The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,79

there?"

"Sir?"

"If it doesn't mean anything, it happened for no reason. That's not a universe you want to live in. You've got to make it mean something."

"As I told you before, it was like they knew we were coming, sir."

"Seems pretty clear, doesn't it?"

"You didn't - don't - seem surprised, sir."

"Surprised? No. That was my null hypothesis - the prediction that I was testing. But I had to know for sure. Noc Lo was, among other things, an experiment. If one were to file plans for an incursion with the local ARVN liaison to Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, what consequences could one expect? What are the information relays that lead back to the local insurgency? There's only one way to test these things. And now we've learned something. We have an enemy that is committed to our root-and-branch destruction - committed with all its heart and soul and mind. And on our side? A lot of transplanted bureaucrats who think they're working for the Tennessee Valley Authority or some damn thing. A few hours ago, son, you narrowly escaped with your life. Was Noc Lo a defeat, or a victory? It's not so easy to say, is it?"

"Sir, it did not taste like victory. Sir."

"Hardaway died, I said, because he was weak. You lived, as I knew you would, because you were strong. Strong like your dad - second wave of the landing on Red Beach, if I'm not mistaken. Strong like your uncle, in the forests and ravines of Sumava, picking off Wehrmacht officers with an old hunting rifle. There's nobody fiercer than those Eastern European partisans - I had an uncle like that myself. War shows us who we are, Paul. My hope is that today you learned something about yourself. Something I determined about you back in Little Creek."

Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest reached for a dog-eared paperback he had on his desk. "You know your Emerson?" He began to read from it: " 'A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushions of advantages he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit.' I reckon Ralph Waldo was onto something."

"Be nice to think so, sir."

"The battlefield is also a proving ground. It's where you die or where you're born anew. And don't just dismiss that as a figure of speech. Ever talk to your mama about what it was like to give birth to you? Women know this blinding flash of what it all means - they know that their lives, the lives of their parents, their parents' parents, of all human life on this planet for tens of thousands of years, have culminated in this wet, squirming, screaming thing. Birth isn't pretty. A nine-month cycle from pleasure to pain. Man is born in a mess of bodily fluids, distended viscera, shit, piss, blood - and baby, it's you. A moment of incredible agony. Yes, giving birth is a bitch, all right, because that pain is what gives it meaning. And I look at you standing here with the stinking guts of another soldier on your tunic and I look into your eyes, and I see a man who's been reborn."

Janson stared, bewildered. Part of him was appalled; part of him was mesmerized.

Demarest stood up, and his own gaze did not shift. He reached over and put a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "What's this war about? Ivy Leaguers in the State Department have thick three-ring binders that pretend to give an answer. It's a whole lot of white noise, meaningless rationalizations. Every conflict is the same- It's about the testing fields of battle. In the past four hours, you've known more energy and exhaustion, more agony and ecstasy - more pure adrenaline - than most people will ever experience. You're more alive than the zombies in their station wagons who tell themselves how glad they are that they're not in harm's way like you. They're the lost souls. They spend their days price-comparing cuts of London broil and boxes of laundry detergent and wondering, should they try to fix the sink or wait around for the plumber? They're dead inside and they don't even know it." Demarest's eyes were bright. "What's the war about? It's about the simple fact that you killed those who sought to kill you. What