“Don’t touch anything,” ordered Bourne as Flannagan and Rachel Swayne haltingly preceded him into the general’s photograph-lined study. At the sight of the old soldier’s corpse arched back in the chair behind the desk, the ugly gun still in his outstretched hand, and the horror beyond left by the blowing away of the back of his skull, the wife convulsed, falling to her knees as if she might vomit. The master sergeant grabbed her arm, holding her off the floor, his eyes dazed, fixed on the mutilated remains of General Norman Swayne.
“Crazy son of a bitch,” whispered Flannagan, his voice strained and barely audible. Then standing motionless, the muscles of his jaw pulsating, he roared. “You insane fuckin’ son of a bitch! What did you do it for—why? What do we do now?”
“You call the police, Sergeant,” answered Jason.
“What?” yelled the aide, spinning around.
“No!” screamed Mrs. Swayne, lurching to her feet. “We can’t do that!”
“I don’t think you’ve got a choice. You didn’t kill him. You may have driven him to kill himself but you didn’t kill him.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Flannagan gruffly.
“Better a simple if messy domestic tragedy than a far wider investigation, wouldn’t you say? I gather it’s no secret that you two have an arrangement that’s—well, no secret.”
“He didn’t give a shit about our ‘arrangement,’ and that was no secret, either.”
“He encouraged us at every opportunity,” added Rachel Swayne, hesitantly smoothing her skirt, oddly, swiftly regaining her composure. She spoke to Bourne but her eyes strayed to her lover. “He consistently threw us together, often for days at a time.… Do we have to stay in here? My God, I was married to that man for twenty-six years! I’m sure you can understand … this is horrible for me!”
“We have things to discuss,” said Bourne.
“Not in here, if you please. The living room; it’s across the hall. We’ll talk there.” Mrs. Swayne, suddenly under control, walked out of the study; the general’s aide glanced over at the blood-drenched corpse, grimaced, and followed her.
Jason watched them. “Stay in the hallway where I can see you and don’t move!” he shouted, crossing to the desk, his eyes darting from one object to another, taking in the last items Norman Swayne saw before placing the automatic in his mouth. Something was wrong. On the right side of the wide green blotter was a Pentagon memorandum pad, Swayne’s rank and name printed below the insignia of the United States Army. Next to the pad, to the left of the blotter’s leather border, was a gold ballpoint pen, its sharp silver point protruding, as if recently used, the writer forgetting to twist it back into its recess. Bourne leaned over the desk within inches of the dead body, the acrid smell of the exploded shell and burnt flesh still pungent, and studied the memo pad. It was blank, but Jason carefully tore off the top pages, folded them, and put them into his trousers pocket. He stepped back still bothered.… What was it? He looked around the room, and as his eyes roamed over the furniture Master Sergeant Flannagan appeared in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” Flannagan asked suspiciously. “We’re waiting for you.”
“Your friend may find it too difficult to stay in here, but I don’t. I can’t afford to, there’s too much to learn.”
“I thought you said we shouldn’t touch anything.”
“Looking isn’t touching, Sergeant. Unless you remove something, then no one knows it’s been touched because it isn’t here.” Bourne suddenly walked over to an ornate brass-topped coffee table, the sort so common in the bazaars of India and the Middle East. It was between two armchairs in front of the study’s small fireplace; off center was a fluted glass ashtray partially filled with the remains of half-smoked cigarettes. Jason reached down and picked it up; he held it in his hand and turned to Flannagan. “For instance, Sergeant, this ashtray. I’ve touched it, my fingerprints are on it, but no one will know that because I’m taking it away.”
“Because I smelled something—I mean I really smelled it, with my nose, nothing to do with instincts.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Cigarette smoke, that’s what I’m talking about. It hangs around a lot longer than you might think. Ask someone who’s given them up more times than he can remember.”
“So what?”
“So let’s have a talk with the general’s wife. Let’s all have a talk. Come on, Flannagan, we’ll play show and tell.”
“That weapon in your pocket makes you pretty fuckin’ brave, doesn’t it?”
“Move, Sergeant!”
Rachel Swayne swung her head to her left, throwing back her long, dark streaked hair over her shoulder as she stiffened her posture in the chair. “That’s offensive in the extreme,” she pronounced with wide accusatory eyes, staring at Bourne.
