Bourne Trilogy 3 - The Bourne Ultimatum, page 34
Former judge of the first circuit court in Boston, the once Honorable Brendan Patrick Prefontaine, watched the weeping, disconsolate Randolph Gates as he sat forward on the couch at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, his face in his widespread hands. "Oh, good Christ, how the mighty fall with such a thud of finality," observed Brendan, pouring himself a short bourbon on the rocks. "So you got snookered, Randy. French style. Your facile brain and your imperial presence didn't help you very much when you saw Paree, huh? You should have stayed 'down on the farm,' soldier boy." "My God, Prefontaine, you don't know what it was like! I was setting up a cartel�Paris, Bonn, London and New York with the Far East labor markets�an enterprise worth billions when I was taken from the Plaza-Ath�e and put in a car and blindfolded. Then I was thrown into a plane and flown to Marseilles, where the most horrible things happened to me. I was kept in a room, and every few hours I was injected�for over six weeks! Women were brought in, films taken�I wasn't myself!" "Maybe you were the self you never recognized, Dandy Boy. The same self that learned to anticipate instant gratification, if I use the phrase correctly. Make your clients extraordinary profits on paper, which they trade on the exchanges while thousands of jobs are lost in buy-outs. Oh, yes, my dear royalist, that's instant gratification." "You're wrong, Judge�" "So lovely to hear that term again. Thank you, Randy." "The unions became too strong. Industry was being crippled. Many companies had to go overseas to survive!" "And not talk? Oddly enough, you may have a point, but you never considered an alternative. ... Regardless, we stray. You emerged from your confinement in Marseilles an addict and, of course, there were the films of the eminent attorney in compromising situations." "What could I do?" screamed Gates. "I was ruined!" "We know what you did. You became this Jackal's confidence man in the world of high finance, a world where competition is undesirable baggage better lost along the way." "It's how he found me to begin with. The cartel we were forming was opposed by Japanese and Taiwanese interests. They hired him. ... Oh, my God, he'll kill me!" "Again?" asked the judge. "What?" "You forget. He thinks you're already dead�thanks to me." "I have cases coming up, a congressional hearing next week. He'll know I'm alive!" "Not if you don't show up." "I have to! My clients expect�" "Then I agree," interrupted Prefontaine. "He'll kill you. Sorry about that, Randy." "What am I going to do?" "There's a way, Dandy Boy, not only out of your current dilemma but for years to come. Of course, it will require some sacrifice on your part. For starters, a long convalescence at a private rehabilitation center, but even before that, your complete cooperation right now. The first ensures your imminent disappearance, the second�the capture and elimination of Carlos the Jackal. You'll be free, Randy." "Anything!" "How do you reach him?" "I have a telephone number!" Gates fumbled for his wallet, yanking it out of his pocket and with trembling fingers digging into a recess. "Only four people alive have it!"
Prefontaine accepted his first $20,000-an-hour fee, instructed Randy to go home, beg Edith's forgiveness, and be prepared to leave Boston tomorrow. Brendan had heard of a private treatment center in Minneapolis, he thought, where the rich sought help incognito; he would refine the details in the morning and call him, naturally expecting a second payment for his services. The instant a shaken Gates left the room, Prefontaine went to the phone and called John St. Jacques at Tranquility Inn. "John, it's the judge. Don't ask me questions, but I have urgent information that could be invaluable to your sister's husband. I realize I can't reach him, but I know he's dealing with someone in Washington�" "His name is Alex Conklin," interrupted St. Jacques. "Wait a minute, Judge, Marie wrote the number down on the desk blotter. Let me get over there." The sound of one phone being placed on a hard surface preceded the clicks of another being picked up. "Here it is." Marie's brother recited the number. "I'll explain everything later. Thank you, John." "An awful lot of people keep telling me that, goddamn it!" said St. Jacques. Prefontaine dialed the number with a Virginia area code. It was answered with a short, brusque "Yes?" "Mr. Conklin, my name is Prefontaine and I was given this number by John St. Jacques. What I have to tell you is in the nature of an emergency." "You're the judge," broke in Alex. "Past tense, I'm afraid. Very past." "What is it?" "I know how to reach the man you call the Jackal." "What?" "Listen to me."
Bernardine stared at the ringing telephone, briefly debating with himself whether or not to pick it up. There was no question; he had to. "Yes?" "Jason? It's you, isn't it? ... Perhaps I have the wrong room." "Alex? This is you?" "Fran�s? What are you doing there? Where's Jason?" "Things have happened so fast. I know he's been trying to reach you." "It's been a rough day. We've got Panov back." "That's good news." "I've got other news. A telephone number where the Jackal can be reached." "We've got it! And a location. Our man left an hour ago." "For Christ's sake, how did you get it?" "A convoluted process I sincerely believe only your man could have negotiated. He's brilliantly imaginative, a true cam�on." "Let's compare," said Conklin. "What's yours?" Bernardine complied, reciting the number he had written down on Bourne's instructions. The silence on the phone was a silent scream. "They're different," said Alex finally, his voice choked. "They're different!" "A trap," said the Deuxi� veteran. "God in heaven, it's a trap!" 26 Twice Bourne had passed the dark, quiet row of old stone houses on the boulevard Lefebvre in the concrete backwater of the fifteenth arrondissement. He then doubled back to the rue d'Al�a and found a sidewalk caf�The outdoor tables, their candles flickering under glass, were peopled mostly by gesturing, argumentative students from the nearby Sorbonne and Montparnasse. It was nearing ten o'clock and the aproned waiters were growing irritable; the majority of customers were not full of largess, either in their hearts or in their pockets. Jason wanted only a strong espresso, but the perpetual scowl on the face of the approaching gar� convinced him he would get mud if he ordered only the coffee, so he added the most expensive brandy he could recall by name. As the waiter returned to the service bar, Jason pulled out his small notebook and ballpoint pen, shutting his eyes for a moment, then opening them and sketching out everything he could envision from the row of houses on his inner screen. There were three structures of two attached houses each, separated by two narrow alleyways. Each double complex was three stories high, each front entrance reached by climbing a steep flight of brick steps, and at either end of the row were vacant lots covered with rubble, the remains of demolished adjacent buildings. The address of the Jackal's buried telephone number�the address was available in the underground tunnels solely for repair purposes�was the final structure on the right, and it took no imagination to know he occupied the entire building, if not the entire row. Carlos was the consummate self-protector, so one had to assume that his Paris command post would be a fortress, employing every human and electronic security device that loyalty and high technology could provide. And the seemingly isolated, all but deserted, section of the outlying fifteenth arrondissement served his purposes far better than any crowded section of the city. For that reason, Bourne had first paid a drunken