“Nuy Dap Ranh,” said Conklin flatly. “A woman’s face with snakes for strands of hair. Snake Lady. You refused to have one done on you—”
“I never considered it a mark of distinction,” interrupted Webb-Bourne, blinking. “Somewhat the reverse, in fact.”
“Initially it was meant for identification, not a standard or a banner of any distinction one way or the other. An intricate tattoo on the underside of the forearm, the design and the colors produced by only one artist in Saigon. No one else could duplicate it.”
“That old man made a lot of money during those years; he was special.”
“Every officer in Command Headquarters who was connected to Medusa had one. They were like manic kids who’d found secret code rings in cereal boxes.”
“They weren’t kids, Alex. Manic, you can bet your ass on it, but not kids. They were infected with a rotten virus called unaccountability, and more than a few millionaires were made in the ubiquitous Command Saigon. The real kids were being maimed and killed in the jungles while a lot of pressed khaki in the South had personal couriers routed through Switzerland and the banks on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse.”
“Careful, David. You could be speaking of some very important people in our government.”
“Who are they?” asked Webb quietly, his glass poised in front of him.
“The ones I knew who were up to their necks in garbage I made damn sure faded after Saigon fell. But I was out of the field a couple of years before then, and nobody talks very much about those months and nothing at all about Snake Lady.”
“Still, you’ve got to have some ideas.”
“Sure, but nothing concrete, nothing even close to proof. Just possibilities based on life-styles, on real estate they shouldn’t have or places they go they shouldn’t be able to afford or the positions some hold or held in corporations justifying salaries and stock options when nothing in their backgrounds justified the jobs.”
“You’re describing a network,” said David, his voice now tight, the voice of Jason Bourne.
“If it is, it’s very tight,” agreed Conklin. “Very exclusive.”
“Draw up a list, Alex.”
“It’d be filled with holes.”
“Then keep it at first to those important people in our government who were attached to Command Saigon. Maybe even further to the ones who have real estate they shouldn’t have or who held high-paying jobs in the private sector they shouldn’t have gotten.”
“I repeat, any such list could be worthless.”
“Not with your instincts.”
“David, what the hell has any of this to do with Carlos?”
“Part of the truth, Alex. A dangerous part, I grant you, but foolproof and irresistible to the Jackal.”
Stunned, the former field officer stared at his friend. “In what way?”
“That’s where your creative thinking comes in. Say you come up with fifteen or twenty names, you’re bound to hit three or four targets we can confirm one way or another. Once we ascertain who they are, we apply pressure, squeezing them in different ways, delivering the same basic message: A former Medusan has gone over the edge, a man who’s been in protective custody for years is about to blow the head off Snake Lady and he’s got the ammunition—names, crimes, the locations of secret Swiss accounts, the whole Caesar salad. Then—and this’ll test the talents of the old Saint Alex we all knew and revered—word is passed on that there’s someone who wants this dangerous, disgruntled turncoat more than they do.”
“Ilich Ramirez Sanchez,” supplied Conklin softly. “Carlos the Jackal. And what follows is equally impossible: Somehow—only God knows how—word gets out calling for a meeting between the two interested parties. That is to say, interested in a joint assassination, the parties of the first part unable to participate actively, due to the sensitive nature of their high official positions, is that about it?”
“Just about, except that these same powerful men in Washington can gain access to the identity and the whereabouts of this much desired corpse-to-be.”
“Naturally,” agreed Alex, nodding in disbelief. “They simply wave a wand and all the restrictions applicable to maximum-classified files are lifted and they’re given the information.”
“Exactly,” said David firmly. “Because whoever meets with Carlos’s emissaries has to be so high up, so authentic, that the Jackal has no choice but to accept him or them. He can’t have any doubts, all thoughts of a trap gone with their coming forward.”
“Would you also like me to make baby roses bloom during a January blizzard in Montana?”
