The Bourne Ultimatum

"What the hell is he talking about?" shouted Jason.

"Automobile ownership is regulated by the state," explained Krupkin weakly from the table. "Each major center has its own registration and is frequently reluctant to cooperate with another center."

"Why?"

"Individual ownership under different family names-even nonfamily names. It's forbidden. There are only so many vehicles available for purchase."

"So?"

"Local bribery is a fact of life. No one in Leningrad wants a finger pointed at him from a bureaucrat in Moscow. He's telling you that it could take several days to learn what automobile the Jackal's driving."

"That's crazy!"

"You said it, Mr. Bourne, I didn't. I'm an upstanding citizen of the Soviet Union, please remember that."

"But what's it all got to do with Novgorod-that is what he said, isn't it?"

"Novgorod. Shto eto znachit?" said Krupkin to the KGB official. In rapid, clipped Russian, the peasant commissar gave the pertinent details to his colleague from Paris. Krupkin turned his head on the table and translated in English. "Try to follow this, Jason," he said, his voice intermittently fading, his breathing becoming increasingly more labored. "Apparently there is a walk-around gallery above the armory's arena. He used it and saw you through a window on the road by the hedges and came back to the weapons room screaming like the maniac he is. He shouted to his bound hostages that you were his and you were dead. ... And there was only one last thing he had to accomplish."

"Novgorod," interrupted Conklin, whispering, his head rigid, staring at the ceiling.

"Precisely," said Krupkin, his eyes focused on Alex's profile beside him. "He's going back to the place of his birth ... where Ilich Ramirez Sanchez became Carlos the Jackal because he was disinherited, marked for execution as a madman. He held his gun against everyone's throat, quietly demanding to know the best roads to Novgorod, threatening to kill whoever gave him the wrong answer. None did, of course, and all who knew told him it was five to six hundred kilometers away, a full day's drive."

"Drive?" interjected Bourne.

"He knows he ca

"What will he do in Novgorod?" asked Jason quickly.

"Dear God in heaven, which, of course, there is neither, who knows? He intends to leave his mark, a highly destructive memorial to himself, no doubt, in answer to those he believes betrayed him thirty-odd years ago, as well as the poor souls who fell under his gun this morning in the Vavilova. ... He took the papers from our agent trained at Novgorod; he thinks they'll get him inside. They won't-we'll stop him."

"Don't even try," said Bourne. "He may or may not use them, depending upon what he sees, what he senses. He doesn't need papers to get in there any more than I do, but if he senses something wrong, and he will, he'll kill a number of good men and still get inside."

"What are you driving at?" asked Krupkin warily, eyeing Bourne, the American with alternate identities and apparently conflicting life-styles.

"Get me inside ahead of him with a detailed map of the whole complex and some kind of document that gives me free access to go wherever I want to go."

"You've lost your senses!" cried Dimitri. "A nondefecting American, an assassin hunted by every NATO country in Europe, inside Novgorod?"

"Nyet, nyet, nyet!" roared the Komitet commissar. "I understand good, okay? You are lunatic, okay?"

"Do you want the Jackal?"

"Naturally, but there are limits to the cost."

"I haven't the slightest interest in Novgorod or in any of the compounds-you should know that by now. Your little infiltrating operations and our little infiltrating operations can go on and on and it doesn't matter because none of it means a goddamned thing in the long run. It's all adolescent game playing. We either live together on this planet or there is no planet. ... My only concern is Carlos. I want him dead so I can go on living."

"Of course, I personally agree with much of what you say, although the adolescent games do keep some of us rather gracefully employed. However, there's no way I could convince my more rigid superiors, starting with the one standing above me."

"All right," said Conklin from his table, his eyes still on the ceiling. "Down and dirty-we deal. You get him into Novgorod and you keep Ogilvie."

"We've already got him, Aleksei."

"Not clean, you haven't. Washington knows he's here."

"So?"

"So I can say you lost him and they'll believe me. They'll take my word for it that he flew out of your nest and you're mad as hell, but you can't get him back. He's operating from points unknown or unreachable, but obviously under the sovereign protection of a United Nations country. As a matter of conjecture, I suspect that's how you got him over here in the first place."

"You're cryptic, my fine old enemy. To what purpose should I entertain your suggestion?"

"No World Court embarrassments, no charges of harboring an American accused of international crimes. ... You win the stakes in Europe. You take over the Medusa operation with no complications-in the person of one Dimitri Krupkin, a proven sophisticate from the cosmopolitan world of Paris. Who better to guide the enterprise? ... The newest hero of the Soviet, a member of the i

"It is a most intelligent and attractive offer, I grant you," said Krupkin. "I know two or three men on the Central Committee whom I can reach in a matter of minutes-everything confidential, of course."

"Nyet, nyet!" shouted the KGB commissar, slamming his fist down on Dimitri's table. "I understand some-you talk too fast-but all is lunatic!"

"Oh, for God's sake, shut up!" roared Krupkin. "We're discussing things far beyond your grasp!"

"Shto?" Like a young child reprimanded by an adult, the Komitet officer, his puffed eyes widened, was both astonished and frightened by his subordinate's incomprehensible rebuke.

"Give my friend his chance, Kruppie," said Alex. "He's the best there is and he may bring you the Jackal."

"He may also bring about his own death, Aleksei."

"He's been there before. I believe in him."

"Belief," whispered Krupkin, his own eyes now on the ceiling. "Such a luxury it is. ... Very well, the order will be issued secretly, its origins untraceable, of course. You'll enter your own American compound. It's the one least understood."

"How fast can I get there?" asked Bourne. "There's a lot I have to put together."

"We have an airport in Vnokova under our control, no more than an hour away. First, I must make arrangements. Hand me a telephone. ... You, my imbecilic commissar! I will hear no more from you! A telefone!" The once all-powerful, now subdued superior, who had really understood only such words as "Presidium" and "Central Committee," moved with alacrity, bringing an extension phone to Krupkin's table.

"One more thing," said Bourne. "Have Tass put out an immediate bulletin with heavy coverage in the newspapers, radio and television that the assassin known as Jason Bourne died of wounds here in Moscow. Make the details sketchy but have them parallel what happened here this morning."

"That's not difficult. Tass is an obedient instrument of the state."

"I haven't finished," continued Jason. "I want you to include in those sketchy details that among the personal effects found on Bourne's body was a road map of Brussels and its environs. The town of Anderlecht was circled in red-that has to appear."

"The assassination of the supreme commander of NATO-very good, very convincing. However, Mr. Bourne or Webb or whatever your name may be, you should know that this story will splash across the world like a giant tidal wave."