tramp to walk with him during his initial foray past the houses, he himself limping unsteadily in the shadows beside his companion; and for his second appraisal, he had hired a middle-aged whore as his cover, with no limp or stagger in his gait. He knew the terrain now, for all the good it did him, but it was the beginning of the end. He swore himself to that! The waiter arrived with his espresso and the cognac, and only when Jason placed a hundred-franc note on the table, accompanied by a wave of his hand, did the man's hostile countenance move to neutral ground. "Merci," he mumbled. "Is there a pay phone nearby?" asked Bourne, removing an additional ten-franc note. "Down the street, fifty, sixty meters," replied the waiter, his eyes on the new money. "Nothing closer?" Jason peeled off another note, twenty francs. "I'm calling right here within a few blocks." "Come with me," said the aproned gar�, gingerly picking up the franc notes and leading Bourne through the open doors of the caf�o a cashier seated on high at the far end of the restaurant. The gaunt, sallow-faced woman looked annoyed; obviously she assumed that Bourne was a discontented customer. "Let him use your telephone," said the waiter. "Why?" spat out the harridan. "So he can call China?" "He calls up the street. He will pay." Jason proffered a ten-franc note, his innocent eyes looking blankly at the highly suspicious woman. "Augh, take it," she said, removing a phone from under her cash-register stand and grasping the money. "It has an extension so you can move to the wall, as they all do. Men! Business and the bed, it's all you think about!" He dialed the Pont-Royal and asked for his room, expecting Bernardine to pick up on the first or second ring. By the fourth, he was concerned; by the eighth, he was profoundly disturbed. Bernardine was not there! Had Santos ... ? No, the Deuxi� veteran was armed and knew how to use his "deterrence"�there would have been at the least loud gunfire, at the last a room blown apart by a grenade. Bernardine had left under his own control. Why? There could be any one of several reasons, thought Bourne, handing back the telephone and returning to his table outside. The first and most wished for was news of Marie; the old intelligence officer would not raise false hopes by detailing the nets he had spread throughout the city, but they were there, Jason was sure of it. ... Bourne could not think of another reason, so it was best not to think about Bernardine. He had other pressing considerations, the most intensely pressing of his life. He returned to the strong coffee and his notebook; every detail had to be exact. An hour later he finished his espresso, taking a sip of the cognac and spilling the rest on the pavement under the usual soiled red tablecloth. He left the caf�nd the rue d'Al�a, turning right and walking slowly, as a far older man might walk, toward the boulevard Lefebvre. The closer he came to the last corner, the more he became aware of the undulating, erratic sounds from apparently different directions. Sirens! The two-note sirens of the Paris police! What had happened? What was happening? Jason abandoned his elderly gait and ran to the edge of the building fronting the Lefebvre and the row of old stone houses. Instantly, he was in shock, fury and astonishment joining together in panic. What were they doing? Five patrol cars converged on the row of stone houses, each successively screeching to a halt in front of the structure on the right. Then a large black police van appeared, swinging directly around to face the two entrances of the building, its searchlight shooting out as a squad of black-uniformed men with automatic weapons leaped into the street and took up crouching attack positions only partially concealed by the patrol cars�an assault was in the making! Fools. Goddamned fools! To give Carlos a warning was to lose the Jackal! Killing was his profession; escape, his obsession. Thirteen years ago Bourne had been told that Carlos's huge retreat in the village hills of Vitry-sur-Seine outside Paris had more false walls and concealed staircases than a nobleman's Loire ch�au in the time of Louis XIV. The fact that no one had ever determined which estate it was, or whom it was assigned to, did not vitiate the all too acceptable rumors. And with three supposedly separated structures on the boulevard Lefebvre, it was also all too acceptable to presuppose hidden underground tunnels linking each to the others. For Christ's sake, who had done this? Had a terrible error been made? Had he and Bernardine been so obtuse as to think the Deuxi� or Peter Holland's Paris station of the CIA had overlooked tapping into his Pont-Royal telephone or bribed or enlisted the various relays of operators on the hotel's switchboard? If so, that obtuseness was rooted in an absolute: it was next to impossible to tap a phone on short notice in a relatively small hotel without being detected. Technology required a stranger on the premises, and bribe money spread around was countered with larger bribes by the subject under surveillance. Santos? Bugs placed in the room by a chambermaid or a bellman? Not likely. The huge conduit to the Jackal, especially if he had reneged on their contract, would not expose the Jackal. Who? How? The questions burned into Jason's imagination as he watched in horror and dismay the scene taking place on the boulevard Lefebvre. "On police authority, all residents will evacuate the building." The orders over the loudspeaker metallically echoed throughout the street. "You have one minute before we take aggressive procedures." What aggressive procedures? screamed Bourne into the silent void of his mind. You've lost him. I've lost him. Insanity! Who? Why? The door at the top of the brick steps on the left side of the building opened first. A petrified man, short, obese, in an undershirt, his trousers held up by suspenders, cautiously walked out into the flood of the searchlight, spreading his hands in front of his face and turning his head away from the blinding beam. "What is it, messieurs?" he cried, his voice tremulous. "I am merely a baker�a good baker�but I know nothing about this street except that the rent is cheap! Is that a crime to the police?" "Our concerns are not with you, monsieur," continued the amplified voice. "Not with me, you say? You arrive here like an army, frightening my wife and children into thinking it is their last minutes on earth, and yet you say we don't concern you? What kind of reasoning is that? We live among fascists?" Hurry up! thought Jason. For God's sake, hurry! Every second is a minute in escape time, an hour for the Jackal! The door above the flight of brick steps on the right now opened, and a nun in the full flowing black robe of a religious habit appeared. She stood defiantly in the frame, no fear whatsoever in her almost operatic voice. "How dare you?" she roared. "These are the hours of vespers and you intrude. Better you should be asking forgiveness for your sins than interrupting those who plead with God for theirs!" "Nicely said, Sister," intoned the unimpressed police officer over the loudspeaker. "But we have other information and we respectfully insist on searching your house. If you refuse, we shall disrespectfully carry out our orders." "We are the Magdalen Sisters of Charity!" exclaimed the nun. "These are the sacrosanct quarters of women devoted to Christ!" "We respect your position, Sister, but we are still coming inside. If what you say is so, I'm sure the authorities will make a generous contribution to your cause." You're wasting time! screamed Bourne to himself. He's getting away! "Then may your souls be damned for transgression, but come ahead and invade this holy ground!" "Really, Sister?" asked another official over the loudspeaker. "I