Page 68 of The Bourne Ultimatum (Jason Bourne 3)

  The small crowd’s reaction was now somewhat more audible, definitely less constrained. “Compared to similar departments in the governments of our adversaries,” went on Carlos, “we here in Moscow have lagged far behind when we should be ahead, and we are behind because your talents have been suppressed by entrenched officeholders who care more for their office privileges than they do for the functions of their departments!”

  The response was immediate, even electric, with the three women openly if softly applauding. “It is for that reason, these reasons, that I and my associate comrades here in Moscow have sought you out. Further, it is why I have sent you funds—to be used totally at your discretion—for the money you’ve received is the approximate value of the privileges your superiors enjoy. Why should you not receive them and enjoy them as they do?”

  The rumble of why not? and he’s right rippled through the audience, now actually looking at one another, eyes locked, and heads nodding firmly. The Jackal then began to reel off the eight major departments in question, and as each was named successively, there was an enthusiastic nodding of heads. “The ministries of Transport, Information, Finance, Import/Export, Legal Procedures, Military Supply, Scientific Research … and hardly the least, Presidium Appointments.… These are your domains, but you have been cut out from all final decisions. That is no longer acceptable—changes must be made!”

  The assembled listeners rose almost as one, no longer strangers but, instead, people united in a cause. Then one, the obviously cautious bureaucrat who had closed the door, spoke. “You appear to know our situations well, sir, but what can change them?”

  “These,” announced Carlos, gesturing dramatically at the file folders spread out across the low table. Slowly the small group sat down, singly and in couples, looking at one another when not staring at the folders. “On this table are secretly gathered confidential dossiers of your superiors in each of the departments represented here. They contain such injurious information that when presented by you individually will guarantee your immediate promotions, and in several cases your succession to those high offices. Your superiors will have no choice, for these files are daggers aimed at their throats—exposure would result in disgrace and execution.”

  “Sir?” A middle-aged woman in a neat but nondescript plain blue dress cautiously stood up. Her blond-gray hair was swept back into a stern bun; she touched it briefly, self-consciously, as she spoke. “I evaluate personnel files on a daily basis … and frequently discover errors … how can you be certain these dossiers are accurate? For if they are not accurate, we could be placed in extremely dangerous situations, is that not so?”

  “That you should even question their accuracy is an affront, madame,” replied the Jackal coldly. “I am the monseigneur from Paris. I have accurately described your individual situations and accurately depicted the inferiority of your superiors. Further, and at great expense and risk to myself and my associates here in Moscow, I have covertly funneled monies to you so as to make your lives more comfortable.”

  “Speaking for myself,” interrupted a gaunt man wearing glasses and a brown business suit, “I appreciate the money—I assigned mine to our collective fund and expect a moderate return—but does one have anything to do with the other? I am with the Ministry of Finance, of course, and having admitted that, I absolve myself of complicity for being clear about my status.”

  “Whatever that means, accountant, you’re about as clear as your paralyzed ministry,” interrupted an obese man in a black suit too small for his girth. “You also cast doubt on your ability to recognize a decent return! Naturally, I’m with Military Supply, and you consistently shortchange us.”

  “As you do constantly with Scientific Research!” exclaimed a short, tweedy professorial member of the audience, the irregularity of his clipped beard due, no doubt, to poor vision, despite the thick spectacles bridging his nose. “Returns, indeed! What about allocations?”

  “More than sufficient for your grade-school scientists! The money is better spent stealing from the West!”

  “Stop it!” cried the priest-assassin, raising his arms like a messiah. “We are not here to discuss interdepartmental conflicts, for they will all be resolved with the emergence of our new elite. Remember! I am the monseigneur from Paris, and together we will bring about a new, cleansed order for our great revolution! Complacency is over.”

  “It is a thrilling concept, sir,” said a second woman, a female in her early thirties, her skirt expensively pleated, her compact features obviously recognized by the others as a popular newscaster on television. “However, may we return to the issue of accuracy?”

