It was the Belgian’s turn to shrug. “He is the complete authority where Le Coeur du Soldat is concerned. He has been known to crush men’s heads if they behave too badly. He always takes off his glasses first, and that is the first sign that something will happen that even proven soldiers do not care to witness.… If he is coming out here to see you, I would advise you to leave.”
“He may come because he wants to see me, not because he wants to harm me.”
“That is not Santos—”
“You don’t have to know the particulars, they don’t concern you. But if he does come out that door, I want you to engage him in conversation, can you do that?”
“Mais certainement. On several occasions I have slept on his couch upstairs, personally carried there by Santos himself when the cleaning women came in.”
“Upstairs?”
“He lives above the café on the second floor. It is said that he never leaves, never goes into the streets, even to the markets. Other people purchase all the supplies, or they are simply delivered.”
“I see.” Jason pulled out his money and distributed another five hundred francs to each weaving man. “Go back into the alley, and if Santos comes out, stop him and behave like you’ve had too much to drink. Ask him for money, a bottle, whatever.”
Like children, Maurice-René and Ralph clutched the franc notes, glancing at each other both as conspirators and as victors. François, the crazy légionnaire, was passing out money as if he printed it himself! Their collective enthusiasm grew.
“How long do you want us to hassle this turkey?” asked the American from the Deep South.
“I will talk the ears off his bald head!” added the Belgian.
“No, just long enough for me to see that he’s alone,” said Bourne, “that no one else is with him or comes out after him.”
“Piece a’ cake, man.”
“We shall earn not only your francs but your respect. You have the word of a Légion corporal!”
“I’m touched. Now, get back in there.” The two inebriated men lurched down the alley, Field Jacket slapping Tank Shirt triumphantly across the shoulders. Jason pressed his back against the street-side brick inches from the edge of the building and waited. Six minutes passed, and then he heard the words he so desperately wanted to hear.
“Santos! My great and good friend Santos!”
“What are you doing here, René?”
“My young American friend was sick to his stomach but it has gone—he vomited.”
“American …?”
“Let me introduce you, Santos. He’s about to become a great soldier.”
“There is a Children’s Crusade somewhere?” Bourne peered around the corner as the bald bartender looked at Ralph. “Good luck, baby face. Go find your war in a playground.”
“You talk French awful fast, mistuh, but I caught some of that. You’re a big mother, but I can be a mean son of a bitch!”
The bartender laughed and switched effortlessly to English. “Then you’d better be mean someplace else, baby face. We only permit peaceable gentlemen in Le Coeur du Soldat.… Now I must go.”
“Santos!” cried Maurice-René. “Lend me ten francs. I left my billfold back at my flat.”
“If you ever had a billfold, you left it back in North Africa. You know my policy. Not a sou for any of you.”
“What money I had went for your lousy fish! It made my friend vomit!”
“For your next meal, go down to Paris and dine at the Ritz.… Ah, yes! You did have a meal—but you did not pay for it.” Jason pulled quickly back as the bartender snapped his head around and looked up the alley. “Good night, René. You too, baby warrior. I have business.”
Bourne ran down the pavement toward the gates of the old factory. Santos was coming to meet him. Alone. Crossing the street into the shadows of the shut-down refinery, he stood still, moving only his hand so as to feel the hard steel and the security of his automatic. With every step Santos took the Jackal was closer! Moments later, the immense figure emerged from the alley, crossed the dimly lit street and approached the rusted gates.
“I am here, monsieur,” said Santos.
“And I am grateful.”
“I’d rather you’d keep your word first. I believe you mentioned five thousand francs in your note.”
“It’s here.” Jason reached into his pocket, removed the money, and held it out for the manager of Le Coeur du Soldat.
“Thank you,” said Santos, walking forward and accepting the bills. “Take him!” he added.
Suddenly, from behind Bourne, the old gates of the factory burst open. Two men rushed out, and before Jason could reach his weapon, a heavy blunt instrument crashed down on his skull.
23
“We’re alone,” said the voice across the dark room as Bourne opened his eyes. Santos’s huge frame minimized the size of his large armchair, and the low wattage of the single floor lamp heightened the whiteness of his immense bald head. Jason arched his neck and felt the angry swelling on top of his skull; he was angled into the corner of a sofa. “There’s no break, no blood, only what I imagine is a very painful lump,” commented the Jackal’s man.
“Your diagnosis is accurate, especially the last part.”
“The instrument was hard rubber and cushioned. The results are predictable except where concussions are concerned. At your side, on a tray, is an ice bag. It might be well to use it.”
Bourne reached down in the dim light, grabbed the bulky cold bag and brought it to his head. “You’re very considerate,” he said flatly.
“Why not? We have several things to discuss … perhaps a million, if broken down into francs.”
“It’s yours under the conditions stated.”
“Who are you?” asked Santos sharply.
“That’s not one of the conditions.”
“You’re not a young man.”
“Not that it matters, but neither are you.”
“You carried a gun and a knife. The latter is for younger men.”
“Who said so?”
“Our reflexes.… What do you know about a blackbird?”
