The Bourne Identity jb-1 Read online

  The Bourne Identity

  ( Jason Bourne - 1 )

  Robert Ludlum

  Jason Bourne.

  He has no past. And he may have no future. His memory is blank. He only knows that he was flushed out of the Mediterranean Sea, his body riddled with bullets.

  There are a few clues. A frame of microfilm surgically implanted beneath the flesh of his hip. Evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face. Strange things that he says in his delirium—maybe code words. Initial: "J.B." And a number on the film negative that leads to a Swiss bank account, a fortune of four million…

  Robert Ludlum,

  THE BOURNE IDENTITY

  For Glynis

  A very special light we all adore.

  With our love and deep respect.

  PREFACE

  The New York Times

  Friday, July 11, 1975

  FRONT PAGE

  DIPLOMATS SAID TO BE LINKED WITH FUGITIVE TERRORIST KNOWN AS CARLOS

  PARIS, July 10—France expelled three high-ranking Cuban diplomats today in connection with the worldwide search for a man called Carlos, who is believed to be an important link in an international terrorist network.

  The suspect, whose real name is thought to be Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, is being sought in the killing of two French counterintelligence agents and a Lebanese informer at a Latin Quarter apartment on June 27.

  The three killings have led the police here and in Britain to what they feel is the trail of a major network of international terrorist agents. In the search for Carlos after the killings, French and British policemen discovered large arms caches that linked Carlos to major terrorism in West Germany and led them to suspect a connection between many terrorist acts throughout Europe.

  Reported Seen in London

  Since then Carlos has been reported seen in London and in Beirut, Lebanon…

  Associated Press

  Monday, July 7, 1975 syndicated dispatch

  A DRAGNET FOR ASSASSIN

  LONDON,(AP)—Guns and girls, grenades and good suits, a fat billfold, airline tickets to romantic places and nice apartments in a half dozen world capitals. This is the portrait emerging of a jet age assassin being sought in an international manhunt.

  The hunt began when the man answered his doorbell in Paris and shot dead two French intelligence agents and a Lebanese informer. It has put four women into custody in two capitals, accused of offenses in his wake. The assassin himself has vanished—perhaps in Lebanon, the French police believe.

  In the past few days in London, those acquainted with him have described him to reporters as good looking, courteous, well educated, wealthy and fashionably dressed.

  But his associates are men and women who have been called the most dangerous in the world. He is said to be linked with the Japanese Red Army, the Organization for the Armed Arab Struggle, the West German Baader-Meinhof gang, the Quebec Liberation Front, the Turkish Popular Liberation Front, separatists in France and Spain, and the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army.

  When the assassin traveled—to Paris, to the Hague, to West Berlin—bombs went off; guns cracked and there were kidnappings.

  A breakthrough occurred in Paris when a Lebanese terrorist broke under questioning and led two intelligence men to the assassin’s door in Paris on June 27. He shot all three to death and escaped. Police found his guns and notebooks containing “death lists” of prominent people.

  Yesterday the London Observer said police were hunting for the son of a Venezuelan Communist lawyer for questioning in the triple slaying. Scotland Yard said, “We are not denying the report,” but added there was no charge against him and he was wanted only for questioning.

  The Observer identified the hunted man as Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, of Caracas. It said his name was on one of the four passports found by French police when they raided the Paris apartment where the slayings took place.

  The newspaper said Ilich was named after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, founder of the Soviet state, and was educated in Moscow and speaks fluent Russian.

  In Caracas, a spokesman for the Venezuelan Communist Party said Ilich is the son of a 70-year-old Marxist lawyer living 450 miles west of Caracas, but “neither father nor son belong to our party.”

  He told reporters he did not know where Ilich was now.

  BOOK I

  1

  The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp. The waves rose to goliathan heights, crashing into the hull with the power of raw tonnage; the white sprays caught in the night sky cascaded downward over the deck under the force of the night wind. Everywhere there were the sounds of inanimate pain, wood straining against wood, ropes twisting, stretched to the breaking point. The animal was dying.

  Two abrupt explosions pierced the sounds of the sea and the wind and the vessel’s pain. They came from the dimly lit cabin that rose and fell with its host body. A man lunged out of the door grasping the railing with one hand, holding his stomach with the other.

  A second man followed, the pursuit cautious, his intent violent. He stood bracing himself in the cabin door; he raised a gun and fired again. And again.

  The man at the railing whipped both his hands up to his head, arching backward under the impact of the fourth bullet. The trawler’s bow dipped suddenly into the valley of two giant waves, lifting the wounded man off his feet; he twisted to his left unable to take his hands away from his head. The boat surged upward, bow and midships more out of the water than in it, sweeping the figure in the doorway back into the cabin, a fifth gunshot fired wildly. The wounded man screamed, his hands now lashing out at anything he could grasp, his eyes blinded by blood and the unceasing spray of the sea. There was nothing he could grab, so he grabbed at nothing; his legs buckled as his body lurched forward. The boat rolled violently leeward and the man whose skull was ripped open plunged over the side into the madness of the darkness below.

