The Bourne Identity jb-1

by Robert Ludlum

  “A few minutes ago. The coin telephone on the second ramp. My God! I can’t see.”

  “Yes, you can. Get up!” Jason released the man, pulling him to his feet. “Get over to the car. Quickly!” Bourne pushed the man back between the stationary automobiles to the Renault’s aisle.

  The man turned, protesting, helpless. “You heard me. Hurry!” shouted Jason.

  “I’m only earning a few francs.”

  “Now you can drive for them.” Bourne shoved him again toward the Renault.

  Moments later the small black automobile careened down an exit ramp toward a glass booth with a single attendant and the cash register. Jason was in the back seat, his gun pressed against the man’s bruised neck. Bourne shoved a bill and his dated ticket out the window; the attendant took both.

  “Drive!” said Bourne. “Do exactly what I told you to do!”

  The man pressed the accelerator, and the Renault sped out through the exit. The man made a screeching U-turn in the street, coming to a sudden stop in front of a dark green Chevrolet. A car door opened behind them; running footsteps followed.

  “Jules? Que se passe-t-il? C’est toi qui conduis?” A figure loomed in the open window.

  Bourne raised his automatic, pointing the barrel at the man’s face. “Take two steps back,” he said in French. “No more, just two. And then stand still.” He tapped the head of the man named Jules.

  “Get out. Slowly.”

  “We were only to follow you,” protested Jules, stepping out into the street. “Follow you and report your whereabouts.”

  “You’ll do better than that,” said Bourne, getting out of the Renault, taking his map of Paris with him. “You’re going to drive me. For a while. Get in your car, both of you!” Five miles outside of Paris, on the road to Chevreuse, the two men were ordered out of the car.

  It was a dark, poorly lighted, third-grade highway. There had been no stores, buildings, houses, or road phones for the past three miles.

  “What was the number you were told to call?” demanded Jason. “Don’t lie. You’d be in worse trouble.”

  Jules gave it to him. Bourne nodded and climbed into the seat behind the wheel of the Chevrolet.

  The old man in the threadbare overcoat sat huddled in the shadows of the empty booth by the telephone. The small restaurant was closed, his presence there an accommodation made by a friend from the old days, the better days. He kept looking at the instrument on the wall, wondering when it would ring. It was only a question of time, and when it did he would in turn make a call and the better days would return permanently. He would be the one man in Paris who was the link to Carlos. It would be whispered among the other old men, and respect would be his again.

  The high-pitched sound of the bell burst from the telephone, echoing off the walls of the deserted restaurant. The beggar climbed out of the booth and rushed to the phone, his chest pounding with anticipation. It was the signal. Cain was cornered! The days of patient waiting merely a preface to the fine life. He lifted the phone out of its curved recess.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Jules!” cried the breathless voice.

  The old man’s face turned ashen, the pounding in his chest growing so loud he could barely hear the terrible things being said. But he had heard enough.

  He was a dead man.

  White-hot explosions joined the vibrations that took hold of his body. There was no air, only white light and deafening eruptions surging up from his stomach to his head.

  The beggar sank to the floor, the cord stretched taut, the phone still in his hand. He stared up at the horrible instrument that carried the terrible words. What could he do? What in the name of God would he do?

  Bourne walked down the path between the graves, forcing himself to let his mind fall free as Washburn had commanded a lifetime ago in Port Noir. If ever he had to be a sponge, it was now; the man from Treadstone had to understand. He was trying with all his concentration to make sense out of the unremembered, to find meaning in the images that came to him without warning. He had not broken whatever agreement they had; he had not turned, or run… He was a cripple; it was as simple as that.

  He had to find the man from Treadstone. Where inside those fenced acres of silence would he be? Where did he expect him to be? Jason had reached the cemetery well before one, the Chevrolet a faster car than the broken-down Renault. He had passed the gates, driven several hundred yards down the road, pulled off onto the shoulder and parked the car reasonably out of sight. On his way back to the gates it had started to rain. It was a cold rain, a March rain, but a quiet rain, little intrusions upon the silence.

