The Misbourne Identity

by Jeffrey B. Burton

The phone broke the dead silence. Ludlum eyed it carefully, suspiciously. On the fifth ring he picked up the receiver.

"Hello."

"Hi there, can I talk to Mr. Thursby please?"

Ludlum paused. He felt the all too familiar tension rising. Feed it, play it out his instincts instructed him. "This is Thursby," he breathed.

"Frank," the mysterious voice cross-examined in a strange monotone as though his soul had long since been stripped away, "it doesn't sound at all like you. Are you feeling okay?"

"Fine," Ludlum coughed, brilliantly disguising his voice.

"Is your secretary out to lunch this early Frank," soul-less continued, "or does she have you answering the phone these days?"

Ludlum offered no information.

"Listen Frank, Meg and I want to hit the ball game this Sunday. Do you and Ann want to join us? I have two extra tickets."

"Ludlum paused in deep concentration, "Coordinates?"

"What?"

"Coordinates?" Ludlum repeated.

"Hey," the voice turned sour in its own undoing, "Who the hell is this?"

Ludlum let the silence bait the soul-less voice. "Thursby," he whispered.

"What number is this?" soul-less attempted to cover up.

Ludlum hung the ear piece on its cradle before the tracer scan could be completed. Someone was trying to draw him out. Who was this Thursby?

Ludlum patted his stomach and got up from his computer. The novel would just have to wait until events began to crystallize. He inched down the elegant wood frame staircase and into his Dutch-stylized kitchen. There wasn't much left in the refrigerator since his maid had left earlier in the week. Ludlum scooped the last of the apple crisp onto a paper plate and sauntered into the living room. He sat on the couch and, using the handy remote control, turned on the television. The late-morning news was on. Ludlum watched a short piece on the realignment of the once Soviet Union and belched with disapproval. Then a reporter went on to tell about the continuing peace talks in the Mid-East. It's beginning again, Ludlum thought disdainfully as he sank his teeth into a delicious chunk of apple crisp, his third heaping of the day. He kicked off his slippers and lay horizontally on the oft-used sofa. Within minutes he became tired, very tired. Realization ebbed in Ludlum's last seconds of consciousness...The apple crisp.

Ludlum awoke with a start. Eyes wide, he searched the room. The news had changed into a mid-afternoon soap opera. Ludlum went into a shoulder roll and landed upright on his feet. His momentum caused him, momentarily, to stagger into the coffee table and trip over backwards.

Everything appeared the same, yet somehow different, completely different. He looked toward the clock on the mantle. It was a little after two. Ludlum clicked the TV off. Over two hours had vanished from his life. His empty apple crisp plate and scoop lay on the floor where he had left them, yet even they seemed different. Two hours had been stolen from his life. Ludlum still felt drowsy from having been drugged. Someone had come and gone. Security had been breached. His house was alive with the ugly stench of intruders.

Ludlum darted toward the door. Just as he had expected, locked. These men weren't amateurs, but, then, neither was he. Who had set him up? The Chinese? Probably not. Things had remained frozen with them since Tianamen Square, a Mexican stand-off: a deadly stalemate with global safety balanced delicately in between. If not the Chinese, then who? The finger pointed toward Mossad. Yet they still owed him a laundry list of favors from that fortnight in Syria. Then, with lightning clarity, it came into sharp focus. The answer was so painfully obvious. Ludlum shuddered against the growing tension. The answer bore a faceless name. A name that sent ice-pick shivers throughout his every nerve-ending. A name that echoed in international fear and terror as it scorched a fiery holocaust of human debris in its violent escape from the bloodiest depths of hell...Thursby.

Ludlum wasn't a wire man and knew it. With today's technology, privacy was a myth -- an old wives tale to be passed on to future generations. After dismantling the phone in the study, Ludlum found the offensive tapping device. The wire was ever so small and blended in perfectly. It appeared Cuban-made, but those bastards will sell to anyone. With utmost concentration, Ludlum carefully snipped the offending eavesdropping mechanism with a quick and decisive flick of his toenail clipper. The dial tone disappeared. Ludlum smiled, a small price to pay for sanctuary.

