“And you, David? What about you?”
“Frankly, I thought I’d head to Washington and stay with you. If the Jackal’s coming for me after all these years, I want to be in on what we’re doing about it. I might even be able to help.… I’ll arrive by noon.”
“No, David. Not today and not here. Go with Marie and the children. Get out of the country. Stay with your family and Johnny St. Jacques on the island.”
“I can’t do that, Alex, and if you were me you couldn’t, either. My family’s not going to be free—really free—until Carlos is out of our lives.”
“It’s not Carlos,” said Conklin, interrupting.
“What? Yesterday you told me—”
“Forget what I told you, I was wrong. This is out of Hong Kong, out of Macao.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Alex! Hong Kong’s finished, Macao’s finished. They’re dead and forgotten and there’s no one alive with a reason to come after me.”
“There is somewhere. A great taipan, ‘the greatest taipan in Hong Kong,’ according to the most recent and most recently dead source.”
“They’re gone. That whole house of Kuomintang cards collapsed. There’s no one left!”
“I repeat, there is somewhere.”
David Webb was briefly silent; then Jason Bourne spoke, his voice cold. “Tell me everything you’ve learned, every detail. Something happened tonight. What was it?”
“All right, every detail,” said Conklin. The retired intelligence officer described the controlled surveillance engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency. He explained how he and Morris Panov spotted the old men who followed them, picking each up in sequence as they made their separate ways to the Smithsonian, none showing himself in the light until the confrontation on a deserted path on the Smithsonian grounds, where the messenger spoke of Macao and Hong Kong and a great taipan. Finally, Conklin described the shattering gunfire that silenced the two aged Orientals. “It’s out of Hong Kong, David. The reference to Macao confirms it. It was your impostor’s base camp.”
Again there was silence on the line, only Jason Bourne’s steady breathing audible. “You’re wrong, Alex,” he said at last, his voice pensive, floating. “It’s the Jackal—by way of Hong Kong and Macao, but it’s still the Jackal.”
“David, now you’re not making sense. Carlos hasn’t anything to do with taipans or Hong Kong or messages from Macao. Those old men were Chinese, not French or Italian or German or whatever. This is out of Asia, not Europe.”
“The old men, they’re the only ones he trusts,” continued David Webb, his voice still low and cold, the voice of Jason Bourne. “ The old men of Paris,’ that’s what they were called. They were his network, his couriers throughout Europe. Who suspects decrepit old men, whether they’re beggars or whether they’re just holding on to the last remnants of mobility? Who would think of interrogating them, much less putting them on a rack. And even then they’d stay silent. Their deals were made—are made—and they move with impunity. For Carlos.”
For a moment, hearing the strange, hollow voice of his friend, the frightened Conklin stared at the dashboard, unsure of what to say. “David, I don’t understand you. I know you’re upset—we’re all upset—but please be clearer.”
“What?… Oh, I’m sorry, Alex, I was going back. To put it simply, Carlos scoured Paris looking for old men who were either dying or knew they hadn’t long to live because of their age, all with police records and with little or nothing to show for their lives, their crimes. Most of us forget that these old men have loved ones and children, legitimate or not, that they care for. The Jackal would find them and swear to provide for the people his about-to-die couriers left behind if they swore the rest of their lives to him. In their places, with nothing to leave those who survive us but suspicion and poverty, which of us would do otherwise?”
“They believed him?”
“They had good reason to—they still have. Scores of bank checks are delivered monthly from multiple unlisted Swiss accounts to inheritors from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. There’s no way to trace those payments, but the people receiving them know who makes them possible and why.… Forget your buried file, Alex. Carlos dug around Hong Kong, that’s where his penetration was made, where he found you and Mo.”
“Then we’ll do some penetrating ourselves. We’ll infiltrate every Oriental neighborhood, every Chinese bookie joint and restaurant, in every city within a fifty-mile radius of D.C.”
