Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Supremacy

'A commando,' said Jason, quietly. 'It fits. Who is he?

'He's a man without a name but not without a macabre story,' replied d'Anjou, gazing at the mountains in the distance.

'No name...

'None he ever gave me that he would not contradict in the next breath – none remotely authentic. He guards that name as if it were the sole extension of his life, its revelation inevitably leading to his death. Of course, he's right; the present circumstances are a case in point. If I had a name, I could forward it through a blind to the British authorities in Hong Kong. Their computers would light up; specialists would be flown from London and a manhunt that I could never mount would be set in motion. They'd never take him alive – he wouldn't permit it and they wouldn't care to – and thus my purpose would be served. '

'Why do the British want him terminated?'

'Suffice it to say that Washington had its Mayi Lais and its Medusa, while London has a far more recent military unit led by a homicidal psychotic who left hundreds slaughtered in his wake – few distinctions were made between the innocent and the guilty. He holds too many secrets, which, if exposed, could lead to violent eruptions of revenge throughout the Mideast and Africa. Practicality comes first, you know that. Or you should. '

'He led? asked Bourne, bewildered.

'No mere foot soldier he, Delta. He was a captain at twenty-two and a major at twenty-four when rank was next to impossible to obtain due to Whitehall's service economies. No doubt he'd be a brigadier or even a full general by now if his luck had held out. '

That's what he told you?

'In periodic drunken rages when ugly truths would surface – but never his name. They usually occurred once or twice a month, several days at a time when he'd block out his life in a drunken sea of self-loathing. Yet he was always coherent enough before the outbursts came, telling me to strap him down, confine him, protect him from himself... He would relive horrible events from his past, his voice hoarse, guttural, hollow. As the drink took over he would describe scenes of torture and mutilation, questioning prisoners with knives puncturing their eyes, and their wrists slit, ordering his captives to watch as their lives flowed out of their veins. So far as I could piece the fragments together, he commanded many of the most dangerous and savage raids against the fanatical uprisings of the late seventies and early eighties, from Yemen down to the bloodbaths in East Africa. In one moment of besotted jubilation he spoke of how Idi Amin himself would stop breathing at the mention of his name, so widespread was his reputation for matching – even surpassing – Amin's strategy of brutality. ' D'Anjou paused, nodding his head slowly and arching his brows in the Gallic acceptance of the inexplicable. 'He was sub-human – is subhuman – but for all that a highly intelligent so-called officer and a gentleman. A complete paradox, a total contradiction of the civilized man... He'd laugh at the fact that his troops despised him and called him an animal, yet none ever dared to raise an official complaint. '

'Why not?' asked Jason, stirred and pained at what he was hearing. 'Why didn't they report him?'

'Because he always brought them out – most of them out -when the order of battle seemed hopeless. '

'I see,' said Bourne, letting the remark ride with the mountain breezes. 'No, I don't see,' he cried angrily, as if suddenly, unexpectedly stung. 'Command structure is better than that. Why did his superiors put up with him? They had to know!'

'As I understood his rantings, he got the jobs done when others couldn't – or wouldn't. He learned the secret we in Medusa learned long ago. Play by the enemy's most ruthless conditions. Change the rules according to the culture. After all, human life to others is not what it is to the Judaeo-Christian concept. How could it be? For so many, death is a. liberation from intolerable human conditions. '

'Breathing is breathing^ insisted Jason, harshly. 'Being is being and thinking is thinking? added David Webb . 'He's a Neanderthal. '

'No more than Delta was at certain times. And you got us out of how many-'

'Don't say that!' protested the man from Medusa, cutting off the Frenchman. 'It wasn't the same. '

'But certainly a variation,'insisted d'Anjou. 'Ultimately the motives do not really matter, do they? Only the results. Or don't you care to accept the truth? You lived it once. Does Jason Bourne now live with lies?'

'At the moment I simply live – from day to day, from night to night – until it's over. One way or another. '

'You must be clearer. '

'When I want to or have to,' replied Bourne, icily. 'He's good, then, isn't he? Your commando – major without a name. Good at what he does. '

'As good as Delta – perhaps better. You see, he has no conscience, none whatsoever. You, on the other hand, as violent as you were, showed flashes of compassion. Something inside you demanded it. "Spare this man," you would say. "He is a husband, a father, a brother. Incapacitate him, but let him live, let him function later"... My creation, your impostor, would never do that. He wants always the final solution – death in front of his eyes. '

'What happened to him? Why did he kill those people in London? Being drunk's not a good enough reason, not where he's been. '

'It is if it's a way of life you can't resign from. '

'You keep your weapon in place unless you're threatened. Otherwise you invite the threats. '

'He used no weapon. Only his hands that night in London. '

"What?'

'He stalked the streets looking for imagined enemies -that's what I gathered from his ravings. "It was in their eyes!" he'd scream. "It's always in the eyes! They know who I am, what I am." I tell you, Delta, it was both frightening and tedious, and I never got a name, never a specific reference other than Idi Amin, which any drunken soldier of fortune would use to further himself. To involve the British in Hong Kong would mean involving myself, and, after all, I certainly could not do that. The whole thing's so frustrating, so I went back to the ways of Medusa. Do it yourself. You taught us that, Delta. You constantly told us – ordered us – to use our imagination. That's what I did tonight. And I failed, as an old man might be expected to fail. '

'Answer my question,' pressed Bourne. 'Why did he kill those people in London?'

'For a reason as banal as it was pointless – and entirely too familiar. He'd been rejected, and his ego could not tolerate that rejection. I sincerely doubt that any other emotion was involved. As with all his indulgences, sexual activity is simply an animal release; no affection is involved, for he has no capacity for it. Man Dieu, he was so right!'

'Again. What happened?'

'He had returned, wounded, from some particularly brutal duty in Uganda expecting to take up where he left off with a woman in London – someone, I gather, rather high-born, as the English say, a throwback to his earlier days, no doubt. But she refused to see him and hired armed guards to protect her house in Chelsea after he called her. Two of those men were among the seven he killed that night. You see, she claimed his temper was uncontrollable and his bouts of drinking made him murderous, which, of course, they did. But for me he was the perfect contender. In Singapore I followed him outside a disreputable bar and saw him corner two murderous thugs in an alleyway – contrebandiers who had made a great deal of money with a narcotics sale in that filthy waterfront cave – and watched as he backed them against the wall, slashing both their throats with a single sweep of his knife and removing the proceeds from their pockets. I knew then that he had it all. I had found my Jason Bourne. I approached him slowly, silently, my hand extended, holding more money than he had extracted from his victims. We talked. It was the beginning.'