“It certainly is,” agreed Jason, nodding. “It also happens to be true. There are five cigarette butts in this ashtray and each has lipstick on it.” Bourne sat down across from her, putting the ashtray on the small table next to the chair. “You were there when he did it, when he put his gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Perhaps you didn’t think he’d go through with it; maybe you thought it was just another one of his hysterical threats—whatever, you didn’t raise a word to stop him. Why should you have? For you and Eddie it was a logical and reasonable solution.”
“Preposterous!”
“You know, Mrs. Swayne, to put it bluntly, that’s not a word you should use. You can’t carry it off, any more than you’re convincing when you say something’s ‘offensive in the extreme.’ … Neither expression is you, Rachel. You’re imitating other people—probably rich, vacuous customers a young hairdresser heard repeating such phrases years ago in Honolulu.”
“How dare you …?”
“Oh, come on, that’s ridiculous, Rachel. Don’t even try the ‘How dare you’ bit, it doesn’t work at all. Are you, in your nasal twang, going to have my head chopped off by royal decree?”
“Lay off her!” shouted Flannagan, standing beside Mrs. Swayne. “You got the iron but you don’t have to do this!… She’s a good woman, a damn good woman, and she was shit on by all the crap artists in this town.”
“How could she be? She was the general’s wife, the mistress of the manor, wasn’t she? Isn’t she?”
“She was used—”
“I was laughed at, always laughed at, Mr. Delta!” cried Rachel Swayne, gripping the arms of her chair. “When they weren’t leering or drooling. How’d you like to be the special piece of meat passed out like a special dessert to very special people when the dinner and the drinks are over?”
“I don’t think I’d like it at all. I might even refuse.”
“I couldn’t! He made me do it!”
“Nobody can make anybody do anything like that.”
“Sure, they can, Mr. Delta,” said the general’s wife, leaning forward, her large breasts pressing the sheer fabric of her blouse, her long hair partially obscuring her aging but still sensual soft-featured face. “Try an uneducated grammar school dropout from the coal basins in West Virginia when the companies shut down the mines and nobody had no food—excuse me, any food. You take what you got and you run with it and that’s what I did. I got laid from Aliquippa to Hawaii, but I got there and I learned a trade. That’s where I met the Big Boy and I married him, but I didn’t have no illusions from day one. ’Specially when he got back from ’Nam, y’know what I mean?”
“I’m not sure I do, Rachel.”
“You don’t have to explain nothin’, kiddo!” roared Flannagan.
“No, I wanna, Eddie! I’m sick of the whole shit, okay?”
“You watch your tongue!”
“The point is, I don’t know nothin’, Mr. Delta. But I can figure things, y’know what I mean?”
“Stop it, Rachel!” cried the dead general’s aide.
“Fuck off, Eddie! You’re not too bright either. This Mr. Delta could be our way out.… Back to the islands, right?”
“Absolutely right, Mrs. Swayne.”
“You know what this place is—?”
“Shut up!” yelled Flannagan, awkwardly plodding forward, stopped by the sudden ear-shattering explosion of Bourne’s gun, the bullet searing into the floor between the sergeant’s legs.
The woman screamed. When she stopped, Jason continued: “What is this place, Mrs. Swayne?”
“Hold it,” the master sergeant again interrupted, but his objection was not shouted now; instead, it was a plea, a strong man’s plea. He looked at the general’s wife and then back at Jason. “Listen, Bourne or Delta or whoever you are, Rachel’s right. You could be our way out—there’s nothing left for us over here—so what have you got to offer?”
“For what?”
“Say we tell you what we know about this place … and I tell you where you can start looking for a lot more. How can you help us? How can we get out of here and back to the Pac Islands without being hassled, our names and faces all over the papers?”
“That’s a tall order, Sergeant.”
“Goddamn it, she didn’t kill him—we didn’t kill him, you said so yourself!”
“Agreed, and I couldn’t care less whether you did or not, whether you were responsible or not. I’ve got other priorities.”
“Like getting ‘caught up with some old comrades’ or whatever the hell it was?”
“That’s right, I’m owed.”
“I still can’t figure you—”
“You don’t have to.”
“You were dead!” broke in the perplexed Flannagan, the words rushing out. “Delta One from the illegals was Bourne, and Bourne was dead and Langley proved it to us! But you’re not dead—”
“I was taken, Sergeant! That’s all you have to know—that and the fact that I’m working alone. I’ve got a few debts I can call in, but I’m strictly solo. I need information and I need it quickly!”
Flannagan shook his head in bewilderment. “Well … maybe I can help you there,” he said quietly, tentatively, “better than anyone else would. I was given a special assignment, so I had to learn things, things someone like me wouldn’t normally be told.”
