“Why is that bad news?” cried Jason. “We know where she is! We can— Oh, Christ, I see what you mean.” Subdued, Bourne’s words trailed off. “She can take a train, hire a car. …”
“She can even fly up to Paris under any name she cares to,” added Bernardine. “Still, I have an idea. It’s probably as worthless as my brain but I suggest it anyway. … Do you and she have special—how do you say it?—nicknames for each other? Sobriquets of endearment perhaps?”
“We’re not much for the cute stuff, frankly. … Wait a minute. A couple of years ago, Jamie, that’s our son, had trouble with ‘Mommy.’ He turned it around and called her ‘Meemom.’ We kidded about it and I called her that for a few months off and on until he got it right.”
“I know she speaks French fluently. Does she read the papers?”
“Religiously, at least the financial pages. I’m not sure she goes seriously much beyond them; it’s her morning ritual.”
“Even in a crisis?”
“Especially in a crisis. She claims it calms her.”
“Let’s send her a message—on the financial pages.”
Ambassador Phillip Atkinson settled in for a morning of dreary paperwork at the American embassy in London. The dreariness was compounded by a dull throbbing at his temples and a sickening taste in his mouth. It was hardly a typical hangover because he rarely drank whisky and for over twenty-five years had never been drunk. He had learned a long time ago, roughly thirty months after Saigon fell, the limits of his talents, his opportunities and, above all, his resources. When he returned from the war with reasonable, if not exceptional, commendations at twenty-nine, his family had purchased him an available seat on the New York Stock Exchange, where in thirty additional months he had lost something over three million dollars.
“Didn’t you ever learn a goddamned thing at Andover and Yale?” his father had roared. “At least make a few connections on the Street?”
“Dad, they were all jealous of me, you know that. My looks, the girls—I look like you, Dad—they all conspired against me. Sometimes I think they were really getting at you through me! You know how they talk. Senior and Junior, dashing socialites and all that crap. … Remember the column in the Daily News when they compared us to the Fairbankses?”
“I’ve known Doug for forty years!” yelled the father. “He’s got it upstairs, one of the best.”
“He didn’t go to Andover and Yale, Dad.”
“He didn’t have to, for Christ’s sake! … Hold it. Foreign Service … ? What the hell was that degree you got at Yale?”
“Bachelor of Arts.”
“Screw that! There was something else. The courses or something.”
“I majored in English literature and minored in political science.”
“That’s it! Shove the fairy stuff on the back burner. You were outstanding in the other one—the political science bullshit.”
“Dad, it wasn’t my strongest course.”
“You passed?”
“Yes. … Barely.”
“Not barely, with honors! That’s it!”
And so Phillip Atkinson III began his career in the Foreign Service by way of a valuable political contributor who was his father, and never looked back. And although that illustrious man had died eight years ago, he never forgot the old war horse’s last admonition: “Don’t fuck this up, son. You want to drink or you want to whore around, you do it inside your own house or in a goddamned desert somewhere, understand? And you treat that wife of yours, whatever the hell her name is, with real affection wherever anybody can see you, got it?”
“Yes, Dad.”
Which was why Phillip Atkinson felt so blah on this particular morning. He had spent the previous evening at a dinner party with unimportant royals who drank until the drink flowed out of their nostrils, and with his wife who excused their behavior because they were royals, all of which he could tolerate only with seven glasses of Chablis. There were times when he longed for the freewheeling, free-drinking days of the old Saigon.
The telephone rang, causing Atkinson to blur his signature on a document that made no sense to him. “Yes?”
“The high commissioner from the Hungarian Central Committee is on the line, sir.”
“Oh? Who’s that—who are they? Do we recognize them—it—him?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Ambassador. I really can’t pronounce his name.
“Very well, put him through.”
“Mr. Ambassador?” said the deep accented voice on the phone. “Mr. Atkinson?”
“Yes, this is Atkinson. Forgive me, but I don’t recollect either your name or the Hungarian affiliation you speak for.”
