8
   Routine secondhand inquiries at the Federal Trade Commission confirmed the fact that its chairman, Albert Armbruster, did, indeed, have ulcers as well as high blood pressure and under doctor's orders left the office and returned home whenever discomfort struck him. Which was why Alex Conklin telephoned him after a generally overindulgent lunch-also established-with an "update" of the Snake Lady crisis. As with Alex's initial call, catching Armbruster in the shower, he anonymously told the shaken chairman that someone would be in touch with him later in the day-either at the office or at home. The contact would identify himself simply as Cobra. ("Use all the banal trigger words you can come up with" was the gospel according to St. Conklin.) In the meantime, Armbruster was instructed to talk to no one. "Those are orders from the Sixth Fleet."
   "Oh, Christ!"
   Thus Albert Armbruster called for his chariot and was driven home in discomfort. Further nausea was in store for the chairman, however, as Jason Bourne was waiting for him.
   "Good afternoon, Mr. Armbruster," said the stranger pleasantly as the chairman struggled out of the limousine, the door held open by the chauffeur.
   "Yes, what?" Armbruster's response was immediate, unsure.
   "I merely said 'Good afternoon.' My name's Simon. We met at the White House reception for the Joint Chiefs several years ago-"
   "I wasn't there," broke in the chairman emphatically.
   "Oh?" The stranger arched his brows, his voice still pleasant but obviously questioning.
   "Mr. Armbruster?" The chauffeur had closed the door and now turned courteously to the chairman. "Will you be needing-"
   "No, no," said Armbruster, again interrupting. "You're relieved-I won't need you anymore today ... tonight."
   "Same time tomorrow morning, sir?"
   "Yes, tomorrow-unless you're told otherwise. I'm not a well man; check with the office."
   "Yes, sir." The chauffeur tipped his visored cap and climbed back into the front seat.
   "I'm sorry to hear that," said the stranger, holding his place as the limousine's engine was started and the automobile rolled away.
   "What? ... Oh, you. I was never at the White House for that damned reception!"
   "Perhaps I was mistaken-"
   "Yes, well, nice to see you again," said Armbruster anxiously, impatiently, hurrying to the steps that led up to his Georgetown house.
   "Then again, I'm quite sure Admiral Burton introduced us-"
   "What?" The chairman spun around. "What did you just say.
   "This is a waste of time," continued Jason Bourne, the pleasantness gone from his voice and his face. "I'm Cobra."
   "Oh, Jesus! ... I'm not a well man." Armbruster repeated the statement in a hoarse whisper, snapping his head up to look at the front of his house, to the windows and the door.
   "You'll be far worse unless we talk," added Jason, following the chairman's eyes. "Shall it be up there? In your house?"
   "No!" cried Armbruster. "She yaps all the time and wants to know everything about everybody, then blabs all over town exaggerating everything."
   "I assume you're talking about your wife."
   "All of 'em! They don't know when to keep their traps shut."
   "It sounds like they're starved for conversation."
   "What...?"
   "Never mind. I've got a car down the block. Are you up to a drive?"
   "I damn well better be. We'll stop at the drugstore down the street. They've got my prescription on file. ... Who the hell are you?"
   "I told you," answered Bourne. "Cobra. It's a snake."
   "Oh, Jesus!" whispered Albert Armbruster.
   The pharmacist complied rapidly, and Jason quickly drove to a neighborhood bar he had chosen an hour before should one be necessary. It was dark and full of shadows, the booths deep, the banquettes high, isolating those meeting one another from curious glances. The ambience was important, for it was vital that he stare into the eyes of the chairman when he asked questions, his own eyes ice-cold, demanding ... threatening. Delta was back, Cain had returned; Jason Bourne was in full command, David Webb forgotten.
   "We have to cover ourselves," said the Cobra quietly after their drinks arrived. "In terms of damage control that means we have to know how much harm each of us could do under the Amytals."
   "What the hell does that mean?" asked Armbruster swallowing most of his gin and tonic while wincing and holding his stomach.
   "Drugs, chemicals, truth serums."
   "What?"
   "This isn't your normal ball game," said Bourne, remembering Conklin's words. "We've got to cover all of the bases because there aren't any constitutional rights in this series."
   "So who are you?" The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission belched and brought his glass briefly to his lips, his hand trembling. "Some kind of one-man hit team? John Doe knows something, so he's shot in an alley?"
   "Don't be ridiculous. Anything like that would be totally counterproductive. It would only fuel those trying to find us, leave a trail-"
   "Then what are you talking about?"
   "Saving our lives, which includes our reputations and our life-styles."
   "You're one cold prick. How do we do that?"
   "Let's take your case, shall we? ... You're not a well man by your own admission. You could resign under doctor's orders and we take care of you-Medusa takes care of you." Jason's imagination floated, making quick sharp forays into reality and fantasy, swiftly searching for the words that might be found in the gospel according to St. Alex. "You're known to be a wealthy man, so a villa might be purchased in your name, or perhaps a Caribbean island, where you'd be completely secure. No one can reach you; no one can talk to you unless you agree, which would mean predetermined interviews, harmless and even favorable results guaranteed. Such things are not impossible."
   "Pretty sterile existence in my opinion," said Armbruster. "Me and the yapper all by ourselves? I'd kill her."
   "Not at all," went on the Cobra. "There'd be constant distractions. Guests of your choosing could be flown to wherever you are. Other women also either of your choice or selected by those who respect your tastes. Life goes on much as before, some inconveniences, some pleasant surprises. The point is that you'd be protected, inaccessible and therefore we're also protected, the rest of us. ... But, as I say, that option is merely hypothetical at this juncture. In my case, frankly, it's a necessity because there's little I don't know. I leave in a matter of days. Until then I'm determining who goes and who stays. ... How much do you know, Mr. Armbruster?"
   "I'm not involved with the day-to-day operations, naturally. I deal with the big picture. Like the others, I get a monthly coded telex from the banks in Zurich listing the deposits and the companies we're gaining control of-that's about it."
   "So far you don't get a villa."
   "I'll be damned if I want one, and if I do I'll buy it myself. I've got close to a hundred million, American, in Zurich."
   Bourne controlled his astonishment and simply stared at the chairman. "I wouldn't repeat that," he said.
   "Who am I going to tell? The yapper?"
   "How many of the others do you know personally?" asked the Cobra.
   "Practically none of the staff, but then they don't know me, either. Hell, they don't know anybody. ... And while we're on the subject, take you, for instance. I've never heard of you. I figure you work for the board and I was told to expect you, but I don't know you."
   "I was hired on a very special basis. My background's deep-cover security."
   "Like I said, I figured-"
   "What about the Sixth Fleet?" interrupted Bourne, moving away from the subject of himself.
   "I see him now and then but I don't think we've exchanged a dozen words. He's military; I'm civilian-very civilian."
   "You weren't once. Where it all began."
   "The hell I wasn't. No uniform ever made a soldier and it sure didn't with me."
   "What about a couple of generals, one in Brussels, the other at the Pentagon?"
   "They were career men; they stayed in. I wasn't and I didn't."
   "We have to expect leaks, rumors," said Bourne almost aimlessly, his eyes now wandering. "But we can't permit the slightest hint of military orientation."
   "You mean like in junta style?"
   "Never," replied Bourne, once more staring at Armbruster. "That kind of thing creates whirlwinds-"
   "Forget it!" whispered the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, angrily interrupting. "The Sixth Fleet, as you call him, calls the shots only here and only because it's convenient. He's a blood-and-guts admiral with a whiz-bang record and a lot of clout where we want it, but that's in Washington, not anywhere else!"
   "I know that and you know it," said Jason emphatically, the emphasis covering his bewilderment, "but someone who's been in a protection program for over fifteen years is putting together his own scenario and that comes out of Saigon-Command Saigon."
   "It may have come out of Saigon but it sure as hell didn't stay there. The soldier boys couldn't run with it, we all know that. ... But I see what you mean. You tie in Pentagon brass with anything like us, the freaks are in the streets and the bleeding-heart fairies in Congress have a field day. Suddenly a dozen subcommittees are in session."
   "Which we can't tolerate," added Bourne.
   "Agreed," said Armbruster. "Are we any closer to learning the name of the bastard who's putting this scenario together?"
   "Closer, not close. He's been in contact with Langley but on what level we don't know."
   "Langley? For Christ's sake, we've got someone over there. He can squelch it and find out who the son of a bitch is!"
   "DeSole?" offered the Cobra simply.
   "That's right." Armbruster leaned forward. "There is very little you don't know. That connection's very quiet. What does DeSole say?"
   "Nothing, we can't touch him," replied Jason, suddenly, frantically reaching for a credible answer. He had been David Webb too long! Conklin was right; he wasn't thinking fast enough. Then the words came ... part of the truth, a dangerous part, but credible, and he could not lose credibility. "He thinks he's being watched and we're to stay away from him, no contact whatsoever until he says otherwise."
   "What happened?" The chairman gripped his glass, his eyes rigid, bulging.
   "Someone in the cellars learned that Teagarten in Brussels has an access fax code directly to DeSole bypassing routine confidential traffic."
   "Stupid goddamned soldier boys!" spat out Armbruster. "Give 'em gold braid and they prance around like debutantes and want every new toy in town! ... Faxes, access codes! Jesus, he probably punched the wrong numbers and got the NAACP."
   "DeSole says he's building a cover and can handle it, but it's no time for him to go around asking questions, especially in this area. He'll check quietly on everything he can, and if he learns something he'll reach us, but we're not to reach him."
   "Wouldn't you know it'd be a lousy soldier boy who puts us out on a limb? If it wasn't for that jackass with his access code, we wouldn't have a problem. Everything would be taken care of."
   "But he does exist, and the problem-the crisis-won't go away," said Bourne flatly. "I repeat, we have to cover ourselves. Some of us will have to leave-disappear at least for a while. For the good of all of us."
   The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission leaned back in the booth, his expression pensively disagreeable. "Yeah, well let me tell you something, Simon, or whatever your name is. You're checking out the wrong people. We're businessmen, some of us rich enough or egotistical enough or for other reasons willing to work for government pay, but first we're businessmen with investments all over the place. We're also appointed, not elected, and that means nobody expects full financial disclosures. Do you see what I'm driving at?"
   "I'm not sure," said Jason, instantly concerned that he was losing control, losing the threat. I've been away too long ... and Albert Armbruster was not a fool. He was given to first-level panic, but the second level was colder, far more analytical. "What are you driving at?"
   "Get rid of our soldier boys. Buy them villas or a couple of Caribbean islands and put them out of reach. Give 'em their own little courts and let 'em play kings; that's what they're all about anyway."
   "Operate without them?" asked Bourne, trying to conceal his astonishment.
   "You said it and I agree. Any hint of big brass and we're in big trouble. It goes under the heading of 'military industrial complex,' which freely translated means military-industrial collusion." Again Armbruster leaned forward over the table. "We don't need them anymore! Get rid of them."
   "There could be very loud objections-"
   "No way. We've got 'em by their brass balls!"
   "I'll have to think about it."
   "There's nothing to think about. In six months we'll have the controls we need in Europe."
   Jason Bourne stared at the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. What controls? he thought to himself. For what reason? Why?
   "I'll drive you home," he said.
   "I talked to Marie," said Conklin from the Agency garden apartment in Virginia. "She's at the inn, not at your house."
   "How come?" asked Jason at a gas-station pay phone on the outskirts of Manassas.
   "She wasn't too clear. ... I think it was lunchtime or nap time-one of those times when mothers are never clear. I could hear your kids in the background. They were loud, pal."
   "What did she say, Alex?"
   "It seems your brother-in-law wanted it that way. She didn't elaborate, and other than sounding like one harried mommy, she was the perfectly normal Marie I know and love-which means she only wanted to hear about you."
   "Which means you told her I was perfectly fine, didn't you?"
   "Hell, yes. I said you were holed up under guard going over a lot of computer printouts, sort of a variation on the truth."
   "Johnny must have had his talk with her. She told him what's happened, so he moved them all to his exclusive bunker."
   "His what?"
   "You never saw Tranquility Inn, or did you? Frankly, I can't remember whether you did or not."
   "Panov and I saw only the plans and the site; that was four years ago. We haven't been back since, at least I haven't. Nobody's asked me."
   "I'll let that pass because you've had a standing invitation since we got the place. ... Anyway, you know it's on the beach and the only way to get there except by water is up a dirt road so filled with rocks no normal car could make it twice. Everything is flown in by plane or brought over by boat. Almost nothing from the town."
   "And the beach is patrolled," interrupted Conklin. "Johnny isn't taking any chances."
   "It's why I sent them down there. I'll call her later."
   "What about now?" said Alex. "What about Armbruster?"
   "Let's put it this way," replied Bourne, his eyes drifting up to the white plastic shell of the pay phone. "What does it mean when a man who has a hundred million dollars in Zurich tells me that Medusa-point of origin Command Saigon, emphasis on 'command,' which is hardly civilian-should get rid of the military because Snake Lady doesn't need them any longer?"
   "I don't believe it," said the retired intelligence officer in a quiet, doubting voice. "He didn't."
   "Oh, yes, he did. He even called them soldier boys, and he wasn't memorializing them in song. He verbally dismissed the admirals and the generals as gold-braided debutantes who wanted every new toy in town."
   "Certain senators on the Armed Services Committee would agree with that assessment," concurred Alex.
   "There's more. When I reminded him that Snake Lady came out of Saigon-Command Saigon-he was very clear. He said it may have, but it sure as hell didn't stay there because and this is a direct quote-'The soldier boys couldn't run with it.' "
   "That's a provocative statement. Did he tell you why they couldn't run with it?"
   "No, and I didn't ask. I was supposed to know the answer."
   "I wish you did. I like less and less the sound of what I'm hearing; it's big and it's ugly. ... How did the hundred million come up?"
   "I told him Medusa might get him a villa someplace out of the country where he couldn't be reached if we thought it was necessary. He wasn't too interested and said if he wanted one, he'd buy it himself. He had a hundred million, American, in Zurich-a fact I think I was also expected to know."
   "That was all? Just a simple little one hundred million?"
   "Not entirely. He told me that like everybody else he gets a monthly telex-in code-from the banks in Zurich listing his deposits. Obviously, they've been growing."
   "Big, ugly and growing," added Conklin. "Anything else? Not that I particularly want to hear it, I'm frightened enough."
   "Two more items and you'd better have some fear in reserve. ... Armbruster said that along with the deposit telexes he gets a listing of the companies they're gaining control of."
   "What companies? What was he talking about? ... Good God."
   "If I had asked, my wife and children might have to attend a private memorial service, no casket in evidence because I wouldn't be there."
   "You've got more to tell me. Tell me."
   "Our illustrious chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said that the ubiquitous 'we' could get rid of the military because in six months 'we' would have all the controls we needed in Europe. ... Alex, what controls? What are we dealing with?"
   There was silence on the unbroken line, and Jason Bourne did not interrupt. David Webb wanted to shout in defiance and confusion, but there was no point; he was a non-person. Finally, Conklin spoke.
   "I think we're dealing with something we can't handle," he said softly, his words barely audible over the phone. "This has to go upstairs, David. We can't keep it to ourselves."
   "Goddamn you, you're not talking to David!" Bourne did not raise his voice in anger; he did not have to, its tone was enough. "This isn't going anywhere unless or until I say it does and I may not ever say it. Understand me, field man. I don't owe anyone anything, especially not the movers and the shakers in this city. They moved and shook my wife and me too much for any concessions where our lives or the lives of our children are concerned! I intend to use everything I can learn for one purpose and one purpose only. That's to draw out the Jackal and kill him so we can climb out of our personal hell and go on living. ... I know now that this is the way to do it. Armbruster talked tough and he probably is tough, but underneath he's frightened. They're all frightened-panicked, as you put it-and you were right. Present them with the Jackal and he's a solution they can't refuse. Present Carlos with a client as rich and as powerful as our current Medusa and it's irresistible to him-he's got the respect of the international big boys, not just the crud of the world, the fanatics of the left and right. ... Don't stand in my way, don't, for God's sake!"
   "That's a threat, isn't it?"
   "Stop it, Alex. I don't want to talk like that."
   "But you just did. It's the reverse of Paris thirteen years ago, isn't it? Only now you'll kill me because I'm the one who hasn't a memory, the memory of what we did to you and Marie."
   "That's my family out there!" cried David Webb, his voice tight, sweat forming on his hairline as his eyes filled with tears. "They're a thousand miles away from me and in hiding. It can't be any other way because I won't risk letting them be harmed! ... Killed, Alex, because that's what the Jackal will do if he finds them. It's an island this week; where is it next? How many thousands of miles more? And after that, where will they go-where will we go? Knowing what we know now, we can't stop-he's after me; that goddamned filthy psychopath is after me, and everything we've learned about him tells us he wants a maximum kill. His ego demands it, and that kill includes my family! ... No, field man, don't burden me with things I don't care about-not where they interfere with Marie and the kids-I'm owed that much."
   "I hear you," said Conklin. "I don't know whether I'm hearing David or Jason Bourne, but I hear you. All right, no reverse Paris, but we have to move fast and I'm talking to Bourne now. What's next? Where are you?"
   "I judge about six or seven miles from General Swayne's house," replied Jason, breathing deeply, the momentary anguish suppressed, the coldness returning. "Did you make the call?"
   "Two hours ago."
   "Am I still 'Cobra'?"
   "Why not? It's a snake."
   "That's what I told Armbruster. He wasn't happy."
   "Swayne will be less so, but I sense something and I can't really explain it."
   "What do you mean?"
   "I'm not sure, but I have an idea that he's answerable to someone."
   "In the Pentagon? Burton?"
   "I suppose so, I just don't know. In his partial paralysis he reacted almost as if he was an onlooker, someone involved but not in the middle of the game. He slipped a couple of times and said things like 'We'll have to think about this,' and 'We'll have to confer.' Confer with whom? It was a one-on-one conversation with my usual warning that he wasn't to talk to anyone. His response was a lame editorial 'we,' meaning that the illustrious general was conferring with himself. I don't buy it."
   "Neither do I," agreed Jason. "I'm going to change clothes. They're in the car."
   "What?"
   Bourne turned partially in the plastic shell of the pay phone and glanced around the gas station. He saw what he hoped for, a men's room in the side of the building. "You said that Swayne lives on a large farm west of Manassas-"
   "Correction," interrupted Alex. "He calls it a farm; his neighbors and the tax rolls call it a twenty-eight-acre estate. Not bad for a career soldier from a lower-middle-class family in Nebraska who married a hairdresser in Hawaii thirty years ago, and supposedly bought his manse ten years ago on the strength of a very sizable inheritance from an untraceable benefactor, an obscure wealthy uncle I couldn't find. That's what made me curious. Swayne headed up the Quartermaster Corps in Saigon and supplied Medusa. ... What's his place got to do with your changing clothes?"
   "I want to look around. I'll get there while it's light to see what it's like from the road, then when it's dark I'll pay him a surprise visit."
   "That'll be effective, but why the looking around?"
   "I like farms. They're so spread out and extended and I can't imagine why a professional soldier who knows that he can be transferred anywhere in the world at a moment's notice would saddle himself with such a large investment."
   "The same as my reasoning except I was concerned about the how, not the why. Your approach may be more interesting."
   "We'll see."
   "Be careful. He may have alarms and dogs, things like that."
   "I'm prepared," said Jason Bourne. "I did some shopping after I left Georgetown."
   The summer sun was low in the western sky as he slowed down the rental car and lowered the visor to keep from being blinded by the yellow globe of fire. Soon it would drop behind the Shenandoah mountains, twilight descending, prelude to darkness. And it was the darkness that Jason Bourne craved; it was his friend and ally, the blackness in which he moved swiftly, with sure feet and alert hands and arms that served as sensors against all the impediments of nature. The jungles had welcomed him in the past, knowing that although he was an intruder he respected them and used them as a part of him. He did not fear the jungles, he embraced them, for they protected him and allowed him passage to accomplish whatever his objective was; he was at one with the jungles-as he would have to be with the dense woods that flanked the estate of General Norman Swayne.
   The main house was set back no less than the distance of two football fields from the country road. A stockade fence separated the entrance on the right from the exit on the left, both with iron gates, fronting a deep drive that was basically an elongated U-turn. Immediately bordering each opening was a profusion of tall trees and shrubbery that was in itself a natural extension of the stockade fence both left and right. All that was missing were guardhouses at each point of entry and exit.
   His mind floated back to China, to Beijing and the wild bird sanctuary where he had trapped a killer posing as Jason Bourne. There had been a guardhouse then and a series of armed patrols in the dense forest ... and a madman, a butcher who controlled an army of killers, foremost among them the false Jason Bourne. He had penetrated that deadly sanctuary, crippled a small fleet of trucks and automobiles by plunging the blade of his knife into every tire, then proceeded to take out each patrol in the Jing Shan forest until he found the torch-lit clearing that held a swaggering maniac and his brigade of fanatics. Could he do it all today? wondered Bourne as he drove slowly past Swayne's property for the third time, his eyes absorbing everything he could see. Five years later, thirteen years after Paris? He tried to evaluate the reality. He was not the younger man that he had been in Paris, nor the more mature man in Hong Kong, Macao and Beijing; he was now fifty and he felt it, every year of it. He would not dwell on it. There was too much else to think about, and the twenty-eight acres of General Norman Swayne's property were not the forest primeval of the Jing Shan sanctuary.
   However, as he had done on the primitive outskirts of Beijing, he drove the car off the country road deep into a mass of tall grass and foliage. He climbed out and proceeded to cover the vehicle with bent and broken branches. The rapidly descending darkness would complete the camouflage, and with the darkness he would go to work. He had changed his clothes in the men's room at the gas station: black trousers below a black long-sleeved, skintight pullover; and black thick-soled sneakers with heavy tread. These were his working apparel. The items he spread on the ground were his equipment, the shopping he had done after leaving Georgetown. They included a long-bladed hunting knife whose scabbard he threaded into his belt; a dual-chambered CO2 pistol, encased in a nylon shoulder holster, that silently shot immobilizing darts into attacking animals, such as pit bulls; two flares designed to assist stranded drivers in broken-down cars to attract or deter other motorists; a pair of small Zeiss Ikon 8x10 binoculars attached to his trousers by a Velcro strip; a penlight; raw-hide laces; and finally, pocket-sized wire cutters in case there was a metal fence. Along with the automatic supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency, the gear was either lashed to his belt or concealed in his clothing. The darkness came and Jason Bourne walked into the woods.
   The white sheet of ocean spray burst up from the coral reef and appeared suspended, the dark blue waters of the Caribbean serving as a backdrop. It was that hour of early evening, a long sundown imminent, when Tranquility Isle was bathed in alternating hot tropical colors, pockets of shadows constantly changing with each imperceptible descent of the orange sun. The resort complex of Tranquility Inn had seemingly been cut out of three adjacent rock-strewn hills above an elongated beach sandwiched between huge natural jetties of coral. Two rows of balconied pink villas with bright red roofs of terra-cotta extended from each side of the resort's central hub, a large circular building of heavy stone and thick glass, all the structures overlooking the water, the villas connected by a white concrete path bordered by low-cut shrubbery and lined with ground lamps. Waiters in yellow guayabera jackets wheeled room-service tables along the path, delivering bottles and ice and canapés to Tranquility's guests, the majority of whom sat on their individual balconies savoring the end of the Caribbean day. And as the shadows became more prominent, other people unobtrusively appeared along the beach and on the long dock that extended out over the water. These were neither guests nor service employees; they were armed guards, each dressed in a dark brown tropical uniform and-again unobtrusively-with a MAC-10 machine pistol strapped to his belted waist. On the opposite side of each jacket and hooked to the cloth was a pair of Zeiss Ikon 8x10 binoculars continuously used to scan the darkness. The owner of Tranquility Inn was determined that it live up to its name.
   On the large circular balcony of the villa nearest the main building and the attached glass-enclosed dining room, an elderly infirm woman sat in a wheelchair sipping a glass of Château Carbonnieux '78 while drinking in the splendors of sundown. She absently touched the bangs of her imperfectly dyed red hair as she listened. She heard the voice of her man talking with the nurse inside, then the sound of his less than emphatic footsteps as he walked out to join her.
   "My God," she said in French. "I'm going to get pissed!"
   "Why not?" asked the Jackal's courier. "This is the place for it. I see everything through a haze of disbelief myself."
   "You still will not tell me why the monseigneur sent you here-us here?"
   "I told you, I'm merely a messenger."
   "And I don't believe you."
   "Believe. It's important for him but of no consequence for us. Enjoy, my lovely."
   "You always call me that when you won't explain."
   "Then you should learn from experience not to inquire, is it not so?"
   "It is not so, my dear. I'm dying-"
   "We'll hear no more of that!"
   "It's true nevertheless; you cannot keep it from me. I don't worry for myself, the pain will end, you see, but I worry about you. You, forever better than your circumstances, Michel– No, no, you are Jean Pierre, I must not forget that. ... Still, I must concern myself. This place, these extraordinary lodgings, this attention. I think you will pay a terrible price, my dear."
   "Why do you say that?"
   "It's all so grand. Too grand. Something's wrong."
   "You concern yourself too deeply."
   "No, you deceive yourself too easily. My brother, Claude, has always said you take too much from the monseigneur. One day the bill will be presented to you."
   "Your brother, Claude, is a sweet old man with feathers in his head. It's why the monseigneur gives him only the most insignificant assignments. You send him out for a paper in Montparnasse he ends up in Marseilles not knowing how he got there." The telephone inside the villa rang, interrupting the Jackal's man. He turned. "Our new friend will get it," he said.
   "She's a strange one," added the old woman. "I don't trust her."
   "She works for the monseigneur."
   "Really?"
   "I haven't had time to tell you. She will relay his instructions."
   The uniformed nurse, her light brown hair pulled severely back into a bun, appeared in the doorway. "Monsieur, it is Paris," she said, her wide gray eyes conveying an urgency missing in her low, understated voice.
   "Thank you." The Jackal's courier walked inside, following the nurse to the telephone. She picked it up and handed it to him. "This is Jean Pierre Fontaine."
   "Blessings upon you, child of God," said the voice several thousand miles away. "Is everything suitable?"
   "Beyond description," answered the old man. "It is ... so grand, so much more than we deserve."
   "You will earn it."
   "However I may serve you."
   "You'll serve me by following the orders given to you by the woman. Follow them precisely with no deviation whatsoever, is that understood?"
   "Certainly."
   "Blessings upon you." There was a click and the voice was no more.
   Fontaine turned to address the nurse, but she was not at his side. Instead, she was across the room, unlocking the drawer of a table. He walked over to her, his eyes drawn to the contents of the drawer. Side by side were a pair of surgical gloves, a pistol with a cylindrical silencer attached to the barrel, and a straight razor, the blade recessed.
   "These are your tools," said the woman, handing him the key, her flat, expressionless gray eyes boring into his own, "and the targets are in the last villa on this row. You are to familiarize yourself with the area by taking extended walks on the path, as old men do for circulatory purposes, and you are to kill them. You are to do this wearing the gloves and firing the gun into each skull. It must be the head. Then each throat must be slit-"
   "Mother of God, the children's?"
   "Those are the orders."
   "They're barbaric!"
   "Do you wish me to convey that judgment?"
   Fontaine looked over at the balcony door, at his woman in the wheelchair. "No, no, of course not."
   "I thought not. ... There is a final instruction. With whosesoever blood is most convenient, you are to write on the wall the following: 'Jason Bourne, brother of the Jackal.' "
   "Oh, my God. ... I'll be caught, of course."
   "That's up to you. Coordinate the executions with me and I'll swear a great warrior of France was in this villa at the time."
   "Time? ... What is the time? When is this to be done?"
   "Within the next thirty-six hours."
   "Then what?"
   "You may stay here until your woman dies."

9
   Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine was again astonished. Though he had no reservation, the front desk of Tranquility Inn treated him like a visiting celebrity, then only moments after he had secured a villa told him that he already had a villa and asked How was the flight from Paris? Confusion descended for several minutes as the owner of Tranquility Inn could not be reached for consultation; he was not at his residence, and if he was on the premises he could not be found. Ultimately hands were thrown up in frustration and the former judge from Boston was taken to his lodgings, a lovely miniature house overlooking the Caribbean. By accident, hardly by design, he had reached into the wrong pocket and given the manager behind the desk a fifty-dollar American bill for his courtesy. Prefontaine instantly became a man to be reckoned with; fingers snapped and palms hit bells rapidly. Nothing was too splendid for the bewildering stranger who had suddenly flown in on the seaplane from Montserrat. ... It was the name that had thrown everyone behind Tranquility's front desk into confusion. Could such a coincidence be possible? ... Still the Crown governor– Err on the safe side. Get the man a villa.
   Once settled, his casual clothes distributed in the closet and the bureau, the craziness continued. A chilled bottle of Château Carbonnieux '78 accompanied fresh-cut flowers, and a box of Belgian chocolates arrived, only to have a confused room-service waiter return to remove them, apologizing for the fact that they were for another villa down the line-or up the line-he thought, mon.
   The judge changed into Bermuda shorts, wincing at the sight of his spindly legs, and put on a subdued paisley sport shirt. White loafers and a white cloth cap completed his tropical outfit; it would be dark soon and he wanted a stroll. For several reasons.
   "I know who Jean Pierre Fontaine is," said John St. Jacques, reading the register behind the front desk, "he's the one the CG's office called me about, but who the hell is B. P. Prefontaine?"
   "An illustrious judge from the United States," declared the tall black assistant manager in a distinct British accent. "My uncle, the deputy director of immigration, phoned me from the airport roughly two hours ago. Unfortunately, I was upstairs when the confusion arose, but our people did the right thing."
   "A judge?" asked the owner of Tranquility Inn as the assistant manager touched St. Jacques's elbow, gesturing for him to move away from the desk and the clerks. Both men did so. "What did your uncle say?"
   "There must be total privvissy where our two distinguished guests are concerned."
   "Why wouldn't there be? What does that mean?"
   "My uncle was very discreet, but he did allow that he watched the honored judge go to the Inter-Island counter and purchase a ticket. He further permitted himself to say that he knew he had been right. The judge and the French war hero are related and wish to meet confidentially on matters of great import."
   "If that was the case, why didn't the honored judge have a reservation?"
   "There appear to be two possible explanations, sir. According to my uncle, they were originally to meet at the airport but the Crown governor's reception line precluded it."
   "What's the second possibility?"
   "An error may have been made in the judge's own offices in Boston, Massachusetts. According to my uncle, there was a brief discussion regarding the judge's law clerks, how they are prone to errors and if one had been made with his passport, he'd fly them all down to apologize."
   "Then judges are paid a lot more in the States than they are in Canada. He's damned lucky we had space."
   "It's the summer season, sir. We usually have available space during these months."
   "Don't remind me. ... All right, so we've got two illustrious relatives who want to meet privately but go about it in a very complicated way. Maybe you should call the judge and tell him what villa Fontaine is in. Or Prefontaine-whichever the hell it is.
