me an alternate number that did reach the Jackal. Only a very few men could do that.”

  “Fascinating,” said Krupkin, his eyes firmly focused on Bourne. “But as my fine old enemy, Aleksei, who is now looking at you as I look at you, might inquire, what are you leading up to, Mr. Bourne? Your words are ambiguous but your implied accusations appear dangerous.”

  “To you. Not to us.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Santos told me that only four men in the world have direct access to the Jackal. One of them is in Dzerzhinsky Square. ‘Very high in the Komitet’ were Santos’s words, and believe me, he didn’t think much of your superior.”

  It was as if Dimitri Krupkin had been struck in the face by a director of the Politburo in the middle of Red Square during a May Day parade. The blood drained from his head, his skin taking on the pallor of ash, his eyes steady, unblinking. “What else did this Santos tell you? I have to know!”

  “Only that Carlos had a thing about Moscow, that he was making contact with people in high places. It was an obsession with him.… If you can find that contact in Dzerzhinsky Square, it would be a big leap forward. In the meantime, all we’ve got is Dominique Lavier—”

  “Damn, damn!” roared Krupkin, cutting off Jason. “How insane, yet how perfectly logical! You’ve answered several questions, Mr. Bourne, and how they’ve burned into my mind. So many times I’ve come so close—so many, so close—and always nothing. Well, let me tell you, gentlemen, the games of the devil are not restricted to those confined to hell. Others can play them. My God, I’ve been a pearl to be flushed from one oyster to another, always the bigger fool!… Make no more calls from that telephone!”

  * * *

  It was 3:30 in the afternoon, Moscow time, and the elderly man in the uniform of a Soviet army officer walked as rapidly as his age permitted down the hallway on the fifth floor of KGB headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square. It was a hot day, and as usual the air conditioning was only barely and erratically adequate, so General Grigorie Rodchenko permitted himself a privilege of rank: his collar was open. It did not stop the occasional rivulet of sweat from sliding in and out of the crevices of his deeply lined face on its way down to his neck, but the absence of the tight, red-bordered band of cloth around his throat was a minor relief.

  He reached the bank of elevators, pressed the button and waited, gripping a key in his hand. The doors to his right opened, and he was pleased to see that there was no one inside. It was easier than having to order everyone out—at least, far less awkward. He entered, inserted the key in the uppermost lock-release above the panel, and again waited while the mechanism performed its function. It did so quickly, and the elevator shot directly down to the lowest underground levels of the building.

  The doors opened and the general walked out, instantly aware of the pervasive silence that filled the corridors both left and right. In moments, that would change, he thought. He proceeded down the left hallway to a large steel door with a metal sign riveted in the center.

  ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  It was a foolish admonition, he thought, as he took out a thin plastic card from his pocket and shoved it slowly, carefully, into a slot on the right. Without the pass card—and sometimes even with it if inserted too quickly—the door would not open. There were two clicks, and Rodchenko removed his card as the heavy, knobless door swung back, a television monitor recording his entry.

  The hum of activity was pronounced from dozens of lighted cubicles within the huge, dark low-ceilinged complex the size of a czar’s grand ballroom but without the slightest attempt at decor. A thousand pieces of equipment in black and gray, several hundred personnel in pristine white coveralls within white-walled cubicles. And, thankfully, the air was cool, almost cold, in fact. The machinery demanded it, for this was the KGB’s communications center. Information poured in twenty-four hours a day from all over the world.

  The old soldier trudged up a familiar path to the farthest aisle on the right, then left to the last cubicle at the far end of the enormous room. It was a long walk, and the general’s breath was short, his legs were tired. He entered the small enclosure, nodding at the middle-aged operator who looked up at his visitor and removed the cushioned headset from his ears. On the white counter in front of him was a large electronic console with

myriad switches, dials and a keyboard. Rodchenko sat down in a steel chair next to the man; catching his breath, he spoke.

  “You have word from Colonel Krupkin in Paris?”

  “I have words concerning Colonel Krupkin, General. In line with your instructions to monitor the colonel’s telephone conversations, including those international lines authorized by him, I received a tape from Paris several minutes ago that I thought you should listen to.”

  “As usual, you are most efficient and I am most grateful; and as always, I’m sure Colonel Krupkin will inform us of events, but as you know, he’s so terribly busy.”

  “No explanations are necessary, sir. The conversations you are about to hear were recorded within the past half hour. The earphones, please?”

  Rodchenko slipped on the headset and nodded. The operator placed a pad and a container of sharpened pencils in front of the general; he touched a number on the keyboard and sat back as the powerful third direktor of the Komitet leaned forward listening. In moments the general began taking notes; minutes later he was writing furiously. The tape came to an end and Rodchenko removed the headset. He looked sternly at the operator, his narrow Slavic eyes rigid between the folds of lined flesh, the crevices in his face seemingly more pronounced than before.

  “Erase the tape, then destroy the reel,” he ordered, getting out of the chair. “As usual, you have heard nothing.”

  “As usual, General.”

  “And, as usual, you will be rewarded.”

  It was 4:17 when Rodchenko returned to his office and sat down at his desk, studying his notes. It was incredible! It was beyond belief, yet there it was—he had heard for himself the words and the voices saying those words!… Not those concerning the monseigneur in Paris; he was secondary now and could be reached in minutes, if it was necessary. That could wait, but the other could not wait, not an instant longer! The general picked up his phone and rang his secretary.

  “I want an immediate satellite transmission to our consulate in New York. All maximum scramblers in place and operational.”

  How could it happen?

  Medusa!