The Bourne ultimatum

27

“I know you!” cried Bourne. “Paris ... years ago ... your name is Lavier ... Jacqueline Lavier. You had one of those dress shops ... Les Classiques—St.-Honoré—Carlos’s drop in the Faubourg! I found you in a confessional booth in Neuilly-sur-Seine. I thought you were dead.” The woman’s sharp, creased, middle-aged fade was contorted in frenzy. She tried to twist out of his grip, but Jason stepped sideways as she pivoted, yanking her away in a sweeping circular motion, crashing her against the wall, pinning her, his left forearm across her throat. “But you weren’t dead. You were part of the trap that ended at the Louvre, blew apart at the Louvre! ... By Christ, you’re coming with me. Men died in that trap—Frenchmen died—and I couldn’t stay around and tell them how it happened or who was responsible. ... In my country, you kill a cop, it doesn’t go off the books. It’s no different over here; and when it’s cops, they don’t stop looking. Oh, they’ll remember the Louvre, they’ll remember their men!”
“You’re wrong!” choked the woman, her wide green eyes bulging. “I’m not who you think I am—”
“You’re Lavier! Queen of the Faubourg, sole contact to the Jackal’s woman, the general’s wife. Don’t tell me I’m wrong ... I followed the two of you out to Neuilly—to that church with the bells ringing and priests everywhere—one of them Carlos! Moments later his whore came back out, but you didn’t. She left in a hurry, so I ran inside and described you to an old priest—if he was a priest—and he told me you were in the second confessional from the left. I walked over and pulled the curtain and there you were. Dead. I thought you’d just been killed and everything was happening so fast. Carlos had to be there! He was within my reach, my gun—or maybe I was within his. I raced around like a maniac and finally I saw him! Out in the street in his priestly black clothes—I saw him, I knew it was him because he saw me and started to run through the traffic. And then I lost him, I lost him! ... But I had a card to play. You. I passed the word—Lavier’s dead. ... It was just what I was supposed to do, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”
“I tell you again, you are wrong!” The woman no longer struggled; it was pointless. Instead, she remained rigid against the wall, no part of her body moving, as if by doing so she might be permitted to speak. “Will you listen to me?” she asked with difficulty, Jason’s forearm still pressed against her throat.
“Forget it, lady,” answered Bourne. “You’re going out of here limp—a Sister of Charity being helped, not assaulted, by a stranger. You’re about to have a fainting spell. At your age it’s a fairly common occurrence, isn’t it?”
“Wait.”
“Too late.”
“We must talk!”
“We will.” Releasing his arm, Jason instantly crashed both his hands simultaneously into the woman’s shoulder blades where the tendons weave into the neck muscles. She collapsed; he caught her in the fall and carried her out of the narrow street as an adoring supplicant might a religious social worker. The dawn light was beginning to fill the sky, and several early risers, one a young jogger in shorts, converged on the man carrying the nun. “She’s been with my wife and sick children for nearly two days without sleep!” pleaded the Chameleon in street French. “Will someone please find me a taxi so I can take her back to her convent in the ninth arrondissement?”
“I shall!” roared the young runner. “There’s an all-night stand on the rue de Sèvres, and I’m very fast!”
“You are a gift, monsieur,” said Jason, appreciating but instantly disliking the all too confident, all too young jogger.
Six minutes later the taxi arrived, the youth inside. “I told the driver you have money,” he said, climbing out. “I trust it’s so.”
“Of course. And thanks.”
“Tell the sister what I did,” added the young man in running shorts, helping Bourne gently insert the unconscious woman into the back of the taxi. “I’ll need all the help I can get when my time comes.”
“I trust that’s not imminent,” said Jason, trying to return the youth’s grin.
“Not likely! I represent my firm in the marathon.” The overgrown child began running in place.
“Thanks again. I hope you win the next one.”
“Tell the sister to pray for me!” cried the athlete, racing away.
“The Bois de Boulogne,” said Bourne, closing the door and addressing the driver.
“The Bois? That ventilating nut told me it was an emergency! You had to get the nun to a hospital.”
“She drank too much wine, what can I tell you?”
“The Bois de Boulogne,” said the driver, nodding his head. “Let her walk it off. I have a second cousin in the Lyons convent. She gets out for a week she’s soused to the temples. Who can blame her?”
The bench on the graveled path of the Bois progressively received the warm rays of the early sun as the middle-aged woman in the religious habit began shaking her head. “How are you doing, Sister?” asked Jason, sitting beside his prisoner.
“I believe I was struck by an army tank,” replied the woman, blinking and opening her mouth to swallow air. “At least a tank.”
