It was shortly past midnight when Bourne got off the métro in Argenteuil. He had divided the day into segments, splitting the hours between the arrangements he had to make and looking for Marie, going from one arrondissement to another, scouting every café, every shop, every large and small hotel he could recall having been a part of their fugitive nightmare thirteen years ago. More than once he had gasped, seeing a woman in the distance or across a café—the back of a head, a quick profile, and twice a crown of dark red hair, any of which from a distance or in a café’s dim light might have belonged to his wife. None of these had turned out to be Marie, but he began to understand his own anxiety and, by understanding it, was better able to control it. These were the most impossible parts of the day; the rest was merely filled with difficulty and frustration.
Alex! Where the hell was Conklin? He could not reach him in Virginia! Because of the time difference, he had counted on Alex to take care of the details, swiftly expediting the transfer of funds, primarily. The business day on the eastern seaboard of the United States began at four o’clock, Paris time, and the business day in Paris stopped at five o’clock or before, Paris time. That left barely an hour to release and transfer over a million American dollars to one Mr. Simon at his chosen bank in Paris, and that meant said Mr. Simon had to make himself known to the aforementioned, as yet unchosen, Paris bank. Bernardine had been helpful. Helpful, hell! He had made it possible.
“There’s a bank on the rue de Grenelle that the Deuxième frequently uses. They can be accommodating in terms of hours and the absence of an authentic signature or two, but they give nothing for nothing, and they trust no one, especially anyone associated with our benevolent socialist government.”
“You mean regardless of the teletypes, if the money’s not there you don’t get it.”
“Not a sou. The president, himself, could call and he would be told to pick it up in Moscow, where they firmly believe he belongs.”
“Since I can’t reach Alex, I’ve bypassed the bank in Boston and called our man in the Cayman Islands, where Marie put the bulk of the money. He’s Canadian and so’s the bank. He’s waiting for instructions.”
“I’ll make a phone call. Are you at the Pont-Royal?”
“No. I’ll call you back.”
“Where are you?”
“I suppose you could say I’m an anxious and confused butterfly going from one vaguely remembered place to another.”
“You are looking for her.”
“Yes. But then that wasn’t a question, was it?”
“Forgive me, but in some ways I hope you do not find her.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”
He had gone to yet another point of recall, the Trocadéro, and the Palais de Chaillot. He had been shot at in the past on one of the terraces; there had been gunfire and men running down the endless stone steps, intermittently obscured by the huge gilded statues and the great sprays of the fountains, disappearing into the formal gardens, finally out of sight, out of range. What had happened? Why did he remember the Trocadéro?… But Marie had been there—somewhere. Where had she been in that enormous complex? Where?… A terrace! She had been on a terrace. Near a statue—what statue?… Descartes? Racine? Talleyrand? The statue of Descartes came to his mind first. He would find it.
He had found it and there was no Marie. He had looked at his watch; it had been nearly forty-five minutes since he had talked to Bernardine. Like the men in his inner screen, he had raced down the steps. To a telephone.
“Go to the Banque Normandie and ask for Monsieur Tabouri. He understands that a Monsieur Simon intends to transfer over seven million francs from the Caymans by way of voice authorization through his private banker in the islands. He is most happy to let you use his phone, but believe me, he’ll charge you for the call.”
“Where are you now?”
“The Trocadéro. It’s crazy. I have the damnedest feelings, like vibrations, but she’s not there. It’s probably the things I can’t remember. Hell, I may have taken a bullet here, I simply don’t know.”
“Go to the bank.”
He had done so, and within thirty-five minutes after his call to the Caymans, the olive-skinned, perpetually smiling Monsieur Tabouri confirmed that his funds were in place. He requested 750,000 francs in the largest notes possible. They were delivered to him, and the grinning obsequious banker took him confidentially aside, away from the desk—which was rather foolish, as there was no one else in the office—and spoke quietly by a window.
“There are some marvelous real estate opportunities in Beirut, believe me, I know. I am the expert on the Middle East and these stupid conflagrations cannot last much longer. Mon Dieu, no one will be left alive! It will once again rise as the Paris of the Mediterranean. Estates for a fraction of their value, hotels for a ridiculous price!”
“It sounds interesting. I’ll be in touch.”
He had fled the Banque Normandie as if its confines held the germs of a lethal disease. He had returned to the Pont-Royal, and again tried to reach Alex Conklin in the United States. It was then close to one o’clock in the afternoon in Vienna, Virginia, and still all he had heard was an answering machine with Alex’s disembodied voice instructing the caller to leave a message. For any number of reasons, Jason had chosen not to do so.
And now he was in Argenteuil, walking up the steps of the métro to the pavement, where he would slowly, cautiously make his way into the uglier streets and the vicinity of Le Coeur du Soldat. His instructions were clear. He was not to be the man he was last night, no limp, no ragged cast-off army clothing, no image that anyone might recognize. He was to be a simple laborer and reach the gates of the old closed-down refinery and smoke cigarettes while leaning against the wall. This was to take place between 12:30 and one o’clock in the morning. No sooner and no later.