“Don’t do anything until I get there. You don’t know what to look for, I do.… It’s kind of remarkable, really. The Jackal doesn’t know that there’s still a great deal I can’t remember, but he just assumed that I’d forgotten about the old men of Paris.”
“Maybe he didn’t, David. Maybe he’s counting on the fact that you’d remember. Maybe this whole charade is a prelude to the real trap he’s setting for you.”
“Then he made another mistake.”
“Oh?”
“I’m better than that. Jason Bourne’s better than that.”
4
David Webb walked through the National Airport terminal and out the automatic doors onto the crowded platform. He studied the signs and proceeded across the walkway leading to the Short-Term Parking area. According to plan, he was to go to the farthest aisle on the right, turn left, and continue down the row of parked cars until he saw a metallic gray 1986 Pontiac LeMans with an ornamental crucifix suspended from the rear-view mirror. A man would be in the driver’s seat wearing a white cap, the window lowered. Webb was to approach him and say, “The flight was very smooth.” If the man removed his cap and started the engine, David was to climb in the backseat. Nothing more would be said.
Nothing more was said, not between Webb and the driver. However, the latter reached under the dashboard, removed a microphone and spoke quietly but clearly. “Our cargo’s on board. Please commence rotating vehicle cover.”
David thought that the exotic procedures bordered on the laughable, but since Alex Conklin had traced him to the Rockwell jet’s departure area at Logan Airport, and, further, had reached him on Director Peter Holland’s private override telephone, he assumed the two of them knew what they were doing. It crossed Webb’s mind that it had something to do with Mo Panov’s call to him nine hours ago. It was all but confirmed when Holland himself got on the phone insisting that he drive down to Hartford and take a commercial flight out of Bradley to Washington, adding enigmatically that he wanted no further telephone communication or private or government aircraft involved.
This particular government-oriented car, however, wasted no time getting out of National Airport. It seemed as if in only minutes they were rushing through the countryside and, only minimally less rapidly, through the suburbs of Virginia. They swung up to the private gate of an expensive garden apartment complex, the sign reading VIENNA VILLAS, after the township in which it was located. The guard obviously recognized the driver and waved him through as the heavy bar across the entrance was raised. It was only then that the driver spoke directly to Webb.
“This place has five separate sections over as many acres, sir. Four of them are legitimate condominiums with regular owners, but the fifth, the one farthest from the gate, is an Agency proprietary with its own road and security. You couldn’t be healthier, sir.”
“I didn’t feel particularly sick.”
“You won’t be. You’re DCI cargo and your health is very important to him.”
“That’s nice to know, but how do you know?”
“I’m part of the team, sir.”
“In that case, what’s your name?”
The driver was silent for a moment, and when he answered, David had the uneasy feeling that he was being propelled back in time, to a time he knew he was reentering. “We don’t have names, sir. You don’t and I don’t.”
Medusa.
“I understand,” said Webb.
“Here we are.” The driver swung the car around a circular drive and stop
ped in front of a two-story Colonial structure that looked as though the fluted white pillars might have been made of Carrara marble. “Excuse me, sir, I just noticed. You don’t have any luggage.”
“No, I don’t,” said David, opening the door.
“How do you like my temporary digs?” asked Alex, waving his hand around the tastefully appointed apartment.
“Too neat and too clean for a cantankerous old bachelor,” replied David. “And since when did you go in for floral curtains with pink and yellow daisies?”
“Wait’ll you see the wallpaper in my bedroom. It’s got baby roses.”
“I’m not sure I care to.”
“Your room has hyacinths.… Of course, I wouldn’t know a hyacinth if it jumped up and choked me, but that’s what the maid said.”
“The maid?”
“Late forties and black and built like a sumo wrestler. She also carries two popguns under her skirt and, rumor has it, several straight razors.”
“Some maid.”
“Some high-powered patrol. She doesn’t let a bar of soap or a roll of toilet paper in here that doesn’t come from Langley. You know, she’s a pay-grade ten and some of these clowns leave her tips.”
“Do they need any waiters?”
“That’s good. Our scholar, Webb the waiter.”
