37
   Darkness. The figure dressed in the uniform of a United States marine dropped down from the top of the wall at the rear of the grounds of the house on Victoria Peak. He crept to his left, passing a sheet of interwoven strands of barbed wire that filled a space where a section of the wall had been blown away, and proceeded around the edge of the property. Staying in the shadows, he raced across the lawn to the corner of the house. He peered around at the demolished bay windows of what had been a large Victorian study. In front of the shattered glass and the profusion of broken frames stood a marine guard, an M-16 rifle planted casually on the grass, the end of the barrel in his hand, a .45 automatic strapped to his belt. The addition of a rifle to the smaller weapon was a sign of max-alert, the intruder understood this, and smiled to see that the guard did not think it necessary to hold the M-16 in his hands. Marines and poised weapons were not welcome. The stock of a rifle could crash into a man's head before he knew it was into its whip. The intruder waited for the opportune moment; it came when the guard's chest swelled with a long yawn and his eyes briefly closed as he inhaled deeply. The intruder raced around the corner, springing off his feet, the wire of a garrotte looping over the guard's head. It was over in seconds. There was barely a sound.
   The killer left the body where it lay, as it was far darker in this area of the grounds than elsewhere. Many of the rear floodlights had been shattered by the explosions. He got to his feet and edged his way to the next corner where he took out a cigarette, lighting it with the cupped flame from a butane lighter. He then stepped out into the glare of the floodlights and walked casually around the corner towards the huge, charred french doors where a second marine was at his post on the brick steps. The intruder held the cigarette in his left hand, which covered his face as he drew" on it.
   'Out for a smoke?' asked the guard.
   'Yeah, I couldn't sleep,' said the man, with an American accent that was a product of the South-west.
   'Those fuckin' cots weren't made for sleeping. Just sit on one and you know it... Hey, wait a minute! Who the hell are you?'
   The marine had no chance to level his rifle. The intruder lunged, thrusting his knife straight into the guard's throat with deadly accuracy, cutting off all sound, all life. The killer quickly dragged the corpse around the corner of the building and left it in the shadows. He wiped the blade off on the dead man's uniform, reinserted it beneath his tunic, and returned to the french doors. He entered the house.
   He walked down the long, dimly lit corridor at the end of which stood a third marine in front of a wide, sculptured door. The guard angled his rifle downward and looked at his watch. 'You're early,' he said. 'I'm not due to be relieved for another hour and twenty minutes. '
   'I'm not with this unit, buddy. '
   'You with the Oahu group?'
   'Yeah. '
   'I thought they got you jokers out of here pronto and back to Hawaii. That's the scuttlebutt. '
   'A few of us were ordered to stay behind. We're down at the consulate now. That guy, what's-his-name, McAllister, has been taking our testimonies all night. '
   'I tell you, pal, this whole goddamned thing is weird!'
   'You got it, triple weird. By the way, where's that fruitcake's office? He sent me up here to bring him back his special pipe tobacco. '
   'It figures. Mix some grass in it. '
   'Which office?'
   'Earlier I saw him and the doctor go in that first door on the right. Then later, before he left, he went in here. ' The guard tilted his head to indicate the door behind him.
   'Whose place is that?'
   'I don't know his name but he's the top banana. They call him the ambassador. '
   The killer's eyes narrowed. 'The ambassador?
   'Yeah. The room's fractured. Half of it's blown apart by that fucking maniac, but the safe's intact, which is why I'm here and another guy outside in the tulips. Must be a couple of million in there for extra-curricular activities. '
   'Or something else,' said the intruder softly. The first door on the right, huh? he added, turning and reaching under his tunic.
   'Hold it,' said the marine. 'Why didn't the gate send word in here? He reached for the hand-held radio strapped to his belt . 'Sorry, but I've got to check you out, buddy. It's standard-'
   The killer threw his knife. As it plunged into the guard's chest he hurled himself on the marine, his thumbs centering on the man's throat. Thirty seconds later he opened the door of Havilland's office and dragged the dead man inside.
   They crossed the border in full darkness, business suits and regimental ties replacing the rumpled, nondescript clothes they had worn previously. Added to their attire were two proper attache cases strapped with diplomatique tape, indicating government documents beyond the scrutiny of immigration points. In truth, the cases held their weapons, as well as several additional items Bourne had picked up in d'Anjou's flat after McAllister produced the sacrosanct plastic tape that was respected even by the People's Republic – respected as long as China wanted the same courtesy to be extended to its own foreign service personnel. The conduit from Macao whose name was Wong – at least that was the name he offered – was impressed by the diplomatic passports but for safety's sake, as well as for the $20,000 American for which he said he felt a moral obligation, decided to prepare the border crossing his way.
   'It's not as difficult as perhaps I led you to believe before, sir,' explained Wong. 'Two of the guards are cousins on my blessed mother's side – may she rest with the holy Jesus – and we help each other. I do more for them than they do for me, but then I am in a better position. Their stomachs are fuller than most in the city of Zhuhai Shi and both have television sets. '
   'If they're cousins,' said Jason, 'why did you object to the watch I gave one of them before? You said it was too expensive. '
   'Because he'll sell it, sir, and I don't care to see him spoiled. He'll expect too much from me. '
   On such considerations, thought Bourne, were the tightest borders in the world patrolled. They were directed by Wong to enter the last gate on the right at precisely 8:55; he would cross separately a few minutes later. Their red-striped passports were studied, sent to an inside office and amid many abrupt smiles on the part of a cousin, the honoured diplomats were rapidly passed through. They were instantly welcomed to China by the prefect of the Zhuhai Shi-Guangdong Province Control who returned their passports. She was a short, broad-shouldered, muscular woman. Her English was obscured by a thick accent but was understandable.
   'You have government business in Zhuhai Shi?' she asked, her smile belied by her clouded, vaguely hostile eyes. The Guangdong garrison, perhaps? I can arrange auto transport, please?'
   'Bu xiexie,' said the undersecretary of state, declining, and then for courtesy's sake reverting to English to show respect for his host's diligence in learning it . 'It's a minor conference, lasting for only a few hours, and we'll return to Macao later tonight. We'll be contacted here, so we'll have some coffee and wait. '
   'In my office, please?'
   Thank you, but I think not. Your people will be looking for us in the... Kafie dian – the cafe. '
   'Over on the left-right, sir. On the street. Welcome again to the People's Republic. '
   'Your courtesy will not be forgotten,' said McAllister, bowing.
   'You are with thanks,' replied the heavy-set woman, nodding and striding away.
   'To use your words, analyst,' said Bourne, 'you did that very well. But I should tell you she's not on our side. '
   'Of course not,' agreed the undersecretary. 'She's been instructed to call someone either here at the garrison or in Beijing confirming that we've crossed over. That someone will reach Sheng, and he'll know it's me – and you. No one else. '
   'He's airborne,' said Jason as they walked slowly towards the dimly lit coffee shop at the end of a dingy concrete walkway that emerged on the street . 'He's on his way here. Incidentally, we'll be followed, you know that, don't you?'
   'No, I don't know that,' replied McAllister, looking briefly at Bourne. 'Sheng will be cautious. I've given him enough information to alarm him. If he thought there was only one file – which happens to be the truth – he might take chances, thinking he could buy it from me and kill me. But he thinks, or has to assume, that there's a copy in Washington. That's the one he wants destroyed. He won't do anything to upset me or to make me panic and run. Remember, I'm the amateur and I frighten easily. I know him. He's putting it all together now and is probably carrying more money to me than I've ever dreamed of. Of course, he expects to get it back once the files are destroyed and he does kill me. So, you see, I have a very strong reason not to fail – or not to succeed by failing. '
   The man from Medusa again stared at the man from Washington. 'You've really thought this out, haven't you?'
   Thoroughly,' answered McAllister, looking straight ahead. 'For weeks. Every detail. Frankly, I didn't think you'd be a part of it because I thought you'd be dead, but I knew I could reach Sheng. Somehow – unofficially, of course. Any other way, including a confidential conference, would entail protocol, and even if I got him alone, without his aides, I couldn't touch him. It would look like a government-sanctioned assassination. I considered reaching him directly, for old time's sake, and using words that would trigger a response – pretty much what I did last night. As you said to Havilland, the simplest ways are usually the best. We tend to complicate things. '
   'In your defence, you frequently have to. You can't be caught with a smoking gun. '
   That's such a trite expression,' said the analyst with a derisive laugh. 'What does it mean? That you were led or misled into an error? Policy doesn't revolve around a single man's embarrassment, or it shouldn't. I'm constantly appalled by the people's cries for righteousness when they have no idea, no concept, of how we have to deal. '
   'Maybe the people every now and then want a straight answer. '
   They can't have one,' said McAllister as they approached the door of the coffee shop, 'because they couldn't understand. '
   Bourne stood in front of the door without opening it . 'You're blind,' he said, his eyes locked with the undersecretary's. 'I wasn't given a straight answer, either, much less an explanation. You've been in Washington too long. You should try a couple of weeks in Cleveland or Bangor, Maine. It might broaden that perspective of yours. '
   'Don't lecture me, Mr Bourne. Less than forty-six per cent of our population care enough to cast a vote – which determines the directions we take. It's all left to us – the performers and the professional bureaucrats. We're all you've got ... May we go inside, please? Your friend, Mr Wong, said we were to spend only a few minutes being seen having coffee and then go out on the street. He said he'd meet us there in exactly twenty-five minutes and twelve have already elapsed. '
   Twelve? Not ten or fifteen, but twelve?"
   'Precisely. '
   'What do we do if he's two minutes late? Shoot him?'
   'Very funny,' said the analyst, pushing the door open.
   They walked out of the coffee shop and on to the dark, bruised pavement of the run-down square fronting the Guangdong checkpoint. As it was a slow time at the gates, there were no more than a dozen people crossing the thoroughfare and disappearing into the darkness. Of the three streetlights in the immediate vicinity, only one was working, dimly. Visibility was poor. The 25-minute mark passed, and was stretched to 30, then approached 38.
   Bourne spoke. 'Something's wrong. He should have made contact by now. '
   Two minutes and we shoot him?" said McAllister, instantly disliking his own attempt at humour. 'I mean I gathered that staying calm was everything. '
   'For two minutes, not close to fifteen,' replied Jason. 'It's not normal,' he added softly, as if to himself. 'On the other hand, it could be normally abnormal. He wants us to make contact with him. '
   'I don't understand-'
   'You don't have to. Just walk alongside me, as if we were strolling, passing the time until we're met. If she sees us, the lady wrestler won't be surprised. Chinese officials are notoriously late for conferences; they feel it gives them the advantage. '
   '"Let them sweat"?
   'Exactly. Only that's not who we're meeting now. Come on, let's go to the left; it's darker, away from the light. Be casual; talk about the weather, anything. Nod your head, shake it, shrug – just keep up steady, low-keyed movements. '
   They had walked for about fifty feet when it happened. 'Kam Pek!' The name of the casino in Macao was whispered, shot out of the shadows beyond a deserted news-stand.
   'Wong?'
   'Stay where you are and make a show of conversation, but listen to me!'
   'What's happened?
   'You're being followed. '
   'Two points for a brilliant bureaucrat,' said Jason. 'Any comment, Mr Undersecretary?'
   'It's unexpected but not illogical,' answered McAllister. 'A safeguard, perhaps. False passports abound over here, as we happen to know. '
   'Queen Kong checked us out. Strike one. '
   Then, perhaps, to make sure we don't link up with the kind of people you suggested last night,' whispered the analyst, his words too low to be heard by the Chinese conduit.
   That's possible. ' Bourne raised his voice slightly so that the conduit could hear him, his eyes on the border gate's entrance. There was no one. 'Who's following us?
   The Pig. '
   'Soo?'
   'Ever so, sir. It is why I must stay out of sight. '
   'Anyone else?'
   'No one that I could see, but I don't know who is on the road to the hills. '
   'I'll take him out,' said the man from Medusa called Delta.
   Wo!' objected McAllister. 'His orders from Sheng may include confirming that we remain alone, that we don't meet others. You just agreed it was possible. '
   The only way he could do that is to reach others himself. He can't do that ... if he can't do that. And your old friend wouldn't permit a radio transmission while he's in a plane or a chopper. It could be picked up. '
   'Suppose there are specific signals – a flare or a powerful flashlight beamed up, telling the pilot everything's clear?'
   Jason looked at the analyst . 'You do think things out. '
   There is a way,' said Wong from the shadows, 'and it is a privilege I should like to reserve for myself, no additional charge. '
   'What privilege?'
   'I will kill the Pig. It will be done in such a way that cannot be compromised. '
   'What? Astonished, Bourne started to turn his head.
   ''Please, sir! Look straight ahead. '
   'Sorry. But why?'
   'He fornicates indiscriminately, threatening the women he favours with loss of employment for themselves and their husbands, even brothers and cousins. Over the past four years he has brought shame to many families, including mine on my blessed mother's side. '
   'Why hasn't he been killed before now?'
   'He travels with armed guards, even in Macao. Yet in spite
   of this, several attempts have been made by enraged men. They resulted in reprisals. ' 'Reprisals? asked McAllister quietly. 'People were chosen, again indiscriminately, and charged with stealing supplies and equipment from the garrison. The punishment for such crimes is death in the fields. '
   'Jesus,' muttered Bourne. 'I won't ask questions. You've got reason enough. But how tonight?
   'His guards are not with him now. They may be waiting for him on the road to the hills, but they are not with him now. You start out, and if he follows you I will follow him. If he does not follow you, I will know that your journey will not be interrupted and I will catch up with you. ' 'Catch up with us? Bourne frowned. 'After I kill the Pig and leave his pig body in its proper and, for him, disgraceful place. The female toilet. ' 'And if he does follow us? asked Jason. 'My opportunity will come, even as I serve as your eyes. I will see his guards, but they will not see me. No matter what he does, the moment will be there when he separates himself, if only by a few feet in the darkness. It will be enough, and it will be assumed he has brought shame to one of his own men. ' 'We'll get started. ' 'You know the way, sir. ' 'As if I had a road map. '
   'I will meet you at the base of the first hill beyond the high grass. Do you remember it? 'It'd be hard to forget. I nearly bought a grave in China there. ' 'After seven kilometres, head into forest towards the fields. '
   'I intend to. You taught me. Have a good hunt, Wong. ' 'I will, sir. I have reason enough. '
   The two Americans walked across the ravaged old square, away from the dim light into complete darkness. An obese figure in civilian clothes watched them from the shadows of the concrete walkway. He looked at his watch and nodded, half smiling to himself in satisfaction. Colonel Soo Jiang then turned and walked back through the man-made tunnel into the stark immigration complex – iron gates and wooden booths and barbed wire in the distance – all bathed in dull grey light. He was greeted by the prefect of the Zhuhai Shi-Guangdong Province Control, who strode purposefully, martially, enthusiastically, towards him.
   'They must be very important men, Colonel,' said the prefect, her eyes not at all hostile, but instead with a look that bordered on blind worship. And fear.
   'Oh, they are, they are,' agreed the colonel.
   'Surely they have to be for such an illustrious officer as yourself to make sure of their requirements. I made the telephone call to the man in Guangzhou, as you requested, and he thanked me, but he did not get my name-'
   'I will make sure he has it,' Soo broke in, wearily.
   'And I will keep only my best people on the gates to greet them when they return later tonight to Macao. '
   Soo looked at the woman. 'That won't be necessary. They will be taken to Beijing for strictly confidential, highest-level conferences. My orders are to remove all records of their having crossed the Guangdong border. '
   'That confidential?
   'Ever so, Madame Comrade. These are secret affairs of state and must be kept as such even from your most intimate associates. Your office, please. '
   'At once,' said the broad shouldered woman, turning with military precision. 'I have tea or coffee, and even the British whisky from Hong Kong. '
   'Ah, yes, the British whisky. May I escort you, Comrade? My work is finished.'
   The two somewhat grotesquely Wagnerian figures marched in waddling lockstep towards the streaked glass door of the prefect's office.
   'Cigarettes!' whispered Bourne, gripping McAllister's shoulder.
   'Where?'
   'Up ahead, off the road on the left. In the woods!'
   'I didn't see them. '
   'You weren't looking for them. They're being cupped but they're there. The bark of the trees gets a touch of light one moment, then it's dark the next. No rhythm, just erratic. Men smoking. Sometimes I think the Far East likes cigarettes more than sex. '
   'What do we do?'
   'Exactly what we're doing, only louder. '
   What?
   'Keep walking and say whatever comes to mind. They won't understand. I'm sure you know Hiawatha or Horatio on the Bridge, or some chant from your wild college days. Don't sing, just say the words; it'll keep your mind off things. '
   'But why?
   'Because this is what you predicted. Sheng is making sure that we don't link up with anyone who could be a threat to him. Let's give him that reassurance, okay?
   'Oh, my God! Suppose one of them speaks English?
   'It's highly unlikely, but if you'd rather we'll just improvise a conversation. ' 'No, I'm not good at that. I hate parties and dinners, I never know what to say. '
   That's why I suggested the doggerel. I'll interrupt whenever you pause. Go ahead now, speak casually but rapidly. This is no place for Chinese scholars who speak fast English... The cigarettes are out. They've spotted us! Goon!'
   'Oh, Lord... very well. Ah, ah... "Sitting on O'Reilly's porch, telling tales of blood and slaughter-"'
   That's very appropriate? said Jason, glaring at his pupil.
   '"Suddenly it came to me, why not shag O'Reilly's daughter"-'
   'Why, Edward, you constantly surprise me. ' 'It's an old fraternity song,' whispered the analyst . 'What! I can't hear you, Edward. Speak up. ' '"Fiddilly-eye-eee, fiddilly-eye-oWj, Fiddilly-eye-eee to the one ball Reilly"-' That's terrific!' interrupted Bourne, as they passed the section of the woods where only seconds ago concealed men had been smoking. 'I think your friend will appreciate your point of view. Any further thoughts?
   'I forgot the words. '
   'Your thoughts, you mean. I'm sure they'll come to you. '
   'Something about "old man Reilly" ... Oh, yes, I remember. First there was "Shag, shag and shag some more, shag until the fun was over", and then came old Reilly... "Two horse pistols by his side, looking for the dog who shagged his daughter". I did remember. '
   'You belong in a museum, if there's one in your home town... But look at it this way, you can research the entire project back in Macao. '
   'What project?... There was another that was always great fun. "A hundred bottles of beer on the wall, a hundred bottles of beer; one fell down-" Oh, Lord, it's been so long. It was repetitious reduction– "ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall"-'
   'Forget it, they're out of earshot. '
   'Oh? Earshot? Thank God?
   'You sounded fine. If any of those clowns understood a word of English, they're even more confused than I am. Well done, analyst. Come on, let's walk faster. '
   McAllister looked at Jason. 'You did that on purpose, didn't you? You prodded me into remembering something -anything – knowing I'd concentrate and not panic. '
   Bourne did not answer; he simply made a statement . 'Another hundred feet and you keep going by yourself. '
   'What! You're leaving me?
   'For about ten, maybe fifteen, minutes. Here, keep walking and angle your arm up so I can put my briefcase on it and open the damn thing. '
   'Where are you going? asked the undersecretary as the attaché case rested awkwardly on his left arm. Jason opened it, took out a long-bladed knife, and closed the case. 'You can't leave me alone!'
   'You'll be all right, nobody wants to stop you – us. If they did, it would have been done. '
   'You mean that could have been an ambush?'
   'I was counting on your analytical mind that it wasn't. Take the case. '
   'But what are you-'
   'I have to see what's back there. Keep walking. ' The man from Medusa spun off to his left and entered the woods at a turn in the road. Running rapidly, silently, instinctively avoiding the tangled underbrush at the first touch of resistance, he moved to his right in a wide semicircle. Minutes later he saw the glow of cigarettes, and moving like a forest cat, crept closer and closer until he was within ten feet of the group of men. The intermittent moonlight, filtered through the massive trees, provided enough illumination for him to count the number. There were six, each armed with a lightweight machine gun strapped over his shoulders... And there was something else, something that was strikingly inconsistent. Each of the men wore the four-buttoned, tailored uniforms of high officers in the army of the People's Republic. And from the snatches of conversation that he could hear, they spoke Mandarin, not Cantonese, which was the normal dialect for soldiers, even officers, of the Guangdong garrison. These men were not from Guangdong. Sheng had flown in his own elite guard.
   Suddenly, one of the officers snapped his lighter and looked at his watch. Bourne studied the face above the flame. He knew it, and seeing it confirmed his judgement. It was the face of the man who had tried to trap Echo by posing as a prisoner on the truck that terrible night, the officer Sheng treated with a degree of deference. A thinking killer with a soft voice.

'Xian zai,' said the man, stating that the moment had come. He picked up a hand-held radio and spoke. 'Da li shi, da li shir he barked, raising his party by the code name marble. 'They are alone, there is no one else. We will proceed as instructed. Prepare for the signal. '
   The six officers rose together, adjusted their weapons and extinguished their cigarettes by grinding them under their boots. They started rapidly for the back country road.
   Bourne scrambled round on his hands and knees, got to his feet and raced through the woods. He had to reach McAllister before Sheng's contingent closed in on him and saw through the sporadic moonlight that he was alone. Should the guards become alarmed they might send a different 'signal' – conference aborted. He reached the turn in the road and ran faster, jumping over fallen branches other men would not see, slithering through vines and linked foliage others would not anticipate. In less than two minutes he sprang silently out of the woods at McAllister's side.
   'Good God!' gasped the undersecretary of state.
   'Be quiet!'
   'You're a maniac!'
   Tell me about it. '
   'It would take hours. ' With trembling hands, McAllister handed Jason his attaché case. 'At least this didn't explode. '
   'I should have told you not to drop it or jar it too much. '
   'Oh, Jesus I... Isn't it time to get off the road? Wong said-'
   'Forget it. We're staying in plain view until we reach the field on the second hill, then you'll be more in view than me. Hurry up. Some kind of signal's going to be given, which means you were right again. A pilot's going to get clearance to land – no radio communication, just a light. '
   'We're to meet Wong somewhere. At the base of the first hill, I think he said. '
   'We'll give him a couple of minutes but I think we can forget him, too. He'll see what I saw and if it were me I'd head back to Macao and twenty thousand American, and say I lost my way. '
   'What did you see?'
   'Six men armed with enough firepower to defoliate one of the hills here. '
   'Oh, my God, we'll never get out I'
   'Don't give up yet. That's one of the things fve been thinking about. ' Bourne turned to McAllister, quickening their pace. 'On the other hand,' he added, his voice deadly serious. 'The risk was always there – doing things your way. '
   'Yes, I know. I won't panic. I will not panic. ' The woods were suddenly gone; the dirt road now cut a path through fields of tall grass. 'What do you think those men are here for?' asked the analyst.
   'Back-ups in case of a trap, which any low-life in this business would think it was. I told you that and you didn't want to believe me. But if something you said is accurate, and I think it is, they'll stay far out of sight – to make sure you won't panic and run. If that's the case, it'll be our way out. '
   'How?'
   'Head to the right, through the field,' replied Jason without answering the question. 'I'll give Wong five minutes, unless we spot a signal somewhere or hear a plane, but no more. And that long only because I really want the pair of eyes I paid for. '
   'Could he get around those men without being sent?' He can if he's not on his way back to Macao. ' They reached the end of the field of high grass and the base of the first hill where trees rose out of the ascending ground. Bourne looked at his watch, then at McAllister. 'Let's get up there, out of sight,' he said, gesturing at the trees above them. 'I'll stay here; you go up farther but don't walk out on that field, don't expose yourself, stay at the edge. If you see any lights or hear a plane, whistle. You can whistle, can't you?' 'Actually, not very well. When the children were younger and we had a dog, a golden retriever-'
   'Oh, for Christ's sake! Throw rocks down through the trees, I'll hear them. Go on!' 'Yes, I understand. Move. '
   Delta – for he was Delta now – began his vigil. The moonlight was constantly intercepted by the drifting, low-flying clouds and he kept straining his eyes, scanning the field of tall grass, looking for a break in the monotonous pattern, for bent reeds moving towards the base of the hill, towards him. Three minutes passed, and he had nearly decided it was a waste of time when a man suddenly lurched out of the grass on his right and plunged up into the foliage. Bourne lowered his attache case and pulled the long knife from his belt . 'Kam Pek!' whispered the man. 'Wong?'
   'Yes, sir,' said the conduit, walking around the trunks of trees, approaching Jason. 'I am greeted with a knife?'
   There are a few other people back there and, frankly, I didn't think you'd show up. I told you, you could get out if the risks looked too great. I didn't think it'd happen so early on but I would have accepted it. Those are impressive weapons they're carrying. '
   'I might have taken advantage of the situation but, added to the money, you afforded me an act of immense gratification. For many others as well. More people than you can imagine will give thanks. '
   'Soo the Pig?'
   'Yes, sir. '
   'Wait a minute,' said Bourne, alarmed. 'Why are you so sure they'll think one of those men did it?'
   'What men?'
   That patrol of machine guns back there! They're not from Guangdong, not from the garrison. They're from Beijing?
   The act took place in Zhuhai Shi. At the gate. '
   'Goddamn you! You've blown everything. They were waiting for Soo!'
   'If they were, sir, he never would have arrived. '
   'What?
   'He was getting drunk with the prefect of the gate. He went to relieve himself which was where I confronted him. He is now next door, lying in a soiled female commode, his throat slit, his genitals removed. '
   'Good God... Then he didn't follow us?'
   'Nor did he show any indication of doing so. '
   'I see – no, I don't see. He was cut out of tonight. It's strictly a Beijing operation. Yet he was the primary contact down here-'
   T would know nothing of such matters,' broke in Wong defensively.
   'Oh, sorry. No you wouldn't. '
   'Here are the eyes you hired, sir. Where do you wish me to look and what do you want me to do?'
   'Did you have any trouble getting by that patrol in the road?'
   'None. I saw them, they did not see me. They are now sitting in the woods at the edge of the field. If it would be of help to you, the man with the radio instructed the one he reached to leave once the "signal" was given. I don't know what that means but I presume it concerns a helicopter. '
   'You presume?'
   The Frenchman and I followed the English major here one night. It's how I knew where to take you before. A helicopter landed and men came out to meet the Englishman. '
   'That's what he told me. '
   'Told you, sir?
   'Never mind. Stay here. If that patrol across the field starts coming over I want to know about it. I'll be up in the field before the second hill, on the right. The same field where you and Echo saw the helicopter. '
   'Echo?
   'The Frenchman. ' Delta paused, thinking quickly. 'You can't light a match, you can't draw attention to yourself-'
   Suddenly, there were the sharp but muted sounds of objects striking other objects. Treesl Rocks! McAllister was signalling!
   'Grab stones, pieces of wood or rocks, and keep throwing them into the woods on the right. I'll hear them. '
   'I will fill my pockets with some now. '
   'I have no right to ask you this,' said Delta, picking up the attache case, 'but do you have a weapon?
   'A three-fifty-seven-calibre magnum with a belt full of ammunition, courtesy of my cousin on my mother's side, may she rest with the holy Jesus. '
   'I hope I don't see you, and if I don't, good-bye, Wong. Another part of me may not approve of you, but you're a hell of a man. And believe me, you really did beat me last time. '
   'No, sir, you bested me. But I would like to try again. '
   'Forget it!' cried the man from Medusa, racing up the hill.
