Ludlum, Robert - Bourne 03 - The Bourne Ultimatum

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2024-12-04 0 0 3.71MB 444 页 5.9玖币
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ROBERT LUDLUM
THE UNSURPASSED MASTER
OF THE SUPERTHRILLER
THE TRANSFORMATION
The station wagon raced south down a backcountry road through the hills of New
Hampshire toward the Massachusetts border, the driver a long-framed man, his sharp-
featured face intense, his clear light-blue eyes furious.
“We knew it would happen,” said Marie St. Jacques Webb. “It was merely a question of
time.”
“It’s crazy!” David whispered so as not to’ wake the children. “Everything’s buried,
maximum archive security and all the rest of that crap! How did anyone find Alex and Mo?”
“We don’t know, but Alex will start looking. There’s no one better than Alex, you said
that yourself—”
“He’s marked now—he’s a dead man,” interrupted Webb grimly. “They’ll kill him and
come after me ... after us, which is why you and the kids are heading south. The Caribbean.”
“I’ll send them, darling. Not me.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.” Webb breathed deeply, steadily, imposing a strange
control. “I’ve been there before,” he said quietly.
Marie looked at her husband, his suddenly passive face outlined in the dim wash of the
dashboard lights. What she saw frightened her far more than the specter of the Jackal. She
was not looking at David Webb the soft-spoken scholar. She was staring at a man they both
thought had disappeared from their lives forever.
Jason Bourne.
For Bobbi and Leonard Raichert,
two lovely people who have enriched
our lives—Our Thanks
Prologue
Darkness had descended on Manassas, Virginia, the countryside alive with nocturnal
undercurrents, as Bourne crept through the woods bordering the estate of General Norman
Swayne. Startled birds fluttered out of their black recesses; crows awoke in the trees and
cawed their alarms, and then, as if calmed by a foraging co-conspirator, kept silent.
Manassas! The key was here! The key that would unlock the subterranean door that led
to Carlos the Jackal, the assassin who wanted only to destroy David Webb and his family. ...
Webb! Get away from me, David! screamed Jason Bourne in the silence of his mind. Let me
be the killer you cannot be!
With each scissoring cut into the thick, high wire fence, he understood the inevitable,
confirmed by his heavy breathing and the sweat that fell from his hairline. No matter how
hard he tried to keep his body in reasonable shape, he was fifty years of age; he could not do
with ease what he did thirteen years ago in Paris when, under orders, he had stalked the
Jackal. It was something to think about, not dwell upon. There were Marie and his children
now—David’s wife, David’s children—and there was nothing he could not do as long as he
willed it! David Webb was disappearing from his psyche, only the predator Jason Bourne
would remain.
He was through! He crawled inside and stood up, instinctively, rapidly checking his
equipment with the fingers of both hands. Weapons: an automatic, as well as a CO2 dart
pistol; Zeiss Ikon binoculars; a scabbarded hunting knife. They were all the predator needed,
for he was now behind the lines in enemy territory, the enemy that would lead him to Carlos.
Medusa. The bastard battalion from Vietnam, the unlogged, unsanctioned,
unacknowledged collection of killers and misfits who roamed the jungles of Southeast Asia
directed by Command Saigon, the original death squads who brought Saigon more
intelligence input than all the search-and-destroys put together. Jason Bourne had come out
of Medusa with David Webb only a memory—a scholar who had another wife, other
children, all slaughtered.
General Norman Swayne had been an elite member of Command Saigon, the sole
supplier of the old Medusa. And now there was a new Medusa: different, massive, evil
incarnate cloaked in contemporary respectability, searching out and destroying whole
segments of global economies, all for the benefit of the few, all financed by the profits from
a long-ago bastard battalion, unlogged, unacknowledged—non-history. This modern Medusa
was the bridge to Carlos the Jackal. The assassin would find the principals irresistible as
clients, and both camps would demand the death of Jason Bourne. That had to happen! And
for it to happen, Bourne had to learn the secrets concealed within the grounds belonging to
General Swayne, head of all procurements for the Pentagon, a panicked man with a small
tattoo on his inner forearm. A Medusan.
Without sound or warning, a black Doberman crashed through the dense foliage, its
frenzy in full force. Jason whipped the CO2 pistol from its nylon holster as the salivating
attack dog lunged for his stomach, its teeth bared. He fired into its head; the dart took effect
in seconds. He cradled the animal’s unconscious body to the ground.
