Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Ultimatum

The two former Royal Commandos, one rather short, the other fairly tall, had selected a series of stations between the points where the Frenchman and his "nurse" would turn and head in different directions. As the old man and the girl proceeded into the next planned leg, the second commando bypassed his colleague in darkness to the next location, using unseen routes only they knew or could negotiate, such as that beyond the coastline wall above the tangled tropical brush that led to the beach below the villas. The black guards climbed like two enormous spiders in a jungle, crawling swiftly, effortlessly from branch and rock to limb and vine, keeping pace with their two charges. Bourne followed the second man, his radio on Receive, the angry words of Fontaine pulsating through the static.

Where is that other nurse? That lovely girl who takes care of my woman? Where is she? I haven't seen her all day! The emphatic phrases were repeated over and over again with growing hostility.

Jason slipped. He was caught! He was behind the coastal wall, his left foot entangled in thick vines. He could not pull his leg loose-the strength was not there! He moved his head-his shoulders-and the hot flashes of pain broke out on his neck. It is nothing. Pull, yank, rip! ... His lungs bursting, the blood now drenching his shirt, he worked his way free and crawled on.

Suddenly there were lights, colored lights spilling over the wall. They had reached the path to the chapel, the red and blue floodlights that lit up the entrance to Tranquility Inn's sealed off sanctuary. It was the last destination before the return route back to Fontaine's villa, and one they all agreed was designed more to permit the old Frenchman time to catch his breath than for any other purpose. St. Jacques had stationed a guard there to prevent entrance into the demolished chapel. There would be no contact here. Then Bourne heard the words over the radio-the words that would send the false nurse racing away from her false charge.

"Get away from me!" yelled Fontaine. "I don't like you. Where is our regular nurse? What have you done with her?"

Up ahead, the two commandos were side by side, crouching below the wall. They turned and looked at Jason, their expressions in the eerie wash of colored lights telling him what he knew only too well. From that moment on, all decisions were his; they had led him, escorted him, to his enemy. The rest was up to him.

The unexpected rarely disturbed Bourne; it did now. Had Fontaine made a mistake? Had the old man forgotten about the inn's guard and erroneously presumed he was the Jackal's contact? In his aged eyes had an understandably surprised reaction on the guard's part been misinterpreted as an approach? Anything was possible, but considering the Frenchman's background-the life of a survivor-and the state of his alert mind, such a mistake was not realistic.

Then the possibility of another reality came into focus and it was sickening. Had the guard been killed or bribed, replaced by another? Carlos was a master of the turn-around. It was said he had fulfilled a contract on the assassination of Anwar Sadat without firing a weapon, by merely replacing the Egyptian president's security detail with inexperienced recruits-money dispersed in Cairo returned a hundredfold by the anti-Israel brotherhoods in the Middle East. If it were true, the exercise on Tranquility Isle was child's play.

Jason rose to his feet, gripped the top of the coastal wall, and slowly, painfully, his neck causing agony, pulled himself up over the ledge, again slowly, inch by inch, sending one arm after the other across the surface to grab the opposing edge for support. What he saw stunned him!

Fontaine was immobile, his mouth gaped in shock, his wide eyes disbelieving, as another old man in a tan gabardine suit approached him and threw his arms around the aged hero of France. Fontaine pushed the man away in panic and bewilderment. The words erupted out of the radio in Bourne's pocket. "Claude! Quelle secousse! Vous etes ici!"

The ancient friend replied in a tremulous voice, speaking French. "It is a privilege our monseigneur permitted me. To see for a final time my sister, and to give comfort to my friend, her husband. I am here and I am with you!"

"With me? He brought you here? But, of course, he did!"

"I am to take you to him. The great man wishes to speak with you."

"Do you know what you're doing-what you've done?"

"I am with you, with her. What else matters?"

"She's dead! She took her own life last night! He intended to kill us both."

Shut off your radio! screamed Bourne in the silence of his thoughts. Kill the radio! It was too late. The left door of the chapel opened and the silhouetted figure of a man walked out into the floodlit corridor of colored lights. He was young, muscular and blond, with blunt features and rigid posture. Was the Jackal training someone else to take his place?

"Come with me, please," said the blond man, his French gentle but icily commanding. "You," he added, addressing the old man in the tan gabardine suit. "Stay where you are. At the slightest sound, fire your gun. ... Take it out. Hold it in your hand."

"Oui, monsieur."

Jason watched helplessly as Fontaine was escorted through the door of the chapel. From the pocket of his jacket there was an eruption of static followed by a snap; the Frenchman's radio had been found and destroyed. Yet something was wrong, off center, out of balance-or perhaps too symmetrical. It made no sense for Carlos to use the location of a failed trap a second time, no sense at all! The appearance of the brother of Fontaine's wife was an exceptional move, worthy of the Jackal, a truly unexpected move within the swirling winds of confusion, but not this, not again Tranquility Inn's superfluous chapel. It was too orderly, too repetitive, too obvious. Wrong.

And therefore right? considered Bourne. Was it the illogical logic of the assassin who had eluded a hundred special branches of the international intelligence community for nearly thirty years? "He wouldn't do that-it's crazy!" "... Oh, yes, he might because he knows we think it's crazy." Was the Jackal in the chapel or wasn't he? If not, where was he? Where had he set his trap?

The lethal chess game was not only supremely intricate, it was sublimely intimate. Others might die, but only one of them would live. It was the only way it could end. Death to the seller of death or death to the challenger, one seeking the preservation of a legend, the other seeking the preservation of his family and himself. Carlos had the advantage; ultimately he would risk everything, for, as Fontaine revealed, he was a dying man and he did not care. Bourne had everything to live for, a middle-aged hunter whose life was indelibly marked, split in two by the death of a vaguely remembered wife and children long ago in far-off Cambodia. It could not, would not, happen again!

Jason slid down off the coastal wall to the slanting precipice at its base. He crawled forward to the two former commandos and whispered, "They've taken Fontaine inside."

"Where is the guard?" asked the man nearest Bourne, confusion and anger in his whisper. "I myself placed him here with specific instructions. No one was permitted inside. He was to be on the radio the instant he saw anyone!"

"Then I'm afraid he didn't see him."

"Who?"

"A blond man who speaks French."

Both commandos whipped their heads toward each other, exchanging glances as the second guard instantly looked at Jason and spoke quietly. "Describe him, please," he said.

"Medium height, large chest and shoulders-"

"Enough," interrupted the first guard. "Our man saw him, sir. He is third provost of the government police, an officer who speaks several languages and is chief of drug investigations."

"But why is he here, mon?" the second commando asked his colleague. "Mr. Saint Jay said the Crown police are not told everything, they are not part of us."