To Carlos?'
'No. He'll send a relay.'
Thank God for that. I'm not sure I could go through with it, knowing it was him.'
The message will reach him.'
'What is it?"
'I'll write it out for you; you can give it to the man he sends. It's got to be exact, both in what it says and what it doesn't say.' Bourne looked over at the dead woman, at the swelling in her throat 'Do you have any alcohol?'
'A drink?'
'No. Rubbing alcohol. Perfume will do.'
'I'm sure there's rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet’
'Would you mind getting it for me? Also a towel, please."
'What are you going to do?'
'Put my hands where your hands were. Just in case, although I don't think anyone will question you. While I'm doing that, call whoever you have to call to get me out The timing's important I have to be on my way before you call Carlos's relay, long before you call the police. They'd have the airports watched.'
'I can delay until daybreak, I imagine. An old man's state of shock, as you put it not much longer than that. Where will you go?'
'New York. Can you do it? I have a passport identifying me as a man named George Washburn. It's a good job.'
'Making mine far easier. You'll have diplomatic status. Pre-clearance on both sides of the Atlantic.'
'As an Englishman? The passport's British.'
'On a N. A. T. O. accommodation. Brevet channels; you are part of an Anglo-American team engaged in military negotiations. We favour your swift return to the United States for further instructions. It's not unusual, and sufficient to get you rapidly past both immigration points.'
'Good. I've checked the schedules. There's a seven a. m. flight, Air France to Kennedy.'
'You'll be on it.' The old man paused, he had not finished. He took a step towards Jason. 'Why New York? What makes you so certain Carlos will follow you to New York?"
Two questions with different answers," said Bourne. 'I have to deliver him where he marked me for killing four men and a woman I didn't know... one of those men very close to me, very much a part of me, I think.'
'I don't understand you.'
'I'm not sure I do, either. There's no time. It'll all be in what I write down for you on the plane. I have to prove Carlos knew. A building in New York. Where it all took place; they've got to understand. He knew about it Trust me.'
'I do. The second question, then. Why will he come after you?'
Jason looked again at the dead woman on the bed. 'Instinct, maybe. I've killed the one person on earth he cares about. If she were someone else and Carlos killed her, I'd follow him across the world until I found him.'
'He may be more practical. I think that was your point to me.'
"There's something else,' replied Jason, taking his eyes away from Angelique Villiers. 'He has nothing to lose, everything to gain. No one knows what he looks like, but he knows me by sight. Still, he doesn't know my state of mind. He's cut me off, isolated me, turned me into someone I was never meant to be. Maybe he was too successful; maybe I'm mad, insane. God knows killing her was insane. My threats are irrational. How much more irrational am I? An irrational man, an insane man, is a panicked man. He can be taken out.'
'Is your threat irrational? Can you be taken out?'
'I'm not sure. I only know I don't have a choice.'
He did not. At the end it was as the beginning. Get Carlos. Trap Carlos. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain. The man and the myth were finally one, images and reality fused. There was no other way.
Ten minutes had passed since he had called Marie, lied to Marie, and heard the quiet acceptance in her voice, knowing it meant she needed time to think. She had not believed him, but she believed in him; she, too, had no choice. And he could not ease her pain; there had been no time, there was no time. Everything was in motion now, Villiers downstairs calling an emergency number at France's Brevet Militaire, arranging for a man with a false passport to fly out of Paris with diplomatic status. In less than three hours a man would be over the Atlantic approaching the anniversary of his own execution. It was the key; it was the trap. It was the last irrational act, insanity the order of that date.
Bourne stood by the desk; he put down the pen and studied the words he had written on a dead woman's stationery. They were the words a broken, bewildered old man was to repeat over the telephone to an unknown relay who would demand the paper and give it to Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez.
I killed your bitch whore and I'll come back for you. There are seventy-one streets in the jungle. A jungle as dense as Tarn Quan, but there was a path you missed, a vault in the cellars you did not know about – just as you never knew about me on the day of my execution ten years ago. One other man knew and you killed him. It doesn't matter. In that vault are documents that will set me free. Did you think I'd become Cain without that final protection? Washington won't dare touch met It seems right that on the date of Bourne's death, Cain picks up the papers that guarantee him a very long life. You marked Cain. Now I mark you. I'll come back and you can join the whore.