Cut its throat! roared Jason Bourne in silence.
No, countered his other self, David Webb. Blame the trainer, not the animal.
Get away from me, David!
1
The cacophony spun out of control as the crowds swelled through the amusement park
in the countryside on the outskirts of Baltimore. The summer night was hot, and nearly
everywhere faces and necks were drenched with sweat, except for those screaming as they
plunged over the crests of a roller coaster, or shrieking as they plummeted down the narrow,
twisting gullies of racing water in torpedo sleds. The garishly colored, manically blinking
lights along the midway were joined by the grating sounds of emphatic music metallically
erupting out of an excess of loudspeakers—calliopes presto, marches prestissimo. Pitchmen
yelled above the din, nasally hawking their wares in monotonic harangues while erratic
explosions in the sky lit up the darkness, sending sprays of myriad fireworks cascading over a
small adjacent black lake. Roman candles bright, arcing bursts of fire blinding.
A row of Hit-the-Gong machines drew contorted faces and thick necks bulging with
veins as men sought furiously and frequently in frustration to prove their manhood, crashing
heavy wooden mallets down on the deceitful planks that too often refused to send the little
red balls up to the bells. Across the way, others shrieked with menacing enthusiasm as they
crashed their Dodge ’Em carts into the whirling, surrounding vehicles, each collision a
triumph of superior aggression, each combatant a momentary movie star who overcomes all
odds against him. Gunfight at O.K. Corral at 9:27 in the evening in a conflict that meant
nothing.
Farther along was a minor monument to sudden death, a shooting gallery that bore little
resemblance to the innocent minimum-caliber variety found in state fairs and rural carnivals.
Instead, it was a microcosm of the most lethal equipment of modern weaponry. There were
mocked-up versions of MAC-10 and Uzi machine pistols, steel-framed missile launchers and
antitank bazookas, and, finally, a frightening replica of a flamethrower spewing out harsh,
straight beams of light through billowing clouds of dark smoke. And again there were the
perspiring faces, continuous beads of sweat rolling over maniacal eyes and down across
stretched necks—husbands, wives and children—their features grotesque, twisted out of
shape as if each were blasting away at hated enemies—wives, husbands, parents and
offspring. All were locked in a never-ending war without meaning—at 9:29 in the evening, in
an amusement park whose theme was violence. Unmitigated and unwarranted, man against
himself and all his hostilities, the worst, of course, being his fears.
A slender figure, a cane gripped in his right hand, limped past a booth where angry,
excited customers were hurling sharp-pointed darts into balloons on which were stenciled
the faces of public figures. As the rubber heads exploded the bursts gave rise to fierce
arguments for and against the sagging, pinched remnants of political icons and their dart-
wielding executioners. The limping man continued down the midway, peering ahead through
the maze of strollers as if he were looking for a specific location in a hectic, crowded,
unfamiliar part of town. He was dressed casually but neatly in a jacket and sport shirt as
though the oppressive heat had no effect on him and the jacket was somehow a
requirement. His face was the pleasant face of a middle-aged man, but worn with premature
lines and deep shadows under the eyes, all of which was the result more of the life he had led
than of the accumulated years. His name was Alexander Conklin, and he was a retired covert
operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. He was also at this moment
apprehensive and consumed with anxiety. He did not wish to be in this place at this hour,
and he could not imagine what catastrophic event had taken place that forced him to be
there.
He approached the pandemonium of the shooting gallery and suddenly gasped, stopping
all movement, his eyes locked on a tall, balding man about his own age with a seersucker
jacket slung over his shoulder. Morris Panov was walking toward the thunderous counter of
the shooting gallery from the opposite direction! Why? What had happened? Conklin
snapped his head around in every direction, his eyes darting toward faces and bodies,
instinctively knowing that he and the psychiatrist were being watched. It was too late to stop
Panov from entering the inner circle of the meeting ground but perhaps not too late to get
them both out! The retired intelligence officer reached under his jacket for the small Beretta
automatic that was his constant companion, and lurched rapidly forward, limping and flailing
his cane against the crowd, smashing kneecaps and prodding stomachs and breasts and
kidneys until the stunned, angry strollers erupted in successive cries of shock, a near riot in
the making. He then rushed forward, slamming his frail body into the bewildered doctor and
shouting into Panov’s face through the roars of the crowd, “What the hell are you doing
here?”
