The Bourne ultimatum

4

David Webb walked through the National Airport terminal and out the automatic doors onto the crowded platform. He studied the signs and proceeded across the walkway leading to the Short-Term Parking area. According to plan, he was to go to the farthest aisle on the right, turn left, and continue down the row of parked cars until he saw a metallic gray 1986 Pontiac LeMans with an ornamental crucifix suspended from the rearview mirror. A man would be in the driver’s seat wearing a white cap, the window lowered. Webb was to approach him and say, “The flight was very smooth.” If the man removed his cap and started the engine, David was to climb in the backseat. Nothing more would be said.
Nothing more was said, not between Webb and the driver. However, the latter reached under the dashboard, removed a microphone and spoke quietly but clearly. “Our cargo’s on board. Please commence rotating vehicle cover.”
David thought that the exotic procedures bordered on the laughable, but since Alex Conklin had traced him to the Rockwell jet’s departure area at Logan Airport, and, further, had reached him on Director Peter Holland’s private override telephone, he assumed the two of them knew what they were doing. It crossed Webb’s mind that it had something to do with Mo Panov’s call to him nine hours ago. It was all but confirmed when Holland himself got on the phone insisting that he drive down to Hartford and take a commercial flight out of Bradley to Washington, adding enigmatically that he wanted no further telephone communication or private or government aircraft involved.
This particular government-oriented car, however, wasted no time getting out of National Airport. It seemed as if in only minutes they were rushing through the countryside and, only minimally less rapidly, through the suburbs of Virginia. They swung up to the private gate of an expensive garden apartment complex, the sign reading VIENNA VILLAS, after the township in which it was located. The guard obviously recognized the driver and waved him through as the heavy bar across the entrance was raised. It was only then that the driver spoke directly to Webb.
“This place has five separate sections over as many acres, sir. Four of them are legitimate condominiums with regular owners, but the fifth, the one farthest from the gate, is an Agency proprietary with its own road and security. You couldn’t be healthier, sir.”
“I didn’t feel particularly sick.”
“You won’t be. You’re DCI cargo and your health is very important to him.”
“That’s nice to know, but how do you know?”
“I’m part of the team, sir.”
“In that case, what’s your name?”
The driver was silent for a moment, and when he answered, David had the uneasy feeling that he was being propelled back in time, to a time he knew he was reentering. “We don’t have names, sir. You don’t and I don’t.”
Medusa.
“I understand,” said Webb.
“Here we are.” The driver swung the car around a circular drive and stopped in front of a two-story Colonial structure that looked as though the fluted white pillars might have been made of Carrara marble. “Excuse me, sir, I just noticed. You don’t have any luggage.”
“No, I don’t,” said David, opening the door.

“How do you like my temporary digs?” asked Alex, waving his hand around the tastefully appointed apartment.
“Too neat and too clean for a cantankerous old bachelor,” replied David. “And since when did you go in for floral curtains with pink and yellow daisies?”
“Wait’ll you see the wallpaper in my bedroom. It’s got baby roses.”
“I’m not sure I care to.”
“Your room has hyacinths. ... Of course, I wouldn’t know a hyacinth if it jumped up and choked me, but that’s what the maid said.”
“The maid?”
“Late forties and black and built like a sumo wrestler. She also carries two popguns under her skirt and, rumor has it, several straight razors.”
“Some maid.”
“Some high-powered patrol. She doesn’t let a bar of soap or a roll of toilet paper in here that doesn’t come from Langley. You know, she’s a pay-grade ten and some of these clowns leave her tips.”
“Do they need any waiters?”
“That’s good. Our scholar, Webb the waiter.”
“Jason Bourne’s been one.”
Conklin paused, then spoke seriously. “Let’s get to him,” he said, limping to an armchair. “By the way, you’ve had a rough day and it’s not even noon, so if you want a drink there’s a full bar behind those puce shutters next to the window. ... Don’t look at me like that, our black Brunhilde said they were puce.”
Webb laughed; it was a low, genuine laugh as he looked at his friend. “It doesn’t bother you a bit, does it, Alex?”
