Neither of them knew when it happened, or, in truth, whether it had happened. Or, if it had, to what lengths either would go to preserve it, or deepen it. There was no essential drama, no conflicts to overcome or barriers to surmount. All that was required was communication, by words and looks, and, perhaps as vital as either of these, the frequent accompaniment of quiet laughter.
Their living arrangements in the room at the village inn were as clinical as they might have been in the hospital ward it replaced. During the daylight hours Marie took care of various practical matters such as clothes, meals, maps, and newspapers. On her own she had driven the stolen car ten miles south to the town of Reinach where she had abandoned it, taking a taxi back to Lenzburg. When she was out Bourne concentrated on rest and mobility. From somewhere in his forgotten past he understood that recovery depended upon both and he applied rigid discipline to both; he had been there before … before Port Noir.
When they were together they talked, at first awkwardly, the thrusts and parries of strangers thrown together and surviving the shock waves of cataclysm. They tried to insert normalcy where none could exist, but it was easier when they both accepted the essential abnormality: there was nothing to say not related to what had happened. And if there was, it would begin to appear only during those moments when the probing of what-had-happened was temporarily exhausted, the silences springboards to relief, to other words and thoughts.
It was during such moments that Jason learned the salient facts about the woman who had saved his life. He protested that she knew as much about him as he did, but he knew nothing about her. Where had she sprung from? Why was an attractive woman with dark red hair and skin obviously nurtured on a farm somewhere pretending to be a doctor of economics?
“Because she was sick of the farm,” Marie replied.
“No kidding? A farm, really?”
“Well, a small ranch would be more like it. Small in comparison to the king-sized ones in Alberta. In my father’s time, when a Canuck went west to buy land, there were unwritten restrictions. Don’t compete in size with your betters. He often said that if he’d used the name St. James rather than St. Jacques, he’d be a far wealthier man today.”
“He was a rancher?”
Marie had laughed. “No, he was an accountant who became a rancher by way of a Vickers bomber in the war. He was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. I guess once he saw all that sky, an accounting office seemed a little dull.”
“That takes a lot of nerve.”
“More than you know. He sold cattle he didn’t own on land he didn’t have before he bought the ranch. French to the core, people said.”
“I think I’d like him.”
“You would.”
She had lived in Calgary with her parents and two brothers until she was eighteen, when she went to McGill University in Montreal and the beginnings of a life she had never contemplated. An indifferent student who preferred racing over the fields on the back of a horse to the structured boredom of a convent school in Alberta discovered the excitement of using her mind.
“It was really as simple as that,” she told him. “I’d looked at books as natural enemies, and suddenly, here I was in a place surrounded by people who were caught up in them, having a marvelous time. Everything was talk. Talk all day, talk all night—in classrooms and seminars, in crowded booths over pitchers of beer; I think it was the talk that turned me on. Does that make sense to you?”
“I can’t remember, but I can understand,” Bourne said. “I have no memories of college or friends like that, but I’m pretty sure I was there.” He smiled. “Talking over pitchers of beer is a pretty strong impression.”
She smiled back. “And I was pretty impressive in that department. A strapping girl from Calgary with two older brothers to compete with could drink more beer than half the university boys in Montreal.”
“You must have been resented.”
“No, just envied.”
A new world had been presented to Marie St. Jacques; she never returned to her old one. Except for prescribed midterm holidays, prolonged trips to Calgary grew less and less frequent. Her circles in Montreal expanded, the summers taken up with jobs in and outside the university. She gravitated first to history, then reasoned that most of history was shaped by economic forces—power and significance had to be paid for—and so she tested the theories of economics. And was consumed.
She remained at McGill for five years, receiving her masters degree and a Canadian government fellowship to Oxford.
“That was a day, I can tell you. I thought my father would have apoplexy. He left his precious cattle to my brothers long enough to fly east to talk me out of it.”
“Talk you out of it? Why? He was an accountant; you were going after a doctorate in economics.”
“Don’t make that mistake,” Marie exclaimed. “Accountants and economists are natural enemies. One views trees, the other forests, and the visions are usually at odds, as they should be. Besides, my father’s not simply Canadian, he’s French-Canadian. I think he saw me as a traitor to Versailles. But he was mollified when I told him that a condition of the fellowship was a commitment to work for the government for a minimum of three years. He said I could ‘serve the cause better from within.’ Vive Québec libre—vive la France!”
