The searing ice-cold heat ripped through his neck as Bourne lunged over the pews, crashing down between the second and third rows, smashing his head and his hips on the glistening brown wood as he clawed at the floor. His vision spun out of control as a cloud of darkness enveloped him. In the distance, far, far away, he heard the sound of voices shouting hysterically. Then the darkness was complete.
“David.” There was no shouting now; the single voice was low and urgent and used a name he did not care to acknowledge. “David, can you hear me?”
Bourne opened his eyes, instantly aware of two facts. There was a wide bandage around his throat and he was lying fully clothed on a bed. To his right, the anxious face of John St. Jacques came into focus; on his left was a man he did not know, a middle-aged man with a level, steady gaze. “Carlos,” Jason managed to say, finding his voice. “It was the Jackal!”
“Then he’s still on the island—this island.” St. Jacques was emphatic. “It’s been barely an hour and Henry’s got Tranquility ringed. Patrols are hovering offshore, roving back and forth, all in visual and radio contact. He’s calling it a ‘drug exercise,’ very quiet and very official. A few boats come in, but none go out and none will go out.”
“Who’s he?” asked Bourne, looking at the man on his left.
“A doctor,” answered Marie’s brother. “He’s staying at the inn and he’s a friend of mine. I was a patient of his in—”
“I think we should be circumspect here,” interrupted the Canadian doctor firmly. “You asked for my help and my confidence, John, and I give both gladly, but considering the nature of the events and the fact that your brother-in-law won’t be under my professional care, let’s dispense with my name.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, Doctor,” added Jason, wincing, then suddenly snapping his head up, his eyes wide in an admixture of pleading and panic. “Ishmael! He’s dead—I killed him!”
“He isn’t and you didn’t,” said St. Jacques calmly. “He’s a goddamned mess but he’s not dead. He’s one tough kid, like his father, and he’ll make it. We’re flying him to the hospital in Martinique.”
“Christ, he was a corpse!”
“He was savagely beaten,” explained the doctor. “Both arms were broken, along with multiple lacerations, contusions, I suspect internal injuries and a severe concussion. However, as John accurately described the young man, he’s one tough kid.”
“I want the best for him.”
“Those were my orders.”
“Good.” Bourne moved his eyes to the doctor. “How damaged am I?”
“Without X rays or seeing how you move—symptomatically, as it were—I can only give you a cursory judgment.”
“Do that.”
“Outside of the wound, I’d say primarily traumatic shock.”
“Forget it. That’s not allowed.”
“Who says?” said the doctor, smiling kindly.
“I do and I’m not trying to be funny. The body, not the head. I’ll be the judge of the head.”
“Is he a native?” asked the doctor, looking at the owner of Tranquility Inn. “A white but older Ishmael? I’ll tell you he’s not a physician.”
“Answer him, please.”
“All right. The bullet passed through the left side of your neck, missing by millimeters several vital spots that would certainly have rendered you voiceless and probably dead. I’ve bathed the wound and sutured it. You’ll have difficulty moving your head for a while, but that’s only a superficial opinion of the damage.”
“In short words, I’ve got a very stiff neck, but if I can walk … well, I can walk.”
“In shorter words, that’s about it.”
“It was the flare that did it, after all,” said Jason softly, carefully moving his neck back over the pillow. “It blinded him just enough.”
“What?” St. Jacques leaned over the bed.
“Never mind.… Let’s see how well I walk—symptomatically, that is.” Bourne slid off the bed, swinging his legs cautiously to the floor, shaking his head at his brother-in-law, who started to help him. “No thanks, Bro. This has got to be me on me.” He stood up, the inhibiting bandage around his throat progressively becoming more uncomfortable. He stepped forward, pained by the bruises on his thighs, but they were bruises—they were minor. A hot bath would reduce the pain, and medication, extra-strength aspirin and liniment, would permit more normal mobility. It was the goddamned dressing around his neck; it not only choked him but forced him to move his shoulders in order to look in any direction.… Still, he considered, he was far less incapacitated than he might have been—for a man of his age. Damn. “Can we loosen this necklace, Doctor? It’s strangling me.”
“A bit, not much. You don’t want to risk rupturing those sutures.”
“What about an Ace bandage? It gives.”
“Too much for a neck wound. You’d forget about it.”
“I promise not to.”
“You’re very amusing.”
“I don’t feel remotely amusing.”
“It’s your neck.”
“It certainly is. Can you get one, Johnny?”
“Doctor?” St. Jacques looked at the physician.
“I don’t think we can stop him.”
“I’ll send someone to the pro shop.”
“Excuse me, Doctor,” said Bourne as Marie’s brother went to the telephone. “I want to ask Johnny a few questions and I’m not sure you want to hear them.”
“I’ve heard more than I care to already. I’ll wait in the other room.” The doctor crossed to the door and let himself out.
While St. Jacques talked on the phone, Jason moved about the room raising and lowering his arms and shaking his hands to check the functioning of his motor controls. He crouched, then rose to his feet four times in succession, each movement faster than the previous one. He had to be ready—he had to be!
“It’ll only be a few minutes,” said the brother-in-law, hanging up the phone. “Pritchard will have to go down and open the shop. He’ll bring different sizes of tape.”
“Thanks.” Bourne stopped moving and stood in place. “Who was the man I shot, Johnny? He fell through the curtains in that archway, but I couldn’t see his face.”
“No one I know, and I thought I knew every white man in these islands who could afford an expensive suit. He must have been a tourist—a tourist on assignment … for the Jackal. Naturally, there wasn’t any identification. Henry’s shipped him off to ’Serrat.”
