Get out of Paris! Now! Whatever you’re doing, stop it and get out!… Those are orders from your government. They want you out of there. They want him isolated.
Marie crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table, her eyes falling on the three-year-old issue of Potomac Quarterly, her thoughts briefly on the terrible game Jason had forced her to play.
“I won’t listen!” she said to herself out loud, startled at the sound of her own voice in the empty room. She walked to the window, the same window he had faced, looking out, frightened, trying to make her understand.
I have to know certain things … enough to make a decision … but maybe not everything. A part of me has to be able … to run, disappear. I have to be able to say to myself, what was isn’t any longer, and there’s a possibility that it never was because I have no memory of it. What a person can’t remember didn’t exist … for him.
“My darling, my darling. Don’t let them do this to you!” Her spoken words did not startle now, for it was as though he were there in the room, listening, heeding his own words, willing to run, disappear … with her. But at the core of her understanding she knew he could not do that; he could not settle for a half-truth, or three-quarters of a lie.
They want him isolated.
Who were they? The answer was in Canada and Canada was cut off, another trap.
Jason was right about Paris; she felt it, too. Whatever it was, was here. If they could find one person to lift the shroud and let him see for himself he was being manipulated, then other questions might be manageable, the answers no longer pushing him toward self-destruction. If he could be convinced that whatever unremembered crimes he had committed, he was a pawn for a much greater single crime, he might be able to walk away, disappear with her. Everything was relative. What the man she loved had to be able to say to himself was not that the past no longer existed, but that it had, and he could live with it, and put it to rest. That was the rationalization he needed, the conviction that whatever he had been was far less than his enemies wanted the world to believe, for they would not use him otherwise. He was the scapegoat, his death to take the place of another’s. If he could only see that; if she could only convince him. And if she did not, she would lose him. They would take him; they would kill him.
They.
“Who are you?” she screamed at the window, at the lights of Paris outside. “Where are you?”
She could feel a cold wind against her face as surely as if the panes of glass had melted, the night air rushing inside. It was followed by a tightening in her throat, and for a moment she could not swallow … could not breathe. The moment passed and she breathed again. She was afraid; it had happened to her before, on their first night in Paris, when she had left the café to find him on the steps of the Cluny. She had been walking rapidly down the Saint-Michel when it happened: the cold wind, the swelling of the throat … at that moment she had not been able to breathe. Later she thought she knew why; at that moment also, several blocks away inside the Sorbonne, Jason had raced to a judgment that in minutes he would reverse—but he had reached it then. He had made up his mind he would not come to her.
“Stop it!” she cried. “It’s crazy,” she added, shaking her head, looking at her watch. He had been gone over five hours; where was he? Where was he?
Bourne got out of the taxi in front of the seedily elegant hotel in Montparnasse. The next hour would be the most difficult of his briefly remembered life—a life that was a void before Port Noir, a nightmare since. The nightmare would continue, but he would live with it alone; he loved her too much to ask her to live it with him. He would find a way to disappear, taking with him the evidence that tied her to Cain. It was as simple as that; he would leave for a nonexistent rendezvous and not return. And sometime during the next hour he would write her a note:
It’s over. I’ve found my arrows. Go back to Canada and say nothing for both our sakes. I know where to reach you.
The last was unfair—he would never reach her—but the small, feathered hope had to be there, if only to get her on a plane to Ottawa. In time—with time—their weeks together would fade into a darkly kept secret, a cache of brief riches to be uncovered and touched at odd quiet moments. And then no more, for life was lived for active memories; the dormant ones lost meaning. No one knew that better than he did.
He passed through the lobby, nodding at the concierge, who sat on his stool behind the marble counter, reading a newspaper. The man barely looked up, noting only that the intruder belonged.
The elevator rumbled and groaned its way up to the fifth floor. Jason breathed deeply and reached for the gate; above all he would avoid dramatics—no alarms raised by words or by looks. The chameleon had to merge with his quiet part of the forest, one in which no spoors could be found. He knew what to say; he had thought about it carefully as he had the note he would write.
“Most of the night walking around,” he said, holding her, stroking her dark red hair, cradling her head against his shoulder … and aching, “chasing down cadaverous clerks, listening to animated nonsense, and drinking coffee disguised as sour mud. Les Classiques was a waste of time; it’s a zoo. The monkeys and the peacocks put on a hell of a show, but I don’t think anyone really knows anything. There’s one outside possibility, but he could simply be a sharp Frenchman in search of an American mark.”
“He?” asked Marie, her trembling diminished.
