Robert Ludlum: The Bourne Identity

“Give me a moment and I’ll tell you. I’ve got a copy in my out file; it’s here on my desk.” The crackling of paper could be heard on the line. It stopped and Petrocelli returned. “Here it is, Conklin. Take up your beef with your own people in Administrative Controls.”

“They didn’t know what they were doing. Cancel the order. Call up the moving company and tell them to clear out! Now!”

“Blow smoke, spook.”

“What?”

“Get a written priority requisition on my desk before three o’clock this afternoon; and it may—just may—get processed tomorrow. Then we’ll put everything back.”

“Put everything back?”

“That’s right. You tell us to take it out, we take it out. You tell us to put it back, we put it back. We have methods and procedures to follow just like you.”

“That equipment—everything—was on loan! It wasn’t—isn’t—an Agency operation.”

“Then why are you calling me? What have you got to do with it?”

“I don’t have time to explain. Just get those people out of there. Call New York and get them out! Those are Four-Zero orders.”

“Make them a hundred and four and you can still blow smoke. Look, Conklin, we both know you can get what you want if I get what I need. Do it right. Make it legitimate.”

“I can’t involve the Agency!”

“You’re not going to involve me, either.”

“Those people have got to get out! I’m telling you—” Conklin stopped, his eyes on the brownstone below and across the street, his thoughts suddenly paralyzed. A tall man in a black overcoat had walked up the concrete steps; he turned and stood motionless in front of the open door. It was Crawford. What was he doing? What was he doing here? He had lost his senses; he was out of his mind! He was a stationary target; he could break the trap!

“Conklin? Conklin …?” The voice floated up out of the phone as the CIA man hung up.

Conklin turned to a stocky man six feet away at an adjacent window. In the man’s large hand was a rifle, a telescopic sight secured to the barrel. Alex did not know the man’s name and he did not want to know it; he had paid enough not to be burdened.

“Do you see that man down there in the black overcoat standing by the door?” he asked.

“I see him. He’s not the one we’re looking for. He’s too old.”

“Get over there and tell him there’s a cripple across the street who wants to see him.”

Bourne walked out of the used clothing store on Third Avenue, pausing in front of the filthy glass window to appraise what he saw. It would do; everything was coordinated. The black wool knit hat covered his head to the middle of his forehead; the wrinkled, patched army field jacket was several sizes too large; the red-checked flannel shirt, the wide-bulging khaki trousers and the heavy work shoes with the thick rubber soles and huge rounded toes were all of a piece. He only had to find a walk to match the clothing. The walk of a strong, slow-witted man whose body had begun to show the effects of a lifetime of physical strain, whose mind accepted the daily inevitability of hard labor, reward found with a six-pack at the end of the drudgery.

He would find that walk; he had used it before. Somewhere. But before he searched his imagination, there was a phone call to make; he saw a telephone booth up the block, a mangled directory hanging from a chain beneath the metal shelf. He started walking, his legs automatically more rigid, his feet pressing weight on the pavement, his arms heavy in their sockets, the fingers of his hands slightly spaced, curved from years of abuse. A set, dull expression on his face would come later. Not now.

“Belkins Moving and Storage,” announced an operator somewhere in the Bronx.

“My name is Johnson,” said Jason impatiently but kindly. “I’m afraid I have a problem, and I hope you might be able to help me.”

“I’ll try, sir. What is it?”

“I was on my way over to a friend’s house on Seventy-first Street—a friend who died recently, I’m sorry to say—to pick up something I’d lent him. When I got there, your van was in front of the house. It’s most embarrassing, but I think your men may remove my property. Is there someone I might speak to?”

“That would be a dispatcher, sir.”

“Might I have his name, please?”

“What?”

“His name:”

“Sure. Murray. Murray Schumach. I’ll connect you.”

Two clicks preceded a long hum over the line.

“Schumach.”

“Mr. Schumach?”

“That’s right.”

Bourne repeated his embarrassing tale. “Of course, I can easily obtain a letter from my attorney, but the item in question has little or no value—”

“What is it?”

“A fishing rod. Not an expensive one, but with an old-fashioned casting reel, the kind that doesn’t get tangled every five minutes.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I fish out of Sheepshead Bay. They don’t make them reels like they used to. I think it’s the alloys.”

“I think you’re right, Mr. Schumach. I know exactly in which closet he kept it.”

“Oh, what the hell—a fishing rod. Go up and see a guy named Dugan, he’s the supervisor on the job. Tell him I said you could have it, but you’ll have to sign for it. If he gives you static, tell him to go outside and call me; the phone’s disconnected down there.”

“A Mr. Dugan. Thank you very much, Mr. Schumach.”

“Christ, that place is a ballbreaker today!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. Some whacko called telling us to get out of there. And the job’s firm, cash guaranteed. Can you believe it?”

Carlos. Jason could believe it.

“It’s difficult, Mr. Schumach.”

“Good fishing,” said the Belkins man.

Bourne walked west on Seventieth Street to Lexington Avenue. Three blocks south he found what he was looking for: an army navy surplus store. He went inside.

Eight minutes later he came out carrying four brown, padded blankets and six wide canvas straps with metal buckles. In the pockets of his field jacket were two ordinary road flares. They had been there on the counter looking like something they were not, triggering images beyond memory, back to a moment of time when there had been meaning and purpose. And anger. He slung the equipment over his left shoulder and trudged up toward Seventy-first Street. The chameleon was heading into the jungle, a jungle as dense as the unremembered Tam Quan.

It was 10:48 when he reached the corner of the tree-lined block that held the secrets of Treadstone Seventy-One. He was going back to the beginning—his beginning—and the fear that he felt was not the fear of physical harm. He was prepared for that, every sinew taut, every muscle ready; his knees and feet, hands and elbows weapons, his eyes trip-wire alarms that would send signals to those weapons. His fear was far more profound. He was about to enter the place of his birth and he was terrified at what he might find there—remember there.

Stop it! The trap is everything. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain!

The traffic had diminished considerably, the rush hour over, the street in the doldrums of midmorning quiescence. Pedestrians strolled now, they did not hasten; automobiles swung leisurely around the moving van, angry horns replaced by brief grimaces of irritation. Jason crossed with the light to the Treadstone side; the tall, narrow structure of brown, jagged stone and thick blue glass was fifty yards down the block. Blankets and straps in place, an already weary, slow-witted laborer walked behind a well-dressed couple toward it.

He reached the concrete steps as two muscular men, one black, one white, were carrying a covered harp out the door. Bourne stopped and called out, his words halting, his dialect coarse.