They raced south out of Paris in the nondescript Peugeot, taking the Barbizon highway to Villeneuve-St.-Georges. Marie sat close to her husband, their bodies touching, her hand clutching his arm. She was, however, sickeningly aware that the warmth she intended was not returned in equal measure. Only a part of the intense man behind the wheel was her David; the rest of him was Jason Bourne and he was now in command.
“For God’s sake, talk to me!” she cried.
“I’m thinking.… Why did you come to Paris?”
“Good Christ!” exploded Marie. “To find you, to help you!”
“I’m sure you thought it was right.… It wasn’t, you know.”
“That voice again,” protested Marie. “That goddamned disembodied tone of voice! Who the hell do you think you are to make that judgment? God? To put it bluntly—no, not bluntly, but brutally—there are things you have trouble remembering, my darling.”
“Not about Paris,” objected Jason. “I remember everything about Paris. Everything.”
“Your friend Bernardine didn’t think so! He told me you never would have chosen the Meurice if you did.”
“What?” Bourne briefly, harshly glanced at his wife.
“Think. Why did you choose—and you did choose—the Meurice?”
“I don’t know … I’m not sure. It’s a hotel; the name just came to me.”
“Think. What happened years ago at the Meurice—right outside the Meurice?”
“I—I know something happened.… You?”
“Yes, my love, me. I stayed there under a false name and you came to meet me, and we walked to the newsstand on the corner, where in one horrible moment we both knew my life could never be the same again—with you or without you.”
“Oh, Jesus, I forgot! The newspapers—your photograph on all the front pages. You were the Canadian government official—”
“The escaped Canadian economist,” broke in Marie, “hunted by the authorities all over Europe for multiple killings in Zurich in tandem with the theft of millions from Swiss banks! Those kinds of headlines never leave a person, do they? They can be refuted, proved to be totally false, yet still there is that lingering doubt. ‘Where there’s smoke there must be fire,’ I believe is the bromide. My own colleagues in Ottawa … dear, dear friends I’d worked with for years … were afraid to talk to me!”
“Wait a minute!” shouted Bourne, his eyes again flashing at David’s wife. “They were false—it was a Treadstone ploy to pull me in—you were the one who understood it, I didn’t!”
“Of course I did, because you were so stretched you couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter to me then because I’d made up my mind, my very precise analytical mind, a mind I’d match against yours any day of the week, my sweet scholar.”
“What?”
“Watch the road! You missed the turn, just the way you missed the one to our cabin only days ago—or was it years ago?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“That small inn we stayed at outside the Barbizon. You politely asked them to please light the fire in the dining room—we were the only people there. It was the third time I saw through the mask of Jason Bourne to someone else, someone I was falling deeply in love with.”
“Don’t do this to me.”
“I have to, David. If only for myself now. I have to know you’re there.”
Silence. A U-turn on the grand-route and the driver pressed the accelerator to the floor. “I’m here,” whispered the husband, lifting his right arm and pulling his wife to him. “I don’t know for how long, but I’m here.”
“Hurry, my darling.”
“I will. I just want to hold you in my arms.”
“And I want to call the children.”
“Now I know I’m here.”
28
“You’ll tell us everything we want to know voluntarily or we’ll send you up into a chemical orbit your hacks never dreamed of with Dr. Panov,” said Peter Holland, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, his quiet monotone as hard and as smooth as polished granite. “Furthermore, I should elaborate on the extremes to which I’m perfectly willing to go because I’m from the old school, paisan. I don’t give a shit for rules that favor garbage. You play cipher with me, I’ll deep-six you still breathing a hundred miles off Hatteras in a torpedo casing. Am I clear?”
The capo subordinato, thick plaster casts around his left arm and right leg, lay on the bed in Langley’s deserted infirmary room, deserted since the DCI ordered the medical staff to get out of hearing range for their own good. The mafioso’s naturally puffed face was additionally enlarged by swellings around both eyes as well as his generous lips, the result of his head having smashed into the dashboard when Mo Panov sent the car into a Maryland oak. He looked up at Holland, his heavy-lidded gaze traveling over to Alexander Conklin seated in a chair, the ever-present cane gripped in anxious hands.
