“The man wearing gold-rimmed glasses!” he shouted. “He’s the one! I saw him!”
“What? Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Walther Apfel! Listen to me! The man wearing gold-rimmed glasses, in a black raincoat. Over there!”
Bureaucratic mentality had not changed in several millenniums. At the mention of a superior officer’s name, one followed orders.
“Herr Apfel!” The Gemeinschaft greeter turned to the guard. “You heard him! The man wearing glasses. Gold-rimmed glasses!”
“Yes, sir!” The guard raced forward.
Jason edged past the greeter to the glass doors. He shoved the door on the right open, glancing behind him, knowing he had to run again but not knowing if a man outside on the pavement, waiting by a brown Peugeot, would recognize him and fire a bullet into his head.
The guard had run past a man in a black raincoat, a man walking more slowly than the panicked figures around him, a man wearing no glasses at all. He accelerated his pace toward the entrance, toward Bourne.
Out on the sidewalk, the growing chaos was Jason’s protection. Word had gone out of the bank; wailing sirens grew louder as police cars raced up the Bahnhofstrasse. He walked several yards to the right, flanked by pedestrians, then suddenly ran, wedging his way into a curious crowd taking refuge in a storefront, his attention on the automobiles at the curb. He saw the Peugeot, saw the man standing beside it, his hand ominously in his overcoat pocket. In less than fifteen seconds, the driver of the Peugeot was joined by the man in the black raincoat, now replacing his gold-rimmed glasses, adjusting his eyes to his restored vision. The two men conferred rapidly, their eyes scanning the Bahnhofstrasse.
Bourne understood their confusion. He had walked with an absence of panic out of the Gemeinschaft’s glass doors into the crowd. He had been prepared to run, but he had not run, for fear of being stopped until he was reasonably clear of the entrance. No one else had been permitted to do so—and the driver of the Peugeot had not made the connection. He had not recognized the target identified and marked for execution in Marseilles.
The first police car reached the scene as the man in the gold-rimmed spectacles removed his raincoat, shoving it through the open window of the Peugeot. He nodded to the driver, who climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. The killer took off his delicate glasses and did the most unexpected thing Jason could imagine. He walked rapidly back toward the glass doors of the bank, joining the police who were racing inside.
Bourne watched as the Peugeot swung away from the curb and sped off down the Bahnhofstrasse. The crowd in the storefront began to disperse, many edging their way toward the glass doors, craning their necks around one another, rising on the balls of their feet, peering inside. A police officer came out, waving the curious back, demanding that a path be cleared to the curb. As he shouted, an ambulance careened around the northwest corner, its horn joining the sharp, piercing notes from its roof, warning all to get out of its way; the driver nosed his outsized vehicle to a stop in the space created by the departed Peugeot. Jason could watch no longer. He had to get to the Carillon du Lac, gather his things, and get out of Zurich, out of Switzerland. To Paris.
Why Paris? Why had he insisted that the funds be transferred to Paris? It had not occurred to him before he sat in Walther Apfel’s office, stunned by the extraordinary figures presented him. They had been beyond anything in his imagination—so much so that he could only react numbly, instinctively. And instinct had evoked the city of Paris. As though it were somehow vital. Why?
Again, no time … He saw the ambulance crew carry a stretcher through the doors of the bank. On it was a body, the head covered, signifying death. The significance was not lost on Bourne; save for skills he could not relate to anything he understood, he was the dead man on that stretcher.
He saw an empty taxi at the corner and ran toward it. He had to get out of Zurich; a message had been sent from Marseilles, yet the dead man was alive. Jason Bourne was alive. Kill him. Kill Jason Bourne!
God in heaven, why?
He was hoping to see the Carillon du Lac’s assistant manager behind the front desk, but he was not there. Then he realized that a short note to the man—what was his name—Stossel? Yes, Stossel—would be sufficient. An explanation for his sudden departure was not required and five hundred francs would easily take care of the few hours he had accepted from the Carillon du Lac—and the favor he would ask of Herr Stossel.
