Page 53 of The Bourne Ultimatum (Jason Bourne 3)

  “No,” said Bourne quietly, shaking his head.

  “Don’t say that to me,” protested the mother, anger flashing in her eyes.

  “Three hours ago in the Rivoli changed everything. Nothing’s the same now. Don’t you understand that?”

  “I understand that my children are several thousand miles away from me and I intend to reach them. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Of course I do, I just can’t allow it,” answered Jason.

  “Goddamn you, Mr. Bourne!”

  “Will you listen to me?… You’ll talk to Johnny and to Jamie—we’ll both talk to them—but not from here and not while they’re on the island.”

  “What …?”

  “I’m calling Alex in a few minutes and telling him to get all of them out of there, including Mrs. Cooper, of course.”

  Marie had stared at her husband, suddenly understanding. “Oh, my God, Carlos!”

  “Yes. As of this noon he’s got only one place to zero in on—Tranquility. If he doesn’t know now, he’ll learn soon enough that Jamie and Alison are with Johnny. I trust your brother and his personal Tonton Macoute, but I still want them away from there before it’s night in the islands. I also don’t know if Carlos has sources in the island’s trunk lines that could trace a call between there and here, but I do know that Alex’s phone is sterile. That’s why you can’t call now. From here to there.”

  “Then, for God’s sake, call Alex! What the hell are you waiting for?”

  “I’m not sure.” For a moment there was a blank, panicked look in her husband’s eyes—they were the eyes of David Webb, not Jason Bourne. “I have to decide—where do I send the kids?”

  “Alex will know, Jason,” said Marie, her own eyes leveled steadily on his. “Now.”

  “Yes … yes, of course. Now.” The veiled, vacuous look passed and Bourne reached for the phone.

  Alexander Conklin was not in Vienna, Virginia, U.S. A. Instead, there was the monotonic voice of a recorded operator that had the effect of crashing thunder. “The telephone number you have called is no longer in service.”

  He had placed the call twice again, believing in desperate hope that an error had been made by the French telephone service. Then bolts of lightning followed: “The telephone number you have called is no longer in service.” For a third time.

  The pacing had begun; from the table to the windows and back again. Over and over, the curtains were pulled aside, anxious eyes nervously peering out, then seconds later poring over a growing list of names and places. Marie suggested lunch; he did not hear her, so she watched him in silence from across the room.

  The quick, abrupt movements of her husband were like those of a large disquieted cat, smooth, fluid, alert for the unexpected. They were the movements of Jason Bourne and, before him, Medusa’s Delta, not David Webb. She remembered the medical records compiled by Mo Panov in the early days of David’s therapy. Many were filled with wildly divergent descriptions from people who claimed to have seen the man known as the Chameleon, but among the most reliable was a common reference to the catlike mobility of the “assassin.” Panov had been looking for clues to Jason Bourne’s identity then, for all they had at the time were a first name and fragmented images of painful death in Cambodia. Mo often wondered aloud if there was more to his patient’s physical dexterity than mere athleticism; oddly enough, there was not.

  As Marie looked back the subtle physical differences between the two men who were her husband both fascinated and repelled her. Each was muscular and graceful, each capable of performing difficult tasks requiring physical coordination; but where David’s strength and mobility came from an easy sense of accomplishment, Jason’s was filled with an inner malice, no pleasure in the accomplishment, only a hostile purpose. When she had mentioned this to Panov, his reply was succinct: “David couldn’t kill. Bourne can; he was trained to.”

  Still, Mo was pleased that she had spotted the different “physical manifestations,” as he called her observation. “It’s another signpost for you. When you see Bourne, bring David back as fast as you can. If you can’t, call me.”

  She could not bring David back now, she thought. For the sake of the children and herself and David, she dared not try.

  “I’m going out for a while,” announced Jason by the window.

  “You can’t!” cried Marie. “For God’s sake, don’t leave me alone.”

