The Bourne ultimatum

28

“You’ll tell us everything we want to know voluntarily or we’ll send you up into a chemical orbit your hacks never dreamed of with Dr. Panov,” said Peter Holland, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, his quiet monotone as hard and as smooth as polished granite. “Furthermore, I should elaborate on, the extremes to which I’m perfectly willing to go because I’m from the old school, paisan. I don’t give a shit for rules that favor garbage. You play cipher with me, I’ll deep-six you still breathing a hundred miles off Hatteras in a torpedo casing. Am I clear?”
The capo subordinato, thick plaster casts around his left arm and right leg, lay on the bed in Langley’s deserted infirmary room, deserted since the DCI ordered the medical staff to get out of hearing range for their own good. The mafioso’s naturally puffed face was additionally enlarged by swellings around both eyes as well as his generous lips, the result of his head having smashed into the dashboard when Mo Panov sent the car into a Maryland oak. He looked up at Holland, his heavy-lidded gaze traveling over to Alexander Conklin seated in a chair, the ever-present cane gripped in anxious hands.
“You got no right, Mr. Big Shot,” said the capo gruffly. “ ’Cause I got rights, you know what I mean?”
“So did the doctor, and you violated them—Jesus, did you violate them!”
“I don’t gotta talk without my lawyer.”
“Where the hell was Panov’s lawyer?” shouted Alex, thumping his cane on the floor.
“That’s not the way the system works,” protested the patient, attempting to raise his eyebrows in indignation. “Besides, I was good to the doc. He took advantage of my goodness, s’help me God!”
“You’re a cartoon,” said Holland. “You’re a hot sketch but you’re not remotely amusing. There are no lawyers here, linguine, just the three of us, and a torpedo casing is very much in your future.”
“Whaddaya want from me?” cried the mafioso. “What do I know? I just do what I’m told, like my older brother did—may he rest in peace—and my father—may he also rest in peace—and probably his father, which I don’t know nothin’ about.”
“It’s like succeeding generations on welfare, isn’t it?” observed Conklin. “The parasites never get off the dole.”
“Hey, that’s my family you’re talkin’ about—whatever the f*ck you’re talkin’ about.”
“My apologies to your heraldry,” added Alex.
“And it’s that family of yours we’re interested in, Augie,” broke in the DCI. “It is Augie, isn’t it? That was the name on one of the five driver’s licenses and we thought it seemed most authentic.”
“Well, you’re not so authentically bright, Mr. Big Shot!” spat out the immobilized patient through his painfully swollen lips. “I got none of them names.”
“We have to call you something,” said Holland. “If only to burn it into the casing down at Hatteras so that some scale-headed archaeologist several thousand years from now can give an identity to the teeth he’s measuring.”
“How about Chauncy?” asked Conklin.
“Too ethnic,” replied Peter. “I like A*shole because that’s what he is. He’s going to be strapped into a tube and dropped over the continental shelf into six miles of seawater for crimes other people committed. I mean, that’s being an a*shole.”
“Cut it out!” roared the a*shole. “Awright, my name’s Nicolo ... Nicholas Dellacroce, and for even giving you that you gotta get me protection! Like with Valachi, that’s part of the deal.”
“It is?” Holland frowned. “I don’t remember mentioning it.”
“Then you don’t get nuthin’!”
“You’re wrong, Nicky,” broke in Alex from across the small room. “We’re going to get everything we want, the only drawback being that it’s a one-time shot. We won’t be able to cross-examine you, or bring you into a federal court, or even have you sign a deposition.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll come out a vegetable with a refried brain. Of course, I suppose it’s a blessing in a way. You’ll hardly know it when you’re packed into that shell casing in Hatteras.”
“Hey, waddaya talkin’?”