“Which I suspect you know more about than a welfare wagon from the Magdalen Sisters of Charity.”
“Quite so,” agreed the woman.
“Don’t bother to look for your gun,” said Bourne. “I removed it from the very expensive belt under your habit.”
“I’m glad you recognized the value. It’s part of what we must talk about. ... Since I am not in a police station, I assume you’ve granted me my request to talk.”
“Only if what you say suits my purpose, I assume you understand that.”
“But it must, you see. Suit your purpose, as you say. I’ve failed. I’ve been taken. I’m not where I should be, and whatever the time is, the light tells me I’m too late for excuses. Also, my bicycle has either disappeared or is still chained to the lamppost.”
“I didn’t take it.”
“Then I’m a dead woman. And if it’s gone I’m just as dead, don’t you see?”
“Because you’ve disappeared? Not where you’re supposed to be?”
“Of course.”
“You’re Lavier!”
“That’s true. I’m Lavier. But I’m not the woman you knew. You knew my sister Jacqueline—I am Dominique Lavier. We were close in age and since we were children strongly resembled each other. But you are not wrong about Neuilly-sur-Seine or what you saw there. My sister was killed because she broke a cardinal rule, committed a mortal sin, if you like. She panicked and led you to Carlos’s woman, his most cherished and useful secret.”
“Me? ... You know who I am?”
“All Paris—the Jackal’s Paris—knows who you are, Monsieur Bourne. Not by sight, I grant you, but they know you are here and they know you’re tracking Carlos.”
“And you’re part of that Paris?”
“I am.”
“Good Christ, lady, he killed your sister!”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Still you work for him?”
“There are times when a person’s choices are considerably reduced. Say, to live or to die. Until six years ago when Les Classiques changed ownership, it was vital to the monseigneur. I took Jacqui’s place—”
“Just like that?”
“It wasn’t difficult. I was younger, and more to the point I looked younger.” The lines in the middle-aged Lavier’s face cracked with a brief pensive smile. “My sister always said it came with living on the Mediterranean. ... At any rate, cosmetic surgery is commonplace in the world of haute couture. Jacqui supposedly went to Switzerland for a face-lift ... and I returned to Paris after eight weeks of preparation.”
“How could you? Knowing what you knew, how the hell could you?”
“I did not know earlier what I learned later, by which time it was irrelevant. By then I had the choice I just mentioned. To live or to die.”
“It never occurred to you to go to the police or the S?reté?”
“Regarding Carlos?” The woman looked at Bourne as if rebuking a foolish child. “As the British say in Cap Ferrat, surely you jest.”
“So you blithely went into the killing game?”
“Not consciously. I was gradually led into it, my education slow, piecemeal. ... In the beginning I was told Jacqueline had died in a boating accident with her lover of the month and that I would be enormously well paid to carry on in her place. Les Classiques was far more than a grand salon—”
“Far more,” agreed Jason, interrupting; “It was the drop for France’s most highly classified military and intelligence secrets funneled to the Jackal by his woman, a celebrated general’s wife.”
“I was not aware of that until long after the general killed her. Villiers was his name, I believe.”
“It was.” Jason looked across the path at the still dark waters of a pond, white lilies floating in clusters. Images came back to him. “I’m the one who found him, found them. Villiers was in a high-backed chair, a gun in his hand, his wife lying on the bed, naked, bleeding, dead. He was going to kill himself. It was a proper execution for a traitor, he said, for his devotion to his wife had blinded his judgment and in that blindness he had betrayed his beloved France. ... I convinced him there was another way; it almost worked—thirteen years ago. In a strange house on Seventy-first Street in New York.”
“I don’t know what happened in New York, but General Villiers left instructions that after his death what happened in Paris was to be made part of the public record. When he died and the truth was known, it was said that Carlos went mad with fury, killing several high-ranking military commanders simply because they were generals.”
“It’s all an old story,” interrupted Bourne sharply. “This is now, thirteen years later. What happens now?”
“I don’t know, monsieur. My choices are zero, aren’t they? One or the other of you will kill me, I suppose.”
“Maybe not. Help me take him and you’re free of both of us. You can go back to the Mediterranean and live in peace. You won’t even have to disappear—you merely return to wherever it is after a number of profitable years in Paris.”
“Disappear?” asked Lavier, studying the haggard face of her captor. “As in the word ‘vanish’?”
“No need for that. Carlos can’t reach you because he’ll be dead.”
“Yes, I understand that part. It’s the disappearance that interests me along with the ‘profitable’ years. Does this profit come from you?”
“Yes.”
“I see. ... Is that what you offered Santos? A profitable disappearance?”