  Bourne frowned, lowering his voice, somewhere an undefined conflict within him. “I’m just driving out on the highway to find a phone, that’s all.”

  “Take me with you. Please. I can’t stay by myself any longer.”

  “All right.… As a matter of fact, we’ll need a few things. We’ll find one of those malls and buy some clothes—toothbrushes, a razor … whatever else we can think of.”

  “You mean we can’t go back to Paris.”

  “We can and probably will go back to Paris, but not to our hotels. Do you have your passport?”

  “Passport, money, credit cards, everything. They were all in my purse, which I didn’t know I had until you gave it to me in the car.”

  “I didn’t think it was such a good idea to leave it at the Meurice. Come on. A phone first.”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Alex.”

  “You just tried him.”

  “At his apartment; he was thrown out of his security tent in Virginia. Then I’ll reach Mo Panov. Let’s go.”

  They drove south again to the small city of Corbeil-Essonnes, where there was a relatively new shopping center several miles west of the highway. The crowded merchandising complex was a blight on the French countryside but a welcome sight for the fugitives. Jason parked the car, and like any husband and wife out for late-afternoon shopping, they strolled down the central mall, all the while frantically looking for a public telephone.

  “Not a goddamned one on the highway!” said Bourne through clenched teeth. “What do they think people are supposed to do if they have an accident or a flat tire?”

  “Wait for the police,” answered Marie, “and there was a phone, only it was broken into. Maybe that’s why there aren’t more—There’s one.”

  Once again Jason went through the irritating process of placing an overseas call with local operators who found it irritating to ring through to the international branch of the system. And then the thunder returned, distant but implacable.

  “This is Alex,” said the recorded voice over the line. “I’ll be away for a while, visiting a place where a grave error was made. Call me in five or six hours. It’s now nine-thirty in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. Out, Juneau.”

  Stunned, his mind spinning, Bourne hung up the phone and stared at Marie. “Something’s happened and I have to make sense out of it. His last words were—‘Out, Juneau.’ ”

  “Juneau?” Marie squinted, her eyes blocking out the light, then she opened them and looked at her husband. “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie,” she began softly, adding, “Alternating military alphabets?” Then she spoke rapidly. “Foxtrot, Gold … India, Juneau! Juneau’s for J and J is for Jason!… What was the rest?”

  “He’s visiting someplace—”

  “Come on, let’s walk,” she broke in, noticing the curious faces of two men waiting to use the phone; she grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the booth. “He couldn’t be clearer?” she asked as they entered the flow of the crowds.

  “It was a recording. ‘… where a grave error was made.’ ”

  “The what?”

  “He said to call him in five or six hours—he was visiting a place where a grave error—grave?—my God, it’s Rambouillet!”

  “The cemetery …?”

  “Where he tried to kill me thirteen years ago. That’s it! Rambouillet!”

  “Not in five or six hours,” objected Marie. “No matter when he left the message he couldn’t fly to Paris and then drive to Rambouillet in five hours. He was in Washington.”

  “Of course he could; we’v

e both done it before. An army jet out of Andrews Air Force Base under diplomatic cover to Paris. Peter Holland threw him out, but he gave him a going-away present. Immediate separation, but a bonus for bringing him Medusa.” Bourne suddenly whipped his wrist up and looked at his watch. “It’s still only around noon in the islands. Let’s find another phone.”

  “Johnny? Tranquility? You really think—”

  “I can’t stop thinking!” interrupted Jason, rushing ahead, holding Marie’s hand as she stumblingly kept up with him. “Glace,” he said, looking up to his right.

  “Ice cream?”

  “There’s a phone inside, over there,” he answered, slowing them both down and approaching the huge windows of a pâtisserie that had a red banner over its door announcing an ice cream counter with several dozen flavors. “Get me a vanilla,” he said, ushering them both into the crowded store.

  “Vanilla what?”

  “Whatever.”

