The Bourne Identity jb-1 Read online

  The madness began.

  5

  The elevator doors started to close; the man with the hand-held radio was already inside, the shoulders of his armed companion angling between the moving panels, the weapon aimed at Bourne’s head.

  Jason leaned to his right—a sudden gesture of fear—then abruptly, without warning, swept his left foot off the floor, pivoting, his heel plunging into the armed man’s hand, sending the gun upward, reeling the man backward out of the enclosure. Two muted gunshots preceded the closing of the doors, the bullets embedding themselves in the thick wood of the ceiling. Bourne completed his pivot, his shoulder crashing into the second man’s stomach, his right hand surging into the chest, his left pinning the hand with the radio. He hurled the man into the wall. The radio flew across the elevator; as it fell, words came out of its speaker.

  “Henri? Ça va? Qu’es-ce qui se passe?”

  The image of another Frenchman came to Jason’s mind. A man on the edge of hysteria, disbelief in his eyes; a would-be killer who had raced out of Le Bouc de Mer into the shadows of the rue Sarrasin less than twenty-four hours ago. That man had wasted no time sending his message to Zurich; the one they thought was dead was alive. Very much alive. Kill him!

  Bourne grabbed the Frenchman in front of him now, his left arm around the man’s throat, his right hand tearing at the man’s left ear. “How many?” he asked in French. “How many are there down there? Where are they?”

  “Find out, pig!”

  The elevator was halfway to the first floor lobby.

  Jason angled the man’s face down, ripping the ear half out of its roots, smashing the man’s head into the wall. The Frenchman screamed, sinking to the floor. Bourne rammed his knee into the man’s chest; he could feel the holster. He yanked the overcoat open, reached in, and pulled out a short-barreled revolver. For an instant it occurred to him that someone had deactivated the scanning machinery in the elevator. Koenig. He would remember; there’d be no amnesia where Herr Koenig was concerned. He jammed the gun into the Frenchman’s open mouth.

  “Tell me or I’ll blow the back of your skull off!” The man expunged a throated wail; the weapon was withdrawn, the barrel now pressed into his cheek.

  “Two. One by the elevators, one outside on the pavement, by the car.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Peugeot.”

  “Color?” The elevator was slowing down, coming to a stop.

  “Brown.”

  “The man in the lobby. What’s he wearing?”

  “I don’t know …”

  Jason cracked the gun across the man’s temple. “You’d better remember!”

  “A black coat!”

  The elevator stopped; Bourne pulled the Frenchman to his feet; the doors opened. To the left, a man in a dark raincoat, and wearing an odd-looking pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, stepped forward. The eyes beyond the lenses recognized the circumstances; blood was trickling down across the Frenchman’s cheek. He raised his unseen hand, concealed by the wide pocket of his raincoat, another silenced automatic leveled at the target from Marseilles.

  Jason propelled the Frenchman in front of him through the doors. Three rapid spits were heard; the Frenchman shouted, his arms raised in a final, guttural protest. He arched his back and fell to the marble floor. A woman to the right of the man with the gold-rimmed spectacles screamed, joined by several men who called to no one and everyone for Hilfe! for the Polizei!

  Bourne knew he could not use the revolver he had taken from the Frenchman. It had no silencer; the sound of a gunshot would mark him. He shoved it into his topcoat pocket, sidestepped the screaming woman and grabbed the uniformed shoulders of the elevator starter, whipping the bewildered man around, throwing him into the figure of the killer in the dark raincoat.

  The panic in the lobby mounted as Jason ran toward the glass doors of the entrance. The boutonnièred greeter who had mistaken his language an hour and a half ago was shouting into a wall telephone, a uniformed guard at his side, weapon drawn, barricading the exit, eyes riveted on the chaos, riveted suddenly on him. Getting out was instantly a problem. Bourne avoided the guard’s eyes, directing his words to the guard’s associate on the telephone.

  “The man wearing gold-rimmed glasses!” he shouted. “He’s the one! I saw him!”

  “What? Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of Walther Apfel! Listen to me! The man wearing gold-rimmed glasses, in a black raincoat. Over there!”

