but would be no help if an indiscriminate burst of gunfire erupted, taking at least one of the guards with him. Yet bullets were not always a killer's choice. There were darts - lethal missiles of poison delivered by air-compressed weapons, puncturing exposed flesh, bringing death in a matter of minutes. Or seconds.
A hand gripped his shoulder! He spun around, arcing his arm up, dislodging the hand as he side stepped to his left, crouching like an animal.
'You okay, Professor?' asked the guard on his right, grinning in the wash of his flashlight.
'What? What happened?
'Isn't it great!' cried the guard on his left, approaching, as David got to his feet.
'What?'
'Kids with that kind of spirit. It really makes you feel good to see it!'
It was over. The campus quad was silent again, and in the distance between the stone buildings that fronted the playing fields and the college stadium, the pulsing flames of a bonfire could be seen through the empty bleachers. A football rally was reaching its climax, and his guards were laughing.
'How about you, Professor?' continued the man on his left. 'Do you feel better about things now, what with us here and all?'
It was over. The self-inflicted madness was over. Or was it? Why was his chest pounding so? Why was he so bewildered, so frightened? Something was wrong.
'Why does this whole parade bother me?' said David over morning coffee in the breakfast alcove of their old rented Victorian house.
'You miss your walks on the beach,' said Marie, ladling her husband's single poached egg over the single slice of toast. 'Eat that before you have a cigarette. '
'No, really. It bothers me. For the past week I've been a duck in a superficially protected gallery. It occurred to me yesterday afternoon. '
'What do you mean?' Marie poured out the water and placed the pan in the kitchen sink, her eyes on Webb. 'Six men are around you, four on your "flanks", as you said, and two peering into everything in front and behind you. '
'A parade. '
'Why do you call it that?1
'I don't know. Everyone in his place, marching to a drumbeat. I don't know. '
'But you feel something?'
'I guess so. '
'Tell me. Those feelings of yours once saved my life on the Guisan Quai in Zurich. I'd like to hear it - well, maybe I wouldn't, but I damn well better. '
Webb broke the yolk of his egg on the toast. 'Do you know how easy it would be for someone - someone who looked young enough to be a student - to walk by me on a path and shoot an air dart into me? He could cover the sound with a cough, or a laugh, and I'd have a hundred cc's of strychnine in my blood. '
'You know far more about that sort of thing than I do. ' 'Of course. Because that's the way I'd do it. '
'No. That's the way Jason Bourne might do it. Not you. '
'All right, I'm projecting. It doesn't invalidate the thought. '
'What happened yesterday afternoon?'
Webb toyed with the egg and toast on his plate. 'The seminar ran late as usual. It was getting dark, and my guards fell in and we walked across the quad towards the parking lot. There was a football rally - our insignificant team against another insignificant team - but very large for us. The crowd passed the four of us, kids racing to a bonfire behind the bleachers, screaming and shouting and singing fight songs, working themselves up. And I thought to myself, this is. This is when it's going to happen if it is going to happen. Believe me, for those few moments I was Bourne. I crouched and side-stepped and watched everyone I could see - I was close to panic. '
'And?' said Marie, disturbed by her husband's abrupt silence.
'My so-called guards were looking around and laughing, the two in front having a ball, enjoying the whole thing. '
'That disturbed you?'
'Instinctively. I was a vulnerable target in the centre of an excited crowd. My nerves told me that; my mind didn't have to. '
'Who's talking now?'
'I'm not sure. I just know that during those few moments nothing made sense to me. Then, only seconds later, as if to pinpoint the feelings I hadn't verbalized, the man behind me on my left came up and said something like, "Isn't it great - or terrific - to see kids with that kind of spirit? Makes you feel good, doesn't it?" I mumbled