The Bourne ultimatum (44 page)

Prefontaine was flying back to Boston in the morning, but he had asked John St. Jacques if he might return one day. Perhaps not with a prepaid reservation.

“Judge, my house is your house” was the reply.

“I might even earn that courtesy.”

Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, got out of his limousine and stood on the pavement before the steep steps of his town house in Georgetown. “Check with the office in the morning,” he said to the chauffeur, holding the rear door. “As you know, I’m not a well man.”

“Yes, sir.” The driver closed the door. “Would you like assistance, sir?”

“
Hell
, no. Get out of here.”

“Yes, sir.” The government chauffeur climbed into the front seat; the sudden roar of his engine was not meant as a courteous exit as he sped down the street.

Armbruster climbed the stone staircase, his stomach and chest heaving with each step, cursing under his breath at the sight of his wife’s silhouette beyond the glass door of their Victorian entrance. “Shit-kicking
yapper
,” he said to himself as he neared the top, gripping the railing before facing his adversary of thirty years.

A spit exploded out of the darkness from somewhere within the grounds of the property next door. Armbruster’s arms flew up, his wrists bent as if trying to locate the bodily chaos; it was too late. The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission tumbled back down the stone staircase, his thumping dead weight landing grotesquely on the pavement below.

Bourne changed into the French denim trousers, slipped on a dark short-sleeved shirt and the cotton safari jacket, put his money, his weapon and all his IDs—authentic and false—into his pockets and left the Pont-Royal. Before doing so, however, he stuffed the bed with pillows, and hung his traveling clothes in clear view over the chair. He walked casually past the ornate front desk, and once outside on Montalembert ran to the nearest telephone kiosk. He inserted a coin and dialed Bernardine’s home.

“It’s Simon,” he said.

“I thought so,” replied the Frenchman. “I was hoping so. I’ve just heard from Alex and told him
not
to tell me where you were; one cannot reveal what one does not know. Still, if I were you, I’d go to another place, at least for the night. You may have been spotted at the airport.”

“What about you?”

“I intend to be a
canard
.”

“A duck?”

“The sitting variety. The Deuxième has my flat under watch. Perhaps I’ll have a visitor; it would be convenient,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“You didn’t tell your office about—”

“About
you
?” interrupted Bernardine. “How could I, monsieur, when I don’t
know
you? My protective Bureau believes I had a threatening call from an old adversary known to be a psychopath. Actually I removed him in the Maritimes years ago but I never closed the file—”

“Should you be telling me this on your telephone?”

“I thought I mentioned that it was a unique instrument.”

“You did.”

“Suffice it to say it cannot be tapped and still function. ... You need rest, monsieur. You are no good to anyone, least of all yourself, without it. Find a bed, I cannot help you there.”

“ ‘Rest is a weapon,’ ” said Jason, repeating a phrase he had come to believe was a vital truth, vital for survival in a world he loathed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. I’ll find a bed and call you in the morning.”

“Tomorrow then.
Bonne chance, mon ami
. For both of us.”

f
f
f

He found a room at the Avenir, an inexpensive hotel on the rue Gay-Lussac. Registering under a false name, promptly forgotten, he climbed the stairs to his room, removed his clothes, and fell into the bed. “Rest is a weapon,” he said to himself, staring at the ceiling, at the flickering lights of the Paris streets as they traveled across the plaster. Whether rest came in a mountain cave or a rice paddy in the Mekong Delta, it did not matter; it was a weapon frequently more powerful than firepower. That was the lesson drummed into his head by d’Anjou, the man who had given his life in a Beijing forest so that Jason Bourne might live. Rest
is
a weapon, he considered, touching the bandage around his neck yet not really feeling it, its constricting presence fading as sleep came.

