The Air France 747 from Martinique circled Orly Airport in the early evening haze over Paris; it was five hours and twenty-two minutes behind schedule because of the severe weather patterns in the Caribbean. As the pilot entered his final approach the flight officer acknowledged their clearance to the tower, then switched to his prescribed sterile frequency and sent a last message in French to an off-limits communications room.
“Deuxième, special cargo. Please instruct your interested party to go to his designated holding area. Thank you. Out.”
“Instructions received and relayed” was the terse reply. “Out.”
The special cargo in question sat in the left rear bulkhead seat in the first-class section of the aircraft; the seat beside him was unoccupied, on orders of the Deuxième Bureau in cooperation with Washington. Impatient, annoyed and unable to sleep because of the constricting bandage around his neck, Bourne, close to exhaustion, reflected on the events of the past nineteen hours. To put it mildly, they had not gone as smoothly as Conklin had anticipated. The Deuxième had balked for over six hours as phone calls went back and forth feverishly between Washington, Paris and, finally, Vienna, Virginia. The stumbling block, and it was more of a hard rock, was the CIA’s inability to spell out the covert operation in terms of one Jason Bourne, for only Alexander Conklin could release the name and he refused to do so, knowing that the Jackal’s penetrations in Paris extended to just about everywhere but the kitchens of the Tour d’Argent. Finally, in desperation and realizing it was lunchtime in Paris, Alex placed ordinary, unsafe overseas telephone calls to several cafés on the Rive Gauche, finding an old Deuxième acquaintance at one on the rue de Vaugirard.
“Do you remember the tinamou and an American somewhat younger than he is now who made things a little simpler for you?”
“Ah, the tinamou, the bird with hidden wings and ferocious legs! They were such better days, younger days. And if the somewhat older American was at the time given the status of a saint, I shall never forget him.”
“Don’t now, I need you.”
“It is you, Alexander?”
“It is and I’ve got a problem with D. Bureau.”
“It is solved.”
And it was, but the weather was insoluble. The storm that had battered the central Leeward Islands two nights before was only a prelude to the torrential rain and winds that swept up from the Grenadines, with another storm behind it. The islands were entering the hurricane season, so the weather was not astonishing, it was merely a delaying factor. Finally, when clearance for takeoff was around the chronological corner, it was discovered that there was a malfunction in the far starboard engine; no one argued while the problem was traced, found and repaired. The elapsed time, however, was an additional three hours.
Except for the churning of his mind, the flight itself was uneventful for Jason; only his guilt interfered with his thoughts of what was before him—Paris, Argenteuil, a café with the provocative name of Le Coeur du Soldat, The Soldier’s Heart. The guilt was most painful on the short flight from Montserrat to Martinique when they passed over Guadeloupe and the island of Basse-Terre. He knew that only a few thousand feet below were Marie and his children, preparing to fly back to Tranquility Isle, to the husband and father who would not be there. His infant daughter, Alison, would, of course, know nothing, but Jamie would; his wide eyes would grow larger and cloud over as words tumbled out about fishing and swimming … and Marie—Christ, I can’t think about her! It hurts too much!
She’d think he had betrayed her, run away to seek a violent confrontation with an enemy from long ago in another far-off life that was no longer their life. She would think like old Fontaine, who had tried to persuade him to take his family thousands of miles away from where the Jackal prowled, but neither of them understood. The aging Carlos might die, but on his deathbed he would leave a legacy, a bequest that would hinge on the mandatory death of Jason Bourne—David Webb and his family. I’m right, Marie! Try to understand me. I have to find him, I have to kill him! We can’t live in our personal prison for the rest of our lives!
“Monsieur Simon?” said the stoutish well-tailored Frenchman, an older man with a close-cropped white chin beard, pronouncing the name Seemohn.
“That’s right,” replied Bourne, shaking the hand extended to him in a narrow deserted hallway somewhere in Orly Airport.
“I am Bernardine, François Bernardine, an old colleague of our mutual friend, Alexander the Saint.”