“The same thing I assume you are. David, or should I say Jason? That’s what the
telegram said.”
“It’s a trap!”
There was a piercing scream overriding the surrounding melee. Both Conklin and Panov
instantly looked over at the shooting gallery only yards away. An obese woman with a
pinched face had been shot in the throat. The crowd went into a frenzy. Conklin spun
around trying to see where the shot came from, but the panic was at full pitch; he saw
nothing but rushing figures. He grabbed Panov and propelled him through the screaming,
frantic bodies across the midway and again through the strolling crowds to the base of the
massive roller coaster at the end of the park, where excited customers were edging toward
the booth through the deafening noise.
“My God!” yelled Panov. “Was that meant for one of us?”
“Maybe ... maybe not,” replied the former intelligence officer breathlessly as sirens and
whistles were heard in the distance.
“You said it was a trap!”
“Because we both got a crazy telegram from David using a name he hasn’t used in five
years—Jason Bourne! And if I’m not mistaken, your message also said that under no
condition should we call his house.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s a trap. ... You move better than I do, Mo, so move those legs of yours. Get out of
here—run like a son of a bitch and find a telephone. A pay phone, nothing traceable!”
“What?”
“Call his house! Tell David to pack up Marie and the kids and get out of there!”
“What?”
“Someone found us, Doctor! Someone looking for Jason Bourne—who’s been looking
for him for years and won’t stop until he’s got him in his gun sight. ... You were in charge of
David’s messed-up head, and I pulled every rotten string in Washington to get him and
Marie out of Hong Kong alive. ... The rules were broken and we were found, Mo. You and
me! The only officially recorded connections to Jason Bourne, address and occupation
unknown.”
“Do you know what you’re saying, Alex?”
“You’re goddamned right I do. ... It’s Carlos. Carlos the Jackal. Get out of here, Doctor.
Reach your former patient and tell him to disappear!”
“Then what’s he to do?”
“I don’t have many friends, certainly no one I trust, but you do. Give him the name of
somebody—say, one of your medical buddies who gets urgent calls from his patients the
way I used to call you. Tell David to reach him or her when he’s secure. Give him a code.”
“A code?”
“Jesus, Mo, use your head! An alias, a Jones or a Smith—”
“They’re rather common names—”
“Then Schicklgruber or Moskowitz, whatever you like! Just tell him to let us know where
he is.”
“I understand.”
“Now get out of here, and don’t go home! ... Take a room at the Brookshire in Baltimore
under the name of—Morris, Phillip Morris. I’ll meet you there later.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Something I hate. ... Without my cane I’m buying a ticket for this fucking roller coaster.
Nobody’ll look for a cripple on one of these things. It scares the hell out of me, but it’s a
logical exit even if I have to stay on the damn thing all night. ... Now get out of here! Hurry!”
The station wagon raced south down a backcountry road through the hills of New
Hampshire toward the Massachusetts border, the driver a long-framed man, his sharp-
featured face intense, the muscles of his jaw pulsating, his clear light-blue eyes furious.
Beside him sat his strikingly attractive wife, the reddish glow of her auburn hair heightened
by the dashboard lights. In her arms was an infant, a baby girl of eight months; in the first
backseat was another child, a blond-haired boy of five, asleep under a blanket, a portable
guardrail protecting him from sudden stops. The father was David Webb, professor of
Oriental studies, but once part of the notorious, unspoken-of Medusa, twice the legend that
was Jason Bourne—assassin.
“We knew it had to happen,” said Marie St. Jacques Webb, Canadian by birth, economist
by profession, savior of David Webb by accident. “It was merely a question of time.”
“It’s crazy!” David whispered so as not to wake the children, his intensity in no way
diminished by his whisper. “Everything’s buried, maximum archive security and all the rest
of that crap! How did anyone find Alex and Mo?”
“We don’t know, but Alex will start looking. There’s no one better than Alex, you said
that yourself—”
“He’s marked now—he’s a dead man,” interrupted Webb grimly.
“That’s premature, David. ‘He’s the best there ever was,’ those were your words.”
“The only time he wasn’t was thirteen years ago in Paris.”
