The Bourne ultimatum

38

Madness! At full force Carlos slammed his right shoulder into the blond-haired waiter, propelling the young man across the hallway and crashing the room-service table over on its side; dishes and food splattered the walls and the carpeted floor. Suddenly the waiter lunged to his left, spinning in midair as, astonishingly, he yanked a weapon from his belt. The Jackal either sensed or caught the movement in the corner of his eye. He whipped around, his automatic weapon on rapid fire, savagely pinning the blond Russian into the wall, bullets puncturing the waiter’s head and torso. At that prolonged, horrible moment, the enlarged sight line on the barrel of Bourne’s Graz Burya caught in the waistline of his trousers. He tore the fabric as the eyes of Carlos swept up centering on his own, fury and triumph in the assassin’s stare.
Jason ripped the gun loose, spinning, crouching back into the wall of the small alcove as the Jackal’s fusillade blew apart the gaudy paneling of the soft-drink machine and tore into the sheets of heavy plastic that fronted the broken-down ice maker. On his stomach, Bourne surged across the opening, the Graz Burya raised and firing as fast as he could squeeze the trigger. Simultaneously, there were other gunshots, not those of a machine pistol. Alex was firing from inside the suite! They had Carlos in their cross fire! It was possible—it could all end in a hotel corridor in Moscow! Let it happen, let it happen!
The Jackal roared; it was a defiant shriek at having been hit. Bourne lunged back across the opening, pivoting once again into the wall, momentarily distracted by the sounds of a now functioning ice machine. Again he crouched, inching his face toward the corner of the archway when the murderous insanity in the hallway erupted into the fever pitch of close combat. Like an enraged caged animal, the wounded Carlos kept spinning around in place, continuous bursts from his weapon exploding as if he were firing through unseen walls that were closing in on him. Two piercing, hysterical screams came from the far end of the hallway, one male, one female; a couple had been wounded or killed in the panicked fusillade of stray bullets.
“Get down!” Conklin’s scream from across the corridor was an instant command for what Jason could not know. “Take cover! Grab the f*cking walls!” Bourne did as he was told, under standing only that the order meant he was to shove himself into as small a place as possible, protecting his head as much as possible. The corner. He lunged as the first explosion rocked the walls—somewhere—and then a second, this much nearer, far more thunderous, in the hallway itself. Grenades!
Smoke mingled with falling plaster and shattered glass. Gunshots. Nine, one after another—a Graz Burya automatic ... Alex! Jason spun up and away from the corner of the recess and lurched for the opening. Conklin stood outside the door of their suite in front of the upturned room-service table; he snapped out his empty clip and furiously searched his trousers pockets. “I haven’t got one!” he shouted angrily, referring to the extra clips of ammunition supplied by Krupkin. “He ran around the corner into the other corridor, and I don’t have any goddamned shells!”
“I do and I’m a lot faster than you,” said Jason, removing his spent magazine and inserting a fresh clip from his pocket. “Get back in there and call the lobby. Tell them to clear it.”
“Krupkin said—”
“I don’t give a damn what he said! Tell them to shut down the elevators, barricade all staircase exits, and stay the hell away from this floor!”
“I see what you mean—”
“Do it!” Bourne raced down the hallway, wincing as he approached the couple who lay on the carpet; each moved, groaning. Their clothes were spotted with blood, but they moved! He turned and yelled to Alex, who was limping around the room-service table. “Get help up here!” he ordered, pointing at an exit door directly down the corridor. “They’re alive! Use that exit and only that one!”
The hunt began, compounded and impeded by the fact that the word had been spread throughout these adjacent wings of the Metropole’s tenth floor. It took no imagination to realize that behind the closed doors, along both sides of the hallways, panicked calls were being made to the front desk as the sound of nearby gunfire echoed throughout the corridors. Krupkin’s strategy for a KGB assault team in civilian clothes had been nullified by the first burst from the Jackal’s weapon.