“A man who operated the switchboard,” said Bourne, repelling images of blinding explosions and darkness and high winds as he pictured the face he did not know but knew so well. That man now was only a device; he pushed the images away. “I agreed to meet him around midnight at the Bastringue on rue Hautefeuille.”
“What did he say?”
“Very little, but enough to interest me. I saw him watching me while I was asking questions. The place was fairly crowded, so I could move around pretty freely, talk to the clerks.”
“Questions? What questions did you ask?”
“Anything I could think of. Mainly about the manager, or whatever she’s called. Considering what happened this afternoon, if she were a direct relay to Carlos, she should have been close to hysterics. I saw her. She wasn’t; she behaved as if nothing had happened except a good day in the shop.”
“But she was a relay, as you call it. D’Amacourt explained that. The fiche.”
“Indirect. She gets a phone call and is told what to say before making another call herself.” Actually, Jason thought, the invented assessment was based on reality. Jacqueline Lavier was, indeed, an indirect relay.
“You couldn’t just walk around asking questions without seeming suspicious,” protested Marie.
“You can,” answered Bourne, “if you’re an American writer doing an article on the stores in Saint-Honoré for a national magazine.”
“That’s very good, Jason.”
“It worked. No one wants to be left out.”
“What did you learn?”
“Like most of those kinds of places, Les Classiques has its own clientele, all wealthy, most known to each other and with the usual marital intrigues and adulteries that go with the scene. Carlos knew what he was doing; it’s a regular answering service over there, but not the kind listed in a phone book.”
“People told you that?” asked Marie, holding his arms, watching his eyes.
“Not in so many words,” he said, aware of the shadows of her disbelief. “The accent was always on this Bergeron’s talent, but one thing leads to another. You can get the picture. Everyone seems to gravitate to that manager. From what I’ve gathered, she’s a font of social information, although she probably couldn’t tell me anything except that she did someone a favor—an accommodation—and that someone will turn out to be someone else who did another favor for another someone. The source could be untraceable, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“Why the meeting tonight at Bastringue?”
“He came over to me when I was leaving and said a very strange thing.” Jason did not have to invent this part of the lie. He had read the words on a note in an elegant restaurant in Argenteuil less than an hour ago. “He said, ‘You may be what you say are, and then again you may not.’ That’s when he suggested a drink later on, away from Saint-Honoré.” Bourne saw her doubts receding. He had done it; she accepted the tapestry of lies. And why not? He was a man of immense skill, extremely inventive. The appraisal was not loathsome to him; he was Cain.
“He may be the one, Jason. You said you only needed one; he could be it!”
“We’ll see.” Bourne looked at his watch. The countdown to his departure had begun; he could not look back. “We’ve got almost two hours. Where did you leave the attaché case?”
“At the Meurice. I’m registered there.”
“Let’s pick it up and get some dinner. You haven’t eaten, have you?”
“No …” Marie’s expression was quizzical. “Why not leave the case where it is? It’s perfectly safe; we wouldn’t have to worry about it.”
“We would if we had to get out of here in a hurry,” he said almost brusquely, going to the bureau. Everything was a question of degree now, traces of friction gradually slipping into speech, into looks, into touch. Nothing alarming, nothing based on false heroics; she would see through such tactics. Only enough so that later she would understand the truth when she read his words. “It’s over. I’ve found my arrows.…”
“What’s the matter, darling?”
“Nothing.” The chameleon smiled. “I’m just tired and probably a little discouraged.”
“Good heavens, why? A man wants to meet you confidentially late at night, a man who operates a switchboard. He could lead you somewhere. And you’re convinced you’ve narrowed Carlos’ contact down to this woman; she’s bound to be able to tell you something—whether she wants to or not. In a macabre way, I’d think you’d be elated.”
“I’m not sure I can explain it,” said Jason, now looking at her reflection in the mirror. “You’d have to understand what I found there.”
“What you found?” A question.
“What I found.” A statement. “It’s a different world,” continued Bourne, reaching for the bottle of scotch and a glass, “different people. It’s soft and beautiful and frivolous, with lots of tiny spotlights and dark velvet. Nothing’s taken seriously except gossip and indulgence. Any one of those giddy people—including that woman—could be a relay for Carlos and never know it, never even suspect it. A man like Carlos would use such people; anyone like him would, including me.… That’s what I found. It’s discouraging.”
“And unreasonable. Whatever you believe, those people make very conscious decisions. That indulgence you talk of demands it; they think. And you know what I think? I think you are tired, and hungry, and need a drink or two. I wish you could put off tonight; you’ve been through enough for one day.”