  He felt rushing cold water envelop him, swallowing him, sucking him under, and twisting him in circles, then propelling him up to the surface—only to gasp a single breath of air. A gasp and he was under again.

  And there was heat, a strange moist heat at his temple that seared through the freezing water that kept swallowing him, a fire where no fire should burn. There was ice, too; an icelike throbbing in his stomach and his legs and his chest, oddly warmed by the cold sea around him. He felt these things, acknowledging his own panic as he felt them. He could see his own body turning and twisting, arms and feet working frantically against the pressures of the whirlpool. He could feel, think, see, perceive panic and struggle—yet strangely there was peace. It was the calm of the observer, the uninvolved observer, separated from the events, knowing of them but not essentially involved.

  Then another form of panic spread through him, surging through the heat and the ice and the uninvolved recognition. He could not submit to peace! Not yet! It would happen any second now; he was not sure what it was, but it would happen. He had to be there!

  He kicked furiously, clawing at the heavy walls of water above, his chest burning. He broke surface, thrashing to stay on top of the black swells. Climb up! Climb up!

  A monstrous rolling wave accommodated; he was on the crest, surrounded by pockets of foam and darkness. Nothing. Turn! Turn!

  It happened. The explosion was massive; he could hear it through the clashing waters and the wind, the sight and the sound somehow his doorway to peace. The sky lit up like a fiery diadem and within that crown of fire, objects of all shapes and sizes were blown through the light into the outer shadows.

  He had won. Whatever it was, he had won.

  Suddenly he was p
lummeting downward again, into an abyss again. He could feel the rushing waters crash over his shoulders, cooling the white-hot heat at his temple, warming the ice-cold incisions in his stomach and his legs and…

  His chest. His chest was in agony! He had been struck—the blow crushing, the impact sudden and intolerable. It happened again! Let me alone. Give me peace.

  And again!

  And he clawed again, and kicked again … until he felt it. A thick, oily object that moved only with the movements of the sea. He could not tell what it was, but it was there and he could feel it, hold it.

  Hold it! It will ride you to peace. To the silence of darkness … and peace.

  The rays of the early sun broke through the mists of the eastern sky, lending glitter to the calm waters of the Mediterranean. The skipper of the small fishing boat, his eyes bloodshot, his hands marked with rope burns, sat on the stern gunnel smoking a Gauloise, grateful for the sight of the smooth sea. He glanced over at the open wheelhouse; his younger brother was easing the throttle forward to make better time, the single other crewman checking a net several feet away. They were laughing at something and that was good; there had been nothing to laugh about last night. Where had the storm come from? The weather reports from Marseilles had indicated nothing; if they had he would have stayed in the shelter of the coastline. He wanted to reach the fishing grounds eighty kilometers south of La Seyne-sur-Mer by daybreak, but not at the expense of costly repairs, and what repairs were not costly these days?

  Or at the expense of his life, and there were moments last night when that was a distinct consideration.

  “Tu es fatigué, hein, mon frère?” his brother shouted, grinning at him. “Va te coucher maintenant. Laisse-moi faire.”

  “D’accord,” the brother answered, throwing his cigarette over the side and sliding down to the deck on top of a net “A little sleep won’t hurt.”

  It was good to have a brother at the wheel. A member of the family should always be the pilot on a family boat; the eyes were sharper. Even a brother who spoke with the smooth tongue of a literate man as opposed to his own coarse words. Crazy! One year at the university and his brother wished to start a compagnie. With a single boat that had seen better days many years ago. Crazy. What good did his books do last night? When his compagnie was about to capsize.

  He closed his eyes, letting his hands soak in the rolling water on the deck. The salt of the sea would be good for the rope burns. Burns received while lashing equipment that did not care to stay put in the storm.

  “Look! Over there!”

  It was his brother; apparently sleep was to be denied by sharp family eyes.

  “What is it?” he yelled.

  “Port bow! There’s a man in the water! He’s holding on to something! A piece of debris, a plank of some sort.”

  The skipper took the wheel, angling the boat to the right of the figure in the water, cutting the engines to reduce the wake. The man looked as though the slightest motion would send him sliding off the fragment of wood he clung to; his hands were white, gripped around the edge like claws, but the rest of his body was limp—as limp as a man fully drowned, passed from this world.

  “Loop the ropes!” yelled the skipper to his brother and the crewman. “Submerge them around his legs. Easy now! Move them up to his waist. Pull gently.”

  “His hands won’t let go of the plank!”

  “Reach down! Pry them up! It may be the death lock.”

  “No. He’s alive … but barely, I think. His lips move, but there’s no sound. His eyes also, though I doubt he sees us.”

  “The hands are free!”

  “Lift him up. Grab his shoulders and pull him over. Easy, now!”

  “Mother of God, look at his head!” yelled the crewman. “It’s split open.”

  “He must have crashed it against the plank in the storm,” said the brother.

  “No,” disagreed the skipper, staring at the wound. “It’s a clean slice, razorlike. Caused by a bullet; he was shot.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “In more than one place,” added the skipper, his eyes roving over the body. “We’ll head for Ile de Port Noir; it’s the nearest island. There’s a doctor on the waterfront.”

