The Bourne Ultimatum

"There's a good side, too," said Alex, smiling and adjusting the bandage around his throat. "It gets easier, not harder. You learn new tricks every day; it's surprising what our little gray cells come up with."

"Do tell? I must explore that field one day. ... I heard you on the phone, who was it?"

"Holland. The wires have been burning on all the back cha

"Medusa?"

"You never heard that name, I never heard that name, and nobody we know has ever heard it. There's been enough bloodletting in the international marketplace-to say nothing of a few buckets of real blood spilled-to call into question the sanity of both governments' controlling institutions, which were obviously blind or just plain stupid."

"How about just plain guilty?" asked Panov.

"Too few at the top to warrant the destruction of the whole-that's the verdict of Langley and Dzerzhinsky Square. The chief pin-stripers at the State Department in the Kremlin's Council of Ministers agree. Nothing can be served by pursuing or exposing the extent of the malfeasance-how do you like that, malfeasance? Murder, assassination, kidnapping, extortion and large-scale corruption using organized crime on both sides of the Atlantic are now conveniently slotted as 'malfeasance'! They say it's better to salvage what we can as quietly and as expeditiously as possible."

"That's obscene."

"That's reality, Doctor. You're about to witness one of the biggest cover-ups in modern history, certainly among powerful sovereign nations. ... And the real obscenity is that they're probably right. If Medusa were exposed to the fullest-and it would be fully exposed if it was exposed at all-the people in their righteous indignation would throw the bastards out-many of them the wrong bastards, tainted only by association. That sort of thing produces vacuums in high places, and these are not the times for vacuums of any kind. Better the Satans you know than the ones you don't who come later."

"So what's going to happen?"

"Trade off," said Conklin pensively. "The scope of Medusa's operations is so far-ranging geographically and structurally that it's almost impossible to unravel. Moscow's sending Ogilvie back with a team of financial analysts, and with our own people they'll start the process of dismantling. Eventually Holland foresees a quiet, una

"Thus burying Medusa," offered Panov. "It's again history, unwritten and unacknowledged, the way it was from the begi

"Above all, that," conceded Alex. "By omission and commission there's enough sleaze to go around for everybody."

"What about men like Burton on the Joint Chiefs, and Atkinson in London?"

"No more than messengers and fronts; they're out for reasons of health, and believe me, they understand."

Panov winced as he adjusted his uncomfortable wounded body in the chair. "It hardly compensates for his crimes, but the Jackal served a purpose of sorts, didn't he? If you hadn't been hunting him, you wouldn't have found Medusa."

"The coincidence of evil, Mo," said Conklin. "I'm not about to recommend a posthumous medal."

"I'd say it's more than coincidence," interrupted Panov, shaking his head. "In the final analysis, David was right. Whether forced or leaped upon, a co

"You mean Teagarten, of course."

"Yes. Since Bourne was on Medusa's death list, our pathetic turncoat, DeSole, had to tell them about the Treadstone operation, perhaps not by name but its essentials. When they learned that Jason-David-was in Paris, they used the original scenario: Bourne against the Jackal. By killing Teagarten the way they did, they accurately assumed they were enlisting the most deadly partner they could find to hunt down and kill David."

"We know that. So?"

"Don't you see, Alex? When you think about it, Brussels was the begi

"He gave hope, that's all. Hope isn't something I put much trust in, Mo."

"He did more than give hope. That message made Holland prepare every station in Europe to expect Jason Bourne, assassin, and to use every extreme to get him back here."

"It worked. Sometimes that kind of thing doesn't."

"It worked because weeks ago a man called Jason Bourne knew that to catch Carlos there had to be a link between himself and the Jackal, a long-forgotten co

"In a hell of a roundabout way," admitted Conklin. "We were reaching, that's all. Possibilities, probabilities, abstractions-it's all we had to work with."

"Abstractions?" asked Panov gently. "That's such an erroneously passive term. Have you any idea what thunder in the mind abstractions provoke?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Those gray cells, Alex. They go crazy, spi

"You've lost me."

"You said it yourself, the coincidence of evil. But I'd suggest another conductor-the magnet of evil. That's what you and David created, and within that magnetic field was Medusa."

Conklin spun around in the chair and wheeled himself toward the balcony and the descending orange glow on the horizon beyond the deep-green out islands of Montserrat. "I wish everything was as simple as you put it, Mo," he said rapidly. "I'm afraid it's not."

"You'll have to be clearer."

"Krupkin's a dead man."

"What?"

"I mourn him as a friend and one hell of an enemy. He made everything possible for us, and when it was all over, he did what was right, not what was ordered. He let David live and now he's paying for it."

"What happened to him?"

"According to Holland, he disappeared from the hospital in Moscow five days ago-he simply took his clothes and walked out. No one knows how he did it or where he went, but an hour after he left, the KGB came to arrest him and move him to the Lubyanka."

"Then they haven't caught him-"

"They will. When the Kremlin issues a Black Alert, every road, train station, airport and border crossing is put under a microscope. The incentives are irresistible: whoever lets him out will spend ten years in a gulag. It's just a question of time. Goddamn it."

There was a knock on the front door and Panov called out. "It's open because it's easier! Come in."

The be-blazered, immaculately dressed assistant manager, Mr. Pritchard, entered, preceded by a room-service table that he was capable of pushing while standing completely erect. He smiled broadly and a

"Collegial?" said Alex. "I got out of college damn near thirty-five years ago."