  “You won’t be able to hear—”

  “He’ll hear me, that’s all that matters. Take your time, give me time.” Bourne crossed to the phone, instantly understanding why it was not used; the noise of the store was nearly unbearable. “Mademoiselle, s’il vous plaît, c’est urgent!” Three minutes later, holding his palm against his left ear, Jason had the unexpected comfort of hearing Tranquility Inn’s most irritating employee over the phone.

  “This is Mr. Pritchard, Tranquility Inn’s associate manager. My switchboard informs me that you have an emergency, sir. May I inquire as to the nature of your—”

  “You can shut up!” shouted Jason from the cacophonous ice cream parlor in Corbeil-Essonnes in France. “Get Jay St. Jay on the phone, now. This is his brother-in-law.”

  “Oh, it is such a pleasure to hear from you, sir! Much has happened since you left. Your lovely children are with us and the handsome young boy plays on the beach—with me, sir—and all is—”

  “Mr. St. Jacques, please. Now!”

  “Of course, sir. He is upstairs.…”

  “Johnny?”

  “David, where are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter. Get out of there. Take the kids and Mrs. Cooper and get out!”

  “We know all about it, Dave. Alex Conklin called several hours ago and said somebody named Holland would reach us.… I gather he’s the chief honcho of your intelligence service.”

  “He is. Did he?”

  “Yeah, about twenty minutes after I talked to Alex. He told us we were being choppered out around two o’clock this afternoon. He needed the time to clear a military aircraft in here. Mrs. Cooper was my idea; your backward son says he doesn’t know how to change diapers, sport.… David, what the hell is going on? Where’s Marie?”

  “She’s all right—I’ll explain everything later. Just do as Holland says. Did he say where you were being taken?”

  “He didn’t want to, I’ll tell you that. But no fucking American’s going to order me and your kids around—my Canadian sister’s kids—and I told him that in a seven spade flush.”

  “That’s nice, Johnny. Make friends with the director of the CIA.”

  “I don’t give a shit on that score. In my country we figure those initials mean Caught In the Act, and I told him so!”

  “That’s even nicer.… What did he say?”

  “He said we were going to a safe house in Virginia, and I said mine’s pretty goddamned safe right here and we had a restaurant and room service and a beach and ten guards who could shoot his balls off at two hundred yards.”

  “You’re full of tact. And what did he say to that?”

  “Actually, he laughed. Then he explained that his place had twenty guards who could take out one of my balls at four hundred yards, along with a kitchen and room service and television for the kids that I couldn’t match.”

  “That’s pretty persuasive.”

  “Well, he said something else that was even more persuasive that I really couldn’t match. He told me there was no public access to the place, that it was an old estate in Fairfax turned over to the government by a rich ambassador who had more money than Ottawa, with its own airfield and an entrance road four miles from the highway.”

  “I know the place,” said Bourne, wincing at the noise of the pâtisserie. “It’s the Tannenbaum estate. He’s right; it’s the best of the sterile houses. He likes us.”

  “I asked you before—where’s Marie?”

  “She’s with me.”

  “She found you!”

  “Later, Johnny. I’ll reach you in Fairfax.” Jason hung up the phone as his wife awkwardly made her way through the crowd and handed him a pink plastic cup with a blue plastic spoon plunged into a mound of dark brown.

  “The children?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard, her eyes on fire.

  “Everything’s fine, better than we might have expected. Alex reached the same conclusion about the Jackal as I did. Peter Holland’s flying them all up to a safe house in Virginia, Mrs. Cooper included.”

  “Thank God!”

  “Thank Alex.” Bourne looked at the pink plastic cup with the thin blue spoon. “What the hell is this? They didn’t have vanilla?”

  “It’s a hot fudge sundae. It was meant for the man beside me but he was yelling at his wife, so I took it.”

  “I don’t like hot fudge.”

  “So yell at your wife. Come on, we’ve got to buy clothes.”

