The Bourne Identity (59 page)

"You've behaved well, you have value."

"I also have a problem, Carlos. As none of us are to call Parc Monceau, how can I reach you? In the event I must. Say, for instance, the Renault."

"Yes, I'm aware of the problem. Are you aware of the burden you ask for?"

"I would much prefer not to have it. My only hope is that when this is over and Cain is dead, you will remember my contributions and rather than killing me, change the number."

"You
do
anticipate."

"In the old days it was my means of survival."

The assassin whispered seven figures. "You are the only man alive who has this number. Naturally it is untraceable."

"Naturally. Who would expect an old beggar to have it?"

"Every hour brings you closer to a better standard of living. The net is closing; every hour brings him nearer to one of several traps. Cain will be caught, and an imposter's body will be thrown back to the bewildered strategists who created him. They counted on a monstrous ego and he gave it to them. At the end, he was only a puppet, an expendable puppet. Everyone knew it but him."

Bourne picked up the telephone. "Yes?"

"Room 420?"

"Go ahead, General."

"The telephone calls have stopped. She's no longer being contacted--not at least by telephone. Our couple was out and the phone rang twice. Both times she asked me to answer it. She really wasn't up to talking."

"Who called?"

"The chemists with a prescription and a journalist requesting an interview. She couldn't have known either."

"Did you get the impression she was trying to throw you off by having you take the calls?"

Villiers paused, his reply laced with anger. "It was there, the effect less than subtle insofar as she
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mentioned she might be having lunch out She said she had a reservation at the George Cinq, and I could reach her there if she decides to go."

"If she does, I want to get there first."

"I'll let you know."

"You said she's not being contacted by phone. 'Not at least by telephone,' I think you said. Did you mean something by that?"

"Yes. Thirty minutes ago a woman came to the house. My wife was reluctant to see her but nevertheless did so. I only saw her face for a moment in the parlor, but it was enough. The woman was in panic."

"Describe her."

Villiers did.

"Jacqueline Lavier," said Jason.

"I thought it might be. From the looks of her, the wolfpack was eminently successful; it was obvious she had not slept. Before taking her into the library, my wife told me she was an old friend in a marriage crisis. A fatuous lie; at her age there are no crises left in marriage, only acceptance and extraction."

"I can't understand her going to your house. It's too much of a risk. It doesn't make sense. Unless she did it on her own, knowing that no further calls were to be made."

"These things occurred to me," said the soldier. "So I felt the need of a little air, a stroll around the block. My aide accompanied me--a doddering old man taking his limited constitutional under the watchful eye of an escort. But my eyes, too, were watchful. Lavier was followed. Two men were seated in a car four houses away, the automobile equipped with a radio. Those men did not belong to the street. It was in their faces, in the way they watched my house."

"How do you know she didn't come with them?"

"We live on a quiet street. When Lavier arrived, I was in the sitting room having coffee, and heard her running up the steps. I went to the window in time to see a taxi drive away. She came in a taxi; she was followed."

"When did she leave?"

"She hasn't. And the men are still outside."

"What kind of car are they in?"

"Citroen. Gray. The first three letters of the license plate are NYR ."

"Birds in the air, following a contact. Where do the birds come from?"

"I beg your pardon. What did you say?"

Jason shook his head "I'm not sure. Never mind. I'm going to try to get out there before Lavier leaves.
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Do what you can to help me. Interrupt your wife, say you have to speak with her for a few minutes. Insist her 'old friend' stay; say anything, just make sure she doesn't leave."

"I will do my best."

Bourne hung up and looked at Marie, standing by the window across the room. "It's working. They're starting to distrust each other. Lavier went to Parc Monceau and she was followed. They're beginning to suspect their own."

" 'Birds in the air,' " said Marie. "What did you mean?"

"I don't know; it's not important. There isn't time."

"I think it
is
important, Jason."

