Shut off your radio! screamed Bourne in the silence of his thoughts. Kill the radio! It was too late. The left door of the chapel opened and the silhouetted figure of a man walked out into the floodlit corridor of colored lights. He was young, muscular and blond, with blunt features and rigid posture. Was the Jackal training someone else to take his place?
“Come with me, please,” said the blond man, his French gentle but icily commanding. “You,” he added, addressing the old man in the tan gabardine suit. “Stay where you are. At the slightest sound, fire your gun. … Take it out. Hold it in your hand.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
Jason watched helplessly as Fontaine was escorted through the door of the chapel. From the pocket of his jacket there was an eruption of static followed by a snap; the Frenchman’s radio had been found and destroyed. Yet something was wrong, off center, out of balance—or perhaps too symmetrical. It made no sense for Carlos to use the location of a failed trap a second time, no sense at all! The appearance of the brother of Fontaine’s wife was an exceptional move, worthy of the Jackal, a truly unexpected move within the swirling winds of confusion, but not this, not again Tranquility Inn’s superfluous chapel. It was too orderly, too repetitive, too obvious. Wrong.
And therefore right? considered Bourne. Was it the illogical logic of the assassin who had eluded a hundred special branches of the international intelligence community for nearly thirty years? “He wouldn’t do that—it’s crazy!” “… Oh, yes, he might because he knows we think it’s crazy.” Was the Jackal in the chapel or wasn’t he? If not, where was he? Where had he set his trap?
The lethal chess game was not only supremely intricate, it was sublimely intimate. Others might die, but only one of them would live. It was the only way it could end. Death to the seller of death or death to the challenger, one seeking the preservation of a legend, the other seeking the preservation of his family and himself. Carlos had the advantage; ultimately he would risk everything, for, as Fontaine revealed, he was a dying man and he did not care. Bourne had everything to live for, a middle-aged hunter whose life was indelibly marked, split in two by the death of a vaguely remembered wife and children long ago in far-off Cambodia. It could not, would not, happen again!
Jason slid down off the coastal wall to the slanting precipice at its base. He crawled forward to the two former commandos and whispered, “They’ve taken Fontaine inside.”
“Where is the guard?” asked the man nearest Bourne, confusion and anger in his whisper. “I myself placed him here with specific instructions. No one was permitted inside. He was to be on the radio the instant he saw anyone!”
“Then I’m afraid he didn’t see him.”
“Who?”
“A blond man who speaks French.”
Both commandos whipped their heads toward each other, exchanging glances as the second guard instantly looked at Jason and spoke quietly. “Describe him, please,” he said.
“Medium height, large chest and shoulders—”
“Enough,” interrupted the first guard. “Our man saw him, sir. He is third provost of the government police, an officer who speaks several languages and is chief of drug investigations.”
“But why is he here, mon?” the second commando asked his colleague. “Mr. Saint Jay said the Crown police are not told everything, they are not part of us.”
“Sir Henry, mon. He has Crown boats, six or seven, running back and forth with orders to stop anyone leaving Tranquility. They are drug boats, mon. Sir Henry calls it a patrol exercise, so naturally the chief of investigations must be—” The lilting whisper of the West Indian trailed off in midsentence as he looked at his companion. “… Then why isn’t he out on the water, mon? On the lead boat, mon?”
“Do you like him?” asked Bourne instinctively, surprising himself by his own question. “I mean, do you respect him? I could be wrong but I seem to sense something—”
“You are not wrong, sir,” answered the first guard, interrupting. “The provost is a cruel man and he doesn’t like the ‘Punjabis,’ as he calls us. He’s very quick to accuse us, and many have lost work because of his rash accusations.”
“Why don’t you complain, get rid of him? The British will listen to you.”
“The Crown governor will not, sir,” explained the second guard. “He’s very partial to his strict chief of narcotics. They are good friends and often go out after the big fish together.”
“I see.” Jason did see and was suddenly alarmed, very alarmed. “Saint Jay told me there used to be a path behind the chapel. He said it might be overgrown, but he thought it was still there.”
“It is,” confirmed the first commando. “The help still use it to go down to the water on their off times.”
“How long is it?”
“Thirty-five, forty meters. It leads to an incline where steps have been cut out of the rocks that take one down to the beach.”
“Which of you is faster?” asked Bourne, reaching into his pocket and taking out the reel of fishing line.
“I am.”
“I am!”
“I choose you,” said Jason, nodding his head at the shorter first guard, handing him the reel. “Go down on the border of that path and wherever you can, string this line across it, tying it to limbs or trunks or the strongest branches you can find. You mustn’t be seen, so be alert, see in the dark.”
“Is no problem, mon!”
“Have you got a knife?”
“Do I have eyes?”
“Good. Give me your Uzi. Hurry!”
The guard scrambled away along the vine-tangled precipice and disappeared into the dense foliage beyond. The second Royal Commando spoke. “In truth, sir, I am much faster, for my legs are much longer.”
“Which is why I chose him and I suspect you know it. Long legs are no advantage here, only an impediment, which I happen to know. Also, he’s much shorter and less likely to be spotted.”
“The smaller ones always get the better assignments. They parade us up front and put us in boxing rings with rules we don’t understand, but the small soldiers get the plumbies.”
“ ‘Plumbies’? The better jobs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The most dangerous jobs?”
“Yes, mon!”
“Live with it, big fella.”
“What do we do now, sir?”
Bourne looked above at the wall and the soft wash of colored lights. “It’s called the waiting game—no love songs implied, only the hatred that comes from wanting to live when others want to kill you. There’s nothing quite like it because you can’t do anything. All you can do is think about what the enemy may or may not be doing, and whether he’s thought of something you haven’t considered. As somebody once said, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”
“Where, mon?”
“Nothing. It isn’t true.”
Suddenly, filling the air above in chilling horror, came a prolonged excruciating scream, followed by words shrieked in pain. “Non, non! Vous êtes monstrueux! … Arrêtez, arrêtez, je vous supplie!”
“Now!” cried Jason, slinging the strap of his Uzi over his shoulder as he leaped onto the wall, gripping the edge, pulling himself up as the blood poured out of his neck. He could not get up! He could not get over! Then strong hands pulled him and he fell over the top of the wall. “The lights!” he shouted. “Shoot them out!”
The tall commando’s Uzi blazing, the lines of floodlights exploded in the ground on both sides of the chapel’s path. Again, strong black hands pulled him to his feet in the new darkness. And then a single shaft of yellow appeared, roving swiftly in all directions; it was a powerful halogen flashlight in the commando’s left hand. The figure of a blood-drenched old man in a tan gabardine suit lay curled up in the path, his throat slit.
“Stop! In the name of almighty God, stop where you are!” came Fontaine’s voice from inside the chapel, the open half door revealing the flickering light of the electric candles. They approached the entrance, automatic weapons leveled, prepared for continuous fire … but not prepared for what they saw. Bourne closed his eyes, the sight was too painful. Old Fontaine, like young Ishmael, was sprawled over the lectern on the raised platform beneath the blown-out, stained-glass windows of the left wall, his face running with blood where he had been slashed, and attached to his body were thin cables that led to various black boxes on both sides of the chapel.
“Go back!” screamed Fontaine. “Run, you fools! I’m wired—”
“Oh, Christ!”
“Mourn not for me, Monsieur le Caméléon. I gladly join my woman! This world is too ugly even for me. It is no longer amusing. Run! The charge will go off—they are watching!”
“You, mon! Now!” roared the second commando, grabbing Jason’s jacket and racing him to the wall, holding Bourne in his arms as they plummeted over the stone surface into the thick foliage.