The Bourne Identity jb-1

by Robert Ludlum

  “So he took out the controls and the finger’s pointed at Carlos, which doesn’t mean a damn thing but give him another kill.”

  “That’s it. We want to play it out, let him think he’s home free. Best, we’d like an admission, whatever information we can get, which is why I’m on my way over. But it’s definitely secondary to taking him out. Too many people in too many places were compromised to put him where he is. Can you help? There’ll be a bonus.”

  “My pleasure. And keep the bonus, I hate fuckers like him. They blow whole networks.”

  “It’s got to be airtight; he’s one of the best. I’d suggest support, at least one.”

  “I’ve got a man from the Saint-Gervais worth five. He’s for hire.”

  “Hire him. Here are the particulars. The control in Paris is an embassy blind; he knows nothing but he’s in communication with Bourne and may request protection for him.”

  “I’ll play it,” said the former intelligence officer. “Go ahead.”

  “There’s not much more for the moment. I’ll take a jet out of Andrews. My ETA in Paris will be anywhere between eleven and twelve midnight your time. I want to see Bourne within an hour or so after that and be back here in Washington by tomorrow. It’s tight, but that’s the way it’s got to be.”

  “That’s the way it’ll be, then.”

  “The blind at the embassy is the First Secretary. His name is …” Conklin gave the remaining specifics and the two men worked out basic ciphers for their initial contact in Paris. Code words that would tell the man from the Central Intelligence Agency whether or not any problems existed when they spoke. Conklin hung up. Everything was in motion exactly the way Delta would expect it to be in motion. The inheritors of Treadstone would go by the book, and the book was specific where collapsed strategies and strategists were concerned. They were to be dissolved, cut off, no official connection or acknowledgment permitted. Failed strategies and strategists were an embarrassment to Washington. And from its manipulative beginnings, Treadstone Seventy-One had used, abused and maneuvered every major unit in the United States Intelligence community and not a few foreign governments. Very long poles would be held when touching any survivors.

  Delta knew all this, and because he himself had destroyed Treadstone, he would appreciate the precautions, anticipate them, be alarmed if they were not there. And when confronted he would react in false fury and artificial anguish over the violence that had taken place in Seventy-first Street.

  Alexander Conklin would listen with all his concentration, trying to discern a genuine note, or even the outlines of a reasonable explanation, but he knew he would hear neither. Irregular fragments of glass could not beam themselves across the Atlantic, only to be concealed beneath a heavy drape in a Manhattan brownstone, and fingerprints were more accurate proof of a man having been at a scene than any photograph. There was no way they could be doctored.

  Conklin would give Delta the benefit of two minutes to say whatever came to his facile mind. He would listen, and then he would pull the trigger.

  32

  “Why are they doing it?” asked Jason, sitting down next to Marie in the packed café. He had made the fifth telephone call, five hours after having reached the embassy. “They want me to keep running. They’re forcing me to run, and I don’t know why.”

  “You’re forcing yourself,” said Marie. “You could have made the calls from the room.”

  “No, I couldn’t. For some reason they want me to know that. Each time I call, that son of a bitch asks me where I am now, am I in ‘safe territory’? Silly goddamn phrase, ‘safe territory’. But he’s saying something else. He’s telling me that every contact must be made from a different location, so that no one outside or inside could trace me to a single phone, a single address. They don’t want me in custody, but they want me on a string. They want me, but they’re afraid of me; it doesn’t make sense!”

  “Isn’t it possible you’re imagining these things? No one said anything remotely like that.”

  “They didn’t have to. Its in what they didn’t say. Why didn’t they just tell me to come right over to the embassy? Order me. No one could touch me there; it’s U. S. territory. They didn’t.”

  “The streets are being watched; you were told that.”

  “You know, I accepted that—blindly—until about thirty seconds ago when it struck me. By whom? Who’s watching the streets?”

  “Carlos, obviously. His men.”

