The Bourne ultimatum (65 page)

The ride down to the lobby was both interminable and insufferable, the latter because of an American couple—he laden with camera equipment, she with purple eyelids and a peroxide bouffant apparently set in concrete—who kept complaining that not enough people in Paris, France, spoke English. The elevator doors thankfully opened and Marie walked out rapidly into the crowded Meurice lobby.

As she crossed the marble floor toward the large glass doors of the ornate filigreed entrance, she suddenly, involuntarily stopped as an elderly man in a dark pin-striped suit gasped, his slender body lurching forward in a heavy leather chair below on her right. The old man stared at her, his thin lips parted in astonishment, his eyes in shock.

“Marie St. Jacques!” he whispered. “My
God
, get
out
of here!”

“I beg your ...
What
?”

The aged Frenchman quickly, with difficulty, rose to his feet, his head subtly, swiftly, jerking in short movements as he scanned the lobby. “You cannot be seen here, Mrs. Webb,” he said, his voice still a whisper but no less harsh and commanding. “Don’t look at me! Look at your watch. Keep your head down.” The Deuxième veteran glanced away, nodding aimlessly at several people in nearby chairs as he continued, his lips barely moving. “Go out the door on the far left, the one used for luggage.
Hurry
!”

“
No
!” replied Marie, her head down, her eyes on her watch. “You know me but I don’t know you! Who
are
you?”

“A friend of your husband.”

“My God, is he
here
?”

“The question is why are
you
here?”

“I stayed at this hotel once before. I thought he might remember it.”

“He did but in the wrong context, I’m afraid.
Mon Dieu
, he never would have chosen it otherwise. Now, leave.”

“I won’t! I have to find him. Where
is
he?”

“You
will
leave or you may find only his corpse. There’s a message for you in the Paris
Tribune
—”

“It’s in my purse. The financial page. ‘
Memom
—’ ”

“Call in several hours.”

“You can’t
do
this to me.”

“You cannot do this to
him
. You’ll kill him! Get out of here.
Now
!”

Her eyes half blinded with fury and fear and tears, Marie started toward the left side of the lobby, desperately wanting to look back, but just as desperately knowing she could not do so. She reached the narrow set of glass double doors, colliding with a uniformed bellhop carrying suitcases inside.

“
Pardon, madame
!”

“
Moi aussi
,” she stammered, maneuvering again blindly around the luggage and out to the pavement. What could she do—what
should
she do? David was somewhere in the hotel—
in
the hotel! And a strange man recognized her and warned her and told her to get out—
get away
! What was happening? ... My God, someone’s trying to kill David! The old Frenchman had said as much—who
was
it... who were
they
?
Where
were they?

Help me! For God’s sake, Jason, tell me what to do.
Jason
? ... Yes, Jason ...
help
me! She stood, frozen, as taxis and limousines broke off from the noonday traffic and pulled up to the Meurice’s curb, where a gold-braided doorman under the huge canopy greeted newcomers and old faces and sent bellboys scurrying in all directions. A large black limousine with a small discreet religious insignia on its passenger door, the cruciform standard of some high office of the Church, inched its way to the canopied area. Marie stared at the small emblem; it was circular and no more than six inches in diameter, a globe of royal purple surrounding an elongated crucifix of gold. She winced and held her breath; her panic now had a disturbing new dimension. She had seen that insignia before, and all she remembered was that it had filled her with horror.

The limousine stopped; both curbside doors were opened by the smiling, bowing doorman as five priests emerged, one from the front seat, four from the spacious rear section. Those from the back immediately, oddly, threaded their way into the noonday crowds of strollers on the pavement, two forward in front of the vehicle, two behind it, one of the priests whipping past Marie, his black coat making contact with her, his face so close she could see the blazing unpriestly eyes of a man who was no part of a religious order. ... Then the association with the emblem, the religious insignia, came back to her!

Years ago, when David—when
Jason
—was in maximum therapy with Panov, Mo had him sketch, draw, doodle whatever images came to him. Time and again that terrible circle with the thin crucifix appeared ... invariably torn apart or stabbed repeatedly with the pencil point.
The Jackal
!

