“Tell me something I don’t know, Bro. … Out. I’m heading back to the chapel.”
“Glad to hear somebody goes there. A travel bastard in New York said it’d be a nice touch, but I haven’t heard from him since. Stay in touch, David.”
“I will, Johnny,” replied Jason Bourne.
The path to the chapel was growing dark, the tall palms and dense foliage above the beach hastening nature’s process by blocking the rays of the setting sun. Jason was about to turn around and head for the tackle shop and a flashlight when suddenly, as if on photoelectric cue, blue and red floods came alive, shooting their wide circles of light up from the ground into the palms above. For a moment Bourne felt that he had abruptly, too abruptly, entered a lush Technicolor tunnel cut out of tropical forest. It was disorienting, then disturbing. He was a moving, illuminated target in a garishly colored gallery.
He quickly walked into the underbrush beyond the border of floodlights, the nettles of the wild shrubbery stinging his bare legs. He went deeper into the enveloping foliage and continued in the now semidarkness toward the chapel, his pace slow, difficult, the moist branches and vines tangling about his hands and feet. Instinct. Stay out of the light, the gaudy bombastic lights that belonged more properly to an island carnivale.
A blunt sound! A thud that was no part of the shoreline woods. Then the start of a moan growing into a convulsion—stopped, thwarted … suppressed? Jason crouched and foot by foot broke through the inhibiting, succeeding walls of bush until he could see the thick cathedral door of the chapel. It was partially open, the soft, pulsating glow of the electric candles penetrating the wash of the red and blue floods on the outside path.
Think. Memory. Remember! He had been to the chapel only once before, humorously berating his brother-in-law for spending good money on a useless addition to Tranquility Inn.
At least it’s quaint, St. Jacques had said.
It ain’t, Bro, Marie had replied. It doesn’t belong. This isn’t a retreat.
Suppose someone gets bad news You know, really bad—
Get him a drink, David Webb had said.
Come on inside. I’ve got symbols of five different religions in stained glass, including Shinto.
Don’t show your sister the bills on this one, Webb had whispered.
Inside. Was there a door inside? Another exit? … No, there was not. Only five or six rows of pews, then a railing of some sort in front of a raised lectern, beneath primitive stained-glass windows done by native artisans.
Inside. Someone was inside. Ishmael? A distraught guest of Tranquility? A honeymooner who had sudden, deep reservations embarrassingly too late? He again reached into his breast pocket for the miniaturized radio. He brought it to his lips and spoke softly.
“Johnny?”
“Right here on the roof.”
“I’m at the chapel. I’m going inside.”
“Is Ishmael there?”
“I don’t know. Someone is.”
“What’s wrong, Dave? You sound—”
“Nothing’s wrong,” interrupted Bourne. “I’m just checking in. … What’s behind the building? East of it.”
“More woods.”
“Any paths?”
“There was one several years ago; it’s overgrown by now. The construction crews used it to go down to the water. … I’m sending over a couple of guards—”
“No! If I need you, I’ll call. Out.” Jason replaced the radio and, still crouching, stared at the chapel door.
Silence now. No sound at all from inside, no human movement, nothing but the flickering “candlelight.” Bourne crept to the border of the path, removed the camera equipment and the straw hat and opened the case holding the flares. He removed one, inserted it under his belt, and took out the automatic beside it. He reached into the left pocket of his guayabera jacket for his lighter, gripping it in his hand as he got to his feet, and walked quietly, rapidly, to the corner of the small building—this unlikely sanctuary in the tropical woods above a tropical beach. Flares and the means to light them went back long before Manassas, Virginia, he considered, as he inched his way around the corner toward the chapel’s entrance. They went back to Paris—thirteen years ago to Paris, and a cemetery in Rambouillet. And Carlos. … He reached the frame of the partially opened door and slowly, cautiously moved his face to the edge and looked inside.
He gasped, his breath suspended, the horror filling him as disbelief and fury spread within him. On the raised platform in front of the rows of glistening wood was the young Ishmael, his body bent forward over the lectern, his arms hanging down, his dark face bruised and lacerated, blood trickling out of his mouth onto the floor. The guilt overwhelmed Jason; it was sudden and complete and devastating, the words of the old Frenchman screaming in his ears: Others may die, innocent people slaughtered.
Slaughtered! A child had been slaughtered! Promises were implied, but death had been delivered. Oh, Christ, what have I done? … What can I do?
Sweat pouring down his face, his eyes barely focusing, Bourne ripped the distress flare out of his pocket, snapped the lighter and, trembling, held it to the red tip. Ignition was instant; the white fire spewed out in white heat, hissing like a hundred angry snakes. Jason threw it into the chapel toward the far end, leaped through the frame, pivoted, and slammed the heavy door shut behind him. He lunged to the floor below the last row, pulled the radio from his pocket and pushed the Send button.
“Johnny, the chapel. Surround it!” He did not wait for St. Jacques’s reply; that there was a voice was enough. The automatic in his hand, the hissing flare continuously erupting as shafts of color shot down from the stained-glass windows, Bourne crept to the far aisle, his eyes moving constantly, seeking out everything he no longer remembered about Tranquility Inn’s chapel. The one place where he could not look again was the lectern that held the body of the child he had killed. … On both sides of the raised platform were narrow draped archways, like scenic doors on a stage leading to minimum wing space, entrances both left and right. Despite the anguish he felt, there welled up in Jason Bourne a deep sense of satisfaction, even of morbid elation. The lethal game was his for the winning. Carlos had mounted an elaborate trap and the Chameleon had reversed it, Medusa’s Delta had turned it around! Behind one of those two draped archways was the assassin from Paris.
Bourne got to his feet, his back pressed against the right wall, and raised his gun. He fired twice into the left archway, the drapes fluttering with each shot, as he sprang behind the last row, scrambling to the far side, getting to his knees and firing twice more into the archway on the right.
A figure lunged in panic through the drapes, clutching the cloth as it fell forward, the dark red fabric ripped from the hooks, bunched around the target’s shoulders as he fell to the floor. Bourne rushed forward, screaming Carlos’s name, firing again and again until the automatic’s magazine was empty. Suddenly, from above there was an explosion, blowing out a whole section of stained glass high on the left wall. As the colored fragments shot through the air and down onto the floor, a man on a ledge outside moved into the center of the open space above the hissing, blinding flare.
“You’re out of bullets,” said Carlos to the stunned Jason Bourne below. “Thirteen years, Delta, thirteen loathsome years. But now they’ll know who won.”
The Jackal raised his gun and fired.
17
The searing ice-cold heat ripped through his neck as Bourne lunged over the pews, crashing down between the second and third rows, smashing his head and his hips on the glistening brown wood as he clawed at the floor. His vision spun out of control as a cloud of darkness enveloped him. In the distance, far, far away, he heard the sound of voices shouting hysterically. Then the darkness was complete.
“David.” There was no shouting now; the single voice was low and urgent and used a name he did not care to acknowledge. “David, can you hear me?”
Bourne opened his eyes, instantly aware of two facts. There was a wide bandage around his throat and he was lying fully clothed on a bed. To his right, the anxious face of John St. Jacques came into focus; on his left was a man he did not know, a middle-aged man with a level, steady gaze. “Carlos,” Jason managed to say, finding his voice. “It was the Jackal!”
“Then he’s still on the island—this island.” St. Jacques was emphatic. “It’s been barely an hour and Henry’s got Tranquility ringed. Patrols are hovering offshore, roving back and forth, all in visual and radio contact. He’s calling it a ‘drug exercise,’ very quiet and very official. A few boats come in, but none go out and none will go out.”