“That sounds like the opening notes of a con song, Sergeant. What was your special assignment?”
“Nursemaid. Two years ago Norman began to fall apart. I controlled him, and if I couldn’t I was given a number to call in New York.”
“Said number being part of the help you can give me.”
“That and a few license-plate ID’s I wrote down just in case—”
“In case,” completed Bourne, “someone decided your nursemaid’s services were no longer required.”
“Something like that. Those pricks never liked us—Norman didn’t see it but I did.”
“Us? You and Rachel and Swayne?”
“The uniform. They look down their rich civilian noses at us like we’re necessary garbage, and they’re right about the necessary. They needed Norman. With their eyes they spat on him, but they needed him.”
The soldier boys couldn’t run with it. Albert Armbruster, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Medusa—the civilian inheritors.
“When you say you wrote down the license-plate numbers, I assume that means you weren’t part of the meetings that took place—take place—here on a fairly regular basis. That is, you didn’t mingle with the guests; you weren’t one of them.”
“Are you crazy?” screeched Rachel Swayne, in her own succinct way answering Jason’s question. “Whenever there was a real meeting and not a lousy drunken dinner party, Norm told me to stay upstairs, or if I wanted to, go over to Eddie’s and watch television. Eddie couldn’t leave the cabin. We weren’t good enough for his big fancy asshole friends! It’s been that way for years.… Like I said, he threw us together.”
“I’m beginning to understand—at least, I think I am. But you got the license numbers, Sergeant. How did you do that? I gather you were confined to quarters.”
“I didn’t get ’em, my guards did. I called it a confidential security procedure. No one argued.”
“I see. You said Swayne began to fall apart a couple of years ago. How? In what way?”
“Like tonight. Whenever something out of the ordinary happened, he’d freeze; he didn’t want to make decisions. If it even smacked of Snake Lady, he wanted to bury his head in the sand until it went away.”
“What about tonight? I saw you two arguing … it seemed to me the sergeant was giving the general his marching orders.”
“You’re damn right I was. Norman was in a panic—over you, over the man they called Cobra who was bringing out this heavy business about Saigon twenty years ago. He wanted me to be with him when you got here, and I told him no way. I said I wasn’t nuts and I’d have to be nuts to do that.”
“Why? Why would it be nuts for an aide to be with his superior officer?”
“For the same reason noncoms aren’t called into situation rooms where the stars and the stripers are figuring out strategy. We’re on different levels; it isn’t done.”
“Which is another way of saying there are limits to what you should know.”
“You got it.”
“But you were part of that Saigon twenty years ago, part of Snake Lady—hell, Sergeant, you were Medusa, you are Medusa.”
“Nickels and dimes’ worth, Delta. I sweep up and they take care of me, but I’m only a sweeper in a uniform. When my time comes to turn in that uniform, I go quietly into a nice distant retirement with my mouth shut, or I go out in a body bag. It’s all very clear. I’m expendable.”
Bourne watched the master sergeant closely as he spoke, noting Flannagan’s brief glances at the general’s wife, as if he expected to be applauded or, conversely, to be told with a look to shut up. Either the huge military aide was telling the truth or he was a very convincing actor. “Then it strikes me,” said Jason finally, “that this is a logical time to move up your retirement. I can do that, Sergeant. You can fade quietly with your mouth shut and with whatever rewards you’re given for sweeping up. A devoted general’s aide with over thirty years’ service opts for retirement when his friend and superior tragically takes his own life. No one will question you.… That’s my offer.”
Flannagan again looked at Rachel Swayne; she nodded sharply once, then stared at Bourne. “What’s the guarantee that we can pack up our stuff and get out?” asked the woman.
“Isn’t there a little matter of Sergeant Flannagan’s discharge and his army pension?”
“I made Norman sign those papers eighteen months ago,” broke in the aide. “I was posted permanently to his office at the Pentagon and billeted to his residence. I just have to fill in the date, sign my own name, and list a general delivery address, which Rachel and I already figured out.”
“That’s all?”
“What’s left is maybe three or four phone calls. Norman’s lawyer, who’ll wrap up everything here; the kennels for the dogs; the Pentagon assigned-vehicle dispatcher—and a last call to New York. Then it’s Dulles Airport.”
“You must have thought about this for a long time, for years—”
“Nothing but, Mr. Delta,” confirmed the general’s wife, interrupting. “Like they say, we paid our dues.”