“I can’t do that,” he said sharply.
“All right, you can’t,” she answered defensively.
“Sorry, I’m edgy.”
“Yes. I know.” She started for the bathroom. “I’ll freshen up and we can go. Pour yourself a stiff one, darling. Your teeth are showing.”
“Marie?”
“Yes?”
“Try to understand. What I found there upset me. I thought it would be different. Easier.”
“While you were looking, I was waiting, Jason. Not knowing. That wasn’t easy either.”
“I thought you were going to call Canada. Didn’t you?”
She held her place for a moment. “No,” she said. “It was too late.”
The bathroom door closed; Bourne walked to the desk across the room. He opened the drawer, took out stationery, picked up the ballpoint pen and wrote the words:
It’s over. I’ve found my arrows. Go back to Canada and say nothing for both our sakes. I know where to reach you.
He folded the stationery, inserted it into an envelope, holding the flap open as he reached for his billfold. He took out both the French and the Swiss bills, slipping them behind the folded note, and sealed the envelope. He wrote on the front: MARIE.
He wanted so desperately to add: My love, my dearest love.
He did not. He could not.
The bathroom door opened. He put the envelope in his jacket pocket. “That was quick,” he said.
“Was it? I didn’t think so. What are you doing?”
“I wanted a pen,” he answered, picking up the ballpoint. “If that fellow has anything to tell me I want to be able to write it down.”
Marie was by the bureau; she glanced at the dry, empty glass. “You didn’t have your drink.”
“I didn’t use the glass.”
“I see. Shall we go?”
They waited in the corridor for the rumbling elevator, the silence between them awkward, in a real sense unbearable. He reached for her hand. At the touch she gripped his, staring at him, her eyes telling him that her control was being tested and she did not know why. Quiet signals had been sent and received, not loud enough or abrasive enough to be alarms, but they were there and she had heard them. It was part of the countdown, rigid, irreversible, prelude to his departure.
Oh God, I love you so. You are next to me and we are touching and I am dying. But you cannot die with me. You must not. I am Cain.
“We’ll be fine,” he said.
The metal cage vibrated noisily into its recessed perch. Jason pulled the brass grille open, then suddenly swore under his breath.
“Oh, Christ, I forgot!”
“What?”
“My wallet. I left it in the bureau drawer this afternoon in case there was any trouble in Saint-Honoré. Wait for me in the lobby.” He gently swung her through the gate, pressing the button with his free hand. “I’ll be right down.” He closed the grille; the brass latticework cutting off the sight of her startled eyes. He turned away and walked rapidly back toward the room.
Inside, he took the envelope out of his pocket and placed it against the base of the lamp on the bedside table. He stared down at it, the ache unendurable.
“Goodbye, my love,” he whispered.
Bourne waited in the drizzle outside the Hotel Meurice on the rue de Rivoli, watching Marie through the glass doors of the entrance. She was at the front desk, having signed for the attaché case, which had been handed to her over the counter. She was now obviously asking a mildly astonished clerk for her bill, about to pay for a room that had been occupied less than six hours. Two minutes passed before the bill was presented. Reluctantly; it was no way for a guest at the Meurice to behave. Indeed, all Paris shunned such inhibited visitors.
Marie walked out on the pavement, joining him in the shadows and the mistlike drizzle to the left of the canopy. She gave him the attaché case, a forced smile on her lips, a slight breathless quality in her voice.
“That man didn’t approve of me. I’m sure he’s convinced I used the room for a series of quick tricks.”
“What did you tell him?” asked Bourne.
“That my plans had changed, that’s all.”
“Good, the less said the better. Your name’s on the registration card. Think up a reason why you were there.”
“Think up?… I should think up a reason?” She studied his eyes, the smile gone.
“I mean we’ll think up a reason. Naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“Let’s go.” They started walking toward the corner, the traffic noisy in the street, the drizzle in the air fuller, the mist denser, the promise of heavy rain imminent. He took her arm—not to guide her, not even out of courtesy—only to touch her, to hold a part of her. There was so little time.
I am Cain. I am death.
“Can we slow down?” asked Marie sharply.
“What?” Jason realized he had been practically running; for a few seconds he had been back in the labyrinth, racing through it, careening, feeling, and not feeling. He looked up ahead and found an answer. At the corner an empty cab had stopped by a garish newsstand, the driver shouting through an open window to the dealer. “I want to catch that taxi,” said Bourne, without breaking stride. “It’s going to rain like hell.”
