That's about it.'
'But I thought... I thought there was a crisis here.'
'Everything's clean.'
'I haven't heard from anybody. I haven't heard from McAllister.'
'Sorry, don't know him. We just have our orders.'
'You can't simply come in here and say you're leaving without some explanation! I was told I was a target! That a man in Hong Kong wanted me killed?
'Well, I don't know whether you were told that, or whether you told yourself that, but I do know we've got an A-one legitimate problem in Newport News. We have to get briefed and get on it.'
'A-one legitimate...? What about me?'
'Get a lot of rest, Professor. We were told you need it.' The man from the CIA abruptly turned, went through the door, and closed it.
Well, I don't know whether you were told that, or whether you told yourself that... How about you, professor? Do you feel better about things now, what with us here and all?
Parade?... Charade!
Where was McAllister's number? Where was it? God-damit, he had two copies, one at home and one in his desk drawer – no, his wallet! he found it, his whole body trembling in fear and in anger as he dialled.
'Mr. McAllister's office,' said a female voice.
'I thought this was his private line. That's what I was told!'
'Mr. McAllister is away from Washington, sir. In these cases we're instructed to pick up and log the calls. '
'Log the calls'? Where is he?'
'I don't know, sir. I'm from the secretarial pool. He phones in every other day or so. Who shall I say called?'
'That's not good enough! My name is Webb. Jason Webb... No, David Webb! I have to talk to him right away! Immediately!'
I'll connect you with the department handling his urgent calls, Webb slammed down the phone. He had the number for McAllister's home; he dialled it.
'Hello?' The voice of another woman.
'Mr. McAllister, please.'
'I'm afraid he's not here. If you care to leave your name and a number, I'll give it to him.'
'When?
'Well, he should be calling tomorrow or the next day. He always does.'
'You've got to give me the number where he is now, Mrs.. McAllister! – I assume this is Mrs.. McAllister.'
'I should hope so. Eighteen years' worth. Who are you?'
'Webb. David Webb.'
'Oh, of course! Edward rarely discusses business – and he certainly didn't in your case but he did tell me what terribly nice people you and your lovely wife are. As a matter of fact, our older boy, who's in prep school, naturally, is very interested in the university where you teach. Now, in the last year or so his marks dropped just a touch, and his aptitude tests weren't the highest, but he has such a wonderful, enthusiastic outlook on life, I'm sure he'd be an asset.. . '
'Mrs.. McAllister!' broke in Webb . 'I have to reach your husband! Now!'
'Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but I don't think that's possible. He's in the Far East and, of course, I don't have a number where 1 can reach him there. In emergencies we always call the State Department . '
David hung up the phone. He had to alert -phone – Marie. The line had to be free by now; it had been busy for nearly an hour, and there was no one his wife could talk with on the telephone for an hour, not even her father, her mother or her two brothers in Canada. There was great affection between them all, but she was the maverick. She was not the Francophile her lather was, not a homebody like her mother, and although she adored her brothers, not the rustic, plainspoken folk they were. She had found another life in the stratified layers of higher economics, with a doctorate and gainful employment with the Canadian Government. And, at last, she had married an American.
QueI dommage.
The line was still busy! Goddamnit, Marie!
Then Webb froze, his whole body for an instant a block of searing hot ice. He could barely move, but he did move, and then he raced out of his small office and down the corridor with such speed that he pummelled three students and a colleague out of his path, sending two into walls the others buckling under him; he was a man suddenly possessed.
Reaching his house, he slammed on the brakes; the car screeched to a stop as he leaped out of the seat and ran up the path to the door. He stopped, staring, his breath suddenly no longer in him. The door was open and on the angled indented panel was a hand print stamped in red – blood.