“Simple logic,” answered the former naval commando and present head of the Central Intelligence Agency. “After our medical team gets finished with you, you can’t expect us to keep you around, can you? An autopsy would railroad us to a rock pile for thirty years and, frankly, I haven’t got that kind of time. ... What’ll it be, Nicky? You want to talk to us or do you want a priest?”
“I gotta think—”
“Let’s go, Alex,” said Holland curtly, walking away from the bed toward the door. “I’ll send for a priest. This poor son of a bitch is going to need all the comfort he can get.”
“It’s times like this,” added Conklin, planting his cane on the floor and rising, “when I seriously ponder man’s inhumanity to man. Then I rationalize. It’s not brutality, for that’s only a descriptive abstraction; it’s merely the custom of the trade we’re all in. Still, there’s the individual—his mind and his flesh and his all too sensitive nerve endings. It’s the excruciating pain. Thank heavens I’ve always been in the background, out of reach—like Nicky’s associates. They dine in elegant restaurants and he goes over in a tube beyond the continental shelf, six miles down in the sea, his body imploding into itself.”
“Awright, awright!” screamed Nicolo Dellacroce, twisting on the bed, his obese frame tangling the sheets. “Ask your f*ckin’ questions, but you give me protection, capisce?”
“That depends on the truthfulness of your answers,” said Holland, returning to the bed.
“I’d be very truthful, Nicky,” observed Alex, limping back to the chair. “One misstatement and you sleep with the fishes—I believe that’s the customary phrase.”
“I don’t need no coaching, I know where it’s at.”
“Let’s begin, Mr. Dellacroce,” said the CIA chief, taking a small tape recorder out of his pocket, checking the charge and placing it on the high white table by the patient’s bed. He drew up a chair and continued speaking, addressing his opening remarks to the thin silver recorder. “My name is Admiral Peter Holland, currently director of the Central Intelligence Agency, voice confirmation to be verified if necessary. This is an interview with an informer we’ll call John Smith, voice distortion to follow on interagency master tape, identification in the DCI’s classified files. ... All right, Mr. Smith, we’re going to cut through the bullshit to the essential questions. I’ll generalize them as much as possible for your protection, but you’ll know exactly what I’m referring to and I expect specific answers. ... Whom do you work for, Mr. Smith?”
“Atlas Coin Vending Machines, Long Island City,” replied Dellacroce, his words slurred and spoken gruffly.
“Who owns it?”
“I dunno who owns it. Most of us work from home—some fifteen, maybe twenty guys, you know what I mean? We service the machines and send in our reports.”
Holland glanced over at Conklin; both men smiled. With one answer the mafioso had placed himself within a large circle of potential informers. Nicolo was not new to the game. “Who signs your paychecks, Mr. Smith?”
“A Mr. Louis DeFazio, a very legitimate businessman, to d’best of my knowledge. He gives us our assignments.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Brooklyn Heights. On the river, I think someone told me.”
“What was your destination when our personnel intercepted you?”
Dellacroce winced, briefly closing his swollen eyes before answering. “One of those drunk-and-dope tanks somewhere south of Philly—which you already know, Mr. Big Shot, ’cause you found the map in the car.”
Holland angrily reached for the recorder, snapping it off. “You’re on your way to Hatteras, you son of a bitch!”
“Hey, you get your info your way, I give it mine, okay? There was a map—there’s always a map—and each of us has to take those cockamamy back roads to the joint like we were driving the president or even a don superiore to an Appalachian meet. ... You gimme that message pad and the pencil, I’ll give you the location right down to the brass plate on the stone gate.” The mafioso raised his uncased right arm and jabbed his index finger at the DCI. “It’ll be accurate, Mr. Big Shot, because I don’t wanna sleep with no fishes, capisce?”
“But you won’t put it on tape,” said Holland, a disturbed inflection in his voice. “Why not?”
“Tape, shit! What did you call it? An interagency master bullshit? What do you think ... our people can’t tap into this place? Hoo-hah! That f*ckin’ doctor of yours could be one of us!”