Delta
Jason dropped the note on the desk and walked over to the dead woman. The alcohol was dry, the swollen throat prepared. He bent down and spread his fingers, placing his hands where another's had been placed. Madness.
Early light broke over the spires of the church in Levallois-Perret in north-west Paris, the March morning cold, the night rain replaced by mist. A few old women, returning to their flats from all-night cleaning shifts in the city proper, trudged in and out of the bronze doors, holding railings and prayer books, devotions about to begin or finished with, precious sleep to follow before the drudgery of surviving the daylight hours. Along with the old women were shabbily dressed men most also old, others pathetically young – holding overcoats together, seeking the warmth of the church, these clutching bottles in their pockets, precious oblivion extended, another day to survive.
One old man, however, did not float with the trance-like movements of the others. He was an old man in a hurry. There was reluctance – even fear, perhaps – in his lined, sallow face, but no hesitation in his progress up the steps and through the doors, past the flickering candles and down the far left aisle of the church. It was an odd hour for a worshipper to seek confession; nevertheless the old beggar went directly to the first booth, parted the curtain and slipped inside.
'Angelus Domini..."
'Did you bring it?' the whisper demanded, the priestly silhouette behind the curtain trembling with rage.
'Yes. He thrust it in my hand like a man in a stupor, weeping, telling me to get out He's burned Cain's note to him and says he'll deny everything if a single word is ever mentioned.' The old man shoved the pages of writing paper under the curtain.
'He used her stationery...' The assassin's whisper broke, a silhouetted hand brought to a silhouetted head, a muted cry of anguish now heard behind the curtain.
'I urge you to remember, Carlos,' pleaded the beggar "The messenger is not responsible for the news he bears. I could have refused to hear it, refused to bring it to you.' 'How? Why.
'Lavier. He followed her to Pare Monceau, then both of them to the church. I saw him in Neuilly-sur-Seine when I was your point. I told you that.'
'I know. But why! He could have used her in a hundred different ways! Against me! Why this?'
'It's in his note. He's gone mad. He was pushed too far, Carlos. It happens; I've seen it happen. A man on a double entry, his source-controls taken out; he has no one to confirm his initial assignment. Both sides want his corpse. He's stretched to the point where he may not even know who he is any longer.'
'He knows.' The whisper was drawn out in quiet fury. 'By signing the name Delta, he's telling me he knows. We both know where it comes from, where he comes from!'
The beggar paused. 'If that's true, then he's still dangerous to you. He's right. Washington won't touch him. It may not want to acknowledge him, but it will call off its hangmen. It may even be forced to grant him a privilege or two in return for his silence.'
'The papers he spoke of?' asked the assassin. 'Yes. In the old days – in Berlin, Prague, Vienna – they were called "final payments". Bourne uses "final protection", a minor variance. They were papers drawn up between a primary source-control and the infiltrator, to be used in the event the strategy collapsed, the primary killed, no other avenues open to the agent. It was not something you would have studied in Novgorod; the Soviets had no such accommodations. Soviet defectors, however, insisted upon them.' 'They were incriminating, then?'
They had to be to some degree. Generally in the area of who was manipulated. Embarrassment is always to be avoided; careers are destroyed by embarrassment. But then, I don't have to tell you that. You've used the technique brilliantly.'
' "Seventy-one streets in the jungle..."' said Carlos, reading from the paper in his hand, an ice-like calm imposed on his whisper.' "A jungle as dense as Tarn Quan."... This time the execution will take place as scheduled. Jason Bourne will not leave this Tarn Quan alive. By any other name, Cain will be dead, and Delta will die for what he's done. Angelique! You have my word!' The incantation stopped, the assassin's mind racing to the practical. 'Did Villiers have any idea when Bourne left his house?'
'He didn't know. I told you, he was barely lucid, in as much a state of shock as with his telephone call.'