“Hell, no, you know that. Have you ever hid any liquor from me when I visited you and Marie?”
“There was never any stress—”
“Stress is irrelevant,” Conklin broke in. “I made a decision because there was only one other one to make. Have a drink, David. We have to talk and I want you calm. I look at your eyes and they tell me you’re on fire.”
“You once told me that it’s always in the eyes,” said Webb, opening the purplish shutters and reaching for a bottle. “You can still see it, can’t you?”
“I told you it was behind the eyes. Never accept the first level. ... How are Marie and the children? I assume they got off all right.”
“I went over the flight plan ad nauseam with the pilot and knew they were all right when he finally told me to get off his case or fly the run myself.” Webb poured a drink and walked back to the chair opposite the retired agent. “Where are we, Alex?” he asked, sitting down.
“Right where we were last night. Nothing’s moved and nothing’s changed, except that Mo refuses to leave his patients. He was picked up this morning at his apartment, which is now as secure as Fort Knox, and driven to his office under guard. He’ll be brought here later this afternoon with four changes of vehicles, all made in underground parking lots.”
“Then it’s open protection, no one’s hiding any longer?”
“That’d be pointless. We sprung a trap at the Smithsonian and our men were very obvious.”
“It’s why it might work, isn’t it? The unexpected? Backups behind a protection unit told to make mistakes.”
“The unexpected works, David, not the dumb.” Conklin quickly shook his head. “I take that back. Bourne could turn the dumbs into smarts, but not an officially mounted surveillance detail. There are too many complications.”
“I don’t understand.”
“As good as those men are, they’re primarily concerned with guarding lives, maybe saving them; they also have to coordinate with each other and make reports. They’re career people, not one-shot, prepaid lowlife with an assassin’s knife at their throats if they screw up.”
“That sounds so melodramatic,” said Webb softly, leaning back in the chair and drinking. “I guess I did operate like that, didn’t I?”
“It was more image than reality, but it was real to the people you used.”
“Then I’ll find those people again, use them again.” David shot forward, gripping his glass in both hands. “He’s forcing me out, Alex! The Jackal’s calling my cards and I have to show.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Conklin irritably. “Now you’re the one who’s being melodramatic. You sound like a grade-Z Western. You show yourself, Marie’s a widow and the kids have no father. That’s reality, David.”
“You’re wrong.” Webb shook his head, staring at his glass. “He’s coming after me, so I have to go after him; he’s trying to pull me out, so I have to pull him out first. It’s the only way it can happen, the only way we’ll get him out of our lives. In the final analysis it’s Carlos against Bourne. We’re back where we were thirteen years ago. ‘Alpha, Bravo, Cain, Delta ... Cain is for Carlos and Delta is for Cain.’ ”
“That was a crazy Paris code thirteen years ago!” interrupted Alex sharply. “Medusa’s Delta and his mighty challenge to the Jackal. But this isn’t Paris and it’s thirteen years later!”
“And in five more years it’ll be eighteen; five years after that, twenty-three. What the hell do you want me to do? Live with the specter of that son of a bitch over my family, frightened every time my wife or my children leave the house, living in fear for the rest of my life? ... No, you shut up, field man! You know better than that. The analysts can come up with a dozen strategies and we’ll use bits and pieces of maybe six and be grateful, but when it gets down to the mud, it’s between the Jackal and me. ... And I’ve got the advantage. I’ve got you on my side.”
Conklin swallowed while blinking. “That’s very flattering, David, maybe too flattering. I’m better in my own element, a couple of thousand miles away from Washington. It was always a little stifling for me here.”
“It wasn’t when you saw me off on that plane to Hong Kong five years ago. You’d put together half the equation by then.”
“That was easier. It was a down-and-dirty D.C. operation that had the smell of rotten halibut, so rotten it offended my nostrils. This is different; this is Carlos.”
“That’s my point, Alex. It is Carlos, not a voice over the telephone neither of us knew. We’re dealing with a known quantity, someone predictable—”
“Predictable?” broke in Conklin, frowning. “That’s also crazy. In what way?”
