The Bourne ultimatum

41

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez snapped his fingers twice in the shadows as he climbed the short steps of the miniaturized entrance to a small church in “Madrid’s” Paseo del Prado, the duffel bag in his left hand. From behind a fluted mock pillar a figure emerged, a heavyset man in his early sixties who walked partially into the dim light of a distant streetlamp. He was dressed in the uniform of a Spanish army officer, a lieutenant general with three rows of ribbons affixed to his tunic. He was carrying a leather suitcase; he raised it slightly and spoke in the compound’s language.
“Come inside, to the vestry. You can change there. That ill-fitting guard’s jacket is an invitation for sharpshooters.”
“It’s good to speak our language again,” said Carlos, following the man inside the tiny church and turning stiffly to close the heavy door. “I’m in your debt, Enrique,” he added, glancing around at the empty rows of pews and the soft lights playing upon the altar, the gold crucifix gleaming.
“You’ve been in my debt for over thirty years, Ramirez, and a lot of good it does me,” laughed the soldier quietly as they proceeded across to the right aisle and down toward the sacristy.
“Then perhaps you’re out of touch with what remains of your family in Baracoa. Fidel’s own brothers and sisters don’t live half so well.”
“Neither does crazy Fidel, but he doesn’t care. They say he bathes more frequently now and I suppose that’s progress. However, you’re talking about my family in Baracoa; what about me, my fine international assassin? No yachts, no racing colors, shame on you! Were it not for my warning you, you would have been executed in this very compound thirty-three years ago. Come to think of it, it was right outside this idiotic dollhouse church on the Prado that you made your escape—dressed as a priest, a figure that perpetually bewilders the Russian, like most everyone else.”
“Once I was established, did you ever lack for anything?” They entered a small paneled room where supposed prelates prepared the sacraments. “Did I ever refuse you?” Carlos added, placing the heavy duffel bag on the floor.
“I’m joking with you, of course,” objected Enrique, smiling good-naturedly and looking at the Jackal. “Where is that lusty humor of yours, my infamous old friend?”
“I have other things on my mind.”
“I’m sure you do, and, in truth, you were never less than generous where my family in Cuba was concerned, and I thank you. My father and mother lived out their lives in peace and comfort, bewildered naturally, but so much better off than anyone they knew. ... It was all so insane. Revolutionaries thrown out by their own revolution’s leaders.”
“You were threats to Castro, as was Che. It’s past.”
“A great deal has passed,” agreed Enrique, studying Carlos. “You’ve aged poorly, Ramirez. Where’s that once full head of dark hair and the handsome strong face with the clear eyes?”
“We won’t talk about it.”
“Very well. I grow fat, you grow thin; that tells me something. How badly are you wounded?”
“I can function well enough for what I intend to do—what I must do.”
“Ramirez, what else is there?” asked the costumed soldier suddenly. “He’s dead! Moscow takes credit over the radio for his death, but when you reached me I knew the credit was yours, the kill yours. Jason Bourne is dead! Your enemy is gone from this world. You’re not well; go back to Paris and heal yourself. I’ll get you out the same way I got you in. We’ll head into ‘France’ and I’ll clear the way. You will be a courier from the commandant of ‘Spain’ and ‘Portugal’ who’s sending a confidential message to Dzerzhinsky Square. It’s done all the time; no one trusts anyone here, especially his own gates. You won’t even have to take the risk of killing a single guard.”
“No! A lesson must be taught.”
“Then let me phrase it another way. When you called with your emergency codes, I did what you demanded, for by and large you have fulfilled your obligations to me, obligations that go back thirty-three years. But now there is another risk involved—risks, to be precise—and I’m not sure I care to take them.”
“You speak this way to me?” cried the Jackal, removing the dead guard’s jacket, his clean white bandages taut, holding his right shoulder firm with no evidence of blood.
“Stop your theatrics,” said Enrique softly. “We go back long before that. I’m speaking to a young revolutionary I followed out of Cuba with a great athlete named Santos. ... How is he, by the way? He was the real threat to Fidel.”
“He’s well,” answered Carlos, his voice flat. “We’re moving Le Coeur du Soldat.”
“Does he still tend to his gardens—his English gardens?”
“Yes, he does.”
“He should have been a landscaper, or a florist, I think. And I should have been a fine agricultural engineer, an agronomist, as they say—that’s how Santos and I met, you know. ... Melodramatic politics changed our lives, didn’t they?”
“Political commitments changed them. Everywhere the fascists changed them.”
“And now we want to be like the fascists, and they want to take what’s not so terrible about us Communists and spread a little money around—which doesn’t really work, but it’s a nice thought.”
“What has this to do with me—your monseigneur?”
“Horse droppings, Ramirez. As you may or may not know, my Russian wife died a number of years ago and I have three children in the Moscow University. Without my position they would not be there and I want them there. They will be scientists, doctors. ... You see, those are the risks you ask of me. I’ve covered myself up until this moment—and you deserve this moment—but perhaps no more. In a few months I will retire, and in recognition of my years of service in southern Europe and the Mediterranean, I will share a fine dacha on the Black Sea where my children will come and visit me. I will not unduly risk what life I have before me. So be specific, Ramirez, and I’ll tell you whether you’re on your own or not. ... I repeat, your getting in here cannot be traced to me, and, as I say, you deserved that much, but this is where I may be forced to stop.”
“I see,” said Carlos, approaching the suitcase Enrique had placed on the sacristy table.
“I hope you do and, further, I hope you understand. Over the years you’ve been good to my family in ways that I could never be, but then I’ve served you well in ways that I could. I led you to Rodchenko, fed you names in ministries where rumors abounded, rumors Rodchenko himself investigated for you. So, my old revolutionary comrade, I’ve not been idle on your behalf either. However, things are different now; we’re not young firebrands in search of a cause any longer, for we’ve lost our appetites for causes—you long before me, of course.”
“My cause remains constant,” interrupted the Jackal sharply. “It is myself and all those who serve me.”
“I’ve served you—”
“You’ve made that clear, as well as my generosity to you and yours. And now that I’m here, you wonder if I deserve further assistance, that’s it, isn’t it?”
“I must protect myself. Why are you here?”
“I told you. To teach a lesson, to leave a message.”
“They are one and the same?”
