“You …? They marked you?”
“If you mean by that, did they know who we were, happily they did not. Had they known, it’s doubtful we’d be sitting at this table!”
“Signor DeFazio,” interrupted the contessa, glancing at her husband, her look telling him to calm down. “The word we received over here is that you have a contract on this cripple and his friend the doctor. Is that true?”
“Yeah,” confirmed the capo supremo cautiously. “As far as that goes, but it goes further, you know what I mean?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” replied the count icily.
“I tell you this because it’s possible I could use your help, for which, like I told you, you’ll be paid good, real good.”
“How does the contract go ‘further’?” asked the wife, again interrupting.
“There’s someone else we have to hit. A third party these two came over here to meet.”
The count and his countess instantly looked at each other. “A ‘third party,’ ” repeated the man from Rome, raising the wineglass to his lips. “I see.… A three-target contract is generally quite profitable. How profitable, Signor DeFazio?”
“Hey, come on, do I ask you what you make a week in Paris, France? Let’s just say it’s a lot and you two personally can count on six figures, if everything goes according to the book.”
“Six figures encompass a wide spectrum,” observed the countess. “It also indicates that the contract is worth over seven figures.”
“Seven …?” DeFazio looked at the woman, his breathing on hold.
“Over a million dollars,” concluded the countess.
“Yeah, well, you see, it’s important to our clients that these people leave this world,” said Louis, breathing again as seven figures had not been equated with seven million. “We don’t ask why, we just do the job. In situations like this, our dons are generous; we keep most of the money and ‘our thing’ keeps its reputation for efficiency. Isn’t that right, Mario?”
“I’m sure it is, Lou, but I don’t involve myself in those matters.”
“You get paid, don’t you, cugino?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, Lou.”
“See what I mean?” said DeFazio, looking at the aristocrats of the European Mafia, who showed no reaction at all except to stare at the capo supremo. “Hey, what’s the matter?… Oh, this bad thing that happened yesterday, huh? What was it—they saw you, right? They spotted you, and some gorilla got off a couple of shots to scare you away, that’s it, isn’t it? I mean what else could it be, right? They didn’t know who you were but you were there—a couple of times too often, maybe—so a little muscle was used, okay? It’s an old scam: Scare the shit out of strangers you see more than once.”
“Lou, I asked you to temper your language.”
“Temper? I’m losing my temper. I want to deal!”
“In plain words,” said the count, disregarding DeFazio’s words with a soft voice and arched brows, “you say you must kill this cripple and his friend the doctor, as well as a third party, is that correct?”
“In plain words, you got it right.”
“Do you know who this third party is—outside of a photograph or a detailed description?”
“Sure, he’s a government slime who was sent out years ago to make like he was a Mario here, an esecuzione, can you believe it? But these three individuals have injured our clients, I mean really hurt them. That’s why the contract, what else can I tell you?”
“We’re not sure,” said the countess, gracefully sipping her wine. “Perhaps you don’t really know.”
“Know what?”
“Know that there is someone else who wants this third party dead far more than you do,” explained the count. “Yesterday noon he assaulted a small café in the countryside with murderous gunfire, killing a number of people, because your third party was inside. So were we.… We saw them—him—warned by a guard and race outside. Certain emergencies are communicated. We left immediately, only minutes before the massacre.”
“Condannare!” choked DeFazio. “Who is this bastard who wants the kill? Tell me!”
“We’ve spent yesterday afternoon and all day today trying to find out,” began the woman, leaning forward, delicately fingering the indelicate glass as though it were an affront to her sensibilities. “Your targets are never alone. There are always men around them, armed guards, and at first we didn’t know where they came from. Then on the avenue Montaigne we saw a Soviet limousine come for them, and your third man in the company of a well-known KGB officer, and now we think we do know.”
“Only you, however,” broke in the count, “can confirm it for us. What is the name of this third man on your contract? Surely we have a right to know.”
“Why not? He’s a loser named Bourne, Jason Bourne, who’s blackmailing our clients.”
“Ecco,” said the husband quietly.
“Ultimo,” added the wife. “What do you know of this Bourne?” she asked.
“What I told you. He went out under cover for the government and got shafted by the big boys in Washington. He gets pissed off, so he ends up shafting our clients. A real slime.”
“You’ve never heard of Carlos the Jackal?” said the count, leaning back in the chair, studying the capo supremo.
“Oh, yeah, sure, I heard of him, and I see what you mean. They say this Jackal character has a big thing against this Bourne and vice versa, but it don’t cut no ice with me. You know, I thought that fox-cat was just in books, in the movies, you know what I mean? Then they tell me he’s a real hit man, wadda y’ know?”
“Very real,” agreed the countess.
“But, like I said, him I couldn’t care less about. I want the Jew shrink, the cripple, and this rot-gut Bourne, that’s all. And I really want them.”
The diplomat and his wife looked at each other; they shrugged in mild astonishment, then the contessa nodded, deferring to her husband. “Your sense of fiction has been shattered by reality,” said the count.
“Come again?”
