The Bourne ultimatum (97 page)

“They’re coming,” answered Benjamin, speeding out of the warehouse parking lot. “The flares are over at Motor Vehicles and grenades aren’t part of normal ordnance. They’re in steel vaults down at the tunnel—all the tunnels—under Emergency Weapons.” The young trainer glanced at Bourne, a glimmering of humor seen on his face in the glow of the headlights washing over the roofless jeep. “In anticipation of a NATO assault, most likely.”

“That’s stupid. We’d come in from the sky.”

“Not with the air base ninety seconds’ flying time away.”

“Hurry up, I want those grenades. Will we have any trouble getting them?”

“Not if Krupkin keeps up the good work.” Krupkin had; with the flares in hand, the tunnel was their last supply stop. Four Russian army grenades were counted out and counter signed by Benjamin. “Where to?” he asked as the soldier in an American uniform returned to the concrete guardhouse.

“These aren’t exactly U.S. general issue,” said Jason, putting the grenades carefully, one by one, into the pockets of his field jacket.

“They’re not for training, either. The compounds aren’t military-oriented but basically civilian. If those are ever used, it’s not for indoctrination purposes. ... Where do we go now?”

“Check with headquarters first. See if anything’s happened at any of the border checkpoints.”

“My beeper would have gone off—”

“I don’t trust beepers, I like words,” interrupted Jason. “Get on the radio.”

Benjamin did so, switching to the Russian language and using the codes that only senior staff were assigned. The terse Soviet reply came over the speaker; the young trainer replaced the microphone and turned to Bourne. “No activity at all,” he said. “Just some intercompound fuel deliveries.”

“What are they?”

“Petrol distribution mainly. Some compounds have larger tanks than others, so logistics call for routine apportionments until the main supplies are shipped downriver.”

“They distribute at night?”

“It’s far better than those trucks clogging up the streets during the day. Remember, everything’s scaled down here. Also, we’ve been driving through the back roads, but there’s a maintenance army in the central locations cleaning up stores and offices and restaurants, getting ready for tomorrow’s assignments. Large trucks wouldn’t help.”

“Christ, it
is
Disneyland. ... All right, head for the ‘Spanish’ border, Pedro.”

“To get there we have to pass through ‘England’ and ‘France.’ I don’t suppose it matters much, but I don’t speak French. Or Spanish. Do you?”

“French fluently, Spanish acceptably. Anything else?”

“Maybe you’d better drive.”

f
f
f

The Jackal braked the huge fuel truck at the “West German” border; it was as far as he intended to go. The remaining northernmost areas of “Scandinavia” and “The Netherlands” were the lesser satellites; the impact of their destruction was not comparable to that of the lower compounds and the time element spared them. Everything was timing now, and “West Germany” would initiate the wholesale conflagrations. He adjusted the coarse Portuguese shirt that covered a Spanish general’s tunic beneath, and as the guard came out of the gatehouse Carlos spoke in Russian, using the same words he had used at every other crossing.

“Don’t ask me to speak the stupid language you talk here. I deliver petrol, I don’t spend time in classrooms! Here’s my key.”

“I barely speak it myself, comrade,” said the guard, laughing as he accepted the small, flat, card-like object and inserted it into the computerized machine. The heavy iron barrier arced up into the vertical position; the guard returned the key and the Jackal sped through into a miniaturized “West Berlin.”

He raced through the narrow replica of the Kurf
ü
rstendamm to the Budapesterstrasse, where he slowed down and pulled out the petcock release. The fuel flowed into the street. He then reached into the open duffel bag on the seat beside him, ripped out the small pretimed plastique explosives and, as he had done throughout the southern compounds to the border of “France,” hurled them through the lowered windows on both sides of the truck into the foundations of the wooden buildings he thought most flammable. He sped into the “Munich” sector, then to the port of “Bremerhaven” on the river, and finally into “Bonn” and the scaled-down versions of the embassies in “Bad Godesberg,” flooding the streets, distributing the explosives. He looked at his watch; it was time to head back. He had barely fifteen minutes before the first detonations took place in all of “West Germany,” followed by the explosions in the combined compounds of “Italy-Greece,” “Israel-Egypt” and “Spain-Portugal,” each spaced eight minutes apart, timed to create maximum chaos.