  “It is settled,” said the dark-eyed Carlos, staring in turn at each person. “How else would I know all about you?”

  “I do not doubt you, sir,” continued the newscaster. “But as a journalist I must always seek a second source of verification unless the ministry determines otherwise. Since you are not with the Ministry of Information, sir, and knowing that whatever you say will remain confidential, can you give us a secondary source?”

  “Am I to be hounded by manipulated journalists when I speak the truth?” The assassin caught his breath in anger. “Everything I’ve told you is the truth and you know it.”

  “So were the crimes of Stalin, sir, and they were buried along with twenty million corpses for thirty years.”

  “You want proof, journalist? I’ll give you proof. I have the eyes and the ears of the leaders of the KGB—namely, the great General Grigorie Rodchenko himself. He is my eyes and my ears, and if you care to know a harsher truth, he is beholden to me! For I am his monseigneur from Paris as well.”

  There was a rustling among the captive audience, a collective hesitancy, a wave of quiet throat clearing. The television newscaster spoke again, now softly, her wide brown eyes riveted on the man in priest’s clothes.

  “You may be whatever you say you are, sir,” she began, “but you do not listen to Radio Moscow’s all-night station. It was reported over an hour ago that General Rodchenko was shot to death this morning by foreign criminals.… It was also reported that all high officers of the Komitet have been called into an emergency session to evaluate the circumstances of the general’s murder. The speculation is that there had to be extraordinary reasons for a man of General Rodchenko’s experience to be lured into a trap by these foreign criminals.”

  “They will tear apart his files,” added the cautious bureaucrat, stiffly getting to his feet. “They will put everything under a KGB microscope, searching for those ‘extraordinary reasons.’ ” The circumspect public official looked at the killer in priest’s clothes. “Perhaps they will find you, sir. And your dossiers.”

  “No,” said the Jackal, perspiration breaking out on his high forehead. “No! That is impossible. I have the only copies of these dossiers—there are no others!”

  “If you believe that, priest,” said the obese man from the Ministry of Military Supply, “you do not know the Komitet.”

  “Know it?” cried Carlos, a tremor developing in his left hand. “I have its soul! No secrets are kept from me, for I am the repository of all secrets! I have volumes on governments everywhere, on their leaders, their generals, their highest officials—I have sources all over the world!”

  “You don’t have Rodchenko anymore,” continued the black-suited man from Military Supply, he, too, getting out of his chair. “And come to think of it, you weren’t even surprised.”

  “What?”

  “For most of us, perhaps all of us, the first thing we do upon rising in the morning is to turn on our radios. It’s always the same foolishness and I suppose there’s comfort in that, but I’d guess most of us knew about Rodchenko’s death.… But you didn’t, priest, and when our television lady told you, you weren’t astonished, you weren’t shocked—as I say, you weren’t even surprised.”

  “Certainly I was!” shouted the Jackal. “What you don’t understand is that I have extraordinary control. It’s why I?

??m trusted, needed by the leaders of world Marxism!”

  “That’s not even fashionable,” mumbled the middle-aged, grayish-blond woman whose expertise was in personnel files; she also stood up.

  “What are you saying?” Carlos’s voice was now a harsh, condemning whisper, rising rapidly in intensity and volume. “I am the monseigneur from Paris. I have made your lives comfortable far beyond your miserable expectations and now you question me? How would I know the things I know—how could I have poured my concentration and my resources into you here in this room if I were not among the most privileged in Moscow? Remember who I am!”

  “But we don’t know who you are,” said another man, rising. Like the other males, his clothes were neat, somber and well pressed, but there was a difference in that they were better tailored, as though he took considerable pains with his appearance. His face, too, was different; it was paler than the others and his eyes were more intense, more focused somehow, giving the impression that when he spoke he weighed his words with great care. “Beyond the clerical title you’ve appropriated, we have no knowledge as to your identity and you obviously do not care to reveal it. As to what you know, you’ve recounted blatant weaknesses and subsequent injustices in our departmental systems, but they are rampant throughout the ministries. You might as well have picked a dozen others like us from a dozen other divisions, and I dare say the complaints would have been the same. Nothing new there—”

  “How dare you?” screamed Carlos the Jackal, the veins in his neck pronounced. “Who are you to say such things to me? I am the monseigneur from Paris, a true son of the Revolution!”

