For a moment, Bourne and Mylene stood looking at each other. He opened his mouth, but she spoke first, “Remember, Jason, life is too short for regrets.”
Bourne left then, striding with ramrod-straight back through the door into a grim and gloomy place of naked concrete block and oil-stained macadam. He looked neither to the left nor right as he went down the car ranks. At the third one, he turned right. A moment later, he found the motorcycle, a silver Voxan VB-1, with a huge 996-cubic V2 engine. Bourne strapped his attaché case to the back, where it would be prominently displayed for the Quai d’Orsay to see. He found a helmet in the carry pack, stowed his hat. Climbing on, he walked the machine out of its parking spot, started the engine and wheeled out of the car park into the rain.
Justine Bérard had been thinking about her son, Yves, when she received the call from Inspector Savoy. These days it seemed as if the only way she could relate to Yves was through his video games. The first time she had beaten him in Grand Theft Auto by outmaneuvering his car with hers was the moment he had looked at her—and really seen her as a living, breathing human being, rather than the annoyance that cooked him food and washed his clothes. Ever since then, though, he’d been begging her to take him for a spin in her official car. So far, she had been successful in staving him off, but there was no doubt that he was wearing her down, not only because she was proud of her nerveless driving but because she desperately wanted Yves to be proud of her.
Following the call from Savoy, informing her that he had found Minister Robbinet and that they were escorting him back to Paris, she had immediately gotten things rolling, pulling the men off surveillance duty, directing them into standard VIP protection formation. Now she gestured to the Police Nationale standing by as Inspector Savoy escorted the Minister of Culture out the front door of the apartment building. At the same time, she checked the street for any sign of the insane assassin Jason Bourne.
Bérard was elated. It made no difference whether Inspector Savoy had found the minister in this maze of residences through cleverness or good fortune, she would benefit hugely, for it was she who had led Savoy here and it was she who would be in at the end when they brought Jacques Robbinet back to Paris safe and sound.
Savoy and Robbinet had crossed the street under the watchful eyes of the phalanx of policemen, machine pistols at the ready. She had Savoy’s car door open, and as he passed her, he handed her the key to the minister’s Peugeot.
As Robbinet ducked his head to get into the backseat of Savoy’s car, Bérard heard the throaty roar of a powerful motorcycle engine. By the echo, it was coming from the car park below the building in which Savoy had found Minister Robbinet. She cocked her head, recognizing the roar of a Voxan VB-1. A military vehicle.
A moment later, she saw the courier accelerate out of the car park and she grabbed her cell phone. What was a military courier doing in Goussainville? Unconsciously, she was walking toward the minister’s Peugeot. She barked out her Quai d’Orsay authorization code, asked to be patched through to Military Liaison. She had reached the Peugeot, unlocked it, slid behind the wheel. With the Code Rouge alert on, it did not take her long to receive the information she was seeking. There was currently no known military courier anywhere near Goussainville.
She started the car, jerked it into gear. Inspector Savoy’s shout of query was drowned in the screech of the Peugeot’s tires as she stood on the gas pedal, accelerating down the street in pursuit of the Voxan. She could only surmise that Bourne had been on to them, knew that he was trapped here unless he could make a quick escape.
The urgent CIA circular she had read had noted that he was able to change identity and appearance with astonishing rapidity. If he was the courier—and, really, when she thought about it, what other possibility was there?—then apprehending or killing him would provide her career an entirely new trajectory. She could imagine the minister himself—so grateful for saving his life—interceding on her behalf, even, possibly, offering her the position of chief of his security.
In the meantime, though, she would have to bring down this faux courier. Lucky for her, the minister’s car was far from a standard Peugeot sedan. Already she could feel the souped-up engine responding to the pressure she was putting on it as she slewed hard left around a corner, shot through a traffic light, passed a lumbering truck on the wrong side. She ignored the indignant blare of its air horn. All of her being was concentrated on keeping the Voxan in sight.
