“I do not kill indiscriminately. Once the plane from Poitiers was given clearance to land, I told him to leave. … Forgive me, but your wife was also on the list. Fortunately, as she is a mother, it was beyond my abilities.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I just told you. A contract employee.”
“I’ve seen better.”
“I’m not, perhaps, in your league, but I serve my organization well.”
“Jesus, you’re Medusa!”
“I’ve heard the name, but that’s all I can tell you. … Let me make one thing clear, Mr. Bourne. I will not leave my wife a widow, or my children orphans for the sake of a contract. That position simply isn’t viable. They mean too much to me.”
“You’ll spend a hundred and fifty years in prison, and that’s only if you’re prosecuted in a state that doesn’t have the death penalty.”
“Not with what I know, Mr. Bourne. My family and I will be well taken care of—a new name, perhaps a nice farm in the Dakotas or Wyoming. You see, I knew this moment had to come.”
“What’s come now, you bastard, is that a friend of mine inside there is shot up! You did it!”
“A truce, then?” said Mario.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I have a very fast car a half mile away.” The killer from Larchmont, New York, pulled a square instrument from his belt. “It can be here in less than a minute. I’m sure the driver knows the nearest hospital.”
“Do it!”
“It’s done, Jason Bourne,” said Mario, pressing a button.
Morris Panov had been rolled into the operating room; Louis DeFazio was still on a gurney, as it was determined that his wound was superficial. And through back-channel negotiations between Washington and Quai d’Orsay, the criminal known only as Mario was securely in the custody of the American embassy in Paris.
A white-frocked doctor came out into the hospital’s waiting room; both Conklin and Bourne got to their feet, frightened. “I will not pretend to be a bearer of glad tidings,” said the physician in French, “for it would be quite wrong. Both lungs of your friend were punctured, as well as the wall of his heart. He has at best a forty-sixty chance of survival—against him, I’m afraid. Still, he is a strong-willed man who wants to live. At times that means more than all the medical negatives. What else can I tell you?”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Jason turned away.
“I have to use a telephone,” said Alex to the surgeon. “I should go to our embassy, but I haven’t the time. Do I have any guarantee that I won’t be tapped, overheard?”
“I imagine you have every guarantee,” replied the physician. “We wouldn’t know how to do it. Use my office, please.”
“Peter?”
“Alex!” cried Holland from Langley, Virginia. “Everything go all right? Did Marie get off?”
“To answer your first question, no, everything did not go all right; and as far as Marie goes, you can expect a panicked phone call from her the minute she reaches Marseilles. That pilot won’t touch his radio.”
“What?”
“Tell her we’re okay, that David’s not hurt—”
“What are you talking about?” broke in the director of Central Intelligence.
“We were ambushed while waiting for the plane from Poitiers. I’m afraid Mo Panov’s in bad shape, so bad I don’t want to think about it right now. We’re in a hospital and the doctor’s not encouraging.”
“Oh, God, Alex, I’m sorry.”
“In his own way, Mo’s a fighter. I’ll still bet on him. Incidentally, don’t tell Marie. She thinks too much.”
“Of course not. Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes, there is, Peter. You can tell me why Medusa’s here in Paris.”
“In Paris? It’s not according to everything I know and I know a hell of a lot.”
“Our identification’s positive. The two guns that hit us an hour ago were sent over by Medusa. We’ve even got a confession of sorts.”
“I don’t understand!” protested Holland. “Paris never entered into our thinking. There’s no linkage in the scenario.”
“Sure, there is,” contradicted the former station chief. “You said it yourself. You called it a self-fulfilling prophecy, remember? The ultimate logic that Bourne conceived as a theory. Medusa joining up with the Jackal, the target Jason Bourne.”
“That’s the point, Alex. It was only a theory, hypothetically convincing, but still just a theory, the basis for a sound strategy. But it never happened.”
“It obviously did.”
“Not from this end. As far as we’re concerned, Medusa’s now in Moscow.”
“Moscow?” Conklin nearly dropped the phone on the doctor’s desk.