  “And I am a judge advocate in the Ministry of Legal Procedures, Comrade Monseigneur, and a much younger product of that revolution. I may not know the heads of the KGB, who you claim are your minions, but I know the penalties for taking the legal processes in our own hands and personally—secretly—confronting our superiors rather than reporting directly to the Bureau of Irregularities. They are penalties I’d rather not face without far more thorough evidentiary materials than unsolicited dossiers from unknown sources, conceivably invented by discontented officials below even our levels.… Frankly, I don’t care to see them, for I will not be compromised by gratuitous pretrial testimony that can be injurious to my position.”

  “You are an insignificant lawyer!” roared the assassin in priest’s clothing, now repeatedly clenching his hands into fists, his eyes becoming bloodshot. “You are all twisters of the truth! You are sworn companions of the prevailing winds of convenience!”

  “Nicely said,” said the attorney from Legal Procedures, smiling. “Except, comrade, you stole the phrase from the English Blackstone.”

  “I will not tolerate your insufferable insolence!”

  “You don’t have to, Comrade Priest, for I intend to leave, and my legal advice to all here in this room is to do the same.”

  “You dare?”

  “I certainly do,” replied the Soviet attorney, granting himself a moment of humor as he looked around the gathering and grinned. “I might have to prosecute myself, and I’m far too good at my job.”

  “The money!” shrieked the Jackal. “I’ve sent you all thousands!”

  “Where is it recorded?” asked the lawyer with an air of innocence. “You, yourself, made sure it was untraceable. Paper bags in our mail slots, or in our office drawers—notes attached instructing us to burn them. Who among our citizens would admit to having placed them there? That way lies the Lubyanka.… Good-bye, Comrade Monseigneur,” said the attorney for the Ministry of Legal Procedures, scraping his chair in place and starting for the door.

  One by one, as they had arrived, the assembled group followed the lawyer, each looking back at the strange man who had so exotically, so briefly, interrupted their tedious lives, all knowing instinctively that in his path were disgrace and execution. Death.

  Yet none was prepared for what followed. The killer in priest’s clothing suddenly snapped; visceral bolts of lightning electrified his madness. His dark eyes burned with a raging fire that could be extinguished only by soul-satisfying violence—relentless, brutal, savage vengeance for all the wrongs done to his pure purpose to kill the unbelievers! The Jackal swept away the dossiers from the table and lurched down to the pile of newspapers; he grabbed the deadly automatic weapon from beneath the scattered pages and roared, “Stop! All of you!”

  None did, and the outer regions of psychopathic energy became the order of the moment. The killer squeezed the trigger repeatedly and men and women died. Amid screams from the shattered bodies nearest the door, the assassin raced outside, leaping over the corpses, his assault rifle on automatic fire, cutting down the figures in the street, screaming curses, condemning the unbelievers to a hell only he could imagine.

  “Traitors! Filth! Garbage!” screamed the crazed Jackal as he leaped over the dead bodies, racing to the car he had commandeered from the Komitet and its inadequate surveillance unit. The night had ended; the morning had begun.

  The Metropole’s telephone did not ring, it erupted. Startled, Alex Conklin snapped open his eyes, instantly shaking the sleep from his head as he clawed for the strident instrument on the bedside table. “Yes?” he announced, wondering briefly if he was speaking into the conically shaped mouthpiece or into the receiver.

  “Aleksei, stay put! Admit no one into your rooms and have your weapons ready!”

  “Krupkin?… What the hell are you talking about.”

  “A crazed dog is loose in Moscow.”

  “Carlos?”