It was as if the words were hard flesh and had slapped him across the face. Jason looked at his prisoner. “So it was Santos, after all,” he said softly. “The Lefebvre was a trap. Christ, he’s good.”
“He’s dead, Le Coeur du Soldat cleaned out and closed down.”
“What?” Stunned, Bourne again stared at the Lavier woman. “That was his reward for cornering me?”
“No, for betraying Carlos.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The monseigneur has eyes everywhere, I’m sure that’s no surprise to you. Santos, the total recluse, was observed sending several heavy boxes out with his main food supplier, and yester day morning he did not clip and water his precious garden, a summer ritual as predictable as the sun. A man was sent to the supplier’s warehouse and opened the boxes—”
“Books,” broke in Jason quietly.
“Placed in storage until further instructions,” completed Dominique Lavier. “Santos’s departure was to be swift and secret.”
“And Carlos knew there was no one in Moscow giving out a telephone number.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. ... What kind of man was Santos?”
“I never knew him, never even saw him. I’ve only heard the downstairs rumors, which weren’t many.”
“I haven’t time for many. What were they?”
“Apparently he was a very large man—”
“I know that,” interrupted Jason impatiently. “And from the books we both know that he was well read, probably well educated, if his speech was indicative. Where did he come from and why did he work for the Jackal?”
“They say he was Cuban and fought in Fidel’s revolution, that he was a deep thinker, as well as a law student with Castro, and once a great athlete. Then, of course, as in all revolutions, the internal strife sours the victories—at least that’s what my old friends from the May Day barricades tell me.”
“Translation, please?”
“Fidel was jealous of the leaders of certain cadres, especially Che Guevara and the man you knew as Santos. Where Castro was larger than life, those two were larger than he was, and Fidel could not tolerate the competition. Che was sent on a mission that ended his life, and trumped up counterrevolutionary charges were brought against Santos. He was within an hour of being executed when Carlos and his men broke into the prison and spirited him away.”
“Spirited? Dressed as priests, no doubt.”
“I have no doubts. The Church with all its medieval lunacies once held sway over Cuba.”
“You sound bitter.”
“I’m a woman, the Pontiff is not; he’s merely medieval.”
“Judgment decreed. ... So Santos joined forces with Carlos, two disillusioned Marxists in search of their personal cause—or maybe their own personal Hollywood.”
“That’s beyond me, monsieur, but if I vaguely understand you, the fantasy belongs to the brilliant Carlos; the bitter disillusion was Santos’s fate. He owed his life to the Jackal, so why not give it? What was left for him? ... Until you came along.”
“That’s all I need. Thanks. I just wanted a few gaps filled in.”
“Gaps?”
“Things I didn’t know.”
“What do we do now, Monsieur Bourne? Wasn’t that your original question?”
“What do you want to do, Madame Lavier?”
“I know I don’t want to die. And I am not Madame Lavier in the marital sense. The restrictions never appealed to me and the benefits seemed unnecessary. For years I was a high-priced call girl in Monte Carlo, Nice and Cap Ferrat until my looks and my body deserted me. Still, I once had friends from the old days, intermittent lovers who took care of me for old times’ sake. Most are dead now, a pity, really.”
“I thought you said you were enormously well paid for assuming your sister’s identity.”
“Oh, I was and to a degree I still am, for I’m still valuable. I move among the elite of Paris, where gossip abounds, and that’s often helpful. I have a beautiful flat on the avenue Montaigne. Antiques, fine paintings, servants, charge accounts—everything a woman once in high fashion should be expected to have for the circles she still travels in: And money. Every month my bank receives eighty thousand francs from Geneva—somewhat more than enough for me to pay the bills. For, you see, I have to pay them, no one else can do so.”
“So then you’ve got money.”
“No, monsieur. I have a life-style, not money. That’s the way of the Jackal. Except for the old men, he pays only for what he gets in terms of immediate service. If the money from Geneva does not arrive at my bank on the tenth of every month, I’d be thrown out in thirty days. But then if Carlos decided to get rid of me, there would be no need for Geneva. I’d be finished—as I am no doubt finished now. If I returned to my flat in the Montaigne this morning, I’d never come out ... as my sister never came out of that church in Neuilly-sur-Seine. At least not alive.”
“You’re convinced of that?”
“Of course. The stop where I chained the bicycle was made to receive instructions from one of the old men. The orders were precise and to be precisely followed. A woman I know would meet me in twenty minutes at a bakery in Saint-Germain where we were to exchange clothes. She was to proceed to the Magdalen mission and I was to meet a courier from Athens in a room at the H?tel Trémoille.”
“The Magdalen mission ... ? You mean those women on the bicycles were actually nuns?”