He woke up slowly, cautiously, the noise of the traffic in the streets below pounding up to his window, the metallic horns like the erratic cawing of angry crows amid the irregular bursts of angry engines, full bore one moment, abrupt quiet the next. It was a normal morning in the narrow streets of Paris. Holding his neck rigid, Jason swung his legs to the floor from the inadequate bed and looked at his watch, startled at what he saw, wondering for an instant whether he had adjusted the watch for Paris time. Of course he had. It was 10:07 in the morning—Paris time. He had slept nearly eleven hours, a fact confirmed by the rumbling in his stomach. Exhaustion was now replaced by acute hunger.

Food, however, would have to wait; there were things to take care of, and first on the list was to reach Bernardine, and then to learn the security status of the Pont-Royal hotel. He got to his feet, stiffly, unsteadily, numbness momentarily invading his legs and arms. He needed a hot shower, which was not to be had at the Avenir, then mild exercise to limber up his body, therapies unnecessary only a few years ago. He removed his wallet from his trousers, pulled out Bernardine’s card and returned to the bed to use the telephone beside it; he dialed.

“
Le canard
had no visitors, I’m afraid,” said the Deuxième veteran. “Not even the hint of a hunter, which I presume is favorable news.”

“It’s not until we find Panov—
if
we find him. The
bastards
!”

“Yes, that must be faced. It’s the ugliest part of our work.”

“Goddamn it, I can’t dismiss a man like Mo with ‘That must be
faced
’!”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m only remarking upon the reality. Your feelings are meaningful to you, but they don’t change reality. I did not mean to offend you.”

“And I didn’t mean to mouth off. Sorry. It’s just that he’s a very special person.”

“I understand. ... What are your plans? What do you need?”

“I don’t know yet,” answered Bourne. “I’ll pick up the car in the Capucines and an hour or so later I’ll know more. Will you be home or at the Deuxième Bureau?”

“Until I hear from you I will stay in my flat and near my very unique telephone. Under the circumstances I prefer that you do not call me at the office.”

“That’s an astonishing statement.”

“I don’t know everyone these days at the Deuxième, and at my age, caution is not merely the better part of valor, it’s frequently a substitute. Besides, to call off my protection so swiftly might generate rumors of senility. ... Speak to you later,
mon
ami
.”

Jason replaced the phone, tempted to pick it up again and reach the Pont-Royal, but this was Paris, the city of discretion, where hotel clerks were loath to give information over the telephone, and would refuse to do so with guests they did not know. He dressed quickly, went down to pay his bill, and walked out onto the rue Gay-Lussac. There was a taxi stand at the corner; eight minutes later he walked into the lobby of the Pont-Royal and up to the concierge. “
Je m’appelle Monsieur Simon
,” he said to the man, giving his room number. “I ran into a friend last night,” he continued in flawless French, “and I stayed at her place. Would you know if anyone came around looking for me, perhaps asking for me.” Bourne removed several large franc notes, his eyes telling the man he would pay generously for confidentiality. “Or even describing someone like me,” he added softly.

“
Merci bien, monsieur
. ... I understand. I will check further with the night concierge, but I’m sure he would have left a note for my personal attention if someone had come here seeking you.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because he
did
leave such a note for me to speak with you. I’ve been calling your room since seven o’clock this morning when I came on duty.”

“What did the note say?” asked Jason, his breathing on hold.

“It’s what I’m to say to you. ‘Reach his friend across the Atlantic. The man has been phoning all night.’ I can attest to the accuracy of that, monsieur. The switchboard tells me that last call was less than thirty minutes ago.”

“Thirty minutes ago?” said Jason, looking hard at the concierge and then at his watch. “It’s five A.M. over there ... all
night
?”

The hotel man nodded as Bourne started for the elevator.

“Alex, for Christ’s sake, what
is
it? They told me you’ve been calling all—”

“Are you at the hotel?” interrupted Conklin quickly.

“Yes, I am.”

“Get to a public phone in the street and call me back. Hurry.”

Again the slow, cumbersome elevator; the faded ornate lobby now half filled with Parisians talking manically, many heading for the bar and their prenoon apéritifs; and again the hot bright summer street outside and the maddening congested traffic. Where was a telephone? He walked rapidly down the pavement toward the Seine—where was a
phone
? There! Across the converging rue du Bac, a red-domed booth with posters covering the sides.

