The Bourne Ultimatum

40

Novgorod. To say it was incredible was to obliquely recognize the existence of credibility and that was nearly impossible. It was the ultimate fantasy, its optical illusions seemingly more real than reality, the phantasmagoria there to be touched, felt, used, entered into and departed from; it was a collective masterpiece of invention cut out of the immense forests along the Volkhov River. From the moment Bourne emerged from the deep underground tu

The American compound, presumably like those of the different countries, was broken up into sections, built on areas anywhere from two to five acres, each distinctly separate from the others. One area, erected on the banks of the river, might be the heart of a Maine waterfront village; another, farther inland, a small Southern town; yet another, a busy metropolitan city street. Each was completely "authentic" with the appropriate vehicular traffic, police, dress codes, shops, grocery and drug stores, gas stations and mock structures of buildings-many of which rose two stories high and were so real they had American hardware on the doors and windows. Obviously, as vital as the physical appearances was language-not merely the fluent use of English but the mastery of linguistic idiosyncrasies, the dialects that were characteristic of specific locations. As Jason wandered from one section to another he heard all around him the distinctive sounds. From New England Down East with its "eeahh" to Texas's drawl and its familiar "you-alls"; from the gentle nasality of the Midwest to the loud abrasiveness of the large Eastern cities with the inevitable "know what I mean?" tacked on to conversational sentences, whether questions or statements. It was all incredible. It was not simply beyond belief, it made the true suspension of disbelief frighteningly viable.

He had been briefed on the flight from Vnokova by a late-middle-aged Novgorod graduate who had been urgently summoned from his Moscow apartment by Krupkin. The small, bald man was not only garrulously instructive, but in his own way mesmerizing. If anyone had ever told Jason Bourne that he was going to be briefed in depth by a Soviet espionage agent whose English was so laced with the Deep South that it sonorously floated out of his mouth with the essence of magnolias, he would have deemed the information preposterous.

"Good Lawd, Ah do miss those barbecues, especially the ribs. You know who grilled 'em best? That black fellow who I believed was such a good friend until he exposed me. Can you imagine? I thought he was one of those radicals. He turned out to be a boy from Dartmouth workin' for the FBI. A lawyer, no less. ... Hell, the exchange was made at Aeroflot in New York and we still write each other."

"Adolescent games," had mumbled Bourne.

"Games? ... Oh yes, he was a mighty fine coach."

"Coach?"

"Sure 'nuff. A few of us started a Little League in East Point. That's right outside Atlanta."

Incredible.

"May we concentrate on Novgorod, please?"

"Sutt'nly. Dimitri may have told you, I'm semi-retired, but my pension requires that I spend five days a month there as a tak govorya-a 'trainer,' as you would say."

"I didn't understand what he meant."

"Ah'll explain." The strange man whose voice belonged to the old Confederacy had been thorough.

Each compound at Novgorod was divided into three classes of perso

"When you say assignments," Bourne had asked, "what do you mean?"

"Situations, mah friend. Jest about anything you might think of. Like ordering lunch or di

The little things, the insignificant things-they were vital. A back door at the Kubinka Armory. "What else?"

"So many inconsequential things that a person might not consider significant, but they can be. Say, being mugged in a city street at night-what should you do, what shouldn't you do? Remember, many of our candidates, and all of the younger ones, are trained in self-defense, but depending upon the circumstances, it may not be advisable to use those skills. Questions of background could be raised. Discretion, always discretion. ... For me, as an experienced part-time tak govorya, of course, I've always preferred the more imaginative situations which we are permitted to implement whenever we care to as long as they fall within the guidelines of environmental penetration."

"What does that mean?"

"Learn always, but never appear to be learning. For example, a favorite of mine is to approach several candidates, say, at a bar in some 'location' near a military testing ground. I pretend to be a disgruntled government worker or perhaps an inebriated defense contractor-obviously someone with access to information-and start ladlin' out classified material of recognized value."

"Just for curiosity," Bourne had interrupted, "under those circumstances how should candidates react?"

"Listen carefully and be prepared to write down every salient fact, all the while feigning total lack of interest and offering such remarks as"-here the Novgorod graduate's Southern dialect became so rough-mountain South that the magnolias were replaced by sour mash-" 'Who gives a barrel a' hogshit 'bout that stuff?' and 'They got any of them whoors over there lak people say they got?' or 'Don't understand a fuckin' word you're talkin' about, asshole-all Ah knows is that you're borin' the holy be-Jesus outta me!' ... that sort of thing."

"Then what?"

"Later, each man is called in and told to list everything he learned-fact by salient fact."

"What about passing along the information? Are there training procedures for that?"

Jason's Soviet instructor had stared at him in silence for several moments from the adjacent seat in the small plane. "I'm sorry you had to ask the question," he said slowly. "I'll have to report it."

"I didn't have to ask it, I was simply curious. Forget I asked it."

"I can't do that. I won't do that."

"Do you trust Krupkin?"

"Of course I do. He's brilliant, a multilingual phenomenon. A true hero of the Komitet."

You don't know the half of it, thought Bourne, but he said, with even a trace of reverence, "Then report it only to him. He'll tell you it was just curiosity. I owe absolutely nothing to my government; instead, it owes me."

"Very well. ... Speakin' of yourself, let's get to you. With Dimitri's authority I've made arrangements for your visit to Novgorod-please don't tell me your objective; it's not in my purview any more than the question you asked is in yours."