“He’s the hunter. He’ll follow a scent.”
“He’ll examine it first with a very experienced nose, then check the spoors under a microscope.”
“Then we’ll have to be authentic, won’t we?”
“I prefer foolproof. What did you have in mind?”
“In the gospel according to Saint Alex, it’s written that in order to bait a trap one has to use a large part of the truth, even a dangerous amount.”
“That chapter and verse referred to a target’s microscope. I think I just mentioned it. What’s the relevance here?”
“Medusa,” said Webb quietly. “I want to use Medusa.”
“Now you’re out of your mind,” responded Conklin, no louder than David. “That name is as off-limits as you are—let’s be honest, a hell of a lot more so.”
“There were rumors, Alex, stories all over Southeast Asia that floated up the China Sea to Kowloon and Hong Kong, where most of those bastards ran with their money. Medusa wasn’t exactly the secret evil you seem to think it was.”
“Rumors, yes, and stories, of course,” interrupted the retired intelligence officer. “Which of those animals didn’t put a gun or a knife to the heads of a dozen or two dozen or two hundred marks during their so-called ‘tours’? Ninety percent were killers and thieves, the original death squads. Peter Holland said that when he was a SEAL in the northern operations he never met a member of that outfit he didn’t want to waste.”
“And without them, instead of fifty-eight thousand casualties, there could well have been sixty-plus. Give the animals their due, Alex. They knew every inch of the territories, every square foot of jungle in the triangle. They—we—sent back more functional intelligence than all the units sent out by Saigon put together.”
“My point, David, is that there can never be any connection between Medusa and the United States government. Our involvement was never logged, much less acknowledged; the name itself was concealed as much as possible. There’s no statute of limitations on war crimes, and Medusa was officially determined to be a private organization, a collection of violent misfits who wanted the corrupt Southeast Asia back the way they knew it and used it. If it was ever established that Washington was behind Medusa, the reputation of some very important people in the White House and the State Department would be ruined. They’re global power brokers now, but twenty years ago they were hotheaded junior staffers in Command Saigon. ... We can live with questionable tactics in time of war, but not with being accomplices in the slaughter of noncombatants and the diversion of funds totaling millions, both unknowingly paid for by the taxpayers. It’s like those still-sealed archives that detail how so many of our fat-cat financiers bankrolled the Nazis. Some things we never want out of their black holes, and Medusa’s one of them.”
Webb again leaned back in the chair—now, however, taut, his eyes steady on his old friend, who was once briefly his deadly enemy. “If what memory I have left serves me, Bourne was identified as having come out of Medusa.”
“It was an entirely believable explanation and a perfect cover,” agreed Conklin, returning David’s gaze. “We went back to Tam Quan and ‘discovered’ that Bourne was a paranoid Tasmanian adventurer who disappeared in the jungles of North Vietnam. Nowhere in that very creative dossier was there the slightest clue of a Washington connection.”
“But that’s all a lie, isn’t it, Alex? There was and is a Washington connection, and the Jackal knows it now. He knew it when he found you and Mo Panov in Hong Kong—found your names in the ruins of that sterile house on Victoria Peak where Jason Bourne was supposedly blown away. He confirmed it last night when his messengers approached you at the Smithsonian and—your words—‘our men were very obvious.’ He knew finally that everything he’s believed for thirteen years is true. The member of Medusa who was called Delta was Jason Bourne, and Jason Bourne was a creation of American intelligence—and he’s still alive. Alive and in hiding and protected by his government.”
Conklin slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. “How did he find us, find me? Everything, everything, was under a black drape. McAllister and I made sure of it!”
“I can think of several ways, but that’s a question we can postpone, we haven’t time for it now. We have to move now on what we know Carlos knows. ... Medusa, Alex.”
“What? Move how?”
“If Bourne was plucked from Medusa, it has to follow that our covert operations were working with it—with them. Otherwise, how could the Bourne switch be created? What the Jackal doesn’t know or hasn’t put together yet is how far this government—especially certain people in this government—will go to keep Medusa in its black hole. As you pointed out, some very important men in the White House and the State Department could get burned, a lot of nasty labels branded on the foreheads of global power brokers, I think you called them.”
