"Calm down," said Holland gently.

"How the hell can I? Bourne's disappeared-I mean really disappeared, if he isn't dead. And there's no trace of Marie, no word from her, and then we learn that Bernardine was killed in a shoot-out only hours ago on the Rivoli-Christ, shot in broad daylight! And that means Jason was there-he had to be there!"

"But since none of the dead or wounded fits his description, we can assume he got away, can't we?"

"We can hope, yes."

"You asked for a thread," mused the DCI. "I'm not sure I can actually provide one, but I can give you something like it.

"New York?" Conklin sat forward on the couch. "The answering machine? That DeFazio hood in Brooklyn Heights?"

"We'll get to New York, to all of that-them. Right now let's concentrate on that thread of yours, that spine you mentioned."

"I'm not the slowest kid on the block, but where is it?"

Holland leaned back in his chair, gazing first at the papers on his desk and then up at Alex. "Seventy-two hours ago, when you decided to come clean with me about everything, you said that the idea behind Bourne's strategy was to persuade the Jackal and this latter-day Medusa to join forces, with Bourne as the common target, one feeding the other. Wasn't that basically the premise? Both sides wanted him killed. Carlos had two reasons-revenge and the fact that he believes Bourne could identify him; the Medusans because Bourne had pieced together so much about them?"

"That was the premise, yes," agreed Conklin, nodding. "It's why I dug around and made those phone calls, never expecting to find what I did. Jesus, a global cartel born twenty years ago in Saigon, peopled by some of the biggest fish in and out of the government and the military. It was the kind of pay dirt I didn't want and wasn't looking for. I thought I might dig up maybe ten or twelve hotshot millionaires with post-Saigon bank accounts that couldn't bear scrutiny, but not this, not this Medusa."

"To put it as simply as possible," continued Holland, frowning, his eyes again straying down to the papers in front of him, then up at Alex. "Once the connection was made between Medusa and Carlos, word would be passed to the Jackal that there was a man Medusa wanted eliminated, and cost was no object. So far, yes?"

"The key here was the caliber and the status of those reaching Carlos," explained Conklin. "They had to be as close to bona fide Olympians as we could find, the kind of clients the Jackal doesn't get and never got."

"Then the name of the target is revealed-say, in a way such as 'John Smith, once known years ago as Jason Bourne'-and the Jackal is hooked. Bourne, the one man he wants dead above all others."

"Yes. That's why the Medusans reaching Carlos had to be so solid, so above questioning that Carlos accepts them and dismisses any sort of a trap."

"Because," added the CIA's director, "Jason Bourne came out of Saigon's Medusa-a fact known to Carlos-but he never shared in the riches of the later, postwar Medusa. That's the background scenario, isn't it?"

"The logic's as clean as it can be. For three years he was used and damn near killed in a black operation, and along the way he supposedly discovered that more than a few undistinguished Saigon pricks were driving Jaguars and were sailing yachts and pulling down six-figure retainers while he went on a government pension. That could try the patience of John the Baptist, to say nothing of Barabbas."

"It's a terrific libretto," allowed Holland, a slow smile breaking across his face. "I can hear the tenors soaring in triumph and the Machiavellian bassos slinking offstage in defeat. ... Don't scowl at me, Alex, I mean it! It's really ingenious. It's so inevitable it became a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Your Bourne was right from the beginning. It all took place the way he saw it, but not in any way he could have imagined. Because it was inevitable; somewhere there had to be a cross-pollinator."

"Please come down from Mars and explain to an earthling, Peter."

"Medusa's using the Jackal! Now. Teagarten's assassination proves it unless you want to concede that Bourne actually blew up that car outside of Brussels."

"Of course not."

"Then Carlos's name had to surface for someone in Medusa who already knew about Jason Bourne. It couldn't be otherwise. You didn't mention either one to Armbruster, or Swayne, or Atkinson in London, did you?"

"Again, of course not. The time wasn't right; we weren't ready to pull those triggers."

"Who's left?" asked Holland.

Alex stared at the DCI. "Good Lord," he said softly. "DeSole?"

"Yes, DeSole, the grossly underpaid specialist who complained amusingly but incessantly that there was no way a man could properly educate his children and grandchildren on government pay. He was brought in on everything we discussed, starting with your assault on us in the conference room."

"He certainly was, but that was limited to Bourne and the Jackal. There was no mention of Armbruster or Swayne, no Teagarten or Atkinson-the new Medusa wasn't even in the picture. Hell, Peter, you didn't know about it until seventy-two hours ago."

"Yes, but DeSole did because he'd sold out; he was part of it. He had to have been alerted. '... Watch it. We've been penetrated. Some maniac says he's going to expose us, blow us apart.' ... You told me yourself that panic buttons were punched from the Trade Commission to Pentagon Procurements to the embassy in London."

"They were punched," agreed Conklin. "So hard that two of them had to be taken out along with Teagarten and our disgruntled Mole. Snake Lady's elders quickly decided who their vulnerable people were. But where does Carlos or Bourne fit in? There's no attribution."

"I thought we agreed that there was."

"DeSole?" Conklin shook his head. "It's a provocative thought, but it doesn't wash. He couldn't have presumed that I knew about Medusa's penetration because we hadn't even started it."

"But when you did, the sequence had to bother him if only in the sense that although they were poles apart, one crisis followed too quickly upon another. What was it? A matter of hours?"

"Less than twenty-four ... Still, they were poles apart."

"Not for an analyst's analyst," countered Holland. "If it walks like an odd duck and sounds like an odd duck, look for an odd duck. I submit that somewhere along the line DeSole made the connection between Jason Bourne and the madman who had infiltrated Medusa-the new Medusa."

"For Christ's sake, how?"

"I don't know. Maybe because you told us Bourne came out of the old Saigon Medusa-that's one hell of a connection to begin with."

"My God, you may be right," said Alex, falling back on the couch. "The driving force we gave our unnamed madman was that he'd been cut off from, the new Medusa. I used the words myself with every phone call. 'He's spent years putting it together. ...' 'He's got names and ranks and banks in Zurich. ...'Jesus, I'm blind! I said those things to total strangers on a telephone fishing expedition and never even thought about having mentioned Bourne's origins in Medusa at that meeting when DeSole was here."

"Why should you have thought about it? You and your man decided to play a separate game all by yourselves."

"The reasons were goddamned valid," broke in Conklin. "For all I knew, you were a Medusan."

"Thanks a bunch."

"Come on, don't give me that shit. 'We've got a top max out at Langley' ... those were the words I heard from London. What would you have thought, what would you have done?"

"Exactly what you did," answered Holland, a tight grin on his lips. "But you're supposed to be so bright, so much smarter than I'm supposed to be."

"Thanks a bunch."

"Don't be hard on yourself; you did what any of us would have done in your place."