The Bourne Identity

26

The old soldier walked in silence beside the younger man down the moonlit path in the Bois de Boulogne. Neither spoke, for too much had already been said—admitted, challenged, denied and reaffirmed. Villiers had to reflect and analyze, to accept or violently reject what he had heard. His life would be far more bearable if he could strike back in anger, attack the lie and find his sanity again. But he could not do that with impunity; he was a soldier and to turn away was not in him.
There was too much truth in the younger man. It was in his eyes, in his voice, in his every gesture that asked for understanding. The man without a name was not lying. The ultimate treason was in Villiers’ house. It explained so many things he had not dared to question before. An old man wanted to weep.
For the man without a memory there was little to change or invent; the chameleon was not called upon. His story was convincing because the most vital part was based in the truth. He had to find Carlos, learn what the assassin knew; there would be no life for him if he failed. Beyond this he would say nothing. There was no mention of Marie St. Jacques, or the Ile de Port Noir, or a message being sent by person or persons unknown, or a walking hollow shell that might or might not be someone he was or was not—who could not even be sure that the fragments of memories he possessed were really his own. None of this was spoken of.
Instead, he recounted everything he knew about the assassin called Carlos. That knowledge was so vast that during the telling Villiers stared at him in astonishment, recognizing information he knew to be highly classified, shocked at new and startling data that was in concert with a dozen existing theories, but to his ears never before put forth with such clarity. Because of his son, the general had been given access to his country’s most secret files on Carlos, and nothing in those records matched the younger man’s array of facts.
“This woman you spoke with in Argenteuil, the one who calls my house, who admitted being a courier to you ...”
“Her name is Lavier,” Bourne interrupted.
The general paused. “Thank you. She saw through you; she had your photograph taken.”
“Yes.” “They had no photograph before?”
“No.”
“So as you hunt Carlos, he in turn hunts you. But you have no photograph; you only know two couriers, one of which was at my house.”
“Yes.”
“Speaking with my wife.”
“Yes.”
The old man turned away. The period of silence had begun.

They came to the end of the path, where there was a miniature lake. It was bordered with white gravel, benches spaced every ten to fifteen feet, circling the water like a guard of honor surrounding a grave of black marble. They walked to the second bench. Villiers broke his silence.
“I should like to sit down,” he said. “With age there comes a paucity of stamina. It often embarrasses me.”
“It shouldn’t,” said Bourne, sitting down beside him.
“It shouldn’t,” agreed the general, “but it does.” He paused for a moment, adding quietly, “Frequently in the company of my wife.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Jason.
“You mistake me.” The old man turned to the younger, “I’m not referring to the bed. There are simply times when I find it necessary to curtail activities—leave a dinner party early, absent myself on weekends to the Mediterranean, or decline a few days on the slopes in Gstaad.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“My wife and I are often apart. In many ways we live quite separate lives, taking pleasure, of course, in each other’s pursuits.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Must I embarrass myself further?” said Villiers. “When an old man finds a stunning young woman anxious to share his life, certain things are understood, others not so readily. There is, of course, financial security and in my case a degree of public exposure. Creature comforts, entry into the great houses, easy friendship with the celebrated; it’s all very understandable. In exchange for these things, one brings a beautiful companion into his home, shows her off among his peers—a form of continuing virility, as it were. But there are always doubts.” The old soldier stopped for several moments; what he had to say was not easy for him. “Will she take a lover?” he continued softly. “Does she long for a younger, firmer body, one more in tune with her own? If she does, one can accept it—even be relieved, I imagine—hoping to God she has the sense to be discreet. A cuckolded statesman loses his constituency faster than a sporadic drunk; it means he’s fully lost his grip. There are other worries. Will she abuse his name? Publicly condemn an adversary whom one is trying to convince? These are the inclinations of the young; they are manageable, part of the risks in the exchange. But there is one underlying doubt that if proved justified cannot be tolerated. And that is if she is part of a design. From the beginning.”
“You’ve felt it then?” asked Jason quietly.
“Feelings are not reality!” shot back the old soldier vehemently. “They have no place in observing the field.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
Villiers’ head arched back, then fell forward, his eyes on the water. “There could be a simple explanation for what we both saw tonight. I pray there is, and I shall give her every opportunity to provide it.” The old man paused again. “But in my heart I know there isn’t. I knew it the moment you told me about Les Classiques. I looked across the street, at the door of my house, and suddenly a number of things fell painfully into place. For the past two hours I have played the devil’s advocate; there is no point in continuing. There was my son before there was this woman.”
“But you said you trusted her judgment. That she was a great help to you.”
“True. You see, I wanted to trust her, desperately wanted to trust her. The easiest thing in the world is to convince yourself that you’re right. As one grows old it is easier still.”
