Page 6 of The Bourne Ultimatum (Jason Bourne 3)

  Conklin slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. “How did he find us, find me? Everything, everything, was under a black drape. McAllister and I made sure of it!”

  “I can think of several ways, but that’s a question we can postpone, we haven’t time for it now. We have to move now on what we know Carlos knows.… Medusa, Alex.”

  “What? Move how?”

  “If Bourne was plucked from Medusa, it has to follow that our covert operations were working with it—with them. Otherwise, how could the Bourne switch be created? What the Jackal doesn’t know or hasn’t put together yet is how far this government—especially certain people in this government—will go to keep Medusa in its black hole. As you pointed out, some very important men in the White House and the State Department could get burned, a lot of nasty labels branded on the foreheads of global power brokers, I think you called them.”

  “And suddenly we’ve got a few Waldheims of our own.” Conklin nodded, frowning and looking down, his thoughts obviously racing.

  “Nuy Dap Ranh,” said Webb, barely above a whisper. At the sound of the Oriental words, Alex’s eyes snapped back up at David. “That’s the key, isn’t it?” continued Webb. “Nuy Dap Ranh—Snake Lady.”

  “You remembered.”

  “Just this morning,” replied Jason Bourne, his eyes cold. “When Marie and the kids were airborne, the plane disappeared into the mists over Boston harbor and suddenly I was there. In another plane, in another time, the words crackling out of a radio through the static. ‘Snake Lady, Snake Lady, abort.… Snake Lady, do you read me? Abort!’ I responded by turning the damn thing off and looked around at the men in the cabin, which seemed ready to break apart in the turbulence. I studied each man, wondering, I guess, whether this one or that one would come out alive, whether I’d come out alive, and if we didn’t, how we would die.… Then I saw two of the men rolling up their sleeves, comparing those small ugly tattoos on their forearms, those lousy little emblems that obsessed them—”

  “Nuy Dap Ranh,” said Conklin flatly. “A woman’s face with snakes for strands of hair. Snake Lady. You refused to have one done on you—”

  “I never considered it a mark of distinction,” interrupted Webb-Bourne, blinking. “Somewhat the reverse, in fact.”

  “Initially it was meant for identification, not a standard or a banner of any distinction one way or the other. An intricate tattoo on the underside of the forearm, the design and the colors produced by only one artist in Saigon. No one else could duplicate it.”

  “That old man made a lot of money during those years; he was special.”

  “Every officer in Command Headquarters who was connected to Medusa had one. They were like manic kids who’d found secret code rings in cereal boxes.”

  “They weren’t kids, Alex. Manic, you can bet your ass on it, but not kids. They were infected with a rotten virus called unaccountability, and more than a few millionaires were made in the ubiquitous Command Saigon. The real kids were being maimed and killed in the jungles while a lot of pressed khaki in the South had personal couriers routed through Switzerland and the banks on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse.”

  “Careful, David. You could be speaking of some very important people in our government.”

  “Who are they?” asked Webb quietly, his glass poised in front of him.

  “The ones I knew who were up to their necks in garbage I made damn sure faded after Saigon fell. But I was out of the field a couple of years before then, and nobody talks very much about those months and nothing at all about Snake Lady.”

  “Still, you’ve got to have some ideas.”

  “Sure, but nothing concrete, nothing even close to proof. Just possibilities based on life-styles, on real estate they shouldn’t have or places they go they shouldn’t be able to afford or the positions some hold or held in corporations justifying salaries and stock options when nothing in their backgrounds justified the jobs.”

  “You’re describing a network,” said David, his voice now tight, the voice of Jason Bourne.

  “If it is, it’s very tight,” agreed Conklin. “Very exclusive.”

  “Draw up a list, Alex.”

  “It’d be filled with holes.”

  “Then keep it at first to those important people in our government who were attached to Command Saigon. Maybe even further to the ones who have real estate they shouldn’t have or who held high-paying jobs in the private sector they shouldn’t have gotten.”

