“Later. Not now. Don’t say anything for a while. Just hold me; let me hold you.”
The minutes passed, hysteria ran its course and the outlines of reality came back into focus.
Bourne led her to the chair; she caught the sleeve of her dress on the frayed lace. They both smiled, as he knelt beside her, holding her hand in silence.
“How about that drink?” he said finally.
“I think so,” she replied, briefly tightening her grip on his hand as he got up from the floor. “You poured it quite a while ago.”
“It won’t go flat.” He went to the bureau and returned with two glasses half filled with whiskey.
She took hers. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Calmer. Still confused ... frightened, of course. Maybe angry, too, I’m not sure. I’m too afraid to think about that.” She drank, closing her eyes, her head pressed back against the chair. “Why did you do it, Jason?”
“Because I thought I had to. That’s the simple answer.”
“And no answer at all. I deserve more than that.”
“Yes, you do, and I’ll give it to you. I have to now because you have to hear it; you have to understand. You have to protect yourself.”
“Protect--“
He held up his hand, interrupting her. “It’ll come later. All of it, if you like. But the first thing we have to do is know what happened--not to me, but to you. That’s where we have to begin. Can you do it?”
“The newspaper?”
“Yes.”
“God knows, I’m interested,” she said, smiling weakly.
“Here.” Jason went to the bed where he had dropped the two papers. “We’ll both read it.”
“No games?”
“No games.”
They read the long article in silence, an article that told of death and intrigue in Zurich. Every now and then Marie gasped, shocked at what she was reading; at other times she shook her head in disbelief. Bourne said nothing. He saw the hand of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. Carlos will follow Cain to the ends of the earth. Carlos will kill him. Marie St. Jacques was expendable, a baited decoy that would die in the trap that caught Cain.
I am Cain. I am death.
The article was, in fact, two articles--an odd mixture of fact and conjecture, speculations taking over where evidence came to an end. The first part indicated a Canadian government employee, a female economist, Marie St. Jacques. She was placed at the scene of three murders, her fingerprints confirmed by the Canadian government. In addition, police found a hotel key from the Carillon du Lac, apparently lost during the violence on the Guisan Quai. It was the key to Marie St. Jacques’ room, given to her by the hotel clerk, who remembered her well--remembered what appeared to him to be a guest in a highly disturbed state of anxiety. The final piece of evidence was a handgun discovered not far from the Steppdeckstrasse, in an alley close by the scene of two other killings.
Ballistics held it to be the murder weapon, and again there were fingerprints, again confirmed by the Canadian government. They belonged to the woman, Marie St. Jacques.
It was at this point that the article veered from fact. It spoke of rumors along the Bahnhofstrasse that a multimillion-dollar theft had taken place by means of a computer manipulation dealing with a numbered, confidential account belonging to an American corporation called Treadstone Seventy-One. The bank was also named; it was of course the Gemeinschaft. But everything else was clouded, obscure, more speculation than fact.
According to “unnamed sources,” an American male holding the proper codes transferred millions to a bank in Paris, assigning the new account to specific individuals who were to assume rights of possession. The assignees were waiting in Paris, and upon clearance, withdrew the millions and disappeared. The success of the operation was traced to the American’s obtaining the accurate codes to the Gemeinschaft account, a feat made possible by penetrating the bank’s numerical sequence related to year, month and day of entry, standard procedure for confidential holdings. Such an analysis could only be made through the use of sophisticated computer techniques and a thorough knowledge of Swiss banking practices. When questioned, an officer of the bank, Herr Walther Apfel, acknowledged that there was an ongoing investigation into matters pertaining to the American company, but pursuant to Swiss law, “the bank would have no further comment--to anyone.”
Here the connection to Marie St. Jacques was clarified. She was described as a government economist extensively schooled in international banking procedures, as well as a skilled computer programmer. She was suspected of being an accomplice, her expertise necessary to the massive theft. And there was a male suspect; she was reported to have been seen in his company at the Carillon du Lac.