   "I suggested that courtesy to my uncle, sir, and he was most adamant. He said we should do and say absolutely nothing. According to my uncle, all great men have secrets and he would not care to have his own brilliant deduction revealed except by the parties themselves."
   "Beg your pardon?"
   "If such a call were made to the judge, he would know the information could only come from my uncle, the deputy director of Montserrat's immigration."
   "Christ, do whatever you want, I've got other things on my mind. ... Incidentally, I've doubled the patrols on the road and the beach."
   "We'll be stretched thin, sir."
   "I've shifted a number off the paths. I know who's here, but I don't know who may want to get in here."
   "Do we expect trouble, sir?"
   John St. Jacques looked at the assistant manager. "Not now," he said. "I've been out checking every inch of the grounds and the beach. By the way, I'll be staying with my sister and her children in Villa Twenty."
   The hero of World War II's Resistance known as Jean Pierre Fontaine walked slowly up the concrete path toward the last villa overlooking the sea. It was similar to the others, with walls of pink stucco and a red tiled roof, but the surrounding lawn was larger, the bordering shrubbery taller and denser. It was a place for prime ministers and presidents, foreign secretaries and secretaries of state, men and women of international stature seeking the peace of pampered isolation.
   Fontaine reached the end of the path where there was a four-foot-high white stuccoed wall and beyond it the impenetrable overgrown slope of the hill leading down to the shoreline. The wall itself extended in both directions, curving around the hill below the villas' balconies, at once demarcation and protection. The entrance to Villa Twenty was a pink wrought-iron gate bolted into the wall. Beyond the gate the old man could see a small child running about the lawn in a bathing suit. In moments a woman appeared in the frame of the open front door.
   "Come on, Jamie!" she called out. "Time for dinner."
   "Has Alison eaten, Mommy?"
   "Fed and asleep, darling. She won't yell at her brother."
   "I like our house better. Why can't we go back to our house, Mommy?"
   "Because Uncle John wants us to stay here. ... The boats are here, Jamie. He can take you fishing and sailing just like he did last April during the spring vacation."
   "We stayed at our house then."
   "Yes, well, Daddy was with us-"
   "And we had lots of fun driving over in the truck!"
   "Dinner, Jamie. Come along now."
   Mother and child went into the house and Fontaine winced thinking about his orders from the Jackal, the bloody executions he was sworn to carry out. And then the child's words came back to him. Why can't we go back to our house, Mommy? ... We stayed at our house then. And the mother's answers: Because Uncle John wants us to stay here. ... Yes, well, Daddy was with us then.
   There might be any number of explanations for the brief exchange he had overheard, but Fontaine could sense warnings quicker than most men, for his life had been filled with them. He sensed one now, and for that reason an old man would take a number of walks late at night for "circulatory purposes."
   He turned from the wall and started down the concrete path so absorbed in thought that he nearly collided with a guest at least his own age wearing a foolish-looking little white cap and white shoes.
   "Excuse me," said the stranger, sidestepping out of Fontaine's way.
   "Pardon, monsieur!" exclaimed the embarrassed hero of France, unconsciously slipping into his native tongue. "Je regrette-that is to say, it is I who must be excused."
   "Oh?" At his words the stranger's eyes briefly widened, almost as if there had been recognition that was quickly hidden. "Not at all."
   "Pardon, we have met, monsieur?"
   "I don't believe so," replied the old man in the silly white cap. "But we've all heard the rumors. A great French hero is among the guests."
   "Foolishness. The accidents of war when we were all much younger. My name is Fontaine. Jean Pierre Fontaine."
   "Mine's ... Patrick. Brendan Patrick-"
   "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, monsieur." Both men shook hands. "This is a lovely place, is it not?"
   "Simply beautiful." Again the stranger seemed to be studying him, thought Fontaine, yet, oddly enough, avoiding any prolonged eye contact. "Well, I must be on my way," added the elderly guest in the brand-new white shoes. "Doctor's orders."
   "Moi aussi," said Jean Pierre, purposely speaking French, which evidently had an effect on the stranger. "Toujours le médecin à notre âge, n'est-ce pas?"
   "All too true," replied the old man with the bony legs, nodding and making the gesture of a wave as he turned and walked rapidly up the path.
   Fontaine stood motionless watching the receding figure, waiting, knowing it would happen. And then it did. The old man stopped and slowly turned around. From a distance their eyes locked; it was enough. Jean Pierre smiled, then proceeded down the concrete path toward his villa.
   It was another warning, he mused, and a far more deadly one. For three things were apparent: first, the elderly guest in the foolish white cap spoke French; second, he knew that "Jean Pierre Fontaine" was in reality someone else-sent to Montserrat by someone else; third ... he had the mark of the Jackal in his eyes. Mon Dieu, how like the monseigneur! Engineer the kill, make sure it is done, then remove all physical traces that could lead back to his methods of operation, in particular his private army of old men. No wonder the nurse had said that after his orders were carried out they could remain here in this paradise until his woman died, a date that was imprecise at best. The Jackal's generosity was not so grand as it appeared; his woman's death, as well as his own, had been scheduled.
   John St. Jacques picked up the phone in his office. "Yes?"
   "They have met, sir!" said the excited assistant manager at the front desk.
   "Who have met?"
   "The great man and his illustrious relative from Boston, Massachusetts. I would have called you at once, but there was a mix-up concerning a box of Belgian chocolates-"
   "What are you talking about?"
   "Several minutes ago, sir, I saw them through the windows. They were conferring on the path. My esteemed uncle, the deputy director, was right in all things!"
   "That's nice."
   "The Crown governor's office will be most pleased, and I'm certain we shall be commended, as will, of course, my brilliant uncle."
   "Good for all of us," said St. Jacques wearily. "Now we don't have to concern ourselves about them any longer, do we?"
   "Offhand I would say not, sir. ... Except that as we speak the honored judge is walking down the path in haste. I believe he's coming inside."
   "I don't think he'll bite you; he probably wants to thank you. Do whatever he says. There's a storm coming up from Basse-Terre and we'll need the CG's input if the phones go out."
   "I myself shall perform whatever service he requires, sir!"
   "Well, there are limits. Don't brush his teeth."
   Brendan Prefontaine hurried through the door of the circular glass-walled lobby. He had waited until the old Frenchman had turned into the first villa before reversing direction and heading straight for the main complex. As he had done so many times over the past thirty years, he was forced to think quickly on his feet-usually running feet-building plausible explanations that would support a number of obvious possibilities as well as others not so obvious. He had just committed an unavoidable yet stupid error, unavoidable because he was not prepared to give Tranquility Inn's desk a false name in case identification was required, and stupid because he had given a false name to the hero of France. ... Well, not stupid; the similarity of their surnames might have led to unwanted complications where the purpose of his trip to Montserrat was concerned, which was quite simply extortion-to learn what so frightened Randolph Gates that he would part with fifteen thousand dollars, and having learned it perhaps collect a great deal more. No, the stupidity was in not taking the precautionary step he was about to take. He approached the front desk and the tall, slender clerk behind it.
   "Good evening, sir," fairly yelled the inn's employee, causing the judge to look around, grateful that there were very few guests in the lobby. "However I may assist you, be assured of my perfection!"
   "I'd rather be assured of your keeping your voice down, young man."
   "I shall whisper," said the clerk inaudibly.
   "What did you say?"
   "How may I help you?" intoned the man, now sotto voce.
   "Let's just talk quietly, all right?"
   "Certainly. I am so very privileged."
   "You are?"
   "Of course."
   "Very well," said Prefontaine. "I have a favor to ask of you-"
   "Anything!"
   "Shhh!"
   "Naturally."
   "Like many men of advanced age I frequently forget things, you can understand that, can't you?"
   "A man of your wisdom I doubt forgets anything."
   "What? ... Never mind. I'm traveling incognito, you do know what I mean."
   "Most assuredly, sir."
   "I registered under my name, Prefontaine-"
   "You certainly did," interrupted the clerk. "I know."
   "It was a mistake. My office and those I've told to reach me expect to ask for a 'Mr. Patrick,' my middle name. It's harmless subterfuge to allow me some much needed rest."
   "I understand," said the clerk confidentially, leaning over the counter.
   "You do?"
   "Of course. If such an eminent person as yourself were known to be a guest here, you might find little rest. As another, you must have complete privvissy! Be assured, I understand."
   " 'Privvissy'? Oh, good Lord. ..."
   "I shall myself alter the directory, Judge."
   "Judge...? I said nothing about being a judge." Consternation was apparent on the man's embarrassed face. "A slip born of wishing to serve you, sir."
   "And of something else-someone else."
   "On my word, no one here other than the owner of Tranquility Inn is aware of the confidential nature of your visit, sir," whispered the clerk, again leaning over the counter. "All is total privvissy!"
   "Holy Mary, that asshole at the airport-"
   "My astute uncle," continued the clerk, overriding and not hearing Prefontaine's soft monotone, "made it completely clear that we were privileged to be dealing with illustrious men who required total confidentiality. You see, he called me in that spirit-"
   "All right, all right, young man, I understand now and appreciate everything you're doing. Just make sure that the name is changed to Patrick, and should anyone here inquire about me, he or she is to be given that name. Do we understand each other?"
   "With clairvoyance, honored Judge!"
   "I hope not."
   Four minutes later the harried assistant manager picked up the ringing telephone. "Front desk," he intoned, as if giving a benediction.
   "This is Monsieur Fontaine in Villa Number Eleven."
   "Yes, sir. The honor is mine ... ours ... everyone's!"
   "Merci. I wondered if you might help me. I met a charming American on the path perhaps a quarter of an hour ago, a man about my own age wearing a white walking cap. I thought I might ask him for an aperitif one day, but I'm not sure I heard his name correctly."
   He was being tested, thought the assistant manager. Great men not only had secrets but concerned themselves with those guarding them. "I would have to say from your description, sir, that you met the very charming Mr. Patrick."
   "Ah, yes, I believe that was the name. An Irish name, indeed, but he's American, is he not?"
   "A very learned American, sir, from Boston, Massachusetts. He's in Villa Fourteen, the third west of yours. Simply dial seven-one-four."
   "Yes, well, thank you so much. If you see Monsieur Patrick, I'd prefer you say nothing. As you know, my wife is not well and I must extend the invitation when it is comfortable for her."
   "I would never say anything, great sir, unless told to do so. Where you and the learned Mr. Patrick are concerned, we follow the Crown governor's confidential instructions to the letter."
   "You do? That's most commendable. ... Adieu."
   He had done it! thought the assistant manager, hanging up the phone. Great men understood subtleties, and he had been subtle in ways his brilliant uncle would appreciate. Not only with the instant offering of the Patrick name, but, more important, by using the word "learned" which conveyed that of a scholar-or a judge. And, finally, by stating that he would not say anything without the Crown governor's instructions. By the use of subtlety he had insinuated himself into the confidentiality of great men. It was a breathtaking experience, and he must call his uncle and share their combined triumph.
   Fontaine sat on the edge of the bed, the telephone in its cradle yet still in his hand, staring at his woman out on the balcony. She sat in her wheelchair, her profile to him, the glass of wine on the small table beside the chair, her head bent down in pain. ... Pain! The whole terrible world was filled with pain! And he had done his share inflicting it; he understood that and expected no quarter, but not for his woman. That was never part of the contract. His life, yes, of course, but not hers, not while she had breath in her frail body. Non, monseigneur. Je refuse! Ce nest pas le contrat!
   So the Jackal's army of very old men now extended to America-it was to be expected. And an old Irish American in a foolish white cap, a learned man who for one reason or another had embraced the cult of the terrorist, was to be their executioner. A man who had studied him and pretended to speak no French, who had the sign of the Jackal in his eyes. Where you and the learned Mr. Patrick are concerned, we follow the instructions of the Crown governor. The Crown governor who took his instructions from a master of death in Paris.
   A decade ago, after five productive years with the monseigneur, he had been given a telephone number in Argenteuil, six miles north of Paris, that he was never to use except in the most extreme emergency. He had used it only once before, but he would use it now. He studied the international codes, picked up the phone and dialed. After the better part of two minutes, a voice answered.
   "Le Coeur du Soldat," said a flat male voice, martial music in the background.
   "I must reach a blackbird," said Fontaine in French. "My identity is Paris Five."
   "If such a request is possible, where can such a bird reach you?"
   "In the Caribbean." Fontaine gave the area code, the telephone number and the extension to Villa Eleven. He hung up the phone and sat despondent on the edge of the bed. In his soul he knew that this might be his and his woman's last few hours on earth. If so, he and his woman could face their God and speak the truth. He had killed, no question about that, but he had never harmed or taken the life of a person who had not committed greater crimes against others-with a few minor exceptions that might be called innocent bystanders caught in the heat of fire or in an explosion. All life was pain, did not the Scriptures tell us that? ... On the other hand, what kind of God allowed such brutalities? Merde! Do not think about such things! They are beyond your understanding.
   The telephone rang and Fontaine grabbed it, pulling it to his ear. "This is Paris Five," he said.
   "Child of God, what can be so extreme that you would use a number you have called only once before in our relationship?"
   "Your generosity has been absolute, monseigneur, but I feel we must redefine our contract."
   "In what way?"
   "My life is yours to do with as you will, as mercifully as you will, but it does not include my woman."
   "What?"
   "A man is here, a learned man from the city of Boston who studies me with curious eyes, eyes that tell me he has other purposes in mind."
   "That arrogant fool flew down to Montserrat himself? He knows nothing!"
   "Obviously he does, and I beg you, I shall do as you order me to do, but let us go back to Paris ... I beg of you. Let her die in peace. I will ask no more of you."
   "You ask of me? I've given you my word!"
   "Then why is this learned man from America here following me with a blank face and inquisitive eyes, monseigneur?"
   The deep, hollow roll of a throated cough filled the silence, and then the Jackal spoke. "The great professor of law has transgressed, inserted himself where he should not be. He's a dead man."
   Edith Gates, wife of the celebrated attorney and professor of law, silently opened the door of the private study in their elegant town house on Louisburg Square. Her husband sat motion less in his heavy leather armchair staring at the crackling fire, a fire he insisted upon despite the warm Boston night outside and the central air conditioning inside.
   As she watched him, Mrs. Gates was once again struck by the painful realization that there were ... things ... about her husband she would never understand. Gaps in his life she could never fill, leaps in his thinking she could not comprehend. She only knew that there were times when he felt a terrible pain and would not share it, when by sharing it he would lessen the burden on himself. Thirty-three years ago a passably attractive young woman of average wealth had married an extremely tall, gangling, brilliant but impoverished law school graduate whose anxiety and eagerness to please had turned off the major firms in those days of the cool, restrained late fifties. The veneer of sophistication and the pursuit of security were valued over a smoldering, wandering first-rate mind of unsure direction, especially a mind inside a head of unkempt hair and a body dressed in clothes that were cheap imitations of J. Press and Brooks Brothers, which appeared even worse because his bank account precluded any additional expenses for alterations and few discount stores carried his size.
   The new Mrs. Gates, however, had several ideas that would improve the prospects of their life together. Among them was to lay aside an immediate law career-better none than with an inferior firm, or, God forbid, a private practice with the sort of clients he was bound to attract, namely, those who could not afford established attorneys. Better to use his natural endowments, which were his impressive height and a quick, sponge-like intelligence that, combined with his drive, disposed of heavy academic workloads with ease. Using her modest trust fund, Edith shaped the externals of her man, buying the correct clothes and hiring a theatrical voice coach who instructed his student in the ways of dramatic delivery and effective stage presence. The gangling graduate soon took on a Lincolnesque quality with subtle flashes of John Brown. Too, he was on his way to becoming a legal expert, remaining in the milieu of the university, piling one degree upon another while teaching at the graduate level until the sheer depth of his expertise in specific areas was incontestable. And he found himself sought after by the prominent firms that had rejected him earlier.
   The strategy took nearly ten years before concrete results appeared, and while the early returns were not earthshaking, still they represented progress. Law reviews, first minor and then major, began publishing his semi-controversial articles as much for their style as for their content, for the young associate professor had a seductive way with the written word, at once riveting and arcane, by turns flowery and incisive. But it was his opinions, latently emerging, that made segments of the financial community take notice. The mood of the nation was changing, the crust of the benevolent Great Society beginning to crack, the lesions initiated with code words coined by the Nixon boys, such as the Silent Majority and Bums-on-Welfare and the pejorative them. A meanness was rising out of the ground and spreading, and it was more than the perceptive, decent Ford could stop, weakened as he was by the wounds of Watergate; and too much as well for the brilliant Carter, too consumed by minutiae to exercise compassionate leadership. The phrase "... what you can do for your country" was out of fashion, replaced by "what I can do for me."
   Dr. Randolph Gates found a relentless wave on which to ride, a mellifluous voice with which to speak, and a growing acerbic vocabulary to match the dawning new era. In his now refined scholarly opinion-legally, economically and socially-bigger was better, and more far preferable to less. The laws that supported competition in the marketplace he attacked as stifling to the larger agenda of industrial growth from which would flow all manner of benefits for everyone-well, practically everyone. It was, after all, a Darwinian world and, like it or not, the fittest would always survive. The drums went bang and the cymbals clanged and the financial manipulators found a champion, a legal scholar who lent respectability to their righteous dreams of merger and consolidation; buy out, take over and sell off, all for the good of the many, of course.
   Randolph Gates was summoned, and he ran into their arms with alacrity, stunning one courtroom after another with his elocutionary gymnastics. He had made it, but Edith Gates was not sure what it all meant. She had envisioned a comfortable living, naturally, but not millions, not the private jets flying all over the world, from Palm Springs to the South of France. Nor was she comfortable when her husband's articles and lectures were used to support causes that struck her as unrelated or patently unfair; he waved her arguments aside, stating that the cases in point were legitimate intellectual parallels. Above everything, she had not shared a bed or a bedroom with her husband in over six years.
   She walked into the study, abruptly stopping as he gasped, swerving his head around, his eyes glazed and filled with alarm.
   "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."
   "You always knock. Why didn't you knock? You know how it is when I'm concentrating."
   "I said I'm sorry. Something's on my mind and I wasn't thinking."
   "That's a contradiction."
   "Thinking about knocking, I mean."
   "What's on your mind," asked the celebrated attorney as if he doubted his wife had one.
   "Please don't be clever with me."
   "What is it, Edith?"
   "Where were you last night?"
   Gates arched his brows in mock surprise. "My God, are you suspicious? I told you where I was. At the Ritz. In conference with someone I knew years ago, someone I did not care to have at my house. If, at your age, you want confirmation, call the Ritz."
   Edith Gates was silent for a moment; she simply looked at her husband. "My dear," she said, "I don't give a damn if you had an assignation with the most voluptuous whore in the Combat Zone. Somebody would probably have to give her a few drinks to restore her confidence."
   "Not bad, bitch."
   "In that department you're not exactly a stud, bastard."
   "Is there a point to this colloquy?"
   "I think so. About an hour ago, just before you came home from your office, a man was at the door. Denise was doing the silver, so I answered it. I must say he looked impressive; his clothes were terribly expensive and his car was a black Porsche-"
   "And?" broke in Gates, lurching forward in the chair, his eyes suddenly wide, rigid.
   "He said to tell you that le grand professeur owed him twenty thousand dollars and 'he' wasn't where he was supposed to be last night, which I assumed was the Ritz."
   "It wasn't. Something came up. ... Oh, Christ, he doesn't understand. What did you say?"
   "I didn't like his language or his attitude. I told him I hadn't the vaguest idea where you were. He knew I was lying, but there wasn't anything he could do."
   "Good. Lying's something he knows about."
   "I can't imagine that twenty thousand is such a problem for you-"
   "It's not the money, it's the method of payment."
   "For what?"
   "Nothing."
   "I believe that's what you call a contradiction, Randy."
   "Shut up!"
   The telephone rang. Gates lunged up from the chair and stared at it. He made no move to go to the desk; instead, he spoke in a guttural voice to his wife. "Whoever it is, you tell him I'm not here. ... I'm away, out of town-you don't know when I'll be back."
   Edith walked over to the phone. "It's your very private line," she said as she picked it up on the third ring. "The Gates residence," began Edith, a ploy she had used for years; her friends knew who it was, others did not matter to her any longer. "Yes. ... Yes? I'm sorry, he's away and we don't know when he'll return." Gates's wife looked briefly at the phone, then hung up. She turned to her husband. "That was the operator in Paris. ... It's strange. Someone was calling you, but when I said you weren't here, she didn't even ask where you could be reached. She simply got off the line-very abruptly."
   "Oh, my God!" cried Gates, visibly shaken. "Something happened ... something's gone wrong, someone lied!" With those enigmatic words the attorney whipped around, and raced across the room, fumbling in his trousers pocket. He reached a section of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves where the center of the chest-high shelf had been converted into a safe-like cupboard, a carved wooden door superimposed on the brown steel. In panic, as an afterthought stunned him further, he spun around and screamed at his wife. "Get out of here! Get out, get out, get out!"
   Edith Gates walked slowly to the study door, where she turned to her husband and spoke quietly. "It all goes back to Paris, doesn't it, Randy? Seven years ago in Paris. That's where something happened, isn't it? You came back a frightened man, a man with a pain you won't share."
   "Get out of here!" shrieked the vaunted professor of law, his eyes wild.
   Edith went out the door, closing it behind her but not releasing the knob, her hand twisted so the latch would not close. Moments later she opened it barely a few inches and watched her husband.
   The shock was beyond anything she could imagine. The man she had lived with for thirty-three years, the legal giant who neither smoked nor drank a drop of alcohol, was plunging a hypodermic needle into his forearm.

10
   Darkness had descended on Manassas, the countryside alive with nocturnal undercurrents, as Bourne crept through the woods bordering the "farm" of General Norman Swayne. Startled birds fluttered out of their black recesses; crows awoke in the trees and cawed their alarms, then, as if calmed by a foraging co-conspirator, kept silent.
   He reached it, wondering, if indeed it would be there. A fence-high, with thick crisscrossing links embedded in green plastic, a coiled-barbed-wire addition above slanting outward. Entry prohibited. Beijing. The Jing Shan Sanctuary. There had been things to conceal within that Oriental wildlife preserve, so it was protected by an all but impassable government barrier. But why would a desk-bound general on military pay erect such a barricade around a "farm" in Manassas, Virginia, an obstruction costing thousands of dollars? It was not designed to fence in livestock; it was, instead, built to keep out human life.
   As with the sanctuary in China, there would be no electric alarms threaded through the links, for the animals and the birds of the forest would set them off repeatedly. Nor would there be the unseen beams of trip lights for the same reason; instead, they would be on the flat ground nearer the house, and waist-high, if they existed. Bourne pulled the small wire cutters out of his rear pocket and started with the links at earth level.
   With each scissoring cut, he again understood the obvious, the inevitable, confirmed by his heavy breathing and the sweat that had formed on his hairline. No matter how hard he tried-not fanatically but at least assiduously-to keep himself in reasonably good shape, he was now fifty and his body knew it. Again, it was something to think about, not dwell upon, and with every inch of progress not think about at all. There were Marie and the children, his family; there was nothing he could not do as long as he willed it. David Webb was gone from his psyche, only the predator Jason Bourne remained.
   He was through! The parallel vertical links were cut, the ground wires as well. He gripped the fence and pulled the opening toward him, making each half foot of space an ordeal. He crawled inside this strangely fortified acreage and stood up, listening, his eyes darting in every direction, scanning the darkness-which was not complete darkness. He saw-filtered through the thick branches of the tall overlapping pines bordering the tamed grounds-flickerings of light coming from the large house. Slowly, he made his way toward what he knew was the circular drive. He reached the outer border of the asphalt and lay prone beneath a spreading pine, gathering his thoughts and his breath as he studied the scene in front of him. Suddenly there was a flash of light on his far right, deep inside the grounds at the end of a straight graveled road that branched off from the circular drive.
   A door had been opened; it belonged to what appeared to be a small house or a large cabin and it remained open. Two men and a woman came out and were talking ... no, they were not just talking, they were arguing heatedly. Bourne ripped the short powerful binoculars out of their Velcro recess and put them up to his eyes. Quickly he focused on the trio, whose voices grew in volume, the words indistinguishable but the anger apparent. As the blurred image sharpened, he studied the three people, knowing instantly that the medium-sized, medium-built, ramrod-straight protesting man on the left was the Pentagon's General Swayne, and the large-breasted woman with streaked dark hair his wife, but what struck him-and fascinated him-was the hulking overweight figure nearest the open door. He knew him! Jason could not remember from where or when, which was certainly not unusual, but his visceral reaction to the sight of the man was not usual. It was one of instant loathing and he did not know why, since no connection with anything in the past came to him. Only feelings of disgust and revulsion. Where were the images, the brief flashes of time or circumstance that so often illuminated his inner screen? They did not come; he only knew that the man he focused on in the binoculars was his enemy.
   Then that huge man did an extraordinary thing. He reached for Swayne's wife, throwing his large left arm protectively around her shoulders, his right hand accusingly jabbing the space between him and the general. Whatever he said-or yelled-caused Swayne to react with what seemed to be stoic resolve mixed with feigned indifference. He turned around, and in military fashion strode back across the lawn toward a rear entrance to the house. Bourne lost him in the darkness and swung back to the couple in the light of the door. The large obese man released the general's wife and spoke to her. She nodded, brushed her lips against his, and ran after her husband. The obvious consort walked back into the small house and slammed the door shut, removing the light.
   Jason reattached the binoculars to his trousers and tried to understand what he had observed. It had been like watching a silent movie minus the subtitles, the gestures far more real and without exaggerated theatricality. That there was in the confines of this fenced acreage a ménage à trois was obvious, but this could hardly explain the fence. There was another reason, a reason he had to learn.
   Further, instinct told him that whatever it was, was linked to the huge overweight man who had walked angrily back into the small house. He had to reach that house; he had to reach that man who had been a part of his forgotten past. He slowly got to his feet, and ducking from one pine to the next, he made his way to the end of the circular drive, and then continued down the tree-lined border of the narrow graveled road.
   He stopped, lurching to the ground at a sudden sound that was no part of the murmuring woods. Somewhere wheels were spinning, crushing stone and displacing it; he rolled over and over into the dark recesses of the low-hanging, wide-spreading branches of a pine tree, swinging his body around to locate the disturbance.
   Within seconds he saw something racing out of the shadows of the circular drive, rushing over the gravel of the extended road. It was a small odd-shaped vehicle, half three-wheeled motorbike, half miniature golf cart, the tires large and deeply treaded, capable of both high speed and balance. It was also, in its way, ominous, for, in addition to a high flexible antenna, thick curved Plexiglas shields shot up from all sides, bulletproof windows that protected the driver from gunfire while alerting by radio anyone inside the residences of an assault. General Norman Swayne's "farm" took on an even stranger ambience. ... Then, abruptly, it was macabre.
   A second three-wheeled cart swung out from the shadows behind the cabin-and it was a cabin with split logs on the exterior-and came to a stop only feet from the first vehicle on the graveled road. Both drivers' heads swung militarily toward the small house as if they were robots in a public gallery, and then the words shot out from an unseen speaker.
   "Secure the gates," said the amplified voice, a voice in command. "Release the dogs and resume your rounds."
   As if choreographed, the vehicles swung in unison, each in the opposite direction, the drivers gunning their engines as one, the strange-looking carts racing forward into the shadows. At the mention of dogs Bourne had automatically reached into his back pocket and removed the CO2 gun; he then crawled laterally, rapidly, through the underbrush to within feet of the extended fence. If the dogs were in a pack, he would have no choice but to scramble up the links and spring over the coiled barbed wire to the other side. His dual-chambered dart pistol could eliminate two animals, not more; there would be no time to reload. He crouched, waiting, ready to leap up on the fence, the sightlines beneath the lower branches relatively clear.
   Suddenly a black Doberman raced by on the graveled road, no hesitation in his pace, no scent picked up, the animal's only objective apparently to reach a given place. Then another dog appeared, this a long-haired shepherd. It slowed down, awkwardly yet instinctively, as if programmed to halt at a specific area; it stopped, an obscure moving silhouette up the road. Standing motionless, Bourne understood. These were trained male attack dogs, each with its own territory, which was constantly urinated upon, forever its own turf. It was a behavioral discipline favored by Oriental peasants and small landowners who knew too well the price of feeding the animals who guarded their minuscule fiefdoms of survival. Train a few, as few as possible, to protect their separated areas from thieves, and if alarms were raised the others would converge. Oriental. Vietnam. ... Medusa. It was coming back to him! Vague, obscure outlines-images. A young, powerful man in uniform, driving a Jeep, stepping out, and-through the mists of Jason's inner screen-yelling at what was left of an assault team that had returned from interdicting an ordnance route paralleling the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That same man, older, larger, had been in his binoculars only moments ago! And years ago that same man had promised supplies. Ammunition, mortars, grenades, radios. He had brought nothing! Only complaints from Command Saigon that "you fucking illegals fed us crap!" But they hadn't. Saigon had acted too late, reacted too late, and twenty-six men had been killed or captured for nothing.
   As if it were an hour ago, a minute ago, Bourne remembered. He had yanked his .45 out of his holster and, without warning, jabbed the barrel into the approaching noncom's forehead.
   "One more word and you're dead, Sergeant." The man had been a sergeant! "You bring us our requisitions by O-five-hundred tomorrow morning or I'll get to Saigon and personally blow you into the wall of whatever whorehouse you're frequenting. Do I make myself clear or do you care to save me a trip to publicity city? Frankly, in light of our losses, I'd rather waste you now."
   "You'll get what you need."
   "Très bien!" had yelled the oldest French member of Medusa, who years later would save his life in a wildlife sanctuary in Beijing. "Tu es formidable, mon fils!" How right he was. And how dead he was. D'Anjou, a man legends were written about. Jason's thoughts were abruptly shattered. The long-haired attack dog was suddenly circling in the road, its snarls growing louder, its nostrils picking up the human scent. Within seconds, as the animal found its directional bearings, a frenzy developed. The dog lunged through the foliage, its teeth bared, the snarls now the throated growls of a kill. Bourne sprang back into the fence, pulling the CO2 pistol out of its nylon shoulder holster with his right hand; his left arm crooked, extended, prepared for a vital counterassault that if not executed properly would cost him the night. The crazed animal leaped, a hurling mass of rage. Jason fired, first one cartridge and then the second, and as the darts were embedded, he whipped his left arm around the attack dog's head, yanking the skull counterclockwise, slamming his right knee up into the animal's body to ward off the lashing sharp-nailed paws. It was over in moments-moments of raging, panicked, finally disintegrating fury-without the howling sounds that might have carried across the lawn of the general's estate. The long-haired dog, its narcotized eyes wide, fell limp in Bourne's arms. He lowered it to the ground and once again waited, afraid to move until he knew that no converging inhuman alarms had been sent to the other animals.