“Alex mentioned you,” said Jason, smiling tentatively. “Not by name, of course, but he told me you might bring up his sainthood. It was how I’d know you were—his colleague.”
“How is he? We hear stories, of course.” Bernardine shrugged. “Banal gossip, by and large. Wounded in the futile Vietnam, alcohol, dismissed, disgraced, brought back a hero of the Agency, so many contradictory things.”
“Most of them true; he’s not afraid to admit that. He’s a cripple now, and he doesn’t drink, and he was a hero. I know.”
“I see. Again stories, rumors, who can believe what? Flights of fancy out of Beijing, Hong Kong—some concerning a man named Jason Bourne.”
“I’ve heard them.”
“Yes, of course.… But now Paris. Our saint said you would need lodgings, clothes purchased en scène, as it were, French to the core.”
“A small but varied closet,” agreed Jason. “I know where to go, what to buy, and I have sufficient money.”
“Then we are concerned with lodgings. A hotel of your choice? La Trémoille? George Cinq? Plaza-Athénée?”
“Smaller, much smaller and far less expensive.”
“Money is a problem, then?”
“Not at all. Only appearances. I’ll tell you what, I know Montmartre. I’ll find a place myself. What I will need is a car—registered under another name, preferably a name that’s a dead end.”
“Which means a dead man. It’s been arranged; it is in the underground garage on the Capucines, near the Place Vendôme.” Bernardine reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys, and handed them to Jason. “An older Peugeot in Section E. There are thousands like them in Paris and the license number is on the tab.”
“Alex told you I’m traveling deep?”
“He didn’t really have to. I believe our saint scoured the cemeteries for useful names when he worked here.”
“I probably learned it from him.”
“We all learned things from that extraordinary mind, the finest in our profession, yet so self-effacing, so … je ne sais quoi … so ‘why not try it,’ yes?”
“Yes, why not try it.”
“I must tell you, though,” said Bernardine, laughing. “He once chose a name, admittedly from a tombstone, that drove the Sûreté fou—crazy! It was the alias of an ax murderer the authorities had been hunting for months!”
“That is funny,” agreed Bourne, chuckling.
“Yes, very. He told me later that he found it in Rambouillet—in a cemetery on the outskirts of Rambouillet.”
Rambouillet! The cemetery where Alex had tried to kill him thirteen years ago. All traces of a smile left Jason’s lips as he stared at Alex’s friend from the Deuxième Bureau. “You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” answered Bernardine. “It was not so difficult to piece together, not with the rumors and the gossip out of the Far East. After all, it was here in Paris where you made your mark on Europe, Mr. Bourne.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Mon Dieu, non! Nor will they. I must explain, I owe my life to Alexander Conklin, our modest saint of les opérations noires—the black assignments in your language.”
“That’s not necessary, I speak French fluently … or didn’t Alex tell you that?”
“Oh, my God, you doubt me,” said the Deuxième man, his gray eyebrows arched. “Take into account, young man—younger man—that I am in my seventieth year, and if I have lapses of language and try to correct them, it is because I mean to be kind, not subreptice.”
“D’accord. Je regrette. I mean that.”
“Bien. Alex is several years younger than I am, but I wonder how he’s handling it. The age, that is.”
“Same as you. Badly.”
“There was an English poet—a Welsh poet, to be exact—who wrote, ‘Do not go gently into that good night.’ Do you remember it?”
“Yes. His name was Dylan Thomas and he died in his mid-thirties. He was saying fight like a son of a bitch. Don’t give in.”
“I mean to do that.” Bernardine again reached into a pocket and pulled out a card. “Here is my office—merely consultant status, you understand—and on the back I’ve written down my home phone; it is a special telephone, actually unique. Call me; whatever you need will be provided. Remember, I am the only friend you have in Paris. No one else knows you are here.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Mais certainement.”
“How can you do the things you’re doing for me when for all intents and purposes you’ve been put out to pasture?”
