The Bourne Identity

22

One by one the four men arrived at the crowded Hilton Hotel on Sixteenth Street in Washington, D.C. Each went to a separate elevator, taking it two or three floors above or below his destination, walking the remaining flights to the correct level. There was no time to meet outside the limits of the District of Columbia; the crisis was unparalleled. These were the men of Treadstone Seventy-One—those that remained alive. The rest were dead, slaughtered in a massacre on a quiet, tree-lined street in New York.
Two of the faces were familiar to the public, one more than the other. The first belonged to the aging senator from Colorado, the second was Brigadier General I. A. Crawford—Irwin Arthur, freely translated as Iron Ass—acknowledged spokesman for Army Intelligence and defender of the G-2 data banks. The other two men were virtually unknown except within the corridors of their own operations. One was a middle-aged naval officer, attached to information Control, 5th Naval District. The fourth and last man was a forty-six-year-old veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, a slender, coiled spring of anger who walked with a cane. His foot had been blown off by a grenade in Southeast Asia; he had been a deep-cover agent with the Medusa operation at the time. His name was Alexander Conklin.
There was no conference table in the room; it was an ordinary double occupancy with the standard twin beds, a couch, two armchairs, and a coffee table. It was an unlikely spot to hold a meeting of such consequence; there were no spinning computers to light up dark screens with green letters, no electronic communications equipment that would reach consoles in London or Paris or Istanbul. It was a plain hotel room, devoid of everything but four minds that held the secrets of Treadstone Seventy-One.
The senator sat on one end of the couch, the naval officer at the other. Conklin lowered himself into an armchair, stretching his immobile limb out in front of him, the cane between his legs, while Brigadier General Crawford remained standing, his face flushed, the muscles of his jaw pulsing in anger.
“I’ve reached the president,” said the senator, rubbing his forehead, the lack of sleep apparent in his bearing. “I had to; we’re meeting tonight. Tell me everything you can, each of you. You begin, General. What in the name of God happened?”
“Major Webb was to meet his car at 2300 hours on the corner of Lexington and Seventy-second Street. The time was firm, but he didn’t show up. By 2330 the driver became alarmed because of the distance to the airfield in New Jersey. The sergeant remembered the address—mainly because he’d been told to forget it—drove around and went to the door. The security bolts had been jammed and the door just swung open; all the alarms had been shorted out. There was blood on the foyer floor, the dead woman on the staircase. He walked down the hallway into the operations room and found the bodies.”
“That man deserves a very quiet promotion,” said the naval officer.
“Why do you say that?” asked the senator.
Crawford replied. “He had the presence of mind to call the Pentagon and insist on speaking with covert transmissions, domestic. He specified the scrambler frequency, the time and the place of reception, and said he had to speak with the sender. He didn’t say a word to anyone until he got me on the phone.”
“Put him in the War College, Irwin,” said Conklin grimly, holding his cane. “He’s brighter than most of the clowns you’ve got over there.”
“That’s not only unnecessary, Conklin,” admonished the senator, “but patently offensive. Go on, please, General.”
Crawford exchanged looks with the CIA man. “I reached Colonel Paul McClaren in New York, ordered him over there, and told him to do absolutely nothing until I arrived. I then phoned Conklin and George here, and we flew up together.”
“I called a Bureau print team in Manhattan,” added Conklin. “One we’ve used before and can trust. I didn’t tell them what we were looking for, but I told them to sweep the place and give what they found only to me.” The CIA man stopped, lifting his cane in the direction of the naval officer. “Then George fed them thirty-seven names, all men whose prints we knew were in the FBI files. They came up with the one set we didn’t expect, didn’t want ... didn’t believe.”
“Delta’s,” said the senator.
“Yes,” concurred the naval officer. “The names I submitted were those of anyone—no matter how remote—who might have learned the address of Treadstone, including, incidentally, all of us. The room had been wiped clean; every surface; every knob, every glass—except one. It was a broken brandy glass, only a few fragments in the corner under a curtain, but it was enough. The prints were there: third and index fingers, right hand.”
“You’re absolutely positive?” asked the senator slowly.
“The prints can’t lie, sir,” said the officer. “They were there, moist brandy still on the fragments. Outside of this room, Delta’s the only one who knows about Seventy-first Street.”
“Can we be sure of that? The others may have said something.”
