Louis DeFazio wearily dragged his small frame out of the taxi in the boulevard Masséna, followed by his larger, heavier, far more muscular cousin Mario from Larchmont, New York. They stood on the pavement in front of a restaurant, its name in red-tubed script across a green-tinted window: Tetrazzini’s.
“This is the place,” said Louis. “They’ll be in a private room in the back.”
“It’s pretty late.” Mario looked at his watch under the wash of a street lamp. “I set the time for Paris; it’s almost midnight here.”
“They’ll wait.”
“You still haven’t told me their names, Lou. What do we call them?”
“You don’t,” answered DeFazio, starting for the entrance. “No names—they wouldn’t mean anything anyway. All you gotta do is be respectful, you know what I mean?”
“I don’t have to be told that, Lou, I really don’t,” reprimanded Mario in his soft-spoken voice. “But for my own information, why do you even bring it up?”
“He’s a high-class diplomatico,” explained the capo supremo, stopping briefly on the pavement and looking up at the man who had nearly killed Jason Bourne in Manassas, Virginia. “He operates out of Rome from fancy government circles, but he’s the direct contact with the dons in Sicily. He and his wife are very, very highly regarded, you understand what I’m saying?”
“I do and I don’t,” admitted the cousin. “If he’s so grand, why would he accept such a menial assignment as following our targets?”
“Because he can. He can go places some of our pagliacci can’t get near, you know what I mean? Also, I happen to let our people in New York know who our clients were, especially one, capisce? The dons all the way from Manhattan to the estates south of Palermo have a language they use exclusively between themselves, did you know that, cugino?… It comes down to a couple of orders: ‘Do it’ and ‘Don’t do it.’ ”
“I think I understand, Lou. We render respect.”
“Respect, yes, my fancy rendering cousin, but not no weakness, capisce? No weakness! The word’s got to go up and down the line that this is an operation Lou DeFazio took control of and ran from beginning to end. You got that?”
“If that’s the case, maybe I can go home to Angie and the kids,” said Mario, grinning.
“What?… You shut up, cugino! With this one job you got annuities for your whole passel of bambinos.”
“Not a passel, Lou, just five.”
“Let’s go. Remember, respect, but we don’t take no shit.”
The small private dining room was a miniature version of Tetrazzini’s decor. The ambience was Italian in all things. The walls were papered with dated, now faded murals of Venice, Rome and Florence; the softly piped-in music was predominantly operatic arias and tarantellas, and the lighting indirect with pockets of shadows. If a patron did not know he was in Paris, he might think he was dining on Rome’s Via Frascati, at one of the many commercialized family ristoranti lining that ancient street.
There was a large round table in the center covered by a deep red tablecloth, with a generous overhang, and four chairs equidistant from one another. Additional chairs were against the walls, allowing for an expanded conference of principals or for the proper location of secondary subalterns, usually armed. Seated at the far end of the table was a distinguished-looking olive-skinned man with wavy dark hair; on his left was a fashionably dressed, well-coiffed middle-aged woman. A bottle of Chianti Classico was between them, the crude thick-stemmed wineglasses in front of them not the sort one would associate with such aristocratic diners. On a chair behind the diplomatico was a black leather suitcase.
“I’m DeFazio,” said the capo supremo from New York, closing the door. “This is my cousin Mario, of who you may have heard of—a very talented man who takes precious time away from his family to be with us.”
“Yes, of course,” said the aristocratic mafioso. “Mario, il boia, esecuzione garantito—deadly with any weapon. Sit down, gentlemen.”
“I find such descriptions meaningless,” responded Mario, approaching a chair. “I’m skilled in my craft, that’s all.”
“Spoken like a professional, signore,” added the woman as DeFazio and his cousin sat down. “May I order you wine, drinks?” she continued.
“Not yet,” replied Louis. “Maybe later—maybe.… My talented relative on my mother’s side, may she rest in the arms of Christ, asked a good question outside. What do we call you, Mr. and Mrs. Paris, France? Which is by way of saying I don’t need no real names.”
“Conte and Contessa is what we’re known by,” answered the husband, smiling, the tight smile more appropriate to a mask than a human face.
“See what I mean, cugino? These are people of high regard.… So, Mr. Count, bring us up to date, how about it?”
“There’s no question about it, Signor DeFazio,” replied the Roman, his voice as tight as his previous smile, which had completely disappeared. “I will bring you up to date, and were it in my powers I would leave you in the far distant past.”
“Hey, what kind of fuckin’ talk is that?”
“Lou, please!” intruded Mario, quietly but firmly. “Watch your language.”
“What about his language? What kind of language is that? He wants to leave me in some kind of dirt?”