“Yes.” Carlos opened the suitcase; it held a coarse shirt, a Portuguese fisherman’s cap with the appropriate rope-belted trousers, and a seaman’s shoulder-strapped canvas satchel. “Why these?” asked the Jackal.
“They’re loose-fitting and I haven’t seen you in years—not since Málaga in the early seventies, I think. I couldn’t very well have clothes tailored for you, and I’m glad I didn’t try—you are not as I remembered you, Ramirez.”
“You’re not much larger than I remember you,” countered the assassin. “A little thicker around the stomach, perhaps, but we’re still the same height, the same basic frame.”
“So? What does that mean?”
“In a moment. ... Have things changed a great deal since we were together here?”
“Constantly. Photographs arrive and construction crews follow a day later. The Prado here in ‘Madrid’ has new shops, new signs, even a few new sewers as they are changed in that city. Also ‘Lisbon’ and the piers along the ‘Bay’ and ‘Tagus River’ have been altered to conform to the changes that have taken place. We are nothing if not authentic. The candidates who complete the training are literally at home wherever they’re initially sent. Sometimes I really believe it’s all excessive, then I recall my first assignment at the naval base in Barcelona and realize how comfortable I was. I went right to work because the psychological orientation had already taken place; there were no major surprises.”
“You’re describing appearances,” broke in Carlos.
“Of course, what else is there?”
“More permanent structures that are not so apparent, not so much in evidence.”
“Such as?”
“Warehouses, fuel depots, fire stations, that are not part of the duplicated scenery. Are they still where they were?”
“By and large, yes. Certainly the major warehouses and the fuel depots with their underground tanks. Most are still west of the ‘San Roque’ district, the ‘Gibraltar’ access.”
“What about going from one compound to another?”
“Now that has changed.” Enrique withdrew a small flat object from the pocket of his tunic. “Each border crossing has a computerized registration release that permits entry when this is inserted.”
“No questions are asked?”
“Only at Novgorod’s Capital Headquarters, if there are any questions.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If one of these is lost or stolen, it’s reported instantly and the internal codes are nullified.”
“I see.”
“I don’t! Why these questions? Again, why are you here? What is this lesson, this message?”
“The ‘San Roque’ district ... ?” said Carlos, as if remembering. “That’s about three or four kilometers south of the tunnel, isn’t it? A small waterfront village, no?”
“The ‘Gibraltar’ access, yes.”
“And the next compound is ‘France,’ of course, and then ‘England’ and finally the largest, the ‘United States.’ Yes, it’s all clear to me; everything’s come back.” The Jackal turned away, his right hand awkwardly disappearing beneath his trousers.
“Yet nothing is clear to me,” said Enrique, his low voice threatening. “And it must be. Answer me, Ramirez. Why are you here?”
“How dare you question me like this?” continued Carlos, his back to his old associate. “How dare any of you question the monseigneur from Paris.”
“You listen to me, Priest Piss Ant. You answer me or I walk out of here and you’re a dead monseigneur in a matter of minutes!”
“Very well, Enrique,” answered Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, addressing the paneled wall of the sacristy. “My message will be triumphantly clear and will shake the very foundations of the Kremlin. Not only did Carlos the Jackal kill the weak pretender Jason Bourne on Soviet soil, he left a reminder to all Russia that the Komitet made a colossal error in not utilizing my extraordinary talents.”
“Really now,” said Enrique, laughing softly, as if humoring a far less than extraordinary man. “More melodramatics, Ramirez? And how will you convey this reminder, this message, this supreme statement of yours?”
“Quite simply,” replied the Jackal, turning, a gun in his hand, the silencer intact. “We have to change places.”
“What?”
“I’m going to burn Novgorod.” Carlos fired a single shot into the upper throat of Enrique. He wanted as little blood as possible on the tunic.

Dressed in combat fatigues with the insignias of an army major on the shoulders of his field jacket, Bourne blended in with the sporadic appearances of military personnel as they crisscrossed the American compound from one sector to another on their night patrols. There were not many, perhaps thirty men, covering the entire acreage of the eight square miles, according to Benjamin. In the “metropolitan” areas they were generally on foot, in pairs; in the “rural” districts they drove military vehicles. The young trainer had requisitioned a jeep.
From the Commissars Suite at U.S. headquarters they had been taken to a military warehouse west of the river where Benjamin’s papers gained them entrance and the jeep. Inside, the astonished interior guards watched as the silent Bourne was outfitted with a field uniform complete with a carbine bayonet, a standard .45 automatic and five clips of live ammunition, this last obtained only after an authorization call was placed to Krupkin’s unknowing subordinates at Capital HQ. Once again outside, Jason complained: “What about the flares I wanted and at least three or four grenades? You agreed to get me everything I needed, not half of it!”
“They’re coming,” answered Benjamin, speeding out of the warehouse parking lot. “The flares are over at Motor Vehicles and grenades aren’t part of normal ordnance. They’re in steel vaults down at the tunnel—all the tunnels—under Emergency Weapons.” The young trainer glanced at Bourne, a glimmering of humor seen on his face in the glow of the headlights washing over the roofless jeep. “In anticipation of a NATO assault, most likely.”
“That’s stupid. We’d come in from the sky.”
“Not with the air base ninety seconds’ flying time away.”
“Hurry up, I want those grenades. Will we have any trouble getting them?”
“Not if Krupkin keeps up the good work.” Krupkin had; with the flares in hand, the tunnel was their last supply stop. Four Russian army grenades were counted out and counter signed by Benjamin. “Where to?” he asked as the soldier in an American uniform returned to the concrete guardhouse.
“These aren’t exactly U.S. general issue,” said Jason, putting the grenades carefully, one by one, into the pockets of his field jacket.
“They’re not for training, either. The compounds aren’t military-oriented but basically civilian. If those are ever used, it’s not for indoctrination purposes. ... Where do we go now?”
“Check with headquarters first. See if anything’s happened at any of the border checkpoints.”
“My beeper would have gone off—”
“I don’t trust beepers, I like words,” interrupted Jason. “Get on the radio.”
Benjamin did so, switching to the Russian language and using the codes that only senior staff were assigned. The terse Soviet reply came over the speaker; the young trainer replaced the microphone and turned to Bourne. “No activity at all,” he said. “Just some intercompound fuel deliveries.”
“What are they?”