“Jason Bourne’s been one.”
Conklin paused, then spoke seriously. “Let’s get to him,” he said, limping to an armchair. “By the way, you’ve had a rough day and it’s not even noon, so if you want a drink there’s a full bar behind those puce shutters next to the window.… Don’t look at me like that, our black Brunhilde said they were puce.”
Webb laughed; it was a low, genuine laugh as he looked at his friend. “It doesn’t bother you a bit, does it, Alex?”
“Hell, no, you know that. Have you ever hid any liquor from-me when I visited you and Marie?”
“There was never any stress—”
“Stress is irrelevant,” Conklin broke in. “I made a decision because there was only one other one to make. Have a drink, David. We have to talk and I want you calm. I look at your eyes and they tell me you’re on fire.”
“You once told me that it’s always in the eyes,” said Webb, opening the purplish shutters and reaching for a bottle. “You can still see it, can’t you?”
“I told you it was behind the eyes. Never accept the first level.… How are Marie and the children? I assume they got off all right.”
“I went over the flight plan ad nauseam with the pilot and knew they were all right when he finally told me to get off his case or fly the run myself.” Webb poured a drink and walked back to the chair opposite the retired agent. “Where are we, Alex?” he asked, sitting down.
“Right where we were last night. Nothing’s moved and nothing’s changed, except that Mo refuses to leave his patients. He was picked up this morning at his apartment, which is now as secure as Fort Knox, and driven to his office under guard. He’ll be brought here later this afternoon with four changes of vehicles, all made in underground parking lots.”
“Then it’s open protection, no one’s hiding any longer?”
“That’d be pointless. We sprung a trap at the Smithsonian and our men were very obvious.”
“It’s why it might work, isn’t it? The unexpected? Backups behind a protection unit told to make mistakes.”
“The unexpected works, David, not the dumb.” Conklin quickly shook his head. “I take that back. Bourne could turn the dumbs into smarts, but not an officially mounted surveillance detail. There are too many complications.”
“I don’t understand.”
“As good as those men are, they’re primarily concerned with guarding lives, maybe saving them; they also have to coordinate with each other and make reports. They’re career people, not one-shot, prepaid lowlife with an assassin’s knife at their throats if they screw up.”
“That sounds so melodramatic,” said Webb softly, leaning back in the chair and drinking. “I guess I did operate like that, didn’t I?”
“It was more image than reality, but it was real to the people you used.”
“Then I’ll find those people again, use them again.” David shot forward, gripping his glass in both hands. “He’s forcing me out, Alex! The Jackal’s calling my cards and I have to show.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Conklin irritably. “Now you’re the one who’s being melodramatic. You sound like a grade-Z Western. You show yourself, Marie’s a widow and the kids have no father. That’s reality, David.”
“You’re wrong.” Webb shook his head, staring at his glass. “He’s coming after me, so I have to go after him; he’s trying to pull me out, so I have to pull him out first. It’s the only way it can happen, the only way we’ll get him out of our lives. In the final analysis it’s Carlos against Bourne. We’re back where we were thirteen years ago. ‘Alpha, Bravo, Cain, Delta … Cain is for Carlos and Delta is for Cain.’ ”
“That was a crazy Paris code thirteen years ago!” interrupted Alex sharply. “Medusa’s Delta and his mighty challenge to the Jackal. But this isn’t Paris and it’s thirteen years later!”
“And in five more years it’ll be eighteen; five years after that, twenty-three. What the hell do you want me to do? Live with the specter of that son of a bitch over my family, frightened every time my wife or my children leave the house, living in fear for the rest of my life?… No, you shut up, field man! You know better than that. The analysts can come up with a dozen strategies and we’ll use bits and pieces of maybe six and be grateful, but when it gets down to the mud, it’s between the Jackal and me.… And I’ve got the advantage. I’ve got you on my side.”
Conklin swallowed while blinking. “That’s very flattering, David, maybe too flattering. I’m better in my own element, a couple of thousand miles away from Washington. It was always a little stifling for me here.”