'It doesn't matter. The first flights to the United States began within the past hour. He'll be on one. I'll be in New York with him, and I won't miss this time... My knife will be waiting, its blade a razor. I'll peel his face away; the Americans will have their Cain without a face! They can give this Bourne, this Delta, whatever name they care to.'
The blue-striped telephone rang on Alexander Conklin's desk. Its bell was quiet, the understated sound lending an eerie emphasis. The blue-striped telephone was Conklin's direct line to the computer rooms and data banks. There was no one in the office to take the call.
The Central Intelligence executive suddenly rushed limping through the door, unused to the cane provided him by G-Two, SHAPE, Brussels last night, when he had commandeered a military transport to Andrel Field, Virginia. He threw the cane angrily across the room as he lurched for the phone. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, his breath short; the man responsible for the dissolution of Treadstone was exhausted. He had been in scrambler-communication with a dozen branches of clandestine operations – in Washington and overseas – trying to undo the insanity of the past twenty-four hours. He had spread every scrap of information he could cull from the files to every post in Europe, placed agents in the Paris-London-Amsterdam axis on alert. Bourne was
alive and dangerous; he had tried to kill his D. C. control; he could be anywhere within ten hours of Paris. All airports and train stations were to be covered, all underground networks activated. Find him! Kill him!
'Yes?' Conklin braced himself against the desk and picked up the phone.
'This is Computer Dock Twelve," said the male voice efficiently. 'We may have something. At least, State doesn't have any listing on it.'
'What, for Christ's sake?'
The name you gave us four hours ago. Washburn.’
'What about it?'
'A George P. Washburn was pre-cleared out of Paris and into New York on an Air France flight this morning. Wash-burn's a fairly common name; he could be just a businessman with connections, but it was flagged on the readout, and since the status was N. A. T. O.-diplomatic, we checked with State. They never heard of him. There's no one named Wash-burn involved with any ongoing N. A. T. O. negotiations with the French government from any member nation."
Then how the hell was he pre-cleared? Who gave him the diplomatic?"
'We checked back through Paris; it wasn't easy. Apparently it was an accommodation of the Brevet Militaire. They're a quiet bunch.'
"The Brevet? Where do they get off clearing our people?"
'It doesn't have to be "our" people or "their" people; it can be anybody. Just a courtesy from the host country and that was a French carrier. It's one way to get a decent seat on an overbooked plane. Incidentally, Washburn's passport wasn't even U. S. It was British."
There's a doctor, an Englishman named Washburn... It was him! It was Delta, and France's Brevet had co-operated with him! But why New York? What was in New York for him! And who placed so high in Paris would accommodate Delta? What had he told them? Oh, Christ! How much had he told them?
'When did the flight get in?' asked Conklin.
Ten thirty-seven this morning. A little over an hour ago.'
'All right,' said the man whose foot had been blown of in Medusa, as he slid painfully around the desk into his seat. 'You've delivered, and now I want this scratched from the reels. Delete it. Everything you gave me. Is that clear?"
'Understood, sir. Deleted, sir."
Conklin hung up. New York. New York? Not Washington but New York! There was nothing in New York any longer. Delta knew that. If he was after someone in Treadstone -if he was after him – he would have taken a flight directly to Dulles. What was in New York?
And why had Delta deliberately used the name Washburn? It was the same as telegraphing a strategy; he knew the name would be picked up sooner or later... Later... After he was inside the gates! Delta was telling whatever was left of Tread-stone that he was dealing from strength. He was in a position to expose not only the Treadstone operation, but could go God knows how much further. Whole networks he had used as Cain, listening posts and ersatz consulates that were no more than electronic espionage stations... even the bloody spectre of Medusa. His connection inside the Brevet was his proof to Treadstone how high he had travelled. His signal that if he could reach within so rarefied a group of strategists, nothing could stop him. Goddamn it, stop him from what! What was the point? He had the millions; he could have faded.'
