The Bourne ultimatum (102 page)

“That’s
Carlos
,” replied Jason, racing to the balcony railing. “He
owns
them! They’re his for life!”

“
Shit
!” roared Alex as he wheeled his chair furiously and pushed Panov away from the table and the lighted candles.

Suddenly a deafening loudspeaker from the lead helicopter crackled with static, followed by the words of the pilot. “You saw what we did to the beach,
mon
! We’ll cut you in two if you don’t stop your engine! ... That’s better,
mon
. Drift into shore—
drift
, no motor at all and both of you come on deck, your hands on the gunwale, leaning forward! Do it
now
!”

The searchlight beams of the two circling helicopters centered on the boat as the lead aircraft dropped to the beach, the rotors swirling up the sand, producing an outline of a threshold for its landing. Four men leaped out, their weapons trained on the drifting speedboat as the inhabitants of Villa Eighteen stood by the railing, staring in astonishment at the unbelievable scene below.

“
Pritchard
!” yelled St. Jacques. “Bring me the binoculars!”

“They’re in my hands, Mr. Saint Jay—oh, there they are.” The assistant manager rushed out with the powerful magnifiers and handed them to his employer. “I managed to clean the lenses, sir!”

“What do you
see
?” asked Bourne sharply.

“I don’t know. Two men.”

“Some
army
!” said Conklin.

“Give them to me,” ordered Jason, grabbing the binoculars from his brother-in-law.

“What
is
it, David?” shouted Marie, seeing the shock on her husband’s face.

“It’s Krupkin,” he said.

Dimitri Krupkin sat at the white wrought-iron table, his face pale—and it was his full face, as his chin beard had been removed—and refused to speak to anyone until he had finished his third brandy. Like Panov, Conklin and David Webb, he was clearly a hurt man, a wounded man, a man in considerable physical pain, which, like the others, he did not care to dwell upon, as what lay ahead was infinitely better than what he had left behind. His decidedly inferior clothes seemed to annoy him whenever he glanced down at them, but he shrugged continually in silence, the shrugs conveying the fact that soon he would be back in sartorial splendor. His first words were to the elderly Brendan Prefontaine as he appraised the former judge’s intricately laced peach guayabera above the royal-blue trousers. “I like that outfit,” he said admiringly. “Very tropical and in good taste for the climate.”

“Thank you.”

Introductions were made, and the instant they were over, a barrage of questions was hurled at the Soviet. He held up both hands, as a pope might from his balcony in St. Peter’s Square, and spoke. “I will not bore you or disturb you with the trivial details of my flight from Mother Russia, other than to say I’m aghast at the high price of corruption and will neither forget nor forgive the filthy accommodations I was forced to endure for the exorbitant sums of money I spent. ... That said, thank God for Credit Suisse and those lovely green coupons they issue.”

“Just tell us what happened,” said Marie.

“
You
, dear lady, are even lovelier than I had imagined. Had we met in Paris I would have whisked you away from this Dickensian ragamuffin you call a husband.
My
, look at your hair—glorious!”

“He probably couldn’t tell you what color it is,” said Marie, smiling. “You’ll be the threat I hold over his peasant head.”

“Still, for his age he’s remarkably competent.”

“That’s because I feed him a lot of pills, all kinds of pills, Dimitri. Now tell us, what happened?”

“What
happened
? They found me out, that’s what happened! They confiscated my lovely house in Geneva! It’s now an adjunct to the Soviet embassy. The loss is heartbreaking!”

“I think my wife’s talking about the peasant
me
,” said Webb. “You were in the hospital in Moscow and you found out what someone intended for me—namely, my execution. Then you told Benjamin to get me out of Novgorod.”

“I have sources, Jason, and errors are made in high places and I’ll incriminate no one by using names. It was simply wrong. If Nuremberg taught us all nothing else, it was that obscene commands should not be obeyed. That lesson crosses borders and penetrates minds. We in Russia suffered far, far more than anyone in America during the last war. Some of us remember that, and we will not emulate that enemy.”

“Well spoken,” said Prefontaine, raising his glass of Perrier to the Soviet. “When everything’s said and done, we’re all part of the same thinking, feeling human race, aren’t we?”

“Well,” choked Krupkin, swallowing his fourth brandy, “beyond that very attractive if overused observation, there are divisions of commitment, Judge. Not serious, of course, but nevertheless varied. For instance, although my house on the lake in Geneva is no longer mine, my accounts in the Cayman Islands remain intensely personal. Incidentally, how far are those islands from here?”

“Roughly twelve hundred miles due west,” replied St. Jacques. “A jet out of Antigua will get you there in three hours plus.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Krupkin. “When we were in the hospital in Moscow, Alex frequently spoke of Tranquility Isle and Montserrat, so I checked the map in the hospital library. Everything seems to be on course. ... Incidentally, the man with the boat, he won’t be dealt with too harshly, will he? My outrageously expensive ersatz papers are very much in order.”

“His crime was in his appearance, not in bringing you over here,” answered St. Jacques.

“I was in a hurry, it goes with running for your life.”

“I’ve already explained to Government House that you’re an old friend of my brother-in-law.”

“Good. Very good.”

“What will you do now, Dimitri?” asked Marie.

