The Bourne ultimatum (24 page)

“Try thirty minutes, Mr. Delta,” replied Rachel.

“My God, you had a
life
here, both of you—”

“We don’t want anything from this life outside of what we’ve got,” said Flannagan firmly.

“The estate here is yours, Mrs. Swayne—”

“Like hell it is. It’s being turned over to some foundation, ask the lawyer. Whatever I get,
if
I get, he’ll send on to me. I just want out—we want out.”

Jason looked back and forth at the strange and strangely drawn-together couple. “Then there’s nothing to stop you.”

“How do we
know
that?” pressed Flannagan, stepping forward.

“It’ll take a measure of trust on your part, but, believe me, I can do it. On the other hand, look at the alternative. Say you stay here. No matter what you do with
him
, he won’t show up in Arlington tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. Sooner or later someone’s going to come looking for him. There’ll be questions, searches, an investigation, and as sure as God made little Bobby Woodwards, the media will descend with its bellyful of speculations. In short order your ‘arrangement’ will be picked up—hell, even the guards talked about it—and the newspapers, the magazines and television will have a collective field day. ... Do you want that? Or would it all lead to that body bag you mentioned?”

The master sergeant and his lady stared at each other. “He’s right, Eddie,” said the latter. “With him we got a chance, the other way we don’t.”

“It sounds too easy,” said Flannagan, his breath coming shorter as he glanced toward the door. “How are you going to handle everything?”

“That’s my business,” answered Bourne. “Give me the telephone numbers, all of them, and then the only call you’ll have to make is the one to New York, and if I were you, I’d make it from whatever Pac island you’re on.”

“You’re
nuts
! The minute the news breaks, I’m on Medusa’s rug—so’s Rachel! They’re going to want to know what happened.”

“Tell them the truth, at least a variation of it, and I think you may even get a bonus.”

“You’re a goddamned flake!”

“I wasn’t a flake in ’Nam, Sergeant. Nor was I in Hong Kong, and I’m certainly not now. ... You and Rachel came home, saw what had happened, packed up and left—because you didn’t want any questions and the dead can’t talk and trap themselves. Predate your papers by a day, mail them, and leave the rest to me.”

“I dunno—”

“You don’t have a
choice
, Sergeant!” shot back Jason, rising from the chair. “And I don’t care to waste any more time! You want me to go, I’ll
go
—figure it all out for yourselves.” Bourne angrily started for the door.

“No, Eddie,
stop
him! We gotta do it his way, we gotta take the chance! The other way we’re dead and you know it.”

“All
right
, all right! ... Cool it, Delta. We’ll do what you say.

Jason stopped and turned. “
Everything
I say, Sergeant, down to the letter.”

“You got it.”

“First, you and I will go over to your place while Rachel goes upstairs and packs. You’ll give me everything you’ve got—telephone and license numbers, every name you can remember, anything you can give me that I ask for. Agreed?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go. And Mrs. Swayne, I know that there are probably a lot of little things you’d like to take along, but—”

“
Forget
it, Mr. Delta. Mementos I don’t have. Whatever I really wanted was long since shipped out of this hell hole. It’s all in storage ten thousand miles away.”

“My, you really were prepared, weren’t you?”

“Tell me something I don’t know. You see, the time had to come, one way or the other, y’know what I mean?” Rachel walked rapidly past the two men and into the hall; she stopped and came back to Master Sergeant Flannagan, a smile on her lips, a glow in her eyes, as she placed her hand on his face. “Hey, Eddie,” she said quietly. “It’s really gonna happen. We’re gonna
live
, Eddie. Y’know what I mean?”

“Yeah, babe. I know.”

As they walked out into the darkness toward the cabin, Bourne spoke. “I meant what I said about not wasting time, Sergeant. Start talking. What were you going to tell me about Swayne’s place here?”

“Are you ready?”

“What does that mean? Of course I’m ready.” But he wasn’t. He stopped suddenly on the grass at Flannagan’s words.

“For openers, it’s a cemetery.”

Alex Conklin sat back in the desk chair, the phone in his hand, stunned, frowning, unable to summon a rational response to Jason’s astonishing information. All he could say was “I don’t
believe
it!”

“Which part?”

“I don’t know. Everything, I guess ... the cemetery on down. But I have to believe it, don’t I?”

