32
   “Why are they doing it?” asked Jason, sitting down next to Marie in the packed café. He had made the fifth telephone call, five hours after having reached the embassy. “They want me to keep running. They’re forcing me to run, and I don’t know why.”
   “You’re forcing yourself,” said Marie. “You could have made the calls from the room.”
   “No, I couldn’t. For some reason they want me to know that. Each time I call, that son of a bitch asks me where I am now, am I in ‘safe territory’? Silly goddamn phrase, ‘safe territory.’. But he’s saying something else. He’s telling me that every contact must be made from a different location, so that no one outside or inside could trace me to a single phone, a single address. They don’t want me in custody, but they want me on a string. They want me, but they’re afraid of me; it doesn’t make sense!”
   “Isn’t it possible you’re imagining these things? No one said anything remotely like that.”
   “They didn’t have to. Its in what they didn’t say. Why didn’t they just tell me to come right over to the embassy? Order me. No one could touch me there; it’s U. S. territory. They didn’t.”
   “The streets are being watched; you were told that.”
   “You know, I accepted that--blindly--until about thirty seconds ago when it struck me. By whom? Who’s watching the streets?”
   “Carlos, obviously. His men.”
   “You know that and I know that--at least we can assume it--but they don’t know that. I may not know who the hell I am or where I came from, but I know what’s happened to me during the past twenty-four hours. They don’t.”
   “They could assume too, couldn’t they? They might have spotted strange men in cars, or standing around too long, too obviously.”
   “Carlos is brighter than that. And there are lots of ways a specific vehicle could get quickly inside an embassy’s gate. Marine contingents everywhere are trained for things like that.”
   “I believe you.”
   “But they didn’t do that; they didn’t even suggest it. Instead, they’re stalling me, making me play games. Goddamn it, why?”
   “You said it yourself, Jason. They haven’t heard from you in six months. They’re being very careful.”
   “Why this way? They get me inside those gates, they can do whatever they want. They control me.
   They can throw me a party or throw me into a cell. Instead, they don’t want to touch me, but they don’t want to lose me either.”
   “They’re waiting for the man flying over from Washington.”
   “What better place to wait for him than in the embassy?” Bourne pushed back his chair.
   “Something’s wrong. Let’s get out of here.”
   It had taken Alexander Conklin, inheritor of Treadstone, exactly six hours and twelve minutes to cross the Atlantic. To go back he would take the first Concorde flight out of Paris in the morning, reach Dulles by 7:30 Washington time and be at Langley by 9:00. If anyone tried to phone him or asked where he had spent the night, an accommodating major from the Pentagon would supply a false answer. And a First Secretary at the embassy in Paris would be told that if he ever mentioned having had a single conversation with the man from Langley, he’d be descaled to the lowest attaché on the ladder and shipped to a new post in Tierra del Fuego. It was guaranteed.
   Conklin went directly to a row of pay phones against the wall and called the embassy. The First Secretary was filled with a sense of accomplishment.
   “Everything’s according to schedule, Conklin,” said the embassy man, the absence of the previously employed Mister a sign of equality. The Company executive was in Paris now, and turf was turf. “Bourne’s edgy. During our last communication he repeatedly asked why he wasn’t being told to come in.”
   “He did?” At first Conklin was surprised; then he understood. Delta was feigning the reactions of a man who knew nothing of the events on Seventy-first Street. If he had been told to come to the embassy, he would have bolted. He knew better; there could be no official. connection. Treadstone was anathema, a discredited strategy, a major embarrassment. “Did you reiterate that the streets were being watched?”
   “Naturally. Then he asked me who was watching them. Can you imagine?”
   “I can. What did you say?”
   “That he knew as well as I did, and all things considered I thought it was counterproductive to discuss such matters over the telephone.”
   “Very good.”
   “I rather thought so”
   “What did he say to that? Did he settle for it?”
   “In an odd way, yes. He said, ‘I see.’ That’s all”
   “Did he change his mind and ask for protection?”
   “He’s continued to refuse it. Even when I insisted.” The First Secretary paused briefly. “He doesn’t want to be watched, does he?” he said confidentially.
   “No, he doesn’t. When do you expect his next call?”
   “In about fifteen minutes.”
   “Tell him the Treadstone officer has arrived.” Conklin took the map from his pocket; it was folded to the area, the route marked in blue ink. “Say the rendezvous has been set for one-thirty on the road between Chevreuse and Rambouillet, seven miles south of Versailles at the Cimetière de Noblesse.”
   “One-thirty, road between Chevreuse and Rambouillet ... the cemetery. Will he know how to get there?”
   “He’s been there before. If he says he’s going by taxi, tell him to take the normal precautions and dismiss it.”
   “Won’t that appear strange? To the driver, I mean. It’s an odd hour for mourning.”
   “I said you’re to ‘tell him’ that. Obviously he won’t take a taxi.”
   “Obviously,” said the First Secretary quickly, recovering by volunteering the unnecessary. “Since I haven’t called your man here, shall I call him now and tell him you’ve arrived?”
   “I’ll take care of that. You’ve still got his number?”
   “Yes, of course.”
   “Burn it,” ordered Conklin. “Before it burns you. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”

   A train thundered by in the lower level of the Métro, the vibrations felt throughout the platform. Bourne hung up the pay phone on the concrete wall and stared for a moment at the mouthpiece. Another door had partially opened somewhere in the distance of his mind, the light too far away, too dim to see inside. Still, there were images. On the road to Rambouillet ... through an archway of iron latticework ... a gently sloping hill with white marble. Crosses--large, larger, mausoleums ... and statuary everywhere. Le Cimetière de Noblesse. A cemetery, but far more than a resting place for the dead. A drop, but even more than that. A place where conversations took place amid burials and the lowering of caskets. Two men dressed somberly as the crowds were dressed somberly, moving between the mourners until they met among the mourners and exchanged the words they had to say to each other.
   There was a face, but it was blurred, out of focus; he saw only the eyes. And that unfocused face and those eyes had a name. David ... Abbott. The Monk. The man he knew but did not know.
   Creator of Medusa and Cain.
   Jason blinked several times and shook his head as if to shake the sudden mists away. He glanced over at Marie, who was fifteen feet to his left against the wall, supposedly scanning the crowds on the platform, watching for someone possibly watching him. She was not; she was looking at him herself, a frown of concern across her face. He nodded, reassuring her; it was not a bad moment for him. Instead, images had come to him. He had been to that cemetery; somehow he would know it.
   He walked toward Marie; she turned and fell in step beside him as they headed for the exit.
   “He’s here,” said Bourne. “Treadstone’s arrived. I’m to meet him near Rambouillet. At a cemetery.”
   “That’s a ghoulish touch. Why a cemetery?”
   “It’s supposed to reassure me.”
   “Good God, how?”
   “I’ve been there before. I’ve met people there ... a man there. By naming it as the rendezvous-an unusual rendezvous--Treadstone’s telling me he’s genuine.” She took his arm as they climbed the steps toward the street. “I want to go with you.”
   “Sorry.”
   “You can’t exclude me!”
   “I have to, because I don’t know what I’m going to find there. And if it’s not what I expect, I’ll want someone on my side.”
   “Darling, that doesn’t make sense! I’m being hunted by the police. If they find me, they’ll send me back to Zurich on the next plane; you said so yourself. What good would I be to you in Zurich?”
   “Not you. Villiers. He trusts us, he trusts you. You can reach him if I’m not back by daybreak or haven’t called explaining why. He can make a lot of noise, and God knows he’s ready to. He’s the one backup we’ve got, the only one. To be more specific, his wife is--through him.” Marie nodded, accepting his logic. ‘He’s ready,” she agreed. “How will you get to Rambouillet?”
   “We have a car, remember? I’ll take you to the hotel, then head over to the garage.”

   He stepped inside the elevator of the garage complex in Montmartre and pressed the button for the fourth floor. His mind was on a cemetery somewhere between Chevreuse and Rambouillet, on a road he had driven over but had no idea when or for what purpose.
   Which was why he wanted to drive there now, not wait until his arrival corresponded more closely to the time of rendezvous. If the images that came to his mind were not completely distorted, it was an enormous cemetery. Where precisely within those acres of graves and statuary was the meeting ground? He would get there by one, leaving a half hour to walk up and down the paths looking for a pair of headlights or a signal. Other things would come to him.
   The elevator door scraped open. The floor was three-quarters filled with cars, deserted otherwise.
   Jason tried to recall where he had parked the Renault; it was in a far corner, he remembered that, but was it on the right or the left? He started tentatively to the left; the elevator had been on his left when he had driven the car up several days ago. He stopped, logic abruptly orienting him. The elevator had been on his left when he had entered, not after he had parked the car; it had been diagonally’ to his right then. He turned, his movement rapid, his thoughts on a road between Chevreuse and Rambouillet.
   Whether it was the sudden, unexpected reversal of direction or an inexperienced surveillance, Bourne neither knew nor cared to dwell upon. Whichever, the moment saved his life, of that he was certain. A man’s head ducked below ,the hood of a car in ,the second aisle on his right; that man had been watching him. An experienced surveillance would have stood up, holding a ring of keys he had presumably picked up from the floor, or checked a windshield wiper, then walked away. The one thing he would not do was what this man did; risk being seen by ducking out of sight.
   Jason maintained his pace, his thoughts concerned on this new development. Who was this man?
   How had he been found? And then both answers were so clear, so obvious he felt like a fool. The clerk at the Auberge du Coin.
   Carlos had been thorough--as he was always thorough--every detail of failure examined. And one of those details was a clerk on duty during a failure. Such a man bore scrutiny, then questioning; it would not be difficult. The show of a knife or a gun would be more than sufficient. Information would pour from the night clerk’s trembling lips, and Carlos’ army ordered to spread throughout the city, each district divided into sectors, hunting for a specific black Renault. A painstaking search, but not impossible, made easier by the driver, who had not bothered to switch license plates. For how many unbroken hours had the garage been watched? How many men were there? Inside, outside?
   How soon would others arrive? Would Carlos arrive?
   The questions were secondary. He had to get out. He could do without the car, perhaps, but the resulting dependency on unknown arrangements might cripple him; he needed transportation and he needed it now. No taxi would drive a stranger to a cemetery on the outskirts of Rambouillet at one o’clock in the morning, and it was no time to rely on the possibility of stealing a car in the streets.
   He stopped, taking cigarettes and matches from his pockets; then, striking a match, he cupped his hands and angled his head to protect the flame. In the corner of his eye he could see a shadow-– square-shaped, stocky; the man once more had lowered himself, now behind the trunk of a nearer automobile.
   Jason dropped to a crouch, spun to his left and lunged out of the aisle between two adjacent cars, breaking his fall with the palms of his hands, the maneuver made in silence. He crawled around the rear wheels of the automobile on his right, arms and legs working rapidly, quietly, down the narrow alley of vehicles, a spider scurrying across a web. He was behind the man now; he crept forward toward the aisle and rose to his knees, inching his face along smooth metal, and peered beyond a headlight. The heavy-set man was in full view, standing erect. He was evidently bewildered, for he moved hesitantly closer toward the Renault, his body low again, squinting to see beyond the windshield. What he saw frightened him further, there was nothing, no one. He gasped, the audible intake of breath a prelude to running. He had been tricked; he knew it and was not about to wait around for the consequences--which told Bourne something else. The man had been briefed on the driver of the Renault, the danger explained. The man began to race toward the exit ramp.
   Now. Jason sprang up and ran straight ahead across the aisle, between the cars to the second aisle, catching up with the running man, hurling himself at his back and throwing him to the concrete floor. He hammer-locked the man’s thick neck, crashing the outsized skull into the pavement, the fingers of his left hand pressed into the man’s eye sockets.
   “You have exactly five seconds to tell me who’s outside,” he said in French, remembering the grimacing face of another Frenchman in an elevator in Zurich. There had been men outside then, men who wanted to kill him then, on the Bahnhofstrasse. “Tell me! Now!”
   “A man, one man, that’s all!”
   Bourne relocked the neck, digging his fingers deeper into the eyes. “Where?”
   “In a car,” spat out the man. “Parked across the street. My God, you’re choking me! You’re blinding me!”
   “Not yet. You’ll know it when and if I do both. What kind of car?”
   “Foreign. I don’t know. Italian, I think. Or American. I don’t know. Please! My eyes!”
   “Color!”
   “Dark! Green, blue, very dark. Oh my God!”
   “You’re Carlos’ man, aren’t you?”
   “Who?”
   Jason yanked again, pressed again. “You heard me--you’re from Carlos!”
   “I don’t know any Carlos. We call a man; there is a number. That’s all we do.”
   “Has he been called?” The man did not reply; Bourne dug his fingers deeper. “Tell me!”
   “Yes. I had to.”
   “When?”
   “A few minutes ago. The coin telephone on the second ramp. My God! I can’t see.”
   “Yes, you can. Get up!” Jason released the man, pulling him to his feet. “Get over to the car. Quickly!” Bourne pushed the man back between the stationary automobiles to the Renault’s aisle.
   The man turned, protesting, helpless. “You heard me. Hurry!” shouted Jason.
   “I’m only earning a few francs.”
   “Now you can drive for them.” Bourne shoved him again toward the Renault.
   Moments later the small black automobile careened down an exit ramp toward a glass booth with a single attendant and the cash register. Jason was in the back seat, his gun pressed against the man’s bruised neck. Bourne shoved a bill and his dated ticket out the window; the attendant took both.
   “Drive!” said Bourne. “Do exactly what I told you to do!”
   The man pressed the accelerator, and the Renault sped out through the exit. The man made a screeching U-turn in the street, coming to a sudden stop in front of a dark green Chevrolet. A car door opened behind them; running footsteps followed.
   “Jules? Que se passe-t-il? C’est toi qui conduis?” A figure loomed in the open window.
   Bourne raised his automatic, pointing the barrel at the man’s face. “Take two steps back,” he said in French. “No more, just two. And then stand still.” He tapped the head of the man named Jules.
   “Get out. Slowly.”
   “We were only to follow you,” protested Jules, stepping out into the street. “Follow you and report your whereabouts.”
   “You’ll do better than that,” said Bourne, getting out of the Renault, taking his map of Paris with him. “You’re going to drive me. For a while. Get in your car, both of you!” Five miles outside of Paris, on the road to Chevreuse, the two men were ordered out of the car.
   It was a dark, poorly lighted, third-grade highway. There had been no stores, buildings, houses, or road phones for the past three miles.
   “What was the number you were told to call?” demanded Jason. “Don’t lie. You’d be in worse trouble.”
   Jules gave it to him. Bourne nodded and climbed into the seat behind the wheel of the Chevrolet.

The old man in the threadbare overcoat sat huddled in the shadows of the empty booth by the telephone. The small restaurant was closed, his presence there an accommodation made by a friend from the old days, the better days. He kept looking at the instrument on the wall, wondering when it would ring. It was only a question of time, and when it did he would in turn make a call and the better days would return permanently. He would be the one man in Paris who was the link to Carlos. It would be whispered among the other old men, and respect would be his again.
   The high-pitched sound of the bell burst from the telephone, echoing off the walls of the deserted restaurant. The beggar climbed out of the booth and rushed to the phone, his chest pounding with anticipation. It was the signal. Cain was cornered! The days of patient waiting merely a preface to the fine life. He lifted the phone out of its curved recess.
   “Yes?”
   “It’s Jules!” cried the breathless voice.
   The old man’s face turned ashen, the pounding in his chest growing so loud he could barely hear the terrible things being said. But he had heard enough.
   He was a dead man.
   White-hot explosions joined the vibrations that took hold of his body. There was no air, only white light and deafening eruptions surging up from his stomach to his head.
   The beggar sank to the floor, the cord stretched taut, the phone still in his hand. He stared up at the horrible instrument that carried the terrible words. What could he do? What in the name of God would he do?