“How many here know what’s going on?”
“Outside of the staff, there are only fourteen guests, and no one’s got a clue. I’ve sealed off the chapel—the word is storm damage. And even those who have to know something—like the doctor and the two guys from Toronto—they don’t know the whole story, just pieces, and they’re friends. I trust them. The others are heavy into island rum.”
“What about the gunshots at the chapel?”
“What about the loudest and lousiest steel band in the islands? Also, you were a thousand feet away in the woods.… Look, David, most everyone’s left but some diehards who wouldn’t stay here if they weren’t old Canadian buddies showing me loyalty, and a few casuals who’d probably take a vacation in Teheran. What can I tell you except that the bar is doing a hell of a business.”
“It’s like a mystifying charade,” murmured Bourne, again carefully arching his neck and staring at the ceiling. “Figures in silhouette playing out disconnected, violent events behind white screens, nothing really making sense, everything’s whatever you want it to be.”
“That’s a little much for me, Professor. What’s your point?”
“Terrorists aren’t born, Johnny, they’re made, schooled in a curriculum you won’t find in any academic catalog. Leaving aside the reasons why they are what they are—which can range from a justifiable cause to the psychopathic megalomania of a Jackal—you keep the charades going because they’re playing out their own.”
“So?” St. Jacques frowned in bewilderment.
“So you control your players, telling them what to act out but not why.”
“That’s what we’re doing here and that’s what Henry’s doing out on the water all around Tranquility.”
“Is he? Are we?”
“Hell, yes.”
“I thought I was too, but I was wrong. I overestimated a big clever kid doing a simple, harmless job and underestimated a humble, frightened priest who took thirty pieces of silver.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ishmael and Brother Samuel. Samuel must have witnessed the torture of a child through the eyes of Torquemada.”
“Turkey who?”
“The point is we don’t really know the players. The guards, for instance, the ones you brought to the chapel—”
“I’m not a fool, David,” protested St. Jacques, interrupting. “When you called for us to surround the place, I took a small liberty and chose two men, the only two I would choose, figuring a pair of Uzis made up for the absence of one man and the four points of the compass. They’re my head boys and former Royal Commandos; they’re in charge of all the security here and, like Henry, I trust them.”
“Henry? He’s a good man, isn’t he?”
“He’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s the best in the islands.”
“And the Crown governor?”
“He’s just an ass.”
“Does Henry know that?”
“Sure, he does. He didn’t get to be a brigadier on his looks, potbelly and all. He’s not only a good soldier, he’s a good administrator. He covers for a lot around here.”
“And you’re certain he hasn’t been in touch with the CG.”
“He told me he’d let me know before he reached the pompous idiot and I believe him.”
“I sincerely hope you’re right—because that pompous idiot is the Jackal’s contact in Montserrat.”
“What? I don’t believe it!”
“Believe. It’s confirmed.”
“It’s incredible!”
“No, it’s not. It’s the way of the Jackal. He finds vulnerability and he recruits it, buys it. There are very few in the gray areas beyond his ability to purchase them.”
Stunned, St. Jacques wandered aimlessly to the balcony doors coming to terms with the unbelievable. “I suppose it answers a question a lot of us have asked ourselves. The governor’s old-line landed gentry with a brother high up in the Foreign Office who’s close to the prime minister. Why at his age was he sent out here, or, maybe more to the point, why did he accept it? You’d think he’d settle for nothing less than Bermuda or the British Virgins. Plymouth can be a stepping-stone, not a final post.”
“He was banished, Johnny. Carlos probably found out why a long time ago and has him on a list. He’s been doing it for years. Most people read newspapers and books and magazines for diversion; the Jackal pores over volumes of in-depth intelligence reports from every conceivable source he can unearth, and he’s unearthed more than the CIA, the KGB, MI-Five and Six, Interpol and a dozen other services even want to think about.… Those seaplanes flew in four or five times after I got back here from Blackburne. Who was on them?”
“Pilots,” answered St. Jacques, turning around. “They were taking people out, not bringing anyone in, I told you that.”
“Yes, you told me. Were you watching?”
“Watching who?”
“Each plane when it came in.”
“Hey, come on! You had me doing a dozen different things.”
“What about the two black commandos? The ones you trust so much.”
“They were checking and positioning the other guards, for Christ’s sake.”
“Then we don’t really know who may have come in on those planes, do we? Maybe slipping into the water over the pontoons as they taxied through the reefs—perhaps before the sandbar.”
“For God’s sake, David, I’ve known those charter jocks for years. They wouldn’t let anything like that happen. No way!”
“You mean it’s kind of unbelievable.”
“You bet your ass.”
“Like the Jackal’s contact in Montserrat. The Crown governor.”
The owner of Tranquility Inn stared at his brother-in-law. “What kind of world do you live in?”
“One I’m sorry you ever became a part of. But you are now and you’ll play by its rules, my rules.” A fleck, a flash, an infinitesimal streak of deep red light from the darkness outside! Infrared! Arms extended, Bourne lunged at St. Jacques, propelling him off his feet, away from the balcony doors. “Get out of there!” Jason roared in midair as both crashed to the floor, three successive snaps crackling the space above them as bullets thumped with finality into the walls of the villa.
“What the hell—”
“He’s out there and he wants me to know it!” said Bourne, shoving his brother-in-law into the lower molding, crawling beside him, and reaching into the pocket of his guayabera. “He knows who you are, so you’re the first corpse, the one he realizes will drive me to the edge because you’re Marie’s brother—you’re family and that’s what he’s holding over my head. My family!”
