The Bourne identity

“That’s his list of ‘accomplishments’?”

“Yes. And we’re losing the battle. With each new killing his reputation spreads.”

“He was dormant for a while,” said Knowlton of the CIA. “For a number of months recently we thought he might have been taken himself. There were several probables in which the killers themselves were eliminated; we thought he might have been one of them.”

“Such as?” asked Walters.

“A banker in Madrid who fu

“I remember the incident. Who might have paid for it?”

“Any number of companies,” answered Gillette, “who wanted to sell gold-plated cars and indoor plumbing to instant dictators.”

“What else? Who else?”

“Sheik Mustafa Kalig in Oman,” said Colonel Ma

“He was reported killed in an abortive coup.”

“Not so,” continued the officer. “There was no attempted coup; G-Two informants confirmed that. Kalig was unpopular, but the other sheiks aren’t fools. The coup story was a cover for an assassination that could tempt other professional killers. Three troublesome nonentities from the Officer Corps were executed to lend credence to the lie. For a while, we thought one of them was Cain; the timing corresponds to Cain’s dormancy.”

“Who would pay Cain for assassinating Kalig?”

“We asked ourselves that over and over again,” said Ma

“There are several dozen other incidents,” added Knowlton. “Probables that fall into the same pattern where highly protected figures were killed, and sources came forward to implicate Cain.”

“I see.” The congressman picked up the summary page for Zurich. “But from what I gather you don’t know who he is.”

“No two descriptions have been alike,” interjected Abbott. “Cain’s apparently a virtuoso at disguise.”

“Yet people have seen him, talked to him. Your sources, the informants, this man in Zurich; none of them may come out in the open and testify, but surely you’ve interrogated them. You’ve got to have come up with a composite, with something.”

“We’ve come up with a great deal,” replied Abbott, “but a consistent description isn’t part of it.

For openers, Cain never lets himself be seen in daylight. He holds meetings at night, in dark rooms or alleyways. If he’s ever met more than one person at a time--as Cain--we don’t know about it.

We’ve been told he never stands, he’s always seated--in a dimly lit restaurant, or a corner chair, or parked car. Sometimes he wears heavy glasses, sometimes none at all; at one rendezvous he may have dark hair, on another white or red or covered by a hat.”

“Language?”

“We’re closer here,” said the CIA director, anxious to put the Company’s research on the table.

“Fluent English and French, and several Oriental dialects.”

“Dialects? What dialects? Doesn’t a language come first?”

“Of course. It’s root-Vietnamese.”

“Viet--“ Walters leaned forward. “Why do I get the idea that I’m coming to something you’d rather not tell me?”

“Because you’re probably quite astute at cross-examination, counselor.” Abbott struck a match and lit his pipe.

“Passably alert,” agreed the congressman. “Now, what is it?”

“Cain,” said Gillette, his eyes briefly, oddly, on David Abbott. “We know where he came from.”

“Where?”

“Out of Southeast Asia,” answered Ma

“With what?”

“Operation Medusa.” The colonel reached for a large, thick manila envelope on his left. He opened it and removed a single folder from among several, inside; he placed it in front of him.

“That’s the Cain file,” he said, nodding at the open envelope. “This is the Medusa material, the aspects of it that might in any way be relevant to Cain.”

The Te

Ma

Their priorities were the disruption of enemy communications and supply lines, the pinpointing of prison camps and, not the least, the assassination of village leaders known to be cooperating with the Communists, as well as the enemy commanders whenever possible.”

“It was a war-within-a-war,” broke in Knowlton. “Unfortunately, racial appearances and languages made participation infinitely more dangerous than, say, the German and Dutch undergrounds, or the French Resistance in World War Two. Therefore, Occidental recruitment was not always as selective as it might have been.”

“There were dozens of these teams,” continued the colonel, “the perso

They were walking encyclopedias when it came to night landings and jungle routes. Many we employed were runaways or fugitives from the States, a number well-educated, all resourceful. We needed their expertise.”

“That’s quite a cross-section of volunteers,” interrupted the congressman. “Old-line navy and army; British and Australian drifters, French colonials, and platoons of thieves. How the hell did you get them to work together?”

“To each according to his greeds,” said Gillette.

“Promises,” amplified the colonel. “Guarantees of rank, promotions, pardons, outright bonuses of cash, and, in a number of cases, opportunities to steal funds from the operation itself. You see, they all had to be a little crazy; we understood that. We trained them secretly, using codes, methods of transport, entrapment and killing--even weapons Command Saigon knew nothing about. As Peter mentioned, the risks were incredible--capture resulting in torture and execution; the price was high and they paid it. Most people would have called them a collection of paranoiacs, but they were geniuses where disruption and assassination were concerned. Especially assassination.”

“What was the price?”

“Operation Medusa sustained over ninety percent casualties. But there’s a catch--among those who didn’t come back were a number who never meant to.”

“From that faction of thieves and fugitives?”

“Yes. Some stole considerable amounts of money from Medusa. We think Cain is one of those men.”

“Why?”

“His modus operandi. He’s used codes, traps, methods of killing and transport that were developed and specialized in the Medusa training.”

“Then for Christ’s sake,” broke in Walters, “you’ve got a direct line to his identity. I don’t care where they’re buried--and I’m damn sure you don’t want them made public--but I assume records were kept.”