Where was he? There was another exit door at the far end of the long hallway Jason had entered, but there were perhaps fifteen to eighteen guest-room doors lining that hallway. Carlos was no fool, and a wounded Carlos would call upon every tactic he could summon from a long life of violence and survival to survive, if only long enough to achieve the kill he wanted more than life itself. ... Bourne suddenly realized how accurate his analysis was, for he was describing himself. What had old Fontaine said on Tranquility Isle, in that faraway storeroom from which they had stared down at the procession of priests knowing that one had been bought by the Jackal? “... Two aging lions stalking each other, not caring who’s killed in the cross fire”—those had been Fontaine’s words, a man who had sacrificed his life for another he barely knew because his own life was over, for the woman he loved was gone. As Jason started cautiously, silently down the hall toward the first door on the left, he wondered if he could do the same. He wanted desperately to live—with Marie and their children—but if she was gone ... if they were gone ... would life really matter? Could he throw it away if he recognized something in another man that reflected something in himself?
No time. Meditate on your own time, David Webb! I have no use for you, you weak, soft son of a bitch. Get away from me! I have to flush out a bird of prey I’ve wanted for thirteen years. His claws are razor-sharp and he’s killed too often, too many, and now he wants to kill my own—your own. Get away from me!
Bloodstains. On the dull, dark brown carpet, wet driblets glistening in the dim overhead light. Bourne crouched and felt them; they were wet; they were red—bloodred. Unbroken, they passed the first door, then the second, remaining on the left—then they crossed the hall, the pattern now altered, no longer steady, instead zigzagging, as if the wound had been located, the bleeding partially stemmed. The trail passed the sixth door on the right, and the seventh ... then abruptly the shining red drops stopped—no, not entirely. There was a trickle heading left, barely visible, and again, across the hallway—there it was! A faint smudge of red just above the knob on the eighth door on the left, no more than twenty feet from the corridor’s exit staircase. Carlos was behind that door holding hostage whoever was inside.
Precision was everything now, every movement, every sound concentrated on the capture or the kill. Breathing steadily while imposing a suspension of the muscular spasms he felt everywhere throughout his body, Bourne once more walked silently, now retracing his steps up the hallway. He reached a point roughly thirty paces away from the eighth door on the left and turned around, suddenly aware of a muted chorus of sporadic sobs and cries that came from closed doorways along the hotel corridor. Orders had been given couched in language far removed from Krupkin’s instructions: Stay inside your rooms, please. Admit no one. Our people are investigating. It was always “our people,” never “the police,” never “the authorities”; with those names came panic. And panic was precisely what Medusa’s Delta One had in mind. Panic and diversion, eternal components for the human snare, lifelong allies in the springing trap.
He raised the Graz Burya automatic, aiming at one of the ornate hallway chandeliers, and fired twice, simultaneously shouting furiously as the earsplitting explosions accompanied the shattered glass that plummeted from the ceiling. “There he goes! A black suit!” His feet pounding, Bourne ran with loud emphatic strides down the corridor to the eighth door on the left, then past the door, shouting once again. “The exit ... the exit!” He abruptly stopped, firing a third shot into another chandelier, the jarring cacophony covering the absent noise of his pounding feet as he spun around, throwing his back against the opposing wall of the eighth door, then pushing himself away, hurling his body at the door and crashing into it, smashing it off its hinges as he. lurched inside, plunging to the floor, his weapon raised, prepared for rapid fire.
He was wrong! He knew it instantly—a final reverse trap was in the making! He heard another door opening somewhere outside—he either heard it or he instinctively knew it! He rolled furiously to his right, over and over again, his legs crashing into a floor lamp, sending it toward the door, his panicked darting eyes catching a glimpse of an elderly couple clutching each other, crouching in a far corner.
The white-gowned figure burst into the room, his automatic pistol spitting indiscriminately, the staccato reports deafening. Bourne fired repeatedly into the mass of white as he sprang into the left wall, knowing that if for only a split second he was positioned on the killer’s blind right flank. It was enough!