“Petrol distribution mainly. Some compounds have larger tanks than others, so logistics call for routine apportionments until the main supplies are shipped downriver.”
“They distribute at night?”
“It’s far better than those trucks clogging up the streets during the day. Remember, everything’s scaled down here. Also, we’ve been driving through the back roads, but there’s a maintenance army in the central locations cleaning up stores and offices and restaurants, getting ready for tomorrow’s assignments. Large trucks wouldn’t help.”
“Christ, it is Disneyland. ... All right, head for the ‘Spanish’ border, Pedro.”
“To get there we have to pass through ‘England’ and ‘France.’ I don’t suppose it matters much, but I don’t speak French. Or Spanish. Do you?”
“French fluently, Spanish acceptably. Anything else?”
“Maybe you’d better drive.”
f f f
The Jackal braked the huge fuel truck at the “West German” border; it was as far as he intended to go. The remaining northernmost areas of “Scandinavia” and “The Netherlands” were the lesser satellites; the impact of their destruction was not comparable to that of the lower compounds and the time element spared them. Everything was timing now, and “West Germany” would initiate the wholesale conflagrations. He adjusted the coarse Portuguese shirt that covered a Spanish general’s tunic beneath, and as the guard came out of the gatehouse Carlos spoke in Russian, using the same words he had used at every other crossing.
“Don’t ask me to speak the stupid language you talk here. I deliver petrol, I don’t spend time in classrooms! Here’s my key.”
“I barely speak it myself, comrade,” said the guard, laughing as he accepted the small, flat, card-like object and inserted it into the computerized machine. The heavy iron barrier arced up into the vertical position; the guard returned the key and the Jackal sped through into a miniaturized “West Berlin.”
He raced through the narrow replica of the Kurfürstendamm to the Budapesterstrasse, where he slowed down and pulled out the petcock release. The fuel flowed into the street. He then reached into the open duffel bag on the seat beside him, ripped out the small pretimed plastique explosives and, as he had done throughout the southern compounds to the border of “France,” hurled them through the lowered windows on both sides of the truck into the foundations of the wooden buildings he thought most flammable. He sped into the “Munich” sector, then to the port of “Bremerhaven” on the river, and finally into “Bonn” and the scaled-down versions of the embassies in “Bad Godesberg,” flooding the streets, distributing the explosives. He looked at his watch; it was time to head back. He had barely fifteen minutes before the first detonations took place in all of “West Germany,” followed by the explosions in the combined compounds of “Italy-Greece,” “Israel-Egypt” and “Spain-Portugal,” each spaced eight minutes apart, timed to create maximum chaos.
There was no way the individual fire brigades could contain the flaming streets and buildings in the disparate sectors of their compounds north of “France.” Others would be ordered in from adjacent compounds only to be recalled when the fires erupted on their own grounds. It was a simple formula for cosmic confusion, the cosmos being the false universe of Novgorod. The border gates, would be flagged open, frantic traffic unimpeded, and to complete the devastation, the genius that was Ilich Ramirez Sanchez—brought into the world of terror as Carlos the Jackal by the errors of that same Novgorod—had to be in “Paris.” Not his Paris, but the hated Novgorod’s “Paris,” and he would burn it to the ground in ways the maniacs of the Third Reich never dreamed of. Then would come “England,” and finally, ultimately, the largest compound in the despised, isolated, illusionist Novgorod, where he would leave his triumphant message—the “United States of America,” breeder of the apostate assassin Jason Bourne. The statement would be as pure and as clear as Alpine water washing over the blood of a destroyed false universe.
I alone have done this. My enemies are dead and I live.
Carlos checked his duffel bag; what remained were the most lethal instruments of death found in the arsenal of Kubinka. Four layered rows of short-packaged, heat-seeking missiles, twenty in all, each capable of blowing up the entire base of the Washington Monument; and once fused and unshielded, each would seek the sources of fire and do its work. Satisfied, the Jackal shut off the fuel release, turned around and sped back to the border gate.

The sleepy technician at Capital Headquarters blinked his eyes and stared at the green letters on the screen in front of him. What he read did not really make sense, but the clearances went unchallenged. For the fifth time the “commandant” of the “Spanish” compound had crossed and recrossed the north borders up into “Germany” and was now heading back into “France.” Twice before, when the codes were transmitted and in accord with the maximum alert that was in force, the technician had phoned the gates of “Israel” and “Italy” and was told that only a fuel truck had passed through. That was the information he had given to a code-cleared trainer named Benjamin, but now he wondered. Why would such a high-ranking official be driving a fuel truck? ... On the other hand, why not? Novgorod was rife with corruption, everyone suspected that, so perhaps the “commandant” was either seeking out the corrupters or collecting his fees at night. Regardless, since there was no report of a lost or stolen card, and the computers raised no objections, it was better to leave well enough alone. One never knew who his next superior might be.
f f f
“Voici ma carte,” said Bourne to the guard at the border crossing as he handed the man his computerized card. “Vite, s’il vous pla?t!”
“Da ... oui,” replied the guard, walking rapidly to the clearance machine as an enormous fuel truck, heading the other way, passed through into “England.”
“Don’t press the French too much,” said Benjamin, in the front seat beside Jason. “These cats do their best, but they’re not linguists.”
“Cal-if-fornia ... here I come,” sang Bourne softly. “You sure you and your father don’t want to join your mother in LA?”
“Shut up!”
The guard returned, saluted, and the iron barrier was raised. Jason accelerated, and saw in a matter of moments, bathed in floodlights, a three-story replica of the Eiffel Tower. In the distance, to the right, was a miniature Champs-Elysées with a wooden reproduction of the Arc de Triomphe, high enough to be unmistakable. Absently, Bourne’s mind wandered back to those fitful, terrible hours when he and Marie had raced all over Paris trying desperately to find each other. ... Marie, oh God, Marie! I want to come back I want to be David again. He and I—we’re so much older now. He doesn’t frighten me any longer and I don’t anger him. ... Who? Which of us? Oh, Christ!
“Hold it,” said Benjamin, touching Jason’s arm. “Slow down.”
“What is it?”
“Stop, “cried the young trainer. “Pull over and shut off the engine.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m not sure.” Benjamin’s neck was arched back, his eyes on the clear night sky and the shimmering lights of the stars. “No clouds,” he said cryptically. “No storms.”
