“Bien.” Relieved, the woman lifted the wineglass to her lips. “You’ll see, it will be better for everyone.”
“It ... doesn’t really matter now.” He could barely be heard, and he knew it. What did he say?
What had he just said? Why did he say it? ... The mists were closing in again, the thunder getting louder; the pain had returned to his temples. “I mean ... I mean, as you say, it’s better for everyone.” He could feel--see--Lavier’s eyes on him, studying him. “It’s a reasonable solution.”
“Of course it is. You are not feeling well?”
“I said it was nothing; it’ll pass.”
“I’m relieved. Now, would you excuse me for a moment?”
“No.” Jason grabbed her arm.
“Je vous prie, monsieur. The powder room, that is all. If you care to, stand outside the door.”
“We’ll leave. You can stop on the way.” Bourne signaled the waiter for a check.
“As you wish,” she said, watching him.
He stood in the darkened corridor between the spills of light that came from recessed lamps in the ceiling. Across the way was the ladies’ room, denoted by small, uncapitalized letters of gold that read FEMMES. Beautiful people--stunning women, handsome men--kept passing by; the orbit was similar to that of Les Classiques. Jacqueline Lavier was at home.
She had also been in the ladies’ room for nearly ten minutes, a fact that would have disturbed Jason had he been able to concentrate on the time. He could not; he was on fire. Noise and pain consumed him, every nerve ending raw, exposed, the fibers swelling, terrified of puncture. He stared straight ahead, a history of dead men behind him. The past was in the eyes of truth; they had sought him out and he had seen them. Cain ... Cain ... Cain.
He shook his head and looked up at the black ceiling. He had to function; he could not allow himself to keep falling, plunging into the abyss filled with darkness and high wind. There were decisions to make. ... No, they were made; it was a question now of implementing them.
Marie. Marie? Oh, God, my love, we’ve been so wrong!
He breathed deeply and glanced at his watch--the chronometer he had traded for a thin gold piece of jewelry belonging to a marquis in the south of France. He is a man of immense skill, extremely inventive. ... There was no joy in that appraisal. He looked across at the ladies’ room.
Where was Jacqueline Lavier? Why didn’ t she come out? What could she hope to accomplish remaining inside? He had had the presence of mind to ask the maître d’ if there was a telephone there; the man had replied negatively, pointing to a booth by the entrance. The Lavier woman had been at his side, she heard the answer, understanding the inquiry.
There was a blinding flash of light. He lurched backward, recoiling into the wall, his hands in front of his eyes. The pain! Oh, Christ! His eyes were on fire!
And then he heard the words, spoken through the polite laughter of well-dressed men and women walking casually about the corridor.
“In memory of your dinner at Roget’s, monsieur,” said an animated hostess, holding a press camera by its vertical flashbar. “The photograph will be ready in a few minutes. Compliments of Roget.”
Bourne remained rigid, knowing that he could not smash the camera, the fear of another realization sweeping over him. “Why me?” he asked.
“Your fiancée requested it, monsieur,” replied the girl, nodding her head toward the ladies’ room.
“We talked inside. You are most fortunate; she is a lovely lady. She asked me to give you this.” The hostess held out a folded note; Jason took it as she pranced away toward the restaurant entrance.
Your illness disturbs me, as I’m sure it does you, my new friend. You may be what you say you are, and then again you may not. I shall have the answer in a half hour or so. A telephone call was made by a sympathetic diner, and that photograph is on its way to Paris. You cannot stop it any more than you can stop those driving now to Argenteuil. If we, indeed, have our compromise, neither will disturb you--as your illness disturbs me--and we shall talk again when my associates arrive.
It is said that Cain is a chameleon, appearing in various guises, and most convincing. It is also said that he is prone to violence and to fits of temper. These are an illness, no?
He ran down the dark street in Argenteuil after the receding roof light of the taxi; it turned the corner and disappeared. He stopped, breathing heavily, looking in all directions for another; there were none. The doorman at Roget’s had told him a cab would take ten to fifteen minutes to arrive; why had not monsieur requested one earlier? The trap was set and he had walked into it.
Up ahead! A light, another taxi! He broke into a run. He had to stop it; he had to get back to Paris. To Marie.
He was back in a labyrinth, racing blindly, knowing, finally, there was no escape. But the race would be made alone; that decision was irrevocable. There would be no discussion, no debate, no screaming back and forth--arguments based in love and uncertainty. For the certainty had been made clear. He knew who he was ... what he had been; he was guilty as charged--as suspected.
