The Bourne ultimatum (28 page)

“I will be in a matter of minutes,” replied Fontaine, heading for the table where his killing equipment lay in the locked drawer. He reached into his pocket and took out the key. “Do you want to go over the procedure?” he asked, turning. “For my benefit, of course. At this age, details are often blurred.”

“Yes, I do, because there is a slight change.”

“
Oh
?” The old Frenchman arched his brows. “Also at my age sudden changes are not welcome.”

“It’s only a question of timing, no more than a quarter of an hour, perhaps much less.”

“An eternity in this business,” said Fontaine as yet another streak of lightning, separated only milliseconds from its crash of thunder, interrupted the pounding rain on the windows and the roof. “It’s dangerous enough to be outside; that bolt was too near for safety.”

“If you believe that, think how the guards feel.”

“The ‘slight change,’ please? Also an explanation.”

“I’ll give you no explanation except to say that it is an order from Argenteuil and you were responsible.”

“The
judge
?”

“Draw your own conclusions.”

“Then he was
not
sent to—”

“I’ll say no more. The change is as follows. Rather than running up the path from here to the guards at Villa Twenty and demanding emergency assistance for your ill wife, I will say I was returning from the front desk where I was complaining about the telephone and saw a fire in Villa Fourteen, three away from ours. There’ll no doubt be a great deal of confusion, what with the storm and everyone yelling and calling for help. That will be your signal. Use the confusion; get through and take out whoever remains at the woman’s villa—make sure your silencer is secure. Then go inside and do the work you have sworn to do.”

“So I wait for the fire, for the guards and for you to return to Number Eleven.”

“Exactly. Stay on the porch with the door closed, of course.”

“Of course.”

“It may take me five minutes or perhaps even twenty, but
stay
there.”

“Naturally. ... May I ask, madame—or perhaps mademoiselle, although I see no evidence—”

“What
is
it?”

“It will take you five or twenty minutes to do what?”

“You’re a fool, old man. What must be done.”

“Of course.”

The nurse pulled her raincoat around her, looped the belt and walked to the front door of the villa. “Get your equipment together and be out here in three minutes,” she commanded.

“Of course.” The door swung back with the wind as the woman opened it; she went outside into the torrential rain, pulling it shut behind her. Astonished and confused, the old Frenchman stood motionless, trying to make sense out of the inexplicable. Things were happening too fast for him, blurred in the agony of his woman’s death. There was no time to mourn, no time to feel. ... Only think and think quickly. Revelation came hard upon revelation, leaving unanswered questions that
had
to be answered so the whole could be understood—so that Montserrat itself made sense!

The nurse was more than a conduit for instructions from Argenteuil; the angel of mercy was herself an angel of death, a killer in her own right. So why was
he
sent thousands of miles to do the work another could do just as well and without the elaborate charade of his auspicious arrival? An old hero of France, indeed ... it was all so unnecessary. And speaking of age, there was another—another old man who was no killer at all. Perhaps, thought the false Jean Pierre Fontaine, he had made a terrible mistake. Perhaps, instead of coming to kill him, the other “old man” had come to
warn
him!

“
Mon Dieu
,” whispered the Frenchman. “The old men of Paris, the Jackal’s army! Too many questions!” Fontaine walked rapidly to the nurse’s bedroom door and opened it. With the swiftness developed over a lifetime of practice, impaired only slightly by his years, he began methodically to tear apart the woman’s room—suitcase, closet, clothes, pillows, mattress, bureau, dressing table, writing desk ... the desk. A locked drawer in the desk—a locked drawer in the outer room. The “equipment.” Nothing mattered now! His woman was gone and there were too many questions!

A heavy lamp on the desk with a thick brass base—he picked it up, pulling out the cord, and smashed it into the drawer. Again and again and again until the wood splintered, shattering the recess that held the tiny vertical latch. He yanked the drawer open and stared in equal parts of horror and comprehension at what he saw.

Next to each other in a cushioned plastic case were two hypodermic needles, their vials filled with an identical yellowish serum. He did not have to know the chemical compounds; there were too many beyond his knowledge that would be effective. Liquid death in the veins.

