"I haven't time to reminisce. The information, please."
"Oh, yes, of course. ... Well, first the money was delivered to me on the corner of Commonwealth and Dartmouth, and naturally I wrote down the names and the specifics you gave me over the phone-"
"Wrote down?" asked Gates sharply.
"Burned as soon as I'd committed them to memory-I did learn a few things from my difficulties. I reached the engineer at the telephone company, who was overjoyed with your-excuse me-my largess, and took his information to that repulsive private detective, a sleaze if I ever saw one, Randy, and considering his methods, someone who could really use my talents."
"Please," interrupted the renowned legal scholar. "The facts, not your appraisals."
"Appraisals often contain germane facts, Professor. Surely you understand that."
"If I want to build a case, I'll ask for opinions. Not now. What did the man find out?"
"Based on what you told me, a lone woman with children-how many being undetermined-and on the data provided by an underpaid telephone company mechanic, namely, a narrowed-down location based on the area code and the first three digits of a number, the unethical sleaze went to work at an outrageous hourly rate. To my astonishment, he was productive. As a matter of fact, with what's left of my legal mind, we may form a quiet, unwritten partnership."
"Damn you, what did he learn?"
"Well, as I say, his hourly rate was beyond belief, I mean it really invaded the corpus of my own well-deserved retainer, so I think we should discuss an adjustment, don't you?"
"Who the hell do you think you are? I sent you three thousand dollars! Five hundred for the telephone man and fifteen hundred for that miserable keyhole slime who calls himself a private detective-"
"Only because he's no longer on the public payroll of the police department, Randolph. Like me, he fell from grace, but he obviously does very good work. Do we negotiate or do I leave?"
In fury, the balding imperious professor of law stared at the gray-faced old disbarred and dishonored attorney in front of him. "How dare you?"
"Dear me, Randy, you really do believe your press, don't you? Very well, I'll tell why I dare, my arrogant old friend. I've read you, seen you, expounding on your esoteric interpretations of complex legal matters, assaulting every decent thing the courts of this country have decreed in the last thirty years, when you haven't the vaguest idea what it is to be poor, or hungry, or have an unwanted mass in your belly you neither anticipated nor can provide a life for. You're the darling of the royalists, my unprofound fellow, and you'd force the average citizen to live in a nation where privacy is obsolete, free thought suspended by censorship, the rich get richer, and for the poorest among us the beginnings of potential life itself may well have to be abandoned in order to survive. And you expound on these unoriginal, medieval concepts only to promote yourself as a brilliant maverick-of disaster. Do you want me to go on, Doctor Gates? Frankly, I think you chose the wrong loser to contact for your dirty work."
"How ... dare you?" repeated the perplexed professor, sputtering as he regally strode to the window. "I don't have to listen to this!"
"No, you certainly don't, Randy. But when I was an associate at the law school and you were one of my kids-one of the best but not the brightest-you damn well had to listen. So I suggest you listen now."
"What the hell do you want?" roared Gates, turning away from the window.
"It's what you want, isn't it? The information you underpaid me for. It's that important to you, isn't it?"
"I must have it."
"You were always filled with anxiety before an exam-"
"Stop it! I paid. I demand the information."
"Then I must demand more money. Whoever's paying you can afford it."
"Not a dollar!"
"Then I'm leaving."
"Stop! ... Five hundred more, that's it."
"Five thousand or I go."
"Ridiculous!"
"See you in another twenty years-"
"All right. ... All right, five thousand."
"Oh, Randy, you're so obvious. It's why you're not really one of the brightest, just someone who can use language to make yourself appear bright, and I think we've seen and heard enough of that these days. ... Ten thousand, Dr. Gates, or I go to the raucous bar of my choice."
"You can't do this."
"Certainly I can. I'm now a confidential legal consultant. Ten thousand dollars. How do you want to pay it? I can't imagine you have it with you, so how will you honor the debt-for the information?"
"My word-"
"Forget it, Randy."
"All right. I'll have it sent to the Boston Five in the morning. In your name. A bank check."
"That's very endearing of you. But in case it occurs to your superiors to stop me from collecting, please advise them that an unknown person, an old friend of mine in the streets, has a letter detailing everything that's gone on between us. It is to be mailed to the Massachusetts Attorney General, Return Receipt Requested, in the event I have an accident."
"That's absurd. The information, please."
"Yes, well, you should know that you've involved yourself in what appears to be an extremely sensitive government operation, that's the bottom line. ... On the assumption that anyone in an emergency leaving one place for another would do so with the fastest transportation possible, our rumbottom detective went to Logan Airport, under what guise I don't know. Nevertheless, he succeeded in obtaining the manifests of every plane leaving Boston yesterday morning from the first flight at six-thirty to ten o'clock. As you recall, that corresponds with the parameters of your statement to me-'leaving first thing in the morning.' "
"And?"
"Patience, Randolph. You told me not to write anything down, so I must take this step by step. Where was I?"
"The manifests."
