The Bourne Supremacy (16 page)

Conklin trudged across the floor, entered the old booth and closed the door. He picked up the phone. 'Yes? he said.

'Is this Treadstone?' asked an odd-sounding male voice.

'I was there. Were you?

'No, I wasn't, but I'm cleared for the file, for the whole mess. '

The voice! thought Alex. How had Webb described it? Anglicized? Mid-Atlantic, refined, certainly not ordinary. It was the same man. The gnomes had been working; they had made progress. Someone was afraid.

'Then I'm sure your memory corresponds with everything I've written down because I was there and I have written it down - written it all down. Facts, names, events, substantiations, back-ups... everything, including the story Webb told me last night. '

'Then I can assume that if anything ugly happened, your voluminous reportage will find its way to a Senate subcommittee or a pack of congressional watchdogs. Am I right?'

'I'm glad we understand each other. '

'It wouldn't do any good,' said the man condescendingly.

'If anything ugly happened, I wouldn't care, would IT

'You're about to retire. You drink a great deal. '

'I didn't always. There's usually a reason for both of those things for a man of my age and competence. Could they be admittedly tied into a certain file?'

'Forget it. Let's talk. '

'Not before you say something a little closer. Treadstone was bandied about here and there; it's not that substantive. '

'All right. Medusa. '

'Stronger,' said Alex. 'But not strong enough. '

'Very well. The creation of Jason Bourne. The Monk. '

'Warmer. '

'Missing funds - unaccounted for and never recovered -estimated to be around five million dollars. Zurich, Paris, and points west. '

'There were rumours. I need a capstone. '

'I'll give it to you. The execution of Jason Bourne. The date was May twenty-third in Tarn Quan... and the same day in New York four years later. On Seventy-first Street. Treadstone 71. '

Conklin closed his eyes and breathed deeply, feeling the hollowness in his throat. 'All right,' he said quietly. 'You're in the circle. '

'I can't give you my name. '

'What are you going to give me?

Two words: Back off. '

'You think I'll accept that?

'You have to,' said the voice, his words precise. 'Bourne is needed where he's going. '

'Bourne?' Alex stared at the phone.

'Yes, Jason Bourne. He can't be recruited in any normal way. We both know that. '

'So you steal his wife from him? Goddamned animals!'

'She won't be harmed. '

'You can't guarantee that! You don't have the controls. You've got to be using second and third parties right now, and if I know my business - and I do - they're probably paid blinds so you can't be traced; you don't even know who they are... My God, you wouldn't have called me if you did\ If you could reach them and get the verifications you want, you wouldn't be talking to me!'

The cultured voice paused. 'Then we both lied, didn't we, Mr Conklin? There was no escape on the woman's part, no call to Webb. Nothing. You went fishing, and so did I, and we both came up with nothing. '

'You're a barracuda, Mr No-name. '

'You've been where I am, Mr Conklin. Right down to David Webb... Now; what can you tell me?'

Alex again felt the hollowness in his throat, now joined with a sharp pain in his chest. 'You've lost them, haven't you?' he whispered. 'You've lost her. ''

'Forty-eight hours isn't permanent,' said the voice guardedly.

'But you've been trying like hell to make contact!' accused Conklin. 'You've called in your conduits, the people who hired the blinds, and suddenly they're not there - you can't find them. Jesus, you have lost control! It did go off the wire! Someone walked in on your strategy and you have no idea who it is. He played your scenario and took it away from you!'

'Our safeguards are spread out,' objected the man without the conviction he had displayed during the past moments. 'The best men in the field are working every district. '

'Including McAllister? In Kowloon? Hong Kong?

'You know that?'

'I know. '

'McAllister's a damn fool, but he's good at what he does. And yes, he's there. We're not panicked. We'll recover. '

'Recover what? asked Alex, filled with anger. 'The merchandise? Your strategy's aborted! Someone else is in charge. Why would he give you back the merchandise? You've killed Webb's wife, Mr No-name! What the hell did you think you Were doing?