   Bourne walked down the path between the graves, forcing himself to let his mind fall free as Washburn had commanded a lifetime ago in Port Noir. If ever he had to be a sponge, it was now; the man from Treadstone had to understand. He was trying with all his concentration to make sense out of the unremembered, to find meaning in the images that came to him without warning. He had not broken whatever agreement they had; he had not turned, or run. ... He was a cripple; it was as simple as that.
   He had to find the man from Treadstone. Where inside those fenced acres of silence would he be? Where did he expect him to be? Jason had reached the cemetery well before one, the Chevrolet a faster car than the broken-down Renault. He had passed the gates, driven several hundred yards down the road, pulled off onto the shoulder and parked the car reasonably out of sight. On his way back to the gates it had started to rain. It was a cold rain, a March rain, but a quiet rain, little intrusions upon the silence.
   He passed a cluster of graves within a plot bordered by a low iron railing, the centerpiece an alabaster cross rising eight feet out of the ground. He stood for a moment before it. Had he been here before? Was another door opening for him in the distance? Or was he trying too desperately to find one? And then it came to him. It was not this particular grouping of gravestones, not the tall alabaster cross, nor the low iron railing. It was the rain. A sudden rain. Crowds of mourners gathered in black around a burial site, the snapping of umbrellas. And two men coming together, umbrellas touching, brief, quiet apologies muttered, as a long brown envelope exchanged hands, pocket to pocket, unnoticed by the mourners.
   There was something else. An image triggered by an image, feeding upon itself, seen only minutes ago. Rain cascading down white marble; not a cold, light rain, but a downpour, pounding against the wall of a glistening white surface ... and columns ... rows of columns on all sides, a miniature replica of an ancient treasure.
   On the other side of the hill. Near the gates. A white mausoleum, someone’s scaled-down version of the Parthenon. He had passed it less than five minutes before, looking at it but not seeing it. That was where the sudden rain had taken place, where two umbrellas had touched and an envelope been delivered. He squinted at the radium dial of his watch. It was fourteen minutes past one; he started running back up the path. He was still early; there was time left to see a car’s headlights, or the striking of a match or ...
   The beam of a flashlight. It was there at the bottom of the hill and it was moving up and down, intermittently swinging back at the gates as though the holder were concerned that someone might appear. Bourne had an almost uncontrollable urge to race down between the rows of graves and statuary, shouting at the top of his voice. I’m here! It’s me. I understand your message. I’ve come back! I have so much to tell you ... and there is so much you must tell me!
   But he did not shout and he did not run. Above all else, he had to show control, for what afflicted him was so uncontrollable. He had to appear completely lucid--sane within the boundaries of his memory. He began walking down the hill in the cold light rain, wishing his sense of urgency had allowed him to remember a flashlight.
   The flashlight. Something was odd about the beam of light five hundred feet below. It was moving in short vertical strokes, as if in emphasis ... as if the man holding it were speaking emphatically to another.
   He was. Jason crouched, peering through the rain, his eyes struck by a sharp, darting reflection of light that shot out whenever the beam hit the object in front of it. He crept forward, his body close to the ground, covering practically a hundred feet in seconds, his gaze still on the beam and the strange reflection. He could see more clearly now, he stopped and concentrated. There were two men, one holding the flashlight, the other a short-barreled rifle, the thick steel of the gun known only too well to Bourne. At distances of up to thirty feet it could blow a man six feet into the air. It was a very odd weapon for an officer-of-record sent by Washington to have at his command.
   The beam of light shot over to the side of the white mausoleum; the figure holding the rifle retreated quickly, slipping behind a column no more than twenty feet away from the man holding the flashlight.
   Jason did not have to think; he knew what he had to do. If there was an explanation for the deadly weapon, so be it, but it would not be used on him. Kneeling, he judged the distance and looked for points of sanctuary, both for concealment and protection. He started out, wiping the rain from his face, feeling the gun in his belt that he knew he could not use.
   He scrambled from gravestone to gravestone, statue to statue, heading to his right, then angling gradually to his left until the semicircle was nearly complete. He was within fifteen feet of the mausoleum; the man with the murderous weapon was standing by the left corner column, under the short portico to avoid the rain. He was fondling his gun as though it were a sexual object, cracking the breach, unable to resist peering inside. He ran his palm over the inserted shells, the gesture obscene.
   Now. Bourne crept out from behind the gravestone, hands and knees propelling him over the wet grass until he was within six feet of the man. He sprang up, a silent, lethal panther hurling dirt in front of him, one hand surging for the barrel of the rifle, the other for the man’s head. He reached both, grabbed both, clasping the barrel in the fingers of his left hand, the man’s hair in his right. The head snapped back, throat stretched, sound muted. He smashed the head into the white marble with such force that the expulsion of breath that followed signified a severe concussion. The man went limp, Jason supporting him against the wall, permitting the unconscious body to slip silently to the ground between the columns. He searched the man, removing a .357 Magnum automatic from a leather case sewn into his jacket, a razor-sharp scaling knife from a scabbard on his belt and a small .22 revolver from an ankle holster. Nothing remotely government issue; this was a hired killer, an arsenal on foot.
   Break his fingers. The words came back to Bourne; they had been spoken by a man in gold-rimmed glasses in a large sedan racing out of the Steppdeckstrasse. There was reason behind the violence.
   Jason grabbed the man’s right hand and bent the fingers back until he heard the cracks; he did the same with the left, the man’s mouth blocked, Bourne’s elbow jammed between the teeth. No sound emerged above the sound of the rain, and neither hand could be used for a weapon or as a weapon, the weapons themselves placed out of reach in the shadows.
   Jason stood up and edged his face around the column. The Treadstone officer now angled the light directly into the earth in front of him. It was the stationary signal, the beam a lost bird was to home into; it might be other things also--the next few minutes would tell. The man turned toward the gate, taking a tentative step as though he might have heard something, and for the first time Bourne saw the cane, observed the limp. The officer-of-record from Treadstone Seventy-One was a cripple ... as he was a cripple.
   Jason dashed back to the first gravestone, spun behind it and peered around the marble edge.
   The man from Treadstone still had his attention on the gates. Bourne glanced at his watch; it was 1:27. Time remained. He pushed himself away from the grave, hugging the ground until he was out of sight, then stood up and ran, retracing the arch back to the top of the hill. He stood for a moment, letting his breathing and his heartbeat resume a semblance of normalcy, then reached into his pocket for a book of matches. Protecting it from the rain, he tore off a match and struck it.
   “Treadstone?” he said loud enough to be heard from below.
   “Delta!”
   Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain. Why did the man from Treadstone use the name Delta rather than Cain? Delta was no part of Treadstone; he had disappeared with Medusa. Jason started down the hill, the cold rain whipping his face, his hand instinctively reaching beneath his jacket, pressing the automatic in his belt.
   He walked onto the stretch of lawn in front of the white mausoleum. The man from Treadstone limped toward him, then stopped, raising his flashlight, the harsh beam causing Bourne to squint and turn his head away.
   “It’s been a long time,” said the crippled officer, lowering the light. “The name’s Conklin, in case you’ve forgotten.”
   “Thank you. I had. It’s only one of the things.”
   “One of what things?”
   “That I’ve forgotten.”
   “You remembered this place, though. I figured you would. I read Abbott’s logs; it was here where you last met, last made a delivery. During a state burial for some minister or other, wasn’t it?”
   “I don’t know. That’s what we have to talk about first. You haven’t heard from me in over six months. There’s an explanation.”
   “Really? Let’s hear it.”
   “The simplest way to put it is that I was wounded, shot, the effects of the wounds causing a severe ... dislocation. Disorientation is a better word, I guess.”
   “Sounds good. What does it mean?”
   “I suffered a memory loss. Total. I spent months on an island in the Mediterranean--south of Marseilles--not knowing who I was or where I came from. There’s a doctor, an Englishman named Washburn, who kept medical records. He can verify what I’m telling you.”
   “I’m sure he can,” said Conklin, nodding. “And I’ll bet those records are massive. Christ, you paid enough!”
   “What do you mean?”
   “We’ve got a record, too. A bank officer in Zurich who thought he was being tested by Treadstone transferred. a million and a half Swiss francs to Marseilles for an untraceable collection.
   Thanks for giving us the name.”
   “That’s part of what you have to understand. I didn’t know. He’d saved my life, put me back together. I was damn near a corpse when I was brought to him.”
   “So you decided a million-odd dollars was a pretty fair ballpark figure, is that it? Courtesy of the Treadstone budget.”
   “I told you, I didn’t know. Treadstone didn’t exist for me; in many ways it still doesn’t.”
   “I forgot. You lost your memory. What was the word? Disorientation?”
   “Yes, but it’s not strong enough. The word is amnesia.”
   “Let’s stick to disorientation. Because it seems you oriented yourself straight into Zurich, right to the Gemeinschaft.”
   “There was a negative surgically implanted near my hip.”
   “There certainly was; you insisted on it. A few of us understood why. It’s the best insurance you can have.”
   “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can’t you understand that?”
   “Sure. You found the negative with only a number on it and right away you assumed the name of Jason Bourne.”
   “It didn’t happen that way! Each day it seemed I learned something, one step at a time, one revelation at a time. A hotel clerk called me Bourne; I didn’t learn the name Jason until I went to the bank.”
   “Where you knew exactly what to do,” interrupted Conklin. “No hesitation at all. In and out, four million gone.”
   “Washburn told me what to do!”
   “Then a woman came along who just happened to be a financial whiz kid to tell you how to squirrel away the rest. And before that you took out Chernak in the Löwenstrasse and three men we didn’t know but figured they sure as hell knew you. And here in Paris, another shot in a bank transfer truck. Another associate? You covered every track, every goddamned track. Until there was only one thing left to do. And you--you son of a bitch--you did it.”
   “Will you listen to me! Those men tried to kill me; they’ve been hunting me since Marseilles.
   Beyond that, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. Things come to me at times. Faces, streets, buildings; sometimes just images I can’t place, but I know they mean something, only I can’t relate to them. And names--there are names, but then no faces. Goddamn you--I’m an amnesiac!
   That’s the truth!”
   “One of those names wouldn’t be Carlos, would it?”
   “Yes, and you know it. That’s the point; you know much more about it than I do. I can recite a thousand facts about Carlos, but I don’t know why. I was told by a man who’s halfway back to Asia by now I had an agreement with Treadstone. The man worked for Carlos. He said Carlos knows.
   That Carlos was closing in on me, that you put out the word that I’d turned. He couldn’t understand the strategy, and I couldn’t tell him. You thought I’d turned because you didn’t hear from me, and I couldn’t reach you because I didn’t know who you were. I still don’t know who you are!”
   “Or the Monk, I suppose.”
   “Yes, yes ... the Monk. His name was Abbott.”
   “Very good. And the Yachtsman? You remember the Yachtsman, don’t you? And his wife?”
   “Names. They’re there, yes. No faces.”
   “Elliot Stevens?”
   “Nothing.”
   “Or ... Gordon Webb.” Conklin said the name quietly.
   “What?” Bourne felt the jolt in his chest, then a stinging, searing pain that drove through his temples to his eyes. His eyes were on fire! Fire! Explosions and darkness, high winds and pain. ... Almanac to Delta! Abandon, abandon! You will respond as ordered. Abandon!“Gordon ...” Jason heard his own voice, but it was far away in a faraway wind. He closed his eyes, the eyes that burned so, and tried to push the mists away. Then he opened his eyes and was not at all surprised to see Conklin’s gun aimed at his head.
   “I don’t know how you did it, but you did. The only thing left to do and you did it. You got back to New York and blew them all away. You butchered them, you son of a bitch. I wish to Christ I could bring you back and see you strapped into an electric chair, but I can’t, so I’ll do the next best thing. I’ll take you myself.”
   “I haven’t been in New York for months. Before then, I don’t know--but not in the last half-year.”
   “Liar! Why didn’t you do it really right? Why didn’t you time your goddamn stunt so you could get to the funerals? The Monk’s was just the other day; you would have seen a lot of old friends. And your brother’s! Jesus God Almighty! You could have escorted his wife down the aisle of the church.
   Maybe delivered the eulogy, that’d be the kicker. At least speak well of the brother you killed.”
   “Brother? ... Stop it! For Christ’s sake, stop it!”
   “Why should I? Cain lives! We made him and he came to life!”
   “I’m not Cain. He never was! I never was!”
   “So you do know! Liar! Bastard!”
   “Put that gun away. I’m telling you, put it down!”
   “No chance. I swore to myself I’d give you two minutes because I wanted to hear what you’d come up with. Well, I’ve heard it and it smells. Who gave you the right?’ We all lose things; it goes with the job, and if you don’t like the goddamned job you get out. If there’s no accommodation you fade; that’s what I thought you did, and I was willing to pass on you, to convince the others to let you fade! But no, you came back, and turned your gun on us.”
   “No! It’s not true!”
   “Tell that to the laboratory techs, who have eight fragments of glass that spell out two prints.
   Third and index fingers, right hand. You were there and you butchered five people. You--one of them--took out your guns--plural--and blew them away. Perfect setup. Discredited strategy. Varied shells, multiple bullets, infiltration. Treadstone’s aborted and you walk out free.”
   “No, you’re wrong! It was Carlos. Not me, Carlos. If what you’re saying took place on Seventy-first Street, it was him! He knows. They know. A residence on Seventy-first Street. Number 139.
   They know about it!”
   Conklin nodded, his eyes clouded, the loathing in them seen in the dim light, through the rain.
   “So perfect,” he said slowly. “The prime mover of the strategy blows it apart by making a deal with the target. What’s your take besides the four million? Carlos give you immunity from his own particular brand of persecution? You two make a lovely couple.”
   “That’s crazy!”
   “And accurate,” completed the man from Treadstone. “Only nine people alive knew that address before seven-thirty last Friday night. Three of them were killed, and we’re the other four. If Carlos found it, there’s only one person who could have told him. You.”
   “How could I? I didn’t know it. I don’t know it!”
   “You just said it.” Conklin’s left hand gripped the cane; it was a prelude to firing, steadying a crippled foot.
   “Don’t!” shouted Bourne, knowing the plea was useless, spinning to his left as he shouted, his right foot lashing out at the wrist that held the gun. Che-sah! was the unknown word that was the silent scream in his head. Conklin fell back, firing wildly in the air, tripping over his cane. Jason spun around and down, now hammering his left foot at the weapon; it flew out of the hand that held it.
   Conklin rolled on the ground, his eyes on the far columns of the mausoleum, expecting an explosion from the gun that would blow his attacker into the air. No! The man from Treadstone rolled again. Now to the right, his features in shock, his wild eyes focused on--There was someone else!
   Bourne crouched, diving diagonally backward as four gunshots came in rapid succession, three screeching ricochets spinning off beyond sound. He rolled over and over and over, pulling the automatic from his belt. He saw the man in the rain; a silhouetted figure rising above a gravestone.
   He fired twice; the man collapsed.
   Ten feet away Conklin was thrashing on the wet grass, both hands spreading frantically over the ground, feeling for the steel of a gun. Bourne sprang up and raced over, he knelt beside the Treadstone man, one hand grabbing the wet hair, the other holding his automatic, its barrel pressed into Conklin’s skull. From the far columns of the mausoleum came a prolonged, shattering scream.
   It grew steadily, eerily in volume, then stopped.
   “That’s your hired shotgun,” said Jason, yanking Conklin’s head to the side. “Treadstone’s taken on some very strange employees. Who was the other man? What death row did you spring him from?”
   “He was a better man than you ever were,” replied Conklin, his voice strained, the rain glistening on his face, caught in the beam of the fallen flashlight six feet away on the ground. “They all are.
   They’ve all lost as much as you lost, but they never turned. We can count on them!”
   “No matter what I say, you won’t believe me. You don’t want to believe me!”
   “Because I know what you are--what you did. You just confirmed the whole damn thing. You can kill me, but they’ll get you. You’re the worst kind. You think you’re special. You always did. I saw you after Phnom Penh--everybody lost out there, but that didn’t count with you. It was only you, just you! Then in Medusa! No rules for Delta! The animal just wanted to kill. And that’s the kind that turns. Well, I lost too, but I never turned. Go on! Kill me! Then you can go back to Carlos. But when I don’t come back, they’ll know. They’ll come after you and they won’t stop until they get you.
   Go on! Shoot!”
   Conklin was shouting, but Bourne could hardly hear him. Instead he had heard two words and the jolts of pain hammered at his temples. Phnom Penh! Phnom Penh. Death in the skies, from the skies. Death of the young and the very young. Screeching birds and screaming machines and the deathlike stench of the jungle ... and a river. He was blinded again, on fire again.
   Beneath him the man from Treadstone had broken away. His crippled figure was crawling in panic, lunging, his hands surging through the wet grass. Jason blinked, trying to force his mind to come back to him. Then instantly he knew he had to point the automatic and fire. Conklin had found his gun and was raising it. But Bourne could not pull the trigger.
   He dove to his right, rolling on the ground, scrambling toward the marble columns of the mausoleum. Conklin’s gunshots were wild, the crippled man unable to steady his leg or his aim.
   Then the firing stopped and Jason got to his feet, his face against the smooth wet stone. He looked out, his automatic raised; he had to kill this man, for this man would kill him, kill Marie, link them both to Carlos.
   Conklin was hobbling pathetically toward the gates, turning constantly, the gun extended, his destination a car outside in the road. Bourne raised his automatic, the crippled figure in his gunsight.
   A split half-second and it would be over, his enemy from Treadstone dead, hope found with that death, for there were reasonable men in Washington.
   He could not do it; he could not pull the trigger. He lowered the gun, standing helpless by the marble column as Conklin climbed into his car.
   The car. He had to get back to Paris. There was a way. It had been there all along. She had been there!

   He rapped on the door, his mind racing, facts analyzed, absorbed and discarded as rapidly as they came to him, a strategy evolving. Marie recognized the knock; she opened the door.
   “Dear God, look at you! What happened?”
   “No time,” he said, rushing toward the telephone across the room. “It was a trap. They’re convinced I turned, sold out to Carlos.”
   “What?”
   “They say I flew into New York last week, last Friday. That I killed five people ... among them a brother.” Jason closed his eyes briefly. “There was a brother--is a brother. I don’t know, I can’t think about it now.”
   “You never left Paris! You can prove it!”
   “How? Eight, ten hours, that’s all I’d need. And eight or ten hours unaccounted for is all they need now. Who’s going to come forward?”
   “I will. You’ve been with me.”
   “They think you’re part of it,” said Bourne, picking up the telephone and dialing. “The theft, the turning, Port Noir, the whole damn thing. They’ve locked you into me. Carlos engineered this down to the last fragment of a fingerprint. Christ! Did he put it together!”
   “What are you doing? Whom are you calling?”
   “Our backup, remember? The only one we’ve got. Villiers. Villiers’ wife. She’s the one. Were going to take her, break her, put her on a hundred racks if we have to. But we won’t have to; she won’t fight because she can’t win. ... Goddamn it, why doesn’t he answer?”
   “The private phone’s in his office. It’s three in the morning. He’s probably--“
   “He’s on! General? Is that you?” Jason had to ask; the voice on the line was oddly quiet, but not the quiet of interrupted sleep.
   “Yes, it is I, my young friend. I apologize for the delay. I’ve been upstairs with my wife.”
   “That’s whom I’m calling about. We’ve got to move. Now. Alert French Intelligence, Interpol and the American Embassy but tell them not to interfere until I’ve seen her, talked to her. We have to talk.”
   “I don’t think so, Mr. Bourne. ... Yes, I know your name, my friend. As for your talking to my wife, however, I’m afraid that’s not possible. You see, I’ve killed her.”

33
   Jason stared at the hotel room wall, at the flock paper with the faded designs that spiraled into one another in meaningless contortions of worn fabric. “Why?” he said quietly into the phone. “I thought you understood.”
   “I tried, my friend,” said Villiers, his voice beyond anger or sorrow. “The saints know I tried, but I could not help myself. I kept looking at her ... seeing the son she did not bear behind her, killed by the pig animal that was her mentor. My whore was someone else’s whore ... the animal’s whore. It could not be otherwise, and as I learned, it was not. I think she saw the outrage in my eyes, heaven knows it was there.” The general paused, the memory painful now. “She not only saw the outrage, but the truth. She saw that I knew. What she was, what she had been during the years we’d spent together. At the end, I gave her the chance I told you I would give her.”
   “To kill you?”
   “Yes. It wasn’t difficult. Between our beds is a nightstand with a weapon in the drawer. She lay on her bed, Goya’s Maja, splendid in her arrogance, dismissing me with her private thoughts, as I was consumed by my own. I opened the drawer for a book of matches and walked back to my chair and my pipe, leaving the drawer open, the handle of the gun very much in evidence.
   “It was my silence, I imagine, and the fact that I could not take my eyes off her that forced her to acknowledge me, then concentrate on me. The tension between us had grown to the point where very little had to be said to burst the floodgates, and--God help me--I said it. I heard myself asking, ‘Why did you do it?’ Then the accusation became complete. I called her my whore, the whore that killed my son.
   “She stared at me for several moments, her eyes breaking away once to glance at the open drawer and the gun ... and the telephone. I stood up, the embers in my pipe glowing, loose ... chauffé au rouge.
   She spun her legs off the bed, put both hands into that open drawer and took out the gun. I did not stop her, instead I had to hear the words, from her own lips, hear my own indictment of myself as well as hers. What I heard will go to my grave with me, for there will be honor left by my person and the person of my son. We will not be scorned by those who’ve given less than us. Never.”
   “General ...” Bourne shook his head, unable to think clearly, knowing he had to find the seconds in order to find his thoughts. “General, what happened? She gave you my name. How? You’ve got to tell me that. Please.”
   “Willingly. She said you were an insignificant gunman who wished to step into the shoes of a giant. That you were a thief out of Zurich, a man your own people disowned.”
   “Did she say who those people were?”
   “If she did I didn’t hear. I was blind, deaf, my rage uncontrolled. But you have nothing to fear from me. The chapter is closed, my life over with a telephone call.”
   “No!” Jason shouted. “Don’t do that! Not now.”
   “I must.”
   “Please. Don’t settle for Carlos’ whore. Get Carlos! Trap Carlos!”
   “Reaping scorn on my name by lying with that whore? Manipulated by the animal’s slut?”
   “Goddamn you--what about your son? Five sticks of dynamite on rue du Bac!”
   “Leave him in peace. Leave me in peace. It’s over.”
   “It’s not over! Listen to me! Give a moment, that’s all I ask.” The images in Jason’s mind raced furiously across his eyes, clashing, supplanting one another. But these images had meaning. Purpose. He could feel Marie’s hand on his arm, gripping him firmly, somehow anchoring his body to a mooring of reality. “Did anyone hear the gunshot?”
   “There was no gunshot. The coup de grâce is misunderstood in these times. I prefer its original intent. To still the suffering of a wounded comrade or a respected enemy. It is not used for a whore.”
   “What do you mean? You said you killed her.”
   “I strangled her, forcing her eyes to look into mine as the breath went out of her body.”
   “She had your gun on you ...”
   “Ineffective when one’s eyes are burning from the loose embers of a pipe. It’s immaterial now; she might have won.”
   “She did win if you let it stop here! Can’t you see that? Carlos wins! She broke you! And you didn’t have the brains to do anything but choke her to death! You talk about scorn? You’re buying it all; there’s nothing left but scorn!”
   “Why do you persist, Monsieur Bourne?” asked Villiers wearily. “I expect no charity from you, nor from anyone. Simply leave me alone. I accept what is. You accomplish nothing.”
   “I will if I can get you to listen to me! Get Carlos, trap Carlos! How many times do I have to say it? He’s the one you want! He squares it all for you! And he’s the one I need! Without him I’m dead.
   We’re dead. For God’s sake, listen to me!”
   “I would like to help you, but there’s no way I can. Or will, if you like.”
   “There is.” The images came into focus. He knew where he was, where he was going. The meaning and the purpose came together. “Reverse the trap. Walk away from it untouched, with everything you’ve got in place.”
   “I don’t understand. How is that possible?”
   “You didn’t kill your wife. I did!”
   “Jason!” Marie screamed, clutching his arm.
   “I know what I’m doing,” said Bourne. “For the first time, I really know what I’m doing. It’s funny, but I think I’ve known it from the beginning.”