“Complete with vows of chastity and poverty, monsieur. I am a frequent visiting superior from the convent at Saint-Malo.”
“And the woman at the bakery. Is she—?”
“She falls from grace now and then, but she’s a perfectly splendid administrator.”
“Jesus,” mumbled Bourne.
“He’s frequently on their lips. ... Do you see now the hopelessness of my position?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Then I am forced to wonder if you really are the Chameleon. I was not at the bakery. The meeting with the Greek courier never took place. Where was I?”
“You were delayed. The bicycle chain broke; you got grazed by one of those trucks on the rue Lecourbe. Hell, you got mugged. What’s the difference? You were delayed.”
“How long has it been since you rendered me unconscious?”
Jason looked at his watch, now easily seen in the bright morning sunlight. “Something over an hour-plus, I think; perhaps an hour and a half. Considering how you were dressed, the taxi driver cruised around trying to find a place to park where we could help you to a bench on the path with as little scrutiny as possible. He was well paid for his assistance.”
“An hour and a half?” asked Lavier pointedly.
“So?”
“So why didn’t I call the bakery or the H?tel Trémoille?”
“Complications? ... No, too easily verified,” added Bourne, shaking his head.
“Or?” Lavier locked her large green eyes with his. “Or, monsieur?”
“The boulevard Lefebvre,” replied Jason slowly, softly. “The trap. As I reversed his on me, he reversed mine for him three hours later. Then I broke the strategy and took you.”
“Exactly.” The once and former whore of Monte Carlo nodded. “And he cannot know what transpired between us ... therefore, I’m marked for execution. A pawn is removed, for she is merely a pawn. She can tell the authorities nothing of substance; she’s never seen the Jackal; she can only repeat the gossip of lowly subordinates.”
“You’ve never seen him?”
“I may have, but not to my knowledge. Again, the rumors fly around Paris. This one with swarthy Latin skin, or that one with black eyes and a dark mustache; ‘He is really Carlos, you know’—how often have I heard the phrases! But no, no man has ever come up to me and said, ‘I am he and I make your life pleasant, you aging elegant prostitute.’ I simply report to old men who every now and then convey information that I must have—such as this evening on the boulevard Lefebvre.”
“I see.” Bourne got to his feet, stretching his body and looking down at his prisoner on the bench. “I can get you out,” he said quietly. “Out of Paris, out of Europe. Beyond Carlos’s reach. Do you want that?”
“As eagerly as Santos did,” answered Lavier, her eyes imploring. “I willingly trade my allegiance from him to you.”
“Why?”
“Because he is old and gray-faced and is no match for you. You offer me life; he offers death.”
“That’s a reasonable decision, then,” said Jason, a tentative but warm smile on his lips. “Do you have any money? With you, I mean?”
“Nuns are sworn to poverty, monsieur,” replied Dominique Lavier, returning his smile. “Actually, I have several hundred francs. Why?”
“It’s not enough,” continued Bourne, reaching into his pocket and taking out his impressive roll of franc notes. “Here’s three thousand,” he said, handing her the money. “Buy some clothes somewhere—I’m sure you know how—and take a room at the ... the Meurice on the rue de Rivoli.”
“What name should I use?”
“What suits you?”
“How about Brielle? A lovely seaside town.”
“Why not? ... Give me ten minutes to get out of here and then leave. I’ll see you at the Meurice at noon.”
“With all my heart, Jason Bourne!”
“Let’s forget that name.”

The Chameleon walked out of the Bois de Boulogne to the nearest taxi station. Within minutes an ecstatic cabdriver accepted a hundred francs to remain in place at the end of the three-vehicle line, his passenger slumped in the rear seat waiting to hear the words.
“The nun comes out, monsieur!” cried the driver. “She enters the first taxi!”
“Follow it,” said Jason, sitting up.
On the avenue Victor Hugo, Lavier’s taxi slowed down and pulled up in front of one of Paris’s few exceptions to tradition—an open plastic-domed public telephone. “Stop here,” ordered Bourne, who climbed out the instant the driver swung into the curb. Limping, the Chameleon walked swiftly, silently, to the telephone directly behind and unseen by the frantic nun under the plastic dome. He was not seen, but he could hear clearly as he stood several feet behind her.
“The Meurice!” she shouted into the phone. “The name is Brielle. He’ll be there at noon. ... Yes, yes, I’ll stop at my flat, change clothes, and be there in an hour.” Lavier hung up and turned, gasping at the sight of Jason. “No!” she screamed.
“Yes, I’m afraid,” said Bourne. “Shall we take my taxi or yours? ... ‘He’s old and gray-faced’—those were your words, Dominique. Pretty goddamned descriptive for someone who never met Carlos.”

