Bourne glanced at the countryside, trying to pry open the steel doors of his mind, trying to find a semblance of the hope she felt. “What you’re saying is that I’m a reproduced illusion,” he said, making the statement flatly.
“That’s the end effect, but it’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s possible you’ve been manipulated. Used. It would explain so much.” She touched his hand. “You tell me there are times when things want to burst out of you—blow your head apart.”
“Words—places, names—they trigger things.”
“Jason, isn’t it possible they trigger the false things? The things you’ve been told over and over again, but you can’t relive. You can’t see them clearly, because they’re not you.”
“I doubt it. I’ve seen what I can do. I’ve done them before.”
“You could have done them for other reasons! … Goddamn you, I’m fighting for my life! For both our lives! … All right! You can think, you can feel. Think now, feel now! Look at me and tell me you’ve looked inside yourself, inside your thoughts and feelings, and you know without a doubt you’re an assassin called Cain! If you can do that—really do that—then bring me to Zurich, take the blame for everything, and get out of my life! But if you can’t, stay with me and let me help you. And love me, for God’s sake. Love me, Jason”
Bourne took her hand, holding it firmly, as one might an angry, trembling child’s. “It’s not a question of feeling or thinking. I saw the account at the Gemeinschaft; the entries go back a long time. They correspond with all the things I’ve learned.”
“But that account, those entries, could have been created yesterday, or last week, or six months ago. Everything you’ve heard and read about yourself could be part of a pattern designed by those who want you to take Cain’s place. You’re not Cain, but they want you to think you are, want others to think you are. But there’s someone out there who knows you’re not Cain and he’s trying to tell you. I have my proof, too. My lover’s alive, but two friends are dead because they got between you and the one who’s sending you the message, who’s trying to save your life. They were killed by the same people who want to sacrifice you to Carlos in place of Cain. You said before that everything fit. It didn’t, Jason, but this does! It explains you.”
“A hollow shell who doesn’t even own the memories he thinks he has? With demons running around inside kicking hell out of the walls? It’s not a pleasant prospect.”
“Those aren’t demons, my darling. They’re parts of you—angry, furious, screaming to get out because they don’t belong in the shell you’ve given them.”
And if I blow that shell apart, what’ll I find?”
“Many things. Some good, some bad, a great deal that’s been hurt. But Cain won’t be there, I promise you that. I believe in you, my darling. Please don’t give up.”
He kept his distance, a glass wall between them. “And if we’re wrong? Finally wrong? What then?”
“Leave me quickly. Or kill me. I don’t care.”
“I love you.”
“I know. That’s why I’m not afraid.”
“I found two telephone numbers in Lavier’s office. The first was for Zurich, the other here in Paris. With any luck, they can lead me to the one number I need.”
“New York? Treadstone?”
“Yes. The answer’s there. If I’m not Cain, someone at that number knows who I am.”
They drove back to Paris on the assumption that they would be far less obvious among the crowds of the city than in an isolated country inn. A blond-haired man wearing tortoise-shell glasses, and a striking but stern-faced woman, devoid of makeup, and with her hair pulled back like an intense graduate student at the Sorbonne, were not out of place in Montmartre. They took a room at the Terrasse on the rue de Maistre, registering as a married couple from Brussels.
In the room, they stood for a moment, no words necessary for what each was seeing and feeling. They came together, touching, holding, closing out the abusive world that refused them peace, that kept them balancing on taut wires next to one another, high above a dark abyss; if either fell, it was the end for both.
Bourne could not change his color for the immediate moment. It would be false, and there was no room for artifice. “We need some rest,” he said. “We’ve got to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day.”
They made love. Gently, completely, each with the other in the warm, rhythmic comfort of the bed. And there was a moment, a foolish moment, when adjustment of an angle was breathlessly necessary and they laughed. It was a quiet laugh, at first even an embarrassed laugh, but the observation was there, the appraisal of foolishness intrinsic to something very deep between them. They held each other more fiercely when the moment passed, more and more intent on sweeping away the awful sounds and the terrible sights of a dark world that kept them spinning in its winds. They were suddenly breaking out of that world, plunging into a much better one where sunlight and blue water replaced the darkness. They raced toward it feverishly, furiously, and then they burst through and found it.
Spent, they fell asleep, their fingers entwined.
Bourne woke first, aware of the horns and the engines in the Paris traffic below in the streets. He looked at his watch; it was ten past one in the afternoon. They had slept nearly five hours, probably less than they needed, but it was enough. It was going to be a long day. Doing what, he was not sure; he only knew that there were two telephone numbers that had to lead him to a third. In New York.
He turned to Marie, breathing deeply beside him, her face—her striking, lovely face—angled down on the edge of the pillow, her lips parted, inches from his lips. He kissed her and she reached for him, her eyes still closed.
“You’re a frog and I’ll make you a prince,” she said in a sleep-filled voice. “Or is it the other way around?”
“As expanding as it may be, that’s not in my present frame of reference.”
“Then you’ll have to stay a frog. Hop around, little frog. Show off for me.”
“No temptations. I only hop when I’m fed flies.”
“Frogs eat flies? I guess they do. Shudder; that’s awful.”
“Come on, open your eyes. We’ve both got to start hopping. We’ve got to start hunting.”
She blinked and looked at him. “Hunting for what?”
“For me,” he said.
From a telephone booth on the rue Lafayette, a collect call was placed to a number in Zurich by a Mr. Briggs. Bourne reasoned that Jacqueline Lavier would have wasted no time sending out her alarms; one had to have been flashed to Zurich.
When he heard the ring in Switzerland, Jason stepped back and handed the phone to Marie. She knew what to say.
She had no chance to say it. The international operator in Zurich came on the line.
“We regret that the number you have called is no longer in service.”
“It was the other day,” broke in Marie. “This is an emergency, operator. Do you have another number?”
“The telephone is no longer in service, madame. There is no alternate number.”
“I may have been given the wrong one. It’s most urgent. Could you give me the name of the party who had this number?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“I told you; it’s an emergency! May I speak with your superior, please?”
“He would not be able to help you. This number is an unpublished listing. Good afternoon, madame.”
The connection was broken. “It’s been disconnected,” she said.
“It took too goddamn long to find that out,” replied Bourne, looking up and down the street. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You think they could have traced it here? In Paris? To a public phone?’
“Within three minutes an exchange can be determined, a district pinpointed. In four, they can narrow the blocks down to half a dozen.”
“How do you know that?”
“I wish I could tell you. Let’s go.”
“Jason. Why not wait out of sight? And watch?”
“Because I don’t know what to watch for and they do. They’ve got a photograph to go by; they could station men all over the area.”
“I don’t look anything like the picture in the papers.”
“Not you. Me. Let’s go!”
They walked rapidly within the erratic ebb and flow of the crowds until they reached the boulevard Malesherbes ten blocks away, and another telephone booth, this with a different exchange from the first. This time there were no operators to go through; this was Paris. Marie stepped inside, coins in her hand and dialed; she was prepared.