| His ego demands it, and that kill includes my
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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 knock off tiffany jewelry 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 chanel white watches curiousSwayne headed up the Quartermaster
Corps in Saigon and supplied MedusaWhat?s his place got to do with your changing clothes??
?I want to look aroundI?ll get there while it?s light to see what it?s like from the road, then
when it?s dark I?ll pay him a surprise visit
?That?ll be effective, but why the looking around??
?I like farmsThey?re so spread out and extended and I can?t imagine why a professional soldier
who knows that he can be transferred anywhere in the world at a moment?s notice would saddle
himself with such a large investment
?The same as my reasoning except I was concerned about the how, not the whyYour approach
may be more interestingHe may have alarms and dogs, things like that
?I?m prepared,? said Jason Bourne?I did some shopping after I left Georgetown
The summer sun was low in the western sky as he slowed down the rental car and lowered the
visor to keep from being blinded by the yellow globe of fireSoon it would drop behind the
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Shenandoah mountains, twilight descending, chanel sac prelude to darknessAnd it was the darkness that
Jason Bourne craved; it was his friend and ally, the blackness in which he moved swiftly, with sure
feet and alert hands and arms that served as sensors against all the impediments of natureThe
jungles had welcomed him in the past, knowing that although he was an intruder he respected them
and used them as a part of himHe did not fear the jungles, he embraced them, for they protected
him and allowed him passage to accomplish whatever his objective was; he was at one with the
jungles?as he would have to be with the dense woods that flanked the estate of General Norman
Swayne
The main house was set back no less than the distance of two football fields from the country
roadA stockade fence separated the entrance on the right from the exit on the left, both with iron
gates, fronting a deep drive that was basically an elongated U-turnImmediately bordering each
opening was a profusion of tall trees and shrubbery that was in itself a natural extension of the
stockade fence both left and rightAll cheap prada handbags that was missing were guardhouses at each point of entry and
exit
His mind floated back to China, to Beijing and the wild bird sanctuary where he had trapped a
killer posing as Jason BourneThere had been a guardhouse then and a series of armed patrols in
the dense forest and a madman, a butcher who controlled an army of killers, foremost among
them the false Jason BourneHe had penetrated that deadly sanctuary, crippled a small fleet of
trucks and automobiles by plunging the blade of his knife into every tire, then proceeded to take out
each patrol in the Jing Shan forest until he found the torch-lit clearing that held a swaggering
maniac and his brigade of fanaticsCould he do it all today? wondered Bourne as he drove slowly
past Swayne?s property for the third time, his eyes absorbing everything he could seeFive years
later, thirteen years after Paris? He tried to evaluate the realityHe was not the younger man that he
had been in Paris, nor the more mature man in Hong Kong, Macao and Beijing; he was now fifty
and he felt it, every year chanel necklace o |
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