Webb ran inside, throwing everything out of his way. Furniture crashed and lamps were smashed as he searched the ground floor. Then he went upstairs, his hands two thin slabs of granite, his every nerve primed for a sound, a weight, his killer instinct as clear as the red stains he had seen below on the outside door. For these moments he knew and accepted the fact that he was the assassin – the lethal animal that Jason Bourne had been. If his wife was above, he would kill whoever tried to harm her – or had harmed her already.
Prone on the floor, he pushed the door of their bedroom open.
The explosion blew apart the upper hallway wall. He rolled under the blast to the opposite side; he had no weapon, but he had a cigarette lighter. He reached into his trouser pockets for the scribbled notes all teachers gather, bunched them together, spun to his left and snapped the lighter; the flame was immediate. He threw the fired wad far into the bedroom as he pressed his back against the wall and rose from the floor, his head whipping towards the other two closed doors on the narrow upper floor. Suddenly he lashed out with his feet, one crash after another as he lunged back onto the floor and rolled into the shadows.
Nothing. The two rooms were empty. If there was an enemy he was in the bedroom. But by now the bedspread was on fire. The flames were gradually leaping towards the ceiling. Only seconds now.
Now!
He plunged into the room, and grabbing the flaming bedspread he swung it in a circle as he crouched and rolled on the floor until the spread was ashes, all the while expecting an ice-cold hit in his shoulder or his arm, but knowing he could overcome it and take his enemy. Jesus! He was Jason Bourne again!
There was nothing. His Marie was not there; there was nothing but a primitive string-device that had triggered a shotgun, angled for a certain kill when he pushed the door open. He stamped out the flames, lurched for a table lamp, and turned it on.
Marie! Marie!
Then he saw it. A note lying on the pillow on her side of the bed:
'A wife for a wife, Jason Bourne. She is wounded but not dead, as mine is dead. You know where to find me, and her, if you are circumspect and fortunate. Perhaps we can do business for I have enemies, too. If not, what is the death of one more daughter?''
Webb screamed, falling onto the pillows, trying to mute the outrage and the horror that came from his throat, pushing back the pain that swept through his temples. Then he turned over and stared at the ceiling, a terrible, brute passivity coming over him. Things unremembered suddenly came back to him – things he had never revealed even to Morris Panov. Bodies collapsing under his knife, falling under his gun these were not imagined killings, they were real. They had made him what he was not, but they had done the job too well. He had become the image, the man that was not supposed to be. He'd had to. He'd had to survive – without knowing who he was.
And now he knew the two men within him that made up his whole being. He would always remember the one because it was the man he wanted to be, but for the time being he had to be the other – the man he despised.
Jason Bourne rose from the bed and went to the walk-in
closet where there was a locked drawer, the third in his built-in bureau. He reached up and pulled the tape from a key attached to the cupboard ceiling. He inserted it in the lock and opened the drawer. Inside were two dismantled automatics, four strings of thin wire attached to spools that he could conceal in his palms, three valid passports in three different names, and six plastique explosive charges that could blow apart whole rooms. He would use one or all. David Webb would find his wife. Or Jason Bou
rne would become the terrorist no one ever dreamed of in his wildest nightmares. He did not care – too much had been taken from him. He would endure no more.
Bourne cracked the various parts in place and snapped the magazine of the second automatic. Both were ready. He was ready. He went back to the bed and lay down, staring again at the ceiling. The logistics would fall into place, he knew that. Then the hunt would begin. He would find her -dead or alive and if she was dead – he would kill, kill and kill again! Whoever it was would never get away from him. Not from Jason Bourne.
5
Barely in control of himself, he knew that calm was out of the question. His hand gripped the automatic while his mind cracked with surreal bursts of rapid gunfire, one option after another slamming into his head. Above all he could not stay still; he had to keep in motion. He had to get up and move!