“It’s not raining, either. So what? I want to get up to the Spanish compound!”
“There it goes again—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” And then Bourne heard it ... far away, the sound of distant thunder, yet the night was clear. It happened again—and again and again, one deep rumble after another.
“There!” shouted the young Soviet from Los Angeles, standing up in the jeep and pointing to the north. “What is it?”
“That’s fire, young man,” answered Jason softly, hesitantly, as he also stood up and stared at the pulsating yellow glow that lit up the distant sky. “And my guess is that it’s the Spanish compound. He was initially trained there and that’s what he came back to do—to blow the place up! It’s his revenge! ... Get down, we’ve got to get up there!”
“No, you’re wrong,” broke in Benjamin, quickly lowering himself into the seat as Bourne started the engine and yanked the jeep into gear. “ ‘Spain’s’ no more than five or six miles from here. Those fires are a lot farther away.”
“Just show me the fastest route,” said Jason, pressing the accelerator to the floor.
Under the trainer’s swiftly roving eyes accompanied by sudden shouts of “Turn here!” and “Go right!” and “Straight down this road!” they raced through “Paris,” and north into successive sectors labeled “Marseilles,” “Montbéliard,” “Le Havre,” “Strasbourg” and so many others, circling town squares and passing quaint streets and miniaturized city blocks, until finally they were in sight of the “Spanish” border. The closer they came, the louder were the booms in the distance, the brighter the yellow night sky. The guards at the gate were furiously manning their telephones and hand-held radios; the two-note blasts of sirens joined the shouting and the screaming as police cars and fire engines appeared seemingly out of nowhere, racing into the streets of “Madrid” on their way to the next northern border crossing.
“What’s happening?” yelled Benjamin, leaping from the jeep and dropping all pretense of Novgorod training by speaking Russian. “I’m senior staff!” he added, slipping the card into the release equipment, snapping the barrier up. “Tell me!”
“Insanity, comrade!” shouted an officer from the gatehouse window. “Unbelievable! ... It’s as if the earth went crazy! First ‘Germany,’ all over there are explosions and fires in the streets and buildings going up in flames. The ground trembles, and we are told it’s some kind of massive earthquake. Then it happens in ‘Italy’—‘Rome’ is torched, and in the ‘Greek’ sector ‘Athens’ and the port of ‘Piraeus’ are filled with fires everywhere and still the explosions continue, the streets in flames!”
“What does Capital Headquarters say?”
“They don’t know what to say! The earthquake nonsense was just that—nonsense. Everyone’s in panic, issuing orders and then countermanding them.” Another wall phone rang inside the gatehouse; the officer of the guard picked it up and listened, then instantly screamed at the top of his lungs. “Madness, it’s complete madness! Are you certain?”
“What is it?” roared Benjamin, rushing to the window.
“ ‘Egypt!’ ” he screamed, his ear pressed to the telephone. “ ‘Israel!’ ... ‘Cairo’ and ‘Tel Aviv’—fires everywhere, bombs everywhere! No one can keep up with the devastation; the trucks crash into one another in the narrow streets. The hydrants are blown up; water flows in the gutters but the streets are still in flames. ... And some idiot just got on the line and asked if the No Smoking signs were properly placed while the wooden buildings are on their way to becoming rubble! Idiots. They are all idiots!”
“Get back here!” yelled Bourne, having made the jeep lurch through the gate. “He’s in here somewhere! You drive and I’ll—” Jason’s words were cut off by a deafening explosion up ahead in the center of “Madrid’s” Paseo del Prado. It was an enormous detonation, lumber and stone arcing up into the flaming sky. Then, as if the Paseo itself were a living, throbbing immense wall of fire, the flames rolled forward, swinging to the left out of the “city” into the road that was the approach to the border gate. “Look!” shouted Bourne, reaching down out of the jeep, his hand scraping the graveled surface beneath; he brought his fingers to his face, his nostrils. “Christ,” he roared. “The whole goddamned road’s soaked with gasoline!” A burst of fire imploded thirty yards in front of the jeep, sending stones and dirt smashing into the metal grille, and propelling the flames forward with increasing speed. “Plastics!” said Jason to himself, then yelled at Benjamin, who was running to the jeep, “Go back there! Get everyone out of here! The son of a bitch has the place ringed with plastics! Head for the river!”
“I’m going with you!” shouted the young Soviet, grabbing the edge of the door.
“Sorry, Junior,” cried Bourne, gunning the engine and swerving the army vehicle back into the open gate, sending Benjamin sprawling onto the gravel. “This is for grown-ups.”
“What are you doing?” screamed Benjamin, his voice fading as the jeep sped across the border.
“The fuel truck, that lousy fuel truck!” whispered Jason as he raced into “Strasbourg, France.”
It happened in “Paris”—where else but Paris! The huge duplicate of the Eiffel Tower blew up with such force that the earth shook. Rockets? Missiles? The Jackal had stolen missiles from the Kubinka Armory! Seconds later, starting far behind him, the explosions began as the streets burst into flames. Everywhere. All “France” was being destroyed in a way that the madman Adolf Hitler could only have envisaged in his most twisted dreams. Panicked men and women ran through the alleyways and the streets, screaming, falling, praying to gods their leaders had forsworn.
“England!” He had to get into “England” and then ultimately into “America,” where all his instincts told him the end would come—one way or another. He had to find the truck that was being driven by the Jackal and destroy both. He could do it—he could do it! Carlos thought he was dead and that was the key, for the Jackal would do what he had to do, what he, Jason Bourne, would do if he were Carlos. When the holocaust he had ignited was at its zenith, the Jackal would abandon the truck and put into play his means of escape—his escape to Paris, the real Paris, where his army of old men would spread the word of their monseigneur’s triumph over the ubiquitous, disbelieving Soviets. It would be somewhere near the tunnel; that was a given.