“It wasn’t when you saw me off on that plane to Hong Kong five years ago. You’d put together half the equation by then.”
“That was easier. It was a down-and-dirty D.C. operation that had the smell of rotten halibut, so rotten it offended my nostrils. This is different; this is Carlos.”
“That’s my point, Alex. It is Carlos, not a voice over the telephone neither of us knew. We’re dealing with a known quantity, someone predictable—”
“Predictable?” broke in Conklin, frowning. “That’s also crazy. In what way?”
“He’s the hunter. He’ll follow a scent.”
“He’ll examine it first with a very experienced nose, then check the spoors under a microscope.”
“Then we’ll have to be authentic, won’t we?”
“I prefer foolproof. What did you have in mind?”
“In the gospel according to Saint Alex, it’s written that in order to bait a trap one has to use a large part of the truth, even a dangerous amount.”
“That chapter and verse referred to a target’s microscope. I think I just mentioned it. What’s the relevance here?”
“Medusa,” said Webb quietly. “I want to use Medusa.”
“Now you’re out of your mind,” responded Conklin, no louder than David, “That name is as off-limits as you are—let’s be honest, a hell of a lot more so.”
“There were rumors, Alex, stories all over Southeast Asia that floated up the China Sea to Kowloon and Hong Kong, where most of those bastards ran with their money. Medusa wasn’t exactly the secret evil you seem to think it was.”
“Rumors, yes, and stories, of course,” interrupted the retired intelligence officer. “Which of those animals didn’t put a gun or a knife to the heads of a dozen or two dozen or two hundred marks during their so-called ‘tours’? Ninety percent were killers and thieves, the original death squads. Peter Holland said that when he was a SEAL in the northern operations he never met a member of that outfit he didn’t want to waste.”
“And without them, instead of fifty-eight thousand casualties, there could well ha
ve been sixty-plus. Give the animals their due, Alex. They knew every inch of the territories, every square foot of jungle in the triangle. They—we—sent back more functional intelligence than all the units sent out by Saigon put together.”
“My point, David, is that there can never be any connection between Medusa and the United States government. Our involvement was never logged, much less acknowledged; the name itself was concealed as much as possible. There’s no statute of limitations on war crimes, and Medusa was officially determined to be a private organization, a collection of violent misfits who wanted the corrupt Southeast Asia back the way they knew it and used it. If it was ever established that Washington was behind Medusa, the reputation of some very important people in the White House and the State Department would be ruined. They’re global power brokers now, but twenty years ago they were hotheaded junior staffers in Command Saigon.… We can live with questionable tactics in time of war, but not with being accomplices in the slaughter of noncombatants and the diversion of funds totaling millions, both unknowingly paid for by the taxpayers. It’s like those still-sealed archives that detail how so many of our fat-cat financiers bankrolled the Nazis. Some things we never want out of their black holes, and Medusa’s one of them.”
Webb again leaned back in the chair—now, however, taut, his eyes steady on his old friend, who was once briefly his deadly enemy. “If what memory I have left serves me, Bourne was identified as having come out of Medusa.”
“It was an entirely believable explanation and a perfect cover,” agreed Conklin, returning David’s gaze. “We went back to Tarn Quan and ‘discovered’ that Bourne was a paranoid Tasmanian adventurer who disappeared in the jungles of North Vietnam. Nowhere in that very creative dossier was there the slightest clue of a Washington connection.”
“But that’s all a lie, isn’t it, Alex? There was and is a Washington connection, and the Jackal knows it now. He knew it when he found you and Mo Panov in Hong Kong—found your names in the ruins of that sterile house on Victoria Peak where Jason Bourne was supposedly blown away. He confirmed it last night when his messengers approached you at the Smithsonian and—your words—‘our men were very obvious.’ He knew finally that everything he’s believed for thirteen years is true. The member of Medusa who was called Delta was Jason Bourne, and Jason Bourne was a creation of American intelligence—and he’s still alive. Alive and in hiding and protected by his government.”