“Ah,” exclaimed the consultant to the Deuxième Bureau. “The younger man grows older! Like Alex, I carry my credentials in my head. I know the secrets. How is it otherwise?”
“You could be taken out, neutralized—have an accident.”
“Stupide, young man! What is in both our heads we say is written down, locked away, to be revealed should such unnatural acts occur.… Of course, it’s all nonsense, for what do we really know that could not be denied, labeled as the ramblings of old men, but they do not know that. Fear, monsieur. It is the most potent weapon in our profession. Second, of course, is embarrassment, but that is usually reserved for the Soviet KGB and your Federal Bureau of Investigation, both of which fear embarrassment more than their nations’ enemies.”
“You and Conklin come from the same street, don’t you?”
“But of course. To the best of my knowledge, neither of us has a wife or a family, only sporadic lovers to fill our beds, and loud, annoying nephews and nieces to fill our flats on certain holidays; no really close friends except now and then an enemy we respect, who, for all we know and in spite of our truce, might shoot us or poison us with a drink. We must live alone, you see, for we are the professionals—we have nothing to do with the normal world; we merely use it as a couverture—as we slink around in dark alleys, paying or compromising people for secrets that mean nothing where summit conferences are concerned.”
“Then why do you do it? Why not walk away if it’s so useless?”
“It’s in the blood rushing through our veins. We’ve been trained. Beat the enemy in the deadly game—he takes you or you take him, and it is better that you take him.”
“That’s dumb.”
“But of course. It’s all dumb. So why does Jason Bourne go after the Jackal here in Paris? Why doesn’t he walk away and say Enough. Complete protection is yours for the asking.”
“So’s prison. Can you get me out of here and into the city? I’ll find a hotel and be in touch with you.”
“Before you are in touch with me, reach Alex.”
“What?”
“Alex wants you to call him. Something happened.”
“Where’s a phone?”
“Not now. Two o’clock, Washington time; you have well over an hour. He won’t be back before then.”
“Did he say what it was?”
“I think he’s trying to find out. He was very upset.”
The room at the Pont-Royal on the rue Montalembert was small and in a secluded corner of the hotel, reached by taking the slow, noisy brass elevator to the top floor and walking down two narrow intersecting hallways, all of which was satisfactory to Bourne. It reminded him of a mountain cave, remote and secure.
To chew up the minutes before calling Alex, he walked along the nearby boulevard Saint-Germain, making necessary purchases. Various toiletries joined several articles of clothing; casual denims called for summer shirts and a lightweight safari jacket; dark socks required tennis shoes, to be scuffed and soiled. Whatever he could supply himself now would save time later. Fortunately, there was no need to press old Bernardine for a weapon. During the drive into Paris from Orly, the Frenchman had opened the glove compartment of his car in silence, withdrawn a taped brown box and handed it to Jason. Inside was an automatic with two boxes of shells. Underneath, neatly layered, were thirty thousand francs, in varying denominations, roughly five thousand dollars, American.
“Tomorrow I will arrange a method for you to obtain funds whenever necessary. Within limits, of course.”
“No limits,” Bourne had contradicted. “I’ll have Conklin wire you a hundred thousand, and then another hundred after that, if it’s necessary. You just tell him where.”
“Of contingency funds?”
“No. Mine. Thanks for the gun.”
With both his hands holding the looped strings of shopping bags, he headed back to Montalembert and the hotel. In a few minutes it would be two in the afternoon in Washington, eight at night in Paris. As he walked rapidly down the street he tried not to think about Alex’s news—an impossible demand on himself. If anything had happened to Marie and the children, he’d go out of his mind! Yet what could have happened? They were back on Tranquility by now, and there was no safer place for them. There was not! He was sure of that. As he entered the old elevator and lowered the bags in his right hand so as to push the number of his floor and remove the hotel key from his pocket, there was a stinging sensation in his neck; he gasped—he had moved too fast, stretched the gut of a suture perhaps. He felt no warm trickle of blood; it was merely a warning this time. He rushed down the two narrow corridors to his room, unlocked the door, threw the shopping bags on the bed, and rapidly took the three necessary steps to the desk and the telephone. Conklin was true to his word; the phone in Vienna, Virginia, was picked up on the first ring.