The Jackal was caught in his shoulder—his right shoulder! The weapon literally snapped out of his grip as he jerked up his forearm, his fingers spastically uncurled under the impact of the Graz Burya’s penetration. With no cessation of movement, the Jackal swung around, the bloody long white robe separating, billowing like a sail as he grabbed the massive flesh wound with his left hand and violently kicked the floor lamp into Jason’s face.
Bourne fired again, half blinded by the flying shade of the heavy lamp, his weapon deflected by the thick stem. The shot went wild; steadying his hand, he squeezed the trigger again, only to hear the sickening finality of a sharp metallic click—the gun’s magazine was empty! Struggling to a crouch, he lunged for the blunt, ugly automatic weapon as the white-robed Carlos raced through the shattered doorway into the corridor. Jason got to his feet, but his knee collapsed! It had buckled under his own weight. Oh, Christ! He crawled to the edge of the bed and dived over the pulled-down sheets toward the bedside telephone—it had been demolished, the Jackal had shot it apart! Carlos’s demented mind was summoning up every tactic, every counteraction he had ever used.
Another sound! This loud and abrupt. The crash bar on the hallway’s stairway exit had been slammed into the opening position, the heavy metal door smashed back into the concrete wall of the landing. The Jackal was heading down the flights of steps to the lobby. If the front desk had listened to Conklin, he was trapped!
Bourne looked at the elderly couple in the corner, affected by the fact that the old man was covering the woman with his own body. “It’s all right,” he. said, trying to calm them by lowering his voice. “I know you probably don’t understand me—I don’t speak Russian—but you’re safe now.”
“We don’t speak Russian either,” admitted the man, an Englishman, in clipped, guarded tones, straining his neck as he looked at Jason while trying to rise. “Thirty years ago I would have been standing at that door! Eighth Army with Monty, y’know. Rather grand at El Alamein—all of us, of course. To paraphrase, age doth wither, as they say.”
“I’d rather not hear it, General—”
“No, no, merely a brigadier—”
“Fine!” Bourne crept over the bed, testing his knee; whatever it was had snapped back. “I have to get to a phone!”
“Actually, what outraged me was the goddamned robe!” went on the veteran of El Alamein. “F*cking disgraceful, I say—forgive me, darling.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The white robe, lad! It had to be Binky’s—the couple across the hall we’re traveling with—he must have copped it from that lovely Beau-Rivage in Lausanne. The rotten theft is bad enough, but to have given it to that swine is unforgivable!”
In seconds, Jason had grabbed the Jackal’s weapon and crashed his way into the room across the hall, immediately knowing that “Binky” deserved more admiration than the brigadier afforded him. He lay on the floor bleeding from knife wounds across his stomach and throat.
“I can’t reach anyone!” screamed the woman with thinning gray hair; she was on her knees above the victim, weeping hysterically. “He fought like a madman—somehow he knew that priest wouldn’t fire his gun!”
“Hold the skin together wherever you can,” yelled Bourne, looking over at the telephone. It was intact! He ran to it, and instead of calling the front desk or the operator, he dialed the numbers for the suite.
“Krupkin?” cried Alex.
“No, me! First: Carlos is on the staircase—the hallway I went into! Second: a man’s cut up, same hallway, seventh door on the right! Hurry.”
“As fast as I can. I’ve got a clear line to the office.”
“Where the hell is the KGB team?”
“They just got here. Krupkin called only seconds ago from the lobby—it’s why I thought you were—”
“I’m going to the staircase!”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Because he’s mine!”
Jason raced to the door, offering no words of comfort for the hysterical wife; he could not summon them. He crashed his way through the exit door, the Jackal’s weapon in his hand. He started down the staircase, suddenly hearing the sound of his own shoes; he stopped on the seventh step and removed both, and then his ankle-length socks. The cool surface of the stone on his feet somehow reminded him of the jungles, flesh against the cold morning underbrush; for some abstract, foolish memory he felt more in command of his fears—the jungles were always the friend of Delta One.
Floor by floor he descended, following the inevitable rivulets of blood, larger now, no longer to be stemmed, for the last wound was too severe to stop by exerting pressure. Twice the Jackal had applied such pressure, once at the fifth-floor and again at the third-floor hallway doors, only to be followed by streaks of dark red, as he could not manipulate the exterior locks without the security keys.