“It does not matter. I speak on behalf of Snake Lady—”
“Stop!” cried the ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. “Stay on the line and we’ll resume talking in twenty seconds.” Atkinson reached down, snapped on his scrambler, and waited until the spiraling sounds of the pre-interceptor subsided. “All right, continue.”
“I have received instructions from Snake Lady and was told to confirm the origin from you.”
“Confirmed!”
“And therefore I am to carry out these instructions?”
“Good Lord, yes! Whatever they say. My God, look what happened to Teagarten in Brussels, Armbruster in Washington! Protect me! Do whatever they say!”
“Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.”
Bourne first sat in the hottest tub he could endure, then took the coldest shower he could tolerate. He then changed the dressing around his neck, walked back into the small hotel room and fell on the bed. … So Marie had found a simple, ingenious way to reach Paris. Goddamn it! How could he find her, protect her? Had she any idea what she was doing? David would go out of his mind. He’d panic and make a thousand mistakes. … Oh, my God, I am David!
Stop it. Control. Pull back.
The telephone rang; he grabbed it off the bedside table. “Yes?”
“Santos wants to see you. With peace in his heart.”
24
The Emergency Medical Service helicopter was lowered into its threshold; the rotors were cut and the blades thumped to a stop. Following EMS procedure when disembarking ambulatory patients, only then did the exit door open and the metal steps slap down to the ground. A uniformed paramedic preceded Panov, turning and assisting the doctor to the tarmac, where a second man in civilian clothes escorted him to a waiting limousine. Inside were Peter Holland, director of the CIA, and Alex Conklin, the latter in the right jump seat, obviously for conversational purposes. The psychiatrist climbed in beside Holland; he took several deep breaths, sighed audibly and fell back into the seat.
“I am a maniac,” he stated, emphasizing each word. “Certifiably insane and I’ll sign the papers of commitment myself.”
“You’re safe, that’s all that matters, Doctor,” said Holland. “Good to see you, Crazy Mo,” added Conklin.
“Have you any idea what I did? … I purposely crashed a car into a tree with me in it! Then after walking at least half the distance to the Bronx, I was picked up by the only person I know who may have more loose bananas in her head than I do. Her libido is unhinged and she’s running away from her trucker husband—hot on her French heels—who I subsequently learned has the cuddly name of the Bronk. My hooker chauffeur proceeds to hold me hostage with such wiles as threatening to yell ‘Rape!’ in a diner filled with a collection of the NFL’s most carnivorous linebackers—except for one who got me out.” Panov abruptly stopped and reached into his pocket. “Here,” he continued, thrusting the five driver’s licenses and the roughly six thousand dollars into Conklin’s hands.
“What’s this?” asked the bewildered Alex.
“I robbed a bank and decided to become a professional driver! … What do you think it is? I took it from the man who was guarding me. I described as best I could to the chopper’s crew where the crash took place. They’re flying back to find him. They will; he’s not walking anywhere.”
Peter Holland reached for the limousine’s telephone, pushing three buttons. In less than two seconds, he spoke. “Get word to EMS-Arlington, Equipment Fifty-seven. The man they’re picking up is to be brought directly to Langley. To the infirmary. And keep me informed as to their progress. … Sorry, Doctor. Go on.”
“Go on? What’s to go on to? I was kidnapped and held in some farmhouse and injected with enough sodium pentothal, if I’m not mistaken, to make me a resident of—of La La Land, which I was recently accused of being by Madame Scylla Charybdis.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Holland flatly. “Nothing, Admiral, or Mr. Director or—”
“Peter’s fine, Mo,” completed Holland. “I simply didn’t understand you.”
“There’s nothing to understand but the facts. My allusions are compulsive attempts at false erudition. It’s called posttraumatic stress.”
“Of course, now you’re perfectly clear.”
Panov turned to the DCI with a nervous smile. “It’s my turn to be sorry, Peter. I’m still wound up. This last day or so hasn’t exactly been representative of my normal life-style.”