“And suddenly we’ve got a few Waldheims of our own.” Conklin nodded, frowning and looking down, his thoughts obviously racing.
“Nuy Dap Ranh,” said Webb, barely above a whisper. At the sound of the Oriental words, Alex’s eyes snapped back up at David. “That’s the key, isn’t it?” continued Webb. “Nuy Dap Ranh—Snake Lady.”
“You remembered.”
“Just this morning,” replied Jason Bourne, his eyes cold. “When Marie and the kids were airborne, the plane disappeared into the mists over Boston harbor and suddenly I was there. In another plane, in another time, the words crackling out of a radio through the static. ‘Snake Lady, Snake Lady, abort. ... Snake Lady, do you read me? Abort!’ I responded by turning the damn thing off and looked around at the men in the cabin, which seemed ready to break apart in the turbulence. I studied each man, wondering, I guess, whether this one or that one would come out alive, whether I’d come out alive, and if we didn’t, how we would die. ... Then I saw two of the men rolling up their sleeves, comparing those small ugly tattoos on their forearms, those lousy little emblems that obsessed them—”
“Nuy Dap Ranh,” said Conklin flatly. “A woman’s face with snakes for strands of hair. Snake Lady. You refused to have one done on you—”
“I never considered it a mark of distinction,” interrupted Webb-Bourne, blinking. “Somewhat the reverse, in fact.”
“Initially it was meant for identification, not a standard or a banner of any distinction one way or the other. An intricate tattoo on the underside of the forearm, the design and the colors produced by only one artist in Saigon. No one else could duplicate it.”
“That old man made a lot of money during those years; he was special.”
“Every officer in Command Headquarters who was connected to Medusa had one. They were like manic kids who’d found secret code rings in cereal boxes.”
“They weren’t kids, Alex. Manic, you can bet your ass on it, but not kids. They were infected with a rotten virus called unaccountability, and more than a few millionaires were made in the ubiquitous Command Saigon. The real kids were being maimed and killed in the jungles while a lot of pressed khaki in the South had personal couriers routed through Switzerland and the banks on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse.”
“Careful, David. You could be speaking of some very important people in our government.”
“Who are they?” asked Webb quietly, his glass poised in front of him.
“The ones I knew who were up to their necks in garbage I made damn sure faded after Saigon fell. But I was out of the field a couple of years before then, and nobody talks very much about those months and nothing at all about Snake Lady.”
“Still, you’ve got to have some ideas.”
“Sure, but nothing concrete, nothing even close to proof. Just possibilities based on life-styles, on real estate they shouldn’t have or places they go they shouldn’t be able to afford or the positions some hold or held in corporations justifying salaries and stock options when nothing in their backgrounds justified the jobs.”
“You’re describing a network,” said David, his voice now tight, the voice of Jason Bourne.
“If it is, it’s very tight,” agreed Conklin. “Very exclusive.”
“Draw up a list, Alex.”
“It’d be filled with holes.”
“Then keep it at first to those important people in our government who were attached to Command Saigon. Maybe even further to the ones who have real estate they shouldn’t have or who held high-paying jobs in the private sector they shouldn’t have gotten.”
“I repeat, any such list could be worthless.”
“Not with your instincts.”
“David, what the hell has any of this to do with Carlos?”
“Part of the truth, Alex. A dangerous part, I grant you, but foolproof and irresistible to the Jackal.”
Stunned, the former field officer stared at his friend. “In what way?”
“That’s where your creative thinking comes in. Say you come up with fifteen or twenty names, you’re bound to hit three or four targets we can confirm one way or another. Once we ascertain who they are, we apply pressure, squeezing them in different ways, delivering the same basic message: A former Medusan has gone over the edge, a man who’s been in protective custody for years is about to blow the head off Snake Lady and he’s got the ammunition—names, crimes, the locations of secret Swiss accounts, the whole Caesar salad. Then—and this’ll test the talents of the old Saint Alex we all knew and revered—word is passed on that there’s someone who wants this dangerous, disgruntled turncoat more than they do.”