They reached the corner, both breathless as the empty cab pulled away, swinging left into rue de Rivoli. Jason looked up into the night sky, feeling the wet pounding on his face, unnerved. The rain had arrived. He looked at Marie in the gaudy lights of the newsstand; she was wincing in the sudden downpour. No. She was not wincing, she was staring at something … staring in disbelief, in shock. In horror. Without warning she screamed, her face contorted, the fingers of her right hand pressed against her mouth. Bourne grabbed her, pulling her head into the damp cloth of his topcoat; she would not stop screaming.
He turned, trying to find the cause of her hysterics. Then he saw it, and in that unbelievable split half-second he knew the countdown was aborted. He had committed the final crime; he could not leave her. Not now, not yet.
On the first ledge of the newsstand was an early-morning tabloid, black headlines electrifying under the circles of light:
SLAYER IN PARIS
WOMAN SOUGHT IN ZURICH KILLINGS
SUSPECT IN RUMORED THEFT OF MILLIONS
Under the screaming words was a photograph of Marie St. Jacques.
“Stop it!” whispered Jason, using his body to cover her face from the curious newsdealer, reaching into his pocket for coins. He threw the money on the counter, grabbed two papers, and propelled her down the dark, rainsoaked street.
They were both in the labyrinth now.
Bourne opened the door and led Marie inside. She stood motionless, looking at him, her face pale and frightened, her breathing erratic, an audible mixture of fear and anger.
“I’ll get you a drink,” said Jason, going to the bureau. As he poured, his eyes strayed to the mirror and he had an overpowering urge to smash the glass, so despicable was his own image to him. What the hell had he done? Oh God!
He heard her gasp and spun around, too late to stop her, too far away to lunge and tear the awful thing from her hand. Oh, Christ, he had forgotten! She had found the envelope on the bedside table, and was reading his note. Her single scream was a searing, terrible cry of pain.
“Jasonnnn!…”
“Please! No!” He raced from the bureau and grabbed her. “It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t count anymore!” He shouted helplessly, seeing the tears swelling in her eyes, streaking down her face. “Listen to me! That was before, not now.”
“You were leaving! My God, you were leaving me!” Her eyes went blank, two blind circles of panic. “I knew it! I felt it!”
“I made you feel it!” he said, forcing her to look at him. “But it’s over now. I won’t leave you. Listen to me. I won’t leave you!”
She screamed again. “I couldn’t breathe!… It was so cold!”
He pulled her to him, enveloping her. “We have to begin again. Try to understand. It’s different now—and I can’t change what was—but I won’t leave you. Not like this.”
She pushed her hands against his chest, her tear-stained face angled back, begging, “Why, Jason? Why?”
“Later. Not now. Don’t say anything for a while. Just hold me; let me hold you.”
The minutes passed, hysteria ran its course and the outlines of reality came back into focus. Bourne led her to the chair; she caught the sleeve of her dress on the frayed lace. They both smiled, as he knelt beside her, holding her hand in silence.
“How about that drink?” he said finally.
“I think so,” she replied, briefly tightening her grip on his hand as he got up from the floor. “You poured it quite a while ago.”
“It won’t go flat.” He went to the bureau and returned with two glasses half filled with whiskey. She took hers. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Calmer. Still confused … frightened, of course. Maybe angry, too, I’m not sure. I’m too afraid to think about that.” She drank, closing her eyes, her head pressed back against the chair. “Why did you do it, Jason?”
“Because I thought I had to. That’s the simple answer.”
“And no answer at all. I deserve more than that.”
“Yes, you do, and I’ll give it to you. I have to now because you have to hear it; you have to understand. You have to protect yourself.”
“Protect—”
He held up his hand, interrupting her. “It’ll come later. All of it, if you like. But the first thing we have to do is know what happened—not to me, but to you. That’s where we have to begin. Can you do it?”
“The newspaper?”
“Yes.”
“God knows, I’m interested,” she said, smiling weakly.
“Here.” Jason went to the bed where he had dropped the two papers. “We’ll both read it.”
“No games?”
“No games.”
They read the long article in silence, an article that told of death and intrigue in Zurich. Every now and then Marie gasped, shocked at what she was reading; at other times she shook her head in disbelief. Bourne said nothing. He saw the hand of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. Carlos will follow Cain to the ends of the earth. Carlos will kill him. Marie St. Jacques was expendable, a baited decoy that would die in the trap that caught Cain.
I am Cain. I am death.
