"You were gone perhaps thirty, thirty-five minutes, and he reached me shortly after you left. I'd say within the next half hour."

The telephone rang. Twenty seconds later they had an address on the boulevard Lefebvre.

"I'm leaving," said Jason Bourne, taking Bernardine's automatic off the desk and putting two grenades in his pocket. "Do you mind?"

"Be my guest," replied the Deuxième, reaching under his jacket and removing a second weapon from his belt. "Pickpockets so abound in Paris one should always carry a backup. ... But what for?"

"I've got at least a couple of hours and I want to look around."

"Alone?"

"How else? If we call for support, I risk being gunned down or spending the rest of my life in jail for an assassination in Belgium I had nothing to do with."

Former judge of the first circuit court in Boston, the once Honorable Brendan Patrick Prefontaine, watched the weeping, disconsolate Randolph Gates as he sat forward on the couch at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, his face in his widespread hands.

"Oh, good Christ, how the mighty fall with such a thud of finality," observed Brendan, pouring himself a short bourbon on the rocks. "So you got snookered, Randy. French style. Your facile brain and your imperial presence didn't help you very much when you saw Paree, huh? You should have stayed 'down on the farm,' soldier boy."

"My God, Prefontaine, you don't know what it was like! I was setting up a cartel-Paris, Bonn, London and New York with the Far East labor markets-an enterprise worth billions when I was taken from the Plaza-Athénée and put in a car and blindfolded. Then I was thrown into a plane and flown to Marseilles, where the most horrible things happened to me. I was kept in a room, and every few hours I was injected-for over six weeks! Women were brought in, films taken-I wasn't myself!"

"Maybe you were the self you never recognized, Dandy Boy. The same self that learned to anticipate instant gratification, if I use the phrase correctly. Make your clients extraordinary profits on paper, which they trade on the exchanges while thousands of jobs are lost in buy-outs. Oh, yes, my dear royalist, that's instant gratification."

"You're wrong, Judge-"

"So lovely to hear that term again. Thank you, Randy."

"The unions became too strong. Industry was being crippled. Many companies had to go overseas to survive!"

"And not talk? Oddly enough, you may have a point, but you never considered an alternative. ... Regardless, we stray. You emerged from your confinement in Marseilles an addict and, of course, there were the films of the eminent attorney in compromising situations."

"What could I do?" screamed Gates. "I was ruined!"

"We know what you did. You became this Jackal's confidence man in the world of high finance, a world where competition is undesirable baggage better lost along the way."

"It's how he found me to begin with. The cartel we were forming was opposed by Japanese and Taiwanese interests. They hired him. ... Oh, my God, he'll kill me!"

"Again?" asked the judge.

"What?"

"You forget. He thinks you're already dead-thanks to me."

"I have cases coming up, a congressional hearing next week. He'll know I'm alive!"

"Not if you don't show up."

"I have to! My clients expect-"

"Then I agree," interrupted Prefontaine. "He'll kill you. Sorry about that, Randy."

"What am I going to do?"

"There's a way, Dandy Boy, not only out of your current dilemma but for years to come. Of course, it will require some sacrifice on your part. For starters, a long convalescence at a private rehabilitation center, but even before that, your complete cooperation right now. The first ensures your imminent disappearance, the second-the capture and elimination of Carlos the Jackal. You'll be free, Randy."

"Anything!"

"How do you reach him?"

"I have a telephone number!" Gates fumbled for his wallet, yanking it out of his pocket and with trembling fingers digging into a recess. "Only four people alive have it!"

Prefontaine accepted his first $20,000-an-hour fee, instructed Randy to go home, beg Edith's forgiveness, and be prepared to leave Boston tomorrow. Brendan had heard of a private treatment center in Minneapolis, he thought, where the rich sought help incognito; he would refine the details in the morning and call him, naturally expecting a second payment for his services. The instant a shaken Gates left the room, Prefontaine went to the phone and called John St. Jacques at Tranquility Inn.

"John, it's the judge. Don't ask me questions, but I have urgent information that could be invaluable to your sister's husband. I realize I can't reach him, but I know he's dealing with someone in Washington-"

"His name is Alex Conklin," interrupted St. Jacques. "Wait a minute, Judge, Marie wrote the number down on the desk blotter. Let me get over there." The sound of one phone being placed on a hard surface preceded the clicks of another being picked up. "Here it is." Marie's brother recited the number.

"I'll explain everything later. Thank you, John."

"An awful lot of people keep telling me that, goddamn it!" said St. Jacques.

Prefontaine dialed the number with a Virginia area code. It was answered with a short, brusque "Yes?"

"Mr. Conklin, my name is Prefontaine and I was given this number by John St. Jacques. What I have to tell you is in the nature of an emergency."

"You're the judge," broke in Alex.

"Past tense, I'm afraid. Very past."

"What is it?"

"I know how to reach the man you call the Jackal."

"What?"

"Listen to me."

Bernardine stared at the ringing telephone, briefly debating with himself whether or not to pick it up. There was no question; he had to. "Yes?"

"Jason? It's you, isn't it? ... Perhaps I have the wrong room."

"Alex? This is you?"

"François? What are you doing there? Where's Jason?"

"Things have happened so fast. I know he's been trying to reach you."

"It's been a rough day. We've got Panov back."

"That's good news."

"I've got other news. A telephone number where the Jackal can be reached."

"We've got it! And a location. Our man left an hour ago."

"For Christ's sake, how did you get it?"

"A convoluted process I sincerely believe only your man could have negotiated. He's brilliantly imaginative, a true caméléon."

"Let's compare," said Conklin. "What's yours?"

Bernardine complied, reciting the number he had written down on Bourne's instructions.

The silence on the phone was a silent scream. "They're different," said Alex finally, his voice choked. "They're different!"

"A trap," said the Deuxième veteran. "God in heaven, it's a trap!"

26

Twice Bourne had passed the dark, quiet row of old stone houses on the boulevard Lefebvre in the concrete backwater of the fifteenth arrondissement. He then doubled back to the rue d'Alésia and found a sidewalk café. The outdoor tables, their candles flickering under glass, were peopled mostly by gesturing, argumentative students from the nearby Sorbonne and Montparnasse. It was nearing ten o'clock and the aproned waiters were growing irritable; the majority of customers were not full of largess, either in their hearts or in their pockets. Jason wanted only a strong espresso, but the perpetual scowl on the face of the approaching garçon convinced him he would get mud if he ordered only the coffee, so he added the most expensive brandy he could recall by name.

As the waiter returned to the service bar, Jason pulled out his small notebook and ballpoint pen, shutting his eyes for a moment, then opening them and sketching out everything he could envision from the row of houses on his inner screen. There were three structures of two attached houses each, separated by two narrow alleyways. Each double complex was three stories high, each front entrance reached by climbing a steep flight of brick steps, and at either end of the row were vacant lots covered with rubble, the remains of demolished adjacent buildings. The address of the Jackal's buried telephone number-the address was available in the underground tunnels solely for repair purposes-was the final structure on the right, and it took no imagination to know he occupied the entire building, if not the entire row.