“Ilich Ramirez Sanchez,” supplied Conklin softly. “Carlos the Jackal. And what follows is equally impossible: Somehow—only God knows how—word gets out calling for a meeting between the two interested parties. That is to say, interested in a joint assassination, the parties of the first part unable to participate actively, due to the sensitive nature of their high official positions, is that about it?”
“Just about, except that these same powerful men in Washington can gain access to the identity and the whereabouts of this much desired corpse-to-be.”
“Naturally,” agreed Alex, nodding in disbelief. “They simply wave a wand and all the restrictions applicable to maximum-classified files are lifted and they’re given the information.”
“Exactly,” said David firmly. “Because whoever meets with Carlos’s emissaries has to be so high up, so authentic, that the Jackal has no choice but to accept him or them. He can’t have any doubts, all thoughts of a trap gone with their coming forward.”
“Would you also like me to make baby roses bloom during a January blizzard in Montana?”
“Close to it. Everything’s got to happen within the next day or two while Carlos is still stinging from what happened at the Smithsonian.”
“Impossible! ... Oh, hell, I’ll try. I’ll set up shop here and have Langley send me what I need. Four Zero security, of course. ... I hate like hell to lose whoever it is at the Mayflower.”
“We may not,” said Webb. “Whoever it is won’t fold so fast. It’s not like the Jackal to leave an obvious hole like that.”
“The Jackal? You think it’s Carlos himself?”
“Not him, of course, but someone on his payroll, someone so unlikely he could carry a sign around his neck with the Jackal’s name on it and we wouldn’t believe him.”
“Chinese?”
“Maybe. He might play that out and then he might not. He’s geometric; whatever he does is logical, even his logic seems illogical.”
“I hear a man from the past, a man who never was.”
“Oh, he was, Alex. He was indeed. And now he’s back.”
Conklin looked toward the door of the apartment, David’s words suddenly provoking another thought. “Where’s your suitcase?” he asked. “You brought some clothes, didn’t you?”
“No clothes, and these will be dropped in a Washington sewer once I have others. But first I have to see another old friend of mine, another genius who lives in the wrong section of town.”
“Let me guess,” said the retired agent. “An elderly black man with the improbable name of Cactus, a genius where false papers such as passports and driver’s licenses and credit cards are concerned.”
“That’s about it. Him.”
“The Agency could do it all.”
“Not as well and too bureaucratically. I want nothing traceable, even with Four Zero security. This is solo.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“You get to work, field man. By tomorrow morning I want a lot of people in this town shaken up.”
“Tomorrow morning ... ? That is impossible!”
“Not for you. Not for Saint Alex, the prince of dark operations?”
“Say whatever the hell you like, I’m not even in training.”
“It comes back quickly, like sex and riding a bicycle.”
“What about you? What are you going to do?”
“After I consult with Cactus, I’ll get a room at the Mayflower hotel,” answered Jason Bourne.

Culver Parnell, hotel magnate from Atlanta whose twenty-year reign in the hostelry business had led to his appointment as chief of protocol for the White House, angrily hung up his office phone as he scribbled a sixth obscenity on a legal pad. With the election and now the turnover of White House personnel, he had replaced the previous administration’s well-born female who knew nothing about the political ramifications of 1600’s invitation list. Then, to his profound irritation, he found himself at war with his own first assistant, another middle-aged female, also from one of the ass-elegant Eastern colleges, and, to make it worse, a popular Washington socialite who contributed her salary to some la-di-da dance company whose members pranced around in their underwear when they wore any.
“Hog damn!” fumed Culver, running his hand through his fringed gray hair; he picked up the telephone and poked four digits on his console. “Gimme the Redhead, you sweet thing,” he intoned, exaggerating his already pronounced Georgia accent.
“Yes, sir,” said the flattered secretary. “He’s on another line but I’ll interrupt. Just hold on a sec, Mr. Parnell.”
“You’re the loveliest of the peaches, lovely child.”