  “The Englishman?”

  “He practices.”

  “When he can,” said the skipper’s brother. “When the wine lets him. He has more success with his patients’ animals than with his patients.”

  “It won’t matter. This will be a corpse by the time we get there. If by chance he lives, I’ll bill him for the extra petrol and whatever catch we miss. Get the kit; we’ll bind his head for all the good it will do.”

  “Look!” cried the crewman. “Look at his eyes.”

  “What about them?” asked the brother.

  “A moment ago they were gray—as gray as steel cables. Now they’re blue!”

  “The sun’s brighter,” said the skipper, shrugging. “Or it’s playing tricks with your own eyes. No matter, there’s no color in the grave.”

  Intermittent whistles of fishing boats clashed with the incessant screeching of the gulls; together they formed the universal sounds of the waterfront. It was late afternoon, the sun a fireball in the west, the air still and too damp, too hot. Above the piers and facing the harbor was a cobblestone street and several blemished white houses, separated by overgrown grass shooting up from dried earth and sand. What remained of the verandas were patched latticework and crumbling stucco supported by hastily implanted pilings. The residences had seen better days a number of decades ago when the residents mistakenly believed Ile de Port Noir might become another Mediterranean playground. It never did.

  All the houses had paths to the street, but the last house in the row had a path obviously more trampled than the others. It belonged to an Englishman who had come to Port Noir eight years before under circumstances no one understood or cared to; he was a doctor and the waterfront had need of a doctor. Hooks, needles and knives were at once means of livelihood as well as instruments of incapacitation. If one saw le docteur on a good day, the sutures were not too bad. On the other hand, if the stench of wine or whiskey was too pronounced, one took one’s chances.

  Tant pis! He was better than no one.

  But not today; no one used the path today. It was Sunday and it was common knowledge that on any Saturday night the doctor was roaring drunk in the village, ending the evening with whatever whore was available. Of course, it was also granted that during the past few Saturdays the doctor’s routine had altered; he had not been seen in the village. But nothing ever changed that much; bottles of scotch were sent to the doctor on a regular basis. He was simply staying in his house; he had been doing so since the fishing boat from La Ciotat had brought in the unknown man who was more corpse than man.

  Dr. Geoffrey Washburn awoke with a start, his chin settled into his collarbone causing the odor of his mouth to invade his nostrils; it was not pleasant. He blinked, orienting himself, and glanced at the open bedroom door. Had his nap been interrupted by another incoherent monologue from his patient? No; there was no sound. Even the gulls outside were mercifully quiet; it was Ile de Port Noir’s holy day, no boats coming in to taunt the birds with their catches.

  Washburn looked at the empty glass and the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the table beside his chair. It was an improvement. On a normal Sunday both would be empty by now, the pain of the previous night having been spiraled out by the scotch. He smiled to himself, once again blessing an older sister in Coventry who made the scotch possible with her monthly stipend. She was a good girl, Bess was, and God knew she could afford a hell of a lot more than she sent him, but he was grateful she did what she did. And one day she would stop, the money would stop, and then the oblivions would be achieved with the cheapest wine until there was no pain at all. Ever.

  He had come to accept that eventuality … until three weeks and five days ago when the half-dead stranger had been dragged from the sea and br
ought to his door by fishermen who did not care to identify themselves. Their errand was one of mercy, not involvement. God would understand; the man had been shot.

  What the fishermen had not known was that far more than bullets had invaded the man’s body.

  And mind.

  The doctor pushed his gaunt frame out of the chair and walked unsteadily to the window overlooking the harbor. He lowered the blind, closing his eyes to block out the sun, then squinted between the slats to observe the activity in the street below, specifically the reason for the clatter. It was a horse-drawn cart, a fisherman’s family out for a Sunday drive. Where the hell else could one see such a sight? And then he remembered the carriages and the finely groomed geldings that threaded through London’s Regent Park with tourists during the summer months; he laughed out loud at the comparison. But his laughter was short-lived, replaced by something unthinkable three weeks ago. He had given up all hope of seeing England again. It was possible that might be changed now. The stranger could change it.

  Unless his prognosis was wrong, it would happen any day, any hour or minute. The wounds to the legs, stomach, and chest were deep and severe, quite possibly fatal were it not for the fact the bullets had remained where they had lodged, self-cauterized and continuously cleansed by the sea.

  Extracting them was nowhere near as dangerous as it might have been, the tissue primed, softened, sterilized, ready for an immediate knife. The cranial wound was the real problem; not only was the penetration subcutaneous, but it appeared to have bruised the thalamus and hippocampus fibrous regions. Had the bullet entered millimeters away on either side the vital functions would have ceased; they had not been impeded, and Washburn had made a decision. He went dry for thirty-six hours, eating as much starch and drinking as much water as was humanly possible. Then he performed the most delicate piece of work he had attempted since his dismissal from Macleans Hospital in London. Millimeter by agonizing millimeter he had brush-washed the fibrous areas, then stretched and sutured the skin over the cranial wound, knowing that the slightest error with brush, needle, or clamp would cause the patient’s death.