They both laughed.
The three-year commitment to Ottawa was extended for all the logical reasons: whenever she thought of leaving, she was promoted a grade, given a large office and an expanded staff.
“Power corrupts, of course”—she smiled—“and no one knows it better than a ranking bureaucrat whom banks and corporations pursue for a recommendation. But I think Napoleon said it better. ‘Give me enough medals and I’ll win you any war.’ So I stayed. I enjoy my work immensely. But then it’s work I’m good at and that helps.”
Jason watched her as she talked. Beneath the controlled exterior there was an exuberant, childlike quality about her. She was an enthusiast, reining in her enthusiasm whenever she felt it becoming too pronounced. Of course she was good at what she did; he suspected she never did anything with less than her fullest application. “I’m sure you are—good, I mean—but it doesn’t leave much time for other things, does it?”
“What other things?”
“Oh, the usual. Husband, family, house with the picket fence.”
“They may come one day; I don’t rule them out.”
“But they haven’t.”
“No. There were a couple of close calls, but no brass ring. Or diamond, either.”
“Who’s Peter?”
The smile faded. “I’d forgotten. You read the cable.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We’ve covered that.… Peter? I adore Peter. We lived together for nearly two years, but it didn’t work out.”
“Apparently he doesn’t hold any grudges.”
“He’d better not!” She laughed again. “He’s director of the section, hopes for a cabinet appointment soon. If he doesn’t behave himself, I’ll tell the Treasury Board what he doesn’t know and he’ll be back as an SX-Two.”
“He said he was going to pick you up at the airport on the twenty-sixth. You’d better cable him.”
“Yes, I know.”
Her leaving was what they had not talked about; they had avoided the subject as though it were a distant eventuality. It was not related to what-had-happened; it was something that was going to be. Marie had said she wanted to help him; he had accepted, assuming she was driven by false gratitude into staying with him for a day or so—and he was grateful for that. But anything else was unthinkable.
Which was why they did not talk about it. Words and looks had passed between them, quiet laughter evoked, comfort established. At odd moments there were tentative rushes of warmth and they both understood and backed away. Anything else was unthinkable.
So they kept returning to the abnormality, to what-had-happened. To him more than to them, for he was the irrational reason for their being together … together in a room at a small village inn in Switzerland. Abnormality. It was not part of the reasonable, ordered world of Marie St. Jacques, and because it was not, her orderly, analytical mind was provoked. Unreasonable things were to be examined, unraveled, explained. She became relentless in her probing, as insistent as Geoffrey Washburn had been on the Ile de Port Noir, but without the doctor’s patience. For she did not have the time; she knew it and it drove her to the edges of stridency.
“When you read the newspapers, what strikes you?”
“The mess. Seems it’s universal.”
“Be serious. What’s familiar to you?”
“Most everything, but I can’t tell you why.”
“This morning. There was a story about an American arms shipment to Greece and the subsequent debate in the United Nations; the Soviets protested. I understand the significance, the Mediterranean power struggle, the Mid East spillover.”
“Give me another.”
“There was an article about East German interference with the Bonn government’s liaison office in Warsaw. Eastern bloc, Western bloc; again I understood.”
“You see the relationship, don’t you? You’re politically—geo-politically—receptive.”
“Or I have a perfectly normal working knowledge of current events. I don’t think I was ever a diplomat. The money at the Gemeinschaft would rule out any kind of government employment.”
“I agree. Still, you’re politically aware. What about maps? You asked me to buy you maps. What comes to mind when you look at them?”
“In some cases names trigger images, just as they did in Zurich. Buildings, hotels, streets … sometimes faces. But never names. The faces don’t have any.”
“Still you’ve traveled a great deal.”
“I guess I have.”
“You know you have.”
“All right, I’ve traveled.”
“How did you travel?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“Was it usually by plane, or by car—not taxis but driving yourself?”
“Both, I think. Why?”
“Planes would mean greater distances more frequently. Did people meet you? Are there faces at airports, hotels?”