“That’s right. We’ve concentrated on Ogilvie’s law firm in New York, tapping everything that could be tapped. Somehow—and we don’t know how—Ogilvie was tipped off and got out of the country. He took an Aeroflot to Moscow, and the rest of his family headed to Marrakesh.”
“Ogilvie … ?” Alex could barely be heard; frowning, his memory peeled away the years. “From Saigon? A legal officer from Saigon?”
“That’s right. We’re convinced he runs Medusa.”
“And you withheld that information from me?”
“Only the name of the firm. I told you we had our priorities and you had yours. For us, Medusa came first.”
“You simple swab jockey!” exploded Conklin. “I know Ogilvie—more precisely, I knew him. Let me tell you what they called him in Saigon: Ice-Cold Ogilvie, the smoothest-talking legal scumball in Vietnam. With a few subpoenas and some research, I could have told you where a few of his courtroom skeletons were buried—you blew it! You could have pulled him in for fixing the army courts in a couple of killings—there are no statutes, civilian or military, on those crimes. Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?”
“In all honesty, Alex, you never asked. You simply assumed—rightly so—that I wouldn’t tell you.”
“All right, all right, it’s done—to hell with it. By tomorrow or the next day you’ll have our two Medusans, so go to work on them. They both want to save their asses—the capo’s a slime, but his sharpshooter keeps praying for his family and it’s not organizational.”
“What are you going to do?” pressed Holland.
“We’re on our way to Moscow.”
“After Ogilvie?”
“No, the Jackal. But if I see Bryce, I’ll give him your regards.”
35
Buckingham Pritchard sat next to his uniformed uncle, Cyril Sylvester Pritchard, deputy director of immigration, in the office of Sir Henry Sykes at Government House in Montserrat. Beside them, on the deputy’s right, was their attorney, the finest native solicitor Sykes could persuade to advise the Pritchards in the event that the Crown brought a case against them as accessories to terrorism. Sir Henry sat behind the desk and glanced in partial shock at the lawyer, one Jonathan Lemuel, who raised his head and eyes to the ceiling, not to have the benefit of the tropic fan that stirred the humid air but to show disbelief. Lemuel was a Cambridge-educated attorney, once a “scholarship boy” from the colonies, who years ago had made his money in London and returned in the autumn of his life to his native ’Serrat to enjoy the fruits of his labors. Actually, Sir Henry had persuaded his retired black friend to give assistance to a couple of idiots who might have involved themselves in a serious international matter.
The cause of Sir Henry’s shock and Jonathan Lemuel’s disbelief cum exasperation came about through the following exchange between Sykes and the deputy director of immigration.
“Mr. Pritchard, we’ve established that your nephew overheard a telephone conversation between John St. Jacques and his brother-in-law, the American Mr. David Webb. Further, your nephew Buckingham Pritchard here, freely, even enthusiastically, admits calling you with certain information contained in that conversation and that you in turn emphatically stated that you had to reach Paris immediately. Is this true?”
“It is all completely true, Sir Henry.”
“Whom did you reach in Paris? What’s the telephone number?”
“With respect, sir, I am sworn to secrecy.”
At that succinct and totally unexpected reply, Jonathan Lemuel had lifted his astonished eyes to the ceiling.
Sykes, regaining his composure, put an end to the brief pause of amazement. “What was that, Mr. Pritchard?”
“My nephew and I are part of an international organization involving the great leaders of the world, and we have been sworn to secrecy.”
“Good God, he believes it,” muttered Sir Henry.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Lemuel, lowering his head. “Our telephone service here is not the most sophisticated, especially where pay phones are concerned, which I presume you were instructed to use, but within a day or so that number can be traced. Why not simply give it to Sir Henry now. He obviously needs to know quickly, so where is the harm?”
“The harm, sir, is to our superiors in the organization—that was made explicitly clear to me personally.”
“What’s the name of this international organization?”
“I don’t know, Sir Henry. That is part of the confidensheeality, do you not see?”