   There were none; there was only the constant murmuring of the forest beyond the prohibiting fence. Jason replaced the CO2 pistol in his holster and crept forward, back to the graveled road, beads of sweat rolling down his face and into his eyes. He had been away too long. Years ago such a feat as silencing an attack dog would have rolled off him-un exercise ordinaire, as the legend d'Anjou would have said-but it was no longer ordinary. What permeated his being was fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. Where was the man that was? Still, Marie and the children were out there; that man had to be summoned. Summon him!
   Bourne stripped out the binoculars and raised them to his eyes again. The moonlight was sporadic, low-flying clouds intercepting the rays, but the yellow wash was sufficient. He focused on the shrubbery that fronted the stockade fence that bordered the road outside. Pacing back and forth on a bisecting dirt path like an angry, impatient panther was the black Doberman, stopping now and then to urinate and poke its long snout into the bushes. As he had been programmed to do, the animal roamed between the opposing closed iron gates of the enormous circular drive. At each halting checkpoint it snarled, spinning around several times as if both expecting and loathing the sharp electrical shock it would receive through its collar if it transgressed without cause. Again, the method of training went back to Vietnam; soldiers disciplined the attack dogs around ammunition and materiel depots with such remote-signaling devices. Jason focused the binoculars on the far side of the expansive front lawn. He zeroed in on a third animal, this a huge Weimaraner, gentle in appearance but lethal in attack. The hyperactive dog raced back and forth, aroused perhaps by squirrels or rabbits in the brush, but not by human scent; it did not raise a throated growl, the signal of assault.
   Jason tried to analyze what he observed, for that analysis would determine his moves. He had to assume that there was a fourth or a fifth, or even a sixth animal patrolling the perimeters of Swayne's grounds. But why this way? Why not a pack roaming at will and in unison, a far more frightening and inhibiting sight? The expense that concerned the Oriental farmer was no object. ... Then the explanation struck him; it was so basic it was obvious. He shifted the binoculars back and forth between the Weimaraner and the Doberman, the picture of the longhaired German shepherd still all too clear in his mind. Beyond the fact that these were trained attack dogs, they were also something else. They were the top of their breeds, groomed to a fare-thee-well-vicious animals posing as champion show dogs by day, violent predators at night. Of course. General Norman Swayne's "farm" was not unrecorded property, not concealed real estate, but very much out in the open and undoubtedly, jealously perhaps, visited by friends, neighbors and colleagues. During the daylight hours, guests could admire these docile champions in their well-appointed kennels without realizing what they really were. Norman Swayne, Pentagon Procurements and alumnus of Medusa, was merely a dog aficionado, attested to by the quality of his animals' bloodlines. He might very well charge stud fees, but there was nothing in the canon of military ethics that precluded the practice.
   A sham. If one such aspect of the general's "farm" was a sham, it had to follow that the estate itself was a sham, as false as the "inheritance" that made its purchase possible. Medusa.
   One of the two strange three-wheeled carts appeared far across the lawn, out of the shadows of the house and down the exit road of the circular drive. Bourne focused on it, not surprised to see the Weimaraner romp over and playfully race beside the vehicle, yapping and seeking approval from the driver. The driver. The drivers were the handlers! The familiar scent of their bodies was calming to the dogs, reassuring them. The observation formed the analysis and the analysis determined his next tactic. He had to move, at least more freely than he was moving now, about the general's grounds. To do so he had to be in the company of a handler. He had to take one of the roving patrols; he raced back in the cover of the pine trees to his point of penetration.
   The mechanized, bulletproof vehicle stopped on the narrow path at midpoint between the two front gates nearly obscured by the shrubbery; Jason adjusted his binoculars. The black Doberman was apparently a favored dog; the driver opened the right panel as the animal sprang up, placing his huge paws on the seat. The man chucked biscuits or pieces of meat into the wide, anticipating jaws, then reached over and massaged the dog's throat.
   Bourne knew instantly that he had only moments to put his uncertain strategy together. He had to stop the cart and force the driver outside but without alarming the man, without giving him any reason whatsoever to use his radio and call for help. The dog? Lying in the road? No, the driver might assume it had been shot from the other side of the fence and alert the house. What could he do? He looked around in the near-total darkness feeling the panic of indecision, his anxiety growing as his eyes swept the area. Then, again, the obvious struck him.
   The large expanse of close-cropped manicured lawn, the precisely cut shrubbery, the swept circular drive-neatness was the order of the general's turf. Jason could almost hear Swayne commanding his groundskeepers to "police the area!"
   Bourne glanced over at the cart by the Doberman; the driver was playfully pushing the dog away, about to close the shielded panel. Only seconds now! What? How?
   He saw the outlines of a tree limb on the ground; a rotted branch had fallen from the pine above him. He crossed quickly to it and crouched, yanking it out of the dirt and debris and dragged it toward the paved asphalt. To lay it across the drive might appear too obvious a trap, but partially on the road-an intrusion on the pervasive neatness-would be offensive to the eye, the task of removing it better done now than later in the event the general drove out and saw it upon his return. The men in Swayne's compound were either soldiers or ex-soldiers still under military authority; they would try to avoid reprimands, especially over the inconsequential. The odds were on Jason's side. He gripped the base of the limb, swung it around and pushed it roughly five feet into the drive. He heard the panel of the cart slam shut; the vehicle rolled forward, gathering speed as Bourne raced back into the darkness of the pine tree.
   The driver steered the vehicle around the dirt curve into the drive. As rapidly as he had accelerated, he slowed down, his single headlight beam picking up the new obstruction protruding on the road. He approached it cautiously, at minimum speed, as if he were unsure of what it was; then he realized what it was and rushed forward. Without hesitation, he opened his side door, the tall Plexiglas shield swinging forward as he stepped out on the drive and walked around the front of the cart.
   "Big Rex, you're one bad dog, buddy," said the driver in a half-loud, very Southern voice. "What'd you drag out of there, you dumb bastard? The brass-plated asshole would shave your coat for messing up his eestate! ... Rex? Rex, you come here, you fuckin' hound!" The man grabbed the limb and pulled it off the road under the pine tree into the shadows. "Rex, you hear me! You humpin' knotholes, you horny stud?"
   "Stay completely still and put your arms out in front of you," said Jason Bourne, walking into view.
   "Holy shit! Who are you?"
   "Someone who doesn't give a damn whether you live or die," replied the intruder calmly.
   "You got a gun! I can see it!"
   "So do you. Yours is in your holster. Mine's in my hand and it's pointed at your head."
   "The dog! Where the hell's the dawg?"
   "Indisposed."
   "What?"
   "He looks like a good dog. He could be anything a trainer wanted him to be. You don't blame the animal, you blame the human who taught it."
   "What are you talkin' about?"
   "I guess the bottom line is that I'd rather kill the man than the animal, do I make myself clear?"
   "Nothin's clear! I jest know this man don't want to get killed."
   "Then let's talk, shall we?"
   "I got words, but only one life, mister."
   "Lower your right arm and take out your gun-by the fingers, mister." The guard did so, holding the weapon by his thumb and forefinger. "Lob it toward me, please." The man obeyed. Bourne picked it up.
   "What the hell's this all about?" cried the guard, pleading.
   "I want information. I was sent here to get it."
   "I'll give you what I got if you let me get out of here. I don't want nothin' more to do with this place! I figured it was comin' someday, I told Barbie Jo, you ask her! I told her someday people'd be comin' around asking questions. But not this way, not your way! Not with guns aimed at our heads."
   "I assume Barbie Jo is your wife."
   "Sort of."
   "Then let's start with why 'people' would come out here asking questions. My superiors want to know. Don't worry, you won't be involved, nobody's interested in you. You're just a security guard."
   "That's all I am, mister!" interrupted the frightened man. "Then why did you tell Barbie Jo what you did? That people would someday come out here asking questions."
   "Hell, I'm not sure.... Jest so many crazy things, y'know?"
   "No, I don't know. Like what?"
   "Well, like the brass-plated screamer, the general. He's a big wheel, right? He's got Pentagon cars and drivers and even helicopters whenever he wants 'em, right? He owns this place, right?"
   "So?"
   "So that big mick of a sergeant-a lousy master sergeant-orders him around like he wasn't toilet-trained, y'know what I mean? And that big-titty wife of his he's got a thing goin' with the hulk and she don't give a damn who knows it. It's all crazy, y'see what I mean?"
   "I see a domestic mess, but I'm not sure it's anybody's business. Why would people come out here and ask questions?"
   "Why are you out here, man? You figured there was a meetin' tonight, didn't you?"
   "A meeting?"
   "Them fancy limousines with the chauffeurs and the big shots, right? Well, you picked the wrong night. The dogs are out and they're never let out when there's a meetin'."
   Bourne paused, then spoke as he approached the guard. "We'll continue this in the cart," he said with authority. "I'll crouch down and you'll do exactly what I tell you to do."
   "You promised me I could get out of here!"
   "You can, you will. Both you and the other fellow making the rounds. The gates over there, are they on an alarm?"
   "Not when the dogs are loose. If those hounds see something out on the road and get excited, they'd jump up and set it off."
   "Where's the alarm panel?"
   "There are two of 'em. One's in the sergeant's place, the other's in the front hall of the house. As long as the gates are closed, you can turn it on."
   "Come on, let's go."
   "Where are we goin'?"
   "I want to see every dog on the premises."
   Twenty-one minutes later, the remaining five attack dogs drugged and carried to their kennels, Bourne unlatched the entrance gate and let the two guards outside. He had given each three hundred dollars. "This will make up for any pay you lose," he said.
   "Hey, what about my car?" asked the second guard. "It ain't much but it gets me around. Me and Willie come out here in it."
   "Do you have the keys?"
   "Yeah, in my pocket. It's parked in the back by the kennels."
   "Get it tomorrow."
   "Why don't I get it now?"
   "You'd make too much noise driving out, and my superiors will be arriving any moment. It's best that they don't see you. Take my word for it."
   "Holy shit! What'd I tell you, Jim-Bob? Jest like I tole Barbie Jo. This place is weird, man!"
   "Three hundred bucks ain't weird, Willie. C'mon, we'll hitch. T'ain't late and some of the boys'll be on the road. ... Hey, mister, who's gonna take care of the hounds when they wake up? They got to be walked and fed before the morning shift, and they'll tear apart any stranger who gets near 'em."
   "What about Swayne's master sergeant? He can handle them, can't he?"
   "They don't like him much," offered the guard named Willie, "but they obey him. They're better with the general's wife, the horny bastards."
   "What about the general?" asked Bourne.
   "He pisses bright yeller at the sight of 'em," replied Jim-Bob.
   "Thanks for the information. Go on now, get down the road a piece before you start hitchhiking. My superiors are coming from the other direction."
   "You know," said the second guard, squinting in the moonlight at Jason, "this is the craziest fuckin' night I ever expect to see. You get in here dressed like some gawddamn terrorist, but you talk and act like a shit-kickin' army officer. You keep mentioning these 'soopeeriors' of yours; you drug the pups and pay us three hundred bucks to get out. I don't understand nothin!"
   "You're not supposed to. On the other hand, if I was really a terrorist, you'd probably be dead, wouldn't you?"
   "He's right, Jim-Bob. Let's get outta here!"
   "What the hell are we supposed to say?"
   "Tell anyone who asks you the truth. Describe what happened tonight. Also, you can add that the code name is Cobra."
   "My Gawd!" yelled Willie as both men fled into the road. Bourne secured the gate and walked back to the patrol cart certain in the knowledge that whatever happened during the next hours, an appendage of Medusa had been thrown into a state of further anxiety. Questions would be asked feverishly-questions for which there were no answers. Nothing. Enigma.
   He climbed into the cart, shifted gears and started for the cabin at the end of the graveled road that branched off from the immaculate circular drive.
   He stood by the window peering inside, his face at the edge of the glass. The huge, overweight master sergeant was sitting in a large leather armchair, his feet on an ottoman, watching television. From the sounds penetrating the window, specifically the rapid, high-pitched speech of an announcer, the general's aide was engrossed in a baseball game. Jason scanned the room as best he could; it was typically rustic, a profusion of browns and reds, from dark furniture to checkered curtains, comfortable and masculine, a man's cabin in the country. However, there were no weapons in sight, not even the accepted antique rifle over the fireplace, and no general-issue .45 automatic either on the sergeant's person or on the table beside the chair. The aide had no concerns for his immediate safety and why should he? The estate of General Norman Swayne was totally secure-fence, gates, patrols and disciplined roving attack dogs at all points of entry. Bourne stared through the glass at the strong jowled face of the master sergeant. What secrets did that large head hold? He would find out. Medusa's Delta One would find out if he had to carve that skull apart. Jason pushed himself away from the window and walked around the cabin to the front door. He knocked twice with the knuckles of his left hand; in his right was the untraceable automatic supplied by Alexander Conklin, the crown prince of dark operations.
   "It's open, Rachel!" yelled the rasping voice from within.
   Bourne twisted the knob and shoved the door back; it swung slowly on its hinges and made contact with the wall. He walked inside.
   "Jesus Christ!" roared the master sergeant, his heavy legs plunging off the ottoman as he wriggled his massive body out of the chair. "You! ... You're a goddamned ghost! You're dead!"
   "Try again," said Delta of Medusa. "The name's Flannagan, isn't it? That's what comes to mind."
   "You're dead!" repeated the general's aide, screaming, his eyes bulging in panic. "You bought it in Hong Kong! You were killed in Hong Kong ... four, five years ago!"
   "You kept tabs-"
   "We know ... I know!"
   "You've got connections in the right places, then."
   "You're Bourne!"
   "Obviously born again, you might say."
   "I don't believe this!"
   "Believe, Flannagan. It's the 'we' we're going to talk about. Snake Lady, to be precise."
   "You're the one-the one Swayne called 'Cobra'!"
   "It's a snake."
   "I don't get it-"
   "It's confusing."
   "You're one of us!"
   "I was. I was also cut out. I snaked back in, as it were."
   The sergeant frantically looked at the door, then the windows. "How'd you get in here? Where are the guards, the dogs? Jesus! Where are they?"
   "The dogs are asleep in the kennels, so I gave the guards the night off."
   "You gave...? The dogs are on the grounds!"
   "Not any longer. They were persuaded to rest."
   "The guards-the goddamned guards!"
   "They were persuaded to leave. What they think is happening here tonight is even more confusing."
   "What've you done-what are you doing?"
   "I thought I just mentioned it. We're going to talk, Sergeant Flannagan. I want to get caught up with some old comrades."
   The frightened man backed awkwardly away from the chair. "You're the maniac they called Delta before you turned and went in business for yourself!" he cried in a guttural whisper. "There was a picture, a photograph-you were laid out on a slab, bloodstains all over the sheet from the bullet wounds; your face was uncovered, your eyes wide open, holes still bleeding on your forehead and your throat. ... They asked me who you were and I said, 'He's Delta. Delta One from the illegals,' and they said, 'No, he's not, he's Jason Bourne, the killer, the assassin,' so I said, 'Then they're one and the same because that man is Delta-I knew him.' They thanked me and told me to go back and join the others."
   "Who were 'they'?"
   "Some people over at Langley. The one who did all the talking had a limp; he carried a cane."
   "And 'the others'-they told you to go back and join?"
   "About twenty-five or thirty of the old Saigon crowd."
   "Command Saigon?"
   "Yeah."
   "Men who worked with our crowd, the 'illegals'?"
   "Mostly, yeah."
   "When was this?"
   "For Christ's sake, I told you!" roared the panicked aide. "Four or five years ago! I saw the photograph-you were dead!"
   "Only a single photograph," interrupted Bourne quietly, staring at the master sergeant. "You have a very good memory."
   "You held a gun to my head. Thirty-three years, two wars and twelve combat tours, nobody ever did that to me-nobody but you. ... Yeah, I gotta good memory."
   "I think I understand."
   "I don't! I don't understand a goddamned thing! You were dead!"
   "You've said that. But I'm not, am I? Or maybe I am. Maybe this is the nightmare that's been visited upon you after twenty years of deceit."
   "What kind of crap is that? What the hell-"
   "Don't move!"
   "I'm not!"
   Suddenly, in the distance, there was a loud report. A gunshot! Jason spun around ... then instinct commanded him to keep turning! All around! The massive general's aide was lunging at him, his huge hands like battering rams grazing off Bourne's shoulders as Delta One viciously lashed up his right foot, catching the sergeant's kidney, embedding his shoe deep into the flesh while crashing the barrel of his automatic into the base of the man's neck. Flannagan lurched downward, splayed on the floor; Jason hammered his left foot into the sergeant's head, stunning him into silence.
   A silence that was broken by the continuous hysterical screams of a woman racing outside toward the open door of the cabin. Within seconds, General Norman Swayne's wife burst into the room, recoiling at the sight in front of her, gripping the back of the nearest chair, unable to contain her panic.
   "He's dead!" she shrieked, collapsing, swerving the chair to her side as she fell to the floor reaching for her lover. "He shot himself, Eddie! Oh, my God, he killed himself!"
   Jason Bourne rose from his crouched position and walked to the door of the strange cabin that held so many secrets. Calmly, watching his two prisoners, he closed it. The woman wept, gasping, trembling, but they were tears not of sorrow but of fear. The sergeant blinked his eyes and raised his huge head. If any emotion could be defined in his expression, it was an admixture of fury and bewilderment.

11
   "Don't touch anything," ordered Bourne as Flannagan and Rachel Swayne haltingly preceded him into the general's photograph-lined study. At the sight of the old soldier's corpse arched back in the chair behind the desk, the ugly gun still in his outstretched hand, and the horror beyond left by the blowing away of the back of his skull, the wife convulsed, falling to her knees as if she might vomit. The master sergeant grabbed her arm, holding her off the floor, his eyes dazed, fixed on the mutilated remains of General Norman Swayne.
   "Crazy son of a bitch," whispered Flannagan, his voice strained and barely audible. Then standing motionless, the muscles of his jaw pulsating, he roared. "You insane fuckin' son of a bitch! What did you do it for-why? What do we do now?"
   "You call the police, Sergeant," answered Jason.
   "What?" yelled the aide, spinning around.
   "No!" screamed Mrs. Swayne, lurching to her feet. "We can't do that!"
   "I don't think you've got a choice. You didn't kill him. You may have driven him to kill himself but you didn't kill him."
   "What the hell are you talking about?" asked Flannagan gruffly.
   "Better a simple if messy domestic tragedy than a far wider investigation, wouldn't you say? I gather it's no secret that you two have an arrangement that's-well, no secret."
   "He didn't give a shit about our, 'arrangement,' and that was no secret, either."
   "He encouraged us at every opportunity," added Rachel Swayne, hesitantly smoothing her skirt, oddly, swiftly regaining her composure. She spoke to Bourne but her eyes strayed to her lover. "He consistently threw us together, often for days at a time. ... Do we have to stay in here? My God, I was married to that man for twenty-six years! I'm sure you can understand ... this is horrible for me!"
   "We have things to discuss," said Bourne.
   "Not in here, if you please. The living room; it's across the hall. We'll talk there." Mrs. Swayne, suddenly under control, walked out of the study; the general's aide glanced over at the blood-drenched corpse, grimaced, and followed her.
   Jason watched them. "Stay in the hallway where I can see you and don't move!" he shouted, crossing to the desk, his eyes darting from one object to another, taking in the last items Norman Swayne saw before placing the automatic in his mouth. Something was wrong. On the right side of the wide green blotter was a Pentagon memorandum pad, Swayne's rank and name printed below the insignia of the United States Army. Next to the pad, to the left of the blotter's leather border, was a gold ballpoint pen, its sharp silver point protruding, as if recently used, the writer forgetting to twist it back into its recess. Bourne leaned over the desk within inches of the dead body, the acrid smell of the exploded shell and burnt flesh still pungent, and studied the memo pad. It was blank, but Jason carefully tore off the top pages, folded them, and put them into his trousers pocket. He stepped back still bothered. ... What was it? He looked around the room, and as his eyes roamed over the furniture Master Sergeant Flannagan appeared in the doorway.
   "What are you doing?" Flannagan asked suspiciously. "We're waiting for you."
   "Your friend may find it too difficult to stay in here, but I don't. I can't afford to, there's too much to learn."
   "I thought you said we shouldn't touch anything."
   "Looking isn't touching, Sergeant. Unless you remove something, then no one knows it's been touched because it isn't here." Bourne suddenly walked over to an ornate brass-topped coffee table, the sort so common in the bazaars of India and the Middle East. It was between two armchairs in front of the study's small fireplace; off center was a fluted glass ashtray partially filled with the remains of half-smoked cigarettes. Jason reached down and picked it up; he held it in his hand and turned to Flannagan. "For instance, Sergeant, this ashtray. I've touched it, my fingerprints are on it, but no one will know that because I'm taking it away."
   "What for?"
   "Because I smelled something-I mean I really smelled it, with my nose, nothing to do with instincts."
   "What the hell are you talking about?"
   "Cigarette smoke, that's what I'm talking about. It hangs around a lot longer than you might think. Ask someone who's given them up more times than he can remember."
   "So what?"
   "So let's have a talk with the general's wife. Let's all have a talk. Come on, Flannagan, we'll play show and tell."
   "That weapon in your pocket makes you pretty fuckin' brave, doesn't it?"
   "Move, Sergeant!"
   Rachel Swayne swung her head to her left, throwing back her long, dark streaked hair over her shoulder as she stiffened her posture in the chair. "That's offensive in the extreme," she pronounced with wide accusatory eyes, staring at Bourne.
   "It certainly is," agreed Jason, nodding. "It also happens to be true. There are five cigarette butts in this ashtray and each has lipstick on it." Bourne sat down across from her, putting the ashtray on the small table next to the chair. "You were there when he did it, when he put his gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Perhaps you didn't think he'd go through with it; maybe you thought it was just another one of his hysterical threats-whatever, you didn't raise a word to stop him. Why should you have? For you and Eddie it was a logical and reasonable solution."
   "Preposterous!"
   "You know, Mrs. Swayne, to put it bluntly, that's not a word you should use. You can't carry it off, any more than you're convincing when you say something's 'offensive in the extreme.' ... Neither expression is you, Rachel. You're imitating other people-probably rich, vacuous customers a young hairdresser heard repeating such phrases years ago in Honolulu."
   "How dare you...?"
   "Oh, come on, that's ridiculous, Rachel. Don't even try the 'How dare you' bit, it doesn't work at all. Are you, in your nasal twang, going to have my head chopped off by royal decree?"
   "Lay off her!" shouted Flannagan, standing beside Mrs. Swayne. "You got the iron but you don't have to do this! ... She's a good woman, a damn good woman, and she was shit on by all the crap artists in this town."
   "How could she be? She was the general's wife, the mistress of the manor, wasn't she? Isn't she?"
   "She was used-"
   "I was laughed at, always laughed at, Mr. Delta!" cried Rachel Swayne, gripping the arms of her chair. "When they weren't leering or drooling. How'd you like to be the special piece of meat passed out like a special dessert to very special people when the dinner and the drinks are over?"
   "I don't think I'd like it at all. I might even refuse."
   "I couldn't! He made me do it!"
   "Nobody can make anybody do anything like that."
   "Sure, they can, Mr. Delta," said the general's wife, leaning forward, her large breasts pressing the sheer fabric of her blouse, her long hair partially obscuring her aging but still sensual soft-featured face. "Try an uneducated grammar school dropout from the coal basins in West Virginia when the companies shut down the mines and nobody had no food-excuse me, any food. You take what you got and you run with it and that's what I did. I got laid from Aliquippa to Hawaii, but I got there and I learned a trade. That's where I met the Big Boy and I married him, but I didn't have no illusions from day one. 'Specially when he got back from 'Nam, y'know what I mean?"
   "I'm not sure I do, Rachel."
   "You don't have to explain nothin' kiddo!" roared Flannagan.
   "No, I wanna, Eddie! I'm sick of the whole shit, okay?"
   "You watch your tongue!"
   "The point is, I don't know nothin', Mr. Delta. But I can figure things, y'know what I mean?"
   "Stop it, Rachel!" cried the dead general's aide.
   "Fuck off, Eddie! You're not too bright either. This Mr. Delta could be our way out. ... Back to the islands, right?"
   "Absolutely right, Mrs. Swayne."
   "You know what this place is-?"
   "Shut up!" yelled Flannagan, awkwardly plodding forward, stopped by the sudden ear-shattering explosion of Bourne's gun, the bullet searing into the floor between the sergeant's legs.
   The woman screamed. When she stopped, Jason continued: "What is this place, Mrs. Swayne?"
   "Hold it," the master sergeant again interrupted, but his objection was not shouted now; instead, it was a plea, a strong man's plea. He looked at the general's wife and then back at Jason. "Listen, Bourne or Delta or whoever you are, Rachel's right. You could be our way out-there's nothing left for us over here-so what have you got to offer?"
   "For what?"
   "Say we tell you what we know about this place ... and I tell you where you can start looking for a lot more. How can you help us? How can we get out of here and back to the Pac Islands without being hassled, our names and faces all over the papers?"
   "That's a tall order, Sergeant."
   "Goddamn it, she didn't kill him-we didn't kill him, you said so yourself!"
   "Agreed, and I couldn't care less whether you did or not, whether you were responsible or not. I've got other priorities."
   "Like getting 'caught up with some old comrades' or whatever the hell it was?"
   "That's right, I'm owed."
   "I still can't figure you-"
   "You don't have to."
   "You were dead!" broke in the perplexed Flannagan, the words rushing out. "Delta One from the illegals was Bourne, and Bourne was dead and Langley proved it to us! But you're not dead-"
   "I was taken, Sergeant! That's all you have to know-that and the fact that I'm working alone. I've got a few debts I can call in, but I'm strictly solo. I need information and I need it quickly!"
   Flannagan shook his head in bewilderment. "Well ... maybe I can help you there," he said quietly, tentatively, "better than anyone else would. I was given a special assignment, so I had to learn things, things someone like me wouldn't normally be told."
   "That sounds like the opening notes of a con song, Sergeant. What was your special assignment?"
   "Nursemaid. Two years ago Norman began to fall apart. I controlled him, and if I couldn't I was given a number to call in New York."
   "Said number being part of the help you can give me."
   "That and a few license-plate ID's I wrote down just in case-"
   "In case," completed Bourne, "someone decided your nursemaid's services were no longer required."
   "Something like that. Those pricks never liked us-Norman didn't see it but I did."
   "Us? You and Rachel and Swayne?"
   "The uniform. They look down their rich civilian noses at us like we're necessary garbage, and they're right about the necessary. They needed Norman. With their eyes they spat on him, but they needed him."
   The soldier boys couldn't run with it. Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Medusa-the civilian inheritors.
   "When you say you wrote down the license-plate numbers, I assume that means you weren't part of the meetings that took place-take place-here on a fairly regular basis. That is, you didn't mingle with the guests; you weren't one of them."
   "Are you crazy?" screeched Rachel Swayne, in her own succinct way answering Jason's question. "Whenever there was a real meeting and not a lousy drunken dinner party, Norm told me to stay upstairs, or if I wanted to, go over to Eddie's and watch television. Eddie couldn't leave the cabin. We weren't good enough for his big fancy asshole friends! It's been that way for years. ... Like I said, he threw us together."
   "I'm beginning to understand-at least, I think I am. But you got the license numbers, Sergeant. How did you do that? I gather you were confined to quarters."
   "I didn't get 'em, my guards did. I called it a confidential security procedure. No one argued."
   "I see. You said Swayne began to fall apart a couple of years ago. How? In what way?"
   "Like tonight. Whenever something out of the ordinary happened, he'd freeze; he didn't want to make decisions. If it even smacked of Snake Lady, he wanted to bury his head in the sand until it went away."
   "What about tonight? I saw you two arguing ... it seemed to me the sergeant was giving the general his marching orders."
   "You're damn right I was. Norman was in a panic-over you, over the man they called Cobra who was bringing out this heavy business about Saigon twenty years ago. He wanted me to be with him when you got here, and I told him no way. I said I wasn't nuts and I'd have to be nuts to do that."
   "Why? Why would it be nuts for an aide to be with his superior officer?"
   "For the same reason noncoms aren't called into situation rooms where the stars and the stripers are figuring out strategy. We're on different levels; it isn't done."
   "Which is another way of saying there are limits to what you should know."
   "You got it."
   "But you were part of that Saigon twenty years ago, part of Snake Lady-hell, Sergeant, you were Medusa, you are Medusa."
   "Nickels and dimes' worth, Delta. I sweep up and they take care of me, but I'm only a sweeper in a uniform. When my time comes to turn in that uniform, I go quietly into a nice distant retirement with my mouth shut, or I go out in a body bag. It's all very clear. I'm expendable."
   Bourne watched the master sergeant closely as he spoke, noting Flannagan's brief glances at the general's wife, as if he expected to be applauded or, conversely, to be told with a look to shut up. Either the huge military aide was telling the truth or he was a very convincing actor. "Then it strikes me," said Jason finally, "that this is a logical time to move up your retirement. I can do that, Sergeant. You can fade quietly with your mouth shut and with whatever rewards you're given for sweeping up. A devoted general's aide with over thirty years' service opts for retirement when his friend and superior tragically takes his own life. No one will question you. ... That's my offer."
   Flannagan again looked at Rachel Swayne; she nodded sharply once, then stared at Bourne. "What's the guarantee that we can pack up our stuff and get out?" asked the woman.
   "Isn't there a little matter of Sergeant Flannagan's discharge and his army pension?"
   "I made Norman sign those papers eighteen months ago," broke in the aide. "I was posted permanently to his office at the Pentagon and billeted to his residence. I just have to fill in the date, sign my own name, and list a general delivery address, which Rachel and I already figured out."
   "That's all?"
   "What's left is maybe three or four phone calls. Norman's lawyer, who'll wrap up everything here; the kennels for the dogs; the Pentagon assigned-vehicle dispatcher-and a last call to New York. Then it's Dulles Airport."
   "You must have thought about this for a long time, for years-"
   "Nothing but, Mr. Delta," confirmed the general's wife, interrupting. "Like they say, we paid our dues."
   "But before I can sign those papers or make those calls," added Flannagan, "I have to know we can break clean-now."
   "Meaning no police, no newspapers, no involvement with tonight-you simply weren't here."
   "You said it's a tall order. How tall are the debts you can call in?"
   "You simply weren't here," repeated Bourne softly, slowly, looking at the fluted glass ashtray with the lipstick-stained cigarette butts on the table beside him. He pulled his eyes back to the general's aide. "You didn't touch anything in there; there's nothing to physically tie you in with his suicide. ... Are you really prepared to leave-say, in a couple of hours?"
   "Try thirty minutes, Mr. Delta," replied Rachel.
   "My God, you had a life here, both of you-"
   "We don't want anything from this life outside of what we've got," said Flannagan firmly.
   "The estate here is yours, Mrs. Swayne-"
   "Like hell it is. It's being turned over to some foundation, ask the lawyer. Whatever I get, if I get, he'll send on to me. I just want out-we want out."
