“If your men are any good, we may reach that objective before the next hour’s up. Come on! Let’s get out of here and use the back way, the kitchen, a window, whatever. He’s found me and you can bet your ass he’s coming out here for me. Only he doesn’t know we know that. Let’s go!”
As the three men rose from the table Krupkin gave instructions to his aide. “Have the car brought around to the rear, the service entrance, if there is one, but do it casually, Sergei. No sense of urgency, you understand me?”
“We can drive half a mile down the road and turn into a pasture that will lead to the rear of the building. We will not be seen by the old man in his car.”
“Very good, Sergei. And have our backup remain in place but be prepared.”
“Of course, comrade.” The aide hurried back to the front entrance.
“A backup?” exploded Alex. “You had a backup?”
“Please, Aleksei, why quibble? It’s your own fault, after all. Even last night on the phone you did not tell me about your conspiracy against your own deputy director.”
“It wasn’t a conspiracy, for Christ’s sake!”
“It wasn’t exactly a pure rapport between the home office and the field, was it? No, Aleksei Nikolae Konsolikov, you knew you could—shall we say—use me and you did. Never forget, my fine old adversary, you are Russian.”
“Will you two shut up and get out of here?”
They waited in Krupkin’s armor-plated Citroën on the edge of an overgrown field a hundred feet behind the old man’s car, the front of the restaurant in clear sight. To Bourne’s annoyance, Conklin and the KGB officer reminisced like two aging professionals dissecting each other’s strategies in past intelligence operations, pointing out the deficiencies each held to be with the other’s. The Soviet backup was a nondescript sedan on the far shoulder of the road diagonally across from the restaurant. Two armed men were ready to leap out, their automatic weapons prepared to fire.
Suddenly, a Renault station wagon pulled up to the curb in front of the inn. Three couples were inside; all but the driver got out, all laughing, playfully entwining their arms. They walked with abandon toward the entrance as their companion drove the car into the small side parking lot.
“Stop them,” said Jason. “They could be killed.”
“Yes, they could be, Mr. Bourne, but if we stop them we will lose the Jackal.”
Jason stared at the Russian, unable to speak, the harsh winds of anger and confusion clouding his thoughts. He started to utter a protest but could not do so; the words would not come. Then it was too late for words. A dark brown van shot up the road from the highway to Paris and Bourne found his voice.
“It’s the one from the boulevard Lefebvre, the one that got away!”
“The one from where?” asked Conklin.
“There was trouble on Lefebvre several days ago,” said Krupkin. “An automobile or a truck was blown up. Do you refer to that?”
“It was a trap. For me. … A van, then a limo, and a double for Carlos—a trap. That’s the second one; it raced out of a dark side street, I think, and tried to cut us down with firepower.”
“Us?” Alex watched Jason; he saw the undisguised fury in the Chameleon’s eyes, the tight, rigid set of his mouth, the slow spreading and contraction of his strong fingers.
“Bernardine and me,” whispered Bourne in reply, suddenly raising his voice. “I want a weapon,” he cried. “The gun in my pocket isn’t a goddamned weapon!”
The driver was Krupkin’s powerfully built Soviet aide Sergei; he reached across his seat and pulled up a Russian AK-47. He held it over his shoulder as Jason grabbed it.
A dark brown limousine, its tires skidding on the backcountry road, screamed to a stop in front of the faded, worn canopy; and like trained commandos, two men leaped out of the side door, their faces encased in stocking masks, their hands holding automatic weapons. They raced to the entrance, each spinning his body to either side of the double doors. A third man emerged from the squared vehicle, a balding man in a priest’s black clothing. With a gesture of his weapon, the two assault troops spun back toward the doors, their hands on the thick brass knobs. The driver of the van gunned his engine in place.
“Go!” yelled Bourne. “It’s him! It’s Carlos!”
“No!” roared Krupkin. “Wait. It’s our trap now, and he must be trapped—inside.”
“For Christ’s sake, there are people in there!” countered Jason.
“All wars have casualties, Mr. Bourne, and in case you don’t realize it, this is war. Yours and mine. Yours is far more personal than mine, incidentally.”
Suddenly, there was an earsplitting scream of vengeance from the Jackal as the double doors were crashed back and the terrorists rushed inside, their weapons on automatic fire.
“Now!” cried Sergei, the ignition started, the accelerator on the floor. The Citroën swung out on the road, rushing toward the van, but in a split half second its progress was derailed. A massive explosion took place on the right. The old man and the nondescript gray car in which he sat was blown apart, sending the Citroën swerving to the left into the ancient post-and-rail fence that bordered the sunken parking lot on the side of the inn. The instant it happened the Jackal’s dark brown van, instead of racing forward, lurched backward, jerking to a halt as the driver jumped out of the cab, concealing himself behind it; he had spotted the Soviet backup. As the two Russians ran toward the restaurant the Jackal’s driver killed one with a burst from his weapon. The other threw himself into the bordering, sloping grass, watching helplessly as Carlos’s driver shot out the tires and the windows of the Soviet vehicle.
“Get out!” yelled Sergei, pulling Bourne from the seat onto the dirt by the fence, as his stunned superior and Alex Conklin crawled out behind him.
“Let’s go!” cried Jason, gripping the AK-47 and getting to his feet. “That son of a bitch blew up the car by remote.”
“I’ll go first!” said the Soviet.
“Why?”
“Frankly, I’m younger and stronger—”
“Shut up!” Bourne raced ahead, zigzagging to draw fire, then plummeting to the ground when it came from the driver of Carlos’s van. He raised his weapon in the grass, knowing that the Jackal’s man believed his fusillade had been accurate; the head appeared and then was no more as Jason squeezed the trigger.
The second Russian backup, hearing the death cry from behind the van, rose from the sloping grass and continued toward the restaurant’s entrance. From inside came the sound of erratic gunfire, sudden bursts accompanied by screams of panic, followed by additional bursts. A living nightmare of terror and blood was taking place within the confines of a once bucolic country inn. Bourne got to his feet, Sergei at his side; running, they joined the other surviving Soviet aide. At Jason’s nod, the Russians pulled back the doors and as one they burst inside.
The next sixty seconds were as terrifying as the shrieking hell depicted by Munch. A waiter and two of the men who were among the three couples were dead, the waiter and one man sprawled on the floor, their skulls shattered, what was left of their faces lying in blood; the third man was splayed back in the banquette, his eyes wide and glass-dead, his clothes riddled with bullets, rivulets of blood rolling down the fabric. The women were in total shock, alternately moaning and screaming as they kept trying to crawl over the pine walls of the booth. The well-dressed man and wife from the Italian embassy were nowhere in sight.
Sergei suddenly rushed forward, his weapon on auto fire; in a rear corner of the room he had spotted a figure whom Bourne had not seen. The stocking-faced killer sprang out of the shadows, his machine swinging into position, but before he could exercise his advantage, the Soviet cut him down. … Another! A body lurching behind the short counter that served as a bar. Was it the Jackal? Jason pivoted into the diagonal wall, crouching, his eyes darting into every recess in the vicinity of the wine racks. He lunged to the base of the bar as the second Russian backup, assessing the situation, ran to the hysterical women, spinning around, his gun swinging back and forth protecting them. The stocking-faced head shot up from behind the counter, his weapon surging out over the wood. Bourne sprang to his feet, gripping the hot barrel with his left hand, his right commanding the AK-47; he fired point-blank into the terrorist’s contorted face beyond the silk. It was not Carlos. Where was the Jackal?
“In there!” shouted Sergei as if he had heard Jason’s furious question.