When he had asked Santos’s messengers—after giving them several hundred francs for their inconvenience—the reason for these late-night precautions, the less inhibited man had replied, “Santos never leaves Le Coeur du Soldat.”
“He left last evening.”
“For minutes only,” rejoined the more voluble messenger.
“I understand.” Bourne nodded, but he had not understood, he could only speculate. Was Santos in some way the Jackal’s prisoner, confined to the sleazy café night and day? It was a fascinating query in light of the manager’s size and sheer raw power, both combined with a far-above-average intellect.
It was 12:37 when Jason, in blue jeans, cap and a dark, tattered V-necked sweater, reached the gates of the old factory. He took out a pack of Gauloise cigarettes and leaned against the wall, lighting one with a match, holding the flame longer than necessary before he blew it out. His thoughts returned to the enigmatic Santos, the premier conduit in Carlos’s army, the most trusted satellite in the Jackal’s orbit, a man whose French might have been formed at the Sorbonne, yet Santos was a Latin American. A Venezuelan, if Bourne’s instincts had merit. Fascinating. And Santos wanted to see him ‘with peace in his heart.’ Bravo, amigo, thought Jason. Santos had reached a terrified ambassador in London with a question so loaded it made a political party’s private poll look like the essence of nonpartisan neutrality. Atkinson had no choice but to state emphatically, if not in panic, that whatever instructions Snake Lady issued were to be carried out. The power of Snake Lady was the ambassador’s only protection, his ultimate refuge.
So Santos could bend; that decision was rooted in intellect, not loyalty, not obligation. The conduit wanted to crawl out of his sewer, and with three million francs in the offing, combined with a multitude of faraway places across the globe to choose from, the conduit’s mind told him to listen, to consider. There were alternatives in life if opportunities were presented. One had been presented to Santos, vassal to Carlos, whose fealty to his lord had perhaps run its suffocating course. It was this instinctive projection that made Bourne include in his plea—calmly but firmly, the emphasis in understatement—such phrases as You could travel, disappear … a wealthy man, free of care and unpleasant drudgery. The key words were “free” and “disappear,” and Santos’s eyes had responded. He was ready to take the three-million-franc bait, and Bourne was perfectly happy to let him break the line and swim with it.
Jason looked at his watch; fifteen minutes had passed. No doubt Santos’s minions were checking the streets, a final inspection before the high priest of conduits appeared. Bourne thought briefly of Marie, of the sensations he felt at the Trocadéro, remembering old Fontaine’s words when the two of them watched the paths of Tranquility Inn from the high storage room, waiting for Carlos. He’s near, I feel it. Like the approach of distant thunder. In a different—far different—way Jason had like feelings at the Trocadéro. Enough! Santos! The Jackal!
His watch read one o’clock, and the two messengers from the Pont-Royal walked out of the alley and across the street to the gates of the old refinery.
“Santos will see you now,” said the voluble one.
“I don’t see him.”
“You are to come with us. He does not leave Le Coeur du Soldat.”
“Why do I find that not to my liking?”
“There’s no reason for such feelings. He has peace in his heart.”
“What about his knife?”
“He has no knife, no weapon. He never carries either.”
“That’s nice to hear. Let’s go.”
“He has no need for such weapons,” added the messenger, disquietingly.
He was escorted down the alley, past the neon-lit entrance, to a barely negotiable break in the buildings. One by one, Jason between the two men, they made their way to the rear of the café, where there was just about the last thing Bourne expected to see in this run-down section of the city. It was … well, an English garden. A plot of ground perhaps thirty feet in length, twenty in depth, and trellises supporting a variety of flowering vines, a barrage of color in the French moonlight.
“That’s quite a sight,” commented Jason. “It didn’t come about through neglect.”
“Ah, it is a passion with Santos! No one understands it, but no one touches a single flower, either.”
Fascinating.
Bourne was led to a small outside elevator whose steel frame was attached to the stone wall of the building. There was no other access in sight. The conveyance barely held the three of them, and once the iron gate was closed, the silent messenger pressed a button in the darkness and spoke. “We are here, Santos. Camellia. Bring us up.”
“Camellia?” asked Jason.
“He knows everything is all right. If not, my friend might have said ‘lily’ or ‘rose.’ ”
“What would happen then?”
“You don’t want to think about it. I don’t care to think about it.”
“Naturally. Of course.”
The outside elevator stopped with a disturbing double jerk, and the quiet messenger opened a thick steel door that required his full weight to open. Bourne was led into the familiar room with the tasteful, expensive furniture, the bookcases and the single floor lamp that illuminated Santos in his outsized armchair.
“You may leave, my friends,” said the large man, addressing the messengers. “Pick up your money from the faggot, and for God’s sake, tell him to give René and the American who calls himself Ralph fifty francs apiece and get them out of here. They’re pissing in the corners.… Say the money’s from their friend from last night who forgot about them.”
“Oh, shit!” exploded Jason.
“You did forget, didn’t you?” Santos grinned.