“No possibility,” interrupted the brigadier general. “Abbott would never have revealed it, and Elliot Stevens wasn’t given the address until fifteen minutes before he got there, when he called from a phone booth. Beyond that, assuming the worst, he would hardly ask for his own execution.”
“What about Major Webb?” pressed the senator.
“The major,” replied Crawford, “was radioed the address solely by me after he landed at Kennedy Airport. As you know, it was a G-Two frequency and scrambled. I remind you, he also lost his life.”
“Yes, of course.” The aging senator shook his head. “It’s unbelievable. Why?”
“I should like to bring up a painful subject,” said Brigadier General Crawford. “At the outset I was not enthusiastic about the candidate. I understood David’s reasoning and agreed he was qualified, but if you recall, he wasn’t my choice.”
“I wasn’t aware we had that many choices,” said the senator. “We had a man—a qualified man, as you agreed—who was willing to go in deep cover for an indeterminate length of time, risking his life every day, severing all ties with his past. How many such men exist?”
“We might have found a more balanced one,” countered the brigadier. “I pointed that out at the time.”
“You pointed out,” corrected Conklin, “your own definition of a balanced man, which I, at the time, pointed out was a crock.”
“We were both in Medusa, Conklin,” said Crawford angrily yet reasonably. “You don’t have exclusive insights. Delta’s conduct in the field was continuously and overtly hostile to command. I was in a position to observe that pattern somewhat more clearly than you.”
“Most of the time he had every right to be. If you’d spent more time in the field and less in Saigon you would have understood that. I understood it.”
“It may surprise you,” said the brigadier, holding his hand up in a gesture of truce, “but I’m not defending the gross stupidities often rampant in Saigon—no one could. I’m trying to describe a pattern of behavior that could lead to the night before last on Seventy-first Street.”
The CIA man’s eyes remained on Crawford; his hostility vanished as he nodded his head. “I know you are. Sorry. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? It’s not easy for me; I worked with Delta in half a dozen sectors, was stationed with him in Phnom Penh before Medusa was even a gleam in the Monk’s eye. He was never the same after Phnom Penh; it’s why he went into Medusa, why he was willing to become Cain.”
The senator leaned forward on the couch. “I’ve heard it, but tell me again. The president has to know everything.”
“His wife and two children were killed on a pier in the Mekong River, bombed and strafed by a stray aircraft—nobody knew which side’s—the identity never uncovered. He hated that war, hated everybody in it. He snapped.” Conklin paused, looking at the brigadier. “And I think you’re right, General. He snapped again. It was in him.”
“What was?” asked the senator sharply.
“The explosion, I guess,” said Conklin. “The dam burst. He’d gone beyond his limits and the hate took over. It’s not hard; you have to be very careful. He killed those men, that woman, like a madman on a deliberate rampage. None of them expected it except perhaps the woman who was upstairs, and she probably heard the shouts. He’s not Delta anymore. We created a myth called Cain, only it’s not a myth any longer. It’s really him.”
“After so many months ...” The senator leaned back, his voice trailing off. “Why did he come back? From where?”
“From Zurich,” answered Crawford. “Webb was in Zurich, and I think he’s the only one who could have brought him back. The ‘why’ we may never know unless he expected to catch all of us there.”
“He doesn’t know who we are,” protested the senator. “His only contacts were the Yachtsman, his wife, and David Abbott.”
“And Webb, of course,” added the general.
“Of course,” agreed the senator. “But not at Treadstone, not even him.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” said Conklin, tapping the rug once with his cane. “He knows there’s a board; Webb might have told him we’d all be there, reasonably expecting that we would. We’ve got a lot of questions—six months’ worth, and now several million dollars. Delta would consider it the perfect solution. He could take us and disappear. No traces.”
“Why are you so certain?”
“Because, one, he was there,” replied the intelligence man, raising his voice. “We have his prints on a glass of brandy that wasn’t even finished. And, two, it’s a classic trap with a couple of hundred variations.”
“Would you explain that?”
“You remain silent,” broke in the general, watching Conklin, “until your enemy can’t stand it any longer and exposes himself.”
And we’ve become the enemy? His enemy?”
“There’s no question about it now,” said the naval officer. “For whatever reasons, Delta’s turned. It’s happened before—thank heaven not very often. We know what to do.”
The senator once more leaned forward on the couch. “What will you do?”