“You asked me what has happened, Signor DeFazio, and I’m telling you,” said the count, his voice as strained as before. “Yesterday at noon my wife and I were nearly killed—killed, Signor DeFazio. It’s not the sort of experience we’re used to or can tolerate. Have you any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?”
“You …? They marked you?”
“If you mean by that, did they know who we were, happily they did not. Had they known, it’s doubtful we’d be sitting at this table!”
“Signor DeFazio,” interrupted the contessa, glancing at her husband, her look telling him to calm down. “The word we received over here is that you have a contract on this cripple and his friend the doctor. Is that true?”
“Yeah,” confirmed the capo supremo cautiously. “As far as that goes, but it goes further, you know what I mean?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” replied the count icily.
“I tell you this because it’s possible I could use your help, for which, like I told you, you’ll be paid good, real good.”
“How does the contract go ‘further’?” asked the wife, again interrupting.
“There’s someone else we have to hit. A third party these two came over here to meet.”
The count and his countess instantly looked at each other. “A ‘third party,’ ” repeated the man from Rome, raising the wineglass to his lips. “I see.… A three-target contract is generally quite profitable. How profitable, Signor DeFazio?”
“Hey, come on, do I ask you what you make a week in Paris, France? Let’s just say it’s a lot and you two personally can count on six figures, if everything goes according to the book.”
“Six figures encompass a wide spectrum,” observed the countess. “It also indicates that the contract is worth over seven figures.”
“Seven …?” DeFazio looked at the woman, his breathing on hold.
“Over a million dollars,” concluded the countess.
“Yeah, well, you see, it’s important to our clients that these people leave this world,” said Louis, breathing again as seven figures had not been equated with seven million. “We don’t ask why, we just do the job. In situations like this, our dons are generous; we keep most of the money and ‘our thing’ keeps its reputation for efficiency. Isn’t that right, Mario?”
“I’m sure it is, Lou, but I don’t involve myself in those matters.”
“You get paid, don’t you, cugino?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, Lou.”
“See what I mean?” said DeFazio, looking at the aristocrats of the European Mafia, who showed no reaction at all except to stare at the capo supremo. “Hey, what’s the matter?… Oh, this bad thing that happened yesterday, huh? What was it—they saw you, right? They spotted you, and some gorilla got off a couple of shots to scare you away, that’s it, isn’t it? I mean what else could it be, right? They didn’t know who you were but you were there—a couple of times too often, maybe—so a little muscle was used, okay? It’s an old scam: Scare the shit out of strangers you see more than once.”
“Lou, I asked you to temper your language.”
“Temper? I’m losing my temper. I want to deal!”
“In plain words,” said the count, disregarding DeFazio’s words with a soft voice and arched brows, “you say you must kill this cripple and his friend the doctor, as well as a third party, is that correct?”
“In plain words, you got it right.”
“Do you know who this third party is—outside of a photograph or a detailed description?”
“Sure, he’s a government slime who was sent out years ago to make like he was a Mario here, an esecuzione, can you believe it? But these three individuals have injured our clients, I mean really hurt them. That’s why the contract, what else can I tell you?”
“We’re not sure,” said the countess, gracefully sipping her wine. “Perhaps you don’t really know.”
“Know what?”
“Know that there is someone else who wants this third party dead far more than you do,” explained the count. “Yesterday noon he assaulted a small café in the countryside with murderous gunfire, killing a number of people, because your third party was inside. So were we.… We saw them—him—warned by a guard and race outside. Certain emergencies are communicated. We left immediately, only minutes before the massacre.”
“Condannare!” choked DeFazio. “Who is this bastard who wants the kill? Tell me!”
“We’ve spent yesterday afternoon and all day today trying to find out,” began the woman, leaning forward, delicately fingering the indelicate glass as though it were an affront to her sensibilities. “Your targets are never alone. There are always men around them, armed guards, and at first we didn’t know where they came from. Then on the avenue Montaigne we saw a Soviet limousine come for them, and your third man in the company of a well-known KGB officer, and now we think we do know.”
“Only you, however,” broke in the count, “can confirm it for us. What is the name of this third man on your contract? Surely we have a right to know.”
“Why not? He’s a loser named Bourne, Jason Bourne, who’s blackmailing our clients.”
“Ecco,” said the husband quietly.
“Ultimo,” added the wife. “What do you know of this Bourne?” she asked.
“What I told you. He went out under cover for the government and got shafted by the big boys in Washington. He gets pissed off, so he ends up shafting our clients. A real slime.”
“You’ve never heard of Carlos the Jackal?” said the count, leaning back in the chair, studying the capo supremo.