"Oh, yes. Well, according to Detective Sleaze, there were eleven unaccompanied children booked on various flights, and eight women, two of them nuns, who had reservations with minors. Of these eight, including the nuns who were taking nine orphans to California, the remaining six were identified as follows." The old man reached into his pocket and shakily took out a typewritten sheet of paper. "Obviously, I did not write this. I don't own a typewriter because I can't type; it comes from Führer Sleaze."
"Let me have it!" ordered Gates, rushing forward, his hand outstretched.
"Surely," said the seventy-year-old disbarred attorney, giving the page to his former student. "It won't do you much good, however," he added. "Our Sleaze checked them out, more to inflate his hours than for anything else. Not only are they all squeaky clean, but he performed that unnecessary service after the real information was uncovered."
"What?" asked Gates, his attention diverted from the page. "What information?"
"Information that neither Sleaze nor I would write down anywhere. The first hint of it came from the morning setup clerk for Pan American Airlines. He mentioned to our lowbrow detective that among his problems yesterday was a hotshot politician, or someone equally offensive, who needed diapers several minutes after our clerk went on duty at five-forty-five. Did you know that diapers come in sizes and are locked away in an airline's contingency supplies?"
"What are you trying to tell me?"
"All the stores in the airport were closed. They open at seven o'clock."
"So?"
"So someone in a hurry forgot something. A lone woman with a five-year-old child and an infant were leaving Boston on a private jet taking off on the runway nearest the Pan Am shuttle counters. The clerk responded to the request and was personally thanked by the mother. You see, he's a young father and understood about diaper sizes. He brought three different packages-"
"For God's sake, will you get to the point, Judge?"
"Judge?" The gray-faced old man's eyes widened. "Thank you, Randy. Except for my friends in various gin mills, I haven't been called that in years. It must be the aura I exude."
"It was a
throwback to that same boring circumlocution you used both on the bench and in the classroom!"
"Impatience was always your weak suit. I ascribed it to your annoyance with other people's points of view that interfered with your conclusions. ... Regardless, our Major Sleaze knew a rotten apple when the worm emerged and spat in his face, so he hide himself off to Logan's control tower, where he found a bribable off duty traffic controller who checked yesterday morning's schedules. The jet in question had a computer readout of Four Zero, which to our Captain Sleaze's astonishment he was told meant it was government-cleared and maximum-classified. No manifest, no names of anyone on board, only a routing to evade commercial aircraft and a destination."
"Which was?"
"Blackburne, Montserrat."
"What the hell is that?"
"The Blackburne Airport on the Caribbean island of Montserrat."
"That's where they went? That's it?"
"Not necessarily. According to Corporal Sleaze, who I must say does his follow-ups, there are small flight connections to a dozen or so minor offshore islands."
"That's it?"
"That's it, Professor. And considering the fact that the aircraft in question had a Four Zero government classification, which, incidentally, in my letter to the attorney general I so specified, I think I've earned my ten thousand dollars."
"You drunken scum-"
"Again you're wrong, Randy," interrupted the judge. "Alcoholic, certainly, drunk hardly ever. I stay on the edge of sobriety. It's my one reason for living. You see in my cognizance I'm always amused-by men like you, actually."
"Get out of here," said the professor ominously.
"You're not even going to offer me a drink to help support this dreadful habit of mine? ... Good heavens, there must be half a dozen unopened bottles over there."
"Take one and leave."
"Thank you, I believe I will." The old judge walked to a cherry-wood table against the wall where two silver trays held various whiskies and a brandy. "Let's see," he continued, picking up several white cloth napkins and wrapping them around two bottles, then a third. "If I hold these tightly under my arm, they could be a pile of laundry I'm taking put for quick service."
"Will you hurry!"
"Will you please open the door for me? I'd hate like hell dropping one of these while manipulating the knob. If it smashed it wouldn't do much for your image, either. You've never been known to have a drink, I believe."
"Get out," insisted Gates, opening the door for the old man.
"Thank you, Randy," said the judge, walking out into the hallway and turning. "Don't forget the bank check at the Boston Five in the morning. Fifteen thousand."
"Fifteen...?"
"My word, can you imagine what the attorney general would say just knowing that you'd even consorted with me? Good-bye, Counselor."
Randolph Gates slammed the door and ran into the bedroom, to the bedside telephone. The smaller enclosure was reassuring, as it removed him from the exposure to scrutiny inherent in larger areas-the room was more private, more personal, less open to invasion. The call he had to make so unnerved him he could not understand the pull-out flap of instructions for overseas connections. Instead, in his anxiety, he dialed the operator.
"I want to place a call to Paris," he said.
6
Bourne's eyes were tired, the strain painful as he studied the results of the computer printouts spread across the coffee table in front of the couch. Sitting forward, he had analyzed them for nearly four hours, forgetting time, forgetting that his "control" was to have reached him by then, concerned only with a link to the Jackal at the Mayflower hotel.
