"Jesus Christ!" cried Swayne, interrupting. "Snake...?"

"He said he'd call back in a half hour-that's eighteen minutes now. Get in, Norman. I'm part of this, remember?"

Bewildered and frightened, the general mumbled. "I ... I have to make excuses. I can't just walk away, drive away."

"Make it quick. And, Norman, you've got on a short-sleeved shirt, you goddamned idiot! Bend your arm."

Swayne, his eyes wide, stared at the small tattoo on his flesh, instantly crooking his arm to his chest in British brigadier fashion as he walked unsteadily back to the tee, summoning a casualness he could not feel. "Damn, young fella, the army calls."

"Well, damn also, Norm, but I've got to pay you. I insist!"

The general, half in a daze, accepted the debt from his partner, not counting the bills, not realizing that it was several hundred dollars more than he was owed. Proffering confused thanks, Swayne walked swiftly back to the golf cart and climbed in beside his master sergeant.

"So much for my hook, soldier boy," said the armaments executive to himself, addressing the tee and swinging his club, sending the little pocked white ball straight down the fairway far beyond the general's and with a much better lie. "Four hundred million's worth, you brass-plated bastard."

Mark Two.

"What in heaven's name are you talking about?" asked the senator, laughing as he spoke into the phone. "Or should I say, what's Al Armbruster trying to pull? He doesn't need my sup port on the new bill and he wouldn't get it if he did. He was a jackass in Saigon and he's a jackass now, but he's got the majority vote."

"We're not talking about votes, Senator. We're talking about Snake Lady!"

"The only snakes I knew in Saigon were jerks like Alby who crawled around the city pretending to know all the answers when there weren't any. ... Who the hell are you anyway?" In Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin replaced the telephone.

Misfire Three.

Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to the Court of St. James's, picked up his phone in London, assuming that the unnamed caller, code "courier D.C." was bearing an exceptionally confidential instruction from the State Department and automatically; as was the order, Atkinson snapped the switch on his rarely used scrambler. It would create an eruption of static on British intelligence's intercepts and later he would smile benignly at good friends in the Connaught bar who asked him if there was anything new out of Washington, knowing that this one or that one had "relatives" in MI-Five.

"Yes, Courier District?"

"Mr. Ambassador, I assume we can't be picked up," said the low, strained voice from Washington.

"Your assumption's correct unless they've come up with a new type of Enigma, which is unlikely."

"Good. ... I want to take you back to Saigon, to a certain operation no one talks about-"

"Who is this?" broke in Atkinson, bolting forward in his chair.

"The men in that outfit never used names, Mr. Ambassador, and we didn't exactly advertise our commitments, did we?"

"Goddamn you, who are you? I know you?"

"No way, Phil, although I'm surprised you don't recognize my voice."

Atkinson's eyes widened as they roamed rapidly about his office, seeing nothing, only trying to remember, trying desperately to put a voice with a face. "Is that you, Jack-believe me, we're on a scrambler!"

"Close, Phil-"

"The Sixth Fleet, Jack. A simple reverse Morse. Then bigger things, much bigger. It's you, isn't it?"

"Let's say it's a possible, but it's also irrelevant. The point is we're in heavy weather, very heavy-"

"It is you!"

"Shut up. Just listen. A bastard frigate got loose from its moorings and is crashing around, hitting too many shoals."

"Jack, I was ground, not sea. I can't understand you."

"Some swab jockey must have been cut out of the action back in Saigon, and from what I've learned he was put in protection for something or other and now he's got it all put together. He's got it all, Phil. Everything."

"Holy Christ!"

"He's ready to launch-"

"Stop him!"

"That's the problem. We're not sure who he is. The whole thing's being kept very close over in Langley."

"Good God, man, in your position you can give them the order to back off! Say it's a DOD dead file that was never completed-that it was designed to spread disinformation! It's all false!"

"That could be walking into a salvo-"

"Have you called Jimmy T over in Brussels?" interrupted the ambassador. "He's tight with the top max at Langley."

"At the moment I don't want anything to go any further. Not until I do some missionary work."

"Whatever you say, Jack. You're running the show."

"Keep your halyards taut, Phil."

"If that means keep my mouth shut, don't you worry about it!" said Atkinson, crooking his elbow, wondering who in London could remove an ugly tattoo on his forearm.

Across the Atlantic in Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin hung up the telephone and leaned back in his chair a frightened man. He had been following his instincts as he had done in the field for over twenty years, words leading to other words, phrases to phrases, innuendos snatched out of the air to support suppositions, even conclusions. It was a chess game of instant invention and he knew he was a skilled professional-sometimes too skilled. There were things that should remain in their black holes, undetected cancers buried in history, and what he had just learned might well fit that category.

Marks Three, Four and Five.

Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to Great Britain. James Teagarten, supreme commander of NATO. Jonathan "Jack" Burton, former admiral of the Sixth Fleet, currently chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Snake Lady. Medusa.

A network.

5

It was as if nothing had changed, thought Jason Bourne, knowing that his other self, the self-called David Webb, was receding. The taxi had brought him out to the once elegant, now run-down neighborhood in northeast Washington, and, as happened five years ago, the driver refused to wait. He walked up the overgrown flagstone path to the old house, thinking as he did the first time that it was too old and too fragile and too much in need of repair; he rang the bell, wondering if Cactus was even alive. He was; the thin old black man with the gentle face and warm eyes stood in the doorframe exactly as he had stood five years before, squinting beneath a green eyeshade. Even Cactus's first words were a minor variation of those he had used five years ago.

"You got hubcaps on your car, Jason?"

"No car and no cab; it wouldn't stay."

"Musta heard all those scurrilous rumors circulated by the fascist press. Me, I got howitzers in the windows just to impress this neighborly turf of my friendly persuasion. Come on in, I think of you a lot. Why didn't you phone this old boy?"

"Your number's not listed, Cactus."

"Musta been an oversight." Bourne walked into the hallway as the old man closed the door. "You got a few streaks of gray in your hair, Br'er Rabbit," added Cactus, studying his friend. "Other than that you ain't changed much. Maybe a line or six in your face, but it adds character."

"I've also got a wife and two kids, Uncle Remus. A boy and a girl."

"I know that. Mo Panov keeps me up on things even though he can't tell me where you are-which I don't care to know, Jason."

Bourne blinked while slowly shaking his head. "I still forget things, Cactus. I'm sorry. I forgot you and Mo are friends."

"Oh, the good doctor calls me at least once a month and says, 'Cactus, you rascal, put on your Pierre Cardin suit and your Gucci shoes and let's have lunch.' So I say to him, 'Where's this old nigger gonna get such threads?' and he says to me, 'You probably own a shopping center in the best part of town.' ... Now that's an exaggeration, s' help me. I do have bits and pieces of decent white real estate but I never go near them."