'No. That's the way Jason Bourne might do it. Not you. '
'All right, I'm projecting. It doesn't invalidate the thought. '
'What happened yesterday afternoon?'
Webb toyed with the egg and toast on his plate. 'The seminar ran late as usual. It was getting dark, and my guards fell in and we walked across the quad towards the parking lot. There was a football rally - our insignificant team against another insignificant team - but very large for us. The crowd passed the four of us, kids racing to a bonfire behind the bleachers, screaming and shouting and singing fight songs, working themselves up. And I thought to myself, this is //. This is when it's going to happen if it is going to happen. Believe me, for those few moments I was Bourne. I crouched and side-stepped and watched everyone I could see - I was close to panic. '
'And?' said Marie, disturbed by her husband's abrupt silence.
'My so-called guards were looking around and laughing, the two in front having a ball, enjoying the whole thing. '
'That disturbed you?'
'Instinctively. I was a vulnerable target in the centre of an excited crowd. My nerves told me that; my mind didn't have to. '
'Who's talking now?'
'I'm not sure. I just know that during those few moments nothing made sense to me. Then, only seconds later, as if to pinpoint the feelings I hadn't verbalized, the man behind me on my left came up and said something like, "Isn't it great - or terrific - to see kids with that kind of spirit? Makes you feel good, doesn't it?" I mumbled something inane, and then he said - and these are his exact words - "How about you, professor? Do you feel better about things now, what with us here and all?" David looked up at his wife. 'Did 7 feel better... HOW? Me. '
'He knew what their job was,' interrupted Marie. 'To protect you. I'm sure he meant did you feel safer. '
'Did he? Do they? That crowd of screaming kids, the dim light, the shadowy bodies, obscure faces... and he's joining in and laughing - they're all laughing. Are they really here to protect me?'
'What else?'
'I don't know. Maybe I've simply been where they haven't. Maybe I'm just thinking too much, thinking about McAllister and those eyes of his. Except for the blinking they belonged to a dead fish. You could read into them anything you wanted to - depending upon how you felt. '
'What he told you was a shock,' said Marie, leaning against the sink, her arms folded across her breasts, watching her husband closely. 'It had to have had a terrible effect on you. It certainly did on me. '
'That's probably it,' agreed Webb, nodding. 'It's ironic, but as much as there are so many things I want to remember, there's an awful lot I'd like to forget. '
'Why don't you call McAllister and tell him what you feel, what you think? You've got a direct line to him, both at his office and his home. Mo Panov would tell you to do that. '
'Yes, Mo would.' David ate his egg half-heartedly. '"If there's a way to get rid of a specific anxiety, do it as fast as you can, " that's what he'd say. '
"Then do it. '
Webb smiled, about as enthusiastically as he ate his egg. 'Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I'd rather not announce a latent, or passive, or recurrent paranoia, or whatever the hell they call it. Mo would fly up here and beat my brains out. '
'If he doesn't, I might. '
'Ni shi nuhaizi,' said David, using the paper napkin, as he got out of his chair and went to her.
'And what does that mean, my inscrutable husband and number eighty-seven lover?'
'Bitch goddess. It means, freely translated, that you are a little girl - and not so little - and I can still take you three out of five on the bed where there are other things to do with you instead of beating you up. '
'All that in such a short phrase?'
'We don't waste words, we paint pictures... I've got to leave. The class this morning deals with Siam's Rama the Second, and his claims on the Malay states in the early
nineteenth century. It's a pain in the ass but important. What's worse is there's an exchange student from Moulmein in Burma, who I think knows more than I do. '
'Siam?' asked Marie, holding him. That's Thailand. '
'Yes. It's Thailand now. '
'Your wife, your children? Does it hurt, David?'
He looked at her, loving her so. 'I can't be that hurt where I can't see that clearly. Sometimes I hope I never do. '
'I don't think that way at all. I want you to see them and hear them and feel them. And to know that I love them, too. '
'Oh, Christ!' He held her, their bodies together in a warmth that was theirs alone.
The line was busy for the second time so Webb replaced the phone and returned to W. F. Vella's Siam under Rama III to see if the Burmese exchange student had been right about Rama IPs conflict with the sultan of Kedah over the disposition of the island of Penang. It was confrontation time in the rarefied groves of academe; the Moulmein pagodas of Kipling's poetry had been replaced by a smart-ass postgraduate student who had no respect for his betters - Kipling would understand that, and torpedo it.
There was a brief, rapid knock on his office door, which opened before David could ask the caller in. It was one of his guards, the man who had spoken to him yesterday afternoon during the pre-game rally - among the crowds, amid the noise, in the middle of his fears.
'Hello there, Professor?'
'Hello. It's Jim, isn't it?
'No, Johnny. It doesn't matter; you're not expected to get our names straight. '
'Is anything the matter?
