The Bourne Identity jb-1

by Robert Ludlum

  “‘Vous êtes un soldat … arrêtez … arrêtez.’”

  “What?”

  “I am a soldier. Someone said that to me recently, someone very dear to you.” Villiers spoke quietly. “She shamed an old warrior into remembering who he was … who he had been. ‘On dit que vous êtes un géant. Je le crois.’ She had the grace, the kindness to say that to me also. She had been told I was a giant, and she believed it. She was wrong—Almighty God, she was wrong—but I shall try.”

  André Villiers lowered the gun; there was dignity in the submission. A soldier’s dignity. A giant’s.

  “What would you have me do?”

  Jason breathed again. “Force Carlos into coming after me. But not here, not in Paris. Not even in France.”

  “Where then?”

  Jason held his place. “Can you get me out of the country? I should tell you, I’m wanted. My name and description by now are on every immigration desk and border check in Europe.”

  “For the wrong reasons?”

  “For the wrong reasons.”

  “I believe you. There are ways. The Conseiller Militaire has ways and will do as I ask.”

  “With an identity that’s false? Without telling them why?”

  “My word is enough. I’ve earned it.”

  “Another question. That aide of yours you talked about. Do you trust him—really trust him?”

  “With my life. Above all men.”

  “With another’s life? One you correctly said was very dear to me?”

  “Of course. Why? You’ll travel alone?”

  “I have to. She’d never let me go.”

  “You’ll have to tell her something.”

  “I will. That I’m underground here in Paris, or Brussels, or Amsterdam. Cities where Carlos operates. But she has to get away; our car was found in Montmartre. Carlos’ men are searching every street, every fiat, every hotel. You’re working with me now; your aide will take her into the country—she’ll be safe there. I’ll tell her that.”

  “I must ask the question now. What happens if you don’t come back?” Bourne tried to keep the plea out of his voice. “I’ll have time on the plane. I’ll write out everything that’s happened, everything that I … remember. I’ll send it to you and you make the decisions. With her. She called you a giant. Make the right decisions. Protect her.”

  “‘Vous êtes un soldat … arrêtez.’ You have my word. She’ll not be harmed.”

  “That’s all I can ask.”

  Villiers threw the gun on the bed. It landed between the twisted bare legs of the dead woman; the old soldier coughed abruptly, contemptuously, his posture returning. ‘To practicalities, my young wolfpack,” he said, authority coming back to him awkwardly, but with definition. “What’s this strategy of yours?”

  “To begin with, you’re in a state of collapse, beyond shock. You’re an automaton walking around in the dark, following instructions you can’t understand but have to obey.”

  “Not very different from reality, wouldn’t you say?” interrupted Villiers. “Before a young man with truth in his eyes forced me to listen to him. But how is this perceived state brought about? And why?”

  “All you know—all you remember—is that a man broke into your house during the fire and smashed his gun into your head; you fell unconscious. When you woke up you found your wife dead, strangled, a note by her body. It’s what’s in the note that’s driven you out of your mind.”

  “What would that be?” asked the old soldier cautiously.

  “The truth,” said Jason. “The truth you can’t ever permit anyone to know. What she was to Carlos, what he was to her. The killer who wrote the note left a telephone number, telling you that you could confirm what he’s written. Once you were satisfied, you could destroy the note and report the murder any way you like. But for telling you the truth—for killing the whore who was so much a part of your son’s death—he wants you to deliver a written message.”

  “To Carlos?”

  “No. He’ll send a relay.”

  “Thank God for that. I’m not sure I could go through with it, knowing it was him.”

  “The message will reach him.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll write it out for you; you can give it to the man he sends. It’s got to be exact, both in what it says and what it doesn’t say.” Bourne looked over at the dead woman, at the swelling in her throat.

  “Do you have any alcohol?”

  “A drink?”

  “No. Rubbing alcohol. Perfume will do.”

  “I’m sure there’s rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet.”

  “Would you mind getting it for me? Also a towel, please.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Put my hands where your hands were. Just in case, although I don’t think anyone will question you. While I’m doing that, call whomever you have to call to get me out. The timing’s important. I have to be on my way before you call Carlos’ relay, long before you call the police. They’d have the airports watched.”

  “I can delay until daybreak, I imagine. An old man’s state of shock, as you put it. Not much longer than that. Where will you go?”

  “New York. Can you do it? I have a passport identifying me as a man named George Washburn. Its a good job.”

  “Making mine far easier. You’ll have diplomatic status. Pre-clearance on both sides of the Atlantic.”

  “As an Englishman? The passport’s British.”

  “As a NATO accommodation. Conseiller channels; you are part of an Anglo-American team engaged in military negotiations. We favor your swift return to the United States for further instructions. It’s not unusual, and sufficient to get you rapidly past both immigration points.”

  “Good. I’ve checked the schedules. There’s a seven A.M. flight, Air France to Kennedy.”

  “You’ll be on it.” The old man paused; he had not finished. He took a step toward Jason. “Why New York? What makes you so certain Carlos will follow you to New York?”