  “He’s gone completely mad. He killed Rodchenko and butchered the two agents who were following him. A farmer found their bodies around four o’clock this morning—it seems the dogs woke him up with their barking, downwind of the blood scents, I imagine.”

  “Christ, he’s gone over the edge.… But why do you think—”

  “One of our agents was tortured before being killed,” broke in the KGB officer, fully anticipating Alex’s question. “He was our driver from the airport, a protégé of mine and the son of a classmate I roomed with at the university. A fine young man from a rational family but not trained for what he was put through.”

  “You’re saying you think he may have told Carlos about us, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.… There’s more, however. Approximately an hour ago in the Vavilova, eight people were cut down by automatic fire. They were slaughtered; it was a massacre. One of the dying, a woman with the Ministry of Information, a direktor, second class, and a television journalist, said the killer was a priest from Paris who called himself the ‘monseigneur.’ ”

  “Jesus!” exploded Conklin, whipping his legs over the edge of the bed, absently staring at the stump of flesh where once there had been a foot. “It was his cadre.”

  “So called and past tense,” said Krupkin. “If you remember, I told you such recruits would abandon him at the first sign of peril.”

  “I’ll get Jason—”

  “Aleksei, listen to me!”

  “What?” Conklin cupped the telephone under his chin as he reached down for the hollowed-out prosthetic boot.

  “We’ve formed a tactical assault squad, men and women in civilian clothes—they’re being given instructions now and will be there shortly.”

  “Good move.”

  “But we have purposely not alerted the hotel staff or the police.”

  “You’d be idiots if you did,” broke in Alex. “We’ll settle for taking the son of a bitch here! We’d never do it with uniforms prowling around or clerks in hysterics. The Jackal has eyes in his kneecaps.”

  “Do as I say,” ordered the Soviet. “Admit no one, stay away from the windows and take all precautions.”

  “Naturally.… What do you mean, the windows? He’ll need time to find out where we are … to question the maids, the stewards.”

  “Forgive me, old friend,” interrupted Krupkin, “but an angelic priest inquiring at the desk about two Americans, one with a pronounced limp,

during the early morning rush in the lobby?”

  “Good point, even if you’re paranoid.”

  “You’re on a high floor, and directly across the Marx Prospekt is the roof of an office building.”

  “You also think pretty fast.”

  “Certainly faster than that fool in Dzerzhinsky. I would have reached you long before now, but my commissar Kartoshki over there didn’t call me until two minutes ago.”

  “I’ll wake up Bourne.”

  “Be careful.”

  Conklin did not hear the Soviet’s final admonition. Instead, he swiftly replaced the telephone and pulled on his boot, carelessly lashing the Velcro straps around his calf. He then opened the bedside table drawer and took out the Graz Burya automatic, a specially designed KGB weapon with three clips of ammunition. The Graz, as it was commonly known, was unique insofar as it was the only automatic known that would accept a silencer. The cylindrical instrument had rolled to the front of the drawer; he removed it and spun it into the short barrel. Unsteadily, he got into his trousers, shoved the weapon into his belt and crossed to the door. He opened it and limped out only to find Jason, fully dressed, standing in front of a window in the ornate Victorian sitting room.

  “That had to be Krupkin,” said Bourne.

  “It was. Get away from the window.”

  “Carlos?” Bourne instantly stepped back and turned to Alex. “He knows we’re in Moscow?” he asked. Then added, “He knows where we are?”

  “The odds are yes to both questions.” In short concise statements, Conklin related Krupkin’s information. “Does all this tell you something?” asked Alex when he had finished.

  “He’s blown apart,” answered Jason quietly. “It had to happen. The time bomb in his head finally went off.”

  “That’s what I think. His Moscow cadre turned out to be a myth. They probably told him to pound sand and he exploded.”

  “I regret the loss of life and I mean that,” said Bourne. “I wish it could have happened another way, but I can’t regret his state of mind. What’s happened to him is what he wanted for me—to crack wide open.”