The Bourne ultimatum (50 page)

“Your doctor friend?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“
Goddamn
it!”

“If I may suggest, you must think of yourself now.”

“I understand.”

“Will you pick up the car?”

“Should I?”

“Frankly, I wouldn’t if I were you. It’s unlikely, but the invoice might be traced back to me. There’s risk, however minor.”

“That’s what I thought. I bought a
métro
map. I’ll use the trains. ... When can I call you?”

“Give me four, perhaps five hours to get back here from the airports. As our saint explained, your wife could be leaving from several different points of embarkation. To get all those passenger manifests will take time.”

“Concentrate on the flights arriving early tomorrow morning. She can’t fake a passport, she wouldn’t know how to do it.”

“According to Alex, one does not underestimate Marie Elise St. Jacques. He even spoke French. He said she was
formidable
.”

“She can come at you from the outer limits, I’ll tell you that.”

“
Qu’est-ce que c’est
?”

“She’s an original, let’s leave it there.”

“And you?”

“I’m taking the subway. It’s getting dark. I’ll call you after midnight.”

“
Bonne chance
.”

“
Merci
.”

Bourne left the booth knowing his next move as he limped down the Quai, the bandage around his knee forcing him to assume a damaged leg. There was a
métro
station by the Tuileries where he would catch a train to Havre-Caumartin and switch to the Regional Express north line past St.-Denis-Basilique to Argenteuil. Argenteuil, a town of the Dark Ages founded by Charlemagne in honor of a nunnery fourteen centuries ago, now fifteen hundred years later a city that housed the message center of a killer as brutal as any man who roamed the bloody fields with a broadsword in Charlemagne’s barbaric days, then as now celebrating and sanctifying brutality in the shadows of religiosity.

Le Coeur du Soldat was not on a street or a boulevard or an avenue. Instead, it was in a dead-end alleyway around the corner and across from a long-since-closed factory whose faded signs indicated a once flourishing metallurgical refining plant in what had to be the ugliest part of the city. Nor was the Soldat listed in the telephone directory; it was found by innocently asking strangers where it was, as the inquirer was to meet
une grosse secousse
at this undiscoverable
pissoir
. The more dilapidated the buildings and the filthier the streets, the more cogent were the directions.

Bourne stood in the dark narrow alley leaning against the aged rough brick of the opposing structure across from the bistro’s entrance. Above the thick massive door in square block letters, several missing, was a dull red sign: L C eur d Soldat. As the door was sporadically opened for entering or departing clientele, metallic martial music blared forth into the alley; and the clientele were not candidates for an haute couture cotillion. His appearance was in keeping, thought Jason, as he struck a wooden match against the brick, lighting a thin black cigar as he limped toward the door.

Except for the language and the deafening music, it might have been a waterfront bar in Sicily’s Palermo, reflected Bourne as he made his way to the crowded bar, his squinting eyes roam ing, absorbing everything he could observe—briefly confused, wondering when he had been in Palermo, Sicily.

A heavyset man in a tank shirt got off a stool; Jason slid on top of it. The clawlike hand gripped his shoulder; Bourne slapped his right hand up, grabbing the wrist and twisting it clockwise, pushing the barstool away and rising to his full height. “What’s your problem?” he asked calmly in French but loud enough to be heard.

“That’s my seat,
pig
! I’m just taking a piss!”

“So maybe when you’re finished, I’ll take one,” said Jason, his gaze boring into the man’s eyes, the strength of his grip unmistakable—emphasized by pressing a nerve with his thumb, which had nothing to do with strength.

“
Ah
, you’re a fucking
cripple
... !” cried the man, trying not to wince. “I don’t pick on invalids.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Bourne, releasing his thumb. “You come back, we’ll take turns, and I’ll buy you a drink each time you let me get off this bum leg of mine, okay?”

Looking up at Jason, the heavyset man slowly grinned. “Hey, you’re all right.”

“I’m not all right, but I’m certainly not looking for a fight,’ either. Shit, you’d hammer me to the floor.” Bourne released the muscular Tank Shirt’s arm.