  “Two questions with different answers,” said Bourne. “I have to deliver him where he marked me for killing four men and a woman I didn’t know … one of those men very close to me, very much a part of me, I think.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “I’m not sure I do, either. There’s no time. It’ll all be in what I write down for you on the plane. I have to prove Carlos knew. A building in New York. Where it all took place; they’ve got to understand He knew about it. Trust me.”

  “I do. The second question, then. Why will he come after you?” Jason looked again at the dead woman on the bed. “Instinct, maybe. I’ve killed the one person on earth he cares about. If she were someone else and Carlos killed her, I’d follow him across the world until I found him.”

  “He may be more practical. I think that was your point to me.”

  “There’s something else,” replied Jason, taking his eyes away from Angélique Villiers. “He has nothing to lose, everything to gain. No one knows what he looks like, but he knows me by sight. Still, he doesn’t know my state of mind. He’s cut me off, isolated me, turned me into someone I was never meant to be. Maybe he was too successful; maybe I’m mad, insane. God knows killing her was insane. My threats are irrational. How much more irrational am I? An irrational man, an insane man, is a panicked man. He can be taken out.”

  “Is your threat irrational? Can you be taken out?”

  “I’m not sure. I only know I don’t have a choice.” He did not. At the end it was as the beginning. Get Carlos. Trap Carlos. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain. The man and the myth were finally one, images and reality fused. There was no other way.

  Ten minutes had passed since he had called Marie, lied to Marie, and heard the quiet acceptance in her voice, knowing it meant she needed time to think. She had not believed him, but she believed in him; she, too, had no choice. And he could not ease her pain; there had been no time, there was no time. Everything w
as in motion now, Villiers was downstairs calling an emergency number at France’s Conseiller Militaire, arranging for a man with a false passport to fly out of Paris with diplomatic status. In less than three hours a man would be over the Atlantic, approaching the anniversary of his own execution. It was the key; it was the trap. It was the last irrational act, insanity the order of that date.

  Bourne stood by the desk; he put down the pen and studied the words he had written on a dead woman’s stationery. They were the words a broken, bewildered old man was to repeat over the telephone to an unknown relay who would demand the paper and give it to Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.

  I killed your bitch whore and I’ll come back for you. There are seventy-one streets in the jungle. A jungle as dense as Tam Quan, but there was a path you missed, a vault in the cellars you did not know about—just as you never knew about me on the day of my execution eleven years ago. One other man knew and you killed him. It doesn’t matter. In that vault are documents that will set me free. Did you think I’d become Cain without that final protection? Washington won’t dare touch me! It seems right that on the date of Bourne’s death, Cain picks up the papers that guarantee him a very long life. You marked Cain. Now I mark you. I’ll come back and you can join the whore.

  —Delta

  Jason dropped the note on the desk and walked over to the dead woman. The alcohol was dry, the swollen throat prepared. He bent down and spread his fingers, placing his hands where another’s had been placed.

  Madness.

  34

  Early light broke over the spires of the church in Levallois Perret in northwest Paris, the March morning cold, the night rain replaced by mist. A few old women, returning to their flats from all-night cleaning shifts in the city proper, trudged in and out of the bronze doors, holding railings and prayer books, devotions about to begin or finished with, precious sleep to follow before the drudgery of surviving the daylight hours. Along with the old women were shabbily dressed men—most also old, others pathetically young—holding overcoats together, seeking the warmth of the church, these clutching bottles in their pockets, precious oblivion extended, another day to survive.

  One old man, however, did not float in the trancelike movements of the others. He was an old man in a hurry. There was reluctance—even fear, perhaps—in his lined, sallow face, but no hesitation in his progress up the steps and through the doors, past the flickering candles and down the far left aisle of the church. It was an odd hour for a worshiper to seek confession; nevertheless this old beggar went directly to the first booth, parted the curtain and slipped inside.

  “Angelus Domini.”

  “Did you bring it?” the whisper demanded, the priestly silhouette behind the curtain trembling with rage.

  “Yes. He thrust it in my hand like a man in a stupor, weeping, telling me to get out. He’s burned Cain’s note to him and says he’ll deny everything if a single word is ever mentioned.” The old man shoved the pages of writing paper under the curtain.

  “He used her stationery—” The assassin’s whisper broke, a silhouetted hand brought to a silhouetted head, a muted cry of anguish now heard behind the curtain.

  “I urge you to remember, Carlos,” pleaded the beggar. “The messenger is not responsible for the news he bears. I could have refused to hear it, refused to bring it to you.”

  “How? Why? …”

  “Lavier. He followed her to Parc Monceau, then both of them to the church. I saw him in Neuilly-sur-Seine when I was your point. I told you that.”

  “I know. But why? He could have used her in a hundred different ways! Against me! Why this?”

  “It’s in his note. He’s gone mad. He was pushed too far, Carlos. It happens; I’ve seen it happen. A man on a double-entry, his source-controls taken out; he has no one to confirm his initial assignment. Both sides want his corpse. He’s stretched to the point where he may not even know who he is any longer.”

