“I’d rather not wait,” said Alex emphatically.
“Nine calls to a reasonably acceptable number in Brooklyn Heights, and three in the space of an hour to an extremely unlikely telephone on Wall Street.”
“Someone was excited—”
“That’s what we thought—we in this case being our own unit. We asked the Sicilians to give us what they had on Brooklyn Heights.”
“DeFazio?”
“Let’s put it this way. He lives there, but the phone is registered to the Atlas Coin Vending Machine Company in Long Island City.”
“It fits. Dumb, but it fits. What about DeFazio?”
“He’s a middle-level but ambitious capo in the Giancavallo family. He’s very close, very underground, very vicious … and very gay.”
“Holy Christ … !”
“The Untouchables swore us to secrecy. They intend to spring it themselves.”
“Bullshit,” said Conklin softly. “One of the first things we learn in this business is to lie to anyone and everyone, especially anyone who’s foolish enough to trust us. We’ll use it anytime it gets us a square forward. … What’s the other telephone number, the unlikely one?”
“Just about the most powerful law firm on Wall Street.”
“Medusa,” concluded Alex firmly.
“That’s the way I read it. They’ve got seventy-six lawyers on two floors of the building. Which one is it—or who among them are they?”
“I don’t give a goddamn! We go after DeFazio and whatever controls he’s sending over to Paris. To Europe to feed the Jackal. They’re the guns after Jason and that’s all I care about. Go to work on DeFazio. He’s the one under contract!”
Peter Holland leaned back in his chair, rigid, intense. “It had to come to this, didn’t it, Alex?” he asked quietly. “We both have our priorities. … I’d do anything within my sworn capacity to save the lives of Jason Bourne and his wife, but I will not violate my oath to defend this country first. I can’t do it and I suspect you know that. My priority is Medusa, in your words a global cartel that intends to become a government within our government over here. That’s whom I have to go after. First and immediately and without regard to casualties. To put it plainly, my friend—and I hope you’re my friend—the Bournes, or whoever they are, are expendable. I’m sorry, Alex.”
“That’s really why you asked me to come over here this morning, isn’t it?” said Conklin, planting his cane on the floor and awkwardly getting to his feet.
“Yes, it is.”
“You’ve got your own game plan against Medusa—and we can’t be a part of it.”
“No, you can’t. It’s a fundamental conflict of interest.”
“I’ll grant you that. We’d louse you up in a minute if it’d help Jason and Marie. Naturally, my personal and professional opinion is that if the whole fucking United States government can’t rip out a Medusa without sacrificing a man and a woman who’ve given so much, I’m not sure it’s worth a damn!”
“Neither am I,” said Holland, standing up behind the desk. “But I swore an oath to try—in order of my sworn priorities.”
“Have I got any perks left?”
“Anything I can get you that doesn’t compromise our going after Medusa.”
“How about two seats on a military aircraft, Agencycleared, to Paris.”
“Two seats?”
“Panov and me. We went to Hong Kong together, why not Paris?”
“Alex, you’re out of your goddamned mind!”
“I don’t think you understand, Peter. Mo’s wife died ten years after they were married, and I never had the courage to give it a try. So you see, ‘Jason Bourne’ and Marie are the only family we have. She makes a hell of a meat loaf, let me tell you.”
“Two tickets to Paris,” said Holland, his face ashen.
29
Marie watched her husband as he walked back and forth, the pacing deliberate, energized. He tramped angrily between the writing table and the sunlit curtains of the two windows overlooking the front lawn of the Auberge des Artistes in Barbizon. The country inn was the one Marie remembered, but it was not part of David Webb’s memory; and when he said as much, his wife briefly closed her eyes, hearing another voice from years ago.
“Above everything, he’s got to avoid extreme stress, the kind of tension that goes with survival under life—threatening circumstances. If you see him regressing into that state of mind—and you’ll know it when you see it—stop him. Seduce him, slap him, cry, get angry … anything, just stop him.” Morris Panov, dear friend, doctor and the guiding force behind her husband’s therapy.