don't believe there's anything in the canons that gives you the right to condemn souls to hell on such a flimsy excuse. ... Go ahead, Monsieur Inspector. Under the habit, you may find lingerie more suited to the Faubourg." He knew that voice! It was Bernardine! What had happened? Was Bernardine no friend after all? Was it all an act, the smooth talk of a traitor? If so, there would be another death that night! The black-uniformed squad of antiterrorists, their automatic weapons bolted into firing mode, raced to the base of the brick steps as the gendarmes blocked off the boulevard Lefebvre, north and south, while the red and blue lights of the patrol cars incessantly blinked their bright warnings to all beyond the area: Stay away. "May I go inside?" screamed the baker. No one replied, so the obese man ran through his door clutching his trousers. An official in civilian clothes, the obvious leader of the assault, joined his invading unit on the pavement below the steps. With a nod of his head, he and his men raced up the brick staircase through the door held open by the defiant nun. Jason held his place at the edge of the building, his body pressed against the stone, the sweat pouring from his hairline and his neck, his eyes on the incomprehensible scene being played out on the Lefebvre. He knew the who now, but why? Was it true? Was the man most trusted by Alex Conklin and himself in reality another pair of eyes and ears for the Jackal? Christ, he did not want to believe it! Twelve minutes passed, and with the reemergence of Paris's version of a SWAT team and its leader, several members bowing and kissing the hand of the real or would-be abbess, Bourne understood that his and Conklin's instincts had been on true course. "Bernardine!" screamed the official approaching the first patrol car. "You are finished! Out! Never are you to talk to the lowest recruit in the Deuxi�, even the man who cleans the toilets! You are ostracized! ... If I had my way, you'd be shot! ... International murder in the boulevard Lefebvre! A friend of the Bureau! An agent we must protect! ... A fucking nunnery, you miserable son of a bitch! Shit! A nunnery! ... Get out of my car, you smelly pig. Get out before a weapon goes off by mistake and your stomach's on the street, where it belongs!" Bernardine lurched out of the patrol car, his old unsteady legs barely able to maintain balance, twice falling into the street. Jason waited, wanting to rush to his friend, but knowing he had to wait. The patrol cars and the van raced away; still Bourne had to wait, his eyes alternately watching Bernardine and the front entrance of the Jackal's house. And it was the Jackal's house, the nun proved it. Carlos could never let go of his lost faith; he consistently used it as a viable cover, but it was much more than that. Much more. Bernardine staggered into the shadows of a long-abandoned storefront across from the house on the boulevard Lefebvre. Jason breached the corner and ran down the pavement, racing into the recess and grabbing the Deuxi� veteran as he leaned against a long glass window, breathing heavily. "For God's sake, what happened?" cried Bourne, supporting Bernardine by both shoulders. "Easy, mon ami," choked Bernardine. "The pig I sat next to�a politician, no doubt, looking for an issue�punched me in the chest before he threw me out of the car. ... I told you, I don't know all the new people who attach themselves to the Bureau these days. You have the same problems in America, so, please, do not give me a lecture." "It's the last thing I'm about to do. ... This is the house, Bernardine. Right here, right in front of us!" "This is also a trap." "What?" "Alex and I confirmed it. The telephone numbers were different. I gather you did not make your call to Carlos, as he instructed you to." "No. I had the address and I wanted him stretched. What's the difference? This is the house!" "Oh, this is where your Mr. Simon was to go, and if he was truly Mr. Simon, he would be taken to another rendezvous. But if he was not Monsieur Simon but someone else, then he would be shot�proof�another corpse in search of the Jackal." "You're wrong!" insisted Jason, shaking his head and speaking quietly, rapidly. "This may be a detour, but Carlos is still on the switch. He's not going to allow anyone to waste me but himself. That's his commandment." "As yours is regarding him?" "Yes. I have a family; he has a borderline legend. Mine is complete for me, but his is a vacuum�without any real meaning for him any longer. He's gone as far as he can go. The only way he can go further is to move into my territory�David Webb's territory�and eliminate Jason Bourne." "Webb? David Webb? Who in the name of almighty God is that?" "Me," replied Bourne, smiling forlornly and leaning beside Bernardine against the window. "It's nuts, isn't it?" "Nuts!" cried the former Deuxi�. "It is fou! Insane, not to be believed!" "Believe it." "You are a family man with children and you do this work?" "Alex never told you?" "If he did so, I passed it off as a cover�one goes along with anything." Shaking his head, the older man looked up at his taller companion. "You really have a family whom you do not wish to escape from?" "On the contrary, I want to get back to them as soon as I can. They're the only people on earth I really care about." "But you are Jason Bourne, the killer Chameleon! The deepest recesses of the criminal world tremble at your name!" "Oh, come on, that's a bit much, even from you." "Not for an instant! You are Bourne, second only to the Jackal�" "No!" shouted the suddenly forgotten David Webb. "He's no match for me! I'll take him! I'll kill him!" "Very well, very well, mon ami," said Bernardine calmly, reassuringly, staring at the man he could not understand. "What do you want me to do?" Jason Bourne turned and breathed heavily against the glass window for several moments�and then through the mists of indecision the Chameleon's strategy became clear. He swung around and looked across the dark street at the stone building on the right. "The police are gone," he said quietly. "Of course, I realize that." "Did you also realize that no one from the other two buildings came outside? Yet there are lights on in a number of the windows." "I was preoccupied, what can I say? I did not notice." Bernardine raised his eyebrows in sudden recollection. "But there were faces at the windows, several faces, I saw them." "Yet no one came outside." "Very understandable. The police ... men with weapons racing around. Best to barricade oneself, no?" "Even after the police and the weapons and the patrol cars have left? They all just go back to their television sets as if nothing had happened? No one comes out to check with the neighbors? That's not natural, Fran�s; it's not even unnaturally natural. It's been orchestrated." "What do you mean? How?" "One man walks out on the porch and shouts into a searchlight. Attention is drawn to him and precious seconds of a minute's warning evaporate. Then a nun emerges on the other side draping herself in holy indignation�more seconds lost, more hours for Carlos. The assault's mounted and the Deuxi� comes up with zero. ... And when it's all over, everything's back to normal�an abnormal normalcy. A job was done according to a predesigned plan, so there's no call for really normal curiosity�no gathering in the street, no excitement, not even a collective postcrisis indignation. Simply people inside undoubtedly checking with one another. Doesn't it all tell you something?" Bernardine nodded. "A prearranged strategy carried out by professionals," said the veteran field officer. "That's what I think, too." "It's what you saw and I did not," countered Bernardine. "Stop being kind, Jason. I've been too long away from the cold. Too soft, too old, too