Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Ultimatum

"Stop it! It's happening-"

"I'm sorry, I apologize-forgive me."

"You're David!"

"Of course I'm David. I was just joking-"

"No, you weren't!"

"I was talking to Alex, that's all. We argued, that's all!"

"No, it isn't! I want you back, I want you here!"

"Then I can't talk any longer. I love you." The line went dead and Marie St. Jacques Webb fell on the bed, her cries of futility muffled by the blankets.

Alexander Conklin, his eyes red with strain, kept touching the letters and the numbers of his computer, his head turned to the open pages of the ledgers sent over by Bourne from General Norman Swayne's estate. Two shrill beeps suddenly intruded on the silence of the room. It was the inanimate machine's robotic signal that another dual reference had been calculated. He checked the entry. R.G. What did it mean? He back-taped and found nothing. He pressed forward, typing like a mindless automaton. Three beeps. He kept punching the irritatingly beige buttons, faster and faster. Four beeps ... five ... six. Back space-stop-forward. R.G. R.G. R.G. R.G. What the hell was R.G.?

He cross-checked the data with the entries from the three different leather-bound notebooks. A common numeral sprang out in green letters on the screen. 617-202-0011. A telephone number. Conklin picked up the Langley phone, dialed the night watch, and told the CIA operator to trace it.

"It's unlisted, sir. It's one of three numbers for the same residence in Boston, Massachusetts."

"The name, please."

"Gates, Randolph. The residence is-"

"Never mind, Operator," interrupted Alex, knowing that he had been given the essential information. Randolph Gates, scholar, attorney for the privileged, advocate of the bigger the better, the biggest the best. How right that Gates should be involved with amassing hundreds of millions in Europe controlled by American interests. ... No, wait a moment. It wasn't right at all, it was wrong! It was completely illogical for the scholarly attorney to have any connection whatsoever to a highly questionable, indeed illegal, operation like Medusa. It did not make sense! One did not have to admire the celebrated legal giant to grant him just about the cleanest record for propriety in the Bar Association. He was a notorious stickler for the most minute points of law, often using those minutiae of his craft to obtain favorable decisions, but no one ever dared question his integrity. So unpopular were his legal and philosophical opinions to the brightest lawyers in the liberal establishment that he would have been gleefully discredited years ago at the slightest hint of impropriety.

Yet here was his name appearing six times in the appointments calendar of a Medusan responsible for untold millions in the nation's defense expenditures. An unstable Medusan whose apparent suicide was in fact murder.

Conklin looked at the screen, at the date of Swayne's last entry referring to R.G. It was on August second, barely a week ago. He picked up the leather-bound diary and turned to the day. He had been concentrating on names, not comments, unless the information struck him as relevant-to what he was not sure, but he was trusting to instinct. If he had known up front who R.G. was, the abbreviated handwritten notation beside the last entry would have caught his eye.

RG will nt cnsider app't fr Maj. Crft. Need Crft on hs stff. Unlock. Paris-7 yrs ago. Two file out and bur'd.

The Paris should have alerted him, thought Alex, but Swayne's notes throughout were filled with foreign or exotic names and places as if the general had been trying to impress whoever might read his personal observations. Also, Conklin regretfully considered, he was terribly tired; were it not for his computer he probably would not have centered in on Dr. Randolph Gates, legal Olympian.

Paris-7 yrs ago. Two file out and bur'd.

The first part was obvious, the second obscure but hardly concealed. The "Two" referred to the army's intelligence arm, G-2, and the "file" was just that, an event or a revelation uncovered by intelligence personnel in Paris-7 yrs ago and removed from the data banks. It was an amateur's attempt to use intelligence gibberish by misusing it. "Unlock" meant "key"-Jesus, Swayne was an idiot! Using his notepad, Alex wrote out the notation as he knew it to be:

"Randolph Gates will not consider the appointment for a Major Craft or Croft or even Christopher, for the f could be an s. (But) we need Crft on his staff. The key is to use the information in our G-2 file about Gates in Paris seven years ago, said file removed and in our possession."

If that was not the exact translation of Swayne's insertion, it was certainly close enough in substance to act upon, mused Conklin, turning his wrist and glancing at his watch. It was twenty past three in the morning, a time when even the most disciplined person would be shaken by the shrill bell of a telephone. Why not? David-Jason-was right. Every hour counted now. Alex picked up the phone and touched the numbers for Boston, Massachusetts.

The telephone kept ringing and the bitch would not pick it up in her room! Then Gates looked at the lighted square and the blood drained from his head. It was his unlisted number, a number that was restricted to a very few. He thrashed wildly in the bed, his eyes wide; the strange call from Paris unnerved him the more he thought about it. It concerned Montserrat, he knew it! The information he had relayed was wrong. ... Prefontaine had lied to him and now Paris wanted an accounting! My God, they'd come after him, expose him! ... No, there was a way, a perfectly acceptable explanation, the truth. He would deliver the liars to Paris, to Paris's man here in Boston. He would trap the drunken Prefontaine and the sleazeball detective and force them to tell their lies to the one person who could absolve him. ... The phone! He had to answer it. He could not appear as if he had anything to hide! He reached out and grabbed the incessantly ringing instrument, pulling it to his ear. "Yes?"

"Seven years ago, Counselor," began the quiet voice on the line. "Do I have to remind you that we've got the entire file. The Deuxième Bureau was extremely cooperative, far more than you have been."

"For God's sake, I was lied to!" cried Gates, swinging his legs onto the floor in panic, his voice hoarse. "You can't believe I'd forward erroneous information. I'd have to be insane!"

"We know you can be obstinate. We made a simple request-"

"I complied, I swear I did! Good Christ, I paid fifteen thousand dollars to make certain everything was silent, absolutely untraceable-not that the money matters, of course-"

"You paid ... ?" interrupted the quiet voice.

"I can show you the bank withdrawals!"

"For what?"

"The information, naturally. I hired a former judge who has contacts-"

"For information about Craft?"

"What?"

"Croft. ... Christopher."

"Who?"

"Our major, Counselor. The major."

"If that's her code name, then yes, yes I did!"

"A code name?"

"The woman. The two children. They flew to the island of Montserrat. I swear that's what I was told!"

There was a sudden click and the line went dead.

His hand still on the telephone, Conklin broke out in a sweat. He released the phone and got up from his chair, limping away from the computer, looking back at it, down at it, as if it were some monstrous thing that had taken him into a forbidden land where nothing was as it appeared to be or should be. What had happened? How did Randolph Gates know anything about Montserrat, about Marie and the children? Why?

Alex lowered himself into the armchair, his pulse racing, his thoughts clashing, no judgments emerging, only chaos. He gripped his right wrist with his left hand, his nails digging into his flesh. He had to get hold of himself, he had to think-he had to act! For David's wife and children.