The first group, which he temporarily put aside, was the foreign nationals, a mix of British, Italian, Swedish, West German, Japanese and Taiwanese. Each of them had been extensively examined with respect to authentic credentials and fully substantiated business or personal reasons for entering the country. The State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency had done their homework. Each person was professionally and personally vouched for by a minimum of five reputable individuals or companies; all had long-standing communications with such people and firms in the Washington area; none had a false or questionable statement on record. If the Jackal's man was among them-and he might well be-it would take far more information than was to be found in the printouts before Jason could refine the list. It might be necessary to go back to this group, but for the moment he had to keep reading. There was so little time!
Of the remaining five hundred or so American guests at the hotel, two hundred and twelve had entries in one or more of the intelligence data banks, the majority because they had business with the government. However, seventy-eight had raw-file negative evaluations. Thirty-one were Internal Revenue Service matters, which meant they were suspected of destroying or falsifying financial records and/or had tax havens in Swiss or Cayman Island accounts. They were zero, nothing, merely rich and not very bright thieves, and, further, the sort of "messengers" Carlos would avoid like lepers.
That left forty-seven possibles. Men and women-in eleven cases ostensibly husbands and wives-with extensive connections in Europe, in the main with technological firms and related nuclear and aerospace industries, all under intelligence microscopes for possibly selling classified information to brokers of the Eastern bloc and therefore to Moscow. Of these forty-seven possibles, including two of the eleven couples, an even dozen had made recent trips to the Soviet Union-scratch all of them. The Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, otherwise known as the KGB, had less use for the Jackal than the Pope. Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, later Carlos the assassin, had been trained in the American compound of Novgorod, where the streets were lined with American gas stations and grocery stores, boutiques and Burger Kings, and everyone spoke American English with diverse dialects-no Russian was allowed-and only those who passed the course were permitted to proceed to the next level of infiltrators. The Jackal had, indeed, passed, but when the Komitet discovered that the young Venezuelan revolutionary's solution for all things disagreeable was to eliminate them violently, it was too much for even the inheritors of the brutal OGPU. Sanchez was expelled and Carlos the Jackal was born. Forget about the twelve people who had traveled to the Soviet Union. The assassin would not touch them, for there was a standing order in all branches of Russian intelligence that if Carlos was tracked he was to be shot. Novgorod was to be protected at all cost.
The possibles were thus narrowed to thirty-five, the hotel's register listing them as nine couples, four single women and thirteen single men. The raw-file printouts from the data banks de scribed in detail the facts and speculations that resulted in the negative evaluation of each individual. In truth, the speculations far outnumbered the facts and were too often based on hostile appraisals given by enemies or competitors, but each had to be studied, many with distaste, for among the information might be a word or phrase, a location or an act, that was the link to Carlos.
The telephone rang, breaking Jason's concentration. He blinked at the harsh, intrusive sound as if trying to locate the source, then he sprang from the couch and rushed to the desk, reaching the phone on the third ring.
"Yes?"
"It's Alex. I'm calling from down the street."
"Are you coming up?"
"Not through that lobby, I'm not. I've made arrangements for the service entrance, with a temporary guard hired this afternoon."
"You're covering all the bases, aren't you?"
"Nowhere near as many as I'd like to," replied Conklin. "This isn't your normal ball game. See you in a few minutes. I'll knock once."
Bourne hung up the phone and returned to the couch and the printouts, separating three that had caught his attention, not that any of them contained anything that evoked the Jackal. In stead, it was seemingly offhand data that might conceivably link the three to each other when no apparent connection existed between them. According to their passports, these three Americans had flown in to Philadelphia's In
ternational Airport within six days of one another eight months ago. Two women and a man, the women from Marrakesh and Lisbon, the man from West Berlin. The first woman was an interior decorator on a collecting trip to the old Moroccan city, the second an executive for the Chase Bank, Foreign Department; the man was an aerospace engineer on loan to the Air Force from McDonnell-Douglas. Why would three such obviously different people, with such dissimilar professions, converge on the same city within a week of one another? Coincidence? Entirely possible, but considering the number of international airports in the country, including the most frequented-New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami – the coincidence of Philadelphia seemed unlikely. Stranger still, and even more unlikely, was the fact that these same three people were staying at the same hotel at the same time in Washington eight months later. Jason wondered what Alex Conklin would say when he told him.
"I'm getting the book on each of them," said Alex, sinking into an armchair across from the couch and the printouts.
"You knew?"
"It wasn't hard to put together. Of course, it was a hell of a lot easier with a computer doing the scanning."
"You might have included a note! I've been poring over these things since eight o'clock."
"I didn't find it-them-until after nine and I didn't want to call you from Virginia."
"That's another story, isn't it?" said Bourne, sitting down on the couch, once again leaning forward anxiously.
"Yes, it is, and it's God-awful."
"Medusa?"
"It's worse than I thought, and worse than that, I didn't think it could be."
"That's a mouthful."
"It's a bowelful," countered the retired intelligence officer. "Where do I start? ... Pentagon procurements? The Federal Trade Commission? Our ambassador in London, or would you like the supreme commander of NATO?"
"My God...!"
"Oh, I can go one better. For size, try on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs."
"Christ, what is it? Some kind of cabal?"
"That's so academic, Dr. Scholar. Now try collusion, down deep and elusive and after all these years still breathing, still alive. They're in contact with each other in high places. Why?"
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