Nor did he have to be told for whom they were intended.
C
ô
te
à
c
ô
te dans le lit
. Two bodies beside each other in bed. He and his woman in a pact of final deliverance. How thoroughly had the monseigneur thought everything out! Himself dead! One dead old man from the Jackal’s army of old men had outwitted all the security procedures, killing and mutilating those dearest to Carlos’s ultimate enemy, Jason Bourne. And, naturally, behind that brilliant manipulation was the Jackal himself.

Ce n’est pas le contrat
!
Myself,
yes
, but not my woman! You promised me!

The
nurse
. The angel not of mercy but of death! The man known on Tranquility Isle as Jean Pierre Fontaine walked as fast as he could into the other room. To his equipment.

The huge silver racing craft with its two enormous engines crashed through the swells as often above the waves as in them. On the short low bridge, John St. Jacques maneuvered the drug boat through the dangerous reefs he knew by summoned memory, aided by the powerful searchlight that lit up the turbulent waters, now twenty, now two hundred feet in front of the bow. He kept screaming into his radio, the microphone weaving in front of his drenched face, hoping against all logic to raise someone on Tranquility.

He was within three miles of the island, a shrubbed volcanic intrusion on the water his landmark. Tranquility Isle was in kilometers much nearer Plymouth than to Blackburne Airport, and if one knew the shoals, not much longer to reach in a drug boat than in a seaplane, which had to bank east out of Blackburne to catch the prevailing west winds in order to land on the sea. Johnny was not sure why these calculations kept interfering with his concentration except that somehow they made him feel better, that he was doing the best he could—
Damn it
! Why was it always the best he could do rather than simply the best? He couldn’t louse up anymore, not now, not
tonight
! Christ, he owed everything to Mare and David! Maybe even more to the crazy bastard who was his brother-in-law than to his own sister. David, wild-nuts
David
, a man he sometimes wondered if Marie ever knew existed!

“You back off little Bro, I’ll take care of this.”

“You can’t, David, I did it. I killed them!”

“I said ‘Back off.’ ”

‘I asked for your help, not for you to be me!”

“But you see I am you. I would have done the same thing and that makes me you in my eyes.”

“That’s crazy!”

“It’s part of it. Someday I may teach you how to kill cleanly, in the dark In the meantime, listen to the lawyers.”

“Suppose they lose?”

“I’ll get you out. I’ll get you away.”

“How?”

“I’ll kill again.”

“I can’t believe you! A teacher, a scholar—I don’t believe you, I don’t want to believe you—you’re my sister’s husband.”

“Then don’t believe me, Johnny. And forget everything I’ve said, and never tell your sister I said it.”

“It’s that other person inside of you, isn’t it?”

“You’re very dear to Marie.”

“That’s no answer! Here, now, you’re Bourne, aren’t you? Jason Bourne!”

“We’ll never, ever, discuss this conversation, Johnny. Do you understand me?”

No, he had never understood, thought St. Jacques, as the swirling winds and the cracks of lightning seemed to envelop the boat. Even when Marie and David appealed to his rapidly disintegrating ego by suggesting he could build a new life for himself in the islands. Seed money, they had said; build us a house and then see where you want to go from there. Within limits, we’ll back you. Why would they do that? Why did they?

It was not “they,” it was he. Jason Bourne.

Johnny St. Jacques understood the other morning when he picked up the phone by the pool and was told by an island pilot that someone had been asking questions at the airport about a woman and two children.

Someday I may teach you how to kill cleanly, in the dark
. Jason Bourne.

Lights! He saw the beach lights of Tranquility. He was less than a mile from the shore!

The rain pounded down against the old Frenchman, the blasts of wind throwing him off balance as he made his way up the path toward Villa Fourteen. He angled his head against the elements, squinting, wiping his face with his left hand, his right gripping the weapon, a gun lengthened by the extension of the pocked cylinder that was its silencer. He held the pistol behind him as he had done years ago racing along railroad tracks, sticks of dynamite in one hand, a German Luger in the other, prepared to drop both at the appearance of Nazi patrols.

