| 2:14a |
@@@@@From time to time he would thrash about on
@@@@@From time to time he would thrash about on the litter, but without any real strengthHe seemed smaller somehow; the flesh over his large frame had settledFor minutes at a time he would blink vacantly at the sky, sniffing delicately at the odors about himWithout realizing it he was smelling himselfForty hours had elapsed since he was wounded, and in that period he had soiled himself frequently, bled and sweated, had even absorbed the dank moist odors of the damp ground they had slept on the night beforeHe moved his mouth in a weak elaborate grimace of disgust
They heard him without much feeling, gasping again for breathAs they had got used to living in the jungle and being wet all the time, as they had forgotten what it was like to live in dry clothing, so they had forgotten now how it felt to draw an effortless breathThey did not think about it; certainly they did not think of when their journey would endIt had become all existence
That morning Goldstein had roused himself long enough to contrive an aidTheir stiffened fingers had been slowing them most of allThey were unable to hold onto the litter for more than a few seconds before its weight would slowly force their hands openGoldstein had cut the straps from their pack, tied them together and yoked the line over his shoulders onto the handles of the stretcherWhen he could grasp them no longer with his fingers he would transfer the weight to the strap, and plow forward until his hands were able to hold them againRidges followed his example soon afterward, and they plodded onward in their harness, the burden of the litter swaying slowly between them
"Water, goddammit, y' fuggin
"No water," Goldstein gasped Wilson began to cough againThe air that played over his face had the flushed heated quality of a kitchen when the oven has been on too long and the windows are closedHe hated the litter-bearers; he was like a child being tormented"Goldstein," he repeated, "always snufflin' around
A thin weak smile formed on Goldstein's mouthWilson had hurt him, and he envied Wilson suddenly because Wilson had never been forced to think about what he said or did"You can't have water," Goldstein mumbled, waiting in a rather delicious expectancy for Wilson's abuse to continue |
| 2:22a |
@@@@@However, seventy-eight had raw-file negative
@@@@@However, seventy-eight had raw-file negative evaluationsThirty-one were
Internal Revenue Service matters, which meant they were suspected of destroying or falsifying
financial records and/or had tax havens in Swiss or Cayman Island accountsThey were zero,
nothing, merely rich and not very bright thieves, and, further, the sort of “messengers” Carlos
would avoid like lepers
That left forty-seven possiblesMen and women—in eleven cases ostensibly husbands and
wives—with extensive connections in Europe, in the main with technological firms and related
nuclear and aerospace industries, all under intelligence microscopes for possibly selling classified
information to brokers of the Eastern bloc and therefore to MoscowOf these forty-seven possibles,
including two of the eleven couples, an even dozen had made recent trips to the Soviet Union—
scratch all of themThe Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, otherwise known as the KGB, had
less use for the Jackal than the PopeIlich Ramirez Sanchez, later Carlos the assassin, had been
trained in the American compound of Novgorod, where the streets were lined with American gas
stations and grocery stores, boutiques and Burger Kings, and everyone spoke American English
with diverse dialects—no Russian was allowed—and only those who passed the course were
permitted to proceed to the next level of infiltratorsThe Jackal had, indeed, passed, but when the
Komitet discovered that the young Venezuelan revolutionary’s solution for all things disagreeable
was to eliminate them violently, it was too much for even the inheritors of the brutal OGPU
Sanchez was expelled and Carlos the Jackal was bornForget about the twelve people who had
traveled to the Soviet UnionThe assassin would not touch them, for there was a standing order in
all branches of Russian intelligence that if Carlos was tracked he was to be shotNovgorod was to
be protected at all cost
The possibles were thus narrowed to thirty-five, the hotel’s register listing them as nine couples,
four single women and thirteen single menThe raw-file printouts from the data banks de scribed in
detail the facts and speculations that resulted in the negative evaluation of each individualIn truth,
the speculations far outnumbered the facts and were too often based on hostile appraisals given by
Robert Ludlum ?? THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
53
enemies or competitors, but each had to be studied, many with distaste, for among the information
might be a word or phrase, a location or an act, that was the link to Carlos
The telephone rang, breaking Jason’s concentrationHe blinked at the harsh, intrusive sound as
if trying to locate the source, then he sprang from the couch and rushed to the desk, reaching the
phone on the third ringI’m calling from down the street
“Are you coming up?”
“Not through that lobby, I’m notI’ve made arrangements for the service entrance, with a
temporary guard hired this afternoon
“You’re covering all the bases, aren’t you?”
“Nowhere near as many as I’d like to,” replied Conklin“This isn’t your normal ball gameSee
you in a few minutes
Bourne hung up the phone and returned to the couch and the printouts, separating three that had
caught his attention, not that any of them contained anything that evoked the Jacka |