“His photograph has never been circulated,” explained Crawford. “We’ll circulate it now. To every station and listening post, every source and informant we have. He has to go somewhere, and he’ll start with a place he knows, if only to buy another identity. He’ll spend money; he’ll be found. When he is, the orders will be clear.”
“You’ll bring him in at once?”
“We’ll kill him,” said Conklin simply. “You don’t bring in a man like Delta, and you don’t take the risk that another government will. Not with what he knows.”
“I can’t tell the president that. There are laws.”
“Not for Delta,” said the agent. “He’s beyond the laws. He’s beyond salvage.”
“Beyond—”
“That’s right, Senator,” interrupted the general. “Beyond salvage. I think you know the meaning of the phrase. You’ll have to make the decision whether or not to define it for the president. It might be better to—”
“You’ve got to explore everything,” said the senator, cutting off the officer. “I spoke to Abbott last week. He told me a strategy was in progress to reach Delta. Zurich, the bank, the naming of Treadstone; it’s all part of it, isn’t it?”
“It is, and it’s over,” said Crawford. “If the evidence on Seventy-first Street isn’t enough for you, that should be. Delta was given a clear signal to come in. He didn’t. What more do you want?”
“I want to be absolutely certain.”
“I want him dead.” Conklin’s words, though spoken softly, had the effect of a sudden, cold wind. “He not only broke all the rules we each set down for ourselves—no matter what—but he sunk into the pits. He reeks; he is Cain. We’ve used the name Delta so much—not even Bourne, but Delta—that I think we’ve forgotten. Gordon Webb was his brother. Find him. Kill him.”




BOOK III


23

It was ten minutes to three in the morning when Bourne approached the Auberge du Coin’s front desk, Marie continuing directly to the entrance. To Jason’s relief, there were no newspapers on the counter, but the late night clerk behind it was in the same mold as his predecessor in the center of Paris. He was a balding, heavy-set man with half-closed eyes, leaning back in a chair, his arms folded in front of him, the weary depression of his interminable night hanging over him. But this night, thought Bourne, would be one he’d remember for a long time to come—beyond the damage to an upstairs room, which would not be discovered until morning. A relief night clerk in Montrouge had to have transportation.
“I’ve just called Rouen,” said Jason, his hands on the counter, an angry man, furious with uncontrollable events in his personal world. “I have to leave at once and need to rent a car.”
“Why not?” snorted the man, getting out of the chair. “What would you prefer, monsieur? A golden chariot or a magic carpet?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We rent rooms, not automobiles.”
“I must be in Rouen before morning.”
“Impossible. Unless you find a taxi crazy enough at this hour to take you.”
“I don’t think you understand. I could sustain considerable losses and embarrassment if I’m not at my office by eight o’clock. I’m willing to pay generously.”
“You have a problem, monsieur.”
“Surely there’s someone here who would be willing to lend me his car for, say ... a thousand, fifteen hundred francs.”
“A thousand ... fifteen hundred, monsieur?” The clerk’s half-closed eyes widened until his skin was taut. “In cash, monsieur?”
“Naturally. My companion would return it tomorrow evening.”
“There’s no rush, monsieur.”
“I beg your pardon? Of course, there’s really no reason why I couldn’t hire a taxi. Confidentiality can be paid for.”
“I wouldn’t know where to reach one,” interrupted the clerk in persuasive frenzy. “On the other hand, my Renault is not so new, perhaps, and perhaps, not the fastest machine on the road, but it is a serviceable car, even a worthy car.”
The chameleon had changed his colors again, had been accepted again for someone he was not. But he knew now who he was and he understood.

Daybreak. But there was no warm room at a village inn, no wallpaper mottled by the early light streaking through a window, filtered by the weaving leaves outside. Rather, the first rays of the sun spread up from the east, crowning the French countryside, defining the fields and hills of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. They sat in the small car parked off the shoulder of a deserted back road, cigarette smoke curling out through the partially open windows.
He had begun that first narrative in Switzerland with the words My life began six months ago on a small island in the Mediterranean called Ile de Port Noir. ...
He had begun this with a quiet declaration: I’m known as Cain.
He had told it all, leaving out nothing he could remember, including the terrible images that had exploded in his mind when he had heard the words spoken by Jacqueline Lavier in the candlelabraed restaurant in Argenteuil. Names, incidents, cities … assassinations.
“Everything fit. There wasn’t anything I didn’t know, nothing that wasn’t somewhere in the back of my head, trying to get out. It was the truth.”
“It was the truth,” repeated Marie.
