The Bourne Ultimatum

by Robert Ludlum

  “That’s a little tough, David,” said St. Jacques, misunderstanding the sharp glance Bourne leveled at him. “I’m sorry, but it is. We’re deflecting most of the local inquiries with an ersatz story about a massive propane-gas leak, but not too many people are buying it. Of course, to the world outside, an earthquake down here wouldn’t rate six lines buried in the last pages of the want ads, but rumors are flying around the Leewards.”

  “You said local inquiries … what about that world outside? Has there been anything from it?”

  “There will be but not about here, not about Tranquility. Montserrat, yes, and the news will get a column in the London Times and maybe an inch in the New York and Washington papers, but I don’t think it’ll touch us.”

  “Stop being so cryptic.”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  “Say whatever you like, John,” broke in the doctor. “I’m just about finished, so I’m not paying much attention, and even if I heard you, I’m entitled to.”

  “I’ll make it brief,” said St. Jacques, walking to the right of the chair. “The Crown governor,” he continued. “You were right, at least I have to assume you were right.”

  “Why?”

  “The news came in while you were getting cleaned up. The CG’s boat was found smashed on one of the nastier reefs off Antigua, halfway to Barbuda. There was no sign of survivors. Plymouth assumes it was one of those whipsaw squalls that can come out of south Nevis, but it’s hard to swallow. Not a squall necessarily, but the circumstances.”

  “Which were?”

  “His usual two crewmen weren’t with him. He dismissed them at the yacht club, saying he wanted to take the boat out by himself, yet he told Henry he was going out for the running big fish—”

  “Which means he would’ve had to have a crew,” interrupted the Canadian physician. “Oh, sorry.”

  “Yes, he would’ve,” agreed the owner of Tranquility Inn. “You can’t fish the big fellas and skipper a boat at the same time—at least the CG couldn’t. He was afraid to take his eyes off the charts.”

  “But he could read them, couldn’t he?” asked Jason. “The charts?”

  “As a navigator, he was no Captain Bligh sailing by the Pacific stars, but he was good enough to stay out of trouble.”

  “He was told to go out alone,” said Bourne. “Ordered to rendezvous with a boat in waters that called for him to really keep his eyes on the charts.” Jason suddenly realized that the doctor’s nimble fingers were no longer touching his neck; instead, there was the constricting bandage and the physician was standing beside him looking down. “How are we doing?” asked Bourne, looking up, an appreciative smile creasing his lips.

  “We’re done,” said the Canadian.

  “Well … then I think we’d better meet later, for a drink, all right?”

  “Good heavens, you’re just getting to the good part.”

  “It’s not good, Doctor, it’s not good at all, and I’d be a very ungrateful patient—which I’m not—if I even unwittingly let you hear things I don’t think you should hear.”

  The elderly Canadian locked his eyes with Jason’s. “You mean that, don’t you? In spite of everything that’s happened, you really don’t want to involve me any further. And you’re not playing melodramatic games, secrecy for secrecy’s sake—an old dodge for inferior doctors, incidentally—but you’re really concerned, aren’t you?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Considering what’s happened to you, and I don’t just mean these past few hours, which I’ve been a part of, but what the scars on your body tell me you’ve been through before, it’s rather remarkable that you can be concerned for anyone but yourself. You’re a strange man, Mr. Webb. At times you even sound like two different people.”

  “I’m not strange, Doctor,” said Jason Bourne, momentarily closing his eyes, his lids briefly tight. “I don’t want to be strange or different or anything exotic at all. I want to be as normal and ordinary as the next fellow, no games at all. I’m just a teacher, and that’s all I want to be. But in the present circumstances, I have to do things my way.”

  “Which means I leave for my own benefit?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “And if I ever learn all the facts, I’ll realize that your instructions were very educational.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’ll bet you’re one hell of a teacher, Mr. Webb.”