“You didn’t want to believe London or Brussels, either, or a commander of the Sixth Fleet or the keeper of the covert keys in Langley. I’m just adding to the list. ... The point is, once you find out who they all are, we can
move
.”

“You’ll have to start from the beginning again; my head’s shredded. The telephone number in New York, the license plates—”

“The
body
, Alex! Flannagan and the general’s
wife
! They’re on their way; that was the deal and you’ve got to cover it.”

“Just like that? Swayne kills himself and the two people on the premises who can answer questions, we say
Ciao
to them and let them get away? That’s only slightly more lunatic than what you’ve told me!”

“We don’t have time for negotiating games—and besides, he can’t answer any more questions. They were on different levels.”

“Oh, boy, that’s really clear.”

“Do it. Let them go. We may need them both later.”

Conklin sighed, his indecision apparent. “Are you sure? It’s very complicated.”

“
Do
it! For Christ’s sake, Alex, I don’t give a goddamn about complications or violations or all the manipulations you can dream up! I want
Carlos
! We’re building a net and we can pull him
in
—I can pull him in!”

“All right, all right. There’s a doctor in Falls Church that we’ve used before in special operations. I’ll get hold of him, he’ll know what to do.”

“Good,” said Bourne, his mind racing. “Now put me on tape. I’ll give you everything Flannagan gave me. Hurry up, I’ve got a lot to do.”

“You’re on tape, Delta One.”

Reading from the list he had written down in Flannagan’s cabin, Jason spoke rapidly, enunciating clearly so that there would be no confusion on the tape. There were the names of seven frequent and acknowledged guests at the general’s dinner parties, none guaranteed as to accuracy or spelling but with broad-brush descriptions; then came the license plates, all from the far more serious twice-monthly meetings. Next to last were the telephone numbers of Swayne’s lawyer, all of the estate’s guards, the dog kennels and the Pentagon extension for assigned vehicles; finally there was the unlisted telephone in New York, no name here, only a machine that took messages. “That’s got to be a priority one, Alex.”

“We’ll break it,” said Conklin, inserting himself on the tape. “I’ll call the kennels and talk Pentagonese—the general’s being flown to a hush-factor post and we pay double for getting the animals out first thing in the morning. Open the gates, incidentally. ... The licenses are no problem and I’ll have Casset run the names through the computers behind DeSole’s back.”

“What about Swayne? We’ve got to keep the suicide quiet for a while.”

“How long?”

“How the hell do I know?” replied Jason, exasperated. “Until we find out who they all are and I can reach them—or you can reach them—and together we can start the wave of panic rolling. That’s when we plant the Carlos solution.”

“Words,” said Conklin, his tone not flattering. “You could be talking about days, maybe a week or even longer.”

“Then that’s what I’m
talking
about.”

“Then we’d better damn well bring in Peter Holland—”

“No, not yet. We don’t know what he’d do and I’m not giving him the chance to get in my way.”

“You’ve got to trust someone besides me, Jason. I can fool the doctor perhaps for twenty-four or forty-eight hours—
perhaps
—but I doubt much longer than that. He’ll want higher authorization. And don’t forget, I’ve got Casset breathing down my neck over DeSole—”

“Give me two days,
get
me two days!”

“While tracking down all this information and stalling Charlie, and lying through my teeth to Peter, telling them that we’re making progress running down the Jackal’s possible couriers at the Mayflower hotel—we
think
... Of course, we’re doing nothing of the sort because we’re up to our credentials in some off-the-wall, twenty-year-old Saigon conspiracy involving who knows
what
, damned if we know, except that the
who
is terribly impressive. Without going into statuses—or is it
statae
—we’re now told they have their own private cemetery on the grounds of the general officer in charge of Pentagon procurements, who just happened to blow his head off, a minor incident we’re sitting on. ...
Jesus
, Delta, back up! The missiles are colliding!”

Though he was standing in front of Swayne’s desk, the general’s corpse in the chair beside him, Bourne managed a tentative, slow smile. “That’s what we’re counting on, isn’t it? It’s a scenario that could have been written by our beloved Saint Alex himself.”

“I’m only along for the ride, I’m not steering—”

“What about the doctor?” interrupted Jason. “You’ve been out of operation for almost five years. How do you know he’s still in business?”