He looked closely at her. “We were wrong, don’t you see?”
“Perhaps. But also right. You were right, and I was right.”
“About what?”
“You. I have to say it again, calmly and logically. You offered your life for mine before you knew me; that’s not the decision of a man you’ve described. If that man existed, he doesn’t any longer.” Marie’s eyes pleaded, while her voice remained controlled. “You said it, Jason. ‘What a man can’t remember doesn’t exist. For him.’ Maybe that’s what you’re faced with. Can you walk away from it?”
Bourne nodded; the dreadful moment had come. “Yes,” he said. “But alone. Not with you.”
Marie inhaled on her cigarette, watching him, her hand trembling. “I see. That’s your decision, then?”
“It has to be.”
“You will heroically disappear so I won’t be tainted.”
“I have to.”
“Thank you very much, and who the hell do you think you are?”
“What?”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m a man they call Cain. I’m wanted by governments—by the police—from Asia to Europe. Men in Washington want to kill me because of what they think I know about this Medusa, an assassin named Carlos wants me shot in the throat because of what I’ve done to him. Think about it for a moment. How long do you think I can keep running before someone in one of those armies out there finds me, traps me, kills me? Is that the way you want your life to end?”
“Good God, no!” shouted Marie, something obviously very much on her analytical mind. “I intend to rot in a Swiss prison for fifty years or be hanged for things I never did in Zurich!”
“There’s a way to take care of Zurich. I’ve thought about it; I can do it.”
“How?” She stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.
“For God’s sake, what difference does it make? A confession. Turning myself in, I don’t know yet, but I can do it! I can put your life back together. I have to put it back!”
“Not that way.”
“Why not?”
Marie reached for his face, her voice now soft once more, the sudden stridency gone. “Because I’ve just proved my point again. Even the condemned man—so sure of his own guilt—should see it. The man called Cain would never do what you just offered to do. For anyone.”
“I am Cain!”
“Even if I were forced to agree that you were, you’re not now.”
“The ultimate rehabilitation? A self-induced lobotomy? Total loss of recall? That happens to be the truth, but it won’t stop anyone who’s looking for me. It won’t stop him—them—from. pulling a trigger.”
“That happens to be the worst, and I’m not ready to concede it.”
“Then you’re not looking at the facts.”
“I’m looking at two facts you seem to have disregarded. I can’t. I’ll live with them for the rest of my life because I’m responsible. Two men were killed in the same brutal way because they stood between you and a message someone was trying to send you. Through me.”
“You saw Corbelier’s message. How many bullet holes were there? Ten, fifteen?”
“Then he was used! You heard him on the phone and so did I. He wasn’t lying; he was trying to help us. If not you, certainly me.”
“It’s … possible.”
“Anything’s possible. I have no answers, Jason, only discrepancies, things that can’t be explained—that should be explained. You haven’t once, ever, displayed a need or a drive for what you say you might have been. And without those things a man like that couldn’t be. Or you couldn’t be him.”
“I’m him.”
“Listen to me. You’re very dear to me, my darling, and that could blind me, I know it. But I also know something about myself. I’m no wide-eyed flower child; I’ve seen a share of this world, and I look very hard and very closely at those who attract me. Perhaps to confirm what I like to think are my values—and they are values. Mine, nobody else’s.” She stopped for a moment and moved away from him. “I’ve watched a man being tortured—by himself and by others—and he won’t cry out. You may have silent screams, but you won’t let them be anyone else’s burden but your own. Instead, you probe and dig and try to understand. And that, my friend, is not the mind of a cold-blooded killer, any more than what you’ve done and want to do for me. I don’t know what you were before, or what crimes you’re guilty of, but they’re not what you believe—what others want you to believe. Which brings me back to those values I spoke of. I know myself. I couldn’t love the man you say you are. I love the man I know you are. You just confirmed it again. No killer would make the offer you just made. And that offer, sir, is respectfully rejected.”
“You’re a goddamn fool!” exploded Jason. “I can help you; you can’t help me! Leave me something for Christ’s sake!”
“I won’t! Not that way ...” Suddenly Marie broke off. Her lips parted. “I think I just did,” she said, whispering.
“Did what?” asked Bourne angrily.
“Give us both something.” She turned back to him. “I just said it; it’s been there a long time. ‘What others want you to believe …’ ”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your crimes ... what others want you to believe are your crimes.”
“They’re there. They’re mine.”