“What fell into place for you?”
“The very help she gave me, the very trust I placed in her.” Villiers turned and looked at Jason. “You have extraordinary knowledge about Carlos. I’ve studied those files as closely as any man alive, for I would give more than any man alive to see him caught and executed, I alone the firing squad. And as swollen as they are, those files do not approach what you know. Yet your concentration is solely on his kills, his methods of assassination. You’ve overlooked the other side of Carlos. He not only sells his gun, he sells a country’s secrets.”
“I know that,” Bourne said. “It’s not the side—”
“For example,” continued the general, as if he had not heard Jason. “I have access to classified documents dealing with France’s military and nuclear security. Perhaps five other men—all above suspicion—share that access. Yet with damning regularity we find that Moscow has learned this, Washington that, Peking something else.”
“You discussed those things with your wife?” asked Bourne, surprised.
“Of course not. Whenever I bring such papers home, they are placed in a vault in my office. No one may enter that room except in my presence. There is only one other person who has a key, one other person who knows the whereabouts of the alarm switch. My wife.”
“I’d think that would be as dangerous as discussing the material. Both could be forced from her.”
“There was a reason. I’m at the age when the unexpected is a daily occurrence; I commend you to the obituary pages. If anything happened to me she is instructed to telephone the Conseiller Militaire, go down to my office, and stay by that vault until the security personnel arrive.”
“Couldn’t she simply stay by the door?”
“Men of my years have been known to pass away at their desks.” Villiers closed his eyes. “All along it was she. The one house, the one place, no one believed possible.”
“Are you sure?”
“More than I dare admit to myself. She was the one who insisted on the marriage. I repeatedly brought up the disparity of our ages, but she would have none of it. It was the years together, she claimed, not those that separated our birth dates. She offered to sign an agreement renouncing any claims to the Villiers estate and, of course, I would have none of that, for it was proof of her commitment to me. The adage is quite right: The old fool is the complete fool. Yet there were always the doubts; they came with the trips, with the unexpected separations.”
“Unexpected?”
“She has many interests, forever demanding her attention. A Franco-Swiss museum in Grenoble, a fine arts gallery in Amsterdam, a monument to the Resistance in Boulogne-sur-Mer, an idiotic oceanography conference in Marseilles. We had a heated argument over that one. I needed her in Paris; there were diplomatic functions I had to attend and wanted her with me. She would not stay. It was as though she were being ordered to be here and there and somewhere else at a given moment.”
Grenoble—near the Swiss border, an hour from Zurich. Amsterdam. Boulogne-sur-Mer—on the Channel, an hour from London. Marseilles ... Carlos.
“When was the conference in Marseilles?” asked Jason.
“Last August, I believe. Toward the latter part of the month.”
“On August 26, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Ambassador Howard Leland was assassinated on the Marseilles waterfront.”
“Yes, I know,” said Villiers. “You spoke of it before. I mourn the passing of the man, not his judgments.” The old soldier stopped; he looked at Bourne. “My God,” he whispered. “She had to be with him. Carlos summoned her and she came to him. She obeyed.”
“I never went this far,” said Jason. “I swear to you I thought of her as a relay—a blind relay. I never went this far.”
Suddenly, from the old man’s throat came a scream—deep and filled with agony and hatred. He brought his hands to his face, his head arched back once again in the moonlight; and he wept.
Bourne did not move; there was nothing he could do. “I’m sorry,” he said.
The general regained control. “And so am I,” he replied finally. “I apologize.”
“No need to.”
“I think there is. We will discuss it no further. I shall do what has to be done.”
“Which is?”
The soldier sat erect on the bench, his jaw firm. “You can ask that?”
“I have to ask it.”
“Having done what she’s done is no different from having killed the child of mine she did not bear. She pretended to hold his memory dear. Yet she was and is an accomplice to his murder. And all the while she committed a second treason against the nation I have served throughout my life.”
“You’re going to kill her?”
“I’m going to kill her. She will tell me the truth and she will die.”
“She’ll deny everything you say.”
“I doubt it.”
“That’s crazy!”
“Young man, I’ve spent over half a century trapping and fighting the enemies of France, even when they were Frenchmen. The truth will be heard.”
“What do you think she’s going to do? Sit there and listen to you and calmly agree that she’s guilty?”
“She’ll do nothing calmly. But she’ll agree; shell proclaim it.”
“Why would she?”
“Because when I accuse her she’ll have the opportunity to kill me. When she makes the attempt, I will have my explanation, won’t I?”
“You’d take that risk?”
“I must take it.”
“Suppose she doesn’t make the attempt, doesn’t try to kill you?”
