He held on to the knobs for a moment, his eyes straying to the mirror, to the face in the glass that had no name.

“What do I say to them?” he asked. “This is Jason Bourne calling. Of course I know that’s not my name because I killed a man named Jason Bourne, but it’s the one you gave me. ... I’m sorry, gentlemen, but something happened to me on the way to Marseilles. I lost something--nothing you can put a price on--just my memory. Now, I gather we’ve got an agreement, but I don’t remember what it is, except for crazy phrases like ‘Get Carlos!’ and ‘Trap Carlos!’ and something about Delta being Cain and Cain is supposed to replace Charlie and Charlie is really Carlos. Things like that, which may lead you to think I do remember. You might even say to yourselves, ‘We’ve got one prime bastard here. Let’s put him away for a couple of decades in a very tight stockade. He not only took us, but worse, he could prove to be one hell of an embarrassment.’ “ Bourne turned from the mirror and looked at Marie. “I’m not kidding. What do I say?”

“The truth,” she answered “They’ll accept it. They’ve sent you a message; they’re trying to reach you. As far as the six months is concerned, wire Washburn in Port Noir. He kept records-– extensive, detailed records.”

“He may not answer. We had our own agreement. For putting me back together he was to receive a fifth of Zurich, untraceable to him. I sent him a million American dollars.”

“Do you think that would stop him from helping you?”

Jason paused. “He may not be able to help himself. He’s got a problem; he’s a drunk. Not a drinker. A drunk. The worst kind; he knows it and likes it. How long can he live with a million dollars? More to the point, how long do you think those waterfront pirates will let him live once they find out?”

“You can still prove you were there. You were ill, isolated. You weren’t in contact with anyone.”

“How can the men at Treadstone be sure? From their view I’m a walking encyclopedia of official secrets. I had to be to do what I’ve done. How can they be certain I haven’t talked to the wrong people?”

“Tell them to send a team to Port Noir.”

“It’ll be greeted with blank stares and silence. I left that island in the middle of the night with half the waterfront after me with hooks. If anyone down there made any money out of Washburn, he’ll see the connection and walk the other way.”

“Jason, I don’t know what you’re driving at. You’ve got your answer, the answer you’ve been looking for since you woke up that morning in Port Noir. What more do you want?”

“I want to be careful, that’s all,” said Bourne abrasively. “I want to ‘look before I leap’ and make damn sure the ‘stable door is shut’ and ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick--but for Christ’s sake don’t fall into the fire!’ How’s that for remembering?” He was shouting; he stopped.

Marie walked across the room and stood in front of him. “It’s very good. But that’s not it, is it?

Being careful I mean.”

Jason shook his head. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “With each step I’ve been afraid, afraid of the things I’ve learned. Now, at the end, I’m more frightened than ever. If I’m not Jason Bourne, who am I really? What have I left back there? Has that occurred to you?”

“In all its ramifications, my darling. In a way, I’m far more afraid than you. But I don’t think that can stop us. I wish to God it could, but I know it can’t.”

The attaché at the American Embassy on the avenue Gabriel walked into the office of the First Secretary and closed the door. The man at the desk looked up.

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“I’m only sure he used the key words,” said the attaché, crossing to the desk, a red-bordered index card in his hand. “Here’s the flag,” he continued, handing the card to the First Secretary. “I’ve checked off the words he used, and if that flag’s accurate, I’d say he’s genuine.” The man behind the desk studied the card. “When did he use the name Treadstone?”

“Only after I convinced him that he wasn’t going to talk with anyone in U. S. Intelligence unless he gave me a damn good reason. I think he thought it’d blow my mind when he said he was Jason Bourne. When I simply asked him what I could do for him, he seemed stuck, almost as if he might hang up on me.”

“Didn’t he say there was a flag out for him?”

“I was waiting for it but he never said it. According to that eight-word sketch--‘Experienced field officer. Possible defection or enemy detention’--he could have just said the word ‘flag’ and we would have been in sync. He didn’t.”

“Then maybe he’s not genuine.”

“The rest fits, though. He did say D.C.’s been looking for him for more than six months. That was when he used the name Treadstone. He was from Treadstone; that’s supposed to be the explosive. He also told me to relay the code words Delta, Cain and Medusa. The first two are on the flag, I checked them off. I don’t know what Medusa means.”

“I don’t know what any of this means,” said the First Secretary. “Except that my orders are to hightail it down to communications, clear all scrambler traffic to Langley and get a sterile patch to a spook named Conklin. Him I’ve heard of: a mean son of a bitch who got his foot blown off ten or twelve years ago in Nam. He pushes very strange buttons over at the Company. Also he survived the purges, which leads me to think he’s one man they don’t want roaming the streets looking for a job.

Or a publisher.”

“Who do you think this Bourne is?” asked the attaché. “I’ve never seen such a concentrated but formless hunt for a person in my whole eight years away from the States.”

“Someone they want very badly.” The First Secretary got up from the desk. “Thanks for this. I’ll tell D.C. how well you handled it. What’s the schedule? I don’t suppose he gave you a telephone number.”

“No way. He wanted to call back in fifteen minutes, but I played the harried bureaucrat. I told him to call me in an hour or so. That’d make it past five o’clock, so we could gain another hour or two by my being out to dinner.”

“I don’t know. We can’t risk losing him. I’ll let Conklin set up the game plan. He’s the control on this. No one makes a move on Bourne unless it’s authorized by him.”

Alexander Conklin sat behind the desk in his white-walled office in Langley, Virginia, and listened to the embassy man in Paris. He was convinced; it was Delta. The reference to Medusa was the proof, for it was a name no one would know but Delta. The bastard! He was playing the stranded agent, his controls at the Treadstone telephone not responding to the proper code words--whatever they were--because the dead could not talk. He was using the omission to get himself off the meathook! The sheer nerve of the bastard was awesome. Bastard, bastard!

Kill the controls and use the kills to call off the hunt. Any kind of hunt. How many men had done it before, thought Alexander Conklin. He had. There had been a source-control in the hills of Huong Khe, a maniac issuing maniacal orders, certain death for a dozen teams of Medusans on a maniacal hunt. A young intelligence officer named Conklin had crept back into Base Camp Kilo with a North Vietnamese rifle, Russian caliber, and had fired two bullets into the head of a maniac.

There had been grieving and harsher security measures put in force, but the hunt was called off.

There had been no fragments of glass found in the jungle paths of Base Camp Kilo, however.

Fragments with fingerprints that irrefutably identified the sniper as an Occidental recruit from Medusa itself. There were such fragments found on Seventy-first Street, but the killer did not know it--Delta did not know it.

“At one point we seriously questioned whether he was genuine,” said the embassy’s First Secretary, rambling on as if to fill the abrupt silence from Washington. “An experienced field officer would have told the attaché to check for a flag, but the subject didn’t.”