  “You know that and I know that—at least we can assume it—but they don’t know that. I may not know who the hell I am or where I came from, but I know what’s happened to me during the past twenty-four hours. They don’t.”

  “They could assume too, couldn’t they? They might have spotted strange men in cars, or standing around too long, too obviously.”

  “Carlos is brighter than that. And there are lots of ways a specific vehicle could get quickly inside an embassy’s gate. Marine contingents everywhere are trained for things like that.”

  “I believe you.”

  “But they didn’t do that; they didn’t even suggest it. Instead, they’re stalling me, making me play games. Goddamn it, why?”

  “You said it yourself, Jason. They haven’t heard from you in six months. They’re being very careful.”

  “Why this way? They get me inside those gates, they can do whatever they want. They control me. They can throw me a party or throw me into a cell. Instead, they don’t want to touch me, but they don’t want to lose me either.”

  “They’re waiting for the man flying over from Washington.”

  “What better place to wait for him than in the embassy?” Bourne pushed back his chair.

  “Something’s wrong. Let’s get out of here.”

  It had taken Alexander Conklin, inheritor of Treadstone, exactly six hours and twelve minutes to cross the Atlantic. To go back he would take the first Concorde flight out of Paris in the morning, reach Dulles by 7:30 Washington time and be at Langley by 9:00. If anyone tried to phone him or asked where he had spent the night, an accommodating major from the Pentagon would supply a false answer. And a First Secretary at the embassy in Paris would be told that if he ever mentioned having had a single conversation with the man from Langley, he’d be descaled to the lowest attaché on the ladder and shipped to a new post in Tierra del Fuego. It was guaranteed.

  Conklin went directly to a row of pay phones against the wall and called the embassy. The First Secretary was filled with a sense of accomplishment.

  “Everything’s according to schedule, Conklin,” said the embassy man, the absence of the previously employed Mister a sign of equality. The Company executive was in Paris now, and turf was turf. “Bourne’s edgy. During our last communication he repeatedly asked why he wasn’t being told to come in.”

  “He did?” At first Conklin was surprised; then he understood. Delta was feigning the reactions of a man who knew nothing of the events on Seventy-first Street. If he had been told to come to the embassy, he would have bolted. He knew better; there could be no official. connection. Treadstone was anathema, a discredited strategy, a major embarrassment. “Did you reiterate that the streets were being watched?”

  “Naturally. Then he asked me who was watching them. Can you imagine?”

  “I can. What did you say?”

  “That he knew as well as I did, and all things considered I thought it was counterproductive to discuss such matters over the telephone.”

  “Very good.”

  “I rather thought so.”

  “What did he say to that? Did he settle for it?”

  “In an odd way, yes. He said, ‘I see.’ That’s all.”

  “Did he change his mind and ask for protection?”

  “He’s continued to refuse it. Even when I insisted.” The First Secretary paused briefly. “He doesn’t want to be watched, does he?” he said confidentially.

  “No, he doesn’t. When do you expect his next call?”

  “In
about fifteen minutes.”

  “Tell him the Treadstone officer has arrived.” Conklin took the map from his pocket; it was folded to the area, the route marked in blue ink. “Say the rendezvous has been set for one-thirty on the road between Chevreuse and Rambouillet, seven miles south of Versailles at the Cimetière de Noblesse.”

  “One-thirty, road between Chevreuse and Rambouillet … the cemetery. Will he know how to get there?”

  “He’s been there before. If he says he’s going by taxi, tell him to take the normal precautions and dismiss it.”

  “Won’t that appear strange? To the driver, I mean. It’s an odd hour for mourning.”

  “I said you’re to ‘tell him’ that. Obviously he won’t take a taxi.”

  “Obviously,” said the First Secretary quickly, recovering by volunteering the unnecessary. “Since I haven’t called your man here, shall I call him now and tell him you’ve arrived?”