   Like a giant, monstrous bird, its lower body pulsating with blinding light, the helicopter descended onto the field. As arranged, McAllister stood in full view and, as expected, the chopper's searchlight zeroed in on him. Also as arranged, Jason Bourne was forty-odd yards away, in the shadows of the woods – visible, bujt not clearly. The rotors wound down to a grinding, abrasive halt. The silence was emphatic. The door opened, the stairs sprang out, and the slender, grey– haired Sheng Chou Yang walked down the steps, carrying a briefcase.
   'So good to see you after all these years, Edward,' called out a taipan's first son. 'Would you care to inspect the aircraft? As you requested, there is no one but myself and my most trusted pilot. '
   'No, Sheng, you can do it for me!' yelled McAllister, several hundred feet away, pulling a canister from inside his jacket and throwing it towards the helicopter. 'Tell the pilot to step outside for a few minutes and spray the cabin. If there's anyone inside he – or they – will come out quickly. '
   'This is so unlike you, Edward. Men like us know when to trust one another. We're not fools. '
   'Do it, Sheng!'
   'Of course I will' under orders, the pilot stepped out of the aircraft. Sheng Chou Yang picked up the canister and sprayed the immobilizing fog into the helicopter. Several minutes elapsed; no one came out . 'Are you satisfied, or should I blow the damn thing up, which would serve neither of us. Come, my friend, we're beyond these games. We always were. '
   'But you became what you are. I remained what I was. '
   'We can correct that, Edward! I can demand your presence at all our conferences. I can elevate you to a position of prominence You'll be a star in the foreign service firmament. '
   'It's true then, isn't it? Everything in the file. You're back. The Kuomintang is back in China-'
   'Let's talk quietly together, Edward. ' Sheng glanced at Bourne in the shadows, then gestured to his right . 'This is a private matter. '
   Jason moved quickly; he raced to the aircraft while the two negotiators were standing with their backs to him. As the pilot climbed into the chopper and reached his seat, the man from Medusa was behind him.
   'An jing!' whispered Jason, ordering the man to keep silent, his machine pistol reinforcing the command. Before the stunned pilot could react, Bourne whipped a strip of heavy cloth over the man's head, bridling it across the shocked, open mouth and yanked it taut. Then, pulling a long thin nylon cord from his pocket, he lashed the man to the seat, pinning his arms. There would be no sudden lift-off.
   Returning his weapon to the belt under his jacket, Bourne crawled out of the helicopter. The huge machine blocked his view of McAllister and Sheng Chou Yang, which meant that it blocked theirs of him. He walked rapidly back to his previous position, constantly turning his head, prepared to change direction if the two men emerged on either side of the aircraft; the chopper was his visual shield. He stopped; he was near enough; it was time to appear casual. He took out a cigarette and struck a match, lighting it. He then strolled aimlessly to his left, to where he could just barely see the two figures on the other side of the helicopter. He wondered what was being said between the enemies. He wondered what McAllister was waiting for.
   Do it, analyst. Do it now! It's your maximum opportunity. Every moment you delay you give away time, and time holds complications! Goddamn it, do it!
   Bourne froze. He heard the sound of a stone hitting a tree close to where he had walked out on the field. Then another much nearer and another quickly following. It was Wong's warning! Sheng's patrol was crossing the field below!
   Analyst, you'll get us killed! If I run over and shoot, the sound will bring six men rushing us with more firepower than we can handle! For Christ's sake, do it!
   The man from Medusa stared at Sheng and McAllister, his self-hatred rising, close to exploding. He never should have let it happen this way. Death by the hands of an amateur, an embittered bureaucrat who wanted his moment in the sun.
   'Kam Pek!' It was Wong! He had crossed through the woods on the second level and was behind him, concealed in the trees.
   'Yes? I heard the stones. '
   'You will not like what you hear now, sir. '
   'What is it?
   'The patrol crawls up the hill. '
   'It's a protective action,' said Jason, his eyes riveted on the two figures in the field. 'We may still be all right. They can't see a hell of a lot. '
   'I am not sure that matters, sir. They prepare themselves. I heard them – they've locked their weapons into firing positions. '
   Bourne swallowed, a sense of futility spreading over him. For reasons he could not fathom, it was a reverse trap. 'You'd better get out of here, Wong. '
   'May I ask? Are these the people who killed the Frenchman?
   'Yes. '
   'And for whom the Pig, Soo Jiang, has worked so obscenely these past four years?
   'Yes. '
   'I believe I will stay, sir. '
   Without saying a word, the man from Medusa walked back to his attache case. He picked it up and threw it into the woods. 'Open it,' he said. 'If we get out of this, you can spend your days at the casino without picking up messages. '
   'I do not gamble. '
   'You're gambling now, Wong. '
   'Did you really think that we, the great warlords of the most ancient and cultured empire the world has ever known, would leave it to unwashed peasants and their ill-born offspring, schooled in the discredited theories of egalitarianism?' Sheng stood in front of McAllister; he held his briefcase across his chest with both hands. 'They should be our slaves, not our rulers. '
   'It was that kind of thinking that lost you the country – you, the leaders, not the people. They weren't consulted. If they were, there might have been accommodations, compromises, and you would have it still. '
   'One does not compromise with Marxist animals – or with liars. As I will not compromise with you, Edward. '
   'What was that?'
   With his left hand Sheng snapped his briefcase open and pulled out the file stolen from Victoria Peak. 'Do you recognize it?' he asked calmly.
   'I don't believe it!'
   'Believe, my old adversary. A little ingenuity can produce anything. '
   'It's impossible?
   'It's here. In my hand and the opening page clearly states that there is only one copy, to be sent by military escort under Ultra Maximum Security wherever it goes. Quite correctly, in my judgement, for your appraisal was accurate when we spoke over the telephone. The contents would inflame the Far East – make war unavoidable. The right-wingers in Beijing would march on Hong Kong – right-wingers there, you'd call them left on your side of the world. Foolish, isn't it?
   'I had a copy made and sent to Washington,' broke in the undersecretary, quickly, quietly, firmly.
   'I don't believe that,' said Sheng. 'All diplomatic transmissions, by telephone-computer or by pouch, must be cleared by the highest superior officer. The notorious Ambassador Havilland wouldn't permit it, and the consulate wouldn't touch it without his authorization. '
   'I sent a copy to the Chinese consulate!' shouted McAllister. 'You're finished, Sheng!'
   'Really? Who do you think receives all communications from all outside sources at our consulate in Hong Kong? Don't bother to answer, I'll do it for you. One of our people. ' Sheng paused, his messianic eyes suddenly on fire. 'We are everywhere, Edward! We will not be denied! We will have our nation back, our empire!'
   'You're insane. It can't work. You'll start a war!' Then it will be a just war! Governments across the world will have to choose. Individual rule or state rule. Freedom or tyranny!'
   'Too few of you gave freedom and too many of you were tyrants. '
   'We will prevail – one way or the other. ' 'My God, that's what you want! You want to push the world to the brink, force it to choose between annihilation and survival! That's how you think you'll get what you want, that the choice of survival will win out! This economic commission, your whole Hong Kong strategy, is just a beginning. You want to spread your poison to the whole Far East! You're a zealot, you're blind! Can't you see the tragic consequences-'
   'Our nation was stolen from us and we will have it back! We cannot be stopped! We march!'
   'You can be stopped,' said McAllister, quietly, his right hand edging to the fold in his jacket . 'I'll stop you. '
   Suddenly, Sheng dropped his briefcase, revealing a gun. He fired as McAllister instinctively recoiled in terror, grabbing his shoulder.
   'Dive!' roared Bourne, racing in front of the aircraft, in the wash of its lights, releasing a burst of gunfire from his machine pistol. 'Roll, roll! If you can move, roll away!'
   'You!' Sheng screamed, firing-two rapid shots down into the fallen undersecretary of state, then raising his weapon and repeatedly pulling the trigger, aiming at the zigzagging man from Medusa running towards him.
   'For Echo!' shouted Bourne at the top of his lungs. 'For the people you hacked to death! For the teacher on a rope you butchered! For the woman that you couldn't stop – oh, Christ! For those two brothers, but mainly for Echo, you bastard!' A short burst exploded from the machine pistol -then no more, and no amount of pressure on the trigger could activate it! It was jammed! Jammed! Sheng knew it; he levelled his weapon carefully as Jason threw the gun down, pounding towards the killer. Sheng fired as Delta instinctively pivoted to his right, spinning in mid-air as he pulled his knife from his belt, then planted his foot on the ground, reversing direction and abruptly lunged towards Sheng. The knife found its mark and the man from Medusa ripped open the fanatic's chest. The actual killer of hundreds and would-be killer of millions was dead.
   His hearing had been suspended; it wasn't now. The patrol had raced out of the woods, bursts from machine guns filling the night and the field... Other bursts came from beyond the helicopter – Wong had opened the attaché case and found what he needed. Two soldiers of the patrol fell; the remaining four dropped to the ground; one crawled back into the woods; he was shouting. The radio! He was reaching other men, other back-ups! How far away were they? How near"?
   Priorities! Bourne raced behind the aircraft and over to Wong, who was crouched by a tree at the edge of the woods.
   There's another one of those in there!' he whispered. 'Give it to me!' 'Conserve your ammunition,' said Wong. 'There's not much more. '
   'I know that. Stay here and pin them down as best you can but keep your fire low to the ground. ' 'Where are you going, sir? 'Circling back through the trees. '
   That's what the Frenchman would have ordered me to do. ' 'He was right. He was always right. ' Jason dashed deeper into the woods with the bloody knife in his belt; his lungs were bursting, his legs straining, his eyes peering into the forest darkness. He threaded his way through the dense foliage as fast as he could, making as little noise as he could.
   Two snaps! Thick twigs on the ground broken by having been stepped on! He saw the shrouded silhouette of a figure coming towards him and spun around the trunk of a tree. He knew who it was – the officer with the radio, the thoughtful, soft-spoken killer from the Beijing sanctuary, an experienced combat soldier: Take to the flanks and outflank. What he lacked was guerrilla training, and that lack would cost him his life. One did not step on thick objects in the forest.
   The officer walked by, crouching. Jason sprang, his left arm circling the man's neck, the gun in his hand slammed against the soldier's head, the knife once again doing its work. Bourne knelt down over the corpse, put his weapon in his belt and took the officer's powerful machine gun. He found, two additional clips of ammunition; the odds were better now. It was even possible they would get out alive. Was McAllister alive? Or had a frustrated bureaucrat's moment in the sun ended in perpetual darkness. Priorities!
   He circled the field's curving border to the point where he had entered it. Wong's sporadic gunfire was keeping the three remaining men of Sheng's elite patrol where they were, afraid to move. Suddenly, something made him turn around – a hum in the distance, a bright fleck in his eye. It was both! The sound was that of a racing engine, the fleck a moving searchlight scanning the dark sky. Above the descending trees he could make out a vehicle – a truck – with a searchlight operated by an experienced hand. The truck sped off the road, obscured now by the high grass; only the bright searchlight was visible, moving faster and faster towards the base of the hill barely 200 yards below. Priorities. Move!
   'Hold fire!' Bourne roared, lurching away from his position. The three officers spun around in place on the ground, their machine guns erupting, bullets spraying the space from which the voice had come.
   The man from Medusa stepped out. It was over in seconds as the powerful weapon blew up the earth and those killers who would have killed him.
   ' Wong!' he shouted, running into the field. 'Come on! With me!' Seconds later he reached the bodies of McAllister and Sheng – one still alive, one a corpse. Jason bent over the analyst, who was moving both arms, his right hand stretched out, trying desperately to reach something. 'Mac, can you hear me?'
   'The file!' whispered the undersecretary of state. 'Get the file!'
   'What– Bourne looked over at the body of Sheng Chou Yang, and, in the dim wash of the moonlight, saw the last thing in the world he expected: Sheng's black-bordered dossier, one of the most secret, most explosive documents on earth. 'Jesus Christ? said Jason softly, reaching for it . 'Listen to me, analyst!' Bourne raised his voice as Wong joined them. 'We have to move you, and it may hurt, but we haven't a choice!' He glanced up at Wong and continued. There's another patrol on its way here and it's closing in. An emergency back-up, and by my estimate they'll be here in less than two minutes. Grit your teeth, Mr Undersecretary. We move!'
   Together Jason and Wong carried McAllister towards the helicopter. Suddenly, Bourne cried out . 'Christ, wait a minute! ... No, go on – you carry him,' he shouted to the conduit . 'I have to go back!'
   'Why?' whispered the undersecretary, in agony.
   'What are you doing, sir?' cried Wong.
   'Food for revisionist thought,' shouted Jason enigmatically, as he raced back to the body of Sheng Chou Yang. When he reached it, he bent down and shoved a flat object under the dead man's tunic. He rose and ran back to the aircraft as Wong was carefully, gently, placing McAllister across two of the back seats. Bourne leaped in the front, took out his knife and slashed the nylon cord that bound the pilot, then cut the cloth that gagged him. The pilot had a spasm of coughing and gasping; even before it subsided Jason gave his orders.
   Kaifeiji ba!' he shouted.
   'You may speak English,' the pilot gasped. 'I am fluent. It was a requirement. '
   'Airborne, you son of a bitch! Now!'
   The pilot snapped the switches and started the rotors as a swarm of soldiers, clearly visible in the helicopter's lights, broke into the field. The new patrol instantly saw the five dead men of Sheng's elite guard. The entire squad began firing at the slowly ascending aircraft.
   'Get the hell out of here!' roared Jason.
   The armour on this equipment is Sheng's armour,' said the pilot calmly. 'Even the glass will withstand heavy fire. Where do we go?'
   'Hong Kong!' shouted Bourne, astonished to see that the pilot, now ascending rapidly, powerfully, turned to him smiling.
   'Surely, the generous Americans or the benevolent British will grant me asylum, sir? It is a dream from the spirits!'
   'I'll be goddamned,' said the man from Medusa as they reached the first layer of low-flying clouds.
   'This was a most efficient idea, sir,' said Wong from the shadows at the rear of the helicopter. 'How did it occur to you?'
   'It worked once before,' said Jason, lighting a cigarette. 'History – even recent history – usually repeats itself. '
   'Mr Webb?' whispered McAllister.
   'What is it, analyst? How are you feeling?
   'Never mind that. Why did you go back – back to Sheng?'
   'To give him a farewell present. A bank book. A confidential account in the Cayman Islands. '
   'What?
   'It won't do anybody any good. The names and the account numbers have been scissored out. But it'll be interesting to see how Peking reacts to its existence, won't it?
   Epilogue
   Edward Newington McAllister, on crutches, limped into the once-impressive study of the old house on Victoria Peak, its huge bay windows now covered by heavy plastic, the carnage all too apparent. Ambassador Raymond Havilland watched as the undersecretary of state threw the Sheng file on his desk.
   'I believe this is something you lost,' said the analyst, angling his crutches and settling down in the chair with difficulty.
   The doctors tell me that your wounds aren't critical,' said the diplomat . 'I'm pleased. '
   'You're pleased! Who the hell are you to be so royally pleased?
   'It's a manner of speaking – sounds arrogant, if you like -but I mean it. What you did was extraordinary, beyond anything I would have imagined. '
   'I'm sure of that. ' The undersecretary shifted his position, easing his wounded shoulder into the back of the chair. 'Actually, I didn't do it. He did. '
   'You made it possible, Edward. '
   'I was out of my element – my territory, as it were. These people do things the rest of us only dream about, or fantasize, or watch on a screen, disbelieving every moment because it's so outrageously implausible. '
   'We wouldn't have such dreams, or fantasize, or stay mesmerized by invention, if the fundamentals weren't in the human experience. They do what they do best just as we do what we do best. To each his own territory, Mr Undersecretary. '
   McAllister stared at Havilland, his look uncompromising. 'How did it happen? How did they get the file?'
   'Another kind of territory. A professional. Three young men were killed, quite horribly. An impenetrable safe was penetrated. '
   'Inexcusable!'
   'Agreed,' said Havilland, leaning forward, suddenly raising his voice. 'Just as your actions were inexcusable! Who in God's name do you think you are to have done what you did? What right had you to take matters in your own hands -inexperienced hands? You've violated every oath you've ever taken in the service of your government! Dismissal is inadequate! Thirty years in prison would more suitably fit your crimes! Have you any idea what might have happened! A war that could plunge the Far East – the world – into hell!
   'I did what I did because I could do it. That's a lesson I learned from Jason Bourne, our Jason Bourne. Regardless, you have my resignation Mr Ambassador. Effective immediately – unless you're pressing charges. '
   'And let you loose? Havilland collapsed back in his chair. 'Don't be ridiculous. I've talked with the President and he agrees. You're going to be chairman of the National Security Council. '
   'Chairman-? I can't handle it!'
   'With your own limousine and all kinds of other crap. '
   'I won't know what to say!'
   'You know how to think, and I'll be at your side. '
   'Oh, my God!'
   'Relax. Just evaluate. And tell those of us who speak what to say. That's where the real power is, you know. Not those who speak, but those who think. '
   'It's all so sudden, so-'
   'So deserved, Mr Undersecretary,' interrupted the diplomat . 'The mind is a marvellous thing. Let's never underestimate it. Incidentally, the doctor tells me Lin Wenzu will pull through. He's lost the use of his left arm, but he'll live. I'm sure you'll have a recommendation to forward to MI6 in London. They'll respect it. ' 'Mr and Mrs. Webb? Where are they? 'In Hawaii by now. With Dr Panov and Mr Conklin of course. They don't think much of me, I'm afraid. ' 'Mr Ambassador, you didn't give them much reason to. ' 'Perhaps not, but then that's not my job. ' 'I think I understand. Now. '
   'I hope your God has compassion for men like you and me, Edward. I should not care to meet Him if He doesn't. ' 'There's always forgiveness. '
   'Really? Then I should not care to know Him. He'd turn out to be a fraud. '
   'Why?
   'Because He unleashed upon the world a race of unthinking, bloodthirsty wolves who care not one whit about the tribe's survival, only their own. That's hardly a perfect
   God, is it?
   'He is perfect. We're the imperfect ones. '
   'Then it's only a game for Him. He puts His creations in place, and for His own amusement watches them blow themselves up. He watches us blow ourselves up. '
   'They're our explosives, Mr Ambassador. We have free will' 'According to the Scriptures, however, it's all His will, isn't that so? Let His will be done. ' 'It's a grey area. ' 'Perfect! One day you might really be Secretary of State. '
   'I don't think so. '
   'Nor do I,' agreed Havilland. 'But in the meantime we do our jobs – keep ,the pieces in place, stop the world from destroying itself. Thank the spirits, as they say here in the East, for people like you and me, and Jason Bourne and David Webb. We push the hour of Armageddon always a day away. What happens when we're not here?
   Her long auburn hair fell over his face, her body pressed against his, her lips next to his lips. David opened his eyes and smiled. It was as though there had been no nightmare that had jarringly interrupted their lives, no outrage inflicted upon them that had brought them to the edge of an abyss that held horror and death. They were together, and the splendid comfort of that reality filled him with profound gratitude. It was, and that was enough – more than he ever thought possible.
   He began to reconstruct the events of the past twenty-four hours and his smile widened, a brief, curtailed laugh escaping from his throat. Things were never as they should be, never as one expected. He and Mo Panov had had far too much to drink on the flight from Hong Kong to Hawaii, while Alex Conklin had stayed with iced tea or club soda or whatever newly reformed drunks want others to know they're staying with – no lectures, just quiet martyrdom. Marie had held the eminent Dr Panov's head while the noted psychiatrist threw up in the British military aircraft's suffocatingly small toilet, covering Mo with a blanket when he fell into a dead sleep. She had then gently but firmly rejected her husband's amorous advances, but had made up for those rejections when she and a sobered mate reached the hotel in Kahala. A splendid, delirious night of making love that adolescents dream of, washing away the terrors of the nightmare.
   Alex? Yes, he remembered. Conklin had taken the first commercial flight out of Oahu to Los Angeles and Washington. There are heads to break' was the way he had phrased it . 'And I intend to break them. ' Alexander Conklin had a new mission in his fragmented life. It was called accountability.
   Mo? Morris Panov? Scourge of the chicken-soup psychologists and the charlatans of his profession? He was next door in the adjoining room, no doubt nursing the most massive hangover of his life.
   'You laughed,' whispered Marie, her eyes closed, nestling her face into his throat . 'What the hell is so funny?'
   'You, me, us – everything. '
   'Your sense of humour positively escapes me. On the other hand, I think I hear a man named David. '
   That's all you'll ever hear from now on. '
   There was a knock on the door, not the door to the hallway but the one to the adjoining room. Panov. Webb got out of bed, walked rapidly to the bathroom and grabbed a towel, whipping it around his naked waist, 'Just a second, Mo!' he called out, going to the door.
   Morris Panov, his face pale but composed, stood there with a suitcase in his hand. 'May I enter the Temple of Eros?'
   'You're there, friend. '
   'I should hope so... Good afternoon, my dear,' said the psychiatrist, addressing Marie in the bed, as he went to a chair by the glass door that led to the baicot;y overlooking the Hawaiian beach. 'Don't fuss, don't prepare a meal, and if you get out of bed, don't worry. I'm a doctor. I think. '
   'How are you, Mo?' Marie sat up, pulling the sheet over her.
   'Far better than I was three hours ago, but you wouldn't know anything about that. You're maddeningly sane. '
   'You were stretched, you had-to let loose. '
   'If you charge a hundred dollars an hour, lovely lady, I'll mortgage my house and sign up for five years of therapy. '
   'I'd like that defined,' said David, smiling and sitting down opposite Panov. 'Why the suitcase?'
   'I'm leaving. I have patients back in Washington and I like to think they may need me. '
   The silence was moving as David and Marie looked at Morris Panov. 'What do we say, MoT asked Webb . 'How do we say it?'
   'You don't say anything. I'll do the talking. Marie has been hurt, pained beyond normal endurance. But then her endurance is beyond normality and she can handle it. Perhaps outrageously, we expect as much from certain people. It's unfair, but that's the way it is.'
   'I had to survive, Mo,' said Marie, looking at her husband. 'I had to get him back. That's the way it was.'
   'You, David. You've gone through a traumatizing experience, one that only you can deal with and you don't need any chicken-soup crap from me to face it. You are now, not anybody else. Jason Bourne is gone. He can't come back. Build your life as David Webb – concentrate on Marie and David – that's all there is and all there should be. And if at any moment the anxieties come back – they probably won't, but I'd appreciate your manufacturing a few – call me and I'll take the next plane up to Maine. I love you both, and Marie's beef stew is outstanding.'
   Sundown, the brilliant orange circle settling on top of the western horizon, slowly disappearing into the Pacific. They walked along the beach, their hands gripped fiercely, their bodies touching sc natural, so right.
   'What do you do when there's a part of you that you hate?' said Webb.
   'Accept it,' answered Marie. 'We all have a dark side, David. We wish we could deny it, but we can't. It's there. Perhaps we can't exist without it. Yours is a legend called Jason Bourne, but that's all it is.'
   'I loathe him.'
   'He brought you back to me. That's all that matters.'

Book 3

The Bourne Ultimatum


Prologue
   
Darkness had descended on Manassas, Virginia, the countryside alive with nocturnal undercurrents, as Bourne crept through the woods bordering the estate of General Norman Swayne. Startled birds fluttered out of their black recesses; crows awoke in the trees and cawed their alarms, and then, as if calmed by a foraging co-conspirator, kept silent.
   Manassas! The key was here! The key that would unlock the subterranean door that led to Carlos the Jackal, the assassin who wanted only to destroy David Webb and his family. ... Webb! Get away from me, David!" screamed Jason Bourne in the silence of his mind. Let me be the killer you cannot be!
   With each scissoring cut into the thick, high wire fence, he understood the inevitable, confirmed by his heavy breathing and the sweat that fell from his hairline. No matter how hard he tried to keep his body in reasonable shape, he was fifty years of age; he could not do with ease what he did thirteen years ago in Paris when, under orders, he had stalked the Jackal. It was something to think about, not dwell upon. There were Marie and his children now-David's wife, David's children-and there was nothing he could not do as long as he willed it! David Webb was disappearing from his psyche, only the predator Jason Bourne would remain.
   He was through! He crawled inside and stood up, instinctively, rapidly checking his equipment with the fingers of both hands. Weapons: an automatic, as well as a CO2 dart pistol; Zeiss Ikon binoculars; a scabbarded hunting knife. They were all the predator needed, for he was now behind the lines in enemy territory, the enemy that would lead him to Carlos.
   Medusa. The bastard battalion from Vietnam, the un-logged, unsanctioned, unacknowledged collection of killers and misfits who roamed the jungles of Southeast Asia directed by Command Saigon, the original death squads who brought Saigon more intelligence input than all the search-and-destroys put together. Jason Bourne had come out of Medusa with David Webb only a memory-a scholar who had another wife, other children, all slaughtered.
   General Norman Swayne had been an elite member of Command Saigon, the sole supplier of the old Medusa. And now there was a new Medusa: different, massive, evil incarnate cloaked in contemporary respectability, searching out and destroying whole segments of global economies, all for the benefit of the few, all financed by the profits from a long-ago bastard battalion, un-logged, unacknowledged-non-history. This modern Medusa was the bridge to Carlos the Jackal. The assassin would find the principals irresistible as clients, and both camps would demand the death of Jason Bourne. That had to happen! And for it to happen, Bourne had to learn the secrets concealed within the grounds belonging to General Swayne, head of all procurements for the Pentagon, a panicked man with a small tattoo on his inner forearm. A Medusan.
   Without sound or warning, a black Doberman crashed through the dense foliage, its frenzy in full force. Jason whipped the CO2 pistol from its nylon holster as the salivating attack dog lunged for his stomach, its teeth bared. He fired into its head; the dart took effect in seconds. He cradled the animal's unconscious body to the ground.
   Cut its throat! roared Jason Bourne in silence.
   No, countered his other self, David Webb. Blame the trainer, not the animal.
   Get away from me, David!

1
   
The cacophony spun out of control as the crowds swelled through the amusement park in the countryside on the outskirts of Baltimore. The summer night was hot, and nearly everywhere faces and necks were drenched with sweat, except for those screaming as they plunged over the crests of a roller coaster, or shrieking as they plummeted down the narrow, twisting gullies of racing water in torpedo sleds. The garishly colored, manically blinking lights along the midway were joined by the grating sounds of emphatic music metallically erupting out of an excess of loudspeakers-calliopes presto, marches prestissimo. Pitchmen yelled above the din, nasally hawking their wares in monotonic harangues while erratic explosions in the sky lit up the darkness, sending sprays of myriad fireworks cascading over a small adjacent black lake. Roman candles bright, arcing bursts of fire blinding.
   A row of Hit-the-Gong machines drew contorted faces and thick necks bulging with veins as men sought furiously and frequently in frustration to prove their manhood, crashing heavy wooden mallets down on the deceitful planks that too often refused to send the little red balls up to the bells. Across the way, others shrieked with menacing enthusiasm as they crashed their Dodge 'Em carts into the whirling, surrounding vehicles, each collision a triumph of superior aggression, each combatant a momentary movie star who overcomes all odds against him. Gunfight at O.K. Corral at 9:27 in the evening in a conflict that meant nothing.
