“Loud and clear, lady. Then maybe you should go back to the States so you won’t have to put up with my august presence.” Jason Bourne rose from the table, pushing the chair behind him. “Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day, so I have to get some sleep—I haven’t had much lately—and a better man than any of us here once told me that rest was a weapon. I believe that. … I’ll be in the car for two minutes. Take your choice. I’m sure Alex can get you out of France.”
“You bastard,” whispered Marie.
“So be it,” said the Chameleon, walking away.
“Go to him,” interjected Panov quickly. “You know what’s happening.”
“I can’t handle it, Mo!”
“Don’t handle it, just be with him. You’re the only rope he’s got. You don’t even have to talk, just be there. With him.”
“He’s become the killer again.”
“He’d never harm you—”
“Of course not, I know that.”
“Then provide him with that link to David Webb. It has to be there, Marie.”
“Oh, God, I love him so!” cried the wife, rushing to her feet and racing after her husband—yet not her husband.
“Was that the right advice, Mo?” asked Conklin.
“I don’t know, Alex. I just don’t think he should be alone with his nightmares, none of us should. That’s not psychiatry, it’s just common sense.”
“Sometimes you sound like a real doctor, you know that?”
The Algerian section of Paris lies between the tenth and eleventh arrondissements, barely three blocks, where the low buildings are Parisian but the sounds and the smells are Arabic. The insignia of the high church small but emblazoned in gold on its doors, a long black limousine entered this ethnic enclave. It stopped in front of a wood-framed, three-story house, where an old priest got out and walked to the door. He selected a name on the mail plate and pressed the button that rang a bell on the second floor.
“Oui?” said the metallic voice on the primitive intercom.
“I am a messenger from the American embassy,” answered the visitor in religious garb, his French partially ungrammatical as was all too frequent with Americans. “I can’t leave my vehicle, but we have an urgent message for you.”
“I’ll be right down,” said the French Algerian driver recruited by Charles Casset in Washington. Three minutes later the man emerged from the building and walked out on the short narrow pavement. “What are you dressed like that for?” he asked the messenger who stood by the large automobile, covering the insignia on the rear door.
“I’m the Catholic chaplain, my son. Our military chargé d’affaires would like a word with you.” He opened the door.
“I’ll do many things for you people,” laughed the driver as he bent down to look inside the limousine, “but being drafted into your army isn’t one of them. … Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”
“Where did you take our people?” asked the shadowed figure in the backseat, his features in darkness.
“What people?” said the Algerian, sudden concern in his voice.
“The two you picked up at the airport several hours ago. The cripple and his friend.”
“If you’re from the embassy and they want you to know, they’ll call and tell you, won’t they?”
“You’ll tell me!” A third, powerfully built man in a chauffeur’s uniform appeared from behind the trunk of the car. He walked rapidly forward, raising his arm and crashing a thick ugly blackjack down on the Algerian’s skull. He shoved his victim inside; the old man in the guise of a chaplain climbed in behind him, pulling the door shut as the chauffeur ran around the hood to the front seat. The limousine raced away down the street.
An hour later on the deserted rue Houdon, a block from Place Pigalle, the Algerian’s bruised and bleeding corpse was disgorged from the large automobile. Inside, the figure in shadows addressed his aged, personally ordained priest.
“Get your car and remain outside the cripple’s hotel. Stay awake, for you’ll be relieved in the morning and can rest all day. Report any movements and go where he goes. Don’t fail me.”
“Never, monseigneur.”
Dimitri Krupkin was not a tall man but he appeared taller than he was, nor was he particularly heavy yet he seemed to possess a much fuller figure than he carried. He had a pleasant if somewhat fleshy face and a generous head held erect; his full eyebrows and well-groomed pepper-and-salt hair and chin beard combined attractively with alert blue eyes and a seemingly perpetual smile, defining a man who enjoyed his life and his work, an intellect behind both. At the moment he was seated in a booth, facing the rear wall, in the all but empty country restaurant in Epernon staring across the table at Alex Conklin, who sat beside the unidentified Bourne and had just explained that he no longer drank alcohol.
“The world is coming to an end!” exclaimed the Russian in heavily accented English. “You see what happens to a good man in the self-indulgent West? Shame on your parents. They should have stayed with us.”
“I don’t think you want to compare the rates of alcoholism in our two countries.”
“Not for a wager of money,” said Krupkin, grinning. “Speaking of money, my dear old enemy, how and where am I to be paid according to our agreement last night on the telephone?”
“How and where do you want to be paid?” asked Jason.
“Ah ha, you are my benefactor, sir?”
“I’ll be paying you, yes.”
“Hold it!” whispered Conklin, his attention drawn to the restaurant’s entrance. He leaned toward the open side of the booth, his hand on his forehead, then quickly moved back as a couple were shown to a table in the corner to the left of the door.
“What is it?” asked Bourne.
“I don’t know … I’m not sure.”
“Who came in, Aleksei?”
“That’s just it, I think I should know him but I don’t.”
“Where is he seated? In a booth?”
“No, a table. In the corner beyond the bar. He’s with a woman.”
Krupkin moved to the edge of his seat, took out his billfold and removed from its recess a small mirror the size and thickness of a credit card. Cupping it in both hands, he cautiously angled the glass in front of him. “You must be addicted to the society pages of the Paris tabloids,” said the Russian, chuckling as he replaced the mirror and returned the billfold to his jacket pocket. “He’s with the Italian embassy; that’s his wife. Paolo and Davinia something-or-other, with pretensions to nobility, I believe. Strictly corpo diplomatico on the protocol level. They dress up a party quite nicely and they’re obviously stinking rich.”
“I don’t travel in those circles, but I’ve seen him somewhere before.”
“Of course you have. He looks like every middle-aged Italian screen star or any one of those vineyard owners who extol the virtues of the Chianti Classico on television commercials.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“I am.” Krupkin turned to Bourne. “I shall write out the name of a bank and the number of an account in Geneva.” The Soviet reached into his pocket for a pen as he pulled a paper napkin in front of him. He was not able to use either, for a man in his early thirties, dressed in a tight-fitting suit, walked rapidly up to the table.
“What is it, Sergei?” asked Krupkin.
“Not you, sir,” replied the Soviet aide. “Him,” he added, nodding at Bourne.
“What is it?” repeated Jason.
“You have been followed. At first we were not sure, for it is an old man with a urinary problem. He rapidly left the car twice to relieve himself, but once settled he used the car telephone and squinted through the windscreen to read the name of the restaurant. That was barely minutes ago.”
“How do you know he was following me?”
“Because he arrived shortly after you did, and we were here a half hour before that securing the area.”
“Securing the area!” erupted Conklin, looking at Krupkin. “I thought this conference was strictly between us.”
“Dear Aleksei, benevolent Aleksei, who would save me from myself. Can you really believe I’d meet with you without considering my own protection. Not you personally, old friend, but your aggressors in Washington. Can you imagine? A deputy director of the CIA negotiates with me over a man he pretends to think I do not know. A rank amateur ploy.”
“Goddamn you, I never told him!”
“Oh, dear me, then the error’s mine. I apologize, Aleksei.”
“Don’t,” interrupted Jason firmly. “That old man’s from the Jackal—”
“Carlos!” cried Krupkin, his face flushed, his alert blue eyes now intense, angry. “The Jackal’s after you, Aleksei?”
“No, him,” answered Conklin. “Your benefactor.”
“Good God! With what we’ve picked up, it’s all falling into place. So I have the distinct honor to meet the infamous Jason Bourne. A great pleasure, sir! We have the same objective where Carlos is concerned, do we not?”