The race through “London,” “Coventry” and “Portsmouth” could only be likened to the newsreel footage from World War II depicting the carnage hurled down on Great Britain by the Luftwaffe, compounded by first the screaming and then the silent terror of the V-2 and V-5 rockets. But the residents of Novgorod were not British—forbearance gave way to mass hysteria, concern for all became survival for self alone. As the impressive reproductions of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament crashed down in flames and the aircraft factories of “Coventry” were reduced to raging fires, the streets swelled with screaming, horrified crowds racing through the roads that led to the Volkhov River and the shipyards of “Portsmouth.” There, from the scaled-down piers and slips, scores threw themselves into rushing waters only to be caught in the magnesium grids where sharp, jagged bolts of electricity blazingly zigzagged through the air, leaving limp bodies floating toward the next metal traps above and below the angry surface. In paralyzed fragments, the crowds watched and turned in panic, fighting their way back into the miniaturized city of “Portsea”; the guards had abandoned their posts and chaos ruled the night.
Snapping on the jeep’s searchlight, Bourne drove in sudden spurts down alleyways and the less crowded narrow streets—south, always south. He grabbed a flare from the army vehicle’s floor, pulled the release string, and proceeded to thrust the spitting, hissing, blinding burst of fire into the hands and faces of the hysterical racing stragglers who tried to climb on board. The sight of the constantly pulsating flame so close to their eyes was enough; each screamed and recoiled in terror, no doubt thinking yet another explosive had detonated in his or her immediate vicinity.
A graveled road! The gates to the American compound were less than a hundred yards away. ... The graveled road? Soaked with fuel! The plastic charges had not gone off—but they would in a matter of moments, creating a wall of fire, enveloping the jeep and its driver! With the accelerator pressed to the floor, Jason raced to the gate. It was deserted—and the iron barrier was down! He slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop, hoping beyond reasonable hope that no sparks would fly out and ignite the gravel. Placing the spewing flare on the metal floor, he swiftly removed two grenades from his pockets—grenades he was loath to part with—pulled the pins, and hurled both toward the gate. The massive explosions blew the barricade away and instantly set the graveled road on fire, the leaping flames immediate—enveloping him! He had no choice; he threw the hot flare away and sped through the tunnel of fire into Novgorod’s final largest compound. As he did so the concrete guardhouse at the “English” border exploded; glass, stone and shards of metal shot out and up everywhere.
He had been so filled with anxiety on their way to the crossing into “Spain” that he barely recalled the diminutive replicas of the “American” cities and towns, much less the fastest routes that led to the tunnel. He had merely followed young Benjamin’s harsh shouted commands, but he did remember that the California-bred trainer kept referring to the “coast road—like Route One, man, up to Carmel!” It was, of course, those streets closest to the Volkhov, which in turn became, in no order of geographical sequence, a shoreline in “Maine,” the Potomac River of “Washington,” and the northern waters of Long Island Sound that housed the naval base at “New London.”
The madness had reached “America.” Police cars, their sirens wailing, sped through the streets, men shouting into radios as people in various stages of dress and undress ran out of buildings and stores, screaming about the terrible earthquake that had hit this leg of the Volkhov, one even more severe than the catastrophe in Armenia. Even with the surest knowledge of devastating infiltration, the leaders of Novgorod could not reveal the truth. It was as if the seismic geologists of the world were forgotten, their discoveries unfounded. The giant forces beneath the earth did not collide and erupt in terrible swift immediacy; instead, they worked in relays, sending a series of crippling body blows from north to south. Who questions authority in the panic of survival? Everyone in “America” was being prepared, primed for what they knew not.
They found out roughly ten minutes after the destruction of a large part of the diminutive “Great Britain.” Bourne reached the compressed, miniaturized outlines of “Washington, D.C.” when the conflagration began. The first to plunge into flames, the sound of its detonation delayed only by milliseconds, was the wooden duplicate of the Capitol dome; it blew into the yellowed sky like the thin, hollow replica it was. Moments later—only moments—the Washington Monument, centered in its patch of grassy park, crumpled with a distant boom as if its false base had been shoveled away by a thunderous ground-moving machine. In seconds the artificial set piece that was the White House collapsed in flames, the explosions dulled both audibly and visibly, for “Pennsylvania Avenue” was awash in fire.
Bourne knew where he was now. The tunnel was between “Washington” and “New London, Connecticut”! It was no more than five minutes away! He drove the jeep down to the street paralleling the river, and again there were frightened, hysterical crowds. The police were shouting through loudspeakers, first in English and then in Russian, explaining the terrible consequences if anyone tried to swim across the water, the searchlights swinging back and forth, picking up the floating bodies of those who had tried in the northern compounds.
“The tunnel, the tunnel! Open the tunnel!”
The screams from the excited crowds became a chant that could not physically be denied; the underground pipeline was about to be assaulted. Jason leaped out of the surrounded jeep, pocketing the remaining three flares, and propelled his way, arms and shoulders working furiously, often fruitlessly, through the crushing, crashing bodies. There was nothing else for it; he pulled out a flare and ripped the release from its recess. The spewing flame had its effect; heat and fire were catalysts. He ran through the crowd, pummeling everyone in front of him, shoving the blinding, spitting flare into terrified faces, until he reached the front and faced a cordon of guards in the uniforms of the United States Army. It was crazy, insane! The world had gone nuts!
No! There! In the fenced-off parking lot was the fuel truck! He broke through the cordon of guards, holding up his computerized release card, and ran up to the soldier with the highest-ranking insignia on his uniform, a colonel with an AK-47 strapped to his waist who was as panicked as any officer of high rank he had ever seen since Saigon.
“My identification is with the name ‘Archie’ and you can clear it immediately. Even now I refuse to speak our language, only English! Is that understood? Discipline is discipline!”
“Togda?” yelled the officer, questioning the moment, then instantly returning to English in a maddeningly Boston accent. “Of course, we know of you,” he cried, “but what can I do? This is an uncontrollable riot!”
“Has anyone passed through the tunnel in the last, say, half hour?”
“No one, absolutely, no one! Our orders are to keep the tunnel closed at all costs!”
“Good. ... Get on the loudspeakers and disperse the crowds. Tell them the crisis has passed and the danger with it.”
“How can I? The fires are everywhere, the explosions everywhere!”
“They’ll stop soon.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know! Do as I say!”
“Do as he says!” roared a voice behind Bourne; it was Benjamin, his face and shirt drenched with sweat. “And I hope to hell you know what you’re talking about!”
“Where did you come from?”
“Where you know; how is another question. Try scaring the shit out of Capital HQ for a chopper ordered by an apoplectic Krupkin from a hospital bed in Moscow.”
“ ‘Apoplectic’—not bad for a Russian—”
“Who gives me such orders?” yelled the officer of the guard. “You are only a young man!”
