The Bourne ultimatum (79 page)

“How?” said the lawyer, looking up at the Russian, his eyes red, pleading.

“The where comes first,” explained Sulikov. “Find a neutral country that has no extradition treaty with Washington, one where there are officials who can be persuaded to grant you temporary residence so you can carry on your business activities—the term ‘temporary’ is extremely elastic, of course. Bahrain, the Emirates, Morocco, Turkey, Greece—there’s no lack of attractive possibilities. All with rich English-speaking settlements. ... We might even be able to help you, very quietly.”

“Why would you?”

“Your blindness returns, Mr. Ogilvie. For a price, naturally. ... You have an extraordinary operation in Europe. It’s in place and functioning, and under our control we could derive considerable benefits from it.”

“Oh ... my ...
God
,” said the leader of Medusa, his voice trailing off as he stared at the consul general.

“Do you really have a choice, Counselor? ... Come now, we must hurry. Arrangements have to be made. Fortunately, it’s still early in the day.”

It was 3:25 in the afternoon when Charles Casset walked into Peter Holland’s office at the Central Intelligence Agency. “Breakthrough,” said the deputy director, then added less enthusiastically, “Of sorts.”

“The Ogilvie firm?” asked the DCI.

“From left field,” replied Casset, nodding and placing several stock photographs on Holland’s desk. “These were faxed down from Kennedy Airport an hour ago. Believe me, it’s been a heavy sixty minutes since then.”

“From Kennedy?” Frowning, Peter studied the facsimiled duplicates. They comprised a sequence of photographs showing a crowd of people passing through metal detectors in one of the airport’s international terminals. The head of a single man was circled in red in each photo. “What is it? Who is it?”

“They’re passengers heading for the Aeroflot lounge, Moscow bound, Soviet carrier, of course. Security routinely photographs U.S. nationals taking those flights.”

“So? Who is he?”

“Ogilvie himself.”

“
What
?”

“He’s on the two o’clock nonstop to Moscow. ... Only he’s not supposed to be.”

“Come again?”

“Three separate calls to his office came up with the same information. He was out of the country, in London, at the Dorchester, which we know he isn’t. However, the Dorchester desk confirmed that he was booked but hadn’t arrived, so they were taking messages.”

“I don’t understand, Charlie.”

“It’s a smoke screen and pretty hastily contrived. In the first place, why would someone as rich as Ogilvie settle for Aeroflot when he could be on the Concorde to Paris and Air France to Moscow? Also, why would his office volunteer that he was either in or on his way to London when he was
heading
for Moscow?”

“The Aeroflot flight’s obvious,” said Holland. “It’s the state airline and he’s under Soviet protection. The London-Dorchester bit isn’t too hard, either. It’s to throw people off—my God, to throw
us
off!”

“Right on, master. So Valentino did some checking with all that fancy equipment in the cellars and guess what? ... Mrs. Ogilvie and their two teenage children are on a Royal Air Maroc flight to Casablanca with connections to Marrakesh.”

“Marrakesh? ... Air Maroc—Morocco,
Marrakesh
. Wait a minute. In those computer sheets Conklin had us work up on the Mayflower hotel’s registers, there was a woman—one of three people he tied to Medusa—who had been in Marrakesh.”

“I commend your memory, Peter. That woman and Ogilvie’s wife were roommates at Bennington in the early seventies. Fine old families; their pedigrees ensure a large degree of sticking together and giving advice to one another.”

“Charlie, what the
hell
is going on?”

“The Ogilvies were tipped off and have gotten out. Also, if I’m not mistaken and if we could sort out several hundred accounts, we’d learn that millions have been transferred from New York to God knows where beyond these shores.”

“
And
?”

“Medusa’s now in Moscow, Mr. Director.”

Louis DeFazio wearily dragged his small frame out of the taxi in the boulevard Masséna, followed by his larger, heavier, far more muscular cousin Mario from Larchmont, New York. They stood on the pavement in front of a restaurant, its name in red-tubed script across a green-tinted window:
Tetrazzini’s
.

“This is the place,” said Louis. “They’ll be in a private room in the back.”

“It’s pretty late.” Mario looked at his watch under the wash of a street lamp. “I set the time for Paris; it’s almost midnight here.”