At first Bourne couldn’t believe that he’d been made so quickly, but as the Peugeot continued its dogged pursuit, he was forced to conclude that something had gone terribly wrong. He had seen the Quai d’Orsay taking Robbinet, knew one of their operatives was driving his car. His assumed identity wouldn’t be enough to protect him now; he had to lose this tail permanently. He hunched over, weaving in and out of traffic, varying his speeds, the ways in which he overtook slower traffic. He took turns at dangerously acute angles, aware that at any instant he could go over and send the Voxan screaming onto its side. A glance in the side mirror confirmed that he was unable to shake the Peugeot. More ominously, it appeared to be gaining on him.
Though the Voxan wove in and out of traffic, though her car was less maneuverable, Bérard kept closing the distance between them. She had flipped the special lever installed in all ministerial cars that made the head-and taillights flash, and this signal caused the more alert motorists to give way. In her head scrolled the increasingly more intricate and hair-raising scenarios of Grand Theft Auto. The scrolling of the streets, the vehicles she needed to pass or get around were astonishingly similar. Once, in order not to lose the Voxan, she had to make a split-second decision, running up onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered from her path.
All at once, she saw the entrance to the A1 and knew this was where Bourne must be headed. Her best chance of getting him was before he made it onto the motorway. Biting her lip in grim intent, she drew on every last bit of power the Peugeot’s engine could give her, closing the gap even more. The Voxan was only two cars away from her. She pulled out to the right, overtook one car, waved the other one back, its driver cowed as much by her aggressive driving as by the Peugeot’s flashing lights.
Bérard was not one to waste an opportunity. They were coming up on the entrance; it was now or never. She manhandled the Peugeot up onto the sidewalk, aiming to approach Bourne on the offside so that in order to keep her in sight he would have to take his eyes off the road. At the speed they were both going, she knew he couldn’t afford to do that. She rolled down her window, floored the accelerator and the car leaped forward into the wind-driven rain.
“Pull over!” she cried. “I am Quai d’Orsay! Pull over or risk the consequences!”
The courier ignored her. Drawing her sidearm, she aimed it at his head. Her arm was straight, elbow locked. Tracking him with the gun’s sight, she aimed at the leading edge of his silhouette. She squeezed the trigger.
But just as she did so, the Voxan swerved hard to their left, slipped in front of an oncoming car in the next lane, jumped the narrow concrete divider, shot through the oncoming traffic.
“My God!” Bérard breathed. “He’s headed onto the off-ramp!”
Even as she slewed the Peugeot around, she saw the Voxan threading its way between the traffic exiting the A1. Tires screeched, horns blared, terrified drivers shook their fists and cursed. Bérard noted these reactions with only part of her mind. The other part was engaged in driving through the stalled traffic, up over the median, across the street and onto the off-ramp herself.
She made it as far as the top of the ramp before she ran into a virtual wall of vehicles. She raced out into the rain, saw the Voxan accelerating between lanes of the oncoming traffic. Bourne’s driving was astounding, but how long could he continue such perilous acrobatics?
The Voxan disappeared behind the silver oval cylinder of a tanker truck. Bérard sucked in her breath as she saw the huge eighteen-wheeler come barreling along in the adjacent lane. Sh
e heard the harsh sound of air brakes, then the Voxan struck the semi’s massive radiator grille head-on, instantly erupting in a howling ball of oily flame.
Chapter Twelve
Jason Bourne saw what he liked to call the convergence of opportunity set up right in front of him. He was running between two lanes of oncoming traffic. To his right was a tanker truck; to his left, a bit farther ahead, was a massive eighteen-wheeler. The choice was instinctual, there was no time for second thoughts. He committed his mind and his body to the convergence.
He lifted his legs and, for an instant, he was balanced on the Voxan’s seat with only his left hand for support. He aimed the Voxan at the eighteen-wheeler barreling toward him on the left, then let go of the handlebar. Reaching out with his right hand, his fingers grasped hold of a rung of the skeletal metal ladder that rose up the tanker truck’s curved side and he was jerked off the bike. Then his grip slipped on the rain-slick metal, and he was on the verge of being swept away like a twig in the wind. Tears welled up in his eyes at the pain that ripped through the same shoulder he’d strained outside the cargo hold of the plane. Both hands on the rung, he tightened his grip. As he swung fully onto the ladder, pressing himself against the tanker, the Voxan slammed into the eighteen-wheeler’s radiator.