“But before I can sign those papers or make those calls,” added Flannagan, “I have to know we can break clean—now.”
“Meaning no police, no newspapers, no involvement with tonight—you simply weren’t here.”
“You said it’s a tall order. How tall are the debts you can call in?”
“You simply weren’t here,” repeated Bourne softly, slowly, looking at the fluted glass ashtray with the lipstick-stained cigarette butts on the table beside him. He pulled his eyes back to the general’s aide. “You didn’t touch anything in there; there’s nothing to physically tie you in with his suicide.… Are you really prepared to leave—say, in a couple of hours?”
“Try thirty minutes, Mr. Delta,” replied Rachel.
“My God, you had a life here, both of you—”
“We don’t want anything from this life outside of what we’ve got,” said Flannagan firmly.
“The estate here is yours, Mrs. Swayne—”
“Like hell it is. It’s being turned over to some foundation, ask the lawyer. Whatever I get, if I get, he’ll send on to me. I just want out—we want out.”
Jason looked back and forth at the strange and strangely drawn-together couple. “Then there’s nothing to stop you.”
“How do we know that?” pressed Flannagan, stepping forward.
“It’ll take a measure of trust on your part, but, believe me, I can do it. On the other hand, look at the alternative. Say you stay here. No matter what you do with him, he won’t show up in Arlington tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. Sooner or later someone’s going to come looking for him. There’ll be questions, searches, an investigation, and as sure as God made little Bobby Woodwards, the media will descend with its bellyful of speculations. In short order your ‘arrangement’ will be picked up—hell, even the guards talked about it—and the newspapers, the magazines and television will have a collective field day.… Do you want that? Or would it all lead to that body bag you mentioned?”
The master sergeant and his lady stared at each other. “He’s right, Eddie,” said the latter. “With him we got a chance, the other way we don’t.”
“It sounds too easy,” said Flannagan, his breath coming shorter as he glanced toward the door. “How are you going to handle everything?”
“That’s my business,” answered Bourne. “Give me the telephone numbers, all of them, and then the only call you’ll have to make is the one to New York, and if I were you, I’d make it from whatever Pac island you’re on.”
“You’re nuts! The minute the news breaks, I’m on Medusa’s rug—so’s Rachel! They’re going to want to know what happened.”
“Tell them the truth, at least a variation of it, and I think you may even get a bonus.”
“You’re a goddamned flake!”
“I wasn’t a flake in ’Nam, Sergeant. Nor was I in Hong Kong, and I’m certainly not now.… You and Rachel came home, saw what had happened, packed up and left—because you didn’t want any questions and the dead can’t talk and trap themselves. Predate your papers by a day, mail them, and leave the rest to me.”
“I dunno—”
“You don’t have a choice, Sergeant!” shot back Jason, rising from the chair. “And I don’t care to waste any more time! You want me to go, I’ll go—figure it all out for yourselves.” Bourne angrily started for the door.
“No, Eddie, stop him! We gotta do it his way, we gotta take the chance! The other way we’re dead and you know it.”
“All right, all right!… Cool it, Delta, We’ll do what you say.”
Jason stopped and turned. “Everything I say, Sergeant, down to the letter.”
“You got it.”
“First, you and I will go over to your place while Rachel goes upstairs and packs. You’ll give me everything you’ve got—telephone and license numbers, every name you can remember, anything you can give me that I ask for. Agreed?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go. And Mrs. Swayne, I know that there are probably a lot of little things you’d like to take along, but—”
“Forget it, Mr. Delta. Mementos I don’t have. Whatever I really wanted was long since shipped out of this hell hole. It’s all in storage ten thousand miles away.”
“My, you really were prepared, weren’t you?”
“Tell me something I don’t know. You see, the time had to come, one way or the other, y’know what I mean?” Rachel walked rapidly past the two men and into the hall; she stopped and came back to Master Sergeant Flannagan, a smile on her lips, a glow in her eyes, as she placed her hand on his face. “Hey, Eddie,” she said quietly. “It’s really gonna happen. We’re gonna live, Eddie. Y’know what I mean?”
“Yeah, babe. I know.”
As they walked out into the darkness toward the cabin, Bourne spoke. “I meant what I said about not wasting time, Sergeant. Start talking. What were you going to tell me about Swayne’s place here?”
“Are you ready?”
“What does that mean? Of course I’m ready.” But he wasn’t. He stopped suddenly on the grass at Flannagan’s words.
“For openers, it’s a cemetery.”
