The Bourne Ultimatum

"It obviously didn't take where the nuances of English are concerned," mumbled Morris Panov. "Tell me, Mr. Pritchard, aren't you terribly hot in those clothes? I'd be sweating like a pig.

"No nuances there, only an unproven cliché," muttered Conklin.

"I do not perspire, sir," replied the assistant manager.

"I'll bet my pension you 'perspired' when Mr. St. Jacques came back from Washington," offered Alex. "Christ almighty, Joh

"The incident has been forgotten, sir," said Pritchard stoically. "Mr. Saint Jay and Sir Henry understand that my brilliant uncle and I had only the children's interests at heart."

"Savvy, very savvy," observed Conklin.

"I'll set up the canapés, gentlemen, and check the ice. The others should be here in a matter of minutes."

"That's very kind of you," said Panov.

David Webb leaned against the balcony archway watching his wife as she read the last pages of a children's story to their son. The outstanding Mrs. Cooper was dozing in a chair, her magnificent black head, crowned by a fleece of silver and gray, kept nodding above her full chest as if she expected at any moment to hear sounds from the infant Alison beyond the half-closed door that was only feet from where she was sitting. The inflections of Marie's quiet voice matched the words of the story, confirmed by Jamie's wide eyes and parted lips. But for an analytical mind that found music in figures, his wife might have been an actress, mused David. She had the surface attributes of that precarious profession-striking features, a commanding presence, the sine qua non that forced both men and women to fall silent and pensively appraise her when she walked down a street or entered a room.

"You can read to me tomorrow, Daddy!"

The story was over, attested to by his son jumping off the couch and Mrs. Cooper flashing her eyes open. "I wanted to read that one tonight," said Webb defensively, moving away from the arch.

"Well, you still kind of smell," said the boy, frowning.

"Your father doesn't smell, Jamie," explained Marie, smiling. "I told you, it's the medicine the doctor said he had to use on his injuries from the accident."

"He still smells."

"You can't argue with an analytical mind when it's right, can you?" asked David.

"It's too early to go to bed, Mommy! I might wake up Alison and she'll start crying again."

"I know, dear, but Daddy and I have to go over and see all your uncles-"

"And my new grandfather!" cried the child exuberantly. "Grandpa Brendan said he was going to teach me how to be a judge someday."

"God help the boy," interjected Mrs. Cooper. "That man dresses like a peacock flowering to mate."

"You may go into our room and watch television," overrode Marie quickly. "But only for a half hour-"

"Aww!"

"All right, perhaps an hour, but Mrs. Cooper will select the cha

"Thanks, Mommy!" cried the child, racing into his parents' bedroom as Mrs. Cooper got out of the chair and followed him.

"Oh, I can start him off," said Marie, getting up from the couch.

"No, Miss Marie," protested Mrs. Cooper. "You stay with your husband. That man hurts but he won't say anything." She disappeared into the bedroom.

"Is that true, my darling?" asked Marie, walking to David. "Do you hurt?"

"I hate to dispel the myth of a great lady's incontestable perceptions, but she's wrong."

"Why do you have to use a dozen words when one will suffice?"

"Because I'm supposed to be a scholar. We academicians never take a direct route because it doesn't leave us any offshoots to claim if we're wrong. What are you, anti-intellectual?"

"No," answered Marie. "You see, that's a simple, one-word declarative."

"What's a declarative?" asked Webb, taking his wife in his arms and kissing her, their lips enveloping, so meaningful to each, arousing to each.

"It's a shortcut to the truth," said Marie, arching her head back and looking at him. "No offshoots, no circumlocutions, just fact. As in five and five equals ten, not nine or eleven, but ten."

"You're a ten."

"That's banal, but I'll take it. ... You are more relaxed, I can feel you again. Jason Bourne's leaving you, isn't he?"

"Just about. While you were with Alison, Ed McAllister called me from the National Security Agency. Benjamin's mother is on her way back to Moscow."

"Hey, that's wonderful, David!"

"Both Mac and I laughed, and as we laughed I thought to myself I'd never heard McAllister laugh before. It was nice."

"He wore his guilt on his sleeve-no, all over him. He sent us both to Hong Kong and he never forgave himself. Now you're back and alive and free. I'm not sure I'll ever forgive him, but at least I won't hang up on him when he calls."

"He'd like that. As a matter of fact, I told him to call. I said you might even ask him to di

"I didn't go that far."

"Benjamin's mother? That kid saved my life."

"Maybe a quick brunch."

"Take your hands off me, woman. In another fifteen seconds I'm going to throw Jamie and Mrs. Cooper out of our bedroom and demand my co

"I'm tempted, Attila, but I think Bro's counting on us. Two feisty individuals and an over-imaginative disbarred judge are more than an Ontario ranch boy can handle."

"I love them all."

"So do I. Let's go."

The Caribbean sun had disappeared; only faint sprays of orange barely illuminated the western horizon. The flames of the glass-encased candles were steady, pointed, sending streams of gray smoke through their fu

"I emphatically explained to Handy Randy that the doctrine of stare decisis has to be challenged if the times have altered the perceptions that existed when the original decisions were rendered," expounded Prefontaine. "Change, change-the inevitable result of the calendar."

"That's so obvious, I can't imagine anyone debating it," said Alex.

"Oh, Flood-the-Gates used it incessantly, confusing juries with his erudition and confounding his peers with multiple decises."

"Mirrors and smoke," added Marie, laughing. "We do the same in economics. Remember, Bro, I told you that?"

"I didn't understand a word. Still don't."

"No mirrors and no smoke where medicine's involved," said Panov. "At least not where the labs are monitored and the pharmaceutical money boys are prohibited. Legitimate advances are validated every day."

"In many ways it's the purposely undefined core of our Constitution," continued the former judge. "It's as though the Founders had read Nostradamus but didn't care to admit their frivolity, or perhaps studied the drawings of Da Vinci, who foresaw aircraft. They understood that they could not legislate the future, for they had no idea what it would hold, or what society would demand for its future liberties. They created brilliant omissions."

"Unaccepted as such by the brilliant Randolph Gates, if memory serves," said Conklin.

"Oh, he'll change quickly now," interrupted Prefontaine, chuckling. "He was always a sworn companion of the wind, and he's smart enough to adjust his sails when he has to buck it."

"I keep wondering whatever happened to the truck driver's wife, the one in the diner who was married to the man they called 'Bronk,' " said the psychiatrist.

"Try to imagine a small house and a white picket fence, et cetera," offered Alex. "It's easier that way."

"What truck driver's wife?" asked St. Jacques.

"Leave it alone, Bro, I'd rather not find out."

"Or that son-of-a-bitch army doctor who pumped me full of Amytal!" pressed Panov.

"He's ru