Thirty-two seconds was his guess; it had taken less than a minute to pull his would-be executioners from the car. He looked at them as he limped around the hood to the door. They were curled up obscenely next to one another against a filthy brick wall. In darkness.
He climbed behind the wheel and backed out of the alley.
Geh! Schnell. Guisan Quai!
9
He reached an intersection, the traffic light red. Lights. On the left, several blocks east, he could see lights arching gently into the night sky. A bridge! The Limmat! The signal turned green; he swung the sedan to the left.
He was back on the Bahnhofstrasse; the start of the Guisan Quai was only minutes away. The wide avenue curved around the water’s edge, riverbank and lakefront merging. Moments later, on his left was the silhouetted outline of a park, in summer a stroller’s haven, now dark, devoid of tourists and Zurichers. He passed an entrance for vehicles; there was a heavy chain across the white pavement, suspended between two stone posts. He came to a second, another chain prohibiting access. But it was not the same; something was different, something odd. He stopped the car and looked closer, reaching across the seat for the flashlight he had taken from his would-be executioner. He snapped it on and shot the beam over the heavy chain. What was it? What was different?
It was not the chain. It was beneath the chain. On the white pavement kept spotless by maintenance crews. There were tire marks, at odds with the surrounding cleanliness. They would not be noticed during the summer months; they were now. It was as if the filth of the Steppdeckstrasse had traveled too well.
Bourne switched off the flashlight and dropped it on the seat. The pain in his battered left hand suddenly fused with the agony in his shoulder and his arm; he had to push all pain out of his mind; he had to curtail the bleeding as best he could. His shirt had been ripped; he reached inside and ripped it further, pulling out a strip of cloth which he proceeded to wrap around his left hand, knotting it with teeth and fingers. He was as ready as he would ever be.
He picked up the gun—his would-be executioner’s gun—and checked the clip: full. He waited until two cars had passed him, then extinguished the headlights and made a U-turn, parking next to the chain. He got out, instinctively testing his leg on the pavement, then favoring it as he limped to the nearest post and lifted the hook off the iron circle protruding from the stone. He lowered the chain, making as little noise as possible, and returned to the car.
He pulled at the gearshift, gently pressed the accelerator, then released it. He was now coasting into the wide expanse of an unlit parking area, made darker by the abrupt end of the white entrance road and the start of a field of black asphalt. Beyond, two-hundred-odd yards in the distance, was the straight dark line of the seawall, a wall that contained no sea but, instead, the currents of the Limmat as they poured into the waters of Lake Zurich. Farther away were the lights of the boats, bobbing in stately splendor. Beyond these were the stationary lights of the Old City, the blurred floodlights of darkened piers. Jason’s eyes took everything in, for the distance was his backdrop; he was looking for shapes in front of it.
To the right. The right. A dark outline darker than the wall, an intrusion of black on lesser black—obscure, faint, barely discernible, but there. A hundred yards away ... now ninety, eighty-five; he cut off the engine and brought the car to a stop. He sat motionless by the open window, staring into the darkness, trying to see more clearly. He heard the wind coming off the water; it covered any sound the car had made.
Sound. A cry. Low, throated ... delivered in fear. A harsh slap followed, then another, and another. A scream was formed, then swallowed, broken, echoing off into silence.
Bourne got out of the car silently, the gun in his right hand, the flashlight awkward in the bloody fingers of his left. He walked toward the obscure black shape, each step, each limp a study in silence.
What he saw first was what he had seen last when the small sedan had disappeared in the shadows of the Steppdeckstrasse. The shining metal of the twisted chrome bumper; it glistened now in the night light.
Four slaps in rapid succession, flesh against flesh, blows maniacally administered, received with muted screams of terror. Cries terminated, gasps permitted, thrashing movement part of it all. Inside the car!
Jason crouched as best he could, sidestepping around the trunk toward the right rear window. He rose slowly, then suddenly, using sound as a weapon of shock, shouted as he switched on the powerful flashlight.
“You move, you’re dead!”
What he saw inside filled him with revulsion and fury. Marie St. Jacques’ clothes were torn away, shredded into strips. Hands were poised like claws on her half-naked body, kneading her breasts, separating her legs. The executioner’s organ protruded from the cloth of his trousers; he was inflicting the final indignity before he carried out the sentence of death.
“Get out, you son of a bitch!”
There was a massive shattering of glass; the man raping Marie St. Jacques saw the obvious. Bourne could not fire the gun for fear of killing the woman; he had spun off her, crashing the heel of his shoe into the window of the small car. Glass flew out, sharp fragments blanketing Jason’s face. He closed his eyes, limping backward to avoid the spray.
The door swung open; a blinding spit of light accompanied the explosion. Hot, searing pain spread through Bourne’s right side. The fabric of his coat was blown away, blood matting what remained of his shirt. He squeezed the trigger, only vaguely able to see the figure rolling on the ground; he fired again, the bullet detonating the surface of the asphalt. The executioner had rolled and lurched out of sight ... into the darker blackness, unseen.
Jason knew he could not stay where he was; to do so was his own execution. He raced, dragging his leg, to the cover of the open door.