“Jesus Christ! What do we do?”
“I do!” replied Jason, pulling the second flare out of his pocket. “I send him a message. The message that tells him why I’m alive and why I will be when he’s dead. Stay where you are!” Bourne pulled his lighter out of his right pocket and ignited the flare. Scrambling, he raced across the balcony doors hurling the hissing, blinding missile out into the darkness. Two snaps followed, the bullets ricocheting off the tiled ceiling and shattering the mirror of a dressing table. “He’s got a MAC-ten with a silencer,” said Medusa’s Delta, rolling into the wall, grabbing his inflamed neck as he did so. “I have to get out of here!”
“David, you’re hurt!”
“That’s nice.” Jason Bourne got to his feet and raced to the door; slamming it back, he rushed into the villa’s living room, only to face a frowning Canadian physician.
“I heard some noise in there,” said the doctor. “Is everything all right?”
“I have to leave. Get to the floor.”
“Now, see here! There’s blood on your bandage, the sutures—”
“Get your ass on the floor!”
“You’re not twenty-one, Mr. Webb—”
“Get out of my life!” shouted Bourne, running to the entrance, letting himself outside, and rushing up the lighted path toward the main complex, suddenly aware of the deafening steel band, its sound amplified throughout the grounds by a score of speakers nailed to the trees.
The undulating cacophony was overwhelming, and that was not to his disadvantage, thought Jason. Angus McLeod had been true to his word. The huge glass-enclosed circular dining room held the few remaining guests and the fewer staff, and that meant the Chameleon had to change colors. He knew the mind of the Jackal as well as he knew his own, and that meant that the assassin would do exactly what he himself would do under the circumstances. The hungry, salivating wolf went into the cave of its confused, rabid quarry and pulled out the prized piece of meat. So would he, shedding the skin of the mythical chameleon, revealing a much larger beast of prey—say, a Bengal tiger—which could rip a jackal apart in his jaws.… Why were the images important? Why? He knew why, and it filled him with a feeling of emptiness, a longing for something that had passed—he was no longer Delta, the feared guerrilla of Medusa; nor was he the Jason Bourne of Paris and the Far East. The older, much older, David Webb kept intruding, invading, trying to find reason within insanity and violence.
No! Get away from me! You are nothing and I am everything!… Go away, David, for Christ’s sake, go away.
Bourne spun off the path and ran across the harsh, sharp tropical grass toward the side entrance of the inn. Instantly, breathlessly, he cut his pace to a walk at the sight of a figure coming through the door; then upon recognizing the man, he resumed running. It was one of the few members of Tranquility’s staff he remembered and one of the few he wished he could forget. The insufferable snob of an assistant manager named Pritchard, a loquacious bore, albeit hardworking, who never let anyone forget his family’s importance in Montserrat—especially an uncle who was deputy director of immigration, a not so incidental plus for Tranquility Inn, David Webb suspected.
“Pritchard!” shouted Bourne, approaching the man. “Have you got the bandages?”
“Why, sir!” cried the assistant manager, genuinely flustered. “You’re here. We were told you left this afternoon—”
“Oh, shit!”
“Sir?… Such condolences of sorrow so pain my lips—”
“Just keep them shut, Pritchard. Do you understand me?”
“Of course, I was not here this morning to greet you or this afternoon to bid you farewell and express my deepest feelings, for Mr. Saint Jay asked me to work this evening, through the night, actually—”
“Pritchard, I’m in a hurry. Give me the bandages and don’t tell anyone—anyone—that you saw me. I want that very clear.”
“Oh, it is clear, sir,” said Pritchard, handing over the three different rolls of elasticized tape. “Such privileged information is safe with me, as safe as the knowledge that your wife and children were staying here—oh, God forgive me! Forgive me, sir!”
“I will and He will if you keep your mouth shut.”
“Sealed. It is sealed. I am so privileged!”
“You’ll be shot if you abuse the privilege. Is that clear?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t faint, Pritchard. Go down to the villa and tell Mr. Saint Jay that I’ll be in touch with him and he’s to stay there. Have you got that? He’s to stay there.… You, too, for that matter.”
“Perhaps I could—”
“Forget it. Get out of here!”
The talkative assistant manager ran across the lawn toward the path to the east villas as Bourne raced to the door and went inside. Jason climbed the steps two at a time—only years before, it would have been three at a time—and again, out of breath, reached St. Jacques’s office. He entered, closed the door, and quickly went to the closet where he knew his brother-in-law kept several changes of clothing. Both men were approximately the same size—outsized, as Marie claimed—and Johnny had frequently borrowed jackets and shirts from David Webb when visiting. Jason selected the most subdued combination in the closet. Lightweight gray slacks and an all-cotton dark blue blazer; the only shirt in evidence, again tropical cotton, was thankfully short-sleeved and brown. Nothing would pick up or reflect light.
He started to undress when he felt a sharp, hot jolt on the left side of his neck. He looked in the closet mirror, alarmed, then furious at what he saw. The constricting bandage around his throat was deep red with spreading blood. He tore open the box of the widest tape; it was too late to change the dressing, he could only reinforce it and hope to stem the bleeding. He unraveled the elasticized tape around his neck, tearing it after several revolutions, and applied the tiny clamps to hold it in place. It was more inhibiting than ever; it was also an impediment he would put out of his mind.