  He passed a cluster of graves within a plot bordered by a low iron railing, the centerpiece an alabaster cross rising eight feet out of the ground. He stood for a moment before it. Had he been here before? Was another door opening for him in the distance? Or was he trying too desperately to find one? And then it came to him. It was not this particular grouping of gravestones, not the tall alabaster cross, nor the low iron railing. It was the rain. A sudden rain. Crowds of mourners gathered in black around a burial site, the snapping of umbrellas. And two men coming together, umbrellas touching, brief, quiet apologies muttered, as a long brown envelope exchanged hands, pocket to pocket, unnoticed by the mourners.

  There was something else. An image triggered by an image, feeding upon itself, seen only minutes ago. Rain cascading down white marble; not a cold, light rain, but a downpour, pounding against the wall of a glistening white surface … and columns … rows of columns on all sides, a miniature replica of an ancient treasure.

  On the other side of the hill. Near the gates. A white mausoleum, someone’s scaled-down version of the Parthenon. He had passed it less than five minutes before, looking at it but not seeing it. That was where the sudden rain had taken place, where two umbrellas had touched and an envelope been delivered. He squinted at the radium dial of his watch. It was fourteen minutes past one; he started running back up the path. He was still early; there was time left to see a car’s headlights, or the striking of a match or …

  The beam of a flashlight. It was there at the bottom of the hill and it was moving up and down, intermittently swinging back at the gates as though the holder were concerned that someone might appear. Bourne had an almost uncontrollable urge to race down between the rows of graves and statuary, shouting at the top of his voice. I’m here! It’s me. I understand your message. I’ve come back! I have so much to tell you … and there is so much you must tell me!

  But he did not shout and he did not run. Above all else, he had to show control, for what afflicted him was so uncontrollable. He had to appear completely lucid—sane within the boundaries of his memory. He began walking down the hill in the cold light rain, wishing his sense of urgency had allowed him to remember a flashlight.

  The flashlight. Something was odd about the beam of light five hundred feet below. It was moving in short vertical strokes, as if in emphasis … as if the man holding it were speaking emphatically to another.

  He was. Jason crouched, peering through the rain, his eyes struck by a sharp, darting reflection of light that shot out whenever the beam hit the object in front of it. He crept forward, his body close to the ground, covering practically a hundred feet in seconds, his gaze still on the beam and the strange reflection. He could see more clearly now, he stopped and concentrated. There were two men, one holding the flashlight, the other a short-barreled rifle, the thick steel of the gun known only too well to Bourne. At distances of up to thirty feet it could blow a man six feet into the air. It was a very odd weapon for an officer-of-record sent by Washington to have at his command.

  The beam of light shot over to the side of the white mausoleum; the figure holding the rifle retreated quickly, slipping behind a column no more than twenty feet away from the man holding the flashlight.

  Jason did not have to think; he knew what he had to do. If there was an explanation for the deadly weapon, so be it, but it would not b
e used on him. Kneeling, he judged the distance and looked for points of sanctuary, both for concealment and protection. He started out, wiping the rain from his face, feeling the gun in his belt that he knew he could not use.

  He scrambled from gravestone to gravestone, statue to statue, heading to his right, then angling gradually to his left until the semicircle was nearly complete. He was within fifteen feet of the mausoleum; the man with the murderous weapon was standing by the left corner column, under the short portico to avoid the rain. He was fondling his gun as though it were a sexual object, cracking the breach, unable to resist peering inside. He ran his palm over the inserted shells, the gesture obscene.