“My options are limited, I’m afraid. Our Russian bear not only has more claws than a centipede has legs, she’s also computerized with a global network. I shall have to remain buried for quite some time while I construct another existence. From birth, of course.” Krupkin turned to the owner of Tranquility Inn. “Would it be possible to lease one of these lovely cottages, Mr. St. Jacques?”

“After what you did for David and my sister, don’t give it a second thought. This house is your house, Mr. Krupkin, all of it.”

“How very kind. First, naturally, there’ll be the trip to the Caymans, where, I’m told, there are excellent tailors; then perhaps a clever little yacht and a small charter business that can be substantiated as having been moved from Tierra del Fuego or the Malvinas, some godforsaken place where a little money can produce an identity and a highly credible if obscure past. After these are set in motion, there’s a doctor in Buenos Aires who does wonders with fingerprints—quite painlessly, I’m told—and then minor cosmetic surgery—Rio has the best, you know, far better than New York—just enough to alter the profile and perhaps remove a few years. ... For the past five days and nights, I’ve had nothing to do but think and plan, enduring situations of passage I would not describe in front of the lovely Mrs. Webb.”

“You certainly have been thinking,” agreed David’s wife, impressed. “And please call me Marie. How can I hold you over the peasant’s head if I’m Mrs. Webb?”

“Ah, the adorable Marie!”

“What about these adorable plans of yours?” asked Conklin pointedly. “How long will they take to implement?”

“You of all people should ask that question?” Krupkin’s eyes were wide in disbelief.

“I think I’d better,” broke in Alex.

“
You
, who were instrumental in building the dossier of the greatest impersonator the international world of terrorism has ever
known
? The incomparable Jason Bourne?”

“If that includes me,” said Webb, “I’m out. I’m heavy into interior decorating.”

“How long, Kruppie?”

“For heaven’s sake, man, you were training a recruit for an assignment, a single mission.
I’m
altering a life!”

“How
long
?”

“You tell me, Alex. It’s my life we’re talking about now—as worthless as that life may be in the geopolitical scheme of things—it’s still my life.”

“Whatever he needs,” interrupted David Webb, the unseen image of Jason Bourne looking over his wounded shoulder.

“Two years to do it well, three years to do it better,” said Dimitri Krupkin.

“They’re yours,” said Marie.

“
Pritchard
,” said St. Jacques, angling his head. “Fix my drink, if you please.”

They walked along the moonlit beach, alternately touching and not touching, the embarrassment of intimacy intermittently intruding as if a world that had separated them had not let them escape its terrible orbit, constantly pulling them into its fiery nucleus.

“You carried a gun,” said Marie softly. “I had no idea you had one. I hate guns.”

“So do I. I’m not sure I knew I had one, either. It was just there.”

“Reflex? Compulsion?”

“Both, I guess. It didn’t matter, I didn’t use it.”

“But you wanted to, didn’t you?”

“Again, I’m not sure. If you and the children were threatened, of course I would, but I don’t think I’d fire indiscriminately.”

“Are you sure, David? Would the appearance of danger to us make you pick up a gun and shoot at shadows?”

“No, I don’t shoot at shadows.”

Footsteps. In the sand! Waves lapping over the unmistakable intrusion of a human being, breaks in the flow of the natural rhythm—sounds Jason Bourne knew from a hundred beaches! He spun around, violently propelling Marie off her feet, sending her out of the line of fire as he crouched, his weapon in his hand.

“Please don’t kill me, David,” said Morris Panov, the beam of his flashlight illuminating the area. “It simply wouldn’t make sense.”

“
Jesus
, Mo!” cried Webb. “What were you
doing
.”

“Trying to find you, that’s all. ... Would you please help Marie?”

Webb did so, pulling his wife to her feet, both half blinded by the flashlight. “My
God
, you’re the
mole
!” cried Jason Bourne, raising his weapon. “You knew every move I was making!”

“I’m
what
?” roared the psychiatrist, throwing down his flashlight. “If you believe that, gun me down, you
son of a bitch
!”

“I don’t know, Mo. I don’t know anything anymore ... !” David’s head arched back in pain.

“Then cry your heart out, you
bastard
! Cry like you’ve never cried
before
! Jason Bourne is dead, cremated in Moscow, and that’s the way it is! You either accept that or I don’t want a goddamned thing to do with you anymore! Have you got that, you arrogant, brilliant
creation
! You
did
it, and it’s
over
!”

Webb fell to his knees, the tears welling in his eyes, trembling and trying not to make a sound.

“We’re going to be okay, Mo,” said Marie, kneeling beside her husband, holding him.

“I know that,” acknowledged Panov, nodding in the glow of the grounded flashlight. “Two lives in one mind, none of us can know what it’s like. But it’s over now. It’s really over.”

THE END.

ROBERT LUDLUM is the author of seventeen novels published in thirty-two languages and forty countries with worldwide sales in excess of two hundred million copies. His works include
The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Osterman Weekend, The Matlock Paper, The Rhinemann Exchange, The Gemini Contenders, The Chancellor Manuscript, The Road to Gandolfo, The Holcroft Covenant, The Matarese Circle, The Bourne Identity, The Parsifal Mosaic, The Aquitaine Progression, The Bourne Supremacy, The Icarus Agenda, Trevayne, The Bourne Ultimatum
, and
The Road to Omaha
. He lives with his wife, Mary, in Florida.