The Bourne ultimatum (92 page)

The young KGB driver from the assault squad was sprawled on the ground by the trunk of the dark green sedan, the wounds in his head certifying death. The car had swerved into the side of a government bus, the sort used to haul workers to and from their places of employment. How or why the accident had happened, Bourne could not know. Neither could he know whether Alex or Krupkin had survived; the car’s windows had been pierced repeatedly and there was no sign of movement inside, both facts suggesting the worst but nothing conclusive. Above all, at this moment, the Chameleon also understood that he could not be affected by what he saw—emotions were
out
! If the worst had happened, mourning the dead would come later, vengeance and taking the killer came now.

Think! How?
Quickly
!

Krupkin had said there were “several dozen men and women” working at the armory. If so, where the hell were they? The Jackal was. not acting in a vacuum; it was impossible! Yet a collision had occurred, its violent crash heard over a hundred yards away—well over the distance of a football field—and a man had been shot dead at the site of that crash, his lifeless body bleeding in the dirt, yet no one—
no one
—had appeared, either accidentally or intentionally. With the exception of Carlos and five unknown people, was the entire armory operating in a vacuum? Nothing made sense!

And then he heard the muffled but emphatic strains of music from deep inside the building. Martial music, drums and trumpets predominating, swelling to crescendos that Bourne could only imagine were deafening within the echoing confines of the huge structure. The image of the young woman emerging from the front entrance returned; she had playfully clapped her hands over her ears and grimaced, and Jason had not understood. He did now. She had come from the armory’s inner staging area, where the decibel level of the music was overpowering. An event was taking place at the Kubinka, a decently attended affair, which accounted for the profusion of automobiles, small vans and buses in the vast parking area—profusion at any rate in the Soviet Union, where such vehicles were not in oversupply. Altogether there were perhaps twenty conveyances in the dirt lot, parked in a semicircle. The activity inside was both the Jackal’s diversion and his protection; he knew how to orchestrate both to his advantage. So did his enemy. Checkmate.

Why didn’t Carlos come out? Why
hadn’t
he come out? What was he waiting for? The circumstances were optimal; they couldn’t be better. Had his wounds slowed him to the point that he had lost the advantages he had created? It was possible, but not likely. The assassin had gotten this far, and if escape was in the offing, it was in him to go further, much further. Then
why
? Irreversible logic, a killer’s
survival
logic demanded that after taking out the backup the Jackal had to race away as fast as humanly possible. It was his only chance! Then why was he still
inside
? Why hadn’t his escape car fled from the area, speeding him to freedom?

His back once again pressed against the wall, Jason sidestepped to his left, closely observing everything he could see. Like most armories the world over, Kubinka had no windows on the first floor, at least not for the first fifteen feet from the ground; he presumed it was because the occasional wildly galloping horses and glass did not go together. He could see a window frame on what appeared to be the second floor but close enough to the slain driver to afford maximum accuracy for a silenced high-powered weapon: Another frame on ground level had a knob protruding; it was the rear exit no one had bothered to mention.
The little things, the insignificant things
!
Goddamn
!

The muted music inside swelled again, but now the swelling was different, the drums louder, the trumpets more sustained, more piercing. It was the unmistakable ending of a symphonic march, martial music at its most intense. ... That was it! The end of the event inside was at hand and the Jackal would use the emerging crowds to cover his escape. He would mingle, and when panic spread through the parking area with the sight of the dead man and the shot-up sedan, he would disappear—with whom and with what vehicle would take hours to determine.

Bourne had to get inside; he had to stop him,
take
him! Krupkin had worried about the lives of “several dozen men and women”—he had no idea that in reality there were several hundred! Carlos would use whatever firepower he had stolen, including grenades, to create mass hysteria so that he could escape. Lives meant nothing; if further killing was required to save his own,
nothing
. Abandoning caution, Delta raced to the door, gripping his AK-47 laterally in his arm, the safety unlatched, his index finger on the trigger. He grabbed the knob and twisted it—it would not turn. He fired his weapon into the plated metal around the lock, then a second fusillade into the opposing frame, and as he reached for the smoking knob, his personal world went mad!

Out of the line of vehicles a heavy truck suddenly shot forward, coming straight toward him, wildly accelerating as it approached. Simultaneously, successive bursts of automatic gunfire erupted, the bullets thumping into the wood to his right. He lunged to his left, rolling on the ground, the dust and dirt filling his eyes as he kept rolling, his body a tube spinning away.