   Farther along was a minor monument to sudden death, a shooting gallery that bore little resemblance to the innocent minimum-caliber variety found in state fairs and rural carnivals. Instead, it was a microcosm of the most lethal equipment of modern weaponry. There were mocked-up versions of MAC-10 and Uzi machine pistols, steel-framed missile launchers and antitank bazookas, and, finally, a frightening replica of a flamethrower spewing out harsh, straight beams of light through billowing clouds of dark smoke. And again there were the perspiring faces, continuous beads of sweat rolling over maniacal eyes and down across stretched necks-husbands, wives and children-their features grotesque, twisted out of shape as if each were blasting away at hated enemies-wives, husbands, parents and offspring. All were locked in a never-ending war without meaning-at 9:29 in the evening, in an amusement park whose theme was violence. Unmitigated and unwarranted, man against himself and all his hostilities, the worst, of course, being his fears.
   A slender figure, a cane gripped in his right hand, limped past a booth where angry, excited customers were hurling sharp-pointed darts into balloons on which were stenciled the faces of public figures. As the rubber heads exploded the bursts gave rise to fierce arguments for and against the sagging, pinched remnants of political icons and their dart-wielding executioners. The limping man continued down the midway, peering ahead through the maze of strollers as if he were looking for a specific location in a hectic, crowded, unfamiliar part of town. He was dressed casually but neatly in a jacket and sport shirt as though the oppressive heat had no effect on him and the jacket was somehow a requirement. His face was the pleasant face of a middle-aged man, but worn with premature lines and deep shadows under the eyes, all of which was the result more of the life he had led than of the accumulated years. His name was Alexander Conklin, and he was a retired covert operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. He was also at this moment apprehensive and consumed with anxiety. He did not wish to be in this place at this hour, and he could not imagine what catastrophic event had taken place that forced him to be there.
   He approached the pandemonium of the shooting gallery and suddenly gasped, stopping all movement, his eyes locked on a tall, balding man about his own age with a seersucker jacket slung over his shoulder. Morris Panov was walking toward the thunderous counter of the shooting gallery from the opposite direction! Why? What had happened? Conklin snapped his head around in every direction, his eyes darting toward faces and bodies, instinctively knowing that he and the psychiatrist were being watched. It was too late to stop Panov from entering the inner circle of the meeting ground but perhaps not too late to get them both out! The retired intelligence officer reached under his jacket for the small Beretta automatic that was his constant companion, and lurched rapidly forward, limping and flailing his cane against the crowd, smashing kneecaps and prodding stomachs and breasts and kidneys until the stunned, angry strollers erupted in successive cries of shock, a near riot in the making. He then rushed forward, slamming his frail body into the bewildered doctor and shouting into Panov's face through the roars of the crowd, "What the hell are you doing here?"
   "The same thing I assume you are. David, or should I say Jason? That's what the telegram said."
   "It's a trap!"
   There was a piercing scream overriding the surrounding melee. Both Conklin and Panov instantly looked over at the shooting gallery only yards away. An obese woman with a pinched face had been shot in the throat. The crowd went into a frenzy. Conklin spun around trying to see where the shot came from, but the panic was at full pitch; he saw nothing but rushing figures. He grabbed Panov and propelled him through the screaming, frantic bodies across the midway and again through the strolling crowds to the base of the massive roller coaster at the end of the park, where excited customers were edging toward the booth through the deafening noise.
   "My God!" yelled Panov. "Was that meant for one of us?"
   "Maybe ... maybe not," replied the former intelligence officer breathlessly as sirens and whistles were heard in the distance.
   "You said it was a trap!"
   "Because we both got a crazy telegram from David using a name he hasn't used in five years-Jason Bourne! And if I'm not mistaken, your message also said that under no condition should we call his house."
   "That's right."
   "It's a trap. ... You move better than I do, Mo, so move those legs of yours. Get out of here-run like a son of a bitch and find a telephone. A pay phone, nothing traceable!"
   "What?"
   "Call his house! Tell David to pack up Marie and the kids and get out of there!"
   "What?"
   "Someone found us, Doctor! Someone looking for Jason Bourne-who's been looking for him for years and won't stop until he's got him in his gun sight. ... You were in charge of David's messed-up head, and I pulled every rotten string in Washington to get him and Marie out of Hong Kong alive. ... The rules were broken and we were found, Mo. You and me! The only officially recorded connections to Jason Bourne, address and occupation unknown."
   "Do you know what you're saying, Alex?"
   "You're goddamned right I do. ... It's Carlos. Carlos the Jackal. Get out of here, Doctor. Reach your former patient and tell him to disappear!"
   "Then what's he to do?"
   "I don't have many friends, certainly no one I trust, but you do. Give him the name of somebody-say, one of your medical buddies who gets urgent calls from his patients the way I used to call you. Tell David to reach him or her when he's secure. Give him a code."
   "A code?"
   "Jesus, Mo, use your head! An alias, a Jones or a Smith-"
   "They're rather common names-"
   "Then Schicklgruber or Moskowitz, whatever you like! Just tell him to let us know where he is."
   "I understand."
   "Now get out of here, and don't go home! ... Take a room at the Brookshire in Baltimore under the name of-Morris, Phillip Morris. I'll meet you there later."
   "What are you going to do?"
   "Something I hate. ... Without my cane I'm buying a ticket for this fucking roller coaster. Nobody'll look for a cripple on one of these things. It scares the hell out of me, but it's a logical exit even if I have to stay on the damn thing all night. ... Now get out of here! Hurry!"
   The station wagon raced south down a backcountry road through the hills of New Hampshire toward the Massachusetts border, the driver a long-framed man, his sharp-featured face intense, the muscles of his jaw pulsating, his clear light-blue eyes furious. Beside him sat his strikingly attractive wife, the reddish glow of her auburn hair heightened by the dashboard lights. In her arms was an infant, a baby girl of eight months; in the first backseat was another child, a blond-haired boy of five, asleep under a blanket, a portable guardrail protecting him from sudden stops. The father was David Webb, professor of Oriental studies, but once part of the notorious, unspoken-of Medusa, twice the legend that was Jason Bourne-assassin.
   "We knew it had to happen," said Marie St. Jacques Webb, Canadian by birth, economist by profession, savior of David Webb by accident. "It was merely a question of time."
   "It's crazy!" David whispered so as not to wake the children, his intensity in no way diminished by his whisper. "Everything's buried, maximum archive security and all the rest of that crap! How did anyone find Alex and Mo?"
   "We don't know, but Alex will start looking. There's no one better than Alex, you said that yourself-"
   "He's marked now-he's a dead man," interrupted Webb grimly.
   "That's premature, David. 'He's the best there ever was,' those were your words."
   "The only time he wasn't was thirteen years ago in Paris."
   "Because you were better-"
   "No! Because I didn't know who I was, and he was operating on prior data that I didn't know a damn thing about. He assumed it was me out there, but I didn't know me, so I couldn't act according to his script. ... He's still the best. He saved both our lives in Hong Kong."
   "Then you're saying what I'm saying, aren't you? We're in good hands."
   "Alex's, yes. Not Mo's. That poor beautiful man is dead. They'll take him and break him!"
   "He'd go to his grave before giving anyone information about us."
   "He won't have a choice. They'll shoot him up to the moon with Amytals and his whole life will be on tape. Then they'll kill him and come after me ... after us, which is why you and the kids are heading south, way south. The Caribbean."
   "I'll send them, darling. Not me."
   "Will you stop it! We agreed when Jamie was born. It's why we got the place down there, why we damn near bought your kid brother's soul to look after it for us. ... Also, he's done pretty damn well. We now own half interest in a flourishing inn down a dirt road on an island nobody ever heard of until that Canadian hustler landed therein a seaplane."
   "Johnny was always the aggressive type. Dad once said he could sell a broken-down heifer as a prime steer and no one would check the parts."
   "The point is he loves you ... and the kids. I'm also counting on that wild man's– Never mind, I trust Johnny."
   "While you're trusting so much in my younger brother, don't trust your sense of direction. You just passed the turn to the cabin."
   "Goddamn it!" cried Webb, braking the car and swerving around. "Tomorrow! You and Jamie and Alison are heading out of Logan Airport. To the island!"
   "We'll discuss it, David."
   "There's nothing to discuss." Webb breathed deeply, steadily, imposing a strange control. "I've been here before," he said quietly.
   Marie looked at her husband, his suddenly passive face outlined in the dim wash of the dashboard lights. What she saw frightened her far more than the specter of the Jackal. She was not looking at David Webb the soft-spoken scholar. She was staring at a man they both thought had disappeared from their lives forever.

2
   Alexander Conklin gripped his cane as he limped into the conference room at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. He stood facing a long impressive table, large enough to seat thirty people, but instead there were only three, the man at the head the gray-haired DCI, director of Central Intelligence. Neither he nor his two highest-ranking deputy directors appeared pleased to see Conklin. The greetings were perfunctory, and rather than taking his obviously assigned seat next to the CIA official on the DCI's left, Conklin pulled out the chair at the far end of the table, sat down, and with a sharp noise slapped his cane against the edge.
   "Now that we've said hello, can we cut the crap, gentlemen?"
   "That's hardly a courteous or an amiable way to begin, Mr. Conklin," observed the director.
   "Neither courtesy nor amiability is on my mind just now, sir. I just want to know why airtight Four Zero regulations were ignored and maximum-classified information was released that endangers a number of lives, including mine!"
   "That's outrageous, Alex!" interrupted one of the two associates.
   "Totally inaccurate!" added the other. "It couldn't happen and you know it!"
   "I don't know it and it did happen and I'll tell you what's outrageously accurate," said Conklin angrily. "A man's out there with a wife and two children, a man this country and a large part of the world owe more to than anyone could ever repay, and he's running, hiding, frightened out of his mind that he and his family are targets. We gave that man our word, all of us, that no part of the official record would ever see the light of day until it was confirmed beyond doubt that Rich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, was dead. ... All right, I've heard the same rumors you have, probably from the same or much better sources, that the Jackal was killed here or executed there, but no one-repeat no one-has come forward with indisputable proof. ... Yet a part of that file was leaked, a very vital part, and it concerns me deeply because my name is there. ... Mine and Dr. Morris Panov, the chief psychiatrist of record. We were the only-repeat only-two individuals acknowledged to have been close associates of the unknown man who assumed the name of Jason Bourne, considered in more sectors than we can count to be the rival of Carlos in the killing game. ... But that information is buried in the vaults here in Langley. How did it get out? According to the rules, if anyone wants any part of that record-from the White House to the State Department to the holy Joint Chiefs-he has to go through the offices of the director and his chief analysts right here at Langley. They have to be briefed on all the details of the request, and even if they're satisfied as to the legitimacy, there's a final step. Me. Before a release is signed, I'm to be contacted, and in the event I'm not around any longer, Dr. Panov is to be reached, either one of us legally empowered to turn the request down flat. ... That's the way it is, gentlemen, and no one knows the rules better than I do because I'm the one who wrote them-again right here at Langley, because this was the place I knew best. After twenty-eight years in this corkscrew business, it was my final contribution-with the full authority of the president of the United States and the consent of Congress through the select committees on intelligence in the House and the Senate."
   "That's heavy artillery, Mr. Conklin," commented the gray-haired director, sitting motionless, his voice flat, neutral.
   "There were heavy reasons for pulling out the cannons."
   "So I gather. One of the sixteen-inchers reached me."
   "You're damned right he did. Now, there's the question of accountability. I want to know how that information surfaced and, most important, who got it."
   Both deputy directors began talking at once, as angrily as Alex, but they were stopped by the DCI, who touched their arms, a pipe in one hand, a lighter in the other. "Slow down and back up, Mr. Conklin," said the director gently, lighting his pipe. "It's obvious that you know my two associates, but you and I never met, have we?"
   "No. I resigned four and a half years ago, and you were appointed a year after that."
   "Like many others-quite justifiably, I think-did you consider me a crony appointment?"
   "You obviously were, but I had no trouble with that. You seemed qualified. As far as I could tell, you were an apolitical Annapolis admiral who ran naval intelligence and who just happened to work with an FMF marine colonel during the Vietnam War who became president. Others were passed over, but that happens. No sweat."
   "Thank you. But do you have any 'sweat' with my two deputy directors?"
   "It's history, but I can't say either one of them was considered the best friend an agent in the field ever had. They were analysts, not field men."
   "Isn't that a natural aversion, a conventional hostility?"
   "Of course it is. They analyzed situations from thousands of miles away with computers we didn't know who programmed and with data we hadn't passed on. You're damned right it's a natural aversion. We dealt with human quotients; they didn't. They dealt with little green letters on a computer screen and made decisions they frequently shouldn't have made."
   "Because people like you had to be controlled," interjected the deputy on the director's right. "How many times, even today, do men and women like you lack the full picture? The total strategy and not just your part of it?"
   "Then we should be given a fuller picture going in, or at least an overview so we can try to figure out what makes sense and what doesn't."
   "Where does an overview stop, Alex?" asked the deputy on the DCI's left. "At what point do we say, 'We can't reveal this. ... for everyone's benefit'?"
   "I don't know, you're the analysts, I'm not. On a case-by-case basis, I suppose, but certainly with better communication than I ever got when I was in the field. ... Wait a minute. I'm not the issue, you are." Alex stared at the director. "Very smooth, sir, but I'm not buying a change of subject. I'm here to find out who got what and how. If you'd rather, I'll take my credentials over to the White House or up to the Hill and watch a few heads roll. I want answers. I want to know what to do!"
   "I wasn't trying to change the subject, Mr. Conklin, only to divert it momentarily to make a point. You obviously objected to the methods and the compromises employed in the past by my colleagues, but did either of these men ever mislead you, lie to you?"
   Alex looked briefly at the two deputy directors. "Only when they had to lie to me, which had nothing to do with field operations."
   "That's a strange comment."
   "If they haven't told you, they should have. ... Five years ago I was an alcoholic-I'm still an alcoholic but I don't drink anymore. I was riding out the time to my pension, so nobody told me anything and they damn well shouldn't have."
   "For your enlightenment, all my colleagues said to me was that you had been ill, that you hadn't been functioning at the level of your past accomplishments until the end of your service."
   Again Conklin studied both deputies, nodding to both as he spoke. "Thanks, Casset, and you, too, Valentino, but you didn't have to do that. I was a drunk and it shouldn't be a secret whether it's me or anybody else. That's the dumbest thing you can do around here."
   "From what we heard about Hong Kong, you did a hell of a job, Alex," said the man named Casset softly. "We didn't want to detract from that."
   "You've been a pain in the ass for longer than I care to remember," added Valentino. "But we couldn't let you hang out as an accident of booze."
   "Forget it. Let's get back to Jason Bourne. That's why I'm here, why you damn well had to see me."
   "That's also why I momentarily sidetracked us, Mr. Conklin. You have professional differences with my deputies, but I gather you don't question their integrity."
   "Others, yes. Not Casset or Val. As far as I was concerned, they did their jobs and I did mine; it was the system that was fouled up-it was buried in fog. But this isn't, today isn't. The rules are clear-cut and absolute, and since I wasn't reached, they were broken and I was misled, in a very real sense, lied to. I repeat. How did it happen and who got the information?"
   "That's all I wanted to hear," said the director, picking up the telephone on the table. "Please call Mr. DeSole down the hall and ask him to come to the conference room." The DCI hung up and turned to Conklin. "I assume you're aware of Steven DeSole."
   "DeSole the mute mole." Alex nodded.
   "I beg your pardon?"
   "It's an old joke around here," explained Casset to the director. "Steve knows where the bodies are buried, but when the time comes he won't even tell God unless He shows him a Four Zero clearance."
   "I assume that means the three of you, especially Mr. Conklin, consider Mr. DeSole a thorough professional."
   "I'll answer that," Alex said. "He'll tell you anything you have to know but no more than that. Also, he won't lie. He'll keep his mouth shut, or tell you he can't tell you, but he won't lie to you."
   "That's another thing I wanted to hear." There was a brief knock on the door, and the DCI called out for the visitor to enter. A medium-sized, slightly overweight man with wide eyes magnified behind steel-rimmed glasses walked into the room, closing the door behind him. His casual second glance at the table revealed Alexander Conklin to him; he was obviously startled by the sight of the retired intelligence officer. Instantly, he changed his reaction to one of pleasant surprise, crossing to Conklin's chair, his hand extended.
   "Good to see you, old boy. It's been two or three years now, hasn't it?"
   "More like four, Steve," replied Alex, shaking hands. "How's the analysts' analyst and keeper of the keys?"
   "Not much to analyze or to lock up these days. The White House is a sieve and the Congress isn't much better. I should get half pay, but don't tell anyone."
   "We still keep some things to ourselves, don't we?" interrupted the DCI, smiling. "At least from past operations. Perhaps you earned double your pay then."
   "Oh, I suspect I did." DeSole nodded his head humorously as he released Conklin's hand. "However, the days of archive custodians and armed transfers to underground warehouses are over. Today it's all computerized photo scans entered by machines from on high. I don't get to go on those wonderful trips any longer with military escorts, pretending I'll be deliciously attacked by Mata Hari. I haven't had a briefcase chained to my wrist since I can't remember when."
   "A lot safer that way," said Alex.
   "But very little I can tell my grandchildren about, old boy. ... 'What did you do as a big spy, Grandpa?'... 'Actually, in my last years, a great many crossword puzzles, young man.' "
   "Be careful, Mr. DeSole," said the DCI, chuckling. "I shouldn't care to put in a recommendation to cut your pay. ... On the other hand, I couldn't, because I don't believe you for an instant."
   "Neither do I." Conklin spoke quietly, angrily. "This is a setup," he added, staring at the overweight analyst.
   "That's quite a statement, Alex," countered DeSole. "Would you mind explaining it?"
   "You know why I'm here, don't you?"
   "I didn't know you were here."
   "Oh, I see. It just happened to be convenient for you to be 'down the hall' and ready to come in here."
   "My office is down the hall. Quite far down, I might add."
   Conklin looked at the DCI. "Again, very smooth, sir. Bring in three people you figure I've had no major run-ins with outside of the system itself, three men you've determined I basically trust, so I'll believe whatever's said."
   "That's fundamentally accurate, Mr. Conklin, because what you'll hear is the truth. Sit down, Mr. DeSole. ... Perhaps at this end of the table so that our former colleague can study us as we explain to him. I understand it's a technique favored by field officers."
   "I haven't a damn thing to explain," said the analyst as he headed for the chair next to Casset. "But in light of our former colleague's somewhat gross remarks, I'd like to study him. ... Are you well, Alex?"
   "He's well," answered the deputy director named Valentino. "He's snarling at the wrong shadows but he's well."
   "That information couldn't have surfaced without the consent and cooperation of the people in this room!"
   "What information?" asked DeSole, looking at the DCI, suddenly widening his large eyes behind his glasses. "Oh, the max-classified thing you asked me about this morning?"
   The director nodded, then looked at Conklin. "Let's go back to this morning. ... Seven hours ago, shortly after nine o'clock, I received a call from Edward McAllister, formerly of the State Department and currently chairman of the National Security Agency. I'm told Mr. McAllister was with you in Hong Kong, Mr. Conklin, is that correct?"
   "Mr. McAllister was with us," agreed Alex flatly. "He flew undercover with Jason Bourne to Macao, where he was shot up so badly he damn near died. He's an intellectual oddball and one of the bravest men I've ever met."
   "He said nothing about the circumstances, only that he was there, and I was to shred my calendar, if need be, but to consider our meeting with you as Priority Red. ... Heavy artillery, Mr. Conklin."
   "To repeat. There are heavy reasons for the cannons."
   "Apparently. ... Mr. McAllister gave me the precise maximum-classified codes that would clarify the status of the file you're talking about-the record of the Hong Kong operation. I, in turn, gave the information to Mr. DeSole, so I'll let him tell you what he learned."
   "It hasn't been touched, Alex," said DeSole quietly, his eyes leveled on Conklin. "As of nine-thirty this morning, it's been in a black hole for four years, five months, twenty-one days, eleven hours and forty-three minutes without penetration. And there's a very good reason why that status is pure, but I have no idea whether you're aware of it or not."
   "Where that file is concerned I'm aware of everything!"
   "Perhaps, perhaps not," said DeSole gently. "You were known to have a problem, and Dr. Panov is not that experienced where security matters are concerned."
   "What the hell are you driving at?"
   "A third name was added to the clearance procedures for that official record on Hong Kong. ... Edward Newington McAllister, by his own insistence and with both presidential and congressional authority. He made sure of it."
   "Oh, my God," said Conklin softly, hesitantly. "When I called him last night from Baltimore he said it was impossible. Then he said I had to understand for myself, so he'd set up the conference. ... Jesus, what happened?"
   "I'd say we'd have to look elsewhere," said the DCI. "But before we do that, Mr. Conklin, you have to make a decision. You see, none of us at this table knows what's in that maximum classified file. ... We've talked, of course, and as Mr. Casset said, we understood that you did a hell of a job in Hong Kong, but we don't know what that job was. We heard the rumors out of our Far East stations which, frankly, most of us believed were exaggerated in the spreading, and paramount among them was your name and that of the assassin Jason Bourne. The scuttlebutt then was that you were responsible for the capture and execution of the killer we knew as Bourne, yet a few moments ago in your anger you used the phrase 'the unknown man who assumed the name of Jason Bourne,' stating that he was alive and in hiding. In terms of specifics, we're at a loss-at least I am, God knows."
   "You didn't pull the record out?"
   "No," answered DeSole. "That was my decision. As you may or may not know, every invasion of a maximum-classified file is automatically marked with the date and hour of penetration. ... Since the director informed me that there was a large Security Agency flap over an illegal entry, I decided to leave well enough alone. Not penetrated in nearly five years, therefore not read or even known about and consequently not given to the evil people, whoever they are."
   "You were covering your ass right down to the last square inch of flesh."
   "Most assuredly, Alex. That data has a White House flag on it. Things are relatively stable around here now and it serves no one to ruffle feathers in the Oval Office. There's a new man at that desk, but the former president is still very much alive and opinionated. He'd be consulted, so why risk trouble?"
   Conklin studied each face and spoke quietly. "Then you really don't know the story, do you?"
   "It's the truth, Alex," said Deputy Director Casset.
   "Nothing but, you pain," agreed Valentino, permitting himself a slight smile.
   "My word on it," added Steven DeSole, his clear, wide eyes rigid on Conklin.
   "And if you want our help, we should know something besides contradictory rumors," continued the director, leaning back in his chair. "I don't know if we can help, but I do know there's little we can do so completely in the dark."
   Again Alex looked at each man, the lines in his pained face more pronounced than ever, as if the decision was momentarily too agonizing for him. "I won't tell you his name because I've given my word-maybe later, not now. And it can't be found in the record, it's not there either; it's a cover-I gave my word on that, too. The rest I'll tell you because I do want your help and I want that record to remain in its black hole. ... Where do I begin?"
   "With this meeting perhaps?" suggested the director. "What prompted it?"
   "All right, that'll be quick." Conklin stared pensively at the surface of the table, absently gripping his cane, then raised his eyes. "A woman was killed last night at an amusement park outside Baltimore-"
   "I read about it in the Post this morning," interrupted DeSole, nodding, his full cheeks jiggling. "Good Lord, were you-"
   "So did I," broke in Casset, his steady brown eyes on Alex. "It happened in front of a shooting gallery. They closed the guns down."
   "I saw the article and figured it was some kind of terrible accident." Valentino shook his head slowly. "I didn't actually read it."
   "I was given my usual thick sheaf of scissored newspaper stories, which is enough journalism for anyone in the morning," said the director. "I don't remember any such article."
   "Were you involved, old boy?"
   "If I wasn't, it was a horrible waste of life. ... I should say if we weren't involved."
   "We?" Casset frowned in alarm.
   "Morris Panov and I received identical telegrams from Jason Bourne asking us to be at the amusement park at nine-thirty last night. It was urgent, and we were to meet him in front of the shooting gallery, but we were not, under any condition, to call his house or anyone else. ... We both independently assumed that he didn't want to alarm his wife, that he had something to tell us individually that he didn't want her to know. ... We arrived at the same time, but I saw Panov first and figured it was a bad scene. From any point of view, especially Bourne's, we should have reached each other and talked before going up there; instead, we had been told not to. It smelled, so I did my best to get us out of there fast. The only way seemed to be a diversion."
   "You stampeded then," said Casset, making a statement.
   "It was the only thing I could think of, and one of the few things this goddamned cane is good for other than keeping me upright. I cracked every shin and kneecap I could see and lanced a few stomachs and tits. We got out of the circle, but that poor woman was killed."
   "How did you figure it-do you figure it?" asked Valentino.
   "I just don't know, Val. It was a trap, no question about that, but what kind of trap? If what I thought then and what I think now are correct, how could a hired marksman miss at that distance? The shot came from my upper left-not that I necessarily heard it-but the position of the woman and the blood all over her throat indicated that she had turned and caught the bullet in her body swing. It couldn't have come from the gallery; those guns are chained and the massive hemorrhage in her neck was caused by a far larger caliber than any of the toys there. If the killer wanted to take out either Mo Panov or me, his telescopic cross hairs wouldn't be that far off the mark. Not if my thinking is right."
   " 'Right,' Mr. Conklin," interjected the DCI, "meaning the assassin, Carlos the Jackal."
   "Carlos?" exclaimed DeSole. "What in heaven's name has the Jackal to do with a killing in Baltimore?"
   "Jason Bourne," answered Casset.
   "Yes, I gather that, but this is all terribly confusing! Bourne was a scum hit man out of Asia who moved to Europe to challenge Carlos and lost. As the director just said, he went back to the Far East and was killed four or five years ago, yet Alex talks as if he's still alive, that he and someone named Panov got telegrams from him. ... What in God's name does a dead scumball and the world's most elusive assassin have to do with last night?"
   "You weren't here a few minutes ago, Steve," again Casset answered quietly. "Apparently they had a lot to do with last night."
   "I beg your pardon."
   "I think you should start at the beginning, Mr. Conklin," said the director. "Who is Jason Bourne?"
   "As the world knew him, a man who never existed," replied the former intelligence officer.

3
   "The original Jason Bourne was garbage, a paranoid drifter from Tasmania who found his way into the Vietnam war as part of an operation no one wants to acknowledge even today. It was a collection of killers, misfits, smugglers and thieves, mostly escaped criminals, many under death sentences, but they knew every inch of Southeast Asia and operated behind enemy lines-funded by us."
   "Medusa," whispered Steven DeSole. "It's all buried. They were animals, killing wantonly without reason or authorization and stealing millions. Savages."
   "Most, not all," said Conklin. "But the original Bourne fitted every rotten profile you could come up with, including the betrayal of his own men. The leader of a particularly hazardous mission-hazardous, hell, it was suicidal-found Bourne radioing their position to the North Vietnamese. He executed him on the spot, shoving the body into a swamp to rot in the jungles of Tam Quan. Jason Bourne disappeared from the face of the earth."
   "He obviously reappeared, Mr. Conklin," observed the director, leaning forward on the table.
   "In another body," agreed Alex, nodding. "For another purpose. The man who executed Bourne in Tam Quan took his name and agreed to be trained for an operation that we called Treadstone Seventy-one, after a building on New York's Seventy-first Street, where he went through a brutal indoctrination program. It was a brilliant strategy on paper, but ultimately failed because of something no one could predict, even consider. After nearly three years of living the role of the world's second most lethal assassin and moving into Europe-as Steve accurately described-to challenge the Jackal in his own territory, our man was wounded and lost his memory. He was found half dead in the Mediterranean and brought by a fisherman to the island of Port Noir. He had no idea who he was or what he was-only that he was a master of various martial arts, spoke a couple of Oriental languages, and was obviously an extremely well-educated man. With the help of a British doctor, an alcoholic banished to Port Noir, our man started to piece his life-his identity-back together from fragments both mental and physical. It was a hell of a journey ... and we who had mounted the operation, who invented the myth, were no help to him. Not knowing what had happened, we thought he had turned, had actually become the mythical assassin we'd created to trap Carlos. I, myself, tried to kill him in Paris, and when he might have blown my head off, he couldn't do it. He finally made his way back to us only through the extraordinary talents of a Canadian woman he met in Zurich and who is now his wife. That lady had more guts and brains than any woman I've ever met. Now she and her husband and their two kids are back in the nightmare, running for their lives."