  “Doctor Webb,” interjected John St. Jacques spontaneously, as if the clarification were mandatory. “My brother-in-law’s a doctor, too. Like my sister, he’s got a Ph. D.; he speaks a couple of Oriental languages and is a full professor. Places like Harvard, McGill and Yale have been after him for years, but he won’t budge—”

  “Will you please be quiet,” said Bourne, close to laughing, albeit kindly, at his wife’s brother. “My entrepreneurial young friend is impressed with any alphabet after a name despite the fact that left to my own resources I couldn’t afford one of these villas for more than a couple of days.”

  “That’s a crock.”

  “I said my own resources.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  “I’ve got a rich wife.… Forgive us, Doctor, it’s an old family argument.”

  “Not only a good teacher,” the physician repeated, “but under the grim exterior I suspect a very engaging one.” The Canadian walked to the door; he turned and added, “I’ll take you up on that drink later, I’d really like that.”

  “Thanks,” said Jason. “Thanks for everything.” The doctor nodded and left, closing the door firmly behind him. Bourne turned to his brother-in-law. “He’s a good friend, Johnny.”

  “Actually, he’s a cold fish but a hell of a doctor. That’s the most human I’ve ever seen him.… So you figure the Jackal had the Crown governor meet him somewhere off the Antigua coast, got the CG’s information, killed him, and fed him to the sharks.”

  “Conveniently foundering the boat in reef waters,” completed Jason. “Perhaps opening the throttle and setting a short high-speed course into the shoals. A tragedy at sea and a link to Carlos vanishes—that’s vital to him.”

  “That’s also something I have trouble with,” said St. Jacques. “I didn’t go into it, but the section of reef north of Falmouth where he bought it is called Devil’s Mouth, and it’s not the kind of place that’s advertised. Charters just stay away from it, and no one boasts about the number of lives and boats it’s claimed.”

  “So?”

  “So assuming the Jackal told the CG where to rendezvous, someplace obviously close to Devil’s Mouth, how the hell did the Jackal know about it?”

  “Your two commandos didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what? I sent them right over to Henry to give him a full report while we took care of you. There wasn’t time to sit down and talk and I figured every moment counted.”

  “Then Henry knows by now; he’s probably in shock. He’s lost two drug boats in two days, and only one is likely to be paid for, and he still doesn’t know about his boss, the so honorable Crown governor, lackey of the Jackal who made fools of the Foreign Office by passing off a small-time Paris hit man as a venerable hero of France. The wires will be burning all night between Government House and Whitehall.”

  “Another drug boat? What are you trying to tell me? What does Henry know now—what could my guards tell him?”

  “Your question a minute ago was how did the Jackal know about the reef off the coast of Antigua called Devil’s Mouth.”

  “Take my word for it, Doctor Webb, I remember the question. How could he?”

  “Because he had a third man here, that’s what your Royal Commandos have told Henry by now. A blond-haired son of a bitch who heads up Montserrat’s drug patrols.”

  “Him? Rickman? The one-man British Ku Klux Klan? By-the-Rules-Rickman, scourge of anybody who’s afraid to yell back at him? Holy Christ, Henry won’t believe it!”

  “Why not? You just described a likely disciple of
Carlos.”

  “I suppose I did, but it seems so unlikely. He’s the original sanctimonious deacon. Prayer meetings before work in the morning, calling on God to aid him in his battle against Satan, no alcohol, no women—”

  “Savonarola?”

  “I’d say that fits—from what I remember reading for history courses.”

  “Then I’d say he’s prime meat for the Jackal. And Henry will believe it when his lead boat doesn’t come back to Plymouth and the bodies of the crew float up on shore or simply don’t show up for the prayer meetings.”

  “That’s how Carlos got away?”

  “Yes.” Bourne nodded and gestured at the couch several feet in front of him, the space between taken up by a glass-topped coffee table. “Sit down, Johnny. We have to talk.”

  “What have we been doing?”

  “Not about what has happened, Bro, but about what’s going to happen.”

  “What’s going to happen?” asked St. Jacques, lowering himself on the couch.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “No!” cried the younger man, shooting to his feet as if propelled by a bolt of electricity. “You can’t!”