“Streets,” he replied involuntarily.
“Streets? Why streets?”
“I don’t know. Faces met me in the streets … and in quiet places. Dark places.”
“Restaurants? Cafés?”
“Hotel rooms?”
“Yes.”
“Not offices? Business offices?”
“Sometimes. Not usually.”
“All right. People met you. Faces. Men? Women? Both?”
“Men mostly. Some women, but mostly men.”
“What did they talk about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try to remember.”
“I can’t. There aren’t any voices; there aren’t any words.”
“Were there schedules? You met with people, that means you had appointments. They expected to meet with you and you expected to meet with them. Who scheduled those appointments? Someone had to.”
“Cables. Telephone calls.”
“From whom? From where?”
“I don’t know. They would reach me.”
“At hotels?”
“Mostly, I imagine.”
“You told me the assistant manager at the Carillon said you did receive messages.”
“Then they came to hotels.”
“Something-or-other Seventy-One?”
“Treadstone.”
“Treadstone. That’s your company, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. I couldn’t find it.”
“Concentrate!”
“I am. It wasn’t listed. I called New York.”
“You seem to think that’s so unusual. It’s not.”
“Why not?”
“It could be a separate in-house division, or a blind subsidiary—a corporation set up to make purchases for a parent company whose name would push up a negotiating price. It’s done every day.”
“Whom are you trying to convince?”
“You. It’s entirely possible that you’re a roving negotiator for American financial interests. Everything points to it: funds set up for immediate capital, confidentiality open for corporate approval, which was never exercised. These facts, plus your own antenna for political shifts, point to a trusted purchasing agent, and quite probably a large shareholder or part owner of the parent company.”
“You talk awfully fast.”
“I’ve said nothing that isn’t logical.”
“There’s a hole or two.”
“Where?”
“That account didn’t show any withdrawals. Only deposits. I wasn’t buying, I was selling.”
“You don’t know that; you can’t remember. Payments can be made with shortfall deposits.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“A treasurer aware of certain tax strategies would. What’s the other hole?”
“Men don’t try to kill someone for buying something at a lower price. They may expose him; they don’t kill him.”
“They do if a gargantuan error has been made. Or if that person has been mistaken for someone else. What I’m trying to tell you is that you can’t be what you’re not! No matter what anyone says.”
“You’re that convinced.”
“I’m that convinced. I’ve spent three days with you. We’ve talked, I’ve listened. A terrible error has been made. Or it’s some kind of conspiracy.”
“Involving what? Against what?”
“That’s what you have to find out.”
“Thanks.”
“Tell me something. What comes to mind when you think of money?”
Stop it! Don’t do this! Can’t you understand? You’re wrong. When I think of money I think of killing.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m tired. I want to sleep. Send your cable in the morning. Tell Peter you’re flying back.”
It was well past midnight, the beginning of the fourth day, and still sleep would not come. Bourne stared at the ceiling, at the dark wood that reflected the light of the table lamp across the room. The light remained on during the nights; Marie simply left it on, no explanation sought, none offered.
In the morning she would be gone and his own plans had to crystallize. He would stay at the inn for a few more days, call the doctor in Wohlen and arrange to have the stitches removed. After that, Paris. The money was in Paris, and so was something else; he knew it, he felt it. A final answer; it was in Paris.
You are not helpless. You will find your way.
What would he find? A man named Carlos? Who was Carlos and what was he to Jason Bourne?
He heard the rustle of cloth from the couch against the wall. He glanced over, startled to see that Marie was not asleep. Instead, she was looking at him, staring at him really.
“You’re wrong, you know,” she said.
“About what?”
“What you’re thinking.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“Yes, I do. I’ve seen that look in your eyes, seeing things you’re not sure are there, afraid that they may be.”
“They have been,” he replied. “Explain the Steppdeckstrasse. Explain a fat man at the Drei Alpenhäuser.”
“I can’t, but neither can you.”
“They were there. I saw them and they were there.”
“Find out why. You can’t be what you’re not, Jason. Find out.”
“Paris,” he said.