“I’ve had other things on my mind.”
“Yes, sir! Yes, Santos!” The two messengers, instead of heading for the back of the room and the elevator, opened a door in the left wall and disappeared. Bourne looked after them, bewildered.
“There is a staircase leading to our kitchen, such as it is,” said Santos, answering Jason’s unspoken question. “The door can be opened from this side, not from the steps below except by me.… Sit down, Monsieur Simon. You are my guest. How is your head?”
“The swelling’s gone down, thank you.” Bourne sat on the large couch, sinking into the pillows; it was not an authoritative position, nor was it not meant to be. “I understand you have peace in your heart.”
“And a desire for three million francs in the avaricious section of that heart.”
“Then you were satisfied with your call to London?”
“No one could have programmed that man into reacting the way he did. There is a Snake Lady and she instills extraordinary devotion and fear in high places—which means that female serpent is not without power.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you.”
“Your word is accepted. Now, let me recapitulate your request, your demand, as it were—”
“My restrictions,” interrupted Jason.
“Very well, your restrictions,” agreed Santos. “You and you alone must reach the blackbird, correct?”
“It’s an absolute.”
“Again, I must ask why?”
“Speaking frankly, you already know too much, more than my clients realize, but then none of them was about to lose his own life on the second floor of a café in Argenteuil. They want nothing to do with you, they want no traces, and in that area you’re vulnerable.”
“How?” Santos crashed his fist against the arm of the chair.
“An old man in Paris with a police record who tried to warn a member of the Assembly that he was to be assassinated. He was the one who mentioned the blackbird; he was the one who spoke of Le Coeur du Soldat. Fortunately, our man heard him and silently passed the word to my clients, but that’s not good enough. How many other old men in Paris in their senile delusions may mention Le Coeur du Soldat—and you?… No, you can have nothing to do with my clients.”
“Even through you?”
“I disappear, you don’t. Although, in all honesty, I believe you should think about doing so.… Here, I brought you something.” Bourne sat forward on the couch and reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a roll of tightly wound franc notes held together by a thick elastic band. He threw it over to Santos, who caught it effortlessly in midair. “Two hundred thousand francs on account—I was authorized to give this to you. On a best-efforts basis. You give me the information I need, I deliver it to London, and whether or not the blackbird accepts my clients’ offer, you still receive the balance of the three million.”
“But you could disappear before then, couldn’t you?”
“Have me watched as you’ve been doing, have me followed to London and back. I’ll even call you with the names of the airlines and the flight numbers. What could be fairer?”
“One thing more could be fairer, Monsieur Simon,” replied Santos, pushing his immense frame out of the chair and baronially striding to a card table against the lacquered brick wall of his flat. “If you will, please come over here.”
Jason rose from the couch and walked over to the card table, instantly astonished. “You’re thorough, aren’t you?”
“I try to be.… Oh, don’t blame the concierges, they belong to you. I’m much further below scale. Chambermaids and stewards are more to my liking. They’re not so spoiled and nobody really misses them if they don’t show up one day.”
Spread across the table were Bourne’s three passports, courtesy of Cactus in Washington, as well as the gun and the knife taken from him last night. “You’re very convincing, but it doesn’t solve anything, does it?”
“We’ll see,” answered Santos. “I’ll accept your money now—for my best efforts—but instead of your flying to London, have London fly to Paris. Tomorrow morning. When he arrives at the Pont-Royal, you’ll call me—I’ll give you my private number, of course—and we’ll play the Soviets’ game. Exchange for exchange, like walking across a bridge with our respective prisoners in tow. The money for the information.”
“You’re crazy, Santos. My clients don’t expose themselves that way. You just lost the rest of the three million.”
“Why not try them? They could always hire a blind, couldn’t they? An innocent tourist with a false bottom in his or her Louis Vuitton carryon? No alarms are set off with paper. Try it! It is the only way you’ll get what you want, monsieur.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Bourne.
“Here is my telephone.” Santos picked up a prearranged card from the table with numbers scrawled across it. “Call me when London arrives. In the meantime, I assure you, you will be watched.”
“You’re a real swell guy.”
“I’ll escort you to the elevator.”
Marie sat up in bed, sipping hot tea in the dark room, listening to the sounds of Paris outside the windows. Not only was sleep impossible, but it was intolerable, a waste of time when every hour counted. She had taken the earliest flight from Marseilles to Paris and had gone directly to the Meurice on the rue de Rivoli, the same hotel where she had waited thirteen years ago, waited for a man to listen to reason or lose his life, and in doing so, losing a large part of hers. She had ordered a pot of tea then, and he had come back to her; she ordered tea now from the night floor steward, absently perhaps, as if the repeated ritual might bring about a repetition of his appearance so long ago.
Oh, God, she had seen him! It was no illusion, no mistake, it was David! She had left the hotel at midmorning and begun wandering, going down the list she had made on the plane, heading from one location to another without any logical sequence in mind, simply following the succession of places as they had come to her—that was her sequence. It was a lesson she had learned from Jason Bourne thirteen years ago: When running or hunting, analyze your options but remember your first. It’s usually the cleanest and the best. Most of the time you’ll take it.