“Alex, it’s me. What happened? Marie …?”
“No,” interrupted Conklin curtly. “I spoke to her around noon. She and the kids are back at the inn and she’s ready to kill me. She doesn’t believe a word I told her and I’m going to erase the tape. I haven’t heard that kind of language since the Mekong Delta.”
“She’s upset—”
“So am I,” broke in Alex, not bothering to make light of Bourne’s understatement. “Mo’s disappeared.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Panov’s gone, vanished.”
“My God, how? He was guarded every minute!”
“We’re trying to piece it together; that’s where I was, over at the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“Walter Reed. He was in a psych session with a military this morning, and when it was over he never came out to his detail. They waited twenty minutes or so, then went in to find him and his escort because he was on a tight schedule. They were told he left.”
“That’s crazy!”
“It gets crazier and scarier. The head floor nurse said an army doctor, a surgeon, came to the desk, showed his ID, and instructed her to tell Dr. Panov that there was a change of routing for him, that he was to use the east-wing exit because of an expected protest march at the main entrance. The east wing has a different hallway to the psych area than the one to the main lobby, yet the army surgeon used the main doors.”
“Come again?”
“He walked right past our escort in the hallway.”
“And obviously out the same way and around to the east-wing hall. Nothing on-scene unusual. A doctor with clearance in a restricted area, in and out, and while he’s in, he delivers false instructions.… But, Christ, Alex, who? Carlos was on his way back here, to Paris! Whatever he wanted in Washington he got. He found me, he found us. He didn’t need any more!”
“DeSole,” said Conklin quietly. “DeSole knew about me and Mo Panov. I threatened the Agency with both of us, and DeSole was there in the conference room.”
“I’m not with you. What are you telling me?”
“DeSole, Brussels … Medusa.”
“All right, I’m slow.”
“It’s not he, David, it’s they. DeSole was taken out, our connection removed. It’s Medusa.”
“To hell with them! They’re on my back burner!”
“You’re not on theirs. You cracked their shell. They want you.”
“I couldn’t care less. I told you yesterday, I’ve only got one priority and he’s in Paris, square one in Argenteuil.”
“Then I haven’t been clear,” said Alex, his voice faint, the tone defeated. “Last night I had dinner with Mo. I told him everything. Tranquility, your flying to Paris, Bernardine … everything!”
A former judge of the first circuit court, residing in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, stood among the small gathering of mourners on the flat surface of the highest hill on Tranquility Isle. The cemetery was the final resting place—in voce verbatim via amicus curiae, as he legally explained to the authorities on Montserrat. Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine watched as the two splendid coffins provided by the generous owner of Tranquility Inn were lowered into the ground along with the absolutely incomprehensible blessings of the native priest, who no doubt usually had the neck of a dead chicken in his mouth while intoning his benediction in voodoo language. “Jean Pierre Fontaine” and his wife were at peace.
Nevertheless, barbarism notwithstanding, Brendan, the quasi-alcoholic street lawyer of Harvard Square, had found a cause. A cause beyond his own survival, and that in itself was remarkable. Randolph Gates, Lord Randolph of Gates, Dandy Randy of the Courts of the Elite, was in reality a scumball, a conduit of death in the Caribbean. And the outlines of a scheme were forming in Prefontaine’s progressively clearer mind, clearer because, among other inhumane deprivations, he had suddenly decided to do without his four shots of vodka upon waking up in the morning. Gates had provided the essential information that led the would-be killers of the Webb family to Tranquility Isle. Why?… That was basically, even legally, irrelevant; the fact that he had supplied their whereabouts to known killers, with prior knowledge that they were killers, was not. That was accomplice to murder, multiple murder. Dandy Randy’s testicles were in a vise, and as the plates closed, he would—he had to—reveal information that would assist the Webbs, especially the glorious auburn-headed woman he wished to almighty God he had met fifty years ago.