   Jason looked back and forth at the strange and strangely drawn-together couple. "Then there's nothing to stop you."
   "How do we know that?" pressed Flannagan, stepping forward.
   "It'll take a measure of trust on your part, but, believe me, I can do it. On the other hand, look at the alternative. Say you stay here. No matter what you do with him, he won't show up in Arlington tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. Sooner or later someone's going to come looking for him. There'll be questions, searches, an investigation, and as sure as God made little Bobby Woodwards, the media will descend with its bellyful of speculations. In short order your 'arrangement' will be picked up-hell, even the guards talked about it-and the newspapers, the magazines and television will have a collective field day. ... Do you want that? Or would it all lead to that body bag you mentioned?"
   The master sergeant and his lady stared at each other. "He's right, Eddie," said the latter. "With him we got a chance, the other way we don't."
   "It sounds too easy," said Flannagan, his breath coming shorter as he glanced toward the door. "How are you going to handle everything?"
   "That's my business," answered Bourne. "Give me the telephone numbers, all of them, and then the only call you'll have to make is the one to New York, and if I were you, I'd make it from whatever Pac island you're on."
   "You're nuts! The minute the news breaks, I'm on Medusa's rug-so's Rachel! They're going to want to know what happened."
   "Tell them the truth, at least a variation of it, and I think you may even get a bonus."
   "You're a goddamned flake!"
   "I wasn't a flake in 'Nam, Sergeant. Nor was I in Hong Kong, and I'm certainly not now. ... You and Rachel came home, saw what had happened, packed up and left-because you didn't want any questions and the dead can't talk and trap themselves. Predate your papers by a day, mail them, and leave the rest to me."
   "I dunno-"
   "You don't have a choice, Sergeant!" shot back Jason, rising from the chair. "And I don't care to waste any more time! You want me to go, I'll go-figure it all out for yourselves." Bourne angrily started for the door.
   "No, Eddie, stop him! We gotta do it his way, we gotta take the chance! The other way we're dead and you know it."
   "All right, all right! ... Cool it, Delta. We'll do what you say.
   Jason stopped and turned. "Everything I say, Sergeant, down to the letter."
   "You got it."
   "First, you and I will go over to your place while Rachel goes upstairs and packs. You'll give me everything you've got-telephone and license numbers, every name you can remember, anything you can give me that I ask for. Agreed?"
   "Yeah."
   "Let's go. And Mrs. Swayne, I know that there are probably a lot of little things you'd like to take along, but-"
   "Forget it, Mr. Delta. Mementos I don't have. Whatever I really wanted was long since shipped out of this hell hole. It's all in storage ten thousand miles away."
   "My, you really were prepared, weren't you?"
   "Tell me something I don't know. You see, the time had to come, one way or the other, y'know what I mean?" Rachel walked rapidly past the two men and into the hall; she stopped and came back to Master Sergeant Flannagan, a smile on her lips, a glow in her eyes, as she placed her hand on his face. "Hey, Eddie," she said quietly. "It's really gonna happen. We're gonna live, Eddie. Y'know what I mean?"
   "Yeah, babe. I know."
   As they walked out into the darkness toward the cabin, Bourne spoke. "I meant what I said about not wasting time, Sergeant. Start talking. What were you going to tell me about Swayne's place here?"
   "Are you ready?"
   "What does that mean? Of course I'm ready." But he wasn't. He stopped suddenly on the grass at Flannagan's words.
   "For openers, it's a cemetery."

   Alex Conklin sat back in the desk chair, the phone in his hand, stunned, frowning, unable to summon a rational response to Jason's astonishing information. All he could say was "I don't believe it!"
   "Which part?"
   "I don't know. Everything, I guess ... the cemetery on down. But I have to believe it, don't I?"
   "You didn't want to believe London or Brussels, either, or a commander of the Sixth Fleet or the keeper of the covert keys in Langley. I'm just adding to the list. ... The point is, once you find out who they all are, we can move."
   "You'll have to start from the beginning again; my head's shredded. The telephone number in New York, the license plates-"
   "The body, Alex! Flannagan and the general's wife! They're on their way; that was the deal and you've got to cover it."
   "Just like that? Swayne kills himself and the two people on the premises who can answer questions, we say Ciao to them and let them get away? That's only slightly more lunatic than what you've told me!"
   "We don't have time for negotiating games-and besides, he can't answer any more questions. They were on different levels."
   "Oh, boy, that's really clear."
   "Do it. Let them go. We may need them both later."
   Conklin sighed, his indecision apparent. "Are you sure? It's very complicated."
   "Do it! For Christ's sake, Alex, I don't give a goddamn about complications or violations or all the manipulations you can dream up! I want Carlos! We're building a net and we can pull him in-I can pull him in!"
   "All right, all right. There's a doctor in Falls Church that we've used before in special operations. I'll get hold of him, he'll know what to do."
   "Good," said Bourne, his mind racing. "Now put me on tape. I'll give you everything Flannagan gave me. Hurry up, I've got a lot to do."
   "You're on tape, Delta One."
   Reading from the list he had written down in Flannagan's cabin, Jason spoke rapidly, enunciating clearly so that there would be no confusion on the tape. There were the names of seven frequent and acknowledged guests at the general's dinner parties, none guaranteed as to accuracy or spelling but with broad-brush descriptions; then came the license plates, all from the far more serious twice-monthly meetings. Next to last were the telephone numbers of Swayne's lawyer, all of the estate's guards, the dog kennels and the Pentagon extension for assigned vehicles; finally there was the unlisted telephone in New York, no name here, only a machine that took messages. "That's got to be a priority one, Alex."
   "We'll break it," said Conklin, inserting himself on the tape. "I'll call the kennels and talk Pentagonese-the general's being flown to a hush-factor post and we pay double for getting the animals out first thing in the morning. Open the gates, incidentally. ... The licenses are no problem and I'll have Casset run the names through the computers behind DeSole's back."
   "What about Swayne? We've got to keep the suicide quiet for a while."
   "How long?"
   "How the hell do I know?" replied Jason, exasperated. "Until we find out who they all are and I can reach them-or you can reach them-and together we can start the wave of panic rolling. That's when we plant the Carlos solution."
   "Words," said Conklin, his tone not flattering. "You could be talking about days, maybe a week or even longer."
   "Then that's what I'm talking about."
   "Then we'd better damn well bring in Peter Holland-"
   "No, not yet. We don't know what he'd do and I'm not giving him the chance to get in my way."
   "You've got to trust someone besides me, Jason. I can fool the doctor perhaps for twenty-four or forty-eight hours-perhaps-but I doubt much longer than that. He'll want higher authorization. And don't forget, I've got Casset breathing down my neck over DeSole-"
   "Give me two days, get me two days!"
   "While tracking down all this information and stalling Charlie, and lying through my teeth to Peter, telling them that we're making progress running down the Jackal's possible couriers at the Mayflower hotel-we think ... Of course, we're doing nothing of the sort because we're up to our credentials in some off-the-wall, twenty-year-old Saigon conspiracy involving who knows what, damned if we know, except that the who is terribly impressive. Without going into statuses-or is it statae-we're now told they have their own private cemetery on the grounds of the general officer in charge of Pentagon procurements, who just happened to blow his head off, a minor incident we're sitting on. ... Jesus, Delta, back up! The missiles are colliding!"
   Though he was standing in front of Swayne's desk, the general's corpse in the chair beside him, Bourne managed a tentative, slow smile. "That's what we're counting on, isn't it? It's a scenario that could have been written by our beloved Saint Alex himself."
   "I'm only along for the ride, I'm not steering-"
   "What about the doctor?" interrupted Jason. "You've been out of operation for almost five years. How do you know he's still in business?"
   "I run into him now and then; we're both museum mavens. A couple of months ago at the Corcoran Gallery he complained that he wasn't given much to do these days."
   "Change that tonight."
   "I'll try. What are you going to do?"
   "Delicately pull apart everything in this room."
   "Gloves?"
   "Surgical, of course."
   "Don't touch the body."
   "Only the pockets-very delicately. ... Swayne's wife is coming down the stairs. I'll call you back when they're gone. Get hold of that doctor!"
   Ivan Jax, M.D. by way of Yale Medical School, surgical training and residency at Massachusetts General, College of Surgeons by appointment, Jamaican by birth, and erstwhile "consultant" to the Central Intelligence Agency courtesy of a fellow black man with the improbable name of Cactus, drove through the gates of General Swayne's estate in Manassas, Virginia. There were times, thought Ivan, when he wished he had never met old Cactus and this was one of them, but tonight notwithstanding, he never regretted that Cactus had come into his life. Thanks to the old man's "magic papers," Jax had gotten his brother and sister out of Jamaica during the repressive Manley years when established professionals were all but prohibited from emigrating and certainly not with personal funds.
   Cactus, however, using complex mock-ups of government permits had sprung both young adults out of the country along with bank transfers honored in Lisbon. All the aged forger re quested were stolen blank copies of various official documents, including import/export bills of lading, the two people's passports, separate photographs and copies of several signatures belonging to certain men in positions of authority-easily obtainable through the hundreds of bureaucratic edicts published in the government-controlled press. Ivan's brother was currently a wealthy barrister in London and his sister a research fellow at Cambridge.
   Yes, he owed Cactus, thought Dr. Jax as he swung his station wagon around the curve to the front of the house, and when the old man had asked him to "consult" with a few "friends over in Langley" seven years ago, he had obliged. Some consultation! Still, there were further perks forthcoming in Ivan's silent association with the intelligence agency. When his island home threw out Manley, and Seaga came to power, among the first of the "appropriated" properties to be returned to their rightful owners were the Jax family's holdings in Montego Bay and Port Antonio. That had been Alex Conklin's doing, but without Cactus there would have been no Conklin, not in Ivan's circle of friends. ... But why did Alex have to call tonight? Tonight was his twelfth wedding anniversary, and he had sent the kids on an overnight with the neighbors' children so that he and his wife could be alone, alone with grilled Jamaic' ribs on the patio-prepared by the only one who knew how, namely, Chef Ivan-a lot of good dark Overton rum, and some highly erotic skinny-dipping in the pool. Damn Alex! Double damn the son-of-a-bitch bachelor who could only respond to the event of a wedding anniversary by saying, "What the hell? You made the year, so what's a day count? Get your jollies tomorrow, I need you tonight."
   So he had lied to his wife, the former head nurse at Mass. General. He told her that a patient's life was in the balance-it was, but it had already tipped the wrong way. She had replied that perhaps her next husband would be more considerate of her life, but her sad smile and her understanding eyes denied her words. She knew death. Hurry, my darling!
   Jax turned off the engine, grabbed his medical bag and got out of the car. He walked around the hood as the front door opened and a tall man in what appeared to be dark skintight clothing stood silhouetted in the frame. "I'm your doctor," said Ivan, walking up the steps. "Our mutual friend didn't give me your name, but I guess I'm not supposed to have it."
   "I guess not," agreed Bourne, extending a hand in a surgical glove as Jax approached.
   "And I guess we're both right," said Jax, shaking hands with the stranger. "The mitt you're wearing is pretty familiar to me."
   "Our mutual friend didn't tell me you were black."
   "Is that a problem for you?"
   "Good Christ, no. I like our friend even more. It probably never occurred to him to say anything."
   "I think we'll get along. Let's go, no-name."
   Bourne stood ten feet to the right of the desk as Jax swiftly, expertly tended to the corpse, mercifully wrapping the head in gauze. Without explaining, he had cut away sections of the general's clothing, examining those parts of the body beneath the fabric. Finally, he carefully rolled the hooded body off the chair and onto the floor. "Are you finished in here?" he asked, looking over at Jason.
   "I've swept it clean, Doctor, if that's what you mean."
   "It usually is. ... I want this room sealed. No one's to enter it after we leave until our mutual friend gives the word."
   "I certainly can't guarantee that," said Bourne.
   "Then he'll have to."
   "Why?"
   "Your general didn't commit suicide, no-name. He was murdered."

12
   "The woman," said Alex Conklin over the line. "From everything you told me it had to be Swayne's wife. Jesus!"
   "It doesn't change anything, but it looks that way," agreed Bourne halfheartedly. "She had reason enough to do it, God knows-still, if she did, she didn't tell Flannagan, and that doesn't make sense."
   "No, it doesn't. ... Conklin paused, then spoke quickly. "Let me talk to Ivan."
   "Ivan? Your doctor? His name is Ivan?"
   "So?"
   "Nothing. He's outside. ... 'packing the merchandise' was the way he put it."
   "In his wagon?"
   "That's right. We carried the body-"
   "What makes him so sure it wasn't suicide?" broke in Alex.
   "Swayne was drugged. He said he'd call you later and explain. He wants to get out of here and no one's to come into this room after we leave-after I leave-until you give the word for the police. He'll tell you that, too."
   "Christ, it must be a mess in there."
   "It's not pretty. What do you want me to do?"
   "Pull the curtains, if there are any; check the windows and, if possible, lock the door. If there's no way to lock it, look around for-"
   "I found a set of keys in Swayne's pocket," interrupted Jason. "I checked; one of them fits."
   "Good. When you leave, wipe the door down clean. Find some furniture polish or a dusting spray."
   "That's not going to keep out anyone who wants to get in."
   "No, but if someone does, we might pick up a print."
   "You're reaching-"
   "I certainly am," concurred the former intelligence officer. "I've also got to figure out a way to seal up the whole place without using anybody from Langley, and, not incidentally, keep the Pentagon at bay just in case someone among those twenty-odd thousand people wants to reach Swayne, and that includes his office and probably a couple of hundred buyers and sellers a day in procurements.... Christ, it's impossible!"
   "It's perfect," contradicted Bourne as Dr. Ivan Jax suddenly appeared in the doorway. "Our little game of destabilization will start right here on the 'farm.' Do you have Cactus's number?"
   "Not with me. I think it's probably in a shoebox at home."
   "Call Mo Panov, he's got it. Then reach Cactus and tell him to get to a pay phone and call me here."
   "What the hell have you got in mind? I hear that old man's name, I get nervous."
   "You told me I had to find someone else to trust besides you. I just did. Reach him, Alex." Jason hung up the telephone. "I'm sorry, Doctor ... or maybe under the circumstances I can use your name. Hello, Ivan."
   "Hello, no-name, which is the way I'd like to keep it on my end. Especially when I just heard you say another name."
   "Alex? ... No, of course it wasn't Alex, not our mutual friend." Bourne laughed quietly, knowingly, as he walked away from the desk. "It was Cactus, wasn't it?"
   "I just came in to ask you if you wanted me to close the gates," said Jax, bypassing the question.
   "Would you be offended if I told you that I didn't think of him until I saw you just now?"
   "Certain associations are fairly obvious. The gates, please?"
   "Do you owe Cactus as much as I do, Doctor?" Jason held his place, looking at the Jamaican.
   "I owe him so much that I could never think of compromising him in a situation like tonight. For God's sake, he's an old man, and no matter what deviant conclusions Langley wants to come up with, tonight was murder, a particularly brutal killing. No, I wouldn't involve him."
   "You're not me. You see, I have to. He'd never forgive me if I didn't."
   "You don't think much of yourself, do you?"
   "Please close the gates, Doctor. There's an alarm panel in the hallway I can activate when they're shut."
   Jax hesitated, as if unsure of what he wanted to say. "Listen," he began haltingly, "most sane people have reasons for saying things-doing things. My guess is you're sane. Call Alex if you need me-if old Cactus needs me." The doctor left, rushing out the door.
   Bourne turned and glanced around the room. Since Flannagan and Rachel Swayne had left nearly three hours ago, he had searched every foot of the general's study, as well as the dead soldier's separate bedroom on the second floor. He had placed the items he intended to take on the brass coffee table; he studied them now. There were three brown leather-bound covers, each equal in size, each holding inserted spiral-bound pages; they were a desk set. The first was an appointments calendar; the second, a personal telephone book in which the names and numbers were entered in ink; the last was an expense diary, barely touched. Along with these were eleven office messages of the telephone notepad variety, which Jason found in Swayne's pockets, a golf-club scorecard and several memoranda written at the Pentagon. Finally, there was the general's wallet containing a profusion of impressive credentials and very little money. Bourne would turn everything over to Alex and hope further leads would be found, but as far as he could determine, he had turned up nothing startling, nothing dramatically relevant to the modern Medusa. And that bothered him; there had to be something. This was the old soldier's home, his sanctum sanctorum inside that home-something! He knew it, he felt it, but he could not find it. So he started again, not foot by foot now; instead, inch by inch.
   Fourteen minutes later, as he was removing and turning over the photographs on the wall behind the desk, the wall to the right of the cushioned bay window that overlooked the lawn outside, he recalled Conklin's words about checking the windows and the curtains so that no one could enter or observe the scene inside.
   Christ, it must be a mess in there.
   It's not very pleasant.
   It wasn't. The panes of the central bay window frame were splattered with blood and membrane. And the ... the small brass latch? Not only was it free from its catch, the window itself was open-barely open, but nevertheless it was open. Bourne knelt on the cushioned seat and looked closely at the shiny brass fixture and the surrounding panes of glass. There were smudges among the rivulets of dried blood and tissue, coarse pressings on the stains that appeared to widen and thin them out into irregular shapes. Then below the sill he saw what kept the window from closing. The end of the left drape had been drawn out, a small piece of its tasseled fabric wedged beneath the lower window frame. Jason stepped back bewildered but not really surprised. This was what he had been looking for, the missing piece in the complex puzzle that was the death of Norman Swayne.
   Someone had climbed out that window after the shot that blew the general's skull apart. Someone who could not risk being seen going through the front hall or out, the front door. Someone who knew the house and the grounds ... and the dogs. A brutal killer from Medusa. Goddamn it!
   Who? Who had been here? Flannagan ... Swayne's wife! They would know, they had to know! Bourne lurched for the telephone on the desk; it began ringing before his hand touched it.
   "Alex?"
   "No, Br'er Rabbit, it's just an old friend, and I didn't realize we were so free with names."
   "We're not, we shouldn't be," said Jason rapidly, imposing a control on himself he could barely exercise. "Something happened a moment ago-I found something."
   "Calm down, boy. What can I do for you?"
   "I need you-out here where I am. Are you free?"
   "Well, let's see." Cactus chuckled as he spoke. "There are several board meetings I should rightfully attend, and the White House wants me for a power breakfast. ... When and where, Br'er Rabbit?"
   "Not alone, old friend. I want three or four others with you. Is that possible?"
   "I don't know. What did you have in mind?"
   "That fellow who drove me into town after I saw you. Are there any other like-minded citizens in the neighborhood?"
   "Most are doin' time, frankly, but I suppose I could dig around the refuse and pull up a few. What for?"
   "Guard duty. It's pretty simple really. You'll be on the phone and they'll be behind locked gates telling people that it's private property, that visitors aren't welcome. Especially a few honkies probably in limousines."
   "Now, that might appeal to the brothers."
   "Call me back and I'll give you directions." Bourne disconnected the line and immediately released the bar for a dial tone. He touched the numbers for Conklin's phone in Vienna.
   "Yes?" answered Alex.
   "The doctor was right and I let our Snake Lady executioner get away!"
   "Swayne's wife, you mean?"
   "No, but she and her fast-talking sergeant know who it was-they had to know who was here! Pick them up and hold them. They lied to me, so the deal's off. Whoever staged this gruesome 'suicide' had orders from high up in Medusa. I want him. He's our shortcut."
   "He's also beyond our reach."
   "What the hell are you talking about?"
   "Because the sergeant and his paramour are beyond our reach. They've disappeared."
   "That's crazy! If I know Saint Alex, and I do, you've had them covered since they left here."
   "Electronically, not physically. Remember, you insisted we keep Langley and Peter Holland away from Medusa."
   "What did you do?"
   "I sent out a full-toned alert to the central reservations computers of all international airline carriers. As of eight-twenty this evening our subjects had seats on Pan Am's ten o'clock flight to London-"
   "London?" broke in Jason. "They were heading the other way, to the Pacific. To Hawaii!"
   "That's probably where they're going because they never showed up at Pan Am. Who knows?"
   "Damn it, you should!"
   "How? Two United States citizens flying to Hawaii don't have to present passports to enter our fiftieth state. A driver's license or a voter's registration card will do. You told me that they've been considering this move for quite a while. How difficult would it be for a master sergeant with over thirty years' service to get a couple of driver's licenses using different names?"
   "But why?"
   "To throw off people looking for them-like us, or maybe a few Medusans, very high up."
   "Shit!"
   "Would you care to talk less in the vulgate, Professor? It was the 'vulgate,' wasn't it?"
   "Shut up, I've got to think."
   "Then think about the fact that we're up to our asses in the Arctic without a heater. It's time for Peter Holland. We need him. We need Langley."
   "No, not yet! You're forgetting something. Holland took an oath, and everything we know about him says he took it seriously. He may bend a rule now and then, but if he's faced with a Medusa, with hundreds of millions out of Geneva buying up whatever they're buying up in Europe, he may say, 'Halt, that's enough!' "
   "That's a risk we have to take. We need him, David."
   "Not David, goddamn you! I'm Bourne, Jason Bourne, your creation, and I'm owed! My family is owed! I won't have it any other way!"
   "And you'll kill me if I go against you."
   Silence. Neither spoke until Delta One of Saigon's Medusa broke the pause. "Yes, Alex, I'll kill you. Not because you tried to kill me in Paris, but for the same blind assumptions you made back then that led to your decision to come after me. Can you understand that?"
   "Yes," replied Conklin, his voice so low it was barely audible. "The arrogance of ignorance, it's your favorite Washington theme; you always make it sound so Oriental. But somewhere along the line you're going to have to be a little less arrogant yourself. There's only so much we can do alone."
   "On the other hand, there's so much that can be loused up if we're not alone. Look at the progress we've made. From zero to double digits in how long-forty-eight, seventy-two hours? Give me the two days, Alex, please. We're closing in on what this whole thing's about, what Medusa's all about. One breakthrough, and we present them with the perfect solution to get rid of me. The Jackal."
   "I'll do the best I can. Did Cactus reach you?"
   "Yes. He'll call me back and then come out here. I'll explain later."
   "I should tell you. He and our doctor are friends."
   "I know. Ivan told me. ... Alex, I want to get some things over to you-Swayne's telephone book, his wallet, appointments schedule, stuff like that. I'll wrap it all up and have one of Cactus's boys deliver the package to your place, to the security gate. Put everything into your high tech and see what you can find."
   "Cactus's boys? What are you doing?"
   "Taking an item off your agenda. I'm sealing this place up. Nobody'll be able to get in, but we'll see who tries."
   "That could be interesting. The kennel people are coming for the dogs around seven in the morning, incidentally, so don't make the seals too tight."
   "Which reminds me," interrupted Jason. "Be official again and call the guards on the other shifts. Their services are no longer required, but each will receive a month's pay by mail in lieu of notice."
   "Who the hell's going to pay it? There's no Langley, remember? No Peter Holland and I'm not independently wealthy."
   "I am. I'll phone my bank in Maine and have them Fed Ex you a cashier's check. Ask your friend Casset to pick it up at your apartment in the morning."
   "It's funny, isn't it?" said Conklin slowly, pensively. "I forgot about your money. I never think about it, actually. I guess I've blocked it out of my mind."
   "That's possible," added Bourne, a trace of lightness in his voice. "The official part of you may have visions of some bureaucrat coming up to Marie and saying, 'By the way, Mrs. Webb or Bourne or whoever you are, while you were in the employ of the Canadian government you made off with over five million dollars belonging to mine."
   "She was only brilliant, David-Jason. You were owed every dollar."
   "Don't press the point, Alex. She claimed at least twice the amount."
   "She was right. It's why everyone shut up. ... What are you going to do now?"
   "Wait for Cactus's call, then make one of my own."
   "Oh?"
   "To my wife."
   Marie sat on the balcony of her villa at Tranquility Inn staring out at the moonlit Caribbean, trying with every controlling instinct in her not to go mad with fear. Strangely, perhaps stupidly or even dangerously, it was not the fear of physical harm that consumed her. She had lived in both Europe and the Far East with the killing machine that was Jason Bourne; she knew what that stranger was capable of and it was brutally efficient. No, it wasn't Bourne, it was David-what Jason Bourne was doing to David Webb. She had to stop it! ... They could go away, far away, to some remote safe haven and start a new life with new names, create a world for themselves that Carlos could never penetrate. They had all the money they would ever need, they could do it! It was done all the time-hundreds, thousands of men and women and children whose lives were threatened were shielded by their governments; and if ever a government anywhere had reason to protect a man, that man was David Webb! ... Thoughts conceived in frenzy, reflected Marie, getting up from her chair and walking to the balcony's railing. It would never happen because David could never accept the solution. Where the Jackal was concerned, David Webb was ruled by Jason Bourne and Bourne was capable of destroying his host body. Oh, God, what's happening to us?
   The telephone rang. Marie stiffened, then rushed into the bedroom and picked it up. "Yes?"
   "Hello, Sis, it's Johnny."
   "Oh...»
   "Which means you haven't heard from David."
   "No, and I'm going a little crazy, Bro."
   "He'll call when he can, you know that."
   "But you're not calling to tell me that."
   "No, I'm just checking in. I'm stuck over here on the big island and it looks like I'll be here for a while. I'm at Government House with Henry, waiting for the CG to personally thank me for accommodating the Foreign Office."
   "I don't understand a word you're saying-"
   "Oh, sorry. Henry Sykes is the Crown governor's aide who asked me to take care of that old French war hero down the path from you. When the CG wants to thank you, you wait until you're thanked-when the phones go out, cowboys like me need Government House."
   "You've totally lost me, Johnny."
   "A storm out of Basse-Terre will hit in a few hours."
   "Out of whom?"
   "It's a what, but I should be back before then. Have the maid make up the couch for me."
   "John, it's not necessary for you to stay here. Good heavens, there are men with guns outside the hedge and down on the beach and God knows where else."
   "That's where they're going to stay. See you later, and hug the kids for me."
   "They're asleep," said Marie as her younger brother hung up. She looked at the phone as she replaced it, unconsciously saying out loud, "How little I know about you, little Bro ... our favorite, incorrigible Bro. And how much more does my husband know. Damn the both of you!"
   The telephone instantly rang again, stunning her. She grabbed it. "Hello?"
   "It's me."
   "Thank God!"
   "He's out of town, but everything's fine. I'm fine, and we're making headway."
   "You don't have to do this! We don't have to!"
   "Yes, we do," said Jason Bourne-no evidence of David Webb. "Just know I love you, he loves you-"
   "Stop it! It's happening-"
   "I'm sorry, I apologize-forgive me."
   "You're David!"
   "Of course I'm David. I was just joking-"
   "No, you weren't!"
   "I was talking to Alex, that's all. We argued, that's all!"
   "No, it isn't! I want you back, I want you here!"
   "Then I can't talk any longer. I love you." The line went dead and Marie St. Jacques Webb fell on the bed, her cries of futility muffled by the blankets.
   Alexander Conklin, his eyes red with strain, kept touching the letters and the numbers of his computer, his head turned to the open pages of the ledgers sent over by Bourne from General Norman Swayne's estate. Two shrill beeps suddenly intruded on the silence of the room. It was the inanimate machine's robotic signal that another dual reference had been calculated. He checked the entry. R.G. What did it mean? He back-taped and found nothing. He pressed forward, typing like a mindless automaton. Three beeps. He kept punching the irritatingly beige buttons, faster and faster. Four beeps ... five ... six. Back space-stop-forward. R.G. R.G. R.G. R.G. What the hell was R.G.?
   He cross-checked the data with the entries from the three different leather-bound notebooks. A common numeral sprang out in green letters on the screen. 617-202-0011. A telephone number. Conklin picked up the Langley phone, dialed the night watch, and told the CIA operator to trace it.
   "It's unlisted, sir. It's one of three numbers for the same residence in Boston, Massachusetts."
   "The name, please."
   "Gates, Randolph. The residence is-"
   "Never mind, Operator," interrupted Alex, knowing that he had been given the essential information. Randolph Gates, scholar, attorney for the privileged, advocate of the bigger the better, the biggest the best. How right that Gates should be involved with amassing hundreds of millions in Europe controlled by American interests. ... No, wait a moment. It wasn't right at all, it was wrong! It was completely illogical for the scholarly attorney to have any connection whatsoever to a highly questionable, indeed illegal, operation like Medusa. It did not make sense! One did not have to admire the celebrated legal giant to grant him just about the cleanest record for propriety in the Bar Association. He was a notorious stickler for the most minute points of law, often using those minutiae of his craft to obtain favorable decisions, but no one ever dared question his integrity. So unpopular were his legal and philosophical opinions to the brightest lawyers in the liberal establishment that he would have been gleefully discredited years ago at the slightest hint of impropriety.
   Yet here was his name appearing six times in the appointments calendar of a Medusan responsible for untold millions in the nation's defense expenditures. An unstable Medusan whose apparent suicide was in fact murder.
   Conklin looked at the screen, at the date of Swayne's last entry referring to R.G. It was on August second, barely a week ago. He picked up the leather-bound diary and turned to the day. He had been concentrating on names, not comments, unless the information struck him as relevant-to what he was not sure, but he was trusting to instinct. If he had known up front who R.G. was, the abbreviated handwritten notation beside the last entry would have caught his eye.
   RG will nt cnsider app't fr Maj. Crft. Need Crft on hs stff. Unlock. Paris-7 yrs ago. Two file out and bur'd.
   The Paris should have alerted him, thought Alex, but Swayne's notes throughout were filled with foreign or exotic names and places as if the general had been trying to impress whoever might read his personal observations. Also, Conklin regretfully considered, he was terribly tired; were it not for his computer he probably would not have centered in on Dr. Randolph Gates, legal Olympian.
   Paris-7 yrs ago. Two file out and bur'd.
   The first part was obvious, the second obscure but hardly concealed. The "Two" referred to the army's intelligence arm, G-2, and the "file" was just that, an event or a revelation uncovered by intelligence personnel in Paris-7 yrs ago and removed from the data banks. It was an amateur's attempt to use intelligence gibberish by misusing it. "Unlock" meant "key"-Jesus, Swayne was an idiot! Using his notepad, Alex wrote out the notation as he knew it to be:
   "Randolph Gates will not consider the appointment for a Major Craft or Croft or even Christopher, for the f could be an s. (But) we need Crft on his staff. The key is to use the information in our G-2 file about Gates in Paris seven years ago, said file removed and in our possession."
   If that was not the exact translation of Swayne's insertion, it was certainly close enough in substance to act upon, mused Conklin, turning his wrist and glancing at his watch. It was twenty past three in the morning, a time when even the most disciplined person would be shaken by the shrill bell of a telephone. Why not? David-Jason-was right. Every hour counted now. Alex picked up the phone and touched the numbers for Boston, Massachusetts.