“He’s not, but we’re going to get to an army doctor who is.” Peter Holland picked up the message pad and pencil from the bedside table, handing both to Dellacroce. He did not bother to switch on the tape recorder. They were beyond props and into hardball.

In New York City, on 138th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, the hard core of Harlem, a large disheveled black man in his mid-thirties staggered up the sidewalk. He bounced off the chipped brick wall of a run-down apartment building and slumped down on the pavement, his legs extended, his unshaven face angled into the right collar of his torn army-surplus shirt.
“With the looks I’m getting,” he said quietly into the miniaturized microphone under the cloth, “you’d think I’d invaded the high colonic white shopping district of Palm Springs.”
“You’re doing beautifully,” came the metallic voice over the tiny speaker sewn into the back of the agent’s collar. “We’ve got the place covered; we’ll give you plenty of notice. That answering machine’s so jammed it’s sending out whistling smoke.”
“How did you two lily boys get into that trap over there?”
“Very early this morning, so early no one noticed what we looked like.”
“I can’t wait to watch you get out; it’s a needle condo if I ever saw one. Speaking of which, which we are in a way, are the cops on this beat alerted? I’d hate like hell to get hauled in after growing this bristle on my face. It itches like crazy and my new wife of three weeks doesn’t dig it.”
“You should have stayed with the first one, buddy.”
“Funny little white boy. She didn’t like the hours or the geography. Like in being away for weeks at a time playing games in Zimbabwe. Answer me, please?”
“The blue coats have your description and the scenario. You’re part of a federal bust, so they’ll leave you alone. ... Hold it! Conversation’s over. This has to be our man; he’s got a telephone satchel strapped to his belt. ... It is. He’s heading for the doorway. It’s all yours, Emperor Jones.”
“Funny little white boy. ... I’ve got him and I can tell you now he’s a soft chocolate mousse. He’s scared shitless to go into this palace.”
“Which means he’s legitimate,” said the metallic voice in the collar. “That’s good.”
“That’s bad, junior,” countered the black agent instantly.
“If you’re right, he doesn’t know anything, and the layers between him and the source will be as thick as Southern molasses.”
“Oh? Then how do you read it?”
“On-scene tech. I have to see the numbers when he programs them into his troubleshooter.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“He may be legit, but he’s also been frightened and not by the premises.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s all over his face, man. He could enter in false numbers if he thinks he’s being followed or watched.”
“You’ve lost me, buddy.”
“He has to duplicate the digits that correspond to the remote so the beeps can be relayed—”
“Forget it,” said the voice from the back of the collar. “That high-tech I’m not. Besides, we got a man down at that company, Reco-something-or-other, now. He’s waiting for you.”
“Then I’ve got work to do. Out, but keep me monitored.” The agent rose from the pavement and unsteadily made his way into the dilapidated building. The telephone repairman had reached the second floor, where he turned right in the narrow, filthy corridor; he had obviously been there before, as there was no hesitation, no checking the barely legible numbers on the doors. Things were going to be a little easier, considered the CIA man, grateful because his assignment was beyond the purview of the Agency. Purview, shit, it was illegal.
The agent took the steps three at a time, his soft double-soled rubber shoes reducing the noise to the inevitable creaks of an old staircase. His back against the wall, he peered around the corner of the trash-filled hallway and watched the repairman insert three separate keys into three vertical locks, turning each in succession and entering the last door on the left. Things, reconsidered the agent, might not be so easy after all. The instant the man closed the door, he ran silently down the corridor and stood motionless, listening. Not wonderful, but not the worst, he thought as he heard the sound of only one lock being latched; the repairman was in a hurry. He placed his ear against the peeling paint of the door and held his breath, no echo from his lungs disturbing his hearing. Thirty seconds later he turned his head, exhaled, then took a deep breath and went back to the door. Although muffled, he heard the words clearly enough to piece together the meaning.
