Page 7 of The Bourne Ultimatum (Jason Bourne 3)

  “That’s pretty blunt—”

  “So was the son of a bitch who called. I had to take it inside, on a pay phone. I told him I wouldn’t break into your game, and he said I goddamned well better if I knew what was good for me. Naturally, I asked him who he was and what rank and all the rest of the bullshit but he cut me off, more scared than anything else. ‘Just tell the general I’m calling about Saigon and some reptiles crawling around the city damn near twenty years ago.’ Those were his exact words—”

  “Jesus Christ!” cried Swayne, interrupting. “Snake …?”

  “He said he’d call back in a half hour—that’s eighteen minutes now. Get in, Norman. I’m part of this, remember?”

  Bewildered and frightened, the general mumbled. “I … I have to make excuses. I can’t just walk away, drive away.”

  “Make it quick. And, Norman, you’ve got on a short-sleeved shirt, you goddamned idiot! Bend your arm.”

  Swayne, his eyes wide, stared at the small tattoo on his flesh, instantly crooking his arm to his chest in British brigadier fashion as he walked unsteadily back to the tee, summoning a casualness he could not feel. “Damn, young fella, the army calls.”

  “Well, damn also, Norm, but I’ve got to pay you. I insist!”

  The general, half in a daze, accepted the debt from his partner, not counting the bills, not realizing that it was several hundred dollars more than he was owed. Proffering confused thanks, Swayne walked swiftly back to the golf cart and climbed in beside his master sergeant.

  “So much for my hook, soldier boy,” said the armaments executive to himself, addressing the tee and swinging his club, sending the little pocked white ball straight down the fairway far beyond the general’s and with a much better lie. “Four hundred million’s worth, you brass-plated bastard.”

  Mark Two.

  “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” asked the senator, laughing as he spoke into the phone. “Or should I say, what’s Al Armbruster trying to pull? He doesn’t need my support on the new bill and he wouldn’t get it if he did. He was a jackass in Saigon and he’s a jackass now, but he’s got the majority vote.”

  “We’re not talking about votes, Senator. We’re talking about Snake Lady!”

  “The only snakes I knew in Saigon were jerks like Alby who crawled around the city pretending to know all the answers when there weren’t any.… Who the hell are you anyway?”

  In Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin replaced the telephone.

  Misfire Three.

  * * *

  Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, picked up his phone in London, assuming that the unnamed caller, code “courier D.C.,” was bearing an exceptionally confidential instruction from the State Department and automatically, as was the order, Atkinson snapped the switch on his rarely used scrambler. It would create an eruption of static on British intelligence’s intercepts and later he would smile benignly at good friends in the Connaught bar who asked him if there was anything new out of Washington, knowing that this one or that one had “relatives” in MI-Five.

  “Yes, Courier District?”

  “Mr. Ambassador, I assume we can’t be picked up,” said the low, strained voice from Washington.

  “Your assumption’s correct unless they’ve come up with a new type of Enigma, which is unlikely.”

  “Good.… I want to take you back to Saigon, to a certain operation no one talks about—”

  “Who is this?” broke in Atkinson, bolting forward in his chair.

  “The men in that outfit never used names, Mr. Ambassador, and we didn’t exactly advertise our commitments, did we?”

  “Goddamn you, who are you? I know you?”

  “No way, Phil, although I’m surprised you don’t recognize my voice.”

  Atkinson’s eyes widened as they roamed rapidly about his office, seeing nothing, only trying to remember, trying desperately to put a voice with a face. “Is that you, Jack—believe me, we’re on a scrambler!”

  “Close, Phil—”

  “The Sixth Fleet, Jack. A simple reverse Morse. Then bigger things, much bigger. It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s say it’s a possible, but it’s also irrelevant. The point is we’re in heavy weather, very heavy—”

  “It is you!”

  “Shut up. Just listen. A bastard frigate got loose from its moorings and is crashing around, hitting too many shoals.”

  “Jack, I was ground, not sea. I can’t understand you.”