   Parc Monceau was quiet, the street deserted, a few porch lights shimmering in the cold, mistlike rain, all the windows along the row of neat, expensive houses dark, except for the residence of André François Villiers, legend of Saint-Cyr and Normandy, member of France’s National Assembly ... wife killer. The front windows above and to the left of the porch glowed dimly. It was the bedroom wherein the master of the house had killed the mistress of the house, where a memory-ridden old soldier had choked the life out of an assassin’s whore.
   Villiers had agreed to nothing; he had been too stunned to answer. But Jason had driven home his theme, hammered the message with such repeated emphasis that the words had echoed over the telephone. Get Carlos! Don’t settle for the killer’s whore! Get the man who killed your son! The man who put five sticks of dynamite in a car on rue du Bac and took the last of the Villiers line. He’s the one you want. Get him!
   Get Carlos. Trap Carlos. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain. It was so clear to him. There was no other way. At the end, it was the beginning--as the beginning had been revealed to him. To survive he had to bring in the assassin; if he failed, he was a dead man. And there would be no life for Marie St. Jacques. She would be destroyed, imprisoned, perhaps killed, for an act of faith that became an act of love. Cain’s mark was on her, embarrassment avoided with her removal. She was a vial of nitroglycerine balanced on a highwire in the center of an unknown ammunition depot. Use a net.
   Remove her. A bullet in the head neutralizes the explosives in her mind. She cannot be heard!
   There was so much Villiers had to understand, and so little time to explain, the explanation itself limited both by a memory that did not exist and the current state of the old soldier’s mind. A delicate balance had to be found in the telling, parameters established as to time and the general’s immediate contributions. Jason understood; he was asking a man who held his honor above all things to lie to the world. For Villiers to do that, the objective had to be monumentally honorable.
   Get Carlos!
   There was a second, ground floor entrance to the general’s home, to the right of the steps, beyond a gate, where deliveries were made to the downstairs kitchen. Villiers had agreed to leave the gate and the door unlatched. Bourne had not bothered to tell the old soldier that it did not matter; that he would get inside in any event, a degree of damage intrinsic to his strategy. But first there was the risk that Villiers’ house was being watched, there being good reasons for Carlos to do so, and equally good reasons not to do so. All things considered, the assassin might decide to stay as far away from Angélique Villiers as possible, taking no chance that one of his men could be picked up, thus proving his connection, the Parc Monceau connection. On the other hand, the dead Angélique was his cousin and lover ... the only person on earth he cares about. Philippe d’Anjou.
   D’Anjou! Of course there’d be someone watching--or two or ten! If d’Anjou had gotten out of France, Carlos could assume the worst; if the man from Medusa had not, the assassin would know the worst. The colonial would be broken, every word exchanged with Cain revealed. Where? Where were Carlos’ men? Strangely enough, thought Jason, if there was no one posted in Parc Monceau on this particular night, his entire strategy was worthless.
   It was not; they were there. In a sedan--the same sedan that had raced through the gates of the Louvre twelve hours ago, the same two men--killers who were the backups of killers. The car was fifty feet down the street on the left-hand side, with a clear view of Villiers’ house. But were those two men slumped down in the seat, their eyes awake and alert, all that were there? Bourne could not tell; automobiles lined the curbs on both sides of the street. He crouched in the shadows of the corner building, diagonally across from the two men in the stationary sedan. He knew what had to be done, but he was not sure how to do it. He needed a diversion, alarming enough to attract Carlos’ soldiers, visible enough to flush out any others who might be concealed in the street or on a rooftop, or behind a darkened window.
   Fire. Out of nowhere. Sudden, away from Villiers’ how. yet close enough and startling enough to send vibrations throughout the quiet, deserted, tree-lined street. Vibrations ... sirens; explosive ... explosions. It could be done. It was merely a question of equipment.
   Bourne crept back behind the corner building into the intersecting street and ran silently to the nearest doorway, where he stopped and removed his jacket and topcoat. Then he took off his shirt, ripping the cloth from collar to waist; he put both coats on again, pulling up the lapels, buttoning the topcoat, the shirt under his arm. He peered into the night rain, scanning the automobiles in the street. He needed gasoline, but this was Paris and most fuel tanks would be locked. Most, but not all; there had to be an unsecured top among the line of cars at the curb.
   And then he saw what he wanted to see directly up ahead on the pavement, chained to an iron gate. It was a motorbike, larger than a street scooter, smaller than a cycle, its gas tank a metal bubble between handlebars and seat. The top would have a chain attached, but it was unlikely to have a lock. Eight liters of fuel was not forty; the risk of any theft had to be balanced against the proceeds, and two gallons of gas was hardly worth a 500 franc fine.
   Jason approached the bike. He looked up and down the street; there was no one, no sounds other than the quiet spattering of the rain. He put his hand on the gas tank top and turned it; it unscrewed easily. Better yet, the opening was relatively wide, the gas level nearly full. He replaced the top; he was not yet ready to douse his shirt. Another piece of equipment was needed.
   He found it at the next corner, by a sewer drain: A partially dislodged cobblestone, forced from its recess by a decade of careless drivers jumping the curb. He pried it loose by kicking his heel into the slice that separated it from its jagged wall. He picked it up along with a smaller fragment and started back toward the motorbike, the fragment in his pocket, the large brick in his hand. He tested its weight ... tested his arm. It would do; both would do.
   Three minutes later he pulled the drenched shirt slowly out of the gas tank, the fumes mingling with the rain, the residue of oil covering his hands. He wrapped the cloth around the cobblestone, twisting and crisscrossing the sleeves, tying them firmly together, holding his missile in place. He was ready.
   He crept back to the edge of the building at the corner of Villiers’ street. The two men in the sedan were still low in the front seat, their concentration still on Villiers’ house. Behind the sedan were three other cars, a small Mercedes, a dark brown limousine and a Bentley. Directly across from Jason, beyond the Bentley, was a white stone building, its windows outlined in black enamel. An inside hallway light spilled over to the casement bay windows on either side of the staircase, the left, was obviously a dining room; he could see chairs and a long table in the additional light of a rococo sideboard mirror. The windows of that dining room with their splendid view of the quaint, rich Parisian street would do.
   Bourne reached into his pocket and pulled out the rock; it was barely one-fourth the size of the gas-drenched brick, but it would serve the purpose. He inched around the corner of the building, cocked his arm and threw the stone as far as he could above and beyond the sedan.

The crash echoed throughout the quiet street. It was followed by a series of cracks as the rock clattered across the hood of a car and dropped to the pavement. The two men in the sedan bolted up. The man next to the driver opened his door, his foot plunging down to the pavement, a gun in his hand. The driver lowered the window, then switched on the headlights. The beams shot forward, bouncing back in blinding reflection off the metal and the chrome of the automobile in front. It was a patently stupid act, serving only to point up the fear of the men stationed in Parc Monceau.
   Now. Jason raced across the street, his attention on the two men, whose hands were covering their eyes, trying to see through the glare of the reflected light. He reached the trunk of the Bentley, the cobblestone brick under his arm, a matchbook in his left hand, a cluster of torn-off matches in his right. He crouched, struck the matches, lowered the brick to the ground, then picked it up by an extended sleeve. He held the burning matches beneath the gas-soaked cloth; it burst instantly into flame.
   He rose quickly, swinging the brick by the sleeve, and dashed over the curb, hurling his missile toward the bulging framework of the casement window with all his strength, racing beyond the edge of the building as impact was made.
   The crash of shattering glass was a sudden intrusion on the rain-soaked stillness of the street.
   Bourne raced to his left across the narrow avenue, then back toward Villiers’ block, again finding the shadows he needed. The fire spread, fanned by the wind from the broken window, leaping up into the willowy backing of the drapes. Within thirty seconds the room was a flaming oven, the fire magnified by the huge sideboard mirror. Shouts erupted, windows lighted up nearby, then farther down the street. A minute passed and the chaos grew. The door of the flaming house was yanked open and figures appeared--an elderly man in a nightshirt, a woman in a negligée and one slipper-– both in panic.
   Other doors opened, other figures emerged, adjusting from sleep to chaos, some racing toward the fire-swept residence--a neighbor was in trouble. Jason ran diagonally across the intersection, one more running figure in the rapidly gathering crowd. He stopped where he had started only minutes before, by the edge of the corner building, and stood motionless, trying to spot Carlos’ soldiers.
   He had been right; the two men were not the only guards posted in Parc Monceau. There were four men now, huddling by the sedan, talking rapidly, quietly. No, five. Another walked swiftly up the pavement, joining the four.
   He heard sirens. Growing louder, drawing nearer. The five men were alarmed. Decisions had to be made; they could not all remain where they were. Perhaps there were arrest records to consider.
   Agreement. One man would stay--the fifth man. He nodded and walked rapidly across the street to Villiers’ side. The others climbed into the sedan, and as a fire engine careened up the street, the sedan curved out of its parking place and sped past the red behemoth racing in the opposite direction.
   One obstacle remained: the fifth man. Jason rounded the building, spotting him halfway between the corner and Villiers’ house. It was now a question of timing and shock. Bourne broke into a loping run, similar to that used by the people heading toward the fire, his head angled back toward the corner, running partially backward, a figure melting into the surrounding pattern, only the direction in conflict. He passed the man; he had not been noticed--but he would be noticed if he continued to the downstairs gate of Villiers’ house and opened it. The man was glancing back and forth, concerned, bewildered, perhaps frightened by the fact that now he was the only patrol in the street. He was standing in front of a low railing; another gate, another downstairs entrance to another expensive house in Parc Monceau.
   Jason stopped, taking two rapid sidesteps toward the man, then pivoted, his balance on his left foot, his right lashing out at the fifth man’s midsection, pummeling him backward over the iron rail.
   The man shouted as he fell down into the narrow concrete corridor. Bourne leaped over the railing, the knuckles of his right hand rigid, the heels of both feet pushed forward. He landed on the man’s chest, the impact breaking the ribs beneath him, his knuckles smashing into the man’s throat. Carlos’ soldier went limp. He would regain consciousness long after someone removed him to a hospital.
   Jason searched the man; there was a single gun strapped to his chest. Bourne took it out and put it into his topcoat pocket. He would give it to Villiers.
   Villiers. The way was clear.

   He climbed the staircase to the third floor. Halfway up the steps he could see a line of light at the bottom of the bedroom door, beyond that door was an old man who was his only hope. If ever in his life--remembered and unremembered--he had to be convincing, it was now. And his conviction was real--there was no room for the chameleon now. Everything he believed was based on one fact. Carlos had to come after him. It was the truth. It was the trap.
   He reached the landing and turned to his left toward the bedroom door. He paused for a moment, trying to dismiss the echo in his chest; it was growing louder, the pounding more rapid.
   Part of the truth, not all of it. No invention, simply omission.
   An agreement ... a contract ... with a group of men--honorable men--who were after Carlos.
   That was all Villiers had to know; it was what he had to accept. He could not be told he was dealing with an amnesiac, for in that loss of memory might be found a man of dishonor. The legend of Saint-Cyr, Algeria and Normandy would not accept that; not now, here, at the end of his life.
   Oh, God, the balance was tenuous! The line between belief and disbelief so thin ... as thin as it was for the man-
   corpse whose name was not Jason Bourne.
   He opened the door and stepped inside, into an old man’s private hell. Outside, beyond draped windows, the sirens raged and the crowds shouted. Spectators in an unseen arena, jeering the unknown, oblivious to its unfathomable cause.
   Jason closed the door and stood motionless. The large room was filled with shadows, the only light a bedside table lamp. His eyes greeted by a sight he wished he did not have to see. Villiers had dragged a high-backed desk chair across the room and was sitting on it at the foot of the bed, staring at the dead woman sprawled over the covers. Angélique Villiers’ bronzed head was resting on the pillow, her eyes wide, bulging out of their sockets. Her throat was swollen, the flesh a reddish purple, the massive bruise having spread throughout her neck. Her body was still twisted, in contrast to the upright head, contorted in furious struggle, her long bare legs stretched out, her hips turned, the negligée torn, her breasts bursting out of the silk--even in death, sensual. There had been no attempt to conceal the whore.
   The old soldier sat like a bewildered child, punished for an insignificant act, the meaningful crime having escaped his tormentor’s reasoning, and perhaps his own. He pulled his eyes away from the dead woman and looked at Bourne.
   “What happened outside?” he asked in a monotone.
   “Men were watching your house. Carlos’ men, five of them. I started a fire up the block; no one was hurt. All but one man left; I took him out.”
   “You’re resourceful, Monsieur Bourne.”
   “I’m resourceful,” agreed Jason. “But they’ll be back. The fire’ll be out and they’ll come back; before then, if Carlos puts it together, and I think he will. If he does, he’ll send someone in here. He won’t come himself, of course, but one of his guns will be here. When that man finds you ... and her ... he’ll kill you, Carlos loses her, but he still wins. He wins a second time; he’s used you through her and at the end he kills you. He walks away and you’re dead. People can draw whatever conclusions they like, but I don’t think they’ll be flattering.”
   “You’re very precise. Assured of your judgment.”
   “I know what I’m talking about. I’d prefer not to say what I’m going to say, but there’s no time for your feelings.”
   “I have none left. Say what you will.”
   “Your wife told you she was French, didn’t she?”
   “Yes. From the south. Her family was from Loures Barouse, near the Spanish border. She came to Paris years ago. Lived with an aunt. What of it?”
   “Did you ever meet her family?”
   “No.”
   “They didn’t come up for your marriage?”
   “All things considered, we thought it would be best not to ask them. The disparity of our ages would have disturbed them.”
   “What about the aunt here in Paris?”
   “She died before I met Angélique. What’s the point of all this?”
   “Your wife wasn’t French. I doubt there was even an aunt in Paris, and her family didn’t come from Loures Barouse, although the Spanish border has a certain relevance. It could cover a lot, explain a lot.”
   “What do you mean?”
   “She was Venezuelan. Carlos’ first cousin, his lover since she was fourteen. They were a team, have been for years. I was told she was the only person on earth he cared about.”
   “A whore.”
   “An assassin’s instrument. I wonder how many targets she set up. How many valuable men are dead because of her.”
   “I cannot kill her twice.”
   “You can use her. Use her death.”
   “The insanity you spoke of?”
   “The only insanity is if you throw your life away. Carlos wins it all; he goes on using his gun ... and sticks of dynamite ... and you’re one more statistic. Another kill added to a long list of distinguished corpses. That’s insane.”
   “And you’re the reasonable man? You assume the guilt for a crime you did not commit? For the death of a whore? Hunted for a killing that was not yours?”
   “That’s part of it. The essential part, actually.”
   “Don’t talk to me of insanity, young man. I beg you, leave. What you’ve told me gives me the courage to face Almighty God. If ever a death was justified, it was hers by my hand. I will look into the eyes of Christ and swear it.”
   “You’ve written yourself out, then,” said Jason, noticing for the first time the bulge of a weapon in the old man’s jacket pocket.
   “I will not stand trial, if that’s what you mean.”
   “Oh, that’s perfect, General! Carlos himself couldn’t have come up with anything better. Not a wasted motion on his part; he doesn’t even have to use his own gun. But those who count will know he did it; he caused it.”
   “Those who count will know nothing. Une affaire de coeur ... une grave maladie ... I am not concerned
   with the tongues of killers and thieves.”
   “And if I told the truth? Told why you killed her?”
   “Who would listen? Even should you live to speak. I’m not a fool, Monsieur Bourne. You are running from more than Carlos. You are hunted by many, not just one. You as much as told me so.
   You would not tell me your name ... for my own safety, you claimed. When and if this was over, you said, it was I who might not care to be seen with you. Those are not the words of a man in whom much trust is placed.”
   “You trusted me.”
   “I told you why,” said Villiers, glancing away, staring at his dead wife. “It was in your eyes.”
   “The truth?”
   “The truth.”
   “Then look at me now. The truth is still there. On that road to Nanterre, you told me you’d listen to what I had to say because I gave you your life. I’m trying to give it to you again. You can walk away free, untouched, go on standing for the things you say are important to you, were important to your son. You can win! ... Don’t mistake me, I’m not being noble. Your staying alive and doing what I ask is the only way I can stay alive, the only way I’ll ever be free.” The old soldier looked up. “Why?”
   “I told you I wanted Carlos because something was taken from me--something very necessary to my life, my sanity--and he was the cause of it. That’s the truth--I believe it’s the truth--but it’s not the whole truth. There are other people involved, some decent, some not; and my agreement with them was to get Carlos, trap Carlos. They want what you want. But something happened that I can’t explain--I won’t try to explain--and those people think I betrayed them. They think I made a pact with Carlos, that I stole millions from them and killed others who were my links to them. They have men everywhere, and the orders are to execute me on sight. You were right: I’m running from more than Carlos. I’m hunted by men I don’t know and can’t see. For all the wrong reasons. I didn’t do the things they say I did, but no one wants to listen. I have no pact with Carlos--you know I don’t.”
   “I believe you. There’s nothing to prevent me from making a call on your behalf. I owe you that.”
   “How? What are you going to say? The man known to me as Jason Bourne has no pact with Carlos. I know this because he exposed Carlos’ mistress to me, and that woman was my wife, the wife I choked to death so as not to bring dishonor to my name. I’m about to call the Sûreté and confess my crime--although, of course, I won’t tell them why I killed her. Or why I’m going to kill myself.’ ... Is that it, General? Is that what you’re going to say?” The old man stared silently at Bourne, the fundamental contradiction clear to him. “I cannot help you then.”
   “Good. Fine. Carlos wins it all. She wins. You lose. Your son loses. Go on--call the police, then put the barrel of the gun in your goddamn mouth and blow your goddamn head off! Go on! That’s what you want! Take yourself out, lie down and die! You’re not good for anything else anymore.
   You’re a self-pitying old, old man! God knows you’re no match for Carlos. No match for the man who placed five sticks of dynamite in rue du Bac and killed your son.” Villiers’ hands shook; the trembling spread to his head “Do not do this. I’m telling you, do not do this.”
   “Telling me? You mean you’re giving me an order? The little old man with the big brass buttons is issuing a command? Well, forget it! I don’t take orders from men like you! You’re frauds! You’re worse than all the people you attack; at least they have the stomachs to do what they say they’re
   going to do! You don’t. All you’ve got is wind. Words and wind and self-serving bromides. Lie down and die, old man! But don’t give me an order!”
   Villiers unclasped his hands and shot out of the chair, his racked body now trembling. “I told you. No more!”
   “I’m not interested in what you tell me. I was right the first time I saw you. You belong to Carlos.
   You were his lackey alive and you’ll be his lackey dead.”
   The old soldier’s face grimaced in pain. He pulled out his gun, the gesture pathetic, the threat, however, real. “I’ve killed many men in my time. In my profession it was unavoidable, often disturbing. I don’t want to kill you now, but I will if you disregard my wishes. Leave me. Leave this house.”
   “That’s terrific. You must be wired into Carlos’ head. You kill me, he sweeps the board!” Jason took a step forward, aware of the fact that it was the first movement he had made since entering the room. He saw Villiers’ eyes widen; the gun shook, its oscillating shadow cast against the wall. A single half ounce of pressure and the hammer would plunge forward, bullet finding its mark. For in spite of madness of the moment, the hand that held that weapon had spent a lifetime gripping steel; it would be steady when the instant came. If it came. That was the risk Bourne had to take. Without Villiers, there was nothing, the old man had to understand. Jason suddenly shouted: “Go on! Fire.
   Kill me. Take your orders from Carlos! You’re a soldier. You’ve got your orders. Carry them out.” The trembling in Villiers’ hand increased, the knuckles white as the gun rose higher, its barrel now leveled at Bourne’s head. And then Jason heard the whisper from an old man’s throat.
   “ ‘Vous êtes un soldat ... arrêtez ... arrêtez.’ “
   “What?”
   “I am a soldier. Someone said that to me recently, someone very dear to you.” Villiers spoke quietly. “She shamed an old warrior into remembering who he was ... who he had been. ‘On dit que vous êtes un géant. Je le crois.’She had the grace, the kindness to say that to me also. She had been told I was a giant, and she believed it. She was wrong--Almighty God, she was wrong--but I shall try.”
   André Villiers lowered the gun; there was dignity in the submission. A soldier’s dignity. A giant’s.
   “What would you have me do?”
   Jason breathed again. “Force Carlos into coming after me. But not here, not in Paris. Not even in France.”
   “Where then?”
   Jason held his place. “Can you get me out of the country? I should tell you, I’m wanted. My name and description by now are on every immigration desk and border check in Europe.”
   “For the wrong reasons?”
   “For the wrong reasons.”
   “I believe you. There are ways. The Conseiller Militaire has ways and will do as I ask.”
   “With an identity that’s false? Without telling them why?”
   “My word is enough. I’ve earned it.”
   “Another question. That aide of yours you talked about. Do you trust him--really trust him?”
   “With my life. Above all men.”
   “With another’s life? One you correctly said was very dear to me?”
   “Of course. Why? You’ll travel alone?”
   “I have to. She’d never let me go.”
   “You’ll have to tell her something.”
   “I will. That I’m underground here in Paris, or Brussels, or Amsterdam. Cities where Carlos operates. But she has to get away; our car was found in Montmartre. Carlos’ men are searching every street, every fiat, every hotel. You’re working with me now; your aide will take her into the country--she’ll be safe there. I’ll tell her that.”
   “I must ask the question now. What happens if you don’t come back?” Bourne tried to keep the plea out of his voice. “I’ll have time on the plane. I’ll write out everything that’s happened, everything that I ... remember. I’ll send it to you and you make the decisions. With her. She called you a giant. Make the right decisions. Protect her.”
   “ ‘Vous êtes un soldat ... arrêtez.’ You have my word. She’ll not be harmed.”
   “That’s all I can ask.”
   Villiers threw the gun on the bed. It landed between the twisted bare legs of the dead woman; the old soldier coughed abruptly, contemptuously, his posture returning. ‘To practicalities, my young wolfpack,” he said, authority coming back to him awkwardly, but with definition. “What’s this strategy of yours?”
   “To begin with, you’re in a state of collapse, beyond shock. You’re an automaton walking around in the dark, following instructions you can’t understand but have to obey.”
   “Not very different from reality, wouldn’t you say?” interrupted Villiers. “Before a young man with truth in his eyes forced me to listen to him. But how is this perceived state brought about? And why?”
   “All you know--all you remember--is that a man broke into your house during the fire and smashed his gun into your head; you fell unconscious. When you woke up you found your wife dead, strangled, a note by her body. It’s what’s in the note that’s driven you out of your mind.”
   “What would that be?” asked the old soldier cautiously.
   “The truth,” said Jason. “The truth you can’t ever permit anyone to know. What she was to Carlos, what he was to her. The killer who wrote the note left a telephone number, telling you that you could confirm what he’s written. Once you were satisfied, you could destroy the note and report the murder any way you like. But for telling you the truth--for killing the whore who was so much a part of your son’s death--he wants you to deliver a written message.”
   “To Carlos?”
   “No. He’ll send a relay.”
   “Thank God for that. I’m not sure I could go through with it, knowing it was him.”
   “The message will reach him.”
   “What is it?”
   “I’ll write it out for you; you can give it to the man he sends. It’s got to be exact, both in what it says and what it doesn’t say.” Bourne looked over at the dead woman, at the swelling in her throat.
   “Do you have any alcohol?”
   “A drink?”
   “No. Rubbing alcohol. Perfume will do.”
   “I’m sure there’s rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet.”
   “Would you mind getting it for me? Also a towel, please.”
   “What are you going to do?”
   “Put my hands where your hands were. Just in case, although I don’t think anyone will question you. While I’m doing that, call whomever you have to call to get me out. The timing’s important. I have to be on my way before you call Carlos’ relay, long before you call the police. They’d have the airports watched.”
   “I can delay until daybreak, I imagine. An old man’s state of shock, as you put it. Not much longer than that. Where will you go?”
   “New York. Can you do it? I have a passport identifying me as a man named George Washburn.
   Its a good job.”
   “Making mine far easier. You’ll have diplomatic status. Pre-clearance on both sides of the Atlantic.”
   “As an Englishman? The passport’s British.”
   “As a NATO accommodation. Conseiller channels; you are part of an Anglo-American team engaged in military negotiations. We favor your swift return to the United States for further instructions. It’s not unusual, and sufficient to get you rapidly past both immigration points.”
   “Good. I’ve checked the schedules. There’s a seven A.M. flight, Air France to Kennedy.”
   “You’ll be on it.” The old man paused; he had not finished. He took a step toward Jason. “Why New York? What makes you so certain Carlos will follow you to New York?”
   “Two questions with different answers,” said Bourne. “I have to deliver him where he marked me for killing four men and a woman I didn’t know ... one of those men very close to me, very much a part of me, I think.”
   “I don’t understand you.”
   “I’m not sure I do, either. There’s no time. It’ll all be in what I write down for you on the plane. I have to prove Carlos knew. A building in New York. Where it all took place; they’ve got to understand He knew about it. Trust me.
   “I do. The second question, then. Why will he come after you?” Jason looked again at the dead woman on the bed. “Instinct, maybe. I’ve killed the one person on earth he cares about. If she were someone else and Carlos killed her, I’d follow him across the world until I found him.”
   “He may be more practical. I think that was your point to me.”
   “There’s something else,” replied Jason, taking his eyes away from Angélique Villiers. “He has nothing to lose, everything to gain. No one knows what he looks like, but he knows me by sight.
   Still, he doesn’t know my state of mind. He’s cut me off, isolated me, turned me into someone I was never meant to be. Maybe he was too successful; maybe I’m mad, insane. God knows killing her was insane. My threats are irrational. How much more irrational am I? An irrational man, an insane man, is a panicked man. He can be taken out.”
   “Is your threat irrational? Can you be taken out?”
   “I’m not sure. I only know I don’t have a choice.” He did not. At the end it was as the beginning. Get Carlos. Trap Carlos. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain.The man and the myth were finally one, images and reality fused. There was no other way.
   Ten minutes had passed since he had called Marie, lied to Marie, and heard the quiet acceptance in her voice, knowing it meant she needed time to think. She had not believed him, but she believed in him; she, too, had no choice. And he could not ease her pain; there had been no time, there was no time. Everything was in motion now, Villiers was downstairs calling an emergency number at France’s Conseiller Militaire, arranging for a man with a false passport to fly out of Paris with diplomatic status. In less than three hours a man would be over the Atlantic, approaching the anniversary of his own execution. It was the key; it was the trap. It was the last irrational act, insanity the order of that date.
   Bourne stood by the desk; he put down the pen and studied the words he had written on a dead woman’s stationery. They were the words a broken, bewildered old man was to repeat over the telephone to an unknown relay who would demand the paper and give it to Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.