  “I’ll take care of that. You’ve still got his number?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Burn it,” ordered Conklin. “Before it burns you. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”

  A train thundered by in the lower level of the Métro, the vibrations felt throughout the platform. Bourne hung up the pay phone on the concrete wall and stared for a moment at the mouthpiece. Another door had partially opened somewhere in the distance of his mind, the light too far away, too dim to see inside. Still, there were images. On the road to Rambouillet … through an archway of iron latticework … a gently sloping hill with white marble. Crosses—large, larger, mausoleums … and statuary everywhere. Le Cimetière de Noblesse. A cemetery, but far more than a resting place for the dead. A drop, but even more than that. A place where conversations took place amid burials and the lowering of caskets. Two men dressed somberly as the crowds were dressed somberly, moving between the mourners until they met among the mourners and exchanged the words they had to say to each other.

  There was a face, but it was blurred, out of focus; he saw only the eyes. And that unfocused face and those eyes had a name. David … Abbott. The Monk. The man he knew but did not know.

  Creator of Medusa and Cain.

  Jason blinked several times and shook his head as if to shake the sudden mists away. He glanced over at Marie, who was fifteen feet to his left against the wall, supposedly scanning the crowds on the platform, watching for someone possibly watching him. She was not; she was looking at him herself, a frown of concern across her face. He nodded, reassuring her; it was not a bad moment for him. Instead, images had come to him. He had been to that cemetery; somehow he would know it.

  He walked toward Marie; she turned and fell in step beside him as they headed for the exit.

  “He’s here,” said Bourne. “Treadstone’s arrived. I’m to meet him near Rambouillet. At a cemetery.”

  “That’s a ghoulish touch. Why a cemetery?”

  “It’s supposed to reassure me.”

  “Good God, how?”

  “I’ve been there before. I’ve met people there … a man there. By naming it as the rendezvous-an unusual rendezvous—Treadstone’s telling me he’s genuine.” She took his arm as they climbed the steps toward the street. “I want to go with you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You can’t exclude me!”

  “I have to, because I don’t know what I’m going to find there. And if it’s not what I expect, I’ll want someone on my side.”

  “Darling, that doesn’t make sense! I’m being hunted by the police. If they find me, they’ll send me back to Zurich on the next plane; you said so yourself. What good would I be to you in Zurich?”

  “Not you. Villiers. He trusts us, he trusts you. You can reach him if I’m not back by daybreak or haven’t called explaining why. He can make a lot of noise, and God knows he’s ready to. He’s the one backup we’ve got, the only one. To be more specific, his wife is—through him.” Marie nodded, accepting his logic. ‘He’s ready,” she agreed. “How will you get to Rambouillet?”

  “We have a car, remember? I’ll take you to the hotel, then head over to the garage.”

  He stepped inside the elevator of the garage complex in Montmartre and pressed the button for the fourth floor. His mind was on a cemetery somewhere between Chevreuse and Rambouillet, on a road he had driven over but had no idea when or for what purpose.

  Which was why he wanted to drive there now, not wait until his arrival corresponded more closely to the time of rendezvous. If the images that came to his mind were not completely distorted, it was an enormous cemetery. Where precisely within those acres of graves and statuary was the meeting ground? He would get there by one, leaving a half hour to walk up and down the paths looking for a pair of headlights or a signal. Other things would come to him.

  The elevator door scraped open. The floor was three-quarters filled with cars, deserted otherwise.

  Jason tried to recall where he had parked the Renault; it was in a far corner, he remembered that, but was it on the right or the left? He started tentatively to the left; the elevator had been on his left when he had driven the car up several days ago. He stopped, logic abruptly orienting him. The elevator had been on his left when he had entered, not after he had parked the car; it had been diagonally’ to his right then. He turned, his movement rapid, his thoughts on a road between Chevreuse and Rambouillet.