  The early afternoon Caribbean sun burned down on Tranquility Inn as John St. Jacques descended the staircase into the lobby carrying a LeSport duffel bag in his right hand. He nodded to Mr. Pritchard, whom he had spoken to over the phone only moments ago, explaining that he was leaving for several days and would be in touch within hours after he reached Toronto. What remained of the staff had been apprised of his sudden, quite necessary departure, and he had full confidence in the executive manager and his valuable assistant, Mr. Pritchard. He assumed that no problems would arise beyond their combined expertise. Tranquility Inn, for all intents and purposes, was virtually shut down. However, Sir Henry Sykes at Government House on the big island should be contacted in the event of difficulties.

  “There shall be none beyond my expertise!” Pritchard had replied. “The repair and maintenance crews will work every bit as hard in your absence.”

  St. Jacques walked out the glass doors of the circular building toward the first villa on the right, the one nearest the stone steps to the pier and the two beaches. Mrs. Cooper and the two children waited inside for the arrival of the United States Navy long-range seagoing helicopter that would take them to Puerto Rico, where they would board a military jet to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.

  Through the huge glass windows, Mr. Pritchard watched his employer disappear through the doors of Villa One. At that same moment he heard the growing sounds of a large helicopter’s rotors thumping in the air above the inn. In minutes it would circle the water beyond the pier and descend, awaiting its passengers. Apparently, those passengers heard what he had heard, thought Mr. Pritchard as he saw St. Jacques, gripping his young nephew’s hand, and the insufferably arrogant Mrs. Cooper, who was holding a blanketed infant in her arms, come out of the villa, followed by the two favorite guards carrying their luggage. Pritchard reached below the counter for the telephone that bypassed the switchboard. He dialed.

  “This is the office of the deputy director of immigration, himself speaking.”

  “Esteemed Uncle—”

  “It is you?” broke in the official from Blackburne Airport, abruptly lowering his voice. “What have you learned?”

  “Everything is of immense value, I assure you. I heard it all on the telephone!”

  “We shall both be greatly rewarded, I have that on the highest authority. They may all be undercover terrorists, you know, St. Jacques himself the leader. It is said they may even fool Washington. What can I pass on, brilliant Nephew?”

  “They are being taken to what is called a ‘safe’ house in Virginia. It is known as the

Tannenbaum estate and has its own airport, can you believe such a thing?”

  “I can believe anything where these animals are concerned.”

  “Be sure to include my name and position, esteemed Uncle.”

  “Would I do otherwise, could I do otherwise? We shall be the heroes of Montserrat!… But remember, my intelligent Nephew, everything must be kept in utmost secrecy. We are both sworn to silence, never forget that. Just think! We’ve been selected to render service to a great international organization. Leaders the world over will know of our contributions.”

  “My heart bursts with pride.… May I know what this august organization is called?”

  “Shhh! It has no name; that is part of the secrecy. The money was wired through a bank computer transfer directly from Switzerland; that is the proof.”

  “A sacred trust,” added Mr. Pritchard.

  “Also well paid, trusted Nephew, and it is only the beginning. I myself am monitoring all aircraft arriving here and sending the manifests on to Martinique, to a famous surgeon, no less! Of course, at the moment all flights are on hold, orders from Government House.”

  “The American military helicopter?” asked the awed Pritchard.

  “Shhh! It, too, is a secret, everything is secret.”

  “Then it is a very loud and apparent secret, my esteemed Uncle. People are on the beach watching it now.”

  “What?”

  “It’s here. Mr. Saint Jay and the children are boarding as we speak. Also that dreadful Mrs. Cooper—”

  “I must call Paris at once,” interrupted the immigration officer, disconnecting the line.

  “Paris?” repeated Mr. Pritchard. “How inspiring! How privileged we are!”

  “I didn’t tell him everything,” said Peter Holland quietly, shaking his head as he spoke. “I wanted to—I intended to—but it was in his eyes, in his own words actually. He said that he’d louse us up in a minute if it would help Bourne and his wife.”