Conklin shook his head, remembering. There had been a time when he would have let Delta fade, he had told him so twelve hours ago in a cemetery outside of Paris. A man could take only so much, and no one knew that better than Alexander Conklin, once among the finest covert field officers in the intelligence community. Only so much; the sanctimonious bromides about still being alive grew stale and bitter with time. It depended on what you were before, what you became with your deformity. Only so much... But Delta did not fade! He came back with insane statements, insane demands... crazy tactics no experienced intelligence officer would even contemplate. For no matter how much explosive information he possessed, no matter how high he penetrated, no sane man walked back into a minefield surrounded by his enemies. And all the blackmail in the world could not bring you back...
No sane man. No sane man. Conklin sat slowly forward in his chair.
I'm not Cain. He never was. I never was! I wasn't in New York...It was Carlos! Not me, Carlos! If what you're saying took place on Seventy-first Street, it was him! He knows!
But Delta had been at the brownstone on Seventy-first Street. Prints – third and index fingers, right hand. And the method of transport was now explained. Air France, Brevet cover... Fact: Carlos could not have known.
Things come to me... faces, streets, buildings. Images I can't place...I know a thousand facts about Carlos, but I don't know why!
Conklin closed his eyes. There was a phrase, a simple code phrase that had been used at the beginning of Treadstone. What was it? It came from Medusa... Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain. That was it. Cain for Carlos. Delta-Bourne became the Cain that was the decoy for Carlos.
Conklin opened his eyes. Jason Bourne was to replace Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez. That was the entire strategy of Tread-stone Seventy-one. It was the keystone to the whole structure of deception, the parallax that would draw Carlos out of position into their sights.
Bourne. Jason Bourne. The totally unknown map, a name buried for a decade, a piece of human debris left in a jungle ten years ago. But he had existed; that, too, was part of the strategy.
Conklin separated the folders on his desk until he found the one he was looking for. It had no title, only an initial and two numbers followed by a black X, signifying that it was the only folder containing the origins of Tread-stone.
T-7 X The birth of Treadstone 71.
He opened it, almost afraid to see what he knew was there.
Date of execution. Tarn Quan Sector. 25 March...
Conklin's eyes moved to the calendar on his desk.
24 March.
'Oh, my God,' he whispered, reaching for the telephone.
Dr Morris Panov walked through the double doors of the psychiatric ward on the third floor of Bethesda's Naval Annex and approached the nurses' counter. He smiled at the uniformed aide shuffling index cards under the stern gaze of the Head Boor Nurse standing beside her. Apparently the young trainee had misplaced a patient's file – if not a patient – and her superior was not going to let it happen again.
'Don't let Annie's whip fool you,' said Panov to the flustered girl 'Underneath those cold, inhuman eyes is a heart of sheer granite. Actually, she escaped from the fifth floor two weeks ago but we're all afraid to tell anybody.'
The aide giggled: the nurse shook her head in exasperation. The phone rang on the desk behind the counter.
'Will you get that, please, dear,' said Annie to the young girl. The aide nodded and retreated to the desk. The nurse turned to Panov. 'Dr. Mo, how am I ever going to get anything through their heads with you around?'
'With love, dear Annie. With love. But don't lose your bicycle chains.'
'You're incorrigible. Tell me, how's your patient in Five-A? I know you're worried about him.'
'I'm still worried.'
'I hear you stayed up all night.'
There was a three a. m. movie on television I wanted to see."
'Don't do it, Mo,' said the matronly nurse. 'You're too young to end up in there.'
'And maybe too old to avoid it, Annie. But thanks...'
Suddenly Panov and the nurse were aware that he was being paged, the wide-eyed trainee at the desk speaking into the microphone.
'Dr Panov, please. Telephone for...'
'I'm Dr Panov,' said the psychiatrist in a sotto voce whisper to the girl. 'We don't want anyone to know. Annie Donovan here's really my mother from Poland. Who is it?'
The trainee stared at Panov's I.D. card on his white coat; she blinked and replied. 'A Mr. Alexander Conklin, sir.'
'Oh?' Panov was startled. Alex Conklin had been a patient on and off for five years, until they had both agreed he'd adjusted as well as he was ever going to adjust – which was not a hell of a lot There were so many, and so little they could do for them. Whatever Conklin wanted had to be relatively serious for him to call Bethesda rather than the office. 'Where can I take this, Annie?'