“Yes, Paris.” Marie got up from the couch. She was in a soft yellow nightgown, nearly white, pearl buttons at the neck; it flowed as she walked toward the bed in her bare feet. She stood beside him, looking down, then raised both her hands and began unbuttoning the top of the gown. She let it fall away, as she sat on the bed, her breasts above him. She leaned toward him, reaching for his face, cupping it, holding him gently, her eyes as so often during the past few days unwavering, fixed on his. “Thank you for my life,” she whispered.
“Thank you for mine,” he answered, feeling the longing he knew she felt, wondering if an ache accompanied hers, as it did his. He had no memory of a woman and, perhaps because he had none she was everything he could imagine; everything and much, much more. She repelled the darkness for him. She stopped the pain.
He had been afraid to tell her. And she was telling him now it was all right, if only for a while, for an hour or so. For the remainder of that night, she was giving him a memory because she too longed for release from the coiled springs of violence. Tension was suspended, comfort theirs for an hour or so. It was all he asked for, but God in heaven, how he needed her!
He reached for her breast and pulled her lips to his lips, her moisture arousing him, sweeping away the doubts.
She lifted the covers and came to him.
She lay in his arms, her head on his chest, careful to avoid the wound in his shoulder. She slid back gently, raising herself on her elbows. He looked at her; their eyes locked, and both smiled. She lifted her left hand, pressing her index finger over his lips, and spoke softly.
“I have something to say and I don’t want you to interrupt. I’m not sending the cable to Peter. Not yet.”
“Now, just a minute.” He took her hand from his face.
“Please, don’t interrupt me. I said ‘not yet.’ That doesn’t mean I won’t send it, but not for a while. I’m staying with you. I’m going to Paris with you.”
He forced the words. “Suppose I don’t want you to.”
She leaned forward, brushing her lips against his cheek. “That won’t wash. The computer just rejected it.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain, if I were you.”
“But you’re not me. I’m me, and I know the way you held me, and tried to say so many things you couldn’t say. Things I think we both wanted to say to each other for the past several days. I can’t explain what’s happened. Oh, I suppose it’s there in some obscure psychological theory somewhere, two reasonably intelligent people thrown into hell together and crawling out … together. And maybe that’s all it is. But it’s there right now and I can’t run away from it. I can’t run away from you. Because you need me, and you gave me my life.”
“What makes you think I need you?”
“I can do things for you that you can’t do for yourself. It’s all I’ve thought about for the past two hours.” She raised herself further, naked beside him. “You’re somehow involved with a great deal of money, but I don’t think you know a debit from an asset. You may have before, but you don’t now. I do. And there’s something else. I have a ranking position with the Canadian government. I have clearance and access to all manner of inquiries. And protection. International finance is rotten and Canada has been raped. We’ve mounted our own protection and I’m part of it. It’s why I was in Zurich. To observe and report alliances, not to discuss abstract theories.”
“And the fact that you have this clearance, this access, can help me?”
“I think it can. And embassy protection, that may be the most important. But I give you my word that at the first sign of violence, I’ll send the cable and get out. My own fears aside, I won’t be a burden to you under those conditions.”
“At the first sign,” repeated Bourne, studying her. “And I determine when and where that is?”
“If you like. My experience is limited. I won’t argue.”
He continued to hold her eyes, the moment long, magnified by silence. Finally he asked, “Why are you doing this? You just said it. We’re two reasonably intelligent people who crawled out of some kind of hell. That may be all we are. Is it worth it?”
She sat motionless. “I also said something else; maybe you’ve forgotten. Four nights ago a man who could have kept running came back for me and offered to die in my place. I believe in that man. More than he does, I think. That’s really what I have to offer.”
“I accept,” he said, reaching for her. “I shouldn’t, but I do. I need that belief very badly.”
“You may interrupt now,” she whispered, lowering the sheet, her body coming to his. “Make love to me, I have needs too.”
Three more days and nights went by, filled by the warmth of their comfort, the excitement of discovery. They lived with the intensity of two people aware that change would come. And when it came, it would come quickly; so there were things to talk about which could not be avoided any longer.