The second floor, then the first, there were no more! Carlos was trapped! Somewhere in the shadows below was the death of the killer who would set him free! Silently, Bourne removed a book of Metropole matches from his pocket; he huddled against the concrete wall, tore out a single match and, cupping his hands, fired the packet. He threw it over the railing, the weapon in his hand ready to explode with continuous rounds of bullets at anything that moved below!
There was nothing—nothing! The cement floor was empty—there was no one there! Impossible! Jason raced down the last flight of steps and pounded on the door to the lobby.
“Shto?” yelled a Russian inside. “Kto tam?”
“I’m an American! I’m working with the KGB! Let me in!”
“Shto ... ?”
“I understand,” shouted another voice. “And, please, you understand that many guns are directed at you when I open the door. It is understand?”
“Understand!” shouted Bourne, at the last second remembering to drop Carlos’s weapon on the concrete floor. The door opened.
“Da!” said the Soviet police officer, instantly correcting himself as he spotted the machine pistol at Jason’s feet. “Nyet!” he yelled.
“Nye za shto?” said a breathless Krupkin, urging his heavyset body forward.
“Pochemu?”
“Komitet!”
“Prekrasno.” The policeman nodded obsequiously, but stayed in place.
“What are you doing?” demanded Krupkin. “The lobby is cleared and our assault squad is in place!”
“He was here!” whispered Bourne, as if his intense quiet voice further obscured his incomprehensible words.
“The Jackal?” asked Krupkin, astonished.
“He came down this staircase! He couldn’t have gone out on any other floor. Every fire door is dead-bolted from the inside—only the crash bars release them.”
“Skazhi,” said the KGB official to the hotel guard, speaking in Russian. “Has anyone come through this door within the past ten minutes since the orders were given to seal them off?”
“No, sir!” replied the mititsiya. “Only a hysterical woman in a soiled bathrobe. In her panic, she fell in the bathroom and cut herself. We thought she might have a heart attack, she was screaming so. We escorted her immediately to the nurse’s office.”
Krupkin turned to Jason, switching back to English. “Only a woman came through, a woman in panic who had inured herself.”
“A woman? Is he certain? ... What color was her hair?” Dimitri asked the guard; with the man’s reply he again looked at Bourne. “He says it was reddish and quite curly.”
“Reddish?” An image came to Jason, a very unpleasant one. “A house phone—no, the front desk! Come on, I may need your help.” With Krupkin following, the barefooted Bourne ran across the lobby to a clerk at the reception counter. “Can you speak English?”
“Certainly most good, even many veniculars, mister sir.”
“A room plan for the tenth floor. Quickly.”
“Mister sir?”
Krupkin translated; a large loose-leaf notebook was placed on the counter, the plastic-enclosed page turned to—“This room!” said Jason, pointing at a square and doing his best not to alarm the frightened clerk. “Get it on the telephone! If the line’s busy, knock off anybody on it.”
Again Krupkin translated as a phone was placed in front of Bourne. He picked it up and spoke. “This is the man who came into your room a few minutes ago—”
“Oh, yes, of course, dear fellow. Thank you so much! The doctor’s here and Binky’s—”
“I have to know something, and I have to know it right now. ... Do you carry hairpieces, or wigs, with you when you travel?”
“I’d say that’s rather impertinent—”
“Lady, I don’t have time for amenities, I have to know! Do you?”
“Well, yes I do. It’s no secret, actually, all my friends know it and they forgive the artifice. You see, dear boy, I have diabetes ... my gray hair is painfully thin.”
“Is one of those wigs red?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I rather fancy changing—”
Bourne slammed down the phone and looked over at Krupkin. “The son of a bitch lucked out. It was Carlos!”
“Come with me!” said Krupkin as they both raced across the empty lobby to the complex of back-room offices of the Metropole. They reached the nurse’s infirmary door and went inside. They both stopped; both gasped and then winced at what they saw.
