The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum

Bernardine nodded. “A prearranged strategy carried out by professionals,” said the veteran field officer.

“That’s what I think, too.”

“It’s what you saw and I did not,” countered Bernardine. “Stop being kind, Jason. I’ve been too long away from the cold. Too soft, too old, too unimaginative.”

“So have I,” said Bourne. “It’s just that the stakes are so high for me that I have to force myself into thinking like a man I wanted to forget.”

“This is Monsieur Webb speaking?”

“I guess it is.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“With an irate baker and an angry nun, and if they prove to be ciphers, several faces in various windows. At this juncture the pickings are ours but that won’t last long, I doubt through the morning.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Carlos will close up shop here and he’ll do it quickly. He hasn’t got a choice now. Someone in his Praetorian guard gave someone else the location of his Paris headquarters, and you can bet your pension—if you’ve still got one—that he’s climbing the walls trying to figure out who betrayed him—”

“Get back!” cried Bernardine, interrupting and grabbing Jason by the cloth of his black jacket, yanking him into the farthest recess of the dark storefront. “Get out of sight! Flat on the pavement!”

Both men threw themselves down, lying prone on the broken concrete, Bourne’s face against the short wall below the glass, his head angled to see the street. A second dark van appeared from the right, but it was not police equipment. Instead, it was shinier and smaller, somehow thicker, lower to the ground and more powerful. The one glaring, blinding similarity it had to the police van was the searchlight. … No, not one, but two searchlights, one on either side of the windshield, both beams swinging back and forth scanning the vehicle’s flanks. Jason reached for the weapon in his belt—the gun he had borrowed from Bernardine—knowing that his companion already had his backup automatic out of his pocket. The beam of the left searchlight shot over their bodies as Bourne whispered, “Good work, but how did you spot it?”

“The moving reflections of the lamps on the side windows,” replied old François. “I thought for a moment it was my former colleague returning to finish the job he had contemplated. Namely, my stomach in the street. … My God, look!”

The van swept past the first two buildings, then suddenly swerved into the curb and stopped in front of the last structure, nearly two hundred feet from the storefront, the building farthest from the Jackal’s telephone. The instant the vehicle came to a halt the rear door opened and four men jumped out, automatic weapons in their hands, two running to the street side, one racing down the pavement to the front, the last guard standing menacingly by the open doors, his MAC-10 ready to fire. A dull wash of yellow light appeared at the top of the brick steps; the door had been opened and a man in a black raincoat came outside. He stood for a moment looking up and down the boulevard Lefebvre.

“Is that him?” whispered Francois.

“No, not unless he’s wearing high heels and a wig,” answered Jason, reaching into his jacket pocket. “I’ll know him when I see him—because I see him every day of my life!” Bourne took out one of the grenades he had also borrowed from Bernardine. He checked the release, laying down his gun and gripping the pockmarked steel oval, tugging at the pin to make certain it was free of corrosion.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” asked the old Deuxième veteran.

“That man up there is a decoy,” replied Jason, his soft voice suspended in a cold monotone. “In moments another will take his place, run down the steps and get into the van, either in the front seat or through the rear doors—I hope the latter, but it won’t make much difference.”

“You’re mad! You’ll be killed! What good is a corpse to that family of yours?”

“You’re not thinking, François. The guards will run back and climb up through the rear doors because there’s no room in front. There’s a lot of difference between climbing into a truck and jumping out of it. For starters, it’s a slower sequence. … By the time the last man gets in and reaches out to close those wide doors, I’ll have a primed grenade inside that van. … And I have no intention of becoming a corpse. Stay here!”

Before Bernardine could object further, Medusa’s Delta crawled out into the dark boulevard, dark but for the harsh stationary beams of the searchlights, which were now angled on the flanks, thus actually enhancing Bourne’s concealment. The hot white light around the vehicle obscured the darkness beyond; his only extreme risk was the guard posted by the open doors. Hugging the shadows of the successive storefronts as though he were threading his way through the high grass of the Mekong Delta toward a floodlit prisoner compound, Jason crept slowly forward with each wayward glance of the rear guard, his eyes darting continuously up to the man by the door above the brick steps.

Suddenly another figure emerged; it was a woman carrying a small suitcase in one hand, a large purse in the other. She spoke to the man in the black raincoat as the guard’s attention was drawn to both of them. Bourne scrambled, his elbows and knees silently pounding the hard pavement, until he reached that point nearest the van where he could observe the scene on the staircase with minimum risk of being spotted. He was relieved to see that the two guards in the street continuously winced and blinked under the beam of the searchlight. His status was as clean as it could be under the tenuous circumstances. Everything now was timing, precision, and all the expertise he could summon from times too often unremembered or too vague or too long ago. He had to remember now; instinct had to propel him through his personal mists. Now. The end of the nightmare was at hand.

It was happening! Suddenly there was furious activity at the door as a third figure came rushing out, joining the other two. The man was shorter than his male colleague, wearing a beret and carrying a briefcase. He obviously issued orders that included the rear guard, who ran up to the pavement as the new arrival hurled his briefcase down over the brick steps. The guard instantly clutched his weapon under his left arm and effortlessly caught the leather missile in midair.

“Allez-vous-en. Nous partons! Vite!” shouted the second man, gesturing for the other two on the brick steps to precede him down to the van. They did so, the man in the raincoat joining the guard at’ the rear doors, the woman accompanying the one who gave the orders. … The Jackal? Was it Carlos? Was it?

Bourne desperately wanted to believe that it was—therefore, it was! The sound of the vehicle’s curbside door slamming shut was followed rapidly by the gunning of the vehicle’s powerful engine; both were a signal. The three other guards raced from their posts to the rear doors of the van. One by one they climbed up inside after the man in the black raincoat, their legs stretched, arms bracing shoulders, curved hands gripping the two metal frames that with instant muscular strain propelled them inside as their weapons were thrown in front of them. Then a pair of hands reached out for the interior door handles—

Now! Bourne pulled the pin of the grenade and lurched to his feet, running as he had never run in his life toward the swinging rear doors of the van. He dived, twisting his body in flight, landing on his back as he gripped the left panel and threw the grenade inside, the bomb’s release in his hand. Six seconds and it would detonate. Jason got to his knees, arms extended, and crashed the doors shut. A fusillade of gunfire erupted. But it was an unintended miracle—as the Jackal’s van was bulletproof, it was also impervious to bullets shot from within! There were no penetrations of the steel, only thuds and the screaming whistles of ricochets … and the screams of the wounded inside.

The glistening vehicle shot forward on the boulevard Lefebvre as Bourne sprang to a crouch and raced toward the deserted storefronts on the east side of the street. He was nearly across the wide avenue when the impossible happened. The impossible!

The Jackal’s van blew up, the explosion firing the dark Paris sky, and the moment it happened a brown limousine screeched around the nearest corner, the windows open, men in the black spaces, weapons in their grips, spraying the entire area with thunderous, indiscriminate fire. Jason lunged into the nearest recess, curling up into a fetal position in the shadows, accepting the fact—not in fear but in fury—that it might well be his last moments of life. He had failed. Failed Marie and his children! … But not this way. He spun off the concrete, the weapon in his hand. He would kill, kill! That was the way of Jason Bourne.