He changed clothes, pulling the collar of the brown shirt high over his throat and putting the automatic in his belt, the reel of fishing line in the blazer’s pocket.… Footsteps! The door opened as he pressed his back against the wall, his hand on the weapon. Old Fontaine walked in; he stood for a moment, looking at Bourne, then closed the door.
“I’ve been trying to find you, frankly not knowing if you were still alive,” said the Frenchman.
“We’re not using the radios unless we have to.” Jason walked away from the wall. “I thought you got the message.”
“I did and it was right. Carlos may have his own radio by now. He’s not alone, you know. It’s why I’ve been wandering around looking for you. Then it occurred to me that you and your brother-in-law might be up here in his office, a headquarters, as it were.”
“It’s not very smart for you to be walking around out in the open.”
“I’m not an idiot, monsieur. I would have perished long before now if I were. Wherever I walked I did so with great caution.… In truth, it’s why I made up my mind to find you, assuming you were not dead.”
“I’m not and you found me. What is it? You and the judge are supposed to be in an empty villa somewhere, not wandering around.”
“We are; we were. You see, I have a plan, a stratagème, I believe would interest you. I discussed it with Brendan—”
“Brendan?”
“His name, monsieur. He thinks my plan has merit and he’s a brilliant man, very sagace—”
“Shrewd? Yes, I’m sure he is, but he’s not in our business.”
“He’s a survivor. In that sense we are all in the same business. He thinks there is a degree of risk, but what plan under these circumstances is without risk?”
“What’s your plan?”
“It is a means to trap the Jackal with minimum danger to the other people here.”
“That really worries you, doesn’t it?”
“I told you why, so there’s no reason to repeat it. There are men and women together out there—”
“Go on,” broke in Bourne, irritated. “What’s this strategy of yours, and you’d better understand that I intend to take out the Jackal if I have to hold this whole goddamned island hostage. I’m not in a giving mood. I’ve given too much.”
“So you and Carlos stalk each other in the night? Two crazed middle-aged hunters obsessed with killing each other, not caring who else is killed or wounded or maimed for life in the bargain?”
“You want compassion, go to a church and appeal to that God of yours who pisses on this planet! He’s either got one hell of a warped sense of humor or he’s a sadist. Now either talk sense or I’m getting out of here.”
“I’ve thought this out—”
“Talk!”
“I know the monseigneur, know the way he thinks. He planned the death of my woman and me but not to coincide with yours, not in a way that would detract from the high drama of his immediate victory over you. It would come later. The revelation that I, the so-called hero of France, was in reality the Jackal’s instrument, his creation, would be the final proof of his triumph. Don’t you see?”
Briefly silent, Jason studied the old man. “Yes, I do,” he replied quietly. “Not that I ever figured on someone like you, but that approach is the basis of everything I believe. He’s a megalomaniac. In his head he’s the king of hell and wants the world to recognize him and his throne. By his lights, his genius has been overlooked, relegated to the level of punk killers and Mafia hit men. He wants trumpets and drums, when all he hears are tired sirens and weary questions in police lineups.”
“C’est vrai. He once complained to me that almost no one in America knew who he was.”
“They don’t. They think he’s a character out of novels or films, if they think about him at all. He tried to make up for that thirteen years ago, when he flew over from Paris to New York to kill me.”
“Correction, monsieur. You forced him to go after you.”
“It’s history. What’s all this got to do with now, tonight … your plan?”
“It provides us with a way to force the Jackal to come out after me, to meet with me. Now. Tonight.”
“How?”
“By my wandering around the grounds very much in the open where he or one of his scouts will see me and hear me.”
“Why would that force him to come out after you?”
“Because I will not be with the nurse he had assigned to me. I will be with someone else, unknown to him, someone who would have no reason at all to kill me.”
Again Bourne looked at the old Frenchman in silence. “Bait,” he said finally.
“A lure so provocative it will drive him into a frenzy until he has it in his possession—has me in his grip so he can question me.… You see, I’m vital to him—more specifically, my death is vital—and everything is timing to him. Precision is his … his diction, how is it said?”
“His byword, his method of operation, I suppose.”
“It is how he has survived, how he has made the most of each kill, each over the years adding to his reputation as the assassin suprême. Until a man named Jason Bourne came out of the Far East … he has never been the same since. But you know all that—”
“I don’t care about all that,” interrupted Jason. “The ‘timing.’ Go on.”
“After I’m gone he can reveal who Jean Pierre Fontaine, the hero of France, really was. An impostor, his impostor, his creation, the instrument of death who was the snare for Jason Bourne. What a triumph for him!… But he cannot do that until I’m dead. Quite simply, it would be too inconvenient. I know too much, too many of my colleagues in the gutters of Paris. No, I must be dead before he has his triumph.”
“Then he’ll kill you when he sees you.”
“Not until he has his answers, monsieur. Where is his killer nurse? What has happened to her? Did Le Caméléon find her, turn her, do away with her? Have the British authorities got her? Is she on her way to London and MI-Six with all their chemicals, to be turned over at last to Interpol? So many questions.… No, he will not kill me until he learns what he must learn. It may take only minutes to satisfy him, but long before then I trust that you will be at my side insuring my survival, if not his.”
“The nurse? Whoever it is, she’ll be shot.”
“No, not at all. I’ll order her away in anger, out of my sight at the first sign of contact. As I walk with her I shall lament the absence of my new dear friend, the angel of mercy who takes such good care of my wife, wondering out loud, What has happened to her? Where has she gone? Why haven’t I seen her all day? Naturally, I will conceal on my person the radio, activated, of course. Wherever I am taken—for surely one of Carlos’s men will make contact first—I will ask an enfeebled old man’s questions. Why am I going here? Why are we there?… You will follow—in full force, I sincerely hope. If you do so, you’ll have the Jackal.”