“Central, this is Mike up on a Hundred Thirty-eighth Street, section twelve, machine sixteen. Is there another unit in this building, which I wouldn’t believe if you said there was.” The following silence lasted perhaps twenty additional seconds. ... We don’t, huh? Well, we got a frequency interference and it don’t make no sense to me. ... The what? Cable TV? Ain’t no one in this neighborhood got the bread for that. ... Oh, I gotcha, brother. Area cable. The drug boys live high, don’t they? Their addresses may be shit, but inside them homes they got theyselves a pile of fancy crap. ... So clear the line and reroute it. I’ll stay here until I get a clean signal, okay, brother?”
The agent again turned away from the door and again breathed, now in relief. He could leave without a confrontation; he had all he needed. One Hundred Thirty-eighth Street, section twelve, machine sixteen, and they knew the firm that installed the equipment. The Reco-Metropolitan Company, Sheridan Square, New York. The lily-whites could handle it from there. He walked back to the questionable staircase and lifted the collar of his army-surplus shirt. “In case I get run over by a truck, here’s the input. Are you reading me?”
“Loud and clear, Emperor Jones.”
“It’s machine sixteen in what they call section twelve.”
“Got it! You’ve earned your paycheck.”
“You might at least say, ‘Outstanding, old chap.’ ”
“Hey, you’re the guy who went to college over there, not me.”
“Some of us are overachievers. ... Hold it! I’ve got company!”
Below on the bottom of the staircase a small compact black man appeared, his dark eyes bulging, staring up at the agent, a gun in his hand. The CIA man spun behind the edge of the wall as four successive gunshots shattered the corridor. Lunging across the open space, his revolver ripped from its holster, the agent fired twice, but once was enough. His assailant fell to the floor of the soiled lobby.
“I caught a ricochet in my leg!” cried the agent. “But he’s down—deep dead or not I can’t tell. Sweep up the vehicle and get us both out. Pronto.”
“On its way. Stay put!”

It was shortly past eight o’clock the next morning when Alex Conklin limped into Peter Holland’s office. The guards at the CIA gates were impressed with his immediate access to the director.
“Anything?” asked the DCI, looking up from the papers on his desk.
“Nothing,” answered the retired field officer angrily, heading for the couch against the wall rather than a chair. “Not a goddamned thing. Jesus, what a f*cked-up day and it hasn’t even begun! Casset and Valentino are down in the cellars sending out queries all over the Paris sewers but so far nothing. ... Christ, look at the scenario and find me a thread! Swayne, Armbruster, DeSole—our mute son of a bitch, the mole. Then for God’s sake, Teagarten with Bourne’s calling card, when we know damned well it’s a trap for Jason set by the Jackal. But there’s no logic anywhere that ties Carlos to Teagarten and by extension to Medusa. Nothing makes sense, Peter. We’ve lost the spine—everything’s gone off the wire!”
“Calm down,” said Holland gently.
“How the hell can I? Bourne’s disappeared-I mean really disappeared, if he isn’t dead. And there’s no trace of Marie, no word from her, and then we learn that Bernardine was killed in a shoot-out only hours ago on the Rivoli—Christ, shot in broad daylight! And that means Jason was there—he had to be there!”
“But since none of the dead or wounded fits his description, we can assume he got away, can’t we?”
“We can hope, yes.”
“You asked for a thread,” mused the DCI. “I’m not sure I can actually provide one, but I can give you something like it.
“New York?” Conklin sat forward on the couch. “The answering machine? That DeFazio hood in Brooklyn Heights?”
“We’ll get to New York, to all of that—them. Right now let’s concentrate on that thread of yours, that spine you mentioned.”
“I’m not the slowest kid on the block, but where is it?”
