The Bourne Identity (72 page)

"So far," said Panov. "You say there's been constant pressure on the decoy to maintain a negative, highly visible profile. What's been his environment?"

"As brutal as you can imagine."

"For how long a period of time?"

"Three years,"

"Good God," said the psychiatrist "No breaks?"

"None at all. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Three years. Someone not himself."

"When will you damn fools learn? Even prisoners in the worst camps could be themselves, talk to others who were themselves--" Panov stopped, catching his own words and Conklin's meaning. "That's your point, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure," answered the intelligence officer. "It's hazy, confusing, even contradictory. What I want to ask is this. Could such a man under these circumstances begin to ... believe he's the decoy, assume the characteristics, absorb the mocked dossier to the point where he believes it's him?"

"The answer to that's so obvious I'm surprised you ask it. Of course he could. Probably would. It's an unendurably prolonged performance that can't be sustained unless the belief becomes a part of his everyday reality. The actor never off the stage in a play that never ends. Day after day, night after night."

The doctor stopped again, then continued carefully. "But that's not really your question, is it?"

"No," replied Conklin. "I go one step further. Beyond the decoy. I have to; it's the only thing that makes sense."

"Wait a minute," interrupted Panov sharply. "You'd better stop there, because I'm not confirming any blind diagnosis. Not for what you're leading up to. No way, Charlie. That's giving you a license I won't be responsible for--with or without a consultation fee."

Page 367

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

" 'No way ...
Charlie
.' Why did you say that, Mo?"

"What do you mean, why did I say it? It's a phrase. I hear it all the time. Kids in dirty blue jeans on the corner; hookers in my favorite saloons."

"How do you know what I'm leading up to?" said the CIA man.

"Because I had to read the books and you're not very subtle. You're about to describe a classic case of paranoid schizophrenia with multiple personalities. It's not just your man assuming the role of the
decoy
, but the decoy himself transferring
his
identity to the one he's after. The
target
. That's what you're driving at, Alex. You're telling me your man is three people: himself, decoy and target. And I repeat. No way, Charlie. I'm not confirming anything remotely like that without an extensive examination. That's giving you rights you can't have: three reasons for dispatch. No way!"

"I'm not asking you to confirm anything! I just want to know if it's
possible
. For Christ's sake, Mo, there's a lethally experienced man running around with a gun, killing people he claims he didn't know, but whom he worked with for three years. He denies being at a specific place at a specific time when his own fingerprints prove he was there. He says images come to him--faces he can't place, names he's heard but doesn't know from where. He claims he was never the decoy; it was never him! But it was! It
is!
Is it
possible?
That's all I want to know. Could the stress and time and the everyday pressures break him like this? Into three?"

Panov held his breath for a moment. "It's possible," he said softly. "If your facts are accurate, it's possible. That's all I'll say, because there are too many other possibilities."

"Thank you." Conklin paused. "A last question. Say there was a date--a month and a day--that was significant to the mocked dossier-the decoy's dossier."

"You'd have to be more specific."

"I will. It was the date when the man whose identity was taken for decoy was killed."

"Then obviously not part of the working dossier, but known to your man. Am I following you?"

"Yes, he knew it. Let's say he was there. Would he remember it?"

"Not as the decoy."

"But as one of the other two?"

"Assuming the target was also aware of it, or that he'd communicated it through his transference, yes."

"There's also a place where the strategy was, conceived, where the decoy was created. If our man was in the vicinity of that place, and the date of death was close at hand, would he be drawn to it? Would it surface and become important to him?"

"It would if it was associated with the original place of death. Because the decoy was born there; it's possible. It would depend on who he was at the moment."

"Suppose he was the target?"

Page 368

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"And knew the location?"

"Yes, because another part of him had to."

"Then he'd be drawn to it. It would be a subconscious compulsion."

"Why?"

"To kill the decoy. He'd kill everything in sight, but the main objective would be the decoy. Himself."

Alexander Conklin replaced the phone, his nonexistent foot throbbing, his thoughts so convoluted he had to close his eyes again to find a consistent strain. He had been wrong in Paris ... in a cemetery outside of Paris. He had wanted to kill a man for the wrong reasons, the right ones beyond his comprehensions. He
was
dealing with a madman. Someone whose afflictions were not explained in twenty years of training, but were understandable if one thought about the pains and the losses, the unending waves of violence ... all ending in futility. No one knew anything really. Nothing made sense. A Carlos was trapped, killed today, and another would take his place. Why did we do it ... David?

David. I say your name finally. We were friends once, David ... Delta. I knew your wife and your
children. We drank together and had a few dinners together in far-off posts in Asia. You were the
best foreign service officer in the Orient and everyone knew it. You were going to be the key to the
new policy, the one that was around the corner. And then it happened. Death from the skies in the
Mekong. You turned, David. We all lost, but only one of us became Delta. In Medusa. I did not
know you that well--drinks and a dinner or two do not a close companion make--but few of us
become animals. You did, Delta.

And now you must die. Nobody can afford you any longer. None of us.

"Leave us, please," said General Villiers to his aide, as he sat down opposite Marie St. Jacques in the Montmartre cafe. The aide nodded and walked to a table ten feet away from the booth; he would leave but he was still on guard. The exhausted old sober looked at Marie. "Why did you insist on my coming here? He wanted you out of Paris. I gave him my word."

"Out of Paris, out of the race," said Marie, touched by the sight of the old man's haggard face. "I'm sorry. I don't want to be another burden for you. I heard the reports on the radio."

"Insanity," said Villiers, picking up the brandy his aide had ordered for him. "Three hours with the police, living a terrible lie, condemning a man for a crime that was mine alone."

