“Yes, sir!” The nurse did as she was ordered and...
“Yes, sir!” The nurse did as she was ordered and fled, leaving Holland and Alex alone in the
antiseptic maze
“Now, you listen to me, Field Man,” whispered the gray-haired director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, kneeling in front of Conklin“This fucking merry-go-round of guilt had better
stop—has got to stop—or nobody’s going to be any good to anybodyI don’t give a good goddamn
what you or Panov did thirteen years ago, or five years ago, or now! We’re all reasonably bright
people, and we did what each of us did because we thought they were the right moves at the timeGuess what, Saint Alex? Yes, I’ve heard the termFucking inconvenient,
isn’t it? Maybe we’re not so brilliant after allMaybe Panov isn’t the greatest behavioral whateverthe-
hell-it-is; maybe you’re not the shrewdest son of a bitch in the field, the one who got canonized,
and fendi handbags discount maybe I’m not the superjock behind-the-lines strategist they’ve made me out to beSo what?
We take our baggage and go where we have to go
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up!” yelled Conklin, struggling against the wall
“Shhh!”
“Oh, shit! The last thing I need is a sermon from you! If I had a foot, I’d take you
“Now we’re physical?”
“I was Black BeltI don’t even know how to wrestle
Their eyes met and Alex was the first to laugh quietly“You’re too much, PeterHelp me up, will you? I’ll go back to the lounge and wait for youCome on, give me a
hand
“The hell I will,” said Holland, getting to his feet and standing over Conklin
Someone told me that the Saint made it back through a hundred and forty miles in enemy territory,
through rivers and streams and jungle, and arrived at the Foxtrot base camp asking if anybody had a
bottle of bourbon
“Yeah, well, that prada replica fairy bag was differentI was a hell of a lot younger and I had another foot
“Pretend you got one now, Saint Alex“I’m going back insideOne of us has
to be there
“Bastard!”
For an hour and forty-seven minutes Conklin sat in the loungeHis attachable footless foot never
throbbed, but it was throbbing nowHe did not know what the impossible feeling meant, but he
could not dismiss the beat that surged through his legIf nothing else, it was something to think
about, and he thought wistfully of the younger days, when he had both feet, and beforeOh, how he
had wanted to change the world! And how he had felt so right in a destiny that forced him to
become the youngest valedictorian in his high school’s history, the youngest freshman ever
accepted at Georgetown, a bright, bright light that shimmered at the end of the tunnels of academe
His decline started when someone, chanel quilted bag knock off somewhere, found out that his name at birth was not Alexander
Conklin but Aleksei Nikolae KonsolikovThat now faceless man had casually asked him a
question, the answer to which had changed Conklin’s life
“Do you by any chance speak Russian?”
“Of course,” he had replied, amused that his visitor would even think he might not“As you
obviously know, my parents were immigrantsI grew up not only in a Russian home but in a
Robert Ludlum ?? THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
244
Russian neighborhood—at least in the early yearsYou couldn’t buy a loaf of bread at the
ovoshchnoi otdel if you didn’tAnd at church school the older priests and nuns, like the Poles, held
ferociously on to the languageI’m sure it contributed to my leaving the faith
“Those were the early years, however, as I believe you mentioned
“What changed?”
“I’m sure it’s in your government report gucci bag sale somewhere and will hardly satisfyyour iniquitous
Senator McCarthy
The face came back to Alex with the memory of those wordsIt was a middle-aged face and it
had suddenly become expressionless, the eyes clouded but with suppressed anger in themConklin, I am in no way associated with the senatorYou call him iniquitous, I have other
terms, but they’re not pertinent hereWhat changed?”
“Quite late in his life my father became what he had been in Russia, a highly successful
merchant, a capitalistAt last count he owned seven supermarkets in upscale mallsThey’re called
Conklin’s CornersHe’s over eighty now, and although I love him dearly, I regret to say he’s an
ardent supporter of the senatorI simply consider his years, his struggles, his hatred of the Soviets,
and avoid the subject
“You’re very bright and very diplomatic
“Bright and diplomatic,” Alex had omega knockoff watch agre