He would return to his office—whether a smart...
He would return to his office—whether a
smart flat in London’s Belgravia Square or the back rooms of a whorehouse in Katmandu—with
multiple solutionsIt was how he got the sobriquet of Saint Alex of ConklinHe had once
mentioned this gastronomical phenomenon to Mo Panov, who had a succinct reply: “If your crazy
head doesn’t kill you, your stomach will
These days, however, with postalcoholic vacuum and various other impediments, such as high
cholesterol and dumb little triglycerides, whatever the hell they were, he had to come up with a
different solutionIt came about by accidentOne morning during the Iran-contra hearings, which
he found to be the finest hours of comedy on television, his set blew outHe was furious, so he
turned on his portable radio, an instrument he had not used in months or perhaps years, as the
television set had a built-in radio component—also inoperable at the time—but the portable radio’s
batteries had long since melted into white slimeHis artificial foot in pain, he walked to his kitchen
telephone, knowing that a call to his television repairman, for whom he had done several favors,
would bring the man running to his emergencyUnfortunately, the call only brought forth a hostile
diatribe from the repairman’s omega seamaster watch wife, who screamed that her husband, the “customerfucker,” had run
off with a “horny rich black bitch from Embassy Row!” (Zaire, as it later turned out in the Puerta
Vallarta papers Conklin, in progressive apoplexy, had rushed to the kitchen sink, where his stress
and blood pressure pills stood on the windowsill above the sink, and turned on the cold waterThe
faucet exploded, surging out of its recess into the ceiling as a powerful gush of water inundated his
entire headCaramba! The shock calmed him down, and he remembered that the Cable Network
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was scheduled to rebroadcast the hearings in full that eveningA happy man, he called the plumber
and went out and bought a new television set
So, since that morning, whenever his own furies or the state of the world disturbed him—the
world he knew—he lowered his head in a kitchen sink and let the cold water pour over his headHe
had done so this morningThis goddamned, fucked-up morning!
DeSole! Killed in an accident on a deserted country road in Maryland at 4:30 that morning
What the hell was Steven DeSole, a man whose driver’s license clearly stated that he was afflicted
with night blindness, doing on a backcountry road outside Annapolis at 4:30 in tiffany and co necklace the morning? And
then Charlie Casset, a very angry Casset, calling him at six o’clock, yelling his usually cool head
off, telling Alex he was going to put the commander of NATO on the goddamned spit and demand
an explanation for the buried fax connection between the general and the dead chief of clandestine
reports, who was not a victim of an accident but of murder! Furthermore, one retired field officer
named Conklin had better damned well come clean with everything he knew about DeSole and
Brussels and related matters, or all bets were off where said retired field agent and his elusive
friend Jason Bourne were concernedNoon at the latest! And then, Ivan Jax! The brilliant black
doctor from Jamaica phoned, telling him he wanted to put Norman Swayne’s body back where he
had found it because he did not want to be loused up by another Agency fiascoBut it was not
Agency, cried Conklin to himself, unable to explain to Ivan Jax the real reason he had asked for his
helpAnd Jax could not simply drive the corpse back to Manassas because the police, on
federal orders—the orders of one retired field agent using appropriated codes he was not entitled to
use—had sealed off General Norman Swayne’s estate without explanation
“What do I do with the see by chloe bag body?” Jax had yelled
“Keep it cold for a while, Cactus would want it that way
“Cactus? I’ve been with him at the hospital all nightHe’s going to be okay, but he doesn’t
know what the hell is going on any more than I do!”
“We in the clandestine services can’t always explain things,” Alex said, wincing as he spoke the
ridiculous words
So he had gone into the kitchen and put his head under a spray of cold waterWhat else could go
wrong? And naturally the telephone rang
“Dunkin’ Donuts,” said Conklin, the phone to his ear
“Get me out of here,” said Jason Bourne, not a trace of David Webb in his voice“To Paris!”
“What happened?”
“He got away, that’s what happened, and I have to get to Paris under a cover, no immigration,
no customsHe’s got them all wired and I can’t give him the chance to track meAlex, are you
listening to me?”
“DeSole was killed last night, killed in an accident that was no accident at four o’clock in the
morning
“I don’t give a damn about Medusa! For me it’s history; we made a wrong turnI want the
Jackal and I’ve got a place to startI can find him, take him!”
“Leaving me with Medusa
“You said you wanted to go higher—you said you’d only give me forty-eight hours until you
didShove the clock aheadThe forty-eight tiffany heart tag necklace hours are over, so go higher, just get me out of here and
over to Paris
“They’ll want to talk to you
“Who?”
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“Peter Holland, Casset, whoever else they bring in the attorney general, Christ, the President
himself
“About what?”
“You spoke at length with Armbruster, with Swayne’s wife and that sergeant, FlannaganI just used a few code words that triggered responses from Armbruster and Ambassador
Atkinson in London, nothing substantiveYou’ve got the fuller picture firsthand
They’ll have to talk to you
“And put the Jackal on a back burner?”
“Just for a day, two at the mostBecause it doesn’t work that way and you know it! Once I’m back there I’m
their only material witness, shunted from one closed interrogation to another; and if I refuse to
cooperate, I’m in custodyI’ve got only one priority and he’s in Paris!”
“Listen to me,” said Conklin“There are some things I can control, others I can’tWe needed
Charlie Casset and he helped us, but he’s not someone you can con, nor would I want toHe knows
DeSole’s death was no accident—a man with night blindness doesn’t take a five-hour drive at four
o’clock in the morning—and he also knows that we know a lot more about DeSole and Brussels
than we’re vintage tank watch telling