A furious Bernardine walked out of the Pont-Royal with the doorman, who had summoned him. “This is preposterous!” he shouted as he approached the taxi. “No, it’s not,” he amended, looking inside. “It’s merely insane.”
“Get in,” said Jason on the far side of the woman dressed in the habit of a nun. Francois did so, staring at the black clothes, the white pointed hat and the pale face of the religious female between them. “Meet one of the Jackal’s more talented performers,” added Bourne. “She could make a fortune in your cinéma-vérité, take my word for it.”
“I’m not a particularly religious man, but I trust you have not made a mistake. ... I did—or should I say we did—with that pig of a baker.”
“Why?”
“He’s a baker, that’s all he is! I damn near put a grenade in his ovens, but no one but a French baker could plead the way he did!”
“It fits,” said Jason. “The illogical logic of Carlos—I can’t remember who said that, probably me.” The taxi made a U-turn and entered the rue du Bac. “We’re going to the Meurice,” added Bourne.
“I’m sure there’s a reason,” stated Bernardine, still looking at the enigmatically passive face of Dominique Lavier. “I mean, this sweet old lady says nothing.”
“I’m not old!” cried the woman vehemently.
“Of course not, my dear,” agreed the Deuxième veteran. “Only more desirable in your mature years.”
“Boy, did you hit it!”
“Why the Meurice?” asked Bernardine.
“It’s the Jackal’s final trap for me,” answered Bourne. “Courtesy of our persuasive Magdalen Sister of Charity here. He expects me to be there and I’ll be there.”
“I’ll call in the Deuxième. Thanks to a frightened bureaucrat, they’ll do anything I ask. Don’t endanger yourself, my friend.”
“I don’t mean to insult you, Francois, but you yourself told me you didn’t know all of the people in the Bureau these days. I can’t take the chance of a leak. One man could send out an alarm.”
“Let me help.” The low soft-spoken voice of Dominique Lavier broke the hum of the outside traffic like the initial burr of a chain saw. “I can help.”
“I listened to your help before, lady, and it was leading me to my own execution. No thanks.”
“That was before, not now. As must be obvious to you, my position now is truly hopeless.”
“Didn’t I hear those words recently?”
“No, you did not. I just added the word ‘now.’ ... For God’s sake, put yourself in my place. I can’t pretend to understand, but this ancient boulevardier beside me casually mentions that he’ll call in the Deuxième—the Deuxième, Monsieur Bourne! For some that is no less than France’s Gestapo! Even if I survived, I’m marked by that infamous branch of the government. I’d no doubt be sent to some horrible penal colony halfway across the world—oh, I’ve heard the stories of the Deuxième!”
“Really?” said Bernardine. “I haven’t. Sounds positively marvelous. How wonderful.”
“Besides,” continued Lavier, looking hard at Jason as she yanked the pointed white hat off her head, a gesture that caused the driver, seeing it in the rearview mirror, to raise his eyebrows. “Without me, without my presence in decidedly different clothing at the Meurice, Carlos won’t come near the rue de Rivoli.” Bernardine tapped the woman’s shoulder, bringing his index finger to his lips and nodding toward the front seat. Dominique quickly added, “The man you wish to confer with will not be there.”
“She’s got a point,” said Bourne, leaning forward and looking past Lavier at the Deuxième veteran. “She’s also got an apartment on the Montaigne, where she’s supposed to change clothes, and neither of us can go in with her.”
“That poses a dilemma, doesn’t it?” responded Bernardine. “There’s no way we can monitor the telephone from outside in the street, is there?”
“You fools! ... I have no choice but to cooperate with you, and if you can’t see that you should be led around by trained dogs! This old, old man here will have my name in the Deuxième files the first chance he gets, and as the notorious Jason Bourne knows if he has even a nodding acquaintance with the Deuxième, several profound questions are raised—once raised by my sister, Jacqueline, incidentally. Who is this Bourne? Is he real or unreal? Is he the assassin of Asia or is he a fraud, a plant? She phoned me herself one night in Nice after too many brandies—a night perhaps you recall, Monsieur le Caméléon—a terribly expensive restaurant outside Paris. You threatened her ... in the name of powerful, unnamed people you threatened her! You demanded that she reveal what she knew about a certain acquaintance of hers—who it was at the time I had no idea—but you frightened her. She said you appeared deranged, that your eyes became glazed and you uttered words in a language she could not understand.”
“I remember,” interrupted Bourne icily. “We had dinner and I threatened her and she was frightened. She went to the ladies’ room, paid someone to make a phone call, and I had to get out of there.”