An hour or two saying nothing. Just watching, talking quietly about anything but the truth.
Loving. And then he would leave; she would never know when and he could never tell her why. He owed her that; it would hurt deeply for a while, but the ultimate pain would be far less than that caused by the stigma of Cain.
Cain!
Marie. Marie! What have I done?
“Taxi! Taxi!”
Get out of Paris! Now! Whatever you’re doing, stop it and get out! ... Those are orders from your government. They want you out of there. They want him isolated.
Marie crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table, her eyes falling on the three-year-old issue of Potomac Quarterly, her thoughts briefly on the terrible game Jason had forced her to play.
“I won’t listen!” she said to herself out loud, startled at the sound of her own voice in the empty room. She walked to the window, the same window he had faced, looking out, frightened, trying to make her understand.
I have to know certain things ... enough to make a decision ... but ma ybe not everything. A part of me has to be able ... to run, disappear. I have to be able to say to myself, what was isn’t any longer, and there’s a possibility that it never was because I have no memory of it. What a person can’t remember didn’t exist ... for him.
“My darling, my darling. Don’t let them do this to you!” Her spoken words did not startle now, for it was as though he were there in the room, listening, heeding his own words, willing to run, disappear ... with her. But at the core of her understanding she knew he could not do that; he could not settle for a half-truth, or three-quarters of a lie.
They want him isolated.
Who were they? The answer was in Canada and Canada was cut off, another trap.
Jason was right about Paris; she felt it, too. Whatever it was, was here. If they could find one person to lift the shroud and let him see for himself he was being manipulated, then other questions might be manageable, the answers no longer pushing him toward self-destruction. If he could be convinced that whatever unremembered crimes he had committed, he was a pawn for a much greater single crime, he might be able to walk away, disappear with her. Everything was relative.
What the man she loved had to be able to say to himself was not that the past no longer existed, but that it had, and he could live with it, and put it to rest. That was the rationalization he needed, the conviction that whatever he had been was far less than his enemies wanted the world to believe, for they would not use him otherwise. He was the scapegoat, his death to take the place of another’s. If he could only see that, if she could only convince him. And if she did not, she would lose him. They would take him; they would kill him.
They.
“Who are you?” she screamed at the window, at the lights of Paris outside. “Where are you?” She could feel a cold wind against her face as surely as if the panes of glass had melted, the night air rushing inside. It was followed by a tightening in her throat, and for a moment she could not swallow ... could not breathe. The moment passed and she breathed again. She was afraid; it had happened to her before, on their first night in Paris, when she had left the café to find him on the steps of the Cluny. She had been walking rapidly down the Saint-Michel when it happened: the cold wind, the swelling of the throat ... at that moment she had not been able to breathe. Later she thought she knew why; at that moment also, several blocks away inside the Sorbonne, Jason had raced to a judgment that in minutes he would reverse--but he had reached it then. He had made up his mind he would not come to her.
“Stop it!” she cried. “It’s crazy,” she added, shaking her head, looking at her watch. He had been gone over five hours; where was he? Where was he?
Bourne got out of the taxi in front of the seedily elegant hotel in Montparnasse. The next hour would be the most difficult of his briefly remembered life--a life that was a void before Port Noir, a nightmare since. The nightmare would continue, but he would live with it alone; he loved her too much to ask her to live it with him. He would find a way to disappear, taking with him the evidence that tied her to Cain. It was as simple as that; he would leave for a nonexistent rendezvous and not return. And sometime during the next hour he would write her a note:
It’s over. I’ve found my arrows. Go back to Canada and say nothing for both our sakes. I know where to reach you.
The last was unfair--he would never reach her--but the small, feathered hope had to be there, if only to get her on a plane to Ottawa. In time--with time--their weeks together would fade into a darkly kept secret, a cache of brief riches to be uncovered and touched at odd quiet moments. And then no more, for life was lived for active memories; the dormant ones lost meaning. No one knew that better than he did.
He passed through the lobby, nodding at the concierge, who sat on his stool behind the marble counter, reading a newspaper. The man barely looked up, noting only that the intruder belonged.
The elevator rumbled and groaned its way up to the fifth floor. Jason breathed deeply and reached for the gate; above all he would avoid dramatics--no alarms raised by words or by looks.