“Oh, yeah, sure, I heard of him, and I see what you mean. They say this Jackal character has a big thing against this Bourne and vice versa, but it don’t cut no ice with me. You know, I thought that fox-cat was just in books, in the movies, you know what I mean? Then they tell me he’s a real hit man, wadda y’ know?”
“Very real,” agreed the countess.
“But, like I said, him I couldn’t care less about. I want the Jew shrink, the cripple, and this rot-gut Bourne, that’s all. And I really want them.”
The diplomat and his wife looked at each other; they shrugged in mild astonishment, then the contessa nodded, deferring to her husband. “Your sense of fiction has been shattered by reality,” said the count.
“Come again?”
“There was a Robin Hood, you know, but he wasn’t a noble of Locksley. He was a barbaric Saxon chief who opposed the Normans, a murdering, butchering thief, extolled only in legends. And there was an Innocent the Third, a pope who was hardly innocent and who followed the savage policies of a predecessor, Saint Gregory the Seventh, who was hardly a saint. Between them they split Europe asunder, into rivers of blood for political power and to enrich the coffers of the ‘Holy Empire.’ Centuries before, there was the gentle Quintus Cassius Longinus of Rome, beloved protector of the Further Spain, yet he tortured and mutilated a hundred thousand Spaniards.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“These men were fictionalized, Signor DeFazio, into many different shadings of what they may actually have been, but regardless of the distortions, they were real. Just as the Jackal is real, and is a deadly problem for you. As, unfortunately, he is a problem for us, for he’s a complication we cannot accept.”
“Huh?” The capo supremo, mouth gaping, stared at the Italian aristocrat.
“The presence of the Soviets was both alarming and enigmatic,” continued the count. “Then finally we perceived a possible connection, which you just confirmed.… Moscow has been hunting Carlos for years, solely for the purpose of executing him, and all they’ve gotten for their efforts is one dead hunter after another. Somehow—God knows how—Jason Bourne negotiated with the Russians to pursue their common objective.”
“For Christ’s sake, speak English or Italian, but with words that make sense! I didn’t exactly go to Harvard City College, gumball. I didn’t have to, capisce?”
“The Jackal stormed that country inn yesterday. He’s the one hunting down Jason Bourne, who was foolish enough to come back to Paris and persuade the Soviets to work with him. Both were stupid, for this is Paris and Carlos will win. He’ll kill Bourne and your other targets and laugh at the Russians. Then he’ll proclaim to the clandestine departments of all governments that he has won, that he’s the padrone, the maestro. You in America have never been exposed to the whole story, only bits and pieces, for your interest in Europe stops at the money line.
But we have lived through it, watching in fascination, and now we are mesmerized. Two aging master assassins obsessed with hatred, each wanting only to cut the other’s throat.”
“Hey, back up, gumball!” shouted DeFazio. “This slime Bourne’s a fake, a contraffazione. He never was an executioner!”
“You’re quite wrong, signore,” said the countess. “He may not have entered the arena with a gun, but it became his favorite instrument. Ask the Jackal.”
“Fuck the Jackal!” cried DeFazio, getting up from the chair.
“Lou!”
“Shut up, Mario! This Bourne is mine, ours! We deliver the corpse, we take the pictures with me—us—standing over all three with a dozen ice picks in their bodies, their heads pulled up by the hair, so nobody can say it ain’t our kills!”
“Now you’re the one who’s pazzo,” said the Mafia count quietly, in counterpoint to the capo supremo’s raucous yelling. “And please keep your voice down.”
“Then don’t get me excited—”
“He’s trying to explain things, Lou,” said DeFazio’s relative, the killer. “I want to hear what the gentleman has to say because it could be vital to my approach. Sit down, Cousin.” Louis sat down. “Please continue, Count.”
“Thank you, Mario. You don’t object to my calling you Mario.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Perhaps you should visit Rome—”
“Perhaps we should get back to Paris,” again choked the capo supremo.
“Very well,” agreed the Roman, now dividing his attention between DeFazio and his cousin, but favoring the latter. “You might take out all three targets with a long-range rifle, but you won’t get near the bodies. The Soviet guards will be indistinguishable from any other people in the area, and if they see the two of you coming in to the killing ground, they’ll open fire, assuming you’re from the Jackal.”
“Then we must create a diversion where we can isolate the targets,” said Mario, his elbows on the table, his intelligent eyes on the count. “Perhaps an emergency in the early hours of the morning. A fire in their lodgings, perhaps, that necessitates their coming outside. I’ve done it before; in the confusion of fire trucks and police sirens and the general panic, one can pull targets away and complete the assignments.”
“It’s a fine strategy, Mario, but there are still the Soviet guards.”
“We take them out!” cried DeFazio.