Cigarette smoke spiraled above the table joining the steam from the hot, bitter coffee. The concierge, an ebullient Swiss whose eyes took in more than his lips would reveal, had left several minutes before, having delivered the petit déjeuner and the Zurich newspapers, in both English and French. Jason and Marie sat across from each other; both had scanned the news.
“Anything in yours?” asked Bourne.
“That old man, the watchman at the Guisan Quai, was buried the day before yesterday. The police still have nothing concrete. ‘Investigation in progress,’ it says.”
“It’s a little more extensive here,” said Jason, shifting his paper awkwardly in his bandaged left hand.
“How is it?” asked Marie, looking at the hand.
“Better. I’ve got more play in the fingers now.”
“I know.”
“You’ve got a dirty mind.” He folded the paper. “Here it is. They repeat the things they said the other day. The shells and blood scrapings are being analyzed.” Bourne looked up. “But they’ve added something. Remnants of clothing; it wasn’t mentioned before.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not for me. My clothes were bought off a rack in Marseilles. What about your dress? Was it a special design or fabric?”
“You embarrass me; it wasn’t. All my clothes are made by a woman in Ottawa.”
“It couldn’t be traced, then?”
“I don’t see how. The silk came from a bolt an FS-Three in our section brought back from Hong Kong.”
“Did you buy anything at the shops in the hotel? Something you might have had on you. A kerchief, a pin, anything like that?”
“No. I’m not much of a shopper that way.”
“Good. And your friend wasn’t asked any questions when she checked out?”
“Not by the desk, I told you that. Only by the two men you saw me with in the elevator.”
“From the French and Belgian delegations.”
“Yes. Everything was fine.”
“Let’s go over it again.”
“There’s nothing to go over. Paul—the one from Brussels—didn’t see anything. He was knocked off his chair to the floor and stayed there. Claude—he tried to stop us, remember?—at first thought it was me on the stage, in the light, but before he could get to the police he was hurt in the crowd and taken to the infirmary—”
“And by the time he might have said something,” interrupted Jason, recalling her words, “he wasn’t sure.”
“Yes. But I have an idea he knew my main purpose for being at the conference; my presentation didn’t fool him. If he did, it would reinforce his decision to stay out of it.”
Bourne picked up his coffee. “Let me have that again,” he said. “You were looking for … alliances?”
“Well, hints of them, really. No one’s going to come out and say there are financial interests in his country working with interests in that country so they can buy their way into Canadian raw materials or any other market. But you see who meets for drinks, who has dinner together. Or sometimes it’s as dumb as a delegate from, say, Rome—whom you know is being paid by Agnelli—coming up and asking you how serious Ottawa is about the declaration laws.”
“I’m still not sure I understand.”
“You should. Your own country’s very touchy about the subject. Who owns what? How many American banks are controlled by OPEC money? How much industry is owned by European and Japanese consortiums? How many hundreds of thousands of acres have been acquired by capital that’s fled England and Italy and France? We all worry.”
“We do?”
Marie laughed. “Of course. Nothing makes a man more nationalistic than to think his country’s owned by foreigners. He can adjust in time to losing a war—that only means the enemy was stronger—but to lose his economy means the enemy was smarter. The period of occupation lasts longer, and so do the scars.”
“You’ve given these things a lot of thought, haven’t you?”
For a brief moment the look in Marie’s eyes lost its edge of humor; she answered him seriously. “Yes, I have. I think they’re important.”
“Did you learn anything in Zurich?”
“Nothing startling,” she said. “Money’s flying all over; syndicates are trying to find internal investments where bureaucratic machineries look the other way.”
“That cablegram from Peter said your daily reports were first rate. What did he mean?”
“I found a number of odd economic bedfellows who I think may be using Canadian figureheads to buy up Canadian properties. I’m not being elusive; it’s just that they wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
“I’m not trying to pry,” countered Jason, “but I think you put me in one of those beds. Not with respect to Canada, but in general.”
“I don’t rule you out; the structure’s there. You could be part of a financial combine that’s looking for all manner of illegal purchases. It’s one thing I can put a quiet trace on, but I want to do it over a telephone. Not words written out in a cable.”
“Now I am prying. What do you mean and how?”
