Except for the language and the deafening music, it might have been a waterfront bar in Sicily’s Palermo, reflected Bourne as he made his way to the crowded bar, his squinting eyes roam ing, absorbing everything he could observe—briefly confused, wondering when he had been in Palermo, Sicily.
A heavyset man in a tank shirt got off a stool; Jason slid on top of it. The clawlike hand gripped his shoulder; Bourne slapped his right hand up, grabbing the wrist and twisting it clockwise, pushing the barstool away and rising to his full height. “What’s your problem?” he asked calmly in French but loud enough to be heard.
“That’s my seat, pig! I’m just taking a piss!”
“So maybe when you’re finished, I’ll take one,” said Jason, his gaze boring into the man’s eyes, the strength of his grip unmistakable—emphasized by pressing a nerve with his thumb, which had nothing to do with strength.
“Ah, you’re a fucking cripple … !” cried the man, trying not to wince. “I don’t pick on invalids.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Bourne, releasing his thumb. “You come back, we’ll take turns, and I’ll buy you a drink each time you let me get off this bum leg of mine, okay?”
Looking up at Jason, the heavyset man slowly grinned. “Hey, you’re all right.”
“I’m not all right, but I’m certainly not looking for a fight,’ either. Shit, you’d hammer me to the floor.” Bourne released the muscular Tank Shirt’s arm.
“I’m not so sure of that,” said the man, now laughing and holding his wrist. “Sit, sit! I’ll take a piss and come back and buy you a drink. You don’t look like you’re loaded with francs.”
“Well, like they say, appearances are deceiving,” replied Jason, sitting down. “I’ve got different, better clothes and an old friend told me to meet him here but not to wear them. … I just got back from good money in Africa. You know, training the savages—”
Cymbals crashed in the metallic, deafening martial music as Tank Shirt’s eyes widened. “Africa?” interrupted the stranger. “I knew it! That grip—LPN.”
What remained of the Chameleon’s memory data banks expanded into the code. LPN—Legion Patria Nostra. France’s Foreign Legion, the mercenaries of the world. It was not what he had in mind, but it would certainly do. “Christ, you too?” he asked, again coarsely but innocently.
“La Légion étrangère! ‘The Legion is our Fatherland’!”
“This is crazy!”
“We don’t announce ourselves, of course. There’s great jealousy, naturally, because we were the best and we were paid for it, but still these are our people. Soldiers!”
“When did you leave the Legion?” asked Bourne, sensing a cloud that could be troublesome.
“Ah, nine years ago! They threw me out before my second conscription for overweight. They were right and they probably saved my life. I’m from Belgique, a corporal.”
“I was discharged a month ago, before my first term was over. Wounds during our incursion into Angola and the fact that they figured I was older than my papers said. They don’t pay for extended recoveries.” How easily the words came.
“Angola? We did that? What was the Quai d’Orsay thinking about.”
“I don’t know. I’m a soldier, I follow orders and don’t question those I can’t understand.”
“Sit! My kidneys are bursting. I’ll be right back. Maybe we know friends. … I never heard of any Angola operation.”
Jason leaned forward over the bulging bar and ordered une bière, grateful that the bartender was too busy and the music too loud for the man to have overheard the conversation. However, he was infinitely more grateful to Saint Alex of Conklin, whose primary advice to a field agent was to “get in bad with a mark first before you get in good,” the theory being that the reversal from hostility to amiability was far stronger for the change. Bourne swallowed the beer in relief. He had made a friend at Le Coeur du Soldat. It was an inroad, minor but vital, and perhaps not so minor.
Tank Shirt returned, his thick arm around the shoulders of a younger man in his early twenties, of medium height and with the physique of a large safe; he was wearing an American field jacket. Jason started to get off the barstool. “Sit, sit!” cried his new friend, leaning forward to be heard through the crowds and the music. “I brought us a virgin.”
“What?”
“You forgot so quickly? He’s on his way to becoming a Legion recruit.”