  “I have to. He knows our names, where we live. Everything.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Paris.”

  “Goddamn it, no! You can’t do that to Marie! Or to the kids, for Christ’s sake. I won’t let you!”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “For God’s sake, David, listen to me! If Washington’s too cheap or doesn’t give a shit, believe me, Ottawa’s cut from better stock. My sister worked for the government and our government doesn’t kiss people off because it’s inconvenient or too expensive. I know people—like Scotty, the Doc and others. A few words from them and you’ll be put in a fortress in Calgary. No one could touch you!”

  “You think my government wouldn’t do the same? Let me tell you something, Bro, there are people in Washington who’ve put their lives on the line to keep Marie and the children and me alive. Selflessly, without any reward for themselves or the government. If I wanted a safe house where no one could touch us, I’d probably get an estate in Virginia, with horses and servants and a full platoon of armed soldiers protecting us around the clock.”

  “Then that’s the answer. Take it!”

  “To what end, Johnny? To live in our own personal prison? The kids not allowed to go over to friends’ houses, guards with them if they go to school and not tutored by themselves, no overnights, no pillow fights—no neighbors? Marie and I staring at each other, glancing over at the searchlights outside the windows, hearing the footsteps of the guards, the occasional cough or sneeze, or, heaven forbid, the crack of a rifle bolt because a rabbit disturbed a garden? That’s not living, that’s imprisonment. Your sister and I couldn’t handle it.”

  “Neither could I, not the way you describe it. But what can Paris solve?”

  “I can find him. I can take him.”

  “He’s got the manpower over there.”

  “I’ve got Jason Bourne,” said David Webb.

  “I don’t buy that crap!”

  “Neither do I, but it seems to work.… I’m calling in your debt to me, Johnny. Cover for me. Tell Marie I’m fine, not hurt at all, and that I’ve got a lead on the Jackal that only old Fontaine could have provided—which is the truth, actually. A café in Argenteuil called Le Coeur du Soldat. Tell her I’m bringing in Alex Conklin and all the help Washington can provide.”

  “But you’re not, are you?”

  “No. The Jackal would hear about it; he’s got ears up and down the Quai d’Orsay. Solo’s the only way.”

  “Don’t you think she’ll know that?”

  “She’ll suspect it, but she can’t be certain. I’ll have Alex call her, confirming that he’s in touch with all the heavy covert firepower in Paris. But first it comes from you.”

  “Why the lie?”

  “You shouldn’t have to ask that, Bro. I’ve put her through enough.”

  “All right, I’ll tell her, but she won’t believe me. She’ll see right through me, she always has. Since I was a kid, those big brown eyes would look into mine, most of the time pissed off, but not like our brothers’, not—oh, I don’t know—not with that disgust in their faces because the ‘kid’ was a screwup. Can you understand that?”

  “It’s called caring. She’s always cared for you—even when you were a screwup.”

  “Yeah, Mare’s okay.”

  “Somewhat more than that, I think. Call her in a couple of hours and bring them back here. It’s the safest place they can be.”

  “What about you? How are you going to get to Paris? The connections out of Antigua and Martinique are lousy, sometimes booked days in advance.”

  “I can’t use those airlines anyway. I’ve got to get in secretly under a shroud. Somehow, a man in Washington will have to figure it out. Somehow. He’s got to.”

  Alexander Conklin limped out of the small kitchen in the CIA’s Vienna apartment, his face and hair soaking wet. In the old days, before the old days fell into a distillery vat, he would calmly leave the office—wherever it was—when things got too heavy too fast and indulge himself in an unwavering ritual. He would seek out the best steak house—again, wherever he was—have two dry martinis and a thick rare slab of meat with the greasiest potatoes on the menu. The combination of the solitude, the limited intake of alcohol, the blood-rare hunk of beef and, in particular, the grease-laden potatoes, had such a calming effect on him that all the rushing, conflicting complexities of the hectic day sorted themselves out and reason prevailed. He would return to his office—whether a smart flat in London’s Belgravia Square or the back rooms of a whorehouse in Katmandu—with multiple solutions. It was how he got the sobriquet of Saint Alex of Conklin. He had once mentioned this gastronomical phenomenon to Mo Panov, who had a succinct reply: “If your crazy head doesn’t kill you, your stomach will.”