In his room, he threw his shaving equipment into his unpacked suitcase, checked the pistol he had taken from the Frenchman, leaving it in his topcoat pocket, and sat down at the desk; he wrote out the note for Herr Stossel, Asst. Mgr. In it he included a sentence that came easily—almost too easily.
… I may be in contact with you shortly relative to messages I expect will have been sent to me. I trust it will be convenient for you to keep an eye out for them, and accept them on my behalf.
If any communication came from the elusive Treadstone Seventy-One, he wanted to know about it. This was Zurich; he would.
He put a five hundred franc note between the folded stationery and sealed the envelope. Then he picked up his suitcase, walked out of the room, and went down the hallway to the bank of elevators. There were four; he touched a button and looked behind him, remembering the Gemeinschaft. There was no one there; a bell pinged and the red light above the third elevator flashed on. He had caught a descending machine. Fine. He had to get to the airport just as fast as he could; he had to get out of Zurich, out of Switzerland. A message had been delivered.
The elevator doors opened. Two men stood on either side of an auburn-haired woman; they interrupted their conversation, nodded at the newcomer—noting the suitcase and moving to the side—then resumed talking as the doors closed. They were in their mid-thirties and spoke French softly, rapidly, the woman glancing alternately at both men, alternately smiling and looking pensive. Decisions of no great import were being made. Laughter intermingled with semi-serious interrogation.
“You’ll be going home then after the summations tomorrow?” asked the man on the left.
“I’m not sure. I’m waiting for word from Ottawa,” the woman replied. “I have relations in Lyon; it would be good to see them.”
“It’s impossible,” said the man on the right, “for the steering committee to find ten people willing to summarize this Godforsaken conference in a single day. We’ll all be here another week.”
“Brussels will not approve,” said the first man grinning. “The hotel’s too expensive.”
“Then by all means move to another,” said the second with a leer at the woman. “We’ve been waiting for you to do just that, haven’t we?”
“You’re a lunatic,” said the woman. “You’re both lunatics, and that’s my summation.”
“You’re not, Marie,” interjected the first. “A lunatic, I mean. Your presentation yesterday was brilliant.”
“It was nothing of the sort,” she said. “It was routine and quite dull.”
“No, no!” disagreed the second. “It was superb; it had to be. I didn’t understand a word. But then I have other talents.”
“Lunatic …”
The elevator was braking; the first man spoke again. “Let’s sit in the back row of the hall. We’re late anyway and Bertinelli is speaking—to little effect, I suggest. His theories of enforced cyclical fluctuations went out with the finances of the Borgias.”
“Before then,” said the auburn-haired woman, laughing. “Caesar’s taxes.” She paused, then added, “If not the Punic wars.”
“The back row then,” said the second man, offering his arm to the woman. “We can sleep. He uses a slide projector; it’ll be dark.”
“No, you two go ahead, I’ll join you in a few minutes. I really must send off some cables and I don’t trust the telephone operators to get them right.”
The doors opened and the threesome walked out of the elevator. The two men started diagonally across the lobby together, the woman toward the front desk. Bourne fell in step behind her, absently reading a sign on a triangular stand several feet away.
WELCOME TO:
MEMBERS OF THE SIXTH WORLD
ECONOMIC CONFERENCE
TODAY’S SCHEDULE:
1:00 P.M.: THE HON. JAMES FRAZIER,
M.P. UNITED KINGDOM.
SUITE 12
6:00 P.M.: DR EUGENIO BERTINELLI,
UNIV. OF MILAN, ITALY.
SUITE 7
9:00 P.M.: CHAIRMAN’S FAREWELL DINNER.
HOSPITALITY SUITE
“Room 507. The operator said there was a cablegram for me.”
English. The auburn-haired woman now beside him at the counter spoke English But then she had said she was “waiting for word from Ottawa.” A Canadian.