The tanker truck shuddered, rocking on its shocks as it hurtled through the ball of flame. Then it was past, rolling its way south toward Orly Airport and Bourne’s freedom.
There were many reasons for Martin Lindros’ swift and unerring rise up the Agency’s slippery slope to become DDCI at the age of thirty-eight. He was smart, he came from the right schools, and he had the ability to keep his head even in a crisis. Moreover, his near-eidetic memory gave him a singular edge in keeping the administrative side of the CIA running smoothly. All important assets, no doubt—mandatory, in fact, for any successful DDCI. However, the DCI had chosen Lindros for an even more crucial reason: He was fatherless.
The DCI had known Martin Lindros’ father well. For three years they had served together in Russia and Eastern Europe—until the elder Lindros had been killed in a car bomb attack. Martin Lindros had been twenty at the time and the effect on him had been incalculable. It was at the elder Lindros’ funeral, while watching the young man’s pale and pinched face, that the DCI knew he wanted to draw Martin Lindros into the same web that had so fascinated his father.
Approaching him had been easy; he’d been in a vulnerable place. The DCI had been primed to act, because his unerring instinct had recognized Martin Lindros’ desire for revenge. The DCI had seen that the young man went to Georgetown upon his graduation from Yale. This served two purposes: It physically brought Martin into his orbit, and it ensured he would take the requisite courses for the career path the DCI had chosen for him. The DCI himself had inducted the young man into the Agency, had overseen every phase of his training. And because he wanted to bind the young man to him for all time, he at last provided the revenge Martin so desperately sought—the name and address of the terrorist responsible for constructing the car bomb.
Martin Lindros had followed the DCI’s instructions to the letter, showing a commendably steady hand when he had put a bullet between the terrorist’s eyes. Had he actually been the one who had made the car bomb? Even the DCI couldn’t be certain. But what difference did it make? He was a terrorist and in his day had made many car bombs. Now he was dead—one more terrorist disposed of—and Martin Lindros could sleep easy at night, knowing that he had avenged his father’s murder.
“You see how Bourne fucked us,” Lindros was saying now. “He was the one who called D.C. Metro as soon as he saw your cruisers. He knew you had no official jurisdiction in the district, unless you were working with the Agency.”
“Sadly, you’ve got that fucking-A right.” Detective Harris of the Virginia State Police nodded as he downed his sour mash whiskey. “But now that the Frogs have him in their sights, maybe they’ll have better luck running him to ground than we did.”
“They’re Frogs,” Lindros said morosely.
“Even so, they’ve gotta be able to do something right sometime, no?”
Lindros and Harris were sitting in the Froggy Bottom Lounge on Pennsylvania Avenue. At this hour, the bar was filled with students from George Washington University. For more than an hour Lindros had been watching bare midriffs pierced by navel rings and pert buttocks almost tucked into short skirts nearly twenty years younger than he was. There came a time in a man’s life, he thought, when he began looking in the rearview mirror and realizing that he was no longer young. None of these girls would give him a second look; they didn’t even know he existed.
“Why is it,” he said, “that a man can’t stay young all his life?”
Harris laughed and called for more drinks.
“You think it’s funny?”
They had passed beyond screaming at each other, beyond frosty silence, beyond snide and cutting remarks. In the end, they had said to hell with it and had decided to get drunk.
“Yeah, I think it’s damn funny,” Harris said, making room for the new drinks. “Here you are mooning over pussy, thinkin’ life’s passed you by. This isn’t about pussy, Martin, though to tell you the truth, I never did pass up the opportunity to get laid.”
“Okay, smart guy, what is it about?”
“We lost, that’s all. We got into Jason Bourne’s game and he beat us six ways from Sunday. Not that he didn’t have good reason to.”