'We just wanted to get him over there,' replied the voice defensively. 'Explain things, show him. We need him.' Then the man resumed his calm delivery. 'And for all we know, everything's still on the wire. Communications are notoriously bad in that part of the world. '

'The ex-culpa for everything in this business. '

'In most businesses, Mr Conklin... How do you read it? Now I'm the one who's asking - very sincerely. You have a certain reputation. '

'Had, No-name. '

'Reputations can't be taken away or contradicted, only added to, positively or negatively, of course. '

'You're a font of unwarranted information, you know that. '

'I'm also right. It's said you were one of the best. How do you read it?

Alex shook his head in the booth; the air was close, the

noise outside his 'sterile' phone growing louder in the seedy bar on 9th Street. 'What I said before. Someone found out what you people were planning - mounting for Webb - and decided to take over. '

'For God's sake, why?

'Because whoever it is wants Jason Bourne more than you do,' Alex said and hung up.

It was 6: 28 when Conklin walked into the lounge at Dulles Airport. He had waited in a taxi down the street from Webb's hotel and had followed David, giving the driver precise instructions. He had been right, but there was no point in burdening Webb with the knowledge. Two grey Plymouths had picked up David's cab and alternately exchanged positions during the surveillance. So be it. One Alexander Conklin might be hanged, and then again, he might not. People at State were behaving stupidly, he had thought as he wrote down the licence numbers. He spotted Webb in a darkened back booth.

'It is you, isn't it? said Alex, dragging his dead foot into the banquette. 'Do blonds really have more fun?1

'It worked in Paris. What did you find?'

'I found slugs under rocks who can't find their way up out of the ground. But then they wouldn't know what to do with the sunlight, would they?

'Sunlight's illuminating; you're not. Cut the crap, Alex. I have to get to the gate in a few minutes.' '

'In short words, they worked out a strategy to get you over to Kowloon. It was based on a previous experience-'

'You can skip that,' said David. 'Why?'

'The man said they needed you. Not you, Webb; they needed Bourne. '

'Because they say Bourne's already there. I told you what McAllister said. Did he go into it?'

'No, he wasn't going to give me that much, but maybe I can use it to press them. However, he told me something else, David, and you have to know it. They can't find their conduits, so they don't know who the blinds are or what's happening. They think it's temporary, but they've lost Marie.

Somebody else wants you out there and he's taken over. '

Webb brought his hand to his forehead, his eyes closed, and suddenly, in silence, the tears fell down his cheeks. 'I'm back, Alex. Back into so much I can't remember. I love her so, I need her so!'

'Cut it out!' ordered Conklin. 'You made it clear to me last night that I still had a mind, if not much of a body. You have both. Make them sweat?

'How?'

'Be what they want you to be - be the chameleon! Be Jason Bourne. '

'It's been so long... '

'You can still do it. Play the scenario they've given you. '

'I don't have any choice, do IT

Over the loudspeakers came the last call for Flight 26 to Hong Kong.

The grey-haired Havilland replaced the phone in its cradle, leaned back in his chair and looked across the room at McAllister. The undersecretary of state was standing next to a huge revolving globe of the world that was perched on an ornamental tripod in front of a bookcase. His index finger was on the southernmost part of China, but his eyes were on the Ambassador.

'It's done,' said the diplomat. 'He's on the plane to Kowloon. '

'It's God-awful,' replied McAllister. 'I'm sure it appears that way to you, but before you render judgement, weigh the advantages. We're free now. We are no longer responsible for the events that take place. They are being manipulated by an unknown party,' 'Which is us! I repeat, it's God-awful!' 'Has your God considered the consequences if we fail?' 'We're given free will. Only our ethics restrict us.' 'A banality, Mr Undersecretary. There's the greater good.' There's also a human being, a man we're manipulating, driving him back into his nightmares. Do we have that right? 'We have no choice. He can do what no one else can do - if we give him a reason. '

McAllister spun the globe; it whirled around as he walked towards the desk. 'Perhaps I shouldn't say it, but I will,' he said, standing in front of Raymond Havilland. 'I think you're the most immoral man I've ever met. '