She had tried seduction within minutes after they were alone together. It was a mistake, even a touch farcical, awkward for both of them. Neither was remotely aroused. Yet there was no embarrassment; they held each other on the bed, both understanding.
“We’re a couple of real sexpots, aren’t we?” said Marie.
“We’ve been there before,” replied David Webb gently, “and I’ve no doubt we’ll be there again.” Then Jason Bourne rolled away and stood up. “I have to make a list,” he said urgently, heading for the quaint country table against the wall that served as a desk and a place for the telephone. “We have to know where we are and where we’re going.”
“And I have to call Johnny on the island,” added Marie, rising to her feet and smoothing her skirt. “After I talk to him I’ll speak to Jamie. I’ll reassure him and tell him we’ll be back soon.” The wife crossed to the table; she stopped, blocked by her husband—her husband yet not her husband.
“No,” said Bourne quietly, shaking his head.
“Don’t say that to me,” protested the mother, anger flashing in her eyes.
“Three hours ago in the Rivoli changed everything. Nothing’s the same now. Don’t you understand that?”
“I understand that my children are several thousand miles away from me and I intend to reach them. Don’t you understand that?”
“Of course I do, I just can’t allow it,” answered Jason.
“Goddamn you, Mr. Bourne!”
“Will you listen to me? … You’ll talk to Johnny and to Jamie—we’ll both talk to them—but not from here and not while they’re on the island.”
“What … ?”
“I’m calling Alex in a few minutes and telling him to get all of them out of there, including Mrs. Cooper, of course.”
Marie had stared at her husband, suddenly understanding. “Oh, my God, Carlos!”
“Yes. As of this noon he’s got only one place to zero in on—Tranquility. If he doesn’t know now, he’ll learn soon enough that Jamie and Alison are with Johnny. I trust your brother and his personal Tonton Macoute, but I still want them away from there before it’s night in the islands. I also don’t know if Carlos has sources in the island’s trunk lines that could trace a call between there and here, but I do know that Alex’s phone is sterile. That’s why you can’t call now. From here to there.”
“Then, for God’s sake, call Alex! What the hell are you waiting for?”
“I’m not sure.” For a moment there was a blank, panicked look in her husband’s eyes—they were the eyes of David Webb, not Jason Bourne. “I have to decide—where do I send the kids?”
“Alex will know, Jason,” said Marie, her own eyes leveled steadily on his. “Now.”
“Yes … yes, of course. Now.” The veiled, vacuous look passed and Bourne reached for the phone.
Alexander Conklin was not in Vienna, Virginia, U.S.A. Instead, there was the monotonic voice of a recorded operator that had the effect of crashing thunder. “The telephone number you have called is no longer in service.”
He had placed the call twice again, believing in desperate hope that an error had been made by the French telephone service. Then bolts of lightning followed: “The telephone number you have called is no longer in service.” For a third time.
The pacing had begun; from the table to the windows and back again. Over and over, the curtains were pulled aside, anxious eyes nervously peering out, then seconds later poring over a growing list of names and places. Marie suggested lunch; he did not hear her, so she watched him in silence from across the room.
The quick, abrupt movements of her husband were like those of a large disquieted cat, smooth, fluid, alert for the unexpected. They were the movements of Jason Bourne and, before him, Medusa’s Delta, not David Webb. She remembered the medical records compiled by Mo Panov in the early days of David’s therapy. Many were filled with wildly divergent descriptions from people who claimed to have seen the man known as the Chameleon, but among the most reliable was a common reference to the catlike mobility of the “assassin.” Panov had been looking for clues to Jason Bourne’s identity then, for all they had at the time were a first name and fragmented images of painful death in Cambodia. Mo often wondered aloud if there was more to his patient’s physical dexterity than mere athleticism; oddly enough, there was not.