The Bourne Supremacy (8 page)

'I'm sorry-'

'And speaking of missionary work, I am a Christian. 1 mean I believe - nothing so chic as being zealous, or born again, or teaching Sunday school, or prostrating myself in the aisle, but I do believe. My wife and I go to the Episcopal church at least twice a month, my two sons are acolytes. I'm generous because I want to be. Can you understand that?'

'Sure. I don't have quite those feelings, but I understand. '

'But I just walked out of that man's house?

'Hey, easy. What's the matter?"

McAllister stared straight ahead, the oncoming headlights creating shadows rushing across his face. 'May God have mercy on my soul,' he whispered.

4

Screams suddenly filled the darkness, an approaching, growing cacophony of roaring voices. Then surging bodies were all around them, racing ahead, shouting, faces contorted in frenzy. Webb fell to his knees, covering his face and neck with both hands as best he could, swinging his shoulders violently back and forth, creating a shifting target within the circle of attack. His dark clothes were a plus in the shadows but would be no help if an indiscriminate burst of gunfire erupted, taking at least one of the guards with him. Yet bullets were not always a killer's choice. There were darts - lethal missiles of poison delivered by air-compressed weapons, puncturing exposed flesh, bringing death in a matter of minutes. Or seconds.

A hand gripped his shoulder! He spun around, arcing his arm up, dislodging the hand as he side stepped to his left, crouching like an animal.

'You okay, Professor?' asked the guard on his right, grinning in the wash of his flashlight.

'What? What happened?

'Isn't it great!' cried the guard on his left, approaching, as David got to his feet.

'What?'

'Kids with that kind of spirit. It really makes you feel good to see it!'

It was over. The campus quad was silent again, and in the distance between the stone buildings that fronted the playing fields and the college stadium, the pulsing flames of a bonfire could be seen through the empty bleachers. A football rally was reaching its climax, and his guards were laughing.

'How about you, Professor?' continued the man on his left. 'Do you feel better about things now, what with us here and all?'

It was over. The self-inflicted madness was over. Or was it? Why was his chest pounding so? Why was he so bewildered, so frightened? Something was wrong.

'Why does this whole parade bother me?' said David over morning coffee in the breakfast alcove of their old rented Victorian house.

'You miss your walks on the beach,' said Marie, ladling her husband's single poached egg over the single slice of toast. 'Eat that before you have a cigarette. '

'No, really. It bothers me. For the past week I've been a duck in a superficially protected gallery. It occurred to me yesterday afternoon. '

'What do you mean?' Marie poured out the water and placed the pan in the kitchen sink, her eyes on Webb. 'Six men are around you, four on your "flanks", as you said, and two peering into everything in front and behind you. '

'A parade. '

'Why do you call it that?1

'I don't know. Everyone in his place, marching to a drumbeat. I don't know. '

'But you feel something?'

'I guess so. '

'Tell me. Those feelings of yours once saved my life on the Guisan Quai in Zurich. I'd like to hear it - well, maybe I wouldn't, but I damn well better. '

Webb broke the yolk of his egg on the toast. 'Do you know how easy it would be for someone - someone who looked young enough to be a student - to walk by me on a path and shoot an air dart into me? He could cover the sound with a cough, or a laugh, and I'd have a hundred cc's of strychnine in my blood. '

'You know far more about that sort of thing than I do. '

'Of course. Because that's the way I'd do it. '

'No. That's the way Jason Bourne might do it. Not you. '

'All right, I'm projecting. It doesn't invalidate the thought. '

'What happened yesterday afternoon?'

Webb toyed with the egg and toast on his plate. 'The seminar ran late as usual. It was getting dark, and my guards fell in and we walked across the quad towards the parking lot. There was a football rally - our insignificant team against another insignificant team - but very large for us. The crowd passed the four of us, kids racing to a bonfire behind the bleachers, screaming and shouting and singing fight songs, working themselves up. And I thought to myself, this is //. This is when it's going to happen if it is going to happen. Believe me, for those few moments I was Bourne. I crouched and side-stepped and watched everyone I could see - I was close to panic. '

'And?' said Marie, disturbed by her husband's abrupt silence.

