The headlights of an approaching limousine shot through the darkness at the far end of the parking lot, swerving in a semicircle toward the CIA analyst, causing him to shut his eyes-the refracted light through his thick lenses was painful. He had to make the sequence of his revelations clear to these men. They were his means to a life he and his wife had dreamed of-money. Not bureaucratic less-than-money, but real money. Education at the best universities for their grandchildren, not the state colleges and the begged-for scholarships that came with the government salary of a bureaucrat-a bureaucrat so much better than those around him it was pitiful. DeSole the Mute Mole, they called him, but would not pay him for his expertise, the very expertise that prohibited him from going into the private sector, surrounding him with so many legal restrictions that it was pointless to apply. Someday Washington would learn; that day would not come in his lifetime, so six grandchildren had made the decision for him. The empathetic new Medusa had beckoned with generosity, and in his bitterness he had come running.

He rationalized that it was no more an unethical decision on his part than those made every year by scores of Pentagon personnel who walked out of Arlington and into the corporate arms of their old friends the defense contractors. As an army colonel once said to him, "It's work now and get paid later," and God knew that one Steven DeSole worked like hell for his country, but his country hardly reciprocated in kind. He hated the name Medusa, though, and rarely if ever used it because it was a symbol from another time, ominous and misleading. The great oil companies and railroads sprang from the chicanery and the venality of the robber barons, but they were not now what they were then. Medusa may have been born in the corruption of a war-ravaged Saigon, its early funding may have been a result of it, but that Medusa no longer existed; it had been replaced by a dozen different names and companies.

"We're not pure, Mr. DeSole, no American-controlled international conglomerate is," said his recruiter, "and it's true that we seek what some might call unfair economic advantage based on privileged information. Secrets, if you like. You see, we have to because our competitors throughout Europe and the Far East consistently have it. The difference between them and us is that their governments support their efforts-ours doesn't. ... Trade, Mr. DeSole, trade and profits. They're the healthiest pursuits on earth. Chrysler may not like Toyota, but the astute Mr. Iacocca does not call for an air strike against Tokyo. At least not yet. He finds ways to join forces with the Japanese."

Yes, mused DeSole as the limousine came to a stop ten feet away from him. What he did for the "corporation," which he preferred to call it, as opposed to what he did for the Company, might even be considered benevolent. Profits, after all, were more desirable than bombs ... and his grandchildren would go to the finest schools and universities in the country. Two men got out of the limousine and approached him.

"What's this Webb look like?" asked Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, as they walked along the edge of the parking lot.

"I only have a description from the gardener, who was hiding behind a fence thirty feet away."

"What did he tell you?" The unidentified associate of the chairman, a short stocky man with penetrating dark eyes and dark eyebrows beneath dark hair, looked at DeSole. "Be precise," he added.

"Now, just a minute," protested the analyst defensively but firmly. "I'm precise in everything I say, and, frankly, whoever you are, I don't like the tone of your voice one bit."

"He's upset," said Armbruster, as if his associate was dismissible. "He's a spaghetti head from New York and doesn't trust anybody."

"Who's to trust in New York?" asked the short, dark man, laughing and poking his elbow into the wide girth of Albert Armbruster. "You WASPs are the worst, you got the banks, amico!"

"Let's keep it that way and out of the courts. ... The description, please?" The chairman looked at DeSole.

"It's incomplete, but there is a long-ago tie-in with Medusa that I'll describe-precisely."

"Go ahead, pal," said the man from New York.

"He's rather large-tall, that is-and in his late forties or early fifties and-"

"Has he got some gray around his temples?" asked Armbruster, interrupting.

"Well, yes, I think the gardener said something to that effect-graying, or gray in his hair, or something like that. It's obviously why he judged him to be in his forties or fifties."

"It's Simon," said Armbruster, looking at the New Yorker.

"Who?" DeSole stopped, as the other two stopped and looked at him.

"He called himself Simon, and he knew all about you, Mr. CIA," said the chairman. "About you and Brussels and our whole thing."

"What are you talking about?"

"For starters, your goddamn fax machine exclusively between you and that fruitcake in Brussels."

"It's a buried, dedicated line! It's locked up!"

"Someone found the key, Mr. Precision," said the New Yorker, not smiling.

"Oh, my God, that's terrible! What should I do?"

"Make up a story between you and Teagarten, but do it from public phones," continued the mafioso. "One of you will come up with something."

"You know about ... Brussels?"

"There's very little I don't know."

"That son of a bitch conned me into thinking he was one of us and he had me by the balls!" said Armbruster angrily, continuing to walk along the edge of the parking lot, the other two joining him, DeSole hesitantly, apprehensively. "He seemed to know everything, but when I think back, he only brought up bits and pieces-damned big bits and pieces like Burton and you and Brussels-and I, like a fucking idiot, filled in a hell of a lot more. Shit!"

"Now, just wait a minute!" cried the CIA analyst, once again forcing the others to stop. "I don't understand-I'm a strategist, and I don't understand. What was David Webb Jason Bourne, if he is Jason Bourne-doing at Swayne's place the other night?"

"Who the hell is Jason Bourne?" roared the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

"He's the tie-in with Saigon's Medusa that I just mentioned. Thirteen years ago the Agency gave him the name Jason Bourne, the original Bourne a dead man by then, and sent him out in deep cover on a Four Zero assignment-a termination with extreme prejudice, if you like-"

"A hit, if you want to speak English, paisan."

"Yes, yes, that's what it was. ... But things went wrong; he had a loss of memory and the operation collapsed. It collapsed, but he survived."

"Holy Christ, what a bunch of zucchinis!"

"What can you tell us about this Webb ... or Bourne-this Simon or the 'Cobra'? Jesus, he's a walking vaudeville act!"

"Apparently that's what he did before. He assumed different names, different appearances, different personalities. He was trained to do that when he was sent out to challenge the assassin called the Jackal-to draw him out and kill him."

"The Jackal?" asked the astonished capo supremo of the Cosa Nostra. "Like in the movie?"

"No, not the movie or the book, you idiot-"

"Hey, easy, amico."

"Oh, shut up. ... Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, otherwise known as Carlos the Jackal, is a living person, a professional killer the international authorities have been hunting for over a quarter of a century. Outside of scores of confirmed hits, many think he was the puff of smoke on the grassy knoll in Dallas, the true killer of John Kennedy."

"You're shittin' me."

"I can assure you, I am not shitting you. The word we got at the Agency at the highest secure levels was that after all these years Carlos had tracked down the only man alive who could identify him, Jason Bourne-or, as I'm firmly convinced, David Webb."