Suddenly, Marie’s eyes were drawn to a figure crossing the rue de Rivoli. It was a tall man in dark clothes—a dark sweater and trousers—and he was limping, dodging the traffic, a hand shielding his face from the drizzle that soon would turn into rain. The limp was
false
! The leg straightened if only for an instant and the swing of the shoulder that compensated was a defiant gesture she knew only too well. It was David!

Another, no more than eight feet from her, also saw what she saw. A miniature radio was instantly brought to the man’s lips. Marie rushed forward, her extended hands the claws of a tigress as she lunged at the killer in priest’s clothing.

“
David
!” she screamed, drawing blood from the face of the Jackal’s man.

Gunshots filled the rue de Rivoli. The crowds panicked, many running into the hotel, many more racing away from the canopied entrance, all shrieking, yelling, seeking safety from the murderous insanity that had suddenly exploded in the civilized street. In the violent struggle with the man who would kill her husband, the strong Canadian ranch girl ripped the automatic out of his belt and fired it into his head; blood and membranes were blown into the air.

“
Jason
!” she screamed again as the killer fell, instantly realizing that she stood alone with only the corpse beneath her—she was a
target
! Then from certain death there was the sudden possibility of life. The old aristocratic Frenchman who had recognized her in the lobby came crashing out of the front entrance, his automatic weapon on repeat fire as he sprayed the black limousine, stopping for an instant to switch his aim and shattering the legs of a “priest” whose weapon was leveled at him.

“
Mon ami
!” roared Bernardine.

“
Here
!” shouted Bourne. “Where
is
she?”

“
A votre droite
!
Auprès de
—” A single gunshot exploded from the glass double doors of the Meurice. As he fell the Deuxième veteran cried out, “
Les Capucines, mon ami. Les Capucines
!” Bernardine slumped to the pavement; a second gunshot ended his life.

Marie was paralyzed, she could not
move
! Everything was a blizzard, a hurricane of iced particles crashing with such force against her face she could neither think nor find meaning. Weeping out of control, she fell to her knees, then collapsed in the street, her screams of despair clear to the man who suddenly was above her. “My children ... oh
God
, my
children
!”

“
Our
children,” said Jason Bourne, his voice not the voice of David Webb. “We’re getting out of here, can you understand that?”

“Yes ...
yes
!” Marie awkwardly, painfully, swung her legs behind her and lurched to her feet, held by the husband she either knew or did not know. “
David
?”

“Of course I’m David. Come on!”

“You frighten me—”

“I frighten myself. Let’s
go
! Bernardine gave us our exit. Run with me; hold my hand!”

They raced down the rue de Rivoli, swinging east into the boulevard St.-Michel until the Parisian strollers in their
nonchalance de jour
made it clear that the fugitives were safe from the horrors of the Meurice. They stopped m an alleyway and held each other.

“Why did you
do
it?” asked Marie, cupping his face. “Why did you run away from us?”

“Because I’m better without you, you know that.”

“You weren’t before, David—or should I say Jason?”

“Names don’t matter, we have to move!”

“Where to?”

“I’m not sure. But we
can
move, that’s the important thing. There’s a way out. Bernardine gave it to us.”

“He was the old Frenchman?”

“Let’s not talk about him, okay? At least not for a while. I’m shredded enough.”

“All right, we won’t talk about him. Still, he mentioned Les Capucines—what did he mean?”

“It’s our way out. There’s a car waiting for me in the boulevard des Capucines. That’s what he was telling me. Let’s
go
!”

They raced south out of Paris in the nondescript Peugeot, taking the Barbizon highway to Vilieneuve-St.-Georges. Marie sat close to her husband, their bodies touching, her hand clutching his arm. She was, however, sickeningly aware that the warmth she intended was not returned in equal measure. Only a part of the intense man behind the wheel was her David; the rest of him was Jason Bourne and he was now in command.

“For God’s sake, talk to me!” she cried.

