The Bourne Ultimatum

"You certainly have been thinking," agreed David's wife, impressed. "And please call me Marie. How can I hold you over the peasant's head if I'm Mrs. Webb?"

"Ah, the adorable Marie!"

"What about these adorable plans of yours?" asked Conklin pointedly. "How long will they take to implement?"

"You of all people should ask that question?" Krupkin's eyes were wide in disbelief.

"I think I'd better," broke in Alex.

"You, who were instrumental in building the dossier of the greatest impersonator the international world of terrorism has ever known? The incomparable Jason Bourne?"

"If that includes me," said Webb, "I'm out. I'm heavy into interior decorating."

"How long, Kruppie?"

"For heaven's sake, man, you were training a recruit for an assignment, a single mission. I'm altering a life!"

"How long?"

"You tell me, Alex. It's my life we're talking about now-as worthless as that life may be in the geopolitical scheme of things-it's still my life."

"Whatever he needs," interrupted David Webb, the unseen image of Jason Bourne looking over his wounded shoulder.

"Two years to do it well, three years to do it better," said Dimitri Krupkin.

"They're yours," said Marie.

"Pritchard," said St. Jacques, angling his head. "Fix my drink, if you please."

Epilogue

They walked along the moonlit beach, alternately touching and not touching, the embarrassment of intimacy intermittently intruding as if a world that had separated them had not let them escape its terrible orbit, constantly pulling them into its fiery nucleus.

"You carried a gun," said Marie softly. "I had no idea you had one. I hate guns."

"So do I. I'm not sure I knew I had one, either. It was just there."

"Reflex? Compulsion?"

"Both, I guess. It didn't matter, I didn't use it."

"But you wanted to, didn't you?"

"Again, I'm not sure. If you and the children were threatened, of course I would, but I don't think I'd fire indiscriminately."

"Are you sure, David? Would the appearance of danger to us make you pick up a gun and shoot at shadows?"

"No, I don't shoot at shadows."

Footsteps. In the sand! Waves lapping over the unmistakable intrusion of a human being, breaks in the flow of the natural rhythm-sounds Jason Bourne knew from a hundred beaches! He spun around, violently propelling Marie off her feet, sending her out of the line of fire as he crouched, his weapon in his hand.

"Please don't kill me, David," said Morris Panov, the beam of his flashlight illuminating the area. "It simply wouldn't make sense."

"Jesus, Mo!" cried Webb. "What were you doing."

"Trying to find you, that's all. ... Would you please help Marie?"

Webb did so, pulling his wife to her feet, both half blinded by the flashlight. "My God, you're the mole!" cried Jason Bourne, raising his weapon. "You knew every move I was making!"

"I'm what?" roared the psychiatrist, throwing down his flashlight. "If you believe that, gun me down, you son of a bitch!"

"I don't know, Mo. I don't know anything anymore ... !" David's head arched back in pain.

"Then cry your heart out, you bastard! Cry like you've never cried before! Jason Bourne is dead, cremated in Moscow, and that's the way it is! You either accept that or I don't want a goddamned thing to do with you anymore! Have you got that, you arrogant, brilliant creation! You did it, and it's over!"

Webb fell to his knees, the tears welling in his eyes, trembling and trying not to make a sound.

"We're going to be okay, Mo," said Marie, kneeling beside her husband, holding him.

"I know that," acknowledged Panov, nodding in the glow of the grounded flashlight. "Two lives in one mind, none of us can know what it's like. But it's over now. It's really over."