unimaginative." "So have I," said Bourne. "It's just that the stakes are so high for me that I have to force myself into thinking like a man I wanted to forget." "This is Monsieur Webb speaking?" "I guess it is." "So where does that leave us?" "With an irate baker and an angry nun, and if they prove to be ciphers, several faces in various windows. At this juncture the pickings are ours but that won't last long, I doubt through the morning." "I beg your pardon?" "Carlos will close up shop here and he'll do it quickly. He hasn't got a choice now. Someone in his Praetorian guard gave someone else the location of his Paris headquarters, and you can bet your pension�if you've still got one�that he's climbing the walls trying to figure out who betrayed him�" "Get back!" cried Bernardine, interrupting and grabbing Jason by the cloth of his black jacket, yanking him into the farthest recess of the dark storefront. "Get out of sight! Flat on the pavement!" Both men threw themselves down, lying prone on the broken concrete, Bourne's face against the short wall below the glass, his head angled to see the street. A second dark van appeared from the right, but it was not police equipment. Instead, it was shinier and smaller, somehow thicker, lower to the ground and more powerful. The one glaring, blinding similarity it had to the police van was the searchlight. ... No, not one, but two searchlights, one on either side of the windshield, both beams swinging back and forth scanning the vehicle's flanks. Jason reached for the weapon in his belt�the gun he had borrowed from Bernardine�knowing that his companion already had his backup automatic out of his pocket. The beam of the left searchlight shot over their bodies as Bourne whispered, "Good work, but how did you spot it?" "The moving reflections of the lamps on the side windows," replied old Fran�s. "I thought for a moment it was my former colleague returning to finish the job he had contemplated. Namely, my stomach in the street. ... My God, look!" The van swept past the first two buildings, then suddenly swerved into the curb and stopped in front of the last structure, nearly two hundred feet from the storefront, the building farthest from the Jackal's telephone. The instant the vehicle came to a halt the rear door opened and four men jumped out, automatic weapons in their hands, two running to the street side, one racing down the pavement to the front, the last guard standing menacingly by the open doors, his MAC-10 ready to fire. A dull wash of yellow light appeared at the top of the brick steps; the door had been opened and a man in a black raincoat came outside. He stood for a moment looking up and down the boulevard Lefebvre. "Is that him?" whispered Francois. "No, not unless he's wearing high heels and a wig," answered Jason, reaching into his jacket pocket. "I'll know him when I see him�because I see him every day of my life!" Bourne took out one of the grenades he had also borrowed from Bernardine. He checked the release, laying down his gun and gripping the pockmarked steel oval, tugging at the pin to make certain it was free of corrosion. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" asked the old Deuxi� veteran. "That man up there is a decoy," replied Jason, his soft voice suspended in a cold monotone. "In moments another will take his place, run down the steps and get into the van, either in the front seat or through the rear doors�I hope the latter, but it won't make much difference." "You're mad! You'll be killed! What good is a corpse to that family of yours?" "You're not thinking, Fran�s. The guards will run back and climb up through the rear doors because there's no room in front. There's a lot of difference between climbing into a truck and jumping out of it. For starters, it's a slower sequence. ... By the time the last man gets in and reaches out to close those wide doors, I'll have a primed grenade inside that van. ... And I have no intention of becoming a corpse. Stay here!" Before Bernardine could object further, Medusa's Delta crawled out into the dark boulevard, dark but for the harsh stationary beams of the searchlights, which were now angled on the flanks, thus actually enhancing Bourne's concealment. The hot white light around the vehicle obscured the darkness beyond; his only extreme risk was the guard posted by the open doors. Hugging the shadows of the successive storefronts as though he were threading his way through the high grass of the Mekong Delta toward a floodlit prisoner compound, Jason crept slowly forward with each wayward glance of the rear guard, his eyes darting continuously up to the man by the door above the brick steps. Suddenly another figure emerged; it was a woman carrying a small suitcase in one hand, a large purse in the other. She spoke to the man in the black raincoat as the guard's attention was drawn to both of them. Bourne scrambled, his elbows and knees silently pounding the hard pavement, until he reached that point nearest the van where he could observe the scene on the staircase with minimum risk of being spotted. He was relieved to see that the two guards in the street continuously winced and blinked under the beam of the searchlight. His status was as clean as it could be under the tenuous circumstances. Everything now was timing, precision, and all the expertise he could summon from times too often unremembered or too vague or too long ago. He had to remember now; instinct had to propel him through his personal mists. Now. The end of the nightmare was at hand. It was happening! Suddenly there was furious activity at the door as a third figure came rushing out, joining the other two. The man was shorter than his male colleague, wearing a beret and carrying a briefcase. He obviously issued orders that included the rear guard, who ran up to the pavement as the new arrival hurled his briefcase down over the brick steps. The guard instantly clutched his weapon under his left arm and effortlessly caught the leather missile in midair. "Allez-vous-en. Nous partons! Vite!" shouted the second man, gesturing for the other two on the brick steps to precede him down to the van. They did so, the man in the raincoat joining the guard at' the rear doors, the woman accompanying the one who gave the orders. ... The Jackal? Was it Carlos? Was it? Bourne desperately wanted to believe that it was�therefore, it was! The sound of the vehicle's curbside door slamming shut was followed rapidly by the gunning of the vehicle's powerful engine; both were a signal. The three other guards raced from their posts to the rear doors of the van. One by one they climbed up inside after the man in the black raincoat, their legs stretched, arms bracing shoulders, curved hands gripping the two metal frames that with instant muscular strain propelled them inside as their weapons were thrown in front of them. Then a pair of hands reached out for the interior door handles� Now! Bourne pulled the pin of the grenade and lurched to his feet, running as he had never run in his life toward the swinging rear doors of the van. He dived, twisting his body in flight, landing on his back as he gripped the left panel and threw the grenade inside, the bomb's release in his hand. Six seconds and it would detonate. Jason got to his knees, arms extended, and crashed the doors shut. A fusillade of gunfire erupted. But it was an unintended miracle�as the Jackal's van was bulletproof, it was also impervious to bullets shot from within! There were no penetrations of the steel, only thuds and the screaming whistles of ricochets ... and the screams of the wounded inside. The glistening vehicle shot forward on the boulevard Lefebvre as Bourne sprang to a crouch and raced toward the deserted storefronts on the east side of the street. He was nearly across the wide