  “I repeat, any such list could be worthless.”

  “Not with your instincts.”

  “David, what the hell has any of this to do with Carlos?”

  “Part of the truth, Alex. A dangerous part, I grant you, but foolproof and irresistible to the Jackal.”

  Stunned, the former field officer stared at his friend. “In what way?”

  “That’s where your creative thinking comes in. Say you come up with fifteen or twenty names, you’re bound to hit three or four targets we can confirm one way or another. Once we ascertain who they are, we apply pressure, squeezing them in different ways, delivering the same basic message: A former Medusan has gone over the edge, a man who’s been in protective custody for years is about to blow the head off Snake Lady and he’s got the ammunition—names, crimes, the locations of secret Swiss accounts, the whole Caesar salad. Then—and this’ll test the talents of the old Saint Alex we all knew and revered—word is passed on that there’s someone who wants this dangerous, disgruntled turncoat more than they do.”

  “Ilich Ramirez Sanchez,” supplied Conklin softly. “Carlos the Jackal. And what follows is equally impossible: Somehow—only God knows how—word gets out calling for a meeting between the two interested parties. That is to say, interested in a joint assassination, the parties of the first part unable to participate actively, due to the sensitive nature of their high official positions, is that about it?”

  “Just about, except that these same powerful men in Washington can gain access to the identity and the whereabouts of this much desired corpse-to-be.”

  “Naturally,” agreed Alex, nodding in disbelief. “They simply wave a wand and all the restrictions applicable to maximum-classified files are lifted and they’re given the information.”

  “Exactly,” said David firmly. “Because whoever meets with Carlos’s emissaries has to be so high up, so authentic, that the Jackal has no choice but to accept him or them. He can’t have any doubts, all thoughts of a trap gone with their coming forward.”

  “Would you also like me to make baby roses bloom during a January blizzard in Montana?”

  “Close to it. Everything’s got to happen within the next day or two while Carlos is still stinging from what happened at the Smithsonian.”

  “Impossible!… Oh, hell, I’ll try. I’ll set up shop here and have Langley send me what I need. Four Zero security, of course.… I hate like hell to lose whoever it is at the Mayflower.”

  “We may not,” said Webb. “Whoever it is won’t fold so fast. It’s not like the Jackal to leave an obvious hole like that.”

  “The Jackal? You think it’s Carlos himself?”

  “Not him, of course, but someone on his payroll, someone so unlikely he could carry a sign around his neck with the Jackal’s name on it and we wouldn’t believe him.”

  “Chinese?”

  “Maybe. He might play that out and then he might not. He’s geometric; whatever he does is logical, even his logic seems illogical.”

  “I hear a man from the past, a man who never was.”

  “Oh, he was, Alex. He was indeed. And now he’s back.”

  Conklin looked toward the door of the apartment, David’s words suddenly provoking another thought. “Where’s your suitcase?” he asked. “You brought some clothes, didn’t you?”

  “No clothes, and these will be dropped in a Washington sewer once I have others. But first I have to see another old friend of mine, another genius who lives in the wrong section of town.”

  “

Let me guess,” said the retired agent. “An elderly black man with the improbable name of Cactus, a genius where false papers such as passports and driver’s licenses and credit cards are concerned.”

  “That’s about it. Him.”

  “The Agency could do it all.”

  “Not as well and too bureaucratically. I want nothing traceable, even with Four Zero security. This is solo.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “You get to work, field man. By tomorrow morning I want a lot of people in this town shaken up.”

  “Tomorrow morning …? That is impossible!”

  “Not for you. Not for Saint Alex, the prince of dark operations?”

  “Say whatever the hell you like, I’m not even in training.”

  “It comes back quickly, like sex and riding a bicycle.”

  “What about you? What are you going to do?”

  “After I consult with Cactus, I’ll get a room at the Mayflower hotel,” answered Jason Bourne.

