“That’s easy to answer. I didn’t know she was there. Where do we stand now?”
“Carlos still trusts me. He blames everything on the woman, your wife, I’m told, and has no reason to hold me responsible. After all, you were there, which proves my allegiance. Were it not for the Deuxième officer, you’d be dead.”
Again Bourne nodded. “How can you reach him?”
“I cannot myself. I never have, nor have I cared to. He prefers it that way, and as I told you, the checks arrive on time, so I have no reason to.”
“But you send him messages,” pressed Jason. “I heard you.”
“Yes, I do, but never directly. I call several old men at cheap cafés—the names and numbers vary weekly and quite a few have no idea what I’m talking about, but for those that do, they call others immediately, and they call others beyond themselves. Somehow the messages get through. Very quickly, I might add.”
“What did I tell you?” said Krupkin emphatically. “All the relays end with false names and filthy cafés. Stone walls!”
“Still, the messages get through,” said Alex Conklin, repeating Lavier’s words.
“Yet Kruppie’s correct.” The aging but still striking woman dragged heavily, nervously on her cigarette. “The routings are convoluted to the point of being untraceable.”
“I don’t care about that,” said Alex, squinting at nothing the others could see. “They also reach Carlos quickly, you made that clear.”
“It’s true.”
Conklin widened his eyes and fixed them on Lavier. “I want you to send the most urgent message you’ve ever relayed to the Jackal. You must talk to him directly. It’s an emergency that you can entrust to no one but Carlos himself.”
“About what?” erupted Krupkin. “What could be so urgent that the Jackal will comply? Like our Mr. Bourne, he is obsessed with traps, and under the circumstances, any direct communication smells of one!”
Alex shook his head and limped to a side window, squinting again, deep in thought, his intense eyes reflecting his concentration. Then gradually, slowly, his eyes opened. He gazed at the street below. “My God, it could work,” he whispered to himself.
“What could work?” asked Bourne.
“Dimitri, hurry! Call the embassy and have them send over the biggest, fanciest diplomatic limousine you proletarians own.”
“What?”
“Just do as I say! Quickly!”
“Aleksei … ?”
“Now!”
The force and urgency of Conklin’s command had its effect. The Russian walked rapidly to the mother-of-pearl telephone and dialed, his questioning eyes on Alex, who kept staring down at the street. Lavier looked at Jason; he shook his head in bewilderment as Krupkin spoke into the phone, his Russian a short series of clipped phrases.
“It’s done,” said the KGB officer, hanging up. “And now I think you should give me an extremely convincing reason for doing it.”
“Moscow,” replied Conklin, still looking out the window.
“Alex, for Christ’s sake—”
“What are you saying?” roared Krupkin.
“We’ve got to get Carlos out of Paris,” said Conklin, turning. “Where better than Moscow?” Before the astonished men could respond, Alex looked at Lavier. “You say he still trusts you?”
“He has no reason not to.”
“Then two words should do it. ‘Moscow, emergency,’ that’s the basic message you’re sending him. Put it any way you like, but add that the crisis is of such a nature that you must speak only with him.”
“But I never have. I know men who have spoken with him, who in drunken moments have tried to describe him, but to me he is a complete stranger.”
“All the stronger for it,” broke in Conklin, turning to Bourne and Krupkin. “In this city he’s got all the cards, all of them. He’s got firepower, an untraceable network of gunslingers and couriers, and for every crevice he can crawl into and burst out from, there are dozens more available to him. Paris is his territory, his protection—we could run blindly all over the city for days, weeks, even months, getting nowhere until the moment comes when he’s got you and Marie in his gun sights … you can also add Mo and me to that scenario. London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Rome—they’d all be better for us than Paris, but the best is Moscow. Oddly enough, it’s the one place in the world that has a hypnotic hold on him—and also the one that’s the least hospitable.”
“Aleksei, Aleksei,” cried Dimitri Krupkin. “I really think you should reconsider alcohol, for it’s obvious you’ve lost your senses! Say Domie actually reaches Carlos and tells him what you say. Do you really believe that on the basis of an ‘emergency’ in Moscow he’ll up and take the next plane there? Insanity!”
