مشکل در لس کلاسیکوس

Chapter nine

Trouble at Les Classiques

One telephone conversation with an assistant at Les Classiques was enough to give Marie all the names they needed. A satisfied customer, wanting to send gifts, could not be refused. A phone book then produced addresses.

Janine Dolbert was called at work and told to return home immediately. Bourne was outside her house, seized her by the arm, and walked with her.

“I work with a group of people,” he told her, as she tried to shake herself free, “who are planning a trap for one of your customers - a killer. He’s one of your most frequent customers, and we know that he’s one of eight men. We’ve planned a trap, and we’ll catch him in your store. Listen and watch. If you see me in the store again, tell me if you think you know who he is.”

He left her in shock and traveled quickly to another part of town. Claude Oreale was next to receive a message and to hurry home.

“We received a report from Zurich,” Bourne said, “and we want you to tell Jacqueline Lavier.” The man looked at him in disbelief. “Tell her that we can’t trust the phones. Carlos is right.”

“Carlos!” Oreale screamed. “What are you talking about?”

“They’re planning a trap for him. He must stay away. Tell her.” Bourne left the shocked young man for his third meeting, knowing that he had started a wave of fear and confusion in Les Classiques.

“Is this room 420,” said the voice on the line.

Villiers! “Yes,” said Marie. “I know who you are.”

“Tell our friend that my wife has been called to the phone six times in the last hour, and has now taken it into her room. I have picked up the phone a couple of times, then apologized for the interruption to her conversation, but she is, I think, becoming suspicious. I am beginning to sense violence in this house.”

“Remember your aim,” Marie told him. “Remember your son.”

“There is more. One of the voices, a male voice, was odd - half-whisper, half-command. It changed quickly when they realized that I was listening, but I am sure. It was the killer-pig, and he was instructing– my–wife!” His voice broke with emotion.

“Please try to stay strong,” Marie said. “It’s very important that no connection is made between you and our friend. It could cost you your life.”

“I think I have already lost it.”

“Vous etes soldat - Arretez,” Marie said sharply.

There was a silence. Then, “Thank you, my friend. You have reminded an old man of who he was - and must be again.”

It was dark when Bourne reached the apartment of Pierre Trignon, Les Classiques’s accountant.

“I’m from the tax office,” Bourne said. “I must instruct you not to leave Paris. My office will take your books when the store opens tomorrow.”

“What?” Trignon was shocked. “There is nothing wrong with my books - nothing! What are you looking for?”

“Payments that were paid to companies that don’t exist, and that were sent to a bank in Zurich.”

“But every payment is signed by Madame Lavier. I just follow her orders.”

“So who does she take orders from? Whose money was put into Les Classiques?”

“I don’t know. Madame Lavier has many rich friends.”

“Then it’s possible that you and Madame Lavier are being used,” Bourne said. “Money is going from the store to the Zurich account of an assassin called Carlos.” Trignon screamed. “You should talk to Madame Lavier and start preparing your defense.”

Bourne left.

Get Carlos. Trap Carlos. Find Treadstone. Find the meaning of a message. Find the sender. Find Jason Bourne.

When he returned to the hotel, he learned from Marie that the calls to Parc Monceau had stopped, and that a woman matching Jacqueline Lavier’s description had arrived at Villiers’s house to speak to his wife. A gray Citroen was parked outside.

Bourne raced out of the hotel again, to Parc Monceau. There was no sign of the Citroen, but Villiers was standing on the doorstep.

“They left five minutes ago in a taxi,” the general said. “My wife said that her friend wanted to see a priest at a church in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Two men followed them in the Citroen.”

Bourne ran for a taxi and made his way to the church, arriving as Villiers’s wife and Jacqueline Lavier were walking up the path. The Citroen was parked, but neither man got out. Bourne left his taxi and watched from across the street.

Minutes later, Villiers’s wife hurried out of the church, carrying a white bag, and climbed into the back seat of the Citroen, which drove away. A white bag! Jacqueline Lavier’s bag! Bourne started to move toward the church, then stopped. A trap? If Lavier was followed, he might be, too.

He looked around, but saw nothing suspicious, so continued toward the church. He stopped. A priest was coming out. Bourne had seen him before. Not in a forgotten past, but recently. Not as a priest, but as a man with a gun. Who? Where? As the killer turned right, the sun touched his face. Bourne froze. His skin was dark - dark by birth. He was looking at Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. Carlos.

Bourne took his gun from his pocket and ran toward him, pushing people out of the way, knocking against an old man. From his dirty clothes, the old man pulled a gun. Bourne threw himself into the street, over a car, as shots hit metal on each side of him. As screams came from people on the sidewalk, he raced through the traffic to the other side of the street. The old man disappeared into the crowd.

Where was he? Where was Carlos? Bourne saw him at the wheel of a large, black car. He ran, but was too late. Carlos sped away.

Lavier! Now Bourne ran back to the church, and then inside. He looked around but could not see her.

“Excuse me, Father,” he said to another priest, who was coming from a side room. “Two women came in a few minutes ago. Did you see them?”