“I’m not so sure of
that
,” said the man, now laughing and holding his wrist. “Sit,
sit
! I’ll take a piss and come back and buy
you
a drink. You don’t look like you’re loaded with francs.”

“Well, like they say, appearances are deceiving,” replied Jason, sitting down. “I’ve got different, better clothes and an old friend told me to meet him here but not to wear them. ... I just got back from good money in Africa. You know, training the savages—”

Cymbals crashed in the metallic, deafening martial music as Tank Shirt’s eyes widened. “
Africa
?” interrupted the stranger. “I knew it! That grip—LPN.”

What remained of the Chameleon’s memory data banks expanded into the code. LPN—
Legion Patria Nostra
. France’s Foreign Legion, the mercenaries of the world. It was not what he had in mind, but it would certainly do. “Christ, you too?” he asked, again coarsely but innocently.

“La Légion étrangère! ‘The Legion is our Fatherland’!”

“This is crazy!”

“We don’t announce ourselves, of course. There’s great jealousy, naturally, because we were the best and we were paid for it, but still these are our people.
Soldiers
!”

“When did you leave the Legion?” asked Bourne, sensing a cloud that could be troublesome.

“
Ah
, nine years ago! They threw me out before my second conscription for overweight. They were right and they probably saved my life. I’m from Belgique, a corporal.”

“I was discharged a month ago, before my first term was over. Wounds during our incursion into Angola and the fact that they figured I was older than my papers said. They don’t pay for extended recoveries.” How easily the words came.

“Angola? We did
that
? What was the Quai d’Orsay
thinking
about.”

“I don’t know. I’m a soldier, I follow orders and don’t question those I can’t understand.”

“
Sit
! My kidneys are bursting. I’ll be right back. Maybe we know friends. ... I never heard of any Angola operation.”

Jason leaned forward over the bulging bar and ordered
une bière
, grateful that the bartender was too busy and the music too loud for the man to have overheard the conversation. However, he was infinitely more grateful to Saint Alex of Conklin, whose primary advice to a field agent was to “get in bad with a mark first before you get in good,” the theory being that the reversal from hostility to amiability was far stronger for the change. Bourne swallowed the beer in relief. He had made a friend at Le Coeur du Soldat. It was an inroad, minor but vital, and perhaps not so minor.

Tank Shirt returned, his thick arm around the shoulders of a younger man in his early twenties, of medium height and with the physique of a large safe; he was wearing an American field jacket. Jason started to get off the barstool. “Sit, sit!” cried his new friend, leaning forward to be heard through the crowds and the music. “I brought us a virgin.”

“
What
?”

“You forgot so quickly? He’s on his way to becoming a Legion recruit.”

“Oh, that,” laughed Bourne, covering his gaffe. “I wondered in a place like this—”

“In a place like this,” broke in Tank Shirt, “half will take it or give it either way as long as it’s rough. But that’s neither here nor there. I thought he should talk to you. He’s American and his French is
grotesque
, but if you speak slow, he’ll catch on.

“No need to,” said Jason in faintly accented English. “I grew up in Neufchâtel, but I spent several years in the States.”

“That’s nice to heah.” The American’s speech was distinctly Deep South, his smile genuine, his eyes wary but unafraid.

“Then let us start again,” said the Belgian in heavily accented English. “My name is ... Maurice, it’s as good a name as any. My young friend here is Ralph, at least he says it is. What’s yours, my wounded hero?”

“Francois,” replied Jason, thinking of Bernardine and wondering briefly how he was doing at the airports. “And I’m no hero; they died too quickly. ... Order your drinks, I’m paying.” They did and Bourne did, his mind racing, trying to recall the little he knew about the French Foreign Legion. “A lot has changed in nine years, Maurice.”
How very easily the words came
, thought the Chameleon. “Why are you enlisting, Ralph?”

“Ah figure it’s the wisest thing I can do—kinda disappear for a few years, and I understand five is the minimum.”

“If you last the first,
mon
ami
,” interjected the Belgian.

“Maurice is right. Listen to him. The officers are tough and difficult—”

“All
French
!” added the Belgian. “Ninety percent, at least. Only one foreigner in perhaps three hundred reach the officer corps. Have no illusions.”

“But Ah’m a college man. An engineer.”