  These days, however, with postalcoholic vacuum and various other impediments, such as high cholesterol and dumb little triglycerides, whatever the hell they were, he had to come up with a different solution. It came about by accident. One morning during the Iran-contra hearings, which he found to be the finest hours of comedy on television, his set blew out. He was furious, so he turned on his portable radio, an instrument he had not used in months or perhaps years, as the television set had a built-in radio component—also inoperable at the time—but the portable radio’s batteries had long since melted into white slime. His artificial foot in pain, he walked to his kitchen telephone, knowing that a call to his television repairman, for whom he had done several favors, would bring the man running to his emergency. Unfortunately, the call only brought forth a hostile diatribe from the repairman’s wife, who screamed that her husband, the “customerfucker,” had run off with a “horny rich black bitch from Embassy Row!” (Zaire, as it later turned out in the Puerta Vallarta papers.) Conklin, in progressive apoplexy, had rushed to the kitchen sink, where his stress and blood pressure pills stood on the windowsill above the sink, and turned on the cold water. The faucet exploded, surging out of its recess into the ceiling as a powerful gush of water inundated his entire head. Caramba! The shock calmed him down, and he remembered that the Cable Network was scheduled to rebroadcast the hearings in full that evening. A happy man, he called the plumber and went out and bought a new television set.

  So, since that morning, whenever his own furies or the state of the world disturbed him—the world he knew—he lowered his head in a kitchen sink and let the cold water pour over his head. He had done so this morning. This goddamned, fucked-up morning!

  DeSole! Killed in an accident on a deserted country road in Maryland at 4:30 that morning. What the hell was Steven DeSole, a man whose driver’s license clearly stated that he was afflicted with night blindness, doing on a backcountry road outside Annapolis at 4:30 in the morning? And then Charlie Casset, a very angry Casset, calling him at six o’clock, yelling his usually c
ool head off, telling Alex he was going to put the commander of NATO on the goddamned spit and demand an explanation for the buried fax connection between the general and the dead chief of clandestine reports, who was not a victim of an accident but of murder! Furthermore, one retired field officer named Conklin had better damned well come clean with everything he knew about DeSole and Brussels and related matters, or all bets were off where said retired field agent and his elusive friend Jason Bourne were concerned. Noon at the latest! And then, Ivan Jax! The brilliant black doctor from Jamaica phoned, telling him he wanted to put Norman Swayne’s body back where he had found it because he did not want to be loused up by another Agency fiasco. But it was not Agency, cried Conklin to himself, unable to explain to Ivan Jax the real reason he had asked for his help. Medusa. And Jax could not simply drive the corpse back to Manassas because the police, on federal orders—the orders of one retired field agent using appropriated codes he was not entitled to use—had sealed off General Norman Swayne’s estate without explanation.

  “What do I do with the body?” Jax had yelled.

  “Keep it cold for a while, Cactus would want it that way.”

  “Cactus? I’ve been with him at the hospital all night. He’s going to be okay, but he doesn’t know what the hell is going on any more than I do!”

  “We in the clandestine services can’t always explain things,” Alex said, wincing as he spoke the ridiculous words. “I’ll call you back.”

  So he had gone into the kitchen and put his head under a spray of cold water. What else could go wrong? And naturally the telephone rang.

  “Dunkin’ Donuts,” said Conklin, the phone to his ear.

  “Get me out of here,” said Jason Bourne, not a trace of David Webb in his voice. “To Paris!”

  “What happened?”

  “He got away, that’s what happened, and I have to get to Paris under a cover, no immigration, no customs. He’s got them all wired and I can’t give him the chance to track me.… Alex, are you listening to me?”

  “DeSole was killed last night, killed in an accident that was no accident at four o’clock in the morning. Medusa’s closing in.”