@@@@@His ego demands it, and that kill includes
@@@@@His ego demands it, and that kill includes my
Robert Ludlum ?? THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
78
family! No, field man, don’t burden me with things I don’t care about—not where they interfere
with Marie and the kids—I’m owed that much
“I hear you,” said Conklin“I don’t know whether I’m hearing David or Jason Bourne, but I
hear youAll right, no reverse Paris, but we have to move fast and I’m talking to Bourne now
What’s next? Where are you?”
“I judge about six or seven miles from General Swayne’s house,” replied Jason, breathing
deeply, the momentary anguish suppressed, the coldness returning“Did you make the call?”
“Two hours ago
“Am I still ‘Cobra’?”
“Why not? It’s a snake
“That’s what I told Armbruster
“Swayne will be less so, but I sense something and I can’t really explain it
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure, but I have an idea that he’s answerable to someone
“In the Pentagon? Burton?”
“I suppose so, I just don’t knowIn his partial paralysis he reacted almost as if he was an
onlooker, someone involved but not in the middle of the gameHe slipped a couple of times and
said things like ‘We’ll have to think about this,’ and ‘We’ll have to confer Confer with whom? It
was a one-on-one conversation with my usual warning that he wasn’t to talk to anyoneHis
response was a lame editorial ‘we,’ meaning that the illustrious general was conferring with
himself
“Neither do I,” agreed Jason“I’m going to change clothes
“What?”
Bourne turned partially in the plastic shell of the pay phone and glanced around the gas station
He saw what he hoped for, a men’s room in the side of the building“You said that Swayne lives
on a large farm west of Manassas—”
“Correction,” interrupted Alex“He calls it a farm; his neighbors and the tax rolls call it a
twenty-eight-acre estateNot bad for a career soldier from a lower-middle-class family in Nebraska
who married a hairdresser in Hawaii thirty years ago, and supposedly bought his manse ten years
ago on the strength of a very sizable inheritance from an untraceable benefactor, an obscure
wealthy uncle I couldn’t findThat’s what made me curiousSwayne headed up the Quartermaster
Corps in Saigon and supplied Me