'Just the opposite, sir. I dropped in to say good-bye - for all of us, the whole contingent. Everything's clean and you're back to normal. We've been ordered to report to B-One-L. '
To what?'
'Sounds kind of silly, doesn't it? Instead of saying "Come on back to headquarters" they call it B-One-L, as if anyone couldn't figure it out. '
'I can't figure it out. '
'Base-One-Langley. We're CIA, all six of us, but I guess you know that. '
'You're leaving? All of you?'
That's about it. '
'But I thought... I thought there was a crisis here. '
'Everything's clean. '
'I haven't heard from anybody. I haven't heard from McAllister. '
'Sorry, don't know him. We just have our orders. '
'You can't simply come in here and say you're leaving without some explanation! I was told I was a target! That a man in Hong Kong wanted me killed?
'Well, I don't know whether you were told that, or whether you told yourself that, but I do know we've got an A-one legitimate problem in Newport News. We have to get briefed and get on it. '
'A-one legitimate...? What about me?'
'Get a lot of rest, Professor. We were told you need it.' The man from the CIA abruptly turned, went through the door, and closed it.
Well, I don't know whether you were told that, or whether you told yourself that... How about you, professor? Do you feel better about things now, what with us here and all?
Parade?... Charade!
Where was McAllister's number? Where was it? God-damit, he had two copies, one at home and one in his desk drawer - no, his wallet! he found it, his whole body trembling in fear and in anger as he dialled.
'Mr McAllister's office,' said a female voice.
'I thought this was his private line. That's what I was told!'
'Mr McAllister is away from Washington, sir. In these cases we're instructed to pick up and log the calls. '
'Log the calls'? Where is he?'
'I don't know, sir. I'm from the secretarial pool. He phones in every other day or so. Who shall I say called?"
'That's not good enough! My name is Webb. Jason Webb... No, David Webb! I have to talk to him right away! Immediately!'
I'll connect you with the department handling his urgent calls, Webb slammed down the phone. He had the number for McAllister's home; he dialled it.
'Hello?' The voice of another woman.
'Mr McAllister, pleas
e. '
'I'm afraid he's not here. If you care to leave your name and a number, I'll give it to him. '
'When?
'Well, he should be calling tomorrow or the next day. He always does. '
'You've got to give me the number where he is now, Mrs McAllister! - I assume this is Mrs McAllister. '
'I should hope so. Eighteen years' worth. Who are you?'
'Webb. David Webb. '
'Oh, of course! Edward rarely discusses business - and he certainly didn't in your case but he did tell me what terribly nice people you and your lovely wife are. As a matter of fact, our older boy, who's in prep school, naturally, is very interested in the university where you teach. Now, in the last year or so his marks dropped just a touch, and his aptitude tests weren't the highest, but he has such a wonderful, enthusiastic outlook on life, I'm sure he'd be an asset... '
'Mrs McAllister!' broke in Webb. 'I have to reach your husband! Now!'
'Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but I don't think that's possible. He's in the Far East and, of course, I don't have a number where 1 can reach him there. In emergencies we always call the State Department. '
David hung up the phone. He had to alert -phone - Marie. The line had to be free by now; it had been busy for nearly an hour, and there was no one his wife could talk with on the telephone for an hour, not even her father, her mother or her two brothers in Canada. There was great affection between them all, but she was the maverick. She was not the Francophile her lather was, not a homebody like her mother, and although she adored her brothers, not the rustic, plainspoken folk they were. She had found another life in the stratified layers of higher economics, with a doctorate and gainful employment with the Canadian Government. And, at last, she had married an American.
QueI dommage.
The line was still busy! Goddamnit, Marie!
Then Webb froze, his whole body for an instant a block of searing hot ice. He could barely move, but he did move, and then he raced out of his small office and down the corridor with such speed that he pummelled three students and a colleague out of his path, sending two into walls the others buckling under him; he was a man suddenly possessed.
Reaching his house, he slammed on the brakes; the car screeched to a stop as he leaped out of the seat and ran up the path to the door. He stopped, staring, his breath suddenly no longer in him. The door was open and on the angled indented panel was a hand print stamped in red - blood.
Webb ran inside, throwing everything out of his way. Furniture crashed and lamps were smashed as he searched the ground floor. Then he went upstairs, his hands two thin slabs of granite, his every nerve primed for a sound, a weight, his killer instinct as clear as the red stains he had seen below on the outside door. For these moments he knew and accepted the fact that he was the assassin - the lethal animal that Jason Bourne had been. If his wife was above, he would kill whoever tried to harm her - or had harmed her already.
Prone on the floor, he pushed the door of their bedroom open.