'Room One,' said the nurse, pointing across the hall. 'It's empty. I'll have the call transferred.'
Panov walked towards the door, an uneasy feeling spreading through him.
'I need some very fast answers, Mo,' said Conklin, his voice strained.
'I'm not very good at fast answers, Alex. Why not come in and see me this afternoon?' 'It's not me. It's someone else. Possibly." 'No games, please. I thought we'd gone beyond that.' 'No games. This is a Four-Zero emergency, and I need help.'
'Four-Zero? Call in one of your staff men. I've never requested that kind of clearance.' 'I can't. That's how tight it is.' 'Then you'd better whisper to God."
'Mo, please I only have to confirm possibilities, the rest I can put together myself. And I don't have five seconds to waste. A man may be running around ready to blow away ghosts, anyone he thinks is a ghost. He's already killed very real, very important people and I'm not sure he knows it Help me, help him]' 'If I can. Go ahead.'
'A man is placed in a highly volatile, maximum stress situation for a long period of time, the entire period in deep cover. The cover itself is a decoy – very visible, very negative, constant pressure applied to maintain that visibility. The purpose is to draw out a target similar to the decoy by persuading the target that the decoy's a threat, forcing the target into the open... Are you with me so far?'
'So far,' said Panov. 'You say there's been constant pressure on the decoy to maintain a negative, highly visible profile. What's his environment been?' 'As brutal as you can imagine.' 'For how long a period of time?' Three years.'
'Good God,' said the psychiatrist. 'No breaks?' 'None at all. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Three years. Someone not himself.'
'When will you damn fools learn? Even prisoners in the worst camps could be themselves, talk to others who were themselves.' Panov stopped, catching his own words, and Conklin's meaning. "That's your point, isn't it?'
'I'm not sure,' answered the intelligence officer. 'It's hazy, confusing, even contradictory. What I want to ask is this. Could such a man under these circumstances begin to... believe he's the decoy, assume the characteristics, absorb the mocked dossier to the point where he believes it's him?'
"The answer to that's so obvious I'm surprised you ask it. Of course he could. Probably would. It's an unendurably prolonged performance that can't be sustained unless the belief becomes a part of his everyday reality. The actor never off the stage in a play that never ends. Day after day, night after night.' The doctor stopped again, then continued carefully. 'But that's not really your question, is it?'
'No,' replied Conklin. 'I go one step further. Beyond the decoy. I have to; it's the only thing that makes sense.'
'Wait a minute,' interrupted Panov sharply. 'You'd better stop there, because I'm not confirming any blind diagnosis. Not for what you're leading up to. No way, Charlie. That's giving you a licence I won't be responsible for – with or without a consultation fee.'
'"No way... Charlie." Why did you say that, Mo?'
'What do you mean, why did I say it? It's a phrase. I hear it all the time. Kids in dirty blue jeans on the corner; hookers in my favourite saloons.'
'How do you know what I'm leading up to?' said the C.I.A. man.
'Because I had to read the books and you're not very subtle. You're about to describe a classic case of paranoid schizophrenia with multiple personalities. It's not just your man assuming the role of the decoy, but the decoy himself transferring his identity to the one he's after. The target. That's what you're driving at, Alex. You're telling me your man is three people: himself, decoy and target And I repeat No way, Charlie. I'm not confirming anything remotely like that without an extensive examination. That's giving you rights you can't have: three reasons for dispatch. No way!'
ATM not asking you to confirm anything! I just want to know if it's possible. For Christ's sake, Mo, there's a legally experienced man running around with a gun, killing people he claims he didn't know, but whom he worked with for three years! He denies being at a specific place at a specific time when his own fingerprints prove he was there! He says images come to him – faces he can't place, names he's heard but doesn't know from where. He claims he was never the decoy, it was never him! But it was! It is! Is it possible! That's all I want to know! Could the stress and time and the everyday pressures break him like this? Into three?'
Panov held his breath for a moment. 'It's possible,' he said softly. 'If your facts are accurate, it's possible. That's all I'll say, because there are too many other possibilities.'