  Whether it was the sudden, unexpected reversal of direction or an inexperienced surveillance, Bourne neither knew nor cared to dwell upon. Whichever, the moment saved his life, of that he was certain. A man’s head ducked below the hood of a car in the second aisle on his right; that man had been watching him. An experienced surveillance would have stood up, holding a ring of keys he had presumably picked up from the floor, or checked a windshield wiper, then walked away. The one thing he would not do was what this man did; risk being seen by ducking out of sight.

  Jason maintained his pace, his thoughts concerned on this new development. Who was this man?

  How had he been found? And then both answers were so clear, so obvious he felt like a fool. The clerk at the Auberge du Coin.

  Carlos had been thorough—as he was always thorough—every detail of failure examined. And one of those details was a clerk on duty during a failure. Such a man bore scrutiny, then questioning; it would not be difficult. The show of a knife or a gun would be more than sufficient. Information would pour from the night clerk’s trembling lips, and Carlos’ army ordered to spread throughout the city, each district divided into sectors, hunting for a specific black Renault. A painstaking search, but not impossible, made easier by the driver, who had not bothered to switch license plates. For how many unbroken hours had the garage been watched? How many men were there? Inside, outside?

  How soon would others arrive? Would Carlos arrive?

  The questions were secondary. He had to get out. He could do without the car, perhaps, but the resulting dependency on unknown arrangements might cripple him; he needed transportation and he needed it now. No taxi would drive a stranger to a cemetery on the outskirts of Rambouillet at one o’clock in the morning, and it was no time to rely on the possibility of stealing a car in the streets.

  He stopped, taking cigarettes and matches from his pockets; then, striking a match, he cupped his hands and angled his head to protect the flame. In the corner of his eye he could see a shadow—square-shaped, stocky; the man once more had lowered himself, now behind the trunk of a nearer automobile.

  Jason dropped to a crouch, spun to his left and lunged out of the aisle between two adjacent cars, breaking his fall with the palms of his hands, the maneuver made in silence. He crawled around the rear wheels of the automobile on his right, arms and legs working rapidly, quietly, down the narrow alley of vehicles, a spider scurrying across a web. He was behind the man now; he crept forward toward the aisle and rose to his knees, inching his face along smooth metal, and peered beyond a headlight. The heavy-set man was in full view, standing erect. He was evidently bew
ildered, for he moved hesitantly closer toward the Renault, his body low again, squinting to see beyond the windshield. What he saw frightened him further, there was nothing, no one. He gasped, the audible intake of breath a prelude to running. He had been tricked; he knew it and was not about to wait around for the consequences—which told Bourne something else. The man had been briefed on the driver of the Renault, the danger explained. The man began to race toward the exit ramp.

  Now. Jason sprang up and ran straight ahead across the aisle, between the cars to the second aisle, catching up with the running man, hurling himself at his back and throwing him to the concrete floor. He hammer-locked the man’s thick neck, crashing the outsized skull into the pavement, the fingers of his left hand pressed into the man’s eye sockets.

  “You have exactly five seconds to tell me who’s outside,” he said in French, remembering the grimacing face of another Frenchman in an elevator in Zurich. There had been men outside then, men who wanted to kill him then, on the Bahnhofstrasse. “Tell me! Now!”

  “A man, one man, that’s all!”

  Bourne relocked the neck, digging his fingers deeper into the eyes. “Where?”

  “In a car,” spat out the man. “Parked across the street. My God, you’re choking me! You’re blinding me!”

  “Not yet. You’ll know it when and if I do both. What kind of car?”

  “Foreign. I don’t know. Italian, I think. Or American. I don’t know. Please! My eyes!”

  “Color!”

  “Dark! Green, blue, very dark. Oh my God!”

  “You’re Carlos’ man, aren’t you?”

  “Who?”

  Jason yanked again, pressed again. “You heard me—you’re from Carlos!”

  “I don’t know any Carlos. We call a man; there is a number. That’s all we do.”

  “Has he been called?” The man did not reply; Bourne dug his fingers deeper. “Tell me!”

  “Yes. I had to.”

  “When?”