So she had followed the list, from the pier of the Bateau Mouche at the base of the avenue George V to the bank on the Madeleine … to the Trocadéro. She had wandered aimlessly along the terraces of the last, as if in a trance, looking for a statue she could not remember, jostled by the intermittent groups of tourists led by loud, officious guides. The huge statues all began to look alike; she had felt light-headed. The late August sun was blinding. She was about to sit down on a marble bench, remembering yet another dictate from Jason Bourne: Rest is a weapon. Suddenly, up ahead, she saw a man wearing a cap and a dark V-necked sweater; he had turned and raced toward the palatial stone steps that led to the avenue Gustave V. She knew that run, that stride; she knew it better than anyone! How often had she watched him—frequently from behind bleachers, sight unseen—as he had pounded around the university track, ridding himself of the furies that had gripped him. It was David! She had leaped up from the bench and raced after him.
“David! David, it’s me!… Jason!”
She had collided with a tour guide leading a group of Japanese. The man was incensed; she was furious, so she furiously pummeled her way through the astonished Orientals, the majority shorter than she was, but her superior sight lines were no help. Her husband had disappeared. Where had he gone? Into the gardens? Into the street with the crowds and the traffic from the Pont d’Iéna? For Christ’s sake, where?
“Jason!” she had screamed at the top of her voice. “Jason, come back!”
People had looked at her, some with the empathetic glances of lovers burned, most simply disapproving. She had run down the never-ending steps to the street, spending—how long a time she could not recall—searching for him. Finally, in exhaustion, she had taken a taxi back to the Meurice. In a daze, she reached her room and fell on the bed, refusing to let the tears come. It was no time for tears. It was a time for a brief rest and food; energy to be restored, the lessons of Jason Bourne. Then back into the streets, the hunt to continue. And as she lay there, staring at the wall, she felt a swelling in her chest, in her lungs perhaps, and it was accompanied by a sense of passive elation. As she was looking for David, he was looking for her. Her husband had not run away, even Jason Bourne had not run away. Neither part of the same man could have seen her. There had been another unknown reason for the sudden, hurried exit from the Trocadéro, but there was only one reason for his being at the Trocadéro. He, too, was searching what memories he had of Paris thirteen years ago. He, too, understood that somewhere, someplace in those memories he would find her.
She had rested, ordered room service and two hours later gone out again into the streets.
Now, at the moment, as she drank her tea, she could not wait for the light to come. The day ahead was meant for searching.
“Bernardine!”
“Mon Dieu, it is four o’clock in the morning, so I can assume you have something vital to tell this seventy-year-old man.”
“I’ve got a problem.”
“I think you have many problems, but I suppose it’s a minor distinction. What is it?”
“I’m as close as I can be but I need an end man.”
“Please speak clearer English, or if you will, far clearer French. It must be an American term, this ‘end man.’ But then you have so many esoteric phrases. I’m sure someone sits in Langley and thinks them up.”
“Come on, I haven’t time for your bon mots.”
“You come on, my friend. I’m not trying to be clever, I’m trying to wake up.… There, my feet are on the floor and a cigarette’s in my mouth. Now, what is it?”
“My access to the Jackal expects an Englishman to fly over from London this morning with two million eight hundred thousand francs—”
“Far less than you have at your disposal, I assume,” interrupted Bernardine. “The Banque Normandie was accommodating, was it not?”
“Very. The money’s there, and that Tabouri of yours is a beaut. He tried to sell me real estate in Beirut.”
“That Tabouri is a thief—but Beirut is interesting.”
“Please.”
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“I’m being watched, so I can’t go to the bank, and I don’t have any Englishman to bring what I can’t get to the Pont-Royal.”
“Yes.”
“Are you willing to part with, say, fifty thousand francs?”
“What for?”
“Tabouri.”
“I suppose so.”
“You signed papers, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Sign another paper, handwritten by you and also signed, releasing the money to—Wait a moment, I must go to my desk.” There was silence on the line as Bernardine obviously went to another room in his flat; his voice returned. “Alio?”
“I’m here.”
“Oh, this is lovely,” intoned the former Deuxième specialist. “I sank him in his sailboat off the shoals of the Costa Brava. The sharks had a feeding frenzy; he was so fat and delectable. The name is Antonio Scarzi, a Sardinian who traded drugs for information, but you know nothing about that, of course.”
“Of course.” Bourne repeated the last name, spelling it out.
“Correct. Seal the envelope, rub a pencil or a pen over your thumb and press your prints along the seal. Then give it to the concierge for Mr. Scarzi.”
“Understood. What about the Englishman? This morning? It’s only a few hours away.”