There were rolls of torn, unwound gauze and reels of tape in various widths, and broken syringes and tubes of antibiotics scattered about the examining table and the floor, as if all were somehow administered in panic. These, however, the two men barely noticed, for their eyes were riveted on the woman who had tended to her crazed patient. The Metropole’s nurse was arched back in her chair, her throat surgically punctured, and over her immaculate white uniform ran a thin stream of blood. Madness!

Standing beside the living room table, Dimitri Krupkin spoke on the phone as Alex Conklin sat on the brocaded couch massaging his bootless leg and Bourne stood by the window staring out on the Marx Prospekt. Alex looked over at the KGB officer, a thin smile on his gaunt face as Krupkin nodded, his eyes on Conklin. An acknowledgment was being transmitted between the two of them. They were worthy adversaries in a never-ending, essentially futile war in which only battles were won, the philosophical conflicts never resolved.
“I have your assurance then, comrade,” said Krupkin in Russian, “and, frankly, I will hold you to it. ... Of course I’m taping this conversation! Would you do otherwise? ... Good! We understand each other as well as our respective responsibilities, so let me recapitulate. The man is seriously wounded, therefore the city taxi service as well as all doctors and all hospitals in the Moscow area have been alerted. The description of the stolen automobile has been circulated and any sightings of man or vehicle are to be reported only to you. The penalty for disregarding these instructions is the Lubyanka, that must be clear. ... Good! We have a mutual understanding and I expect to hear from you the minute you have any information, yes? ... Don’t have a cardiac arrest, comrade. I am well aware that you are my superior, but then this is a proletarian society, yes? Simply follow the advice of an extremely experienced subordinate. Have a pleasant day. ... No, that is not a threat, it is merely a phrase I picked up in Paris—American origin, I believe.” Krupkin hung up the phone and sighed. “There’s something to be said for our vanished, educated aristocracy, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t say it out loud,” observed Conklin, nodding at the telephone. “I gather nothing’s coming down.”
“Nothing to act upon immediately but something rather interesting, even fascinating in a macabre sort of way.”
“By which you mean it concerns Carlos, I assume.”
“No one else.” Krupkin shook his head as Jason looked over at him from the window. “I stopped at my office to join the assault squad and on my desk were eight large manila envelopes, only one of which had been opened. The police found them in the Vavilova and, true to form, having read the contents of only one, wanted nothing to do with them.”
“What were they?” asked Alex, chuckling. “State secrets describing the entire Politburo as gay?”
“You’re probably not far off the mark,” interrupted Bourne. “That was the Jackal’s Moscow cadre in the Vavilova. He was either showing them the dirt he had on them, or giving them the dirt on others.”
“The latter in this case,” said Krupkin. “A collection of the most preposterous allegations directed at the ranking heads of our major ministries.”
“He’s got vaults of that garbage. It’s standard operating procedure for Carlos; it’s how he buys his way into circles he shouldn’t be able to penetrate.”
“Then I’m not being clear, Jason,” continued the KGB officer. “When I say preposterous, I mean exactly that—beyond belief. Lunacy.”
“He’s almost always on target. Don’t take that judgment to the bank.”
“If there were such a bank I certainly would, and I’d negotiate a sizable loan on its efficacy as collateral.. Most of the information is the stuff of the lowest-grade tabloids—nothing unusual there, of course—but along with such nonsense are outright distortions of times, places, functions and even identities. For example, the Ministry of Transport is not where a particular file says, but a block away, and a certain comrade direktor is not married to the lady named but to someone else—the woman mentioned is their daughter and is not in Moscow but rather in Cuba, where she’s been for six years. Also, the man listed as head of Radio Moscow and accused of just about everything short of having intercourse with dogs, died eleven months ago and was a known closet orthodox Catholic, who would have been far happier as a truly devout priest. ... These blatant falsehoods I picked up in a matter of minutes, time being at a premium, but I’m sure there are dozens more.”
“You’re saying that a scam was pulled on Carlos?” said Conklin.
