The Bourne Identity (22 page)

"I can't, but neither can you."

Page 110

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"They were there. I saw them and they were there."

"Find out why. You can't be what you're not, Jason. Find out."

"Paris," he said.

"Yes, Paris." Marie got up from the couch. She was in a soft yellow nightgown, nearly white, pearl buttons at the neck; it flowed as she walked toward the bed in her bare feet. She stood beside him, looking down, then raised both her hands and began unbuttoning the top of the gown. She let it fall away, as she sat on the bed, her breasts above him. She leaned toward him, reaching for his face, cupping it, holding him gently, her eyes as so often during the past few days unwavering, fixed on his. "Thank you for my life," she whispered.

"Thank you for mine," he answered, feeling the longing he knew she felt, wondering if an ache accompanied hers, as it did his. He had no memory of a woman and, perhaps because he had none she was everything he could imagine; everything and much, much more. She repelled the darkness for him. She stopped the pain.

He had been afraid to tell her. And she was telling him now it was all right, if only for a while, for an hour or so. For the remainder of that night, she was giving him a memory because she too longed for release from the coiled springs of violence. Tension was suspended, comfort theirs for an hour or so. It was all he asked for, but God in heaven, how he
needed
her!

He reached for her breast and pulled her lips to his lips, her moisture arousing him, sweeping away the doubts.

She lifted the covers and came to him.

She lay in his arms, her head on his chest, careful to avoid the wound in his shoulder. She slid back gently, raising herself on her elbows. He looked at her, their eyes locked, and both smiled. She lifted her left hand, pressing her index finger over his lips, and spoke softly.

"I have something to say and I don't want you to interrupt. I'm not sending the cable to Peter. Not yet."

"Now, just a
minute
." He took her hand from his face. "Please, don't interrupt me. I said 'not yet.'

That doesn't mean I won't send it, but not for a while. I'm staying with you. I'm going to Paris with you."

He forced the words. "Suppose I don't want you to."

She leaned forward brushing her lips against his cheek. "That won't wash. The computer just rejected it."

"I wouldn't be so certain, if I were you."

"But you're not me. I'm me, and I know the way you held me, and tried to say so many things you couldn't say. Things I think we both wanted to say to each other for the past several days. I can't explain what's happened. Oh, I suppose it's there in some obscure psychological theory somewhere, two reasonably intelligent people thrown into hell together and crawling out ... together. And maybe that's all
Page 111

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

it is. But it's there right now and I can't run away from it. I can't run away from you. Because you need me, and you gave me my life."

"What makes you think I need you?"

"I can do things for you that you can't do for yourself. It's all I've thought about for the past two hours."

She raised herself further, naked beside him. "You're somehow involved with a great deal of money, but I don't think you know a debit from an asset. You may have before, but you don't now. I do. And there's something else. I have a ranking position with the Canadian government. I have clearance and access to all manner of inquiries. And protection. International finance is rotten and Canada has been raped. We've mounted our own protection and I'm part of it. It's why I was in Zurich. To observe and report alliances, not to discuss abstract theories."

"And the fact that you have this clearance, this access, can help me?"

"I think it can. And embassy protection, that may be the most important. But I give you my word that at the first sign of violence, I'll send the cable and get out. My own fears aside, I won't be a burden to you under those conditions."

"At the first sign," repeated Bourne, studying her. "And I determine when and where that is?"

"If you like. My experience is limited. I won't argue."

He continued to hold her eyes, the moment long, magnified by silence. Finally he asked, "Why are you doing this? You just said it. We're two reasonably intelligent people who crawled out of some kind of hell. That may be all we are. Is it worth it?"

She sat motionless. "I also said something else; maybe you've forgotten. Four nights ago a man who could have kept running came back for me and offered to die in my place. I believe in that man. More than he does, I think. That's really what I have to offer."

"I accept," he said, reaching for her. "I shouldn't, but I do. I need that belief very badly."

"You may interrupt now," she whispered, lowering the sheet, her body coming to his. "Make love to me, I have needs too."

Three more days and nights went by, filled by the warmth of their comfort, the excitement of discovery. They lived with the intensity of two people aware that change would come. And when it came, it would come quickly; so there were things to talk about which could not be avoided any longer. Cigarette smoke spiraled above the table joining the steam from the hot, bitter coffee. The
concierge
, an ebullient Swiss whose eyes took in more than his lips would reveal, had left several minutes before, having delivered the
petit dejeuner
and the Zurich newspapers, in both English and French. Jason and Marie sat across from each other, both had scanned the news.

"Anything in yours?" asked Bourne.

"That old man, the watchman at the Guisan Quai, was buried the day before yesterday. The police still have nothing concrete. 'Investigation in progress,' it says."

Page 112

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"It's a little more extensive here," said Jason, shifting his paper awkwardly in his bandaged left hand.

"How is it?" asked Marie, looking at the hand.

"Better. I've got more play in the fingers now."

"I know."

"You've got a dirty mind." He folded the paper. "Here it is. They repeat the things they said the other day. The shells and blood scrapings are being analyzed." Bourne looked up. "But they've added something. Remnants of clothing; it wasn't mentioned before."

"Is that a problem?"

"Not for me. My clothes were bought off a rack in Marseilles. What about your dress? Was it a special design or fabric?"

"You embarrass me; it wasn't. All my clothes are made by a woman in Ottawa."

"It couldn't be traced, then?"

"I don't see how. The silk came from a bolt an FS-Three in our section brought back from Hong Kong."

"Did you buy anything at the shops in the hotel? Something you might have had on you. A kerchief, a pin, anything like that?"

