Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Identity

“Brother? … Stop it! For Christ’s sake, stop it!”

“Why should I? Cain lives! We made him and he came to life!”

“I’m not Cain. He never was! I never was!”

“So you do know! Liar! Bastard!”

“Put that gun away. I’m telling you, put it down!”

“No chance. I swore to myself I’d give you two minutes because I wanted to hear what you’d come up with. Well, I’ve heard it and it smells. Who gave you the right?’ We all lose things; it goes with the job, and if you don’t like the goddamned job you get out. If there’s no accommodation you fade; that’s what I thought you did, and I was willing to pass on you, to convince the others to let you fade! But no, you came back, and turned your gun on us.”

“No! It’s not true!”

“Tell that to the laboratory techs, who have eight fragments of glass that spell out two prints. Third and index fingers, right hand. You were there and you butchered five people. You—one of them—took out your guns—plural—and blew them away. Perfect setup. Discredited strategy. Varied shells, multiple bullets, infiltration. Treadstone’s aborted and you walk out free.”

“No, you’re wrong! It was Carlos. Not me, Carlos. If what you’re saying took place on Seventy-first Street, it was him! He knows. They know. A residence on Seventy-first Street. Number 139. They know about it!”

Conklin nodded, his eyes clouded, the loathing in them seen in the dim light, through the rain.

“So perfect,” he said slowly. “The prime mover of the strategy blows it apart by making a deal with the target. What’s your take besides the four million? Carlos give you immunity from his own particular brand of persecution? You two make a lovely couple.”

“That’s crazy!”

“And accurate,” completed the man from Treadstone. “Only nine people alive knew that address before seven-thirty last Friday night. Three of them were killed, and we’re the other four. If Carlos found it, there’s only one person who could have told him. You.”

“How could I? I didn’t know it. I don’t know it!”

“You just said it.” Conklin’s left hand gripped the cane; it was a prelude to firing, steadying a crippled foot.

“Don’t!” shouted Bourne, knowing the plea was useless, spinning to his left as he shouted, his right foot lashing out at the wrist that held the gun. Che-sah! was the unknown word that was the silent scream in his head. Conklin fell back, firing wildly in the air, tripping over his cane. Jason spun around and down, now hammering his left foot at the weapon; it flew out of the hand that held it.

Conklin rolled on the ground, his eyes on the far columns of the mausoleum, expecting an explosion from the gun that would blow his attacker into the air. No! The man from Treadstone rolled again. Now to the right, his features in shock, his wild eyes focused on—There was someone else!

Bourne crouched, diving diagonally backward as four gunshots came in rapid succession, three screeching ricochets spinning off beyond sound. He rolled over and over and over, pulling the automatic from his belt. He saw the man in the rain; a silhouetted figure rising above a gravestone.

He fired twice; the man collapsed.

Ten feet away Conklin was thrashing on the wet grass, both hands spreading frantically over the ground, feeling for the steel of a gun. Bourne sprang up and raced over, he knelt beside the Treadstone man, one hand grabbing the wet hair, the other holding his automatic, its barrel pressed into Conklin’s skull. From the far columns of the mausoleum came a prolonged, shattering scream.

It grew steadily, eerily in volume, then stopped.

“That’s your hired shotgun,” said Jason, yanking Conklin’s head to the side. “Treadstone’s taken on some very strange employees. Who was the other man? What death row did you spring him from?”

“He was a better man than you ever were,” replied Conklin, his voice strained, the rain glistening on his face, caught in the beam of the fallen flashlight six feet away on the ground. “They all are. They’ve all lost as much as you lost, but they never turned. We can count on them!”

“No matter what I say, you won’t believe me. You don’t want to believe me!”

“Because I know what you are—what you did. You just confirmed the whole damn thing. You can kill me, but they’ll get you. You’re the worst kind. You think you’re special. You always did. I saw you after Phnom Penh—everybody lost out there, but that didn’t count with you. It was only you, just you! Then in Medusa! No rules for Delta! The animal just wanted to kill. And that’s the kind that turns. Well, I lost too, but I never turned. Go on! Kill me! Then you can go back to Carlos. But when I don’t come back, they’ll know. They’ll come after you and they won’t stop until they get you. Go on! Shoot!”

Conklin was shouting, but Bourne could hardly hear him. Instead he had heard two words and the jolts of pain hammered at his temples. Phnom Penh! Phnom Penh. Death in the skies, from the skies. Death of the young and the very young. Screeching birds and screaming machines and the deathlike stench of the jungle … and a river. He was blinded again, on fire again.

Beneath him the man from Treadstone had broken away. His crippled figure was crawling in panic, lunging, his hands surging through the wet grass. Jason blinked, trying to force his mind to come back to him. Then instantly he knew he had to point the automatic and fire. Conklin had found his gun and was raising it. But Bourne could not pull the trigger.

He dove to his right, rolling on the ground, scrambling toward the marble columns of the mausoleum. Conklin’s gunshots were wild, the crippled man unable to steady his leg or his aim.

Then the firing stopped and Jason got to his feet, his face against the smooth wet stone. He looked out, his automatic raised; he had to kill this man, for this man would kill him, kill Marie, link them both to Carlos.

Conklin was hobbling pathetically toward the gates, turning constantly, the gun extended, his destination a car outside in the road. Bourne raised his automatic, the crippled figure in his gunsight.

A split half-second and it would be over, his enemy from Treadstone dead, hope found with that death, for there were reasonable men in Washington.

He could not do it; he could not pull the trigger. He lowered the gun, standing helpless by the marble column as Conklin climbed into his car.

The car. He had to get back to Paris. There was a way. It had been there all along. She had been there!

He rapped on the door, his mind racing, facts analyzed, absorbed and discarded as rapidly as they came to him, a strategy evolving. Marie recognized the knock; she opened the door.

“Dear God, look at you! What happened?”

“No time,” he said, rushing toward the telephone across the room. “It was a trap. They’re convinced I turned, sold out to Carlos.”

“What?”

“They say I flew into New York last week, last Friday. That I killed five people … among them a brother.” Jason closed his eyes briefly. “There was a brother—is a brother. I don’t know, I can’t think about it now.”

“You never left Paris! You can prove it!”

“How? Eight, ten hours, that’s all I’d need. And eight or ten hours unaccounted for is all they need now. Who’s going to come forward?”

“I will. You’ve been with me.”

“They think you’re part of it,” said Bourne, picking up the telephone and dialing. “The theft, the turning, Port Noir, the whole damn thing. They’ve locked you into me. Carlos engineered this down to the last fragment of a fingerprint. Christ! Did he put it together!”

“What are you doing? Whom are you calling?”