avenue when the impossible happened. The impossible! The Jackal's van blew up, the explosion firing the dark Paris sky, and the moment it happened a brown limousine screeched around the nearest corner, the windows open, men in the black spaces, weapons in their grips, spraying the entire area with thunderous, indiscriminate fire. Jason lunged into the nearest recess, curling up into a fetal position in the shadows, accepting the fact�not in fear but in fury�that it might well be his last moments of life. He had failed. Failed Marie and his children! ... But not this way. He spun off the concrete, the weapon in his hand. He would kill, kill! That was the way of Jason Bourne. Then the incredible happened. The incredible. A siren? The police? The brown limousine shot forward, skirting the flaming wreck of the Jackal's van and disappeared into the dark streets as a patrol car raced out of the opposing darkness, its siren screaming, the tires screeching as it skidded to a stop only yards from the flames of the demolished vehicle. Nothing made sense! thought Jason. Where before there had been five patrol cars, only one had returned. Why? And even that question was superfluous. Carlos had mounted a strategy employing not one but seven, conceivably eight, decoys, all expendable, all led to their terrible death by the consummate self-protector. The Jackal had sprung himself from the trap that had been reversed by his hated quarry, Delta, the product of Medusa, a creation of American intelligence. Once again, the assassin had outthought him, but he had not killed him. There would be another day, another night.
Prefontaine accepted his first $20,000-an-hour fee, instructed Randy to go home, beg Edith's forgiveness, and be prepared to leave Boston tomorrow. Brendan had heard of a private treatment center in Minneapolis, he thought, where the rich sought help incognito; he would refine the details in the morning and call him, naturally expecting a second payment for his services. The instant a shaken Gates left the room, Prefontaine went to the phone and called John St. Jacques at Tranquility Inn. "John, it's the judge. Don't ask me questions, but I have urgent information that could be invaluable to your sister's husband. I realize I can't reach him, but I know he's dealing with someone in Washington�" "His name is Alex Conklin," interrupted St. Jacques. "Wait a minute, Judge, Marie wrote the number down on the desk blotter. Let me get over there." The sound of one phone being placed on a hard surface preceded the clicks of another being picked up. "Here it is." Marie's brother recited the number. "I'll explain everything later. Thank you, John." "An awful lot of people keep telling me that, goddamn it!" said St. Jacques. Prefontaine dialed the number with a Virginia area code. It was answered with a short, brusque "Yes?" "Mr. Conklin, my name is Prefontaine and I was given this number by John St. Jacques. What I have to tell you is in the nature of an emergency." "You're the judge," broke in Alex. "Past tense, I'm afraid. Very past." "What is it?" "I know how to reach the man you call the Jackal." "What?" "Listen to me."
Bernardine stared at the ringing telephone, briefly debating with himself whether or not to pick it up. There was no question; he had to. "Yes?" "Jason? It's you, isn't it? ... Perhaps I have the wrong room." "Alex? This is you?" "Fran�s? What are you doing there? Where's Jason?" "Things have happened so fast. I know he's been trying to reach you." "It's been a rough day. We've got Panov back." "That's good news." "I've got other news. A telephone number where the Jackal can be reached." "We've got it! And a location. Our man left an hour ago." "For Christ's sake, how did you get it?" "A convoluted process I sincerely believe only your man could have negotiated. He's brilliantly imaginative, a true cam�on." "Let's compare," said Conklin. "What's yours?" Bernardine complied, reciting the number he had written down on Bourne's instructions. The silence on the phone was a silent scream. "They're different," said Alex finally, his voice choked. "They're different!" "A trap," said the Deuxi� veteran. "God in heaven, it's a trap!" 26 Twice Bourne had passed the dark, quiet row of old stone houses on the boulevard Lefebvre in the concrete backwater of the fifteenth arrondissement. He then doubled back to the rue d'Al�a and found a sidewalk caf�The outdoor tables, their candles flickering under glass, were peopled mostly by gesturing, argumentative students from the nearby Sorbonne and Montparnasse. It was nearing ten o'clock and the aproned waiters were growing irritable; the majority of customers were not full of largess, either in their hearts or in their pockets. Jason wanted only a strong espresso, but the perpetual scowl on the face of the approaching gar� convinced him he would get mud if he ordered only the coffee, so he added the most expensive brandy he could recall by name. As the waiter returned to the service bar, Jason pulled out his small notebook and ballpoint pen, shutting his eyes for a moment, then opening them and sketching out everything he could envision from the row of houses on his inner screen. There were three structures of two attached houses each, separated by two narrow alleyways. Each double complex was three stories high, each front entrance reached by climbing a steep flight of brick steps, and at either end of the row were vacant lots covered with rubble, the remains of demolished adjacent buildings. The address of the Jackal's buried telephone number�the address was available in the underground tunnels solely for repair purposes�was the final structure on the right, and it took no imagination to know he occupied the entire building, if not the entire row. Carlos was the consummate self-protector, so one had to assume that his Paris command post would be a fortress, employing every human and electronic security device that loyalty and high technology could provide. And the seemingly isolated, all but deserted, section of the outlying fifteenth arrondissement served his purposes far better than any crowded section of the city. For that reason, Bourne had first paid a drunken tramp to walk with him during his initial foray past the houses, he himself limping unsteadily in the shadows beside his companion; and for his second appraisal, he had hired a middle-aged whore as his cover, with no limp or stagger in his gait. He knew the terrain now, for all the good it did him, but it was the beginning of the end. He swore himself to that! The waiter arrived with his espresso and the cognac, and only when Jason placed a hundred-franc note on the table, accompanied by a wave of his hand, did the man's hostile countenance move to neutral ground. "Merci," he mumbled. "Is there a pay phone nearby?" asked Bourne, removing an additional ten-franc note. "Down the street, fifty, sixty meters," replied the waiter, his eyes on the new money. "Nothing closer?" Jason peeled off another note, twenty francs. "I'm calling right here within a few blocks." "Come with me," said the aproned gar�, gingerly picking up the franc notes and leading Bourne through the open doors of the caf�o a cashier seated on high at the far end of the restaurant. The gaunt, sallow-faced woman looked annoyed; obviously she assumed that Bourne was a discontented customer. "Let him use your telephone," said the waiter. "Why?" spat out the harridan. "So he can call China?" "He calls up the street. He will pay." Jason proffered a ten-franc note, his innocent eyes looking blankly at the highly suspicious woman. "Augh, take it," she said, removing a phone from under her cash-register stand and grasping the money. "It has an extension so you can move to the wall, as they all do. Men! Business and the bed, it's all you think