The explosion blew apart the upper hallway wall. He rolled under the blast to the opposite side; he had no weapon, but he had a cigarette lighter. He reached into his trouser pockets for the scribbled notes all teachers gather, bunched them together, spun to his left and snapped the lighter; the flame was immediate. He threw the fired wad far into the bedroom as he pressed his back against the wall and rose from the floor, his head whipping towards the other two closed doors on the narrow upper floor. Suddenly he lashed out with his feet, one crash after another as he lunged back onto the floor and rolled into the shadows.
Nothing. The two rooms were empty. If there was an enemy he was in the bedroom. But by now the bedspread was on fire. The flames were gradually leaping towards the ceiling. Only seconds now.
Now!
He plunged into the room, and grabbing the flaming bedspread he swung it in a circle as he crouched and rolled on the floor until the spread was ashes, all the while expecting an ice-cold hit in his shoulder or his arm, but knowing he could overcome it and take his enemy. Jesus! He was Jason Bourne again!
There was nothing. His Marie was not there; there was nothing but a primitive string-device that had triggered a shotgun, angled for a certain kill when he pushed the door open. He stamped out the flames, lurched for a table lamp, and turned it on.
Marie! Marie!
Then he saw it. A note lying on the pillow on her side of the bed:
'A wife for a wife, Jason Bourne. She is wounded but not dead, as mine is dead. You know where to find me, and her, if you are circumspect and fortunate. Perhaps we can do business for I have enemies, too. If not, what is the death of one more daughter?''
Webb screamed, falling onto the pillows, trying to mute the outrage and the horror that came from his throat, pushing back the pain that swept through his temples. Then he turned over and stared at the ceiling, a terrible, brute passivity coming over him. Things unremembered suddenly came back to him - things he had never revealed even to Morris Panov. Bodies collapsing under his knife, falling under his gun these were not imagined killings, they were real. They had made him what he was not, but they had done the job too well. He had become the image, the man that was not supposed to be. He'd had to. He'd had to survive - without knowing who he was.
And now he knew the two men within him that made up his whole being. He would always remember the one because it was the man he wanted to be, but for the time being he had to be the other - the man he despised.
Jason Bourne rose from the bed and went to the walk-in
closet where there was a locked drawer, the third in his built-in bureau. He reached up and pulled the tape from a key attached to the cupboard ceiling. He inserted it in the lock and opened the drawer. Inside were two dismantled automatics, four strings of thin wire attached to spools that he could conceal in his palms, three valid passports in three different names, and six plastique explosive charges that could blow apart whole rooms. He would use one or all. David Webb would find his wife. Or Jason Bourne would become the terrorist no one ever dreamed of in his wildest nightmares. He did not care - too much had been taken from him. He would endure no more.
Bourne cracked the various parts in place and snapped the magazine of the second automatic. Both were ready. He was ready. He went back to the bed and lay down, staring again at the ceiling. The logistics would fall into place, he knew that. Then the hunt would begin. He would find her -dead or alive and if she was dead - he would kill, kill and kill again! Whoever it was would never get away from him. Not from Jason Bourne.
5
Barely in control of himself, he knew that calm was out of the question. His hand gripped the automatic while his mind cracked with surreal bursts of rapid gunfire, one option after another slamming into his head. Above all he could not stay still; he had to keep in motion. He had to get up and move!
The State Department. The men at State he had known during his last months in the remote, classified Virginia medical complex - those insistent, obsessed men who questioned him relentlessly, showing him photographs by the dozens until Mo Panov would order them to stop. He had learned their names and written them down, thinking that one day he might want to know who they were - no reason other than visceral distrust; such men had tried to kill him only months before. Yet he had never asked for their names, nor were they offered except as Harry, Bill, or Sam, presumably on the theory that actual identities would simply add to his confusion. Instead, he had unobtrusively read their identification tags and, after they left, wrote the names down and placed the pieces of paper with his personal belongings in the bureau drawer. When Marie came to see him, which was every day, he gave her those names and told her to hide them in the house hide them well.
Later, Marie admitted that although she had done as he instructed, she thought his suspicions were excessive, a case of overkill. But then one morning, only minutes after a heated session with the men from Washington, David pleaded with her to leave the medical complex immediately, run to
the car, drive to the bank where they had a safety deposit box, and do the following: Insert a short strand of her hair in the bottom left border of the deposit box, lock it, get out of the bank, and return two hours later to see if it was still there.
It was not. She had securely fixed the strand of hair in place; it could not have fallen away unless the deposit box had been opened. She found it on the tiled floor of the bank vault.
'How did you know?' she had asked him.
'One of my friendly interrogators got hot and tried to provoke me. Mo was out of the room for a couple of minutes and he damn near accused me of faking, of hiding things. I knew you were coming, and so I played it out. I wanted to see for myself how far they would go - how far they could go?
Robert Ludlum - Bourne 2 - Bourne Supremecy Page 7