And then it happened! The massive explosion tore apart the door, blowing away a large section of the wall above, and through the black smoke and settling debris, he could see a figure lurching awkwardly toward the semicircle of vehicles. His killer was getting away after all, But
he
was alive! And the reason for it was obvious—the Jackal had made a mistake. Not in the trap,
that
was extraordinary; Carlos
knew
his enemy was with Krupkin and the KGB and so he
had
gone outside and waited for him. Instead, his error was in the placement of the explosives. He had wired the bomb or bombs to the top of the truck’s engine, not
underneath
. Explosive compounds seek release through the least resistant barriers; the relatively thin hood of a vehicle is far less solid than the iron beneath it. The bomb actually blew
up
, it did not blow
out
on ground level, sending death-inducing metal fragments along the surface.

No
time
! Bourne struggled to his feet and staggered to the Komitet sedan, a horrible fear coming into focus. He looked through the shattered windows, his eyes suddenly drawn to the front seat as a heavily fleshed hand was raised. He yanked the door open and saw Krupkin, his large body squeezed below the seat under the dashboard, his right shoulder half torn away, bleeding flesh apparent through the fabric of his jacket.

“We are hurt,” said the KGB officer weakly but calmly. “Aleksei somewhat more seriously than I am, so attend to him first, if you please.”

“The crowd’s coming out of the armory—”

“
Here
!” interrupted Krupkin, painfully reaching into his pocket and pulling out his plastic identification case. “Get to the idiot in charge and bring him to me. We must get a doctor. For
Aleksei
, you damn fool.
Hurry
!”

The two wounded men lay alongside each other on examining tables in the armory’s infirmary as Bourne stood across the room, leaning against the wall, watching but not understanding what was being said. Three doctors had been dispatched by helicopter from the roof of the People’s Hospital on the Serova Prospekt—two surgeons and an anesthesiologist, the last, however, proving unnecessary. Severe invasive procedures were not called for; local anesthetics were sufficient for the cleansing and suturing, followed by generous injections of antibiotics. The foreign objects had passed through their bodies, explained the chief doctor.

“I presume you mean bullets when you speak so reverently of ‘foreign objects,’ ” said Krupkin in high dudgeon.

“He means bullets,” confirmed Alex hoarsely in Russian. The retired CIA station chief was unable to move his head because of his bandaged throat. Wide adhesive straps extended down across his collarbone and upper right shoulder.

“Thank you,” said the surgeon. “You were both fortunate, especially you, our American patient for whom we must compile confidential medical records. Incidentally, give our people the name and address of your physician in the United States. You’ll need attention for some weeks ahead.”

“Right now he’s in a hospital in Paris.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, whenever something’s wrong with me, I tell him and he sends me to the doctor he thinks I should see.”

“That’s not exactly socialized medicine.”

“For me it is. I’ll give his name and address to a nurse. With luck he’ll be back soon.”

“I repeat, you were very fortunate.”

“I was very fast, Doctor, and so was your comrade. We saw that son of a bitch running out toward us, so we locked the doors and kept moving in the seats and firing at him as he tried to get close enough to put us away, which he damn near did. ... I’m sorry about the driver; he was a brave young man.”

“He was an angry young man as well, Aleksei,” broke in Krupkin from the other table. “Those first shots from the doorway sent him into that bus.”

The door of the infirmary burst open, which was to say it was not opened so much as it was invaded, submitting to the august presence of the KGB commissar from the flat in Slavyansky. The blunt-featured, blunt-spoken Komitet officer in the disheveled uniform lived up to his appearance. “You,” he said to the doctor, “I’ve spoken to your associates outside. You are finished here, they say.”

“Not entirely, comrade. There are minor items to attend to, such as therapeutical—”

“Later,” interrupted the commissar. “We talk privately. Alone.”

“The Komitet speaks?” asked the surgeon, his contempt minor but evident.

“It speaks.”

“Sometimes too often.”

“
What
?”

“You heard me,” replied the doctor, heading for the door. The KGB man shrugged and waited for the infirmary door to close. He then walked to the foot of both examining tables, his squinting flesh-encased eyes darting between the two wounded men, and spat out one word. “
Novgorod
!” he said.

“What?”

“
What
... ?”

The responses were simultaneous; even Bourne snapped himself away from the wall.

“You,” he added, switching to his limited English. “Understand I say?”

“If you said what I think you said, I think I do, but only the name.”

“I explain good enough. We question the nine men women he locked in weapons storage. He kill two guards who do not stop him, okay? He take automobile keys from four men but uses no automobiles, okay?”

“I saw him head for the cars!”

“Which? Three other people at Kubinka shot dead, automobile papers taken. Which?”

“For Christ’s sake, check with your vehicle bureau, or whatever you call it!”

“Take time. Also in Moskva, automobiles under different names, different tag plates—Leningrad, Smolensk, who knows—all to not look for automobile laws broken.”

“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 cannot use any other means of transportation. The railroads, the airports—even the small airfields—all will be watched, he understands that.”

“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.”