“Stay inside!” he yelled to Marie St. Jacques; the woman had started to move in panic. “Goddamn it! Stay in there!”
A gunshot; the bullet imbedded in the metal of the door. A running figure was silhouetted above the wall. Bourne fired twice, grateful for an expulsion of breath in the distance. He had wounded the man; he had not killed him. But the executioner would function less well than he had sixty seconds ago.
Lights. Dim lights ... squared, frames. What was it? What were they? He looked to the left and saw what he could not possibly have seen before. A small brick structure, some kind of dwelling by the seawall. Lights had been turned on inside. A watchman’s station; someone inside had heard the gunshots.
“Was ist los? Wer ist da?” The shouts came from the figure of a man—a bent-over, old man—standing in a lighted doorway. Then the beam of a flashlight pierced the blacker darkness. Bourne followed it with his eyes, hoping it would shine on the executioner.
It did. He was crouched by the wall. Jason stood up and fired; at the sound of his gun, the beam swung over to him. He was the target; two shots came from the darkness, a bullet ricocheting off a metal strip in the window. Steel punctured his neck; blood erupted.
Racing footsteps. The executioner was running toward the source of the light.
“Nein!”
He had reached it; the figure in the doorway was lashed by an arm that was both his leash and his cage. The beam went out; in the light of the windows Jason could see the killer pulling the watchman away, using the old man as a shield, dragging him back into darkness.
Bourne watched until he could see no more, his gun raised helplessly over the hood. As he was helpless, his body draining.
There was a final shot, followed by a guttural cry and, once again, racing footsteps. The executioner had carried out a sentence of death, not with the condemned woman, but with an old man. He was running; he had made his escape.
Bourne could run no longer; the pain had finally immobilized him, his vision too blurred, his sense of survival exhausted. He lowered himself to the pavement. There was nothing; he simply did not care.
Whatever he was, let it be. Let it be.
T
he St. Jacques woman crawled out of the car, holding her clothes, every move made in shock. She stared at Jason, disbelief, horror and confusion coming together in her eyes.
“Go on,” he whispered, hoping she could hear him. “There’s a car back there, the keys are in it. Get out of here. He may bring others, I don’t know.”
“You came for me,” she said, her voice echoing through a tunnel of bewilderment.
“Get out! Get in that car and go like hell, Doctor. If anyone tries to stop you, run him down. Reach the police ... real ones, with uniforms, you damn fool.” His throat was so hot, his stomach so cold. Fire and ice; he’d felt them before. Together. Where was it?
“You saved my life,” she continued in that hollow tone, the words floating in the air. “You came for me. You came back for me, and saved ... my ... life.”
“Don’t make it what it wasn’t” You are incidental, Doctor. You are a reflex, an instinct born of forgotten memories, conduits electrically prodded by stress. You see, I know the words ... I don’t care anymore. I hurt—oh my God, I hurt.
“You were free. You could have kept going but you didn’t. You came back for me.”
He heard her through mists of pain. He saw her, and what he saw was unreasonable—as unreasonable as the pain. She was kneeling beside him, touching his face, touching his head. Stop it! Do not touch my head! Leave me.
“Why did you do that?” It was her voice, not his.
She was asking him a question. Didn’t she understand? He could not answer her.
What was she doing? She had torn a piece of cloth and was wrapping it around his neck ... and now another, this larger, part of her dress. She had loosened his belt and was pushing the soft smooth cloth down into the boiling hot skin on his right hip.
“It wasn’t you.” He found words and used them quickly. He wanted the peace of darkness—as he had wanted it before but could not remember when. He could find it if she left him. “That man ... he’d seen me. He could identify me. It was him. I wanted him. Now get out!”
“So could half a dozen others,” she replied, another note in her voice. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me!”
She was standing above him now. Then she was not there. She was gone. She had left him. The peace would come quickly now; he would be swallowed up in the dark crashing waters and the pain would be washed away. He leaned back against the car and let himself drift with the currents of his mind.
A noise intruded. A motor, rolling and disruptive. He did not care for it; it interfered with the freedom of his own particular sea. Then a hand was on his arm. Then another, gently pulling him up.
“Come on,” said the voice, “help me.”
“Let go of me!” The command was shouted; he had shouted it. But the command was not obeyed. He was appalled; commands should be obeyed. Yet not always; something told him that. The wind was there again, but not a wind in Zurich. In some other place, high in the night sky. And a signal came, a light flashed on, and he leaped up, whipped by furious new currents.
“All right. You’re all right,” said the maddening voice that would not pay attention to his commands. “Lift your foot up. Lift it! ... That’s right. You did it. Now, inside the car. Ease yourself back ... slowly. That’s right.”
He was falling ... falling in the pitch black sky. And then the falling stopped, everything stopped, and there was stillness; he could hear his own breathing. And footsteps, he could hear footsteps ... and the sound of a door closing, followed by the rolling, disruptive noise beneath him, in front of him, somewhere.
Motion, swaying in circles. Balance was gone and he was falling again, only to be stopped again, another body against his body, a hand holding him, lowering him. His face felt cool; and then he felt nothing. He was drifting again, currents gentler now, darkness complete.