“You got no right, Mr. Big Shot,” said the capo gruffly. “ ’Cause I got rights, you know what I mean?”
“So did the doctor, and you violated them—Jesus, did you violate them!”
“I don’t gotta talk without my lawyer.”
“Where the hell was Panov’s lawyer?” shouted Alex, thumping his cane on the floor.
“That’s not the way the system works,” protested the patient, attempting to raise his eyebrows in indignation. “Besides, I was good to the doc. He took advantage of my goodness, s’help me God!”
“You’re a cartoon,” said Holland. “You’re a hot sketch but you’re not remotely amusing. There are no lawyers here, linguine, just the three of us, and a torpedo casing is very much in your future.”
“Whaddaya want from me?” cried the mafioso. “What do I know? I just do what I’m told, like my older brother did—may he rest in peace—and my father—may he also rest in peace—and probably his father, which I don’t know nothin’ about.”
“It’s like succeeding generations on welfare, isn’t it?” observed Conklin. “The parasites never get off the dole.”
“Hey, that’s my family you’re talkin’ about—whatever the fuck you’re talkin’ about.”
“My apologies to your heraldry,” added Alex.
“And it’s that family of yours we’re interested in, Augie,” broke in the DCI. “It is Augie, isn’t it? That was the name on one of the five driver’s licenses and we thought it seemed most authentic.”
“Well, you’re not so authentically bright, Mr. Big Shot!” spat out the immobilized patient through his painfully swollen lips. “I got none of them names.”
“We have to call you something,” said Holland. “If only to burn it into the casing down at Hatteras so that some scale-headed archaeologist several thousand years from now can give an identity to the teeth he’s measuring.”
“How about Chauncy?” asked Conklin.
“Too ethnic,” replied Peter. “I like Asshole because that’s what he is. He’s going to be strapped into a tube and dropped over the continental shelf into six miles of seawater for crimes other people committed. I mean, that’s being an asshole.”
“Cut it out!” roared the asshole. “Awright, my name’s Nicolo … Nicholas Dellacroce, and for even giving you that you gotta get me protection! Like with Valachi, that’s part of the deal.”
“It is?” Holland frowned. “I don’t remember mentioning it.”
“Then you don’t get nuthin’!”
“You’re wrong, Nicky,” broke in Alex from across the small room. “We’re going to get everything we want, the only drawback being that it’s a one-time shot. We won’t be able to cross-examine you, or bring you into a federal court, or even have you sign a deposition.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll come out a vegetable with a retried brain. Of course, I suppose it’s a blessing in a way. You’ll hardly know it when you’re packed into that shell casing in Hatteras.”
“Hey, waddaya talkin’?”
“Simple logic,” answered th
e former naval commando and present head of the Central Intelligence Agency. “After our medical team gets finished with you, you can’t expect us to keep you around, can you? An autopsy would railroad us to a rock pile for thirty years and, frankly, I haven’t got that kind of time.… What’ll it be, Nicky? You want to talk to us or do you want a priest?”
“I gotta think—”
“Let’s go, Alex,” said Holland curtly, walking away from the bed toward the door. “I’ll send for a priest. This poor son of a bitch is going to need all the comfort he can get.”
“It’s times like this,” added Conklin, planting his cane on the floor and rising, “when I seriously ponder man’s inhumanity to man. Then I rationalize. It’s not brutality, for that’s only a descriptive abstraction; it’s merely the custom of the trade we’re all in. Still, there’s the individual—his mind and his flesh and his all too sensitive nerve endings. It’s the excruciating pain. Thank heavens I’ve always been in the background, out of reach—like Nicky’s associates. They dine in elegant restaurants and he goes over in a tube beyond the continental shelf, six miles down in the sea, his body imploding into itself.”