"Not now." Bourne walked to the chair where he had dropped his topcoat and hat. He put them on quickly and went to the bureau, opened the drawer and took out the gun. He looked at it for a moment, remembering. The images were there, the past that was his whole yet not his whole at all. Zurich. The Bahnhofstrasse and the Carillon du Lac; the Drei Alpenhauser and the Lowenstrasse; a filthy boardinghouse on the Steppdeckstrasse. The gun symbolized them all, for it had once nearly taken his life in Zurich.

But this was Paris. And everything started in Zurich was in motion.
Find Carlos. Trap Carlos. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain.
False! Goddamn you, false!

Find Treadstone. Find a message. Find a man.

29

Jason remained in the far corner of the back seat as the taxi entered Villiers' block in Parc Monceau. He scanned the cars lining the curb; there was no gray Citroen, no license with the lettersNYR . But there was Villiers. The old soldier was standing alone on the pavement, four doors away from his house.

Two men ... in a car four houses away from my house.

Villiers was standing now where that car had stood; it was a signal.

"Arretez, s'il vous plait,"
said Bourne to the driver. "Le vieux la-bas. Je veux parler avec, lui." He rolled down the window and leaned forward.
"Monsieur?"

"In English," replied Villiers, walking toward the taxi, an old man summoned by a stranger.

"What happened?" asked Jason.

"I could not detain them."

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"Them?"

"My wife left with the Lavier woman. I was adamant, however. I told her to expect my call at the George Cinq. It was a matter of the utmost importance and I required her counsel."

"What did she say?"

"That she wasn't sure she'd be at the George Cinq. That her friend insisted on seeing a priest in Neuilly-sur-Seine, at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. She said she felt obliged to accompany her."

"Did you object?"

"Strenuously. And for the first time in our life together, she stated the thoughts in my own mind. She said,

'If it's your desire to check up on me, Andre, why not call the parish? I'm sure someone might recognize me and bring me to a telephone.' Was she testing me?"

Bourne tried to think. "Perhaps. Someone would see her there, she'd make sure of it. But bringing her to a phone might be something else again. When did they leave?"

"Less than five minutes ago. The two men in the Citroen followed them."

"Were they in your car?"

"No. My wife called a taxi."

"I'm going out there," said Jason.

"I thought you might," said Villiers. "I looked up the address of the church."

Bourne dropped a fifty-franc note over the back of the front seat. The driver grabbed it. "It's important to me to reach Neuilly-sur-Seine as fast as possible. The Church of the Blessed Sacrament. Do you know where it is?"

"But of course, monsieur. It is the most beautiful parish in the district."

"Get there quickly and there'll be another fifty francs."

"We shall fly on the wings of blessed angels, monsieur!"

They flew, the flight plan jeopardizing most of the traffic in their path.

"There are the spires of the Blessed Sacrament, monsieur," said the victorious driver, twelve minutes later, pointing at three soaring towers of stone through the windshield. "Another minute, perhaps two if the idiots who should be taken off the street will permit. ..."

"Slow down," interrupted Bourne, his attention not on the spires of the church but on an automobile several cars ahead. They had taken a corner and he had seen it during the turn; it was a gray Citroen, two men in the front seat.

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They came to a traffic light; the cars stopped Jason dropped the second fifty-franc note over the seat and opened the door. "I'll be right back. If the light changes, drive forward slowly and I'll jump in."

Bourne got out, keeping his body low, and rushed between the cars until he saw the letters.NYR ; the numbers following were 768, but for the moment they were inconsequential. The taxi driver had earned his money.

The light changed and the row of automobiles lurched forward like one elongated insect pulling its shelled parts together. The taxi drew alongside; Jason opened the door and climbed in. "You do good work," he said to the driver.

"I'm not sure I know the work I am doing."

"An affair of the heart. One must catch the betrayer in the act."

"In
church
, monsieur? The world moves too swiftly for me."