about!" He dialed the Pont-Royal and asked for his room, expecting Bernardine to pick up on the first or second ring. By the fourth, he was concerned; by the eighth, he was profoundly disturbed. Bernardine was not there! Had Santos ... ? No, the Deuxi� veteran was armed and knew how to use his "deterrence"�there would have been at the least loud gunfire, at the last a room blown apart by a grenade. Bernardine had left under his own control. Why? There could be any one of several reasons, thought Bourne, handing back the telephone and returning to his table outside. The first and most wished for was news of Marie; the old intelligence officer would not raise false hopes by detailing the nets he had spread throughout the city, but they were there, Jason was sure of it. ... Bourne could not think of another reason, so it was best not to think about Bernardine. He had other pressing considerations, the most intensely pressing of his life. He returned to the strong coffee and his notebook; every detail had to be exact. An hour later he finished his espresso, taking a sip of the cognac and spilling the rest on the pavement under the usual soiled red tablecloth. He left the caf�nd the rue d'Al�a, turning right and walking slowly, as a far older man might walk, toward the boulevard Lefebvre. The closer he came to the last corner, the more he became aware of the undulating, erratic sounds from apparently different directions. Sirens! The two-note sirens of the Paris police! What had happened? What was happening? Jason abandoned his elderly gait and ran to the edge of the building fronting the Lefebvre and the row of old stone houses. Instantly, he was in shock, fury and astonishment joining together in panic. What were they doing? Five patrol cars converged on the row of stone houses, each successively screeching to a halt in front of the structure on the right. Then a large black police van appeared, swinging directly around to face the two entrances of the building, its searchlight shooting out as a squad of black-uniformed men with automatic weapons leaped into the street and took up crouching attack positions only partially concealed by the patrol cars�an assault was in the making! Fools. Goddamned fools! To give Carlos a warning was to lose the Jackal! Killing was his profession; escape, his obsession. Thirteen years ago Bourne had been told that Carlos's huge retreat in the village hills of Vitry-sur-Seine outside Paris had more false walls and concealed staircases than a nobleman's Loire ch�au in the time of Louis XIV. The fact that no one had ever determined which estate it was, or whom it was assigned to, did not vitiate the all too acceptable rumors. And with three supposedly separated structures on the boulevard Lefebvre, it was also all too acceptable to presuppose hidden underground tunnels linking each to the others. For Christ's sake, who had done this? Had a terrible error been made? Had he and Bernardine been so obtuse as to think the Deuxi� or Peter Holland's Paris station of the CIA had overlooked tapping into his Pont-Royal telephone or bribed or enlisted the various relays of operators on the hotel's switchboard? If so, that obtuseness was rooted in an absolute: it was next to impossible to tap a phone on short notice in a relatively small hotel without being detected. Technology required a stranger on the premises, and bribe money spread around was countered with larger bribes by the subject under surveillance. Santos? Bugs placed in the room by a chambermaid or a bellman? Not likely. The huge conduit to the Jackal, especially if he had reneged on their contract, would not expose the Jackal. Who? How? The questions burned into Jason's imagination as he watched in horror and dismay the scene taking place on the boulevard Lefebvre. "On police authority, all residents will evacuate the building." The orders over the loudspeaker metallically echoed throughout the street. "You have one minute before we take aggressive procedures." What aggressive procedures? screamed Bourne into the silent void of his mind. You've lost him. I've lost him. Insanity! Who? Why? The door at the top of the brick steps on the left side of the building opened first. A petrified man, short, obese, in an undershirt, his trousers held up by suspenders, cautiously walked out into the flood of the searchlight, spreading his hands in front of his face and turning his head away from the blinding beam. "What is it, messieurs?" he cried, his voice tremulous. "I am merely a baker�a good baker�but I know nothing about this street except that the rent is cheap! Is that a crime to the police?" "Our concerns are not with you, monsieur," continued the amplified voice. "Not with me, you say? You arrive here like an army, frightening my wife and children into thinking it is their last minutes on earth, and yet you say we don't concern you? What kind of reasoning is that? We live among fascists?" Hurry up! thought Jason. For God's sake, hurry! Every second is a minute in escape time, an hour for the Jackal! The door above the flight of brick steps on the right now opened, and a nun in the full flowing black robe of a religious habit appeared. She stood defiantly in the frame, no fear whatsoever in her almost operatic voice. "How dare you?" she roared. "These are the hours of vespers and you intrude. Better you should be asking forgiveness for your sins than interrupting those who plead with God for theirs!" "Nicely said, Sister," intoned the unimpressed police officer over the loudspeaker. "But we have other information and we respectfully insist on searching your house. If you refuse, we shall disrespectfully carry out our orders." "We are the Magdalen Sisters of Charity!" exclaimed the nun. "These are the sacrosanct quarters of women devoted to Christ!" "We respect your position, Sister, but we are still coming inside. If what you say is so, I'm sure the authorities will make a generous contribution to your cause." You're wasting time! screamed Bourne to himself. He's getting away! "Then may your souls be damned for transgression, but come ahead and invade this holy ground!" "Really, Sister?" asked another official over the loudspeaker. "I don't believe there's anything in the canons that gives you the right to condemn souls to hell on such a flimsy excuse. ... Go ahead, Monsieur Inspector. Under the habit, you may find lingerie more suited to the Faubourg." He knew that voice! It was Bernardine! What had happened? Was Bernardine no friend after all? Was it all an act, the smooth talk of a traitor? If so, there would be another death that night! The black-uniformed squad of antiterrorists, their automatic weapons bolted into firing mode, raced to the base of the brick steps as the gendarmes blocked off the boulevard Lefebvre, north and south, while the red and blue lights of the patrol cars incessantly blinked their bright warnings to all beyond the area: Stay away. "May I go inside?" screamed the baker. No one replied, so the obese man ran through his door clutching his trousers. An official in civilian clothes, the obvious leader of the assault, joined his invading unit on the pavement below the steps. With a nod of his head, he and his men raced up the brick staircase through the door held open by the defiant nun. Jason held his place at the edge of the building, his body pressed against the stone, the sweat pouring from his hairline and his neck, his eyes on the incomprehensible scene being played out on the Lefebvre. He knew the who now, but why? Was it true? Was the man most trusted by Alex Conklin and himself in reality another pair of eyes and ears for the Jackal? Christ, he did not want to believe it! Twelve minutes passed, and with the reemergence of Paris's version of a SWAT team and its leader, several members bowing and