“Oh, golly, thank you! Now just hold on.”
It never failed, mused Culver. A little soft oil from the magnolia worked a hell of a lot better than the bark of a gnarled oak. That bitch of a first assistant of his might take a lesson from her Southern superiors; she talked like some Yankee dentist had bonded her f*cking teeth together with permanent cement.
“That you, Cull?” came the voice of Redhead over the line, intruding on Parnell’s thoughts as he wrote a seventh obscenity on the legal pad.
“You’re momma-letchin’ right, boy, and we got a problem! The fricassee bitch is doin’ it again. I got our Wall Streeters inked in for a table at the reception on the twenty-fifth, the one for the new French ambassador and she says we gotta bump ’em for some core-dee-ballet fruitcakes—she says she and the First Lady feel mighty strong about it. Shee-it! Those money boys gotta lot of French interests goin’ for them, and this White House bash could put ’em on top. Every frog on the Bourse will think they got the ears of the whole town here!”
“Forget it, Cull,” broke in the anxious Redhead, “We may have a bigger problem, and I don’t know what it means.”
“What’s that?”
“When we were back in Saigon, did you ever hear of something or someone called Snake Lady?”
“I heard a hell of a lot about snake eyes,” chuckled Parnell, “but no Snake Lady. Why?”
“The fellow I was just talking to—he’s going to call back in five minutes—sounded as though he was threatening me. I mean actually threatening me, Cull! He mentioned Saigon and implied that something terrible happened back then and repeated the name Snake Lady several times as if I should have run for cover.”
“You leave that son of a bitch to me!” roared Parnell, interrupting. “I know exactly what that bastard’s talking about! This is that snotty bitch first assistant of mine—that’s the f*ckin’ Snake Lady! You give that slug worm my number and tell him I know all about his horseshit!”
“Will you please tell me, Cull?”
“What the hell, you were there, Redhead. ... So we had a few games going, even a few mini casinos, and some clowns lost a couple of shirts, but there was nothin’ soldiers haven’t done since they threw craps for Christ’s clothes! ... We just put it on a higher plane and maybe tossed in a few broads who’d have been walkin’ the streets anyway. ... No, Redhead, that elegant-ass, so-called assistant thinks she’s got somethin’ on me—that’s why she’s goin’ through you, ’cause everybody knows we’re buddies. ... You tell that slime to call me and I’ll settle his grits along with that bitch’s twat! Oh, boy, she made a wrong move! My Wall Streeters are in and her pansies are out!”
“Okay, Cull, I’ll simply refer him to you,” said the Redhead, otherwise known as the vice president of the United States, as he hung up the phone.
It rang four minutes later and the words were spat out at Parnell. “Snake Lady, Culver, and we’re all in trouble!”
“No, you listen to me, Divot Head, and I’ll tell you who’s in trouble! She’s no lady, she’s a bitch! One of her thirty or forty eunuch husbands may have thrown a few snake eyes in Saigon and lost some of her well-advertised come-and-take-me cash, but nobody gave a shit then and nobody gives a shit now. Especially a marine colonel who liked a sharp game of poker every once in a while, and that man is sitting in the Oval Office at this moment. And furthermore, you ball-less scrotum, when he learns that she’s trying to further defame the brave boys who wanted only a little relaxation while fighting a thankless war—”
In Vienna, Virginia, Alexander Conklin replaced the phone. Misfire One and Misfire Two ... and he had never heard of Culver Parnell.

The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Albert Armbruster, swore out loud as he turned off the shower at the sound of his wife’s shrieking voice in the steam-filled bathroom. “What the hell is it, Mamie? I can’t take a shower without you yammering?”
“It could be the White House, Al! You know how they talk, so low and quiet and always saying it’s urgent.”
“Shit!” yelled the chairman, opening the glass door and walking naked to the phone on the wall. “This is Armbruster. What is it?”
“There’s a crisis that requires your immediate attention.”
“Is this 1600?”
“No, and we hope it never goes up there.”
“Then who the hell are you?”
“Someone as concerned as you’re going to be. After all these years—oh, Christ!”
