“Why not? He’s a loser named Bourne, Jason Bourne, who’s blackmailing our clients.”
“Ecco,” said the husband quietly.
“Ultimo,” added the wife. “What do you know of this Bourne?” she asked.
“What I told you. He went out under cover for the government and got shafted by the big boys in Washington. He gets pissed off, so he ends up shafting our clients. A real slime.”
“You’ve never heard of Carlos the Jackal?” said the count, leaning back in the chair, studying the capo supremo.
“Oh, yeah, sure, I heard of him, and I see what you mean. They say this Jackal character has a big thing against this Bourne and vice versa, but it don’t cut no ice with me. You know, I thought that fox-cat was just in books, in the movies, you know what I mean? Then they tell me he’s a real hit man, wadda y’ know?”
“Very real,” agreed the countess.
“But, like I said, him I couldn’t care less about. I want the Jew shrink, the cripple, and this rot-gut Bourne, that’s all. And I really want them.”
The diplomat and his wife looked at each other; they shrugged in mild astonishment, then the contessa nodded, deferring to her husband. “Your sense of fiction has been shattered by reality,” said the count.
“Come again?”
“There was a Robin Hood, you know, but he wasn’t a noble of Locksley. He was a barbaric Saxon chief who opposed the Normans, a murdering, butchering thief, extolled only in legends. And there was an Innocent the Third, a pope who was hardly innocent and who followed the savage policies of a predecessor, Saint Gregory the Seventh, who was hardly a saint. Between them they split Europe asunder, into rivers of blood for political power and to enrich the coffers of the ‘Holy Empire.’ Centuries before, there was the gentle Quintus Cassius Longinus of Rome, beloved protector of the Further Spain, yet he tortured and mutilated a hundred thousand Spaniards.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“These men were fictionalized, Signor DeFazio, into many different shadings of what they may actually have been, but regardless of the distortions, they were real. Just as the Jackal is real, and is a deadly problem for you. As, unfortunately, he is a problem for us, for he’s a complication we cannot accept.”
“Huh?” The capo supremo, mouth gaping, stared at the Italian aristocrat.
“The presence of the Soviets was both alarming and enigmatic,” continued the count. “Then finally we perceived a possible connection, which you just confirmed. … Moscow has been hunting Carlos for years, solely for the purpose of executing him, and all they’ve gotten for their efforts is one dead hunter after another. Somehow—God knows how—Jason Bourne negotiated with the Russians to pursue their common objective.”
“For Christ’s sake, speak English or Italian, but with words that make sense! I didn’t exactly go to Harvard City College, gumball. I didn’t have to, capisce?”
“The Jackal stormed that country inn yesterday. He’s the one hunting down Jason Bourne, who was foolish enough to come back to Paris and persuade the Soviets to work with him. Both were stupid, for this is Paris and Carlos will win. He’ll kill Bourne and your other targets and laugh at the Russians. Then he’ll proclaim to the clandestine departments of all governments that he has won, that he’s the padrone, the maestro. You in America have never been exposed to the whole story, only bits and pieces, for your interest in Europe stops at the money line. But we have lived through it, watching in fascination, and now we are mesmerized. Two aging master assassins obsessed with hatred, each wanting only to cut the other’s throat.”
“Hey, back up, gumball!” shouted DeFazio. “This slime Bourne’s a fake, a contraffazione. He never was an executioner!”
“You’re quite wrong, signore,” said the countess. “He may not have entered the arena with a gun, but it became his favorite instrument. Ask the Jackal.”
“Fuck the Jackal!” cried DeFazio, getting up from the chair.
“Lou!”
“Shut up, Mario! This Bourne is mine, ours! We deliver the corpse, we take the pictures with me—us—standing over all three with a dozen ice picks in their bodies, their heads pulled up by the hair, so nobody can say it ain’t our kills!”
“Now you’re the one who’s pazzo,” said the Mafia count quietly, in counterpoint to the capo supremo’s raucous yelling. “And please keep your voice down.”