“The Englishman is not a problem. The morning is—the few hours are. It’s a simple matter to transfer funds from one bank to another—buttons are pressed, computers instantly cross-check the data, and, poof, figures are entered on paper. It’s quite another thing to collect nearly three million francs in cash, and your access certainly won’t accept pounds or dollars for fear of being caught exchanging them or depositing them. Add to this the problem of collecting notes large enough to be part of a bundle small enough to be concealed from customs inspectors.… Your access, mon ami, has to be aware of these difficulties.”
Jason looked aimlessly at the wall, his thoughts on Bernardine’s words. “You think he’s testing me?”
“He has to.”
“The money could be gotten together from the foreign departments of different banks. A small private plane could hop across the channel and land in a pasture where a car’s waiting to bring the man to Paris.”
“Bien. Of course. However, these logistics take time even for the most influential people. Don’t make it all appear too simple, that would be suspect. Keep your access informed as to the progress being made, emphasizing the secrecy, how there can be no risk of exposure, explain the delays. If there were none, he might think it’s a trap.”
“I see what you mean. It comes down to what you just said—don’t make it seem so easy because that’s not credible.”
“There’s something else, mon ami. A chameleon may be many things in daylight; still, he is safer in darkness.”
“You forgot something,” said Bourne. “What about the Englishman?”
“Tallyho, old chap,” said Bernardine.
The operation went as smoothly as any Jason had ever engineered or been witness to, perhaps thanks to the flair of a resentful talented man who had been sent to the pastures too soon. While throughout the day Bourne made progress calls to Santos, Bernardine had someone other than himself pick up the sealed instructions from the concierge and bring them to him, at which point he made his appointment with Monsieur Tabouri. Shortly after four-thirty in the afternoon, the Deuxième veteran walked into the Pont-Royal dressed in a dark pin-striped suit so obviously British that it screamed Savile Row. He went to the elevator and eventually, after two wrong turns, reached Bourne’s room.
“Here’s the money,” he said, dropping the attaché case on the floor and going straight to Jason’s hotel wet bar; he removed two miniature bottles of Tanqueray gin, snapped them open and poured the liquor into a questionably clean glass. “A votre santé,” he added, swallowing half his drink before breathing heavily through his mouth and then rapidly swallowing the rest. “I haven’t done anything like that in years.”
“You haven’t?”
“Frankly, no. I had others do such things. It’s far too dangerous.… Nevertheless, Tabouri is forever in your debt, and, frankly, he’s convinced me I should look into Beirut.”
“What?”
“Of course, I haven’t your resources, but a percentage of forty years of les fonds de contingence have found their way to Geneva on my behalf. I’m not a poor man.”
“You may be a dead man if they pick you up leaving here.”
“Oh, but I shan’t go,” said Bernardine, once again searching the small refrigerator. “I shall stay in this room until you have concluded your business.” François ripped open two additional bottles and poured them into his glass. “Now, perhaps, my old heart will beat slower,” he added as he walked to the inadequate desk, placed his drink on the blotter, and proceeded to take out two automatics and three grenades from his pockets, placing them all in a row in front of his glass. “Yes, I will relax now.”
“What the hell is that—are they!” cried Jason.
“I think you Americans call it deterrence,” replied Bernardine. “Although I frankly believe both you and the Soviets are playing with yourselves as you both put so much money into weaponry that doesn’t work. Now, I come from a different era. When you go out to do your business, you will leave the door open. If someone comes down that narrow corridor, he will see a grenade in my hand. That is not nuclear abstraction, that is deterrence.”
“I’ll buy it,” said Bourne, going to the door. “I want to get this over with.”
Out on Montalembert, Jason walked to the corner, and as he had done at the old factory in Argenteuil, leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. He waited, his posture casual, his mind in high gear.
A man walked across from the bisecting rue du Bac toward him. It was the talkative messenger from last night; he approached, his hand in his jacket pocket.
“Where’s the money?” said the man in French.
“Where’s the information?” answered Bourne.
“The money first.”
“That’s not the arrangement.” Without warning, Jason grabbed the minion from Argenteuil by his lapel, yanking him forward off his feet. Bourne whipped up his free hand and gripped the messenger’s throat, his fingers digging into the man’s flesh. “You go back and tell Santos he’s got a one-way ticket to hell. I don’t deal this way.”
“Enough!” said the low voice, its owner rounding the corner on Jason’s right. The huge figure of Santos approached. “Let him go, Simon. He is nothing. It is now only you and me.”
“I thought you never left Le Coeur du Soldat?”
“You’ve changed that, haven’t you?”
“Apparently.” Bourne released the messenger, who looked at Santos. With a gesture of his large head, the man raced away.
“Your Englishman arrived,” said Santos when they were alone. “He carried a valise, I saw for myself.”
“He arrived carrying a valise,” agreed Jason.
“So London capitulates, no? London is very anxious.”
“The stakes are very high and that’s all I’ll say about it. The information, please.”
“Let us first again define the procedure, shall we?”
“We’ve defined it several times.… You give me the information, my client tells me to act upon it; and if satisfactory contact is made, I bring you the remainder of the three million francs.”
“You say ‘satisfactory contact.’ What will satisfy you? How will you know the contact is firm? How do I know that you will not claim it is unsatisfactory and steal my money when, indeed, you have made the connection your clients have paid for?”