“Awright, awright!” screamed Nicolo Dellacroce, twisting on the bed, his obese frame tangling the sheets. “Ask your fuckin’ questions, but you give me protection, capisce?”
“That depends on the truthfulness of your answers,” said Holland, returning to the bed.
“I’d be very truthful, Nicky,” observed Alex, limping back to the chair. “One misstatement and you sleep with the fishes—I believe that’s the customary phrase.”
“I don’t need no coaching, I know where it’s at.”
“Let’s begin, Mr. Dellacroce,” said the CIA chief, taking a small tape recorder out of his pocket, checking the charge and placing it on the high white table by the patient’s bed. He drew up a chair and continued speaking, addressing his opening remarks to the thin silver recorder. “My name is Admiral Peter Holland, currently director of the Central Intelligence Agency, voice confirmation to be verified if necessary. This is an interview with an informer we’ll call John Smith, voice distortion to follow on interagency master tape, identification in the DCI’s classified files.… All right, Mr. Smith, we’re going to cut through the bullshit to the essential questions. I’ll generalize them as much as possible for your protection, but you’ll know exactly what I’m referring to and I expect specific answers.… Whom do you work for, Mr. Smith?”
“Atlas Coin Vending Machines, Long Island City,” replied Dellacroce, his words slurred and spoken gruffly.
“Who owns it?”
“I dunno who owns it. Most of us work from home—some fifteen, maybe twenty guys, you know what I mean? We service the machines and send in our reports.”
Holland glanced over at Conklin; both men smiled. With one answer the mafioso had placed himself within a large circle of potential informers. Nicolo was not new to the game. “Who signs your paychecks, Mr. Smith?”
“A Mr. Louis DeFazio, a very legitimate businessman, to d’best of my knowledge. He gives us our assignments.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Brooklyn Heights. On the river, I think someone told me.”
“What was your destination when our personnel intercepted you?”
Dellacroce winced, briefly closing his swollen eyes before answering. “One of those drunk-and-dope tanks somewhere south of Philly—which you already know, Mr. Big Shot, ’cause you found the map in the car.”
Holland angrily reached for the recorder, snapping it off. “You’re on your way to Hatteras, you son of a bitch!”
“Hey, you get your info your way, I give it mine, okay? There was a map—there’s always a map—and each of us has to take those cockamamy back roads to the joint like we were driving the president or even a don superiore to an Appalachian meet.… You gimme that message pad and the pencil, I’ll give you the location right down to the brass plate on the stone gate.” The mafioso raised his uncased right arm and jabbed his index finger at the DCI. “It’ll be accurate, Mr. Big Shot, because I don’t wanna sleep with no fishes, capisce?”
“But you won’t put it on tape,” said Holland, a disturbed inflection in his voice. “Why not?”
“Tape, shit! What did you call it? An interagency master bullshit? What do you think … our people can’t tap into this place? Hoo-hah! That fuckin’ doctor of yours could be one of us!”
“He’s not, but we’re going to get to an army doctor who is.” Peter Holland picked up the message pad and pencil from the bedside table, handing both to Dellacroce. He did not bother to switch on the tape recorder. They were beyond props and into hardball.
In New York City, on 138th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, the hard core of Harlem, a large disheveled black man in his mid-thirties staggered up the sidewalk. He bounced off the chipped brick wall of a run-down apartment building and slumped down on the pavement, his legs extended, his unshaven face angled into the right collar of his torn army-surplus shirt.
“With the looks I’m getting,” he said quietly into the miniaturized microphone under the cloth, “you’d think I’d invaded the high colonic white shopping district of Palm Springs.”
“You’re doing beautifully,” came the metallic voice over the tiny speaker sewn into the back of the agent’s collar. “We’ve got the place covered; we’ll give you plenty of notice. That answering machine’s so jammed it’s sending out whistling smoke.”
“How did you two lily boys get into that trap over there?”
“Very early this morning, so early no one noticed what we looked like.”