“Concerned about what? What are you talking about?”
“Snake Lady, Mr. Chairman.”
“Oh, my God!” Armbruster’s hushed voice was a sudden involuntary cry of panic. Instantly, he controlled himself but it was too late. Mark One. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. ... What’s a snake whatever-it-is? Never heard of it.”
“Well, hear it now, Mr. Medusa. Somebody’s got it all, everything. Dates, diversions of matériel, banks in Geneva and Zurich—even the names of a half-dozen couriers routed out of Saigon—and worse. ... Jesus, the worst! Other names—MIAs established as never having been in combat ... eight investigating personnel from the inspector general’s office. Everything.”
“You’re not making sense! You’re talking gibberish!”
“And you’re on the list, Mr. Chairman. That man must have spent fifteen years putting it together, and now he wants payment for all those years of work or he blows it open—everything, everyone.”
“Who? Who is he, for Christ’s sake?”
“We’re centering in. All we know is that he’s been in the protection program for over a decade, and no one gets rich in those circumstances. He must have been cut out of the action in Saigon and now he’s making up for lost time. Stay tight. We’ll be back in touch.” There was a click and the line went dead.
Despite the steam and the heat of the bathroom, the naked Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, shivered as the sweat rolled down his face. He hung up the phone, his eyes straying to the small, ugly tattoo on the underside of his forearm.
Over in Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin looked at the telephone.
Mark One.

General Norman Swayne, chief of Pentagon procurements, stepped back from the tee satisfied with his long straight drive down the fairway. The ball would roll to an optimum position for a decent five-iron approach shot to the seventeenth green. “That ought to do it,” he said, turning to address his golfing partner.
“Certainly ought to, Norm,” replied the youngish senior vice president of Calco Technologies. “You’re taking my butt for a ride this afternoon. I’m going to end up owing you close to three hundred clams. At twenty a hole, I’ve only gotten four so far.”
“It’s your hook, young fella. You ought to work on it.”
“That’s certainly the truth, Norm,” agreed the Calco executive in charge of marketing as he approached the tee. Suddenly, there was the high grating sound of a golf cart’s horn as a three-wheeled vehicle appeared over the incline from the sixteenth fairway going as fast as it could go. “That’s your driver, General,” said the armaments marketer, immediately wishing he had not used his partner’s formal title.
“So it is. That’s odd; he never interrupts my golf game.” Swayne walked toward the rapidly approaching cart, meeting it thirty feet away from the tee. “What is it?” he asked a large, middle-aged beribboned master sergeant who had been his driver for over fifteen years.
“My guess is that it’s rotten,” answered the noncommissioned officer gruffly while he gripped the wheel.
“That’s pretty blunt—”
“So was the son of a bitch who called. I had to take it inside, on a pay phone. I told him I wouldn’t break into your game, and he said I goddamned well better if I knew what was good for me. Naturally, I asked him who he was and what rank and all the rest of the bullshit but he cut me off, more scared than anything else. ‘Just tell the general I’m calling about Saigon and some reptiles crawling around the city damn near twenty years ago.’ Those were his exact words—”
“Jesus Christ!” cried Swayne, interrupting. “Snake ... ?”
“He said he’d call back in a half hour-that’s eighteen minutes now. Get in, Norman. I’m part of this, remember?”
Bewildered and frightened, the general mumbled. “I ... I have to make excuses. I can’t just walk away, drive away.”
“Make it quick. And, Norman, you’ve got on a short-sleeved shirt, you goddamned idiot! Bend your arm.”
Swayne, his eyes wide, stared at the small tattoo on his flesh, instantly crooking his arm to his chest in British brigadier fashion as he walked unsteadily back to the tee, summoning a casualness he could not feel. “Damn, young fella, the army calls.”
“Well, damn also, Norm, but I’ve got to pay you. I insist!”
The general, half in a daze, accepted the debt from his partner, not counting the bills, not realizing that it was several hundred dollars more than he was owed. Proffering confused thanks, Swayne walked swiftly back to the golf cart and climbed in beside his master sergeant.