Holding his head straight, his neck rigid, Bourne walked to St. Jacques’s desk and sat on the edge. “Your friend, Judge Brendan what’s-his-name, is right—”
“Prefontaine. Although Fontaine is not my true name, we’ve decided it’s all the same family. When the earliest members left Alsace-Lorraine for America in the eighteenth century with Lafayette, they added the Pre to distinguish them from the Fontaines who spread out all over France.”
“He told you that?”
“He’s a brilliant man, once an honored judge.”
“Lafayette came from Alsace-Lorraine?”
“I don’t know, monsieur. I’ve never been there.”
“He’s a brilliant man.… More to the point, he’s right. Your plan has a lot of merit, but there’s also considerable risk. And I’ll be honest with you, Fontaine, I don’t give a damn about the risk you’re taking or about the nurse, whoever it is. I want the Jackal, and if it costs your life or the life of a woman I don’t know, it doesn’t matter to me. I want you to understand that.”
The old Frenchman stared at Jason with amused rheumy eyes and laughed softly. “You are such a transparent contradiction. Jason Bourne would never have said what you just did. He would have remained silent, accepting my proposition without comment but knowing the advantage. Mrs. Webb’s husband, however, must have a voice. He objects and must be heard.” Fontaine suddenly spoke sharply. “Get rid of him, Monsieur Bourne. He is not my protection, not the death of the Jackal. Send him away.”
“He’s gone. I promise you, he’s gone.” The Chameleon sprang up from the desk, his neck frozen in pain. “Let’s get started.”
The steel band continued its deafening assault, but now restricted to the confines of the glass-enclosed lobby and adjacent dining room. The speakers on the grounds were switched off on St. Jacques’s orders, the owner of Tranquility Inn having been escorted up from the unoccupied villa by the two Uzi-bearing former commandos along with the Canadian doctor and the incessantly chattering Mr. Pritchard. The assistant manager was instructed to return to the front desk and say nothing to anyone about the things he had witnessed during the past hour.
“Absolutely nothing, sir. If I am asked, I was on the telephone with the authorities over in ’Serrat.”
“About what?” objected St. Jacques.
“Well, I thought—”
“Don’t think. You were checking the maid service on the west path, that’s all.”
“Yes, sir.” The deflated Pritchard headed for the office door, which had been opened moments before by the nameless Canadian doctor.
“I doubt it would make much difference what he said,” offered the physician as the assistant manager left. “That’s a small zoo down there. The combination of last night’s events, too much sun today and excessive amounts of alcohol this evening, will augur a great deal of guilt in the morning. My wife doesn’t think your meteorologist will have much to say, John.”
“Oh?”
“He’s having a few himself, and even if he’s halfway lucid, there aren’t five sober enough to listen to him.”
“I’d better get down there. We may as well turn it into a minor carnivale. It’ll save Scotty ten thousand dollars, and the more distraction we have, the better. I’ll speak to the band and the bar and be right back.”
“We may not be here,” said Bourne as his brother-in-law left and a strapping young black woman in a complete nurse’s uniform walked out of St. Jacques’s private bathroom into the office. At the sight of her, old Fontaine approached.
“Very good, my child, you look splendid,” said the Frenchman. “Remember now, I’ll be holding your arm as we walk and talk, but when I squeeze you and raise my voice, telling you to leave me alone, you’ll do as I say, correct?”
“Yes, sir. I am to hurry away quite angry with you for being so unnice.”
“That’s it. There’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s just a game. We want to talk with someone who’s very shy.”
“How’s the neck?” asked the doctor, looking at Jason, unable to see the bandage beneath the brown shirt.
“It’s all right,” answered Bourne.
“Let’s take a look at it,” said the Canadian, stepping forward.
“Thanks but not now, Doctor. I suggest you go downstairs and rejoin your wife.”
“Yes. I thought you’d say that, but may I say something very quickly?”
“Very quickly.”
“I’m a doctor and I’ve had to do a great many things I didn’t like doing and I’m sure this is in that category. But when I think of that young man and what was done to him—”
“Please,” broke in Jason.
“Yes, yes, I understand. Nevertheless, I’m here if you need me, I just wanted you to know that.… I’m not terribly proud of my previous statements. I saw what I saw and I do have a name and I’m perfectly willing to testify in a court of law. In other words, I withdraw my reluctance.”
“There’ll be no courts, Doctor, no testimony.”
“Really? But these are serious crimes!”
“We know what they are,” interrupted Bourne. “Your help is greatly appreciated, but nothing else concerns you.”
“I see,” said the doctor, staring curiously at Jason. “I’ll go, then.” The Canadian went to the door and turned. “You’d better let me check that neck later. If you’ve got a neck.” The doctor left and Bourne turned to Fontaine.
“We’re ready,” replied the Frenchman, smiling pleasantly at the large, imposing, thoroughly mystified young black woman. “What are you going to do with all the money you’re earning tonight, my dear?”
The girl giggled shyly, her broad smile alive with bright white teeth. “I have a good boyfriend. I’m going to buy him a fine present.”
“That’s lovely. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”
“Ishmael, sir.”
“Let’s go,” said Jason firmly.