Holland leaned back in his chair, gazing first at the papers on his desk and then up at Alex. “Seventy-two hours ago, when you decided to come clean with me about everything, you said that the idea behind Bourne’s strategy was to persuade the Jackal and this latter-day Medusa to join forces, with Bourne as the common target, one feeding the other. Wasn’t that basically the premise? Both sides wanted him killed. Carlos had two reasons—revenge and the fact that he believes Bourne could identify him; the Medusans because Bourne had pieced together so much about them?”
“That was the premise, yes,” agreed Conklin, nodding. “It’s why I dug around and made those phone calls, never expecting to find what I did. Jesus, a global cartel born twenty years ago in Saigon, peopled by some of the biggest fish in and out of the government and the military. It was the kind of pay dirt I didn’t want and wasn’t looking for. I thought I might dig up maybe ten or twelve hotshot millionaires with post-Saigon bank accounts that couldn’t bear scrutiny, but not this, not this Medusa.”
“To put it as simply as possible,” continued Holland, frowning, his eyes again straying down to the papers in front of him, then up at Alex. “Once the connection was made between Medusa and Carlos, word would be passed to the Jackal that there was a man Medusa wanted eliminated, and cost was no object. So far, yes?”
“The key here was the caliber and the status of those reaching Carlos,” explained Conklin. “They had to be as close to bona fide Olympians as we could find, the kind of clients the Jackal doesn’t get and never got.”
“Then the name of the target is revealed—say, in a way such as ‘John Smith, once known years ago as Jason Bourne’—and the Jackal is hooked. Bourne, the one man he wants dead above all others.”
“Yes. That’s why the Medusans reaching Carlos had to be so solid, so above questioning that Carlos accepts them and dismisses any sort of a trap.”
“Because,” added the CIA’s director, “Jason Bourne came out of Saigon’s Medusa—a fact known to Carlos—but he never shared in the riches of the later, postwar Medusa. That’s the background scenario, isn’t it?”
“The logic’s as clean as it can be. For three years he was used and damn near killed in a black operation, and along the way he supposedly discovered that more than a few undistinguished Saigon pricks were driving Jaguars and were sailing yachts and pulling down six-figure retainers while he went on a government pension. That could try the patience of John the Baptist, to say nothing of Barabbas.”
“It’s a terrific libretto,” allowed Holland, a slow smile breaking across his face. “I can hear the tenors soaring in triumph and the Machiavellian bassos slinking offstage in defeat. ... Don’t scowl at me, Alex, I mean it! It’s really ingenious. It’s so inevitable it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your Bourne was right from the beginning. It all took place the way he saw it, but not in any way he could have imagined. Because it was inevitable; somewhere there had to be a cross-pollinator.”
“Please come down from Mars and explain to an earthling, Peter.”
“Medusa’s using the Jackal! Now. Teagarten’s assassination proves it unless you want to concede that Bourne actually blew up that car outside of Brussels.”
“Of course not.”
“Then Carlos’s name had to surface for someone in Medusa who already knew about Jason Bourne. It couldn’t be otherwise. You didn’t mention either one to Armbruster, or Swayne, or Atkinson in London, did you?”
“Again, of course not. The time wasn’t right; we weren’t ready to pull those triggers.”
“Who’s left?” asked Holland.
Alex stared at the DCI. “Good Lord,” he said softly. “DeSole?”
“Yes, DeSole, the grossly underpaid specialist who complained amusingly but incessantly that there was no way a man could properly educate his children and grandchildren on government pay. He was brought in on everything we discussed, starting with your assault on us in the conference room.”
“He certainly was, but that was limited to Bourne and the Jackal. There was no mention of Armbruster or Swayne, no Teagarten or Atkinson—the new Medusa wasn’t even in the picture. Hell, Peter, you didn’t know about it until seventy-two hours ago.”
“Yes, but DeSole did because he’d sold out; he was part of it. He had to have been alerted. ‘... Watch it. We’ve been penetrated. Some maniac says he’s going to expose us, blow us apart.’ ... You told me yourself that panic buttons were punched from the Trade Commission to Pentagon Procurements to the embassy in London.”