  Bureaucratic mentality had not changed in several millenniums. At the mention of a superior officer’s name, one followed orders.

  “Herr Apfel!” The Gemeinschaft greeter turned to the guard. “You heard him! The man wearing glasses. Gold-rimmed glasses!”

  “Yes, sir!” The guard raced forward.

  Jason edged past the greeter to the glass doors. He shoved the door on the right open, glancing behind him, knowing he had to run again but not knowing if a man outside on the pavement, waiting by a brown Peugeot, would recognize him and fire a bullet into his head.

  The guard had run past a man in a black raincoat, a man walking more slowly than the panicked figures around him, a man wearing no glasses at all. He accelerated his pace toward the entrance, toward Bourne.

  Out on the sidewalk, the growing chaos was Jason’s protection. Word had gone out of the bank; wailing sirens grew louder as police cars raced up the Bahnhofstrasse. He walked several yards to the right, flanked by pedestrians, then suddenly ran, wedging his way into a curious crowd taking refuge in a storefront, his attention on the automobiles at the curb. He saw the Peugeot, saw the man standing beside it, his hand ominously in his overcoat pocket. In less than fifteen seconds, the driver of the Peugeot was joined by the man in the black raincoat, now replacing his gold-rimmed glasses, adjusting his eyes to his restored vision. The two men conferred rapidly, their eyes scanning the Bahnhofstrasse.

  Bourne understood their confusion. He had walked with an absence of panic out of the Gemeinschaft’s glass doors into the crowd. He had been prepared to run, but he had not run, for fear of being stopped until he was reasonably clear of the entrance. No one else had been permitted to do so—and the driver of the Peugeot had not made the connection. He had not recognized the target identified and marked for execution in Marseilles.

  The first police car reached the scene as the man in the gold-rimmed spectacles removed his raincoat, shoving it through the open window of the Peugeot. He nodded to the driver, who climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. The killer took off his delicate glasses and did the most unexpected thing Jason could imagine. He walked rapidly back toward the glass doors of the bank, joining the police who were racing inside.

  Bourne watched as the Peugeot swung away from the curb and sped off down the Bahnhofstrasse. The crowd in the storefront began to disperse, many edging their way toward the glass doors, craning their necks around one another, rising on the balls of their feet, peering inside.

  A police officer came out, waving the curious back, demanding that a path be cleared to the curb. As he shouted, an ambulance careened around the northwest corner, its horn joining the sharp, piercing notes from its roof, warning all to get out of its way; the driver nosed his outsized vehicle to a stop in the space created by the departed Peugeot. Jason could watch no longer. He had to get to the Carillon du Lac, gather his things, and get out of Zurich, out of Switzerland. To Paris.

  Why Paris? Why had he insisted that the funds be transferred to Paris? It had not occurred to him before he sat in Walther Apfel’s office, stunned by the extraordinary figures presented him. They had been beyond anything in his imagination—so much so that he could only react numbly, instinctively. And instinct had evoked the city of Paris. As though it were somehow vital. Why?

  Again, no time … He saw the ambulance crew carry a stretcher through the doors of the bank.

  On it was a body, the head covered, signifying death. The significance was not lost on Bourne; save for skills
he could not relate to anything he understood, he was the dead man on that stretcher.

  He saw an empty taxi at the corner and ran toward it. He had to get out of Zurich; a message had been sent from Marseilles, yet the dead man was alive. Jason Bourne was alive. Kill him. Kill Jason Bourne!

  God in heaven, why?

  He was hoping to see the Carillon du Lac’s assistant manager behind the front desk, but he was not there. Then he realized that a short note to the man—what was his name—Stossel? Yes, Stossel—would be sufficient. An explanation for his sudden departure was not required and five hundred francs would easily take care of the few hours he had accepted from the Carillon du Lac—and the favor he would ask of Herr Stossel.

  In his room, he threw his shaving equipment into his unpacked suitcase, checked the pistol he had taken from the Frenchman, leaving it in his topcoat pocket, and sat down at the desk; he wrote out the note for Herr Stossel, Asst. Mgr. In it he included a sentence that came easily—almost too easily.