The State Department. The men at State he had known during his last months in the remote, classified Virginia medical complex – those insistent, obsessed men who questioned him relentlessly, showing him photographs by the dozens until Mo Panov would order them to stop. He had learned their names and written them down, thinking that one day he might want to know who they were – no reason other than visceral distrust; such men had tried to kill him only months before. Yet he had never asked for their names, nor were they offered except as Harry, Bill, or Sam, presumably on the theory that actual identities would simply add to his confusion. Instead, he had unobtrusively read their identification tags and, after they left, wrote the names down and placed the pieces of paper with his personal belongings in the bureau drawer. When Marie came to see him, which was every day, he gave her those names and told her to hide them in the house hide them well.
Later, Marie admitted that although she had done as he instructed, she thought his suspicions were excessive, a case of overkill. But then one morning, only minutes after a heated session with the men from Washington, David pleaded with her to leave the medical complex immediately, run to the car, drive to the bank where they had a safety deposit box, and do the following: Insert a short strand of her hair in the bottom left border of the deposit box, lock it, get out of the bank, and return two hours later to see if it was still there.
It was not. She had securely fixed the strand of hair in place; it could not have fallen away unless the deposit box had been opened. She found it on the tiled floor of the bank vault.
'How did you know?' she had asked him.
'One of my friendly interrogators got hot and tried to provoke me. Mo was out of the room for a couple of minutes and he damn near accused me of faking, of hiding things. I knew you were coming, and so I played it out. I wanted to see for myself how far they would go – how far they could go?
Nothing had been sacred then, and nothing was sacred now. It was all too symmetrical. The guards had been pulled, his own reactions condescendingly questioned as if he were the one who had asked for the additional protection and not on the insistence of one Edward canister. Then within hours Marie was taken, according to a scenario that had been detailed far too accurately by a nervous man with dead eyes. And now this same McAllister was suddenly fifteen thousand miles away from his own self-determined ground zero. Had the undersecretary turned? Had he been bought in Hong Kong? Had he betrayed Washington as well as the man he had sworn to protect? What was happening! Whatever it was, among the unholy secrets was code name Medusa. It had never been mentioned during the questioning, never referred to. Its absence was startling. It was as if the unacknowledged battalion of psychotics and killers had never existed; its history had been wiped off the books. But that history could be reinstated. This was where he would start.
Webb walked rapidly out of the bedroom and down the steps to his study, once a small library off the hallway in the old Victorian house. He sat at his desk, opened the bottom drawer and removed several notebooks and various papers. He then inserted a brass letter opener and pried up the false bottom; lying on the second layer of wood were other papers. They were a vague, mostly bewildering assortment of fragmented recollections, images that had come to him at odd hours of the day and night. There were torn scraps and pages from small notebooks and scissored pieces of stationery on which he had jotted down the pictures and words that exploded in his head. It was a mass of painful evocations, many so tortured that he could not share them with Marie, fearing the hurt would be too great, the revelations of Jason Bourne too brutal for his wife to confront. And among these secrets were the names of the experts in clandestine operations who had come down to question him so intensely in Virginia.
David's eyes suddenly focused on the ugly heavy-calibre weapon on the edge of the desk. Without realizing it, he had gripped it in his hand and carried it down from the bedroom; he stared at it for a moment, then picked up the phone. It was the beginning of the most agonizing, infuriating hour of his life as each moment Marie drifted farther away.
The first two calls were taken by wives or lovers; the men he was trying to reach were suddenly not there when he identified himself. He was still out of sanction! They would not touch him without authorization and that authorization was being withheld. Christ, he should have known!
'Hello?'
'Is this the Lanier residence?"
'Yes, it is. '
'William Lanier, please. Tell him it's urgent, a Sixteen Hundred alert. My name is Thompson, State Department . '
'Just one minute,' said the woman, concerned.
' Who is this?' asked a man's voice.
'It's David Webb. You remember Jason Bourne, don't you?'
' A pause followed, filled with Lanier's breathing. 'Why did you say your name was Thompson? That it was a White House alert?'