  “Some swab-jockey must have been cut out of the action back in Saigon, and from what I’ve learned he was put in protection for something or other and now he’s got it all put together. He’s got it all, Phil. Everything.”

  “Holy Christ!”

  “He’s ready to launch—”

  “Stop him!”

  “That’s the problem. We’re not sure who he is. The whole thing’s being kept very close over in Langley.”

  “Good God, man, in your position you can give them the order to back off! Say it’s a DOD dead file that was never completed—that it was designed to spread disinformation! It’s all false!”

  “That could be walking into a salvo—”

  “Have you called Jimmy T over in Brussels?” interrupted the ambassador. “He’s tight with the top max at Langley.”

  “At the moment I don’t want anything to go any further. Not until I do some missionary work.”

  “Whatever you say, Jack. You’re running the show.”

  “Keep your halyards taut, Phil.”

  “If that means keep my mouth shut, don’t you worry about it!” said Atkinson, crooking his elbow, wondering who in London could remove an ugly tattoo on his forearm.

  Across the Atlantic in Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin hung up the telephone and leaned back in his chair a frightened man. He had been following his instincts as he had done in the field for over twenty years, words leading to other words, phrases to phrases, innuendos snatched out of the air to support suppositions, even conclusions. It was a chess game of instant invention and he knew he was a skilled professional—sometimes too skilled. There were things that should remain in their black holes, undetected cancers buried in history, and what he had just learned might well fit that category.

  Marks Three, Four and Five.

  Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to Great Britain. James Teagarten, supreme commander of NATO. Jonathan “Jack” Burton, former admiral of the Sixth Fleet, currently chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  Snake Lady. Medusa.

  A network.

  5

  It was as if nothing had changed, thought Jason Bourne, knowing that his other self, the self called David Webb, was receding. The taxi had brought him out to the once elegant, now run-down neighborhood in northeast Washington, and, as happened five years ago, the driver refused to wait. He walked up the overgrown flagstone path to the old house, thinking as he did the first time that it was too old and too fragile and too much in need of repair; he rang the bell, wondering if Cactus was even alive. He was; the thin old black man with the gentle face and warm eyes stood in the doorframe exactly as he had stood five years before, squinting beneath a green eyeshade. Even Cactus’s first words were a minor variation of those he had used five years ago.

  “You got hubcaps on your car, Jason?”

  “No car and no cab; it wouldn’t stay.”

  “Musta heard all those scurrilous rumors circulated by the fascist press. Me, I got howitzers in the windows just to impress this neighborly turf of my friendly persuasion. Come on in, I think of you a lot. Why didn’t you phone this old boy?”

  “Your number’s not listed, Cactus.”

  “Musta been an oversight.” Bourne walked into the hallway as the old man closed the door. “You got a few streaks of gray in your hair, Br’er Rabbit,” added Cactus, studying his friend. “Other than that you ain’t changed much. Maybe a line or six in your face, but it adds character.”

  “I’v

e also got a wife and two kids, Uncle Remus. A boy and a girl.”

  “I know that. Mo Panov keeps me up on things even though he can’t tell me where you are—which I don’t care to know, Jason.”

  Bourne blinked while slowly shaking his head. “I still forget things, Cactus. I’m sorry. I forgot you and Mo are friends.”

  “Oh, the good doctor calls me at least once a month and says, ‘Cactus, you rascal, put on your Pierre Cardin suit and your Gucci shoes and let’s have lunch.’ So I say to him, ‘Where’s this old nigger gonna get such threads?’ and he says to me, ‘You probably own a shopping center in the best part of town.’ … Now that’s an exaggeration, s’ help me. I do have bits and pieces of decent white real estate but I never go near them.”

  As both men laughed, Jason stared at the dark face and warm black eyes in front of him. “Something else I just remembered. Thirteen years ago in that hospital in Virginia … you came to see me. Outside of Marie and those government bastards you were the only one.”

  “Panov understood, Br’er Rabbit. When in my very unofficial status I worked on you for Europe, I told Morris that you don’t study a man’s face in a lens without learning things about that face, that man. I wanted you to talk about the things I found missing in that lens and Morris thought it might not be a bad idea.… And now that confessional hour is over, I gotta say that it’s really good to see you, Jason, but to tell you the truth I’m not happy to see you, if you catch my meaning.”