Dodging the onslaught of automobiles and small trucks, all with furious drivers, he raced to the other side of the street and down to the booth. He sped inside, deposited a coin, and after an agonizing few moments during which he explained that he was
not
calling Austria, the international operator accepted his AT&T credit number and put the call through to Vienna, Virginia.

“Why the hell couldn’t I talk from the hotel?” asked Bourne angrily. “I called you last night from there!”

“That was last night, not today.”

“Any news about Mo?”

“Nothing yet, but they may have made a mistake. We may have a line on the army doctor.”

“Break him!”

“With pleasure. I’ll take off my foot and smash his face with it until he begs to cooperate—if the line on him is rumb.”

“That’s not why you’ve been calling me all night, though, is it?”

“No. I was with Peter Holland for five hours yesterday. I went over to see him after we talked, and his reaction was exactly what I thought it would be, with a few generous broadsides in the bargain.”

“Medusa?”

“Yes. He insists you fly back immediately; you’re the only one with direct knowledge. It’s an order.”

“Bullshit! He can’t insist I do anything, much less give me an order!”

“He can cut you off, and I can’t do anything about it. If you need something in a hurry, he won’t deliver.”

“Bernardine’s offered to help. ‘Whatever you need,’ those were his words.”

“Bernardine’s limited. Like me, he can call in debts, but without access to the machine he’s too restricted.”

“Did you tell Holland I’m writing down everything I know, every statement that was made to me, every answer to every question I asked?”

“Are you?”

“I will.”

“He doesn’t buy it. He wants to question you; he says he can’t question pages of paper.”

“I’m too close to the Jackal! I won’t
do
it. He’s an unreasonable son of a bitch!”

“I think he wanted to be reasonable,” said Conklin. “He knows what you’re going through, what you’ve been through, but after seven o’clock last night he closed the doors.”

“Why?”

“Armbruster was shot to death outside his house. They’re calling it a Georgetown robbery, which, of course, it isn’t and wasn’t.”

“Oh,
Jesus
!”

“There are a couple of other things you ought to know. To begin with, we’re releasing Swayne’s ‘suicide.’ ”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“To let whoever killed him think he’s off the hook, and, more important, to see who shows up during the next week or so.

“At the funeral?”

“No, that’s a ‘closed family affair,’ no guests, no formal ceremony.”

“Then who’s going to show up where?

“At the estate, in one form or another. We checked with Swayne’s attorney, very officially, of course, and he confirmed what Swayne’s wife told you about his leaving the whole place to a foundation.”

“Which one?” asked Bourne.

“One you’ve never heard of, funded privately a few years ago by wealthy close friends of the august ‘wealthy’ general. It’s as touching as can be. It goes under the title of the Soldiers, Sailors and Marines Retreat; the board of directors is already in place.”

“Medusans.”

“Or their surrogates. We’ll see.”

“Alex, what about the names I gave you, the six or seven names Flannagan gave
me
? And that slew of license plate numbers from their meetings?”

“Cute, real cute,” said Conklin enigmatically.

“What’s cute?”

“Take the names—they’re the dregs of the wing-ding social set, no relation to the Georgetown upper crust. They’re out of the
National Enquirer
, not
The Washington Post
.”

“But the
licenses
, the meetings! That’s got to be the ball of wax.”

“Even cuter,” observed Alex. “A ball of sheep dip. ... Every one of those licenses is registered to a limousine company, read that companies. I don’t have to tell you how authentic the names would be even if we had the dates to trace them.”

“There’s a cemetery out there!”

“Where is it? How big, how small? There are twenty-eight acres—”

“Start looking!”

“And advertise what we know?”

“You’re right; you’re playing it right. ... Alex, tell Holland you couldn’t reach me.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, I mean it. I’ve got the concierge, I can cover. Give Holland the hotel and the name and tell him to call himself, or send over whoever he likes from the embassy to verify. The concierge will swear I checked in yesterday and he hasn’t seen me since. Even the switchboard will confirm it. Buy me a few days,
please
.”