“Wait a minute. Suppose they were there but they weren’t yours? Suppose the evidence was planted—as expertly as it was planted against me in Zurich—but it belongs to someone else. Jason—you don’t know when you lost your memory.”
“Port Noir.”
“That’s when you began to build one, not when you lost it. Before Port Noir; it could explain so much. It could explain you, the contradiction between you and the man people think you are.”
“You’re wrong. Nothing could explain the memories—the images—that come back to me.”
“Maybe you just remember what you’ve been told,” said Marie. “Over and over and over again. Until there was nothing else. Photographs, recordings, visual and aural stimulae.”
“You’re describing a walking, functioning vegetable who’s been brainwashed. That’s not me.”
She looked at him, speaking gently. “I’m describing an intelligent, very ill man whose background conformed with what other men were looking for. Do you know how easily such a man might be found? They’re in hospitals everywhere, in private sanitoriums, in military wards.” She paused, then continued quickly. “That newspaper article told another truth. I’m reasonably proficient with computers; anyone doing what I do would be. If I were looking for a curve-example that incorporated isolated factors, I’d know how to do it. Conversely, someone looking for a man hospitalized for amnesia, whose background incorporated specific skills, languages, racial characteristics, the medical data banks could provide candidates. God knows, not many in your case; perhaps only a few, perhaps only one. But one man was all they were looking for, all they needed.”
Bourne glanced at the countryside, trying to pry open the steel doors of his mind, trying to find a semblance of the hope she felt. “What you’re saying is that I’m a reproduced illusion,” he said, making the statement flatly.
“That’s the end effect, but it’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s possible you’ve been manipulated. Used. It would explain so much.” She touched his hand. “You tell me there are times when things want to burst out of you—blow your head apart.”
“Words—places, names—they trigger things.”
“Jason, isn’t it possible they trigger the false things? The things you’ve been told over and over again, but you can’t relive. You can’t see them clearly, because they’re not you.”
“I doubt it. I’ve seen what I can do. I’ve done them before.”
“You could have done them for other reasons! ... Goddamn you, I’m fighting for my life! For both our lives! ... All right! You can think, you can feel. Think now, feel now! Look at me and tell me you’ve looked inside yourself, inside your thoughts and feelings, and you know without a doubt you’re an assassin called Cain! If you can do that—really do that—then bring me to Zurich, take the blame for everything, and get out of my life! But if you can’t, stay with me and let me help you. And love me, for God’s sake. Love me, Jason”
Bourne took her hand, holding it firmly, as one might an angry, trembling child’s. “It’s not a question of feeling or thinking. I saw the account at the Gemeinschaft; the entries go back a long time. They correspond with all the things I’ve learned.”
“But that account, those entries, could have been created yesterday, or last week, or six months ago. Everything you’ve heard and read about yourself could be part of a pattern designed by those who want you to take Cain’s place. You’re not Cain, but they want you to think you are, want others to think you are. But there’s someone out there who knows you’re not Cain and he’s trying to tell you. I have my proof, too. My lover’s alive, but two friends are dead because they got between you and the one who’s sending you the message, who’s trying to save your life. They were killed by the same people who want to sacrifice you to Carlos in place of Cain. You said before that everything fit. It didn’t, Jason, but this does! It explains you.”
“A hollow shell who doesn’t even own the memories he thinks he has? With demons running around inside kicking hell out of the walls? It’s not a pleasant prospect.”
“Those aren’t demons, my darling. They’re parts of you—angry, furious, screaming to get out because they don’t belong in the shell you’ve given them.”
And if I blow that shell apart, what’ll I find?”
“Many things. Some good, some bad, a great deal that’s been hurt. But Cain won’t be there, I promise you that. I believe in you, my darling. Please don’t give up.”
He kept his distance, a glass wall between them. “And if we’re wrong? Finally wrong? What then?”
“Leave me quickly. Or kill me. I don’t care.”
“I love you.”
“I know. That’s why I’m not afraid.”
“I found two telephone numbers in Lavier’s office. The first was for Zurich, the other here in Paris. With any luck, they can lead me to the one number I need.”
“New York? Treadstone?”
“Yes. The answer’s there. If I’m not Cain, someone at that number knows who I am.”