The plan was simple to mount and, like most good strategies, however complex, simple to execute. Old Fontaine’s walk through the grounds of Tranquility Inn had been precisely mapped out. The trek began with Fontaine and the young woman returning to his villa presumably to look in on his ill wife before his established, medically required evening stroll. They stayed on the lighted main path, straying now and then across the floodlit lawns but always visible, a crotchety old man supposedly walking wherever his whims led him, to the annoyance of his companion. It was a familiar sight the world over, an enfeebled, irascible septuagenarian taunting his keeper.
The two former Royal Commandos, one rather short, the other fairly tall, had selected a series of stations between the points where the Frenchman and his “nurse” would turn and head in different directions. As the old man and the girl proceeded into the next planned leg, the second commando bypassed his colleague in darkness to the next location, using unseen routes only they knew or could negotiate, such as that beyond the coastline wall above the tangled tropical brush that led to the beach below the villas. The black guards climbed like two enormous spiders in a jungle, crawling swiftly, effortlessly from branch and rock to limb and vine, keeping pace with their two charges. Bourne followed the second man, his radio on Receive, the angry words of Fontaine pulsating through the static.
Where is that other nurse? That lovely girl who takes care of my woman? Where is she? I haven’t seen her all day! The emphatic phrases were repeated over and over again with growing hostility.
Jason slipped. He was caught! He was behind the coastal wall, his left foot entangled in thick vines. He could not pull his leg loose—the strength was not there! He moved his head—his shoulders—and the hot flashes of pain broke out on his neck. It is nothing. Pull, yank, rip!… His lungs bursting, the blood now drenching his shirt, he worked his way free and crawled on.
Suddenly there were lights, colored lights spilling over the wall. They had reached the path to the chapel, the red and blue floodlights that lit up the entrance to Tranquility Inn’s sealed-off sanctuary. It was the last destination before the return route back to Fontaine’s villa, and one they all agreed was designed more to permit the old Frenchman time to catch his breath than for any other purpose. St. Jacques had stationed a guard there to prevent entrance into the demolished chapel. There would be no contact here. Then Bourne heard the words over the radio—the words that would send the false nurse racing away from her false charge.
“Get away from me!” yelled Fontaine. “I don’t like you. Where is our regular nurse? What have you done with her?”
Up ahead, the two commandos were side by side, crouching below the wall. They turned and looked at Jason, their expressions in the eerie wash of colored lights telling him what he knew only too well. From that moment on, all decisions were his; they had led him, escorted him, to his enemy. The rest was up to him.
The unexpected rarely disturbed Bourne; it did now. Had Fontaine made a mistake? Had the old man forgotten about the inn’s guard and erroneously presumed he was the Jackal’s contact? In his aged eyes had an understandably surprised reaction on the guard’s part been misinterpreted as an approach? Anything was possible, but considering the Frenchman’s background—the life of a survivor—and the state of his alert mind, such a mistake was not realistic.
Then the possibility of another reality came into focus and it was sickening. Had the guard been killed or bribed, replaced by another? Carlos was a master of the turn-around. It was said he had fulfilled a contract on the assassination of Anwar Sadat without firing a weapon, by merely replacing the Egyptian president’s security detail with inexperienced recruits—money dispersed in Cairo returned a hundredfold by the anti-Israel brotherhoods in the Middle East. If it were true, the exercise on Tranquility Isle was child’s play.
Jason rose to his feet, gripped the top of the coastal wall, and slowly, painfully, his neck causing agony, pulled himself up over the ledge, again slowly, inch by inch, sending one arm after the other across the surface to grab the opposing edge for support. What he saw stunned him!
Fontaine was immobile, his mouth gaped in shock, his wide eyes disbelieving, as another old man in a tan gabardine suit approached him and threw his arms around the aged hero of France. Fontaine pushed the man away in panic and bewilderment. The words erupted out of the radio in Bourne’s pocket. “Claude! Quelle secousse! Vous êtes ici!”
The ancient friend replied in a tremulous voice, speaking French. “It is a privilege our monseigneur permitted me. To see for a final time my sister, and to give comfort to my friend, her husband. I am here and I am with you!”
“With me? He brought you here? But, of course, he did!”
“I am to take you to him. The great man wishes to speak with you.”
“Do you know what you’re doing—what you’ve done?”
“I am with you, with her. What else matters?”
“She’s dead! She took her own life last night! He intended to kill us both.”
Shut off your radio! screamed Bourne in the silence of his thoughts. Kill the radio! It was too late. The left door of the chapel opened and the silhouetted figure of a man walked out into the floodlit corridor of colored lights. He was young, muscular and blond, with blunt features and rigid posture. Was the Jackal training someone else to take his place?
“Come with me, please,” said the blond man, his French gentle but icily commanding. “You,” he added, addressing the old man in the tan gabardine suit. “Stay where you are. At the slightest sound, fire your gun.… Take it out. Hold it in your hand.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
Jason watched helplessly as Fontaine was escorted through the door of the chapel. From the pocket of his jacket there was an eruption of static followed by a snap; the Frenchman’s radio had been found and destroyed. Yet something was wrong, off-center, out of balance—or perhaps too symmetrical. It made no sense for Carlos to use the location of a failed trap a second time, no sense at all! The appearance of the brother of Fontaine’s wife was an exceptional move, worthy of the Jackal, a truly unexpected move within the swirling winds of confusion, but not this, not again Tranquility Inn’s superfluous chapel. It was too orderly, too repetitive, too obvious. Wrong.