kissing the hand of the real or would-be abbess, Bourne understood that his and Conklin's instincts had been on true course. "Bernardine!" screamed the official approaching the first patrol car. "You are finished! Out! Never are you to talk to the lowest recruit in the Deuxi�, even the man who cleans the toilets! You are ostracized! ... If I had my way, you'd be shot! ... International murder in the boulevard Lefebvre! A friend of the Bureau! An agent we must protect! ... A fucking nunnery, you miserable son of a bitch! Shit! A nunnery! ... Get out of my car, you smelly pig. Get out before a weapon goes off by mistake and your stomach's on the street, where it belongs!" Bernardine lurched out of the patrol car, his old unsteady legs barely able to maintain balance, twice falling into the street. Jason waited, wanting to rush to his friend, but knowing he had to wait. The patrol cars and the van raced away; still Bourne had to wait, his eyes alternately watching Bernardine and the front entrance of the Jackal's house. And it was the Jackal's house, the nun proved it. Carlos could never let go of his lost faith; he consistently used it as a viable cover, but it was much more than that. Much more. Bernardine staggered into the shadows of a long-abandoned storefront across from the house on the boulevard Lefebvre. Jason breached the corner and ran down the pavement, racing into the recess and grabbing the Deuxi� veteran as he leaned against a long glass window, breathing heavily. "For God's sake, what happened?" cried Bourne, supporting Bernardine by both shoulders. "Easy, mon ami," choked Bernardine. "The pig I sat next to�a politician, no doubt, looking for an issue�punched me in the chest before he threw me out of the car. ... I told you, I don't know all the new people who attach themselves to the Bureau these days. You have the same problems in America, so, please, do not give me a lecture." "It's the last thing I'm about to do. ... This is the house, Bernardine. Right here, right in front of us!" "This is also a trap." "What?" "Alex and I confirmed it. The telephone numbers were different. I gather you did not make your call to Carlos, as he instructed you to." "No. I had the address and I wanted him stretched. What's the difference? This is the house!" "Oh, this is where your Mr. Simon was to go, and if he was truly Mr. Simon, he would be taken to another rendezvous. But if he was not Monsieur Simon but someone else, then he would be shot�proof�another corpse in search of the Jackal." "You're wrong!" insisted Jason, shaking his head and speaking quietly, rapidly. "This may be a detour, but Carlos is still on the switch. He's not going to allow anyone to waste me but himself. That's his commandment." "As yours is regarding him?" "Yes. I have a family; he has a borderline legend. Mine is complete for me, but his is a vacuum�without any real meaning for him any longer. He's gone as far as he can go. The only way he can go further is to move into my territory�David Webb's territory�and eliminate Jason Bourne." "Webb? David Webb? Who in the name of almighty God is that?" "Me," replied Bourne, smiling forlornly and leaning beside Bernardine against the window. "It's nuts, isn't it?" "Nuts!" cried the former Deuxi�. "It is fou! Insane, not to be believed!" "Believe it." "You are a family man with children and you do this work?" "Alex never told you?" "If he did so, I passed it off as a cover�one goes along with anything." Shaking his head, the older man looked up at his taller companion. "You really have a family whom you do not wish to escape from?" "On the contrary, I want to get back to them as soon as I can. They're the only people on earth I really care about." "But you are Jason Bourne, the killer Chameleon! The deepest recesses of the criminal world tremble at your name!" "Oh, come on, that's a bit much, even from you." "Not for an instant! You are Bourne, second only to the Jackal�" "No!" shouted the suddenly forgotten David Webb. "He's no match for me! I'll take him! I'll kill him!" "Very well, very well, mon ami," said Bernardine calmly, reassuringly, staring at the man he could not understand. "What do you want me to do?" Jason Bourne turned and breathed heavily against the glass window for several moments�and then through the mists of indecision the Chameleon's strategy became clear. He swung around and looked across the dark street at the stone building on the right. "The police are gone," he said quietly. "Of course, I realize that." "Did you also realize that no one from the other two buildings came outside? Yet there are lights on in a number of the windows." "I was preoccupied, what can I say? I did not notice." Bernardine raised his eyebrows in sudden recollection. "But there were faces at the windows, several faces, I saw them." "Yet no one came outside." "Very understandable. The police ... men with weapons racing around. Best to barricade oneself, no?" "Even after the police and the weapons and the patrol cars have left? They all just go back to their television sets as if nothing had happened? No one comes out to check with the neighbors? That's not natural, Fran�s; it's not even unnaturally natural. It's been orchestrated." "What do you mean? How?" "One man walks out on the porch and shouts into a searchlight. Attention is drawn to him and precious seconds of a minute's warning evaporate. Then a nun emerges on the other side draping herself in holy indignation�more seconds lost, more hours for Carlos. The assault's mounted and the Deuxi� comes up with zero. ... And when it's all over, everything's back to normal�an abnormal normalcy. A job was done according to a predesigned plan, so there's no call for really normal curiosity�no gathering in the street, no excitement, not even a collective postcrisis indignation. Simply people inside undoubtedly checking with one another. Doesn't it all tell you something?" Bernardine nodded. "A prearranged strategy carried out by professionals," said the veteran field officer. "That's what I think, too." "It's what you saw and I did not," countered Bernardine. "Stop being kind, Jason. I've been too long away from the cold. Too soft, too old, too unimaginative." "So have I," said Bourne. "It's just that the stakes are so high for me that I have to force myself into thinking like a man I wanted to forget." "This is Monsieur Webb speaking?" "I guess it is." "So where does that leave us?" "With an irate baker and an angry nun, and if they prove to be ciphers, several faces in various windows. At this juncture the pickings are ours but that won't last long, I doubt through the morning." "I beg your pardon?" "Carlos will close up shop here and he'll do it quickly. He hasn't got a choice now. Someone in his Praetorian guard gave someone else the location of his Paris headquarters, and you can bet your pension�if you've still got one�that he's climbing the walls trying to figure out who betrayed him�" "Get back!" cried Bernardine, interrupting and grabbing Jason by the cloth of his black jacket, yanking him into the farthest recess of the dark storefront. "Get out of sight! Flat on the pavement!" Both men threw themselves down, lying prone on the broken concrete, Bourne's face against the short wall below the glass, his head angled to see the street. A second dark van appeared from the right, but it was not police equipment. Instead, it was shinier and smaller, somehow thicker, lower to the ground and more powerful. The one glaring, blinding similarity it had to the police van was the searchlight. ... No, not one, but two searchlights, one on either side of the windshield, both beams swinging back and forth scanning the vehicle's flanks. Jason reached for the weapon in his belt�the gun he had borrowed from Bernardine�knowing that his companion already had