  “I need your help, Cactus.”

  “That’s the root of my unhappiness. You’ve been through enough and you wouldn’t be here unless you were itching for more, and in my professional, lens-peering opinion, that ain’t healthy for the face I’m lookin’ at.”

  “You’ve got to help me.”

  “Then you’d better have a damn good reason that passes muster for the good doctor. ’Cause I ain’t gonna mess around with anything that could mess you up further.… I met your lovely lady with the dark red hair a few times in the hospital—she’s somethin’ special, Br’er, and your kids have got to be outstanding, so you see I can’t mess around with anything that might hurt them. Forgive me, but you’re all like kinfolk from a distance, from a time we don’t talk about, but it’s on my mind.”

  “They’re why I need your help.”

  “Be clearer, Jason.”

  “The Jackal’s closing in. He found us in Hong Kong and he’s zeroing in on me and my family, on my wife and my children. Please, help me.”

  The old man’s eyes grew wide under the green shade, a moral fury in his expanded pupils. “Does the good doctor know about this?”

  “He’s part of it. He may not approve of what I’m doing, but if he’s honest with himself, he knows that the bottom line is the Jackal and me. Help me, Cactus.”

  The aged black studied his pleading client in the hallway, in the afternoon shadows. “You in good shape, Br’er Rabbit?” he asked. “You still got juices?”

  “I run six miles every morning and I press weights at least twice a week in the university gym—”

  “I didn’t hear that. I don’t want to know anything about colleges or universities.”

  “Then you didn’t hear it.”

  “ ’Course I didn’t. You look in pretty fair condition, I’ll say that.”

  “It’s deliberate, Cactus,” said Jason quietly. “Sometimes it’s just a telephone suddenly ringing, or Marie’s late or out with the kids and I can’t reach her … or someone I don’t know stops me in the street to ask directions, and it comes back—he comes back. The Jackal. As long as there’s a possibility that he’s alive, I have to be ready for him because he won’t stop looking for me. The awful irony is that his hunt is based on a supposition that may not be true. He thinks I can identify him, but I’m not sure I could. Nothing’s really in focus yet.”

  “Have you considered sending that message to him?”

  “With his assets maybe I’ll take an ad out in the Wall Street Journal. ‘Dear Old Buddy Carlos: Boy, have I got news for you.’ ”

  “Don’t chortle, Jason, it’s not inconceivable. Your friend Alex could find a way. His gimp doesn’t affect that head of his. I believe the fancy word is serpentine.”

  “Which is why if he hasn’t tried it there’s a reason.”

  “I guess I can’t argue with that.… So let’s go to work, Br’er Rabbit. What did you have in mind?” Cactus led the way through a wide archway toward a door at the rear of a worn-out living room replete with ancient furniture and yellowed antimacassars. “My studio isn’t as elegant as it was but all the equipment’s there. You see, I’m sort of semiretired. My financial planners worked out a hell of a retirement program with great tax advantages, so the pressure’s not so great.”

  “You’re only incredible,” said Bourne.

  “I imagine some people might say that, the ones not doin’ time. What did you have in mind?”

  “Pretty much myself. Not Europe or Hong Kong, of course. Just papers, actually.”

  “So the Chameleon retreats to another disguise. Himself.”

  Jason stopped as they approached the door. “That was something else I forgot. They used to call me that, didn’t they?”

  “Chameleon?… They sure did and not without cause, as they say. Six people could come face-to-face with our boy Bourne and there’d be six different descriptions. Without a jar of makeup, incidentally.”

  “It’s all coming back, Cactus.”

  “I wish to almighty God that it didn’t have to, but if it does, you make damn sure it’s all back.… Come on into the magic room.”