“One so garish—albeit compiled with extreme conviction—it would be laughed out of our most rigidly doctrinaire courts. Whoever fed him these melodramatic ‘exposés’ wanted built-in deniabilities.”
“Rodchenko?” asked Bourne.
“I can’t think of anyone else. Grigorie—I say ‘Grigorie’ but I never called him that to his face; it was always ‘General’—was a consummate strategist, the ultimate survivor, as well as a deeply committed Marxist. Control was his byword, his addiction, really, and if he could control the infamous Jackal for the Motherland’s interests, what a profound exhilaration for the old man. Yet the Jackal killed him with those symbolic bullets in his throat. Was it betrayal, or was it carelessness on Rodchenko’s part at having been discovered? Which? We’ll never know.” The telephone rang and Krupkin’s hand shot down, picking it up. “Da?” Shifting to Russian, Dimitri gestured for Conklin to restrap the prosthetic boot as he spoke. “Now listen to me very carefully, comrade. The police are to make no moves—above all, they are to remain out of sight. Call in one of our unmarked vehicles to replace the patrol car, am I clear? ... Good. We’ll use the Moray frequency.”
“Breakthrough?” asked Bourne, stepping away from the window as Dimitri slammed down the phone.
“Maximum!” replied Krupkin. “The car was spotted on the Nemchinovka road heading toward Odintsovo.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me. What’s in Odintsovol, or whatever it’s called?”
“I don’t know specifically, but I must assume he does. Remember, he knows Moscow and its environs. Odintsovo is what you might call an industrial suburb about thirty-five minutes from the city—”
“Goddamn it!” yelled Alex, struggling with the Velcro straps of his boot.
“Let me do that,” said Jason, his tone of voice brooking no objection as he knelt down and swiftly manipulated the thick strips of coarse cloth. “Why is Carlos still using the Dzerzhinsky car?” continued Bourne, addressing Krupkin. “It’s not like him to take that kind of risk.”
“It is if he has no choice. He has to know that all Moscow taxis are a silent arm of the state, and he is, after all, severely wounded and undoubtedly now without a gun or he would have used it on you. He’s in no condition to threaten a driver or steal an automobile. ... Besides, he reached the Nemchinovka road quickly; that the car was even seen is pure chance. The road is not well traveled, which I assume he also knows.”
“Let’s get out of here!” cried Conklin, annoyed by both Jason’s attention and his own infirmity. He stood up, wavered, angrily rejected Krupkin’s hand, and started for the door. “We can talk in the car. We’re wasting time.”

“Moray, come in, please,” said Krupkin in Russian, sitting beside the assault squad driver in the front seat, the microphone at his lips, his hand on the frequency dial of the vehicle’s radio. “Moray, respond, if I’m reaching you.”
“What the hell’s he talking about?” asked Bourne, in the backseat with Alex.
“He’s trying to make contact with the unmarked KGB patrol following Carlos. He keeps switching from one ultrahigh frequency to another. It’s the Moray code.”
“The what?”
“It’s an eel, Jason,” replied Krupkin, glancing over the seat. “Of the Muraenidae family with pore-like gills and capable of descending to great depths. Certain species can be quite deadly.”
“Thank you, Peter Lorre,” said Bourne.
“Very good,” laughed the KGB man. “But you’ll admit it’s aptly descriptive. Very few radios can either send it or receive it.”
“When did you steal it from us?”
“Oh, not you, not you at all. From the British, truthfully. As usual, London is very quiet about these things, but they’re far ahead of you and the Japanese in certain areas. It’s that damned MI-Six. They dine in their clubs in Knightsbridge, smoke their odious pipes, play the innocents, and send us defectors trained at the Old Vic.”
“They’ve had their gaps,” said Conklin defensively.
“More so in their high-dudgeon revelations than in reality, Aleksei. You’ve been away too long. We’ve both lost more than they have in that department, but they can cope with public embarrassment—we haven’t learned that time-honored trait. We bury our ‘gaps,’ as you put it; we try too hard for that respectability which too often eludes us. Then, I suppose, we’re historically young by comparison.” Krupkin again switched back into Russian. “Moray, come in, please! I’m reaching the end of the spectrum. Where are you, Moray?”