There were voices above him, in the distance, but not so far away. Shapes came slowly into focus, lit by the spill of table lamps. He was in a fairly large room, and on a bed, a narrow bed, blankets covering him. Across the room were two people, a man in an overcoat and a woman ... dressed in a dark red skirt beneath a white blouse. Dark red, as the hair was. ...
The St. Jacques woman? It was she, standing by a door talking to a man holding a leather bag in his left hand. They were speaking French.
“Rest, mainly,” the man was saying. “If you’re not accessible to me, anyone can remove the sutures. They can be taken out in a week, I’d guess.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Thank you. You’ve been most generous. I’ll go now. Perhaps I’ll hear from you, perhaps not.”
The doctor opened the door and let himself out. When he was gone the woman reached down and slid the bolt in place. She turned and saw Bourne looking at her. She walked slowly, cautiously, toward the bed.
“Can you hear me?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You’re hurt,” she said, “quite badly; but if you stay quiet, it won’t be necessary for you to get to a hospital. That was a doctor ... obviously. I paid him out of the money I found on you; quite a bit more than might seem usual, but I was told he could be trusted. It was your idea, incidentally. While we were driving, you kept saying you had to find a doctor, one you could pay to keep quiet. You were right. It wasn’t difficult.”
“Where are we?” He could hear his voice; it was weak, but he could hear it.
“A village called Lenzburg, about twenty miles outside of Zurich. The doctor’s from Wohlen; it’s a nearby town. He’ll see you in a week, if you’re here.”
“How? ...” He tried to raise himself but the strength wasn’t there. She touched his shoulder; it was an order to lie back down.
“I’ll tell you what happened, and perhaps that will answer your questions. At least I hope so, because if it doesn’t, I’m not sure I can.” She stood motionless, looking down at him, her tone controlled. “An animal was raping me—after which he had orders to kill me. There was no way I was going to live. In the Steppdeckstrasse, you tried to stop them, and when you couldn’t, you told me to scream, to keep screaming. It was all you could do, and by shouting to me, you risked being killed at that moment yourself. Later, you somehow got free—I don’t know how, but I know you were hurt very badly doing so—and you came back to find me.”
“Him,” interrupted Jason, “I wanted him.”
“You told me that, and I’ll say what I said before. I don’t believe you. Not because you’re a poor liar, but because it doesn’t conform with the facts. I work with statistics, Mr. Washburn, or Mr. Bourne, or whatever your name is. I respect observable data and I can spot inaccuracies; I’m trained to do that. Two men went in that building to find you, and I heard you say they were both alive. They could identify you. And there’s the owner of the Drei Alpenhäuser; he could too. Those are the facts, and you know them as well as I do. No, you came back to find me. You came back and saved my life.”
“Go on,” he said, his voice gaining strength. “What happened?”
“I made a decision. It was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made in my life. I think a person can only make a decision like that if he’s nearly lost his life by an act of violence, his life saved by someone else. I decided to help you. Only for a while—for just a few hours, perhaps—but I would help you get away.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“I almost did, and I’m not sure I can tell you why I didn’t. Maybe it was the rape, I don’t know. I’m being honest with you. I’ve always been told it’s the most horrible experience a woman can go through. I believe it now. And I heard the anger—the disgust—in your own voice when you shouted at him. I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live, as much as I may want to.”
“The police?” he repeated.
“That man at the Drei Alpenhäuser said the police were looking for you. That a telephone number had been set up in Zurich.” She paused. “I couldn’t give you to the police. Not then. Not after what you did.
”
“Knowing what I am?” he asked.
“I know only what I’ve heard, and what I’ve heard doesn’t correspond with the injured man who came back for me and offered his life for mine.”
“That’s not very bright.”
“That’s the one thing I am, Mr. Bourne—I assume it’s Bourne, it’s what he called you. Very bright.”
“I hit you. I threatened to kill you.”
“If I’d been you, and men were trying to kill me, I probably would have done the same—if I were capable.”
“So you drove out of Zurich?”
“Not at first, not for a half hour or so. I had to calm down, reach my decision. I’m methodical.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
“I was a wreck, a mess; I needed clothes, hairbrush, makeup. I couldn’t walk anywhere. I found a telephone booth down by the river, and there was no one around, so I got out of the car and called a colleague at the hotel—”
“The Frenchman? The Belgian?” interrupted Jason.
“No. They’d been at the Bertinelli lecture, and if they had recognized me up on the stage with you, I assumed they’d given my name to the police. Instead, I called a woman who’s a member of our delegation; she loathes Bertinelli and was in her room. We’ve worked together for several years and were friends. I told her that if she heard anything about me to disregard it, I was perfectly all right. As a matter of fact, if anyone asked about me, she was to say I was with a friend for the evening—for the night, if pressed. That I’d left the Bertinelli lecture early.”
“Methodical,” said Bourne.
“Yes.” Marie allowed herself a tentative smile. “I asked her to go to my room—we’re only two doors away from each other and the night maid knows we’re friends. If no one was there she was to put some clothes and makeup in my suitcase and come back to her room. I’d call her in five minutes.”
The Bourne Identity Page 14