'I had an idea you might not talk to me. Among the things I remember is that you don't make contact with certain people without authorization. They're out of bounds. You simply report the contact attempt . '
'Then I assume you also remember that it's highly irregular to call someone like me on a domestic phone. '
'Domestic phone? Does the domestic prohibitive now include where you live?"
'You know what I'm talking about . '
'I said it was an emergency. '
'It can't have anything to do with me,' protested Lanier. 'You're a dead file in my office-'
'Colour me deep-dead?' interrupted David.
'I didn't say that,' shot back the man from covert operations. 'All I meant was that you're not on my schedule and it's policy not to interfere with others. '
'What others?' asked Webb sharply.
'How the hell do I know?'
'Are you telling me that you're not interested in what I have to tell you?'
'Whether I'm interested or not hasn't anything to do with it. You're not on any list of mine and that's all I have to know. If you have something to say, call your authorized contact . '
'I tried to. His wife said he was in the Far East.'
'Try his office. Someone there will process you.'
'I know that, and I don't care to be processed. I want to talk to someone I know, and I know you, Bill. Remember? It was "Bill" in Virginia, that's what you told me to call you. You were interested to hell and back in what I had to say then. '
That was then, not now. Look, Webb, I can't help you because I can't advise you. No matter what you tell me, I can't respond. I'm not current on your status – I haven't been for almost a year. Your contact is – he can be reached. Call State back. I'm hanging up.'
'Medusa,' whispered David. 'Did you hear me, Lanier? Medusa!'
'Medusa what? Are you trying to tell me something?'
'I'll blow it all apart, do you read me? I'll expose the whole obscene mess unless I get some answers?
'Why don't you get yourself processed instead?" said the man from covert operations coldly. 'Or check yourself into a hospital. ' There was an abrupt click, and David, perspiring, hung up the phone.
Lanier did not know about Medusa. If he had known, he would have stayed on the ph
one, learning whatever he could, for Medusa crossed the lines of 'policy' and being 'current'. But Lanier was one of the younger interrogators, no more than 33 or 34; he was very bright, but not a long-term veteran. Someone a few years older would probably have been given clearance, told about the renegade battalion that was still held in deep cover. Webb looked at the names on his list and at the corresponding telephone numbers. He picked up the phone.
'Hello?'A male voice.
'Is this Samuel Teasdale?'
'Yeah, that's right. Who are you?'
'I'm glad you answered the phone and not your wife. '
The wife's standard where possible,' said Teasdale, suddenly cautious. 'Mine's no longer available. She's sailing somewhere in the Caribbean with someone I never knew about. Now that you know my life's story, who the hell are you?'
'Jason Bourne, remember?'
' Webb?'
"I vaguely remember that name,' said David.
'Why are you calling me?'
'You were friendly. Down in Virginia you told me to call you Sam. '
'Okay, okay, David, you're right. I told you to call me Sam that's what I am to my friends, Sam...' Teasdale was bewildered, upset, searching for words. 'But that was almost a year ago, Davey, and you know the rules. You're given a person to talk to, either on the scene or over at State. That's the one you should reach that's the person who's up to date on everything.'
'Aren't you up to date, Sam?'
'Not about you, no. I remember the directive; it was dropped on our desks a couple of weeks after you left Virginia. All inquiries, regarding "said subject, et cetera" were to be bumped up to Section whatever-the-hell-it was, "said subject" having full access and in direct touch with deputies on the scene and in the Department . 'and my direct-access contact has disappeared.'
'Come on,' objected Teasdale quietly, suspiciously. That's crazy. It couldn't happen.'
'It happened!' yelled Webb . 'My wife happened!'
'What about your wife? What are you talking about?'
'She's gone, you bastard – all of you, bastards! You let it happen!' Webb grabbed his wrist, gripping it with all his strength to stop the trembling. 'I want answers, Sam. I want to know who cleared the way, who turned! I've got an idea who it is but I need answers to nail him – nail all of you, if I have to.'
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