“Less than five minutes ago. The two men in the Citroën followed them.”
“Were they in your car?”
“No. My wife called a taxi.”
“I’m going out there,” said Jason.
“I thought you might,” said Villiers. “I looked up the address of the church.”
Bourne dropped a fifty-franc note over the back of the front seat. The driver grabbed it. “It’s important to me to reach Neuilly-sur-Seine as fast as possible. The Church of the Blessed Sacrament. Do you know where it is?”
“But of course, monsieur. It is the most beautiful parish in the district.”
“Get there quickly and there’ll be another fifty francs.”
“We shall fly on the wings of blessed angels, monsieur!”
They flew, the flight plan jeopardizing most of the traffic in their path.
“There are the spires of the Blessed Sacrament, monsieur,” said the victorious driver, twelve minutes later, pointing at three soaring towers of stone through the windshield. “Another minute, perhaps two if the idiots who should be taken off the street will permit. …”
“Slow down,” interrupted Bourne, his attention not on the spires of the church but on an automobile several cars ahead. They had taken a corner and he had seen it during the turn; it was a gray Citroën, two men in the front seat.
They came to a traffic light; the cars stopped Jason dropped the second fifty-franc note over the seat and opened the door. “I’ll be right back. If the light changes, drive forward slowly and I’ll jump in.”
Bourne got out, keeping his body low, and rushed between the cars until he saw the letters. NYR; the numbers following were 768, but for the moment they were inconsequential. The taxi driver had earned his money.
The light changed and the row of automobiles lurched forward like one elongated insect pulling its shelled parts together. The taxi drew alongside; Jason opened the door and climbed in. “You do good work,” he said to the driver.
“I’m not sure I know the work I am doing.”
“An affair of the heart. One must catch the betrayer in the act.”
“In church, monsieur? The world moves too swiftly for me.”
“Not in traffic,” said Bourne. They approached the final corner before the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. The Citroën made the turn, a single car between it and a taxi, the passengers indistinguishable. Something bothered Jason. The surveillance on the part of the two men was too open, far too obvious. It was as if Carlos’ soldiers wanted someone in that taxi to know they were there.
Of course! Villiers’ wife was in that cab. With Jacqueline Lavier. And the two men in the Citroën wanted Villiers’ wife to know they were behind her.
“There is the Blessed Sacrament,” said the driver, entering the street where the church rose in minor medieval splendor in the center of a manicured lawn, crisscrossed by stone paths and dotted with statuary. “What shall I do, monsieur?”
“Pull into that space,” ordered Jason, gesturing at a break in the line of parked cars. The taxi with Villiers’ wife and the Lavier woman stopped in front of a path guarded by a concrete saint. Villiers’ stunning wife got out first, extending her hand for Jacqueline Lavier, who emerged, ashen, on the pavement. She wore large, orange-rimmed sunglasses and carried a white purse, but she was no longer elegant. Her crown of silver-streaked hair fell in straight, disassociated lines down the sides of her death-white mask of a face, and her stockings were torn. She was at least three hundred feet away, but Bourne felt he could almost hear the erratic gasping for breath that accompanied the hesitant movements of the once regal figure stepping forward in the sunlight.
The Citroën had proceeded beyond the taxi and was now pulling to the curb. Neither man got out, but a thin metal rod, reflecting the glare of the sun, began rising out of the trunk. The radio antenna was being activated, codes sent over a guarded frequency. Jason was mesmerized, not by the sight and the knowledge of what was being done, but by something else. Words came to him, from where he did not know, but they were there.
Delta to Almanac, Delta to Almanac. We will not respond. Repeat, negative, brother.
Almanac to Delta. You will respond as ordered. Abandon, abandon. That is final.
Delta to Almanac. You’re final, brother. Go fuck yourself. Delta out, equipment damaged.
Suddenly the darkness was all around him, the sunlight gone. There were no soaring towers of a church reaching for the sky; instead there were black shapes of irregular foliage shivering beneath the light of iridescent clouds. Everything was moving, everything was moving; he had to move with the movement. To remain immobile was to die. Move! For Christ’s sake, move!
And take them out. One by one. Crawl in closer, overcome the fear—the terrible fear—and reduce the numbers. That was all there was to it. Reduce the numbers. The Monk had made that clear. Knife, wire, knee, thumb; you know the points of damage. Of death.
Death is a statistic for the computers. For you it is survival.
The Monk.
The Monk?
The sunlight came again, blinding him for a moment, his foot on the pavement, his gaze on the gray Citroën a hundred yards away. But it was difficult to see; why was it so difficult? Haze, mist … not darkness now but impenetrable mist. He was hot; no, he was cold. Cold! He jerked his head up, suddenly aware of where he was and what he was doing. His face had been pressed against the window; his breath had fogged the glass.
“I’m getting out for a few minutes,” said Bourne. “Stay here.”
“All day, if you wish, monsieur.”
Jason pulled up the lapels of his topcoat, pushed his hat forward and put on the tortoise-shell glasses. He walked alongside a couple toward a religious sidewalk bazaar, breaking away to stand behind a mother and child at the counter. He had a clear view of the Citroën, the taxi which had been summoned to Parc Monceau was no longer there, dismissed by Villiers’ wife. It was a curious decision on her part, thought Bourne; cabs were not that available.
Three minutes later the reason was clear … and disturbing. Villiers’ wife came striding out of the church, walking rapidly, her tall, statuesque figure drawing admiring glances from strollers. She went directly to the Citroën, spoke to the men in front, then opened the rear door.
The purse. A white purse! Villiers’ wife was carrying the purse that only minutes before had been clutched in the hands of Jacqueline Lavier. She climbed into the Citroën’s back seat and pulled the door shut. The sedan’s motor was switched on and gunned, prelude to a quick and sudden departure. As the car rolled away, the shiny metal rod that was the vehicle’s antenna became shorter and shorter, retracting into its base.
Where was Jacqueline Lavier? Why had she given her purse to Villiers’ wife? Bourne started to move, then stopped, instinct warning him. A trap? If Lavier was followed, those following her might also be trailed—and not by him.
He looked up and down the street, studying the pedestrians on the sidewalk, then each car, each driver and passenger, watching for a face that did not belong, as Villiers had said of the two men in the Citroën had not belonged in Parc Monceau.
There were no breaks in the parade, no darting eyes or hands concealed in outsized pockets. He was being overly cautious; Neuilly-sur-Seine was not a trap for him. He moved away from the counter and started for the church.
He stopped, his feet suddenly clamped to the pavement. A priest was coming out of the church, a priest in a black suit, a starched white collar and a black hat that partially covered his face. He had seen him before. Not long ago, not in a forgotten past, but recently. Very recently. Weeks, days … hours, perhaps. Where was it? Where? He knew him! It was in the walk, in the tilt of his head, in the wide shoulders that seemed to glide in place above the fluid movement of his body. He was a man with a gun! Where was it?
Zurich? The Carillon du Lac? Two men breaking through the crowds, converging, brokering death. One wore gold-rimmed glasses; it was not he. That man was dead. Was it that other man in the Carillon du Lac? Or in the Guisan Quai? An animal, grunting, wild-eyed in rape. Was it he? Or someone else. A dark-coated man in the corridor at the Auberge du Coin where the lights had been shorted out, the spill from the staircase illuminating the trap. A reverse trap where that man had fired his weapon in darkness at shapes he thought were human. Was it that man?
Bourne did not know, he only knew that he had seen the priest before, but not as a priest. As a man with a gun.