There was no way the individual fire brigades could contain the flaming streets and buildings in the disparate sectors of their compounds north of “France.” Others would be ordered in from adjacent compounds only to be recalled when the fires erupted on their own grounds. It was a simple formula for cosmic confusion, the cosmos being the false universe of Novgorod. The border gates, would be flagged open, frantic traffic unimpeded, and to complete the devastation, the genius that was Ilich Ramirez Sanchez—brought into the world of terror as Carlos the Jackal by the errors of that same Novgorod—had to be in “Paris.” Not
his
Paris, but the hated Novgorod’s “Paris,” and he would burn it to the ground in ways the maniacs of the Third Reich never dreamed of. Then would come “England,” and finally, ultimately, the largest compound in the despised, isolated, illusionist Novgorod, where he would leave his triumphant message—the “United States of America,” breeder of the apostate assassin Jason Bourne. The statement would be as pure and as clear as Alpine water washing over the blood of a destroyed false universe.

I alone have done this
.
My enemies are dead and I live
.

Carlos checked his duffel bag; what remained were the most lethal instruments of death found in the arsenal of Kubinka. Four layered rows of short-packaged, heat-seeking missiles, twenty in all, each capable of blowing up the entire base of the Washington Monument; and once fused and unshielded, each would seek the sources of fire and do its work. Satisfied, the Jackal shut off the fuel release, turned around and sped back to the border gate.

The sleepy technician at Capital Headquarters blinked his eyes and stared at the green letters on the screen in front of him. What he read did not really make sense, but the clearances went unchallenged. For the fifth time the “commandant” of the “Spanish” compound had crossed and recrossed the north borders up into “Germany” and was now heading back into “France.” Twice before, when the codes were transmitted and in accord with the maximum alert that was in force, the technician had phoned the gates of “Israel” and “Italy” and was told that only a fuel truck had passed through. That was the information he had given to a code-cleared trainer named Benjamin, but now he wondered. Why would such a high-ranking official be driving a fuel truck? ... On the other hand, why not? Novgorod was rife with corruption, everyone suspected that, so perhaps the “commandant” was either seeking out the corrupters or collecting his fees at night. Regardless, since there was no report of a lost or stolen card, and the computers raised no objections, it was better to leave well enough alone. One never knew who his next superior might be.

f
f
f

“
Voici ma carte
,” said Bourne to the guard at the border crossing as he handed the man his computerized card. “
Vite, s’il vous pla
î
t
!”

“
Da ... oui
,” replied the guard, walking rapidly to the clearance machine as an enormous fuel truck, heading the other way, passed through into “England.”

“Don’t press the French too much,” said Benjamin, in the front seat beside Jason. “These cats do their best, but they’re not linguists.”

“
Cal-if-fornia
... here I come,” sang Bourne softly. “You sure you and your father don’t want to join your mother in LA?”

“
Shut
up!”

The guard returned, saluted, and the iron barrier was raised. Jason accelerated, and saw in a matter of moments, bathed in floodlights, a three-story replica of the Eiffel Tower. In the distance, to the right, was a miniature Champs-Elysées with a wooden reproduction of the Arc de Triomphe, high enough to be unmistakable. Absently, Bourne’s mind wandered back to those fitful, terrible hours when he and Marie had raced all over Paris trying desperately to find each other. ... Marie, oh God,
Marie
!
I want to come back I want to be David again. He and I—we’re so much older now. He doesn’t frighten me any longer and I don’t anger him. ... Who
?
Which of us
?
Oh, Christ
!

“Hold it,” said Benjamin, touching Jason’s arm. “Slow down.”

“What is it?”

“
Stop
, “cried the young trainer. “Pull over and shut off the engine.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m not sure.” Benjamin’s neck was arched back, his eyes on the clear night sky and the shimmering lights of the stars. “No clouds,” he said cryptically. “No storms.”

“It’s not raining, either. So what? I want to get up to the Spanish compound!”

“There it goes again—”

“What the
hell
are you talking about?” And then Bourne heard it ... far away, the sound of distant thunder, yet the night
was
clear. It happened again—and again and again, one deep rumble after another.