   Aristocratic mouth agape, his pipe in midair in front of his chest, the director spoke. "Do you mean to sit there and tell us that the assassin we knew as Jason Bourne was an invention? That he wasn't the killer we all presumed he was?"
   "He killed when he had to kill in order to survive, but he was no assassin. We created the myth as the ultimate challenge to Carlos, to draw the Jackal out."
   "Good Christ!" exclaimed Casset. "How?"
   "Massive disinformation throughout the Far East. Whenever a killing of consequence took place, whether in Tokyo or Hong Kong, Macao or Korea-wherever-Bourne was flown there and took the credit, planting evidence, taunting the authorities, until he became a legend. For three years our man lived in a world of filth-drugs, warlords, crime, tunneling his way in with only one objective: Get to Europe and bait Carlos, threaten his contracts, force the Jackal out into the open if only for a moment, just long enough to put a bullet in his head."
   The silence around the table was electric. DeSole broke it, his voice barely above a whisper. "What kind of man would accept an assignment like that?"
   Conklin looked at the analyst and answered in a monotone. "A man who felt there wasn't much left to live for, someone who had a death wish, perhaps ... a decent human being who was driven into an outfit like Medusa out of hatred and frustration." The former intelligence officer stopped; his anguish was apparent.
   "Come on, Alex," said Valentino softly. "You can't leave us with that."
   "No, of course not." Conklin blinked several times, adjusting to the present. "I was thinking how horrible it must be for him now-the memories, what he can remember. There's a lousy parallel I hadn't considered. The wife, the kids."
   "What's the parallel?" asked Casset, hunched forward, staring at Alex.
   "Years ago, during Vietnam, our man was a young foreign service officer stationed in Phnom Penh, a scholar married to a Thai woman he'd met here in graduate school. They had two children and lived on the banks of a river. ... One morning while the wife and kids were swimming, a stray jet from Hanoi strafed the area killing the three of them. Our man went crazy; he chucked everything and made his way to Saigon and into Medusa. All he wanted to do was kill. He became Delta One-no names were ever used in Medusa-and he was considered the most effective guerrilla leader in the war, as often as not fighting Command Saigon over orders as he did the enemy with death squads."
   "Still, he obviously supported the war," observed Valentino.
   "Outside of having no use for Saigon and the ARVN, I don't think he gave a damn one way or another. He had his own private war and it was way behind enemy lines, the nearer Hanoi the better. I think in his mind he kept looking for the pilot who had killed his family. ... That's the parallel. Years ago there was a wife and two kids and they were butchered in front of his eyes. Now there's another wife and two children and the Jackal is closing in, hunting him down. That's got to be driving him close to the edge. Goddamn it!"
   The four men at the opposite end of the table looked briefly at one another and let Conklin's sudden emotion pass. Again, the director spoke, again gently. "Considering the time span," he began, "the operation mounted to trap Carlos had to have taken place well over a decade ago, yet the events in Hong Kong were much more recent. Were they related? Without giving us a name or names at this juncture, what do you feel you can tell us about Hong Kong?"
   Alex gripped his cane and held it firmly, his knuckles white as he replied. "Hong Kong was both the filthiest black operation ever conceived in this town and without question the most extraordinary I've ever heard of. And to my profound relief we here at Langley had nothing to do with the initial strategy, the plaudits can go to hell. I came in late and what I found turned my stomach. It sickened McAllister, too, for he was in at the beginning. It was why he was willing to risk his life, why he damn near ended up a corpse across the Chinese border in Macao. His intellectualized morality couldn't let a decent man be killed for the strategy."
   "That's a hell of an indictment," offered Casset. "What happened?"
   "Our own people arranged to have Bourne's wife kidnapped, the woman who had led that man without a memory back to us. They left a trail that forced him to go after her-to Hong Kong."
   "Jesus, why?" cried Valentino.
   "The strategy; it was perfect, and it was also abominable. ... I told you the 'assassin' called Jason Bourne had become a legend in Asia. He disappeared in Europe, but he was no less a legend for that in the Far East. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a new enterprising killer operating out of Macao revived that legend. He took the name of 'Jason Bourne' and the killings for hire started all over again. A week rarely went by, often only days, when another hit was made, the same evidence planted, the same taunting of the police. A false Bourne was back in business, and he had studied every trick of the original."
   "So who better to track him down than the one who invented those tricks-the original, your original," interjected the director. "And what better way to force the original Bourne into the hunt than by taking his wife from him. But why? Why was Washington so consumed? There were no longer any ties to us."
   "There was something much worse. Among the new Jason Bourne's clients was a madman in Beijing, a Kuomintang traitor in the government who was about to turn the Far East into a firestorm. He was determined to destroy the Sino-British Hong Kong Accords, shutting down the colony, leaving the whole territory in chaos."
   "War," said Casset quietly. "Beijing would march into Hong Kong and take over. We'd all have to choose sides. ... War."
   "In the nuclear age," added the director. "How far had it all progressed, Mr. Conklin?"
   "A vice premier of the People's Republic was killed in a private massacre in Kowloon. The impostor left his calling card. 'Jason Bourne.' "
   "Good God, he had to be stopped!" exploded the DCI, gripping his pipe.
   "He was," said Alex, releasing his cane. "By the only man who could hunt him down. Our Jason Bourne. ... That's all I'll tell you for now, except to repeat that that man is back here with his wife and children, and Carlos is closing in. The Jackal won't rest until he knows the only person alive who can identify him is dead. So call in every debt that's owed to us in Paris, London, Rome, Madrid – especially Paris. Someone's got to know something. Where is Carlos now? Who are his points over here? He's got eyes here in Washington, and whoever they are, they found Panov and me!" The former field officer again absently gripped his cane, staring at the window. "Don't you see?" he added quietly, as if talking to himself. "We can't let it happen. Oh, my God, we can't let it happen!"
   Once more the emotional moment passed in silence as the men of the Central Intelligence Agency exchanged glances. It was as though a consensus had been reached among them without a word being said; three pairs of eyes fell on Casset. He nodded, accepting his selection as the one closest to Conklin, and spoke.
   "Alex, I agree that everything points to Carlos, but before we start spinning our wheels in Europe, we have to be sure. We can't afford a false alarm because we'd be handing the Jackal a grail he'd have to go after, showing him how vulnerable we were where Jason Bourne is concerned. From what you've told us, Carlos would pick up on a long-dormant operation known as Treadstone Seventy-one if only because none of our agents or subagents has been in his personal neighborhood for over a decade."
   The retired Conklin studied Charles Casset's pensive sharp-featured face. "What you're saying is that if I'm wrong and it isn't the Jackal, we're ripping open a thirteen-year-old wound and presenting him with an irresistible kill."
   "I guess that's what I'm saying."
   "And I guess that's pretty good thinking, Charlie. ... I'm operating on externals, aren't I? They're triggering instincts, but they're still externals."
   "I'd trust those instincts of yours far more than I would any polygraph-"
   "So would I," interrupted Valentino. "You saved our personnel in five or six sector crises when all the indicators said you were wrong. However, Charlie's got a legitimate query. Suppose it isn't Carlos? We not only send the wrong message to Europe, but, more important, we've wasted time."
   "So stay out of Europe," mused Alex softly, again as if to himself. "At least for now. ... Go after the bastards here. Draw them out. Pull them in and break them. I'm the target, so let them come after me."
   "That would entail far looser protection than I envisage for you and Dr. Panov, Mr. Conklin," said the director firmly.
   "Then disenvisage, sir." Alex looked back and forth at Casset and Valentino, suddenly raising his voice. "We can do it if you two will listen to me and let me mount it!"
   "We're in a gray area," stated Casset. "This thing may be foreign-oriented, but it's domestic turf. The Bureau should be brought in-"
   "No way," exclaimed Conklin. "Nobody's brought in outside of this room!"
   "Come on, Alex," said Valentino kindly, slowly shaking his head. "You're retired. You can't give orders here."
   "Good, fine!" shouted Conklin, awkwardly getting out of the chair and supporting himself on his cane. "Next stop the White House, to a certain chairman of the NSA named McAllister!"
   "Sit down," said the DCI firmly.
   "I'm retired! You can't give orders to me."
   "I wouldn't dream of it, I'm simply concerned for your life. As I read the scenario, what you're suggesting is based on the questionable supposition that whoever fired at you last night in tended to miss, not caring whom he hit, only determined to take you alive during the subsequent chaos."
   "That's a couple of leaps-"
   "Based on a couple of dozen operations I've been involved with both here and at the Department of the Navy and in places you couldn't pronounce or know anything about." The director's elbows were planted on the arms of his chair, his voice suddenly harsh, commanding. "For your information, Conklin, I didn't suddenly bloom as a gold-braided admiral running naval intelligence. I was in the SEALs for a few years and made runs off submarines into Kaesong and later into Haiphong harbor. I knew a number of those Medusa pricks, and I can't think of one that I didn't want to put a bullet in his head! Now you tell me there was one, and he became your Jason Bourne' and you'll break your balls or bust open your heart to see that he stays alive and well and out of the Jackal's gun sights. ... So let's cut the crap, Alex. Do you want to work with me or not?"
   Conklin slowly sank back in his chair, a smile gradually emerging on his lips. "I told you I had no sweat with your appointment, sir. It was just intuition, but now I know why. You were a field man. ... I'll work with you."
   "Good, fine," said the director. "We'll work up a controlled surveillance and hope to Christ your theory that they want you alive is correct because there's no way we can cover every window or every rooftop. You'd better understand the risk."
   "I do. And since two chunks of bait are better than one in a tank of piranhas, I want to talk to Mo Panov."
   "You can't ask him to be a part of this," countered Casset. "He's not one of us, Alex. Why should he?"
   "Because he is one of us and I'd better ask him. If I didn't, he'd give me a flu shot filled with strychnine. You see, he was in Hong Kong, too-for reasons not much different from mine. Years ago I tried to kill my closest friend in Paris because I'd made a terrible mistake believing my friend had turned when the truth was that he had lost his memory. Only days later, Morris Panov, one of the leading psychiatrists in the country, a doctor who can't stand the chicken-shit psychobabble so popular these days, was presented with a 'hypothetical' psychiatric profile that required his immediate reaction. It described a rogue deep-cover agent, a walking time bomb with a thousand secrets in his head, who had gone over the edge. ... On the basis of Mo's on-the-spot evaluation of that hypothetical profile-which he hours later suspected was no more hypothetical than Campbell's soup-an innocent amnesiac was nearly blown away in a government ambush on New York's Seventy-first Street. When what was left of that man survived, Panov demanded to be assigned as his only head doctor. He's never forgiven himself. If any of you were he, what would you do if I didn't talk to you about what we're talking about right now?"
   "Tell you it's a flu shot and pump you full of strychnine, old boy," concluded DeSole, nodding.
   "Where is Panov now?" asked Casset.
   "At the Brookshire Hotel in Baltimore under the name of Morris, Phillip Morris. He called off his appointments today-he has the flu."
   "Then let's go to work," said the DCI, pulling a yellow legal pad in front of him. "Incidentally, Alex, a competent field man doesn't concern himself with rank and won't trust a man who can't convincingly call him by his first name. As you well know, my name is Holland and my first name is Peter. From here on we're Alex and Peter, got it?"
   "I've got it-Peter. You must have been one son of a bitch in the SEALs."
   "Insofar as I'm here-geographically, not in this chair-it can be assumed I was competent."
   "A field man," mumbled Conklin in approval.
   "Also, since we've dropped the diplomatic drivel expected of someone in this job, you should understand that I was a hardnosed son of a bitch. I want pro input here, Alex, not emotional output. Is that clear?"
   "I don't operate any other way, Peter. A commitment may be based on emotions and there's nothing wrong with that, but the execution of a strategy is ice-cold. ... I was never in the SEALs, you hard-nosed son of a bitch, but I'm also geographically here, limp and all, and that presumes I'm also competent."
   Holland grinned; it was a smile of youth belied by streaked gray hair, the grin of a professional momentarily freed of executive concerns so as to return to the world he knew best. "We may even get along," said the DCI. And then, as if to drop the last vestige of his directorial image, he placed his pipe on the table, reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, popped one up to his mouth and snapped his lighter as he began to write on the legal pad. "To hell with the Bureau," he continued. "We'll use only our men and we'll check every one out under a fast microscope."
   Charles Casset, the lean, bright heir apparent of the CIA's directorship, sat back in his chair and sighed. "Why do I have the idea that I'm going to have to ride herd on both you gentlemen?"
   "Because you're an analyst at heart, Charlie," answered Holland.
   The object of controlled surveillance is to expose those who shadow others so as to establish their identities or take them into custody, whichever suits the strategy. The aim in the present case was to trap the agents of the Jackal who had lured Conklin and Panov to the amusement park in Baltimore. Working through the night and most of the following day, the men of the Central Intelligence Agency formed a detail of eight experienced field personnel, defined and redefined the specific routes that Conklin and Panov were to take both individually and together for the next twenty-four hours-these routes covered by the armed professionals in swift progressive relays-and finally to design an irresistible rendezvous, unique in terms of time and location. The early morning hours at the Smithsonian Institution. It was the Dionaea muscipula, the Venus flytrap.
   Conklin stood in the narrow, dimly lit lobby of his apartment house and looked at his watch, squinting to read the dial. It was precisely 2:35 in the morning; he opened the heavy door and limped out into the dark street, which was devoid of any signs of life. According to their plan he turned left, maintaining the pace agreed upon; he was to arrive at the comer as close to 2:38 as possible. Suddenly, he was alarmed; in a shadowed doorway on his right was the figure of a man. Unobtrusively Alex reached under his jacket for his Beretta automatic. There was nothing in the strategy that called for someone to be in a doorway on this section of the street! Then, as suddenly as he had been alarmed, he relaxed, feeling equal parts of guilt and relief at what he understood. The figure in shadows was an indigent, an old man in worn-out clothes, one of the homeless in a land of so much plenty. Alex kept going; he reached the corner and heard the low, single click of two fingers snapped apart. He crossed the avenue and proceeded down the pavement, passing an alleyway. The alleyway. Another figure ... another old man in disheveled clothing moving slowly out into the street and then back into the alley. Another derelict protecting his concrete cave. At any other time Conklin might have approached the unfortunate and given him a few dollars, but not now. He had a long way to go and a schedule to keep.
   Morris Panov approached the intersection still bothered by the curious telephone conversation he had had ten minutes ago, still trying to recall each segment of the plan he was to follow, afraid to look at his watch to see if he had reached a specific place within a specific time span-he had been told not to look at his watch in the street ... and why couldn't they say "at approximately such and such" rather than the somewhat unnerving term "time span," as if a military invasion of Washington were imminent. Regardless, he kept walking, crossing the streets he was told to cross, hoping some unseen clock kept him relatively in tune with the goddamned "time spans" that had been determined by his striding back and forth between two pegs on some lawn behind a garden apartment in Vienna, Virginia. ... He would do anything for David Webb-good Christ, anything – but this was insane. ... Yet, of course, it wasn't. They would not ask him to do what he was doing if it were.
   What was that? A face in shadows peering at him, just like the other two! This one hunched over on a curb, raising wine-soaked eyes up at him. Old men-weather-beaten, old, old men who could barely move-staring at him! Now he was allowing his imagination to run away with him-the cities were filled with the homeless, with perfectly harmless people whose psychoses or poverty drove them into the streets. As much as he would like to help them, there was nothing he could do but professionally badger an unresponsive Washington. ... There was another! In an indented space between two storefronts barricaded by iron gates-he, too, was watching him. Stop it! You're being irrational. ... Or was he? Of course, he was. Go on, keep to the schedule, that's what you're supposed to do. ... Good God! There's another. Across the street. ... Keep going!
   The vast moonlit grounds of the Smithsonian dwarfed the two figures as they converged from intersecting paths, joining each other and proceeding to a bench. Conklin lowered himself with the aid of his cane while Mo Panov looked around nervously, listening, as if he expected the unexpected. It was 3:28 in the predawn morning, the only noises the subdued rattle of crickets and mild summer breezes through the trees. Guardedly Panov sat down.
   "Anything happen on the way here?" asked Conklin.
   "I'm not sure," replied the psychiatrist. "I'm as lost as I was in Hong Kong, except that over there we knew where we were going, whom we expected to meet. You people are crazy."
   "You're contradicting yourself, Mo," said Alex, smiling. "You told me I was cured."
   "Oh, that? That was merely obsessive manic-depression bordering on dementia praecox. This is nuts! It's nearly four o'clock in the morning. People who aren't nuts do not play games at four o'clock in the morning."
   Alex watched Panov in the dim wash of a distant Smithsonian floodlight that illuminated the massive stone structure. "You said you weren't sure. What does that mean?"
   "I'm almost embarrassed to say-I've told too many patients that they invent uncomfortable images to rationalize their panic, justify their fears."
   "What the hell does that mean?"
   "It's a form of transference-"
   "Come on, Mo!" interrupted Conklin. "What bothered you? What did you see?"
   "Figures ... some bent over, walking slowly, awkwardly-not like you, Alex, incapacitated not by injuries but by age. Worn out and old and staying in the darkness of storefronts and side streets. It happened four or five times between my apartment house and here. Twice I almost stopped and called out for one of your men, and then I thought to myself, My God, Doctor, you're overreacting, mistaking a few pathetic homeless people for what they're not, seeing things that aren't there."
   "Right on!" Conklin whispered emphatically. "You saw exactly what was there, Mo. Because I saw the same, the same kind of old people you saw, and they were pathetic, mostly in beat up clothes and who moved slower than I move. ... What does it mean? What do they mean? Who are they?"
   Footsteps. Slow, hesitant, and through the shadows of the deserted path walked two short men-old men. At first glance they, indeed, appeared to be part of the swelling army of indigent homeless, yet there was something different about them, a sense of purpose, perhaps. They stopped nearly twenty feet away from the bench, their faces in darkness. The old man on the left spoke, his voice thin, his accent strange. "It is an odd hour and an unusual place for two such well-dressed gentlemen to meet. Is it fair for you to occupy a place of rest that should be for others not so well off as you?"
   "There are a number of unoccupied benches," said Alex pleasantly. "Is this one reserved?"
   "There are no reserved seats here," replied the second old man, his English clear but not native to him. "But why are you here?"
   "What's it to you?" asked Conklin. "This is a private meeting and none of your business."
   "Business at this hour and in this place?" The first aged intruder spoke while looking around.
   "I repeat," repeated Alex. "It's none of your business and I really think you should leave us alone."
   "Business is business," intoned the second old man.
   "What in God's name is he talking about?" whispered the bewildered Panov to Conklin.
   "Ground zero," said Alex under his breath. "Be quiet." The retired field agent turned his head up to the two old men. "Okay, fellas, why don't you go on your way?"
   "Business is business," again said the second tattered ancient, glancing at his colleague, both their faces still in shadows.
   "You don't have any business with us-"
   "You can't be sure of that," interrupted the first old man, shaking his head back and, forth. "Suppose I were to tell you that we bring you a message from Macao?"
   "What?" exclaimed Panov.
   "Shut up!" whispered Conklin, addressing the psychiatrist but his eyes on the messenger. "What does Macao mean to us?" he asked flatly.
   "A great taipan wishes to meet with you. The greatest taipan in Hong Kong."
   "Why?"
   "He will pay you great sums. For your services."
   "I'll say it again. Why?"
   "We are to tell you that a killer has returned. He wants you to find him."
   "I've heard that story before; it doesn't wash. It's also repetitious."
   "That is between the great taipan and yourselves, sir. Not with us. He is waiting for you."
   "Where is he?"
   "At a great hotel, sir."
   "Which one?"
   "We are again to tell you that it has a great-sized lobby with always many people, and its name refers to this country's past."
   "There's only one like that. The Mayflower." Conklin directed his words toward his left lapel, into a microphone sewn into the buttonhole.
   "As you wish."
   "Under what name is he registered?"
   "Registered?"
   "Like in reserved benches, only rooms. Who do we ask for?"
   "No one, sir. The taipan's secretary will approach you in the lobby."
   "Did that same secretary approach you also?"
   "Sir?"
   "Who hired you to follow us?"
   "We are not at liberty to discuss such matters and we will not do so."
   "That's it!" shouted Alexander Conklin, yelling over his shoulder as floodlights suddenly lit up the Smithsonian grounds around the deserted path, revealing the two startled old men to be Orientals. Nine personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency walked rapidly into the glare of light from all directions, their hands under their jackets. Since there was no apparent need for them, their weapons remained hidden.
   Suddenly the need was there, but the realization came too late. Two high-powered rifle shots exploded from the outer darkness, the bullets ripping open the throats of the two Oriental messengers. The CIA men lunged to the ground, rolling for cover as Conklin grabbed Panov, pulling him down to the path in front of the bench for protection. The unit from Langley lurched to their feet and, like the combat veterans they were, including the former commando Director Peter Holland, they started scrambling, zigzagging one after another toward the source of the gunfire, weapons extended, shadows sought. In moments, an angry cry split the silence.
   "Goddamn it!" shouted Holland, the beam of his flashlight angled down between tree trunks. "They made their break!"
   "How can you tell?"
   "The grass, son, the heel imprints. Those bastards were overqualified. They dug in for one shot apiece and got out-look at the slip marks on the lawn. Those shoes were running. Forget it! No use now. If they stopped for a second position, they'd blow us into the Smithsonian."
   "A field man," said Alex, getting up with his cane, the frightened, bewildered Panov beside him. Then the doctor spun around, his eyes wide, rushing toward the two fallen Orientals.
   "Oh, my God, they're dead," he cried, kneeling beside the corpses, seeing their blown-apart throats. "Jesus, the amusement park! It's the same!"
   "A message," agreed Conklin, nodding, wincing. "Put rock salt on the trail," he added enigmatically.
   "What do you mean?" asked the psychiatrist, snapping his head around at the former intelligence officer.
   "We weren't careful enough."
   "Alex!" roared the gray-haired Holland, running to the bench. "I heard you, but this neuters the hotel," he said breathlessly. "You can't go there now. I won't let you."
   "It neuters-fucks up-more than the hotel. This isn't the Jackal! It's Hong Kong! The externals were right, but my instincts were wrong. Wrong!"
   "Which way do you want to go?" asked the director softly.
   "I don't know," answered Conklin, a plaint in his voice. "I was wrong. ... Reach our man, of course, as soon as possible."
   "I spoke to David-I spoke to him about an hour ago," said Panov, instantly correcting himself.
   "You spoke to him?" cried Alex. "It's late and you were at home. How?"
   "You know my answering machine," said the doctor. "If I picked up every crazy call after midnight, I'd never get to the office in the morning. So I let it ring, and because I was getting ready to go out and meet you, I listened. All he said was 'Reach me,' and by the time I got to the phone, he'd hung up. So I called him back."
   "You called him back? On your phone?"
   "Well ... yes," answered Panov hesitantly. "He was very quick, very guarded. He just wanted us to know what was happening, that 'M'-he called her 'M'-was leaving with the children first thing in the morning. That was it; he hung up right away."
   "They've got your boy's name and address by now," said Holland. "Probably the message as well."
   "A location, yes; the message, maybe," broke in Conklin, speaking quietly, rapidly. "Not an address, not a name."
   "By morning they will have-"
   "By morning he'll be on his way to Tierra del Fuego, if need be."
   "Christ, what have I done?" exclaimed the psychiatrist.
   "Nothing anybody else in your place wouldn't have done," replied Alex. "You get a message at two o'clock in the morning from someone you care about, someone in trouble, you call back as fast as you can. Now we have to reach him as fast as we can. So it's not Carlos, but somebody with a lot of firepower is still closing in, making breakthroughs we thought were impossible."
   "Use the phone in my car," said Holland. "I'll put it on override. There'll be no record, no log."
   "Let's go!" As quickly as possible, Conklin limped across the lawn toward the Agency vehicle.
   "David, it's Alex."
   "Your timing's pretty scary, friend, we're on our way out the door. If Jamie hadn't had to hit the potty we'd be in the car by now."
   "At this hour?"
   "Didn't Mo tell you? There was no answer at your place, so I called him."
   "Mo's a little shook up. Tell me yourself. What's happening?"
   "Is this phone secure? I wasn't sure his was."
   "None more so."
   "I'm packing Marie and the kids off south-way south. She's screaming like hell, but I chartered a Rockwell jet out of Logan Airport, everything precleared thanks to the arrangements you made four years ago. The computers spun and everyone cooperated. They take off at six o'clock, before it's light-I want them out."
   "And you, David? What about you?"
   "Frankly, I thought I'd head to Washington and stay with you. If the Jackal's coming for me after all these years, I want to be in on what we're doing about it. I might even be able to help. ... I'll arrive by noon."
   "No, David. Not today and not here. Go with Marie and the children. Get out of the country. Stay with your family and Johnny St. Jacques on the island."
   "I can't do that, Alex, and if you were me you couldn't, either. My family's not going to be free-really free-until Carlos is out of our lives."
   "It's not Carlos," said Conklin, interrupting.
   "What? Yesterday you told me-"
   "Forget what I told you, I was wrong. This is out of Hong Kong, out of Macao."
   "That doesn't make sense, Alex! Hong Kong's finished, Macao's finished. They're dead and forgotten and there's no one alive with a reason to come after me."
   "There is somewhere. A great taipan, 'the greatest taipan in Hong Kong,' according to the most recent and most recently dead source."
   "They're gone. That whole house of Kuomintang cards collapsed. There's no one left!"
   "I repeat, there is somewhere."
   David Webb was briefly silent; then Jason Bourne spoke, his voice cold. "Tell me everything you've learned, every detail. Something happened tonight. What was it?"
   "All right, every detail," said Conklin. The retired intelligence officer described the controlled surveillance engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency. He explained how he and Morris Panov spotted the old men who followed them, picking each up in sequence as they made their separate ways to the Smithsonian, none showing himself in the light until the confrontation on a deserted path on the Smithsonian grounds, where the messenger spoke of Macao and Hong Kong and a great taipan. Finally, Conklin described the shattering gunfire that silenced the two aged Orientals. "It's out of Hong Kong, David. The reference to Macao confirms it. It was your impostor's base camp."
   Again there was silence on the line, only Jason Bourne's steady breathing audible. "You're wrong, Alex," he said at last, his voice pensive, floating. "It's the Jackal-by way of Hong Kong and Macao, but it's still the Jackal."
   "David, now you're not making sense. Carlos hasn't anything to do with taipans or Hong Kong or messages from Macao. Those old men were Chinese, not French or Italian or German or whatever. This is out of Asia, not Europe."
   "The old men, they're the only ones he trusts," continued David Webb, his voice still low and cold, the voice of Jason Bourne. " 'The old men of Paris,' that's what they were called. They were his network, his couriers throughout Europe. Who suspects decrepit old men, whether they're beggars or whether they're just holding on to the last remnants of mobility? Who would think of interrogating them, much less putting them on a rack. And even then they'd stay silent. Their deals were made-are made-and they move with impunity. For Carlos."