   I killed your bitch whore and I’ll come back for you. There are seventy-one streets in the jungle. A jungle as dense as Tam Quan, but there was a path you missed, a vault in the cellars you did not know about--just as you never knew about me on the day of my execution eleven years ago. One other man knew and you killed him. It doesn’t matter. In that vault are documents that will set me free. Did you think I’d become Cain without that final protection? Washington won’t dare touch me! It seems right that on the date of Bourne’s death, Cain picks up the papers that guarantee him a very long life. You marked Cain. Now I mark you. I’ll come back and you can join the whore.
   –-Delta

   Jason dropped the note on the desk and walked over to the dead woman. The alcohol was dry, the swollen throat prepared He bent down and spread his fingers, placing his hands where another’s had been placed.
   Madness.

34
   Early light broke over the spires of the church in Levallois Perret in northwest Paris, the March morning cold, the night rain replaced by mist. A few old women, returning to their flats from all-night cleaning shifts in the city proper, trudged in and out of the bronze doors, holding railings and prayer books, devotions about to begin or finished with, precious sleep to follow before the drudgery of surviving the daylight hours. Along with the old women were shabbily dressed men-– most also old, others pathetically young--holding overcoats together, seeking the warmth of the church, these clutching bottles in their pockets, precious oblivion extended, another day to survive.
   One old man, however, did not float in the trancelike movements of the others. He was an old man in a hurry. There was reluctance--even fear, perhaps--in his lined, sallow face, but no hesitation in his progress up the steps and through the doors, past the flickering candles and down the far left aisle of the church. It was an odd hour for a worshiper to seek confession; nevertheless this old beggar went directly to the first booth, parted the curtain and slipped inside.
   “Angelus Domini.”
   “Did you bring it?” the whisper demanded, the priestly silhouette behind the curtain trembling with rage.
   “Yes. He thrust it in my hand like a man in a stupor, weeping, telling me to get out. He’s burned Cain’s note to him and says he’ll deny everything if a single word is ever mentioned.” The old man shoved the pages of writing paper under the curtain.
   “He used her stationery--“ The assassin’s whisper broke, a silhouetted hand brought to a silhouetted head, a muted cry of anguish now heard behind the curtain.
   “I urge you to remember, Carlos,” pleaded the beggar. “The messenger is not responsible for the news he bears. I could have refused to hear it, refused to bring it to you.”
   “How? Why? ...”
   “Lavier. He followed her to Parc Monceau, then both of them to the church. I saw him in Neuilly-sur-Seine when I was your point. I told you that.”
   “I know. But why? He could have used her in a hundred different ways! Against me! Why this?”
   “It’s in his note. He’s gone mad. He was pushed too far, Carlos. It happens; I’ve seen it happen.
   A man on a double-entry, his source-controls taken out; he has no one to confirm his initial assignment. Both sides want his corpse. He’s stretched to the point where he may not even know who he is any longer.”
   “He knows ...” The whisper was drawn out in quiet fury. “By signing the name Delta, he’s telling me he knows. We both know where it comes from, where he comes from.” The beggar paused. “If that’s true, then he’s still dangerous to you. He’s right. Washington won’t touch him. It may not want to acknowledge him, but it will call off its hangmen. It may even be forced to grant him a privilege or two in return for his silence.”
   “The papers he speaks of?” asked the assassin.
   “Yes. In the old days--in Berlin, Prague, Vienna--they were called ‘final payments.’ Bourne uses ‘final protection,’ a minor variance. They were papers drawn up between a primary source-control and the infiltrator, to be used in the event the strategy collapsed, the primary killed, no other avenues open to the agent. It was not something you would have studied in Novgorod; the Soviets had no such accommodations. Soviet defectors, however, insisted upon them.”
   “They were incriminating, then?”
   “They had to be to some degree. Generally in the area of who was manipulated. Embarrassment is always to be avoided; careers are destroyed by embarrassment. But then, I don’t have to tell you that. You’ve used the technique brilliantly.”
   “ ‘Seventy-one streets in the jungle ...’ “ said Carlos, reading from the paper in his hand, an icelike calm imposed on his whisper. “ ‘A jungle as dense as Tam Quan.’ ... This time the execution will take place as scheduled. Jason Bourne will not leave this Tam Quan alive. By any other name, Cain will be dead, and Delta will die for what he’s done. Angélique--you have my word.” The incantation stopped, the assassin’s mind racing to the practical. “Did Villiers have any idea when Bourne left his house?”
   “He didn’t know. I told you, he was barely lucid, in as much a state of shock as with his telephone call”
   “It doesn’t matter. The first flights to the United States began within the past hour. He’ll be on one. I’ll be in New York with him, and I won’t miss this time. My knife will be waiting, its blade a razor. I’ll peel his face away; the Americans will have their Cain without a face! Then they can give this Bourne, this Delta, whatever name they care to.”

   The blue-striped telephone rang on Alexander Conklin’s desk. Its bell was quiet, the understated sound lending an eerie emphasis. The blue-striped telephone was Conklin’s direct line to the computer rooms and data banks. There was no one in the office to take the call.
   The Central Intelligence executive suddenly rushed limping through the door, unused to the cane provided him by G-2, SHAPE, Brussels, last night when he had commandeered a military transport to Andrews Field, Maryland. He threw the cane angrily across the room as he lurched for the phone.
   His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, his breath short; the man responsible for the dissolution of Treadstone was exhausted. He had been in scrambler-communication with a dozen branches of clandestine operations--in Washington and overseas--trying to undo the insanity of the past twenty-four hours. He had spread every scrap of information he could cull from the files to every post in Europe, placed agents in the Paris-London-Amsterdam axis on alert. Bourne was alive and dangerous; he had tried to kill his D.C. control; he could be anywhere within ten hours of Paris. All airports and train stations were to be covered, all underground networks activated. Find him! Kill him!
   “Yes?” Conklin braced himself against the desk and picked up the phone.
   “This is Computer Dock 12,” said the male voice efficiently. “We may have something. At least, State doesn’t have any listing on it.”
   “What, for Christ’s sake?”
   “The name you gave us four hours ago. Washburn.”
   “What about it?”
   “A George P. Washburn was pre-cleared out of Paris and into New York on an Air France flight this morning. Washburn’s a fairly common name; he could be just a businessman with connections, but it was flagged on the readout, and since the status was NATO-diplomatic, we checked with State. They never heard of him. There’s no one named Washburn involved with any ongoing NATO negotiations with the French government from any member nation.”
   “Then how the hell was he pre-cleared? Who gave him the diplomatic?”
   “We checked back through Paris; it wasn’t easy. Apparently it was an accommodation of the Conseiller Militaire. They’re a quiet bunch.”
   “The Conseiller? Where do they get off clearing our people?”
   “It doesn’t have to be ‘our’ people or ‘their’ people; it can be anybody. Just a courtesy from the host country, and that was a French carrier. It’s one way to get a decent seat on an overbooked plane. Incidentally, Washburn’s passport wasn’t even U.S. It was British.”
   There’s a doctor, an Englishman named Washburn ...It was him! It was Delta, and France’s Conseiller had cooperated with him. But why New York? What was in New York for him? And who placed so high in Paris would accommodate Delta? What had he told them? Oh, Christ! How much had he told them?
   “When did the flight get in?” asked Conklin.
   “Ten thirty-seven this morning. A little over an hour ago.”
   “All right,” said the man whose foot had been blown off in Medusa, as he slid painfully around the desk into his seat. “You’ve delivered, and now I want this scratched from the reels. Delete it.
   Everything you gave me. Is that clear?”
   “Understood, sir. Deleted, sir.”
   Conklin hung up. New York. New York? Not Washington, but New York! There was nothing in New York any longer. Delta knew that. If he was after someone in Treadstone--if he was after him--he would have taken a flight directly to Dulles. What was in New York?
   And why had Delta deliberately used the name Washburn? It was the same as telegraphing a strategy; he knew the name would be picked up sooner or later ... Later ... After he was inside the gates! Delta was telling whatever was left of Treadstone that he was dealing from strength. He was in a position to expose not only the Treadstone operation, but he could go God knows how much further. Whole networks he had used as Cain, listening posts and ersatz consulates that were no more than electronic espionage stations ... even the bloody specter of Medusa. His connection inside the Conseiller was his proof to Treadstone how high up he had traveled. His signal that if he could reach within so rarefied a group of strategists, nothing could stop him. Goddamn it, stop him from what? What was the point? He had the millions; he could have faded!
   Conklin shook his head, remembering. There had been a time when he would have let Delta fade; he had told him so twelve hours ago in a cemetery outside of Paris. A man could take only so much, and no one knew that better than Alexander Conklin, once among the finest covert field officers in the intelligence community. Only so much; the sanctimonious bromides about still being alive grew stale and bitter with time. It depended on what you were before, what you became with your deformity. Only so much ... But Delta did not fade! He came back with insane statements, insane demands ... crazy tactics no experienced intelligence officer would even contemplate. For no matter how much explosive information he possessed, no matter how high he penetrated, no sane man walked back into a minefield surrounded by his enemies. And all the blackmail in the world could not bring you back. ...
   No sane man. No sane man. Conklin sat slowly forward in his chair.
   I’m not Cain. He never was. I never was! I wasn’t in New York. ... It was Carlos. Not me, Carlos! If what you’re saying took place on Seventy-first Street, it was him. He knows!
   But Delta had been at the brownstone on Seventy-first Street. Prints--third and index fingers, right hand. And the method of transport was now explained: Air France, Conseiller cover ... Fact:
   Carlos could not have known.
   Things come to me ... faces, streets, buildings. Images I can’t place ... I know a thousand facts about Carlos, but I don’t know why!
   Conklin closed his eyes. There was a phrase, a simple code phrase that had been used at the beginning of Treadstone. What was it? It came from Medusa ... Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain.
   That was it. Cain for Carlos. Delta-Bourne became the Cain that was the decoy for Carlos.
   Conklin opened his eyes. Jason Bourne was to replace Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. That was the entire strategy of Treadstone Seventy-One. It was the keystone to the whole structure of deception, the parallax that would draw Carlos out of position into their sights.
   Bourne. Jason Bourne. The totally unknown man, a name buried for over a decade, a piece of human debris left in a jungle. But he had existed; that, too, was part of the strategy.
   Conklin separated the folders on his desk until he found the one he was looking for. It had no title, only an initial and two numbers followed by a black X, signifying that it was the only folder containing the origins of Treadstone.
   T-71 X. The birth of Treadstone Seventy-One.
   He opened it, almost afraid to see what he knew was there.
   Date of execution. Tam Quan Sector. March 25 ...
   Conklin’s eyes moved to the calendar on his desk.
   March 24.
   “Oh, my God,” he whispered, reaching for the telephone.

   Dr. Morris Panov walked through the double doors of the psychiatric ward on the third floor of Bethesda’s Naval Annex and approached the nurses’ counter. He smiled at the uniformed aide shuffling index cards under the stem gaze of the head floor nurse standing beside her. Apparently the young trainee had misplaced a patient’s file--if not a patient--and her superior was not about to let it happen again.
   “Don’t let Annie’s whip fool you,” said Panov to_ the flustered girl. “Underneath those cold, inhuman eyes is a heart of sheer granite. Actually, she escaped from the fifth floor two weeks ago but we’re all afraid to tell anybody.”
   The aide giggled, the nurse shook her head in exasperation. The phone rang on the desk behind the counter.
   “Will you get that, please, dear,” said Annie to the young girl. The aide nodded and retreated to the desk. The nurse turned to Panov. “Doctor Mo, how am I ever going to get anything through their heads with you around?”
   “With love, dear Annie. With love. But don’t lose your bicycle chains.”
   “You’re incorrigible. Tell me, how’s your patient in Five-A? I know you’re worried about him.”
   “I’m still worried.”
   “I hear you stayed up all night.”
   “There was a three A.M. movie on television I wanted to see.”
   “Don’t do it, Mo,” said the matronly nurse. “You’re too young to end up in there.”
   “And maybe too old to avoid it, Annie. But thanks.”
   Suddenly Panov and the nurse were aware that he was being paged, the wide-eyed trainee at the desk speaking into the microphone.
   “Dr. Panov, please. Telephone for--“
   “I’m Dr. Panov,” said the psychiatrist in a sotto voce whisper to the girl. “We don’t want anyone to know. Annie Donovan here’s really my mother from Poland. Who is it?” The trainee stared at Panov’s ID card on his white coat, she blinked and replied. “A Mr. Alexander Conklin, sir.”
   “Oh?” Panov was startled. Alex Conklin had been a patient on and off for five years, until they both had agreed he’d adjusted as well as he was ever going to adjust--which was not a hell of a lot.
   There were so many, and so little they can do for them. Whatever Conklin wanted had to be relatively serious for him to call Bethesda and not the office. “Where can I take this, Annie?”
   “Room One,” said the nurse, pointing across the hall. “It’s empty. I’ll have the call transferred.”
   Panov walked toward the door, an uneasy feeling spreading through him.
   “I need some very fast answers, Mo,” said Conklin, his voice strained.
   “I’m not very good at fast answers, Alex. Why not come in and see me this afternoon?”
   “It’s not me. It’s someone else. Possibly.”
   “No games, please. I thought we’d gone beyond that.”
   “No games. This is a Four-Zero emergency, and I need help.”
   “Four-Zero? Call in one of your staff men. I’ve never requested that kind of clearance.”
   “I can’t. That’s how tight it is.”
   “Then you’d better whisper to God.”
   “Mo, please! I only have to confirm possibilities, the rest I can put together myself. And I don’t have five seconds to waste. A man may be running around ready to blow away ghosts, anyone he thinks is a ghost. He’s already killed very real, very important people and I’m not sure he knows it.
   Help me, help him!”
   “If I can. Go ahead.”
   “A man is placed in a highly volatile, maximum stress situation for a long period of time, the entire period in deep cover. The cover itself is a decoy--very visible, very negative, constant pressure applied to maintain that visibility. The purpose is to draw out a target similar to the decoy by convincing the target that the decoy’s a threat, forcing the target into the open. ... Are you with me so far?”
   “So far,” said Panov. “You say there’s been constant pressure on the decoy to maintain a negative, highly visible profile. What’s been his environment?”
   “As brutal as you can imagine.”
   “For how long a period of time?”
   “Three years,”
   “Good God,” said the psychiatrist “No breaks?”
   “None at all. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Three years.
   Someone not himself.”
   “When will you damn fools learn? Even prisoners in the worst camps could be themselves, talk to others who were themselves--“ Panov stopped, catching his own words and Conklin’s meaning.
   “That’s your point, isn’t it?”
   “I’m not sure,” answered the intelligence officer. “It’s hazy, confusing, even contradictory. What I want to ask is this. Could such a man under these circumstances begin to ... believe he’s the decoy, assume the characteristics, absorb the mocked dossier to the point where he believes it’s him?”
   “The answer to that’s so obvious I’m surprised you ask it. Of course he could. Probably would.
   It’s an unendurably prolonged performance that can’t be sustained unless the belief becomes a part of his everyday reality. The actor never off the stage in a play that never ends. Day after day, night after night.” The doctor stopped again, then continued carefully. “But that’s not really your question, is it?”
   “No,” replied Conklin. “I go one step further. Beyond the decoy. I have to; it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
   “Wait a minute,” interrupted Panov sharply. “You’d better stop there, because I’m not confirming any blind diagnosis. Not for what you’re leading up to. No way, Charlie. That’s giving you a license I won’t be responsible for--with or without a consultation fee.”
   “ ‘No way ... Charlie.’ Why did you say that, Mo?”
   “What do you mean, why did I say it? It’s a phrase. I hear it all the time. Kids in dirty blue jeans on the corner; hookers in my favorite saloons.”
   “How do you know what I’m leading up to?” said the CIA man.
   “Because I had to read the books and you’re not very subtle. You’re about to describe a classic case of paranoid schizophrenia with multiple personalities. It’s not just your man assuming the role of the decoy, but the decoy himself transferring his identity to the one he’s after. The target. That’s what you’re driving at, Alex. You’re telling me your man is three people: himself, decoy and target.
   And I repeat. No way, Charlie. I’m not confirming anything remotely like that without an extensive examination. That’s giving you rights you can’t have: three reasons for dispatch. No way!”
   “I’m not asking you to confirm anything! I just want to know if it’s possible. For Christ’s sake, Mo, there’s a lethally experienced man running around with a gun, killing people he claims he didn’t know, but whom he worked with for three years. He denies being at a specific place at a specific time when his own fingerprints prove he was there. He says images come to him--faces he can’t place, names he’s heard but doesn’t know from where. He claims he was never the decoy; it was never him! But it was! It is! Is it possible? That’s all I want to know. Could the stress and time and the everyday pressures break him like this? Into three?”
   Panov held his breath for a moment. “It’s possible,” he said softly. “If your facts are accurate, it’s possible. That’s all I’ll say, because there are too many other possibilities.”
   “Thank you.” Conklin paused. “A last question. Say there was a date--a month and a day--that was significant to the mocked dossier-the decoy’s dossier.”
   “You’d have to be more specific.”
   “I will. It was the date when the man whose identity was taken for decoy was killed.”
   “Then obviously not part of the working dossier, but known to your man. Am I following you?”
   “Yes, he knew it. Let’s say he was there. Would he remember it?”
   “Not as the decoy.”
   “But as one of the other two?”
   “Assuming the target was also aware of it, or that he’d communicated it through his transference, yes.”
   “There’s also a place where the strategy was, conceived, where the decoy was created. If our man was in the vicinity of that place, and the date of death was close at hand, would he be drawn to it?
   Would it surface and become important to him?”
   “It would if it was associated with the original place of death. Because the decoy was born there; it’s possible. It would depend on who he was at the moment.”
   “Suppose he was the target?”
   “And knew the location?”
   “Yes, because another part of him had to.”
   “Then he’d be drawn to it. It would be a subconscious compulsion.”
   “Why?”
   “To kill the decoy. He’d kill everything in sight, but the main objective would be the decoy.
   Himself.”

