His neck was more an irritant now than an impediment; either he was adjusting to the stiff, restricted movement or the healing process was doing its mysterious work. And that re stricted movement was not a liability where his current appearance was concerned; in truth, it was an asset. An embittered wounded veteran, a discarded son of France, would be hard pressed to forget his dual immobility. Jason shoved Bernardine’s automatic into his trousers pocket, checked his money, his car keys, and his scabbarded hunting knife, the latter purchased at a sporting goods store and strapped inside his shirt, and limped to the door of the small, filthy, depressing room. Next stop, the Capucines and a nondescript Peugeot in an underground garage. He was ready,
Out on the street, he knew he had to walk a number of blocks before he found a taxi station; cabs were not the fashion in this section of Montparnasse. … Neither was the commotion around a newspaper kiosk at the second corner. People were shouting, many waving their arms, clutching papers in their fists, anger and consternation in their voices. Instinctively, he quickened his pace, reached the stand, threw down his coins and grabbed a newspaper.
The breath went out of him as he tried to suppress the shock waves that swept through him. Teagarten killed! The assassin, Jason Bourne! Jason Bourne! Madness, insanity! What had happened? Was it a resurrection of Hong Kong and Macao? Was he losing what was left of his mind? Was he in some nightmare so real he had entered its dimensions, the horror of demented sleep, the fantasy of conjured, improvised terror turned into reality? He broke away from the crowd, reeled across the pavement, and leaned against the stone wall of a building, gasping for air, his neck now in pain, trying desperately to find a reasonable train of thought. Alex! A telephone!
“What happened?” he screamed into the mouthpiece to Vienna, Virginia.
“Come down and stay cold,” said Conklin in a low monotone. “Listen to me. I want to know exactly where you are. Bernardine will pick you up and get you out. He’ll make the arrangements and put you on the Concorde to New York.”
“Wait a minute—wait a minute! … The Jackal did this, didn’t he?”
“From what we’re told, it was a contract from a crazy jihad faction out of Beirut. They’re claiming it was their kill. The actual executioner is unimportant. That may be true and it may not. At first I didn’t buy it, not after DeSole and Armbruster, but the numbers add up. Teagarten was forever sounding off about sending NATO forces into Lebanon and leveling every suspected Palestinian enclave. He’s been threatened before; it’s just that the Medusa connection is too damned coincidental for me. But to answer your question, of course it was the Jackal.”
“So he laid it on me, Carlos laid it on me!”
“He’s an ingenious fucker, I’ll say that for him. You come after him and he uses a contract that freezes you in Paris.”
“Then we turn it around!”
“What the hell are you talking about? You get out!”
“No way. While he thinks I’m running, hiding, evading—I’m walking right into his nest.”
“You’re nuts! You get out while we can still get you out!”
“No, I stay in. Number one, he figures I have to in order to reach him, but, as you say, he’s locked me in ice. He thinks that after all these years I’ll panic in my fashion and make stupid moves—God knows I made enough on Tranquility—but so stupid here that his army of old men will find me by looking in the right places and knowing what to look for. Christ, he’s good! Shake the bastard up so he’ll make a mistake. I know him, Alex. I know the way he thinks and I’ll outthink him. I’ll stay on course, no prolonged safe cave for me.”
“Cave? What cave?”
“A figure of speech, forget it. I was in place before the news of Teagarten. I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay, you’re a fruitcake! Get out!”
“Sorry, Saint Alex, this is exactly where I want to be. I’m going after the Jackal.”
“Well, maybe I can move you off that place you’re clinging to. I spoke to Marie a couple of hours ago. Guess what, you aging Neanderthal? She’s flying to Paris. To find you.”
“She can’t!”
“That’s what I said, but she wasn’t in a listening mode. She said she knew all the places you and she used when you were running from us thirteen years ago. That you’d use them again.”
“I have. Several. But she mustn’t!”
“Tell her, not me.”
“What’s the Tranquility number? I’ve been afraid to call her—to be honest, I’ve tried like hell to put her and the kids out of my mind.”
“That’s the most reasonable statement you’ve made. Here it is.” Conklin recited the 809 area code number, and the instant he had done so, Bourne slammed down the phone.
Frantically, Jason went through the agonizing process of relaying destination and credit card numbers, accompanied by the beeps and stutters of an overseas call to the Caribbean, and, finally, after subduing some idiot at the front desk of Tranquility Inn, got through to his brother-in-law.
“Get Marie for me!” he ordered.
“David?”
“Yes … David. Get Marie.”
“I can’t. She’s gone. She left an hour ago.”
“Where to?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. She chartered a plane out of Blackburne, but she wouldn’t tell me what international island she was going to. There’s only Antigua or Martinique around here, but she could have flown to Sint Maarten or Puerto Rico. She’s on her way to Paris.”
“Couldn’t you have stopped her?”
“Christ, I tried, David. Goddamn it, I tried!”
“Did you ever think about locking her up?”
“Marie?”
“I see what you mean. … She can’t get here until tomorrow morning at the earliest.”
“Have you heard the news?” cried St. Jacques. “General Teagarten was killed and they say it was Jason—”
“Oh, shut up,” said Bourne, replacing the phone and leaving the booth, walking down the street to collect what thoughts he could generate.
Peter Holland, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to his feet behind his desk and roared at the crippled man seated in front of him. “Do nothing? Have you lost your fucking senses?”
“Did you lose yours when you issued that statement about a joint British-American operation in Hong Kong?”
“It was the goddamned truth!”
“There are truths, and then again there are other truths, such as denying the truth when it doesn’t serve the service.”
“Shit! Fairy politicians!”
“I’d hardly say that, Genghis Khan. I’ve heard of such men going to the wall, accepting execution rather than betraying the current truth they had to live by. … You’re off base, Peter.”
Exasperated, Holland sank back into his chair. “Maybe I really don’t belong here.”
“Maybe you don’t, but give yourself a little more time. Maybe you’ll become as dirty as the rest of us; it could happen, you know.”
The director leaned back, arching his head over the chair; he spoke in a broken cadence. “I was dirtier than any of you in the field, Alex. I still wake up at night seeing the faces of young men staring at me as I ripped a knife up their chests, taking their lives away, somehow knowing that they had no idea why they were there.”
“It was either you or them. They would have put a bullet in your head if they could have.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” The DCI shot forward, his eyes locked with Conklin’s. “But that’s not what we’re talking about, is it?”
“You might say it’s a variation on the theme.”
“Cut the horseshit.”
“It’s a musician’s term. I like music.”
“Then get to the main symphonic line, Alex. I like music, too.”
“All right. Bourne’s disappeared. He told me that he thinks he’s found a cave—his word, not mine—where he’s convinced he can track the Jackal. He didn’t say where it is, and God knows when he’ll call me again.”
“I sent our man at the embassy over to the Pont-Royal, asking for Simon. What they told you is true. Simon checked in, went out, and never came back. Where is he?”
“Staying out of sight. Bernardine had an idea, but it blew up in his face. He thought he could quietly close in on Bourne by circulating the license number of the rental car, but it wasn’t picked up at the garage and we both agree it won’t be. He doesn’t trust anybody now, not even me, and considering his history, he has every right not to.”
Holland’s eyes were cold and angry. “You’re not lying to me, are you, Conklin?”
“Why would I lie at a time like this, about a friend like this?”
“That’s not an answer, it’s a question.”
“Then no, I’m not lying. I don’t know where he is.” And, in truth, Alex did not.