“Stop there, comrade!” came the metallic voice over the loudspeaker. “We’re in contact. Can you hear me?”
“You sound like a castrato but I can hear you.”
“This must be Comrade Krupkin—”
“Were you expecting the pope? Who’s this?”
“Orlov.”
“Good! You know what you’re doing.”
“I hope you do, Dimitri.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your insufferable orders to do nothing, that’s why. We’re two kilometers away from the building—I drove up through the grass on a small hill—and we have the vehicle in sight. It’s parked in the lot and the suspect’s inside.”
“What building? What hill? You tell me nothing.”
“The Kubinka Armory.”
Hearing this, Conklin bolted forward in the seat. “Oh, my God!” he cried.
“What is it?” asked Bourne.
“He reached an armory.” Alex saw the frown of confusion on Jason’s face. “Over here armories are a hell of a lot more than enclosed parade grounds for legionnaires and reservists. They’re serious training quarters and warehouses for weapons.”
“He wasn’t heading for Odintsovo,” broke in Krupkin. “The armory’s farther south, on the outskirts of the town, another four or five kilometers. He’s been there before.”
“Those places must have tight security,” said Bourne. “He can’t just walk inside.”
“He already has,” corrected the KGB officer from Paris.
“I mean into restricted areas—like storerooms filled with weapons.”
“That’s what concerns me,” went on Krupkin, fingering the microphone in his hand. “Since he’s been there before—and he obviously has—what does he know about the installation ... who does he know?”
“Get on a radio patch, call the place and have him stopped, held!” insisted Jason.
“Suppose I reach the wrong person, or suppose he already has weapons and we set him off? With one phone call, one hostile confrontation or even the appearance of a strange automobile, there could be wholesale slaughter of several dozen men and women. We saw what he did at the Metropole, in the Vavilova. He’s lost all control; he’s utterly mad.”
“Dimitri,” came the metallic Soviet voice over the radio speaking Russian. “Something’s happening. The man just came out of a side door with a burlap sack and is heading for the car. ... Comrade, I’m not sure it’s the same man. It probably is, but there’s something different about him.”
“What do you mean? The clothes?”
“No, he’s wearing a dark suit and his right arm is in a black sling as before ... yet he’s moving more rapidly, his pace firmer, his posture erect.”
“You’re saying he does not appear to be wounded, yes?”
“I guess that’s what I’m saying, yes.”
“He could be faking it,” said Conklin. “That son of a bitch could be taking his last breath and convince you he’s ready for a marathon.”
“For what purpose, Aleksei? Why any pretense at all?”
“I don’t know, but if your man in that car can see him, he can see the car. Maybe he’s just in a hell of a hurry.”
“What’s going on?” asked Bourne angrily.
“Someone’s come outside with a bagful of goodies and going to the car,” said Conklin in English.
“For Christ’s sake, stop him!”
“We’re not sure it’s the Jackal,” interrupted Krupkin. “The clothes are the same, even to the arm sling, but there are physical differences—”
“Then he wants you to think it isn’t him!” said Jason emphatically.
“Shto? ... What?”
“He’s putting himself in your place, thinking like you’re thinking now and by doing that outthinking you. He may or may not know that he’s been spotted, the car picked up, but he has to assume the worst and act accordingly. How long before we get there?”
“The way my outrageously reckless young comrade is driving, I’d say three or four minutes.”
“Krupkin!” The voice burst from the radio speaker. “Four other people have come outside—three men and a woman. They’re running to the car!”
“What did he say?” asked Bourne. Alex translated and Jason frowned. “Hostages?” he said quietly, as if to himself. “He just blew it!” Medusa’s Delta leaned forward and touched Krupkin’s shoulder. “Tell your man to get out of there the moment that car takes off and he knows where it’s heading. Tell him to be obvious, to blow the hell out of his horn while he passes the armory, which he must pass from one way or the other.”