  Three hours and twenty minutes later the magic was completed. David Webb, Oriental scholar and for three years Jason Bourne, assassin, had two additional aliases with passports, driver’s licenses and voter registration cards to confirm the identities. And since no cabs would travel out to Cactus’s “turf,” an unemployed neighbor wearing several heavy gold chains around his neck and wrists drove Cactus’s client into the heart of Washington in his new Cadillac Allanté.

  Jason found a pay phone in Garfinkel’s department store and called Alex in Virginia, giving him both aliases and selecting one for the Mayflower hotel. Conklin would officially secure a room through the management in the event that summer reservations were tight. Further, Langley would activate a Four Zero imperative and do its best to furnish Bourne with the material he needed, delivering it to his room as soon as possible. The estimate was a minimum of an additional three hours, no guarantees as to the time or authenticity. Regardless, thought Jason, as Alex reconfirmed the information on a second direct line to the CIA, he needed at least two of those three hours before going to the hotel. He had a small wardrobe to put together; the Chameleon was reverting to type.

  “Steve DeSole tells me he’ll start spinning the disks, cross-checking ours with the army data banks and naval intelligence,” said Conklin, returning to the line. “Peter Holland can make it happen; he’s the president’s crony.”

  “Crony? That’s an odd word coming from you.”

  “Like in crony appointment.”

  “Oh?… Thanks, Alex. How about you? Any progress?”

  Conklin paused, and when he answered his quiet voice conveyed his fear; it was controlled but the fear was there. “Let’s put it this way.… I’m not equipped for what I’ve learned. I’ve been away too long. I’m afraid, Jason—sorry … David.”

  “You’re right the first time. Have you discussed—”

  “Nothing by name,” broke in the retired intelligence officer quickly, firmly.

  “I see.”

  “You couldn’t,” contradicted Alex. “I couldn’t. I’ll be in touch.” With these cryptic words Conklin abruptly hung up.

  Slowly Bourne did the same, frowning in concern. Alex was the one now sounding melodramatic, and it was not like him to think that way or act that way. Control was his byword, understatement his persona. Whatever he had learned profoundly disturbed him … so much so as to ma

ke it seem to Bourne that he no longer trusted the procedures he himself had set up, or even the people he was working with. Otherwise he would have been clearer, more forthcoming; instead, for reasons Jason could not fathom, Alexander Conklin did not want to talk about Medusa or whatever he had learned in peeling away twenty years of deceit.… Was it possible?

  No time! No use, not now, considered Bourne, looking around the huge department store. Alex was not only as good as his word, he lived by it, as long as one was not an enemy. Ruefully, suppressing a short throated laugh, Jason remembered Paris thirteen years ago. He knew that side of Alex, too. But for the cover of gravestones in a cemetery on the outskirts of Rambouillet, his closest friend would have killed him. That was then, not now. Conklin said he’d “be in touch.” He would. Until then the Chameleon had to build several covers. From the inside to the outside, from underwear to outerwear and everything in between. No chance of a laundry or a cleaning mark coming to light, no microscopic chemical evidence of a regionally distributed detergent or fluid—nothing. He had given too much. If he had to kill for David’s family … oh, my God! For my family!… he refused to live with the consequences of that killing or those killings. Where he was going there were no rules; the innocent might well die in the cross fire. So be it. David Webb would violently object, but Jason Bourne didn’t give a goddamn. He’d been there before; he knew the statistics, Webb knew nothing.

  Marie, I’ll stop him! I promise you I’ll rip him out of your lives. I’ll take the Jackal and leave a dead man. He’ll never be able to touch you again—you’ll be free.

  Oh, Christ, who am I? Mo, help me!… No, Mo, don’t! I am what I have to be. I am cold and I’m getting colder. Soon I’ll be ice … clear, transparent ice, ice so cold and pure it can move anywhere without being seen. Can’t you understand, Mo—you, too, Marie—I have to! David has to go. I can’t have him around any longer.

  Forgive me, Marie, and you forgive me, Doctor, but I’m thinking the truth. A truth that has to be faced right now. I’m not a fool, nor do I fool myself. You both want me to let Jason Bourne get out of my life, release him to some infinity, but the reverse is what I have to do now. David has to leave, at least for a while.