Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy (23 page)

Bourne turned his head away, stared out at the dreary industrial landscape. The impact of what had happened during his last encounter with Khan had hit him with the impact of a train derailing. He couldn't help exploring the fierce ache inside himself, much as one keeps pressing a sore tooth, if only to determine just how deep the pain went. The fiercely analytical portion of his mind had already determined that Khan hadn't really said anything that indicated he possessed intimate knowledge of David or Joshua Webb. He had made intimations, innuendoes, yes, but what did they amount to?

Bourne, aware that Robbinet was scrutinizing him, turned further toward the window. Robbinet, misconstruing the reason for Bourne's brooding silence, said, "Mon
ami,
you will be in Budapest by eighteen hundred hours, have no fear."

"Merci, Jacques." Bourne momentarily freed himself from his melancholy thoughts.

"Thanks for all your kindness and help. What now?"

"Alors,
we are going to Goussainville. Not the most scenic town in France, but there's someone there who I suspect will interest you."

Robbinet said nothing more for the remainder of the trip. He was right about Goussainville. It was one of those French villages that, because of its proximity to the airport, had been transformed into a modern industrial town. The depressing rows of high-rises, glass-fronted offices and giant retailers not unlike Wal-Mart were only slightly alleviated by the roundabouts and curbsides planted with row upon row of colorful flowers.

Bourne noticed the radio unit mounted below the dashboard, presumably used by Jacques' driver. As Robbinet pulled into a gas station, he asked his friend for the frequencies used by the Police Nationale and the Quai d'Orsay. While Robbinet pumped gas into the car, Bourne monitored both frequencies but heard nothing about the incident at the airport, nothing of interest about him. Bourne watched the cars coming and going in and out of the gas station. A woman got out of her car, asked Robbinet his opinion about her front driver's side tire. She was worried it needed air. A vehicle with two young men pulled in. They both got out. One man lounged against the fender of the car while the driver went into the station. The lounging man eyed Jacques' Peugeot, then gazed appreciatively at the woman as she walked back to her car.

"Anything on the air?" Robbinet inquired as he slid in beside Bourne.

"Not a thing."

"That at least is good news," Robbinet said as they drove off. They went down more ugly streets, and Bourne used the mirrors to check that the car with the two young men wasn't tailing them.

"Goussainville had an ancient and royal beginning," Robbinet said. "Once upon a time it belonged to Clotaire, wife of Clovis, the king of France early in the sixth century. While we Franks were still considered barbarians, he converted to Catholicism, making us acceptable to the Romans. The emperor made him a consul. Barbarians no longer, we became true champions of the Faith."

"You'd never know this place was once a medieval city." The minister pulled up to a series of concrete apartment buildings. "In France," he said,

"history is often hidden in the most unexpected places." Bourne looked around. "This isn't where your current mistress lives, is it?" he said.

"Because the last time you introduced me to your mistress I had to pretend she was my girlfriend when your wife walked into the cafe" where we were having drinks."

"I recall you having quite a good time that afternoon." Robbinet shook his head. "But no, with her Dior this and her Yves Saint Laurent that I'm certain Delphine would rather slit her wrists than live in Goussainville."

"Then what are we doing here?"

The minister sat staring out at the rain for some time. "Filthy weather," he said at last.

"Jacques ... ?"

Robbinet looked around. "Ah, yes, forgive me,
mon ami.
My mind wanders.
Alors,
I am taking you to meet Mylene Dutronc." He cocked his head. "Have you heard her name?" When Bourne shook his head, Robbinet continued. "I thought not. Well, now that he's dead, I suppose I can say it. Mile. Dutronc was Alex Conklin's lover." At once, Bourne said, "Let me guess: light eyes, long wavy hair and a smile with something of the ironic about it."

"He
did
tell you about her!"

"No, I saw a photo. It's pretty much all he had of a personal nature in his bedroom." He waited a moment. "Does she know?"

"I phoned her as soon as I found out."

Bourne wondered why Robbinet hadn't told her in person. It would have been the decent thing to do.

"Enough talk." Robbinet grabbed an overnight bag from the footwell of the backseat.