“My dear fellow!” exploded the Soviet intelligence officer. “Would you mind telling me why I should issue such an order?”
“Because your colleague was right and I was wrong. The man in the sling isn’t Carlos. The Jackal’s inside, waiting for the cavalry to pass the fort so he can get away in another car—if there is a cavalry.”
“In the name of our revered Karl Marx, do explain how you reached this contradictory conclusion!”
“Simple. He made a mistake. ... Even if you could, you wouldn’t shoot up that car on the road, would you?”
“Agreed. There are four other people inside, all no doubt innocent Soviet citizens forced to appear otherwise.”
“Hostages?”
“Yes, of course.”
“When was the last time you heard of people running like hell into a situation where they could become hostages? Even if they were under a gun from a doorway, one or two, if not all of them, would try to race behind other cars for protection.”
“My word—”
“But you were right about one thing. Carlos has a contact inside that armory—the man in the sling. He may only be an innocent Russian with a brother or a sister living in Paris, but the Jackal owns him.”
“Dimitri!” shouted the metallic voice in Russian. “The car is speeding out of the parking lot!”
Krupkin pressed the button on his microphone and gave his instructions. Essentially, they were to follow that automobile to the borders of Finland if necessary, but to take it without violence, calling in the police if they had to. The last order was to pass the armory, blowing his horn repeatedly. In the Russian vernacular, the agent named Orlov asked, “What the f*ck for?”
“Because I’ve had a vision from St. Nickolai the Good! Also, I’m your charitable superior. Do it!”
“You’re not well, Dimitri.”
“Do you wish a superb service report or one that will send you to Tashkent?”
“I’m on my way, comrade.”
Krupkin replaced the microphone in the dashboard receptacle. “Everything proceeds,” he said haltingly, partially over his shoulder. “If I’m to go down with either a crazed assassin or a convoluted lunatic who displays certain decencies, I imagine it’s best to choose the latter. Contrary to the most enlightened skeptics, there might be a God, after all. ... Would you care to buy a house on the lake in Geneva, Aleksei?”
“I might,” answered Bourne. “If I live through the day and do what I have to do, give me a price. I won’t quibble.”
“Hey, David,” interjected Conklin. “Marie made that money, you didn’t.”
“She’ll listen to me. To him.”
“What now, whoever you are?” asked Krupkin.
“Give me all the firepower I need from this trunk of yours and let me off in the grass just before the armory. Give me a couple of minutes to get in place, then pull into the parking lot and obviously—very obviously—see that the car is missing and get out of there fast, gunning your engine.”
“And leave you alone?” cried Alex.
“It’s the only way I can take him. The only way he can be taken.”
“Lunacy!” spat out Krupkin, his jowls vibrating.
“No, Kruppie, reality,” said Jason Bourne simply. “It’s the same as it was in the beginning. One on one, it’s the only way.”
“That is sophomoric heroics!” roared the Russian, slamming his hand down on the back of the seat. “Worse, it’s ridiculous strategy. If you’re right, I can surround the armory with a thousand troops!”
“Which is exactly what he’d want—what I’d want, if I were Carlos. Don’t you see? He could get away in the confusion, in the sheer numbers—that’s not a problem for either of us, we’ve both done it too many times before. Crowds and anxiety are our protection—they’re child’s play. A knife in a uniform, the uniform ours; toss a grenade into the troops, and after the explosion we’re one of the staggering victims—that’s amateur night for paid killers. Believe me, I know—I became one in spite of myself.”
“So what do you think you can do by yourself, Batman?” asked Conklin, furiously massaging his useless leg.
“Stalk the killer who wants to kill me—and I’ll take him.”
“You’re a f*cking megalomaniac!”
“You’re absolutely right. It’s the only way to be in the killing game. It’s the only edge you’ve got.”
“Insanity!” yelled Krupkin.
“So allow me; I’m entitled to a little craziness. If I thought the entire Russian army would ensure my survival, I’d scream for it. But it wouldn’t—it couldn’t. There’s only this way. ... Stop the car and let me choose the weapons.”