“Yes, the younger woman helped the older one, who looked pale and sad, into that confession booth.” He pointed. “A visiting priest is taking confessions today - although I thought I saw him leave.”

“Thank you, Father. I’ll wait for her.”

Bourne waited until the priest had gone to the door of the church to see why ambulances were arriving outside. Then he went to the confession booth and pulled back the curtain. As he expected, Jacqueline Lavier was dead. Beside her was a fashionable bag - not hers - and in it was a note explaining why the poor, unhappy woman had decided to end her life. She asked for God’s forgiveness.

He understood why Carlos had killed her - not for disloyalty, but for disobedience. Her crime was her visit to Parc Monceau.

Bourne decided that his next conversation should be with another messenger and a man, he was sure, from his past - Les Classiques’s switchboard operator. Marie had learned that his name was Philippe d’Anjou. He found a payphone.

“D’Anjou?”

“Delta? I wondered when – Paris is not Tam Quan, Delta. We work for different employers now.”

Delta! The name had been spoken. The name that meant nothing to him, but also everything. “Jacqueline Lavier is dead,” Bourne said. “Carlos killed her half an hour ago.”

“She’s on a plane,” d’Anjou replied, “with Bergeron.”

“She’s dead and you’re next. Would she kill herself?”

“No.”

“Call the church in Neuilly-sur-Seine.”

Bourne ended the call and took a taxi to a different payphone.

“D’Anjou?”

“So a woman killed herself. Who says it is really her?”

“It’s her. I want to talk.”

“No talking, Delta. But, in memory of Tam Quan - leave!”

“She went to Parc Monceau and she died for it. You’ve been there, too. He’ll use you to trap me, and then he’ll kill you.” There was a long silence. “I only want information, and then I’ll leave Paris. I’ll see you in an hour outside the Louvre. There are men watching you. Tell them you’re meeting me.”

“You’re mad! They’ll kill you.”

“Then you’ll be well paid. An hour, d’Anjou!”

Before he left the payphone near Les Classiques, Bourne noted the men in a black car who were clearly watching d’Anjou. When d’Anjou left the store, his behavior showed that he knew they were there.

A taxi arrived and the black car followed. Bourne followed in another taxi. When he arrived at the Louvre, he saw the gray car that had followed Lavier and Villiers’s wife to the church.

“Drive past that car - Three hundred francs,” he ordered.

When they were beside it, he lifted his gun and fired at the back window. There were screams and the men threw themselves to the floor. They had seen him, though, as he had planned.

“Get out of here,” Bourne shouted at the terrified driver, and as the taxi raced past the gates to the Louvre, he threw himself out.

He hid between two parked cars and watched the gray car following the speeding taxi.

The black car! He saw two men leaving the car and walking toward Philippe d’Anjou, who was standing on the steps. He ran until they were only a few meters from d’Anjou.

“Medusa,” he shouted.

D’Anjou’s head came up in shock. The driver of the car turned his gun on Bourne, while the other man’s was pointing at d’Anjou. Bourne dived to one side and fired at the second man, hitting him. He moved to the left as shots passed him, and fired again. The driver screamed.

By this time men, women, and children were running in all directions. Bourne stood up. D’Anjou was hiding behind a great block of stone, and Bourne ran to him.

“Delta! It was Carlos’s man. He was going to kill me!”

“I know. Let’s go! Quickly!” Then he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, another, dark-skinned figure with a gun. He pushed d’Anjou down as four shots flew past them. It was him!

The pain returned to his head, the doors of his mind crashed open, then shut, as he ran after the man, then dived again as the man fired. Then Carlos raced away.

Minutes later, Bourne and d’Anjou sat in a back street cafe.

“I shall return to Asia,” d Anjou said. “I can’t stay here.”

“Tell me about Villiers’s wife,” Bourne said.

“Angelique? She is thought to be French, but she is Venezuelan. She is Carlos’s cousin, and his lover - probably the only other person that he cares about. Villiers, of course, knows nothing.”

“Now Treadstone. What do you know?”

“When I saw you, Delta, it seemed clear that you had made a very expensive agreement with the Americans. But what can I tell you?”

“Please. Just tell me what you - what Carlos knows.”

“You became Cain, with a list of contracts that never existed, to make Carlos angry, bring him out, and catch him. Treadstone Seventy-one is the American government’s most secretive group, formed by David Abbott, the same man who planned Medusa.” Light and warmth were spreading into the dark corners of Bourne’s mind. “I was told you were an American spy, but I knew you weren’t - and that money wasn’t the reason either. You are Cain for the same reason that you became Delta, whatever that is.”

“Anything else,” asked Bourne urgently.

“Two things. First, the Americans think you are not working for them now - or they want Carlos to think that.” The silence - the message! They wanted him to return. “Second, they know, of course, that your name isn’t Jason Bourne.”

“What?”

“March 25 is two days away. Carlos wants your corpse on that day - the day you killed Jason Bourne at Tam Quan.”