"No. I'm not much of a shopper that way."

"Good. And your friend wasn't asked any questions when she checked out?"

"Not by the desk, I told you that. Only by the two men you saw me with in the elevator."

"From the French and Belgian delegations."

"Yes. Everything was fine."

"Let's go over it again."

"There's nothing to go over. Paul--the one from Brussels--didn't see anything. He was knocked off his chair to the floor and stayed there. Claude--he tried to stop us, remember?--at first thought it was me on the stage, in the light, but before he could get to the police he was hurt in the crowd and taken to the infirmary--"

"And by the time he might have said something," interrupted Jason, recalling her words, "he wasn't sure."

"Yes. But I have an idea he knew my main purpose for being at the conference; my presentation didn't fool him. If he did, it would reinforce his decision to stay out of it."

Page 113

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Bourne picked up his coffee. "Let me have
that
again," he said. "You were looking for ... alliances?"

"Well, hints of them, really. No one's going to come out and say there are financial interests in his country working with interests in that country so they can buy their way into Canadian raw materials or any other market. But you see who meets for drinks, who has dinner together. Or sometimes it's as dumb as a delegate from, say, Rome--whom you know is being paid by Agnelli--coming up and asking you how serious Ottawa is about the declaration laws."

"I'm still not sure I understand."

"You should. Your own country's very touchy about the subject. Who owns what? How many American banks are controlled by OPEC money? How much industry is owned by European and Japanese consortiums? How many hundreds of thousands of acres have been acquired by capital that's fled England and Italy and France? We all worry."

"We do?"

Marie laughed. "Of course. Nothing makes a man more nationalistic than to think his country's owned by foreigners. He can adjust in time to losing a war--that only means the enemy was stronger--but to lose his economy means the enemy was smarter. The period of occupation lasts longer, and so do the scars."

"You've given these things a lot of thought, haven't you?"

For a brief moment the look in Marie's eyes lost its edge of humor; she answered him seriously. "Yes, I have. I think they're important."

"Did you learn anything in Zurich?"

"Nothing startling," she said. "Money's flying all over; syndicates are trying to find internal investments where bureaucratic machineries look the other way."

"That cablegram from Peter said your daily reports were first rate. What did he mean?"

"I found a number of odd economic bedfellows who I think may be using Canadian figureheads to buy up Canadian properties. I'm not being elusive; it's just that they wouldn't mean anything to you."

"I'm not trying to pry," countered Jason, "but I think you put
me
in one of those beds. Not with respect to Canada, but in general."

"I don't rule you out; the structure's there. You could be part of a financial combine that's looking for all manner of illegal purchases. It's one thing I can put a quiet trace on, but I want to do it over a telephone. Not words written out in a cable."

"Now I
am
prying. What do you mean and how?"

"If there's a Treadstone Seventy-One behind a multinational corporate door somewhere, there are ways to find which company, which door. I want to call Peter from one of those public telephone stations in Paris. I'll tell him that I ran across the name Treadstone Seventy-One in Zurich and it's been bothering me. I'll ask him to make a CS--a covert search--and say that I'll call him back."

Page 114

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"And if he finds it?"

"If it's there, he'll find it."

"Then I get in touch with whoever's listed as the 'certified directors' and surface."

"Very cautiously," added Marie. "Through intermediaries. Myself, if you like."

"Why?"

"Because of what they've done. Or
not
done, really."

"Which is?"

"They haven't tried to reach you in nearly six months."

"You don't know that--
I
don't know that."

"The bank knows it. Millions of dollars left untouched, unaccounted for, and no one has bothered to find out why. That's what I can't understand. It's as though you were being abandoned It's where the mistake could have been made."

Bourne leaned back in the chair, looking at his bandaged left hand, remembering the sight of the weapon smashing repeatedly downward-in the shadows of a racing car in the Steppdeckstrasse. He raised his eyes and looked at Marie. "What you're saying is that if I was abandoned, it's because that mistake is thought to be the truth by the directors at Treadstone."

"Possibly. They might think you've involved them in illegal transactions--with criminal elements--that could cost them millions more. Conceivably risking expropriation of entire companies by angry governments. Or that you joined forces with an international crime syndicate, probably not knowing it. Anything. It would account for their not going near the bank. They'd want no guilt by association."

"So, in a sense, no matter what your friend Peter learns, I'm still back at square one."

"
We're
back, but it's not square one, more like four-and-a-half to five on a scale of ten."

"Even if it were nine, nothing's really changed. Men want to kill me and I don't know why. Others could stop them but they won't. That man at the Drei Alpenhauser said Interpol has its nets out for me, and if I walk into one I don't have any answers. I'm guilty as charged because I don't know what I'm guilty of. Having no memory isn't much of a defense, and it's possible that I have no defense, period."

"I refuse to believe that, and so must you."

"Thanks."

"I mean it, Jason. Stop it."

Stop it. How many times do I say that to myself? You are my love, the only woman I have ever
known, and you believe in me. Why can't I believe in myself?

Bourne got up, as always testing his legs. Mobility was coming back to him, the wounds less severe than
Page 115

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

his imagination had permitted him to believe. He had made an appointment that night with the doctor in Wohlen to remove the stitches. Tomorrow, change would come.

"Paris," said Jason. "The answer's in Paris. I know it as surely as I saw the outline of those triangles in Zurich. I just don't know where to begin. It's crazy. I'm a man waiting for an image, for a word or a phrase--or a book of matches--to tell me something. To send me somewhere else."

"Why not wait until I hear from Peter? I can call him tomorrow; we can be in Paris tomorrow."