   Alexander Conklin replaced the phone, his nonexistent foot throbbing, his thoughts so convoluted he had to close his eyes again to find a consistent strain. He had been wrong in Paris ...
   in a cemetery outside of Paris. He had wanted to kill a man for the wrong reasons, the right ones beyond his comprehensions. He was dealing with a madman. Someone whose afflictions were not explained in twenty years of training, but were understandable if one thought about the pains and the losses, the unending waves of violence ... all ending in futility. No one knew anything really.
   Nothing made sense. A Carlos was trapped, killed today, and another would take his place. Why did we do it ... David?
   David. I say your name finally. We were friends once, David ... Delta. I knew your wife and your children. We drank together and had a few dinners together in far-off posts in Asia. You were the best foreign service officer in the Orient and everyone knew it. You were going to be the key to the new policy, the one that was around the corner. And then it happened. Death from the skies in the Mekong. You turned, David. We all lost, but only one of us became Delta. In Medusa. I did not know you that well--drinks and a dinner or two do not a close companion make—but few of us become animals. You did, Delta.
   And now you must die. Nobody can afford you any longer. None of us.
   “Leave us, please,” said General Villiers to his aide, as he sat down opposite Marie St. Jacques in the Montmartre café. The aide nodded and walked to a table ten feet away from the booth; he would leave but he was still on guard. The exhausted old sober looked at Marie. “Why did you insist on my coming here? He wanted you out of Paris. I gave him my word.”
   “Out of Paris, out of the race,” said Marie, touched by the sight of the old man’s haggard face.
   “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be another burden for you. I heard the reports on the radio.”
   “Insanity,” said Villiers, picking up the brandy his aide had ordered for him. “Three hours with the police, living a terrible lie, condemning a man for a crime that was mine alone.”
   “The description was accurate, uncannily accurate. No one could miss him.”
   “He gave it to me himself. He sat in front of my wife’s mirror and told me what to say, looking at his own face in the strangest manner. He said it was the only way. Carlos could only be convinced by my going to the police, creating a manhunt. He was right, of course.”
   “He was right,” agreed Marie, “but he’s not in Paris, or Brussels, or Amsterdam.”
   “I beg your pardon?”
   “I want you to tell me where he’s gone.”
   “He told you himself.”
   “He lied to me.”
   “How can you be certain?”
   “Because I know when he tells me the truth. You see, we both listen for it.”
   “You both ...? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
   “I didn’t think you would; I was sure he hadn’t told you. When he lied to me on the phone, saying the things he said so hesitantly, knowing I knew they were lies, I couldn’t understand. I didn’t piece it together until I heard the radio reports. Yours and another. That description ... so complete, so total, even to the scar on his left temple. Then I knew. He wasn’t going to stay in Paris, or within five hundred miles of Paris. He was going far away--where that description wouldn’t mean very much--where Carlos could be led, delivered to the people Jason had his agreement with. Am I right?”
   Villiers put down the glass. “I’ve given my word. You’re to be taken to safety in the country. I don’t understand the things you’re saying.”
   “Then I’ll try to be clearer,” said Marie, leaning forward. “There was another report on the radio, one you obviously didn’t hear because you were with the police or in seclusion. Two men were found shot to death in a cemetery near Rambouillet this morning. One was a known killer from Saint-Gervais. The other was identified as a former American Intelligence officer living in Paris, a highly controversial man who killed a journalist in Vietnam and was given the choice of retiring from the army or facing a court-martial.”
   “Are you saying the incidents are related?” asked the old man.
   “Jason was instructed by the American Embassy to go to that cemetery last night to meet with a man flying over from Washington.”
   “Washington?”
   “Yes. His agreement was with a small group of men from American Intelligence. They tried to kill him last night; they think they have to kill him.”
   “Good God, why?”
   “Because they can’t trust him. They don’t know what he’s done or where he’s been for a long period of time and he can’t tell them.” Marie paused, closing her eyes briefly. “He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know who they are; and the man from Washington hired other men to kill him last night. That man wouldn’t listen; they think he’s betrayed them, stolen millions from them, killed men he’s never heard of. He hasn’t. But he doesn’t have any clear answers, either. He’s a man with only fragments of a memory, each fragment condemning him. He’s a near total amnesiac.” Villiers’ lined face was locked in astonishment, his eyes pained in recollection. “ ‘For all the wrong reasons ...’ He said that to me. ‘They have men everywhere ... the orders are to execute me on sight. I’m hunted by men I don’t know and can’t see. For all the wrong reasons.’ “ “For all the wrong reasons,” emphasized Marie, reaching across the narrow table and touching the old man’s arm. “And they do have men everywhere, men ordered to kill him on sight. Wherever he goes, they’ll be waiting.”
   “How will they know where he’s gone?”
   “He’ll tell them. It’s part of his strategy. And when he does, they’ll kill him. He’s walking into his own trap.”
   For several moments Villiers was silent, his guilt overwhelming. Finally he spoke in a whisper.
   “Almighty God, what have I done?”
   “What you thought was right. What he convinced you was right. You can’t blame yourself. Or him, really.”
   “He said he was going to write out everything that had happened to him, everything that they remembered. ... How painful that statement must have been for him! I can’t wait for that letter, mademoiselle. We can’t wait. I must know everything you can tell me. Now.”
   “What can you do?”
   “Go to the American Embassy. To the ambassador. Now. Everything.” Marie St. Jacques withdrew her hand slowly as she leaned back in the booth, her dark red hair against the banquette. Her eyes were far away, clouded with the mist of tears. “He told me his life began for him on a small island in the Mediterranean called Ile de Port Noir. ...” The secretary of state walked angrily into the office of the director of Consular Operations, the department’s section dealing with clandestine activities. He strode across the room to the desk of the astonished director, who rose at the sight of this powerful man, his expression a mixture of shock and bewilderment.
   “Mr. Secretary? ... I didn’t receive any message from your office, sir. I would have come upstairs right away.”
   The secretary of state slapped a yellow legal pad down on the director’s desk. On the top page was a column of six names written with the broad strokes of a felt-tipped pen.

BOURNE
   DELTA
   MEDUSA
   CAIN
   CARLOS
   TREADSTONE

   “What is this?” asked the secretary. “What the hell is this?”
   The director of Cons-Op leaned over the desk. “I don’t know, sir. They’re names, of course. A code for the alphabet--the letter D--and a reference to Medusa; that’s still classified, but I’ve heard of it. And I suppose the ‘Carlos’ refers to the assassin; I wish we knew more about him. But I’ve
   never heard of ‘Bourne’ or ‘Cain’ or ‘Treadstone.’ “
   “Then come up to my office and listen to a tape of a telephone conversation that I’ve just had with Paris and you’ll learn all about them!” exploded the secretary of state. “There are extraordinary things on that tape, including killings in Ottawa and Paris, and some very strange dealings our First Secretary in the Montaigne had with a CIA man. There’s also outright lying to the authorities of foreign governments, to our own intelligence units, and to the European newspapers--with neither the knowledge nor the consent of the Department of State! There’s been a global deception that’s spread misinformation throughout more countries than I want to think about. Were flying over, under a deep-diplomatic, a Canadian woman--an economist for the government in Ottawa who’s wanted for murder in Zurich. We’re being forced to grant asylum to a fugitive, to subvert the laws-– because if that woman’s telling the truth, we’ve got our ass in a sling! I want to know what’s been going on. Cancel everything on your calendar--and I mean everything. You’re spending the rest of the day and all night if you have to digging this damn thing out of the ground. There’s a man walking around who doesn’t know who he is, but with more classified information in his head than ten intelligence computers!”

   It was past midnight when the exhausted director of Consular Operations made the connection; he had nearly missed it. The First Secretary at the embassy in Paris, under threat. of instant dismissal, had given him Alexander Conklin’s name. But Conklin was nowhere to be found. He had returned to Washington on a military jet out of Brussels in the morning, but had signed out of Langley at 1:22 in the afternoon, leaving no telephone number--not even an emergency number--where he could be reached. And from what the director had learned about Conklin, that omission was extraordinary.
   The CIA man was what was commonly referred to as a shark-killer; he directed individual strategies throughout the world where defection and treason were suspected. There were too many men in too many stations who might need his approval or disapproval at any given moment. It was not logical he would sever that cord for twelve hours. What was also unusual was the fact that his telephone logs had been scratched; there were none for the past two days--and the Central Intelligence Agency had very specific regulations concerning those logs. Traceable accountability was the new order of the new regime. However, the director of Cons-Op had learned one fact: Conklin had been attached to Medusa.
   Using the threat of State Department retaliation, the director had requested a closed circuit readout of Conklin’s logs for the past five weeks. Reluctantly, the Agency beamed them over and the director had sat in front of a screen for two hours, instructing the operators at Langley to keep the tape repeating until he told them to stop.
   Eighty-six logicals had been called, the word Treadstone mentioned; none had responded. Then the director went back to the possibles; there was an army man he had not considered because of his well-known antipathy to the CIA. But Conklin had telephoned him twice during the space of twelve minutes a week ago. The director called his sources at the Pentagon and found what he was looking for: Medusa.
   Brigadier General Irwin Arthur Crawford, current ranking officer in charge of Army Intelligence data banks, former commander, Saigon, attached to covert operations--still classified. Medusa.
   The director picked up the conference room phone, it bypassed the switchboard. He dialed the brigadier’s home in Fairfax, and on the fourth ring, Crawford answered. The State Department man identified himself and asked if the general cared to return a call to State and be put through for verification.
   “Why would I want to do that?”
   “It concerns a matter that comes under the heading of Treadstone.”
   “I’ll call you back.”
   He did so in eighteen seconds, and within the next two minutes the director had delivered the outlines of State’s information.
   “There’s nothing there we don’t know about,” said the brigadier. “There’s been a control committee on this from the beginning, the Oval Office given a preliminary summation within a week of the inauguration. Our objective warranted the procedures, you may be assured of that.”
   “I’m willing to be convinced,” replied the man from State. “Is this related to that business in New York a week ago? Elliot Stevens--that Major Webb and David Abbott? Where the circumstances were, shall we say, considerably altered?”
   “You were aware of the alterations?”
   “I’m the head of Cons-Op, General.”
   “Yes, you would be ... Stevens wasn’t married; the rest understood. Robbery and homicide were preferable. The answer is affirmative.”
   “I see ... Your man Bourne flew into New York yesterday morning.”
   “I know. We know--that is Conklin and myself. We’re the inheritors.”
   “You’ve been in touch with Conklin?”
   “I last spoke to him around one o’clock in the afternoon. Unlogged. He insisted on it, frankly.”
   “He’s checked out of Langley. There’s no number where he can be reached.”
   “I know that, too. Don’t try. With all due respect, tell the Secretary to back away. You back away.
   Don’t get involved.”
   “We are involved, General. We’re flying over the Canadian woman by diplomatic.”
   “For God’s sake, why?”
   “We were forced to; she forced us to.”
   “Then keep her in isolation. You’ve got to! She’s our resolve, we’ll be responsible.”
   “I think you’d better explain.”
   “We’re dealing with an insane man. A multiple schizophrenic. He’s a walking firing squad; he could kill a dozen innocent people with one outburst, one explosion in his own head, and he wouldn’t know why.”
   “How do you know?”
   “Because he’s already killed. That massacre in New York--it was him. He killed Stevens, the Monk, Webb--above all, Webb--and two others you never heard of. We understand now. He wasn’t responsible, but that can’t change anything. Leave him to us. To Conklin.”
   “Bourne?”
   “Yes. We have proof. Prints. They were confirmed by the Bureau. It was him.”
   “Your man would leave prints?”
   “He did.”
   “He couldn’t have,” said the man from State finally.
   “What?”
   ‘Tell me, where did you come up with the conclusion of insanity? This multiple schizophrenia or whatever the hell you call it.”
   “Conklin spoke to a psychiatrist-one of the best--an authority on stress-breakdowns. Alex described the history--and it was brutal. The doctor confirmed our suspicions, Conklin’s suspicions.”
   “He confirmed them?” asked the director, stunned.
   “Yes.”
   “Based on what Conklin said? On what he thought he knew?”
   “There’s no other explanation. Leave him to us. He’s our problem.”
   “You’re a damn fool, General. You should have stuck to your data banks or maybe more primitive artillery.”
   “I resent that.”
   “Resent it all you like. If you’ve done what I think you’ve done, you may not have anything left but resentment.”
   “Explain that,” said Crawford harshly.
   “You’re not dealing with a madman, or with insanity, or with any goddamned multiple schizophrenia--which I doubt you know any more about than I do. You’re dealing with an amnesiac, a man who’s been trying for months to find out who he is and where he comes from. And from a telephone tape we’ve got over here, we gather he tried to tell you--tried to tell Conklin, but Conklin wouldn’t listen. None of you would listen ... You sent a man out in deep cover for three years--three years--to pull in Carlos, and when the strategy broke, you assumed the worst.”
   “Amnesia? ... No, you’re wrong! I spoke to Conklin; he did listen. You don’t understand; we both knew--“ “I don’t want to hear his name!” broke in the director of Consular Operations.
   The general paused. “We both knew ... Bourne ... years ago. I think you know from where; you read the name off to me. He was the strangest man I ever met, as close to being paranoid as anyone in that outfit. He undertook missions--risks--no sane man would accept. Yet he never asked for anything. He was filled with so much hate.”
   “And that made him a candidate for a psychiatric ward ten years later?”
   “Seven years,” corrected Crawford. “I tried to prevent his selection in Treadstone. But the Monk said he was the best. I couldn’t argue with that, not in terms of expertise. But I made my objections known. He was psychologically a borderline case; we knew why. I was proven right I stand on that.”
   “You’re not going to stand on anything, General. You’re going to fall right on your iron ass.
   Because the Monk was right. Your man is the best, with or without a memory. He’s bringing in Carlos, delivering him right to your goddamn front door. That is, he’s bringing him in unless you kill Bourne first.” Crawford’s low, sharp intake of breath was precisely what the director was afraid he might hear. He continued. “You can’t reach Conklin, can you?” he asked.
   “No.”
   “He’s gone under, hasn’t he? Made his own arrangements, payments funneled through third and fourth parties unknown to each other, the source untraceable, all connections to the Agency and Treadstone obliterated. And by now there are photographs in the hands of men Conklin doesn’t know, wouldn’t recognize if they held him up. Don’t talk to me about firing squads. Yours is in place, but you can’t see it--you don’t know where it is. But it’s Prepared--a half a dozen rifles ready to fire when the condemned man comes into view. Am I reading the scenario?”
   “You don’t expect me to answer that,” said Crawford.
   “You don’t have to. This is Consular Operations; I’ve been there before. But you were right about one thing. This is your problem; its right back in your court. We’re not going to be touched by you. That’s my recommendation to the Secretary. The State Department can’t afford to know who you are. Consider this call unlogged.”
   “Understood.”
   “I’m sorry,” said the director, meaning it, hearing the futility in the general’s voice. “It all blows up sometimes.”
   “Yes. We learned that in Medusa. What are you going to do with the girl?”
   “We don’t even know what we’re going to do with you yet.”
   “That’s easy. Eisenhower at the summit: ‘What U-Twos?’ We’ll go along; no preliminary summation. Nothing. We can get the girl off the Zurich books.”
   “We’ll tell her. It may help. We’ll be making apologies all over the place; with her we’ll try for a very substantial settlement.”
   “Are you sure?” interrupted Crawford
   “About the settlement?”
   “No. The amnesia. Are you positive?”
   “I’ve listened to that tape at least twenty times, heard her voice. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. Incidentally, she got in several hours ago. She’s at the Pierre Hotel under guard.
   We’ll bring her down to Washington in the morning after we figure out what were going to do.”
   “Wait a minute!” The general’s voice rose. “Not tomorrow! She’s here ...? Can you get me clearance to see her?”
   “Don’t dig that grave of yours any deeper, General. The fewer names she knows, the better. She was with Bourne when he was calling the embassy; she’s aware of the First Secretary, probably Conklin by now. He may have to take the fall himself. Stay out of it.”
   “You just told me to play it out.”
   “Not this way. You’re a decent man; so am I. We’re professionals.”
   “You don’t understand! We have photographs, yes, but they may be useless. They’re three years old, and Bourne’s changed, changed drastically. It’s why Conklin’s on the scene--where I don’t know--but he’s there. He’s the only one who’s seen him, but it was night, raining. She may be our only chance. She’s been with him--living with him for weeks. She knows him. It’s possible that she’d recognize him before anyone else.”
   “I don’t understand.”
   “I’ll spell it out. Among Bourne’s many, many talents is the ability to change his appearance, melt into a crowd or a field or a cluster of trees--be where you can’t see him. If what you say is so, he wouldn’t remember, but we used to have a word for him in Medusa. His men used to call him ... a chameleon.”
   “That’s your Cain, General.”
   “It was our Delta. There was no one like him. And that’s why the girl can help. Now. Clear me!
   Let me see her, talk to her.”
   “By clearing you, we acknowledge you. I don’t think we can do that.”
   “For God’s sake, you just said we were decent men! Are we? We can save his life! Maybe. If she’s with me and we find him, we can get him out of there!”
   “There? Are you telling me you know exactly where he’s going to be?”
   “Yes.”
   “How?”
   “Because he wouldn’t go anywhere else.”
   “And the time span?” asked the incredulous director of Consular Operations. “You know when he’s going to be there?”
   “Yes. Today. It’s the date of his own execution.”
35