“If there’s a Treadstone Seventy-One behind a multinational corporate door somewhere, there are ways to find which company, which door. I want to call Peter from one of those public telephone stations in Paris. I’ll tell him that I ran across the name Treadstone Seventy-One in Zurich and it’s been bothering me. I’ll ask him to make a CS—a covert search—and say that I’ll call him back.”
“And if he finds it?”
“If it’s there, he’ll find it.”
“Then I get in touch with whoever’s listed as the ‘certified directors’ and surface.”
“Very cautiously,” added Marie. “Through intermediaries. Myself, if you like.”
“Why?”
“Because of what they’ve done. Or not done, really.”
“Which is?”
“They haven’t tried to reach you in nearly six months.”
“You don’t know that—I don’t know that.”
“The bank knows it. Millions of dollars left untouched, unaccounted for, and no one has bothered to find out why. That’s what I can’t understand. It’s as though you were being abandoned. It’s where the mistake could have been made.”
Bourne leaned back in the chair, looking at his bandaged left hand, remembering the sight of the weapon smashing repeatedly downward in the shadows of a racing car in the Steppdeckstrasse. He raised his eyes and looked at Marie. “What you’re saying is that if I was abandoned, it’s because that mistake is thought to be the truth by the directors at Treadstone.”
“Possibly. They might think you’ve involved them in illegal transactions—with criminal elements—that could cost them millions more. Conceivably risking expropriation of entire companies by angry governments. Or that you joined forces with an international crime syndicate, probably not knowing it. Anything. It would account for their not going near the bank. They’d want no guilt by association.”
“So, in a sense, no matter what your friend Peter learns, I’m still back at square one.”
“We’re back, but it’s not square one, more like four-and-a-half to five on a scale of ten.”
“Even if it were nine, nothing’s really changed. Men want to kill me and I don’t know why. Others could stop them but they won’t. That man at the Drei Alpenhäuser said Interpol has its nets out for me, and if I walk into one I don’t have any answers. I’m guilty as charged because I don’t know what I’m guilty of. Having no memory isn’t much of a defense, and it’s possible that I have no defense, period.”
“I refuse to believe that, and so must you.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it, Jason. Stop it.”
Stop it. How many times do I say that to myself? You are my love, the only woman I have ever known, and you believe in me. Why can’t I believe in myself?
Bourne got up, as always testing his legs. Mobility was coming back to him, the wounds less severe than his imagination had permitted him to believe. He had made an appointment that night with the doctor in Wohlen to remove the stitches. Tomorrow, change would come.
“Paris,” said Jason. “The answer’s in Paris. I know it as surely as I saw the outline of those triangles in Zurich. I just don’t know where to begin. It’s crazy. I’m a man waiting for an image, for a word or a phrase—or a book of matches—to tell me something. To send me somewhere else.”
“Why not wait until I hear from Peter? I can call him tomorrow; we can be in Paris tomorrow.”
“Because it wouldn’t make any difference, don’t you see? No matter what he came up with, the one thing I need to know wouldn’t be there. For the same reason Treadstone hasn’t gone near the bank. Me. I have to know why men want to kill me, why someone named Carlos will pay … what was it … a fortune for my corpse.”
It was as far as he got, interrupted by the crash at the table. Marie had dropped her cup and was staring at him, her face white, as if the blood had drained from her head. “What did you just say?” she asked.
“What? I said I have to know …”
“The name. You just said the name Carlos.”
“That’s right.”
“In all the hours we’ve talked, the days we’ve been together, you never mentioned him.”
Bourne looked at her, trying to remember. It was true; he had told her everything that had come to him, yet somehow he had omitted Carlos … almost purposely, as if blocking it out.
“I guess I didn’t,” he said. “You seem to know. Who’s Carlos?”
“Are you trying to be funny? If you are, the joke’s not very good.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. I don’t think there’s anything to be funny about. Who’s Carlos?”
“My God—you don’t know!” she exclaimed, studying his eyes. “It’s part of what was taken from you.”
“Who is Carlos?”
“An assassin. He’s called the assassin of Europe. A man hunted for twenty years, believed to have killed between fifty and sixty political and military figures. No one knows what he looks like … but it’s said he operates out of Paris.”
Bourne felt a wave of cold going through him.
