The Bourne Ultimatum

"You are an insignificant lawyer!" roared the assassin in priest's clothing, now repeatedly clenching his hands into fists, his eyes becoming bloodshot. "You are all twisters of the truth! You are sworn companions of the prevailing winds of convenience!"

"Nicely said," said the attorney from Legal Procedures, smiling. "Except, comrade, you stole the phrase from the English Blackstone."

"I will not tolerate your insufferable insolence!"

"You don't have to, Comrade Priest, for I intend to leave, and my legal advice to all here in this room is to do the same."

"You dare?"

"I certainly do," replied the Soviet attorney, granting himself a moment of humor as he looked around the gathering and gri

"The money!" shrieked the Jackal. "I've sent you all thousands!"

"Where is it recorded?" asked the lawyer with an air of i

One by one, as they had arrived, the assembled group followed the lawyer, each looking back at the strange man who had so exotically, so briefly, interrupted their tedious lives, all knowing instinctively that in his path were disgrace and execution. Death.

Yet none was prepared for what followed. The killer in priest's clothing suddenly snapped; visceral bolts of lightning electrified his madness. His dark eyes burned with a raging fire that could be extinguished only by soul-satisfying violence-relentless, brutal, savage vengeance for all the wrongs done to his pure purpose to kill the unbelievers! The Jackal swept away the dossiers from the table and lurched down to the pile of newspapers; he grabbed the deadly automatic weapon from beneath the scattered pages and roared, "Stop! All of you!"

None did, and the outer regions of psychopathic energy became the order of the moment. The killer squeezed the trigger repeatedly and men and women died. Amid screams from the shattered bodies nearest the door, the assassin raced outside, leaping over the corpses, his assault rifle on automatic fire, cutting down the figures in the street, screaming curses, condemning the unbelievers to a hell only he could imagine.

"Traitors! Filth! Garbage!" screamed the crazed Jackal as he leaped over the dead bodies, racing to the car he had commandeered from the Komitet and its inadequate surveillance unit. The night had ended; the morning had begun.

The Metropole's telephone did not ring, it erupted. Startled, Alex Conklin snapped open his eyes, instantly shaking the sleep from his head as he clawed for the strident instrument on the bedside table. "Yes?" he a

"Aleksei, stay put! Admit no one into your rooms and have your weapons ready!"

"Krupkin? ... What the hell are you talking about."

"A crazed dog is loose in Moscow."

"Carlos?"

"He's gone completely mad. He killed Rodchenko and butchered the two agents who were following him. A farmer found their bodies around four o'clock this morning-it seems the dogs woke him up with their barking, downwind of the blood scents, I imagine."

"Christ, he's gone over the edge. ... But why do you think-"

"One of our agents was tortured before being killed," broke in the KGB officer, fully anticipating Alex's question. "He was our driver from the airport, a protégé of mine and the son of a classmate I roomed with at the university. A fine young man from a rational family but not trained for what he was put through."

"You're saying you think he may have told Carlos about us, aren't you?"

"Yes. ... There's more, however. Approximately an hour ago in the Vavilova, eight people were cut down by automatic fire. They were slaughtered; it was a massacre. One of the dying, a woman with the Ministry of Information, a direktor, second class, and a television journalist, said the killer was a priest from Paris who called himself the 'monseigneur.' "

"Jesus!" exploded Conklin, whipping his legs over the edge of the bed, absently staring at the stump of flesh where once there had been a foot. "It was his cadre."

"So called and past tense," said Krupkin. "If you remember, I told you such recruits would abandon him at the first sign of peril."

"I'll get Jason-"

"Aleksei, listen to me!"

"What?" Conklin cupped the telephone under his chin as he reached down for the hollowed-out prosthetic boot.

"We've formed a tactical assault squad, men and women in civilian clothes-they're being given instructions now and will be there shortly."

"Good move."

"But we have purposely not alerted the hotel staff or the police."

"You'd be idiots if you did," broke in Alex. "We'll settle for taking the son of a bitch here! We'd never do it with uniforms prowling around or clerks in hysterics. The Jackal has eyes in his kneecaps."

"Do as I say," ordered the Soviet. "Admit no one, stay away from the windows and take all precautions."

"Naturally. ... What do you mean, the windows? He'll need time to find out where we are ... to question the maids, the stewards."

"Forgive me, old friend," interrupted Krupkin, "but an angelic priest inquiring at the desk about two Americans, one with a pronounced limp, during the early morning rush in the lobby?"

"Good point, even if you're paranoid."

"You're on a high floor, and directly across the Marx Prospekt is the roof of an office building."

"You also think pretty fast."

"Certainly faster than that fool in Dzerzhinsky. I would have reached you long before now, but my commissar Kartoshki over there didn't call me until two minutes ago."

"I'll wake up Bourne."

"Be careful."

Conklin did not hear the Soviet's final admonition. Instead, he swiftly replaced the telephone and pulled on his boot, carelessly lashing the Velcro straps around his calf. He then opened the bedside table drawer and took out the Graz Burya automatic, a specially designed KGB weapon with three clips of ammunition. The Graz, as it was commonly known, was unique insofar as it was the only automatic known that would accept a silencer. The cylindrical instrument had rolled to the front of the drawer; he removed it and spun it into the short barrel. Unsteadily, he got into his trousers, shoved the weapon into his belt and crossed to the door. He opened it and limped out only to find Jason, fully dressed, standing in front of a window in the ornate Victorian sitting room.

"That had to be Krupkin," said Bourne.

"It was. Get away from the window."

"Carlos?" Bourne instantly stepped back and turned to Alex. "He knows we're in Moscow?" he asked. Then added, "He knows where we are?"

"The odds are yes to both questions." In short concise statements, Conklin related Krupkin's information. "Does all this tell you something?" asked Alex when he had finished.

"He's blown apart," answered Jason quietly. "It had to happen. The time bomb in his head finally went off."

"That's what I think. His Moscow cadre turned out to be a myth. They probably told him to pound sand and he exploded."

"I regret the loss of life and I mean that," said Bourne. "I wish it could have happened another way, but I can't regret his state of mind. What's happened to him is what he wanted for me-to crack wide open."

"Kruppie said it," added Conklin. "He's got a psychopathic death wish to return to the people who first found out he was a maniac. Now, if he knows you're here, and we have to assume that he does, the obsession's compounded, your death replacing his-giving him some kind of symbolic triumph maybe."