35
   Rock music blared from the transistor radio with tin-like vibrations as the long-haired driver of the Yellow Cab slapped his hand against the rim of the steering wheel and jolted his jaw with the beat.
   The taxi edged east on Seventy-first Street, locked into the line of cars that began at the exit on the East River Drive. Tempers flared as engines roared in place and cars lurched forward only to slam to sudden stops, inches away from bumpers in front. It was 8:45 in the morning, New York’s rush hour traffic as usual a contradiction in terms.
   Bourne wedged himself into the corner of the back seat and stared at the tree-lined street beneath the rim of his hat and through the dark lenses of his sunglasses. He had been there; it was all indelible. He had walked the pavements, seen the doorways and the storefronts and the walls covered with ivy--so out of place in the city, yet so right for this street. He had glanced up before and had noticed the roof gardens, relating them to a gracious garden several blocks away toward the park, beyond a pair of elegant French doors at the far end of a large ... complicated ... room. That room was inside a tall, narrow building of brown, jagged stone, with a column of wide, lead-paned windows rising four stories above the pavement. Windows made of thick glass that refracted light both inside and out in subtle flashes of purple and blue. Antique glass, perhaps, ornamental glass ...
   bulletproof glass. A brownstone residence with a set of thick outside steps. They were odd steps, unusual steps, each level crisscrossed with black ridges that protruded above the surface, protecting the descender from the elements. Shoes going down would not slip on ice or snow ... and the weight of anyone climbing up would trigger electronic devices inside.
   Jason knew that house, knew they were coming closer to it. The echo in his chest accelerated and became louder as they entered the block. He would see it any moment, and as he held his wrist, he knew why Parc Monceau had struck such chords in his mind’s eye. That small part of Paris was so much like this short stretch of the Upper East Side. Except for an isolated intrusion of an unkempt stoop or an ill-conceived whitewashed façade, they could be identical blocks.
   He thought of André Villiers. He had written down everything he could remember since a memory had been given him in the pages of a notebook hastily purchased at Charles de Gaulle Airport. From the fast moment when a living, bullet-ridden man had opened his eyes in a humid,
   dingy room on Ile de Port Noir through the frightening revelations of Marseilles, Zurich and Paris--especially Paris, where the specter of an assassin’s mantle had fallen over his shoulders, the expertise of a killer proven to be his. By any standards, it was a confession, as damning in what it could not explain as in what it described. But it was the truth as he knew the truth, infinitely more exculpatory after his death than before it. In the hands of André Villiers it would be used well; the right decisions would be made for Marie St. Jacques. That knowledge gave him the freedom he needed now. He had sealed the pages in an envelope and mailed it to Parc Monceau from Kennedy Airport. By the time it reached Paris he would be alive or he would be dead; he would kill Carlos or Carlos would kill him. Somewhere on that street--so like a street thousands of miles away--a man whose shoulders floated rigidly above a tapered waist would come after him. It was the only thing he was absolutely sure of; he would do the same. Somewhere on that street ...
   There it was! It was there, the morning sun bouncing off the black enameled door and the shiny brass hardware, penetrating the thick, lead-paned windows that rose like a wide column of glistening, purplish blue, emphasizing the ornamental splendor of the glass, but not its resistance to the impacts of high-powered rifles and heavy-calibered automatic weapons. He was here, and for reasons-– emotions--he could not define, his eyes began to tear and there was a swelling in his throat. He had the incredible feeling that he had come hack to a place that was as much a part of him as his body or what was left of his mind. Not a home; there was no comfort, no serenity found in looking at that elegant East Side residence. But there was something else--an overpowering sensation of--return.
   He was back at the beginning, the beginning, at both departure and creation, black night and bursting dawn. Something was happening to him; he gripped his wrist harder, desperately trying to control the almost uncontrollable impulse to jump out of the taxi and race across the street to that monstrous, silent structure of jagged stone and deep blue glass. He wanted to leap up the steps and hammer his fist against the heavy black door.
   Let me in! I am here! You must let me in! Can’t you understand?
   I AM INSIDE!
   Images welled up in front of his eyes; jarring sounds assaulted his ears. A jolting, throbbing pain kept exploding at his temples. He was inside a dark room--that room--staring at a screen, at other, inner images that kept flashing on and off in rapid, blinding succession.
   Who is he? Quickly. You’re too late! You’re a dead man. Where is this street? What does it mean to you? Whom did you meet there? What? Good. Keep it simple; say as little as possible. Here’s a list: eight names. Which are contacts? Quickly! Here’s another. Methods of matching kills. Which are yours? ... No, no, no! Delta might do that, not Cain! You are not Delta, you are not you! You are Cain. You are a man named Bourne. Jason Bourne! You slipped back. Try again. Concentrate! Obliterate everything else. Wipe away the past. It does not exist for you. You are only what you are here, became here!
   Oh, God. Marie had said it.
   Maybe you just know what you’ve been told. ... Over and over and over again. Until there was nothing else. ... Things you’ve been told ... but you can’t relive ... because they’re not you.
   The sweat rolled down his face, stinging his eyes, as he dug his fingers into his wrist, trying to push the pain and the sounds and the flashes of light out of his mind. He had written Carlos that he was coming back for hidden documents that were his ... “final protection.” At that time, the phrase had struck him as weak; he had nearly crossed it out, wanting a stronger reason for flying to New York. Yet instinct had told him to let it stand; it was a part of his past ... somehow. Now he understood. His identity was inside that house. His identity. And whether Carlos came after him or not, he had to find it. He had to!
   It was suddenly insane! He shook his head violently back and forth trying to suppress the compulsion, to still the screams that were all around him--screams that were his screams, his voice.
   Forget Carlos. Forget the trap. Get inside that house! It was there, it was the beginning!
   Stop it!
   The irony was macabre. There was no final protection in that house, only a final explanation for himself. And it was meaningless without Carlos. Those who hunted him knew it and disregarded it; they wanted him dead because of it. But he was so close ... he had to find it. It was there.
   Bourne glanced up; the longhaired driver was watching him in the rearview mirror. “Migraine,” said Jason curtly. “Drive around the block. To this block again. I’m early for my appointment. I’ll tell you where to let me off.”
   “It’s your wallet, mister.”
   The brownstone was behind them now, passed quickly in a sudden, brief break in the traffic.
   Bourne swung around in the seat and looked at it through the rear window. The seizure was receding, the sights and sound of personal panic fading; only the pain remained, but it too would diminish, he knew that. It had been an extraordinary few minutes. Priorities had become twisted; compulsion had replaced reason, the pull of the unknown had been so strong that for a moment or two he had nearly lost control. He could not let it happen again; the trap itself was everything. He had to see that house again; he had to study it again. He had all day to work, to refine his strategy, his tactics for the night, but a second, calmer appraisal was in order now. Others would come during the day, closer appraisals. The chameleon in him would be put to work.
   Sixteen minutes later it was obvious that whatever he intended to study no longer mattered.
   Suddenly, everything was different, everything had changed. The line of traffic in the block was slower, another hazard added to the street. A moving van had parked in front of the brownstone; men in coveralls stood smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, putting off that moment when work was to commence. The heavy black door was open and a man in a green jacket, the moving company’s emblem above the left pocket, stood in the foyer, a clipboard in his hand. Treadstone was being dismantled! In a few hours it could be gutted, a shell! It couldn’t be! They had to stop!
   Jason leaned forward, money in his hand, the pain gone from his head; all was movement now.
   He had to reach Conklin in Washington. Not later--not when the chess pieces were in place--but right now! Conklin had to tell them to stop! His entire strategy was based on darkness ... always darkness. The beam of a flashlight shooting out of first one alleyway, then another, then against dark walls and up to darkened windows. Orchestrated properly, swiftly, darting from one position to another. An assassin would be drawn to a stone building at night. At night. It would happen at night!
   Not now! He got out.
   “Hey, mister!” yelled the driver through the open window.
   Jason bent down. “What is it?”
   “I just wanted to say thanks. This makes my--“
   A spit. Over his shoulder! Followed by a cough that was the start of a scream. Bourne stared at the driver, at the stream of blood that had erupted over the man’s left ear. The man was dead, killed by a bullet meant for his fare, fired from a window somewhere in that street.
   Jason dropped to the ground, then sprang to his left spinning toward the curb. Two more spits came in rapid succession, the first imbedded in the side of the taxi, the second exploding the asphalt.
   It was unbelievable! He was marked before the hunt had begun! Carlos was there. In position! He or one of his men had taken the high ground, a window or a rooftop from which the entire street could be observed. Yet the possibility of indiscriminate death caused by a killer in a window or on a rooftop was crazy; the police would come, the street blocked off, even a reverse trap aborted. And Carlos was not crazy! It did not make sense. Nor did Bourne have the time to speculate; he had to get out of the trap ... the reverse trap. He had to get to that phone. Carlos was here! At the doors of Treadstone! He had brought him back. He had actually brought him back! It was his proof!
   He got to his feet and began running, weaving in and out of the groups of pedestrians. He reached the corner and turned right--the booth was twenty feet away, but it was also a target. He could not use it.
   Across the street was a delicatessen, a small rectangular sign above the door: TELEPHONE. He stepped off the curb and started running again, dodging the lurching automobiles. One of them might do the job Carlos had reserved for himself. That irony, too, was macabre.
   “The Central Intelligence Agency, sir, is fundamentally a fact-finding organization,” said the man on the line condescendingly. “The sort of activities you describe are the rarest part of our work, and frankly blown out of proportion by films and misinformed writers.”
   “Goddamn it, listen to me!” said Jason, cupping the mouthpiece in the crowded delicatessen. “Just tell me where Conklin is. It’s an emergency!”
   “His office already told you, sir. Mr. Conklin left yesterday afternoon and is expected back at the end of the week. Since you say you know Mr. Conklin, you’re aware of his service-related injury. He often goes for physical therapy--“ “Will you stop it! I saw him in Paris--outside of Paris--two nights ago. He flew over from Washington to meet me.”
   “As to that,” interrupted the man in Langley, “when you were transferred to this office, we’d already checked. There’s no record of Mr. Conklin having left the country in over a year.”
   “Then it’s buried! He was there! You’re looking for codes,” said Bourne desperately. “I don’t have them. But someone working with Conklin will recognize the words. Medusa, Delta, Cain ...
   Treadstone! Someone has to!”
   “No one does. You were told that.”
   “By someone who doesn’t. There are those who do. Believe me!”
   “I’m sorry. I really--“
   “Don’t hang up!” There was another way; one he did not care to use, but there was nothing else.
   “Five or six minutes ago, I got out of a taxi on Seventy-first Street. I was spotted and someone tried to take me out.”
   “Take ... you out?”
   “Yes. The driver spoke to me and I bent down to listen. That movement saved my life, but the driver’s dead, a bullet in his skull. That’s the truth, and I know you have ways of checking. There are probably half a dozen police cars on the scene by now. Check it out. That’s the strongest advice I can give you.”
   There was a brief silence from Washington. “Since you asked for Mr. Conklin--at least used his name--I’ll follow this up. Where can I reach you?”
   “I’ll stay on. This call’s on an international credit card. French issue, name of Chamford.”
   “Chamford? You said--“
   “Please.”
   “I’ll be back.”
   The waiting was intolerable, made worse by a stern Hassid glaring at him, fingering coins in one hand, a roll in another, and crumbs in his stringy, unkempt beard. A minute later the man in Langley was on the line, anger replacing compromise.
   “I think this conversation has come to an end, Mr. Bourne or Chamford, or whatever you call yourself. The New York police were reached; there’s no such incident as you described on Seventy– first Street. And you were right. We do have ways of checking. I advise you that there are laws about such calls as this, strict penalties involved. Good day, sir.” There was a click; the line went dead. Bourne stared at the dial in disbelief. For months the men in Washington had searched for him, wanted to kill him for the silence they could not understand.

Now, when he presented himself--presented them with the sole objective of his three-year agreement--he was dismissed. They still would not listen! But that man had listened! And he had come back on the line denying a death that had taken place only minutes ago. It could not be ... it was insane. It had happened.
   Jason put the phone back on the hook, tempted to bolt from the crowded delicatessen. Instead, he walked calmly toward the door, excusing himself through the rows of people lined up at the counter, his eyes on the glass front, scanning the crowds on the sidewalk. Outside, he removed his topcoat, carrying it over his arm, and replaced the sunglasses with his tortoise-shells. Minor alterations, but he would not be where he was going long enough for them to be a major mistake.
   He hurried across the intersection toward Seventy-first Street.
   At the far corner he fell in with a group of pedestrians waiting for the light. He turned his head to the left, his chin pressed down into his collarbone. The traffic was moving but the taxi was gone. It had been removed from the scene with surgical precision, a diseased, ugly organ cut from the body, the vital functions in normal process. It showed the precision of a master assassin, who knew precisely when to go in swiftly with a knife.
   Bourne turned quickly, reversing his direction, and began walking south. He had to find a store; he had to change his outer skin. The chameleon could not wait.
   Marie St. Jacques was angry as she held her place across the room from Brigadier General Irwin Arthur Crawford in the suite at the Pierre Hotel. “You wouldn’t listen!” she accused. “None of you would listen. Have you any idea what you’ve done to him?”
   “All too well,” replied the officer, the apology in his acknowledgment, not his voice. “I can only repeat what I’ve told you. We didn’t know what to listen for. The differences between the appearance and the reality were beyond our understanding, obviously beyond his own. And if beyond his, why not ours?”
   “He’s been trying to reconcile the appearance and reality, as you call it, for seven months! And all you could do was send out men to kill him! He tried to tell you. What kind of people are you?”
   “Flawed, Miss St. Jacques. Flawed but decent, I Think. It’s why I’m here. The time span’s begun and I want to save him if I can, if we can.”
   “God, you make me sick!” Marie stopped, she shook her head and continued softly. “I’ll do whatever you ask, you know that. Can you reach this Conklin?”
   “I’m sure I can. I’ll stand on the steps of that house until he has no choice but to reach me. He may not be our concern, however.”
   “Carlos?”
   “Perhaps others.”
   “What do you mean?”
   “I’ll explain on the way. Our main concern now--our only concern now--is to reach Delta.”
   “Jason?”
   “Yes. The man you call Jason Bourne.”
   “And he’s been one of you from the beginning,” said Marie. “There were no slates to clean, no payments or pardons bargained for?”
   “None. You’ll be told everything in time, but this is not the time. I’ve made arrangements for you to be in an unmarked government car diagonally across from the house. We have binoculars for you; you know him better than anyone now. Perhaps you’ll spot him. I pray to God you do.” Marie went quickly to the closet and got her coat. “He said to me one night that he was a chameleon ...”
   “He remembered?” interrupted Crawford.
   “Remembered what?”
   “Nothing. He had a talent for moving in and out of difficult situations without being seen. That’s all I meant.”
   “Wait a minute.” Marie approached the army man, her eyes suddenly riveted on his again. “You say we have to reach Jason, but there’s a better way. Let him come to us. To me. Put me on the steps of that house. He’ll see me, get word to me!”
   “Giving whoever’s out there two targets?”
   You don’t know your own man, General. I said ‘get word to me.’ He’ll send someone, pay a man or a woman on the street to give me a message. I know him. He’ll do it. It’s the surest way.”
   “I can’t permit it.”
   “Why not? You’ve done everything else stupidly! Blindly! Do one thing intelligently!”
   “I can’t It might even solve problems you’re not aware of, but I can’t do it.”
   “Give me a reason.”
   “If Delta’s right, if Carlos has come after him and is in the street, the risk is too great. Carlos knows you from photographs. He’ll kill you.”
   “I’m willing to take that risk.”
   “I’m not. I’d like to think I’m speaking for my government when I say that.”
   “I don’t think you are, frankly.”
   “Leave it to others. May we go, please?”
   “General Service Administration,” intoned a disinterested switchboard operator.
   “Mr. J. Petrocelli, please,” said Alexander Conklin, his voice tense, his fingers wiping the sweat from his forehead as he stood by the window, the telephone in his hand. “Quickly, please!”
   “Everybody’s in a hurry--“ The words were shorted out, replaced by the hum of a ring.
   “Petrocelli, Reclamation Invoice Division.”
   “What are you people doing?” exploded the CIA man, the shock calculated, a weapon.
   The pause was brief. “Right now, listening to some nut ask a stupid question.”
   “Well, listen further. My name’s Conklin, Central Intelligence Agency, Four-Zero clearance. You do know what that means?”
   “I haven’t understood anything you people’ve said in the past ten years.”
   “You’d better understand this. It took me damn near an hour, but I just reached the dispatcher for a moving company up here in New York. He said he had an invoice signed by you to remove all the furniture from a brownstone on Seventy-first Street--139, to be exact.”
   “Yeah, I remember that one. What about it?”
   “Who gave you the order? That’s our territory. We removed our equipment last week, but we did not--repeat, did not--request any further activity.”
   “Just hold it,” said the bureaucrat. “I saw that invoice. I mean, I read it before I signed it; you guys make me curious. The order came directly from Langley on a priority sheet.”
   “Who in Langley?”
   “Give me a moment and I’ll tell you. I’ve got a copy in my out file; it’s here on my desk.” The crackling of paper could be heard on the line. It stopped and Petrocelli returned. “Here it is, Conklin. Take up your beef with your own people in Administrative Controls.”
   “They didn’t know what they were doing. Cancel the order. Call up the moving company and tell them to clear out! Now!”
   “Blow smoke, spook.”
   “What?”
   “Get a written priority requisition on my desk before three o’clock this afternoon; and it may-– just may--get processed tomorrow. Then we’ll put everything back.”
   “Put everything back?”
   “That’s right. You tell us to take it out, we take it out. You tell us to put it back, we put it back.
   We have methods and procedures to follow just like you.”
   “That equipment--everything--was on loan! It wasn’t--isn’t--an Agency operation.”
   “Then why are you calling me? What have you got to do with it?”
   “I don’t have time to explain. Just get those people out of there. Call New York and get them out! Those are Four-Zero orders.”
   “Make them a hundred and four and you can still blow smoke. Look, Conklin, we both know you can get what you want if I get what I need. Do it right. Make it legitimate.”
   “I can’t involve the Agency!”
   “You’re not going to involve me, either.”
   “Those people have got to get out! I’m telling you--“ Conklin stopped, his eyes on the brownstone below and across the street, his thoughts suddenly paralyzed. A tall man in a black overcoat had walked up the concrete steps; he turned and stood motionless in front of the open door. It was Crawford. What was he doing? What was he doing here? He had lost his senses; he was out of his mind! He was a stationary target; he could break the trap!
   “Conklin? Conklin ...?” The voice floated up out of the phone as the CIA man hung up.
   Conklin turned to a stocky man six feet away at an adjacent window. In the man’s large hand was a rifle, a telescopic sight secured to the barrel. Alex did not know the man’s name and he did not want to know it; he had paid enough not to be burdened.
   “Do you see that man down there in the black overcoat standing by the door?” he asked.
   “I see him. He’s not the one we’re looking for. He’s too old.”
   “Get over there and tell him there’s a cripple across the street who wants to see him.”

   Bourne walked out of the used clothing store on Third Avenue, pausing in front of the filthy glass window to appraise what he saw. It would do; everything was coordinated. The black wool knit hat covered his head to the middle of his forehead; the wrinkled, patched army field jacket was several sizes too large; the red-checked flannel shirt, the wide-bulging khaki trousers and the heavy work shoes with the thick rubber soles and huge rounded toes were all of a piece. He only had to find a walk to match the clothing. The walk of a strong, slow-witted man whose body had begun to show the effects of a lifetime of physical strain, whose mind accepted the daily inevitability of hard labor, reward found with a six-pack at the end of the drudgery.
   He would find that walk; he had used it before. Somewhere. But before he searched his imagination, there was a phone call to make; he saw a telephone booth up the block, a mangled directory hanging from a chain beneath the metal shelf. He started walking, his legs automatically more rigid, his feet pressing weight on the pavement, his arms heavy in their sockets, the fingers of his hands slightly spaced, curved from years of abuse. A set, dull expression on his face would come later. Not now.
   “Belkins Moving and Storage,” announced an operator somewhere in the Bronx.
   “My name is Johnson,” said Jason impatiently but kindly. “I’m afraid I have a problem, and I hope you might be able to help me.”
   “I’ll try, sir. What is it?”
   “I was on my way over to a friend’s house on Seventy-first Street--a friend who died recently, I’m sorry to say--to pick up something I’d lent him. When I got there, your van was in front of the house. It’s most embarrassing, but I think your men may remove my property. Is there someone I might speak to?”
   “That would be a dispatcher, sir.”
   “Might I have his name, please?”
   “What?”
   “His name:”
   “Sure. Murray. Murray Schumach. I’ll connect you.”
   Two clicks preceded a long hum over the line.
   “Schumach.”
   “Mr. Schumach?”
   “That’s right.”
   Bourne repeated his embarrassing tale. “Of course, I can easily obtain a letter from my attorney, but the item in question has little or no value--“
   “What is it?”
   “A fishing rod. Not an expensive one, but with an old-fashioned casting reel, the kind that doesn’t get tangled every five minutes.”
   “Yeah, I know what you mean. I fish out of Sheepshead Bay. They don’t make them reels like they used to. I think it’s the alloys.”
   “I think you’re right, Mr. Schumach. I know exactly in which closet he kept it.”
   “Oh, what the hell--a fishing rod. Go up and see a guy named Dugan, he’s the supervisor on the job. Tell him I said you could have it, but you’ll have to sign for it. If he gives you static, tell him to go outside and call me; the phone’s disconnected down there.”
   “A Mr. Dugan. Thank you very much, Mr. Schumach.”
   “Christ, that place is a ballbreaker today!”
   “I beg your pardon?”
   “Nothing. Some whacko called telling us to get out of there. And the job’s firm, cash guaranteed.
   Can you believe it?”
   Carlos. Jason could believe it.
   “It’s difficult, Mr. Schumach.”
   “Good fishing,” said the Belkins man.
   Bourne walked west on Seventieth Street to Lexington Avenue. Three blocks south he found what he was looking for: an army navy surplus store. He went inside.
   Eight minutes later he came out carrying four brown, padded blankets and six wide canvas straps with metal buckles. In the pockets of his field jacket were two ordinary road flares. They had been there on the counter looking like something they were not, triggering images beyond memory, back to a moment of time when there had been meaning and purpose. And anger. He slung the equipment over his left shoulder and trudged up toward Seventy-first Street. The chameleon was heading into the jungle, a jungle as dense as the unremembered Tam Quan.
   It was 10:48 when he reached the corner of the tree-lined block that held the secrets of Treadstone Seventy-One. He was going back to the beginning--his beginning--and the fear that he felt was not the fear of physical harm. He was prepared for that, every sinew taut, every muscle ready; his knees and feet, hands and elbows weapons, his eyes trip-wire alarms that would send signals to those weapons. His fear was far more profound. He was about to enter the place of his birth and he was terrified at what he might find there--remember there.
   Stop it! The trap is everything. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain!
   The traffic had diminished considerably, the rush hour over, the street in the doldrums of midmorning quiescence. Pedestrians strolled now, they did not hasten; automobiles swung leisurely around the moving van, angry horns replaced by brief grimaces of irritation. Jason crossed with the light to the Treadstone side; the tall, narrow structure of brown, jagged stone and thick blue glass was fifty yards down the block. Blankets and straps in place, an already weary, slow-witted laborer walked behind a well-dressed couple toward it.
   He reached the concrete steps as two muscular men, one black, one white, were carrying a covered harp out the door. Bourne stopped and called out, his words halting, his dialect coarse.
   “Hey! Where’s Doogan?”
   “Where the hell d’you t’ink?” replied the white, angling his head around. “Sittin’ in a fuckin’ chair.”
   “He ain’t gonna lift nothin’ heavier than that clipboard, man,” added the black. “He’s an executive, ain’t that right, Joey?”
   “He’s a crumbball, is what he is. Watcha’ got there?”
   “Schumach sent me,” said Jason. “He wanted another man down here and figured you needed this stuff. Told me to bring it.”
   “Murray the menace!” laughed the black. “You new, man? I ain’t seen you before. You come from shape-up?”
   “Yeah.”
   “Take that shit up to the executive,” grunted Joey, starting down the steps. “He can allocate it, how about that, Pete? Allocate--you like it?”
   “I love it, Joey. You a regular dictionary.”
   Bourne walked up the reddish brown steps past the descending movers to the door. He stepped inside and saw the winding staircase on the right, and the long narrow corridor in front of him that led to another door thirty feet away. He had climbed those steps a thousand times, walked up and down that corridor thousands more. He had come back, and an overpowering sense of dread swept through him. He started down the dark, narrow corridor; he could see shafts of sunlight bursting through a pair of French doors in the distance. He was approaching the room where Cain was born.
   That room. He gripped the straps on his shoulder and tried to stop the trembling.