And therefore right? considered Bourne. Was it the illogical logic of the assassin who had eluded a hundred special branches of the international intelligence community for nearly thirty years? “He wouldn’t do that—it’s crazy!” “… Oh, yes, he might because he knows we think it’s crazy.” Was the Jackal in the chapel or wasn’t he? If not, where was he? Where had he set his trap?
The lethal chess game was not only supremely intricate, it was sublimely intimate. Others might die, but only one of them would live. It was the only way it could end. Death to the seller of death or death to the challenger, one seeking the preservation of a legend, the other seeking the preservation of his family and himself. Carlos had the advantage; ultimately he would risk everything, for, as Fontaine revealed, he was a dying man and he did not care. Bourne had everything to live for, a middle-aged hunter whose life was indelibly marked, split in two by the death of a vaguely remembered wife and children long ago in far-off Cambodia. It could not, would not, happen again!
Jason slid down off the coastal wall to the slanting precipice at its base. He crawled forward to the two former commandos and whispered, “They’ve taken Fontaine inside.”
“Where is the guard?” asked the man nearest Bourne, confusion and anger in his whisper. “I myself placed him here with specific instructions. No one was permitted inside. He was to be on the radio the instant he saw anyone!”
“Then I’m afraid he didn’t see him.”
“Who?”
“A blond man who speaks French.”
Both commandos whipped their heads toward each other, exchanging glances as the second guard instantly looked at Jason and spoke quietly. “Describe him, please,” he said.
“Medium height, large chest and shoulders—”
“Enough,” interrupted the first guard. “Our man saw him, sir. He is third provost of the government police, an officer who speaks several languages and is chief of drug investigations.”
“But why is he here, mon?” the second commando asked his colleague. “Mr. Saint Jay said the Crown police are not told everything, they are not part of us.”
“Sir Henry, mon. He has Crown boats, six or seven, running back and forth with orders to stop anyone leaving Tranquility. They are drug boats, mon. Sir Henry calls it a patrol exercise, so naturally the chief of investigations must be—” The lilting whisper of the West Indian trailed off in midsentence as he looked at his companion. “… Then why isn’t he out on the water, mon? On the lead boat, mon?”
“Do you like him?” asked Bourne instinctively, surprising himself by his own question. “I mean, do you respect him? I could be wrong but I seem to sense something—”
“You are not wrong, sir,” answered the first guard, interrupting. “The provost is a cruel man and he doesn’t like the ‘Punjabis,’ as he calls us. He’s very quick to accuse us, and many have lost work because of his rash accusations.”
“Why don’t you complain, get rid of him? The British will listen to you.”
“The Crown governor will not, sir,” explained the second guard. “He’s very partial to his strict chief of narcotics. They are good friends and often go out after the big fish together.”
“I see.” Jason did see and was suddenly alarmed, very alarmed. “Saint Jay told me there used to be a path behind the chapel. He said it might be overgrown, but he thought it was still there.”
“It is,” confirmed the first commando. “The help still use it to go down to the water on their off times.”
“How long is it?”
“Thirty-five, forty meters. It leads to an incline where steps have been cut out of the rocks that take one down to the beach.”
“Which of you is faster?” asked Bourne, reaching into his pocket and taking out the reel of fishing line.
“I am.”
“I am!”
“I choose you,” said Jason, nodding his head at the shorter first guard, handing him the reel. “Go down on the border of that path and wherever you can, string this line across it, tying it to limbs or trunks or the strongest branches you can find. You mustn’t be seen, so be alert, see in the dark.”
“Is no problem, mon!”
“Have you got a knife?”
“Do I have eyes?”
“Good. Give me your Uzi. Hurry!”
The guard scrambled away along the vine-tangled precipice and disappeared into the dense foliage beyond. The second Royal Commando spoke. “In truth, sir, I am much faster, for my legs are much longer.”
“Which is why I chose him and I suspect you know it. Long legs are no advantage here, only an impediment, which I happen to know. Also, he’s much shorter and less likely to be spotted.”
“The smaller ones always get the better assignments. They parade us up front and put us in boxing rings with rules we don’t understand, but the small soldiers get the plumbies.”
“ ‘Plumbies’? The better jobs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The most dangerous jobs?”
“Yes, mon!”
“Live with it, big fella.”
“What do we do now, sir?”
Bourne looked above at the wall and the soft wash of colored lights. “It’s called the waiting game—no love songs implied, only the hatred that comes from wanting to live when others want to kill you. There’s nothing quite like it because you can’t do anything. All you can do is think about what the enemy may or may not be doing, and whether he’s thought of something you haven’t considered. As somebody once said, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”
“Where, mon?”
“Nothing. It isn’t true.”
Suddenly, filling the air above in chilling horror, came a prolonged excruciating scream, followed by words shrieked in pain. “Non, non! Vous êtes monstrueux!… Arrêtez, arrêtez, je vous supplie!”
“Now!” cried Jason, slinging the strap of his Uzi over his shoulder as he leaped onto the wall, gripping the edge, pulling himself up as the blood poured out of his neck. He could not get up! He could not get over! Then strong hands pulled him and he fell over the top of the wall. “The lights!” he shouted. “Shoot them out!”
The tall commando’s Uzi blazing, the lines of floodlights exploded in the ground on both sides of the chapel’s path. Again, strong black hands pulled him to his feet in the new darkness. And then a single shaft of yellow appeared, roving swiftly in all directions; it was a powerful halogen flashlight in the commando’s left hand. The figure of a blood-drenched old man in a tan gabardine suit lay curled up in the path, his throat slit.