“There was a Robin Hood, you know, but he wasn’t a noble of Locksley. He was a barbaric Saxon chief who opposed the Normans, a murdering, butchering thief, extolled only in legends. And there was an Innocent the Third, a pope who was hardly innocent and who followed the savage policies of a predecessor, Saint Gregory the Seventh, who was hardly a saint. Between them they split Europe asunder, into rivers of blood for political power and to enrich the coffers of the ‘Holy Empire.’ Centuries before, there was the gentle Quintus Cassius Longinus of Rome, beloved protector of the Further Spain, yet he tortured and mutilated a hundred thousand Spaniards.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“These men were fictionalized, Signor DeFazio, into many different shadings of what they may actually have been, but regardless of the distortions, they were real. Just as the Jackal is real, and is a deadly problem for you. As, unfortunately, he is a problem for us, for he’s a complication we cannot accept.”
“Huh?” The capo supremo, mouth gaping, stared at the Italian aristocrat.
“The presence of the Soviets was both alarming and enigmatic,” continued the count. “Then finally we perceived a possible connection, which you just confirmed.… Moscow has been hunting Carlos for years, solely for the purpose of executing him, and all they’ve gotten for their efforts is one dead hunter after another. Somehow—God knows how—Jason Bourne negotiated with the Russians to pursue their common objective.”
“For Christ’s sake, speak English or Italian, but with words that make sense! I didn’t exactly go to Harvard City College, gumball. I didn’t have to, capisce?”
“The Jackal stormed that country inn yesterday. He’s the one hunting down Jason Bourne, who was foolish enough to come back to Paris and persuade the Soviets to work with him. Both were stupid, for this is Paris and Carlos will win. He’ll kill Bourne and your other targets and laugh at the Russians. Then he’ll proclaim to the
clandestine departments of all governments that he has won, that he’s the padrone, the maestro. You in America have never been exposed to the whole story, only bits and pieces, for your interest in Europe stops at the money line.
But we have lived through it, watching in fascination, and now we are mesmerized. Two aging master assassins obsessed with hatred, each wanting only to cut the other’s throat.”
“Hey, back up, gumball!” shouted DeFazio. “This slime Bourne’s a fake, a contraffazione. He never was an executioner!”
“You’re quite wrong, signore,” said the countess. “He may not have entered the arena with a gun, but it became his favorite instrument. Ask the Jackal.”
“Fuck the Jackal!” cried DeFazio, getting up from the chair.
“Lou!”
“Shut up, Mario! This Bourne is mine, ours! We deliver the corpse, we take the pictures with me—us—standing over all three with a dozen ice picks in their bodies, their heads pulled up by the hair, so nobody can say it ain’t our kills!”
“Now you’re the one who’s pazzo,” said the Mafia count quietly, in counterpoint to the capo supremo’s raucous yelling. “And please keep your voice down.”
“Then don’t get me excited—”
“He’s trying to explain things, Lou,” said DeFazio’s relative, the killer. “I want to hear what the gentleman has to say because it could be vital to my approach. Sit down, Cousin.” Louis sat down. “Please continue, Count.”
“Thank you, Mario. You don’t object to my calling you Mario.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Perhaps you should visit Rome—”
“Perhaps we should get back to Paris,” again choked the capo supremo.
“Very well,” agreed the Roman, now dividing his attention between DeFazio and his cousin, but favoring the latter. “You might take out all three targets with a long-range rifle, but you won’t get near the bodies. The Soviet guards will be indistinguishable from any other people in the area, and if they see the two of you coming in to the killing ground, they’ll open fire, assuming you’re from the Jackal.”
“Then we must create a diversion where we can isolate the targets,” said Mario, his elbows on the table, his intelligent eyes on the count. “Perhaps an emergency in the early hours of the morning. A fire in their lodgings, perhaps, that necessitates their coming outside. I’ve done it before; in the confusion of fire trucks and police sirens and the general panic, one can pull targets away and complete the assignments.”
“It’s a fine strategy, Mario, but there are still the Soviet guards.”
“We take them out!” cried DeFazio.
“You are only two men,” said the diplomat, “and there are at least three in Barbizon, to say nothing of the hotel in Paris where the cripple and the doctor are staying.”
“So we outmatch the numbers.” The capo supremo pulled the back of his hand over the sweat that had gathered on his forehead. “We hit this Barbizon first, right?”
“With only two men?” asked the countess, her cosmeticized eyes wide in surprise.
“You got men!” exclaimed DeFazio. “We’ll use a few.… I’ll pay additional.”
The count shook his head slowly and spoke softly. “We will not go to war with the Jackal,” he said. “Those are my instructions.”
“Fairy bastards!”
“An interesting comment coming from you,” observed the countess, a thin insulting smile on her lips.
“Perhaps our dons are not as generous as yours,” continued the diplomat. “We are willing to cooperate up to a point but no further.”
“You’ll never make another shipment to New York, or Philly, or Chicago!”
“We’ll let our superiors debate those issues, won’t we?”
There was a sudden knocking at the door, four raps in a row, harsh and intrusive. “Avanti,” called out the count, instantly reaching under his jacket and ripping an automatic out of his belt; he lowered it beneath the overhang of the red tablecloth and smiled as the manager of Tetrazzini’s entered.