  Culver Parnell, hotel magnate from Atlanta whose twenty-year reign in the hostelry business had led to his appointment as chief of protocol for the White House, angrily hung up his office phone as he scribbled a sixth obscenity on a legal pad. With the election and now the turnover of White House personnel, he had replaced the previous administration’s well-born female who knew nothing about the political ramifications of 1600’s invitation list. Then, to his profound irritation, he found himself at war with his own first assistant, another middle-aged female, also from one of the ass-elegant Eastern colleges, and, to make it worse, a popular Washington socialite who contributed her salary to some la-di-da dance company whose members pranced around in their underwear when they wore any.

  “Hog damn!” fumed Culver, running his hand through his fringed gray hair; he picked up the telephone and poked four digits on his console. “Gimme the Redhead, you sweet thing,” he intoned, exaggerating his already pronounced Georgia accent.

  “Yes, sir,” said the flattered secretary. “He’s on another line but I’ll interrupt. Just hold on a sec, Mr. Parnell.”

  “You’re the loveliest of the peaches, lovely child.”

  “Oh, golly, thank you! Now just hold on.”

  It never failed, mused Culver. A little soft oil from the magnolia worked a hell of a lot better than the bark of a gnarled oak. That bitch of a first assistant of his might take a lesson from her Southern superiors; she talked like some Yankee dentist had bonded her fucking teeth together with permanent cement.

  “That you, Cull?” came the voice of Redhead over the line, intruding on Parnell’s thoughts as he wrote a seventh obscenity on the legal pad.

  “You’re momma-letchin’ right, boy, and we got a problem! The fricassee bitch is doin’ it again. I got our Wall Streeters inked in for a table at the reception on the twenty-fifth, the one for the new French ambassador and she says we gotta bump ’em for some core-dee-ballet fruitcakes—she says she and the First Lady feel mighty strong about it. Shee-it! Those money boys gotta lot of French interests goin’ for them, and this White House bash could put ’em on top. Every frog on the Bourse will think they got the ears of the whole town here!”

  “Forget it, Cull,” broke in the anxious Redhead. “We may have a bigger problem, and I don’t know what it means.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When we were back in Saigon, did you ever hear of something or someone called Snake Lady?”

  “I heard a hell of a lot about snake eyes,” chuckled Parnell, “but no Snake Lady. Why?”

  “The fellow I was just talking to—he’s going to call back in five minutes—sounded as though he was threatening me. I mean actually threatening me, Cull! He mentioned Saigon and implied that something terrible happened back then and repeated the name Snake Lady several times as if I should have run for cover.”

  “You leave that son of a bitch to me!” roared Parnell, interrupting. “I know exactly what that bastard’s talking about! This is that snotty bitch first assistant of mine—that’s the fuckin’ Snake Lady! You give that slug worm my number and tell him I know all about his horseshit!”

  “Will you please tell me, Cull?”

  “What the hell, you were there, Redhead.… So we had a few games going, even a few mini casinos, and some clowns lost a couple of shirts, but there was nothin’ soldiers haven’t done since they threw craps for Christ’s clothes!… We just put it on a higher plane and maybe tossed in a few broads who’d have been walkin’ the streets anyway.… No, Redhead, that elegant-ass, so-called assistant thinks she’s got somethin’ on me—that’s why she’s goin’ through you, ’cause everybody knows we’re buddies.… You tell that slime to call me and I’ll settle his grits along with that bitch’s twat! Oh, boy, she made a wrong move! My Wall Streeters are in and her pansies are out!”

  “Okay, Cull, I’ll simply refer him to you,” said the Redhead, otherwise known as the vice president of the United States, as he hung up the phone.

  It rang four minutes later and the words were spat out at Parnell. “Snake Lady, Culver, and we’re all in trouble!”

