"I'll bear it in mind-if it's called for. The number, please?"

Santos recited it twice along with the words Bourne was to say. He spoke slowly, obviously impressed that Bourne wrote nothing down. "Is it all clear?"

"Indelibly, no pencil or paper required. ... If everything goes as I trust it will, how do you want me to get you the money?"

"Phone me; you've got my number. I will leave Argenteuil and come to you. And never return to Argenteuil."

"Good luck, Santos. Something tells me you deserve it."

"No one more so. I have drunk the hemlock far too many times."

"Socrates," said Jason.

"Not directly. Plato's dialogues, to be precise. Au revoir."

Santos walked away, and Bourne, his chest pounding, headed back to the Pont-Royal, desperately suppressing his desire to run. A running man is an object of curiosity, a target. A lesson from the cantos of Jason Bourne.

"Bernardine!" he yelled, racing down the narrow, deserted hallway to his room, all too aware of the open door and the old man seated at the desk, a grenade in one hand, a gun in the other. "Put the hardware away, we've hit pay dirt!"

"Who's paying?" asked the Deuxième veteran as Jason closed the door.

"I am," answered Bourne. "If this works out the way I think it will, you can add to your account in Geneva."

"I do not do what I'm doing for that, my friend. It has never been a consideration."

"I know, but as long as we're passing out francs like we're printing them in the garage, why shouldn't you get a fair share?"

"I can't argue with that, either."

"An hour," announced Jason. "Forty-three minutes now, to be exact."

"For what?"

"To find out if it's real, actually real." Bourne fell on the bed, his arms behind his head on the pillow, his eyes alive. "Write this down, François." Jason recited the telephone number given him by Santos. "Buy, bribe, or threaten every high-level contact you've ever had in the Paris telephone service, but get me the location of that number."

"It's not such an expensive request-"

"Yes, it is," countered Bourne. "He's got it guarded, inviolate; he wouldn't do it any other way. Only four people in his entire network have it."

"Then, perhaps, we do not go high-level, but, instead, far lower to the ground, underground actually. Into the tunnels of the telephone service beneath the streets."

Jason snapped his head over at Bernardine. "I hadn't thought of that."

"Why should you? You are not Deuxième. The technicians are the source, not the bureaucrats behind the desks. ... I know several. I will find one and give him a quiet call at home later tonight-"

"Tonight?" broke in Bourne, raising himself off the bed.

"It will cost a thousand francs or so, but you'll get the location of the telephone."

"I can't wait until later tonight."

"Then you add a risk by trying to reach such a man at work. These men are monitored; no one trusts anyone in the telephone service. It's the Socialists' paradox: Give its laboring forces responsibility but no individual authority."

"Hold it!" said Jason from the bed. "You have the home phone numbers, right?"

"They're in the book, yes. These people don't keep private listings."

"Have someone's wife call. An emergency. Someone's got to get home."

Bernardine nodded his head. "Not bad, my friend. Not bad at all."

The minutes turned into quarter hours as the retired Deuxième officer went to work, unctuously, with promises of reward for the wives of telephone technicians, if they would do what he asked them to do. Two hung up on him, three turned him down with epithets born of the suspicious Paris curbsides; but the sixth, amid obscenities, declared, "Why not?" As long as the rodent she had married understood that the money was hers.

The hour was over, and Jason left the hotel, walking slowly, deliberately, down the pavement, crossing four streets until he saw a public phone on the Quai Voltaire by the Seine. A blanket of darkness was slowly floating down over Paris, the boats on the river and the bridges dotted with lights. As he approached the red kiosk he breathed steadily, inhaling deeply, exercising a control over himself that he never thought possible. He was about to place the most important phone call of his life, but he could not let the Jackal know that, if, indeed, it was the Jackal. He went inside, inserted the coin and dialed.

"Yes?" It was a woman's voice, the French oui sharp and harsh. A Parisienne.

"Blackbirds circle in the sky," said Bourne, repeating Santos's words in French. "They make a great deal of noise, all but one. He is silent."

"Where do you call from?"

"Here in Paris, but I am not from Paris."

"From where, then?"

"Where the winters are far colder," answered Jason, feeling the moisture on his hairline. Control. Control! "It is urgent that I reach a blackbird."

The line was suddenly filled with silence, a sonic void, and Bourne stopped breathing. Then came the voice, low, steady, and as hollow as the previous silence. "We speak to a Muscovite?"

The Jackal! It was the Jackal! The smooth, swift French could not hide the Latino trace. "I did not say that," answered Bourne; his own French dialect was one he employed frequently, with the guttural tinge of Gascony. "I merely said the winters were colder than Paris."

"Who is this?"

"Someone who is considered by someone who knows you sufficiently impressive to be given this number along with the proper words to go with it. I can offer you the contract of your career, of your life. The fee is immaterial-name your own-but those who pay are among the most powerful men in the United States. They control much of American industry, as well as that country's financial institutions, and have direct access to the nerve centers of the government."

"This is also a very strange call. Very unorthodox."

"If you're not interested, I'll forget this number and go elsewhere. I'm merely the broker. A simple yes or no will suffice."

"I do not commit to things I know nothing about, to people I never heard of."

"You'd recognize their positions, if I were at liberty to reveal them, believe that. However, I'm not seeking a commitment, only your interest at this point. If the answer is yes, I can reveal more. If it's no, well, I tried, but am forced to go elsewhere. The newspapers say he was in Brussels only yesterday. I'll find him." There was a short, sharp intake of breath at the mention of Brussels and the unspoken Jason Bourne. "Yes or no, blackbird?"

Silence. Finally the Jackal spoke. "Call me back in two hours," he ordered, hanging up the phone.

It was done! Jason leaned against the pay phone, the sweat pouring down his face and breaking out on his neck. The Pont-Royal. He had to get back to Bernardine!

"It was Carlos!" he announced, closing the door and crossing directly to the bedside phone while taking Santos's card out of his pocket. He dialed; in seconds, he spoke. "The bird's confirmed," he said. "Give me a name, any name." The pause was brief. "I've got it. The merchandise will be left with the concierge. It'll be locked and taped; count it and send my passports back to me. Have your best boy pick everything up and call off the dogs. They could lead a blackbird to you." Jason hung up and turned to Bernardine.

"The telephone number is in the fifteenth arrondissement," said the Deuxième veteran. "Our man knew that, or at least assumed it when I gave it to him."

"What's he going to do?"

"Go back into the tunnels and refine things further."

"Will he call us here?"

"Fortunately, he drives a motorbike. He said he would be back at work in ten minutes or so and reach us by this room number within the hour."

"Perfect!"

"Not entirely. He wants five thousand francs."

"He could have asked ten times that. ... What's 'within the hour'? How long before he calls?"