“And now the Deuxième is allied with those powerful unnamed people?” Dominique Lavier shook her head repeatedly and lowered her voice. “No, messieurs, I am a survivor and I do not fight against such odds. One knows when to pass the shoe in baccarat.”
After a short period of silence, Bernardine spoke. “What’s your address on the avenue Montaigne? I’ll give it to the driver, but before I do, understand me, madame. If your words prove false, all the true horrors of the Deuxième will be visited upon you.”

Marie sat at the room-service table in her small suite at the Meurice reading the newspapers. Her attention constantly strayed; concentration was out of the question. Her anxiety had kept her awake after she returned to the hotel shortly past midnight, having made the rounds of five cafés she and David had frequented so many years ago in Paris. Finally by four-something in the morning, exhaustion had short-circuited her tossing and turning; she fell asleep with the bedside lamp switched on, and was awakened by the same light nearly six hours later. It was the longest she had slept since that first night on Tranquility Isle, itself a distant memory now except for the very real pain of not seeing and hearing the children. Don’t think about them, it hurts too much. Think about David. ... No, think about Jason Bourne! Where? Concentrate!
She put down the Paris Tribune and poured herself a third cup of black coffee, glancing over at the French doors that led to a small balcony overlooking the rue de Rivoli. It disturbed her that the once bright morning had turned into a dismal gray day. Soon the rain would come, making her search in the streets even more difficult. Resigned, she sipped her coffee and replaced the elegant cup in the elegant saucer, annoyed that it was not one of the simple pottery mugs favored by David and her in their rustic country kitchen in Maine. Oh, God, would they ever be back there again? Don’t think about such things! Concentrate! Out of the question.
She picked up the Tribune, aimlessly scanning the pages, seeing only isolated words, no sentences or paragraphs, no continuity of thought or meaning, merely words. Then one stood out at the bottom of a meaningless column, a single meaningless line bracketed at the bottom of a meaningless page.
The word was Memom, followed by a telephone number; and despite the fact that the Tribune was printed in English, the French in her switchable French-thinking brain absently translated the word as Maymohm. She was about to turn the page when a signal from another part of her brain screamed Stop!
Memom ... mommy—turned around by a child struggling with his earliest attempts at language. Meemom! Jamie—their Jamie! The funny inverted name he had called her for several weeks! David had joked about it while she, frightened, had wondered if their son had dyslexia.
“He could also just be confused, memom,” David had laughed.
David! She snapped up the page; it was the financial section of the paper, the section she instinctively gravitated to every morning over coffee. David was sending her a message! She pushed back her chair, crashing it to the floor as she grabbed the paper and rushed to the telephone on the desk. Her hands trembling, she dialed the number. There was no answer, and thinking that in her panic she had made an error or had not used the local Paris digit, she dialed again, now slowly, precisely.
No answer. But it was David, she felt it, she knew it! He had been looking for her at the Trocadéro and now he was using a briefly employed nickname only the two of them would know! My love, my love, I’ve found you! ... She also knew she could not stay in the confining quarters of the small hotel suite, pacing up and down and dialing every other minute, driving herself crazy with every unanswered ring. When you’re stressed out and spinning until you think you’ll blow apart, find someplace where you can keep moving without being noticed. Keep moving! That’s vital. You can’t let your head explode. One of the lessons from Jason Bourne. Her head spinning, Marie dressed more rapidly than she had ever done in her life. She tore out the message from the Tribune and left the oppressive suite, trying not to run to the bank of elevators but needing the crowds of the Paris streets, where she could keep moving without being noticed. From one telephone kiosk to another.
The ride down to the lobby was both interminable and insufferable, the latter because of an American couple—he laden with camera equipment, she with purple eyelids and a peroxide bouffant apparently set in concrete—who kept complaining that not enough people in Paris, France, spoke English. The elevator doors thankfully opened and Marie walked out rapidly into the crowded Meurice lobby.
As she crossed the marble floor toward the large glass doors of the ornate filigreed entrance, she suddenly, involuntarily stopped as an elderly man in a dark pin-striped suit gasped, his slender body lurching forward in a heavy leather chair below on her right. The old man stared at her, his thin lips parted in astonishment, his eyes in shock.
“Marie St. Jacques!” he whispered. “My God, get out of here!”
“I beg your ... What?”
The aged Frenchman quickly, with difficulty, rose to his feet, his head subtly, swiftly, jerking in short movements as he scanned the lobby. “You cannot be seen here, Mrs. Webb,” he said, his voice still a whisper but no less harsh and commanding. “Don’t look at me! Look at your watch. Keep your head down.” The Deuxième veteran glanced away, nodding aimlessly at several people in nearby chairs as he continued, his lips barely moving. “Go out the door on the far left, the one used for luggage. Hurry!”
