The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum

“She’s got a point,” said Bourne, leaning forward and looking past Lavier at the Deuxième veteran. “She’s also got an apartment on the Montaigne, where she’s supposed to change clothes, and neither of us can go in with her.”

“That poses a dilemma, doesn’t it?” responded Bernardine. “There’s no way we can monitor the telephone from outside in the street, is there?”

“You fools! … I have no choice but to cooperate with you, and if you can’t see that you should be led around by trained dogs! This old, old man here will have my name in the Deuxième files the first chance he gets, and as the notorious Jason Bourne knows if he has even a nodding acquaintance with the Deuxième, several profound questions are raised—once raised by my sister, Jacqueline, incidentally. Who is this Bourne? Is he real or unreal? Is he the assassin of Asia or is he a fraud, a plant? She phoned me herself one night in Nice after too many brandies—a night perhaps you recall, Monsieur le Caméléon—a terribly expensive restaurant outside Paris. You threatened her … in the name of powerful, unnamed people you threatened her! You demanded that she reveal what she knew about a certain acquaintance of hers—who it was at the time I had no idea—but you frightened her. She said you appeared deranged, that your eyes became glazed and you uttered words in a language she could not understand.”

“I remember,” interrupted Bourne icily. “We had dinner and I threatened her and she was frightened. She went to the ladies’ room, paid someone to make a phone call, and I had to get out of there.”

“And now the Deuxième is allied with those powerful unnamed people?” Dominique Lavier shook her head repeatedly and lowered her voice. “No, messieurs, I am a survivor and I do not fight against such odds. One knows when to pass the shoe in baccarat.”

After a short period of silence, Bernardine spoke. “What’s your address on the avenue Montaigne? I’ll give it to the driver, but before I do, understand me, madame. If your words prove false, all the true horrors of the Deuxième will be visited upon you.”

Marie sat at the room-service table in her small suite at the Meurice reading the newspapers. Her attention constantly strayed; concentration was out of the question. Her anxiety had kept her awake after she returned to the hotel shortly past midnight, having made the rounds of five cafés she and David had frequented so many years ago in Paris. Finally by four-something in the morning, exhaustion had short-circuited her tossing and turning; she fell asleep with the bedside lamp switched on, and was awakened by the same light nearly six hours later. It was the longest she had slept since that first night on Tranquility Isle, itself a distant memory now except for the very real pain of not seeing and hearing the children. Don’t think about them, it hurts too much. Think about David. … No, think about Jason Bourne! Where? Concentrate!

She put down the Paris Tribune and poured herself a third cup of black coffee, glancing over at the French doors that led to a small balcony overlooking the rue de Rivoli. It disturbed her that the once bright morning had turned into a dismal gray day. Soon the rain would come, making her search in the streets even more difficult. Resigned, she sipped her coffee and replaced the elegant cup in the elegant saucer, annoyed that it was not one of the simple pottery mugs favored by David and her in their rustic country kitchen in Maine. Oh, God, would they ever be back there again? Don’t think about such things! Concentrate! Out of the question.

She picked up the Tribune, aimlessly scanning the pages, seeing only isolated words, no sentences or paragraphs, no continuity of thought or meaning, merely words. Then one stood out at the bottom of a meaningless column, a single meaningless line bracketed at the bottom of a meaningless page.

The word was Memom, followed by a telephone number; and despite the fact that the Tribune was printed in English, the French in her switchable French-thinking brain absently translated the word as Maymohm. She was about to turn the page when a signal from another part of her brain screamed Stop!

Memom … mommy—turned around by a child struggling with his earliest attempts at language. Meemom! Jamie—their Jamie! The funny inverted name he had called her for several weeks! David had joked about it while she, frightened, had wondered if their son had dyslexia.

“He could also just be confused, memom,” David had laughed.

David! She snapped up the page; it was the financial section of the paper, the section she instinctively gravitated to every morning over coffee. David was sending her a message! She pushed back her chair, crashing it to the floor as she grabbed the paper and rushed to the telephone on the desk. Her hands trembling, she dialed the number. There was no answer, and thinking that in her panic she had made an error or had not used the local Paris digit, she dialed again, now slowly, precisely.

No answer. But it was David, she felt it, she knew it! He had been looking for her at the Trocadéro and now he was using a briefly employed nickname only the two of them would know! My love, my love, I’ve found you! … She also knew she could not stay in the confining quarters of the small hotel suite, pacing up and down and dialing every other minute, driving herself crazy with every unanswered ring. When you’re stressed out and spinning until you think you’ll blow apart, find someplace where you can keep moving without being noticed. Keep moving! That’s vital. You can’t let your head explode. One of the lessons from Jason Bourne. Her head spinning, Marie dressed more rapidly than she had ever done in her life. She tore out the message from the Tribune and left the oppressive suite, trying not to run to the bank of elevators but needing the crowds of the Paris streets, where she could keep moving without being noticed. From one telephone kiosk to another.

The ride down to the lobby was both interminable and insufferable, the latter because of an American couple—he laden with camera equipment, she with purple eyelids and a peroxide bouffant apparently set in concrete—who kept complaining that not enough people in Paris, France, spoke English. The elevator doors thankfully opened and Marie walked out rapidly into the crowded Meurice lobby.

As she crossed the marble floor toward the large glass doors of the ornate filigreed entrance, she suddenly, involuntarily stopped as an elderly man in a dark pin-striped suit gasped, his slender body lurching forward in a heavy leather chair below on her right. The old man stared at her, his thin lips parted in astonishment, his eyes in shock.

“Marie St. Jacques!” he whispered. “My God, get out of here!”

“I beg your … What?”

The aged Frenchman quickly, with difficulty, rose to his feet, his head subtly, swiftly, jerking in short movements as he scanned the lobby. “You cannot be seen here, Mrs. Webb,” he said, his voice still a whisper but no less harsh and commanding. “Don’t look at me! Look at your watch. Keep your head down.” The Deuxième veteran glanced away, nodding aimlessly at several people in nearby chairs as he continued, his lips barely moving. “Go out the door on the far left, the one used for luggage. Hurry!”

“No!” replied Marie, her head down, her eyes on her watch. “You know me but I don’t know you! Who are you?”

“A friend of your husband.”

“My God, is he here?”

“The question is why are you here?”

“I stayed at this hotel once before. I thought he might remember it.”

“He did but in the wrong context, I’m afraid. Mon Dieu, he never would have chosen it otherwise. Now, leave.”

“I won’t! I have to find him. Where is he?”

“You will leave or you may find only his corpse. There’s a message for you in the Paris Tribune—”

“It’s in my purse. The financial page. ‘Memom—’ ”

“Call in several hours.”

“You can’t do this to me.”

“You cannot do this to him. You’ll kill him! Get out of here. Now!”

Her eyes half blinded with fury and fear and tears, Marie started toward the left side of the lobby, desperately wanting to look back, but just as desperately knowing she could not do so. She reached the narrow set of glass double doors, colliding with a uniformed bellhop carrying suitcases inside.

“Pardon, madame!”

“Moi aussi,” she stammered, maneuvering again blindly around the luggage and out to the pavement. What could she do—what should she do? David was somewhere in the hotel—in the hotel! And a strange man recognized her and warned her and told her to get out—get away! What was happening? … My God, someone’s trying to kill David! The old Frenchman had said as much—who was it… who were they? Where were they?