"The description was accurate, uncannily accurate. No one could miss him."

"He gave it to me himself. He sat in front of my wife's mirror and told me what to say, looking at his own face in the strangest manner. He said it was the only way. Carlos could only be convinced by my going to the police, creating a manhunt. He was right, of course."

"He was right," agreed Marie, "but he's not in Paris, or Brussels, or Amsterdam."

Page 369

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"I beg your pardon?"

"I want you to tell me where he's gone."

"He told you himself."

"He lied to me."

"How can you be certain?"

"Because I know when he tells me the truth. You see, we both listen for it."

"You both ...? I'm afraid I don't understand."

"I didn't think you would; I was sure he hadn't told you. When he lied to me on the phone, saying the things he said so hesitantly, knowing I knew they were lies, I couldn't understand. I didn't piece it together until I heard the radio reports. Yours and another. That description ... so complete, so total, even to the scar on his left temple. Then I knew. He wasn't going to stay in Paris, or within five hundred miles of Paris. He was going far away--where that description wouldn't mean very much--where Carlos could be led, delivered to the people Jason had his agreement with. Am I right?"

Villiers put down the glass. "I've given my word. You're to be taken to safety in the country. I don't understand the things you're saying."

"Then I'll try to be clearer," said Marie, leaning forward. "There was another report on the radio, one you obviously didn't hear because you were with the police or in seclusion. Two men were found shot to death in a cemetery near Rambouillet this morning. One was a known killer from Saint-Gervais. The other was identified as a former American Intelligence officer living in Paris, a highly controversial man who killed a journalist in Vietnam and was given the choice of retiring from the army or facing a court-martial."

"Are you saying the incidents are related?" asked the old man.

"Jason was instructed by the American Embassy to go to that cemetery last night to meet with a man flying over from Washington."

"Washington?"

"Yes. His agreement was with a small group of men from American Intelligence. They tried to kill him last night; they think they have to kill him."

"Good God, why?"

"Because they can't trust him. They don't know what he's done or where he's been for a long period of time and he can't tell them." Marie paused, closing her eyes briefly. "He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know who
they
are; and the man from Washington hired other men to kill him last night. That man wouldn't listen; they think he's betrayed them, stolen millions from them, killed men he's never heard of. He hasn't. But he doesn't have any clear answers, either. He's a man with only fragments of a memory, each fragment condemning him. He's a near total amnesiac."

Villiers' lined face was locked in astonishment, his eyes pained in recollection. " 'For all the wrong
Page 370

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

reasons ...' He said that to me. 'They have men everywhere ... the orders are to execute me on sight. I'm hunted by men I don't know and can't see. For all the wrong reasons.' "

"For
all
the wrong reasons," emphasized Marie, reaching across the narrow table and touching the old man's arm. "And they do have men everywhere, men ordered to kill him on sight. Wherever he goes, they'll be waiting."

"How will they know where he's gone?"

"He'll tell them. It's part of his strategy. And when he does, they'll kill him. He's walking into his own trap."

For several moments Villiers was silent, his guilt overwhelming. Finally he spoke in a whisper. "Almighty God, what have I done?"

"What you thought was right. What he convinced you was right. You can't blame yourself. Or him, really."

"He said he was going to write out everything that had happened to him, everything that they remembered. ... How painful that statement must have been for him! I can't wait for that letter, mademoiselle. We can't wait. I must know everything you can tell me. Now."

"What can you do?"

"Go to the American Embassy. To the ambassador. Now.
Everything
."

Marie St. Jacques withdrew her hand slowly as she leaned back in the booth, her dark red hair against the banquette. Her eyes were far away, clouded with the mist of tears. "He told me his life began for him on a small island in the Mediterranean called Ile de Port Noir. ..."

The secretary of state walked angrily into the office of the director of Consular Operations, the department's section dealing with clandestine activities. He strode across the room to the desk of the astonished director, who rose at the sight of this powerful man, his expression a mixture of shock and bewilderment.

"Mr. Secretary? ... I didn't receive any message from your office, sir. I would have come upstairs right away."

The secretary of state slapped a yellow legal pad down on the director's desk. On the top page was a column of six names written with the broad strokes of a felt-tipped pen.

DELTA

MEDUSA

Page 371

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

CARLOS

TREADSTONE

"What is this?" asked the secretary. "What the hell
is
this?"

The director of Cons-Op leaned over the desk. "I don't know, sir. They're names, of course. A code for the alphabet--the letter D--and a reference to Medusa; that's still classified, but I've heard of it. And I suppose the 'Carlos' refers to the assassin; I wish we knew more about him. But I've never heard of

'Bourne' or 'Cain' or 'Treadstone.' "

"Then come up to my office and listen to a tape of a telephone conversation that I've just had with Paris and you'll learn all about them!" exploded the secretary of state. "There are extraordinary things on that tape, including killings in Ottawa and Paris, and some very strange dealings our First Secretary in the Montaigne had with a CIA man. There's also outright lying to the authorities of foreign governments, to our
own
intelligence units, and to the European newspapers--with neither the knowledge nor the consent of the Department of State! There's been a global deception that's spread misinformation throughout more countries than I want to think about. Were flying over, under a deep-diplomatic, a Canadian woman--an economist for the government in Ottawa who's wanted for murder in Zurich. We're being
forced
to grant asylum to a fugitive, to subvert the laws--because if that woman's telling the truth, we've got our ass in a sling! I want to know what's been going on. Cancel everything on your calendar--and I mean
everything
. You're spending the rest of the day and all night if you have to digging this damn thing out of the ground. There's a man walking around who doesn't know who he is, but with more classified information in his head than ten intelligence computers!"