“They were punched,” agreed Conklin. “So hard that two of them had to be taken out along with Teagarten and our disgruntled Mole. Snake Lady’s elders quickly decided who their vulnerable people were. But where does Carlos or Bourne fit in? There’s no attribution.”
“I thought we agreed that there was.”
“DeSole?” Conklin shook his head. “It’s a provocative thought, but it doesn’t wash. He couldn’t have presumed that I knew about Medusa’s penetration because we hadn’t even started it.”
“But when you did, the sequence had to bother him if only in the sense that although they were poles apart, one crisis followed too quickly upon another. What was it? A matter of hours?”
“Less than twenty-four ... Still, they were poles apart.”
“Not for an analyst’s analyst,” countered Holland. “If it walks like an odd duck and sounds like an odd duck, look for an odd duck. I submit that somewhere along the line DeSole made the connection between Jason Bourne and the madman who had infiltrated Medusa—the new Medusa.”
“For Christ’s sake, how?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you told us Bourne came out of the old Saigon Medusa—that’s one hell of a connection to begin with.”
“My God, you may be right,” said Alex, falling back on the couch. “The driving force we gave our unnamed madman was that he’d been cut off from, the new Medusa. I used the words myself with every phone call. ‘He’s spent years putting it together. ...’ ‘He’s got names and ranks and banks in Zurich. ...’Jesus, I’m blind! I said those things to total strangers on a telephone fishing expedition and never even thought about having mentioned Bourne’s origins in Medusa at that meeting when DeSole was here.”
“Why should you have thought about it? You and your man decided to play a separate game all by yourselves.”
“The reasons were goddamned valid,” broke in Conklin. “For all I knew, you were a Medusan.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“Come on, don’t give me that shit. ‘We’ve got a top max out at Langley’ ... those were the words I heard from London. What would you have thought, what would you have done?”
“Exactly what you did,” answered Holland, a tight grin on his lips. “But you’re supposed to be so bright, so much smarter than I’m supposed to be.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself; you did what any of us would have done in your place.”
“For that I do thank you. And you’re right, of course. It had to be DeSole; how he did it, I don’t know, but it had to be him. It probably went back years inside his head—he never really forgot anything, you know. His mind was a sponge that absorbed everything and never let a recollection drip away. He could remember words and phrases, even spontaneous grunts of approval or disapproval the rest of us forgot. ... And I gave him the whole Bourne-Jackal history—and then someone from Medusa used it in Brussels.”
“They did more than that, Alex,” said Holland, leaning forward in his chair and picking up several papers from his desk. “They stole your scenario, usurped your strategy. They’ve pitted Jason Bourne against Carlos the Jackal, but instead of the controls being in your hands, Medusa has them. Bourne’s back where he was in Europe thirteen years ago, maybe with his wife, maybe not, the only difference being that in addition to Carlos and Interpol and every other police authority on the continent ready to waste him on sight, he’s got another lethal monkey on his back.”
“That’s what’s in those pages you’re holding, isn’t it? The information from New York?”
“I can’t guarantee it, but I think so. It’s the cross-pollinator I spoke about before, the bee that went from one rotten flower to another carrying poison.”
“Deliver, please.”
“Nicolo Dellacroce and the higher-ups above him.”
“Mafia?”
“It’s consistent, if not socially acceptable. Medusa grew out of Saigon’s officer corps and it still relegates its dirty work to the hungry grunts and corrupt NCOs. Check out Nicky D. and men like Sergeant Flannagan. When it comes to killing or kidnapping or using drugs on prisoners, the starched-shirt boys stay far in the background; they’re nowhere to be found.”
“But I gather you found them,” said the impatient Conklin.
“Again, we think so—we being our people in quiet consultation with New York’s anticrime division, especially a unit called the U.S. platoon.”