“No!” replied Marie, her head down, her eyes on her watch. “You know me but I don’t know you! Who are you?”
“A friend of your husband.”
“My God, is he here?”
“The question is why are you here?”
“I stayed at this hotel once before. I thought he might remember it.”
“He did but in the wrong context, I’m afraid. Mon Dieu, he never would have chosen it otherwise. Now, leave.”
“I won’t! I have to find him. Where is he?”
“You will leave or you may find only his corpse. There’s a message for you in the Paris Tribune—”
“It’s in my purse. The financial page. ‘Memom—’ ”
“Call in several hours.”
“You can’t do this to me.”
“You cannot do this to him. You’ll kill him! Get out of here. Now!”
Her eyes half blinded with fury and fear and tears, Marie started toward the left side of the lobby, desperately wanting to look back, but just as desperately knowing she could not do so. She reached the narrow set of glass double doors, colliding with a uniformed bellhop carrying suitcases inside.
“Pardon, madame!”
“Moi aussi,” she stammered, maneuvering again blindly around the luggage and out to the pavement. What could she do—what should she do? David was somewhere in the hotel—in the hotel! And a strange man recognized her and warned her and told her to get out—get away! What was happening? ... My God, someone’s trying to kill David! The old Frenchman had said as much—who was it... who were they? Where were they?
Help me! For God’s sake, Jason, tell me what to do. Jason? ... Yes, Jason ... help me! She stood, frozen, as taxis and limousines broke off from the noonday traffic and pulled up to the Meurice’s curb, where a gold-braided doorman under the huge canopy greeted newcomers and old faces and sent bellboys scurrying in all directions. A large black limousine with a small discreet religious insignia on its passenger door, the cruciform standard of some high office of the Church, inched its way to the canopied area. Marie stared at the small emblem; it was circular and no more than six inches in diameter, a globe of royal purple surrounding an elongated crucifix of gold. She winced and held her breath; her panic now had a disturbing new dimension. She had seen that insignia before, and all she remembered was that it had filled her with horror.
The limousine stopped; both curbside doors were opened by the smiling, bowing doorman as five priests emerged, one from the front seat, four from the spacious rear section. Those from the back immediately, oddly, threaded their way into the noonday crowds of strollers on the pavement, two forward in front of the vehicle, two behind it, one of the priests whipping past Marie, his black coat making contact with her, his face so close she could see the blazing unpriestly eyes of a man who was no part of a religious order. ... Then the association with the emblem, the religious insignia, came back to her!
Years ago, when David—when Jason—was in maximum therapy with Panov, Mo had him sketch, draw, doodle whatever images came to him. Time and again that terrible circle with the thin crucifix appeared ... invariably torn apart or stabbed repeatedly with the pencil point. The Jackal!
Suddenly, Marie’s eyes were drawn to a figure crossing the rue de Rivoli. It was a tall man in dark clothes—a dark sweater and trousers—and he was limping, dodging the traffic, a hand shielding his face from the drizzle that soon would turn into rain. The limp was false! The leg straightened if only for an instant and the swing of the shoulder that compensated was a defiant gesture she knew only too well. It was David!
Another, no more than eight feet from her, also saw what she saw. A miniature radio was instantly brought to the man’s lips. Marie rushed forward, her extended hands the claws of a tigress as she lunged at the killer in priest’s clothing.
“David!” she screamed, drawing blood from the face of the Jackal’s man.
Gunshots filled the rue de Rivoli. The crowds panicked, many running into the hotel, many more racing away from the canopied entrance, all shrieking, yelling, seeking safety from the murderous insanity that had suddenly exploded in the civilized street. In the violent struggle with the man who would kill her husband, the strong Canadian ranch girl ripped the automatic out of his belt and fired it into his head; blood and membranes were blown into the air.
“Jason!” she screamed again as the killer fell, instantly realizing that she stood alone with only the corpse beneath her—she was a target! Then from certain death there was the sudden possibility of life. The old aristocratic Frenchman who had recognized her in the lobby came crashing out of the front entrance, his automatic weapon on repeat fire as he sprayed the black limousine, stopping for an instant to switch his aim and shattering the legs of a “priest” whose weapon was leveled at him.
“Mon ami!” roared Bernardine.
“Here!” shouted Bourne. “Where is she?”
“A votre droite! Auprès de—” A single gunshot exploded from the glass double doors of the Meurice. As he fell the Deuxième veteran cried out, “Les Capucines, mon ami. Les Capucines!” Bernardine slumped to the pavement; a second gunshot ended his life.