“You might as well ask me how I knew about Le Coeur du Soldat.”
“How did you?”
“Someone told me.”
“Who?”
“Sorry, not one of the conditions. I’m a broker and that’s the way I work. My clients expect it.”
“Do they also expect you to bind your knee so as to feign an injury? As your eyes opened I pressed the area; there was no sign of pain, no sprain, no break. Also, you carry no identification but considerable amounts of money?”
“I don’t explain my methods, I only clarify my restrictions as I understand them to be. I got my message through to you, didn’t I? Since I had no telephone number, I doubt I could have done so very successfully had I arrived at your establishment in a business suit carrying an attaché case.”
Santos laughed. “You never would have gotten inside. You would have been rudely stopped in the alley and stripped.”
“The thought occurred to me.… Do we do business, say a million francs’ worth?”
The Jackal’s man shrugged. “It would seem to me that if a buyer mentions such an amount in his first offer, he will go higher. Say a million and a half. Perhaps even two.”
“But I’m not the buyer, I’m the broker. I was authorized to pay one million, which is far too much in my opinion, but time is of the essence. Take it or leave it, I have other options.”
“Do you really?”
“Certainly.”
“Not if you’re a corpse found floating in the Seine without any identification.”
“I see.” Jason looked around the darkened flat; it bore little relationship to the shabby café below. The furniture was large, as required by the oversized owner, but tastefully selected, not elegant but certainly not cheap. What was mildly astonishing were the bookshelves covering the wall between the two front windows. The academic in Bourne wis
hed he could read the titles; they might give him a clearer picture of this strange, huge man whose speech might have been formed at the Sorbonne—a committed brute on the outside, perhaps someone else inside. His eyes returned to Santos. “Then my leaving here freely under my own power is not a given, is it?”
“No,” answered the Jackal’s conduit. “It might have been had you answered my simple questions, but you tell me that your conditions, or should I say your restrictions, forbid you to do so.… Well, I, too, have conditions and you will live or die by them.”
“That’s succinct.”
“There’s no reason not to be.”
“Of course, you’re forfeiting any chance of collecting a million francs—or, as you suggested, perhaps a great deal more.”
“Then may I also suggest,” said Santos, crossing his thick arms in front of him and absently glancing at the large tattoos on his skin, “that a man with such funds available will not only part with them in exchange for his life, but will happily deliver the information requested so as to avoid unnecessary and excruciating pain.” The Jackal’s man suddenly slammed his clenched right fist down on the armrest and shouted, “What do you know about a blackbird? Who told you about Le Coeur du Soldat? Where do you come from and who are you and who is your client?”
Bourne froze, his body rigid but his mind spinning, whirling, racing. He had to get out! He had to reach Bernardine—how many hours was his call overdue? Where was Marie? Yet what he wanted to do, had to do, could not be done by opposing the giant across the room. Santos was neither a liar nor a fool. He would and could kill his prisoner handily and without hesitation … and he would not be duped by outright false or convoluted information. The Jackal’s man was protecting two turfs—his own and his mentor’s. The Chameleon had only one option open: to expose a part of the truth so dangerous as to be credible, the ring of authenticity so plausible that the risk of rejecting it was unacceptable. Jason put the ice bag on the tray and spoke slowly from the shadows of the large couch.
“Obviously I don’t care to die for a client or be tortured to protect his information, so I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t as much as I’d like under the present circumstances. I’ll take your points in order if I’m not too damned frightened to forget the sequence. To begin with, the funds are not available to me personally. I meet with a man in London to whom I deliver the information, and he releases an account in Bern, Switzerland, to a name and a number—any name, any number—that I give him.… We’ll skip over my life and the ‘excruciating pain’—I’ve answered both. Let’s see, what do I know about a blackbird? The Coeur du Soldat is part of that question, incidentally.… I was told that an old man—name and nationality unknown, at least to me, but I suspect French—approached a well-known public figure and told him he was the target of an assassination. Who believes a drunken old man, especially one with a long police record looking for a reward? Unfortunately the assassination took place, but fortunately an aide to the deceased was by his side when the old man warned him. Even more fortunate, the aide was and is extremely close to my client and the assassination was a welcome event to both. The aide secretly passed on the old man’s information. A blackbird is sent a message through a café known as Le Coeur du Soldat in Argenteuil. This blackbird must be an extraordinary man, and now my client wants to reach him.… As for myself, my offices are hotel rooms in various cities. I’m currently registered under the name of Simon at the Pont-Royal, where I keep my passport and other papers.” Bourne paused, his palms outstretched. “I’ve just told you the entire truth as I know it.”
“Not the entire truth,” corrected Santos, his voice low and guttural. “Who is your client?”
“I’ll be killed if I tell you.”
“I’ll kill you right now if you don’t,” said the Jackal’s conduit, removing Jason’s hunting knife from his wide leather belt, the blade glistening in the light of the floor lamp.
“Why not give me the information my client wants along with a name and a number—any name, any number—and I’ll guarantee you two million francs. All my client asks is for me to be the only intermediary. Where’s the harm? The blackbird can turn me down and tell me to go to hell.… Three million!”