Whoever they were on the path above, they were no less than the Boche in his mind. All were Boche! He had been subservient to others long enough! His woman was gone; he would be his own man now, for there was nothing left but his own decisions, his own
feelings
, his own very private sense of what was right and what was wrong. ... And the Jackal was wrong! The apostle of Carlos could accept the killing of the woman; it was a debt he could rationalize, but not the children, and certainly not the mutilations. Those acts were against God, and he and his woman were about to face Him; there had to be certain ameliorating circumstances.

Stop
the angel of death! What could she be doing? What did the fire she talked about
mean
? ... Then he saw it—a huge burst of flame through the hedges of Villa Fourteen. In a window! The same window that had to be the bedroom of the luxurious pink cottage.

Fontaine reached the flagstone walk that led to the front door as a bolt of lightning shook the ground under him. He fell to the earth, then struggled to his knees, crawling to the pink porch, its fluttering overhead light outlining the door. No amount of twisting or pulling or shoving could release the latch, so he angled his pistol up, squeezed the trigger twice and blew the lock apart. He pushed himself to his feet and went inside.

Inside
. The screams came from beyond the door of the master bedroom. The old Frenchman lurched toward it, his legs unsteady, his weapon wavering in his right hand. With what strength he had left, he kicked the door open and observed a scene that he knew had to come from hell.

The nurse, with the old man’s head in a metal leash, was forcing her victim down into a raging kerosene fire on the floor.

“
Arrêtez
!” screamed the man called Jean Pierre Fontaine. “
Assez
!
Maintenant
!”

Through the rising, spreading flames, shots rang out and bodies fell.

The lights of Tranquility’s beach drew nearer as John St. Jacques kept yelling into the microphone: “It’s
me
! It’s Saint Jay coming in! Don’t
shoot
!”

But the sleek silver drug boat was greeted by the staccato gunfire of automatic weapons. St. Jacques dived to the deck and kept shouting. “I’m coming in—I’m
beaching
! Hold your goddamned fire!”

“Is that
you
,
mon
?” came a panicked voice over the radio.

“You want to get
paid
next week?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Saint Jay!” The loudspeakers on the beach erratically interrupted the winds and the thunder out of Basse-Terre. “Everyone down on the beach, stop shooting your guns! The
bo-att
is okay,
mon
! It is our
boss mon
, Mr. Saint Jay!”

The drug boat shot out of the water and onto the dark sand, its engines screaming, the blades instantly embedded, the pointed hull cracking under the impact. St. Jacques leaped up from his defensive fetal position and vaulted over the gunwale. “
Villa Twenty
!” he roared, racing through the downpour across the beach to the stone steps that led to the path. “All you men, get there!”

As he ran up the hard, rain-splattered staircase he suddenly gasped, his personal galaxy exploding into a thousand blinding stars of fire.
Gunshots
! One after another. On the east wing of the path! His legs cycled faster and faster, leaping over two and three steps at a time; he reached the path and like a man possessed raced up the path toward Villa Twenty, snapping his head to the right in furious confusion that only added to his panic.
People
—men and woman from his
staff
—were clustered around the doorway of Villa Fourteen! ... Who was there? ... My
God
, the
judge
!

His lungs bursting, every muscle and tendon in his legs stretched to the breaking point, St. Jacques reached his sister’s house. He crashed through the gate, and ran to the door, hurling his body against it and bursting through to the room inside. Eyes bulging first in horror, then in unmeasurable pain, he fell to his knees, screaming. On the white wall with terrible clarity were the words scrawled in dark red:

Jason Bourne, brother of the Jackal
.

“
Johnny
! Johnny,
stop
it!” His sister’s voice crashed into his ear as she cradled his head in one arm, the other extended above him, her free hand gripping his hair, nearly pulling it out of his skull. “Can you
hear
me? We’re
all right
, Bro! The children are in another villa—we’re
fine
!”