"We'll go see Mylene now."

Exiting the Peugeot, they went through the rain, along a little flower-flanked walk, and mounted a short flight of poured-concrete stairs. Robbinet pressed the button for 4A and a moment later the buzzer sounded.

The apartment building was as plain and unlovely on the inside as it was on the outside. They walked up the five flights of stairs to the fourth floor and went along a hallway, past rows of identical doors on either side. At the sound of their approach, the door opened. Just inside stood Mylene Dutronc.

She was perhaps a decade older than the image in the photo—in fact, she must have been sixty by now, Bourne thought, though she appeared at least ten years younger—but her light eyes had the same sparkle and her smile had the same enigmatic twist to it. She wore jeans and a man-tailored shirt, an outfit that made her appear feminine because it showed off her full figure. She was in low heels and her hair, a natural-looking ash-blond, was tied back from her face.

"Bonjour,
Jacques." She lifted her face for Robbinet to kiss on both cheeks, but she was already looking at his companion.

Bourne could see details that the snapshot hadn't revealed. The color of her eyes, the sculpted flare of her nostrils, the whiteness of her even teeth. Her face was both powerful and compassionate.

"And you must be Jason Bourne." Her gray eyes appraised him coolly.

"I'm sorry about Alex," Bourne said.

"You're kind. It's been a shock to all of us who knew him." She stepped back. "Please come in."

As she shut the door behind her, Bourne took in the room. Mile. Dutronc lived in the middle of a blocky urban landscape, but her apartment was altogether different. Unlike many people her age, she had not continued to surround herself with furniture decades old, relics of the past. Instead, her furnishings were both stylishly modern and comfortable. A scattering of chairs, a matching pair of sofas facing each other on either side of a brick fireplace, patterned curtains. It was a place you would not easily want to leave, Bourne decided.

"I understand you've had a long flight," she said to Bourne. "You must be starving." She made no mention of his disheveled appearance, for which he was grateful. She seated him in the dining room, served him food and drink from a typical European kitchen, small and dark. When she was finished, she sat down opposite him, put her clasped hands on the table.

Bourne could see now that she had been crying.

"Did he die instantly?" Mile. Dutronc asked. "You see, I've been wondering whether he suffered."

"No," Bourne said truthfully. "I very much doubt he did."

"That's something, at least." A look of profound relief came over her face. Mile. Dutronc sat back and, with this movement, Bourne became aware that she had been holding her body tensely. "Thank you, Jason." She looked up, her expressive gray eyes locked on his, and he could see all the emotion in her face. "May I call you Jason?"

"Of course," he said.

"You knew Alex well, didn't you?"

"As well as one could ever know Alex Conklin."

For just an instant, her gaze flicked in Robbinet's direction, but it was enough.

"I have some calls to make." The minister had already pulled out his cell phone. "You won't mind if I leave you two for a little while."

She looked bleakly after Robbinet as he headed for the living room. Then she turned back to Bourne. "Jason, what you told me just now was said as a true friend. Even if Alex had never spoken to me about you, I would say the same thing."

"Alex talked to you about me?" Bourne shook his head. "Alex never told civilians about his work."

There was that smile again; this time the irony in it was quite apparent. "But I'm not, as you say, a civilian." There was a pack of cigarettes in her hand. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Not at all."

"Many Americans do. It's something of an obsession with you, isn't it?" She had not been seeking an answer and Bourne did not give her one. He watched as she lit up, drew the smoke deep into her lungs, let it out slowly, luxuriously. "No, I'm definitely not a civilian." The smoke swirled around her. "I'm Quai d'Orsay." Bourne sat very still. Beneath the table, his hand grasped the butt of the ceramic pistol Deron had given him.

As if reading his mind, Mile. Dutronc shook her head. "Calm yourself, Jason. Jacques hasn't led you into a trap. You're among friends here."

"I don't understand," he said thickly. "If you're Quai d'Orsay, Alex would've been doubly sure not to involve you in anything he was working on, so as not to compromise your loyalties."