The taxi to Wohlen was an English Ford belonging to the concierge’s son-in-law. Jason and Marie sat in the back seat, the dark countryside passing swiftly outside the windows. The stitches had been removed, replaced by soft bandages held by wide strips of tape.
“Get back to Canada,” said Jason softly, breaking the silence between them.
“I will, I told you that. I’ve a few more days left. I want to see Paris.”
“I don’t want you in Paris. I’ll call you in Ottawa. You can make the Treadstone search yourself and give me the information over the phone.”
“I thought you said it wouldn’t make any difference. You had to know the why; the who was meaningless until you understood.”
“I’ll find a way. I just need one man; I’ll find him.”
“But you don’t know where to begin. You’re a man waiting for an image, for a phrase, or a book of matches. They may not be there.”
“Something will be there.”
“Something is, but you don’t see it. I do. It’s why you need me. I know the words, the methods. You don’t.”
Bourne looked at her in the rushing shadows. “I think you’d better be clearer.”
“The banks, Jason. Treadstone’s connections are in the banks. But not in the way that you might think.”
The stooped old man in the threadbare overcoat, black beret in hand, walked down the far left aisle of the country church in the village of Arpajon, ten miles south of Paris. The bells of the evening Angelus echoed throughout the upper regions of stone and wood; the man held his place at the fifth row and waited for the ringing to stop. It was his signal; he accepted it, knowing that during the pealing of the bells another, younger man—as ruthless as any man alive—had circled the small church and studied everyone inside and outside. Had that man seen anything he did not expect to see, anyone he considered a threat to his person, there would be no questions asked, simply an execution. That was the way of Carlos, and only those who understood that their lives could be snuffed out because they themselves had been followed accepted money to act as the assassin’s messenger. They were all like himself, old men from the old days, whose lives were running out, months remaining limited by age, or disease, or both.
Carlos permitted no risks whatsoever, the single consolation being that if one died in his service—or by his hand—money would find its way to old women, or the children of old women, or their children. It had to be said: there was a certain dignity to be found in working for Carlos. And there was no lack of generosity. This was what his small army of infirm old men understood; he gave a purpose to the ends of their lives.
The messenger clutched his beret and continued down the aisle to the row of confessional booths against the left wall. He walked to the fifth booth, parted the curtain, and stepped inside, adjusting his eyes to the light of a single candle that glowed from the other side of the translucent drape separating priest from sinner. He sat down on the small wooden bench and looked at the silhouette in the holy enclosure. It was as it always was, the hooded figure of a man in a monk’s habit. The messenger tried not to imagine what that man looked like; it was not his place to speculate on such things.
“Angelus Domini,” he said.
“Angelus Domini, child of God,” whispered the hooded silhouette. “Are your days comfortable?”
“They draw to an end,” replied the old man, making the proper response, “but they are made comfortable.”
“Good. It’s important to have a sense of security at your age,” said Carlos. “But to business. Did you get the particulars from Zurich?”
“The owl is dead; so are two others, possibly a third. Another’s hand was severely wounded; he cannot work. Cain disappeared. They think the woman is with him.”
“An odd turn of events,” said Carlos.
“There’s more. The one ordered to kill her has not been heard from. He was to take her to the Guisan Quai; no one knows what happened.”
“Except that a watchman was killed in her place. It’s possible she was never a hostage at all, but instead, bait for a trap. A trap that snapped back on Cain. I want to think about that. In the meantime, here are my instructions. Are you ready?”
The old man reached into his pocket and took out the stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper. “Very well.”
“Telephone Zurich. I want a man in Paris by tomorrow who has seen Cain, who can recognize him. Also, Zurich is to reach Koenig at the Gemeinschaft and tell him to send his tape to New York. He’s to use the post office box in Village Station.”
“Please,” interrupted the aged messenger. “These old hands do not write as they once did.”
“Forgive me,” whispered Carlos. “I’m preoccupied and inconsiderate. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all, not at all. Go ahead.”
“Finally, I want our team to take rooms within a block of the bank on the rue Madeleine. This time the bank will be Cain’s undoing. The pretender will be taken at the source of his misplaced pride. A bargain price, as despicable as he is … unless he’s something else.”