“That would be another explanation,” Villiers said. “In that unlikely event, I should look to my flanks if I were you, monsieur.” He shook his head. “It will not happen. We both know it, I far more clearly than you.”
“Listen to me,” insisted Jason. “You say there was your son first Think of him! Go after the killer, not the accomplice. She’s an enormous wound for you, but he’s a greater wound. Get the man who killed your son! In the end, you’ll get both. Don’t confront her; not yet. Use what you know against Carlos. Hunt him with me. No one’s ever been this close.”
“You ask more than I can give,” said the old man.
“Not if you think about your son. If you think of yourself, it is. But not if you think of the rue du Bac.”
“You are excessively cruel, monsieur.”
“I’m right and you know it.”
A high cloud floated by in the night sky, briefly blocking the light of the moon. Darkness was complete; Jason shivered. The old soldier spoke, resignation in his voice.
“Yes, you are right,” he said. “Excessively cruel and excessively right. It’s the killer, not the whore, who must be stopped. How do we work together? Hunt together?”
Bourne closed his eyes briefly in relief. “Don’t do anything. Carlos has to be looking for me all over Paris. I’ve killed his men, uncovered a drop, found a contact. I’m too close to him. Unless we’re both mistaken, your telephone will get busier and busier. I’ll make sure of it.”
“How?”
“I’ll intercept a half a dozen employees of Les Classiques. Several clerks, the Lavier woman, Bergeron maybe, and certainly the man at the switchboard. They’ll talk. And so will I. That phone of yours will be busy as hell.”
“But what of me? What do I do?”
“Stay home. Say you’re not feeling well. And whenever that phone rings, stay near whoever else answers. Listen to the conversation, try to pick up codes, question the servants as to what was said to them. You could even listen in. If you hear something, fine, but you probably won’t. Whoever’s on the line will know you’re there. Still, you’ll frustrate the relay. And depending upon where your wife is—”
“The whore is,” broke in the old soldier.
“—in Carlos’ hierarchy, we might even force him to come out.”
“Again, how?”
“His lines of communication will be disrupted. The secure, unthinkable relay will be interfered with. He’ll demand a meeting with your wife.”
“He would hardly announce the whereabouts.”
“He has to tell her.” Bourne paused, another thought coming into focus. “If the disruption is severe enough, there’ll be that one phone call, or that one person you don’t know coming to the house, and shortly after, your wife will tell you she has to go somewhere. When it happens insist she leave a number where she can be reached. Be firm about it; you’re not trying to stop her from going, but you must be able to reach her. Tell her anything—use the relationship she developed. Say it’s a highly sensitive military matter you can’t talk about until you get a clearance. Then you want to discuss it with her before you render a judgment. She might jump at it.”
“What will it serve?”
“She’ll be telling you where she is. Maybe where Carlos is. If not Carlos, certainly others closer to him. Then reach me. I’ll give you a hotel and a room number. The name on the registry is meaningless, don’t bother about it.”
“Why don’t you give me your real name?”
“Because if you ever mentioned it—consciously or unconsciously—you’d be dead.”
“I’m not senile.”
“No, you’re not. But you’re a man who’s been’ hurt very badly. As badly as a person can be hurt, I think. You may risk your life; I won’t.”
“You’re a strange man, monsieur.”
“Yes. If I’m not there when you call, a woman will answer. She’ll know where I am. We’ll set up timing for messages.”
“A woman?” the general drew back. “You’ve said nothing about a woman, or anyone else.”
“There is no one else. Without her I wouldn’t be alive. Carlos is hunting both of us; he’s tried to kill both of us.”
“Does she know about me?”
“Yes. She’s the one who said it couldn’t be true. That you couldn’t be allied with Carlos. I thought you were.”
“Perhaps I’ll meet her.”
“Not likely. Until Carlos is taken—if he can be taken—we can’t be seen with you. Of all people, not you. Afterwards—if there is an afterwards—you may not want to be seen with us. With me. I’m being honest with you.”
“I understand that and I respect it In any event, thank this woman for me. Thank her for thinking I could be no part of Carlos.”
Bourne nodded. “Can you be sure your private line isn’t tapped?”
“Absolutely. It is swept on a regular basis; all the telephones restricted by the Conseiller are.”
“Whenever you expect a call from me, answer the phone and clear your throat twice. I’ll know it’s you. If for any reason you can’t talk, tell me to call your secretary in the morning. I’ll call back in ten minutes. What’s the number?”
Villiers gave it to him. “Your hotel?” asked the general.
“The Terrasse. Rue de Maistre, Montmartre. Room 420.”
“When will you begin?”
“As soon as possible. Noon, today.”
“Be like a wolfpack,” said the old soldier, leaning forward, a commander instructing his officer corps. “Strike swiftly.”