The Bourne Identity (31 page)

"Those were the words. You heard them."

"He was to come
up
to you. He was to show himself."

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"Which he will
do
. And present the piece of leather, which must fit exactly! Do you expect him to do that in the middle of a street filled with traffic?"

"I don't like it!"

"You paid me to help you and your people find someone. Not to lose my job. I'm going!"

"It
must
be the Pont Neuf!"

"Kiss my ass!"

There was the sound of heavy footsteps on the metal floorboards. "I'm coming with you!"

The panel door opened; Jason spun behind it, his hand still under his coat. Below him a child's face was pressed against the glass of a car window, the eyes squinting, the young features contorted into an ugly mask, fright and insult the childish intent. The swelling sound of angry horns, blaring in counterpoint, filled the street; the traffic had come to a standstill.

The courier stepped off the metal ledge, the attache case in his left hand. Bourne was ready; the instant the courier was on the street, he slammed the panel back into the body of the second man, crashing the heavy steel into a descending kneecap and an outstretched hand. The man screamed, reeling backward inside the van. Jason shouted at the courier, the jagged scrap of leather in his free hand.

"I'm Bourne! Here's your fragment! And you keep that gun in its holster or you won't just lose your job, you'll lose your life, you son of a bitch!"

"I meant no harm, monsieur! They wanted to find you! They have no interest in your delivery, you have my word on it!"

The door crashed open; Jason slammed it again with his shoulder, then pulled it back to see the face of Carlos' soldier, his hand on the weapon in his belt.

What he saw was the barrel of a gun, the black orifice of its opening staring him in the eyes. He spun back, aware that the split-second delay in the gunshot that followed was caused by the burst of a shrill ringing that exploded out of the armored van. The alarm had been tripped, the sound deafening, riding over the dissonance in the street; the gunshot seemed muted by comparison, the eruption of asphalt below not heard.

Once more Jason hammered the panel. He heard the impact of metal against metal; he had made contact with the gun of Carlos' soldier. He pulled his own from his belt, dropped to his knees in the street, and pulled the door open.

He saw the face from Zurich, the killer they had called Johann, the man they had brought to Paris to recognize him. Bourne fired twice; the man arched backward, blood spreading across his forehead. The courier! The attache case!

Jason saw the man; he had ducked below the tailgate for protection, his weapon in his hand, screaming for help. Bourne leaped to his feet and lunged for the extended gun, gripping the barrel, twisting it out of the courier's hand. He grabbed the attache case and shouted.

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"No harm, right? Give me that, you bastard!" He threw the man's gun under the van, got up and plunged into the hysterical crowds on the pavement.

He ran wildly, blindly, the bodies in front of him the movable walls of his labyrinth. But there was-an essential difference between this gauntlet and one he lived in every day. There was no darkness; the afternoon sun was bright, as blinding as his race through the labyrinth.
14

"Everything is here," said Marie. She had collated the certificates by denominations, the stacks and the franc notes on the desk. "I told you it would be."

"It almost wasn't."

"What?"

The man they called Johann, the one from Zurich. He's dead. I killed him."

"Jason, what
happened?"

He told her. "They counted on the Pont Neuf," he said. "My guess is that the backup car got caught in traffic, broke into the courier's radio frequency, and told them to delay. I'm sure of it."

"Oh God, they're everywhere!"

"But they don't know where
I
am," said Bourne, looking into the mirror above the bureau, studying his blond hair while putting on the tortoise-shell glasses. "And the last place they'd expect to find me at this moment--if they conceivably thought I knew about it--would be a fashion house on Saint-Honore."

"Les Classiques?" asked Marie, astonished.

"That's right. Did you call it!"

"Yes, but that's insane!"

"Why?" Jason turned from the mirror. -Think about it. Twenty minutes ago their trap fell apart; there's got to be confusion, recriminations, accusations of incompetency, or worse. Right now, at this moment, they're more concerned with each other than with me; nobody wants a bullet in his throat. It won't last long, they'll regroup quickly, Carlos will make sure of that. But during the next hour or so, while they're trying to piece together what happened, the one place they won't look for me is a relay-drop they haven't the vaguest idea I'm aware of."

"Someone will recognize you!"

"Who? They brought in a man from Zurich to do that and he's dead. They're not sure what I look like."

"The courier. They'll take him; he saw you."

"For the next few hours he'll be busy with the police."

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"D'Amacourt. The lawyer!"

"I suspect they're halfway to Normandy or Marseilles or, if they're lucky, out of the country."

"Suppose they're stopped, caught?"

"Suppose they are? Do you think Carlos would expose a drop where he gets messages? Not on your life. Or his."

"Jason, I'm frightened."

"So am I. But not of being recognized." Bourne returned to the mirror. "I could give a long dissertation about facial classifications, and softened features, but I won't."

"You're talking about the evidences of surgery. Port Noir. You told me."

"Not all of it." Bourne leaned against the bureau, staring at his face. "What color are my eyes?"

"What?"

"No, don't look at me. Now, tell me, what color are my eyes? Yours are brown with speckles of green; what about mine?"

"Blue ... bluish. Or a kind of gray, really ..." Marie stopped. "I'm not really sure. I suppose that's dreadful of me."

"It's perfectly natural. Basically they're hazel, but not all the time. Even I've noticed it When I wear a blue shirt or tie, they become bluer, a brown coat or jacket, they're gray. When I'm naked, they're strangely nondescript."

"That's not so strange. I'm sure millions of people are the same."

"I'm sure they are. But how many of them wear contact lenses when their eyesight is normal?"

"Contact--"

"That's what I said," interrupted Jason. "Certain types of contact lenses are worn to change the color of the eyes. They're most effective when the eyes are hazel. When Washburn first examined me there was evidence of prolonged usage. It's one of the clues, isn't it?"

