The Bourne identity

Bourne grabbed the Frenchman in front of him now, his left arm around the man’s throat, his right hand tearing at the man’s left ear. “How many?” he asked in French. “How many are there down there? Where arethey?”

“Find out, pig!”

The elevator was halfway to the first floor lobby.

Jason angled the man’s face down, ripping the ear half out of its roots, smashing the man’s head into the wall. The Frenchman screamed, sinking to the floor. Bourne rammed his knee into the man’s chest; he could feel the holster. He yanked the overcoat open, reached in, and pulled out a short-barreled revolver. For an instant it occurred to him that someone had deactivated the sca

“Tell me or I’ll blow the back of your skull off!” The man expunged a throated wail; the weapon was withdrawn, the barrel now pressed into his cheek.

“Two. One by the elevators, one outside on the pavement, by the car.”

“What kind of car?”

“Peugeot.”

“Color?” The elevator was slowing down, coming to a stop.

“Brown.”

“The man in the lobby. What’s he wearing?”

“I don’t know ...”

Jason cracked the gun across the man’s temple. “You’d better remember!”

“A black coat!”

The elevator stopped; Bourne pulled the Frenchman to his feet; the doors opened. To the left, a man in a dark raincoat, and wearing an odd-looking pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, stepped forward. The eyes beyond the lenses recognized the circumstances; blood was trickling down across the Frenchman’s cheek. He raised his unseen hand, concealed by the wide pocket of his raincoat, another silenced automatic leveled at the target from Marseilles.

Jason propelled the Frenchman in front of him through the doors. Three rapid spits were heard; the Frenchman shouted, his arms raised in a final, guttural protest. He arched his back and fell to the marble floor. A woman to the right of the man with the gold-rimmed spectacles screamed, joined by several men who called to no one and everyone for Hilfe! for the Polizei!

Bourne knew he could not use the revolver he had taken from the Frenchman. It had no silencer; the sound of a gunshot would mark him. He shoved it into his topcoat pocket, sidestepped the screaming woman and grabbed the uniformed shoulders of the elevator starter, whipping the bewildered man around, throwing him into the figure of the killer in the dark raincoat.

The panic in the lobby mounted as Jason ran toward the glass doors of the entrance. The bouto

“The man wearing gold-rimmed glasses!” he shouted. “He’s the one! I saw him!”

“What? Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of Walther Apfel! Listen to me! The man wearing gold-rimmed glasses, in a black raincoat. Over there!”

Bureaucratic mentality had not changed in several mille

“Herr Apfel!” The Gemeinschaft greeter turned to the guard. “You heard him! The man wearing glasses. Gold-rimmed glasses!”

“Yes, sir!” The guard raced forward.

Jason edged past the greeter to the glass doors. He shoved the door on the right open, glancing behind him, knowing he had to run again but not knowing if a man outside on the pavement, waiting by a brown Peugeot, would recognize him and fire a bullet into his head.

The guard had run past a man in a black raincoat, a man walking more slowly than the panicked figures around him, a man wearing no glasses at all. He accelerated his pace toward the entrance, toward Bourne.

Out on the sidewalk, the growing chaos was Jason’s protection. Word had gone out of the bank;

wailing sirens grew louder as police cars raced up the Bahnhofstrasse. He walked several yards to the

right, flanked by pedestrians, then suddenly ran, wedging his way into a curious crowd taking refuge in a storefront, his attention on the automobiles at the curb. He saw the Peugeot, saw the man standing beside it, his hand ominously in his overcoat pocket. In less than fifteen seconds, the driver of the Peugeot was joined by the man in the black raincoat, now replacing his gold-rimmed glasses, adjusting his eyes to his restored vision. The two men conferred rapidly, their eyes sca

Bourne understood their confusion. He had walked with an absence of panic out of the Gemeinschaft’s glass doors into the crowd. He had been prepared to run, but he had not run, for fear of being stopped until he was reasonably clear of the entrance. No one else had been permitted to do so--and the driver of the Peugeot had not made the co

The first police car reached the scene as the man in the gold-rimmed spectacles removed his raincoat, shoving it through the open window of the Peugeot. He nodded to the driver, who climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. The killer took off his delicate glasses and did the most unexpected thing Jason could imagine. He walked rapidly back toward the glass doors of the bank, joining the police who were racing inside.

Bourne watched as the Peugeot swung away from the curb and sped off down the Bahnhofstrasse. The crowd in the storefront began to disperse, many edging their way toward the glass doors, craning their necks around one another, rising on the balls of their feet, peering inside.

A police officer came out, waving the curious back, demanding that a path be cleared to the curb. As he shouted, an ambulance careened around the northwest corner, its horn joining the sharp, piercing notes from its roof, warning all to get out of its way; the driver nosed his outsized vehicle to a stop in the space created by the departed Peugeot. Jason could watch no longer. He had to get to the Carillon du Lac, gather his things, and get out of Zurich, out of Switzerland. To Paris.

Why Paris? Why had he insisted that the funds be transferred to Paris? It had not occurred to him before he sat in Walther Apfel’s office, stu

Again, no time ... He saw the ambulance crew carry a stretcher through the doors of the bank.

On it was a body, the head covered, signifying death. The significance was not lost on Bourne; save for skills he could not relate to anything he understood, he was the dead man on that stretcher.

He saw an empty taxi at the corner and ran toward it. He had to get out of Zurich; a message had been sent from Marseilles, yet the dead man was alive. Jason Bourne was alive. Kill him. Kill Jason Bourne!

God in heaven, why?

He was hoping to see the Carillon du Lac’s assistant manager behind the front desk, but he was not there. Then he realized that a short note to the man--what was his name--Stossel? Yes, Stossel--would be sufficient. An explanation for his sudden departure was not required and five hundred francs would easily take care of the few hours he had accepted from the Carillon du Lac-– and the favor he would ask of Herr Stossel.

In his room, he threw his shaving equipment into his unpacked suitcase, checked the pistol he had taken from the Frenchman, leaving it in his topcoat pocket, and sat down at the desk; he wrote out the note for Herr Stossel, Asst. Mgr. In it he included a sentence that came easily--almost too easily.