He completed the search of his house, his tainted fortress, for other signs of wires. Ludlum decided he would call the Langley boys for a weekend's untapping. Those imbeciles owed him that much. Ludlum felt the familiar goose bumps begin to rise. Could they be trusted? Had Thursby's endless resources gotten through to the Agency as well? Either way, he would go through the farce channels so as not to arise suspicion.

He heard the interloper cutting across his lawn long before he saw him. Ludlum charged out through the side garage door. Surprise and interrogate. It was confrontation time.

The boy completed placing the afternoon paper on the stoop when Ludlum grabbed him from behind in a Sandanista death grip, and shoved his face and body full into the oak of the front door.

"Thursby," Ludlum whispered into the impostor paper boy's right ear.

"Lemme go," the boy acted with seasoned skill, "Lemme go."

"You will talk when I say talk or I'll snap your little neck like a twig. Understandenzee?"

The cringing boy nodded his head as best he could from his awkward position.

"Who sent you?"

"The Dispatch." The impostor began to cry, "The Evening Dispatch. See," the boy pointed, "There's your paper."

"Tears won't buy your life, pawn," Ludlum smiled in anticipation, "and just what happened to that other kid?"

"He up and quit sir," the impostor sobbed, "he didn't wanna do this route no more sir. He didn't even give notice, he just quit."

"How terribly," Ludlum paused, "convenient." Ludlum sensed a slight Serbian accent in the boy's panic.

"Sir, please. Your hurting me. Please lemme go."

"Pain is alive, but death is forever. Practice your accent better, midget." Ludlum twisted and threw the assassin onto the unmown grass. "Tell Thursby I'm unimpressed, and the next time you won't be so lucky."

Ludlum watched as the killer-boy ran from his yard. If the boy were truly as he said he was, why would he leave behind his sack of undelivered papers? Ludlum picked one up and began reading an analysis of the events taking place in Chechnya. One by one the pieces of the jigsaw were coming together.

Ludlum heard the all too familiar sound and bolted indoors. He was fearful that he would be too late. Too late in this business meant certain death. He ran to the upstairs backroom closet and grabbed his rifle from beneath a pile of dirty laundry and empty Nacho bags. The rifle was in perfect balance, with a sniper infra-red scope attached atop its barrel. He opened the front bedroom window ten inches and set the rifle in its customary position. A good tool when used by a good man.

The mail truck came to a stop in front of his box. It seemed to be coming later every afternoon, as though trying to slip by undetected. The truck was obviously meant for clean-up if the midget's job had been a success, or possibly to finish off a botched job. Ludlum focused the driver's head between the cross-hairs. The man looked of Mid-Eastern descent, possibly Iraqi. He watched as the agent-driver of the rigged mail truck set many letters inside his box. Ludlum's finger began to tighten. It was rapidly becoming clear. The phony mailman was obviously one of Thursby's scouts. Anything out of the ordinary, or if the driver lingered a second too long, and the first of several bullets would smack straight into the flat of his temple. This was an insult. Just whom did Thursby's men think they were dicking with? An amateur. The Iraqi closed the lid to the mailbox and drove away.

It occurred to Ludlum that the maid had been one of Thursby's as well. He had earlier believed that she'd been hired free-lance, but the drugged apple crisp proved beyond doubt that she had been in Thursby's employ. Ludlum was beginning to understand how Thursby operated and, in another lifetime, might even admire him. But for now the stakes were too high. Ludlum had caught the maid in his study pretending to dust. She quickly melted under his cold steel eyes as he ordered her to leave. He had at least been alert enough at the time to confiscate her dust wand and properly dispose of its Syrian manufactured eye-cam in the fireplace.

And last week there was the gardener who'd tried to garrote him from behind, had not Ludlum's cat-like reflexes saved his life once again. Ludlum saw red and wished he'd killed that treasonous son of a bitch. He had been landing karate chop after karate chop before his wife had stepped in between to try and stop the death fight. Unfortunately, she got caught in the middle and received several blows meant for the gardener. Thursby's henchman fled the driveway leaving Ludlum crying, "Assassin, Butcher!" His wife would be released from the hospital early next week and...Thursby's name kept popping up. Thursby.