“Check me out, buddy, but do it quick,” answered Benjamin, holding out his card. “Otherwise I think I’ll have you transferred to Tashkent. Nice scenery, but no private toilets. ... Move, you a*shole!”
“Cal—if—fornia, here I—”
“Shut up!”
“He’s here! There’s the fuel truck. Over there.” Jason pointed to the huge vehicle that dwarfed the scattered cars and vans in the fenced parking area.
“A fuel truck? How did you figure it out?” asked the astonished Benjamin.
“That tank’s got to hold close to a hundred thousand pounds. Combined with the plastics, strategically placed, it’s enough for the streets and those fake structures of old, dried wood.”
“Slushaytye!” blared the myriad loudspeakers around the tunnel, demanding attention, as indeed the explosions began to diminish. The colonel climbed on top of the low, concrete gate house, a microphone in his hand, his figure outlined in the harsh beams of powerful searchlights. “The earthquake has passed,” he cried in Russian, “and although the damage is extensive and the fires will continue throughout the night, the crisis has passed! ... Stay by the banks of the river, and our comrades in the maintenance crews will do their best to provide for your needs. ... These are orders from our superiors, comrades. Do not give us reason to use force, I plead with you!”
“What earthquake?” shouted a man in the front ranks of the panicked multitude. “You say it’s an earthquake and we are all told it is an earthquake but your brains are in your bowels! I’ve lived through an earthquake and this is no earthquake. It is an armed attack!”
“Yes, yes! An attack!”
“We are being attacked!”
“Invaded! It’s an invasion!”
“Open the tunnel and let us out or you’ll have to shoot us down! Open the tunnel!”
The protesting chorus grew from all sections of the desperate crowd as the soldiers held firm, their bayonets unsheathed and affixed to their rifles. The colonel continued, his features contorted, his voice nearly matching the hysteria of his frenzied audience.
“Listen to me and ask yourselves a question!” he screamed. “I’m telling you, as I have been told, that this is an earthquake and I know it’s true. Further, I will tell you how I know it’s true! ... Have you heard a single gunshot? Yes, that is the question! A single gunshot! No, you have not! ... Here, as in all the compounds and in every sector of those compounds, there are police and soldiers and trainers who carry weapons. Their orders are to repel by force any unwarranted displays of violence, to say nothing of armed invaders! Yet nowhere has there been any gunfire—”
“What’s he shouting about?” asked Jason, turning to Benjamin.
“He’s trying to convince them it is—or was—an earthquake. They don’t believe him; they think it’s an invasion. He’s telling them it couldn’t be because there’s been no gunfire.”
“Gunfire?”
“That’s his proof. Nobody’s shooting at anybody and they sure as hell would be if there was an armed attack. No gunshots, no attack.”
“Gunshots ... ?” Bourne suddenly grabbed the young Soviet and spun him around. “Tell him to stop! For God’s sake, stop him!”
“What?”
“He’s giving the Jackal the opening he wants—he needs!”
“Now what are you talking about?”
“Gunfire ... gunshots, confusion!”
“Nyet!” screamed a woman, breaking through the crowd and shouting at the officer in the center of the searchlight beams. “The explosions are bombs! They come from bombers above!”
“You are foolish,” cried the colonel, replying in Russian. “If it was an air raid, our fighter planes from Belopol would fill the sky! ... The explosions come out of the earth, the fires out of the earth, from the gases below—” These false words were the last words the Soviet officer would ever speak.
A staccato volley of automatic gunfire burst from the shadows of the tunnel’s parking area cutting the Russian down, his instantly limp, punctured body collapsing and falling off the roof of the gatehouse, plummeting to the ground out of sight at the rear. The already frantic crowd went rabid; the ranks of uniformed “American” soldiers broke, and if chaos had ruled previously, nihilistic mobocracy now reigned supreme. The narrow, fenced entrance to the tunnel was virtually stormed, racing figures colliding, pummeling, climbing over one another, rushing en masse toward the mouth of the underwater access. Jason pulled his young trainer to the side of the stampeding hordes, never for an instant taking his eyes off the darkened parking area.
“Can you operate the tunnel’s machinery?” he shouted.
“Yes! Everyone on the senior staff can, it’s part of the job!”
“The iron gates you told me about?”
“Of course.”
“Where are the mechanisms?”
“The guardhouse.”
“Get in there!” yelled Bourne, taking one of the three remaining flares out of his field jacket pocket and handing it to Benjamin. “I’ve got two more of these and two other grenades. ... When you see one of my flares go over the crowd, lower those gates on this side—only this side, understood?”
“What for?”
“My rules, Ben! Do it! Then ignite this flare and throw it out the window so I’ll know it’s done.”
“Then what?”
“Something you may not want to do, but you have to. ... Take the ‘forty-seven’ from the colonel’s body and force the crowd, shoot it back into the street. Rapid fire into the ground in front of them—or above them—do whatever you have to do, even if it means wounding a few. Whatever the cost, it must be done. I have to find him, isolate him, above all, cut him off from everyone else trying to get out.”
“You’re a goddamned maniac,” broke in Benjamin, the veins pronounced in his forehead. “I could kill ‘a few’—more than a few! You’re crazy!”
“At this moment I’m the most rational man you’ve ever met,” interrupted Jason harshly, rapidly, as the panicked residents of Novgorod kept rushing by. “There’s not a sane general in the Soviet army—the same army that retook Stalingrad—who wouldn’t agree with me. ... It’s called the ‘calculated estimate of losses,’ and there’s a very good reason for that lousy verbiage. It simply means you’re paying a lot less for what you’re getting now than you’d pay later.”
“You’re asking too much! These people are my comrades, my friends; they’re Russians. Would you fire into a crowd of Americans? One recoil of my hands—an inch, two inches with a ‘forty-seven’—and I could maim or kill half a dozen people! The risk’s too great!”
“You don’t have a choice. If the Jackal gets by me—and I’ll know it if he does—I’ll throw in a grenade and kill twenty.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Believe it, Ben. Where Carlos is concerned I’m a son of a bitch. I can’t afford him any longer, the world can’t afford him. Move!”