“You are only two men,” said the diplomat, “and there are at least three in Barbizon, to say nothing of the hotel in Paris where the cripple and the doctor are staying.”
“So we outmatch the numbers.” The capo supremo pulled the back of his hand over the sweat that had gathered on his forehead. “We hit this Barbizon first, right?”
“With only two men?” asked the countess, her cosmeticized eyes wide in surprise.
“You got men!” exclaimed DeFazio. “We’ll use a few.… I’ll pay additional.”
The count shook his head slowly and spoke softly. “We will not go to war with the Jackal,” he said. “Those are my instructions.”
“Fairy bastards!”
“An interesting comment coming from you,” observed the countess, a thin insulting smile on her lips.
“Perhaps our dons are not as generous as yours,” continued the diplomat. “We are willing to cooperate up to a point but no further.”
“You’ll never make another shipment to New York, or Philly, or Chicago!”
“We’ll let our superiors debate those issues, won’t we?”
There was a sudden knocking at the door, four raps in a row, harsh and intrusive. “Avanti,” called out the count, instantly reaching under his jacket and ripping an automatic out of his belt; he lowered it beneath the overhang of the red tablecloth and smiled as the manager of Tetrazzini’s entered.
“Emergenza,” said the grossly overweight man, walking rapidly to the well-tailored mafioso and handing him a note.
“Grazie.”
“Prego,” replied the manager, crossing back to the door and exiting as quickly as he had arrived.
“The anxious gods of Sicily may be smiling down on you after all,” said the count, reading. “This communication is from the man following your targets. They are outside Paris and they are alone, and for reasons I cannot possibly explain, there are no guards. They have no protection.”
“Where?” cried DeFazio, leaping to his feet.
Without answering, the diplomat calmly reached for his gold lighter, ignited it, and fired the small piece of paper, lowering it into an ashtray. Mario sprang up from his chair; the man from Rome dropped the lighter on the table and swiftly retrieved the gun from his lap. “First, let us discuss the fee,” he said as the note coiled into flaming black ash. “Our dons in Palermo are definitely not as generous as yours. Please talk quickly, as every minute counts.”
“You motherfucking bastard!”
“My Oedipal problems are not your concern. How much, Signor DeFazio?”
“I’ll go the limit,” replied the capo supremo, lowering himself into the chair, staring at the charred remnants of the information. “Three hundred thousand, American. That’s it.”
“That’s excremento,” said the countess. “Try again. Seconds become minutes and you cannot afford them.”
“All right, all right! Double it!”
“Plus expenses,” added the woman.
“What the fuck can they be?”
“Your cousin Mario is right,” said the diplomat. “Please watch your language in front of my wife.”
“Holy shit—”
“I warned you, signore. The expenses are an additional quarter of a million, American.”
“What are you, nuts?”
“No, you’re vulgar. The total is one million one hundred fifty thousand dollars, to be paid as our couriers in New York so instruct you.… If not, you will be missed in—what is it?—Brooklyn Heights, Signor DeFazio?”
“Where are the targets?” said the beaten capo supremo, his defeat painful to him.
“At a small private airfield in Pontcarré, about forty-five minutes from Paris. They’re waiting for a plane that was grounded in Poitiers because of bad weather. It can’t possibly arrive for at least an hour and a quarter.”
“Did you bring the equipment we requested?” asked Mario rapidly.
“It’s all there,” answered the countess, gesturing at the large black suitcase on a chair against the wall.
“A car, a fast car!” cried DeFazio as his executioner retrieved the suitcase.
“Outside,” replied the count. “The driver will know where to take you. He’s been to that field.”
“Come on, cugino. Tonight we collect and you can settle a score!”
Except for a single clerk behind the counter in the small one-room terminal and an air controller hired to stay the extra hours in the radio tower, the private airport in Pontcarré was deserted. Alex Conklin and Mo Panov stayed discreetly behind as Bourne led Marie outside to the gate area fronting the field beyond a waist-high metal fence. Two strips of receding amber ground lights defined the long runway for the plane from Poitiers; they had been turned on only a short time ago.
“It won’t be long now,” said Jason.
“This whole damn thing’s stupid,” retorted Webb’s wife. “Everything.”
“There’s no reason for you to stay and every reason for you to leave. For you to be alone here in Paris would be stupid. Alex is right. If Carlos’s people found you, you’d be taken hostage, so why risk it?”
“Because I’m capable of staying out of sight and I don’t want to be ten thousand miles away from you. You’ll forgive me if I worry about you, Mr. Bourne. And care for you.”
