Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Identity

“Now I hear Delta,” said d’Anjou. “He doesn’t create his own trap; he doesn’t walk in front of a firing squad and ask for a blindfold.”

“No, he doesn’t,” agreed Bourne. “You don’t have a choice, d’Anjou. One hour. Outside the Louvre.”

The success of any trap lies in its fundamental simplicity. The reverse trap by the nature of its single complication must be swift and simpler still.

The words came to him as he waited in the taxi in Saint-Honoré down the street from Les Classiques. He had asked the driver to take him around the block twice, an American tourist whose wife was shopping in the strip of haute couture. Sooner or later she would emerge from one of the stores and he would find her.

What he found was Carlos’ surveillance. The rubber-capped antenna on the black sedan was both the proof and the danger signal. He would feel more secure if that radio transmitter were shorted out, but there was no way to do it. The alternative was misinformation. Sometime during the next forty-five minutes Jason would do his best to make sure the wrong message was sent over that radio.

From his concealed position in the back seat, he studied the two men in the car across the way. If there was anything that set them apart from a hundred other men like them in Saint-Honoré, it was the fact that they did not talk.

Philippe d’Anjou walked out onto the pavement, a gray homburg covering his gray hair. His glances swept the street, telling Bourne that the former Medusan had covered himself. He had called a number; he had relayed his startling information; he knew there were men in a car prepared to follow him.

A taxi, apparently ordered by phone, pulled up to the curb. D’Anjou spoke to the driver and climbed inside. Across the street an antenna rose ominously out of its cradle, the hunt was on.

The sedan pulled out after d’Anjou’s taxi; it was the confirmation Jason needed. He leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “I forgot,” he said irritably. “She said it was the Louvre this morning, shopping this afternoon. Christ, I’m half an hour late! Take me to the Louvre, will you please?”

“Mais oui, monsieur, Le Louvre.”

Twice during the short ride to the monumental façade that overlooked the Seine, Jason’s taxi passed the black sedan, only to be subsequently passed by it. The proximity gave Bourne the opportunity to see exactly what he needed to see. The man beside the driver in the sedan spoke repeatedly into the hand held radio microphone. Carlos was making sure the trap had no loose spikes; others were closing in on the execution ground.

They came to the enormous entrance of the Louvre. “Get in line behind those other taxis,” said Jason.

“But they wait for fares, monsieur. I have a fare; you are my fare. I will take you to the—”

“Just do as I say,” said Bourne, dropping fifty francs over the seat.

The driver swerved into the line. The black sedan was twenty yards away on the right; the man on the radio had turned in the seat and was looking out the left rear window. Jason followed his gaze and saw what he thought he might see. Several hundred feet to the west in the huge square was a gray automobile, the car that had followed Jacqueline Lavier and Villiers’ wife to the Church of the Blessed Sacrament and sped the latter away from Neuilly-sur-Seine after she had escorted Lavier to her final confession. Its antenna could be seen retracting down into its base. Over on the right, Carlos’ soldier no longer held the microphone. The black sedan’s antenna was also receding; contact had been made, visual sighting confirmed. Four men. These were Carlos’ executioners.

Bourne concentrated on the crowds in front of the Louvre entrance, spotting the elegantly dressed d’Anjou instantly. He was pacing slowly, cautiously, back and forth by the large block of white granite that flanked the marble steps on the left.

Now. It was time to send the misinformation. “Pull out of the line,” ordered Jason.

“What, monsieur?”

“Two hundred francs if you do exactly what I tell you. Pull out and go to the front of the line, then make two left turns, heading back up the next aisle.”

“I don’t understand, monsieur!”

“You don’t have to. Three hundred francs”

The driver swung right and proceeded to the head of the line, where he spun the wheel, sending the taxi to the left toward the row of parked cars. Bourne pulled the automatic from his belt, keeping it between his knees. He checked the silencer, twisting the cylinder taut.

“Where do you wish to go, monsieur?” asked the bewildered driver as they entered the aisle heading back toward the entrance to the Louvre.

“Slow down,” said Jason. “That large gray car up ahead, the one pointing to the Seine exit. Do you see it?”

“But of course.”

“Go around it slowly, to the right.” Bourne slid over to the left side of the seat and rolled down the window, keeping his head and the weapon concealed. He would show both in a matter of seconds.

The taxi approached the sedan’s trunk, the driver spinning the wheel again. They were parallel.

Jason thrust his head and his gun into view. He aimed for the gray sedan’s right rear window and fired, five spits coming one after another, shattering the glass, stunning the two men, who screamed at each other, lurching below the window frames to the floor of the front seat. But they had seen him. That was the misinformation.

“Get out of here!” yelled Bourne to the terrified driver, as he threw three hundred francs over the seat and wedged his soft felt hat into the well of the rear window. The taxi shot ahead toward the stone gates of the Louvre.

Now.

Jason slid back across the seat, opened the door and rolled out to the cobblestone pavement, shouting his last instructions to the driver. “If you want to stay alive, get out of here!” The taxi exploded forward, engine gunning, driver screaming. Bourne dove between two parked cars, now hidden from the gray sedan, and got up slowly, peering between the windows. Carlos’ men were quick, professional, losing no moment in the pursuit. They had the taxi in view, the cab no match for the powerful sedan, and in that taxi was the target. The man behind the wheel pulled the car into gear and raced ahead as his companion held the microphone, the antenna rising from its recess. Orders were being shouted to another sedan nearer the great stone steps. The speeding taxi swerved out into the street by the Seine, the large gray car directly behind it. As they passed within feet of Jason, the expressions on the two men’s faces said it all. They had Cain in their sights, the trap had closed and they would earn their pay in a matter of minutes.

The reverse trap by the nature of its single complication must be swift and simpler still…

A matter of minutes… He had only a matter of moments if everything he believed was so. D’Anjou! The contact had played his role—his minor role—and was expendable—as Jacqueline Lavier had been expendable.

Bourne ran out from between the two cars toward the black sedan; it was no more than fifty yards ahead. He could see the two men; they were converging on Philippe d’Anjou, who was still pacing in front of the short flight of marble steps. One accurate shot from either man and d’Anjou would be dead, Treadstone Seventy-One gone with him. Jason ran faster, his hand inside his coat, gripping the heavy automatic.

Carlos’ soldiers were only yards away, now hurrying themselves, the execution to be quick, the condemned man cut down before he understood what was happening.

“Medusa!” roared Bourne, not knowing why he shouted the name rather than d’Anjou’s own.

“Medusa—Medusa!”

D’Anjou’s head snapped up, shock on his face. The driver of the black sedan had spun around, his weapon leveled at Jason, while his companion moved toward d’Anjou, his gun aimed at the former Medusan. Bourne dove to his right, the automatic extended, steadied by his left hand. He fired in midair, his aim accurate; the man closing in on d’Anjou arched backward as his stiffened legs were caught in an instant of paralysis; he collapsed on the cobblestones. Two spits exploded over Jason’s head, the bullets impacting into metal behind him. He rolled to his left, his gun again steady, directed at the second man. He pulled the trigger twice; the driver screamed, an eruption of blood spreading across his face as he fell.