The trainer named Benjamin spat in Bourne’s face, then turned and began fighting his way to the guardhouse and the unseen corpse of the colonel beyond. Almost unconsciously Jason wiped his face with the back of his hand, his concentration solely on the fenced parking area, his eyes darting from one pocket of shadows to another, trying to center in on the origins of the automatic gunfire, yet knowing it was pointless; the Jackal had changed position by then. He counted the other vehicles in addition to the fuel truck; there were nine parked by the fence—two station wagons, four sedans and three suburban vans, all American-made or simulated as such. Carlos was concealed beyond one of them or possibly the fuel truck, the last unlikely as it was the farthest away from the open gate in the fence that permitted access to the guardhouse and thus to the tunnel.
Jason crouched and crawled forward; he reached the waist-high fence, the pandemonium behind him continuous, deafening. Every muscle and joint in his legs and arms pounded with pain; cramps were developing everywhere, everywhere! Don’t think about them, don’t acknowledge them. You’re too close, David! Keep going. Jason Bourne knows what to do. Trust him!
Aaughh! He spun his body over the fence; the handle of his sheathed bayonet embedded itself in his kidney. There is no pain! You’re too close, David—Jason. Listen to Jason!
The searchlights—someone had pressed something and they went crazy, spinning around in circles, abrupt, blinding, out of control! Where would Carlos go? Where could he hide? The beams were erratically piercing everywhere! Then, from an opening that he could not see from across the fenced-in area, two police cars raced inside, their sirens blaring. Uniformed men leaped out from every door, and contrary to anything he expected to see, each scrambled to the borders of the fence, behind the cars and the vans, one after another dashing from one vehicle to another to the open gate that led to the guardhouse and the tunnel.
There was a break in space, in time. In men! The last four escapees from the second car were suddenly three—and only moments later did the fourth appear-but he was not the same—the uniform was not the same! There were specks of orange and red, and the visored officer’s cap was laced with gold ribbing, the visor itself too prominent for the American army, the crown of the cap too pointed. What was it? ... And, suddenly, Bourne understood. Fragments of his memories spiraled back years to Madrid or Casavieja, when he was tracing the Jackal’s contracts with the Falangists. It was a Spanish uniform! That was it! Carlos had infiltrated through the Spanish compound, and as his Russian was fluent, he was using the high-ranking uniform to make his escape from Novgorod.
Jason lurched to his feet, his automatic drawn, and ran across the graveled lot, his left hand reaching into his field jacket pocket for his second-to-last flare. He pulled the release and hurled the fired stalk above the cars, beyond the fence. Benjamin would not see it from the guardhouse and mistake it for the signal to close the gates of the tunnel; that signal would come shortly—in seconds, perhaps—but at the moment it was premature, again perhaps by seconds.
“Eto srochno!” roared one of the escaping men, spinning around and panicked at the sight of the hissing, blinding flare.
“Skoryeye!” shouted another, passing three companions and racing toward the open section of the fence. As the whirling searchlights continued their maniacal spinning, Bourne counted the seven figures as one by one they dashed away from the last car and passed through the opening, joining the excited crowds at the mouth of the tunnel. The eighth man did not appear; the high-ranking Spanish uniform was nowhere in sight. The Jackal was trapped!
Now! Jason whipped out his last flare, yanked the release, and threw it with all his strength over the stream of rushing men and women at the guardhouse. Do it, Ben! he screamed in silence as he removed the next-to-last grenade from the pocket of his field jacket. Do it now!
As if in answer to his fevered plea, a thunderous roar came from the tunnel, round after round of hysterical protestations punctuated by screams and shrieks and wailing chaos. Two rapid, deafening bursts of automatic gunfire preceded unintelligible commands over the speakers, shouted in Russian. ... Another burst and the same voice continued, louder, even more authoritative, as the crowd momentarily but perceptibly quieted down, only to suddenly resume screaming at full volume. Bourne glanced over, astonished to see through the beams of the spinning searchlights the figure of Benjamin now standing on the roof of the concrete guardhouse. The young trainer was shouting into the microphone, exhorting the crowd to follow his instructions, whatever they were. ... And whatever they were, they were being obeyed! The multitude gradually, then gathering momentum, began reversing direction—then, as a single unit, started racing back into the street! Benjamin ignited his flare and waved it, pointing to the north. He was sending Jason his own signal. Not only was the tunnel shut down but the crowds were being dispersed without anyone being shot with the AK-47. There had been a better way.
Bourne dropped to the ground, his eyes scanning the under sides of the stationary vehicles, the spewing flame beyond lighting up the open spaces. ... A pair of legs—in boots! Behind the third automobile on the left, no more than twenty yards from the break in the fence that led to the tunnel. Carlos was his! The end was at last in sight! No time! Do what you have to do and do it quickly! He dropped his weapon on the gravel, gripped the grenade in his right hand, pulled the pin, grabbed the .45 with his left hand and lurched off the ground, racing forward. Roughly thirty feet from the car he dived back down into the gravel, turned sideways and heaved the grenade under the automobile—only at the last instant, the small bomb having left his hand, realizing that he had made a terrible error! The legs behind the car did not move—the boots remained in place, for they were just that, boots! He lunged to his right, rolling furiously over the sharp stones, shielding his face, curling his body into the smallest mass he could manage.
The explosion was deafening, the lethal debris joining the whirling beams of the searchlights in the night sky, fragments of metal and glass stinging Jason’s back and legs. Move, move! screamed the voice in his mind’s ears as he lurched to his knees, then to his feet in the smoke and fire of the burning automobile. As he did so the gravel erupted all around him; he zigzagged wildly toward the protection of the nearest vehicle, a square-shaped van. He was hit twice, in his shoulder and thigh! He spun around the wall of the van at the precise moment when the large windshield was blown away.
“You’re no match for me, Jason Bourne!” screamed Carlos the Jackal, his automatic weapon on rapid fire. “You never were! You are a pretender, a fraud!”
“So be it,” roared Bourne. “Then come and get me!” Jason raced to the driver’s door, yanked it open, then ran to the back of the vehicle where he crouched, his face to the edge, his Colt .45 angled straight up next to his cheek. With a final hissing expulsion, the flare beyond the fence burned itself out as the Jackal stopped his continuous fire. Bourne understood. Carlos faced the open door, unsure, indecisive ... only seconds to go. Metal against metal; a gun barrel was rammed against the door, slamming it shut. Now!