Jason looked at her in the shadows, grateful for the darkness; she could not clearly see his eyes. “Then be reasonable and use your head,” he said coldly, suddenly feeling so old, too old for such a transparently false lack of feeling. “We know Carlos is in Moscow and Krupkin isn’t far behind him. Dimitri’s flying us there in the morning, and we’ll be under the protection of the KGB in the tightest city in the world. What more could we want?”
“You were under the protection of the United States government on a short East Side block in New York thirteen years ago and it didn’t do you much good.”
“There’s a great deal of difference. Back then the Jackal knew exactly where I was going and when I’d be there. Right now he has no idea we even know he’s in Moscow. He’s got other problems, big ones for him, and he thinks we’re here in Paris—he’s ordered his people to keep searching for us.”
“What will you do in Moscow?”
“We won’t know until we get there, but whatever it is, it’s better than here in Paris. Krupkin’s been busy. Every ranking officer in Dzerzhinsky Square who speaks French is being watched and is under surveillance. He said the French narrowed down the possibilities and that something should break.… Something will break; the odds are on our side. And when it does, I can’t be worried about you back here.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said in the past thirty-six hours.”
“So be it. You should be with the children and you know that. You’ll be out of reach and safe … and the kids need you. Mrs. Cooper’s a terrific lady, but she’s not their mother. Besides, your brother probably has Jamie smoking his Cuban cigars and playing Monopoly with real money by now.”
Marie looked up at her husband, a gentle smile apparent in the darkness as well as in her voice. “Thanks for the laugh. I need it.”
“It’s probably the truth—your brother, I mean. If there are good-looking women on the staff, it’s quite possible our son’s lost his virginity.”
“David!” Bourne was silent. Marie chuckled briefly, then went on. “I suppose I really can’t argue with you.”
“And you would if my argument was flawed, Dr. St. Jacques. That’s something I’ve learned over the past thirteen years.”
“I still object to this crazy trip back to Washington! From here to Marseilles, then to London, then on a flight to Dulles. It’d be so much simpler just to get on a plane from Orly to the States.”
“It’s Peter Holland’s idea. He’ll meet you himself, so ask him; he doesn’t say an awful lot on the phone. I suspect he doesn’t want to deal with the French authorities for fear of a leak to Carlos’s people. A single woman with a common name on crowded flights is probably best.”
“I’ll spend more time sitting in airports than in the air.”
“Probably, so cover those great legs of yours and carry a Bible.”
“That’s sweet,” said Marie, touching his face. “I suddenly hear you, David.”
“What?” Again Bourne did not respond to the warmth.
“Nothing.… Do me a favor, will you?”
“What is it?” asked Jason, in a distant monotone.
“Bring that David back to me.”
“Let’s get an update on the plane,” said Bourne, his voice flat and abrupt as he touched her elbow and led her back inside. I’m getting older—old—and I cannot much longer be what I am not. The Chameleon is slipping away; the imagination isn’t there the way it used to be. But I cannot stop! Not now! Get away from me, David Webb!
No sooner had they reentered the small terminal than the telephone on the counter began to ring. The lone clerk picked it up. “Oui?” He listened for no more than five seconds. “Merci,” he said, hanging up and addressing the four interested parties in French. “That was the tower. The plane from Poitiers will be on the ground in approximately four minutes. The pilot requests that you be ready, madame, as he would like to fly ahead of the weather front moving east.”
“So would I,” agreed Marie, rushing to Alex Conklin and Mo Panov. The farewells were brief, the embraces strong, the words heartfelt. Bourne led his wife back outside. “I just remembered—where are Krupkin’s guards?” she asked as Jason unlatched the gate and they walked toward the lighted runway.
“We don’t need them or want them,” he answered. “The Soviet connection was made in the Montaigne, so we have to assume the embassy’s being watched. No guards rushing out into cars, therefore no movement on our part for Carlos’s people to report.”
“I see.” The sound of a small decelerating jet could be heard as the plane circled the airfield once and made its descent onto the four-thousand-foot runway. “I love you so much, David,” said Marie, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the aircraft, rolling toward them.
“He loves you so much,” said Bourne, images colliding in his mind. “I love you so much.”
The jet loomed clearly into view between the rows of amber lights, a white bulletlike machine with short delta wings sweeping back from the fuselage, giving it the appearance of an angry flying insect. The pilot swung the plane around in a circle, coming to a jarring stop as the automatic passenger door sprang out and up while metal steps slapped down to the ground. Jason and Marie ran toward the jet’s entrance.
It happened with the sudden impact of a murderous wind shear, at once unstoppable, enveloping, the swirling winds of death! Gunfire. Automatic weapons—two of them; one nearby, one farther away—shattering windows, ripping into wood, a piercing screech of pain erupting from the terminal, announcing a mortal hit.