The article was, in fact, two articles—an odd mixture of fact and conjecture, speculations taking over where evidence came to an end. The first part indicated a Canadian government employee, a female economist, Marie St. Jacques. She was placed at the scene of three murders, her fingerprints confirmed by the Canadian government. In addition, police found a hotel key from the Carillon du Lac, apparently lost during the violence on the Guisan Quai. It was the key to Marie St. Jacques’ room, given to her by the hotel clerk, who remembered her well—remembered what appeared to him to be a guest in a highly disturbed state of anxiety. The final piece of evidence was a handgun discovered not far from the Steppdeckstrasse, in an alley close by the scene of two other killings. Ballistics held it to be the murder weapon, and again there were fingerprints, again confirmed by the Canadian government. They belonged to the woman, Marie St. Jacques.
It was at this point that the article veered from fact. It spoke of rumors along the Bahnhofstrasse that a multimillion-dollar theft had taken place by means of a computer manipulation dealing with a numbered, confidential account belonging to an American corporation called Treadstone Seventy-One. The bank was also named; it was of course the Gemeinschaft. But everything else was clouded, obscure, more speculation than fact.
According to “unnamed sources,” an American male holding the proper codes transferred millions to a bank in Paris, assigning the new account to specific individuals who were to assume rights of possession. The assignees were waiting in Paris, and upon clearance, withdrew the millions and disappeared. The success of the operation was traced to the American’s obtaining the accurate codes to the Gemeinschaft account, a feat made possible by penetrating the bank’s numerical sequence related to year, month and day of entry, standard procedure for confidential holdings. Such an analysis could only be made through the use of sophisticated computer techniques and a thorough knowledge of Swiss banking practices. When questioned, an officer of the bank, Herr Walther Apfel, acknowledged that there was an ongoing investigation into matters pertaining to the American company, but pursuant to Swiss law, “the bank would have no further comment—to anyone.”
Here the connection to Marie St. Jacques was clarified. She was described as a government economist extensively schooled in international banking procedures, as well as a skilled computer programmer. She was suspected of being an accomplice, her expertise necessary to the massive theft. And there was a male suspect; she was reported to have been seen in his company at the Carillon du Lac.
Marie finished the article first and let the paper drop to the floor. At the sound, Bourne looked over from the edge of the bed. She was staring at the wall, a strange pensive serenity having come over her. It was the last reaction he expected. He finished reading quickly, feeling depressed and hopeless—for a moment, speechless. Then he found his voice and spoke.
“Lies,” he said, “and they were made because of me, because of who and what I am. Smoke you out, they find me. I’m sorry, sorrier than I can ever tell you.”
Marie shifted her eyes from the wall and looked at him. “It goes deeper than lies, Jason,” she said. “There’s too much truth for lies alone.”
“Truth? The only truth is that you were in Zurich. You never touched a gun, you were never in an alley near the Steppdeckstrasse, you didn’t lose a hotel key and you never went near the Gemeinschaft.”
“Agreed, but that’s not the truth I’m talking about.”
“Then what is?”
“The Gemeinschaft, Treadstone Seventy-One, Apfel. Those are true and the fact that any were mentioned—especially Apfel’s acknowledgment—is incredible. Swiss bankers are cautious men. They don’t ridicule the laws, not this way; the jail sentences are too severe. The statutes pertaining to banking confidentiality are among the most sacrosanct in Switzerland. Apfel could go to prison for years for saying what he did, for even alluding to such an account, much less confirming it by name. Unless he was ordered to say what he did by an authority powerful enough to contravene the laws.” She stopped, her eyes straying to the wall again. “Why? Why was the Gemeinschaft or Treadstone or Apfel ever made part of the story?”
“I told you. They want me and they know we’re together. Carlos knows we’re together. Find you, he finds me.”
“No, Jason, it goes beyond Carlos. You really don’t understand the laws in Switzerland. Not even a Carlos could cause them to be flaunted this way.” She looked at him, but her eyes did not see him; she was peering through her own mists. “This isn’t one story, it’s two. Both are constructed out of lies, the first connected to the second by tenuous speculation—public speculation—on a banking crisis that would never be made public, unless and until a thorough and private investigation proved the facts. And that second story—the patently false statement that millions were stolen from the Gemeinschaft—was tacked onto the equally false story that I’m wanted for killing three men in Zurich. It was added. Deliberately.”
“Explain that, please.”
“It’s there, Jason. Believe me when I tell you that; it’s right in front of us.”
“What is?”
“Someone’s trying to send us a message.”