Thank you.' Conklin paused. 'A last question. Say there was a date – a month and a day – that was significant to the mocked dossier, the decoy's dossier.’
'You'd have to be more specific.'
'I will. It was the date when the man whose identity was taken for decoy was killed.'
'Then obviously not part of the working dossier, but known to your man. Am I following you?'
'Yes, he knew it. Let's say he was there. Would he remember it?'
'Not as the decoy."
'But as one of the other two?'
'Assuming the target was also aware of it, or that he'd communicated it through his transference, yes.'
'There's also a place where the strategy was conceived, where the decoy was created. If our man was in the vicinity of that place and the date of death was close at hand, would he be drawn to it? Would it surface and become important to him?'
'If it was associated with the original place of death because the decoy was born there, it's possible. It would depend on who he was at the moment.
'Suppose he was the target?’
'And knew the location?'
'Yes because another part of him had to."
'Then he'd be drawn to it. It would be a subconscious compulsion.'
'Why?'
'To kill the decoy. He'd kill everything in sight, but the main objective would be the decoy. Himself.'
Alexander Conklin replaced the phone, his non-existent foot throbbing, his thoughts so convoluted he had to close his eyes again to find a consistent strain. He had been wrong in Paris... in a cemetery outside Paris. He had wanted to kill a man for the wrong reasons, the right ones beyond his comprehension. He was dealing with a madman. Someone whose afflictions were not explained in twenty years of training, but were understandable if one thought about the pains and the losses, the unending waves of violence... all ending in futility. No one knew anything really. Nothing made sense. A Carlos was trapped, killed today, and another would take his place. Why did we do it... David?
David. I say your name finally. We were friends once. David... Delta. I knew your wife and your children. We drank together and had a few dinners together in far-off posts in Asia. You were the best foreign service officer in the Orient and everyone knew it. You were going to be the key to the new policy, the one that was around the corner. And then it happened. Death from the skies in the Mekong... You turned, David. We all lost, but only one of us became Delta. In Medusa. I did not know you that well – drinks and a dinner or two do not a close companion make – but few of us become animals. You did. Delta.
And now you must die. Nobody can afford you any longer. None of us.
'Leave us, please,' said General Villiers to his aide as he sat down opposite Marie St Jacques in the Montmartre cafe". The aide nodded and walked to a table ten feet from the booth; he would leave but he was still on guard. The exhausted old soldier looked at Marie. 'Why did you insist on my coming here? He wanted you out of Paris. I gave him my word.'
'Out of Paris, out of the race,' said Marie, touched by the sight of the old man's haggard face. 'I'm sorry. I don't want to be another burden for you. I heard the reports on the radio.'
'Insanity,' said Villiers, picking up the brandy his aide had ordered for him. Three hours with the police living a terrible lie, condemning a man for a crime that was mine alone.'
The description was accurate, uncannily accurate. No one could miss him.'
'He gave it to me himself. He sat in front of my wife's mirror and told me what to say, looking at his own face in the strangest manner. He saw it was the only way. Carlos could only be convinced by my going to the police, creating a manhunt. He was right, of course.'
'He was right,' agreed Marie, 'but he's not in Paris, or Brussels, or Amsterdam.' 'I beg your pardon?' 'I want you to tell me where he's gone.' 'He told you himself.' 'He lied to me.' 'How can you be certain?'
'Because I know when he tells me the truth. You see, we both listen for it.'
'You both...? I'm afraid I don't understand.' 'I didn't think you would; I was sure he hadn't told you. When he lied to me on the phone, saying the things he said so hesitantly, knowing I knew they were lies, I couldn't understand. I didn't piece it together until I heard the radio reports. Yours and another. That description... so complete, so total, even to the scar on his left temple. Then I knew. He wasn't planning to stay in Paris, or within five hundred miles of Paris. He was going far away – where that description wouldn't mean very much – where Carlos could be led, delivered to the people Jason had his agreement with. Am I right?'
Villiers put down the glass. 'I've given my word. You're to be taken to safety in the country. I don't understand the things you're saying.'
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