“Because you were better—”
“No! Because I didn’t know who I was, and he was operating on prior data that I didn’t
know a damn thing about. He assumed it was me out there, but I didn’t know me, so I
couldn’t act according to his script. ... He’s still the best. He saved both our lives in Hong
Kong.”
“Then you’re saying what I’m saying, aren’t you? We’re in good hands.”
“Alex’s, yes. Not Mo’s. That poor beautiful man is dead. They’ll take him and break
him!”
“He’d go to his grave before giving anyone information about us.”
“He won’t have a choice. They’ll shoot him up to the moon with Amytals and his whole
life will be on tape. Then they’ll kill him and come after me ... after us, which is why you and
the kids are heading south, way south. The Caribbean.”
“I’ll send them, darling. Not me.”
“Will you stop it! We agreed when Jamie was born. It’s why we got the place down there,
why we damn near bought your kid brother’s soul to look after it for us. ... Also, he’s done
pretty damn well. We now own half interest in a flourishing inn down a dirt road on an
island nobody ever heard of until that Canadian hustler landed therein a seaplane.”
“Johnny was always the aggressive type. Dad once said he could sell a broken-down
heifer as a prime steer and no one would check the parts.”
“The point is he loves you ... and the kids. I’m also counting on that wild man’s— Never
mind, I trust Johnny.”
“While you’re trusting so much in my younger brother, don’t trust your sense of
direction. You just passed the turn to the cabin.”
“Goddamn it!” cried Webb, braking the car and swerving around. “Tomorrow! You and
Jamie and Alison are heading out of Logan Airport. To the island!”
“We’ll discuss it, David.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.” Webb breathed deeply, steadily, imposing a strange
control. “I’ve been here before,” he said quietly.
Marie looked at her husband, his suddenly passive face outlined in the dim wash of the
dashboard lights. What she saw frightened her far more than the specter of the Jackal. She
was not looking at David Webb the soft-spoken scholar. She was staring at a man they both
thought had disappeared from their lives forever.
2
Alexander Conklin gripped his cane as he limped into the conference room at the
Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. He stood facing a long impressive table,
large enough to seat thirty people, but instead there were only three, the man at the head the
gray-haired DCI, director of Central Intelligence. Neither he nor his two highest-ranking
deputy directors appeared pleased to see Conklin. The greetings were perfunctory, and rather
than taking his obviously assigned seat next to the CIA official on the DCI’s left, Conklin
pulled out the chair at the far end of the table, sat down, and with a sharp noise slapped his
cane against the edge.
“Now that we’ve said hello, can we cut the crap, gentlemen?”
“That’s hardly a courteous or an amiable way to begin, Mr. Conklin,” observed the
director.
“Neither courtesy nor amiability is on my mind just now, sir. I just want to know why
airtight Four Zero regulations were ignored and maximum-classified information was
released that endangers a number of lives, including mine!”
“That’s outrageous, Alex!” interrupted one of the two associates..
“Totally inaccurate!” added the other. “It couldn’t happen and you know it!”
“I don’t know it and it did happen and I’ll tell you what’s outrageously accurate,” said
Conklin angrily. “A man’s out there with a wife and two children, a man this country and a
large part of the world owe more to than anyone could ever repay, and he’s running, hiding,
frightened out of his mind that he and his family are targets. We gave that man our word, all
of us, that no part of the official record would ever see the light of day until it was confirmed
beyond doubt that Rich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, was dead. ... All
right, I’ve heard the same rumors you have, probably from the same or much better sources,
that the Jackal was killed here or executed there, but no one—repeat no one—has come
forward with indisputable proof. ... Yet a part of that file was leaked, a very vital part, and it
concerns me deeply because my name is there. ... Mine and Dr. Morris Panov, the chief
psychiatrist of record. We were the only—repeat only—two individuals acknowledged to
have been close associates of the unknown man who assumed the name of Jason Bourne,
considered in more sectors than we can count to be the rival of Carlos in the killing game. ...