Prefontaine was flying back to Boston in the morning, but he had asked John St. Jacques if he might return one day. Perhaps not with a prepaid reservation.
“Judge, my house is your house” was the reply.
“I might even earn that courtesy.”
Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, got out of his limousine and stood on the pavement before the steep steps of his town house in Georgetown. “Check with the office in the morning,” he said to the chauffeur, holding the rear door. “As you know, I’m not a well man.”
“Yes, sir.” The driver closed the door. “Would you like assistance, sir?”
“Hell, no. Get out of here.”
“Yes, sir.” The government chauffeur climbed into the front seat; the sudden roar of his engine was not meant as a courteous exit as he sped down the street.
Armbruster climbed the stone staircase, his stomach and chest heaving with each step, cursing under his breath at the sight of his wife’s silhouette beyond the glass door of their Victorian entrance. “Shit-kicking yapper,” he said to himself as he neared the top, gripping the railing before facing his adversary of thirty years.
A spit exploded out of the darkness from somewhere within the grounds of the property next door. Armbruster’s arms flew up, his wrists bent as if trying to locate the bodily chaos; it was too late. The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission tumbled back down the stone staircase, his thumping dead weight landing grotesquely on the pavement below.
Bourne changed into the French denim trousers, slipped on a dark short-sleeved shirt and the cotton safari jacket, put his money, his weapon and all his IDs—authentic and false—into his pockets and left the Pont-Royal. Before doing so, however, he stuffed the bed with pillows, and hung his traveling clothes in clear view over the chair. He walked casually past the ornate front desk, and once outside on Montalembert ran to the nearest telephone kiosk. He inserted a coin and dialed Bernardine’s home.
“It’s Simon,” he said.
“I thought so,” replied the Frenchman. “I was hoping so. I’ve just heard from Alex and told him not to tell me where you were; one cannot reveal what one does not know. Still, if I were you, I’d go to another place, at least for the night. You may have been spotted at the airport.”
“What about you?”
“I intend to be a canard.”
“A duck?”
“The sitting variety. The Deuxième has my flat under watch. Perhaps I’ll have a visitor; it would be convenient, n’est-ce pas?”
“You didn’t tell your office about—”
“About you?” interrupted Bernardine. “How could I, monsieur, when I don’t know you? My protective Bureau believes I had a threatening call from an old adversary known to be a psychopath. Actually I removed him in the Maritimes years ago but I never closed the file—”
“Should you be telling me this on your telephone?”
“I thought I mentioned that it was a unique instrument.”
“You did.”
“Suffice it to say it cannot be tapped and still function.… You need rest, monsieur. You are no good to anyone, least of all yourself, without it. Find a bed, I cannot help you there.”
“ ‘Rest is a weapon,’ ” said Jason, repeating a phrase he had come to believe was a vital truth, vital for survival in a world he loathed.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. I’ll find a bed and call you in the morning.”
“Tomorrow then. Bonne chance, mon ami. For both of us.”
* * *
He found a room at the Avenir, an inexpensive hotel on the rue Gay-Lussac. Registering under a false name, promptly forgotten, he climbed the stairs to his room, removed his clothes, and fell into the bed. “Rest is a weapon,” he said to himself, staring at the ceiling, at the flickering lights of the Paris streets as they traveled across the plaster. Whether rest came in a mountain cave or a rice paddy in the Mekong Delta, it did not matter; it was a weapon frequently more powerful than firepower. That was the lesson drummed into his head by d’Anjou, the man who had given his life in a Beijing forest so that Jason Bourne might live. Rest is a weapon, he considered, touching the bandage around his neck yet not really feeling it, its constricting presence fading as sleep came.