  … I may be in contact with you shortly relative to messages I expect will have been sent to me. I trust it will be convenient for you to keep an eye out for them, and accept them on my behalf.

  If any communication came from the elusive Treadstone Seventy-One, he wanted to know about it. This was Zurich; he would.

  He put a five hundred franc note between the folded stationery and sealed the envelope. Then he picked up his suitcase, walked out of the room, and went down the hallway to the bank of elevators.

  There were four; he touched a button and looked behind him, remembering the Gemeinschaft.

  There was no one there; a bell pinged and the red light above the third elevator flashed on. He had caught a descending machine. Fine. He had to get to the airport just as fast as he could; he had to get out of Zurich, out of Switzerland. A message had been delivered.

  The elevator doors opened. Two men stood on either side of an auburn-haired woman; they interrupted their conversation, nodded at the newcomer—noting the suitcase and moving to the side—then resumed talking as the doors closed. They were in their mid-thirties and spoke French softly, rapidly, the woman glancing alternately at both men, alternately smiling and looking pensive.

  Decisions of no great import were being made. Laughter intermingled with semi-serious interrogation.

  “You’ll be going home then after the summations tomorrow?” asked the man on the left.

  “I’m not sure. I’m waiting for word from Ottawa,” the woman replied. “I have relations in Lyon; it would be good to see them.”

  “It’s impossible,” said the man on the right, “for the steering committee to find ten people willing to summarize this Godforsaken conference in a single day. We’ll all be here another week.”

  “Brussels will not approve,” said the first man grinning. “The hotel’s too expensive.”

  “Then by all means move to another,” said the second with a leer at the woman. “We’ve been waiting for you to do just that, haven’t we?”

  “You’re a lunatic,” said the woman. “You’re both lunatics, and that’s my summation.”

  “You’re not, Marie,” interjected the first. “A lunatic, I mean. Your presentation yesterday was brilliant.”

  “It was nothing of the sort,” she said. “It was routine and quite dull.”

  “No, no!” disagreed the second. “It was superb; it had to be. I didn’t understand a word. But then I have other talents.”

  “Lunatic …”

  The elevator was braking; the first man spoke again. “Let’s sit in the back row of the hall. We’re late anyway and Bertinelli is speaking—to little effect, I suggest. His theories of enforced cyclical fluctuations went out with the finances of the Borgias.”

  “Before then,” said the auburn-haired woman, laughing. “Caesar’s taxes.” She paused, then added, “If not the Punic wars.”

  “The back row then,” said the second man, offering his arm to the woman. “We can sleep. He uses a slide projector; it’ll be dark.”

  “No, you two go ahead, I’ll join you in a few minutes. I really must send off some cables and I don’t trust the telephone operators to get them right.”

  The doors opened and the threesome walked out of the elevator. The two men started diagonally across the lobby together, the woman toward the front desk. Bourne fell in step behind her, absently reading a sign on a triangular stand several feet away.

  WELCOME TO:

  MEMBERS OF THE SIXTH WORLD

  ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

  TODAY’S SCHEDULE:

  1:00 P.M.: THE HON. JAMES FRAZIER,

  M.P. UNITED KINGDOM.

  SUITE 12

  6:00 P.M.: DR EUGENIO BERTINELLI,

  UNIV. OF MILAN, ITALY.

  SUITE 7

  9:00 P.M.: CHAIRMAN’S FAREWELL DINNER.

  HOSPITALITY SUITE

  “Room 507. The operator said there was a cablegram for me.” English. The auburn-haired woman now beside him at the counter spoke English But then she had said she was “waiting for word from Ottawa.” A Canadian.

  The desk clerk checked the slots and returned with the cable. “Dr. St. Jacques?” he asked, holding out the envelope.

  “Yes. Thanks very much.”

  The woman turned away, opening the cable, as the clerk moved in front of Bourne. “Yes, sir?”

  “I’d like to leave this note for Herr Stossel.” He placed the Carillon du Lac envelope on the counter.

  “Herr Stossel will not return until six o’clock in the morning, sir. In the afternoons, he leaves at four. Might I be of service?”