“You’re a suspicious fellow, aren’t you?”
“Oh, very suspicious. Our world, Mr. Simon, is not peopled with saints, is it?”
“Perhaps more than you realize.”
“That would astonish me. Please answer my questions.”
“All right, I’ll try.… How will I know the contact’s firm? That’s easy. I’ll simply know because it’s my business to know. It’s what I’m paid for, and a man in my position does not make mistakes at this level and live to apologize. I’ve refined the process, done my research, and I’ll ask two or three questions myself. Then I’ll know—one way or another.”
“That’s an elusive reply.”
“In our world, Mr. Santos, being elusive is hardly a negative, is it?… As to your concern that I would lie to you and take your money, let me assure you I don’t cultivate enemies like you and the network your blackbird obviously controls any more than I would make enemies of my clients. That way is madness and a much shorter life.”
“I admire your perspicacity as well as your caution,” said the Jackal’s intermediary.
“The bookcases didn’t lie. You’re a learned man.”
“That’s neither here nor there, but I have certain credentials. Appearances can be a liability as well as an asset.… What I am about to tell you, Mr. Simon, is known by only four men on the face of the earth, all of whom speak French fluently. How you wish to use that information is up to you. However, if you even hint at Argenteuil, I’ll know it instantly and you will never leave the Pont-Royal alive.”
“The contact can be made so quickly?”
“With a telephone number. But you will not place the call for at least an hour from the moment we part. If you do, again I will know it, and again I tell you you’re a dead man.”
“An hour. Agreed.… Only three other people have this number? Why not pick one you’re not particularly fond of so I might peripherally allude to him—if it’s necessary.”
Santos permitted himself a small, flat smile. “Moscow,” he said softly. “High up in Dzerzhinsky Square.”
“The KGB?”
“The blackbird is building a cadre in Moscow, always Moscow, it’s an obsession with him.”
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, thought Bourne. Trained at Novgorod. Dismissed by the Komitet as a maniac. The Jackal!
“I’ll bear it in mind—if it’s called for. The number, please?”
Santos recited it twice along with the words Bourne was to say. He spoke slowly, obviously impressed that Bourne wrote nothing down. “Is it all clear?”
“Indelibly, no pencil or paper required.… If everything goes as I trust it will, how do you want me to get you the money?”
“Phone me; you’ve got my number. I will leave Argenteuil and come to you. And never return to Argenteuil.”
“Good luck, Santos. Something tells me you deserve it.”
“No one more so. I have drunk the hemlock far too many times.”
“Socrates,” said Jason.
“Not directly. Plato’s dialogues, to be precise. Au revoir.”
Santos walked away, and Bourne, his chest pounding, headed back to the Pont-Royal, desperately suppressing his desire to run. A running man is an object of curiosity, a target. A lesson from the cantos of Jason Bourne.
“Bernardine!” he yelled, racing down the narrow, deserted hallway to his room, all too aware of the open door and the old man seated at the desk, a grenade in one hand, a gun in the other. “Put the hardware away, we’ve hit pay dirt!”
“Who’s paying?” asked the Deuxième veteran as Jason closed the door.
“I am,” answered Bourne. “If this works out the way I think it will, you can add to your account in Geneva.”
“I do not do what I’m doing for that, my friend. It has never been a consideration.”
“I know, but as long as we’re passing out francs like we’re printing them in the garage, why shouldn’t you get a fair share?”
“I can’t argue with that, either.”
“An hour,” announced Jason. “Forty-three minutes now, to be exact.”
“For what?”
“To find out if it’s real, actually real.” Bourne fell on the bed, his arms behind his head on the pillow, his eyes alive. “Write this down, François.” Jason recited the telephone number given him by Santos. “Buy, bribe, or threaten every high-level contact you’ve ever had in the Paris telephone service, but get me the location of that number.”
“It’s not such an expensive request—”
“Yes, it is,” countered Bourne. “He’s got it guarded, inviolate; he wouldn’t do it any other way. Only four people in his entire network have it.”
“Then, perhaps, we do not go high-level, but, instead, far lower to the ground, underground actually. Into the tunnels of the telephone service beneath the streets.”
Jason snapped his head over at Bernardine. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Why should you? You are not Deuxième. The technicians are the source, not the bureaucrats behind the desks.… I know several. I will find one and give him a quiet call at home later tonight—”
“Tonight?” broke in Bourne, raising himself off the bed.
“It will cost a thousand francs or so, but you’ll get the location of the telephone.”
“I can’t wait until later tonight.”
“Then you add a risk by trying to reach such a man at work. These men are monitored; no one trusts anyone in the telephone service. It’s the Socialists’ paradox: Give its laboring forces responsibility but no individual authority.”
“Hold it!” said Jason from the bed. “You have the home phone numbers, right?”
“They’re in the book, yes. These people don’t keep private listings.”
“Have someone’s wife call. An emergency. Someone’s got to get home.”