   The telephone kept ringing and the bitch would not pick it up in her room! Then Gates looked at the lighted square and the blood drained from his head. It was his unlisted number, a number that was restricted to a very few. He thrashed wildly in the bed, his eyes wide; the strange call from Paris unnerved him the more he thought about it. It concerned Montserrat, he knew it! The information he had relayed was wrong. ... Prefontaine had lied to him and now Paris wanted an accounting! My God, they'd come after him, expose him! ... No, there was a way, a perfectly acceptable explanation, the truth. He would deliver the liars to Paris, to Paris's man here in Boston. He would trap the drunken Prefontaine and the sleazeball detective and force them to tell their lies to the one person who could absolve him. ... The phone! He had to answer it. He could not appear as if he had anything to hide! He reached out and grabbed the incessantly ringing instrument, pulling it to his ear. "Yes?"
   "Seven years ago, Counselor," began the quiet voice on the line. "Do I have to remind you that we've got the entire file. The Deuxième Bureau was extremely cooperative, far more than you have been."
   "For God's sake, I was lied to!" cried Gates, swinging his legs onto the floor in panic, his voice hoarse. "You can't believe I'd forward erroneous information. I'd have to be insane!"
   "We know you can be obstinate. We made a simple request-"
   "I complied, I swear I did! Good Christ, I paid fifteen thousand dollars to make certain everything was silent, absolutely untraceable-not that the money matters, of course-"
   "You paid ... ?" interrupted the quiet voice.
   "I can show you the bank withdrawals!"
   "For what?"
   "The information, naturally. I hired a former judge who has contacts-"
   "For information about Craft?"
   "What?"
   "Croft. ... Christopher."
   "Who?"
   "Our major, Counselor. The major."
   "If that's her code name, then yes, yes I did!"
   "A code name?"
   "The woman. The two children. They flew to the island of Montserrat. I swear that's what I was told!"
   There was a sudden click and the line went dead.

13
   His hand still on the telephone, Conklin broke out in a sweat. He released the phone and got up from his chair, limping away from the computer, looking back at it, down at it, as if it were some monstrous thing that had taken him into a forbidden land where nothing was as it appeared to be or should be. What had happened? How did Randolph Gates know anything about Montserrat, about Marie and the children? Why?
   Alex lowered himself into the armchair, his pulse racing, his thoughts clashing, no judgments emerging, only chaos. He gripped his right wrist with his left hand, his nails digging into his flesh. He had to get hold of himself, he had to think-he had to act! For David's wife and children.
   Associations. What were the conceivable associations? It was difficult enough to consider Gates as even unwittingly a part of Medusa, but impossible to think he was also connected to Carlos the Jackal. Impossible! ... Yet both appeared to be; the connections existed. Was Carlos himself part of Swayne's Medusa? Everything they knew about the Jackal would deny it emphatically. The assassin's strength was in his total disassociation with any structured entity, Jason Bourne had proved that thirteen years ago in Paris. No group of people could ever reach him; they could only send out a message and he would reach them. The single organization the international killer for hire permitted was his army of old men, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, lost misfits, criminals whose impoverished last days were made better by the assassin's largess, fealty unto death demanded and received. Where did-could-a man like Randolph Gates fit in?
   He didn't, concluded Alex as the outer limits of his imagination explored an old territory-Be skeptical of the apparent. The celebrated attorney was no more part of Carlos than he was of Medusa. He was the aberration, the flaw in the lens, an otherwise honorable man with a single weakness that had been uncovered by two disparate parties both with extraordinary resources. It was common knowledge that the Jackal could reach into the Sûreté and Interpol, and it took no clairvoyance to assume that Medusa could penetrate the army's G-2. It was the only possible explanation, for Gates had been too controversial, too powerful for too long to function as spectacularly as he did in the courts if his vulnerability was easily uncovered. No, it would take predators like the Jackal and the men of Medusa to bore deep enough to dredge up a secret so devastating as to turn Randolph Gates into a valuable pawn. Clearly, Carlos had gotten to him first.
   Conklin reflected on a truth that was forever reconfirmed: the world of global corrupters was in reality a small multilayered neighborhood, geometric in design, the irregular avenues of corruption leading into one another. How could it be otherwise? The residents of those lethal streets had services to offer, their clients were a specific breed-the desperate dregs of humanity. Extort, compromise, kill. The Jackal and the men of Medusa belonged to the same fraternal order. The Brotherhood of I Must Have Mine.
   Breakthrough. But it was a breakthrough Jason Bourne could handle-not David Webb-and Webb was still too much a part of Bourne. Especially since both parts of the same man were over a thousand miles away from Montserrat, the coordinates of death determined by Carlos. Montserrat? ... Johnny St. Jacques! The "little brother" who had proved himself in a backwater town in the northern regions of Canada, proved himself beyond the knowledge and the understanding of his family, especially his beloved sister. A man who could kill in anger-who had killed in fury-and who would kill again if the sister he adored and her children were under the Jackal's gun. David believed in him-Jason Bourne believed in him, which was far more to the point.
   Alex looked over at the telephone console, then quickly got out of the chair. He rushed to the desk, sat down, and touched the buttons that rewound the current tape, adjusting it to the spot where he wanted to pick it up. He went forward and back until he heard Gates's panicked voice.
   "... Good Christ, I paid fifteen thousand-"
   No, not there, thought Conklin. Later.
   "... I can show you the bank withdrawals-"
   Later!
   "... I hired a former judge who has contacts-"
   That's it. A judge.
   "... They flew to the island of Montserrat-"
   Alex opened the drawer where he kept a sheet of paper with each number he had called during the past two days on the assumption that he might need specific ones quickly. He saw the number in the Caribbean for Tranquility Inn, picked up the phone and dialed. After more rings than seemed necessary, a voice thick with sleep answered.
   "Tranquility-"
   "This is an emergency," broke in Conklin. "It's urgent that I speak with John St. Jacques. Quickly, please."
   "I'm sorry, sir, Mr. St. Jacques isn't here."
   "I've got to find him. I repeat, it's urgent. Where is he?"
   "On the big island-"
   "Montserrat?"
   "Yes-"
   "Where? ... My name's Conklin. He wants to talk to me-he has to talk to me. Please!"
   "A big wind came up from Basse-Terre and all flights are canceled until morning."
   "A what?"
   "A tropical depression-"
   "Oh, a storm."
   "We prefer a TD, sir. Mr. St. Jacques left a telephone number in Plymouth."
   "What's your name?" interrupted Alex suddenly. The clerk replied Pritchard and Conklin continued: "I'm going to ask you a very delicate question, Mr. Pritchard. It's important that you have the right answer, but if it's the wrong one you must do as I tell you. Mr. St. Jacques will confirm everything I say when I reach him; however, I can't waste time now. Do you understand me?"
   "What is your question?" asked the clerk with dignity. "I'm not a child, mon."
   "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
   "The question, Mr. Conklin. You're in a hurry."
   "Yes, of course. ... Mr. St. Jacques's sister and her children, are they in a safe place? Did Mr. St. Jacques take certain precautions?"
   "Such as armed guards about the villa and our usual men down on the beach?" said the clerk. "The answer is yes."
   "It's the right answer." Alex took a deep breath, his breathing still erratic. "Now, what's the number where I can reach Mr. St. Jacques?"
   The clerk gave it to Conklin, then added, "Many phones are out, sir. It might be well if you left a number here. The wind is still strong, but Mr. Saint Jay will no doubt come over with the first light if he can."
   "Certainly." Alex rattled off the number of the sterile telephone in the Vienna apartment and had the man in Montserrat repeat it. "That's it," said Conklin. "I'll try Plymouth now."
   "The spelling of your name, please. It is C-o-n-c-h-"
   "C-o-n-k," broke in Alex, snapping off the line and instantly dialing the number in the town of Plymouth, the capital of Montserrat. Once again a startled, drowsy voice answered; it was a barely coherent greeting. "Who's this?" asked Conklin impatiently.
   "Who the hell is this-are you?" replied an angry English man.
   "I'm trying to reach John St. Jacques. It's an emergency, and I was given this number by the desk at Tranquility Inn."
   "Good Lord, their phones are intact ... ?"
   "Obviously. Please, is John there?"
   "Yes, yes, of course. He's across the hall, I'll fetch him. Who shall I say-"
   " 'Alex' is good enough."
   "Just 'Alex'?"
   "Hurry, please!" Twenty seconds later the voice of John St. Jacques filled the line.
   "Conklin? Is that you?"
   "Listen to me. They know Marie and the children flew into Montserrat."
   "We heard that someone was asking questions over at the airport about a woman and two kids-"
   "Then that's why you moved them from the house to the inn."
   "That's right."
   "Who was asking questions?"
   "We don't know. It was done by telephone. ... I didn't want to leave them, even for a few hours, but I had a command appearance at Government House, and by the time that son-of-a-bitch Crown governor showed up, the storm hit."
   "I know. I talked to the desk and got this number."
   "That's one consolation; the phones are still working. In weather like this they usually don't, which is why we suck up to the Crown."
   "I understand you've got guards-"
   "You're goddamned right!" cried St. Jacques. "The trouble is I don't know what to look for except strangers in boats or on the beach, and if they don't stop and identify themselves satisfactorily, my orders are to shoot!"
   "I may be able to help-"
   "Go ahead!"
   "We got a break-don't ask how; it's from outer space but that doesn't matter, it's real. The man who traced Marie to Montserrat used a judge who had contacts, presumably in the islands."
   "A judge?" exploded the owner of Tranquility Inn. "My God, he's there! Christ, he's there! I'll kill that scum bastard-"
   "Stop it, Johnny! Get hold of yourself-who's there?"
   "A judge, and he insisted on using a different name! I didn't think anything about it-a couple of whack-a-doo old men with similar names-"
   "Old men? ... Slow down, Johnny, this is important. What two old men?"
   "The one you're talking about is from Boston-"
   "Yes!" confirmed Alex emphatically.
   "The other flew in from Paris-"
   "Paris? Jesus Christ! The old men of Paris!"
   "What ... ?"
   "The Jackal! Carlos has his old men in place!"
   "Now, you slow down, Alex," said St. Jacques, his breathing audible. "Now you be clearer."
   "There's no time, Johnny. Carlos has an army-his army-of old men who'll die for him, kill for him. There won't be any strangers on the beach, they're already there! Can you get back to the island?"
   "Somehow, yes! I'll call my people over there. Both those pieces of garbage will be thrown into the cisterns!"
   "Hurry, John!"
   ( ( (
   St. Jacques pressed down the small bar of the old telephone, released it, and heard the forever-pulsating dial tone. He spun the numbers for the inn on Tranquility Isle.
   "We are sorry," said the recorded voice. "Due to weather conditions the lines are down to the area you are calling. Government is working very hard to restore communications. Please try your call later. Have a good day."
   John St. Jacques slammed the phone down with such force that he broke it in two. "A boat!" he screamed. "Get me a drug boat!"
   "You're crazy," objected the aide to the Crown governor across the room. "In these swells?"
   "A sea streak, Henry!" said the devoted brother, reaching into his belt and slowly pulling out an automatic. "Or I'll be forced to do something I don't even want to think about, but I'll get a boat."
   "I simply can't believe this, chap."
   "Neither can I, Henry. ... I mean it, though."
   Jean Pierre Fontaine's nurse sat at her dressing table in front of the mirror and adjusted her tightly knotted blond hair under the black rain hat. She looked at her watch, recalling every word of the most unusual telephone call she had received several hours ago from Argenteuil in France, from the great man who made all things possible.
   "There is an American attorney who calls himself a judge staying near you."
   "I know of no such person, monseigneur."
   "He is there, nevertheless. Our hero rightfully complains of his presence, and a call to his home in the city of Boston confirms that it is he."
   "His presence here is not desirable, then?"
   "His presence there is abominable to me. He pretends to be in my debt-an enormous debt, an event that could destroy him-yet his actions tell me that he's ungrateful, that he intends to cancel his debt by betraying me, and by betraying me he betrays you."
   "He's dead."
   "Exactly. In the past he's been valuable to me, but the past is over. Find him, kill him. Make his death appear to be a tragic accident. ... Finally, since we will not speak until you are back on Martinique, are preparations complete for your last act on my behalf?"
   "They are, monseigneur. The two syringes were prepared by the surgeon at the hospital in Fort-de-France. He sends you his devotion."
   "He should. He's alive, as opposed to several dozen of his patients."
   "They know nothing of his other life in Martinique."
   "I'm aware of that. ... Administer the doses in forty-eight hours, when the chaos has begun to subside. Knowing that the hero was my invention-which I'll make sure they know-will put a chameleon to shame."
   "All will be done. You'll be here soon?"
   "In time for the shock waves. I'm leaving within the hour and will reach Antigua before it's noon in Montserrat tomorrow. All things being on schedule, I'll arrive in time to observe the exquisite anguish of Jason Bourne before I leave my signature, a bullet in his throat. The Americans will then know who has won. Adieu."
   The nurse, like an ecstatic suppliant, arched her neck in front of the mirror remembering the mystical words of her omniscient lord. It was nearly time, she thought, opening the dresser drawer and picking out a diamond-clustered wire garrote from among her necklaces, a gift from her mentor. It would be so simple. She had easily learned who the judge was and where he was staying-the old, painfully thin man three villas away. Everything now was precision, the "tragic accident" merely a prelude to the horror that would take place at Villa Twenty in less than an hour. For all of Tranquility's villas had kerosene lamps in the event of electricity loss and generator malfunction. A panicked old man with loose bowels, or in plain fear, living through such a storm as they were experiencing, might well attempt to light a lamp for additional comfort. How tragic that his upper body would fall into the flowing spilled kerosene, his neck scorched into black tissue, the neck that had been garroted: Do it, insisted the echoing voices of her imagination. You must obey. Without Carlos you would have been a headless corpse in Algeria.
   She would do it-she would do it now.
   The harsh downpour of the rain on the roof and the windows, and the whistling, roaring wind outside were interrupted by a blinding streak of lightning followed by a deafening crack of thunder.
   "Jean Pierre Fontaine" wept silently as he knelt beside the bed, his face inches from his woman's, his tears falling on the cold flesh of her arm. She was dead, and the note by her white rigid hand said it all: Maintenant nous deux sommes libres, mon amour.
   They were both free. She from the terrible pain, he from the price demanded by the monseigneur, a price he had not described to her, but one she knew was too horrible to pay. He had known for months that his woman had ready access to pills that would end her life quickly if her living became unendurable; he had frequently, at times frantically, searched for them but he had never found them. Now he knew why as he stared at the small tin of her favorite pastilles, the harmless droplets of licorice she had popped laughingly into her mouth for years.
   "Be thankful, mon cher, they might be caviar or those expensive drugs the rich indulge in!" They were not caviar but they were drugs, lethal drugs.
   Footsteps. The nurse! She had come out of her room, but she could not see his woman! Fontaine pushed himself up from the bed, wiped his eyes as best he could, and hurried to the door. He opened it, stunned by the sight of the woman; she stood directly in front of him, her arm raised, the knuckles of her hand arcing forward to knock.
   "Monsieur! ... You startled me."
   "I believe we startled each other." Jean Pierre slipped out, rapidly closing the door behind him. "Regine is finally asleep," he whispered, bringing his forefinger to his lips. "This terrible storm has kept her up most of the night."
   "But it is sent from heaven for us-for you-isn't it? There are times when I think the monseigneur can order such things."
   "Then I doubt they come from heaven. It's not the source of his influence."
   "To business," interrupted the nurse, not amused and walking away from the door. "Are you prepared?"
   "I will be in a matter of minutes," replied Fontaine, heading for the table where his killing equipment lay in the locked drawer. He reached into his pocket and took out the key. "Do you want to go over the procedure?" he asked, turning. "For my benefit, of course. At this age, details are often blurred."
   "Yes, I do, because there is a slight change."
   "Oh?" The old Frenchman arched his brows. "Also at my age sudden changes are not welcome."
   "It's only a question of timing, no more than a quarter of an hour, perhaps much less."
   "An eternity in this business," said Fontaine as yet another streak of lightning, separated only milliseconds from its crash of thunder, interrupted the pounding rain on the windows and the roof. "It's dangerous enough to be outside; that bolt was too near for safety."
   "If you believe that, think how the guards feel."
   "The 'slight change,' please? Also an explanation."
   "I'll give you no explanation except to say that it is an order from Argenteuil and you were responsible."
   "The judge?"
   "Draw your own conclusions."
   "Then he was not sent to-"
   "I'll say no more. The change is as follows. Rather than running up the path from here to the guards at Villa Twenty and demanding emergency assistance for your ill wife, I will say I was returning from the front desk where I was complaining about the telephone and saw a fire in Villa Fourteen, three away from ours. There'll no doubt be a great deal of confusion, what with the storm and everyone yelling and calling for help. That will be your signal. Use the confusion; get through and take out whoever remains at the woman's villa-make sure your silencer is secure. Then go inside and do the work you have sworn to do."
   "So I wait for the fire, for the guards and for you to return to Number Eleven."
   "Exactly. Stay on the porch with the door closed, of course."
   "Of course."
   "It may take me five minutes or perhaps even twenty, but stay there."
   "Naturally. ... May I ask, madame-or perhaps mademoiselle, although I see no evidence-"
   "What is it?"
   "It will take you five or twenty minutes to do what?"
   "You're a fool, old man. What must be done."
   "Of course."
   The nurse pulled her raincoat around her, looped the belt and walked to the front door of the villa. "Get your equipment together and be out here in three minutes," she commanded.
   "Of course." The door swung back with the wind as the woman opened it; she went outside into the torrential rain, pulling it shut behind her. Astonished and confused, the old Frenchman stood motionless, trying to make sense out of the inexplicable. Things were happening too fast for him, blurred in the agony of his woman's death. There was no time to mourn, no time to feel. ... Only think and think quickly. Revelation came hard upon revelation, leaving unanswered questions that had to be answered so the whole could be understood-so that Montserrat itself made sense!
   The nurse was more than a conduit for instructions from Argenteuil; the angel of mercy was herself an angel of death, a killer in her own right. So why was he sent thousands of miles to do the work another could do just as well and without the elaborate charade of his auspicious arrival? An old hero of France, indeed ... it was all so unnecessary. And speaking of age, there was another-another old man who was no killer at all. Perhaps, thought the false Jean Pierre Fontaine, he had made a terrible mistake. Perhaps, instead of coming to kill him, the other "old man" had come to warn him!
   "Mon Dieu," whispered the Frenchman. "The old men of Paris, the Jackal's army! Too many questions!" Fontaine walked rapidly to the nurse's bedroom door and opened it. With the swiftness developed over a lifetime of practice, impaired only slightly by his years, he began methodically to tear apart the woman's room-suitcase, closet, clothes, pillows, mattress, bureau, dressing table, writing desk ... the desk. A locked drawer in the desk-a locked drawer in the outer room. The "equipment." Nothing mattered now! His woman was gone and there were too many questions!
   A heavy lamp on the desk with a thick brass base-he picked it up, pulling out the cord, and smashed it into the drawer. Again and again and again until the wood splintered, shattering the recess that held the tiny vertical latch. He yanked the drawer open and stared in equal parts of horror and comprehension at what he saw.
   Next to each other in a cushioned plastic case were two hypodermic needles, their vials filled with an identical yellowish serum. He did not have to know the chemical compounds; there were too many beyond his knowledge that would be effective. Liquid death in the veins.
   Nor did he have to be told for whom they were intended. Côte à côte dans le lit. Two bodies beside each other in bed. He and his woman in a pact of final deliverance. How thoroughly had the monseigneur thought everything out! Himself dead! One dead old man from the Jackal's army of old men had outwitted all the security procedures, killing and mutilating those dearest to Carlos's ultimate enemy, Jason Bourne. And, naturally, behind that brilliant manipulation was the Jackal himself.
   Ce n'est pas le contrat! Myself, yes, but not my woman! You promised me!
   The nurse. The angel not of mercy but of death! The man known on Tranquility Isle as Jean Pierre Fontaine walked as fast as he could into the other room. To his equipment.
   The huge silver racing craft with its two enormous engines crashed through the swells as often above the waves as in them. On the short low bridge, John St. Jacques maneuvered the drug boat through the dangerous reefs he knew by summoned memory, aided by the powerful searchlight that lit up the turbulent waters, now twenty, now two hundred feet in front of the bow. He kept screaming into his radio, the microphone weaving in front of his drenched face, hoping against all logic to raise someone on Tranquility.
   He was within three miles of the island, a shrubbed volcanic intrusion on the water his landmark. Tranquility Isle was in kilometers much nearer Plymouth than to Blackburne Airport, and if one knew the shoals, not much longer to reach in a drug boat than in a seaplane, which had to bank east out of Blackburne to catch the prevailing west winds in order to land on the sea. Johnny was not sure why these calculations kept interfering with his concentration except that somehow they made him feel better, that he was doing the best he could– Damn it! Why was it always the best he could do rather than simply the best? He couldn't louse up anymore, not now, not tonight! Christ, he owed everything to Mare and David! Maybe even more to the crazy bastard who was his brother-in-law than to his own sister. David, wild-nuts David, a man he sometimes wondered if Marie ever knew existed!
   "You back off little Bro, I'll take care of this."
   "You can't, David, I did it. I killed them!"
   "I said 'Back off.' "
   'I asked for your help, not for you to be me!"
   "But you see I am you. I would have done the same thing and that makes me you in my eyes."
   "That's crazy!"
   "It's part of it. Someday I may teach you how to kill cleanly, in the dark In the meantime, listen to the lawyers."
   "Suppose they lose?"
   "I'll get you out. I'll get you away."
   "How?"
   "I'll kill again."
   "I can't believe you! A teacher, a scholar-I don't believe you, I don't want to believe you-you're my sister's husband."
   "Then don't believe me, Johnny. And forget everything I've said, and never tell your sister I said it."
   "It's that other person inside of you, isn't it?"
   "You're very dear to Marie."
   "That's no answer! Here, now, you're Bourne, aren't you? Jason Bourne!"
   "We'll never, ever, discuss this conversation, Johnny. Do you understand me?"
   No, he had never understood, thought St. Jacques, as the swirling winds and the cracks of lightning seemed to envelop the boat. Even when Marie and David appealed to his rapidly disintegrating ego by suggesting he could build a new life for himself in the islands. Seed money, they had said; build us a house and then see where you want to go from there. Within limits, we'll back you. Why would they do that? Why did they?
   It was not "they," it was he. Jason Bourne.
   Johnny St. Jacques understood the other morning when he picked up the phone by the pool and was told by an island pilot that someone had been asking questions at the airport about a woman and two children.
   Someday I may teach you how to kill cleanly, in the dark. Jason Bourne.
   Lights! He saw the beach lights of Tranquility. He was less than a mile from the shore!
   The rain pounded down against the old Frenchman, the blasts of wind throwing him off balance as he made his way up the path toward Villa Fourteen. He angled his head against the elements, squinting, wiping his face with his left hand, his right gripping the weapon, a gun lengthened by the extension of the pocked cylinder that was its silencer. He held the pistol behind him as he had done years ago racing along railroad tracks, sticks of dynamite in one hand, a German Luger in the other, prepared to drop both at the appearance of Nazi patrols.
   Whoever they were on the path above, they were no less than the Boche in his mind. All were Boche! He had been subservient to others long enough! His woman was gone; he would be his own man now, for there was nothing left but his own decisions, his own feelings, his own very private sense of what was right and what was wrong. ... And the Jackal was wrong! The apostle of Carlos could accept the killing of the woman; it was a debt he could rationalize, but not the children, and certainly not the mutilations. Those acts were against God, and he and his woman were about to face Him; there had to be certain ameliorating circumstances.
   Stop the angel of death! What could she be doing? What did the fire she talked about mean? ... Then he saw it-a huge burst of flame through the hedges of Villa Fourteen. In a window! The same window that had to be the bedroom of the luxurious pink cottage.
   Fontaine reached the flagstone walk that led to the front door as a bolt of lightning shook the ground under him. He fell to the earth, then struggled to his knees, crawling to the pink porch, its fluttering overhead light outlining the door. No amount of twisting or pulling or shoving could release the latch, so he angled his pistol up, squeezed the trigger twice and blew the lock apart. He pushed himself to his feet and went inside.
   Inside. The screams came from beyond the door of the master bedroom. The old Frenchman lurched toward it, his legs unsteady, his weapon wavering in his right hand. With what strength he had left, he kicked the door open and observed a scene that he knew had to come from hell.
   The nurse, with the old man's head in a metal leash, was forcing her victim down into a raging kerosene fire on the floor.
   "Arêtes!" screamed the man called Jean Pierre Fontaine. "Assez! Maintenant!"
   Through the rising, spreading flames, shots rang out and bodies fell.

   The lights of Tranquility's beach drew nearer as John St. Jacques kept yelling into the microphone: "It's me! It's Saint Jay coming in! Don't shoot!"
   But the sleek silver drug boat was greeted by the staccato gunfire of automatic weapons. St. Jacques dived to the deck and kept shouting. "I'm coming in-I'm beaching! Hold your goddamned fire!"
   "Is that you, mon?" came a panicked voice over the radio.
   "You want to get paid next week?"
   "Oh, yes, Mr. Saint Jay!" The loudspeakers on the beach erratically interrupted the winds and the thunder out of Basse-Terre. "Everyone down on the beach, stop shooting your guns! The bo-att is okay, mon! It is our boss mon, Mr. Saint Jay!"
   The drug boat shot out of the water and onto the dark sand, its engines screaming, the blades instantly embedded, the pointed hull cracking under the impact. St. Jacques leaped up from his defensive fetal position and vaulted over the gunwale. "Villa Twenty!" he roared, racing through the downpour across the beach to the stone steps that led to the path. "All you men, get there!"
   As he ran up the hard, rain-splattered staircase he suddenly gasped, his personal galaxy exploding into a thousand blinding stars of fire. Gunshots! One after another. On the east wing of the path! His legs cycled faster and faster, leaping over two and three steps at a time; he reached the path and like a man possessed raced up the path toward Villa Twenty, snapping his head to the right in furious confusion that only added to his panic. People-men and woman from his staff-were clustered around the doorway of Villa Fourteen! ... Who was there? ... My God, the judge!
   His lungs bursting, every muscle and tendon in his legs stretched to the breaking point, St. Jacques reached his sister's house. He crashed through the gate, and ran to the door, hurling his body against it and bursting through to the room inside. Eyes bulging first in horror, then in unmeasurable pain, he fell to his knees, screaming. On the white wall with terrible clarity were the words scrawled in dark red:
   Jason Bourne, brother of the Jackal.

14
   "Johnny! Johnny, stop it!" His sister's voice crashed into his ear as she cradled his head in one arm, the other extended above him, her free hand gripping his hair, nearly pulling it out of his skull. "Can you hear me? We're all right, Bro! The children are in another villa-we're fine!"
   The faces above him and around him came slowly into focus. Among them were the two old men, one from Boston, the other from Paris. "There they are!" screamed St. Jacques, lurching up but stopped by Marie, who fell across him. "I'll kill the bastards!"
   "No!" roared his sister, holding him, helped by a guard whose strong black hands gripped her brother's shoulders. "At this moment they're two of the best friends we have."
   "You don't know who they are!" cried St. Jacques, trying to free himself.
   "Yes, we do," broke in Marie, lowering her voice, her lips next to his ear. "Enough to know they can lead us to the Jackal-"
   "They work for the Jackal!"
   "One did," said the sister. "The other never heard of Carlos."
   "You don't understand!" whispered St. Jacques. "They're old men-'the old men of Paris,' the Jackal's army! Conklin reached me in Plymouth and explained ... they're killers!"
   "Again, one was but he's not anymore; he has nothing to kill for now. The other ... well, the other's a mistake, a stupid, outrageous mistake, but that's all he is, and thank God for it-for him."
   "It's all crazy ... !"
   "It's crazy," agreed Marie, nodding to the guard to help her brother up. "Come on, Johnny, we have things to talk about."
   The storm had blown away like a violent, unwanted intruder racing off into the night leaving behind the carnage of its rage. The early morning light broke over the eastern horizon, slowly revealing through the mists the blue-green out islands of Montserrat. The first boats cautiously, dolefully lumbered out to the favored fishing grounds, for the catch of the day meant one more day's survival. Marie, her brother and the two old men were around a table on the balcony of an unoccupied villa. Over coffee, they had been talking for the better part of an hour, treating each point of horror coldly, dissecting facts without feeling. The aged false hero of France had been assured that all proper arrangements would be made for his woman once phone service had been restored to the big island. If it was possible, he wanted her to be buried in the islands; she would understand. There was nothing left for her in France but the ignominy of a tawdry grave. If it was possible-
   "It's possible," said St. Jacques. "Because of you my sister's alive."
   "Because of me, young man, she might have died."
   "Would you have killed me?" asked Marie, studying the old Frenchman.
   "Certainly not after I saw what Carlos had planned for me and my woman. He had broken the contract, not I."
   "Before then."
   "When I had not yet seen the needles, understood what was all too obvious?"
   "Yes."
   "That's difficult to answer; a contract's a contract. Still, my woman was dead, and a part of her dying was because she sensed that a terrible thing had been demanded of me. To go through with that demand would deny that aspect of her death, don't you see? Yet again, even in her death, the monseigneur could not be totally denied-he had made possible years of relative happiness that would have been impossible without him. ... I simply don't know. I might have reasoned that I owed him your life-your death-but certainly not the children's ... and most certainly not the rest of it."
   "Rest of what?" asked St. Jacques.
   "It's best not to inquire."
   "I think you would have killed me," said Marie.
   "I tell you, I simply don't know. There was nothing personal. You were not a person to me, you were simply an event that was part of a business arrangement. ... Still, as I say, my woman was gone, and I'm an old man with limited time before me. Perhaps a look in your eyes or a plea for your children-who knows, I might have turned the pistol on myself. Then again, I might not have."
   "Jesus, you are a killer," said the brother quietly.
   "I am many things, monsieur. I don't ask forgiveness in this world; the other's another question. There were always circumstances-"
   "Gallic logic," remarked Brendan Patrick Pierre Prefontaine, former judge of the first circuit court in Boston, as he absently touched the raw tender skin of his neck below his singed white hair. "Thank heavens I never had to argue before les tribunals; neither side is ever actually wrong." The disbarred attorney chuckled. "You see before you a felon, justly tried and justly convicted. The only exculpatory aspect of my crimes is that I was caught and so many others were not and are not."
   "Perhaps we are related, after all, Monsieur le Juge."
   "By comparison, sir, my life is far closer to that of St. Thomas Aquinas-"
   "Blackmail," interrupted Marie.
   "No, actually the charge was malfeasance. Accepting remunerations for favorable decisions, that sort of thing. ... My God, we're hound's-tooth Boston! In New York City it's standard procedure: Leave your money with the bailiff, enough for everyone."
   "I'm not referring to Boston, I'm talking about why you're here. It's blackmail."
   "That's an oversimplification but essentially correct. As I told you, the man who paid me to find out where you'd gone also paid me an additional large sum of money to keep the information to myself. Under the circumstances, and because I have no pressing schedule of appointments, I thought it logical to pursue the inquiry. After all, if the little I knew brought so much, how much more might come to me if I learned a little more?"