He woke up slowly, cautiously, the noise of the traffic in the streets below pounding up to his window, the metallic horns like the erratic cawing of angry crows amid the irregular bursts of angry engines, full bore one moment, abrupt quiet the next. It was a normal morning in the narrow streets of Paris. Holding his neck rigid, Jason swung his legs to the floor from the inadequate bed and looked at his watch, startled at what he saw, wondering for an instant whether he had adjusted the watch for Paris time. Of course he had. It was 10:07 in the morning—Paris time. He had slept nearly eleven hours, a fact confirmed by the rumbling in his stomach. Exhaustion was now replaced by acute hunger.
Food, however, would have to wait; there were things to take care of, and first on the list was to reach Bernardine, and then to learn the security status of the Pont-Royal hotel. He got to his feet, stiffly, unsteadily, numbness momentarily invading his legs and arms. He needed a hot shower, which was not to be had at the Avenir, then mild exercise to limber up his body, therapies unnecessary only a few years ago. He removed his wallet from his trousers, pulled out Bernardine’s card and returned to the bed to use the telephone beside it; he dialed.
“Le canard had no visitors, I’m afraid,” said the Deuxième veteran. “Not even the hint of a hunter, which I presume is favorable news.”
“It’s not until we find Panov—if we find him. The bastards!”
“Yes, that must be faced. It’s the ugliest part of our work.”
“Goddamn it, I can’t dismiss a man like Mo with ‘That must be faced’!”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m only remarking upon the reality. Your feelings are meaningful to you, but they don’t change reality. I did not mean to offend you.”
“And I didn’t mean to mouth off. Sorry. It’s just that he’s a very special person.”
“I understand.… What are your plans? What do you need?”
“I don’t know yet,” answered Bourne. “I’ll pick up the car in the Capucines and an hour or so later I’ll know more. Will you be home or at the Deuxième Bureau?”
“Until I hear from you I will stay in my flat and near my very unique telephone. Under the circumstances I prefer that you do not call me at the office.”
“That’s an astonishing statement.”
“I don’t know everyone these days at the Deuxième, and at my age, caution is not merely the better part of valor, it’s frequently a substitute. Besides, to call off my protection so swiftly might generate rumors of senility.… Speak to you later, mon ami.”
Jason replaced the phone, tempted to pick it up again and reach the Pont-Royal, but this was Paris, the city of discretion, where hotel clerks were loath to give information over the telephone, and would refuse to do so with guests they did not know. He dressed quickly, went down to pay his bill, and walked out onto the rue Gay-Lussac. There was a taxi stand at the corner; eight minutes later he walked into the lobby of the Pont-Royal and up to the concierge. “Je m’appelle Monsieur Simon,” he said to the man, giving his room number. “I ran into a friend last night,” he continued in flawless French, “and I stayed at her place. Would you know if anyone came around looking for me, perhaps asking for me.” Bourne removed several large franc notes, his eyes telling the man he would pay generously for confidentiality. “Or even describing someone like me,” he added softly.
“Merci bien, monsieur.… I understand. I will check further with the night concierge, but I’m sure he would have left a note for my personal attention if someone had come here seeking you.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because he did leave such a note for me to speak with you. I’ve been calling your room since seven o’clock this morning when I came on duty.”
“What did the note say?” asked Jason, his breathing on hold.
“It’s what I’m to say to you. ‘Reach his friend across the Atlantic. The man has been phoning all night.’ I can attest to the accuracy of that, monsieur. The switchboard tells me that last call was less than thirty minutes ago.”
“Thirty minutes ago?” said Jason, looking hard at the concierge and then at his watch. “It’s five A. M. over there … all night?”
The hotel man nodded as Bourne started for the elevator.
“Alex, for Christ’s sake, what is it? They told me you’ve been calling all—”
“Are you at the hotel?” interrupted Conklin quickly.
“Yes, I am.”
“Get to a public phone in the street and call me back. Hurry.”
Again the slow, cumbersome elevator; the faded ornate lobby now half filled with Parisians talking manically, many heading for the bar and their prenoon apéritifs; and again the hot bright summer street outside and the maddening congested traffic. Where was a telephone? He walked rapidly down the pavement toward the Seine—where was a phone? There! Across the converging rue du Bac, a red-domed booth with posters covering the sides.