“They’ll wait.”

“You still haven’t told me their names, Lou. What do we call them?”

“You don’t,” answered DeFazio, starting for the entrance. “No names—they wouldn’t mean anything anyway. All you gotta do is be respectful, you know what I mean?”

“I don’t have to be told that, Lou, I really don’t,” reprimanded Mario in his soft-spoken voice. “But for my own information, why do you even bring it up?”

“He’s a high-class
diplomatico
,” explained the capo supremo, stopping briefly on the pavement and looking up at the man who had nearly killed Jason Bourne in Manassas, Virginia. “He operates out of Rome from fancy government circles, but he’s the direct contact with the dons in Sicily. He and his wife are very,
very
highly regarded, you understand what I’m saying?”

“I do and I don’t,” admitted the cousin. “If he’s so grand, why would he accept such a menial assignment as following our targets?”

“Because he
can
. He can go places some of our
pagliacci
can’t get near, you know what I mean? Also, I happen to let our people in New York know who our clients were, especially one,
capisce
? The dons all the way from Manhattan to the estates south of Palermo have a language they use exclusively between themselves, did you know that,
cugino
? ... It comes down to a couple of orders: ‘Do it’ and ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

“I think I understand, Lou. We render respect.”

“Respect,
yes
, my fancy rendering cousin, but not no weakness,
capisce
? No weakness! The word’s got to go up and down the line that this is an operation Lou DeFazio took control of and ran from beginning to end. You
got
that?”

“If that’s the case, maybe I can go home to Angie and the kids,” said Mario, grinning.

“What? ... You shut up,
cugino
! With this one job you got annuities for your whole passel of bambinos.”

“Not a passel, Lou, just five.”

“Let’s go. Remember, respect, but we don’t take no shit.”

The small private dining room was a miniature version of Tetrazzini’s decor. The ambience was Italian in all things. The walls were papered with dated, now faded murals of Venice, Rome and Florence; the softly piped-in music was predominantly operatic arias and tarantellas, and the lighting indirect with pockets of shadows. If a patron did not know he was in Paris, he might think he was dining on Rome’s Via Frascati, at one of the many commercialized family
ristoranti
lining that ancient street.

There was a large round table in the center covered by a deep red tablecloth, with a generous overhang, and four chairs equidistant from one another. Additional chairs were against the walls, allowing for an expanded conference of principals or for the proper location of secondary subalterns, usually armed. Seated at the far end of the table was a distinguished-looking olive-skinned man with wavy dark hair; on his left was a fashionably dressed, well-coiffed middle-aged woman. A bottle of Chianti Classico was between them, the crude thick-stemmed wineglasses in front of them not the sort one would associate with such aristocratic diners. On a chair behind the
diplomatico
was a black leather suitcase.

“I’m DeFazio,” said the capo supremo from New York, closing the door. “This is my cousin Mario, of who you may have heard of—a very talented man who takes precious time away from his family to be with us.”

“Yes, of course,” said the aristocratic mafioso. “Mario,
il bola, esecuzione garantito
—deadly with any weapon. Sit down, gentlemen.”

“I find such descriptions meaningless,” responded Mario, approaching a chair. “I’m skilled in my craft, that’s all.”

“Spoken like a professional, signore,” added the woman as DeFazio and his cousin sat down. “May I order you wine, drinks?” she continued.

“Not yet,” replied Louis. “Maybe later—maybe. ... My talented relative on my mother’s side, may she rest in the arms of Christ, asked a good question outside. What do we call you, Mr. and Mrs. Paris, France? Which is by way of saying I don’t need no real names.”

“
Conte
and
Contessa
is what we’re known by,” answered the husband, smiling, the tight smile more appropriate to a mask than a human face.

“See what I mean,
cugino
? These are people of high regard. ... So, Mr. Count, bring us up to date, how about it?”

“There’s no question about it, Signor DeFazio,” replied the Roman, his voice as tight as his previous smile, which had completely disappeared. “I will bring you up to date, and were it in my powers I would leave you in the far distant past.”

“Hey, what kind of fuckin’ talk is that?”

“Lou,
please
!” intruded Mario, quietly but firmly. “Watch your language.”