“
There
!” shouted the young Soviet from Los Angeles, standing up in the jeep and pointing to the north. “What
is
it?”

“That’s fire, young man,” answered Jason softly, hesitantly, as he also stood up and stared at the pulsating yellow glow that lit up the distant sky. “And my guess is that it’s the Spanish compound. He was initially trained there and that’s what he came back to do—to blow the place
up
! It’s his revenge! ... Get
down
, we’ve got to get up there!”

“No, you’re wrong,” broke in Benjamin, quickly lowering himself into the seat as Bourne started the engine and yanked the jeep into gear. “ ‘Spain’s’ no more than five or six miles from here. Those fires are a lot farther away.”

“Just show me the fastest route,” said Jason, pressing the accelerator to the floor.

Under the trainer’s swiftly roving eyes accompanied by sudden shouts of “Turn here!” and “Go right!” and “Straight down this road!” they raced through “Paris,” and north into successive sectors labeled “Marseilles,” “Montb
é
liard,” “Le Havre,” “Strasbourg” and so many others, circling town squares and passing quaint streets and miniaturized city blocks, until finally they were in sight of the “Spanish” border. The closer they came, the louder were the booms in the distance, the brighter the yellow night sky. The guards at the gate were furiously manning their telephones and hand-held radios; the two-note blasts of sirens joined the shouting and the screaming as police cars and fire engines appeared seemingly out of nowhere, racing into the streets of “Madrid” on their way to the next northern border crossing.

“What’s
happening
?” yelled Benjamin, leaping from the jeep and dropping all pretense of Novgorod training by speaking Russian. “I’m senior staff!” he added, slipping the card into the release equipment, snapping the barrier up. “
Tell
me!”

“
Insanity
, comrade!” shouted an officer from the gatehouse window. “Unbelievable! ... It’s as if the earth went crazy! First ‘Germany,’ all over there are explosions and fires in the streets and buildings going up in flames. The ground trembles, and we are told it’s some kind of massive earthquake. Then it happens in ‘Italy’—‘Rome’ is torched, and in the ‘Greek’ sector ‘Athens’ and the port of ‘Piraeus’ are filled with fires everywhere and still the explosions continue, the streets in flames!”

“What does Capital Headquarters say?”

“They don’t know
what
to say! The earthquake nonsense was just that—
nonsense
. Everyone’s in panic, issuing orders and then countermanding them.” Another wall phone rang inside the gatehouse; the officer of the guard picked it up and listened, then instantly screamed at the top of his lungs. “Madness, it’s complete
madness
! Are you
certain
?”

“What is it?” roared Benjamin, rushing to the window.

“ ‘Egypt!’ ” he screamed, his ear pressed to the telephone. “ ‘
Israel
!’ ... ‘Cairo’ and ‘Tel Aviv’—fires
everywhere
, bombs everywhere! No one can keep up with the devastation; the trucks crash into one another in the narrow streets. The hydrants are blown up; water flows in the gutters but the streets are still in flames. ... And some idiot just got on the line and asked if the No Smoking signs were properly placed while the wooden buildings are on their way to becoming rubble! Idiots. They are all
idiots
!”

“Get back here!” yelled Bourne, having made the jeep lurch through the gate. “He’s
in
here somewhere! You drive and I’ll—” Jason’s words were cut off by a deafening explosion up ahead in the center of “Madrid’s” Paseo del Prado. It was an enormous detonation, lumber and stone arcing up into the flaming sky. Then, as if the Paseo itself were a living, throbbing immense wall of fire, the flames rolled forward, swinging to the left out of the “city” into the road that was the approach to the border gate. “
Look
!” shouted Bourne, reaching down out of the jeep, his hand scraping the graveled surface beneath; he brought his fingers to his face, his nostrils. “
Christ
,” he roared. “The whole goddamned road’s soaked with
gasoline
!” A burst of fire imploded thirty yards in front of the jeep, sending stones and dirt smashing into the metal grille, and propelling the flames forward with increasing speed. “
Plastics
!” said Jason to himself, then yelled at Benjamin, who was running to the jeep, “Go back there! Get everyone out of here! The son of a bitch has the place ringed with plastics! Head for the river!”