Regrets of the Saint
A/N: A conversion between Marie and Alex Conklin set after the events of The Bourne Identity book. Inspired from an allusion made to such a meeting in The Bourne Supremacy.
Marie St. Jacques could never truly and completely forgive Alexander Conklin.
As long as she lived, she would never forget what this man had done to her husband. She would never forget the fact that he had tried to kill David and later had paid others to kill him. Nor the fact that when she first met him he seemed completely unapologetic about his actions. Even defensive towards them.
And yet, today, for the first time since she'd known this man, this recruiter and controller of spies and killers, she'd felt pity for him. Pity towards the wreck of his former self he'd become now.
Mo Panov, David's new psychiatrist, who had once treated Conklin as well years ago, had told her of the sudden change in Conklin's behaviour that had taken place over the past few months. The debacles in Paris and New York had taken their toll on the veteran spymaster, who in turn had taken to drink to drown away his regrets. And his guilt. "In a way, he seems more shaken now than he was ten years ago after a part of his foot got blown off in the 'Nam", Panov told her the last time he'd visited.
Marie knew Conklin deserved the guilt. Every ounce of it. And yet a part of her pitied him nonetheless. The part of her that hadn't yet been hardened and jaded by the danger, the lies, the conspiracies and the deaths of the labyrinth she'd just survived. The part of her that was still just an Ontario ranch girl turned hotshot Canadian economist. What she still would have been had she not been abducted suddenly by an amnesiac running for his life in a hotel lobby in Zurich.
Conklin had come again to their house in Maine. To apologise. This was the third time he'd done so. Not unexpectedly, David refused to see him. "If he walks through that door, I swear I'm gonna kill him", he husband had said. So Marie had to hastily usher him out. But seeing him sitting on their front porch, brooding and smoking like a chimney, she couldn't find it within herself to force him to leave.
He stared up at her. "Miss St. Jacques", he said in a surly, drained voice, acknowledging her presence but doing not much else. Marie surprised herself with her response to this. "You can call me Marie...Mr. Conklin"
"Marie..." Conklin said as the auburn beauty sat down next to him on the porch. The two sat in silence for a few minutes, the accuser and the accused side by side. And then Marie was the one to speak, "I'm sorry about...David. I mean...this is the third time you've come to apologise and I know you're a very busy man, but...try to understand...it's..."
"It's all right. I can't blame him for that. Not really", Conklin said, staring down at the space between his feet. "But I really don't sleep too well at night...not without knowing that I've tried..." he confessed a few moments later. "Besides", he said smiling wryly, "since Treadstone collapsed I've been practically out of a job...so I'm hardly a 'busy man'. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't shunted into early retirement any day now, because God help me, maybe I am getting too old for this".
He sighed and threw his spent cigarette to the ground, lighting another one. He continued, "In my line of work...in our line of work...David's and mine that is...a single misstep can cost a man his life. A single misapprehension infinitely more so. Which is why we tread slowly. Carefully. With patience. Patience which I didn't have". He paused and added, "Patience would have stopped me from doing...what I nearly did. From nearly taking my best friend's life".
"Your...best friend?" Marie asked, surprised. She'd never known of any relationship that existed between her husband and Conklin, save for their professional one of course.
"Yeah", Conklin nodded wistfully. "David and I...we go back a long way. To the Far East. To Cambodia. To Phnom Penh". He looked up at Marie now. "I knew his wife and children. I visited their house often. I was at the time under cover at the Embassy. David was...one of the rising stars of the Far East Section of the Foreign Service".
"But after his wife and children...died...everything changed for him", he continued. "And I was responsible for most of what happened to him next".
"How so?" Marie asked, though she could guess.
"I got him into this lousy business of ours. At the time, I thought it was best for him. Better than therapy even. There was so much grief in David. And more than grief...rage. Rage at the pilot who killed his family. Rage at Hanoi. Rage at everyone in the goddamn war. Rage at himself at not being able to protect his family. Rage at the whole goddamn world. That rage needed to be channelized; to be used...constructively...before it destroyed him. He needed a new purpose in life. A reason to go on living. We needed a specialist...someone who understood the Oriental mind as perfectly as he understood and spoke their languages. Someone who was willing to take risks...crazy near-suicidal risks no sane man would take. It seemed a fair deal at the time. We give him a purpose...he gives us results".
Conklin sighed again and took a third cigarette. "I recruited him and supervised his training personally. I saw him transform from a mild-mannered Oriental scholar into a killing machine. The ultimate guerrilla. The perfect weapon we'd always dreamed of. I saw him become the Chameleon who could blend into any jungle, any situation, and strike out at the enemy invisibly." He paused, "In over two decades in this 'business' I've fielded God knows how many agents...but there was never an agent as skilled, as committed, as ruthless as the man we called Delta".