Bernardine nodded his head. “Not bad, my friend. Not bad at all.”
The minutes turned into quarter hours as the retired Deuxième officer went to work, unctuously, with promises of reward for the wives of telephone technicians, if they would do what he asked them to do. Two hung up on him, three turned him down with epithets born of the suspicious Paris curbsides; but the sixth, amid obscenities, declared, “Why not?” As long as the rodent she had married understood that the money was hers.
The hour was over, and Jason left the hotel, walking slowly, deliberately, down the pavement, crossing four streets until he saw a public phone on the Quai Voltaire by the Seine. A blanket of darkness was slowly floating down over Paris, the boats on the river and the bridges dotted with lights. As he approached the red kiosk he breathed steadily, inhaling deeply, exercising a control over himself that he never thought possible. He was about to place the most important phone call of his life, but he could not let the Jackal know that, if, indeed, it was the Jackal. He went inside, inserted the coin and dialed.
“Yes?” It was a woman’s voice, the French oui sharp and harsh. A Parisienne.
“Blackbirds circle in the sky,” said Bourne, repeating Santos’s words in French. “They make a great deal of noise, all but one. He is silent.”
“Where do you call from?”
“Here in Paris, but I am not from Paris.”
“From where, then?”
“Where the winters are far colder,” answered Jason, feeling the moisture on his hairline. Control. Control! “It is urgent that I reach a blackbird.”
The line was suddenly filled with silence, a sonic void, and Bourne stopped breathing. Then came the voice, low, steady, and as hollow as the previous silence. “We speak to a Muscovite?”
The Jackal! It was the Jackal! The smooth, swift French could not hide the Latino trace. “I did not say that,” answered Bourne; his own French dialect was one he employed frequently, with the guttural tinge of Gascony. “I merely said the winters were colder than Paris.”
“Who is this?”
“Someone who is considered by someone who knows you sufficiently impressive to be given this number along with the proper words to go with it. I can offer you the contract of your career, of your life. The fee is immaterial—name your own—but those who pay are among the most powerful men in the United States. They control much of American industry, as well as that country’s financial institutions, and have direct access to the nerve centers of the government.”
“This is also a very strange call. Very unorthodox.”
“If you’re not interested, I’ll forget this number and go elsewhere. I’m merely the broker. A simple yes or no will suffice.”
“I do not commit to things I know nothing about, to people I never heard of.”
“You’d recognize their positions, if I were at liberty to reveal them, believe that. However, I’m not seeking a commitment, only your interest at this point. If the answer is yes, I can reveal more. If it’s no, well, I tried, but am forced to go elsewhere. The newspapers say he was in Brussels only yesterday. I’ll find him.” There was a short, sharp intake of breath at the mention of Brussels and the unspoken Jason Bourne. “Yes or no, blackbird?”
Silence. Finally the Jackal spoke. “Call me back in two hours,” he ordered, hanging up the phone.
It was done! Jason leaned against the pay phone, the sweat pouring down his face and breaking out on his neck. The Pont-Royal. He had to get back to Bernardine!
“It was Carlos!” he announced, closing the door and crossing directly to the bedside phone while taking Santos’s card out of his pocket. He dialed; in seconds, he spoke. “The bird’s confirmed,” he said. “Give me a name, any name.” The pause was brief. “I’ve got it. The merchandise will be left with the concierge. It’ll be locked and taped; count it and send my passports back to me. Have your best boy pick everything up and call off the dogs. They could lead a blackbird to you.” Jason hung up and turned to Bernardine.
“The telephone number is in the fifteenth arrondissement,” said the Deuxième veteran. “Our man knew that, or at least assumed it when I gave it to him.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“Go back into the tunnels and refine things further.”
“Will he call us here?”
“Fortunately, he drives a motorbike. He said he would be back at work in ten minutes or so and reach us by this room number within the hour.”
“Perfect!”
“Not entirely. He wants five thousand francs.”
“He could have asked ten times that.… What’s ‘within the hour’? How long before he calls?”
“You were gone perhaps thirty, thirty-five minutes, and he reached me shortly after you left. I’d say within the next half hour.”
The telephone rang. Twenty seconds later they had an address on the boulevard Lefebvre.
“I’m leaving,” said Jason Bourne, taking Bernardine’s automatic off the desk and putting two grenades in his pocket. “Do you mind?”
“Be my guest,” replied the Deuxième, reaching under his jacket and removing a second weapon from his belt. “Pickpockets so abound in Paris one should always carry a backup.… But what for?”
“I’ve got at least a couple of hours and I want to look around.”
“Alone?”
“How else? If we call for support, I risk being gunned down or spending the rest of my life in jail for an assassination in Belgium I had nothing to do with.”
Former judge of the first circuit court in Boston, the once Honorable Brendan Patrick Prefontaine, watched the weeping, disconsolate Randolph Gates as he sat forward on the couch at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, his face in his widespread hands.