“Stop! In the name of almighty God, stop where you are!” came Fontaine’s voice from inside the chapel, the open half door revealing the flickering light of the electric candles. They approached the entrance, automatic weapons leveled, prepared for continuous fire … but not prepared for what they saw. Bourne closed his eyes, the sight was too painful. Old Fontaine, like young Ishmael, was sprawled over the lectern on the raised platform beneath the blown-out, stained-glass windows of the left wall, his face running with blood where he had been slashed, and attached to his body were thin cables that led to various black boxes on both sides of the chapel.
“Go back!” screamed Fontaine. “Run, you fools! I’m wired—”
“Oh, Christ!”
“Mourn not for me, Monsieur le Caméléon. I gladly join my woman! This world is too ugly even for me. It is no longer amusing. Run! The charge will go off—they are watching!”
“You, mon! Now!” roared the second commando, grabbing Jason’s jacket and racing him to the wall, holding Bourne in his arms as they plummeted over the stone surface into the thick foliage.
The explosion was massive, blinding and deafening. It was as if this small corner of the small island had been taken out by a heat-seeking nuclear missile. Flames erupted into the night sky, but the burning mass was quickly diffused in the still wind to fiery rubble.
“The path!” shouted Jason, in a hoarse whisper, as he crawled to his feet in the sloping brush. “Get to the path!”
“You’re in bad condition, mon—”
“I’ll take care of me, you take care of you!”
“I believe I’ve taken care of both of us.”
“So you’ve got a fucking medal and I’ll add a lot of money to it. Now, get us up to the path!”
Pulling, pushing, and finally with Bourne’s feet grinding like a machine out of control, the two men reached the border of the path thirty feet behind the smoldering ruins of the chapel. They crept into the weeds and within seconds the first commando found them. “They’re in the south palms,” he said breathlessly. “They wait until the smoke has cleared to see if anyone is alive, but they cannot stay long.”
“You were there?” asked Jason. “With them?”
“No problem, mon, I told you, sir.”
“What’s happening? How many are there?”
“There were four, sir. I killed the man whose place I assumed. He was black, so it made no matter in appearance with the darkness. It was quick and silent. The throat.”
“Who’s left?”
“ ’Serrat’s chief of narcotics, of course, and two others—”
“Describe them!”
“I could not see clearly, but one I think was another black man, tall and without much hair. The third I could not see at all, for he—or she—was wearing strange clothes, with cloth over the head like a woman’s sun hat or insect veil.”
“A woman?”
“It is possible, sir.”
“A woman …? They’ve got to get out of there—he’s got to get out of there!”
“Very soon they will run to this path and race down to the beach, where they will hide in the woods of the cove until a boat comes for them. They have no choice. They cannot go back to the inn, for strangers are seen instantly, and even though we are far away and the steel band is loud, the explosion was certainly heard by the guards posted outside. They will report it.”
“Listen to me,” said Bourne, his voice hoarse, tense. “One of those three people is the man I want, and I want him for myself! So hold your fire because I’ll know him when I see him. I don’t give a damn about the others; they can be flushed out of that cove later.”
There was a sudden burst of gunfire from the tropical forest accompanied by screams from the once floodlit corridor beyond the ruins of the chapel. Then one after another the figures raced out of the tangled brush into the path. The first to be caught was the blond-haired police officer from Montserrat, the waist-high invisible fishing line tripping him as he fell into the dirt, breaking the thin, taut string. The second man, slender, tall, dark-featured, with only a fringe of hair on his bald head, was hard upon the first, pulling him to his feet, sight or instinct making the second killer wield his automatic weapon in slashing arcs, cutting the impeding lines across the path to the ledge that led down to the beach. The third figure appeared. It was not a woman. It was a man, in the robes of a monk. A priest. It was he. The Jackal!
Bourne rose to his feet and stumbled out of the brush into the path, the Uzi in his hands; the victory was his, his freedom his, his family his! As the robed figure reached the top of the primitive rock-hewn staircase, Jason pressed his trigger finger, holding it in place, the fusillade of bullets exploding out of the automatic weapon.
The monk arched in silhouette, then fell, his body tumbling, rolling, sprawling down the steps carved out of volcanic rock, finally lurching over the edge and plummeting to the sand below. Bourne raced down the awkward, irregular stone staircase, the two commandos behind him. He reached the beach, raced over to the corpse, and pulled the drenched hood away from the face. In horror, he looked at the black features of Samuel, the brother priest of Tranquility Isle, the Judas who had sold his soul to the Jackal for thirty pieces of silver.
Suddenly, in the distance, there was the roar of powerful dual engines as a huge speedboat lurched out of a shadowed section of the cove and sped for a break in the reefs. The beam of a searchlight shot out, firing the barriers of rock protruding above the choppy black water, its wash illuminating the fluttering ensign of the government’s drug fleet. Carlos!… The Jackal was no chameleon, but he had changed! He had aged, grown thinner and bald—he was not the sharp, broad, full-headed muscular image of Jason’s memory. Only the indistinct dark Latin features remained, the face and the unfamiliar expanse of bare skin above burned by the sun. He was gone!
The boat’s motors screamed in unison as the craft breached a precarious opening in the reef and burst out into open water. Then the words in heavily accented English, metallically spewing from the distant loudspeaker, echoed within the tropical cove.
“Paris, Jason Bourne! Paris, if you dare! Or shall it be a certain minor university in Maine, Dr. Webb?”
Bourne, his neck wound ripped open, collapsed in the lapping waves, his blood trickling into the sea.