“I’m thinking. ... Why did you come to Paris?”

“Good
Christ
!” exploded Marie. “To find you, to
help
you!”

“I’m sure you thought it was right. ... It wasn’t, you know.”

“That voice again,” protested Marie. “That goddamned disembodied tone of voice! Who the hell do you think you are to make that judgment?
God
? To put it bluntly—no, not bluntly, but brutally—there are things you have trouble remembering, my darling.”

“Not about Paris,” objected Jason. “I remember everything about Paris. Everything.”

“Your friend Bernardine didn’t think so! He told me you never would have chosen the Meurice if you did.”

“What?” Bourne briefly, harshly glanced at his wife.

“Think. Why did you choose—and you
did
choose—the Meurice?”

“I don’t know ... I’m not sure. It’s a hotel; the name just came to me.”

“
Think
. What happened years ago at the Meurice—right outside the Meurice?”

“I—I know something happened. ...
You
?”

“Yes, my love,
me
. I stayed there under a false name and you came to meet me, and we walked to the newsstand on the corner, where in one horrible moment we both knew my life could never be the same again—with you or without you.”

“Oh, Jesus, I forgot! The newspapers—your photograph on all the front pages. You were the Canadian government official—”

“The
escaped
Canadian economist,” broke in Marie, “hunted by the authorities all over Europe for multiple killings in Zurich in tandem with the theft of millions from Swiss banks! Those kinds of headlines never leave a person, do they? They can be refuted, proved to be totally false, yet still there is that lingering doubt. ‘Where there’s smoke there must be fire,’ I believe is the bromide. My own colleagues in Ottawa ... dear, dear friends I’d worked with for years ... were afraid to
talk
to me!”

“
Wait
a minute!” shouted Bourne, his eyes again flashing at David’s wife. “They
were
false—it was a Treadstone ploy to pull me in—you were the one who understood it,
I
didn’t!”

“Of course I did, because you were so stretched you couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter to me then because I’d made up my mind, my very precise analytical mind, a mind I’d match against yours any day of the week, my sweet scholar.”

“
What
?”

“Watch the
road
! You missed the turn, just the way you missed the one to our cabin only days ago—or was it years ago?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“That small inn we stayed at outside the Barbizon. You politely asked them to please light the fire in the dining room—we were the only people there. It was the third time I saw through the mask of Jason Bourne to someone else, someone I was falling deeply in love with.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“I have to, David. If only for myself now. I have to know you’re there.”

Silence. A U-turn on the
grand-route
and the driver pressed the accelerator to the floor. “I’m here,” whispered the husband, lifting his right arm and pulling his wife to him. “I don’t know for how long, but I’m here.”

“Hurry, my darling.”

“I will. I just want to hold you in my arms.”

“And I want to call the children.”

“Now I know I’m here.”

“You’ll tell us everything we want to know voluntarily or we’ll send you up into a chemical orbit your hacks never dreamed of with Dr. Panov,” said Peter Holland, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, his quiet monotone as hard and as smooth as polished granite. “Furthermore, I should elaborate on, the extremes to which I’m perfectly willing to go because I’m from the old school,
paisan
. I don’t give a shit for rules that favor garbage. You play cipher with me, I’ll deep-six you still breathing a hundred miles off Hatteras in a torpedo casing. Am I clear?”

The capo subordinato, thick plaster casts around his left arm and right leg, lay on the bed in Langley’s deserted infirmary room, deserted since the DCI ordered the medical staff to get out of hearing range for their own good. The mafioso’s naturally puffed face was additionally enlarged by swellings around both eyes as well as his generous lips, the result of his head having smashed into the dashboard when Mo Panov sent the car into a Maryland oak. He looked up at Holland, his heavy-lidded gaze traveling over to Alexander Conklin seated in a chair, the ever-present cane gripped in anxious hands.

“You got no right, Mr. Big Shot,” said the capo gruffly. “ ’Cause
I
got rights, you know what I mean?”

“So did the doctor, and you violated them—
Jesus
, did you violate them!”