“Oh, good Christ, how the mighty fall with such a thud of finality,” observed Brendan, pouring himself a short bourbon on the rocks. “So you got snookered, Randy. French style. Your facile brain and your imperial presence didn’t help you very much when you saw Paree, huh? You should have stayed ‘down on the farm,’ soldier boy.”
“My God, Prefontaine, you don’t know what it was like! I was setting up a cartel—Paris, Bonn, London and New York with the Far East labor markets—an enterprise worth billions when I was taken from the Plaza-Athénée and put in a car and blindfolded. Then I was thrown into a plane and flown to Marseilles, where the most horrible things happened to me. I was kept in a room, and every few hours I was injected—for over six weeks! Women were brought in, films taken—I wasn’t myself!”
“Maybe you were the self you never recognized, Dandy Boy. The same self that learned to anticipate instant gratification, if I use the phrase correctly. Make your clients extraordinary profits on paper, which they trade on the exchanges while thousands of jobs are lost in buy-outs. Oh, yes, my dear royalist, that’s instant gratification.”
“You’re wrong, Judge—”
“So lovely to hear that term again. Thank you, Randy.”
“The unions became too strong. Industry was being crippled. Many companies had to go overseas to survive!”
“And not talk? Oddly enough, you may have a point, but you never considered an alternative.… Regardless, we stray. You emerged from your confinement in Marseilles an addict—and, of course, there were the films of the eminent attorney in compromising situations.”
“What could I do?” screamed Gates. “I was ruined!”
“We know what you did. You became this Jackal’s confidence man in the world of high finance, a world where competition is undesirable baggage better lost along the way.”
“It’s how he found me to begin with. The cartel we were forming was opposed by Japanese and Taiwanese interests. They hired him.… Oh, my God, he’ll kill me!”
“Again?” asked the judge.
“What?”
“You forget. He thinks you’re already dead—thanks to me.”
“I have cases coming up, a congressional hearing next week. He’ll know I’m alive!”
“Not if you don’t show up.”
“I have to! My clients expect—”
“Then I agree,” interrupted Prefontaine. “He’ll kill you. Sorry about that, Randy.”
“What am I going to do?”
“There’s a way, Dandy Boy, not only out of your current dilemma but for years to come. Of course, it will require some sacrifice on your part. For starters, a long convalescence at a private rehabilitation center, but even before that, your complete cooperation right now. The first ensures your imminent disappearance, the second—the capture and elimination of Carlos the Jackal. You’ll be free, Randy.”
“Anything!”
“How do you reach him?”
“I have a telephone number!” Gates fumbled for his wallet, yanking it out of his pocket and with trembling fingers digging into a recess. “Only four people alive have it!”
Prefontaine accepted his first $20,000-an-hour fee, instructed Randy to go home, beg Edith’s forgiveness, and be prepared to leave Boston tomorrow. Brendan had heard of a private treatment center in Minneapolis, he thought, where the rich sought help incognito; he would refine the details in the morning and call him, naturally expecting a second payment for his services. The instant a shaken Gates left the room, Prefontaine went to the phone and called John St. Jacques at Tranquility Inn.
“John, it’s the judge. Don’t ask me questions, but I have urgent information that could be invaluable to your sister’s husband. I realize I can’t reach him, but I know he’s dealing with someone in Washington—”
“His name is Alex Conklin,” interrupted St. Jacques. “Wait a minute, Judge, Marie wrote the number down on the desk blotter. Let me get over there.” The sound of one phone being placed on a hard surface preceded the clicks of another being picked up. “Here it is.” Marie’s brother recited the number.
“I’ll explain everything later. Thank you, John.”
“An awful lot of people keep telling me that, goddamn it!” said St. Jacques.
Prefontaine dialed the number with a Virginia area code. It was answered with a short, brusque “Yes?”
“Mr. Conklin, my name is Prefontaine and I was given this number by John St. Jacques. What I have to tell you is in the nature of an emergency.”
“You’re the judge,” broke in Alex.
“Past tense, I’m afraid. Very past.”
“What is it?”
“I know how to reach the man you call the Jackal.”
“What?”
“Listen to me.”
Bernardine stared at the ringing telephone, briefly debating with himself whether or not to pick it up. There was no question; he had to. “Yes?”
“Jason? It’s you, isn’t it?… Perhaps I have the wrong room.”
“Alex? This is you?”
“Frančois? What are you doing there? Where’s Jason?”
“Things have happened so fast. I know he’s been trying to reach you.”
“It’s been a rough day. We’ve got Panov back.”
“That’s good news.”
“I’ve got other news. A telephone number where the Jackal can be reached.”
“We’ve got it! And a location. Our man left an hour ago.”
“For Christ’s sake, how did you get it?”
“A convoluted process I sincerely believe only your man could have negotiated. He’s brilliantly imaginative, a true caméléon.”
“Let’s compare,” said Conklin. “What’s yours?”
Bernardine complied, reciting the number he had written down on Bourne’s instructions.
The silence on the phone was a silent scream. “They’re different,” said Alex finally, his voice choked. “They’re different!”
“A trap,” said the Deuxième veteran. “God in heaven, it’s a trap!”