With both hands Bourne gripped Marie by the waist, heaving her up and propelling her into the plane as he shouted to the pilot. “Shut the door and get out of here!”
“Mon Dieu!” cried the man from the open flight deck. “Allez-vous-en!” he roared, ordering Jason away from the spring-hinged door and the metal steps, gunning the jet’s engine as the plane lurched forward. Jason plunged to the ground and raised his eyes. Marie’s face was pressed against the window; she was screaming hysterically. The plane thundered down the runway; it was free.
Bourne was not. He was caught in the wash of the amber lights, the glowing rows a cyclorama of yellowish orange. No matter where he stood or knelt or crouched he was in silhouette. So he pulled out the automatic from his belt—the weapon, he reflected, given to him by Bernardine—and began slithering, snaking his way across the asphalt toward the bordering grass outside the fenced-gate area.
The gunfire erupted again, but now they were three scattered single shots from within the terminal, where the lights had been extinguished. They had to have come from Conklin’s gun, or possibly the clerk’s if he had a weapon; Panov did not. Then who had been hit?… No time! A shattering fusillade burst out of the nearest automatic rifle; it was steady, prolonged and deadly, spraying the side of the small building and the gate area.
Then the second automatic weapon commenced firing; from the sound it was on the opposite side of the terminal’s waiting room. Moments later there were two single shots, the last one accompanied by a scream … again on the other side of the building.
“I’ve been hit!” The voice was the cry of a man in pain … on the other side of the building. The automatic rifle! Jason slowly rose to a low crouch in the grass and peered into the darkness. A fragment of blacker darkness moved. He raised his automatic and fired into the moving mass, getting to his feet and racing across the gate area, turning and squeezing the trigger until he was both out of bullets and out of sight on the east side of the building, where the runway ended and the amber lights stopped. He crawled cautiously to the section of the waist-high fence that paralleled the corner of the small terminal. The grayish-white gravel of the parking area was a gratifying sight; he was able to make out the figure of a man writhing on the stones. The figure gripped a weapon in his hands, then pushing it into the gravel, raised himself to a half-sitting position.
“Cugino!” he screamed. “Help me!” His answer was another burst of gunfire from the west side of the building, diagonally to the right of the wounded man. “Holy Christ!” he shrieked. “I’m hit bad!” Again the reply was yet another fusillade from the automatic rifle, these rounds simultaneous with crashing glass. The killer on the west side of the building had smashed the windows and was blowing apart everything inside.
Bourne dropped the useless automatic and grabbed the top of the fence, vaulting over it, his left leg landing in agony on the ground. What’s happened to me? Why do I hurt? Goddamn it! He limped to the wood-framed corner of the building and edged his face to the open space beyond. The figure on the gravel fell back, unable to support himself on the automatic rifle. Jason felt the ground, found a large rock, and threw it with all his strength beyond the wounded man. It crashed, bouncing into the gravel, for an instant like the sound of approaching footsteps. The killer spastically rose and spun his body to the rear, gripping his weapon, which twice fell out of his grasp.
Now! Bourne raced across the stones of the parking lot and lunged off his feet down into the man with the gun. He tore the weapon from the killer’s grip and crashed the metal stock into his skull. The short, slender man went limp. And, again, suddenly, there was another crescendo of gunfire from the west exterior of the terminal building, again accompanied by the shattering of glass. The first and nearer killer was narrowing down his targets. He had to be stopped! thought Jason, his breath gone, every muscle in his body in pain. Where was the man from yesterday? Where was Delta from Medusa? The Chameleon from Treadstone Seventy-one? Where was that man?
Bourne grabbed the MAC-10 submachine gun from the unconscious figure on the gravel and raced toward the side door of the terminal.
“Alex!” he roared. “Let me in! I’ve got the weapon!”
The door crashed open. “My God, you’re alive!” shouted Conklin in the darkness of the shadows as Jason ran inside. “Mo’s in bad shape—he was shot in the chest. The clerk’s dead and we can’t raise the tower out on the field. They must have reached it first.” Alex slammed the door shut. “Get down on the floor!” A fusillade raked the walls. Bourne got to his knees and fired back, then threw himself down beside Conklin.
“What happened?” cried Jason, breathless, his voice strained, the sweat dripping down his face and stinging his eyes.
“The Jackal happened.”
“How did he do it?”
“He fooled us all. You, me, Krupkin and Lavier—worst of all, me. He sent the word out that he’d be away, no explanation even with you here in Paris, just that he’d be gone for a while. We thought the trap had worked; everything pointed to Moscow.… He sucked us into his own trap. Oh, Christ, did he suck us in! I should have known better, I should have seen through it! It was too clean.… I’m sorry, David. Oh, God, I’m sorry!”
