The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum

“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 serge. ant 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.”