“Then don’t get me excited—”
“He’s trying to explain things, Lou,” said DeFazio’s relative, the killer. “I want to hear what the gentleman has to say because it could be vital to my approach. Sit down, Cousin.” Louis sat down. “Please continue, Count.”
“Thank you, Mario. You don’t object to my calling you Mario.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Perhaps you should visit Rome—”
“Perhaps we should get back to Paris,” again choked the capo supremo.
“Very well,” agreed the Roman, now dividing his attention between DeFazio and his cousin, but favoring the latter. “You might take out all three targets with a long-range rifle, but you won’t get near the bodies. The Soviet guards will be indistinguishable from any other people in the area, and if they see the two of you coming in to the killing ground, they’ll open fire, assuming you’re from the Jackal.”
“Then we must create a diversion where we can isolate the targets,” said Mario, his elbows on the table, his intelligent eyes on the count. “Perhaps an emergency in the early hours of the morning. A fire in their lodgings, perhaps, that necessitates their coming outside. I’ve done it before; in the confusion of fire trucks and police sirens and the general panic, one can pull targets away and complete the assignments.”
“It’s a fine strategy, Mario, but there are still the Soviet guards.”
“We take them out!” cried DeFazio.
“You are only two men,” said the diplomat, “and there are at least three in Barbizon, to say nothing of the hotel in Paris where the cripple and the doctor are staying.”
“So we outmatch the numbers.” The capo supremo pulled the back of his hand over the sweat that had gathered on his forehead. “We hit this Barbizon first, right?”
“With only two men?” asked the countess, her cosmeticized eyes wide in surprise.
“You got men!” exclaimed DeFazio. “We’ll use a few. … I’ll pay additional.”
The count shook his head slowly and spoke softly. “We will not go to war with the Jackal,” he said. “Those are my instructions.”
“Fairy bastards!”
“An interesting comment coming from you,” observed the countess, a thin insulting smile on her lips.
“Perhaps our dons are not as generous as yours,” continued the diplomat. “We are willing to cooperate up to a point but no further.”
“You’ll never make another shipment to New York, or Philly, or Chicago!”
“We’ll let our superiors debate those issues, won’t we?”
There was a sudden knocking at the door, four raps in a row, harsh and intrusive. “Avanti,” called out the count, instantly reaching under his jacket and ripping an automatic out of his belt; he lowered it beneath the overhang. of the red tablecloth and smiled as the manager of Tetrazzim’s entered.
“Emergenza,” said the grossly overweight man, walking rapidly to the well-tailored mafioso and handing him a note.
“Grazie.”
“Prego,” replied the manager, crossing back to the door and exiting as quickly as he had arrived.
“The anxious gods of Sicily may be smiling down on you after all,” said the count, reading. “This communication is from the man following your targets. They are outside Paris and they are alone, and for reasons I cannot possibly explain, there are no guards. They have no protection.”
“Where?” cried DeFazio, leaping to his feet.
Without answering, the diplomat calmly reached for his gold lighter, ignited it, and fired the small piece of paper, lowering it into an ashtray. Mario sprang up from his chair; the man from Rome dropped the lighter on the table and swiftly retrieved the gun from his lap. “First, let us discuss the fee,” he said as the note coiled into flaming black ash. “Our dons in Palermo are definitely not as generous as yours. Please talk quickly, as every minute counts.”
“You motherfucking bastard!”
“My Oedipal problems are not your concern. How much, Signor DeFazio?”
“I’ll go the limit,” replied the capo supremo, lowering himself into the chair, staring at the charred remnants of the information. “Three hundred thousand, American. That’s it.”
“That’s excremento,” said the countess. “Try again. Seconds become minutes and you cannot afford them.”
“All right, all right! Double it!”
“Plus expenses,” added the woman.
“What the fuck can they be?”
“Your cousin Mario is right,” said the diplomat. “Please watch your language in front of my wife.”
“Holy shit—”
“I warned you, signore. The expenses are an additional quarter of a million, American.”
“What are you, nuts?”
“No, you’re vulgar. The total is one million one hundred fifty thousand dollars, to be paid as our couriers in New York so instruct you. … If not, you will be missed in—what is it?—Brooklyn Heights, Signor DeFazio?”