Dodging the onslaught of automobiles and small trucks, all with furious drivers, he raced to the other side of the street and down to the booth. He sped inside, deposited a coin, and after an agonizing few moments during which he explained that he was not calling Austria, the international operator accepted his AT&T credit number and put the call through to Vienna, Virginia.
“Why the hell couldn’t I talk from the hotel?” asked Bourne angrily. “I called you last night from there!”
“That was last night, not today.”
“Any news about Mo?”
“Nothing yet, but they may have made a mistake. We may have a line on the army doctor.”
“Break him!”
“With pleasure. I’ll take off my foot and smash his face with it until he begs to cooperate—if the line on him is rumb.”
“That’s not why you’ve been calling me all night, though, is it?”
“No. I was with Peter Holland for five hours yesterday. I went over to see him after we talked, and his reaction was exactly what I thought it would be, with a few generous broadsides in the bargain.”
“Medusa?”
“Yes. He insists you fly back immediately; you’re the only one with direct knowledge. It’s an order.”
“Bullshit! He can’t insist I do anything, much less give me an order!”
“He can cut you off, and I can’t do anything about it. If you need something in a hurry, he won’t deliver.”
“Bernardine’s offered to help. ‘Whatever you need,’ those were his words.”
“Bernardine’s limited. Like me, he can call in debts, but without access to the machine he’s too restricted.”
“Did you tell Holland I’m writing down everything I know, every statement that was made to me, every answer to every question I asked?”
“Are you?”
“I will.”
“He doesn’t buy it. He wants to question you; he says he can’t question pages of paper.”
“I’m too close to the Jackal! I won’t do it. He’s an unreasonable son of a bitch!”
“I think he wanted to be reasonable,” said Conklin. “He knows what you’re going through, what you’ve been through, but after seven o’clock last night he closed the doors.”
“Why?”
“Armbruster was shot to death outside his house. They’re calling it a Georgetown robbery, which, of course, it isn’t and wasn’t.”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“There are a couple of other things you ought to know. To begin with, we’re releasing Swayne’s ‘suicide.’ ”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“To let whoever killed him think he’s off the hook, and, more important, to see who shows up during the next week or so.”
“At the funeral?”
“No, that’s a ‘closed family affair,’ no guests, no formal ceremony.”
“Then who’s going to show up where?
“At the estate, in one form or another. We checked with Swayne’s attorney, very officially, of course, and he confirmed what Swayne’s wife told you about his leaving the whole place to a foundation.”
“Which one?” asked Bourne.
“One you’ve never heard of, funded privately a few years ago by wealthy close friends of the august ‘wealthy’ general. It’s as touching as can be. It goes under the title of the Soldiers, Sailors and Marines Retreat; the board of directors is already in place.”
“Medusans.”
“Or their surrogates. We’ll see.”
“Alex, what about the names I gave you, the six or seven names Flannagan gave me? And that slew of license plate numbers from their meetings?”
“Cute, real cute,” said Conklin enigmatically.
“What’s cute?”
“Take the names—they’re the dregs of the wing-ding social set, no relation to the Georgetown upper crust. They’re out of the National Enquirer, not The Washington Post.”
“But the licenses, the meetings! That’s got to be the ball of wax.”
“Even cuter,” observed Alex. “A ball of sheep dip.… Every one of those licenses is registered to a limousine company, read that companies. I don’t have to tell you how authentic the names would be even if we had the dates to trace them.”
“There’s a cemetery out there!”
“Where is it? How big, how small? There are twenty-eight acres—”
“Start looking!”
“And advertise what we know?”
“You’re right; you’re playing it right.… Alex, tell Holland you couldn’t reach me.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, I mean it. I’ve got the concierge, I can cover. Give Holland the hotel and the name and tell him to call himself, or send over whoever he likes from the embassy to verify. The concierge will swear I checked in yesterday and he hasn’t seen me since. Even the switchboard will confirm it. Buy me a few days, please.”
“Holland could still pull all the plugs and probably will.”
