able to bring down two clay pigeons with one shot."
"Not another word"-Halliday held up his hand-"to either of us. Luther and I must maintain plausible deniability. We can't afford this operation coming back to bite us on the ass. Is that clear, Mr. Batt?"
"Perfectly clear, sir. This is my operation, pure and simple."
Halliday grinned. "Son, those words are music to these big ol' Texan ears." He tugged at the lobe of his ear. "Now, I assume Luther here told you about Typhon."
Batt looked from the secretary to LaValle and back again. A frown formed on his face. "No, sir, he didn't."
"An oversight," LaValle said smoothly.
"Well, no time like the present." A smile continued to light Halliday's expression.
"We believe that one of CI's problems is Typhon," LaValle said. "It's become too much for the director to properly rehabilitate and manage CI, and keep tabs on Typhon. As such, responsibility for Typhon will be taken off your shoulders. That section will be controlled directly by me."
The entire topic had been handled smoothly, but Batt knew he'd been deliberately sandbagged. These people had wanted control of Typhon from the beginning. "Typhon is home-grown CI," he said. "It's Martin Lindros's brainchild."
"Martin Lindros is dead," LaValle pointed out needlessly. "Another female is the director of Typhon now. That needs to be addressed, along with many other decisions that will affect Typhon's future. You will also need to be making crucial decisions, Rob, about all of CI. You don't want more on your plate than you can handle, do you." It wasn't a question.
Batt felt himself losing traction on a slippery slope. "Typhon is part of CI," he said as a last, feeble attempt to win back control.
"Mr. Batt," Halliday interjected. "We have made our determination. Are you with us or shall we recruit someone else for DCI?"
The man whose call had drawn Professor Specter out into the street was Mikhail Tarkanian. Bourne suggested the National Zoo as a place to meet, and the professor had called Tarkanian. The professor then contacted his secretary at the university to tell her that he and Professor Webb were each taking a personal day. They got in Specter's car, which had been driven to the estate by one of his men, and headed toward the zoo.
"Your problem, Jason, is that you need an ideology," Specter said. "An ideology grounds you. It's the backbone of commitment."
Bourne, who was driving, shook his head. "As far back as I can remember I've been manipulated by ideologues. So far as I can tell, all ideology does is give you tunnel vision. Everything that doesn't fit within your self-imposed limits is either ignored or destroyed."
"Now I know I'm truly speaking to Jason Bourne," Specter said, "because I tried my best to instill in David Webb a sense of purpose he lost somewhere in his past. When you came to me you weren't just cast adrift, you were severely maimed. I sought to help heal you by helping you turn away from whatever it was that hurt you so deeply. But now I see I was wrong-"
"You weren't wrong, Professor."
"No, let me finish. You're always quick to defend me, to believe I'm always right. Don't think I don't appreciate how you feel about me. I wouldn't want anything to change that. But occasionally I do make mistakes, and this was one of them. I don't know what went into the making of the Bourne identity, and believe me when I tell you that I don't want to know.
"What seems clear to me, however, is that however much you don't want to believe it, something inside you, something innate and connected with the Bourne identity, sets you apart from everyone else."
Bourne felt troubled by the direction of the conversation. "Do you mean that I'm Jason Bourne through and through-that David Webb would have become him no matter what?"
"No, not at all. But I do think from what you've shared with me that if there had been no intervention, if there had been no Bourne identity, then David Webb would have been a very unhappy man."
This idea was not a new one to Bourne. But he'd always assumed the thought occurred to him because he knew so damnably little about who he'd been. David Webb was more of an enigma to him than Jason Bourne. That realization itself haunted Bourne, as if Webb were a ghost, a shadowing armature into which the Bourne identity had been hung, fleshed out, given life by Alex Conklin.