“That’s him out there, isn’t it? He wants the kill all to himself—nothing else matters to him.”
Suddenly a flashlight, its powerful beam blinding, was thrown through a shattered window. Instantly, Bourne raised the MAC-10 and blew the shiny metal tube away, extinguishing the light. The damage, however, had been done; their bodies had been seen.
“Over here!” screamed Alex, grabbing Jason and diving behind the counter as a murderous barrage came from the blurred silhouette in the window. It stopped; there was the crack of a bolt.
“He has to reload!” whispered Bourne, with the break in the fire. “Stay here!” Jason stood up and raced to the gate doors, crashing through them, his weapon gripped in his right hand, his body prone, tense, prepared to kill—if the years would permit it. They had to permit it!
He crawled through the gate he had opened for Marie and spun on the ground to his right, scrambling along the fence. He was Delta—of Saigon’s Medusa … he could do it! There was no friendly jungle now, but there was everything he could use—Delta could use—the darkness, the intermittent blocks of shadows from the myriad clouds intercepting the moonlight. Use everything! It was what you were trained to do … so many years ago—so many. Forget it, forget time! Do it! The animal only yards away wants you dead—your wife dead, your children dead. Dead!
It was the quickness born of pure fury that propelled him, obsessed him, and he knew that to win he had to win quickly, with all the speed that was in him. He crept swiftly along the fence that enclosed the airfield, and past the corner of the terminal, prepared for the instant of exposure. The lethal submachine gun was still gripped in his hand, his index finger now on the trigger. There was a cluster of wild shrubbery preceding two thick trees no more than thirty feet away; if he could reach them, the advantage was his. He would have the “high ground,” the Jackal in the valley of death, if only because he was behind the assassin and unseen.
He reached the shrubbery. And at the moment he heard a massive smashing of glass followed by yet another fusillade—this time so prolonged that the entire magazine had to have been emptied. He had not been seen; the figure by the window had backed away to reload, his concentration on that task, not on the possibility of an escape. Carlos, too, was growing old and losing his finesse, thought Jason Bourne. Where were the flares intrinsic to such an operation? Where were the alert, roving eyes that loaded weapons in total darkness?
Darkness. A cloud cover blocked the yellow rays of the moon; there was darkness. He vaulted over the fence, concealing himself behind the shrubbery, then raced to the first of the two trees where he could stand upright, view the scene and consider his options.
Something was wrong. There was a primitiveness he could not associate with the Jackal. The assassin had isolated the terminal, ad valorem, and the price was high, but there was an absence of the finer points of the deadly equation. The subtlety was not there; instead, there was a brute force, hardly to be denied, but not when employed against the man they called Jason Bourne who had escaped from the trap.
The figure by the shattered window had spent his ammunition; he reeled back against the building, pulling another magazine out of his pocket. Jason raced out of the cover of the trees, his MAC-10 on automatic fire, exploding the dirt in front of the killer, then circling the bullets around his frame.
“That’s it!” he shouted, closing in on the assassin. “You’re dead, Carlos, with one pull of my finger—if you are the Jackal!”
The man by the shattered window threw down his weapon. “I am not he, Mr. Bourne,” said the executioner from Larchmont, New York. “We’ve met before, but I am not the person you think I am.”
“Hit the ground, you son of a bitch!” The killer did so as Jason approached. “Spread your legs and your arms!” The command was obeyed. “Raise your head!”
The man did so, and Bourne stared at the face, vaguely illuminated by the distant glow of the amber lights on the airfield’s runway. “You see now?” said Mario. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“My God,” whispered Jason, his incredulity all too apparent. “You were in the driveway in Manassas, Virginia. You tried to kill Cactus, then me!”
“Contracts, Mr. Bourne, nothing more.”
“What about the tower? The air controller here in the tower!”
“I do not kill indiscriminately. Once the plane from Poitiers was given clearance to land, I told him to leave.… Forgive me, but your wife was also on the list. Fortunately, as she is a mother, it was beyond my abilities.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I just told you. A contract employee.”
“I’ve seen better.”
“I’m not, perhaps, in your league, but I serve my organization well.”
“Jesus, you’re Medusa!”
“I’ve heard the name, but that’s all I can tell you.… Let me make one thing clear, Mr. Bourne. I will not leave my wife a widow, or my children orphans for the sake of a contract. That position simply isn’t viable. They mean too much to me.”
“You’ll spend a hundred and fifty years in prison, and that’s only if you’re prosecuted in a state that doesn’t have the death penalty.”
“Not with what I know, Mr. Bourne. My family and I will be well taken care of—a new name, perhaps a nice farm in the Dakotas or Wyoming. You see, I knew this moment had to come.”