   Marie leaned forward in the back seat of the armor-plated government sedan, the binoculars in place. Something had happened; she was not sure what it was, but she could guess. A short, stocky man had passed by the steps of the brownstone a few minutes ago, slowing his pace as he approached the general, obviously saying something to him. The man had then continued down the block and seconds later Crawford had followed him.
   Conklin had been found.
   It was a small step if what the general said was true. Hired gunmen, unknown to their employer, he unknown to them. Hired to kill a man ... for all the wrong reasons! Oh, God, she loathed them all! Mindless, stupid men. Playing with the lives of other men, knowing so little, thinking they knew so much.
   They had not listened! They never listened until it was too late, and then only with stern forbearance and strong reminders of what might have been--had things been as they were perceived to be, which they were not. The corruption came from blindness, the lies from obstinacy and embarrassment. Do not embarrass the powerful; the napalm said it all.
   Marie focused the binoculars. A Belkins man was approaching the steps, blankets and straps over his shoulder, walking behind an elderly couple, obviously residents of the block out for a stroll. The man in the field jacket and the black knit hat stopped; he began talking to two other movers carrying a triangular-shaped object out the door.
   What was it? There was something ... something odd. She could not see the man’s face; it was hidden from view, but there was something about the neck, the angle of the head ... what was it?
   The man started up the steps, a blunt man, weary of his day before it had begun ... a slovenly man.
   Marie removed the binoculars; she was too anxious, too ready to see things that were not there.
   Oh, God, my love, my Jason. Where are you? Come to me. Let me find you. Do not leave me for these blind, mindless men. Do not let them take you from me.
   Where was Crawford? He had promised to keep her informed of every move, everything. She had been blunt. She did not trust him, any of them; she did not trust their intelligence, that word spelled with a lower-case i. He had promised ... where was he?
   She spoke to the driver. “Will you put down the window, please. It’s stifling in here.”
   “Sorry, miss,” replied the civilian-clothed army man. “I’ll turn on the air conditioning for you, though.”
   The windows and doors were controlled by buttons only the driver could reach. She was in a glass and metal tomb in a sun-drenched, tree-lined street.

   “I don’t believe a word of it!” said Conklin, limping angrily across the room back to the window.
   He leaned against the sill, looking out, his left hand pulled up to his face, his teeth against the knuckle of his index finger. “Not a goddamned word!”
   You don’t want to believe it, Alex,” countered Crawford. “The solution is so much easier. It’s in place, and so much simpler.”
   “You didn’t hear that tape. You didn’t hear Villiers!”
   “I’ve heard the woman; she’s all I have to hear. She said we didn’t listen ... you didn’t listen.”
   “Then she’s lying!” Awkwardly Conklin spun around. “Christ, of course she’s lying! Why wouldn’t she? She’s his woman. She’ll do anything to get him off the meathook.”
   “You’re wrong and you know it. The fact that he’s here proves you’re wrong, proves I was wrong to accept what you said.”
   Conklin was breathing heavily, his right hand trembling as he gripped his cane. “Maybe ... maybe we, maybe ...” He did not finish; instead he looked at Crawford helplessly.
   “We ought to let the solution stand?” asked the officer quietly. “You’re tired, Alex. You haven’t slept for several days; you’re exhausted. I don’t think I heard that.”
   “No.” The CIA man shook his head, his eyes closed, his face reflecting his disgust. “No, you didn’t hear it and I didn’t say it. I just wish I knew where the hell to begin.”
   “I do,” said Crawford, going to the door and opening it. “Come in, please.” The stocky man walked in, his eyes darting to the rifle leaning against the wall. He looked at the two men, appraisal in his expression. “What is it?”
   “The exercise has been called off,” Crawford said. “I think you must have gathered that.”
   “What exercise? I was hired to protect him.” The gunman looked at Alex. “You mean you don’t need protection anymore, sir?”
   “You know exactly what we mean,” broke in Conklin. “All signals are off, all stipulations.”
   “What stipulations? I don’t know about any stipulations. The terms of my employment are very clear. I’m protecting you, sir.”
   “Good, fine,” said Crawford “Now what we have to know is who else out there is protecting him.”
   “Who else where?”
   “Outside this room, this apartment. In other rooms, on the street, in cars, perhaps. We have to know.”
   The stocky man walked over to the rifle and picked it up. “I’m afraid you gentlemen have misunderstood. I was hired on an individual basis. If others were employed, I’m not aware of them.”
   “You do know them!” shouted Conklin. “Who are they? Where are they?”
   “I haven’t any idea ... sir.” The courteous gunman held the rifle in his right arm, the barrel angled down toward the floor. He raised it perhaps two inches, no more than that, the movement barely perceptible. “If my services are no longer required, I’ll be leaving.”
   “Can you reach them?” interrupted the brigadier. “We’ll pay generously.”
   “I’ve already been paid generously, sir. It would be wrong to accept money for a service I can’t perform. And pointless for this to continue.”
   “A man’s life is at stake out there!” shouted Conklin.
   “So’s mine,” said the gunman, walking to the door, the weapon raised higher. “Goodbye, gentlemen.” He let himself out.
   “Jesus!” roared Alex, swinging back to the window, his cane clattering against a radiator. “What do we do?”
   “To start with, get rid of that moving company. I don’t know what part it played in your strategy, but it’s only a complication now.”
   “I can’t. I tried. I didn’t have anything to do with it. Agency Controls picked up our sheets when we had the equipment taken out. They saw that a store was being closed up and told GSA to get us the hell out of there.”
   “With all deliberate speed,” said Crawford, nodding. “The Monk covered that equipment by signature; his statement absolves the Agency. It’s in his files.”
   “That’d be fine if we had twenty-four hours. We don’t even know if we’ve got twenty-four minutes.”
   “We’ll still need it. There’ll be a Senate inquiry. Closed, I hope. ... Rope off the street.”
   “What?”
   “You heard me--rope off the street! Call in the police, tell them to rope everything off!”
   “Through the Agency? This is domestic.”
   “Then I will. Through the Pentagon, from the Joint Chiefs, if I have to. We’re standing around making excuses, when it’s right in front of our eyes! Clear the street, rope it off, bring in a truck with a public address system. Put her in it, put her on a microphone! Let her say anything she likes, let her scream her head off. She was right. He’ll come to her!”
   “Do you know what you’re saying?” asked Conklin. “There’ll be questions. Newspapers, television, radio. Everything will be exposed. Publicly.”
   “I’m aware of that,” said the brigadier. “I’m also aware that she’ll do it for us if this goes down.
   She may do it anyway, no matter what happens, but I’d rather try to save a man I didn’t like, didn’t approve of. But I respected him once, and I think I respect him more now.”
   “What about another man? If Carlos is really out there, you’re opening the gates for him. You’re handing him his escape.”
   “We didn’t create Carlos. We created Cain and we abused him. We took his mind and his memory. We owe him. Go down and get the woman. I’ll use the phone.”

   Bourne walked into the large library with the sunlight streaming through the wide, elegant french doors at the far end of the room. Beyond the panes of glass were the high walls of the garden ... all around him objects too painful to look at; he. knew them and did not know them. They were fragments of dreams--but solid, to be touched, to be felt, to be used--not ephemeral at all. A long hatch table where whiskey was poured, leather armchairs where men sat and talked, bookshelves that housed books and other things--concealed things--that appeared with the touch of buttons. It was a room where a myth was born, a myth that had raced through Southeast Asia and exploded in Europe.
   He saw the long, tubular bulge in the ceiling and the darkness came, followed by flashes of light and images on a screen and voices shouting in his ears.
   Who is he? Quick. You’re too late! You’re a dead man! Where is this street? What does it mean to you? Whom did you meet there? ... Methods of kills. Which are yours? No! ... You are not Delta, you are not you! ... You are only what you are here, became here!
   “Hey! Who the hell are you?” The question was shouted by a large, red-faced man seated in an armchair by the door, a clipboard on his knees. Jason had walked right past him.
   “You Doogan?” Bourne asked.
   “Yeah.”
   “Schumach sent me. Said you needed another man.”
   “What for? I got five already, and this fuckin’ place has hallways so tight you can’t hardly get through ‘em. They’re climbing asses now.”
   “I don’t know. Schumach sent me, that’s all I know. He told me to bring this stuff.” Bourne let the blankets and the straps fall to the floor.
   “Murray sends new junk? I mean, that’s new.”
   “I don’t.”
   “I know, I know! Schumach sent you. Ask Schumach.”
   “You can’t. He said to tell you he was heading out to Sheepshead. Be back this afternoon.”
   “Oh, that’s great! He goes fishing and leaves me with the shit. ... You’re new. You a crumbball from the shape-up?”
   “Yeah.”
   “That Murray’s a beaut. All I need’s another crumbball. Two wiseass stiffs and now four crumbballs.”
   “You want me to start in here? I can start in here.”
   “No, asshole! Crumbballs start at the top, you ain’t heard? It’s further away, capisce?”
   “Yeah, I capisce.” Jason bent down for the blankets and the straps.
   “Leave that junk here--you don’t need it. Get upstairs, top floor, and start with the single wood units. As heavy as you can carry, and don’t give me no union bullshit.” Bourne circled the landing on the second floor and climbed the narrow staircase to the third, as if drawn by a magnetic force beyond his understanding. He was being pulled to another room high up in the brownstone, a room that held both the comfort of solitude and the frustration of loneliness.
   The landing above was dark, no lights on, no sunlight bursting through windows anywhere. He reached the top and stood for a moment in silence. Which room was it? There were three doors, two on the left side of the hallway, one on the right. He started walking slowly toward the second door on the left, barely seen in the shadows. That was it; it was where thoughts came in the darkness ... memories that haunted him, pained him. Sunlight and the stench of the river and the jungle ... screaming machines in the sky, screaming down from the sky. Oh, God, it hurt!
   He put his hand on the knob, twisted it and opened the door. Darkness, but not complete. There was a small window at the far end of the room, a black shade pulled down, covering it, but not completely. He could see a thin line of sunlight, so narrow it barely broke through, where the shade met the sill. He walked toward it, toward that thin, tiny shaft of sunlight.
   A scratch! A scratch in the darkness! He spun, terrified at the tricks being played on his mind. But it was not a trick! There was a diamondlike flash in the air, light bouncing off steel.
   A knife was slashing up at his face.

   “I would willingly see you die for what you’ve done,” said Marie, staring at Conklin. “And that realization revolts me.”
   “Then there’s nothing I can say to you,” replied the CIA man, limping across the room toward the general. “Other decisions could have been made--by him and by you.”
   “Could they? Where was he to start? When that man tried to kill him in Marseilles? In the rue Sarrasin? When they hunted him in Zurich? When they shot at him in Paris? And all the while he didn’t know why. What was he to do?”
   “Come out! Goddamn it, come out!”
   “He did. And when he did, you tried to kill him.”
   “You were there! You were with him. You had a memory.”
   “Assuming I knew whom to go to, would you have listened to me?” Conklin returned her gaze. “I don’t know,” he answered, breaking the contact between them and turning to Crawford. “What’s happening?”
   “Washington’s calling me back within ten minutes.”
   “But what’s happening?”
   “I’m not sure you want to hear it. Federal encroachment on state and municipal law-enforcement statutes. Clearances have to be obtained.”
   “Jesus!”
   “Look!” The army man suddenly bent down to the window. “The truck’s leaving.”
   “Someone got through,” said Conklin.
   “Who?”
   “I’ll find out.” The CIA man limped to the phone; there were scraps of paper on the table, telephone numbers written hastily. He selected one and dialed. “Give me Schumach ... please ...
   Schumach? This is Conklin, Central Intelligence. Who gave you the word?” The dispatcher’s voice on the line could be heard halfway across the room. “What word? Get off my back! We’re on that job and we’re going to finish it! Frankly I think you’re a whacko--“ Conklin slammed down the phone. “Christ ... oh, Christ!” His hand trembled as he gripped the instrument. He picked it up and dialed again, his eyes on another scrap of paper. “Petrocelli.
   Reclamations,” he commanded. “Petrocelli? Conklin again.”
   “You faded out. What happened?”
   “No time. Level with me. That priority invoice from Agency Controls. Who signed it?”
   “What do you mean, who signed it? The top cat who always signs them. McGivern.” Conklin’s face turned white. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he whispered, as he lowered the phone. He turned to Crawford, his head quivering as he spoke. “The order to GSA was signed by a man who retired two weeks ago.”
   “Carlos ...”
   “Oh, God!” screamed Marie. “The man carrying the blankets, the straps! The way he held his head, his neck. Angled to the right. It was him! When his head hurts, he favors the right. It was Jason! He went inside.”
   Alexander Conklin turned back to the window, his eyes focused on the black enameled door across the way. It was closed.
   The hand! The skin ... the dark eyes in the thin shaft of light. Carlos!
   Bourne whipped his head back as the razorlike edge of the blade sliced the flesh under his chin, the eruption of blood streaming across the hand that held the knife. He lashed his right foot out, catching his unseen attacker in the kneecap, then pivoted and plunged his left heel into the man’s groin. Carlos spun, and again the blade came out of the darkness, now surging toward him, the line of assault directly at his stomach. Jason sprang back off the ground, crossing his wrists, slashing downward, blocking the dark arm that was an extension of the handle. He twisted his fingers inward, yanking his hands together, vicing the forearm beneath his blood-soaked neck and wrenched the arm diagonally up. The knife creased the cloth of his field jacket and once above his chest.
   Bourne spiraled the arm downward, twisting the wrist now in his grip, crashing his shoulder into the assassin’s body, yanking again as Carlos plunged sideways off balance, his arm pulled half out of its socket.
   Jason heard the clatter of the knife on the floor. He lurched toward the sound, at the same time reaching into his belt for his gun. It caught on the cloth; he rolled on the floor, but not quickly enough. The steel toe of a shoe crashed into the side of his head--his temple--and shock waves bolted through him. He rolled again, faster, faster, until he smashed into the wall; coiling upward on his knee, trying to focus through the weaving, obscure shadows in the near total darkness. The flesh of a hand was caught in the thin line of light from the window; he lunged at it, his own hands now claws, his arms battering rams. He gripped the hand, snapping it back, breaking the wrist. A scream filled the room.
   A scream and the hollow, lethal cough of a gunshot. An icelike incision had been made in Bourne’s upper left chest, the bullet lodged somewhere near his shoulder blade. In agony, he crouched and sprang again, pummeling the killer with a gun into the wall above a sharp-edged piece of furniture. Carlos lunged away as two more muted shots were fired wildly. Jason dove to his left, freeing his gun, leveling it at the sounds in the darkness. He fired, the explosion deafening, useless.
   He heard the door crash shut; the killer had raced out into the hallway.
   Trying to fill his lungs with air, Bourne crawled toward the door. As he reached it, instinct commanded him to stay at the side and smash his fist into the wood at the bottom. What followed was the core of a terrifying nightmare. There was a short burst of automatic gunfire as the paneled wood splintered, fragments flying across the room. The instant it stopped, Jason raised his own weapon and fired diagonally through the door; the burst was repeated. Bourne spun away, pressing his back against the wall; the eruption stopped and he fired again. There were now two men inches from each other, wanting above all to kill each other. Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain. Get Carlos.
   Trap Carlos. Kill Carlos!
   And then they were not inches from each other. Jason heard racing footsteps, then the sounds of a railing being broken as a figure lurched down the staircase. Carlos was racing below; the pig-animal wanted support; he was hurt. Bourne wiped the blood from his face, from his throat, and moved in front of what was left of the door. He pulled it open and stepped out into the narrow corridor, his gun leveled in front of him. Painfully he made his way toward the top of the dark staircase. Suddenly he heard shouts below.
   “What the hell you doin’ man? Pete! Pete!”
   Two metallic coughs filled the air.
   “Joey! Joey!”
   A single spit was heard; bodies crashed to a floor somewhere below.
   “Jesus! Jesus, Mother of--!”
   Two metallic coughs again, followed by a guttural cry of death. A third man was killed.
   What had that third man said? Two wiseass stiffs and now four crumbballs. The moving van was a Carlos operation! The assassin had brought two soldiers with him--the first three crumbballs from the shape-up. Three men with weapons, and he was one with a single gun. Cornered on the top floor of the brownstone. Still Carlos was inside. Inside. If he could get out, it would be Carlos who was cornered! If he could get out. Out!
   There was a window at the front end of the hallway, obscured by a black shade. Jason veered toward it, stumbling, holding his neck, creasing his shoulder so to blunt the pain in his chest. He ripped the shade from its spindle; the window was small, the glass here, too, thick, prismatic blocks of purple and blue light shooting through it. It was unbreakable, the frame riveted in place; there was no way he could smash a single pane. And then his eyes were drawn below to Seventy-first Street. The moving van was gone! Someone had to have driven it away ... one of Carlos’ soldiers!
   That left two. Two men, not three. And he was on the high ground; there were always advantages on the high ground.
   Grimacing, bent partially over, Bourne made his way to the first door on the left; it was parallel to the top of the staircase. He opened it and stepped inside. From what he could see it was an ordinary bedroom: lamps, heavy furniture, pictures on the walls. He grabbed the nearest lamp, ripped the cord from the wall and carried it out to the railing. He raised it above his head and hurled it down, stepping back as metal and glass crashed below. There was another burst of gunfire, the bullets shredding the ceiling, cutting a path in the plaster. Jason screamed, letting the scream fade into a cry, the cry into a prolonged desperate wail, and then silence. He edged his way to the rear of the railing.
   He waited. Silence.
   It happened. He could hear the slow, cautious footsteps; the killer had been on the second floor landing. The footsteps came closer, became louder, a faint shadow appeared on the dark wall. Now.
   Bourne sprang out of his recess and fired four shots in rapid succession at the figure on the staircase; a line of bullet holes and eruptions of blood appeared diagonally across the man’s collar.
   The killer spun, roaring in anger and pain as his neck arched: back and his body plummeted down the steps until it was still, sprawled face-up across the bottom three steps. In his hands was a deadly automatic field machine gun with a rod and brace for a stock.
   Now. Jason ran over to the top of the staircase and raced down, holding the railing, trying to keep whatever was left of his balance. He could not waste a moment; he might not find another. If he was going to reach the second floor it was now, in the immediate aftermath of the soldier’s death. And as he leaped over the dead body, Bourne knew it was a soldier; it was not Carlos. The man was tall and his skin was white, very white, his features Nordic or northern European, in no way Latin.
   Jason ran into the hallway of the second floor, seeking the shadows, hugging the wall. He stopped, listening. There was a sharp scrape in the distance, brief scratch from below. He knew what he had to do now. The assassin was on the first floor. And the sound had not been deliberate; it had not been loud enough or prolonged enough to signify a trap. Carlos was injured--a smashed kneecap or a broken wrist could disorient him to the point where he might collide with a piece of furniture or brush against a wall with a weapon in his hand, briefly losing his balance as Bourne was losing his. It was what he needed to know.
   Jason dropped to a crouch and crept back to the staircase, to the dead body sprawled across the steps. He had to pause for a moment; he was losing strength, too much blood. He tried to squeeze the flesh at the top of his throat and press the wound in his chest--anything to stem the bleeding. It was futile; to stay alive he had to get out of the brownstone, away from the place where Cain was born. Jason Bourne ... there was no humor in the word association. He found his breath again, reached out and pried the automatic weapon from the dead man’s hands. He was ready.
   He was dying and he was ready. Get Carlos. Trap Carlos ... Kill Carlos! He could not get out; he knew that. Time was not on his side. The blood would drain out of him before it happened. The end was the beginning: Cain was for Carlos and Delta was for Cain. Only one agonizing question remained: who was Delta? It did not matter. It was behind him now; soon there would be darkness, not violent but peaceful ... freedom from that question.
   And with his death Marie would be free, his love would be free. Decent men would see to it, led by a decent man in Paris whose son had been killed on rue du Bac, whose life had been destroyed by an assassin’s whore. Within the next few minutes, thought Jason, silently checking the clip in the automatic weapon, he would fulfill his promise to that man, carry out the agreement he had with men he did not know. By doing both, the proof was his. Jason Bourne had died once on this day; he would die again but would take Carlos out with him. He was ready.
   He lowered himself to a prone position and crept hands over elbows toward the top of the staircase. He could smell the blood beneath him, the sweet, bland odor penetrating his nostrils, informing him of a practicality. Time was running out. He reached the top step, pulling his legs under him, digging into his pocket for one of the road flares he had purchased at the army-navy store on Lexington Avenue. He knew now why he had felt the compulsion to buy them. He was back in the unremembered Tam Quan, forgotten except for brilliant, blinding flashes of light. The flares had reminded him of that fragment of memory; they would light up a jungle now.
   He uncoiled the waxed fuse from the small round recess in the flare head, brought it to his teeth and bit through the cord, shortening the fuse to less than an inch. He reached into his other pocket and took out a plastic lighter; he pressed it against the flare, gripping both in his left hand. Then he angled the rod and the brace of the weapon into his right shoulder, shoving the curved strip of metal into the cloth of his blood-soaked field jacket; it was secure. He stretched out his legs and, snakelike, started down the final flight of steps, head below, feet above, his back scraping the wall.