Lindros sat up a little straighter, paid for the precipitate movement with a brief bout of vertigo. He put a hand to the side of his head. “What the hell does that mean?”
Harris had a habit of swigging his whiskey around as if it was mouthwash. His throat clicked when he swallowed. “I don’t think Bourne murdered Conklin and Panov.”
Lindros groaned. “Jesus, Harry, not that again.”
“I’ll say it till I’m blue in the face. What I want to know is why you don’t wanna hear it.”
Lindros picked up his head. “Okay, okay. Tell me why you think Bourne is innocent.”
“What’s the point?”
“I’m asking you, aren’t I?”
Harris seemed to consider. He shrugged, pulled out his wallet, extracted a slip of paper, which he unfolded on the table. “Because of this parking ticket.”
Lindros picked the slip up, read it. “This ticket is made out to a Dr. Felix Schiffer.” He shook his head in confusion.
“Felix Schiffer’s a scofflaw,” Harris said. “I wouldn’t’ve known anything about him, but we’re cracking down on scofflaws this month and one of my men couldn’t get to first base with tracking him down.” He tapped the ticket. “It took some doing, but I found out why my guy couldn’t find him. Turns out that all of Schiffer’s mail is being sent to Alex Conklin.”
Lindros shook his head. “So?”
“So when I tried to run a database check on this Dr. Felix Schiffer, I ran up against a wall.”
Lindros felt his head starting to clear. “What kind of a wall?”
“One put up by the United States Government.” Harris finished off his whiskey in a single toss, swish and swallow. “This Dr. Schiffer’s been put on ice with a capital I. I don’t know what the hell Conklin was into, but it was hidden so deep I’ll bet even his own people didn’t know nothin’ about it.” He shook his head. “He wasn’t killed by a rogue agent, Martin; on that I’ll stake my life.”
As Stepan Spalko rode up the private elevator at Humanistas, Ltd., he was in as near to good spirits as he could get. Except for the unexpected development with Khan, everything was now back on track. The Chechens were his; they were intelligent, fearless and willing to die for their cause. As for Arsenov, he was, if nothing else, a dedicated and disciplined leader. This was why Spalko had chosen him to betray Khalid Murat. Murat had not quite trusted Spalko; he’d had a keen nose for duplicity. But now Murat was gone. Spalko had no doubt that the Chechens would perform as he envisioned. On the other front, the damnable Alexande
r Conklin was dead and the CIA was convinced Jason Bourne was his murderer, two birds with one stone. Still, there was the core issue of the weapon and of Felix Schiffer. He felt the intense pressure of what still needed to be done. He knew that he was running out of time; there was much yet to be accomplished.
He got off at a mid-level floor accessible only with a magnetic key he wore. Letting himself into his sun-splashed living quarters, he crossed to the bank of windows overlooking the Danube, the deep green of Margaret Island, the city beyond. He stood staring out at the Houses of Parliament, thinking of the time to come, when undreamed-of power would be his. Sunlight spun off the medieval facade, the flying buttresses, the domes and spires. Inside, men of power met daily, prattling inconsequentially. His chest filled with air. It was he, Spalko, who knew where the real power in this world resided. He held out his hand, clenched it into a fist. Soon they would all know—the American president in his White House, the Russian president in the Kremlin, the sheiks in their magnificent Arabian palaces. Soon they would all know the true meaning of fear.
Naked, he padded into the large, opulent bathroom whose tiles were the color of lapis lazuli. Beneath eight streaming jets, he took a shower, scrubbing himself until his skin turned red. Then he dried himself with a thick white oversized Turkish towel and changed into jeans and a denim shirt.
At a gleaming stainless-steel wet-bar, he drew a cup of freshly brewed coffee from the automatic maker. He added cream and sugar, a dollop of whipped cream from the half-fridge below. For several moments thereafter, he stood sipping the coffee, allowing his mind to go pleasurably out of focus, allowing the anticipation to build. There were so many wonderful things to look forward to today!
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