“He won’t if he thinks I’ll come back when you find me. I just want him to keep looking for Mo and keep my name out of Paris. Good or bad, no Webb, no Simon, no Bourne!”
“Was there anything else? I’ve got a lot to do.”
“Yes. Casset is flying over to Brussels in the morning. He’s going to nail Teagarten—him we can’t allow and it won’t touch you.”
“Agreed.”
On a side street in Anderlecht, three miles south of Brussels, a military sedan bearing the flags of a four-star general officer pulled up to the curb in front of a sidewalk café. General James Teagarten, commander of NATO, his tunic emblazoned with five rows of ribbons, stepped gingerly out of the car into the bright early afternoon sunlight. He turned and offered his hand to a stunning WAC major, who smiled her thanks as she climbed out after him. Gallantly, with military authority, Teagarten released the woman’s hand and took her elbow; he escorted her across the wide pavement toward a cluster of umbrella-topped tables behind a row of flowering planter boxes that was the alfresco section of the café. They reached the entrance, a latticework archway profusely covered with baby roses, and walked inside. All the tables were occupied save one at the far end of the enclosed pavement; the hum of luncheon conversation was punctuated by the tinkling of wine bottles gently touching wineglasses and the delicate clatter of utensils lowered on china plates. The decibel level of the conversation was suddenly reduced, and the general, aware that his presence inevitably brought stares, amiable waves and not infrequently mild applause, smiled benignly at no one in particular and yet at everyone as he guided his lady to the deserted table where a small folded card read Réservé.
The owner, with two waiters trailing behind him like anxious egrets, practically flew between the tables to greet his distinguished guest. When the commander was seated, a chilled bottle of Corton-Charlemagne was presented and the menu discussed. A young Belgian child, a boy of five or six, walked shyly up to the table and brought his hand to his forehead; he smiled and saluted the general. Teagarten rose to his feet, standing erect, and saluted the child back.
“Vous êtes un soldat distingué, mon camarade,” said the general, his commanding voice ringing through the sidewalk café, his bright smile winning the crowd, who responded with appreciative applause. The child retreated and the meal continued.
A leisurely hour later, Teagarten and his lady were interrupted by the general’s chauffeur, a middle-aged army sergeant whose expression conveyed his anxiety. The commander of NATO had received an urgent message over his vehicle’s secure phone, and the chauffeur had had the presence of mind to write it down and repeat it for accuracy. He handed Teagarten the note.
The general stood up, his tanned face turning pale as he glanced around the now-half-empty sidewalk café, his eyes narrowed, angry, afraid. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded wad of Belgian franc notes, peeled off several large ones and dropped them on the table. “Come on,” he said to the woman major. “Let’s go.… You”—he turned to his driver—“get the car started!”
“What is it?” asked his luncheon companion.
“London. Over the wire. Armbruster and DeSole are dead.”
“Oh, my God! How?”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever they say is a lie.”
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know. I just know we’re getting out of here. Come on!”
The general and his lady rushed through the latticework archway, across the wide pavement and into the military vehicle. On either side of the hood, something was missing. The middle-aged sergeant had removed the two red-and-gold flags denoting the impressive rank of his superior, the commander of NATO. The car shot forward, traveling less than fifty yards when it happened.
A massive explosion blew the military vehicle into the sky, shards of glass and metal, pieces of flesh and streaks of blood filling the narrow street in Anderlecht.
“Monsieur!” cried the petrified waiter as crews of police, firemen and sanitation workers went about their grisly business in the road.
“What is it?” replied the distraught owner of the sidewalk café, still shaking from the harsh interrogation he had gone through by the police and the descending hordes of journalists. “I am ruined. We will be known as the Café de la Mort, the restaurant of death.”
“Monsieur, look!” The waiter pointed at the table where the general and his lady had sat.
“The police have gone over it,” said the disconsolate owner.
“No, monsieur. Now!”
Across the glass top of the table, the capital letters scrawled in glistening red lipstick, was a name.
JASON BOURNE