“What’s come now, you bastard, is that a friend of mine inside there is shot up! You did it!”
“A truce, then?” said Mario.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I have a very fast car a half mile away.” The killer from Larchmont, New York, pulled a square instrument from his belt. “It can be here in less than a minute. I’m sure the driver knows the nearest hospital.”
“Do it!”
“It’s done, Jason Bourne,” said Mario, pressing a button.
Morris Panov had been rolled into the operating room; Louis DeFazio was still on a gurney, as it was determined that his wound was superficial. And through back-channel negotiations between Washington and Quai d’Orsay, the criminal known only as Mario was securely in the custody of the American embassy in Paris.
A white-frocked doctor came out into the hospital’s waiting room; both Conklin and Bourne got to their feet, frightened. “I will not pretend to be a bearer of glad tidings,” said the physician in French, “for it would be quite wrong. Both lungs of your friend were punctured, as well as the wall of his heart. He has at best a forty—sixty chance of survival—against him, I’m afraid. Still, he is a strong-willed man who wants to live. At times that means more than all the medical negatives. What else can I tell you?”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Jason turned away.
“I have to use a telephone,” said Alex to the surgeon. “I should go to our embassy, but I haven’t the time. Do I have any guarantee that I won’t be tapped, overheard?”
“I imagine you have every guarantee,” replied the physician. “We wouldn’t know how to do it. Use my office, please.”
“Peter?”
“Alex!” cried Holland from Langley, Virginia. “Everything go all right? Did Marie get off?”
“To answer your first question, no, everything did not go all right; and as far as Marie goes, you can expect a panicked phone call from her the minute she reaches Marseilles. That pilot won’t touch his radio.”
“What?”
“Tell her we’re okay, that David’s not hurt—”
“What are you talking about?” broke in the director of Central Intelligence.
“We were ambushed while waiting for the plane from Poitiers. I’m afraid Mo Panov’s in bad shape, so bad I don’t want to think about it right now. We’re in a hospital and the doctor’s not encouraging.”
“Oh, God, Alex, I’m sorry.”
“In his own way, Mo’s a fighter. I’ll still bet on him. Incidentally, don’t tell Marie. She thinks too much.”
“Of course not. Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes, there is, Peter. You can tell me why Medusa’s here in Paris.”
“In Paris? It’s not according to everything I know and I know a hell of a lot.”
“Our identification’s positive. The two guns that hit us an hour ago were sent over by Medusa. We’ve even got a confession of sorts.”
“I don’t understand!” protested Holland. “Paris never entered into our thinking. There’s no linkage in the scenario.”
“Sure, there is,” contradicted the former station chief. “You said it yourself. You called it a self-fulfilling prophecy, remember? The ultimate logic that Bourne conceived as a theory. Medusa joining up with the Jackal, the target Jason Bourne.”
“That’s the point, Alex. It was only a theory, hypothetically convincing, but still just a theory, the basis for a sound strategy. But it never happened.”
“It obviously did.”
“Not from this end. As far as we’re concerned, Medusa’s now in Moscow.”
“Moscow?” Conklin nearly dropped the phone on the doctor’s desk.
“That’s right. We’ve concentrated on Ogilvie’s law firm in New York, tapping everything that could be tapped. Somehow—and we don’t know how—Ogilvie was tipped off and got out of the country. He took an Aeroflot to Moscow, and the rest of his family headed to Marrakesh.”
“Ogilvie …?” Alex could barely be heard; frowning, his memory peeled away the years. “From Saigon? A legal officer from Saigon?”
“That’s right. We’re convinced he runs Medusa.”
“And you withheld that information from me?”
“Only the name of the firm. I told you we had our priorities and you had yours. For us, Medusa came first.”
“You simple swab-jockey!” exploded Conklin. “I know Ogilvie—more precisely, I knew him. Let me tell you what they called him in Saigon: Ice-Cold Ogilvie, the smoothest-talking legal scumball in Vietnam. With a few subpoenas and some research, I could have told you where a few of his courtroom skeletons were buried—you blew it! You could have pulled him in for fixing the army courts in a couple of killings—there are no statutes, civilian or military, on those crimes. Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?”
“In all honesty, Alex, you never asked. You simply assumed—rightly so—that I wouldn’t tell you.”
“All right, all right, it’s done—to hell with it. By tomorrow or the next day you’ll have our two Medusans, so go to work on them. They both want to save their asses—the capo’s a slime, but his sharpshooter keeps praying for his family and it’s not organizational.”
“What are you going to do?” pressed Holland.
“We’re on our way to Moscow.”
“After Ogilvie?”
“No, the Jackal. But if I see Bryce, I’ll give him your regards.”