“I can’t wait to watch you get out; it’s a needle condo if I ever saw one. Speaking of which, which we are in a way, are the cops on this beat alerted? I’d hate like hell to get hauled in after growing this bristle on my face. It itches like crazy and my new wife of three weeks doesn’t dig it.”
“You should have stayed with the first one, buddy.”
“Funny little white boy. She didn’t like the hours or the geography. Like in being away for weeks at a time playing games in Zimbabwe. Answer me, please?”
“The blue coats have your description and the scenario. You’re part of a federal bust, so they’ll leave you alone.… Hold it! Conversation’s over. This has to be our man; he’s got a telephone satchel strapped to his belt.… It is. He’s heading for the doorway. It’s all yours, Emperor Jones.”
“Funny little white boy.… I’ve got him and I can tell you now he’s a soft chocolate mousse. He’s scared shitless to go into this palace.”
“Which means he’s legitimate,” said the metallic voice in the collar. “That’s good.”
“That’s bad, junior,” countered the black agent instantly. “If you’re right, he doesn’t know anything, and the layers between him and the source will be as thick as Southern molasses.”
“Oh? Then how do you read it?”
“On-scene tech. I have to see the numbers when he programs them into his troubleshooter.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“He may be legit, but he’s also been frightened and not by the premises.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s all over his face, man. He could enter in false numbers if he thinks he’s being followed or watched.”
“You’ve lost me, buddy.”
“He has to duplicate the digits that correspond to the remote so the beeps can be relayed—”
“Forget it,” said the voice from the back of the collar. “That high-tech I’m not. Besides, we got a man down at that company, Reco-something-or-other, now. He’s waiting for you.”
“Then I’ve got work to do. Out, but keep me monitored.” The agent rose from the pavement and unsteadily made his way into the dilapidated building. The telephone repairman had reached the second floor, where he turned right in the narrow, filthy corridor; he had obviously been there before, as there was no hesitation, no checkin
g the barely legible numbers on the doors. Things were going to be a little easier, considered the CIA man, grateful because his assignment was beyond the purview of the Agency. Purview, shit, it was illegal.
The agent took the steps three at a time, his soft double-soled rubber shoes reducing the noise to the inevitable creaks of an old staircase. His back against the wall, he peered around the corner of the trash-filled hallway and watched the repairman insert three separate keys into three vertical locks, turning each in succession and entering the last door on the left. Things, reconsidered the agent, might not be so easy after all. The instant the man closed the door, he ran silently down the corridor and stood motionless, listening. Not wonderful, but not the worst, he thought as he heard the sound of only one lock being latched; the repairman was in a hurry. He placed his ear against the peeling paint of the door and held his breath, no echo from his lungs disturbing his hearing. Thirty seconds later he turned his head, exhaled, then took a deep breath and went back to the door. Although muffled, he heard the words clearly enough to piece together the meaning.
“Central, this is Mike up on a Hundred Thirty-eighth Street, section twelve, machine sixteen. Is there another unit in this building, which I wouldn’t believe if you said there was.” The following silence lasted perhaps twenty additional seconds. “… We don’t, huh? Well, we got a frequency interference and it don’t make no sense to me.… The what? Cable TV? Ain’t no one in this neighborhood got the bread for that.… Oh, I gotcha, brother. Area cable. The drug boys live high, don’t they? Their addresses may be shit, but inside them homes they got theyselves a pile of fancy crap.… So clear the line and reroute it. I’ll stay here until I get a clean signal, okay, brother?”
The agent again turned away from the door and again breathed, now in relief. He could leave without a confrontation; he had all he needed. One Hundred Thirty-eighth Street, section twelve, machine sixteen, and they knew the firm that installed the equipment. The Reco-Metropolitan Company, Sheridan Square, New York. The lily-whites could handle it from there. He walked back to the questionable staircase and lifted the collar of his army-surplus shirt. “In case I get run over by a truck, here’s the input. Are you reading me?”