But that information is buried in the vaults here in Langley. How did it get out? According
to the rules, if anyone wants any part of that record—from the White House to the State
Department to the holy Joint Chiefs—he has to go through the offices of the director and
his chief analysts right here at Langley. They have to be briefed on all the details of the
request, and even if they’re satisfied as to the legitimacy, there’s a final step. Me. Before a
release is signed, I’m to be contacted, and in the event I’m not around any longer, Dr. Panov
is to be reached, either one of us legally empowered to turn the request down flat. ... That’s
the way it is, gentlemen, and no one knows the rules better than I do because I’m the one
who wrote them—again right here at Langley, because this was the place I knew best. After
twenty-eight years in this corkscrew business, it was my final contribution—with the full
authority of the president of the United States and the consent of Congress through the
select committees on intelligence in the House and the Senate.”
“That’s heavy artillery, Mr. Conklin,” commented the gray-haired director, sitting
motionless, his voice flat, neutral.
“There were heavy reasons for pulling out the cannons.”
“So I gather. One of the sixteen-inchers reached me.”
“You’re damned right he did. Now, there’s the question of accountability. I want to
know how that information surfaced and, most important, who got it.”
Both deputy directors began talking at once, as angrily as Alex, but they were stopped by
the DCI, who touched their arms, a pipe in one hand, a lighter in the other. “Slow down and
back up, Mr. Conklin,” said the director gently, lighting his pipe. “It’s obvious that you know
my two associates, but you and I never met, have we?”
“No. I resigned four and a half years ago, and you were appointed a year after that.”
“Like many others—quite justifiably, I think—did you consider me a crony
appointment?”
“You obviously were, but I had no trouble with that. You seemed qualified. As far as I
could tell, you were an apolitical Annapolis admiral who ran naval intelligence and who just
happened to work with an FMF marine colonel during the Vietnam war who became
president. Others were passed over, but that happens. No sweat.”
“Thank you. But do you have any ‘sweat’ with my two deputy directors?”
“It’s history, but I can’t say either one of them was considered the best friend an agent in
the field ever had. They were analysts, not field men.”
“Isn’t that a natural aversion, a conventional hostility?”
“Of course it is. They analyzed situations from thousands of miles away with computers
we didn’t know who programmed and with data we hadn’t passed on. You’re damned right
it’s a natural aversion. We dealt with human quotients; they didn’t. They dealt with little
green letters on a computer screen and made decisions they frequently shouldn’t have
made.”
“Because people like you had to be controlled,” interjected the deputy on the director’s
right. “How many times, even today, do men and women like you lack the full picture? The
total strategy and not just your part of it?”
“Then we should be given a fuller picture going in, or at least an overview so we can try
to figure out what makes sense and what doesn’t.”
“Where does an overview stop, Alex?” asked the deputy on the DCI’s left. “At what
point do we say, ‘We can’t reveal this . ... for everyone’s benefit’?”
“I don’t know, you’re the analysts, I’m not. On a case-by-case basis, I suppose, but
certainly with better communication than I ever got when I was in the field. ... Wait a
minute. I’m not the issue, you are.” Alex stared at the director. “Very smooth, sir, but I’m
not buying a change of subject. I’m here to find out who got what and how. If you’d rather,
I’ll take my credentials over to the White House or up to the Hill and watch a few heads roll.
I want answers. I want to know what to do!”
“I wasn’t trying to change the subject, Mr. Conklin, only to divert it momentarily to
make a point. You obviously objected to the methods and the compromises employed in the
past by my colleagues, but did either of these men ever mislead you, lie to you?”
Alex looked briefly at the two deputy directors. “Only when they had to lie to me, which
had nothing to do with field operations.”
“That’s a strange comment.”
“If they haven’t told you, they should have. ... Five years ago I was an alcoholic—I’m still
an alcoholic but I don’t drink anymore. I was riding out the time to my pension, so nobody
told me anything and they damn well shouldn’t have.”
“For your enlightenment, all my colleagues said to me was that you had been ill, that you
hadn’t been functioning at the level of your past accomplishments until the end of your
service.”
Again Conklin studied both deputies, nodding to both as he spoke. “Thanks, Casset, and
摘要：

ROBERTLUDLUMTHEUNSURPASSEDMASTEROFTHESUPERTHRILLERTHETRANSFORMATIONThestationwagonracedsouthdownabackcountryroadthroughthehillsofNewHampshiretowardtheMassachusettsborder,thedriveralong-framedman,hissharp-featuredfaceintense,hisclearlight-blueeyesfurious.“Weknewitwouldhappen,”saidMarieSt.JacquesWebb...

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