'My so-called guards were looking around and laughing, the two in front having a ball, enjoying the whole thing. '

'That disturbed you?'

'Instinctively. I was a vulnerable target in the centre of an excited crowd. My nerves told me that; my mind didn't have to. '

'Who's talking now?'

'I'm not sure. I just know that during those few moments nothing made sense to me. Then, only seconds later, as if to pinpoint the feelings I hadn't verbalized, the man behind me on my left came up and said something like, "Isn't it great - or terrific - to see kids with that kind of spirit? Makes you feel good, doesn't it?" I mumbled something inane, and then he said - and these are his exact words - "How about you, professor? Do you feel better about things now, what with us here and all?" David looked up at his wife. 'Did 7 feel better... HOW? Me. '

'He knew what their job was,' interrupted Marie. 'To protect you. I'm sure he meant did you feel safer. '

'Did he? Do they? That crowd of screaming kids, the dim light, the shadowy bodies, obscure faces... and he's joining in and laughing - they're all laughing. Are they really here to protect me?'

'What else?'

'I don't know. Maybe I've simply been where they haven't. Maybe I'm just thinking too much, thinking about McAllister and those eyes of his. Except for the blinking they belonged to a dead fish. You could read into them anything you wanted to - depending upon how you felt. '

'What he told you was a shock,' said Marie, leaning against the sink, her arms folded across her breasts, watching her husband closely. 'It had to have had a terrible effect on you. It certainly did on me. '

'That's probably it,' agreed Webb, nodding. 'It's ironic, but as much as there are so many things I want to remember, there's an awful lot I'd like to forget. '

'Why don't you call McAllister and tell him what you feel, what you think? You've got a direct line to him, both at his office and his home. Mo Panov would tell you to do that. '

'Yes, Mo would.' David ate his egg half-heartedly. '"If there's a way to get rid of a specific anxiety, do it as fast as you can, " that's what he'd say. '

"Then do it. '

Webb smiled, about as enthusiastically as he ate his egg. 'Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I'd rather not announce a latent, or passive, or recurrent paranoia, or whatever the hell they call it. Mo would fly up here and beat my brains out. '

'If he doesn't, I might. '

'Ni shi nuhaizi,' said David, using the paper napkin, as he got out of his chair and went to her.

'And what does that mean, my inscrutable husband and number eighty-seven lover?'

'Bitch goddess. It means, freely translated, that you are a little girl - and not so little - and I can still take you three out of five on the bed where there are other things to do with you instead of beating you up. '

'All that in such a short phrase?'

'We don't waste words, we paint pictures... I've got to leave. The class this morning deals with Siam's Rama the Second, and his claims on the Malay states in the early

nineteenth century. It's a pain in the ass but important. What's worse is there's an exchange student from Moulmein in Burma, who I think knows more than I do. '

'Siam?' asked Marie, holding him. That's Thailand. '

'Yes. It's Thailand now. '

'Your wife, your children? Does it hurt, David?'

He looked at her, loving her so. 'I can't be that hurt where I can't see that clearly. Sometimes I hope I never do. '

'I don't think that way at all. I want you to see them and hear them and feel them. And to know that I love them, too. '

'Oh, Christ!' He held her, their bodies together in a warmth that was theirs alone.

The line was busy for the second time so Webb replaced the phone and returned to W. F. Vella's Siam under Rama III to see if the Burmese exchange student had been right about Rama IPs conflict with the sultan of Kedah over the disposition of the island of Penang. It was confrontation time in the rarefied groves of academe; the Moulmein pagodas of Kipling's poetry had been replaced by a smart-ass postgraduate student who had no respect for his betters - Kipling would understand that, and torpedo it.

There was a brief, rapid knock on his office door, which opened before David could ask the caller in. It was one of his guards, the man who had spoken to him yesterday afternoon during the pre-game rally - among the crowds, amid the noise, in the middle of his fears.

'Hello there, Professor?'

'Hello. It's Jim, isn't it?

'No, Johnny. It doesn't matter; you're not expected to get our names straight. '

'Is anything the matter?