Alex Conklin sat back in the desk chair, the phone in his hand, stunned, frowning, unable to summon a rational response to Jason’s astonishing information. All he could say was “I don’t believe it!”
“Which part?”
“I don’t know. Everything, I guess … the cemetery on down. But I have to believe it, don’t I?”
“You didn’t want to believe London or Brussels, either, or a commander of the Sixth Fleet or the keeper of the covert keys in Langley. I’m just adding to the list.… The point is, once you find out who they all are, we can move.”
“You’ll have to start from the beginning again; my head’s shredded. The telephone number in New York, the license plates—”
“The body, Alex! Flannagan and the general’s wife! They’re on their way; that was the deal and you’ve got to cover it.”
“Just like that? Swayne kills himself and the two people on the premises who can answer questions, we say Ciao to them and let them get away? That’s only slightly more lunatic than what you’ve told me!”
“We don’t have time for negotiating games—and besides, he can’t answer any more questions. They were on different levels.”
“Oh, boy, that’s really clear.”
“Do it. Let them go. We may need them both later.”
Conklin sighed, his indecision apparent. “Are you sure? It’s very complicated.”
“Do it! For Christ’s sake, Alex, I don’t give a goddamn about complications or violations or all the manipulations you can dream up! I want Carlos! We’re building a net and we can pull him in—I can pull him in!”
“All right, all right. There’s a doctor in Falls Church that we’ve used before in special operations. I’ll get hold of him, he’ll know what to do.”
“Good,” said Bourne, his mind racing. “Now put me on tape. I’ll give you everything Flannagan gave me. Hurry up, I’ve got a lot to do.”
“You’re on tape, Delta One.”
Reading from the list he had written down in Flannagan’s cabin, Jason spoke rapidly, enunciating clearly so that there would be no confusion on the tape. There were the names of seven frequent and acknowledged guests at the general’s dinner parties, none guaranteed as to accuracy or spelling but with broad-brush descriptions; then came the license plates, all from the far more serious twice-monthly meetings. Next to last were the telephone numbers of Swayne’s lawyer, all of the estate’s guards, the dog kennels and the Pentagon extension for assigned vehicles; finally there was the unlisted telephone in New York, no name here, only a machine that took messages. “That’s got to be a priority one, Alex.”
“We’ll break it,” said Conklin, inserting himself on the tape. “I’ll call the kennels and talk Pentagonese—the general’s being flown to a hush-factor post and we pay double for getting the animals out first thing in the morning. Open the gates, incidentally.… The licenses are no problem and I’ll have Casset run the names through the computers behind DeSole’s back.”
“What about Swayne? We’ve got to keep the suicide quiet for a while.”
“How long?”
“How the hell do I know?” replied Jason, exasperated. “Until we find out who they all are and I can reach them—or you can reach them—and together we can start the wave of panic rolling. That’s when we plant the Carlos solution.”
“Words,” said Conklin, his tone not flattering. “You could be talking about days, maybe a week or even longer.”
“Then that’s what I’m talking about.”
“Then we’d better damn well bring in Peter Holland—”
“No, not yet. We don’t know what he’d do and I’m not giving him the chance to get in my way.”
“You’ve got to trust someone besides me, Jason. I can fool the doctor perhaps for twenty-four or forty-eight hours—perhaps—but I doubt much longer than that. He’ll want higher authorization. And don’t forget, I’ve got Casset breathing down my neck over DeSole—”
“Give me two days, get me two days!”
“While tracking down all this information and stalling Charlie, and lying through my teeth to Peter, telling them that we’re making progress running down the Jackal’s possible couriers at the Mayflower hotel—we think … Of course, we’re doing nothing of the sort because we’re up to our credentials in some off-the-wall, twenty-year-old Saigon conspiracy involving who knows what, damned if we know, except that the who is terribly impressive. Without going into statuses—or is it statae—we’re now told they have their own private cemetery on the grounds of the general officer in charge of Pentagon procurements, who just happened to blow his head off, a minor incident we’re sitting on.… Jesus, Delta, back up! The missiles are colliding!”
Though he was standing in front of Swayne’s desk, the general’s corpse in the chair beside him, Bourne managed a tentative, slow smile. “That’s what we’re counting on, isn’t it? It’s a scenario that could have been written by our beloved Saint Alex himself.”
“I’m only along for the ride, I’m not steering—”
“What about the doctor?” interrupted Jason. “You’ve been out of operation for almost five years. How do you know he’s still in business?”