"But then he went and killed that Australian bastard Jason Bourne and everyone thought he'd gone over the edge. That he'd lost control of himself, or worse, that we'd lost control of him. But he was too good to remove from the game by that point. So we continued to use him. We continued to push him further. When Treadstone was formed, we stripped him off his identity, turned him into somebody else, one of his victims no less, and sent him out as bait for a killer; sent him out into a world where some of the most dangerous men in the world would be trying to kill him 24/7 for being someone he was not. By all rights, he should have snapped by this point. But he didn't. And it's something I should have kept in mind".
Marie spoke now, after a long pause, "But anybody can snap after a while. Anybody can lose their minds in a high-stress situation after too long. God knows, I've known of far too many people; financiers, politicians, soldiers...even colleagues in my very own department, who've broken down. With the work you people do...I wouldn't be surprised if any of you people snapped...and I don't suppose any one of you would be surprised either. In fact, I guess you might even start to accept it after a point".
"Now you're the one playing the goddamn Devil's Advocate", Conklin said darkly. "I've given that up a long time back".
"It's because I've started to realise that you're not the Devil I thought you were. You're just human, like the rest of us, and you make mistakes", Marie said sincerely.
"You don't understand, Marie. It wasn't just a mistake. It was a gross error of judgement. The worst kind. You don't know what David was like back then. Or Jason Bourne, to be more accurate. He was one hundred percent dedicated to the mission, to whatever we told him to do, not because he necessarily believed in it, but because it gave him a purpose. And deep down inside, I suppose he felt that the work he did for us, hunting down killers, would perhaps go a long way in saving countless lives...innocent lives like those of his wife and children. He was the last among us who would have turned, who would have become what he hated. True, he was a killer himself, he had to be in order to survive, but he never ever killed an innocent. On the contrary, he often went out of his way to save lives, at great risk to himself. Just like he saved yours in Zurich. How in the world could anyone, least of all me, who knew him best; how could I possibly even start to believe he had sold out to Carlos? The thought of it now sickens me!"
Marie let him smoke in silence for a few minutes. Then she spoke, slowly, hesitatingly, "But people do change. They do unexpected things and act in unexpected ways that can startle others, even those closest to them, and lead them to believe the worst. David, or rather Jason, had changed...losing his memory, not knowing who or what he was, stumbling around in the dark looking for clues to his past, all of that changed him more than you could ever have anticipated. You could never have predicted the amnesia, Alex. You could never have realised the reason behind his actions. And no matter how good you are at what you do, you can't really blame yourself for falling for Carlos's deception. It was so airtight, anyone would have believed it. Perhaps even I would have...in your place".
Conklin looked at her quietly for a few minutes. After a long silence, he spoke softly, "Maybe you're right. Maybe you aren't. But what's done is done. It can't ever be reversed and I'll live with it for the rest of my life".
"You're right, Alex. What's done is done. It's all in the past. But you don't need to brood over the past any longer. It's the future that matters, not the past". She paused and added, "David's looking only towards the future now, because for him the past doesn't exist. It does for you, but that doesn't necessarily need to bog you down. Sometimes you just need to let go. Sometimes you just need to forgive yourself. And forget. With or without amnesia".
Conklin got up as though to leave, and the paused to turn around and look at Marie. "You know, David is really lucky to have you, Marie. I've never seen him so happy, so content since...Dao died", he said softly. "I don't know if he'll ever forgive me. But I do know one thing. Or at least I can hope. You'll undo all the damage I did. You'll make him David Webb again. More than just another soldier in these futile shadow wars we fight". He paused and then added, "Back at Langley, they call me the 'Saint'. But I'm no saint. I'm just a sinner. And my worst sin was making him one as well". And with that pronouncement, Conklin walked away.
Marie stood silent by the porch, overwhelmed by the revelations of the evening. But the thought which dominated her mind the foremost was whether or not to tell David this. And more importantly, critical even, if she were to tell him this, how would he react? Would it make it sympathetic towards Conklin or just cause him to hate him even more? Would it cause him to remember...?
And then she made her decision. She wouldn't tell David. Not yet. Not when he was still trying to adapt to a new life. She wouldn't burden with a friendship, a friendship strained and tainted by opportunism and exploitation no less, from a forgotten past. Not when he was desparately trying to make a future. But someday perhaps, he would remember. He would remember the man who'd once given his life a purpose, even one as dark as what Conklin had given him, at a time when he desperately needed it. And then maybe, he would be ready to forgive...