Marie was paralyzed, she could not move! Everything was a blizzard, a hurricane of iced particles crashing with such force against her face she could neither think nor find meaning. Weeping out of control, she fell to her knees, then collapsed in the street, her screams of despair clear to the man who suddenly was above her. “My children ... oh God, my children!”
“Our children,” said Jason Bourne, his voice not the voice of David Webb. “We’re getting out of here, can you understand that?”
“Yes ... yes!” Marie awkwardly, painfully, swung her legs behind her and lurched to her feet, held by the husband she either knew or did not know. “David?”
“Of course I’m David. Come on!”
“You frighten me—”
“I frighten myself. Let’s go! Bernardine gave us our exit. Run with me; hold my hand!”
They raced down the rue de Rivoli, swinging east into the boulevard St.-Michel until the Parisian strollers in their nonchalance de jour made it clear that the fugitives were safe from the horrors of the Meurice. They stopped m an alleyway and held each other.
“Why did you do it?” asked Marie, cupping his face. “Why did you run away from us?”
“Because I’m better without you, you know that.”
“You weren’t before, David—or should I say Jason?”
“Names don’t matter, we have to move!”
“Where to?”
“I’m not sure. But we can move, that’s the important thing. There’s a way out. Bernardine gave it to us.”
“He was the old Frenchman?”
“Let’s not talk about him, okay? At least not for a while. I’m shredded enough.”
“All right, we won’t talk about him. Still, he mentioned Les Capucines—what did he mean?”
“It’s our way out. There’s a car waiting for me in the boulevard des Capucines. That’s what he was telling me. Let’s go!”

They raced south out of Paris in the nondescript Peugeot, taking the Barbizon highway to Vilieneuve-St.-Georges. Marie sat close to her husband, their bodies touching, her hand clutching his arm. She was, however, sickeningly aware that the warmth she intended was not returned in equal measure. Only a part of the intense man behind the wheel was her David; the rest of him was Jason Bourne and he was now in command.
“For God’s sake, talk to me!” she cried.
“I’m thinking. ... Why did you come to Paris?”
“Good Christ!” exploded Marie. “To find you, to help you!”
“I’m sure you thought it was right. ... It wasn’t, you know.”
“That voice again,” protested Marie. “That goddamned disembodied tone of voice! Who the hell do you think you are to make that judgment? God? To put it bluntly—no, not bluntly, but brutally—there are things you have trouble remembering, my darling.”
“Not about Paris,” objected Jason. “I remember everything about Paris. Everything.”
“Your friend Bernardine didn’t think so! He told me you never would have chosen the Meurice if you did.”
“What?” Bourne briefly, harshly glanced at his wife.
“Think. Why did you choose—and you did choose—the Meurice?”
“I don’t know ... I’m not sure. It’s a hotel; the name just came to me.”
“Think. What happened years ago at the Meurice—right outside the Meurice?”
“I—I know something happened. ... You?”
“Yes, my love, me. I stayed there under a false name and you came to meet me, and we walked to the newsstand on the corner, where in one horrible moment we both knew my life could never be the same again—with you or without you.”
“Oh, Jesus, I forgot! The newspapers—your photograph on all the front pages. You were the Canadian government official—”
“The escaped Canadian economist,” broke in Marie, “hunted by the authorities all over Europe for multiple killings in Zurich in tandem with the theft of millions from Swiss banks! Those kinds of headlines never leave a person, do they? They can be refuted, proved to be totally false, yet still there is that lingering doubt. ‘Where there’s smoke there must be fire,’ I believe is the bromide. My own colleagues in Ottawa ... dear, dear friends I’d worked with for years ... were afraid to talk to me!”
“Wait a minute!” shouted Bourne, his eyes again flashing at David’s wife. “They were false—it was a Treadstone ploy to pull me in—you were the one who understood it, I didn’t!”
“Of course I did, because you were so stretched you couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter to me then because I’d made up my mind, my very precise analytical mind, a mind I’d match against yours any day of the week, my sweet scholar.”
“What?”
“Watch the road! You missed the turn, just the way you missed the one to our cabin only days ago—or was it years ago?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“That small inn we stayed at outside the Barbizon. You politely asked them to please light the fire in the dining room—we were the only people there. It was the third time I saw through the mask of Jason Bourne to someone else, someone I was falling deeply in love with.”
“Don’t do this to me.”
“I have to, David. If only for myself now. I have to know you’re there.”
Silence. A U-turn on the grand-route and the driver pressed the accelerator to the floor. “I’m here,” whispered the husband, lifting his right arm and pulling his wife to him. “I don’t know for how long, but I’m here.”
“Hurry, my darling.”
“I will. I just want to hold you in my arms.”
“And I want to call the children.”
“Now I know I’m here.”