  Now. Bourne crept out from behind the gravestone, hands and knees propelling him over the wet grass until he was within six feet of the man. He sprang up, a silent, lethal panther hurling dirt in front of him, one hand surging for the barrel of the rifle, the other for the man’s head. He reached both, grabbed both, clasping the barrel in the fingers of his left hand, the man’s hair in his right. The head snapped back, throat stretched, sound muted. He smashed the head into the white marble with such force that the expulsion of breath that followed signified a severe concussion. The man went limp, Jason supporting him against the wall, permitting the unconscious body to slip silently to the ground between the columns. He searched the man, removing a .357 Magnum automatic from a leather case sewn into his jacket, a razor-sharp scaling knife from a scabbard on his belt and a small .22 revolver from an ankle holster. Nothing remotely government issue; this was a hired killer, an arsenal on foot.

  Break his fingers. The words came back to Bourne; they had been spoken by a man in gold-rimmed glasses in a large sedan racing out of the Steppdeckstrasse. There was reason behind the violence.

  Jason grabbed the man’s right hand and bent the fingers back until he heard the cracks; he did the same with the left, the man’s mouth blocked, Bourne’s elbow jammed between the teeth. No sound emerged above the sound of the rain, and neither hand could be used for a weapon or as a weapon, the weapons themselves placed out of reach in the shadows.

  Jason stood up and edged his face around the column. The Treadstone officer now angled the light directly into the earth in front of him. It was the stationary signal, the beam a lost bird was to home into; it might be other things also—the next few minutes would tell. The man turned toward the gate, taking a tentative step as though he might have heard something, and for the first time Bourne saw the cane, observed the limp. The officer-of-record from Treadstone Seventy-One was a cripple … as he was a cripple.

  Jason dashed back to the first gravestone, spun behind it and peered around the marble edge.

  The man from Treadstone still had his attention on the gates. Bourne glanced at his watch; it was 1:27. Time remained. He pushed himself away from the grave, hugging the ground until he was out of sight, then stood up and ran, retracing the arch back to the top of the hill. He stood for a moment, letting his breathing and his heartbeat resume a semblance of normalcy, then reached into his pocket for a book of matches. Protecting it from the rain, he tore off a match and struck it.

  “Treadstone?” he said loud enough to be heard from below.

  “Delta!”

  Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain. Why did the man from Treadstone use the name Delta rather than Cain? Delta was no part of Treadstone; he had disappeared with Medusa. Jason started down the hill, the cold rain whipping his face, his hand instinctively reaching beneath his jacket, pressing the automatic in his belt.

  He walked onto the stretch of lawn in front of the white mausoleum. The man from Treadstone limped toward him, then stopped, raising his flashlight, the harsh beam causing Bourne to squint and turn his head away.

  “It’s been a long time,” said the crippled officer, lowering the light. “The name’s Conklin, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Thank you. I had. It’s only one of the things.”

  “One of what things?”

  “That I’ve forgotten.”

  “You remembered this place, though. I figured you would. I read Abbott’s logs; it was here where you last met, last made a delivery. During a state burial for some minister or other, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what we have to talk about first. You haven’t heard from me in over six months. There’s an explanation.”

  “Really? Let’s hear it.”

  “The simplest way to put it is that I was wounded, shot, the effects of the wounds causing a severe … dislocation. Disorientation is a better word, I guess.”

  “Sounds good. What does it mean?”

  “I suffered a memory loss. Total. I spent months on an island in the Mediterranean—south of Marseilles—not knowing who I was or where I came from. There’s a doctor, an Englishman named Washburn, who kept medical records. He can verify what I’m telling you.”

  “I’m sure he can,” said Conklin, nodding. “And I’ll bet those records are massive. Christ, you paid enough!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve got a record, too. A bank officer in Zurich who thought he was being tested by Treadstone transferred a million and a half Swiss francs to Marseilles for an untraceable collection.

  Thanks for giving us the name.”

  “That’s part of what you have to understand. I didn’t know. He’d saved my life, put me back together. I was damn near a corpse when I was brought to him.”

  “So you decided a million-odd dollars was a pretty fair ballpark figure, is that it? Courtesy of the Treadstone budget.”