   "You talk of Gallic logic, monsieur?" inserted the Frenchman.
   "It's simple interrogatory progression," replied the former judge, briefly glancing at Jean Pierre before turning back to Marie. "However, my dear, I may have glossed over an item that was extremely helpful in negotiations with my client. To put it plainly, your identity was being withheld and protected by the government. It was a strong point that frightened a very strong and influential man."
   "I want his name," said Marie.
   "Then I must have protection, too," rejoined Prefontaine.
   "You'll have it-"
   "And perhaps something more," continued the old disbarred attorney. "My client has no idea I came here, no knowledge of what's happened, all of which might fuel the fires of his largess if I described what I've experienced and observed. He'd be frightened out of his mind even to be associated with such events. Also, considering the fact that I was nearly killed by that Teutonic Amazon, I really deserve more."
   "Am I then to be rewarded for saving your life, monsieur?"
   "If I had anything of value-other than my legal expertise, which is yours-I'd happily share it. If I'm given anything, that still holds, Cousin."
   "Merci bien, Cousin."
   "D'accord, mon ami, but never let the Irish nuns hear us."
   "You don't look like a poor man, Judge," said John St. Jacques.
   "Then appearances are as deceiving as a long-forgotten title you so generously use. ... I should add that my wants are not extravagant, for there's no one but myself, and my creature comforts do not require luxury."
   "You've lost your woman, too, then?"
   "Not that it's any of your damn business, but my wife left me twenty-nine years ago, and my thirty-eight-year-old son, now a successful attorney on Wall Street, uses her name and when questioned by curious people tells them he never knew me. I haven't seen him since he was ten; it was not in his interest, you understand."
   "Quelle tristesse."
   "Quel bullshit, Cousin. That boy got his brains from me, not from the airhead who bore him. ... However, we stray. My French pureblood here has his own reasons-obviously based on betrayal-for cooperating with you. I have equally strong reasons for wanting to help you, too, but I must also consider myself. My aged new friend can go back and live what's left of his life in Paris, whereas I have no place to go but Boston and the few opportunities I've developed over the years to eke out a living. Therefore my deep-seated motives for wanting to help must themselves take a backseat. With what I know now I wouldn't last five minutes in the streets of Boston."
   "Breakthrough," said John St. Jacques, staring at Prefontaine. "I'm sorry, Judge, we don't need you."
   "What?" Marie sat forward in her chair. "Please, Bro, we need all the help we can get!"
   "Not in this case. We know who hired him."
   "We do?"
   "Conklin knows; he called it a 'breakthrough.' He told me that the man who traced you and the children here used a judge to find you." The brother nodded across the table at the Bostonian. "Him. It's why I smashed up a hundred-thousand-dollar boat to get back over here. Conklin knows who his client is."
   Prefontaine again glanced at the old Frenchman. "Now is the time for 'Quelle tristesse,' Sir Hero. I'm left with nothing. My persistence brought me only a sore throat and a burned scalp."
   "Not necessarily," interrupted Marie. "You're the attorney, so I shouldn't have to tell you. Corroboration is cooperation. We may want you to tell everything you know to certain people in Washington."
   "Corroboration can be obtained with a subpoena, my dear. Under oath in a courtroom, take my personal as well as my professional word for it."
   "We won't be going to court. Ever."
   "Oh? ... I see."
   "You couldn't possibly, Judge, not at this juncture. However, if you agree to help us you'll be well paid. ... A moment ago you said that you had strong reasons for wanting to help, reasons that had to be secondary to your own well-being-"
   "Are you by any chance a lawyer, my dear?"
   "No, an economist."
   "Holy Mary, that's worse. ... About my reasons?"
   "Do they concern your client, the man who hired you to trace us?"
   "They do. His august persona-as in Caesar Augustus-should be trashed. Slippery, intellectuality aside, he's a whore. He had promise once, more than I let him know, but he let it all go by the boards in a flamboyant quest for his own personal grail."
   "What the hell's he talking about, Mare?"
   "A man with a great deal of influence or power, neither of which he should have, I think. Our convicted felon here has come to grips with personal morality."
   "Is that an economist speaking?" asked Prefontaine, once more absently touching the blistered flesh of his neck. "An economist reflecting on her last inaccurate projection that caused in appropriate buying or selling on the stock exchanges, resulting in losses many could afford and many more could not?"
   "My voice was never that important, but I'll grant you it's the reflection of a great many others whose projections were, because they never risked, they only theorized. It's a safe position. ... Yours isn't, Judge. You may need the protection we can provide. What's your answer?"
   "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you're a cold one-"
   "I have to be," said Marie, her eyes leveled on the man from Boston. "I want you with us, but I won't beg, I'll simply leave you with nothing and you can go back to the streets in Boston."
   "Are you sure you're not a lawyer-or perhaps a lord high executioner?"
   "Take your choice. Just give me your answer."
   "Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on here!" yelled John St. Jacques.
   "Your sister," answered Prefontaine, his gentle gaze on Marie, "has enlisted a recruit. She's made the options clear, which every attorney understands, and the inevitability of her logic, in addition to her lovely face, crowned by that dark red hair, makes my decision also inevitable."
   "What ...?"
   "He's opted for our side, Johnny. Forget it."
   "What do we need him for?"
   "Without a courtroom a dozen different reasons, young man," answered the judge. "In certain situations, volunteerism is not the best road to take unless one is thoroughly protected beyond the courts."
   "Is that right, Sis?"
   "It's not wrong, Bro, but it's up to Jason-damn it-David!"
   "No, Mare," said John St. Jacques, his eyes boring into his sister's. "It's up to Jason."
   "Are these names I should be aware of?" asked Prefontaine. "The name 'Jason Bourne' was sprayed on the wall of your villa."
   "My instructions, Cousin," said the false yet not so false hero of France. "It was necessary."
   "I don't understand ... any more than I understood the other name, the 'Jackal,' or 'Carlos,' which you both rather brutally questioned me about when I wasn't sure whether I was dead or alive. I thought the 'Jackal' was fiction."
   The old man called Jean Pierre Fontaine looked at Marie; she nodded. "Carlos the Jackal is a legend, but he is not fiction. He's a professional killer now in his sixties, rumored to be ill, but still possessed with a terrible hatred. He's a man of many faces, many sides, some loved by those who have reasons to love him, others detested by those who consider him the essence of evil-and depending on the view, all have their reasons for being correct. I am an example of one who has experienced both viewpoints, but then my world is hardly yours, as you rightly suggested, St. Thomas of Aquinas."
   "Merci bien."
   "But the hatred that obsesses Carlos grows like a cancer in his aging brain. One man drew him out; one man tricked him, usurped his kills, taking credit for the Jackal's work, kill after kill, driving Carlos mad when he was trying to correct the record, trying to maintain his supremacy as the ultimate assassin. That same man was responsible for the death of his lover-but one far more than a lover, the woman who was his keel, his beloved since childhood in Venezuela, his colleague in all things. That single man, one of hundreds, perhaps thousands sent out by governments everywhere, was the only one who ever saw his face-as the Jackal. The man who did all this was a product of American intelligence, a strange man who lived a deadly lie every day of his life for three years. And Carlos will not rest until that man is punished ... and killed. The man is Jason Bourne."
   Squinting, stunned by the Frenchman's story, Prefontaine leaned forward over the table. "Who is Jason Bourne?" he asked.
   "My husband, David Webb," replied Marie.
   "Oh, my God," whispered the judge. "May I have a drink, please?"
   John St. Jacques called out. "Ronald!"
   "Yes, boss-mon!" cried from within the guard whose strong hands had held his employer's shoulders an hour ago in Villa Twenty.
   "Bring us some whisky and brandy, please. The bar should be stocked."
   "Comin', sir."
   The orange sun in the east suddenly took fire, its rays penetrating what was left of the sea mists of dawn. The silence around the table was broken by the soft, heavily accented words of the old Frenchman. "I am not used to such service," he said, looking aimlessly beyond the railing of the balcony at the progressively bright waters of the Caribbean. "When something is asked for, I always think the task should be mine."
   "Not anymore," said Marie quietly, then after a beat, adding, "... Jean Pierre."
   "I suppose one could live with that name. ..."
   "Why not here?"
   "Qu'est-ce que vous dites, madame?"
   "Think about it. Paris might not be any less dangerous for you than the streets of Boston for our judge."
   The judge in question was lost in his own aimless reverie as several bottles, glasses and a bucket of ice were brought to the table. With no hesitation, Prefontaine reached out and poured himself an extravagant drink from the bottle nearest him. "I must ask a question or two," he said emphatically. "Is that proper?"
   "Go ahead," replied Marie. "I'm not sure I can or will answer you, but try me."
   "The gunshots, the spray paint on the wall-my 'cousin' here says the red paint and the words were by his instructions-"
   "They were, mon ami. The loud firing of the guns as well."
   "Why?"
   "Everything must be as it is expected to be. The gunshots were an additional element to draw attention to the event that was to take place."
   "Why?"
   "A lesson we learned in the Not-not that I was ever a 'Jean Pierre Fontaine,' but I did my small part. It was called an accentuation, a positive statement making clear that the underground was responsible for the action. Everyone in the vicinity knew it."
   "Why here?"
   "The Jackal's nurse is dead. There is no one to tell him that his instructions have been carried out."
   "Gallic logic. Incomprehensible."
   "French common sense. Incontestable."
   "Why?"
   "Carlos will be here by noon tomorrow."
   "Oh, dear God!"
   The telephone rang inside the villa. John St. Jacques lurched out of his chair only to be blocked by his sister, who threw her arm in front of his face and then raced through the doors into the living room. She picked up the phone.
   "David?"
   "It's Alex," said the breathless voice on the line. "Christ, I've had this goddamned thing on redial for three hours! Are you all right?"
   "We're alive but we weren't supposed to be."
   "The old men! The old men of Paris! Did Johnny-"
   "Johnny did, but they're on our side!"
   "Who?"
   "The old men-"
   "You're not making one damn bit of sense!"
   "Yes, I am! We're in control here. What about David?"
   "I don't know! The telephone lines were cut. Everything's a mess! I've got the police heading out there-"
   "Screw the police, Alex!" screamed Marie. "Get the army, the marines, the lousy CIA! We're owed!"
   "Jason won't allow that. I can't turn on him now."
   "Well, try this for size. The Jackal will be here tomorrow!"
   "Oh, Jesus! I have to get him a jet somewhere."
   "You have to do something!"
   "You don't understand, Marie. The old Medusa surfaced-"
   "You tell that husband of mine that Medusa's history! The Jackal isn't, and he's flying in here tomorrow!"
   "David'll be there, you know that."
   "Yes, I do. ... Because he's Jason Bourne now."
   "Br'er Rabbit, this ain't thirteen years ago, and you just happen to be thirteen years older. You're not only gonna be useless, you're gonna be a positive liability unless you get some rest, preferably sleep. Turn off the lights and grab some sack time in that big fancy couch in the living room. I'll man the phones, which ain't gonna ring 'cause nobody's callin' at four o'clock in the morning."
   Cactus's voice had faded as Jason wandered into the dark living room, his legs heavy, his lids falling over his eyes like lead weights. He dropped to the couch, swinging his legs slowly, with effort, one at a time, up on the cushions; he stared at the ceiling. Rest is a weapon, battles won and lost ... Philippe d'Anjou. Medusa. His inner screen went black and sleep came.
   A screaming, pulsating siren erupted, deafening, incessant, echoing throughout the cavernous house like a sonic tornado. Bourne spastically whipped his body around and sprang off the couch, at first disoriented, unsure of where he was and for a terrible moment ... of who he was.
   "Cactus!" he roared, racing out of the ornate living room into the hallway. "Cactus!" he shouted again, hearing his voice lost in the rapid, rhythmic crescendos of the siren-alarm. "Where are you?"
   Nothing. He ran to the door of the study, gripping the knob. It was locked! He stepped back and crashed his shoulder against it, once, twice, a third time with all the speed and strength he could summon. The door splintered, then gave way and Jason hammered his foot against the central panel until it collapsed; he went inside and what he found caused the killing machine that was the product of Medusa and beyond to stare in ice-cold fury. Cactus was sprawled over the desk, under the light of the single lamp, in the same chair that had held the murdered general, his blood forming a pool of red on the blotter-a corpse. ... No, not a corpse! The right hand moved, Cactus was alive!
   Bourne ran to the desk and gently raised the old man's head, the shrill, deafening, all-encompassing alarm making communication-if communication were possible-impossible. Cactus opened his dark eyes, his trembling right hand moving down the blotter, his forefinger curved and tapping the top of the desk.
   "What is it?" yelled Jason. The hand kept moving back toward the edge of the blotter, the tapping more rapid. "Below? Underneath?" With minuscule-nearly imperceptible-motions of his head, Cactus nodded in the affirmative. "Under the desk!" shouted Bourne, beginning to understand. He knelt down to the right of Cactus and felt under the thin top drawer, then to the side– He found it! A button. Again gently, he moved the heavy rolling chair inches to the left and centered his eyes on the button. Beneath it, in tiny white letters on a black plastic strip, was the answer.
   Aux. Alarm
   Jason pressed the button; instantly the shrieking pandemonium was cut off. The ensuing silence was nearly as deafening, the adjustment to it nearly as terrifying.
   "How were you hit?" asked Bourne. "How long ago? ... If you can talk, just whisper, no energy at all, do you understand?"
   "Oh, Br'er, you're too much," whispered Cactus, in pain. "I was a black cabdriver in Washington, man. I've been here before. It ain't fatal, boy, I gotta slug in the upper chest."
   "I'll get a doctor right away-our friend Ivan, incidentally-but if you can, tell me what happened while I move you to the floor and look at the damage." Jason slowly, carefully lowered the old man off the chair and onto the throw rug beneath the bay window. He tore off Cactus's shirt; the bullet had gone through the flesh of the left shoulder. With short, swift movements Bourne ripped the shirt into strips and tightly wrapped a primitive bandage around his friend's chest and between the underarm and the shoulder. "It's not much," said Jason, "but it'll hold you for a while. Go on."
   "He's out there, Br'er!" Cactus coughed weakly, lying back on the floor. "He's got a big mother 'fifty-seven magnum with a silencer; he pinned me through the window, then smashed it and climbed inside. ... He-he ..."
   "Easy! Don't talk, never mind-"
   "I gotta. The brothers out there, they ain't got no hardware. He'll pick 'em off! ... I played deep dead and he was in a hurry-oh, was he in a hurry! Look over there, will ya?" Jason swung his head in the direction of Cactus's gesture. A dozen or so books had been yanked out of a shelf on the side wall and strewn on the floor. The old man continued, his voice growing weaker. "He went over to the bookcase like in a panic, until he found what he wanted ... then to the door, that 'fifty-seven ready for bear, if you follow me. ... I figured it was you he was after, that he'd seen you through the window go out to the other room, and I tell ya, I was workin' my right knee like a runnin' muskrat 'cause I found that alarm button an hour ago and knew I had to stop him-"
   "Easy!"
   "I gotta tell you ... I couldn't move my hands 'cause he'd see me, but my knee hit that sucker and the siren damn near blew me out of the chair. ... The honky bastard fell apart. He slammed the door, locked it, and beat his way out of here back through the window." Cactus's neck arched back, the pain and the exhaustion overtaking him. "He's out there, Br'er Rabbit-"
   "That's enough!" ordered Bourne as he cautiously reached up, snapping off the desk lamp, leaving the dim light from the hallway through the shattered door as the only illumination. "I'm calling Alex; he can send the doctor-"
   Suddenly, from somewhere outside, there was a high-pitched scream, a roar of shock and anguish Jason knew only too well. So did Cactus, who whispered, his eyes shut tight: "He got one. That fucker got one of the brothers!"
   "I'm reaching Conklin," said Jason, pulling the phone off of the desk. "Then I'll go out and get him. ... Oh, Christ! The line's out-it's been cut!"
   "That honky knows his way around here."
   "So do I, Cactus. Stay as quiet as you can. I'll be back for you-"
   There was another scream, this lower, more abrupt, an expulsion of breath more than a roar.
   "May sweet Jesus forgive me," muttered the old black man painfully, meaning the words. "There's only one brother left-"
   "If anyone should ask forgiveness, it's me," cried Bourne, his voice guttural, half choking. "Goddamn it! I swear to you, Cactus, I never thought, never even considered, that anything like this would happen."
   " 'Course you didn't. I know you from back to the old days, Br'er, and I never heard of you asking anyone to risk anything for you. ... It's always been the other way around."
   "I'm going to pull you over," interrupted Jason, tugging on the rug, maneuvering Cactus to the right side of the desk, the old man's left hand close enough to reach the auxiliary alarm. "If you hear anything or see anything or feel anything, turn on the siren."
   "Where are you going? I mean how?"
   "Another room. Another window."
   Bourne crept across the floor to the mutilated door, lurched through it and ran into the living room. At the far end was a pair of French doors that led to an outside patio; he recalled seeing white wrought-iron lawn furniture on the south end of the house when he was with the guards. He twisted the knob and slipped outside, pulling the automatic from his belt, shutting the right door, and crouching, making his way to the shrubbery at the edge of the grass. He had to move quickly. Not only was there a third life in the balance, a third unrelated, unwarranted death, but a killer who could be his shortcut to the crimes of the new Medusa, and those crimes were his bait for the Jackal! A diversion, a magnet, a trap ... the flares-part of the equipment he had brought with him to Manassas. The two emergency "candles" were in his left rear pocket, each six inches long and bright enough to be seen for miles; ignited together yet spaced apart they would light up Swayne's property like two searchlights. One in the south drive, the other by the kennels, possibly waking the drugged dogs, bewildering them, infuriating them-Do it! Hurry.
   Jason scrambled across the lawn, his eyes darting everywhere, wondering where the stalking killer was and how the innocent quarry that Cactus had enlisted was evading him. One was experienced, the other not, and Bourne could not permit the latter's life to be wasted.

It happened! He had been spotted! Two cracks on either side of him, bullets from a silenced pistol slicing the air. He reached the south leg of the paved drive and, racing across it, dived into the foliage. Ripping a flare from his pocket, he put down the weapon, snapped up the flame of his lighter, ignited the fuse and threw the sizzling candle to his right. It landed on the road; in seconds it would spew out the blinding fire. He ran to his left beneath the pine trees toward the rear of the estate, his lighter and the second flare in one hand, the automatic in the other. He was parallel to the kennels; the flare in the road exploded into bluish-white flames. He ignited the second and threw it end over end, arcing it forty yards away to the front of the kennels. He waited.
   The second flare burst into sputtering fire, two balls of blinding white light eerily illuminating the house and grounds of the estate's south side. Three of the dogs began to wail, then made feeble attempts to howl; soon their confused anger would be heard. A shadow. Against the west wall of the white house-it moved, caught in the light between the flare by the kennels and the house. The figure darted for the protection of the shrubbery; it crouched, an immobile but intrusive part of the silhouetted foliage. Was it the killer or the killer's target, the last "brother" recruited by Cactus? ... There was one way to find out, and if it was the former and he was a decent marksman, it was not the best tactic, but still it was the quickest.
   Bourne leaped up from the underbrush, yelling in full view as he lunged to his right, at the last half second plunging his foot into the soft dirt and pivoting, lowering his body and diving to his left. "Head for the cabin!" he roared. And he got his answer. Two more spits, two more cracks in the air, the bullets digging up the earth to his right. The killer was good; perhaps not an expert but good enough. A .357 held six shells; five had been fired, but there had been sufficient time to reload the emptied cylinder. Another strategy-quickly!
   Suddenly another figure appeared, a man running up the road toward the rear of Flannagan's cabin. He was in the open-he could be killed!
   "Over here, you bastard!" screamed Jason, jumping up and firing his automatic blindly into the shrubbery by the house. And then he got another answer, a welcome one. There was a single spit, a single crack in the air and then no more. The killer had not reloaded! Perhaps he had no more shells-whatever, the primary target was now on the high ground. Bourne raced out of the bushes and across the lawn through the opposing light of the flares; the dogs were now really aroused, the yelps and throated growls of attack becoming louder. The killer ran out of the shrubbery and into the road, racing through shadows toward the front gates. Jason had the bastard, he knew it. The gates were closed, the Medusan was cornered. Bourne roared: "There's no way out, Snake Lady! Make it easy on yourself-"
   A spit, a crack. The man had reloaded while running! Jason fired; the man fell in the road. And as he did so, the intermittent silence of the night was ripped open by the sound of a powerful, racing engine, the vehicle in question speeding up the outside road, its flashing red and blue lights signifying the police. The police! The alarm must have been wired into the Manassas headquarters, a fact that had never occurred to Bourne; he had assumed that such a measure was impossible where Medusa was concerned. It wasn't logical; the security was internal; no external force could be permitted for Snake Lady. There was too much to learn, too much that had to be kept secret-a cemetery!
   The killer writhed in the road, rolling over and over toward the bordering pine trees. There was something clutched in his hand. Jason approached him as two police officers got out of the patrol car beyond the gate. He lashed his foot out, kicking the man's body, releasing whatever it was in his grip and reaching down to pick it up. It was a leather-bound book, one of a set, like a volume of Dickens or Thackeray, the embossed letters in gold, more for display than for reading. It was crazy! Then he flipped open a page and understood it was not crazy at all. There was no print inside, only the scrawl of handwritten notes on blank pages. It was a diary, a ledger!
   There could be no police! Especially not now. He could not allow them to be aware of his and Conklin's penetration into Medusa. The leather-bound book in his hand could not see the official light of day! The Jackal was everything. He had to get rid of them!
   "We got a call, mister," intoned a middle-aged patrolman walking toward the grilled gate, a younger associate joining him. "HQ said he was uptight as hell. We're responding, but like I told dispatch, there've been some pretty wild parties out here, no criticism intended, sir. We all like a good time now and then, right?"
   "Absolutely right, Officer," replied Jason, trying his utmost to control the painful heaving in his chest, his eyes straying to the wounded killer-he had disappeared! "There was a momentary shortage in electricity that somehow interfered with the telephone lines."
   "Happens a lot," confirmed the younger patrolman. "Sudden showers and summer heat lightnin'. Someday they'll put all them cables underground. My folks got a place-"
   "The point is," interrupted Bourne, "everything's getting back to normal. As you can see, some of the lights in the house are back on."
   "I can't see nothin' through them flares," said the young police officer.
   "The general always takes the ultimate precautions," explained Jason. "I guess he feels he has to," added Bourne, somewhat lamely. "Regardless, everything's-as I said-getting back to normal. Okay?"
   "Okay by me," answered the older patrolman, "but I got a message for someone named Webb. He in there?"
   "I'm Webb," said Jason Bourne, alarmed.
   "That makes things easier. You're supposed to call a 'Mister Conk' right away. It's urgent."
   "Urgent?"
   "An emergency, we were told. It was just radioed to us."
   Jason could hear the rattling of the fence on the perimeter of Swayne's property. The killer was getting away! "Well, Officer, the phones are still out here. ... Do you have one in your car?"
   "Not for personal use, sir. Sorry."
   "But you just said it was an emergency."
   "Well, I suppose since you're a guest of the general's I could permit it. If it's long distance, though, you'd better have a credit card number."
   "Oh, my God." Bourne unlocked the gate and rushed to the patrol car as the siren-alarm was activated back at the house-activated and then instantly shut off. The remaining brother had apparently found Cactus.
   "What the hell was that?" yelled the young policeman.
   "Forget it!" screamed Jason, jumping into the car and yanking an all too familiar patrol phone out of its cradle. He gave Alex's number in Virginia to the police switchboard and kept repeating the phrase: "It's an emergency, it's an emergency!"
   "Yes?" answered Conklin, acknowledging the police operator.
   "It's me!"
   "What happened?"
   "Too involved to go into. What's the emergency?"
   "I've got you a private jet out of the Reston airport."
   "Reston? That's north of here-"
   "The field in Manassas doesn't have the equipment. I'm sending a car for you."
   "Why?"
   "Tranquility. Marie and the kids are okay; they're okay! She's in charge."
   "What the hell does that mean?"
   "Get to Reston and I'll tell you."
   "I want more!"
   "The Jackal's flying in today."
   "Jesus Christ!"
   "Wrap things up there and wait for the car."
   "I'll take this one!"
   "No! Not unless you want to blow everything. We've got time. Wrap it up out there."
   "Cactus ... he's hurt-shot."
   "I'll call Ivan. He'll get back in a hurry."
   "There's one brother left-only one, Alex. I killed the other two-I was responsible."
   "Cut that out. Stop it. Do what you have to do."
   "Goddamn you, I can't. Someone's got to be here and I won't be!"
   "You're right. There's too much to keep under wraps out there and you've got to be in Montserrat. I'll drive out with the car and take your place."
   "Alex, tell me what happened on Tranquility!"
   "The old men ... your 'old men of Paris,' that's what happened."
   "They're dead," said Jason Bourne quietly, simply.
   "Don't be hasty. They've turned-at least I gather the real one turned and the other's a God-given mistake. They're on our side now."
   "They're never on anyone's side but the Jackal's, you don't know them."
   "Neither do you. Listen to your wife. But now you go back to the house and write out everything I should know. ... And Jason, I must tell you something. I hope to Christ you can find your solution-our solution-on Tranquility. Because all things considered, including my life, I can't keep this Medusa on our level much longer. I think you know that."
   "You promised!"
   "Thirty-six hours, Delta."
   In the woods beyond the fence a wounded man crouched, his frightened face against the green links. In the bright wash of the headlights, he observed the tall man who had gone into the patrol car and now came out, awkwardly, nervously thanking the policemen. He did not, however, permit them inside.
   Webb. The killer had heard the name "Webb."
   It was all they had to know. All Snake Lady had to know.

15
   "God, I love you!" said David Webb, leaning into the pay phone in the preboarding room at the private airfield in Reston, Virginia. "The waiting was the worst part, waiting to talk to you, to hear from you that you were all all right."
   "How do you think I felt, darling? Alex said the telephone lines had been cut and he was sending the police when I wanted him to send the whole damned army."
   "We can't even allow the police, nothing official anywhere at the moment. Conklin's promised me at least another thirty-six hours. ... We may not need that now. Not with the Jackal in Montserrat."
   "David, what happened? Alex mentioned Medusa-"
   "It's a mess and he's right, he has to go higher up with it. Him, not us. We stay out. Far away out."
   "What happened?" repeated Marie. "What's the old Medusa got to do with anything?"
   "There's a new Medusa-an extension of the old one, actually-and it's big and ugly and it kills, they kill. I saw that tonight; one of their guns tried to kill me after thinking he'd killed Cactus and murdering two innocent men."
   "Good God! Alex told me about Cactus when he called me back, but nothing else. How is your Uncle Remus?"
   "He'll make it. The Agency doctor came out and took him and the last brother away."
   " 'Brother'?"
   "I'll tell you when I see you. ... Conklin's out there now. He'll take care of everything and have the telephone fixed. I'll call him from Tranquility."
   "You're exhausted-"
   "I'm tired, but I'm not sure why. Cactus insisted I get some sleep and I must have had all of twelve minutes."
   "My poor darling."
   "I like the tone of your voice," said David. "The words even better, except I'm not poor. You took care of that in Paris thirteen years ago." Suddenly his wife was silent and Webb was alarmed. "What is it? Are you all right?"
   "I'm not sure," answered Marie softly, but with a strength that was the result of thought, not feeling. "You say this new Medusa is big and ugly and it tried to kill you-they tried to kill you."
   "They didn't."
   "Yet they, or it, wanted you dead. Why?"
   "Because I was there."
   "You don't kill a man because he was at someone's house-"
   "A lot happened at that house tonight. Alex and I penetrated its circle of secrets and I was seen. The idea was to bait the Jackal with a few rich and all too famous bandits from the old Saigon who would hire him to come after me. It was a hell of a strategy but it spiraled out of control."
   "My God, David, don't you understand? You're marked! They'll come after you themselves!"
   "How can they? The hit man from Medusa who was there never saw my face except while I was running in shadows, and they have no idea who I am. I'm a nonperson who'll simply disappear. ... No, Marie, if Carlos shows up and if I can do what I know I can do in Montserrat, we'll be free. To borrow a phrase, 'free at last.' "
   "Your voice changes; doesn't it?"
   "My what does which?"
   "It really does. I can tell."
   "I don't know what you're talking about," said Jason Bourne. "I'm being signaled. The plane's here. Tell Johnny to keep those two old men under guard!"

   The whispers spread through Montserrat like rolling pockets of mist. Something terrible had happened on the out island of Tranquility. ... Bad times, mon." ... "The evil obeah come across the Antilles from Jamaic' and there was death and madness." ... "And blood on the walls of death, mon, a curse put on the family of an animal." ... "Sshh! There was a cat mother and two cat children ... !"
   And there were other voices. ... "Dear God, keep it quiet! It could ruin what tourism we've built!" ... "Never anything like this before-an isolated incident, obviously drug related, brought over from another island! ... "All too true, mon! I hear it was a madman, his body filled with dope." ... "I'm told a fast boat running like the wind of a hurricane took him out to sea. He's gone! ... Keep it quiet, I say! Remember the Virgins? The Fountainhead massacre? It took them years to recover. Quiet!"
   And a single voice. "It's a trap, sir, and if successful, as we believe it will be, we'll be the talk of the West Indies, the heroes of the Caribbean. It'll be positively marvelous for our image. Law and order and all that."
   "Thank heavens! Was anyone actually killed?"
   "One person, and she was in the act of taking another's life."
   "She? Good God, I don't want to hear another word until it's all over."
   "It's better that you not be available for comment."
   "Damned good idea. I'll go out on the boat; the fish are running well after the storm."
   "Excellent, sir. And I'll stay in radio contact with developments."
   "Perhaps you shouldn't. Anything can be picked up out there."
   "I only meant so as to advise you when to return-at the appropriate moment to make a most advantageous appearance. I'll fill you in, of course."
   "Yes, of course. You're a good man, Henry."
   "Thank you, Crown Governor."
   It was ten o'clock in the morning and they held each other fiercely, but there was no time for talk, only the brief comfort of being together, safe together, secure in the knowledge that they knew things the Jackal did not know and that knowledge gave them an enormous advantage. Still, it was only an advantage, not a guarantee, not where Carlos was concerned. And both Jason and John St. Jacques were adamant: Marie and the children were being flown south to Guadeloupe's Basse-Terre island. They would stay there with the Webbs' regal maid, Mrs. Cooper, all under guard until they were called back to Montserrat. Marie objected, but her objections were met with silence; her husband's orders were delivered abruptly, icily.
   "You're leaving because I have work to do. We won't discuss it any further."
   "It's Switzerland again ... Zurich again, isn't it, Jason?"