his backup automatic out of his pocket. The beam of the left searchlight shot over their bodies as Bourne whispered, "Good work, but how did you spot it?" "The moving reflections of the lamps on the side windows," replied old Fran�s. "I thought for a moment it was my former colleague returning to finish the job he had contemplated. Namely, my stomach in the street. ... My God, look!" The van swept past the first two buildings, then suddenly swerved into the curb and stopped in front of the last structure, nearly two hundred feet from the storefront, the building farthest from the Jackal's telephone. The instant the vehicle came to a halt the rear door opened and four men jumped out, automatic weapons in their hands, two running to the street side, one racing down the pavement to the front, the last guard standing menacingly by the open doors, his MAC-10 ready to fire. A dull wash of yellow light appeared at the top of the brick steps; the door had been opened and a man in a black raincoat came outside. He stood for a moment looking up and down the boulevard Lefebvre. "Is that him?" whispered Francois. "No, not unless he's wearing high heels and a wig," answered Jason, reaching into his jacket pocket. "I'll know him when I see him�because I see him every day of my life!" Bourne took out one of the grenades he had also borrowed from Bernardine. He checked the release, laying down his gun and gripping the pockmarked steel oval, tugging at the pin to make certain it was free of corrosion. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" asked the old Deuxi� veteran. "That man up there is a decoy," replied Jason, his soft voice suspended in a cold monotone. "In moments another will take his place, run down the steps and get into the van, either in the front seat or through the rear doors�I hope the latter, but it won't make much difference." "You're mad! You'll be killed! What good is a corpse to that family of yours?" "You're not thinking, Fran�s. The guards will run back and climb up through the rear doors because there's no room in front. There's a lot of difference between climbing into a truck and jumping out of it. For starters, it's a slower sequence. ... By the time the last man gets in and reaches out to close those wide doors, I'll have a primed grenade inside that van. ... And I have no intention of becoming a corpse. Stay here!" Before Bernardine could object further, Medusa's Delta crawled out into the dark boulevard, dark but for the harsh stationary beams of the searchlights, which were now angled on the flanks, thus actually enhancing Bourne's concealment. The hot white light around the vehicle obscured the darkness beyond; his only extreme risk was the guard posted by the open doors. Hugging the shadows of the successive storefronts as though he were threading his way through the high grass of the Mekong Delta toward a floodlit prisoner compound, Jason crept slowly forward with each wayward glance of the rear guard, his eyes darting continuously up to the man by the door above the brick steps. Suddenly another figure emerged; it was a woman carrying a small suitcase in one hand, a large purse in the other. She spoke to the man in the black raincoat as the guard's attention was drawn to both of them. Bourne scrambled, his elbows and knees silently pounding the hard pavement, until he reached that point nearest the van where he could observe the scene on the staircase with minimum risk of being spotted. He was relieved to see that the two guards in the street continuously winced and blinked under the beam of the searchlight. His status was as clean as it could be under the tenuous circumstances. Everything now was timing, precision, and all the expertise he could summon from times too often unremembered or too vague or too long ago. He had to remember now; instinct had to propel him through his personal mists. Now. The end of the nightmare was at hand. It was happening! Suddenly there was furious activity at the door as a third figure came rushing out, joining the other two. The man was shorter than his male colleague, wearing a beret and carrying a briefcase. He obviously issued orders that included the rear guard, who ran up to the pavement as the new arrival hurled his briefcase down over the brick steps. The guard instantly clutched his weapon under his left arm and effortlessly caught the leather missile in midair. "Allez-vous-en. Nous partons! Vite!" shouted the second man, gesturing for the other two on the brick steps to precede him down to the van. They did so, the man in the raincoat joining the guard at' the rear doors, the woman accompanying the one who gave the orders. ... The Jackal? Was it Carlos? Was it? Bourne desperately wanted to believe that it was�therefore, it was! The sound of the vehicle's curbside door slamming shut was followed rapidly by the gunning of the vehicle's powerful engine; both were a signal. The three other guards raced from their posts to the rear doors of the van. One by one they climbed up inside after the man in the black raincoat, their legs stretched, arms bracing shoulders, curved hands gripping the two metal frames that with instant muscular strain propelled them inside as their weapons were thrown in front of them. Then a pair of hands reached out for the interior door handles� Now! Bourne pulled the pin of the grenade and lurched to his feet, running as he had never run in his life toward the swinging rear doors of the van. He dived, twisting his body in flight, landing on his back as he gripped the left panel and threw the grenade inside, the bomb's release in his hand. Six seconds and it would detonate. Jason got to his knees, arms extended, and crashed the doors shut. A fusillade of gunfire erupted. But it was an unintended miracle�as the Jackal's van was bulletproof, it was also impervious to bullets shot from within! There were no penetrations of the steel, only thuds and the screaming whistles of ricochets ... and the screams of the wounded inside. The glistening vehicle shot forward on the boulevard Lefebvre as Bourne sprang to a crouch and raced toward the deserted storefronts on the east side of the street. He was nearly across the wide avenue when the impossible happened. The impossible! The Jackal's van blew up, the explosion firing the dark Paris sky, and the moment it happened a brown limousine screeched around the nearest corner, the windows open, men in the black spaces, weapons in their grips, spraying the entire area with thunderous, indiscriminate fire. Jason lunged into the nearest recess, curling up into a fetal position in the shadows, accepting the fact�not in fear but in fury�that it might well be his last moments of life. He had failed. Failed Marie and his children! ... But not this way. He spun off the concrete, the weapon in his hand. He would kill, kill! That was the way of Jason Bourne. Then the incredible happened. The incredible. A siren? The police? The brown limousine shot forward, skirting the flaming wreck of the Jackal's van and disappeared into the dark streets as a patrol car raced out of the opposing darkness, its siren screaming, the tires screeching as it skidded to a stop only yards from the flames of the demolished vehicle. Nothing made sense! thought Jason. Where before there had been five patrol cars, only one had returned. Why? And even that question was superfluous. Carlos had mounted a strategy employing not one but seven, conceivably eight, decoys, all expendable, all led to their terrible death by the consummate self-protector. The Jackal had sprung himself from the trap that had been reversed by his hated quarry, Delta, the product of Medusa, a creation of American intelligence. Once again, the assassin had outthought him, but he had not killed him. There would be another day, another night.