“Never heard of it.”
“They’re mostly Italian Americans; they gave themselves the name Untouchable Sicilians. Thus the U.S. initials with a dual connotation.”
“Nice touch.”
“Unnice work. ... According to the Reco-Metropolitan’s billing files—”
“The who?”
“The company that installed the answering machine on One Hundred Thirty-eighth Street in Manhattan.”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“According to the files, the machine was leased to a small importing firm on Eleventh Avenue several blocks from the piers. An hour ago we got the telephone records for the past two months for the company, and guess what we found?”
“I’d rather not wait,” said Alex emphatically.
“Nine calls to a reasonably acceptable number in Brooklyn Heights, and three in the space of an hour to an extremely unlikely telephone on Wall Street.”
“Someone was excited—”
“That’s what we thought—we in this case being our own unit. We asked the Sicilians to give us what they had on Brooklyn Heights.”
“DeFazio?”
“Let’s put it this way. He lives there, but the phone is registered to the Atlas Coin Vending Machine Company in Long Island City.”
“It fits. Dumb, but it fits. What about DeFazio?”
“He’s a middle-level but ambitious capo in the Giancavallo family. He’s very close, very underground, very vicious ... and very gay.”
“Holy Christ ... !”
“The Untouchables swore us to secrecy. They intend to spring it themselves.”
“Bullshit,” said Conklin softly. “One of the first things we learn in this business is to lie to anyone and everyone, especially anyone who’s foolish enough to trust us. We’ll use it anytime it gets us a square forward. ... What’s the other telephone number, the unlikely one?”
“Just about the most powerful law firm on Wall Street.”
“Medusa,” concluded Alex firmly.
“That’s the way I read it. They’ve got seventy-six lawyers on two floors of the building. Which one is it—or who among them are they?”
“I don’t give a goddamn! We go after DeFazio and whatever controls he’s sending over to Paris. To Europe to feed the Jackal. They’re the guns after Jason and that’s all I care about. Go to work on DeFazio. He’s the one under contract!”
Peter Holland leaned back in his chair, rigid, intense. “It had to come to this, didn’t it, Alex?” he asked quietly. “We both have our priorities. ... I’d do anything within my sworn capacity to save the lives of Jason Bourne and his wife, but I will not violate my oath to defend this country first. I can’t do it and I suspect you know that. My priority is Medusa, in your words a global cartel that intends to become a government within our government over here. That’s whom I have to go after. First and immediately and without regard to casualties. To put it plainly, my friend—and I hope you’re my friend—the Bournes, or whoever they are, are expendable. I’m sorry, Alex.”
“That’s really why you asked me to come over here this morning, isn’t it?” said Conklin, planting his cane on the floor and awkwardly getting to his feet.
“Yes, it is.”
“You’ve got your own game plan against Medusa—and we can’t be a part of it.”
“No, you can’t. It’s a fundamental conflict of interest.”
“I’ll grant you that. We’d louse you up in a minute if it’d help Jason and Marie. Naturally, my personal and professional opinion is that if the whole f*cking United States government can’t rip out a Medusa without sacrificing a man and a woman who’ve given so much, I’m not sure it’s worth a damn!”
“Neither am I,” said Holland, standing up behind the desk. “But I swore an oath to try—in order of my sworn priorities.”
“Have I got any perks left?”
“Anything I can get you that doesn’t compromise our going after Medusa.”
“How about two seats on a military aircraft, Agencycleared, to Paris.”
“Two seats?”
“Panov and me. We went to Hong Kong together, why not Paris?”
“Alex, you’re out of your goddamned mind!”
“I don’t think you understand, Peter. Mo’s wife died ten years after they were married, and I never had the courage to give it a try. So you see, ‘Jason Bourne’ and Marie are the only family we have. She makes a hell of a meat loaf, let me tell you.”
“Two tickets to Paris,” said Holland, his face ashen.