   "It's whatever you like," replied Bourne, now preoccupied as the three of them stood at the base of the dock, two seaplanes bobbing in the water only yards apart at the far end. One had brought Jason directly to Tranquility from Antigua; the other was fueled for the flight to Guadeloupe with Mrs. Cooper and the children already inside. "Hurry up, Marie," added Bourne. "I want to go over things with Johnny and then grill those two old scumballs."
   "They're not scumballs, David. Because of them we're alive."
   "Why? Because they blew it and had to turn to save their asses?"
   "That's not fair."
   "It's fair until I say otherwise, and they're scum until they convince me they're not. You don't know the Jackal's old men, I do. They'll say anything, do anything, lie and snivel to hell and back, and if you turn the other way, they'll shove a knife in your spine. He owns them-body, mind and what's left of their souls. ... Now get to the plane, it's waiting."
   "Don't you want to see the children, tell Jamie that-"
   "No, there isn't time! Take her out there, Johnny. I want to check the beach."
   "There's nothing I haven't checked, David," said St. Jacques, his voice on the edge of defiance.
   "I'll tell you whether you have or not," shot back Bourne, his eyes angry as he started across the sand, adding in a loud voice without looking around, "I'm going to have a dozen questions for you, and I hope to Christ you can answer them!"
   St. Jacques tensed, taking a step forward but stopped by his sister. "Leave it alone, Bro," said Marie, her hand on his arm. "He's frightened."
   "He's what? He's one nasty son of a bitch is what he is!"
   "Yes, I know."
   The brother looked at his sister. "That stranger you were talking about yesterday at the house?"
   "Yes, only now it's worse. That's why he's frightened."
   "I don't understand."
   "He's older, Johnny. He's fifty now and he wonders if he can still do the things he did before, years ago-in the war, in Paris, in Hong Kong. It's all gnawing at him, eating into him, because he knows he's got to be better than he ever was."
   "I think he can be."
   "I know he will be, for he has an extraordinary reason going for him. A wife and two children were taken from him once before. He barely remembers them, but they're at the core of his torment; Mo Panov believes that and I do, too. ... Now, years later, another wife and two children are threatened. Every nerve in him has to be on fire."
   Suddenly, from three hundred feet away on the beach, Bourne's voice erupted, splitting through the breezes from the sea. "Goddamn it, I told you to hurry! ... And you, Mr. Expert, there's a reef out here with the color of a sandbar beyond it! Have you considered that?"
   "Don't answer, Johnny. We'll go out to the plane."
   "A sandbar? What the hell's he talking about? ... Oh, my God, I do see!"
   "I don't," said Marie as they walked rapidly up the pier.
   "There are reefs around eighty percent of the island, ninety-five percent where this beach is concerned. They brake the waves, it's why it's called Tranquility; there's no surf at all."
   "So what?"
   "So someone using a tank under water wouldn't risk crashing into a reef, but he would into a sandbar in front of a reef. He could watch the beach and the guards and crawl up when his landing was clear, lying in the water only feet from shore until he could take the guard. I never thought about that."
   "He did, Bro."
   Bourne sat on the corner of the desk, the two old men on a couch in front of him, his brother-in-law standing by a window fronting the beach in the unoccupied villa.
   "Why would I-why would we-lie to you, monsieur?" asked the hero of France.
   "Because it all sounds like a classic French farce. Similar but different names; one door opening as another closes, look-alikes disappearing and entering on cue. It smells, gentlemen."
   "Perhaps you are a student of Molière or Racine ... ?"
   "I'm a student of uncanny coincidence, especially where the Jackal is concerned."
   "I don't think there's the slightest similarity in our appearances," offered the judge from Boston. "Except, perhaps, our ages."
   The telephone rang. Jason quickly reached down and picked it up. "Yes?"
   "Everything checks out in Boston," said Conklin. "His name's Prefontaine, Brendan Prefontaine. He was a federal judge of the first circuit caught in a government scam and convicted of felonious misconduct on the bench-read that as being very large in the bribery business. He was sentenced to twenty-one years and did ten, which was enough to blow him away in every department. He's what they call a functioning alcoholic, something of a character in Bean Town's shadier districts, but harmless-actually kind of liked in a warped sort of way. He's also considered very bright when he's clearheaded, and I'm told a lot of crumbs wouldn't have gone court-free and others would be doing longer jail terms if he hadn't given shrewd advice to their attorneys of record. You might say he's a behind-the-scenes storefront lawyer, the 'stores' in his case being saloons, pool halls and probably warehouses.... Since I've been where he's at in the booze terrain, he sounds straight arrow to me. He's handling it better than I ever did."
   "You quit."
   "If I could have managed better in that twilight zone, I might not have. There's something to be said for the grape on many occasions."
   "What about his client?"
   "Awesome, and our once and former judge was an adjunct professor at Harvard Law, where Gates was a student in two of his classes. No question about it, Prefontaine knows the man. ... Trust him, Jason. There's no reason for him to lie. He was simply after a score."
   "You're following up on the client?"
   "With all the quiet ammunition I can pull out of my personal woodwork. He's our link to Carlos.. . . The Medusa connection was a false lead, a stupid attempt by a stupid general in the Pentagon to put someone inside Gates's inner legal circle."
   "You're sure of that?"
   "I am now. Gates is a highly paid consultant to a law firm representing a megadefense contractor under antitrust scrutiny. He wouldn't even return Swayne's calls, which, if he did, would make him more stupid than Swayne, which he isn't."
   "That's your problem, friend, not mine. If everything goes the way I intend it to go here, I don't even want to hear about Snake Lady. In fact, I can't remember ever having heard of it."
   "Thanks for dumping it in my lap-and in a way I guess I mean that. Incidentally, the grammar-school notebook you grabbed from the gunslinger in Manassas has some interesting things in it."
   "Oh?"
   "Do you remember those three frequent fliers from the Mayflower's registry who flew into Philadelphia eight months ago and just happened to be at the hotel at the same time eight months later?"
   "Certainly."
   "Their names are in Swayne's Mickey Mouse loose-leaf. They had nothing to do with Carlos; they're part of Medusa. It's a mother lode of disconnected information."
   "I'm not interested. Use it in good health."
   "We will, and very quietly. That notebook'll be on the most wanted list in a matter of days."
   "I'm happy for you, but I've got work to do."
   "And you refuse any help?"
   "Absolutely. This is what I've been waiting thirteen years for. It's what I said at the beginning, it's one on one."
   "High Noon, you goddamn fool?"
   "No, the logical extension of a very intellectual chess game, the player with the better trap wins, and I've got that trap because I'm using his. He'd smell out any deviation."
   "We trained you too well, scholar."
   "Thank you for that."
   "Good hunting, Delta."
   "Good-bye." Bourne hung up the phone and looked over at the two pathetically curious old men on the couch. "You passed a sleaze-factored muster, Judge," he said to Prefontaine. "And you, 'Jean Pierre,' what can I say? My own wife, who admits to me that you might very well have killed her without the slightest compunction, tells me that I have to trust you. Nothing makes a hell of a lot of sense, does it?"
   "I am what I am, and I did what I did," said the disgraced attorney with dignity. "But my client has gone too far. His magisterial persona must come to an end in ashes."
   "My words are not so well phrased as those of my learned, newfound relative," added the aged hero of France. "But I know the killing must stop; it's what my woman tried to tell me. I am a hypocrite, of course, for I am no stranger to killing, so I shall only say that this kind of killing must stop. There is no business arrangement here, no profit in the kill, only a sick madman's vengeance that demands the unnecessary death of a mother and her children. Where is the profit there? ... No, the Jackal has gone too far. He, too, must now be stopped."
   "That's the most cold-blooded fucking reasoning I've ever heard!" cried John St. Jacques by the window.
   "I thought your words were very well chosen," said the former judge to the felon from Paris. "Très bien."
   "D'accord."
   "And I think I'm out of my mind to have anything to do with either of you," broke in Jason Bourne. "But right now I don't have a choice. ... It's eleven-thirty-five, gentlemen. The clock is running."
   "The what?" asked Prefontaine.
   "Whatever's going to happen will happen during the next two, five, ten or twenty-four hours. I'm flying back to Blackburne Airport, where I'll create a scene, the bereaved husband and father who's gone crazy over the killing of his wife and children. It won't be difficult for me, I assure you; I'll make a hell of a ruckus. ... I'll demand an immediate flight to Tranquility, and when I get here there'll be three pine coffins on the pier, supposedly containing my wife and children."
   "Everything as it should be," interrupted the Frenchman. "Bien."
   "Very bien," agreed Bourne. "I'll insist that one be opened, and then I'll scream or collapse or both, whatever comes to mind, so that whoever's watching won't forget what they've seen. St. Jacques here will have to control me-be rough, Johnny, be convincing-and finally I'll be taken up to another villa, the one nearest the steps to the beach on the east path. ... Then the waiting begins."
   "For this Jackal?" asked the Bostonian. "He'll know where you are?"
   "Of course he will. A lot of people, including the staff, will have seen where I was taken. He'll find out, that's child's play for him."
   "So you wait for him, monsieur? You think the monseigneur will walk into such a trap? Ridicule!'
   "Not at all, monsieur," replied Jason calmly. "To begin with, I won't be there, and by the time he finds that out, I'll have found him."
   "For Christ's sake, how?" half shouted St. Jacques.
   "Because I'm better than he is," answered Jason Bourne. "I always was."
   The scenario went as planned, the personnel at Montserrat's Blackburne Airport still smoldering from the abuse hurled at them by the tall hysterical American who accused them all of murder, of allowing his wife and children to be killed by terrorists-of being willing nigger accomplices of filthy killers! Not only were the people of the island quietly furious, but they were also hurt. Quiet because they understood his anguish, hurt because they could not understand how he could blame them and use such vicious words, words he had never used before. Was this good mon, this wealthy brother of the gregarious Johnny Saint Jay, this rich-rich friend who had put so much money into Tranquility Isle not a friend at all but, instead, white garbage who blamed them for terrible things they had nothing to do with because their skins were dark? It was an evil puzzle, mon. It was part of the madness, the obeah that had crossed the waters from the mountains of Jamaic' and put a curse on their islands. Watch him, brothers. Watch his every move. Perhaps he is another sort of storm, one not born in the south or the east, but whose winds are more destructive. Watch him, mon. His anger is dangerous.
   So he was watched. By many-the uninformed, civilians and authorities alike-as a nervous Henry Sykes at Government House kept his word. The official investigation was solely under his command. It was quiet, thorough-and nonexistent.
   Bourne behaved far worse on the pier of Tranquility Inn, striking his own brother, the amiable Saint Jay, until the younger man subdued him and had him carried up the steps to the nearest villa. Servants came and went bringing trays of food and drink to the porch. Selected visitors were permitted to pay their condolences, including the chief aide to the Crown governor who wore his full military regalia, a symbol of the Crown's concern. And an old man who knew death from the brutalities of war and who insisted on seeing the bereaved husband and father-he was accompanied by a woman in a nurse's uniform, properly topped by a hat and a dark mourning veil. And two Canadian guests of the hotel, close friends of the owner, both of whom had met the disconsolate man when Tranquility Inn opened with great fireworks several years ago-they asked to pay their respects and offer whatever support or comfort they could. John St. Jacques agreed, suggesting that their visit be brief and to understand that his brother-in-law remained in a corner of the darkened living room, the drapes having been drawn.
   "It's all so horrible, so meaningless!" said the visitor from Toronto softly to the shadowed figure in a chair across the room. "I hope you're a religious man, David. I am. Faith helps in such times as these. Your loved ones are in the arms of Christ now."
   "Thank you." A momentary breeze off the water rustled the drapes, permitting a narrow shaft of sunlight to flash across the room. It was enough.
   "Wait a minute," said the second Canadian. "You're not-good Lord, you're not Dave Webb! Dave has-"
   "Be quiet," ordered St. Jacques, standing at the door behind the two visitors.
   "Johnny, I spent seven hours in a fishing boat with Dave and I damn well know him when I see him!"
   "Shut up," said the owner of Tranquility Inn.
   "Oh, dear God!" cried the aide to the Crown governor of Montserrat in a clipped British accent.
   "Listen to me, both of you," said St. Jacques, rushing forward between the two Canadians and turning to stand in front of the armchair. "I wish I'd never let you in here, but there's nothing we can do about that now. ... I thought you'd add weight, two more observers, if anyone asked you questions, which they will, and that's exactly what you're going to do. You've been talking to David Webb, consoling David Webb. Do you understand that?"
   "I don't understand a damn thing," objected the bewildered visitor who had spoken of the comfort of faith. "Who the hell is he?"
   "He's the senior aide to the Crown governor," answered St. Jacques. "I'm telling you this so you will understand-"
   "You mean the army brass who showed up in full uniform with a squad of black soldiers?" asked the guest who had fished with David Webb.
   "Among his duties is chief military aide-de-camp. He's a brigadier-"
   "We saw the bastard leave," protested the fisherman. "From the dining room, we all saw him leave! He was with the old Frenchman and the nurse-"
   "You saw someone else leave. Wearing sunglasses."
   "Webb ... ?"
   "Gentlemen!" The governor's aide rose from the chair, wearing the ill-fitting jacket worn by Jason Bourne when he had flown back to Tranquility from Blackburne Airport. "You are welcome guests on our island but, as guests, you will abide by the Crown's decisions in emergencies. You will either abide by them, or, as we would do in extreme weather, we will be forced to place you in custody."
   "Hey, come on, Henry. They're friends. ..."
   "Friends do not call brigadiers 'bastards'-"
   "You might if you were once a busted corporal, General," inserted the man of faith. "My companion here didn't mean anything. Long before the whole damned Canadian army needed his company's engineers, he was a screwed-up infantry grunt. His company, incidentally. He wasn't too bright in Korea."
   "Let's cut the crap," said Webb's fishing companion. "So we've been in here talking to Dave, right?"
   "Right. And that's all I can tell you."
   "It's enough, Johnny. Dave's in trouble, so what can we do?"
   "Nothing-absolutely nothing but what's on the inn's agenda. You all got a copy delivered to your villas an hour ago."
   "You'd better explain," said the religious Canadian. "I never read those goddamn happy-hour schedules."
   "The inn's having a special buffet, everything on the house, and a meteorologist from the Leeward Islands Weather Control will speak for a few minutes on what happened last night."
   "The storm?" asked the fisherman, the former busted corporal and current owner of Canada's largest industrial engineering company. "A storm's a storm in these islands. What's to explain?"
   "Oh, things like why they happen and why they're over so quickly; how to behave-the elimination of fear, basically."
   "You want us all up there, is that what you mean?"
   "Yes, I do."
   "That'll help Dave?"
   "Yes; it will."
   "Then the whole place'll be up there. I guarantee it."
   "I appreciate that, but how can you?"
   "I'll circulate another happy-hour notice that Angus MacPherson McLeod, chairman of All Canada Engineering, will award ten thousand dollars to whoever asks the most intelligent question. How about that, Johnny? The rich always want more for nothing, that's our profound weakness."
   "I'll take your word for it," mumbled St. Jacques.
   "C'mon," said McLeod to his religious friend from Toronto. "We'll circulate with tears in our eyes and spread the word. Then, you idiot colonel-that's what you were, y' bastard-in an hour or so we'll shift gears and only talk of ten thousand dollars and a free-for-all dinner. With the beach and the sun, people's attention spans are roughly two and a half minutes; in cold weather, no more than four. Believe me, I've had it calculated by computer research. ... You'll have a full party tonight, Johnny." McLeod turned and walked toward the door.
   "Scotty," cried the man of faith following the fisherman. "You're going off half-cocked again! Attention spans, two minutes, four minutes, computer research-I don't believe a word of it!"
   "Really?" said Angus, his hand on the knob. "You believe in ten thousand dollars, don't you?"
   "I certainly do."
   "You watch, that's my market research. ... That's also why I own the company. And now I intend to summon those tears to my eyes; it's another reason I own the company."
   In a dark storage room on the third floor of Tranquility Inn's main complex, Bourne, who had shed the military tunic, and the old Frenchman sat on two stools in front of a window overlooking the east and west paths of the shoreline resort. The villas below extended out on both sides of the stone steps leading down to the beach and the dock. Each man held a pair of powerful binoculars to his eyes, scanning the people walking back and forth on the paths and up and down the rock staircase. A handheld radio with the hotel's private frequency was on the sill in front of Jason.
   "He's near us," said Fontaine softly.
   "What?" shot out Bourne, yanking the glasses from his face and turning to the old man. "Where? Tell me where!"
   "He's not in our vision, monsieur, but he is near us."
   "What do you mean?"
   "I can feel it. Like an animal that senses the approach of distant thunder. It's inside of you; it's the fear."
   "That's not very clear."
   "It is to me. Perhaps you wouldn't understand. The Jackal's challenger, the man of many appearances, the Chameleon-the killer known as Jason Bourne-was not given to fear, we are told, only a great bravado that came from his strength."
   Jason smiled grimly, in contradiction. "Then you were told a lie," he said softly. "A part of that man lives with a kind of raw fear few people have ever experienced."
   "I find that hard to believe, monsieur-"
   "Believe. I'm he."
   "Are you, Mr. Webb? It's not difficult to piece things together. Do you force yourself to assume your other self because of this fear?"
   David Webb stared at the old man. "For God's sake, what choice do I have?"
   "You could disappear for a time, you and your family. You could live peacefully, in complete security, your government would see to it."
   "He'd come after me-after us-wherever we were."
   "For how long? A year? Eighteen months? Certainly less than two years. He's a sick man; all Paris-my Paris-knows it. Considering the enormous expense and complexity of the current situation-these events designed to trap you-I would suggest that it's Carlos's last attempt. Leave, monsieur. Join your wife in Basse-Terre and then fly thousands of miles away while you can. Let him go back to Paris and die in frustration. Is it not enough?"
   "No. He'd come after me, after us! It's got to be settled here, now."
   "I will soon join my woman, if such is to be, so I can disagree with certain people, men like you, for instance, Monsieur le Chameleon, whom I would have automatically agreed with before. I do so now. I think you can go far away. I think you know that you can put the Jackal in a side pocket and get on with your life, altered only slightly for a while, but you won't do it. Something inside stops you; you cannot permit yourself a strategic retreat, no less honorable for its avoidance of violence. Your family is safe but others may die, but even that doesn't stop you. You have to win-"
   "I think that's enough psychobabble," interrupted Bourne, bringing the binoculars again to his eyes, concentrating on the scene below beyond the windows.
   "That's it, isn't it?" said the Frenchman, studying Le Chameleon, his binoculars still at his side. "They trained you too well, instilled in you too completely the person you had to become. Jason Bourne against Carlos the Jackal and Bourne must win, it's imperative that he win. ... Two aging lions, each pitted against the other years ago, both with a burning hatred created by far-off strategists who had no idea what the consequences would be. How many have lost their lives because they crossed your converging paths? How many unknowing men and women have been killed-"
   "Shut up!" cried Jason as flashing images of Paris, even peripherally of Hong Kong, Macao and Beijing-and most recently last night in Manassas, Virginia-assaulted his fragmented inner screen. So much death!
   Suddenly, abruptly, the door of the dark storage room opened and Judge Brendan Prefontaine walked rapidly, breathlessly inside. "He's here," said the Bostonian. "One of St. Jacques's patrols, a three-man unit a mile down the east shoreline, couldn't be reached by radio. St. Jacques sent a guard to find them and he just returned-then ran away himself. All three were killed, each man with a bullet in his throat."
   "The Jackal!" exclaimed the Frenchman. "It is his carte de visite-his calling card. He announces his arrival."

17
   The searing ice-cold heat ripped through his neck as Bourne lunged over the pews, crashing down between the second and third rows, smashing his head and his hips on the glistening brown wood as he clawed at the floor. His vision spun out of control as a cloud of darkness enveloped him. In the distance, far, far away, he heard the sound of voices shouting hysterically. Then the darkness was complete.
   "David." There was no shouting now; the single voice was low and urgent and used a name he did not care to acknowledge. "David, can you hear me?"
   Bourne opened his eyes, instantly aware of two facts. There was a wide bandage around his throat and he was lying fully clothed on a bed. To his right, the anxious face of John St. Jacques came into focus; on his left was a man he did not know, a middle-aged man with a level, steady gaze. "Carlos," Jason managed to say, finding his voice. "It was the Jackal!"
   "Then he's still on the island-this island." St. Jacques was emphatic. "It's been barely an hour and Henry's got Tranquility ringed. Patrols are hovering offshore, roving back and forth, all in visual and radio contact. He's calling it a 'drug exercise,' very quiet and very official. A few boats come in, but none go out and none will go out."
   "Who's he?" asked Bourne, looking at the man on his left. "A doctor," answered Marie's brother. "He's staying at the inn and he's a friend of mine. I was a patient of his in-"
   "I think we should be circumspect here," interrupted the Canadian doctor firmly. "You asked for my help and my confidence, John, and I give both gladly, but considering the nature of the events and the fact that your brother-in-law won't be under my professional care, let's dispense with my name."
   "I couldn't agree with you more, Doctor," added Jason, wincing, then suddenly snapping his head up, his eyes wide in an admixture of pleading and panic. "Ishmael! He's dead-I killed him!"
   "He isn't and you didn't," said St. Jacques calmly. "He's a goddamned mess but he's not dead. He's one tough kid, like his father, and he'll make it. We're flying him to the hospital in Martinique."
   "Christ, he was a corpse!"
   "He was savagely beaten," explained the doctor. "Both arms were broken, along with multiple lacerations, contusions, I suspect internal injuries and a severe concussion. However, as John accurately described the young man, he's one tough kid."
   "I want the best for him."
   "Those were my orders."
   "Good." Bourne moved his eyes to the doctor. "How damaged am I?"
   "Without X rays or seeing how you move-symptomatically, as it were-I can only give you a cursory judgment."
   "Do that."
   "Outside of the wound, I'd say primarily traumatic shock."
   "Forget it. That's not allowed."
   "Who says?" said the doctor, smiling kindly.
   "I do and I'm not trying to be funny. The body, not the head. I'll be the judge of the head."
   "Is he a native?" asked the doctor, looking at the owner of Tranquility Inn. "A white but older Ishmael? I'll tell you he's not a physician."
   "Answer him, please."
   "All right. The bullet passed through the left side of your neck, missing by millimeters several vital spots that would certainly have rendered you voiceless and probably dead. I've bathed the wound and sutured it. You'll have difficulty moving your head for a while, but that's only a superficial opinion of the damage."
   "In short words, I've got a very stiff neck, but if I can walk ... well, I can walk."
   "In shorter words, that's about it."
   "It was the flare that did it, after all," said Jason softly, carefully moving his neck back over the pillow. "It blinded him just enough."
   "What?" St. Jacques leaned over the bed.
   "Never mind. ... Let's see how well I walk-symptomatically, that is." Bourne slid off the bed, swinging his legs cautiously to the floor, shaking his head at his brother-in-law, who started to help him. "No thanks, Bro. This has got to be me on me." He stood up, the inhibiting bandage around his throat progressively becoming more uncomfortable. He stepped forward, pained by the bruises on his thighs, but they were bruises-they were minor. A hot bath would reduce the pain, and medication, extra-strength aspirin and liniment, would permit more normal mobility. It was the goddamned dressing around his neck; it not only choked him but forced him to move his shoulders in order to look in any direction. ... Still, he considered, he was far less incapacitated than he might have been-for a man of his age. Damn. "Can we loosen this necklace, Doctor? It's strangling me."
   "A bit, not much. You don't want to risk rupturing those sutures."
   "What about an Ace bandage? It gives."
   "Too much for a neck wound. You'd forget about it."
   "I promise not to."
   "You're very amusing."
   "I don't feel remotely amusing."
   "It's your neck."
   "It certainly is. Can you get one, Johnny?"
   "Doctor?" St. Jacques looked at the physician.
   "I don't think we can stop him."
   "I'll send someone to the pro shop."
   "Excuse me, Doctor," said Bourne as Marie's brother went to the telephone. "I want to ask Johnny a few questions and I'm not sure you want to hear them."
   "I've heard more than I care to already. I'll wait in the other room." The doctor crossed to the door and let himself out.
   While St. Jacques talked on the phone, Jason moved about the room raising and lowering his arms and shaking his hands to check the functioning of his motor controls. He crouched, then rose to his feet four times in succession, each movement faster than the previous one. He had to be ready-he had to be!
   "It'll only be a few minutes," said the brother-in-law, hanging up the phone. "Pritchard will have to go down and open the shop. He'll bring different sizes of tape."
   "Thanks." Bourne stopped moving and stood in place. "Who was the man I shot, Johnny? He fell through the curtains in that archway, but I couldn't see his face."
   "No one I know, and I thought I knew every white man in these islands who could afford an expensive suit. He must have been a tourist-a tourist on assignment ... for the Jackal. Naturally, there wasn't any identification. Henry's shipped him off to 'Serrat."
   "How many here know what's going on?"
   "Outside of the staff, there are only fourteen guests, and no one's got a clue. I've sealed off the chapel-the word is storm damage. And even those who have to know something-like the doctor and the two guys from Toronto-they don't know the whole story, just pieces, and they're friends. I trust them. The others are heavy into island rum."
   "What about the gunshots at the chapel?"
   "What about the loudest and lousiest steel band in the islands? Also, you were a thousand feet away in the woods. ... Look, David, most everyone's left but some diehards who wouldn't stay here if they weren't old Canadian buddies showing me loyalty, and a few casuals who'd probably take a vacation in Teheran. What can I tell you except that the bar is doing a hell of a business."
   "It's like a mystifying charade," murmured Bourne, again carefully arching his neck and staring at the ceiling. "Figures in silhouette playing out disconnected, violent events behind white screens, nothing really making sense, everything's whatever you want it to be."
   "That's a little much for me, Professor. What's your point?"
   "Terrorists aren't born, Johnny, they're made, schooled in a curriculum you won't find in any academic catalog. Leaving aside the reasons why they are what they are-which can range from a justifiable cause to the psychopathic megalomania of a Jackal-you keep the charades going because they're playing out their own."
   "So?" St. Jacques frowned in bewilderment.
   "So you control your players, telling them what to act out but not why."
   "That's what we're doing here and that's what Henry's doing out on the water all around Tranquility."
   "Is he? Are we?"
   "Hell, yes."
   "I thought I was too, but I was wrong. I overestimated a big clever kid doing a simple, harmless job and underestimated a humble, frightened priest who took thirty pieces of silver."
   "What are you talking about?"
   "Ishmael and Brother Samuel. Samuel must have witnessed the torture of a child through the eyes of Torquemada."
   "Turkey who?"
   "The point is we don't really know the players. The guards, for instance, the ones you brought to the chapel."
   "I'm not a fool, David," protested St. Jacques, interrupting. "When you called for us to surround the place, I took a small liberty and chose two men, the only two I would choose, figuring a pair of Uzis made up for the absence of one man and the four points of the compass. They're my head boys and former Royal Commandos; they're in charge of all the security here and, like Henry, I trust them."
   "Henry? He's a good man, isn't he?"
   "He's a pain in the ass sometimes, but he's the best in the islands."
   "And the Crown governor?"
   "He's just an ass."
   "Does Henry know that?"
   "Sure, he does. He didn't get to be a brigadier on his looks, potbelly and all. He's not only a good soldier, he's a good administrator. He covers for a lot around here."
   "And you're certain he hasn't been in touch with the CG."
   "He told me he'd let me know before he reached the pompous idiot and I believe him."
   "I sincerely hope you're right-because that pompous idiot is the Jackal's contact in Montserrat."
   "What? I don't believe it!"
   "Believe. It's confirmed."
   "It's incredible!"
   "No, it's not. It's the way of the Jackal. He finds vulnerability and he recruits it, buys it. There are very few in the gray areas beyond his ability to purchase them."
   Stunned, St. Jacques wandered aimlessly to the balcony doors coming to terms with the unbelievable. "I suppose it answers a question a lot of us have asked ourselves. The governor's old-line landed gentry with a brother high up in the Foreign Office who's close to the prime minister. Why at his age was he sent out here, or, maybe more to the point, why did he accept it? You'd think he'd settle for nothing less than Bermuda or the British Virgins. Plymouth can be a stepping-stone, not a final post."
   "He was banished, Johnny. Carlos probably found out why a long time ago and has him on a list. He's been doing it for years. Most people read newspapers and books and magazines for diversion; the Jackal pores over volumes of in-depth intelligence reports from every conceivable source he can unearth, and he's unearthed more than the CIA, the KGB, MI-Five and Six, Interpol and a dozen other services even want to think about. ... Those seaplanes flew in four or five times after I got back here from Blackburne. Who was on them?"
   "Pilots," answered St. Jacques, turning around. "They were taking people out, not bringing anyone in, I told you that."
   "Yes, you told me. Were you watching?"
   "Watching who?"
   "Each plane when it came in."
   "Hey, come on! You had me doing a dozen different things."
   "What about the two black commandos? The ones you trust so much."
   "They were checking and positioning the other guards, for Christ's sake."
   "Then we don't really know who may have come in on those planes, do we? Maybe slipping into the water over the pontoons as they taxied through the reefs-perhaps before the sandbar."
   "For God's sake, David, I've known those charter jocks for years. They wouldn't let anything like that happen. No way!"
   "You mean it's kind of unbelievable."
   "You bet your ass."
   "Like the Jackal's contact in Montserrat. The Crown governor."
   The owner of Tranquility Inn stared at his brother-in-law. "What kind of world do you live in?"
   "One I'm sorry you ever became a part of. But you are now and you'll play by its rules, my rules." A fleck, a flash, an infinitesimal streak of deep red light from the darkness outside! Infrared! Arms extended, Bourne lunged at St. Jacques, propelling him off his feet, away from the balcony doors. "Get out of there!" Jason roared in midair as both crashed to the floor, three successive snaps crackling the space above them as bullets thumped with finality into the walls of the villa.
   "What the hell-"
   "He's out there and he wants me to know it!" said Bourne, shoving his brother-in-law into the lower molding, crawling beside him, and reaching into the pocket of his guayabera. "He knows who you are, so you're the first corpse, the one he realizes will drive me to the edge because you're Marie's brother-you're family and that's what he's holding over my head. My family!"
   "Jesus Christ! What do we do?"
   "I do!" replied Jason, pulling the second flare out of his pocket. "I send him a message. The message that tells him why I'm alive and why I will be when he's dead. Stay where you are!" Bourne pulled his lighter out of his right pocket and ignited the flare. Scrambling, he raced across the balcony doors hurling the hissing, blinding missile out into the darkness. Two snaps followed, the bullets ricocheting off the tiled ceiling and shattering the mirror of a dressing table. "He's got a MAC-ten with a silencer," said Medusa's Delta, rolling into the wall, grabbing his inflamed neck as he did so. "I have to get out of here!"
   "David, you're hurt!"
   "That's nice." Jason Bourne got to his feet and raced to the door; slamming it back, he rushed into the villa's living room, only to face a frowning Canadian physician.
   "I heard some noise in there," said the doctor. "Is everything all right?"
   "I have to leave. Get to the floor."
   "Now, see here! There's blood on your bandage, the sutures-"
   "Get your ass on the floor!"