Marie finished the article first and let the paper drop to the floor. At the sound, Bourne looked over from the edge of the bed. She was staring at the wall, a strange pensive serenity having come over her. It was the last reaction he expected. He finished reading quickly, feeling depressed and hopeless--for a moment, speechless. Then he found his voice and spoke.
“Lies,” he said, “and they were made because of me, because of who and what I am. Smoke you out, they find me. I’m sorry, sorrier than I can ever tell you.” Marie shifted her eyes from the wall and looked at him. “It goes deeper than lies, Jason,” she said.
“There’s too much truth for lies alone.”
“Truth? The only truth is that you were in Zurich. You never touched a gun, you were never in an alley near the Steppdeckstrasse, you didn’t lose a hotel key and you never went near the Gemeinschaft.”
“Agreed, but that’s not the truth I’m talking about.”
“Then what is?”
“The Gemeinschaft, Treadstone Seventy-One, Apfel. Those are true and the fact that any were mentioned--especially Apfel’s acknowledgment--is incredible. Swiss bankers are cautious men.
They don’t ridicule the laws, not this way; the jail sentences are too severe. The statutes pertaining to banking confidentiality are among the most sacrosanct in Switzerland. Apfel could go to prison for years for saying what he did, for even alluding to such an account, much less confirming it by name.
Unless he was ordered to say what he did by an authority powerful enough to contravene the laws.”
She stopped, her eyes straying to the wall again. “Why? Why was the Gemeinschaft or Treadstone or Apfel ever made part of the story?”
“I told you. They want me and they know we’re together. Carlos knows we’re together. Find you, he finds me.”
“No, Jason, it goes beyond Carlos. You really don’t understand the laws in Switzerland Not even a Carlos could cause them to be flaunted this way.” She looked at him, but her eyes did not see him; she was peering through her own mists. “This isn’t one story, it’s two. Both are constructed out of lies, the first connected to the second by tenuous speculation--public speculation--on a banking crisis that would never be made public, unless and until a thorough and private investigation proved the facts. And that second story--the patently false statement that millions were stolen from the Gemeinschaft--was tacked onto the equally false story that I’m wanted for killing three men in Zurich. It was added. Deliberately.”
“Explain that, please.”
“It’s there, Jason. Believe me when I tell you that; it’s right in front of us.”
“What is?”
“Someone’s trying to send us a message.”
The army sedan sped south on Manhattan’s East River Drive, headlights illuminating the swirling remnants of a late-winter snowfall. The major in the back seat dozed, his long body angled into the corner, his legs stretched out diagonally across the floor. In his lap was a briefcase, a thin nylon cord attached to the handle by a metal clamp, the cord itself strung through his right sleeve and down his inner tunic to his belt. The security device had been removed only twice in the past nine hours.
Once during the major’s departure from Zurich, and again with his arrival at Kennedy Airport. In both places, however, U. S. government personnel had been watching the customs clerks--more precisely, watching the briefcase. They were not told why, they were simply ordered to observe the inspections, and at the slightest deviation from normal procedures--which meant any undue interest in the briefcase--they were to intercede. With weapons, if necessary.
There was a sudden, quiet ringing; the major snapped his eyes open and brought his left hand up in front of his face. The sound was a wrist alarm; he pressed the button on his watch and squinted at the second radium dial of his two-zoned instrument. The first was on Zurich time, the second, New York; the alarm had been set twenty-four hours ago, when the officer had received his cabled orders.
The transmission would come within the next three minutes. That is, thought the major, it would come if Iron Ass was as precise as he expected his subordinates to be. The officer stretched, awkwardly balancing the briefcase, and leaned forward, speaking to the driver.
“Sergeant, turn on your scrambler to 1430 megahertz, will you please?”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant flipped two switches on the radio panel beneath the dashboard, then twisted the dial to the 1430 frequency. “There it is, Major.”
“Thanks. Will the microphone reach back here?”