  “I told you, I didn’t know. Treadstone didn’t exist for me; in many ways it still doesn’t.”

  “I forgot. You lost your memory. What was the word? Disorientation?”

  “Yes, but it’s not strong enough. The word is amnesia.”

  “Let’s stick to disorientation. Because it seems you oriented yourself straight into Zurich, right to the Gemeinschaft.”

  “There was a negative surgically implanted near my hip.”

  “There certainly was; you insisted on it. A few of us understood why. It’s the best insurance you can have.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can’t you understand that?”

  “Sure. You found the negative with only a number on it and right away you assumed the name of Jason Bourne.”

  “It didn’t happen that way! Each day it seemed I learned something, one step at a time, one revelation at a time. A hotel clerk called me Bourne; I didn’t learn the name Jason until I went to the bank.”

  “Where you knew exactly what to do,” interrupted Conklin. “No hesitation at all. In and out, four million gone.”

  “Washburn told me what to do!”

  “Then a woman came along who just happened to be a financial whiz kid to tell you how to squirrel away the rest. And before that you took out Chernak in the Löwenstrasse and three men we didn’t know but figured they sure as hell knew you. And here in Paris, another shot in a bank transfer truck. Another associate? You covered every track, every goddamned track. Until there was only one thing left to do. And you—you son of a bitch—you did it.”

  “Will you listen to me! Those men tried to kill me; they’ve been hunting me since Marseilles. Beyond that, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. Things come to me at times. Faces, streets, buildings; sometimes just images I can’t place, but I know they mean something, only I can’t relate to them. And names—there are names, but then no faces. Goddamn you—I’m an amnesiac! That’s the truth!”

  “One of those names wouldn’t be Carlos, would it?”

  “Yes, and you know it. That’s the point; you know much more about it than I do. I can recite a thousand facts about Carlos, but I don’t know why. I was told by a man who’s halfway back to Asia by now I had an agreement with Treadstone. The man worked for Carlos. He said Carlos knows.

  That Carlos was closing in on me, that you put out the word that I’d turned. He couldn’t unders
tand the strategy, and I couldn’t tell him. You thought I’d turned because you didn’t hear from me, and I couldn’t reach you because I didn’t know who you were. I still don’t know who you are!”

  “Or the Monk, I suppose.”

  “Yes, yes … the Monk. His name was Abbott.”

  “Very good. And the Yachtsman? You remember the Yachtsman, don’t you? And his wife?”

  “Names. They’re there, yes. No faces.”

  “Elliot Stevens?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Or … Gordon Webb.” Conklin said the name quietly.

  “What?” Bourne felt the jolt in his chest, then a stinging, searing pain that drove through his temples to his eyes. His eyes were on fire! Fire! Explosions and darkness, high winds and pain… Almanac to Delta! Abandon, abandon! You will respond as ordered. Abandon! “Gordon …” Jason heard his own voice, but it was far away in a faraway wind. He closed his eyes, the eyes that burned so, and tried to push the mists away. Then he opened his eyes and was not at all surprised to see Conklin’s gun aimed at his head.

  “I don’t know how you did it, but you did. The only thing left to do and you did it. You got back to New York and blew them all away. You butchered them, you son of a bitch. I wish to Christ I could bring you back and see you strapped into an electric chair, but I can’t, so I’ll do the next best thing. I’ll take you myself.”

  “I haven’t been in New York for months. Before then, I don’t know—but not in the last half-year.”

  “Liar! Why didn’t you do it really right? Why didn’t you time your goddamn stunt so you could get to the funerals? The Monk’s was just the other day; you would have seen a lot of old friends. And your brother’s! Jesus God Almighty! You could have escorted his wife down the aisle of the church. Maybe delivered the eulogy, that’d be the kicker. At least speak well of the brother you killed.”

  “Brother? … Stop it! For Christ’s sake, stop it!”

  “Why should I? Cain lives! We made him and he came to life!”

  “I’m not Cain. He never was! I never was!”