“You can bet your last black-market ruble I do,” replied Conklin. “That message is only to convince him to get in touch with her. Once he does, she explodes the bomb. … She’s just heard an extraordinary piece of information that she knew should only be conveyed to him, not sent through the message tunnels.”
“And what in God’s name might that be?” asked Lavier, extracting another cigarette and instantly lighting it.
“The KGB in Moscow is closing in on the Jackal’s man in Dzerzhinsky Square. They’ve narrowed it down to, say, ten or fifteen officers in the highest ranks. Once they find him, Carlos is neutralized in the Komitet—worse, he’s about to lose an informer who knows far too much about him to the Lubyanka interrogators.”
“But how would she know that?” said Jason.
“Who would tell her?” added Krupkin.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“So are your very secret substations in Beijing, Kabul and—forgive my impertinence—Canada’s Prince Edward Island, but you don’t advertise them,” said Krupkin.
“I didn’t know about Prince Edward,” admitted Alex. “Regardless, there are times when advertisements aren’t necessary, only the means to convey the information credibly. A few minutes ago I didn’t have any means, only authenticity, but that gap has just been filled. … Come over here, Kruppie—just you for the moment, and stay away from the window. Look between the corner of the drapes.” The Soviet did as he was told, going to Conklin’s side and parting the fold of lace fabric from the wall. “What do you see?” asked Alex, gesturing at a shabby, nondescript brown car below on the avenue Montaigne. “Doesn’t do much for the neighborhood, does it?”
Krupkin did not bother to reply. Instead, he whipped the miniaturized radio from his pocket and pressed the transmitter button. “Sergei, there’s a brown automobile roughly eighty meters down the street from the building’s entrance—”
“We know, sir,” interrupted the aide. “We’ve got it covered, and if you’ll notice, our backup is parked across the way. It’s an old man who barely moves except to look out the window.”
“Does he have a car telephone?”
“No, comrade, and should he leave the automobile he’ll be followed, so there can be no outside calls unless you direct otherwise.”
“I shall not direct otherwise. Thank you, Sergei. Out.” The Russian looked at Conklin. “The old man,” he said. “You saw him.”
“Bald head and all,” affirmed Alex. “He’s not a fool; he’s done this before and knows he’s being watched. He can’t leave for fear of missing something, and if he had a phone there’d be others down in the Montaigne.”
“The Jackal,” said Bourne, stepping forward, then stopping, remembering Conklin’s order to stay away from the window.
“Now, do you understand?” asked Alex, addressing the question to Krupkin.
“Of course,” conceded the KGB official, smiling. “It’s why you wanted an ostentatious limousine from our embassy. After we leave, Carlos is told that a Soviet diplomatic vehicle was sent to pick us up, and for what other reason would we be here but to interrogate Madame Lavier? Naturally, in my well-advertised presence was a tall man who might or might not be Jason Bourne, and another shorter individual with a disabled leg—thus confirming that it was Jason Bourne. … Our unholy alliance is therefore established and observed, and again, naturally, during our harsh questioning of Madame Lavier, tempers flared and references were made to the Jackal’s informer in Dzerzhinsky Square.”
“Which only I’d known about through my dealing with Santos at Le Coeur du Soldat,” said Jason quietly. “So Dominique has a credible observer—an old man from Carlos’s army of old men—to back up the information she delivers. … I’ve got to say it, Saint Alex, that serpentine brain of yours hasn’t lost its cunning.”
“I hear a professor I once knew. … I thought he’d left us.”
“He has.”
“Only for a while, I hope.”
“Well done, Aleksei. You still have the touch; you may remain abstemious if you must, much as it pains me. … It’s always the nuances, isn’t it?”
“Not always by any means,” disagreed Conklin simply, shaking his head. “Most of the time it’s foolish mistakes. For instance, our new colleague here, ‘Domie,’ as you affectionately call her, was told she was still trusted, but she wasn’t, not completely. So an old man was dispatched to watch her apartment—no big deal, just a little insurance in a car that doesn’t belong in a street with Jaguars and Rolls-Royces. So we pay off on the small policy, and with luck cash in on the big one. Moscow.”