“What about
his
language? What kind of language is that? He wants to leave me in some kind of
dirt
?”

“You asked me what has happened, Signor DeFazio, and I’m telling you,” said the count, his voice as strained as before. “Yesterday at noon my wife and I were nearly killed—
killed
, Signor DeFazio. It’s not the sort of experience we’re used to or can tolerate. Have you any idea what you’ve gotten yourself
into
?”

“You ... ? They
marked
you?”

“If you mean by that, did they know who we were, happily they did not. Had they known, it’s doubtful we’d be sitting at this table!”

“Signor DeFazio,” interrupted the contessa, glancing at her husband, her look telling him to calm down. “The word we received over here is that you have a contract on this cripple and his friend the doctor. Is that true?”

“Yeah,” confirmed the capo supremo cautiously. “As far as that goes, but it goes further, you know what I mean?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” replied the count icily.

“I tell you this because it’s possible I could use your help, for which, like I told you, you’ll be paid good, real good.”

“How does the contract go ‘further’?” asked the wife, again interrupting.

“There’s someone else we have to hit. A third party these two came over here to meet.”

The count and his countess instantly looked at each other. “A ‘third party,’ ” repeated the man from Rome, raising the wineglass to his lips. “I see. ... A three-target contract is generally quite profitable.
How
profitable, Signor DeFazio?”

“Hey, come on, do I ask you what you make a week in Paris, France? Let’s just say it’s a lot and you two personally can count on six figures, if everything goes according to the book.”

“Six figures encompass a wide spectrum,” observed the countess. “It also indicates that the contract is worth over seven figures.”

“
Seven
... ?” DeFazio looked at the woman, his breathing on hold.

“Over a million dollars,” concluded the countess.

“Yeah, well, you see, it’s important to our clients that these people leave this world,” said Louis, breathing again as seven figures had not been equated with seven million. “We don’t ask why, we just do the job. In situations like this, our dons are generous; we keep most of the money and ‘our thing’ keeps its reputation for efficiency. Isn’t that right, Mario?”

“I’m sure it is, Lou, but I don’t involve myself in those matters.”

“You get paid, don’t you,
cugino
?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, Lou.”

“See what I mean?” said DeFazio, looking at the aristocrats of the European Mafia, who showed no reaction at all except to stare at the capo supremo. “Hey, what’s the matter? ... Oh, this bad thing that happened yesterday, huh? What was it—they saw you,
right
? They spotted you, and some gorilla got off a couple of shots to scare you away, that’s it, isn’t it? I mean what else could it be, right? They didn’t know who you were but you were there—a couple of times too often, maybe—so a little muscle was used, okay? It’s an old scam: Scare the shit out of strangers you see more than once.”

“Lou, I asked you to temper your language.”

“Temper? I’m
losing
my temper. I want to deal!”

“In plain words,” said the count, disregarding DeFazio’s words with a soft voice and arched brows, “you say you must kill this cripple and his friend the doctor, as well as a third party, is that correct?”

“In plain words, you got it right.”

“Do you know who this third party is—outside of a photograph or a detailed description?”

“Sure, he’s a government slime who was sent out years ago to make like he was a Mario here, an
esecuzione
, can you believe it? But these three individuals have injured our clients, I mean really
hurt
them. That’s why the contract, what else can I tell you?”

“We’re not sure,” said the countess, gracefully sipping her wine. “Perhaps you don’t really know.”

“Know what?”

“Know that there is someone else who wants this third party dead far more than you do,” explained the count. “Yesterday noon he assaulted a small café in the countryside with murderous gunfire, killing a number of people, because your third party was inside. So were we. ... We saw them—
him
—warned by a guard and race outside. Certain emergencies are communicated. We left immediately, only minutes before the massacre.”

“
Condannare
!” choked DeFazio. “Who is this bastard who wants the kill?
Tell
me!”

“We’ve spent yesterday afternoon and all day today trying to find out,” began the woman, leaning forward, delicately fingering the indelicate glass as though it were an affront to her sensibilities. “Your targets are never alone. There are always men around them, armed guards, and at first we didn’t know where they came from. Then on the avenue Montaigne we saw a Soviet limousine come for them, and your third man in the company of a well-known KGB officer, and now we think we
do
know.”