Robert Ludlum: The Bourne Ultimatum

"Maybe a quick brunch."

"Take your hands off me, woman. In another fifteen seconds I'm going to throw Jamie and Mrs. Cooper out of our bedroom and demand my connubials."

"I'm tempted, Attila, but I think Bro's counting on us. Two feisty individuals and an over-imaginative disbarred judge are more than an Ontario ranch boy can handle."

"I love them all."

"So do I. Let's go."

The Caribbean sun had disappeared; only faint sprays of orange barely illuminated the western horizon. The flames of the glass-encased candles were steady, pointed, sending streams of gray smoke through their funnels, their glow producing warm light and comfortable shadows around the terraced balcony of Villa Eighteen. The conversation, too, had been warm and comfortable-survivors relishing their deliverance from a nightmare.

"I emphatically explained to Handy Randy that the doctrine of stare decisis has to be challenged if the times have altered the perceptions that existed when the original decisions were rendered," expounded Prefontaine. "Change, change-the inevitable result of the calendar."

"That's so obvious, I can't imagine anyone debating it," said Alex.

"Oh, Flood-the-Gates used it incessantly, confusing juries with his erudition and confounding his peers with multiple decises."

"Mirrors and smoke," added Marie, laughing. "We do the same in economics. Remember, Bro, I told you that?"

"I didn't understand a word. Still don't."

"No mirrors and no smoke where medicine's involved," said Panov. "At least not where the labs are monitored and the pharmaceutical money boys are prohibited. Legitimate advances are validated every day."

"In many ways it's the purposely undefined core of our Constitution," continued the former judge. "It's as though the Founders had read Nostradamus but didn't care to admit their frivolity, or perhaps studied the drawings of Da Vinci, who foresaw aircraft. They understood that they could not legislate the future, for they had no idea what it would hold, or what society would demand for its future liberties. They created brilliant omissions."

"Unaccepted as such by the brilliant Randolph Gates, if memory serves," said Conklin.

"Oh, he'll change quickly now," interrupted Prefontaine, chuckling. "He was always a sworn companion of the wind, and he's smart enough to adjust his sails when he has to buck it."

"I keep wondering whatever happened to the truck driver's wife, the one in the diner who was married to the man they called 'Bronk,' " said the psychiatrist.

"Try to imagine a small house and a white picket fence, et cetera," offered Alex. "It's easier that way."

"What truck driver's wife?" asked St. Jacques.

"Leave it alone, Bro, I'd rather not find out."

"Or that son-of-a-bitch army doctor who pumped me full of Amytal!" pressed Panov.

"He's running a clinic in Leavenworth," replied Conklin. "I forgot to tell you. ... So many, so crazy. And Krupkin. Crazy old Kruppie, elegance and all. We owe him, but we can't help him."

There was a moment of silence as each in his and her own way thought of a man who had selflessly opposed a monolithic system that demanded the death of David Webb, who stood by the railing staring out at the darkened sea, somehow separated in mind and body from the others. It would take time, he understood that. Jason Bourne had to vanish; he had to leave him. When?

Not now! Out of the early night, the madness began again! From the sky the roar of multiple engines broke the silence like approaching sharp cracks of lightning. Three military helicopters swooped down toward the Tranquility dock, fusillades of gunfire chewing up the shoreline as a powerful bullet speedboat swung through the reefs toward the beach. St. Jacques was on his intercom. "Shore alarm!" he screamed. "Grab your weapons!"

"Christ, the Jackal's dead!" yelled Conklin.

"His goddamned disciples aren't!" shouted Jason Bourne-no trace of David Webb-as he shoved Marie to the floor and took a gun out of his belt, a weapon his wife knew nothing about. "They were told he was here!"

"It's insane!"

"That's Carlos," replied Jason, racing to the balcony railing. "He owns them! They're his for life!"

"Shit!" roared Alex as he wheeled his chair furiously and pushed Panov away from the table and the lighted candles.

Suddenly a deafening loudspeaker from the lead helicopter crackled with static, followed by the words of the pilot. "You saw what we did to the beach, mon! We'll cut you in two if you don't stop your engine! ... That's better, mon. Drift into shore-drift, no motor at all and both of you come on deck, your hands on the gunwale, leaning forward! Do it now!"

The searchlight beams of the two circling helicopters centered on the boat as the lead aircraft dropped to the beach, the rotors swirling up the sand, producing an outline of a threshold for its landing. Four men leaped out, their weapons trained on the drifting speedboat as the inhabitants of Villa Eighteen stood by the railing, staring in astonishment at the unbelievable scene below.

"Pritchard!" yelled St. Jacques. "Bring me the binoculars!"

"They're in my hands, Mr. Saint Jay-oh, there they are." The assistant manager rushed out with the powerful magnifiers and handed them to his employer. "I managed to clean the lenses, sir!"

"What do you see?" asked Bourne sharply.

"I don't know. Two men."

"Some army!" said Conklin.

"Give them to me," ordered Jason, grabbing the binoculars from his brother-in-law.

"What is it, David?" shouted Marie, seeing the shock on her husband's face.

"It's Krupkin," he said.

Dimitri Krupkin sat at the white wrought-iron table, his face pale-and it was his full face, as his chin beard had been removed-and refused to speak to anyone until he had finished his third brandy. Like Panov, Conklin and David Webb, he was clearly a hurt man, a wounded man, a man in considerable physical pain, which, like the others, he did not care to dwell upon, as what lay ahead was infinitely better than what he had left behind. His decidedly inferior clothes seemed to annoy him whenever he glanced down at them, but he shrugged continually in silence, the shrugs conveying the fact that soon he would be back in sartorial splendor. His first words were to the elderly Brendan Prefontaine as he appraised the former judge's intricately laced peach guayabera above the royal-blue trousers. "I like that outfit," he said admiringly. "Very tropical and in good taste for the climate."

"Thank you."

Introductions were made, and the instant they were over, a barrage of questions was hurled at the Soviet. He held up both hands, as a pope might from his balcony in St. Peter's Square, and spoke. "I will not bore you or disturb you with the trivial details of my flight from Mother Russia, other than to say I'm aghast at the high price of corruption and will neither forget nor forgive the filthy accommodations I was forced to endure for the exorbitant sums of money I spent. ... That said, thank God for Credit Suisse and those lovely green coupons they issue."

"Just tell us what happened," said Marie.

"You, dear lady, are even lovelier than I had imagined. Had we met in Paris I would have whisked you away from this Dickensian ragamuffin you call a husband. My, look at your hair-glorious!"

"He probably couldn't tell you what color it is," said Marie, smiling. "You'll be the threat I hold over his peasant head."

"Still, for his age he's remarkably competent."

"That's because I feed him a lot of pills, all kinds of pills, Dimitri. Now tell us, what happened?"

"What happened? They found me out, that's what happened! They confiscated my lovely house in Geneva! It's now an adjunct to the Soviet embassy. The loss is heartbreaking!"

"I think my wife's talking about the peasant me," said Webb. "You were in the hospital in Moscow and you found out what someone intended for me-namely, my execution. Then you told Benjamin to get me out of Novgorod."