Jason spun around the edge of the van, his weapon exploding, firing into the Spanish uniform, blowing the gun out of the Jackal’s hands. One, two, three; the shells flew in the air—and then they stopped! They stopped, the explosions replaced by a sickening, jamming click as the round in the chamber failed to eject. Carlos lurched to the ground for his weapon, his left arm limp and bleeding but his right hand still strong, clutching the gun like the claw of a crazed animal.
Bourne whipped his bayonet out of its scabbard- and sprang forward, slicing the blade down toward the Jackal’s forearm. He was too late! Carlos held the weapon! Jason lunged up, his left hand clasping the hot barrel—hold on, hold on! You can’t let it go! Twist it! Clockwise! Use the bayonet—no, don’t! Drop it! Use both hands! The conflicting commands clashed in his head, madness. He had no breath, no strength; his eyes could not focus—the shoulder. Like Bourne himself, the Jackal was wounded in his right shoulder!
Hold on! Reach the shoulder but hold on! With a last, gasping final surge, Bourne shot up and crashed Carlos back into the side of the van, pummeling the wounded area. The Jackal screamed, dropping the weapon, then kicked it under the vehicle.
Where the blow came from, Jason at first did not know; he only knew that the left side of his skull seemed suddenly split in two. Then he realized that he had done it to himself! He had slipped on the blood-covered gravel, and had crashed into the metal grille of the van. It did not matter—nothing mattered!
Carlos the Jackal was racing away! With the rampant confusion everywhere, there were a hundred ways he could get out of Novgorod. It had all been for nothing!
Still, there was his last grenade. Why not? Bourne removed it, pulled the pin, and threw it over the van into the center of the parking area. The explosion followed and Jason got to his feet; perhaps the grenade would tell Benjamin something, warn him to keep his eyes on the area.
Staggering and barely able to walk, Jason started for the break in the fence that led to the guardhouse and the tunnel.” Oh, God, Marie, I failed! I’m so sorry. Nothing! It was for nothing! And then, as if all Novgorod were having a final laugh at his expense, he saw that someone had opened the iron gates to the tunnel, giving the Jackal his invitation to freedom.
“Archie ... ?” Benjamin’s astonished voice floated over the sounds of the river, followed by the sight of the young Soviet running out of the guardhouse toward Bourne. “Christ almighty, I thought you were dead!”
“So you opened the gates and let my executioner walk away,” yelled Jason weakly. “Why didn’t you send a limousine for him?”
“I suggest you look again, Professor,” replied a breathless Benjamin as he stopped in front of Bourne, studying Jason’s battered face and bloodstained clothing. “Old age has withered your eyesight.”
“What?”
“You want gates, you’ll have gates.” The trainer shouted an order toward the guardhouse in Russian. Seconds later the huge iron gates descended, covering the mouth of the tunnel. But something was strange. Bourne had not actually seen the lowered gates before, yet these were not like anything he might have imagined. They appeared to be ... swollen somehow, distorted perhaps. “Glass,” said Benjamin.
“Glass?” asked a bewildered Jason.
“At each end of the tunnel, five-inch-thick walls of glass, locked and sealed.”
“What are you talking about?” It was not necessary for the young Russian to explain. Suddenly, like a series of gigantic waves crashing against the walls of a huge aquarium, the tunnel was being filled with the waters of the Volkhov River. Then within the violence of the growing, swirling liquid mass, there was an object ... a thing, a form, a body! Bourne stared in shock, his eyes bulging, his mouth gaped, frozen in place, unable to disgorge the cry that was in him. He summoned what strength he had left, running unsteadily, twice falling to his knees, but gathering speed with each stride, and raced to the massive wall of glass that sealed the entrance beyond it. Breathlessly, his chest heaving, he placed his hands against the glass wall and leaned into it, bearing witness to the macabre scene barely inches in front of him. The grotesquely uniformed corpse of Carlos the Jackal kept crashing back and forth into the steel bars of the gate, his dark features twisted in hate, his eyes two glass orbs reviling death as it overtook him.
The cold eyes of Jason Bourne watched in satisfaction, his mouth taut, rigid, the face of a killer, a killer among killers, who had won. Briefly, however, the softer eyes of David Webb intruded, his lips parted, forming the face of a man for whom the weight of a world he loathed had been removed.
“He’s gone, Archie,” observed Benjamin at Jason’s side. “That bastard can’t come back.”
“You flooded the tunnel,” said Bourne simply. “How did you know it was him?”
“You didn’t have an automatic weapon, but he did. Frankly, I thought Krupkin’s prophecy was—shall we say—borne out? You were dead, and the man who killed you would take the quickest way out. This was it and the uniform confirmed it. Everything suddenly made sense from the ‘Spanish’ compound down.”
“How did you get that crowd away?”
“I told them barges were being sent to take them across the river—about two miles north. ... Speaking of Krupkin, I’ve got to get you out of here. Now. Come on, the helicopter pad’s about a half a mile away. We’ll use the jeep. Hurry up, for God’s sake!”
“Krupkin’s instructions?”
“Choked from his hospital bed, in as much anger as in shock.”
“What do you mean?”
“You might as well know. Someone up in the rarefied circle—Krupkin doesn’t know who—issued the order that you weren’t to leave here under any conditions. Put plainly, it was unthinkable, but then no one ever thought that the whole goddamned Novgorod would go up in flames, either, and that’s our cover.”
“Ours?”
“I’m not your executioner, somebody else is. The word never reached me and in this mess it won’t now.”
“Wait a minute! Where’s the chopper taking me?”
“Cross your fingers, Professor, and hope Krupkin and your American friend know what they’re doing. The helicopter takes you to Yelsk, and from there a plane to Zomosc across the Polish border, where an ungrateful satellite has apparently permitted a CIA listening post.”
“Christ, I’ll still be in Soviet bloc territory!”
“The implication was that your people are ready for you. Good luck.”
“Ben,” said Jason, studying the young man. “Why are you doing this? You’re disobeying a direct order—”
“I received no order!” broke in the Russian. “And even if I had, I’m no unthinking robot. You had an arrangement and you fulfilled your end. ... Also, if there’s a chance for my mother—”
“There’s more than a chance,” interrupted Bourne.
“Come on, let’s go! We’re wasting time. Yelsk and Zomosc are only the beginning for you. You face a long and dangerous journey, Archie.”