“Oh, that,” laughed Bourne, covering his gaffe. “I wondered in a place like this—”
“In a place like this,” broke in Tank Shirt, “half will take it or give it either way as long as it’s rough. But that’s neither here nor there. I thought he should talk to you. He’s American and his French is grotesque, but if you speak slow, he’ll catch on.
“No need to,” said Jason in faintly accented English. “I grew up in Neufchâtel, but I spent several years in the States.”
“That’s nice to heah.” The American’s speech was distinctly Deep South, his smile genuine, his eyes wary but unafraid.
“Then let us start again,” said the Belgian in heavily accented English. “My name is … Maurice, it’s as good a name as any. My young friend here is Ralph, at least he says it is. What’s yours, my wounded hero?”
“Francois,” replied Jason, thinking of Bernardine and wondering briefly how he was doing at the airports. “And I’m no hero; they died too quickly. … Order your drinks, I’m paying.” They did and Bourne did, his mind racing, trying to recall the little he knew about the French Foreign Legion. “A lot has changed in nine years, Maurice.” How very easily the words came, thought the Chameleon. “Why are you enlisting, Ralph?”
“Ah figure it’s the wisest thing I can do—kinda disappear for a few years, and I understand five is the minimum.”
“If you last the first, mon ami,” interjected the Belgian.
“Maurice is right. Listen to him. The officers are tough and difficult—”
“All French!” added the Belgian. “Ninety percent, at least. Only one foreigner in perhaps three hundred reach the officer corps. Have no illusions.”
“But Ah’m a college man. An engineer.”
“So you’ll build fine latrines for the camps and design perfect shit holes in the field,” laughed Maurice. “Tell him, François. Explain how the savants are treated.”
“The educated ones must first know how to fight,” said Jason, hoping he was right.
“Always first!” exclaimed the Belgian. “For their schooling is suspicious. Will they doubt? Will they think when they are paid only to follow orders? … Oh, no, mon ami, I would not emphasize your érudition.”
“Let it come out gradually,” added Bourne. “When they need it, not when you want to offer it.”
“Bien!” cried Maurice. “He knows what he’s talking about. A true légionnaire!”
“Can you fight?” asked Jason. “Could you go after someone to kill him?”
“Ah killed mah feeancee and her two brothers and a cousin, all with a knife and my bare hands. She was fuckin’ a big banker in Nashville and they were coverin’ for her because he was payin’ all of ’em a lot of money. … Yeah, I can kill, Mr. François.”
Manhunt for Crazed Killer in Nashville
Young engineer with promising future escapes dragnet. …
Bourne remembered the newspaper headlines of only weeks ago, as he stared at the face of the young American. “Go for the Legion,” he said.
“If push comes to shove, Mr. François, could I use you as a reference?”
“It wouldn’t help you, young man, it might only hurt. If you’re pressed, just tell the truth. It’s your credentials.”
“Aussi bien! He knows the Legion. They will not take maniacs if they can help it, but they—how do you say it, François?”
“Look the other way, I think.”
“Oui. They look the other way when there are—encore, Francois?”
“When there are extenuating circumstances.”
“See? My friend Francois also has brains. I wonder how he survived.”
“By not showing them, Maurice.”
A waiter wearing about the filthiest apron Jason had ever seen clapped the Belgian on the neck. “Votre table, René.”
“So?” shrugged Tank Shirt. “Just another name. Quelle différence? We eat and with good fortune we will not be poisoned.”
Two hours later, with four bottles of rough vin ordinaire consumed by Maurice and Ralph, along with suspicious fish, Le Coeur du Soldat settled in for its nightly endurance ritual. Fights occurred episodically, broken up by muscular waiters. The blaring music marshaled memories of battles won and lost, engendering arguments between old soldiers who had basically been the assault troops, cannon fodder, at once resentful and filled with the pride of survival because they had survived the blood and horror their gold-braided superiors knew nothing about. It was the collective roar of the underprivileged foot soldiers heard from the time of the Pharaoh’s legions to the grunts of Korea and Vietnam. The properly uniformed officers decreed from far behind the lines, and the foot soldiers died to preserve their superiors’ wisdom. Bourne remembered Saigon and could not fault the existence of Le Coeur du Soldat.