"It's whatever you want to make of it," said Marie. "If it's true."

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because the doctor was more often drunk than sober. You've told me that. He piled conjecture on top of conjecture, heaven knows how warped by alcohol. He was never specific. He couldn't be."

"He was about one thing. I'm a chameleon, designed to fit a flexible mold. I want to find out whose; maybe I can now. Thanks to you I've got an address. Someone there may know the truth. Just one man, that's all I need. One person I can confront, break if I have to ..."

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"I can't stop you, but for God's sake be careful. If they do recognize you, they'll kill you."

"Not there they won't; it'd be rotten for business. This is Paris."

"I don't think that's funny, Jason."

"Neither do I. I'm counting on it very seriously."

"What are you going to do? I mean, how?"

"I'll know better when I get there. See if anyone's running around looking nervous or anxious or waiting for a phone call as if his life depended on it."

"Then what?"

"I'll do the same as I did with d'Amacourt. Wait outside and follow whoever it is. I'm this close; I won't miss. And I'll be careful."

"Will you call me?"

"I'll try."

"I may go crazy waiting. Not knowing."

"Don't wait. Can you deposit the bonds somewhere?"

"The banks are closed."

"Use a large hotel; hotels have vaults."

"You have to have a room."

"Take one. At the Meurice or the George Cinq. Leave the case at the desk but come back here."

Marie nodded. "It would give me something to do."

"Then call Ottawa. Find out what happened."

"I will."

Bourne crossed to the bedside table and picked up a number of five-thousand franc notes. "A bribe would be easier," he said. "I don't think it'll happen, but it could."

"It could," agreed Marie, and then in the same breath continued. "Did you hear yourself? You just rattled off the names of two hotels."

"I heard." He turned and faced her. "I've been here before. Many times. I lived here, but not in those hotels. In out-of-the-way streets, I think. Not very easily found."

The moment passed in silence, the fear electric.

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"I love you, Jason."

"I love you, too," said Bourne.

"Come back to me. No matter what happens, come back to me."

The lighting was soft and dramatic, pinpoint spotlights shining down from the dark brown ceiling, bathing manikins and expensively dressed clients in pools of flattering yellows. The jewelry and accessories counters were lined with black velvet, silks of bright red and green tastefully flowing above the midnight sheen, glistening eruptions of gold and silver caught in the recessed frame lights. The aisles curved graciously in semicircles, giving an illusion of space that was not there, for Les Classiques, though hardly small, was not a large emporium. It was, however, a beautifully appointed store on one of the most costly strips of real estate in Paris. Fitting rooms with doors of tinted glass were at the rear, beneath a balcony where the offices of management were located. A carpeted staircase rose on the right beside an elevated switchboard in front of which sat an oddly out-of-place middle-aged man dressed in a conservative business suit, operating the console, speaking into a mouthpiece that was an extension of his single earphone.

The clerks were mostly women, tall, slender, gaunt of face and body, living postmortems of former fashion models whose tastes and intelligence had carried them beyond their sisters in the trade, other practices no longer feasible. The few men in evidence were also slender; reedlike figures emphasized by form-fitting clothes, gestures rapid, stances balletically defiant. Light romantic music floated out of the dark ceiling, quiet crescendos abstractly punctuated by the beams of the miniature spotlights. Jason wandered through the aisles, studying manikins, touching the fabric, making his own appraisals. They covered his essential bewilderment. Where was the confusion, the anxiety he expected to find at the core of Carlos' message center? He glanced up at the open office doors and the single corridor that bisected the small complex. Men and women walked casually about as they did on the main floor, every now and then stopping one another, exchanging pleasantries or scraps of relevantly irrelevant information. Gossip. Nowhere was there the slightest sense of urgency, no sign at all that a vital trap had exploded in their faces, an imported killer--the only man in Paris who worked for Carlos and could identify the target--shot in the head, dead in the back of an armored van on the Quai de la Rapee.

It was incredible, if only because the whole atmosphere was the opposite of what he had anticipated. Not that he expected to find chaos, far from it; the soldiers of Carlos were too controlled for that. Still he had expected
something
. And here there were no strained faces, or darting eyes, no abrupt movements that signified alarm. Nothing whatsoever was unusual; the elegant world of
haute couture
continued to spin in its elegant orbit, unmindful of events that should have thrown its axis off balance. Still, there was a private telephone somewhere and someone who not only spoke for Carlos but was also empowered to set in motion three killers on the hunt. A woman ... He saw her, it had to be her. Halfway down the carpeted staircase, a tall imperious woman with a face that age and cosmetics had rendered into a cold mask of itself. She was stopped by a reedlike male clerk who held out a salesbook for the woman's approval; she looked at it, then glanced down at the floor, at a nervous, middle-aged man by a nearby jewelry counter. The glance was brief but pointed, the message clear.
All right, mon ami, pick up your bauble but pay your bill soon. Otherwise you could be
embarrassed next time. Or worse. I might call your wife
. In milliseconds the rebuke was over; a
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smile as false as it was broad cracked the mask, and with a nod and a flourish the woman took a pencil from the clerk and initialed the sales slip. She continued down the staircase, the clerk following, leaning forward in further conversation. It was obvious he was flattering her; she turned on the-bottom step, touching her crown of streaked dark hair and tapped his wrist in a gesture of thanks. There was little placidity in the woman's eyes. They were as aware as any pair of eyes Bourne had ever seen, except perhaps behind gold-rimmed glasses in Zurich.

Instinct
. She was his objective; it remained how to reach her. The first moves of the pavane had to be subtle, neither too much nor too little, but warranting attention. She had to come to him. The next few minutes astonished Jason--which was to say he astonished himself. The term was