  “He knows …” The whisper was drawn out in quiet fury. “By signing the name Delta, he’s telling me he knows. We both know where it comes from, where he comes from.” The beggar paused. “If that’s true, then he’s still dangerous to you. He’s right. Washington won’t touch him. It may not want to acknowledge him, but it will call off its hangmen. It may even be forced to grant him a privilege or two in return for his silence.”

  “The papers he speaks of?” asked the assassin.

  “Yes. In the old days—in Berlin, Prague, Vienna—they were called ‘final payments.’ Bourne uses ‘final protection,’ a minor variance. They were papers drawn up between a primary source-control and the infiltrator, to be used in the event the strategy collapsed, the primary killed, no other avenues open to the agent. It was not something you would have studied in Novgorod; the Soviets had no such accommodations. Soviet defectors, however, insisted upon them.”

  “They were incriminating, then?”

  “They had to be to some degree. Generally in the area of who was manipulated. Embarrassment is always to be avoided; careers are destroyed by embarrassment. But then, I don’t have to tell you that. You’ve used the technique brilliantly.”

  “‘Seventy-one streets in the jungle …’” said Carlos, reading from the paper in his hand, an icelike calm imposed on his whisper. “‘A jungle as dense as Tam Quan.’ … This time the execution will take place as scheduled. Jason Bourne will not leave this Tam Quan alive. By any other name, Cain will be dead, and Delta will die for what he’s done. Angélique—you have my word.” The incantation stopped, the assassin’s mind racing to the practical. “Did Villiers have any idea when Bourne left his house?”

  “He didn’t know. I told you, he was barely lucid, in as much a state of shock as with his telephone call.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The first flights to the United States began within the past hour. He’ll be on one. I’ll be in New York with him, and I won’t miss this time. My knife will be waiting, its blade a razor. I’ll peel his face away; the Americans will have their Cain without a face! Then they can give this Bourne, this Delta, whatever name they care to.”

  The blue-striped telephone rang on Alexander Conklin’s desk. Its bell was quiet, the understated sound lending an eerie emphasis. The blue-striped telephone was Conklin’s direct line to the computer rooms and data banks. There was no one in the office to take the call.

  The Central Intelligence executive suddenly rushed limping through the door, unused to the cane provided him by G-2, SHAPE, Brussels, last night when he had commandeered a military transport to Andrews Field, Maryland. He threw the cane angrily across the room as he lurched for the phone.

  His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, his breath short; the man responsible for the dissolution of Treadstone was exhausted. He had been in scrambler-communication with a dozen branches of clandestine operations—in Washington and overseas—trying to undo the insanity of the past twenty-four hours. He had spread every scrap of information he could cull from the files to every post in Europe, placed agents in the Paris-London-Amsterdam axis on alert. Bourne was alive and dangerous; he had tried to kill his D.C. control; he could be anywhere within ten hours of Paris. All airports and train stations were to be covered, all underground networks activated. Find him! Kill him!

  “Yes?” Conklin braced himself against the desk and picked up the phone.

  “This is Computer Dock 12,” said the male voice efficiently. “We may have something. At least, State doesn’t have any listing on it.”

  “What, for Christ’s sake?”

  “The name you gave us four hours ago. Washburn.”

  “What about it?”

  “A George P. Washburn was pre-cleared out of Paris and into New York on an Air France flight this morning. Washburn’s a fairly common name; he could be just a businessman with connections, but it was flagged on the readout, and since the status was NATO-diplomatic, we checked with State. They never heard of him. There’s no one named Washburn involved with any ongoing NATO negotiations with th
e French government from any member nation.”

  “Then how the hell was he pre-cleared? Who gave him the diplomatic?”

  “We checked back through Paris; it wasn’t easy. Apparently it was an accommodation of the Conseiller Militaire. They’re a quiet bunch.”

  “The Conseiller? Where do they get off clearing our people?”

  “It doesn’t have to be ‘our’ people or ‘their’ people; it can be anybody. Just a courtesy from the host country, and that was a French carrier. It’s one way to get a decent seat on an overbooked plane. Incidentally, Washburn’s passport wasn’t even U.S. It was British.”

  There’s a doctor, an Englishman named Washburn … It was him! It was Delta, and France’s Conseiller had cooperated with him. But why New York? What was in New York for him? And who placed so high in Paris would accommodate Delta? What had he told them? Oh, Christ! How much had he told them?

  “When did the flight get in?” asked Conklin.

  “Ten thirty-seven this morning. A little over an hour ago.”

  “All right,” said the man whose foot had been blown off in Medusa, as he slid painfully around the desk into his seat. “You’ve delivered, and now I want this scratched from the reels. Delete it. Everything you gave me. Is that clear?”

  “Understood, sir. Deleted, sir.”

  Conklin hung up. New York. New York? Not Washington, but New York! There was nothing in New York any longer. Delta knew that. If he was after someone in Treadstone—if he was after him—he would have taken a flight directly to Dulles. What was in New York?