The Bourne identity

... I may be in contact with you shortly relative to messages I expect will have been sent to me. I trust it will be convenient for you to keep an eye out for them, and accept them on my behalf.

If any communication came from the elusive Treadstone Seventy-One, he wanted to know about it. This was Zurich; he would.

He put a five hundred franc note between the folded stationery and sealed the envelope. Then he picked up his suitcase, walked out of the room, and went down the hallway to the bank of elevators.

There were four; he touched a button and looked behind him, remembering the Gemeinschaft.

There was no one there; a bell pinged and the red light above the third elevator flashed on. He had caught a descending machine. Fine. He had to get to the airport just as fast as he could; he had to get out of Zurich, out of Switzerland. A message had been delivered.

The elevator doors opened. Two men stood on either side of an auburn-haired woman; they interrupted their conversation, nodded at the newcomer--noting the suitcase and moving to the side--then resumed talking as the doors closed. They were in their mid-thirties and spoke French softly, rapidly, the woman glancing alternately at both men, alternately smiling and looking pensive.

Decisions of no great import were being made. Laughter intermingled with semi-serious interrogation.

“You’ll be going home then after the summations tomorrow?” asked the man on the left.

“I’m not sure. I’m waiting for word from Ottawa,” the woman replied. “I have relations in Lyon; it would be good to see them.”

“It’s impossible,” said the man on the right, “for the steering committee to find ten people willing to summarize this Godforsaken conference in a single day. We’ll all be here another week.”

“Brussels will not approve,” said the first man gri

“Then by all means move to another,” said the second with a leer at the woman. “We’ve been waiting for you to do just that, haven’t we?”

“You’re a lunatic,” said the woman. “You’re both lunatics, and that’s my summation.”

“You’re not, Marie,” interjected the first. “A lunatic, I mean. Your presentation yesterday was brilliant.”

“It was nothing of the sort,” she said. “It was routine and quite dull.”

“No, no!” disagreed the second. “It was superb; it had to be. I didn’t understand a word. But then I have other talents.”

“Lunatic ...”

The elevator was braking; the first man spoke again. “Let’s sit in the back row of the hall. We’re late anyway and Bertinelli is speaking--to little effect, I suggest. His theories of enforced cyclical fluctuations went out with the finances of the Borgias.”

“Before then,” said the auburn-haired woman, laughing. “Caesar’s taxes.” She paused, then added, “If not the Punic wars.”

“The back row then,” said the second man, offering his arm to the woman. “We can sleep. He uses a slide projector; it’ll be dark.”

“No, you two go ahead, I’ll join you in a few minutes. I really must send off some cables and I don’t trust the telephone operators to get them right.”

The doors opened and the threesome walked out of the elevator. The two men started diagonally across the lobby together, the woman toward the front desk. Bourne fell in step behind her, absently reading a sign on a triangular stand several feet away.

WELCOME TO:

MEMBERS OF THE SIXTH WORLD

ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

TODAY’S SCHEDULE:

1:00 P.M.: THE HON. JAMES FRAZIER,

M.P. UNITED KINGDOM.

SUITE 12

6:00 P.M.: DR EUGENIO BERTINELLI,

UNIV. OF MILAN, ITALY.

SUITE 7

9:00 P.M.: CHAIRMAN’S FAREWELL DINNER.

HOSPITALITY SUITE

“Room 507. The operator said there was a cablegram for me.” English. The auburn-haired woman now beside him at the counter spoke English But then she had said she was “waiting for word from Ottawa.” A Canadian.

The desk clerk checked the slots and returned with the cable. “Dr. St. Jacques?” he asked, holding out the envelope.

“Yes. Thanks very much.”

The woman turned away, opening the cable, as the clerk moved in front of Bourne. “Yes, sir?”

“I’d like to leave this note for Herr Stossel.” He placed the Carillon du Lac envelope on the counter.

“Herr Stossel will not return until six o’clock in the morning, sir. In the afternoons, he leaves at four. Might I be of service?”

“No, thanks. Just make sure he gets it, please.” Then Jason remembered: this was Zurich. “It’s nothing urgent,” he added, “but I need an answer. I’ll. check with him in the morning.”

“Of course, sir.”

Bourne picked up his suitcase and started across the lobby toward the hotel’s entrance, a row of wide glass doors that led to a circular drive fronting the lake. He could see several taxis waiting in line under the floodlights of the canopy; the sun had gone down; it was night in Zurich. Still, there were flights to all points of Europe until well past midnight ...

He stopped walking, his breath suspended, a form of paralysis sweeping over him. His eyes did not believe what else he saw beyond the glass doors. A brown Peugeot pulled up in the circular drive in front of the first taxi. Its door opened and a man stepped out--a killer in a black raincoat, wearing thin, gold-rimmed spectacles. Then from the other door another figure emerged, but it was not the driver who had been at the curb on the Bahnhofstrasse, waiting for a target he did not recognize. Instead, it was another killer, in another raincoat, its wide pockets recessed for powerful weapons. It was the man who had sat in the reception room on the second floor of the Gemeinschaft Bank, the same man who had pulled a .38 caliber pistol from a holster beneath his coat. A pistol with a perforated cylinder on its barrel that silenced two bullets meant for the skull of the quarry he had followed into an elevator.

How? How could they have found him? ... Then he remembered and felt sick. It had been so i

Are you enjoying your stay in Zurich? Walther Apfel had asked while they were waiting for a minion to

leave and be alone again.

Very much. My room overlooks the lake. It’s a nice view, very peaceful, quiet.

Koenig! Koenig had heard him say his room looked over the lake. How many hotels had rooms overlooking the lake? Especially hotels a man with a three-zero account might frequent. Two?

Three? ... From unremembered memory names came to him: Carillon du Lac, Baur au Lac, Eden au Lac. Were there others? No further names came. How easy it must have been to narrow them down!

How easy it had been for him to say the words. How stupid!

No time. Too late. He could see through the row of glass doors; so, too, could the killers. The second man had spotted him. Words were exchanged over the hood of the Peugeot, gold-rimmed spectacles adjusted, hands placed in outsized pockets, unseen weapons gripped. The two men converged on the entrance, separating at the last moment, one on either end of the row of clear glass panels. The flanks were covered, the trap set; he could not race outside.

Did they think they could walk into a crowded hotel lobby and simply kill a man?

Of course they could, The crowds and the noise were their cover. Two, three, four muted gunshots fired at close range would be as effective as an ambush in a crowded square in daylight, escape easily found in the resulting chaos.