   For a moment, hearing the strange, hollow voice of his friend, the frightened Conklin stared at the dashboard, unsure of what to say. "David, I don't understand you. I know you're upset-we're all upset-but please be clearer."
   "What? ... Oh, I'm sorry, Alex, I was going back. To put it simply, Carlos scoured Paris looking for old men who were either dying or knew they hadn't long to live because of their age, all with police records and with little or nothing to show for their lives, their crimes. Most of us forget that these old men have loved ones and children, legitimate or not, that they care for. The Jackal would find them and swear to provide for the people his about-to-die couriers left behind if they swore the rest of their lives to him. In their places, with nothing to leave those who survive us but suspicion and poverty, which of us would do otherwise?"
   "They believed him?"
   "They had good reason to-they still have. Scores of bank checks are delivered monthly from multiple unlisted Swiss accounts to inheritors from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. There's no way to trace those payments, but the people receiving them know who makes them possible and why. ... Forget your buried file, Alex. Carlos dug around Hong Kong, that's where his penetration was made, where he found you and Mo."
   "Then we'll do some penetrating ourselves. We'll infiltrate every Oriental neighborhood, every Chinese bookie joint and restaurant, in every city within a fifty-mile radius of D.C."
   "Don't do anything until I get there. You don't know what to look for, I do. ... It's kind of remarkable, really. The Jackal doesn't know that there's still a great deal I can't remember, but he just assumed that I'd forgotten about the old men of Paris."
   "Maybe he didn't, David. Maybe he's counting on the fact that you'd remember. Maybe this whole charade is a prelude to the real trap he's setting for you."
   "Then he made another mistake."
   "Oh?"
   "I'm better than that. Jason Bourne's better than that."

4
   David Webb walked through the National Airport terminal and out the automatic doors onto the crowded platform. He studied the signs and proceeded across the walkway leading to the Short-Term Parking area. According to plan, he was to go to the farthest aisle on the right, turn left, and continue down the row of parked cars until he saw a metallic gray 1986 Pontiac LeMans with an ornamental crucifix suspended from the rearview mirror. A man would be in the driver's seat wearing a white cap, the window lowered. Webb was to approach him and say, "The flight was very smooth." If the man removed his cap and started the engine, David was to climb in the backseat. Nothing more would be said.
   Nothing more was said, not between Webb and the driver. However, the latter reached under the dashboard, removed a microphone and spoke quietly but clearly. "Our cargo's on board. Please commence rotating vehicle cover."
   David thought that the exotic procedures bordered on the laughable, but since Alex Conklin had traced him to the Rockwell jet's departure area at Logan Airport, and, further, had reached him on Director Peter Holland's private override telephone, he assumed the two of them knew what they were doing. It crossed Webb's mind that it had something to do with Mo Panov's call to him nine hours ago. It was all but confirmed when Holland himself got on the phone insisting that he drive down to Hartford and take a commercial flight out of Bradley to Washington, adding enigmatically that he wanted no further telephone communication or private or government aircraft involved.
   This particular government-oriented car, however, wasted no time getting out of National Airport. It seemed as if in only minutes they were rushing through the countryside and, only minimally less rapidly, through the suburbs of Virginia. They swung up to the private gate of an expensive garden apartment complex, the sign reading VIENNA VILLAS, after the township in which it was located. The guard obviously recognized the driver and waved him through as the heavy bar across the entrance was raised. It was only then that the driver spoke directly to Webb.
   "This place has five separate sections over as many acres, sir. Four of them are legitimate condominiums with regular owners, but the fifth, the one farthest from the gate, is an Agency proprietary with its own road and security. You couldn't be healthier, sir."
   "I didn't feel particularly sick."
   "You won't be. You're DCI cargo and your health is very important to him."
   "That's nice to know, but how do you know?"
   "I'm part of the team, sir."
   "In that case, what's your name?"
   The driver was silent for a moment, and when he answered, David had the uneasy feeling that he was being propelled back in time, to a time he knew he was reentering. "We don't have names, sir. You don't and I don't."
   Medusa.
   "I understand," said Webb.
   "Here we are." The driver swung the car around a circular drive and stopped in front of a two-story Colonial structure that looked as though the fluted white pillars might have been made of Carrara marble. "Excuse me, sir, I just noticed. You don't have any luggage."
   "No, I don't," said David, opening the door.
   "How do you like my temporary digs?" asked Alex, waving his hand around the tastefully appointed apartment.
   "Too neat and too clean for a cantankerous old bachelor," replied David. "And since when did you go in for floral curtains with pink and yellow daisies?"
   "Wait! You'll see the wallpaper in my bedroom. It's got baby roses."
   "I'm not sure I care to."
   "Your room has hyacinths. ... Of course, I wouldn't know a hyacinth if it jumped up and choked me, but that's what the maid said."
   "The maid?"
   "Late forties and black and built like a sumo wrestler. She also carries two popguns under her skirt and, rumor has it, several straight razors."
   "Some maid."
   "Some high-powered patrol. She doesn't let a bar of soap or a roll of toilet paper in here that doesn't come from Langley. You know, she's a pay-grade ten and some of these clowns leave her tips."
   "Do they need any waiters?"
   "That's good. Our scholar, Webb the waiter."
   "Jason Bourne's been one."
   Conklin paused, then spoke seriously. "Let's get to him," he said, limping to an armchair. "By the way, you've had a rough day and it's not even noon, so if you want a drink there's a full bar behind those puce shutters next to the window. ... Don't look at me like that, our black Brunhilde said they were puce."
   Webb laughed; it was a low, genuine laugh as he looked at his friend. "It doesn't bother you a bit, does it, Alex?"
   "Hell, no, you know that. Have you ever hid any liquor from me when I visited you and Marie?"
   "There was never any stress-"
   "Stress is irrelevant," Conklin broke in. "I made a decision because there was only one other one to make. Have a drink, David. We have to talk and I want you calm. I look at your eyes and they tell me you're on fire."
   "You once told me that it's always in the eyes," said Webb, opening the purplish shutters and reaching for a bottle. "You can still see it, can't you?"
   "I told you it was behind the eyes. Never accept the first level. ... How are Marie and the children? I assume they got off all right."
   "I went over the flight plan ad nauseam with the pilot and knew they were all right when he finally told me to get off his case or fly the run myself." Webb poured a drink and walked back to the chair opposite the retired agent. "Where are we, Alex?" he asked, sitting down.
   "Right where we were last night. Nothing's moved and nothing's changed, except that Mo refuses to leave his patients. He was picked up this morning at his apartment, which is now as secure as Fort Knox, and driven to his office under guard. He'll be brought here later this afternoon with four changes of vehicles, all made in underground parking lots."
   "Then it's open protection, no one's hiding any longer?"
   "That'd be pointless. We sprung a trap at the Smithsonian and our men were very obvious."
   "It's why it might work, isn't it? The unexpected? Backups behind a protection unit told to make mistakes."
   "The unexpected works, David, not the dumb." Conklin quickly shook his head. "I take that back. Bourne could turn the dumbs into smarts, but not an officially mounted surveillance detail. There are too many complications."
   "I don't understand."
   "As good as those men are, they're primarily concerned with guarding lives, maybe saving them; they also have to coordinate with each other and make reports. They're career people, not one-shot, prepaid lowlife with an assassin's knife at their throats if they screw up."
   "That sounds so melodramatic," said Webb softly, leaning back in the chair and drinking. "I guess I did operate like that, didn't I?"
   "It was more image than reality, but it was real to the people you used."
   "Then I'll find those people again, use them again." David shot forward, gripping his glass in both hands. "He's forcing me out, Alex! The Jackal's calling my cards and I have to show."
   "Oh, shut up," said Conklin irritably. "Now you're the one who's being melodramatic. You sound like a grade-Z Western. You show yourself, Marie's a widow and the kids have no father. That's reality, David."
   "You're wrong." Webb shook his head, staring at his glass. "He's coming after me, so I have to go after him; he's trying to pull me out, so I have to pull him out first. It's the only way it can happen, the only way we'll get him out of our lives. In the final analysis it's Carlos against Bourne. We're back where we were thirteen years ago. 'Alpha, Bravo, Cain, Delta ... Cain is for Carlos and Delta is for Cain.' "
   "That was a crazy Paris code thirteen years ago!" interrupted Alex sharply. "Medusa's Delta and his mighty challenge to the Jackal. But this isn't Paris and it's thirteen years later!"
   "And in five more years it'll be eighteen; five years after that, twenty-three. What the hell do you want me to do? Live with the specter of that son of a bitch over my family, frightened every time my wife or my children leave the house, living in fear for the rest of my life? ... No, you shut up, field man! You know better than that. The analysts can come up with a dozen strategies and we'll use bits and pieces of maybe six and be grateful, but when it gets down to the mud, it's between the Jackal and me. ... And I've got the advantage. I've got you on my side."
   Conklin swallowed while blinking. "That's very flattering, David, maybe too flattering. I'm better in my own element, a couple of thousand miles away from Washington. It was always a little stifling for me here."
   "It wasn't when you saw me off on that plane to Hong Kong five years ago. You'd put together half the equation by then."
   "That was easier. It was a down-and-dirty D.C. operation that had the smell of rotten halibut, so rotten it offended my nostrils. This is different; this is Carlos."
   "That's my point, Alex. It is Carlos, not a voice over the telephone neither of us knew. We're dealing with a known quantity, someone predictable-"
   "Predictable?" broke in Conklin, frowning. "That's also crazy. In what way?"
   "He's the hunter. He'll follow a scent."
   "He'll examine it first with a very experienced nose, then check the spoors under a microscope."
   "Then we'll have to be authentic, won't we?"
   "I prefer foolproof. What did you have in mind?"
   "In the gospel according to Saint Alex, it's written that in order to bait a trap one has to use a large part of the truth, even a dangerous amount."
   "That chapter and verse referred to a target's microscope. I think I just mentioned it. What's the relevance here?"
   "Medusa," said Webb quietly. "I want to use Medusa."
   "Now you're out of your mind," responded Conklin, no louder than David. "That name is as off-limits as you are-let's be honest, a hell of a lot more so."
   "There were rumors, Alex, stories all over Southeast Asia that floated up the China Sea to Kowloon and Hong Kong, where most of those bastards ran with their money. Medusa wasn't exactly the secret evil you seem to think it was."
   "Rumors, yes, and stories, of course," interrupted the retired intelligence officer. "Which of those animals didn't put a gun or a knife to the heads of a dozen or two dozen or two hundred marks during their so-called 'tours'? Ninety percent were killers and thieves, the original death squads. Peter Holland said that when he was a SEAL in the northern operations he never met a member of that outfit he didn't want to waste."
   "And without them, instead of fifty-eight thousand casualties, there could well have been sixty-plus. Give the animals their due, Alex. They knew every inch of the territories, every square foot of jungle in the triangle. They-we-sent back more functional intelligence than all the units sent out by Saigon put together."
   "My point, David, is that there can never be any connection between Medusa and the United States government. Our involvement was never logged, much less acknowledged; the name itself was concealed as much as possible. There's no statute of limitations on war crimes, and Medusa was officially determined to be a private organization, a collection of violent misfits who wanted the corrupt Southeast Asia back the way they knew it and used it. If it was ever established that Washington was behind Medusa, the reputation of some very important people in the White House and the State Department would be ruined. They're global power brokers now, but twenty years ago they were hotheaded junior staffers in Command Saigon. ... We can live with questionable tactics in time of war, but not with being accomplices in the slaughter of noncombatants and the diversion of funds totaling millions, both unknowingly paid for by the taxpayers. It's like those still-sealed archives that detail how so many of our fat-cat financiers bankrolled the Nazis. Some things we never want out of their black holes, and Medusa's one of them."
   Webb again leaned back in the chair-now, however, taut, his eyes steady on his old friend, who was once briefly his deadly enemy. "If what memory I have left serves me, Bourne was identified as having come out of Medusa."
   "It was an entirely believable explanation and a perfect cover," agreed Conklin, returning David's gaze. "We went back to Tam Quan and 'discovered' that Bourne was a paranoid Tasmanian adventurer who disappeared in the jungles of North Vietnam. Nowhere in that very creative dossier was there the slightest clue of a Washington connection."
   "But that's all a lie, isn't it, Alex? There was and is a Washington connection, and the Jackal knows it now. He knew it when he found you and Mo Panov in Hong Kong-found your names in the ruins of that sterile house on Victoria Peak where Jason Bourne was supposedly blown away. He confirmed it last night when his messengers approached you at the Smithsonian and-your words-'our men were very obvious.' He knew finally that everything he's believed for thirteen years is true. The member of Medusa who was called Delta was Jason Bourne, and Jason Bourne was a creation of American intelligence-and he's still alive. Alive and in hiding and protected by his government."
   Conklin slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. "How did he find us, find me? Everything, everything, was under a black drape. McAllister and I made sure of it!"
   "I can think of several ways, but that's a question we can postpone, we haven't time for it now. We have to move now on what we know Carlos knows. ... Medusa, Alex."
   "What? Move how?"
   "If Bourne was plucked from Medusa, it has to follow that our covert operations were working with it-with them. Otherwise, how could the Bourne switch be created? What the Jackal doesn't know or hasn't put together yet is how far this government-especially certain people in this government-will go to keep Medusa in its black hole. As you pointed out, some very important men in the White House and the State Department could get burned, a lot of nasty labels branded on the foreheads of global power brokers, I think you called them."
   "And suddenly we've got a few Waldheims of our own." Conklin nodded, frowning and looking down, his thoughts obviously racing.
   "Nuy Dap Ranh," said Webb, barely above a whisper. At the sound of the Oriental words, Alex's eyes snapped back up at David. "That's the key, isn't it?" continued Webb. "Nuy Dap Ranh-Snake Lady."
   "You remembered."
   "Just this morning," replied Jason Bourne, his eyes cold. "When Marie and the kids were airborne, the plane disappeared into the mists over Boston harbor and suddenly I was there. In another plane, in another time, the words crackling out of a radio through the static. 'Snake Lady, Snake Lady, abort. ... Snake Lady, do you read me? Abort!' I responded by turning the damn thing off and looked around at the men in the cabin, which seemed ready to break apart in the turbulence. I studied each man, wondering, I guess, whether this one or that one would come out alive, whether I'd come out alive, and if we didn't, how we would die. ... Then I saw two of the men rolling up their sleeves, comparing those small ugly tattoos on their forearms, those lousy little emblems that obsessed them-"
   "Nuy Dap Ranh," said Conklin flatly. "A woman's face with snakes for strands of hair. Snake Lady. You refused to have one done on you-"
   "I never considered it a mark of distinction," interrupted Webb-Bourne, blinking. "Somewhat the reverse, in fact."
   "Initially it was meant for identification, not a standard or a banner of any distinction one way or the other. An intricate tattoo on the underside of the forearm, the design and the colors produced by only one artist in Saigon. No one else could duplicate it."
   "That old man made a lot of money during those years; he was special."
   "Every officer in Command Headquarters who was connected to Medusa had one. They were like manic kids who'd found secret code rings in cereal boxes."
   "They weren't kids, Alex. Manic, you can bet your ass on it, but not kids. They were infected with a rotten virus called unaccountability, and more than a few millionaires were made in the ubiquitous Command Saigon. The real kids were being maimed and killed in the jungles while a lot of pressed khaki in the South had personal couriers routed through Switzerland and the banks on Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse."
   "Careful, David. You could be speaking of some very important people in our government."
   "Who are they?" asked Webb quietly, his glass poised in front of him.
   "The ones I knew who were up to their necks in garbage I made damn sure faded after Saigon fell. But I was out of the field a couple of years before then, and nobody talks very much about those months and nothing at all about Snake Lady."
   "Still, you've got to have some ideas."
   "Sure, but nothing concrete, nothing even close to proof. Just possibilities based on life-styles, on real estate they shouldn't have or places they go they shouldn't be able to afford or the positions some hold or held in corporations justifying salaries and stock options when nothing in their backgrounds justified the jobs."
   "You're describing a network," said David, his voice now tight, the voice of Jason Bourne.
   "If it is, it's very tight," agreed Conklin. "Very exclusive."
   "Draw up a list, Alex."
   "It'd be filled with holes."
   "Then keep it at first to those important people in our government who were attached to Command Saigon. Maybe even further to the ones who have real estate they shouldn't have or who held high-paying jobs in the private sector they shouldn't have gotten."
   "I repeat, any such list could be worthless."
   "Not with your instincts."
   "David, what the hell has any of this to do with Carlos?"
   "Part of the truth, Alex. A dangerous part, I grant you, but foolproof and irresistible to the Jackal."
   Stunned, the former field officer stared at his friend. "In what way?"
   "That's where your creative thinking comes in. Say you come up with fifteen or twenty names, you're bound to hit three or four targets we can confirm one way or another. Once we ascertain who they are, we apply pressure, squeezing them in different ways, delivering the same basic message: A former Medusan has gone over the edge, a man who's been in protective custody for years is about to blow the head off Snake Lady and he's got the ammunition-names, crimes, the locations of secret Swiss accounts, the whole Caesar salad. Then-and this'll test the talents of the old Saint Alex we all knew and revered-word is passed on that there's someone who wants this dangerous, disgruntled turncoat more than they do."
   "Ilich Ramirez Sanchez," supplied Conklin softly. "Carlos the Jackal. And what follows is equally impossible: Somehow-only God knows how-word gets out calling for a meeting between the two interested parties. That is to say, interested in a joint assassination, the parties of the first part unable to participate actively, due to the sensitive nature of their high official positions, is that about it?"
   "Just about, except that these same powerful men in Washington can gain access to the identity and the whereabouts of this much desired corpse-to-be."
   "Naturally," agreed Alex, nodding in disbelief. "They simply wave a wand and all the restrictions applicable to maximum-classified files are lifted and they're given the information."
   "Exactly," said David firmly. "Because whoever meets with Carlos's emissaries has to be so high up, so authentic, that the Jackal has no choice but to accept him or them. He can't have any doubts, all thoughts of a trap gone with their coming forward."
   "Would you also like me to make baby roses bloom during a January blizzard in Montana?"
   "Close to it. Everything's got to happen within the next day or two while Carlos is still stinging from what happened at the Smithsonian."
   "Impossible! ... Oh, hell, I'll try. I'll set up shop here and have Langley send me what I need. Four Zero security, of course. ... I hate like hell to lose whoever it is at the Mayflower."
   "We may not," said Webb. "Whoever it is won't fold so fast. It's not like the Jackal to leave an obvious hole like that."
   "The Jackal? You think it's Carlos himself?"
   "Not him, of course, but someone on his payroll, someone so unlikely he could carry a sign around his neck with the Jackal's name on it and we wouldn't believe him."
   "Chinese?"
   "Maybe. He might play that out and then he might not. He's geometric; whatever he does is logical, even his logic seems illogical."
   "I hear a man from the past, a man who never was."
   "Oh, he was, Alex. He was indeed. And now he's back."
   Conklin looked toward the door of the apartment, David's words suddenly provoking another thought. "Where's your suitcase?" he asked. "You brought some clothes, didn't you?"
   "No clothes, and these will be dropped in a Washington sewer once I have others. But first I have to see another old friend of mine, another genius who lives in the wrong section of town."
   "Let me guess," said the retired agent. "An elderly black man with the improbable name of Cactus, a genius where false papers such as passports and driver's licenses and credit cards are concerned."
   "That's about it. Him."
   "The Agency could do it all."
   "Not as well and too bureaucratically. I want nothing traceable, even with Four Zero security. This is solo."
   "Okay. Then what?"
   "You get to work, field man. By tomorrow morning I want a lot of people in this town shaken up."
   "Tomorrow morning…? That is impossible!"
   "Not for you. Not for Saint Alex, the prince of dark operations?"
   "Say whatever the hell you like, I'm not even in training."
   "It comes back quickly, like sex and riding a bicycle."
   "What about you? What are you going to do?"
   "After I consult with Cactus, I'll get a room at the Mayflower hotel," answered Jason Bourne.
   Culver Parnell, hotel magnate from Atlanta whose twenty-year reign in the hostelry business had led to his appointment as chief of protocol for the White House, angrily hung up his office phone as he scribbled a sixth obscenity on a legal pad. With the election and now the turnover of White House personnel, he had replaced the previous administration's well-born female who knew nothing about the political ramifications of 1600's invitation list. Then, to his profound irritation, he found himself at war with his own first assistant, another middle-aged female, also from one of the ass-elegant Eastern colleges, and, to make it worse, a popular Washington socialite who contributed her salary to some la-di-da dance company whose members pranced around in their underwear when they wore any.
   "Hog damn!" fumed Culver, running his hand through his fringed gray hair; he picked up the telephone and poked four digits on his console. "Gimme the Redhead, you sweet thing," he intoned, exaggerating his already pronounced Georgia accent.
   "Yes, sir," said the flattered secretary. "He's on another line but I'll interrupt. Just hold on a sec, Mr. Parnell."
   "You're the loveliest of the peaches, lovely child."
   "Oh, golly, thank you! Now just hold on."
   It never failed, mused Culver. A little soft oil from the magnolia worked a hell of a lot better than the bark of a gnarled oak. That bitch of a first assistant of his might take a lesson from her Southern superiors; she talked like some Yankee dentist had bonded her fucking teeth together with permanent cement.
   "That you, Cull?" came the voice of Redhead over the line, intruding on Parnell's thoughts as he wrote a seventh obscenity on the legal pad.
   "You're momma-letchin' right, boy, and we got a problem! The fricassee bitch is doin' it again. I got our Wall Streeters inked in for a table at the reception on the twenty-fifth, the one for the new French ambassador and she says we gotta bump 'em for some core-dee-ballet fruitcakes-she says she and the First Lady feel mighty strong about it. Shee-it! Those money boys gotta lot of French interests goin' for them, and this White House bash could put 'em on top. Every frog on the Bourse will think they got the ears of the whole town here!"
   "Forget it, Cull," broke in the anxious Redhead, "We may have a bigger problem, and I don't know what it means."
   "What's that?"
   "When we were back in Saigon, did you ever hear of something or someone called Snake Lady?"
   "I heard a hell of a lot about snake eyes," chuckled Parnell, "but no Snake Lady. Why?"
   "The fellow I was just talking to-he's going to call back in five minutes-sounded as though he was threatening me. I mean actually threatening me, Cull! He mentioned Saigon and implied that something terrible happened back then and repeated the name Snake Lady several times as if I should have run for cover."
   "You leave that son of a bitch to me!" roared Parnell, interrupting. "I know exactly what that bastard's talking about! This is that snotty bitch first assistant of mine-that's the fuckin' Snake Lady! You give that slug worm my number and tell him I know all about his horseshit!"
   "Will you please tell me, Cull?"
   "What the hell, you were there, Redhead. ... So we had a few games going, even a few mini casinos, and some clowns lost a couple of shirts, but there was nothin' soldiers haven't done since they threw craps for Christ's clothes! ... We just put it on a higher plane and maybe tossed in a few broads who'd have been walkin' the streets anyway. ... No, Redhead, that elegant-ass, so-called assistant thinks she's got somethin' on me-that's why she's goin' through you, 'cause everybody knows we're buddies. ... You tell that slime to call me and I'll settle his grits along with that bitch's twat! Oh, boy, she made a wrong move! My Wall Streeters are in and her pansies are out!"
   "Okay, Cull, I'll simply refer him to you," said the Redhead, otherwise known as the vice president of the United States, as he hung up the phone.
   It rang four minutes later and the words were spat out at Parnell. "Snake Lady, Culver, and we're all in trouble!"
   "No, you listen to me, Divot Head, and I'll tell you who's in trouble! She's no lady, she's a bitch! One of her thirty or forty eunuch husbands may have thrown a few snake eyes in Saigon and lost some of her well-advertised come-and-take-me cash, but nobody gave a shit then and nobody gives a shit now. Especially a marine colonel who liked a sharp game of poker every once in a while, and that man is sitting in the Oval Office at this moment. And furthermore, you ball-less scrotum, when he learns that she's trying to further defame the brave boys who wanted only a little relaxation while fighting a thankless war-"
   In Vienna, Virginia, Alexander Conklin replaced the phone. Misfire One and Misfire Two ... and he had never heard of Culver Parnell.
   The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Albert Armbruster, swore out loud as he turned off the shower at the sound of his wife's shrieking voice in the steam-filled bathroom. "What the hell is it, Mamie? I can't take a shower without you yammering?"
   "It could be the White House, Al! You know how they talk, so low and quiet and always saying it's urgent."
   "Shit!" yelled the chairman, opening the glass door and walking naked to the phone on the wall. "This is Armbruster. What is it?"
   "There's a crisis that requires your immediate attention."
   "Is this 1600?"
   "No, and we hope it never goes up there."
   "Then who the hell are you?"
   "Someone as concerned as you're going to be. After all these years-oh, Christ!"
   "Concerned about what? What are you talking about?"
   "Snake Lady, Mr. Chairman."
   "Oh, my God!" Armbruster's hushed voice was a sudden involuntary cry of panic. Instantly, he controlled himself but it was too late. Mark One. "I have no idea what you're talking about. ... What's a snake whatever-it-is? Never heard of it."
   "Well, hear it now, Mr. Medusa. Somebody's got it all, everything. Dates, diversions of materiel, banks in Geneva and Zurich-even the names of a half-dozen couriers routed out of Saigon-and worse. ... Jesus, the worst! Other names-MIAs established as never having been in combat ... eight investigating personnel from the inspector general's office. Everything."
   "You're not making sense! You're talking gibberish!"
   "And you're on the list, Mr. Chairman. That man must have spent fifteen years putting it together, and now he wants payment for all those years of work or he blows it open-everything, everyone."
   "Who? Who is he, for Christ's sake?"
   "We're centering in. All we know is that he's been in the protection program for over a decade, and no one gets rich in those circumstances. He must have been cut out of the action in Saigon and now he's making up for lost time. Stay tight. We'll be back in touch." There was a click and the line went dead.
   Despite the steam and the heat of the bathroom, the naked Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, shivered as the sweat rolled down his face. He hung up the phone, his eyes straying to the small, ugly tattoo on the underside of his forearm.
   Over in Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin looked at the telephone.
   Mark One.
   General Norman Swayne, chief of Pentagon procurements, stepped back from the tee satisfied with his long straight drive down the fairway. The ball would roll to an optimum position for a decent five-iron approach shot to the seventeenth green. "That ought to do it," he said, turning to address his golfing partner.
   "Certainly ought to, Norm," replied the youngish senior vice president of Calco Technologies. "You're taking my butt for a ride this afternoon. I'm going to end up owing you close to three hundred clams. At twenty a hole, I've only gotten four so far."
   "It's your hook, young fella. You ought to work on it."
   "That's certainly the truth, Norm," agreed the Calco executive in charge of marketing as he approached the tee. Suddenly, there was the high grating sound of a golf cart's horn as a three-wheeled vehicle appeared over the incline from the sixteenth fairway going as fast as it could go. "That's your driver, General," said the armaments marketer, immediately wishing he had not used his partner's formal title.
   "So it is. That's odd; he never interrupts my golf game." Swayne walked toward the rapidly approaching cart, meeting it thirty feet away from the tee. "What is it?" he asked a large, middle-aged beribboned master sergeant who had been his driver for over fifteen years.