He reached the midpoint of the staircase. Silence, darkness, all the lights had been extinguished ...
   Lights? Light? Where were the rays of sunlight he had seen in that hallway only minutes ago? They had streamed through a pair of french doors at the far end of the room--that room--beyond the corridor, but he could see only darkness now. The door had been shut; the door beneath him, the only other door in that hallway, was also closed, marked by a thin shaft of light at the bottom. Carlos was making him choose. Behind which door? Or was the assassin using a better strategy? Was he in the darkness of the narrow hallway itself?
   Bourne felt a stabbing jolt of pain in his shoulder blade, then an eruption of blood that drenched the flannel shirt beneath his field jacket. Another warning: there was very little time.
   He braced himself against the wall, the weapon leveled at the thin posts of the railing, aimed down into the darkness of the corridor. Now! He pulled the trigger. The staccato explosions tore the posts apart as the railing fell, the bullets shattering the walls and the door beneath him. He released the trigger, slipping his hand under the scalding barrel, grabbing the plastic lighter with his right hand, the flare in his left. He spun the flint; the wick took fire and he put it to the short fuse. He pulled his hand back to the weapon and squeezed the trigger again, blowing away everything below.
   A glass chandelier crashed to a floor somewhere; singing whines of ricochets filled the darkness.
   And then--light! Blinding light as the flare ignited, firing the jungle, lighting up the trees and the walls, the hidden paths and the mahogany corridors. The stench of death and the jungle was everywhere, and he was there.
   Almanac to Delta. Almanac to Delta. Abandon, abandon!
   Never. Not now. Not at the end. Cain is for Carlos and Delta is for Cain. Trap Carlos. Kill Carlos!
   Bourne rose to his feet, his back pressed against the wall, the flare in his left hand, the exploding weapon in his right. He plunged down into the carpeted underbrush, kicking the door in front of him open, shattering silver frames and trophies that flew off tables and shelves into the air. Into the trees. He stopped; there was no one in that quiet, soundproof, elegant room. No one in the jungle path.
   He spun around and lurched back into the hallway, puncturing the walls with a prolonged burst of gunfire. No one.
   The door at the end of the narrow, dark corridor. Beyond was the room where Cain was born.
   Where Cain would die, but not alone.
   He held his fire, shifting the flare to his right hand beneath the weapon, reaching into his pocket for the second flare. He pulled it out, and again uncoiled the fuse and brought it to his teeth, severing the cord, now millimeters from its point of contact with the gelatinous incendiary. He shoved the first flare to it; the explosion of light was so bright it pained his eyes. Awkwardly, he held both flares in his left hand and, squinting, his legs and arms losing the battle for balance, approached the door.
   It was open, the narrow crack extending from top to bottom on the lock side. The assassin was accommodating, but as he looked at that door, Jason instinctively knew one thing about it that Carlos did not know. It was a part of his past, a part of the room where Cain was born. He reached down with his right hand, bracing the weapon between his forearm and his hip, and gripped the knob.
   Now. He shoved the door open six inches and hurled the flares inside. A long staccato burst from a Sten gun echoed throughout the room, throughout the entire house, a thousand dead sounds forming a running chord beneath, as sprays of bullets imbedded in a lead shield backed by a steel plate in the door.
   The firing stopped, a final clip expended. Now. Bourne whipped his hand back to the trigger, crashed his shoulder into the door and lunged inside, firing in circles as he rolled on the floor, swinging his legs counterclockwise. Gunshots were returned wildly as Jason honed his weapon toward the source. A roar of fury burst from blindness across the room; it accompanied Bourne’s realization that the drapes had been drawn, blocking out the sunlight from the french doors. Then why was there so much light ... magnified light beyond the sizzling blindness of the flares? It was overpowering, causing explosions in his head, sharp bolts of agony at his temples.
   The screen! The huge screen was pulled down from its bulging recess in the ceiling, drawn taut to the floor, the wide expanse of glistening silver a white-hot shield of ice-cold fire. He plunged behind the large hatch table to the protection of a copper dry bar; he rose and jammed the trigger back, in another burst--a final burst. The last clip had run out. He hurled the weapon by its rod-stock across the room at the figure in white overalls and a white silk scarf that had fallen below his face.
   The face! He knew it! He had seen it before! Where ... where? Was it Marseilles? Yes ... not
   Zurich? Paris? Yes and no! Then it struck him at that instant in the blinding, vibrating light, that the face across the room was known to many, not just him. But from where? Where? As so much else, he knew it and did not know it. But he did know it! It was, only the name he could not find!
   He spiraled back off his feet, behind the heavy copper dry bar. Gunshots came, two ... three, the second bullet tearing the flesh of his left forearm. He pulled his automatic from his belt; he had three shots left. One of them had to find its mark--Carlos. There was a debt to pay in Pa ris, and a contract to fulfill, his love far safer with the assassin’s death. He took the plastic lighter from his pocket, ignited it and held it beneath a bar rag suspended from a hook. The cloth caught fire; he grabbed it and threw it to his right, as he dove to his left. Carlos fined at the flaming rag, as Bourne spun to his knees, leveling his gun, pulling the trigger twice.
   The figure buckled but did not fall. Instead, he crouched, then sprang like a white panther diagonally forward, his hands outstretched. What was he doing? Then Jason knew. The assassin gripped the edge of the huge silver screen, ripping it from its metal bracket in the ceiling, pulling it downward with all his weight and strength.
   It floated down above Bourne, filling his vision, blocking everything else from his mind. He screamed as the shimmering silver descended over him, suddenly more frightened of it than of Carlos or of any other human being on the earth. It terrified him, infuriated him, splitting his mind in fragments; images flashed across his eyes and angry voices shouted in his ears. He aimed his gun and fired at the terrible shroud. As he slashed his hand against it wildly, pushing the rough silver cloth away, he understood. He had fired his last shot, his last. As a legend named Cain, Carlos knew by sight and by sound every weapon on earth; he had counted the gunshots.
   The assassin loomed above him, the automatic in his hand aimed at Jason’s head. “Your execution, Delta. On the day scheduled. For everything you’ve done.” Bourne arched his back, rolling furiously to his right; at least he would die in motion! Gunshots filled the shimmering room, hot needles slicing across his neck, piercing his legs, cutting up to his waist. Roll, roll!
   Suddenly the gunshots stopped, and in the distance he could hear repeated sounds of hammering, the smashing of wood and steel, growing louder, more insistent. There was a final deafening crash from the dark corridor outside the library, followed by men shouting, running, and beyond them somewhere in the unseen, outside world, the insistent whine of sirens.
   “In here! He’s in here!” screamed Carlos.
   It was insane! The assassin was directing the invaders directly toward him, to him! Reason was madness, nothing on earth made sense!
   The door was crashed open by a tall man in a black overcoat; someone was with him, but Jason could not see. The mists were filling his eyes, shapes and sounds becoming obscured, blurred. He was rolling in space. Away ... away.
   But then he saw the one thing he did not want to see. Rigid shoulders that floated above a tapered waist raced out of the room and down the dimly lit corridor. Carlos. His screams had sprung the trap open! He had reversed it! In the chaos he had trapped the stalkers. He was escaping!
   “Carlos ...” Bourne knew he could not be heard; what emerged from his bleeding throat was a whisper. He tried again, forcing the sound from his stomach. “It’s him. It’s ... Carlos!” There was confusion, commands shouted futilely, orders swallowed in consternation. And then a figure came into focus. A man was limping toward him, a cripple who had tried to kill him in a cemetery outside of Paris. There was nothing left! Jason lurched, crawling toward the sizzling, blinding flare. He grabbed it and held it as though it were a weapon, aiming it at the killer with a cane.
   “Come on! Come on! Closer, you bastard! I’ll burn your eyes out! You think you’ll kill me, you won’t! I’ll kill you! I’ll burn your eyes!”
   “You don’t understand,” said the trembling voice of the limping killer. “It’s me, Delta. It’s Conklin. I was wrong.”
   The flare singed his hands, his eyes! ... Madness. The explosions were all around him now, blinding, deafening, punctuated by ear-splitting screeches from the jungle that erupted with each detonation.
   The jungle! Tam Quan! The wet, hot stench was everywhere, but they had reached it! The base camp was theirs!
   An explosion to his left; he could see it! High above the ground, suspended between two trees, the spikes of a bamboo cage. The figure inside was moving. He was alive! Get to him, reach him!
   A cry came from his right. Breathing, coughing in the smoke, a man was limping toward the dense underbrush, a rifle in his hand. It was him, the blond hair caught in the light, a foot broken from a parachute jump. The bastard! A piece of filth who had trained with them, studied the maps with them, flown north with them ... all the time springing a trap on them! A traitor with a radio who told the enemy exactly where to look in that impenetrable jungle that was
   Tam Quan.
   It was Bourne! Jason Bourne. Traitor, garbage!
   Get him! Don’t let him reach others! Kill him! Kill Jason Bourne! He is your enemy! Fire!
   He did not fall! The head that had been blown apart was still there. Coming toward him! What was happening?
   Madness. Tam Quan ...
   “Come with us,” said the limping figure, walking out of the jungle into what remained of an elegant room. That room. “We’re not your enemies. Come with us.”
   “Get away from me!” Bourne lunged again, now back to the fallen screen. It was his sanctuary, his shroud of death, the blanket thrown over a man at birth, a lining for his coffin. “You are my enemy!
   I’ll take you all! I don’t care, it doesn’t matter! Can’t you understand!? I’m Delta! Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain! What more do you want from me? I was and I was not! I am and I am not!
   Bastards, bastards! Come on! Closer!”
   Another voice was heard, a deeper voice, calmer, less insistent. “Get her. Bring her in.”
   Somewhere in the distance the sirens reached a crescendo, and then they stopped. Darkness came and the waves carried Jason up to the night sky, only to hurl him down again, crashing him into an abyss of watery violence. He was entering an eternity of weightless ... memory. An explosion filled the night sky now, a fiery diadem rose above black waters. And then he heard the words, spoken from the clouds, filling the earth.
   “Jason, my love. My only love. Take my hand. Hold it. Tightly, Jason. Tightly, my darling.”
   Peace came with the darkness.

EPILOGUE
   Brigadier General Crawford put the file folder down on the couch beside him. “I don’t need this,” he said to Marie St. Jacques, who sat across from him in a straight-back chair. “I’ve gone over it and over it, trying to find out where we missed.”
   “You presumed where no one should,” said the only other person in the hotel suite. He was Dr. Morris Panov, psychiatrist; he stood by the window, the morning sun streaming in, putting his expressionless face in shadow. “I allowed you to presume, and I’ll live with it for the rest of my life.”
   “It’s nearly two weeks now,” said Marie impatiently. “I’d like specifics. I think I’m entitled to them.”
   “You are. It was an insanity called clearance.”
   “Insanity,” agreed Panov.
   “Protection, also,” added Crawford. “I subscribe to that part. It has to continue for a very long time.”
   “Protection?” Marie frowned.
   “We’ll get to it,” said the general, glancing at Panov. “From everyone’s point of view, it’s vital. I trust we all accept that.”
   “Please! Jason--who is he?”
   “His name is David Webb. He was a career foreign service officer, a specialist in Far Eastern affairs, until his separation from the government five years ago.”
   “Separation?”
   “Resignation by mutual agreement. His work in Medusa precluded any sustained career in the State Department. ‘Delta’ was infamous and too many knew he was Webb. Such men are rarely welcome at the diplomatic conference tables. I’m not sure they should be. Visceral wounds are reopened too easily with their presence.”
   “He was everything they say? In Medusa?”
   “Yes. I was there. He was everything they say.”
   “It’s hard to believe,” said Marie.
   “He’d lost something very special to him and couldn’t come to grips with it. He could only strike out.”
   “What was that?”
   “His family. His wife was a Thai; they had two children, a boy and a girl. He was stationed in Phnom Penh, his house on the outskirts, near the Mekong River. One Sunday afternoon while his wife and children were down at their dock, a stray aircraft circled and dove, dropping two bombs and strafing the area. By the time he reached the river the dock was blown away, his wife and children floating in the water, their bodies riddled.”
   “Oh, God,” whispered Marie. “Whom did the plane belong to?”
   “It was never identified. Hanoi disclaimed it; Saigon said it wasn’t ours. Remember, Cambodia was neutral; no one wanted to be responsible. Webb had to strike out; he headed for Saigon and trained for Medusa. He brought a specialist’s intellect to a very brutal operation. He became Delta.”
   “Was that when he met d’Anjou?”
   “Later on, yes. Delta was notorious by then. North Vietnamese Intelligence had put an extraordinary price on his head, and it’s no secret that among our own people a number hoped they’d succeed. Then Hanoi found out that Webb’s younger brother was an army officer in Saigon, and having studied Delta--knowing the brothers were close--decided to mount a trap; they had nothing to lose. They kidnapped Lieutenant Gordon Webb and took him north, sending back a Cong informant with word that he was being held in the Tam Quan sector. Delta bit; along with the informer--a double agent--he formed a team of Medusans who knew the area and picked a night when no aircraft should have left the ground to fly north. D’Anjou was in the unit. So was another man Webb didn’t know about; a white man who’d been bought by Hanoi, an expert in communications who could assemble the electronic components of a high-frequency radio in the dark. Which is exactly what he did, betraying the unit’s position. Webb broke through the trap and found his brother. He also found the double agent and the white man. The Vietnamese escaped in the jungle; the white man didn’t. Delta executed him on the spot.”
   “And that man?” Marie’s eyes were riveted on Crawford.
   “Jason Bourne. A Medusan from Sydney. Australia; a runner of guns, narcotics and slaves throughout all Southeast Asia; a violent man with a criminal record who was nevertheless highly effective--if the price were high enough. It was in Medusa’s interests to bury the circumstances of his death; he became an MIA from a specialized unit. Years later, when Treadstone was being formed and Webb called back, it was Webb himself who took the name of Bourne. It fit the requirements of authenticity, traceability. He took the name of the man who’d betrayed him, the man he had killed in Tam Quan.”
   “Where was he when he was called back for Treadstone?” asked Marie. “What was he doing?”
   “Teaching in a small college in New Hampshire. Living an isolated life, some said destructive.
   For him.” Crawford picked up the file folder. “Those are the essential facts, Miss St. Jacques. Other areas will be covered by Dr. Panov, who’s made it clear that my presence is not required. There is, however, one remaining detail which must be thoroughly understood. It’s a direct order from the White House.”
   “The protection,” said Marie, her words a statement.
   “Yes. Wherever he goes, regardless of the identity he assumes or the success of his cover, he’ll be guarded around the clock. For as long as it takes--even if it never happens.”
   “Please explain that.”
   “He’s the only man alive who’s ever seen Carlos. As Carlos. He knows his identity, but it’s locked away in his mind, part of an unremembered past. We understand from what he says that Carlos is someone known to many people--a visible figure in a government somewhere, or in the media, or international banking or society. It fits with a prevalent theory. The point is one day that identity may come into focus for Webb. We realize you’ve had several discussions with Dr. Panov. I believe he’ll confirm what I’ve said.”
   Marie turned to the psychiatrist. “Is it true, Mo?”
   “It’s possible,” said Panov.
 
   Crawford left and Marie poured coffee for the two of them. Panov went to the couch where the brigadier had been sitting.
   “It’s still warm,” he said, smiling. “Crawford was sweating right down to his famous backsides.
   He has every right to, they all do.”
   “What’s going to happen?”
   “Nothing. Absolutely nothing until I tell them they can go ahead. And that may not be for months, a couple of years for all I know. Not until he’s ready.”
   “For what?”
   “The questions. And photographs--volumes of them. They’re compiling a photographic encyclopedia based on the loose description he gave them. Don’t get me wrong; one day he’ll have to begin. He’ll want to; we’ll all want him to. Carlos has to be caught, and it’s not my intention to blackmail them into doing nothing. Too many people have given too much; he’s given too much. But right now he comes first. His head comes first.”
   “That’s what I mean. What’s going to happen to him?”
   Panov put down his coffee. “I’m not sure yet. I’ve too much respect for the human mind to deal you chicken soup psychology; there’s too damn much of it floating around in the wrong hands. I’ve been in on all the conferences--I insisted upon that--and I’ve talked to the other shrinks and the neurosurgeons. Its true we can go in with a knife and reach the storm centers, reduce the anxieties, bring a kind of peace to him. Even bring him back to what he was, perhaps. But it’s not the kind of peace he wants ... and there’s a far more dangerous risk. We might wipe away too much, take away the things he has found--will continue to find. With care. With time.”
   “Time?”
   “I believe it, yes. Because the pattern’s been established. There’s growth, the pain of recognition and the excitement of discovery. Does that tell you something?” Marie looked into Panov’s dark, weary eyes; there was a light in them. “All of us,” she said.
   “That’s right. In a way, he’s a functioning microcosm of us all. I mean, we’re all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren’t we?”
 
   Marie went to the front window in the cottage on the waterfront, with the rising dunes behind it, the fenced-off grounds surrounding it. And guards. Every fifty feet a man with a gun. She could see him several hundred yards down the beach; he was scaling shells over the water, watching them bounce across the waves that gently lapped into the shore. The weeks had been good to him, for him. His body was scarred but whole again, firm again. The nightmares were still there, and moments of anguish kept coming back during the daylight hours, but somehow it was all less terrifying. He was beginning to cope; he was beginning to laugh again. Panov had been right. Things were happening to him; images were becoming clearer, meaning found where there had been no meaning before.
   Something had happened now! Oh, God, what was it? He had thrown himself into the water and was thrashing around, shouting. Then, suddenly, he sprang out, leaping over the waves onto the beach. In the distance, by the barbed-wire fence, a guard spun around, a rifle whipped up under an arm, a hand-held radio pulled from a belt.
   He began racing across the wet sand toward the house, his body lurching, swaying, his feet
   digging furiously into the soft surface, sending up sprays of water and sand behind him. What was it? Marie froze, prepared for the moment they knew might come one day, prepared for the sound of gunfire.
   He burst through the door, chest heaving, gasping for breath. He stared at her, his eyes as clear as she had ever seen them. He spoke softly, so softly she could barely hear him. But she did hear him.
   “My name is David ...”
   She walked slowly toward him.
   “Hello, David,” she said.
 
   END.