"Not in traffic," said Bourne. They approached the final corner before the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. The Citroen made the turn, a single car between it and a taxi, the passengers indistinguishable. Something bothered Jason. The surveillance on the part of the two men was too open, far too obvious. It was as if Carlos' soldiers wanted someone in that taxi to know they were there. Of course! Villiers' wife was in that cab. With Jacqueline Lavier. And the two men in the Citroen wanted Villiers' wife to know they were behind her.

"There is the Blessed Sacrament," said the driver, entering the street where the church rose in minor medieval splendor in the center of a manicured lawn, crisscrossed by stone paths and dotted with statuary. "What shall I do, monsieur?"

"Pull into that space," ordered Jason, gesturing at a break in the line of parked cars. The taxi with Villiers' wife and the Lavier woman stopped in front of a path guarded by a concrete saint. Villiers'

stunning wife got out first, extending her hand for Jacqueline Lavier, who emerged, ashen, on the pavement. She wore large, orange-rimmed sunglasses and carried a white purse, but she was no longer elegant. Her crown of silver-streaked hair fell in straight, disassociated lines down the sides of her death-white mask of a face, and her stockings were torn. She was at least three hundred feet away, but Bourne felt he could almost hear the erratic gasping for breath that accompanied the hesitant movements of the once regal figure stepping forward in the sunlight.

The Citroen had proceeded beyond the taxi and was now pulling to the curb. Neither man got out, but a thin metal rod, reflecting the glare of the sun, began rising out of the trunk. The radio antenna was being activated, codes sent over a guarded frequency. Jason was mesmerized, not by the sight and the knowledge of what was being done, but by something else. Words came to him, from where he did not know, but they were there.

Delta to Almanac, Delta to Almanac. We will not respond. Repeat, negative, brother.
Almanac to Delta. You will respond as ordered. Abandon, abandon. That is final.
Delta to Almanac. You're final, brother. Go fuck yourself. Delta out, equipment damaged.
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Suddenly the darkness was all around him, the sunlight gone. There were no soaring towers of a church reaching for the sky; instead there were black shapes of irregular foliage shivering beneath the light of iridescent clouds. Everything was moving,
everything was moving
; he had to move with the movement. To remain immobile was to die.
Move!
For Christ's sake,
move!

And take them
out
. One by
one
. Crawl in closer, overcome the fear--the terrible fear--and reduce the numbers. That was all there was to it. Reduce the numbers. The Monk had made that clear. Knife, wire, knee, thumb; you know the points of damage. Of death.

Death is a statistic for the computers. For you it is survival. The Monk.

The
Monk?

The sunlight came again, blinding him for a moment, his foot on the pavement, his gaze on the gray Citroen a hundred yards away. But it was difficult to see; why was it so difficult? Haze, mist ... not darkness now but impenetrable mist. He was hot; no, he was cold. Cold! He jerked his head up, suddenly aware of where he was and what he was doing. His face had been pressed against the window; his breath had fogged the glass.

"I'm getting out for a few minutes," said Bourne. "Stay here."

"All day, if you wish, monsieur."

Jason pulled up the lapels of his topcoat, pushed his hat forward and put on the tortoise-shell glasses. He walked alongside a couple toward a religious sidewalk bazaar, breaking away to stand behind a mother and child at the counter. He had a clear view of the Citroen, the taxi which had been summoned to Parc Monceau was no longer there, dismissed by Villiers' wife. It was a curious decision on her part, thought Bourne; cabs were not that available.

Three minutes later the reason was clear ... and disturbing. Villiers' wife came striding out of the church, walking rapidly, her tall, statuesque figure drawing admiring glances from strollers. She went directly to the Citroen, spoke to the men in front, then opened the rear door. The purse. A
white
purse! Villiers' wife was carrying the purse that only minutes before had been clutched in the hands of Jacqueline Lavier. She climbed into the Citroen's back seat and pulled the door shut. The sedan's motor was switched on and gunned, prelude to a quick and sudden departure. As the car rolled away, the shiny metal rod that was the vehicle's antenna became shorter and shorter, retracting into its base.