“I run into him now and then; we’re both museum mavens. A couple of months ago at the Corcoran Gallery he complained that he wasn’t given much to do these days.”

“Change that tonight.”

“I’ll try. What are you going to do?”

“Delicately pull apart everything in this room.”

“Gloves?”

“Surgical, of course.”

“Don’t touch the body.”

“Only the pockets—very delicately. ... Swayne’s wife is coming down the stairs. I’ll call you back when they’re gone. Get hold of that
doctor
!”

Ivan Jax, M.D. by way of Yale Medical School, surgical training and residency at Massachusetts General, College of Surgeons by appointment, Jamaican by birth, and erstwhile “consultant” to the Central Intelligence Agency courtesy of a fellow black man with the improbable name of Cactus, drove through the gates of General Swayne’s estate in Manassas, Virginia. There were times, thought Ivan, when he wished he had never met old Cactus and this was one of them, but tonight notwithstanding, he never regretted that Cactus had come into his life. Thanks to the old man’s “magic papers,” Jax had gotten his brother and sister out of Jamaica during the repressive Manley years when established professionals were all but prohibited from emigrating and certainly not with personal funds.

Cactus, however, using complex mock-ups of government permits had sprung both young adults out of the country along with bank transfers honored in Lisbon. All the aged forger re quested were stolen blank copies of various official documents, including import/export bills of lading, the two people’s passports, separate photographs and copies of several signatures belonging to certain men in positions of authority—easily obtainable through the hundreds of bureaucratic edicts published in the government-controlled press. Ivan’s brother was currently a wealthy barrister in London and his sister a research fellow at Cambridge.

Yes, he owed Cactus, thought Dr. Jax as he swung his station wagon around the curve to the front of the house, and when the old man had asked him to “consult” with a few “friends over in Langley” seven years ago, he had obliged. Some consultation! Still, there were further perks forthcoming in Ivan’s silent association with the intelligence agency. When his island home threw out Manley, and Seaga came to power, among the first of the “appropriated” properties to be returned to their rightful owners were the Jax family’s holdings in Montego Bay and Port Antonio. That had been Alex Conklin’s doing, but without Cactus there would have been no Conklin, not in Ivan’s circle of friends. ... But why did Alex have to call
tonight
? Tonight was his twelfth wedding anniversary, and he had sent the kids on an overnight with the neighbors’ children so that he and his wife could be alone, alone with grilled Jamaic’ ribs on the patio—prepared by the only one who knew how, namely, Chef Ivan—a lot of good dark Overton rum, and some highly erotic skinny-dipping in the pool.
Damn
Alex! Double damn the son-of-a-bitch bachelor who could only respond to the event of a wedding anniversary by saying, “What the hell? You made the year, so what’s a day count? Get your jollies tomorrow, I need you tonight.”

So he had lied to his wife, the former head nurse at Mass. General. He told her that a patient’s life was in the balance—it was, but it had already tipped the wrong way. She had replied that perhaps her next husband would be more considerate of
her
life, but her sad smile and her understanding eyes denied her words. She knew death.
Hurry, my darling!

Jax turned off the engine, grabbed his medical bag and got out of the car. He walked around the hood as the front door opened and a tall man in what appeared to be dark skintight clothing stood silhouetted in the frame. “I’m your doctor,” said Ivan, walking up the steps. “Our mutual friend didn’t give me your name, but I guess I’m not supposed to have it.”

“I guess not,” agreed Bourne, extending a hand in a surgical glove as Jax approached.

“And I guess we’re both right,” said Jax, shaking hands with the stranger. “The mitt you’re wearing is pretty familiar to me.”

“Our mutual friend didn’t tell me you were black.”

“Is that a problem for you?”

“Good Christ, no. I like our friend even more. It probably never occurred to him to say anything.”

“I think we’ll get along. Let’s go, no-name.”

Bourne stood ten feet to the right of the desk as Jax swiftly, expertly tended to the corpse, mercifully wrapping the head in gauze. Without explaining, he had cut away sections of the general’s clothing, examining those parts of the body beneath the fabric. Finally, he carefully rolled the hooded body off the chair and onto the floor. “Are you finished in here?” he asked, looking over at Jason.