  “No, thanks. Just make sure he gets it, please.” Then Jason remembered: this was Zurich. “It’s nothing urgent,” he added, “but I need an answer. I’ll check with him in the morning.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Bourne picked up his suitcase and started across the lobby toward the hotel’s entrance, a row of wide glass doors that led to a circular drive fronting the lake. He could see several taxis waiting in line under the floodlights of the canopy; the sun had gone down; it was night in Zurich. Still, there were flights to all points of Europe until well past midnight …

  He stopped walking, his breath suspended, a form of paralysis sweeping over him. His eyes did not believe what else he saw beyond the glass doors. A brown Peugeot pulled up in the circular drive in front of the first taxi. Its door opened and a man stepped out—a killer in a black raincoat, wearing thin, gold-rimmed spectacles. Then from the other door another figure emerged, but it was not the driver who had been at the curb on the Bahnhofstrasse, waiting for a target he did not recognize. Instead, it was another killer, in another raincoat, its wide pockets recessed for powerful weapons. It was the man who had sat in the reception room on the second floor of the Gemeinschaft Bank, the same man who had pulled a .38 caliber pistol from a holster beneath his coat. A pistol with a perforated cylinder on its barrel that silenced two bullets meant for the skull of the quarry he had followed into an elevator.

  How? How could they have found him? … Then he remembered and felt sick. It had been so innocuous, so casual!

  Are you enjoying your stay in Zurich? Walther Apfel had asked while they were waiting for a minion to leave and be alone again.

  Very much. My room overlooks the lake. It’s a nice view, very peaceful, quiet.

  Koenig! Koenig had heard him say his room looked over the lake. How many hotels had rooms overlooking the lake? Especially hotels a man with a three-zero account might frequent. Two?

  Three? … From unremembered memory names came to him: Carillon du Lac, Baur au Lac, Eden au Lac. Were there others? No further names came. How easy it must have been to narrow them down!

  How easy it had been for him to say the words. How stupid!

  No time. Too late. He could see through the row of glass doors; so, too, could the killers. The second man had spotted him. Words were exchanged over the hood of the Peugeot, gold-rimmed spectacles adjusted, hands placed in outsized
pockets, unseen weapons gripped. The two men converged on the entrance, separating at the last moment, one on either end of the row of clear glass panels. The flanks were covered, the trap set; he could not race outside.

  Did they think they could walk into a crowded hotel lobby and simply kill a man?

  Of course they could, the crowds and the noise were their cover. Two, three, four muted gunshots fired at close range would be as effective as an ambush in a crowded square in daylight, escape easily found in the resulting chaos.

  He could not let them get near him! He backed away, thoughts racing through his mind, outrage paramount. How dared they? What made them think he would not run for protection, scream for the police? And then the answer was clear, as numbing as the question itself. The killers knew with certainty that which he could only surmise: he could not seek that kind of protection—he could not seek the police. For Jason Bourne, all the authorities had to be avoided… Why? Were they seeking him?

  Jesus Christ, why?

  The two opposing doors were opened by outstretched hands, other hands hidden, around steel.

  Bourne turned; there were elevators, doorways, corridors—a roof and cellars; there had to be a dozen ways out of the hotel.

  Or were there? Did the killers now threading their way through the crowds know something else he could only surmise? Did the Carillon du Lac have only two or three exits? Easily covered by men outside, easily used as traps themselves to cut down the lone figure of a running man.

  A lone man; a lone man was an obvious target. But suppose he were not alone? Suppose someone was with him? Two people were not one, but for one alone an extra person was camouflage—especially in crowds, especially at night, and it was night. Determined killers avoided taking the wrong life, not from compassion but for practicality; in any ensuing panic the real target might escape.

  He felt the weight of the gun in his pocket, but there was not much comfort in knowing it was there. As at the bank, to use it—to even display it—was to mark him. Still, it was there. He started back toward the center of the lobby, then turned to his right where there was a greater concentration of people. It was the pre-evening hour during an international conference, a thousand tentative plans being made, rank and courtesan separated by glances of approval and rebuke, odd groupings everywhere.