"True enough. And this was how it remained for many years." Mile. Dutronc took in more smoke, let it drift out of her flared nostrils. She had a habit of raising her head slightly as she exhaled. It made her look like Mar-lene Dietrich. "Then, very recently, something happened. I don't know what, he wouldn't tell me, though I begged him to." She regarded him through the smoke haze for some moments. Any member of an intelligence organization had to maintain a stone facade that revealed nothing of their inner thoughts or feelings. But through her eyes he could see her mind working, and he knew that she had let her guard down.

"Tell me, Jason, as a long-time friend of Alex's, do you ever remember him being frightened?"

"No," Bourne said. "Alex was utterly fearless."

"Well, that day he
was
frightened. That's why I begged him to tell me what it was, so I could help, or at least convince him to move himself out of harm's way." Bourne leaned forward, his body now as tense as Mile. Dutronc's had been before.

"When was this?"

"Two weeks ago."

"Did he tell you anything at all?"

"There was a name he mentioned, Felix Schiffer."

Bourne's pulse began to race. "Dr. Schiffer worked for DARPA." She frowned. "Alex told me that he worked for the Tactical Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate."

"That's an Agency adjunct," Bourne said, half to himself. Now the pieces were starting to fall together. Could Alex have convinced Felix Schiffer to leave DARPA for the Directorate? Surely, it would not have been difficult for Conklin to make Schiffer

"disappear." But why would he want to? If he was merely poaching on DOD territory, he could've handled the resulting flak. There had to be another reason Alex needed to get Felix Schiffer to ground.

He looked at Mylene. "Was Dr. Schiffer the reason Alex was frightened?"

"He wouldn't say, Jason. But how could it be otherwise? That day, Alex made and received many calls in a very short period of time. He was terribly tense and I knew he was at the crisis point of a hot field operation. I heard Dr. Schiffer's name mentioned several times. I suspect that he was the subject of the operation."

Inspector Savoy sat in his Citroen, listening to the scraping sound of his windshield wipers. He hated the rain. It had been raining the day his wife had left him, the day his daughter had gone off to school in America, never to return. His wife was living in Boston now, married to a straight-laced investment banker. She had three children, a house, property, all that she could wish for, while here he was sitting in this shitty town—

what was its name? ah, yes, Goussainville—biting his nails down to the quick. And, to top it off, it was raining again.

But today was different because he was closing in on the CIA's most wanted target. Once he got Jason Bourne, his career would skyrocket. Perhaps he'd come to the attention of the president himself. He glanced over at the car across the street—Minister Jacques Robbinet's Peugeot.

From the Quai d'Orsay files, he had retrieved the make, model and license plate of the minister's car. His fellow officers had informed him that upon exiting the airport checkpoint the minister had headed north onto the Al. After having ascertained from headquarters who had been assigned to the northerly section of the dragnet, he had methodically called each car—mindful of Lindros' warning, keeping away from radio transmission, whose frequency wasn't secure. None of his contacts had seen the minister's car, and he was working himself up into a fit of despair when he had gotten to Justine Berard, who told him that, yes, she had seen Robbinet's car—had spoken to him briefly—

at a gas station. She remembered because the minister seemed tense, nervous, even a bit rude.

"Did his behavior strike you as odd?"

"Yes, it did. Though I didn't make much of it at the time," Berard had said. "Though now, of course, my thinking has changed."

"Was the minister alone?" Inspector Savoy asked.

"I'm not certain. It was raining hard and the window was up," Berard said. "To be candid, my attention was on Monsieur Robbinet."

"Yes, a handsome specimen," Savoy said, more dryly than he had intended. Berard had been a great help. She had seen the direction in which the minister's car had gone, and by the time he had arrived in Goussainville, she had found it sitting outside a block of concrete apartment buildings.

Mile. Dutronc's eyes strayed to Bourne's throat and she stubbed out her cigarette.

"Your wound has begun bleeding again. Come. We must take care of it." She led him into her bathroom, tiled in sea-green and cream. A small window overlooking the street let in the dismal light of day. She sat him down and began to wash the wound with soap and water.

"The bleeding has subsided," she said as she applied antibiotic to the reddened flesh across his throat. "This wound wasn't accidental. You were in a fight."