Santos’s eyes wavered as if the temptation were almost too much for his imagination. “Perhaps we’ll do business later—”
“Now.”
“No!” Carlos’s man pushed his immense body out of the chair and walked toward the couch, the knife held threateningly in front of him. “Your client.”
“Plural,” replied Bourne. “A group of powerful men in the United States.”
“Who?”
“They guard their names like nuclear secrets, but I know of one and he should be enough for you.”
“Who?”
“Find out for yourself—at least learn the enormity of what I’m trying to tell you. Protect your blackbird by all means! Ascertain that I’m telling you the truth and in the process make yourself so rich you can do anything you want to do for the rest of your life. You could travel, disappear, perhaps have time for those books of yours rather than being concerned with all that garbage downstairs. As you pointed out, neither of us is young. I make a generous brokering fee and you’re a wealthy man, free of care, of unpleasant drudgery.… Again, where’s the harm? I can be turned down, my clients turned down. There’s no trap. My clients don’t ever want to see him. They want to hire him.”
“How could this be done? How could I be satisfied?”
“Invent some high position for yourself and reach the American ambassador in London—the name is Atkinson. Tell him you’ve received confidential instructions from Snake Lady. Ask him if you should carry them out.”
“Snake Lady? What’s that?”
“Medusa. They call themselves Medusa.”
Mo Panov excused himself and slid out of the booth. He made his way through the crowded highway diner toward the men’s room, frantically scanning the wall at the far end for a pay phone. There was none! The only goddamned phone was ten feet from the booth and in clear sight of the wild-eyed platinum blonde whose paranoia was as deeply embedded as the dark roots of her hair. He had casually mentioned that he thought he should call his office and tell his staff about the accident and where he was, and was instantly met with invective.
“And have a swarm of cops coming out to pick you up! Not on your fuckin’ life, Medicine Man. Your office calls the fuzz, they call my devoted Chief Fork-in-Mouth, and my ass is bouncing into every barbed-wire fence in the county. He’s in with every cop on the roads. I think he tells ’em where to get laid.”
“There’d be no reason for me to mention you and I certainly wouldn’t. If you recall, you said he might resent me.”
“Resent don’t count. He’d just cut your cute little nose off. I’m not takin’ any chances—you don’t look like you’re too with-it. You’d blurt out about your accident—next thing the cops.”
“You know, you’re not really making sense.”
“All right, I’ll make sense. I’ll yell ‘Rape!’ and tell these not-so-pansy truckers I picked you up on the road two days ago and I’ve been a sex slave ever since. How does that grab you?”
“Very firmly. May I at least go to the men’s room? It’s urgent that I do.”
“Be my guest. They don’t put phones in the can in these places.”
“Really?… No, honestly, I’m not chagrined, not disappointed—just curious. Why don’t they? Truckers make good money; they’re not interested in stealing dimes or quarters.”
“Boy, you’re from La La Land, Doc. Things happen on the highways; things get switched or snitched, you dig? If people make phone calls, other people want to know who makes them.”
“Really …?”
“Oh, Jesus. Hurry up. We only got time for a couple of greasies, so I’ll order. He’ll head up Seventy, not Ninety-seven. He wouldn’t figure.”
“Figure what? What are Seventy and Ninety-seven?”
&
nbsp; “Routes, for Christ’s sake! There are routes and there are routes. You are one dumb medicine man. Hit the head, then maybe later we’ll stop at a motel where we can continue our business discussion while you get an advance bonus.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m pro-choice. Is that against your religion?”
“Good Lord, no. I’m a firm advocate.”
“Good. Hurry up!”
So Panov headed for the men’s room, and indeed the woman was right. There was no phone, and the window to the outside was too small for anyone but a small cat or a large rat to crawl through.… But he had money, a great deal of money, along with five driver’s licenses from five different states. In Jason Bourne’s lexicon these were weapons, especially the money. Mo went to the urinal—long overdue—and then to the door; he pulled it back several inches to observe the blonde. Suddenly, the door swung violently back several feet and Panov crashed into the wall.
“Hey, sorry, pal!” cried a short heavyset man, who grabbed the psychiatrist by the shoulders as Mo grabbed his face. “You okay, buddy?”
“Oh, certainly. Yes, of course.”
“The hell you are, you got a nosebleed! C’mon over here by the towels,” ordered the T-shirted trucker, one sleeve rolled up to hold a pack of cigarettes. “C’mon, put your head back while I get some cold water on your schnoz.… Loosen up and lean against the wall. There, that’s better; we’ll stop this sucker in a moment or two.” The short man reached up and gently pressed the wet paper towels across Panov’s face while holding the back of his neck, and every few seconds checking the flow of blood from Mo’s nostrils. “There y’are, buddy, it’s damned near stopped. Just breathe through your mouth, deep breaths, you got me? Head tilted, okay?”
“Thank you,” said Panov, holding the towels and amazed that a nosebleed could be stopped so quickly. “Thank you very much.”
“Don’t thank me, I bashed you one by mistake,” answered the trucker, relieving himself. “Feel better now?” he asked, zipping up his trousers.