“So much for my hook, soldier boy,” said the armaments executive to himself, addressing the tee and swinging his club, sending the little pocked white ball straight down the fairway far beyond the general’s and with a much better lie. “Four hundred million’s worth, you brass-plated bastard.”
Mark Two.

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” asked the senator, laughing as he spoke into the phone. “Or should I say, what’s Al Armbruster trying to pull? He doesn’t need my sup port on the new bill and he wouldn’t get it if he did. He was a jackass in Saigon and he’s a jackass now, but he’s got the majority vote.”
“We’re not talking about votes, Senator. We’re talking about Snake Lady!”
“The only snakes I knew in Saigon were jerks like Alby who crawled around the city pretending to know all the answers when there weren’t any. ... Who the hell are you anyway?” In Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin replaced the telephone.
Misfire Three.
f f f
Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, picked up his phone in London, assuming that the unnamed caller, code “courier D.C.” was bearing an exceptionally confidential instruction from the State Department and automatically; as was the order, Atkinson snapped the switch on his rarely used scrambler. It would create an eruption of static on British intelligence’s intercepts and later he would smile benignly at good friends in the Connaught bar who asked him if there was anything new out of Washington, knowing that this one or that one had “relatives” in MI-Five.
“Yes, Courier District?”
“Mr. Ambassador, I assume we can’t be picked up,” said the low, strained voice from Washington.
“Your assumption’s correct unless they’ve come up with a new type of Enigma, which is unlikely.”
“Good. ... I want to take you back to Saigon, to a certain operation no one talks about—”
“Who is this?” broke in Atkinson, bolting forward in his chair.
“The men in that outfit never used names, Mr. Ambassador, and we didn’t exactly advertise our commitments, did we?”
“Goddamn you, who are you? I know you?”
“No way, Phil, although I’m surprised you don’t recognize my voice.”
Atkinson’s eyes widened as they roamed rapidly about his office, seeing nothing, only trying to remember, trying desperately to put a voice with a face. “Is that you, Jack—believe me, we’re on a scrambler!”
“Close, Phil—”
“The Sixth Fleet, Jack. A simple reverse Morse. Then bigger things, much bigger. It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Let’s say it’s a possible, but it’s also irrelevant. The point is we’re in heavy weather, very heavy—”
“It is you!”
“Shut up. Just listen. A bastard frigate got loose from its moorings and is crashing around, hitting too many shoals.”
“Jack, I was ground, not sea. I can’t understand you.”
“Some swab jockey must have been cut out of the action back in Saigon, and from what I’ve learned he was put in protection for something or other and now he’s got it all put together. He’s got it all, Phil. Everything.”
“Holy Christ!”
“He’s ready to launch—”
“Stop him!”
“That’s the problem. We’re not sure who he is. The whole thing’s being kept very close over in Langley.”
“Good God, man, in your position you can give them the order to back off! Say it’s a DOD dead file that was never completed—that it was designed to spread disinformation! It’s all false!”
“That could be walking into a salvo—”
“Have you called Jimmy T over in Brussels?” interrupted the ambassador. “He’s tight with the top max at Langley.”
“At the moment I don’t want anything to go any further. Not until I do some missionary work.”
“Whatever you say, Jack. You’re running the show.”
“Keep your halyards taut, Phil.”
“If that means keep my mouth shut, don’t you worry about it!” said Atkinson, crooking his elbow, wondering who in London could remove an ugly tattoo on his forearm.
Across the Atlantic in Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin hung up the telephone and leaned back in his chair a frightened man. He had been following his instincts as he had done in the field for over twenty years, words leading to other words, phrases to phrases, innuendos snatched out of the air to support suppositions, even conclusions. It was a chess game of instant invention and he knew he was a skilled professional—sometimes too skilled. There were things that should remain in their black holes, undetected cancers buried in history, and what he had just learned might well fit that category.
Marks Three, Four and Five.
Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to Great Britain. James Teagarten, supreme commander of NATO. Jonathan “Jack” Burton, former admiral of the Sixth Fleet, currently chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Snake Lady. Medusa.
A network.