“So you’ll build fine latrines for the camps and design perfect shit holes in the field,” laughed Maurice. “Tell him, François. Explain how the
savants
are treated.”

“The educated ones must first know how to fight,” said Jason, hoping he was right.

“
Always
first!” exclaimed the Belgian. “For their schooling is suspicious. Will they doubt? Will they think when they are paid only to follow orders? ... Oh, no,
mon
ami
, I would not emphasize your
érudition
.”

“Let it come out gradually,” added Bourne. “When they need it, not when you want to offer it.”

“
Bien
!” cried Maurice. “He knows what he’s talking about. A true
légionnaire
!”

“Can you fight?” asked Jason. “Could you go after someone to kill him?”

“Ah killed mah
feeancee
and her two brothers and a cousin, all with a knife and my bare hands. She was fuckin’ a big banker in Nashville and they were coverin’ for her because he was payin’ all of ’em a lot of money. ... Yeah, I can kill, Mr. François.”

Manhunt for Crazed Killer in Nashville

Young engineer with promising future escapes dragnet. ...

Bourne remembered the newspaper headlines of only weeks ago, as he stared at the face of the young American. “Go for the Legion,” he said.

“If push comes to shove, Mr. François, could I use you as a reference?”

“It wouldn’t help you, young man, it might only hurt. If you’re pressed, just tell the truth. It’s your credentials.”

“
Aussi bien
! He knows the Legion. They will not take maniacs if they can help it, but they—how do you say it, Fran
ç
ois?”

“Look the other way, I think.”

“
Oui
. They look the other way when there are—
encore
, Francois?”

“When there are extenuating circumstances.”

“
See
? My friend Francois also has brains. I wonder how he survived.”

“By not showing them, Maurice.”

A waiter wearing about the filthiest apron Jason had ever seen clapped the Belgian on the neck. “
Votre table, René
.”

“So?” shrugged Tank Shirt. “Just another name.
Quelle différence
? We eat and with good fortune we will not be poisoned.”

Two hours later, with four bottles of rough
vin ordinaire
consumed by Maurice and Ralph, along with suspicious fish, Le Coeur du Soldat settled in for its nightly endurance ritual. Fights occurred episodically, broken up by muscular waiters. The blaring music marshaled memories of battles won and lost, engendering arguments between old soldiers who had basically been the assault troops, cannon fodder, at once resentful and filled with the pride of survival because they
had
survived the blood and horror their gold-braided superiors knew nothing about. It was the collective roar of the underprivileged foot soldiers heard from the time of the Pharaoh’s legions to the grunts of Korea and Vietnam. The properly uniformed officers decreed from far behind the lines, and the foot soldiers died to preserve their superiors’ wisdom. Bourne remembered Saigon and could not fault the existence of Le Coeur du Soldat.

The head bartender, a massive bald man with steel-rimmed glasses, picked up a telephone concealed below the far end of the bar and brought it to his ear. Jason watched him between the roving figures. The man’s eyes spun around the crowded room—what he heard appeared to be important; what he saw, dismissible. He spoke briefly, plunged his hand below the bar and kept it there for several moments; he had dialed. Again, he spoke quickly, then calmly replaced the phone out of sight. It was the kind of sequence described by old Fontaine on Tranquility Isle. Message received, message relayed. And at the end of that receiving line was the Jackal.

It was all he wanted to see that evening; there were things to consider, perhaps men to hire, as he had hired men in the past. Expendable men who meant nothing to him, people who could be paid or bribed, blackmailed or threatened into doing what he wanted them to do without explanation.

“I just spotted the man I was to meet here,” he said to the barely conscious Maurice and Ralph. “He wants me to go outside.”

“You’re
leaving
us?” whined the Belgian.

“Hey, man, you shouldn’t do
thay-at
,” added the young American from the South.

“Only for tonight.” Bourne leaned over the table. “I’m working with another
légionnaire
, someone who’s on to something that involves a lot of money. I don’t know you, but you seem like decent men.” Bourne pulled out his roll of bills and peeled off a thousand francs, five hundred for each of his companions. “Take this, both of you—shove it in your pockets, quickly!”