The Bourne ultimatum (64 page)

“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 Hôtel 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
cin
é
ma-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.