what Alex Conklin devoted his life to."
"But why? I just don't get it."
"The Old Man didn't either, not really." Willard sighed. "Sometimes I think Alex was the only American to learn from the tragic mistakes of the war in Vietnam. It was his special genius, you see, to anticipate Iraq and Afghanistan. He saw the new world coming. He knew that the old methods of waging war were as antiquated, as certain to fail as the Napoleonic code.
"While the Pentagon was spending billions on stockpiling smart bombs, nuclear submarines, stealth bombers, supersonic jet fighters, Alex was concentrated on building the one weapon of war he knew would be effective: human beings. Treadstone's mission from the very first day of its inception was to build the perfect human weapon: fearless, merciless, skilled at infiltration, subterfuge, misdirection, mimicry. A weapon of a thousand faces who could be anyone, go anywhere, kill any target without remorse, and return to take on the next mission.
"And now you see what a visionary Alex was. What he saw has, indeed, come to pass. What we create in the Treadstone program will become America's most potent weapon against its enemies, no matter how clever they are, no matter how remote their location. Do you think I'm going to bury something invaluable? I made a deal with the devil so that Treadstone would be resurrected."
"And what," Marks said, "if the devil has other ideas for Treadstone?"
"Then," Willard replied, "the devil will have to be dealt with in some manner." There was a slight pause. "Arkadin or Bourne, it makes no difference to me. Only the outcome of their struggle for survival interests me. And either way, I will have them - one or the other - as the prototype for the graduates Treadstone will produce."
Start at the beginning," Bourne said. "This has all the earmarks of a nightmare."
"The long and the short of it," Ottavio Moreno said with a sigh, "is that you had no right to kill Noah Perlis."
The two men were in a safe house in Thamesmead, a small developed area directly across the river from the London City Airport. It was one of those modern crackerjack boxes being thrown up all over the sprawling suburbs that were as flimsy as they looked. They had driven there in Moreno's gray Opel, as anonymous a car as you were likely to find in London. They'd eaten some cold chicken and pasta out of the fridge, washed it down with a bottle of decent South African wine, and then had retired to the living room where they literally threw themselves onto the sofas.
"Perlis killed Holly Moreau."
"Perlis was business," Ottavio Moreno pointed out.
"So, I think, was Holly."
Ottavio Moreno nodded. "But then it became personal, didn't it?"
Bourne had no good reply to that, since the answer was obvious to both of them.
"Water under the bridge," Moreno said, taking Bourne's silence as acquiescence. "The point that you've forgotten is that I hired Perlis to find the laptop."
"He had no laptop; he had the ring."
Moreno shook his head. "Forget the ring and try to remember the laptop."
Bourne felt as if he were sinking deeper and deeper into quicksand. "You mentioned the laptop before, but I have no memory of it."
"In that event I imagine you have no memory of how you stole it from Jalal Essai's home."
Bourne shook his head helplessly.
Moreno dug his thumbs into his eyes for a moment. "I see what you meant when you said start at the beginning."
Bourne, saying nothing, watched him carefully. The constant problem with people arising out of his past was this: Who were they really and were they telling him the truth? A man with no memory isn't difficult to lie to. In fact, Bourne reflected, it was probably fun to lie to an amnesiac and watch his reactions.
"You were given an assignment to get the laptop computer."
"By whom?"
Moreno shrugged. "Alex Conklin, I imagine. Anyway, we made contact in Marrakech."
Morocco again. Bourne sat forward. "Why would I contact you?"
"I was Alex Conklin's contact there." When Bourne gave him a skeptical look, he added, "I'm a half brother. My mother is a Berber, from the High Atlas Mountains."
"Your father got around."
"Make a joke, okay, it's all right, I won't gut you." Ottavio Moreno laughed. "Christ, this is a fucked-up world." He shook his head in disbelief. "Okay, look, my friend. My father had his thumb in a shitload of pies, most of them illegal, yes, I freely admit it. So what? So his business ventures