“Close to it. Everything’s got to happen within the next day or two while Carlos is still stinging from what happened at the Smithsonian.”
“Impossible! … Oh, hell, I’ll try. I’ll set up shop here and have Langley send me what I need. Four Zero security, of course. … I hate like hell to lose whoever it is at the Mayflower.”
“We may not,” said Webb. “Whoever it is won’t fold so fast. It’s not like the Jackal to leave an obvious hole like that.”
“The Jackal? You think it’s Carlos himself?”
“Not him, of course, but someone on his payroll, someone so unlikely he could carry a sign around his neck with the Jackal’s name on it and we wouldn’t believe him.”
“Chinese?”
“Maybe. He might play that out and then he might not. He’s geometric; whatever he does is logical, even his logic seems illogical.”
“I hear a man from the past, a man who never was.”
“Oh, he was, Alex. He was indeed. And now he’s back.”
Conklin looked toward the door of the apartment, David’s words suddenly provoking another thought. “Where’s your suitcase?” he asked. “You brought some clothes, didn’t you?”
“No clothes, and these will be dropped in a Washington sewer once I have others. But first I have to see another old friend of mine, another genius who lives in the wrong section of town.”
“Let me guess,” said the retired agent. “An elderly black man with the improbable name of Cactus, a genius where false papers such as passports and driver’s licenses and credit cards are concerned.”
“That’s about it. Him.”
“The Agency could do it all.”
“Not as well and too bureaucratically. I want nothing traceable, even with Four Zero security. This is solo.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“You get to work, field man. By tomorrow morning I want a lot of people in this town shaken up.”
“Tomorrow morning … ? That is impossible!”
“Not for you. Not for Saint Alex, the prince of dark operations?”
“Say whatever the hell you like, I’m not even in training.”
“It comes back quickly, like sex and riding a bicycle.”
“What about you? What are you going to do?”
“After I consult with Cactus, I’ll get a room at the Mayflower hotel,” answered Jason Bourne.
Culver Parnell, hotel magnate from Atlanta whose twenty-year reign in the hostelry business had led to his appointment as chief of protocol for the White House, angrily hung up his office phone as he scribbled a sixth obscenity on a legal pad. With the election and now the turnover of White House personnel, he had replaced the previous administration’s well-born female who knew nothing about the political ramifications of 1600’s invitation list. Then, to his profound irritation, he found himself at war with his own first assistant, another middle-aged female, also from one of the ass-elegant Eastern colleges, and, to make it worse, a popular Washington socialite who contributed her salary to some la-di-da dance company whose members pranced around in their underwear when they wore any.
“Hog damn!” fumed Culver, running his hand through his fringed gray hair; he picked up the telephone and poked four digits on his console. “Gimme the Redhead, you sweet thing,” he intoned, exaggerating his already pronounced Georgia accent.
“Yes, sir,” said the flattered secretary. “He’s on another line but I’ll interrupt. Just hold on a sec, Mr. Parnell.”
“You’re the loveliest of the peaches, lovely child.”
“Oh, golly, thank you! Now just hold on.”
It never failed, mused Culver. A little soft oil from the magnolia worked a hell of a lot better than the bark of a gnarled oak. That bitch of a first assistant of his might take a lesson from her Southern superiors; she talked like some Yankee dentist had bonded her fucking teeth together with permanent cement.
“That you, Cull?” came the voice of Redhead over the line, intruding on Parnell’s thoughts as he wrote a seventh obscenity on the legal pad.
“You’re momma-letchin’ right, boy, and we got a problem! The fricassee bitch is doin’ it again. I got our Wall Streeters inked in for a table at the reception on the twenty-fifth, the one for the new French ambassador and she says we gotta bump ’em for some core-dee-ballet fruitcakes—she says she and the First Lady feel mighty strong about it. Shee-it! Those money boys gotta lot of French interests goin’ for them, and this White House bash could put ’em on top. Every frog on the Bourse will think they got the ears of the whole town here!”