   "My guess is that it's rotten," answered the noncommissioned officer gruffly while he gripped the wheel.
   "That's pretty blunt-"
   "So was the son of a bitch who called. I had to take it inside, on a pay phone. I told him I wouldn't break into your game, and he said I goddamned well better if I knew what was good for me. Naturally, I asked him who he was and what rank and all the rest of the bullshit but he cut me off, more scared than anything else. 'Just tell the general I'm calling about Saigon and some reptiles crawling around the city damn near twenty years ago.' Those were his exact words-"
   "Jesus Christ!" cried Swayne, interrupting. "Snake...?"
   "He said he'd call back in a half hour-that's eighteen minutes now. Get in, Norman. I'm part of this, remember?"
   Bewildered and frightened, the general mumbled. "I ... I have to make excuses. I can't just walk away, drive away."
   "Make it quick. And, Norman, you've got on a short-sleeved shirt, you goddamned idiot! Bend your arm."
   Swayne, his eyes wide, stared at the small tattoo on his flesh, instantly crooking his arm to his chest in British brigadier fashion as he walked unsteadily back to the tee, summoning a casualness he could not feel. "Damn, young fella, the army calls."
   "Well, damn also, Norm, but I've got to pay you. I insist!"
   The general, half in a daze, accepted the debt from his partner, not counting the bills, not realizing that it was several hundred dollars more than he was owed. Proffering confused thanks, Swayne walked swiftly back to the golf cart and climbed in beside his master sergeant.
   "So much for my hook, soldier boy," said the armaments executive to himself, addressing the tee and swinging his club, sending the little pocked white ball straight down the fairway far beyond the general's and with a much better lie. "Four hundred million's worth, you brass-plated bastard."
   Mark Two.
   "What in heaven's name are you talking about?" asked the senator, laughing as he spoke into the phone. "Or should I say, what's Al Armbruster trying to pull? He doesn't need my sup port on the new bill and he wouldn't get it if he did. He was a jackass in Saigon and he's a jackass now, but he's got the majority vote."
   "We're not talking about votes, Senator. We're talking about Snake Lady!"
   "The only snakes I knew in Saigon were jerks like Alby who crawled around the city pretending to know all the answers when there weren't any. ... Who the hell are you anyway?" In Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin replaced the telephone.
   Misfire Three.
   Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to the Court of St. James's, picked up his phone in London, assuming that the unnamed caller, code "courier D.C." was bearing an exceptionally confidential instruction from the State Department and automatically; as was the order, Atkinson snapped the switch on his rarely used scrambler. It would create an eruption of static on British intelligence's intercepts and later he would smile benignly at good friends in the Connaught bar who asked him if there was anything new out of Washington, knowing that this one or that one had "relatives" in MI-Five.
   "Yes, Courier District?"
   "Mr. Ambassador, I assume we can't be picked up," said the low, strained voice from Washington.
   "Your assumption's correct unless they've come up with a new type of Enigma, which is unlikely."
   "Good. ... I want to take you back to Saigon, to a certain operation no one talks about-"
   "Who is this?" broke in Atkinson, bolting forward in his chair.
   "The men in that outfit never used names, Mr. Ambassador, and we didn't exactly advertise our commitments, did we?"
   "Goddamn you, who are you? I know you?"
   "No way, Phil, although I'm surprised you don't recognize my voice."
   Atkinson's eyes widened as they roamed rapidly about his office, seeing nothing, only trying to remember, trying desperately to put a voice with a face. "Is that you, Jack-believe me, we're on a scrambler!"
   "Close, Phil-"
   "The Sixth Fleet, Jack. A simple reverse Morse. Then bigger things, much bigger. It's you, isn't it?"
   "Let's say it's a possible, but it's also irrelevant. The point is we're in heavy weather, very heavy-"
   "It is you!"
   "Shut up. Just listen. A bastard frigate got loose from its moorings and is crashing around, hitting too many shoals."
   "Jack, I was ground, not sea. I can't understand you."
   "Some swab jockey must have been cut out of the action back in Saigon, and from what I've learned he was put in protection for something or other and now he's got it all put together. He's got it all, Phil. Everything."
   "Holy Christ!"
   "He's ready to launch-"
   "Stop him!"
   "That's the problem. We're not sure who he is. The whole thing's being kept very close over in Langley."
   "Good God, man, in your position you can give them the order to back off! Say it's a DOD dead file that was never completed-that it was designed to spread disinformation! It's all false!"
   "That could be walking into a salvo-"
   "Have you called Jimmy T over in Brussels?" interrupted the ambassador. "He's tight with the top max at Langley."
   "At the moment I don't want anything to go any further. Not until I do some missionary work."
   "Whatever you say, Jack. You're running the show."
   "Keep your halyards taut, Phil."
   "If that means keep my mouth shut, don't you worry about it!" said Atkinson, crooking his elbow, wondering who in London could remove an ugly tattoo on his forearm.
   Across the Atlantic in Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin hung up the telephone and leaned back in his chair a frightened man. He had been following his instincts as he had done in the field for over twenty years, words leading to other words, phrases to phrases, innuendos snatched out of the air to support suppositions, even conclusions. It was a chess game of instant invention and he knew he was a skilled professional-sometimes too skilled. There were things that should remain in their black holes, undetected cancers buried in history, and what he had just learned might well fit that category.
   Marks Three, Four and Five.
   Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to Great Britain. James Teagarten, supreme commander of NATO. Jonathan "Jack" Burton, former admiral of the Sixth Fleet, currently chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
   Snake Lady. Medusa.
   A network.

5
   It was as if nothing had changed, thought Jason Bourne, knowing that his other self, the self-called David Webb, was receding. The taxi had brought him out to the once elegant, now run-down neighborhood in northeast Washington, and, as happened five years ago, the driver refused to wait. He walked up the overgrown flagstone path to the old house, thinking as he did the first time that it was too old and too fragile and too much in need of repair; he rang the bell, wondering if Cactus was even alive. He was; the thin old black man with the gentle face and warm eyes stood in the doorframe exactly as he had stood five years before, squinting beneath a green eyeshade. Even Cactus's first words were a minor variation of those he had used five years ago.
   "You got hubcaps on your car, Jason?"
   "No car and no cab; it wouldn't stay."
   "Musta heard all those scurrilous rumors circulated by the fascist press. Me, I got howitzers in the windows just to impress this neighborly turf of my friendly persuasion. Come on in, I think of you a lot. Why didn't you phone this old boy?"
   "Your number's not listed, Cactus."
   "Musta been an oversight." Bourne walked into the hallway as the old man closed the door. "You got a few streaks of gray in your hair, Br'er Rabbit," added Cactus, studying his friend. "Other than that you ain't changed much. Maybe a line or six in your face, but it adds character."
   "I've also got a wife and two kids, Uncle Remus. A boy and a girl."
   "I know that. Mo Panov keeps me up on things even though he can't tell me where you are-which I don't care to know, Jason."
   Bourne blinked while slowly shaking his head. "I still forget things, Cactus. I'm sorry. I forgot you and Mo are friends."
   "Oh, the good doctor calls me at least once a month and says, 'Cactus, you rascal, put on your Pierre Cardin suit and your Gucci shoes and let's have lunch.' So I say to him, 'Where's this old nigger gonna get such threads?' and he says to me, 'You probably own a shopping center in the best part of town.' ... Now that's an exaggeration, s' help me. I do have bits and pieces of decent white real estate but I never go near them."
   As both men laughed, Jason stared at the dark face and warm black eyes in front of him. "Something else I just remembered. Thirteen years ago in that hospital in Virginia ... you came to see me. Outside of Marie and those government bastards you were the only one."
   "Panov understood, Br'er Rabbit. When in my very unofficial status I worked on you for Europe, I told Morris that you don't study a man's face in a lens without learning things about that face, that man. I wanted you to talk about the things I found missing in that lens and Morris thought it might not be a bad idea. ... And now that confessional hour is over, I gotta say that it's really good to see you, Jason, but to tell you the truth I'm not happy to see you, if you catch my meaning."
   "I need your help, Cactus."
   "That's the root of my unhappiness. You've been through enough and you wouldn't be here unless you were itching for more, and in my professional, lens-peering opinion, that ain't healthy for the face I'm lookin' at."
   "You've got to help me."
   "Then you'd better have a damn good reason that passes muster for the good doctor. 'Cause I ain't gonna mess around with anything that could mess you up further. ... I met your lovely lady with the dark red hair a few times in the hospital-she's somethin' special, Br'er, and your kids have got to be outstanding, so you see I can't mess around with anything that might hurt them. Forgive me, but you're all like kinfolk from a distance, from a time we don't talk about, but it's on my mind."
   "They're why I need your help."
   "Be clearer, Jason."
   "The Jackal's closing in. He found us in Hong Kong and he's zeroing in on me and my family, on my wife and my children. Please, help me."
   The old man's eyes grew wide under the green shade, a moral fury in his expanded pupils. "Does the good doctor know about this?"
   "He's part of it. He may not approve of what I'm doing, but if he's honest with himself, he knows that the bottom line is the Jackal and me. Help me, Cactus."
   The aged black studied his pleading client in the hallway, in the afternoon shadows. "You in good shape, Br'er Rabbit?" he asked. "You still got juices?"
   "I run six miles every morning and I press weights at least twice a week in the university gym-"
   "I didn't hear that. I don't want to know anything about colleges or universities."
   "Then you didn't hear it."
   " 'Course I didn't. You look in pretty fair condition, I'll say that."
   "It's deliberate, Cactus," said Jason quietly. "Sometimes it's just a telephone suddenly ringing, or Marie's late or out with the kids and I can't reach her ... or someone I don't know stops me in the street to ask directions, and it comes back-he comes back. The Jackal. As long as there's a possibility that he's alive, I have to be ready for him because he won't stop looking for me. The awful irony is that his hunt is based on a supposition that may not be true. He thinks I can identify him, but I'm not sure I could. Nothing's really in focus yet."
   "Have you considered sending that message to him?"
   "With his assets maybe I'll take an ad out in the Wall Street Journal. 'Dear Old Buddy Carlos: Boy, have I got news for you.' "
   "Don't chortle, Jason, it's not inconceivable. Your friend Alex could find a way. His gimp doesn't affect that head of his. I believe the fancy word is serpentine."
   "Which is why if he hasn't tried it there's a reason."
   "I guess I can't argue with that. ... So let's go to work, Br'er Rabbit. What did you have in mind?" Cactus led the way through a wide archway toward a door at the rear of a worn out living room replete with ancient furniture and yellowed antimacassars. "My studio isn't as elegant as it was but all the equipment's there. You see, I'm sort of semi-retired. My financial planners worked out a hell of a retirement program with great tax advantages, so the pressure's not so great."
   "You're only incredible," said Bourne.
   "I imagine some people might say that, the ones not doin' time. What did you have in mind?"
   "Pretty much myself. Not Europe or Hong Kong, of course. Just papers, actually."
   "So the Chameleon retreats to another disguise. Himself."
   Jason stopped as they approached the door. "That was something else I forgot. They used to call me that, didn't they?"
   "Chameleon? ... They sure did and not without cause, as they say. Six people could come face-to-face with our boy Bourne and there'd be six different descriptions. Without a jar of makeup, incidentally."
   "It's all coming back, Cactus."
   "I wish to almighty God that it didn't have to, but if it does, you make damn sure it's all back. ... Come on into the magic room."
   Three hours and twenty minutes later the magic was completed. David Webb, Oriental scholar and for three years Jason Bourne, assassin, had two additional aliases with passports, driver's licenses and voter registration cards to confirm the identities. And since no cabs would travel out to Cactus's "turf," an unemployed neighbor wearing several heavy gold chains around his neck and wrists drove Cactus's client into the heart of Washington in his new Cadillac Allante.
   Jason found a pay phone in Garfinkel's department store and called Alex in Virginia, giving him both aliases and selecting one for the Mayflower hotel. Conklin would officially secure a room through the management in the event that summer reservations were tight. Further, Langley would activate a Four Zero imperative and do its best to furnish Bourne with the material he needed, delivering it to his room as soon as possible. The estimate was a minimum of an additional three hours, no guarantees as to the time or authenticity. Regardless, thought Jason, as Alex reconfirmed the information on a second direct line to the CIA, he needed at least two of those three hours before going to the hotel. He had a small wardrobe to put together; the Chameleon was reverting to type.
   "Steve DeSole tells me he'll start spinning the disks, crosschecking ours with the army data banks and naval intelligence," said Conklin, returning to the line. "Peter Holland can make it happen; he's the president's crony."
   "Crony? That's an odd word coming from you."
   "Like in crony appointment."
   "Oh? ... Thanks, Alex. How about you? Any progress?"
   Conklin paused, and when he answered his quiet voice conveyed his fear; it was controlled but the fear was there. "Let's put it this way. ... I'm not equipped for what I've learned. I've been away too long. I'm afraid, Jason-sorry ... David."
   "You're right the first time. Have you discussed-"
   "Nothing by name," broke in the retired intelligence officer quickly, firmly.
   "I see."
   "You couldn't," contradicted Alex. "I couldn't. I'll be in touch." With these cryptic words Conklin abruptly hung up.
   Slowly Bourne did the same, frowning in concern. Alex was the one now sounding melodramatic, and it was not like him to think that way or act that way. Control was his byword, understatement his persona. Whatever he had learned profoundly disturbed him ... so much so as to make it seem to Bourne that he no longer trusted the procedures he himself had set up, or even the people he was working with. Otherwise he would have been clearer, more forthcoming; instead, for reasons Jason could not fathom, Alexander Conklin did not want to talk about Medusa or whatever he had learned in peeling away twenty years of deceit. ... Was it possible?
   No time! No use, not now, considered Bourne, looking around the huge department store. Alex was not only as good as his word, he lived by it, as long as one was not an enemy. Ruefully, suppressing a short throated laugh, Jason remembered Paris thirteen years ago. He knew that side of Alex, too. But for the cover of gravestones in a cemetery on the outskirts of Rambouillet, his closest friend would have killed him. That was then, not now. Conklin said he'd "be in touch." He would. Until then the Chameleon had to build several covers. From the inside to the outside, from underwear to outerwear and everything in between. No chance of a laundry or a cleaning mark coming to light, no microscopic chemical evidence of a regionally distributed detergent or fluid-nothing. He had given too much. If he had to kill for David's family ... oh, my God! For my family! ... he refused to live with the consequences of that killing or those killings. Where he was going there were no rules; the innocent might well die in the cross fire. So be it. David Webb would violently object, but Jason Bourne didn't give a goddamn. He'd been there before; he knew the statistics, Webb knew nothing.
   Marie, I'll stop him! I promise you I'll rip him out of your lives. I'll take the Jackal and leave a dead man. He'll never be able to touch you again-you'll be free.
   Oh, Christ, who am I? Mo, help me! ... No, Mo, don't! I am what I have to be. I am cold and I'm getting colder. Soon I'll be ice ... clear, transparent ice, ice so cold and pure it can move anywhere without being seen. Can't you understand, Mo-you, too, Marie-I have to! David has to go. I can't have him around any longer.
   Forgive me, Marie, and you forgive me, Doctor, but I'm thinking the truth. A truth that has to be faced right now. I'm not a fool, nor do I fool myself. You both want me to let Jason Bourne get out of my life, release him to some infinity, but the reverse is what I have to do now. David has to leave, at least for a while.
   Don't bother me with such considerations! I have work to do.
   Where the hell is the men's department? When he was finished making his purchases, all paid for in cash with as many different clerks as possible, he would find a men's room where he would replace every stitch of clothing on his body. After that he would walk the streets of Washington until he found a hidden sewer grate. The Chameleon, too, was back.
   It was 7:35 in the evening when Bourne put down the single-edged razor blade. He had removed all the labels from the assortment of new clothes, hanging up each item in the closet when he had finished except for the shirts; these he steamed in the bathroom to remove the odor of newness. He crossed to the table, where room service had placed a bottle of Scotch whisky, club soda and a bucket of ice. As he passed the desk with the telephone he stopped; he wanted so terribly to call Marie on the island but knew he could not, not from the hotel room. That she and the children had arrived safely was all that mattered and they had; he had reached John St. Jacques from another pay phone in Garfinkel's.
   "Hey, Davey, they're bushed! They had to hang around the big island for damn near four hours until the weather cleared. I'll wake Sis if you want me to, but after she fed Alison she just crashed."
   "Never mind, I'll call later. Tell her I'm fine and take care of them, Johnny."
   "Will do, fella. Now you tell me. Are you okay?"
   "I said I'm fine."
   "Sure, you can say it and she can say it, but Marie's not just my only sister, she's my favorite sister, and I know when that lady's shook up."
   "That's why you're going to take care of her."
   "I'm also going to have a talk with her."
   "Go easy, Johnny."
   For a few moments he had been David Webb again, mused Jason, pouring himself a drink. He did not like it; it felt wrong. An hour later, however, Jason Bourne was back. He had spoken to the clerk at the Mayflower about his reservation; the night manager had been summoned.
   "Ah, yes, Mr. Simon," the man had greeted him enthusiastically. "We understand you're here to argue against those terrible tax restrictions on business travel and entertainment. Godspeed, as they say. These politicians will ruin us all! ... There were no double rooms, so we took the liberty of providing you with a suite, no additional charge, of course."
   All that had taken place over two hours ago, and since then he had removed the labels, steamed the shirts and scuffed the rubber-soled shoes on the hotel's window ledge. Drink in hand, Bourne sat in a chair staring blankly at the wall; there was nothing to do but wait and think.
   A quiet tapping at the door ended the waiting in a matter of minutes. Jason walked rapidly across the room, opened the door and admitted the driver who had met him at the airport. The CIA man carried an attaché case; he handed it to Bourne.
   "Everything's there, including a weapon and a box of shells."
   "Thanks."
   "Do you want to check it out?"
   "I'll be doing that all night."
   "It's almost eight o'clock," said the agent. "Your control will reach you around eleven. That'll give you time to get started."
   "My control ... ?"
   "That's who he is, isn't he?"
   "Yes, of course," replied Jason softly. "I'd forgotten. Thanks again."
   The man left and Bourne hurried to the desk with the attaché case. He opened it, removing first the automatic and the box of ammunition, then picking up what had to be several hundred computer printouts secured in file folders. Somewhere in those myriad pages was a name that linked a man or a woman to Carlos the Jackal. For these were the informational printouts of every guest currently at the hotel, including those who had checked out within the past twenty-four hours. Each printout was supplemented by whatever additional information was found in the data banks of the CIA, Army G-2 and naval intelligence. There could be a score of reasons why it might all be useless, but it was a place to start. The hunt had begun.
   Five hundred miles north, in another hotel suite, this on the third floor of Boston's Ritz-Carlton, there was another tapping on another hotel door. Inside, an immensely tall man, whose well-tailored pin-striped suit made him appear even larger than his nearly six feet five inches of height, came rushing out of the bedroom. His bald head, fringed by perfectly groomed gray hair above his temples, was like the skull of an anointed éminence grise of some royal court where kings, princes and pretenders deferred to his wisdom, delivered no doubt with the eyes of an eagle and the soaring voice of a prophet. Although his rushing figure revealed a vulnerable anxiety, even that did not diminish his image of dominance. He was important and powerful and he knew it. All this was in contrast to the older man he admitted through the door. There was little that was distinguished about this short, gaunt, elderly visitor; instead, he conveyed the look of defeat.
   "Come in. Quickly! Did you bring the information?"
   "Oh, yes, yes, indeed," answered the gray-faced man whose rumpled suit and ill-fitting collar had both seen better days perhaps a decade ago. "How grand you look, Randolph," he continued in a thin voice while studying his host and glancing around at the opulent suite. "And how grand a place this is, so proper for such a distinguished professor."
   "The information, please," insisted Dr. Randolph Gates of Harvard, expert in antitrust law and highly paid consultant to numerous industries.
   "Oh, give me a moment, my old friend. It's been a long time since I've been near a hotel suite, much less stayed in one. ... Oh, how things have changed for us over the years. I read about you frequently and I've watched you on television. You're so-erudite, Randolph, that's the word, but it's not enough. It's what I said before-'grand,' that's what you are, grand and erudite. So tall and imperious."
   "You might have been in the same position, you know," broke in the impatient Gates. "Unfortunately, you looked for shortcuts where there weren't any."
   "Oh, there were lots of them. I just chose the wrong ones."
   "I gather things haven't gone well for you-"
   "You don't 'gather,' Randy, you know. If your spies didn't inform you, certainly you can tell."
   "I was simply trying to find you."
   "Yes, that's what you said on the phone, what a number of people said to me in the street-people who had been asked a number of questions having nothing to do with my residence, such as it is."
   "I had to know if you were capable. You can't fault me for that."
   "Good heavens, no. Not considering what you had me do, what I think you had me do."
   "Merely act as a confidential messenger, that's all. You certainly can't object to the money."
   "Object?" said the visitor, with a high-pitched and tremulous laugh. "Let me tell you something, Randy. You can be disbarred at thirty or thirty-five and still get by, but when you're disbarred at fifty and your trial is given national press along with a jail sentence, you'd be shocked at how your options disappear-even for a learned man. You become an untouchable, and I was never much good at selling anything but my wits. I proved that, too, over the last twenty-odd years, incidentally. Alger Hiss did better with greeting cards."
   "I haven't time to reminisce. The information, please."
   "Oh, yes, of course. ... Well, first the money was delivered to me on the corner of Commonwealth and Dartmouth, and naturally I wrote down the names and the specifics you gave me over the phone-"
   "Wrote down?" asked Gates sharply.
   "Burned as soon as I'd committed them to memory-I did learn a few things from my difficulties. I reached the engineer at the telephone company, who was overjoyed with your-excuse me-my largess, and took his information to that repulsive private detective, a sleaze if I ever saw one, Randy, and considering his methods, someone who could really use my talents."
   "Please," interrupted the renowned legal scholar. "The facts, not your appraisals."
   "Appraisals often contain germane facts, Professor. Surely you understand that."
   "If I want to build a case, I'll ask for opinions. Not now. What did the man find out?"
   "Based on what you told me, a lone woman with children-how many being undetermined-and on the data provided by an underpaid telephone company mechanic, namely, a narrowed-down location based on the area code and the first three digits of a number, the unethical sleaze went to work at an outrageous hourly rate. To my astonishment, he was productive. As a matter of fact, with what's left of my legal mind, we may form a quiet, unwritten partnership."
   "Damn you, what did he learn?"
   "Well, as I say, his hourly rate was beyond belief, I mean it really invaded the corpus of my own well-deserved retainer, so I think we should discuss an adjustment, don't you?"
   "Who the hell do you think you are? I sent you three thousand dollars! Five hundred for the telephone man and fifteen hundred for that miserable keyhole slime who calls himself a private detective-"
   "Only because he's no longer on the public payroll of the police department, Randolph. Like me, he fell from grace, but he obviously does very good work. Do we negotiate or do I leave?"
   In fury, the balding imperious professor of law stared at the gray-faced old disbarred and dishonored attorney in front of him. "How dare you?"
   "Dear me, Randy, you really do believe your press, don't you? Very well, I'll tell why I dare, my arrogant old friend. I've read you, seen you, expounding on your esoteric interpretations of complex legal matters, assaulting every decent thing the courts of this country have decreed in the last thirty years, when you haven't the vaguest idea what it is to be poor, or hungry, or have an unwanted mass in your belly you neither anticipated nor can provide a life for. You're the darling of the royalists, my unprofound fellow, and you'd force the average citizen to live in a nation where privacy is obsolete, free thought suspended by censorship, the rich get richer, and for the poorest among us the beginnings of potential life itself may well have to be abandoned in order to survive. And you expound on these unoriginal, medieval concepts only to promote yourself as a brilliant maverick-of disaster. Do you want me to go on, Doctor Gates? Frankly, I think you chose the wrong loser to contact for your dirty work."
   "How ... dare you?" repeated the perplexed professor, sputtering as he regally strode to the window. "I don't have to listen to this!"
   "No, you certainly don't, Randy. But when I was an associate at the law school and you were one of my kids-one of the best but not the brightest-you damn well had to listen. So I suggest you listen now."
   "What the hell do you want?" roared Gates, turning away from the window.
   "It's what you want, isn't it? The information you underpaid me for. It's that important to you, isn't it?"
   "I must have it."
   "You were always filled with anxiety before an exam-"
   "Stop it! I paid. I demand the information."
   "Then I must demand more money. Whoever's paying you can afford it."
   "Not a dollar!"
   "Then I'm leaving."
   "Stop! ... Five hundred more, that's it."
   "Five thousand or I go."
   "Ridiculous!"
   "See you in another twenty years-"
   "All right. ... All right, five thousand."
   "Oh, Randy, you're so obvious. It's why you're not really one of the brightest, just someone who can use language to make yourself appear bright, and I think we've seen and heard enough of that these days. ... Ten thousand, Dr. Gates, or I go to the raucous bar of my choice."
   "You can't do this."
   "Certainly I can. I'm now a confidential legal consultant. Ten thousand dollars. How do you want to pay it? I can't imagine you have it with you, so how will you honor the debt-for the information?"
   "My word-"
   "Forget it, Randy."
   "All right. I'll have it sent to the Boston Five in the morning. In your name. A bank check."
   "That's very endearing of you. But in case it occurs to your superiors to stop me from collecting, please advise them that an unknown person, an old friend of mine in the streets, has a letter detailing everything that's gone on between us. It is to be mailed to the Massachusetts Attorney General, Return Receipt Requested, in the event I have an accident."
   "That's absurd. The information, please."
   "Yes, well, you should know that you've involved yourself in what appears to be an extremely sensitive government operation, that's the bottom line. ... On the assumption that anyone in an emergency leaving one place for another would do so with the fastest transportation possible, our rumbottom detective went to Logan Airport, under what guise I don't know. Nevertheless, he succeeded in obtaining the manifests of every plane leaving Boston yesterday morning from the first flight at six-thirty to ten o'clock. As you recall, that corresponds with the parameters of your statement to me-'leaving first thing in the morning.' "
   "And?"
   "Patience, Randolph. You told me not to write anything down, so I must take this step by step. Where was I?"
   "The manifests."
   "Oh, yes. Well, according to Detective Sleaze, there were eleven unaccompanied children booked on various flights, and eight women, two of them nuns, who had reservations with minors. Of these eight, including the nuns who were taking nine orphans to California, the remaining six were identified as follows." The old man reached into his pocket and shakily took out a typewritten sheet of paper. "Obviously, I did not write this. I don't own a typewriter because I can't type; it comes from Führer Sleaze."
   "Let me have it!" ordered Gates, rushing forward, his hand outstretched.
   "Surely," said the seventy-year-old disbarred attorney, giving the page to his former student. "It won't do you much good, however," he added. "Our Sleaze checked them out, more to inflate his hours than for anything else. Not only are they all squeaky clean, but he performed that unnecessary service after the real information was uncovered."
   "What?" asked Gates, his attention diverted from the page. "What information?"
   "Information that neither Sleaze nor I would write down anywhere. The first hint of it came from the morning setup clerk for Pan American Airlines. He mentioned to our lowbrow detective that among his problems yesterday was a hotshot politician, or someone equally offensive, who needed diapers several minutes after our clerk went on duty at five-forty-five. Did you know that diapers come in sizes and are locked away in an airline's contingency supplies?"
   "What are you trying to tell me?"
   "All the stores in the airport were closed. They open at seven o'clock."
   "So?"