  “No, you listen to me, Divot Head, and I’ll tell you who’s in trouble! She’s no lady, she’s a bitch! One of her thirty or forty eunuch husbands may have thrown a few snake eyes in Saigon and lost some of her well-advertised come-and-take-me cash, but nobody gave a shit then and nobody gives a shit now. Especially a marine colonel who liked a sharp game of poker every once in a while, and that man is sitting in the Oval Office at this moment. And furthermore, you ball-less scrotum, when he learns that she’s trying to further defame the brave boys who wanted only a little relaxation while fighting a thankless war—”

  In Vienna, Virginia, Alexander Conklin replaced the phone. Misfire One and Misfire Two … and he had never heard of Culver Parnell.

  The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Albert Armbruster, swore out loud as he turned off the shower at the sound of his wife’s shrieking voice in the steam-filled bathroom. “What the hell is it, Mamie? I can’t take a shower without you yammering?”

  “It could be the White House, Al! You know how they talk, so low and quiet and always saying it’s urgent.”

  “Shit!” yelled the chairman, opening the glass door and walking naked to the phone on the wall. “This is Armbruster. What is it?”

  “There’s a crisis that requires your immediate attention.”

  “Is this 1600?”

  “No, and we hope it never goes up there.”

  “Then who the hell are you?”

  “Someone as concerned as you’re going to be. After all these years—oh, Christ!”

  “Concerned about what? What are you talking about?”

  “Snake Lady, Mr. Chairman.”

  “Oh, my God!” Armbruster’s hushed voice was a sudden involuntary cry of panic. Instantly, he controlled himself but it was too late. Mark One. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.… What’s a snake whatever-it-is? Never heard of it.”

  “Well, hear it now, Mr. Medusa. Somebody’s got it all, everything. Dates, diversions of matériel, banks in Geneva and Zurich—even the names of a half-dozen couriers routed out of Saigon—and worse.… Jesus, the worst! Other names—MIAs established as never having been in combat … eight investigating personnel from the inspector general’s office. Everything.”

  “You’re not making sense! You’re talking gibberish!”

  “And you’re on the list, Mr. Chairman. That man must have spent fifteen years putting it together, and now he wants payment for all those years of work or he blows it open—everything, everyone.”

  “Who? Who is he, for Christ’s sake?”

  “We’re centering in. All we know is that he’s been in the protection program for over a decade, and no one gets rich in those circumstances. He must have been cut out of the action in Saigon and now he’s making up for lost time. Stay tight. We’ll be back in touch.” There was a click and the line went dead.

  Despite the steam and

the heat of the bathroom, the naked Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, shivered as the sweat rolled down his face. He hung up the phone, his eyes straying to the small, ugly tattoo on the underside of his forearm.

  Over in Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin looked at the telephone.

  Mark One.

  General Norman Swayne, chief of Pentagon procurements, stepped back from the tee satisfied with his long straight drive down the fairway. The ball would roll to an optimum position for a decent five-iron approach shot to the seventeenth green. “That ought to do it,” he said, turning to address his golfing partner.

  “Certainly ought to, Norm,” replied the youngish senior vice president of Calco Technologies. “You’re taking my butt for a ride this afternoon. I’m going to end up owing you close to three hundred clams. At twenty a hole, I’ve only gotten four so far.”

  “It’s your hook, young fella. You ought to work on it.”

  “That’s certainly the truth, Norm,” agreed the Calco executive in charge of marketing as he approached the tee. Suddenly, there was the high grating sound of a golf cart’s horn as a three-wheeled vehicle appeared over the incline from the sixteenth fairway going as fast as it could go. “That’s your driver, General,” said the armaments marketer, immediately wishing he had not used his partner’s formal title.

  “So it is. That’s odd; he never interrupts my golf game.” Swayne walked toward the rapidly approaching cart, meeting it thirty feet away from the tee. “What is it?” he asked a large, middle-aged beribboned master sergeant who had been his driver for over fifteen years.

  “My guess is that it’s rotten,” answered the noncommissioned officer gruffly while he gripped the wheel.