Ludlum walked down the driveway towards the mailbox. He picked up the mail and began walking back when, across the lawn, he saw his neighbor trying to hide. Ludlum's glance caught him in mid-backstep. Their eyes locked.

"Good afternoon Bob," the neighbor called and waved from his yard.

Ludlum stared him down. The neighbor gave an awkward smile and backed into his house. Ludlum had suspected the Greenbergs since day one. They had lived in the neighborhood years before the Ludlums had moved in, and their original meeting had seemed one of pure chance. Or had it? So far Thursby had been in complete control of the cards, maybe he also owned the dealer. Either way, the Greenbergs had been turned. They wore their treachery on their crooked, freckled faces.

The Greenbergs had a poodle, Princess, which had been trained to freely roam the Ludlum's yard, snooping and sniffing, defecating the rose bushes with whatever electronic devices Thursby's team of experts could fit into a flea collar. The dog had disappeared over two weeks ago. Then, after several days, Princess' headless carcass reappeared early one morning on top of Mr. Greenberg's new Lincoln Continental. A For-Sale sign appeared in their yard later that afternoon, thus confirming their betrayal.

Ludlum walked in with the mail and code-scanned the advertisements. He found nothing. A thought gnawed away at Ludlum's mind, and his instincts confirmed this horrible suspicion. How did Thursby fit into this unholy and 'Oh my, aren't we just a bit too tidy' shattering of the iron curtain? It was just too clean to wash. It was the false calm before the storm. Ludlum also knew, without a doubt, that Thursby had to be the Nazi puppet master behind the events curdling in the Mid-East and North Korea. After all, the Soviets were no longer a threat to Thursby's new Reich. Russia, we're led to believe, has been reduced to an open sore; a US yes-man tied up with its own infighting and fake democratization process. As for the mighty United States, it has become a giant fossil, swaying impotently in the wind with policy determined by tooth-brushed media polls and assorted crybabies.

What was behind Thursby's plot in the Mid-East, and how would North Korea figure in? Events were beginning to accelerate, and Ludlum prayed he would not be too late. It was time to contact Interpol. If Thursby was a foreigner, they would know. Ludlum would have to phrase things just right to compel them to ante up classified information.

Ludlum had forgotten how long it had been since he'd fingered the Q-Pit Ribs Joint to be a slick cover for Interpol. Perhaps their cover was just a hair too slick. Interpol must delight in their creativity. Ludlum had been driving by one day and, out of sheer curiosity, had stopped by for the rib special. The employees had fit their clichés too tightly to be real, and the way they'd looked him over, frowned, and talked among themselves, had given away their true organization. He'd watched as people would go into the rest rooms, sometimes four at a time, and how they would not come out for long periods. The Q-Pit was, in essence, a perfect front. The ribs weren't bad either. It was exactly how Interpol worked in this less than perfect world. Ludlum had highlighted the Q-Pit's phone number in Miami's phone book in case, someday, he ever needed their lethal services. Today was that day.

It took Interpol several rings to answer, and finally, "Q-Pit Ribs, we do take out, can I help you?"

Ludlum had long since broken Interpol's rather simplistic code, "Scorpio-One to Interpol, Chief-Seven."

"Whaa," the voice said into the ear piece, then in the background, "Shit, it's him again. You take it, I'm sick of talkin' to this crazy dude."

"Hello," the new voice answered.

"Scorpio-One to Interpol, Chief-Seven," Ludlum repeated calmly.

"Listen pal, don't call here anymore! We're a business and we don't want this shit to keep happening!"

The phone hung up on him. Interpol had cut him off. Once again he had been cut loose, abandoned in the field. Ludlum knew that he would have to go after Thursby, and put an end to Thursby's satanic Fourth Reich plot, alone. He also realized that only one of them could be allowed to live in this, a no holds barred, death struggle between good and evil, darkness and light. Thursby had to be destroyed at all costs, and Ludlum was the only man who could stop him. Ludlum knew what he had to do.

He would begin right after he made himself a stack of blueberry pancakes for dinner.