   "So someone in a hurry forgot something. A lone woman with a five-year-old child and an infant were leaving Boston on a private jet taking off on the runway nearest the Pan Am shuttle counters. The clerk responded to the request and was personally thanked by the mother. You see, he's a young father and understood about diaper sizes. He brought three different packages-"
   "For God's sake, will you get to the point, Judge?"
   "Judge?" The gray-faced old man's eyes widened. "Thank you, Randy. Except for my friends in various gin mills, I haven't been called that in years. It must be the aura I exude."
   "It was a throwback to that same boring circumlocution you used both on the bench and in the classroom!"
   "Impatience was always your weak suit. I ascribed it to your annoyance with other people's points of view that interfered with your conclusions. ... Regardless, our Major Sleaze knew a rotten apple when the worm emerged and spat in his face, so he hide himself off to Logan's control tower, where he found a bribable off duty traffic controller who checked yesterday morning's schedules. The jet in question had a computer readout of Four Zero, which to our Captain Sleaze's astonishment he was told meant it was government-cleared and maximum-classified. No manifest, no names of anyone on board, only a routing to evade commercial aircraft and a destination."
   "Which was?"
   "Blackburne, Montserrat."
   "What the hell is that?"
   "The Blackburne Airport on the Caribbean island of Montserrat."
   "That's where they went? That's it?"
   "Not necessarily. According to Corporal Sleaze, who I must say does his follow-ups, there are small flight connections to a dozen or so minor offshore islands."
   "That's it?"
   "That's it, Professor. And considering the fact that the aircraft in question had a Four Zero government classification, which, incidentally, in my letter to the attorney general I so specified, I think I've earned my ten thousand dollars."
   "You drunken scum-"
   "Again you're wrong, Randy," interrupted the judge. "Alcoholic, certainly, drunk hardly ever. I stay on the edge of sobriety. It's my one reason for living. You see in my cognizance I'm always amused-by men like you, actually."
   "Get out of here," said the professor ominously.
   "You're not even going to offer me a drink to help support this dreadful habit of mine? ... Good heavens, there must be half a dozen unopened bottles over there."
   "Take one and leave."
   "Thank you, I believe I will." The old judge walked to a cherry-wood table against the wall where two silver trays held various whiskies and a brandy. "Let's see," he continued, picking up several white cloth napkins and wrapping them around two bottles, then a third. "If I hold these tightly under my arm, they could be a pile of laundry I'm taking put for quick service."
   "Will you hurry!"
   "Will you please open the door for me? I'd hate like hell dropping one of these while manipulating the knob. If it smashed it wouldn't do much for your image, either. You've never been known to have a drink, I believe."
   "Get out," insisted Gates, opening the door for the old man.
   "Thank you, Randy," said the judge, walking out into the hallway and turning. "Don't forget the bank check at the Boston Five in the morning. Fifteen thousand."
   "Fifteen...?"
   "My word, can you imagine what the attorney general would say just knowing that you'd even consorted with me? Good-bye, Counselor."
   Randolph Gates slammed the door and ran into the bedroom, to the bedside telephone. The smaller enclosure was reassuring, as it removed him from the exposure to scrutiny inherent in larger areas-the room was more private, more personal, less open to invasion. The call he had to make so unnerved him he could not understand the pull-out flap of instructions for overseas connections. Instead, in his anxiety, he dialed the operator.
   "I want to place a call to Paris," he said.

6
   Bourne's eyes were tired, the strain painful as he studied the results of the computer printouts spread across the coffee table in front of the couch. Sitting forward, he had analyzed them for nearly four hours, forgetting time, forgetting that his "control" was to have reached him by then, concerned only with a link to the Jackal at the Mayflower hotel.
   The first group, which he temporarily put aside, was the foreign nationals, a mix of British, Italian, Swedish, West German, Japanese and Taiwanese. Each of them had been extensively examined with respect to authentic credentials and fully substantiated business or personal reasons for entering the country. The State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency had done their homework. Each person was professionally and personally vouched for by a minimum of five reputable individuals or companies; all had long-standing communications with such people and firms in the Washington area; none had a false or questionable statement on record. If the Jackal's man was among them-and he might well be-it would take far more information than was to be found in the printouts before Jason could refine the list. It might be necessary to go back to this group, but for the moment he had to keep reading. There was so little time!
   Of the remaining five hundred or so American guests at the hotel, two hundred and twelve had entries in one or more of the intelligence data banks, the majority because they had business with the government. However, seventy-eight had raw-file negative evaluations. Thirty-one were Internal Revenue Service matters, which meant they were suspected of destroying or falsifying financial records and/or had tax havens in Swiss or Cayman Island accounts. They were zero, nothing, merely rich and not very bright thieves, and, further, the sort of "messengers" Carlos would avoid like lepers.
   That left forty-seven possibles. Men and women-in eleven cases ostensibly husbands and wives-with extensive connections in Europe, in the main with technological firms and related nuclear and aerospace industries, all under intelligence microscopes for possibly selling classified information to brokers of the Eastern bloc and therefore to Moscow. Of these forty-seven possibles, including two of the eleven couples, an even dozen had made recent trips to the Soviet Union-scratch all of them. The Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, otherwise known as the KGB, had less use for the Jackal than the Pope. Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, later Carlos the assassin, had been trained in the American compound of Novgorod, where the streets were lined with American gas stations and grocery stores, boutiques and Burger Kings, and everyone spoke American English with diverse dialects-no Russian was allowed-and only those who passed the course were permitted to proceed to the next level of infiltrators. The Jackal had, indeed, passed, but when the Komitet discovered that the young Venezuelan revolutionary's solution for all things disagreeable was to eliminate them violently, it was too much for even the inheritors of the brutal OGPU. Sanchez was expelled and Carlos the Jackal was born. Forget about the twelve people who had traveled to the Soviet Union. The assassin would not touch them, for there was a standing order in all branches of Russian intelligence that if Carlos was tracked he was to be shot. Novgorod was to be protected at all cost.
   The possibles were thus narrowed to thirty-five, the hotel's register listing them as nine couples, four single women and thirteen single men. The raw-file printouts from the data banks de scribed in detail the facts and speculations that resulted in the negative evaluation of each individual. In truth, the speculations far outnumbered the facts and were too often based on hostile appraisals given by enemies or competitors, but each had to be studied, many with distaste, for among the information might be a word or phrase, a location or an act, that was the link to Carlos.
   The telephone rang, breaking Jason's concentration. He blinked at the harsh, intrusive sound as if trying to locate the source, then he sprang from the couch and rushed to the desk, reaching the phone on the third ring.
   "Yes?"
   "It's Alex. I'm calling from down the street."
   "Are you coming up?"
   "Not through that lobby, I'm not. I've made arrangements for the service entrance, with a temporary guard hired this afternoon."
   "You're covering all the bases, aren't you?"
   "Nowhere near as many as I'd like to," replied Conklin. "This isn't your normal ball game. See you in a few minutes. I'll knock once."
   Bourne hung up the phone and returned to the couch and the printouts, separating three that had caught his attention, not that any of them contained anything that evoked the Jackal. In stead, it was seemingly offhand data that might conceivably link the three to each other when no apparent connection existed between them. According to their passports, these three Americans had flown in to Philadelphia's International Airport within six days of one another eight months ago. Two women and a man, the women from Marrakesh and Lisbon, the man from West Berlin. The first woman was an interior decorator on a collecting trip to the old Moroccan city, the second an executive for the Chase Bank, Foreign Department; the man was an aerospace engineer on loan to the Air Force from McDonnell-Douglas. Why would three such obviously different people, with such dissimilar professions, converge on the same city within a week of one another? Coincidence? Entirely possible, but considering the number of international airports in the country, including the most frequented-New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami – the coincidence of Philadelphia seemed unlikely. Stranger still, and even more unlikely, was the fact that these same three people were staying at the same hotel at the same time in Washington eight months later. Jason wondered what Alex Conklin would say when he told him.
   "I'm getting the book on each of them," said Alex, sinking into an armchair across from the couch and the printouts.
   "You knew?"
   "It wasn't hard to put together. Of course, it was a hell of a lot easier with a computer doing the scanning."
   "You might have included a note! I've been poring over these things since eight o'clock."
   "I didn't find it-them-until after nine and I didn't want to call you from Virginia."
   "That's another story, isn't it?" said Bourne, sitting down on the couch, once again leaning forward anxiously.
   "Yes, it is, and it's God-awful."
   "Medusa?"
   "It's worse than I thought, and worse than that, I didn't think it could be."
   "That's a mouthful."
   "It's a bowelful," countered the retired intelligence officer. "Where do I start? ... Pentagon procurements? The Federal Trade Commission? Our ambassador in London, or would you like the supreme commander of NATO?"
   "My God...!"
   "Oh, I can go one better. For size, try on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs."
   "Christ, what is it? Some kind of cabal?"
   "That's so academic, Dr. Scholar. Now try collusion, down deep and elusive and after all these years still breathing, still alive. They're in contact with each other in high places. Why?"
   "What's the purpose? The objective?"
   "I just said that, asked that, really."
   "There has to be a reason!"
   "Try motive. I just said that, too, and it may be as simple as hiding past sins. Isn't that what we were looking for? A collection of former Medusans who'd run to the hills at the thought of the past coming to light?"
   "Then that's it."
   "No, it's not, and this is Saint Alex's instincts searching for words. Their reactions were too immediate, too visceral, too loaded with today, not twenty years ago."
   "You've lost me."
   "I've lost myself. Something's different from what we expected, and I'm goddamned sick of making mistakes. ... But this isn't a mistake. You said this morning that it could be a net work, and I thought you were way the hell off base. I thought that maybe we'd find a few high profiles who didn't want to be publicly drawn and quartered for things they did twenty years ago, or who legitimately didn't want to embarrass the government, and we could use them, force them in their collective fear to do things and say things we told them to do. But this is different. It's today, and I can't figure it out. It's more than fear, it's panic; they're frightened out of their minds. ... We've bumbled and stumbled onto something, Mr. Bourne, and in your rich friend Cactus's old-time minstrel-show language, 'In the focus, it could be bigger than bo'fus."
   "In my considered opinion there's, nothing bigger than the Jackal! Not for me. The rest can go to hell."
   "I'm on your side and I'll go to the wall shouting it. I just wanted you to know my thoughts. ... Except for a brief and pretty rotten interlude, we never kept anything from each other, David."
   "I prefer Jason these days."
   "Yes, I know," interrupted Conklin. "I hate it but I understand."
   "Do you?"
   "Yes," said Alex softly, nodding as he closed his eyes. "I'd do anything to change it but I can't."
   "Then listen to me. In that serpentine mind of yours-Cactus's description, incidentally-conjure up the worst scenario you can think of and shove those bastards against another wall, one they can't get away from unscathed unless they follow your instructions down to the letter. Those orders will be to stay quiet and wait for you to call and tell them who to reach and what to say."
   Conklin looked over at his damaged friend with guilt and concern. "There may be a scenario in place that I can't match," said Alex quietly. "I won't make another mistake, not in that area. I need more than what I've got."
   Bourne clasped his hands, flesh angrily grinding flesh in frustration. He stared at the scattered printouts in front of him, frowning, wincing, his jaw pulsating. In seconds a sudden passivity came over him; he sat back on the couch and spoke as quietly as Conklin. "All right, you'll get it. Quickly."
   "How?"
   "Me. I'll get it for you. I'll need names, residences, schedules and methods of security, favorite restaurants and bad habits, if any are known. Tell your boys to go to work. Tonight. All night, if necessary."
   "What the hell do you think you're going to do?" shouted Conklin, his frail body lurching forward in the armchair. "Storm their houses? Stick needles in their asses between the appetizer and the entrée?"
   "I hadn't thought of the last option," replied Jason, smiling grimly. "You've really got a terrific imagination."
   "And you're a madman! ... I'm sorry, I didn't mean that-"
   "Why not?" broke in Bourne gently. "I'm not lecturing on the rise of the Manchu and the Ching dynasty. Considering the accepted state of my mind and memory, the allusion to mental health isn't inappropriate." Jason paused, then spoke as he leaned slowly forward. "But let me tell you something, Alex. The memories may not all be there, but the part of my mind that you and Treadstone formed is all there. I proved it in Hong Kong, in Beijing and Macao, and I'll prove it again. I have to. There's nothing left for me if I don't. ... Now, get me the information. You mentioned several people who have to be here in Washington. Pentagon supplies or provisions-"
   "Procurements," corrected Conklin. "It's a lot more expansive and expensive; he's a general named Swayne. Then there's Armbruster, he's head of the Federal Trade Commission, and Burton over at-"
   "Chairman of the Joint Chiefs," completed Bourne. "Admiral 'Joltin' Jack Burton, commander of the Sixth Fleet."
   "One and the same. Formerly the scourge of the South China Sea, now the largest of the large brass."
   "I repeat," said Jason. "Tell your boys to go to work. Peter Holland will get you all the help you need. Find me everything there is on each of them."
   "I can't."
   "What?"
   "I can get us the books on our three Philadelphians because they're part of the immediate Mayflower project-that's the Jackal. I can't touch our five-so far, five-inheritors of Medusa."
   "For Christ's sake, why not? You have to. We can't waste time!"
   "Time wouldn't mean much if both of us were dead. It wouldn't help Marie or the children either."
   "What the hell are you talking about?"
   "Why I'm late. Why I didn't want to call you from Virginia. Why I reached Charlie Casset to pick me up at that real estate proprietary in Vienna, and why, until he got there, I wasn't sure I'd ever get here alive."
   "Spell it out, field man."
   "All right, I will. ... I've said nothing to anyone about going after former Medusa personnel-that was between you and me, nobody else."
   "I wondered. When I spoke to you this afternoon you were playing it close. Too close, I thought, considering where you were and the equipment you were using."
   "The rooms and the equipment proved secure. Casset told me later that the Agency doesn't want any traceable records of anything that takes place over there, and that's the best guarantee you can ask for. No bugs, no phone intercepts, nothing. Believe me, I breathed a lot easier when I heard that."
   "Then what's the problem? Why are you stopping."
   "Because I have to figure out another admiral before I move any further into Medusa territory. ... Atkinson, our impeccable WASP ambassador to the Court of St. James's in London, was very clear. In his panic, he pulled the masks off Burton and Teagarten in Brussels."
   "So?"
   "He said Teagarten could handle the Agency if anything about the old Saigon surfaced-because he was very tight with the top max at Langley."
   "And?"
   " 'Top max' is the Washington euphemism for maximum-classified security, and where Langley is concerned that's the director of Central Intelligence. ... That's also Peter Holland."
   "You told me this morning he'd have no problem wasting any member of Medusa."
   "Anyone can say anything. But would he?"
   Across the Atlantic, in the old Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, an old man in a dark threadbare suit trudged up the concrete path toward the entrance of the sixteenth-century cathedral known as the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. The bells in the tower above tolled the first Angelus and the man stopped in the morning sunlight, blessing himself and whispering to the sky.
   "Angelus domini nuntiavit Mariae." With his right hand he blew a kiss to the bas-relief crucifix atop the stone archway and proceeded up the steps and through the huge doors of the cathedral, aware that two robed priests eyed him with distaste. I apologize for defiling your rich parish, you tight-assed snobs, he thought as he lit a candle and placed it in the prayer rack, but Christ made it clear that he preferred me to you. 'The meek shall inherit the earth'-what you haven't stolen of it.
   The old man moved cautiously down the center aisle, his right hand gripping the backs of successive pews for balance, his left fingering the rim of his outsized collar and slipping down to his tie so as to make sure the knot had not somehow come apart. His woman was so weak now that she could barely fold the damn thing together, but, as in the old days, she insisted on putting the finishing touches on his appearance before he went to work. She was still a good woman; they had both laughed, remembering the time she swore at his cuff links over forty years ago because she had put too much starch in his shirt. That night, so long ago, she had wanted him to look the proper bureaucrat when he went to the whore-mongering Oberführer's headquarters on the rue St. Lazare carrying a briefcase-a briefcase that, left behind, had blown up half the block. And twenty years later, one winter afternoon she'd had trouble making his stolen expensive overcoat hang properly on his shoulders before he set off to rob the Grande Banque Louis IX on the Madeleine, run by an educated but unappreciative former member of the Résistance who refused him a loan. Those were the good times, followed by bad times and bad health, which led to worse times-in truth, destitute times. Until a man came along, a strange man with an odd calling and an even odder unwritten contract. After that, respect returned in the form of sufficient money for decent food and acceptable wine, for clothes that fit, making his woman look pretty again, and, most important, for the doctors who made his woman feel better. The suit and shirt he wore today had been dug out of a closet. In many ways he and his woman were like the actors in a provincial touring company. They had costumes for their various roles. It was their business. ... Today was business. This morning, with the bells of the Angelus, was business.
   The old man awkwardly, only partially, genuflected in front of the holy cross and knelt down in the first seat of the sixth row from the altar, his eyes on his watch. Two and a half minutes later he raised his head and, as unobtrusively as possible, glanced around. His weakened sight had adjusted to the dim light of the cathedral; he could see, not well but clearly enough. There were no more than twenty worshipers scattered about, most in prayer, the others staring in meditation at the enormous gold crucifix on the altar. Yet these were not what he was looking for; and then he saw what he was seeking and knew that everything was on schedule. A priest in a priestly black suit walked down the far left aisle and disappeared beyond the dark red drapes of the apse.
   The old man again looked at his watch, for everything now was timing; that was the way of the monseigneur-that was the way of the Jackal. Again two minutes passed and the aged courier got unsteadily up from his pew, sidestepped into the aisle, genuflected as best his body would permit, and made his way, step by imperfect step, to the second confessional booth on the left. He pulled back the curtain and went inside.
   "Angelus Domini," he whispered, kneeling and repeating the words he had spoken several hundred times over the past fifteen years.
   "Angelus Domini, child of God," replied the unseen figure behind the black latticework. The blessing was accompanied by a low rattling cough. "Are your days comfortable?"
   "Made more so by an unknown friend ... my friend."
   "What does the doctor say about your woman?"
   "He says to me what he does not say to her, thanks be for the mercy of Christ. It appears that against the odds I will outlive her. The wasting sickness is spreading."
   "My sympathies. How long does she have?"
   "A month, no more than two. Soon she will be confined to her bed. ... Soon the contract between us will be void."
   "Why is that?"
   "You will have no further obligations to me, and I accept that. You've been good to us and I've saved a little and my wants are few. Frankly, knowing what's facing me, I'm feeling terribly tired-"
   "You insufferable ingrate!" whispered the voice behind the confessional screen. "After all I've done, all I've promised you!"
   "I beg your pardon?"
   "Would you die for me?"
   "Of course, that's our contract."
   "Then, conversely, you will live for me!"
   "If that's what you want, naturally I will. I simply wanted you to know that soon I would no longer be a burden to you. I am easily replaced."
   "Do not presume, never with me!" The anger erupted in a hollow cough, a cough that seemed to confirm the rumor that had spread through the dark streets of Paris. The Jackal himself was ill, perhaps deathly ill.
   "You are our life, our respect. Why should I do that?"
   "You just did. ... Nevertheless, I have an assignment for you that will ease your woman's departure for both of you. You will have a holiday in a lovely part of the world, the two of you together. You will pick up the papers and the money at the usual place."
   "Where are we going, if I may ask?"
   "To the Caribbean island of Montserrat. Your instructions will be delivered to you there at the Blackburne Airport. Follow them precisely."
   "Of course. ... Again, if I may ask, what is my objective?"
   "To find and befriend a mother and two children."
   "Then what?"
   "Kill them."
   Brendan Prefontaine, former federal judge of the first circuit court of Massachusetts, walked out of the Boston Five Bank on School Street with fifteen thousand dollars in his pocket. It was a heady experience for a man who had lived an impecunious existence for the past thirty years. Since his release from prison he rarely had more than fifty dollars on his person. This was a very special day.
   Yet it was more than very special. It was also very disturbing because he had never thought for an instant that Randolph Gates would pay him a sum anywhere near the amount he had demanded. Gates had made an enormous error because by acceding to the demand he had revealed the gravity of his endeavors. He had crossed over from ruthless, albeit nonfatal, greed into something potentially quite lethal. Prefontaine had no idea who the woman and the children were or what their relationship was to Lord Randolph of Gates, but whoever they were and whatever it was, Dandy Randy meant them no good.
   An irreproachable Zeus-like figure in the legal world did not pay a disbarred, discredited, deniable alcoholic "scum" like one Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine an outrageous sum of money because his soul was with the archangels of heaven. Rather, that soul was with the disciples of Lucifer. And since this was obviously the case, it might be profitable for the scum to pursue a little knowledge, for as the bromide declared, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing-frequently more so in the eyes of the beholder than in the one possessing scant tidbits of information, so slanted as to appear many times more. Fifteen thousand today might well become fifty thousand tomorrow if-if a scum flew to the island of Montserrat and began asking questions.
   Besides, thought the judge, the Irish in him chuckling, the French sector in minor rebellion, he had not had a vacation in years. Good Christ, it was enough keeping body and soul together; who thought of an unenforced suspension of the hustle?
   So Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine hailed a taxi, which he had not done sober for at least ten years, and directed the skeptical driver to take him to Louis's men's store at Faneuil Hall.
   "You got the scratch, old man?"
   "More than enough to get you a haircut and cure the acne on your pubescent face, young fellow. Drive on, Ben Hur. I'm in a hurry."
   The clothes were off the racks, but they were expensive racks, and after he had shown a roll of hundred-dollar bills, the purple-lipped clerk was extremely cooperative. A midsized suit case of burnished leather soon held casual apparel, and Prefontaine discarded his worn-out suit, shirt and shoes for a new outfit. Within the hour he looked not unlike a man he had known years ago: the Honorable Brendan P. Prefontaine. (He had always dropped the second P., for Pierre, for obvious reasons.)
   Another taxi took him to his rooming house in Jamaica Plains, where he picked up a few essentials, including his passport, which he always kept active for rapid exits-preferable to prison walls-and then delivered him to Logan Airport, this driver having no concern regarding his ability to pay the fare. Clothes, of course, never made the man, thought Brendan, but they certainly helped to convince dubious underlings. At Logan's information desk he was told that three airlines out of Boston serviced the island of Montserrat. He asked which counter was the nearest and then bought a ticket for the next available flight. Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine naturally flew first class.
   The Air France steward rolled the wheelchair slowly, gently through the ramp and onto the 747 jet in Paris's Orly Airport. The frail woman in the chair was elderly and overly made-up with an imbalance of rouge; she wore an outsized feather hat made of Australian cockatoo. She might have been I a caricature except for the large eyes beneath the bangs of gray hair imperfectly dyed red-eyes alive and knowing and filled with humor. It was as if she were saying to all who observed her, Forget it, mes amis, he likes me this way and that's all I care about. I don't give a pile of merde about you or your opinions. The he referred to the old man walking cautiously beside her, every now and then touching her shoulder, lovingly as well as perhaps for balance, but in the touch there was a volume of poetry that was theirs alone. Closer inspection revealed a sporadic welling of tears in his eyes that he promptly wiped away so she could not see them.
   "Il est ici, mon capitaine," announced the steward to the senior pilot, who greeted his two preboarding passengers at the aircraft's entrance. The captain reached for the woman's left hand and touched his lips to it, then stood erect and solemnly saluted the balding gray-haired old man with the small Legion d'honneur medal in his lapel.
   "It is an honor, monsieur," said the captain. "This aircraft is my command, but you are my commander." They shook hands and the pilot continued. "If there's anything the crew and I can do to make the flight most comfortable for you, don't hesitate to ask, monsieur."
   "You're very kind."
   "We are all beholden-all of us, all of France."
   "It was nothing, really-"
   "To be singled out by Le Grand Charles himself as a true hero of the Résistance is hardly nothing. Age cannot dull such glory." The captain snapped his fingers, addressing three stew ardesses in the still-empty first-class cabin. "Quickly, mesdemoiselles! Make everything perfect for a brave warrior of France and his lady."
   So the killer with many aliases was escorted to the wide bulkhead on the left, where his woman was gently transferred from the wheelchair to the seat on the aisle; his was next to the window. Their trays were set up and a chilled bottle of Cristal was brought in their honor and for their enjoyment. The captain raised the first glass and toasted the couple; he returned to the flight deck as the old woman winked at her man, the wink wicked and filled with laughter. In moments, the passengers began boarding the plane, a number of whom glancing appreciatively at the elderly "man and wife" in the front row. For the rumors had spread in the Air France lounge. A great hero ... Le Grand Charles himself ... In the Alps he held off six hundred Boche-or was it a thousand?
   As the enormous jet raced down the runway and with a thump lumbered off the ground into the air, the old "hero of France"-whose only heroics he could recall from the Résistance were based on theft, survival, insults to his woman, and staying out of whatever army or labor force that might draft him-reached into his pocket for his papers. The passport had his picture duly inserted, but that was the only item he recognized. The rest-name, date and place of birth, occupation-all were unfamiliar, and the attached list of honors, well, they were formidable. Totally out of character, but in case anyone should ever refer to them, he had better restudy the "facts" so he could at least nod in self-effacing modesty. He had been assured that the individual originally possessing the name and the achievements had no living relatives and few friends, and had disappeared from his apartment in Marseilles supposedly on a world trip from which he presumably would not return.
   The Jackal's courier looked at the name-he must remember it and respond whenever it was spoken. It should not be difficult, for it was such a common name. And so he repeated it silently to himself over and over again.
   Jean Pierre Fontaine, Jean Pierre Fontaine, Jean Pierre ...
   A sound! Sharp, abrasive. It was wrong, not normal, not part of a hotel's routine noise of hollow drumming at night. Bourne grabbed the weapon by his pillow and rolled out of bed in his shorts, steadying himself by the wall. It came again! A single, loud knock on the bedroom door of the suite. He shook his head trying to remember. ... Alex? I'll knock once. Jason lurched half in sleep to the door, his ear against the wood.
   "Yes?"
   "Open this damn thing before somebody sees me!" came Conklin's muffled voice from the corridor. Bourne did so and the retired field officer limped quickly into the room, treating his cane as if he loathed it. "Boy, are you out of training!" he exclaimed as he sat on the foot of the bed. "I've been standing there tapping for at least a couple of minutes."
   "I didn't hear you."
   "Delta would have; Jason Bourne would have. David Webb didn't."
   "Give me another day and you won't find David Webb."
   "Talk. I want you better than talk!"
   "Then stop talking and tell me why you're here-at whatever time it is."
   "When last I looked I met Casset on the road at three-twenty. I had to gimp through a bunch of woods and climb over a goddamned fence-"
   "What?"
   "You heard me. A fence. Try it with your foot in cement. ... You know, I once won the fifty-yard dash when I was in high school."
   "Cut the digression. What happened?"
   "Oh, I hear Webb again."
   "What happened? And while you're at it, who the hell is this Casset you keep talking about?"
   "The only man I trust in Virginia. He and Valentino."
   "Who?"
   "They're analysts, but they're straight."
   "What?"
   "Never mind. Jesus, there are times when I wish I could get pissed-"
   "Alex, why are you here?"
   Conklin looked up from the bed as he angrily gripped his cane. "I've got the books on our Philadelphians."
   "That's why? Who are they?"
   "No, that's not why. I mean it's interesting, but it's not why I'm here."
   "Then why?" asked Jason, crossing to a chair next to a window and sitting down, frowning, perplexed. "My erudite friend from Cambodia and beyond doesn't climb over fences with his foot in cement at three o'clock in the morning unless he thinks he has to."