'Appearances, Mr Undersecretary. I have one saving grace which supersedes all the sins I have committed. I will go to any lengths, indulge in all venalities, to stop this planet from blowing itself up. And that includes the life of one David Webb - known where I want him as Jason Bourne. '

8

The mists rose like layers of diaphanous scarves above Victoria Harbour as the huge jet circled for the final approach into Kai Tak Airport. The early morning haze was dense, the promise of a humid day in the colony. Below on the water the junks and sampans bobbed beside the outlying freighters, the squat barges, the chugging multi-tiered ferries and the occasional marine patrols that swept through the harbour. As the plane descended into the Kowloon airport, the serried ranks of skyscrapers on the island of Hong Kong took on the appearance of alabaster giants, reaching up through the mists and reflecting the first penetrating light of the morning sun.

Webb studied the scene below, as a man under a horrible strain and as one consumed by an eerily detached curiosity. Down there somewhere in the seething, vastly overpopulated territory was Marie - that was uppermost in his thoughts and the most agonizing to think about. Yet another part of him was like a scientist filled with a cold anxiety as he peered into the clouded lens of a microscope trying to discern what his eye and his mind could understand. The familiar and the unfamiliar were joined, and the result was bewilderment and fear. During Panov's sessions in Virginia, David had read and re-read hundreds of travel folders and illustrated brochures describing all the places the mythical Jason Bourne was known to have been; it was a continuous, often

painful exercise in self-probing. Fragments would come to him in flashes of recognition; many were all too brief and confusing, others prolonged, his sudden memories astonishingly accurate, the descriptions his own, not those of travel agents' manuals. As he looked down now, he saw much that he knew he knew but could not specifically remember. So he looked away and concentrated on the day ahead.

He had wired the Regent Hotel in Kowloon from Dulles Airport requesting a room for a week in the name of one James Howard Cruett, the identity on Cactus's refined blue-eyed passport. He had added: 'I believe arrangements were made for our firm with respect to Suite Six-nine-zero, if it is available. Arrival day is firm, flight is not. '

The suite would be available. What he had to find out was who had made it available. It was the first step towards Marie. And either before or after or during the process there were items to purchase - some would be simple to buy, others not; but even finding the more inaccessible would not be impossible. This was Hong Kong, the colony of survival and it had the tools of survival. It was also the one civilized place on earth where religions flourished but the only commonly acknowledged god, of believers and non-believers alike, was money. As Marie had put it: 'It has no other reason for being. '

The tepid morning reeked with the odors of a crowded, rushing humanity, the smells strangely not unpleasant. Kerbsides were being hosed ferociously, steam rising from pavements drying in the sun, and the fragrance of herbs boiling in oil wafted through the narrow streets from carts and concessions screeching for attention. The noises accumulated; they became a series of constant crescendos demanding acceptance and a sale or at least a negotiation. Hong Kong was the essence of survival; one worked furiously or one did not survive. Adam Smith was outdone and outdated; he could never have conceived of such a world. It mocked the disciplines he projected for a free economy; it was madness. It was Hong Kong.

David held up his hand for a taxi, knowing that he had done so before, knowing the exit doors he had headed for after the prolonged drudgery of customs, knowing he knew

the streets through which the driver took him - not really remembering, but somehow knowing. It was both a comfort and profoundly terrifying. He knew and he did not know. He was a marionette being manipulated on the stage of his own sideshow, and he did not know who was the puppet or who the puppeteer.

'It was an error,' said David to the clerk behind the oval marble counter in the centre of the Regent's lobby. 'I don't want a suite. I'd prefer something smaller, a single or a double room will do. '

'But the arrangements have been made, Mr Cruett,' replied the bewildered clerk, using the name on Webb's false passport.

'Who made them?'

The youthful Oriental peered down at a signature on the computer print-out reservation. 'It was authorized by the assistant manager, Mr Liang. '

'Then in courtesy I should speak with Mr Liang, shouldn't

I?'

'I'm afraid it will be necessary. I'm not sure there's anything else available. '

'I understand. I'll find another hotel. '

'You are considered a most important guest, sir. I will go back and speak with Mr Liang. '