They drove back to Paris on the assumption that they would be far less obvious among the crowds of the city than in an isolated country inn. A blond-haired man wearing tortoise-shell glasses, and a striking but stern-faced woman, devoid of makeup, and with her hair pulled back like an intense graduate student at the Sorbonne, were not out of place in Montmartre. They took a room at the Terrasse on the rue de Maistre, registering as a married couple from Brussels.
In the room, they stood for a moment, no words necessary for what each was seeing and feeling. They came together, touching, holding, closing out the abusive world that refused them peace, that kept them balancing on taut wires next to one another, high above a dark abyss; if either fell, it was the end for both.
Bourne could not change his color for the immediate moment. It would be false, and there was no room for artifice. “We need some rest,” he said. “We’ve got to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day.”
They made love. Gently, completely, each with the other in the warm, rhythmic comfort of the bed. And there was a moment, a foolish moment, when adjustment of an angle was breathlessly necessary and they laughed. It was a quiet laugh, at first even an embarrassed laugh, but the observation was there, the appraisal of foolishness intrinsic to something very deep between them. They held each other more fiercely when the moment passed, more and more intent on sweeping away the awful sounds and the terrible sights of a dark world that kept them spinning in its winds. They were suddenly breaking out of that world, plunging into a much better one where sunlight and blue water replaced the darkness. They raced toward it feverishly, furiously, and then they burst through and found it.
Spent, they fell asleep, their fingers entwined.
Bourne woke first, aware of the horns and the engines in the Paris traffic below in the streets. He looked at his watch; it was ten past one in the afternoon. They had slept nearly five hours, probably less than they needed, but it was enough. It was going to be a long day. Doing what, he was not sure; he only knew that there were two telephone numbers that had to lead him to a third. In New York.
He turned to Marie, breathing deeply beside him, her face—her striking, lovely face—angled down on the edge of the pillow, her lips parted, inches from his lips. He kissed her and she reached for him, her eyes still closed.
“You’re a frog and I’ll make you a prince,” she said in a sleep-filled voice. “Or is it the other way around?”
“As expanding as it may be, that’s not in my present frame of reference.”
“Then you’ll have to stay a frog. Hop around, little frog. Show off for me.”
“No temptations. I only hop when I’m fed flies.”
“Frogs eat flies? I guess they do. Shudder; that’s awful.”
“Come on, open your eyes. We’ve both got to start hopping. We’ve got to start hunting.”
She blinked and looked at him. “Hunting for what?”
“For me,” he said.

From a telephone booth on the rue Lafayette, a collect call was placed to a number in Zurich by a Mr. Briggs. Bourne reasoned that Jacqueline Lavier would have wasted no time sending out her alarms; one had to have been flashed to Zurich.
When he heard the ring in Switzerland, Jason stepped back and handed the phone to Marie. She knew what to say.
She had no chance to say it. The international operator in Zurich came on the line.
“We regret that the number you have called is no longer in service.”
“It was the other day,” broke in Marie. “This is an emergency, operator. Do you have another number?”
“The telephone is no longer in service, madame. There is no alternate number.”
“I may have been given the wrong one. It’s most urgent. Could you give me the name of the party who had this number?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“I told you; it’s an emergency! May I speak with your superior, please?”
“He would not be able to help you. This number is an unpublished listing. Good afternoon, madame.”
The connection was broken. “It’s been disconnected,” she said.
“It took too goddamn long to find that out,” replied Bourne, looking up and down the street. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You think they could have traced it here? In Paris? To a public phone?’
“Within three minutes an exchange can be determined, a district pinpointed. In four, they can narrow the blocks down to half a dozen.”
“How do you know that?”
“I wish I could tell you. Let’s go.”
“Jason. Why not wait out of sight? And watch?”
“Because I don’t know what to watch for and they do. They’ve got a photograph to go by; they could station men all over the area.”
“I don’t look anything like the picture in the papers.”
“Not you. Me. Let’s go!”
They walked rapidly within the erratic ebb and flow of the crowds until they reached the boulevard Malesherbes ten blocks away, and another telephone booth, this with a different exchange from the first. This time there were no operators to go through; this was Paris. Marie stepped inside, coins in her hand and dialed; she was prepared.
But the words that came over the line so astonished her:
“La résidence du Général Villiers. Bonjour? ... All?? All??”
For a moment Marie was unable to speak. She simply stared at the telephone. “Je m’excuse,” she whispered. “Une erreur.” She hung up.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bourne, opening the glass door. “What happened? Who was it?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I just reached the house of one of the most respected and powerful men in France.”