“They’re not for training, eitherThe compounds...
“They’re not for training, eitherThe compounds aren’t military-oriented but basically civilian If those are ever used, it’s not for indoctrination purposesWhere do we go now?” “Check with headquarters firstSee if anything’s happened at any of the border checkpoints Robert Ludlum ?? THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM 424 “My beeper would have gone off—” “I don’t trust beepers, I like words,” interrupted Jason Benjamin did so, switching to the Russian language and using the codes that only senior staff were assignedThe terse Soviet reply came over the speaker; the young trainer replaced the microphone and turned to Bourne“No activity at all,” he said“Just some intercompound fuel deliveries “What are they?” “Petrol distribution mainlySome compounds have larger tanks than others, so logistics call for routine apportionments until the main supplies are shipped downriver “They distribute at night?” “It’s far better than those trucks clogging up the streets during the dayRemember, everything’s scaled down hereAlso, we’ve been driving through the back roads, but there’s a maintenance discount chanel quilted handbag army in the central locations cleaning up stores and offices and restaurants, getting ready for tomorrow’s assignmentsLarge trucks wouldn’t help “Christ, it is DisneylandAll right, head for the ‘Spanish’ border, Pedro “To get there we have to pass through ‘England’ and ‘France I don’t suppose it matters much, but I don’t speak FrenchDo you?” “French fluently, Spanish acceptablyAnything else?” “Maybe you’d better drive ?? ?? ?? The Jackal braked the huge fuel truck at the “West German” border; it was as far as he intended to goThe remaining northernmost areas of “Scandinavia” and “The Netherlands” were the lesser satellites; the impact of their destruction was not comparable to that of the lower compounds and the time element spared themEverything was timing now, and “West Germany” would initiate the wholesale conflagrationsHe adjusted the coarse Portuguese shirt that covered a Spanish general’s tunic beneath, and as the guard came out of the gatehouse Carlos spoke in Russian, using the same words he had used at every other crossing “Don’t ask me to speak the stupid language dior messanger bag you talk hereI deliver petrol, I don’t spend time in classrooms! Here’s my key “I barely speak it myself, comrade,” said the guard, laughing as he accepted the small, flat, cardlike object and inserted it into the computerized machineThe heavy iron barrier arced up into the vertical position; the guard returned the key and the Jackal sped through into a miniaturized “West Berlin He raced through the narrow replica of the Kurfürstendamm to the Budapesterstrasse, where he slowed down and pulled out the petcock releaseThe fuel flowed into the streetHe then reached into the open duffel bag on the seat beside him, ripped out the small pretimed plastique explosives and, as he had done throughout the southern compounds to the border of “France,” hurled them through the lowered windows on both sides of the truck into the foundations of the wooden buildings he thought most flammableHe sped into the “Munich” sector, then to the port of “Bremerhaven” on the river, and finally into “Bonn” and the scaled-down versions of the embassies in “Bad Godesberg,” flooding the streets, d&g handbag distributing the explosivesHe looked at his watch; it was time to head backHe had barely fifteen minutes before the first detonations took place in all of “West Germany,” followed by the explosions in the combined compounds of “Italy-Greece,” “Israel-Egypt” and “Spain-Portugal,” each spaced eight minutes apart, timed to create maximum chaos There was no way the individual fire brigades could contain the flaming streets and buildings in the disparate sectors of their compounds north of “France Others would be ordered in from Robert Ludlum ?? THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM 425 adjacent compounds only to be recalled when the fires erupted on their own groundsIt was a simple formula for cosmic confusion, the cosmos being the false universe of NovgorodThe border gates, would be flagged open, frantic traffic unimpeded, and to complete the devastation, the genius that was Ilich Ramirez Sanchez—brought into the world of terror as Carlos the Jackal by the errors of that same Novgorod—had to be in “Paris Not his Paris, but the hated Novgorod’s “Paris,” and he would burn it to the ground in ways the cartier rodster swiss watches maniacs of the Third Reich never dreamed ofThen would come “England,” and finally, ultimately, the largest compound in the despised, isolated, illusionist Novgorod, where he would leave his triumphant message—the “United States of America,” breeder of the apostate assassin Jason BourneThe statement would be as pure and as clear as Alpine water washing over the blood of a destroyed false universe I alone have done thisMy enemies are dead and I live Carlos checked his duffel bag; what remained were the most lethal instruments of death found in the arsenal of KubinkaFour layered rows of short-packaged, heat-seeking missiles, twenty in all, each capable of blowing up the entire base of the Washington Monument; and once fused and unshielded, each would seek the sources of fire and do its workSatisfied, the Jackal shut off the fuel release, turned around and sped back to the border gate The sleepy technician at Capital Headquarters blinked his eyes and stared at the green letters on the screen in front of himWhat he read did not really make sense, but the clearances tiffany necklace and bracelet went unchalleng