   "I had to."
   "Which tells me nothing. Please tell."
   "It's DeSole."
   "What's the soul?"
   "Not 'the,' DeSole."
   "You've lost me."
   "He's the keeper of the keys at Langley. Nothing happens that he doesn't know about and nothing gets done in the area of research that he doesn't pass on."
   "I'm still lost."
   "We're in deep shit."
   "That doesn't help me at all."
   "Webb again."
   "Would you rather I took a nerve out of your neck?"
   "All right, all right. Let me get my breath." Conklin dropped his cane on the rug. "I didn't even trust the freight elevator. I stopped two floors below and walked up."
   "Because we're in deep shit?"
   "Yes."
   "Why? Because of this DeSole?"
   "Correct, Mr. Bourne. Steven DeSole. The man who has his finger on every computer at Langley. The one person who can spin the disks and put your old virginal Aunt Grace in jail as a hooker if he wants her there."
   "What's your point?"
   "He's the connection to Brussels, to Teagarten at NATO. Casset learned down in the cellars that he's the only connection-they even have an access code bypassing everyone else."
   "What does it mean?"
   "Casset doesn't know, but he's goddamned angry."
   "How much did you tell him?"
   "The minimum. That I was working on some possibles and Teagarten's name came up in an odd way-most likely a diversion or used by someone trying to impress someone else-but I wanted to know who he talked to at the Agency, frankly figuring it was Peter Holland. I asked Charlie to play it out in the dark."
   "Which I assume means confidentially."
   "Ten times that. Casset is the sharpest knife in Langley. I didn't have to say any more than I did; he got the message. Now he's also got a problem he didn't have yesterday."
   "What's he going to do?"
   "I asked him not to do anything for a couple of days and that's what he gave me. Forty-eight hours, to be precise, and then he's going to confront DeSole."
   "He can't do that," said Bourne firmly. "Whatever these people are hiding we can use it to pull out the Jackal. Use them to pull him out as others like them used me thirteen years ago."
   Conklin stared first down at the floor, then up at Jason Bourne. "It comes down to the almighty ego, doesn't it?" he said. "The bigger the ego the bigger the fear-"
   "The bigger the bait, the bigger the fish," completed Jason, interrupting. "A long time back you told me that Carlos's 'spine' was as big as his head, which had to be swollen all out of proportion for him to be in the business he's in. That was true then and it's true now. If we can get any one of these high government profiles to send a message to him-namely, to come after me, kill me-he'll jump at it. Do you know why?"
   "I just told you. Ego."
   "Sure, that's part of it, but there's something else. It's the respect that's eluded Carlos for more than twenty years, starting with Moscow cutting him loose and telling him to get lost. He's made millions, but his clients have mainly been the crud of the earth. For all the fear he's engendered he still remains a punk psychopath. No legends have been built around him, only contempt, and at this stage it's got to be driving him close to the edge. The fact that he's coming after me to settle a thirteen-year-old score supports what I'm saying. ... I'm vital to him-his killing me is vital-because I was the product of our covert operations. That's who he wants to show up, show that he's better than all of us put together."
   "It could also be because he still thinks you can identify him."
   "I thought that at first, too, but after thirteen years and nothing from me-well, I had to think again."
   "So you moved into Mo Panov's territory and came up with a psychiatric profile."
   "It's a free country."
   "Compared with most, yes, but where's all this leading us?"
   "Because I know I'm right."
   "That's hardly an answer."
   "Nothing can be false or faked," insisted Bourne, leaning forward in the armchair, his elbows on his bare knees, his hands clasped. "Carlos would find the contrivance; it's the first thing he'll look for. Our Medusans have to be genuine and genuinely panicked."
   "They're both, I told you that."
   "To the point where they'd actually consider making contact with someone like the Jackal."
   "That I don't know-"
   "That we'll never know," broke in Jason, "until we learn what they're hiding."
   "But if we start the disks spinning at Langley, DeSole will find out. And, if he's part of whatever the hell it is, he'll alert the others."
   "Then there'll be no research at Langley. I've got enough to go on anyway, just get me addresses and private telephone numbers. You can do that, can't you?"
   "Certainly, that's low-level. What are you going to do?"
   Bourne smiled and spoke quietly, even gently. "How about storming their houses or sticking needles in their asses between the appetizers and the entrées?"
   "Now I hear Jason Bourne."
   "So be it."

7
   Marie St. Jacques Webb greeted the Caribbean morning by stretching in bed and-looking over at the crib several feet away. Alison was deep in sleep, which she had not been four or five hours ago. The little dear had been a basket case then, so much so that Marie's brother Johnny had knocked on the door, walked cowardly inside, and asked if he could do anything, which he profoundly trusted he could not.
   "How are you at changing a nasty diaper?"
   "I don't even want to think about it," said St. Jacques, fleeing.
   Now, however, she heard his voice through the shutters outside. She also knew that she was meant to hear it; he was enticing her son, Jamie, into a race in the pool and speaking so loudly he could be heard on the big island of Montserrat. Marie literally crawled out of bed, headed for the bathroom, and four minutes later, ablutions completed, her auburn hair brushed and, wearing a bathrobe, walked out through the shuttered door to the patio overlooking the pool.
   "Well, hi there, Mare!" shouted her tanned, dark-haired, handsome younger brother beside her son in the water. "I hope we didn't wake you up. We just wanted to take a swim."
   "So you decided to let the British coastal patrols in Plymouth know about it."
   "Hey, come on, it's almost nine o'clock. That's late in the islands."
   "Hello, Mommy. Uncle John's been showing me how to scare off sharks with a stick!"
   "Your uncle is full of terribly important information that I hope to God you'll never use."
   "There's a pot of coffee on the table, Mare. And Mrs. Cooper will make you whatever you like for breakfast."
   "Coffee's fine, Johnny. The telephone rang last night-was it David?"
   "Himself," replied the brother. "And you and I are going to talk. ... Come on, Jamie, up we go. Grip the ladder."
   "What about the sharks?"
   "You got 'em all, buddy. Go get yourself a drink."
   "Johnny!"
   "Orange juice, there's a pitcher in the kitchen." John St. Jacques walked around the rim of the pool and up the steps to the bedroom patio as his nephew raced into the house.
   Marie watched her brother approach, noting the similarities between him and her husband. Both were tall and muscular; both had in their strides an absence of compromise, but where David usually won, Johnny more often than not lost, and she did not know why. Or why David had such trust in his younger brother-in-law when the two older St. Jacques sons would appear to be more responsible. David-or was it Jason Bourne? – never discussed the question in depth; he simply laughed it off and said Johnny had a streak in him that appealed to David-or was it Bourne?
   "Let's level," said the youngest St. Jacques sitting down, the water dripping off his body onto the patio. "What kind of trouble is David in? He couldn't talk on the phone and you were in no shape last night for an extended chat. What's happened?"
   "The Jackal. ... The Jackal's what's happened."
   "Christ!" exploded the brother. "After all these years?"
   "After all these years," repeated Marie, her voice drifting off."
   "How far has that bastard gotten?"
   "David's in Washington trying to find out. All we know for certain is that he dug up Alex Conklin and Mo Panov from the horrors of Hong Kong and Kowloon." She told him about the false telegrams and the trap at the amusement park in Baltimore.
   "I presume Alex has them all under protection or whatever they call it."
   "Around the clock, I'm sure. Outside of ourselves and McAllister, Alex and Mo are the only two people still alive who know that David was-oh, Jesus, I can't even say the name!" Marie slammed the coffee mug down on the patio table.
   "Easy, Sis." St. Jacques reached for her hand, placing his on top of hers. "Conklin knows what he's doing. David told me that Alex was the best-'field man,' he called him-that ever worked for the Americans."
   "You don't understand, Johnny!" cried Marie, trying to control her voice and emotions, her wide eyes denying the attempt. "David never said that, David Webb never knew that! Jason Bourne said it, and he's back! ... That ice-cold calculating monster they created is back in David's head. You don't know what it's like. With a look in those unfocused eyes that see things I can't see-or with a tone of voice, a quiet freezing voice I don't know-and I'm suddenly with a stranger."
   St. Jacques held up his free hand telling her to stop. "Come on," he said softly.
   "The children? Jamie...?" She looked frantically around.
   "No, you. What do you expect David to do? Crawl inside a Wing or Ming dynasty vase and pretend his wife and children aren't in danger-that only he is? Whether you ladies like it or not, we boys still think it's up to us to keep the big cats from the cave. We honestly believe we're more equipped. We revert to those strengths, the ugliest of them, of course, because we have to. That's what David's doing."
   "When did little brother get so philosophical?" asked Marie, studying John St. Jacques's face.
   "That ain't philosophy, girl, I just know it. Most men do-apologies to the feminist crowd."
   "Don't apologize; most of us wouldn't have it any other way. Would you believe that your big scholarly sister who called a lot of economic shots in Ottawa still yells like hell when she sees a mouse in our country kitchen, and goes into panic if it's a rat?"
   "Certain bright women are more honest than others."
   "I'll accept what you say, Johnny, but you're missing my point. David's been doing so well these last five years, every month just a little bit better than the last. He'll never be totally cured, we all know that-he was damaged too severely-but the furies, his own personal furies, have almost disappeared. The solitary walks in the woods when he'd come back with hands bruised from attacking tree trunks; the quiet, stifled tears in his study late at night when he couldn't remember what he was or what he'd done, thinking the worst of himself-they were gone, Johnny! There was real sunlight, do you know what I mean?"
   "Yes, I do," said the brother solemnly.
   "What's happening now could bring them all back, that's what's frightening me so!"
   "Then let's hope it's over quickly."
   Marie stopped, once again studying her brother. "Hold it, little bro, I know you too well. You're pulling back."
   "Not a bit."
   "Yes, you are. ... You and David-I never understood. Our two older brothers, so solid, so on top of everything, perhaps not intellectually but certainly pragmatically. Yet he turned to you. Why, Johnny?"
   "Let's not go into it," said St. Jacques curtly, removing his hand from his sister's.
   "But I have to. This is my life, he's my life! There can't be any more secrets where he's concerned-I can't stand any more! ... Why you?"
   St. Jacques leaned back in the patio chair, his stretched fingers now covering his forehead. He raised his eyes, an unspoken plea in them. "All right, I know where you're coming from. Do you remember six or seven years ago I left our ranch saying I wanted to try things on my own?"
   "Certainly. I think you broke both Mom's and Dad's hearts. Let's face it, you were always kind of the favorite-"
   "I was always the kid!" interrupted the youngest St. Jacques. "Playing out some moronic Bonanza where my thirty-year-old brothers were blindly taking orders from a pontificating, bigoted French Canadian father whose only smarts came with his money and his land."
   "There was more to him than that, but I won't argue-from a 'kid's' viewpoint."
   "You couldn't, Mare. You did the same thing, and sometimes you didn't come home for over a year."
   "I was busy."
   "So was I."
   "What did you do?"
   "I killed two men. Two animals who'd killed a friend of mine-raped her and killed her."
   "What?"
   "Keep your voice down-"
   "My God, what happened?"
   "I didn't want to call home, so I reached your husband ... my friend, David, who didn't treat me like a brain-damaged kid. At the time it seemed like a logical thing to do and it was the best decision I could have made. He was owed favors by his government, and a quiet team of bright people from Washington and Ottawa flew up to James Bay and I was acquitted. Self-defense, and it was just that."
   "He never said a word to me-"
   "I begged him not to."
   "So that's why. ... But I still don't understand!"
   "It's not difficult, Mare. A part of him knows I can kill, will kill, if I think it's necessary."
   A telephone rang inside the house as Marie stared at her younger brother. Before she could get her voice back, an elderly black woman emerged from the door to the kitchen. "It's for you, Mr. John. It's that pilot over on the big island. He says it's real important, mon."
   "Thanks, Mrs. Cooper," said St. Jacques, getting out of the chair and walking rapidly down to an extension phone by the pool. He spoke for several moments, looked up at Marie, slammed down the telephone and rushed back up to his sister. "Pack up. You're getting out of here!"
   "Why? Was that the man who flew us-"
   "He's back from Martinique and just learned that someone was asking questions at the airport last night. About a woman and two small children. None of the crews said anything, but that may not last. Quickly."
   "My God, where will we go?"
   "Over to the inn until we think of something else. There's only one road and my own Tonton Macoute patrols it. No one gets in or out. Mrs. Cooper will help you with Alison. Hurry!"
   The telephone started ringing again as Marie dashed through the bedroom door. St. Jacques raced down the steps to the pool extension, reaching it as Mrs. Cooper once more stepped out of the kitchen. "It's Government House over in 'Serrat, Mr. John."
   "What the hell do they want...?"
   "Shall I ask them?"
   "Never mind, I'll get it. Help my sister with the kids and pack everything they brought with them into the Rover. They're leaving right away!"
   "Oh, a bad time pity, mon. I was just getting to know the little babies."
   " 'Bad time pity' is right," mumbled St. Jacques, picking up the telephone. "Yes?"
   "Hello, John?" said the chief aide to the Crown governor, a man who had befriended the Canadian developer and helped him through the maze of the colony's Territorial Regulations.
   "Can I call you back, Henry? I'm kind of harried at the moment."
   "I'm afraid there's no time, chap. This is straight from the Foreign Office. They want our immediate cooperation, and it won't do you any harm, either."
   "Oh?"
   "It seems there's an old fellow and his wife arriving on Air France's connecting flight from Antigua at ten-thirty and Whitehall wants the red-carpet treatment. Apparently the old boy had a splendid war, with a slew of decorations, and worked with a lot of our chaps across the Channel."
   "Henry, I'm really in a hurry. What's any of this got to do with me?"
   "Well, I rather assumed you might have more of an idea about that than we do. Probably one of your rich Canadian guests, perhaps a Frenchie from Montreal who came out of the Résistance and who thought of you-"
   "Insults will only get you a bottle of superior French Canadian wine. What do you want?"
   "Put up our hero and his lady in the finest accommodations you've got, with a room for the French-speaking nurse we've assigned to them."
   "On an hour's notice?"
   "Well, chap, our buns could be in a collective sling, if you know what I mean-and your so vital but erratic telephone service does depend on a degree of Crown intervention, if you also know what I mean."
   "Henry, you're a terrific negotiator. You so politely kick a person so accurately where it hurts. What's our hero's name? Quickly, please!"
   "Our names are Jean Pierre and Regine Fontaine, Monsieur le Directeur, and here are our passports," said the soft-spoken. old man inside the immigration officer's glass-enclosed office, the chief aide of the Crown governor at his side. "My wife can be seen over there," he added, pointing through the window. "She is talking with the mademoiselle in the white uniform."
   "Please, Monsieur Fontaine," protested the stocky black immigration official in a pronounced British accent. "This is merely an informal formality, a stamping procedure, if you like. Also to remove you from the inconvenience of so many admirers. Rumors have gone throughout the airport that a great man has arrived."
   "Really?" Fontaine smiled; it was a pleasant smile.
   "Oh, but not to be concerned, sir. The press has been barred. We know you want complete privacy, and you shall have it."
   "Really?" The old man's smile faded. "I was to meet someone here, an associate, you might say, I must consult with confidentially. I hope your most considerate arrangements do not prevent him from reaching me."
   "A small, select group with proper standing and credentials will greet you in Blackburne's honored-guest corridor, Monsieur Fontaine," said the Crown governor's chief aide. "May we proceed? The reception line will be swift, I assure you."
   "Really? That swift?"
   It was, less than five minutes actually, but five seconds would have been enough. The first person the Jackal's courier-killer met was the beribboned Crown governor himself. As the Queen's royal representative embraced the hero in Gallic style, he whispered into Jean Pierre Fontaine's ear. "We've learned where the woman and her children were taken. We are sending you there. The nurse has your instructions."
   The rest was somewhat anticlimactic for the old man, especially the absence of the press. He had never had his picture in the newspapers except as a felon.
   Morris Panov, M.D., was a very angry man, and he always tried to control his very angry moments because they never helped him or his patients. At the moment, however, sitting at his office desk, he was having difficulty curbing his emotions. He had not heard from David Webb. He had to hear from him, he had to talk to him. What was happening could negate thirteen years of therapy, couldn't they understand that? ... No, of course they couldn't; it was not what interested them; they had other priorities and did not care to be burdened by problems beyond their purview. But he had to care. The damaged mind was so fragile, so given to setbacks, the horrors of the past were so capable of taking over the present. It could not happen with David! He was so close to being as normal as he would ever be (and who the hell was "normal" in this fucked-up world). He could function wonderfully as a teacher; he had near-total recall where his scholarly expertise was called upon, and he was remembering more and more as each year progressed. But it could all blow apart with a single act of violence, for violence was the way of life for Jason Bourne. Damn!
   It was crippling enough that they even permitted David to stay around; he had tried to explain the potential damage to Alex, but Conklin had an irrefutable reply: We can't stop him. At least this way we can watch him, protect him. Perhaps so. "They" did not stint where protection was involved-the guards down the hall from his office and on the roof of the building, to say nothing of a temporary receptionist bearing arms as well as a strange computer, attested to their concern. Still it would be so much better for David if he was simply sedated and flown down to his island retreat, leaving the hunt for the Jackal to the professionals. ... Panov suddenly caught himself as the realization swept over him: there was no one more professional than Jason Bourne.
   The doctor's thoughts were interrupted by the telephone, the telephone he could not pick up until all the security procedures were activated. A trace was placed on the incoming call; a scanner determined whether there were intercepts on the line, and finally the identity of the caller was approved by Panov himself. His intercom buzzed; he flipped the switch on his console. "Yes?"
   "All systems are cleared, sir," announced the temporary receptionist, who was the only one in the office who would know. "The man on the line said his name was Treadstone, Mr. D. Treadstone."
   "I'll take it," said Mo Panov firmly. "And you can remove whatever other 'systems' you've got on that machine out there. This is doctor-patient confidentiality."
   "Yes, sir. Monitor is terminated."
   "It's what? ... Never mind." The psychiatrist picked up the phone and was barely able to keep from shouting. "Why didn't you call me before this, you son of a bitch!"
   "I didn't want to give you cardiac arrest, is that sufficient?"
   "Where are you and what are you doing?"
   "At the moment?"
   "That'll suffice."
   "Let's see, I rented a car and right now I'm a half a block from a town house in Georgetown owned by the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, talking to you on a pay phone."
   "For Christ's sake, why?"
   "Alex will fill you in, but what I want you to do is call Marie on the island. I've tried a couple of times since leaving the hotel but I can't get through. Tell her I'm fine, that I'm perfectly fine, and not to worry. Have you got that?"
   "I've got it, but I don't buy it. You don't even sound like yourself."
   "You can't tell her that, Doctor. If you're my friend, you can't tell her anything like that."
   "Stop it, David. This Jekyll-and-Hyde crap doesn't wash anymore."
   "Don't tell her that, not if you're my friend."
   "You're spiraling, David. Don't let it happen. Come to me, talk to me."
   "No time, Mo. The fat cat's limousine is parking in front of his house. I've got to go to work."
   "Jason!"
   The line went dead.
   Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine walked down the jet's metal steps into the hot Caribbean sun of Montserrat's Blackburne Airport. It was shortly past three o'clock in the afternoon, and were it not for the many thousands of dollars on his person he might have felt lost. It was remarkable how a supply of hundred-dollar bills in various pockets made one feel so secure. In truth, he had to keep reminding himself that his loose change-fifties, twenties and tens-were in his right front trousers pocket so as not to make a mistake and either appear ostentatious or be a mark for some unprincipled hustler. Above all, it was vital for him to keep a low profile to the point of insignificance. He had to insignificantly ask significant questions around the airport regarding a woman and two small children who had arrived on a private aircraft the previous afternoon.
   Which was why to his astonishment and alarm he heard the absolutely adorable black female immigration clerk say to him after hanging up a telephone, "Would you be so kind, sir, as to come with me, please?"
   Her lovely face, lilting voice and perfect smile did nothing to allay the former judge's fears. Far too many extremely guilty criminals had such assets. "Is there something wrong with my passport, young lady?"
   "Not that I can see, sir."
   "Then why the delay? Why not simply stamp it and allow me to proceed?"
   "Oh, it is stamped and entry is permitted, sir. There is no problem."
   "Then why...?"
   "Please come with me, sir."
   They approached a large glass-enclosed cubicle with a sign on the left window, the gold letters announcing the occupant: DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION SERVICES. The attractive clerk opened the door and, again smiling, gestured for the elderly visitor to go inside. Prefontaine did so, suddenly terrified that he would be searched, the money found, and all manner of charges leveled against him. He did not know which islands were involved in narcotics, but if this was one of them the thousands of dollars in his pockets would be instantly suspect. Explanations raced through his mind as the clerk crossed to the desk handing his passport to the short, heavyset deputy of immigration. The woman gave Brendan a last bright smile and went out the door, closing it behind her.
   "Mr. Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine," intoned the immigration official reading the passport.
   "Not that it matters," said Brendan kindly but with summoned authority. "However, the 'Mister' is usually replaced with 'Judge'-as I say, I don't believe it's relevant under the circumstances, or perhaps it is, I really don't know. Did one of my law clerks make an error? If so, I'll fly the whole group down to apologize."
   "Oh, not at all, sir-Judge," replied the uniformed wide-girthed black man with a distinct British accent as he rose from the chair and extended his hand over the desk. "Actually, it is I who may have made the error."
   "Come now, Colonel, we all do occasionally." Brendan gripped the official's hand. "Then perhaps I may be on my way? There's someone here I must meet."
   "That's what he said!"
   Brendan released the hand. "I beg your pardon?"
   "I may have to beg yours. ... The confidentiality, of course."
   "The what? Could we get to the point, please?"
   "I realize that privacy," continued the official, pronouncing the word as privvissy, "is of utmost importance-that's been explained to us-but whenever we can be of assistance, we try to oblige the Crown."
   "Extremely commendable, Brigadier, but I'm afraid I don't understand."
   The official needlessly lowered his voice. "A great man arrived here this morning, are you aware of that?"
   "I'm sure many men of stature come to your beautiful island. It was highly recommended to me, in fact."
   "Ah, yes, the privvissy!"
   "Yes, of course, the privvissy," agreed the ex-convict judge, wondering if the official had both his oars in the water. "Could you be clearer?"
   "Well, he said he was to meet someone, an associate he had to consult with, but after the very private reception line-no press, of course-he was taken directly to the charter that flew him to the out island, and obviously never met the person he was to confidentially meet. Now, am I clearer?"
   "Like Boston harbor in a squall, General."
   "Very good. I understand. Privvissy. ... So all our personnel are alerted to the fact that the great man's friend might be seeking him here at the airport-confidentially, of course."
   "Of course." Not even a paddle, thought Brendan.
   "Then I considered another possibility," said the official in minor triumph. "Suppose the great man's friend was also flying to our island for a rendezvous with the great man?"
   "Brilliant."
   "Not without logic. Then it struck me to obtain the passenger manifests of all the incoming flights, concentrating, of course, on those in first class, which would be proper for the great man's associate."
   "Clairvoyance," mumbled the once and former judge. "And you selected me?"
   "The name, my good man! Pierre Prefontaine!"
   "My pious, departed mother would no doubt take offense at your omitting the 'Brendan Patrick.' Like the French, the Irish are quite sensitive in such matters."
   "But it was the family. I understood that immediately!"
   "You did?"
   "Pierre Prefontaine! ... Jean Pierre Fontaine. I am an expert on immigration procedures, having studied the methods in many countries. Your own name is a fascinating example, most honored Judge. Wave after wave of immigrants flocked to the United States, the melting pot of nations, races and languages. In the process names were altered, combined or simply misunderstood by armies of confused, overworked clerks. But roots frequently survived and thus it was for you. The family Fontaine became Prefontaine in America and the great man's associate was in reality an esteemed member of the American branch!"
   "Positively awesome," muttered Brendan, eyeing the official as if he expected several male nurses to barge into the room with restraining equipment. "But isn't it possible that this is merely coincidence? Fontaine is a common name throughout France, but, as I understand it, the Prefontaines were distinctly centered around Alsace-Lorraine."
   "Yes, of course," said the deputy, again, lowering his voice rather than conceivably winking. "Yet without any prior word whatsoever, the Quai d'Orsay in Paris calls, then the UK's Foreign Office follows with instructions-a great man is soon to drop out of the sky. Acknowledge him, honor him, spirit him off to a remote resort known for its confidentiality-for that, too, is paramount. The great one is to have total privvissy. ... Yet that same great warrior is anxious; he is to confidentially meet with an associate he does not find. Perhaps the great man has secrets-all great men do, you know."
   Suddenly, the thousands of dollars in Prefontaine's pockets felt very heavy. Washington's Four Zero clearance in Boston, the Quai d'Orsay in Paris, the Foreign Office in London-Randolph Gates needlessly parting with an extraordinary amount of money out of sheer panic. There was a pattern of strange convergence, the strangest being the inclusion of a frightened, unscrupulous attorney named Gates. Was he an inclusion or an aberration? What did it all mean? "You are an extraordinary man," said Brendan quickly, covering his thoughts with rapid words. "Your perceptions are nothing short of brilliant, but you do understand that confidentiality is paramount."
   "I will hear no more, honored Judge!" exclaimed the deputy. "Except to add that your appraisal of my abilities might not be lost on my superiors."
   "They will be made clear, I assure you. ... Precisely where did my not too distant and distinguished cousin go?"
   "A small out island where the seaplanes must land on the water. Its name is Tranquility Isle and the resort is called Tranquility Inn."
   "You will be personally thanked by those above you, be assured of that."
   "And I shall personally clear you through customs."
   Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine, carrying his suitcase of burnished leather, walked out into the terminal of Blackburne Airport a bewildered man. Bewildered, hell, he was stunned! He could not decide whether to take the next flight back to Boston or to ... his feet were apparently deciding for him. He found himself walking toward a counter beneath a large sea-blue sign with white lettering: INTER-ISLAND AIRWAYS. It couldn't do any harm to inquire, he mused, then he would buy a ticket on the next plane to Boston.
   On the wall beyond the counter a list of nearby "Out Isles" was next to a larger column of the well-known Leeward and Windward Islands from St. Kitts and Nevis south to the Grenadines. Tranquility was sandwiched between Canada Cay and Turtle Rock. Two clerks, both young, one black and one white, the former a young woman, the latter a blond-haired man in his early twenties, were talking quietly. The girl approached. "May I help you, sir?"
   "I'm not really sure," replied Brendan hesitantly. "My schedule's so unsettled, but it seems I have a friend on Tranquility Isle."
   "At the inn, sir?"
   "Yes, apparently so. Does it take long to fly over there?"
   "If the weather's clear, no more than fifteen minutes, but that would be an amphibious charter. I'm not sure one's available until tomorrow morning."
   "Sure, there is, babe," interrupted the young man with small gold wings pinned crookedly on his white shirt. "I'm running over some supplies to Johnny St. Jay pretty soon," he added, stepping forward.
   "He's not scheduled for today."
   "As of an hour ago he is. Pronto."
   At that instant and with those words, Prefontaine's eyes fell in astonishment on two stacks of cartons moving slowly down Inter-Island's luggage carousel toward the exterior loading area. Even if he had the time to debate with himself, he knew his decision was made.
   "I'd like to purchase a ticket on that flight, if I may," he said, watching the boxes of Gerber's Assorted Baby Foods and Pampers Medium Diapers disappear into the hold.
   He had found the unknown woman with the small male child and the infant.