Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Ultimatum

"Tutti-fruitee," said the driver, removing an outsized, wide-toothed comb from his hair as he swung out into the traffic.

"You have a reservation, sir?" asked the tuxedoed clerk behind the counter at the Ritz.

"I trust one of my law clerks made it for me. The name's Scofield, Justice William Scofield of the Supreme Court. I'd hate to think that the Ritz had lost a reservation, especially these days when everyone's screaming for consumer protection."

"Justice Scofield ... ? I'm sure it's here somewhere, sir."

"I specifically requested Suite Three-C, I'm sure it's in your computer."

"Three-C ... it's booked-"

"What?"

"No, no, I'm wrong, Mr. Justice. They haven't arrived ... I mean it's an error ... they're in another suite." The clerk pounded his bell with ferocity. "Bellboy, bellboy!"

"No need for that, young fella, I travel light. Just give me the key and point me in the right direction."

"Yes, sir!"

"I trust you've got a few bottles of decent whisky up there, as usual?"

"If they're not, they will be, Mr. Justice. Any particular brands?"

"Good rye, good bourbon and good brandy. The white stuff is for sissies, right?"

"Right, sir. Right away, sir!"

Twenty minutes later, his face washed and a drink in his hand, Prefontaine picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Randolph Gates.

"The Gates residence," said the woman on the line.

"Oh, come on, Edie, I'd know your voice under water and it's been almost thirty years."

"I know yours, too, but I simply can't place it."

"Try a rough adjunct professor at the law school who kept beating the hell out of your husband, which made no impression upon him and he was probably right because I ended up in jail. The first of the local judges to be put away, and rightfully so."

"Brendan? Dear God, it's you! I never believed all those things they said about you."

"Believe, my sweet, they were true. But right now I have to speak to the lord of the Gates. Is he there?"

"I suppose he is, I don't really know. He doesn't speak to me very much anymore."

"Things are not well, my dear?"

"I'd love to talk to you, Brendan. He's got a problem, a problem I never knew about."

"I suspect he has, Edie, and of course we'll talk. But at the moment I have to speak with him. Right now."

"I'll call him on the intercom."

"Don't tell him it's me, Edith. Tell him it's a man named Blackburne from the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean."

"What?"

"Do as I say, dear Edie. It's for his sake as well as yours-perhaps more for you, if truth were told."

"He's sick, Brendan."

"Yes, he is. Let's try to make him well. Get him on the line for me."

"I'll put you on hold."

The silence was interminable, the two minutes more like two hours until the graveled voice of Randolph Gates exploded on the line. "Who are you?" whispered the celebrated attorney.

"Relax, Randy, it's Brendan. Edith didn't recognize my voice, but I sure remembered hers. You're one lucky fellow."

"What do you want? What's this about Montserrat?"

"Well, I just came back from there-"

"You what?"

"I decided I needed a vacation."

"You didn't ... !" Gates's whisper was now essentially a cry of panic.

"Oh, but I did, and because I did your whole life is going to change. You see, I ran into the woman and her two children that you were so interested in, remember them? It's quite a story and I want to tell it to you in all its fascinating detail. ... You set them up to be killed, Dandy Randy, and that's a no-no. A dreadful no-no."

"I don't know what you're talking about! I've never heard of Montserrat or any woman with two children. You're a desperate sniveling drunk and I'll deny your insane allegations as the alcoholic fantasies of a convicted felon!"

"Well done, Counselor. But denying any allegations made by me isn't the core of your dilemma. No, that's in Paris."

"Paris ... ?"

"A certain man in Paris, someone I didn't realize was a living person, but I learned otherwise. It's somewhat murky how it came about, but a strange thing happened in Montserrat. I was mistaken for you."

"You were ... what?" Gates was barely audible, his thin voice tremulous.

"Yes. Odd, isn't it? I imagine that when this man in Paris tried to reach you here in Boston, someone told him your imperial presence was out or away and that's how the mix-up began. Two brilliant legal minds, both with an elusive connection to a woman and her two children, and Paris thought I was you."

"What happened?"

"Calm down, Randy. At the moment he probably thinks you're dead."

"What?"

"He tried to have me killed-you killed. For transgression,"

"Oh, my God!"

"And when he finds out you're very much alive and eating well in Boston, he won't permit a second attempt to fail."

"Jesus Christ ... !"

"There may be a way out, Dandy Boy, which is why you must come and see me. Incidentally, I'm in the same suite at the Ritz that you were in when I came to see you. Three-C; just take the elevator. Be here in thirty minutes, and remember, I have little patience with clients who abuse schedules, for I'm a very busy man. By the way, my fee is twenty thousand dollars an hour or any part thereof, so bring money, Randy. Lots of it. In cash."

He was ready, thought Bourne, studying himself in the mirror, satisfied with what he saw. He had spent the last three hours getting ready for his drive to Argenteuil, to a restaurant named Le Coeur du Soldat, the message center for a "blackbird," for Carlos the Jackal. The Chameleon had dressed for the environment he was about to enter; the clothes were simple, the body and the face less so. The first required a trip to the secondhand stores and pawn shops in Montmartre, where he found faded trousers and a surplus French army shirt, and an equally faded small combat ribbon that denoted a wounded veteran. The second, somewhat more complex, demanded hair coloring, a day's growth of beard, and another constricting bandage, this bound around his right knee so tight he could not forget the limp he had quickly perfected. His hair and eyebrows were now a dull red-dirty, unkempt red, which fit his new surroundings, a cheap hotel in Montparnasse whose front desk wanted as little contact as possible with its clientele.

His neck was more an irritant now than an impediment; either he was adjusting to the stiff, restricted movement or the healing process was doing its mysterious work. And that re stricted movement was not a liability where his current appearance was concerned; in truth, it was an asset. An embittered wounded veteran, a discarded son of France, would be hard pressed to forget his dual immobility. Jason shoved Bernardine's automatic into his trousers pocket, checked his money, his car keys, and his scabbarded hunting knife, the latter purchased at a sporting goods store and strapped inside his shirt, and limped to the door of the small, filthy, depressing room. Next stop, the Capucines and a nondescript Peugeot in an underground garage. He was ready,

Out on the street, he knew he had to walk a number of blocks before he found a taxi station; cabs were not the fashion in this section of Montparnasse. ... Neither was the commotion around a newspaper kiosk at the second corner. People were shouting, many waving their arms, clutching papers in their fists, anger and consternation in their voices. Instinctively, he quickened his pace, reached the stand, threw down his coins and grabbed a newspaper.

The breath went out of him as he tried to suppress the shock waves that swept through him. Teagarten killed! The assassin, Jason Bourne! Jason Bourne! Madness, insanity! What had happened? Was it a resurrection of Hong Kong and Macao? Was he losing what was left of his mind? Was he in some nightmare so real he had entered its dimensions, the horror of demented sleep, the fantasy of conjured, improvised terror turned into reality? He broke away from the crowd, reeled across the pavement, and leaned against the stone wall of a building, gasping for air, his neck now in pain, trying desperately to find a reasonable train of thought. Alex! A telephone!