“Emergenza,” said the grossly overweight man, walking rapidly to the well-tailored mafioso and handing him a note.
“Grazie.”
“Prego,” replied the manager, crossing back to the door and exiting as quickly as he had arrived.
“The anxious gods of Sicily may be smiling down on you after all,” said the count, reading. “This communication is from the man following your targets. They are outside Paris and they are alone, and for reasons I cannot possibly explain, there are no guards. They have no protection.”
“Where?” cried DeFazio, leaping to his feet.
Without answering, the diplomat calmly reached for his gold lighter, ignited it, and fired the small piece of paper, lowering it into an ashtray. Mario sprang up from his chair; the man from Rome dropped the lighter on the table and swiftly retrieved the gun from his lap. “First, let us discuss the fee,” he said as the note coiled into flaming black ash. “Our dons in Palermo are definitely not as generous as yours. Please talk quickly, as every minute counts.”
“You motherfucking bastard!”
“My Oedipal problems are not your concern. How much, Signor DeFazio?”
“I’ll go the limit,” replied the capo supremo, lowering himself into the chair, staring at the charred remnants of the information. “Three hundred thousand, American. That’s it.”
“That’s excremento,” said the countess. “Try again. Seconds become minutes and you cannot afford them.”
“All right, all right! Double it!”
“Plus expenses,” added the woman.
“What the fuck can they be?”
“Your cousin Mario is right,” said the diplomat. “Please watch your language in front of my wife.”
“Holy shit—”
“I warned you, signore. The expenses are an additional quarter of a million, American.”
“What are you, nuts?”
“No, you’re vulgar. The total is one million one hundred fifty thousand dollars, to be paid as our couriers in New York so instruct you.… If not, you will be missed in—what is it?—Brooklyn Heights, Signor DeFazio?”
“Where are the targets?” said the beaten capo supremo, his defeat painful to him.
“At a small private airfield in Pontcarré, about forty-five minutes from Paris. They’re waiting for a plane that was grounded in Poitiers because of bad weather. It can’t possibly arrive for at least an hour and a quarter.”
“Did you bring the equipment we requested?” asked Mario rapidly.
“It’s all there,” answered the countess, gesturing at the large black suitcase on a chair against the wall.
“A car, a fast car!” cried DeFazio as his executioner retrieved the suitcase.
“Outside,” replied the count. “The driver will know where to take you. He’s been to that field.”
“Come on, cugino. Tonight we collect and you can settle a score!”
Except for a single clerk behind the counter in the small one-room terminal and an air controller hired to stay the extra hours in the radio tower, the private airport in Pontcarré was deserted. Alex Conklin and Mo Panov stayed discreetly behind as Bourne led Marie outside to the gate area fronting the field beyond a waist-high metal fence. Two strips of receding amber ground lights defined the long runway for the plane from Poitiers; they had been turned on only a short time ago.
“It won’t be long now,” said Jason.
“This whole damn thing’s stupid,” retorted Webb’s wife. “Everything.”
“There’s no reason for you to stay and every reason for you to leave. For you to be alone here in Paris would be stupid. Alex is right. If Carlos’s people found you, you’d be taken hostage, so why risk it?”
“Because I’m capable of staying out of sight and I don’t want to be ten thousand miles away from you. You’ll forgive me if I worry about you, Mr. Bourne. And care for you.”
Jason looked at her in the shadows, gr
ateful for the darkness; she could not clearly see his eyes. “Then be reasonable and use your head,” he said coldly, suddenly feeling so old, too old for such a transparently false lack of feeling. “We know Carlos is in Moscow and Krupkin isn’t far behind him. Dimitri’s flying us there in the morning, and we’ll be under the protection of the KGB in the tightest city in the world. What more could we want?”
“You were under the protection of the United States government on a short East Side block in New York thirteen years ago and it didn’t do you much good.”
“There’s a great deal of difference. Back then the Jackal knew exactly where I was going and when I’d be there. Right now he has no idea we even know he’s in Moscow. He’s got other problems, big ones for him, and he thinks we’re here in Paris—he’s ordered his people to keep searching for us.”
“What will you do in Moscow?”
“We won’t know until we get there, but whatever it is, it’s better than here in Paris. Krupkin’s been busy. Every ranking officer in Dzerzhinsky Square who speaks French is being watched and is under surveillance. He said the French narrowed down the possibilities and that something should break.… Something will break; the odds are on our side. And when it does, I can’t be worried about you back here.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said in the past thirty-six hours.”
“So be it. You should be with the children and you know that. You’ll be out of reach and safe … and the kids need you. Mrs. Cooper’s a terrific lady, but she’s not their mother. Besides, your brother probably has Jamie smoking his Cuban cigars and playing Monopoly with real money by now.”
Marie looked up at her husband, a gentle smile apparent in the darkness as well as in her voice. “Thanks for the laugh. I need it.”
“It’s probably the truth—your brother, I mean. If there are good-looking women on the staff, it’s quite possible our son’s lost his virginity.”