'Just the opposite, sir. I dropped in to say good-bye - for all of us, the whole contingent. Everything's clean and you're back to normal. We've been ordered to report to B-One-L. '

To what?'

'Sounds kind of silly, doesn't it? Instead of saying "Come on back to headquarters" they call it B-One-L, as if anyone couldn't figure it out. '

'I can't figure it out. '

'Base-One-Langley. We're CIA, all six of us, but I guess you know that. '

'You're leaving? All of you?'

That's about it. '

'But I thought... I thought there was a crisis here. '

'Everything's clean. '

'I haven't heard from anybody. I haven't heard from McAllister. '

'Sorry, don't know him. We just have our orders. '

'You can't simply come in here and say you're leaving without some explanation! I was told I was a target! That a man in Hong Kong wanted me killed?

'Well, I don't know whether you were told that, or whether you told yourself that, but I do know we've got an A-one legitimate problem in Newport News. We have to get briefed and get on it. '

'A-one legitimate...? What about me?'

'Get a lot of rest, Professor. We were told you need it.' The man from the CIA abruptly turned, went through the door, and closed it.

Well, I don't know whether you were told that, or whether you told yourself that... How about you, professor? Do you feel better about things now, what with us here and all?

Parade?... Charade!

Where was McAllister's number? Where was it? God-damit, he had two copies, one at home and one in his desk drawer - no, his wallet! he found it, his whole body trembling in fear and in anger as he dialled.

'Mr McAllister's office,' said a female voice.

'I thought this was his private line. That's what I was told!'

'Mr McAllister is away from Washington, sir. In these cases we're instructed to pick up and log the calls. '

'Log the calls'? Where is he?'

'I don't know, sir. I'm from the secretarial pool. He phones in every other day or so. Who shall I say called?"

'That's not good enough! My name is Webb. Jason Webb... No, David Webb! I have to talk to him right away! Immediately!'

I'll connect you with the department handling his urgent calls, Webb slammed down the phone. He had the number for McAllister's home; he dialled it.

'Hello?' The voice of another woman.

'Mr McAllister, please. '

'I'm afraid he's not here. If you care to leave your name and a number, I'll give it to him. '

'When?

'Well, he should be calling tomorrow or the next day. He always does. '

'You've got to give me the number where he is now, Mrs McAllister! - I assume this is Mrs McAllister. '

'I should hope so. Eighteen years' worth. Who are you?'

'Webb. David Webb. '

'Oh, of course! Edward rarely discusses business - and he certainly didn't in your case but he did tell me what terribly nice people you and your lovely wife are. As a matter of fact, our older boy, who's in prep school, naturally, is very interested in the university where you teach. Now, in the last year or so his marks dropped just a touch, and his aptitude tests weren't the highest, but he has such a wonderful, enthusiastic outlook on life, I'm sure he'd be an asset... '

'Mrs McAllister!' broke in Webb. 'I have to reach your husband! Now!'

'Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but I don't think that's possible. He's in the Far East and, of course, I don't have a number where 1 can reach him there. In emergencies we always call the State Department. '

David hung up the phone. He had to alert -phone - Marie. The line had to be free by now; it had been busy for nearly an hour, and there was no one his wife could talk with on the telephone for an hour, not even her father, her mother or her two brothers in Canada. There was great affection between them all, but she was the maverick. She was not the Francophile her lather was, not a homebody like her mother, and although she adored her brothers, not the rustic, plainspoken folk they were. She had found another life in the stratified layers of higher economics, with a doctorate and gainful employment with the Canadian Government. And, at last, she had married an American.

QueI dommage.

The line was still busy! Goddamnit, Marie!

Then Webb froze, his whole body for an instant a block of searing hot ice. He could barely move, but he did move, and then he raced out of his small office and down the corridor with such speed that he pummelled three students and a colleague out of his path, sending two into walls the others buckling under him; he was a man suddenly possessed.

Reaching his house, he slammed on the brakes; the car screeched to a stop as he leaped out of the seat and ran up the path to the door. He stopped, staring, his breath suddenly no longer in him. The door was open and on the angled indented panel was a hand print stamped in red - blood.