   "You're not twenty-one, Mr. Webb-"
   "Get out of my life!" shouted Bourne, running to the entrance, letting himself outside, and rushing up the lighted path toward the main complex, suddenly aware of the deafening steel band, its sound amplified throughout the grounds by a score of speakers nailed to the trees.
   The undulating cacophony was overwhelming, and that was not to his disadvantage, thought Jason. Angus McLeod had been true to his word. The huge glass-enclosed circular dining room held the few remaining guests and the fewer staff, and that meant the Chameleon had to change colors. He knew the mind of the Jackal as well as he knew his own, and that meant that the assassin would do exactly what he himself would do under the circumstances. The hungry, salivating wolf went into the cave of its confused, rabid quarry and pulled out the prized piece of meat. So would he, shedding the skin of the mythical chameleon, revealing a much larger beast of prey-say, a Bengal tiger-which could rip a jackal apart in his jaws. ... Why were the images important? Why? He knew why, and it filled him with a feeling of emptiness, a longing for something that had passed-he was no longer Delta, the feared guerrilla of Medusa; nor was he the Jason Bourne of Paris and the Far East. The older, much older, David Webb kept intruding, invading, trying to find reason within insanity and violence.
   No! Get away from me! You are nothing and I am everything! ... Go away, David, for Christ's sake, go away.
   Bourne spun off the path and ran across the harsh, sharp tropical grass toward the side entrance of the inn. Instantly, breathlessly, he cut his pace to a walk at the sight of a figure coming through the door; then upon recognizing the man, he resumed running. It was one of the few members of Tranquility's staff he remembered and one of the few he wished he could forget. The insufferable snob of an assistant manager named Pritchard, a loquacious bore, albeit hardworking, who never let anyone forget his family's importance in Montserrat-especially an uncle who was deputy director of immigration, a not so incidental plus for Tranquility Inn, David Webb suspected.
   "Pritchard!" shouted Bourne, approaching the man. "Have you got the bandages?"
   "Why, sir!" cried the assistant manager, genuinely flustered. "You're here. We were told you left this afternoon-"
   "Oh, shit!"
   "Sir? ... Such condolences of sorrow so pain my lips-"
   "Just keep them shut, Pritchard. Do you understand me?"
   "Of course, I was not here this morning to greet you or this afternoon to bid you farewell and express my deepest feelings, for Mr. Saint Jay asked me to work this evening, through the night, actually-"
   "Pritchard, I'm in a hurry. Give me the bandages and don't tell anyone-anyone-that you saw me. I want that very clear."
   "Oh, it is clear, sir," said Pritchard, handing over the three different rolls of elasticized tape. "Such privileged information is safe with me, as safe as the knowledge that your wife and children were staying here-oh, God forgive me! Forgive me, sir!"
   "I will and He will if you keep your mouth shut."
   "Sealed. It is sealed. I am so privileged!"
   "You'll be shot if you abuse the privilege. Is that clear?"
   "Sir?"
   "Don't faint, Pritchard. Go down to the villa and tell Mr. Saint Jay that I'll be in touch with him and he's to stay there. Have you got that? He's to stay there. ... You, too, for that matter."
   "Perhaps I could-"
   "Forget it. Get out of here!"
   The talkative assistant manager ran across the lawn toward the path to the east villas as Bourne raced to the door and went inside. Jason climbed the steps two at a time-only years before, it would have been three at a time-and again, out of breath, reached St. Jacques's office. He entered, closed the door, and quickly went to the closet where he knew his brother-in-law kept several changes of clothing. Both men were approximately the same size-outsized, as Marie claimed-and Johnny had frequently borrowed jackets and shirts from David Webb when visiting. Jason selected the most subdued combination in the closet. Lightweight gray slacks and an all-cotton dark blue blazer; the only shirt in evidence, again tropical cotton, was thankfully short-sleeved and brown. Nothing would pick up or reflect light.
   He started to undress when he felt a sharp, hot jolt on the left side of his neck. He looked in the closet mirror, alarmed, then furious at what he saw. The constricting bandage around his throat was deep red with spreading blood. He tore open the box of the widest tape; it was too late to change the dressing, he could only reinforce it and hope to stem the bleeding. He unraveled the elasticized tape around his neck, tearing it after several revolutions, and applied the tiny clamps to hold it in place. It was more inhibiting than ever; it was also an impediment he would put out of his mind.
   He changed clothes, pulling the collar of the brown shirt high over his throat and putting the automatic in his belt, the reel of fishing line in the blazer's pocket. ... Footsteps! The door opened as he pressed his back against the wall, his hand on the weapon. Old Fontaine walked in; he stood for a moment, looking at Bourne, then closed the door.
   "I've been trying to find you, frankly not knowing if you were still alive," said the Frenchman.
   "We're not using the radios unless we have to." Jason walked away from the wall. "I thought you got the message."
   "I did and it was right. Carlos may have his own radio by now. He's not alone, you know. It's why I've been wandering around looking for you. Then it occurred to me that you and your brother-in-law might be up here in his office, a headquarters, as it were."
   "It's not very smart for you to be walking around out in the open."
   "I'm not an idiot, monsieur. I would have perished long before now if I were. Wherever I walked I did so with great caution. ... In truth, it's why I made up my mind to find you, assuming you were not dead."
   "I'm not and you found me. What is it? You and the judge are supposed to be in an empty villa somewhere, not wandering around."
   "We are; we were. You see, I have a plan, a stratageme, I believe would interest you. I discussed it with Brendan-"
   "Brendan?"
   "His name, monsieur. He thinks my plan has merit and he's a brilliant man, very sagace-"
   "Shrewd? Yes, I'm sure he is, but he's not in our business."
   "He's a survivor. In that sense we are all in the same business. He thinks there is a degree of risk, but what plan under these circumstances is without risk?"
   "What's your plan?"
   "It is a means to trap the Jackal with minimum danger to the other people here."
   "That really worries you, doesn't it?"
   "I told you why, so there's no reason to repeat it. There are men and women together out there-"
   "Go on," broke in Bourne, irritated. "What's this strategy of yours, and you'd better understand that I intend to take out the Jackal if I have to hold this whole goddamned island hostage. I'm not in a giving mood. I've given too much."
   "So you and Carlos stalk each other in the night? Two crazed middle-aged hunters obsessed with killing each other, not caring who else is killed or wounded or maimed for life in the bargain?"
   "You want compassion, go to a church and appeal to that God of yours who pisses on this planet! He's either got one hell of a warped sense of humor or he's a sadist. Now either talk sense or I'm getting out of here."
   "I've thought this out-"
   "Talk!"
   "I know the monseigneur, know the way he thinks. He planned the death of my woman and me but not to coincide with yours, not in a way that would detract from the high drama of his immediate victory over you. It would come later. The revelation that I, the so-called hero of France, was in reality the Jackal's instrument, his creation, would be the final proof of his triumph. Don't you see?"
   Briefly silent, Jason studied the old man. "Yes, I do," he replied quietly. "Not that I ever figured on someone like you, but that approach is the basis of everything I believe. He's a megalomaniac. In his head he's the king of hell and wants the world to recognize him and his throne. By his lights, his genius has been overlooked, relegated to the level of punk killers and Mafia hit men. He wants trumpets and drums, when all he hears are tired sirens and weary questions in police lineups."
   "C'est vrai. He once complained to me that almost no one in America knew who he was."
   "They don't. They think he's a character out of novels or films, if they think about him at all. He tried to make up for that thirteen years ago, when he flew over from Paris to New York to kill me."
   "Correction, monsieur. You forced him to go after you."
   "It's history. What's all this got to do with now, tonight ... your plan?"
   "It provides us with a way to force the Jackal to come out after me, to meet with me. Now. Tonight."
   "How?"
   "By my wandering around the grounds very much in the open where he or one of his scouts will see me and hear me."
   "Why would that force him to come out after you?"
   "Because I will not be with the nurse he had assigned to me. I will be with someone else, unknown to him, someone who would have no reason at all to kill me."
   Again Bourne looked at the old Frenchman in silence. "Bait," he said finally.
   "A lure so provocative it will drive him into a frenzy until he has it in his possession-has me in his grip so he can question me. ... You see, I'm vital to him-more specifically, my death is vital-and everything is timing to him. Precision is his ... his diction, how is it said?"
   "His byword, his method of operation, I suppose."
   "It is how he has survived, how he has made the most of each kill, each over the years adding to his reputation as the assassin supreme. Until a man named Jason Bourne came out of the Far East ... he has never been the same since. But you know all that-"
   "I don't care about all that," interrupted Jason. "The 'timing.' Go on."
   "After I'm gone he can reveal who Jean Pierre Fontaine, the hero of France, really was. An impostor, his impostor, his creation, the instrument of death who was the snare for Jason Bourne. What a triumph for him! ... But he cannot do that until I'm dead. Quite simply, it would be too inconvenient. I know too much, too many of my colleagues in the gutters of Paris. No, I must be dead before he has his triumph."
   "Then he'll kill you when he sees you."
   "Not until he has his answers, monsieur. Where is his killer nurse? What has happened to her? Did Le Chameleon find her, turn her, do away with her? Have the British authorities got her? Is she on her way to London and MI-Six with all their chemicals, to be turned over at last to Interpol? So many questions. ... No, he will not kill me until he learns what he must learn. It may take only minutes to satisfy him, but long before then I trust that you will be at my side insuring my survival, if not his."
   "The nurse? Whoever it is, she'll be shot."
   "No, not at all. I'll order her away in anger, out of my sight at the first sign of contact. As I walk with her I shall lament the absence of my new dear friend, the angel of mercy who takes such good care of my wife, wondering out loud, What has happened to her? Where has she gone? Why haven't I seen her all day? Naturally, I will conceal on my person the radio, activated, of course. Wherever I am taken-for surely one of Carlos's men will make contact first-I will ask an enfeebled old man's questions. Why am I going here? Why are we there? ... You will follow-in full force, I sincerely hope. If you do so, you'll have the Jackal."
   Holding his head straight, his neck rigid, Bourne walked to St. Jacques's desk and sat on the edge. "Your friend, Judge Brendan what's-his-name, is right-"
   "Prefontaine. Although Fontaine is not my true name, we've decided it's all the same family. When the earliest members left Alsace-Lorraine for America in the eighteenth century with Lafayette, they added the Pre to distinguish them from the Fontaines who spread out all over France."
   "He told you that?"
   "He's a brilliant man, once an honored judge."
   "Lafayette came from Alsace-Lorraine?"
   "I don't know, monsieur. I've never been there."
   "He's a brilliant man. ... More to the point; he's right. Your plan has a lot of merit, but there's also considerable risk. And I'll be honest with you, Fontaine, I don't give a damn about the risk you're taking or about the nurse, whoever it is. I want the Jackal, and if it costs your life or the life of a woman I don't know, it doesn't matter to me. I want you to understand that."
   The old Frenchman stared at Jason with amused rheumy eyes and laughed softly. "You are such a transparent contradiction. Jason Bourne would never have said what you just did. He would have remained silent, accepting my proposition without comment but knowing the advantage. Mrs. Webb's husband, however, must have a voice. He objects and must be heard." Fontaine suddenly spoke sharply. "Get rid of him, Monsieur Bourne. He is not my protection, not the death of the Jackal. Send him away."
   "He's gone. I promise you, he's gone." The Chameleon sprang up from the desk, his neck frozen in pain. "Let's get started."
   The steel band continued its deafening assault, but now restricted to the confines of the glass-enclosed lobby and adjacent dining room. The speakers on the grounds were switched off on St. Jacques's orders, the owner of Tranquility Inn having been escorted up from the unoccupied villa by the two Uzi-bearing former commandos along with the Canadian doctor and the incessantly chattering Mr. Pritchard. The assistant manager was instructed to return to the front desk and say nothing to anyone about the things he had witnessed during the past hour.
   "Absolutely nothing, sir. If I am asked, I was on the telephone with the authorities over in 'Serrat."
   "About what?" objected St. Jacques. "Well, I thought-"
   "Don't think. You were checking the maid service on the west path, that's all."
   "Yes, sir." The deflated Pritchard headed for the office door, which had been opened moments before by the nameless Canadian doctor.
   "I doubt it would make much difference what he said," offered the physician as the assistant manager left. "That's a small zoo down there. The combination of last night's events, too much sun today and excessive amounts of alcohol this evening, will augur a great deal of guilt in the morning. My wife doesn't think your meteorologist will have much to say, John."
   "Oh?"
   "He's having a few himself, and even if he's halfway lucid, there aren't five sober enough to listen to him."
   "I'd better get down there. We may as well turn it into a minor carnivale. It'll save Scotty ten thousand dollars, and the more distraction we have, the better. I'll speak to the band and the bar and be right back."
   "We may not be here," said Bourne as his brother-in-law left and a strapping young black woman in a complete nurse's uniform walked out of St. Jacques's private bathroom into the office. At the sight of her, old Fontaine approached.
   "Very good, my child, you look splendid," said the Frenchman. "Remember now, I'll be holding your arm as we walk and talk, but when I squeeze you and raise my voice, telling you to leave me alone, you'll do as I say, correct?"
   "Yes, sir. I am to hurry away quite angry with you for being so unnice."
   "That's it. There's nothing to be afraid of, it's just a game. We want to talk with someone who's very shy."
   "How's the neck?" asked the doctor, looking at Jason, unable to see the bandage beneath the brown shirt.
   "It's all right," answered Bourne.
   "Let's take a look at it," said the Canadian, stepping forward.
   "Thanks but not now, Doctor. I suggest you go downstairs and rejoin your wife."
   "Yes. I thought you'd say that, but may I say something , very quickly?"
   "Very quickly."
   "I'm a doctor and I've had to do a great many things I didn't like doing and I'm sure this is in that category. But when, I think of that young man and what was done to him-"
   "Please," broke in Jason.
   "Yes, yes, I understand. Nevertheless, I'm here if you need me, I just wanted you to know that. ... I'm not terribly proud of my previous statements. I saw what I saw and I do have a name and I'm perfectly willing to testify in a court of law. In other words, I withdraw my reluctance."
   "There'll be no courts, Doctor, no testimony."
   "Really? But these are serious crimes!"
   "We know what they are," interrupted Bourne. "Your help is greatly appreciated, but nothing else concerns you."
   "I see," said the doctor, staring curiously at Jason. "I'll go, then." The Canadian went to the door and turned. "You'd better let me check that neck later. If you've got a neck." The doctor left and Bourne turned to Fontaine.
   "Are we ready?"
   "We're ready," replied the Frenchman, smiling pleasantly at the large, imposing, thoroughly mystified young black woman. "What are you going to do with all the money you're earning tonight, my dear?"
   The girl giggled shyly, her broad smile alive with bright white teeth. "I have a good boyfriend. I'm going to buy him a fine present."
   "That's lovely. What's your boyfriend's name?"
   "Ishmael, sir."
   "Let's go," said Jason firmly.
   The plan was simple to mount and, like most good strategies, however complex, simple to execute. Old Fontaine's walk through the grounds of Tranquility Inn had been precisely mapped out. The trek began with Fontaine and the young woman returning to his villa presumably to look in on his ill wife before his established, medically required evening stroll. They stayed on the lighted main path, straying now and then across the floodlit lawns but always visible, a crotchety old man supposedly walking wherever his whims led him, to the annoyance of his companion. It was a familiar sight the world over, an enfeebled, irascible septuagenarian taunting his keeper.
   The two former Royal Commandos, one rather short, the other fairly tall, had selected a series of stations between the points where the Frenchman and his "nurse" would turn and head in different directions. As the old man and the girl proceeded into the next planned leg, the second commando bypassed his colleague in darkness to the next location, using unseen routes only they knew or could negotiate, such as that beyond the coastline wall above the tangled tropical brush that led to the beach below the villas. The black guards climbed like two enormous spiders in a jungle, crawling swiftly, effortlessly from branch and rock to limb and vine, keeping pace with their two charges. Bourne followed the second man, his radio on Receive, the angry words of Fontaine pulsating through the static.
   Where is that other nurse? That lovely girl who takes care of my woman? Where is she? I haven't seen her all day! The emphatic phrases were repeated over and over again with growing hostility.
   Jason slipped. He was caught! He was behind the coastal wall, his left foot entangled in thick vines. He could not pull his leg loose-the strength was not there! He moved his head-his shoulders-and the hot flashes of pain broke out on his neck. It is nothing. Pull, yank, rip! ... His lungs bursting, the blood now drenching his shirt, he worked his way free and crawled on.
   Suddenly there were lights, colored lights spilling over the wall. They had reached the path to the chapel, the red and blue floodlights that lit up the entrance to Tranquility Inn's sealed off sanctuary. It was the last destination before the return route back to Fontaine's villa, and one they all agreed was designed more to permit the old Frenchman time to catch his breath than for any other purpose. St. Jacques had stationed a guard there to prevent entrance into the demolished chapel. There would be no contact here. Then Bourne heard the words over the radio-the words that would send the false nurse racing away from her false charge.
   "Get away from me!" yelled Fontaine. "I don't like you. Where is our regular nurse? What have you done with her?"
   Up ahead, the two commandos were side by side, crouching below the wall. They turned and looked at Jason, their expressions in the eerie wash of colored lights telling him what he knew only too well. From that moment on, all decisions were his; they had led him, escorted him, to his enemy. The rest was up to him.
   The unexpected rarely disturbed Bourne; it did now. Had Fontaine made a mistake? Had the old man forgotten about the inn's guard and erroneously presumed he was the Jackal's contact? In his aged eyes had an understandably surprised reaction on the guard's part been misinterpreted as an approach? Anything was possible, but considering the Frenchman's background-the life of a survivor-and the state of his alert mind, such a mistake was not realistic.
   Then the possibility of another reality came into focus and it was sickening. Had the guard been killed or bribed, replaced by another? Carlos was a master of the turn-around. It was said he had fulfilled a contract on the assassination of Anwar Sadat without firing a weapon, by merely replacing the Egyptian president's security detail with inexperienced recruits-money dispersed in Cairo returned a hundredfold by the anti-Israel brotherhoods in the Middle East. If it were true, the exercise on Tranquility Isle was child's play.
   Jason rose to his feet, gripped the top of the coastal wall, and slowly, painfully, his neck causing agony, pulled himself up over the ledge, again slowly, inch by inch, sending one arm after the other across the surface to grab the opposing edge for support. What he saw stunned him!
   Fontaine was immobile, his mouth gaped in shock, his wide eyes disbelieving, as another old man in a tan gabardine suit approached him and threw his arms around the aged hero of France. Fontaine pushed the man away in panic and bewilderment. The words erupted out of the radio in Bourne's pocket. "Claude! Quelle secousse! Vous etes ici!"
   The ancient friend replied in a tremulous voice, speaking French. "It is a privilege our monseigneur permitted me. To see for a final time my sister, and to give comfort to my friend, her husband. I am here and I am with you!"
   "With me? He brought you here? But, of course, he did!"
   "I am to take you to him. The great man wishes to speak with you."
   "Do you know what you're doing-what you've done?"
   "I am with you, with her. What else matters?"
   "She's dead! She took her own life last night! He intended to kill us both."
   Shut off your radio! screamed Bourne in the silence of his thoughts. Kill the radio! It was too late. The left door of the chapel opened and the silhouetted figure of a man walked out into the floodlit corridor of colored lights. He was young, muscular and blond, with blunt features and rigid posture. Was the Jackal training someone else to take his place?
   "Come with me, please," said the blond man, his French gentle but icily commanding. "You," he added, addressing the old man in the tan gabardine suit. "Stay where you are. At the slightest sound, fire your gun. ... Take it out. Hold it in your hand."
   "Oui, monsieur."
   Jason watched helplessly as Fontaine was escorted through the door of the chapel. From the pocket of his jacket there was an eruption of static followed by a snap; the Frenchman's radio had been found and destroyed. Yet something was wrong, off center, out of balance-or perhaps too symmetrical. It made no sense for Carlos to use the location of a failed trap a second time, no sense at all! The appearance of the brother of Fontaine's wife was an exceptional move, worthy of the Jackal, a truly unexpected move within the swirling winds of confusion, but not this, not again Tranquility Inn's superfluous chapel. It was too orderly, too repetitive, too obvious. Wrong.
   And therefore right? considered Bourne. Was it the illogical logic of the assassin who had eluded a hundred special branches of the international intelligence community for nearly thirty years? "He wouldn't do that-it's crazy!" "... Oh, yes, he might because he knows we think it's crazy." Was the Jackal in the chapel or wasn't he? If not, where was he? Where had he set his trap?
   The lethal chess game was not only supremely intricate, it was sublimely intimate. Others might die, but only one of them would live. It was the only way it could end. Death to the seller of death or death to the challenger, one seeking the preservation of a legend, the other seeking the preservation of his family and himself. Carlos had the advantage; ultimately he would risk everything, for, as Fontaine revealed, he was a dying man and he did not care. Bourne had everything to live for, a middle-aged hunter whose life was indelibly marked, split in two by the death of a vaguely remembered wife and children long ago in far-off Cambodia. It could not, would not, happen again!
   Jason slid down off the coastal wall to the slanting precipice at its base. He crawled forward to the two former commandos and whispered, "They've taken Fontaine inside."
   "Where is the guard?" asked the man nearest Bourne, confusion and anger in his whisper. "I myself placed him here with specific instructions. No one was permitted inside. He was to be on the radio the instant he saw anyone!"
   "Then I'm afraid he didn't see him."
   "Who?"
   "A blond man who speaks French."
   Both commandos whipped their heads toward each other, exchanging glances as the second guard instantly looked at Jason and spoke quietly. "Describe him, please," he said.
   "Medium height, large chest and shoulders-"
   "Enough," interrupted the first guard. "Our man saw him, sir. He is third provost of the government police, an officer who speaks several languages and is chief of drug investigations."
   "But why is he here, mon?" the second commando asked his colleague. "Mr. Saint Jay said the Crown police are not told everything, they are not part of us."
   "Sir Henry, mon. He has Crown boats, six or seven, running back and forth with orders to stop anyone leaving Tranquility. They are drug boats, mon. Sir Henry calls it a patrol exercise, so naturally the chief of investigations must be-" The lilting whisper of the West Indian trailed off in midsentence as he looked at his companion. "... Then why isn't he out on the water, mon? On the lead boat, mon?"
   "Do you like him?" asked Bourne instinctively, surprising himself by his own question. "I mean, do you respect him? I could be wrong but I seem to sense something-"
   "You are not wrong, sir," answered the first guard, interrupting. "The provost is a cruel man and he doesn't like the 'Punjabis,' as he calls us. He's very quick to accuse us, and many have lost work because of his rash accusations."
   "Why don't you complain, get rid of him? The British will listen to you."
   "The Crown governor will not, sir," explained the second guard. "He's very partial to his strict chief of narcotics. They are good friends and often go out after the big fish together."
   "I see." Jason did see and was suddenly alarmed, very alarmed. "Saint Jay told me there used to be a path behind the chapel. He said it might be overgrown, but he thought it was still there."
   "It is," confirmed the first commando. "The help still use it to go down to the water on their off times."
   "How long is it?"
   "Thirty-five, forty meters. It leads to an incline where steps have been cut out of the rocks that take one down to the beach."
   "Which of you is faster?" asked Bourne, reaching into his pocket and taking out the reel of fishing line.
   "I am."
   "I am!"
   "I choose you," said Jason, nodding his head at the shorter first guard, handing him the reel. "Go down on the border of that path and wherever you can, string this line across it, tying it to limbs or trunks or the strongest branches you can find. You mustn't be seen, so be alert, see in the dark."
   "Is no problem, mon!"
   "Have you got a knife?"
   "Do I have eyes?"
   "Good. Give me your Uzi. Hurry!"
   The guard scrambled away along the vine-tangled precipice and disappeared into the dense foliage beyond. The second Royal Commando spoke. "In truth, sir, I am much faster, for my legs are much longer."
   "Which is why I chose him and I suspect you know it. Long legs are no advantage here, only an impediment, which I happen to know. Also, he's much shorter and less likely to be spotted."
   "The smaller ones always get the better assignments. They parade us up front and put us in boxing rings with rules we don't understand, but the small soldiers get the plumbies."
   " 'Plumbies'? The better jobs?"
   "Yes, sir."
   "The most dangerous jobs?"
   "Yes, mon!"
   "Live with it, big fella."
   "What do we do now, sir?"
   Bourne looked above at the wall and the soft wash of colored lights. "It's called the waiting game-no love songs implied, only the hatred that comes from wanting to live when others want to kill you. There's nothing quite like it because you can't do anything. All you can do is think about what the enemy may or may not be doing, and whether he's thought of something you haven't considered. As somebody once said, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."
   "Where, mon?"
   "Nothing. It isn't true."
   Suddenly, filling the air above in chilling horror, came a prolonged excruciating scream, followed by words shrieked in pain. "Non, non! Vous etes monstrueux! ... Arêtes, arêtes, je vous supplie!"
   "Now!" cried Jason, slinging the strap of his Uzi over his shoulder as he leaped onto the wall, gripping the edge, pulling himself up as the blood poured out of his neck. He could not get up! He could not get over! Then strong hands pulled him and he fell over the top of the wall. "The lights!" he shouted. "Shoot them out!"
   The tall commando's Uzi blazing, the lines of floodlights exploded in the ground on both sides of the chapel's path. Again, strong black hands pulled him to his feet in the new darkness. And then a single shaft of yellow appeared, roving swiftly in all directions; it was a powerful halogen flashlight in the commando's left hand. The figure of a blood-drenched old man in a tan gabardine suit lay curled up in the path, his throat slit.
   "Stop! In the name of almighty God, stop where you are!" came Fontaine's voice from inside the chapel, the open half door revealing the flickering light of the electric candles. They approached the entrance, automatic weapons leveled, prepared for continuous fire ... but not prepared for what they saw. Bourne closed his eyes, the sight was too painful. Old Fontaine, like young Ishmael, was sprawled over the lectern on the raised platform beneath the blown-out, stained-glass windows of the left wall, his face running with blood where he had been slashed, and attached to his body were thin cables that led to various black boxes on both sides of the chapel.
   "Go back!" screamed Fontaine. "Run, you fools! I'm wired-"
   "Oh, Christ!"
   "Mourn not for me, Monsieur le Chameleon. I gladly join my woman! This world is too ugly even for me. It is no longer amusing. Run! The charge will go off-they are watching!"
   "You, mon! Now!" roared the second commando, grabbing Jason's jacket and racing him to the wall, holding Bourne in his arms as they plummeted over the stone surface into the thick foliage.
   The explosion was massive, blinding and deafening. It was as if this small corner of the small island had been taken out by a heat-seeking nuclear missile. Flames erupted into the night sky, but the burning mass was quickly diffused in the still wind to fiery rubble.
   "The path!" shouted Jason, in a hoarse whisper, as he crawled to his feet in the sloping brush. "Get to the path!"
   "You're in bad condition, mon-"
   "I'll take care of me, you take care of you!"
   "I believe I've taken care of both of us."
   "So you've got a fucking medal and I'll add a lot of money to it. Now, get us up to the path!"
   Pulling, pushing, and finally with Bourne's feet grinding like a machine out of control, the two men reached the border of the path thirty feet behind the smoldering ruins of the chapel. They crept into the weeds and within seconds the first commando found them. "They're in the south palms," he said breathlessly. "They wait until the smoke has cleared to see if anyone is alive, but they cannot stay long."
   "You were there?" asked Jason. "With them?"
   "No problem, mon, I told you, sir."
   "What's happening? How many are there?"
   "There were four, sir. I killed the man whose place I assumed. He was black, so it made no matter in appearance with the darkness. It was quick and silent. The throat."
   "Who's left?"
   " 'Serrat's chief of narcotics, of course, and two others-"
   "Describe them!"
   "I could not see clearly, but one I think was another black man, tall and without much hair. The third I could not see at all, for he-or she-was wearing strange clothes, with cloth over the head like a woman's sun hat or insect veil."
   "A woman?"
   "It is possible, sir."
   "A woman ... ? They've got to get out of there-he's got to get out of there!"
   "Very soon they will run to this path and race down to the beach, where they will hide in the woods of the cove until a boat comes for them. They have no choice. They cannot go back to the inn, for strangers are seen instantly, and even though we are far away and the steel band is loud, the explosion was certainly heard by the guards posted outside. They will report it."
   "Listen to me," said Bourne, his voice hoarse, tense. "One of those three people is the man I want, and I want him for myself! So hold your fire because I'll know him when I see him. I don't give a damn about the others; they can be flushed out of that cove later."
   There was a sudden burst of gunfire from the tropical forest accompanied by screams from the once floodlit corridor beyond the ruins of the chapel. Then one after another the figures raced out of the tangled brush into the path. The first to be caught was the blond-haired police officer from Montserrat, the waist-high invisible fishing line tripping him as he fell into the dirt, breaking the thin, taut string. The second man, slender, tall, dark-featured, with only a fringe of hair on his bald head, was hard upon the first, pulling him to his feet, sight or instinct making the second killer wield his automatic weapon in slashing arcs, cutting the impeding lines across the path to the ledge that led down to the beach. The third figure appeared. It was not a woman. It was a man, in the robes of a monk. A priest. It was he. The Jackal!
   Bourne rose to his feet and stumbled out of the brush into the path, the Uzi in his hands; the victory was his, his freedom his, his family his! As the robed figure reached the top of the primitive rock-hewn staircase, Jason pressed his trigger finger, holding it in place, the fusillade of bullets exploding out of the automatic weapon.
   The monk arched in silhouette, then fell, his body tumbling, rolling, sprawling down the steps carved out of volcanic rock, finally lurching over the edge and plummeting to the sand below. Bourne raced down the awkward, irregular stone staircase, the two commandos behind him. He reached the beach, raced over to the corpse, and pulled the drenched hood away from the face. In horror, he looked at the black features of Samuel, the brother priest of Tranquility Isle, the Judas who had sold his soul to the Jackal for thirty pieces of silver.
   Suddenly, in the distance, there was the roar of powerful dual engines as a huge speedboat lurched out of a shadowed section of the cove and sped for a break in the reefs. The beam of a searchlight shot out, firing the barriers of rock protruding above the choppy black water, its wash illuminating the fluttering ensign of the government's drug fleet. Carlos! ... The Jackal was no chameleon, but he had changed! He had aged, grown thinner and bald-he was not the sharp, broad, full-headed muscular image of Jason's memory. Only the indistinct dark Latin features remained, the face and the unfamiliar expanse of bare skin above burned by the sun. He was gone!
   The boat's motors screamed in unison as the craft breached a precarious opening in the reef and burst out into open water. Then the words in heavily accented English, metallically spewing from the distant loudspeaker, echoed within the tropical cove.
   "Paris, Jason Bourne! Paris, if you dare! Or shall it be a certain minor university in Maine, Dr. Webb?"
   Bourne, his neck wound ripped open, collapsed in the lapping waves, his blood trickling into the sea.