“I run into him now and then; we’re both museum mavens. A couple of months ago at the Corcoran Gallery he complained that he wasn’t given much to do these days.”
“Change that tonight.”
“I’ll try. What are you going to do?”
“Delicately pull apart everything in this room.”
“Gloves?”
“Surgical, of course.”
“Don’t touch the body.”
“Only the pockets—very delicately.… Swayne’s wife is coming down the stairs. I’ll call you back when they’re gone. Get hold of that doctor!”
Ivan Jax, M. D. by way of Yale Medical School, surgical training and residency at Massachusetts General, College of Surgeons by appointment, Jamaican by birth, and erstwhile “consultant” to the Central Intelligence Agency courtesy of a fellow black man with the improbable name of Cactus, drove through the gates of General Swayne’s estate in Manassas, Virginia. There were times, thought Ivan, when he wished he had never met old Cactus and this was one of them, but tonight not-withstanding, he never regretted that Cactus had come into his life. Thanks to the old man’s “magic papers,” Jax had gotten his brother and sister out of Jamaica during the repressive Manley years when established professionals were all but prohibited from emigrating and certainly not with personal funds.
Cactus, however, using complex mock-ups of government permits had sprung both young adults out of the country along with bank transfers honored in Lisbon. All the aged forger requested were stolen blank copies of various official documents, including import/export bills of lading, the two people’s passports, separate photographs and copies of several signatures belonging to certain men in positions of authority—easily obtainable through the hundreds of bureaucratic edicts published in the government-controlled press. Ivan’s brother was currently a wealthy barrister in London and his sister a research fellow at Cambridge.
Yes, he owed Cactus, thought Dr. Jax as he swung his station wagon around the curve to the front of the house, and when the old man had asked him to “consult” with a few “friends over in Langley” seven years ago, he had obliged. Some consultation! Still, there were further perks forthcoming in Ivan’s silent association with the intelligence agency. When his island home threw out Manley, and Seaga came to power, among the first of the “appropriated” properties to be returned to their rightful owners were the Jax family’s holdings in Montego Bay and Port Antonio. That had been Alex Conklin’s doing, but without Cactus there would have been no Conklin, not in Ivan’s circle of friends.… But why did Alex have to call tonight? Tonight was his twelfth wedding anniversary, and he had sent the kids on an overnight with the neighbors’ children so that he and his wife could be alone, alone with grilled Jamaic’ ribs on the patio—prepared by the only one who knew how, namely, Chef Ivan—a lot of good dark Overton rum, and some highly erotic skinny-dipping in the pool. Damn Alex! Double damn the son-of-a-bitch bachelor who could only respond to the event of a wedding anniversary by saying, “What the hell? You made the year, so what’s a day count? Get your jollies tomorrow, I need you tonight.”
So he had lied to his wife, the former head nurse at Mass. General. He told her that a patient’s life was in the balance—it was, but it had already tipped the wrong way. She had replied that perhaps her next husband would be more considerate of her life, but her sad smile and her understanding eyes denied her words. She knew death. Hurry, my darling!
Jax turned off the engine, grabbed his medical bag and got out of the car. He walked around the hood as the front door opened and a tall man in what appeared to be dark skintight clothing stood silhouetted in the frame. “I’m your doctor,” said Ivan, walking up the steps. “Our mutual friend didn’t give me your name, but I guess I’m not supposed to have it.”
“I guess not,” agreed Bourne, extending a hand in a surgical glove as Jax approached.
“And I guess we’re both right,” said Jax, shaking hands with the stranger. “The mitt you’re wearing is pretty familiar to me.”
“Our mutual friend didn’t tell me you were black.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
“Good Christ, no. I like our friend even more. It probably never occurred to him to say anything.”
“I think we’ll get along. Let’s go, no-name.”
Bourne stood ten feet to the right of the desk as Jax swiftly, expertly tended to the corpse, mercifully wrapping the head in gauze. Without explaining, he had cut away sections of the general’s clothing, examining those parts of the body beneath the fabric. Finally, he carefully rolled the hooded body off the chair and onto the floor. “Are you finished in here?” he asked, looking over at Jason.
“I’ve swept it clean, Doctor, if that’s what you mean.”
“It usually is.… I want this room sealed. No one’s to enter it after we leave until our mutual friend gives the word.”
“I certainly can’t guarantee that,” said Bourne.
“Then he’ll have to.”
“Why?”
“Your general didn’t commit suicide, no-name. He was murdered.”