Free The Bourne ultimatum by Robert Ludlum Page B

wishing he had not used his partner’s formal title.
    “So it is. That’s odd; he never interrupts my golf game.” Swayne walked toward the rapidly approaching cart, meeting it thirty feet away from the tee. “What is it?” he asked a large, middle-aged beribboned master sergeant who had been his driver for over fifteen years.
    “My guess is that it’s rotten,” answered the noncommissioned officer gruffly while he gripped the wheel.
    “That’s pretty blunt—”
    “So was the son of a bitch who called. I had to take it inside, on a pay phone. I told him I wouldn’t break into your game, and he said I goddamned well better if I knew what was good for me. Naturally, I asked him who he was and what rank and all the rest of the bullshit but he cut me off, more scared than anything else. ‘Just tell the general I’m calling about Saigon and some reptiles crawling around the city damn near twenty years ago.’ Those were his exact words—”
    “Jesus Christ !” cried Swayne, interrupting. “ Snake ... ?”
    “He said he’d call back in a half hour-that’s eighteen minutes now. Get in, Norman. I’m part of this, remember?”
    Bewildered and frightened, the general mumbled. “I ... I have to make excuses. I can’t just walk away, drive away.”
    “Make it quick. And, Norman , you’ve got on a short-sleeved shirt, you goddamned idiot! Bend your arm.”
    Swayne, his eyes wide, stared at the small tattoo on his flesh, instantly crooking his arm to his chest in British brigadier fashion as he walked unsteadily back to the tee, summoning a casualness he could not feel. “Damn, young fella, the army calls.”
    “Well, damn also, Norm, but I’ve got to pay you. I insist !”
    The general, half in a daze, accepted the debt from his partner, not counting the bills, not realizing that it was several hundred dollars more than he was owed. Proffering confused thanks, Swayne walked swiftly back to the golf cart and climbed in beside his master sergeant.
    “So much for my hook, soldier boy,” said the armaments executive to himself, addressing the tee and swinging his club, sending the little pocked white ball straight down the fairway far beyond the general’s and with a much better lie. “Four hundred million’s worth, you brass-plated bastard.”
    Mark Two .
     
    “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” asked the senator, laughing as he spoke into the phone. “Or should I say, what’s Al Armbruster trying to pull? He doesn’t need my sup port on the new bill and he wouldn’t get it if he did. He was a jackass in Saigon and he’s a jackass now, but he’s got the majority vote.”
    “We’re not talking about votes, Senator. We’re talking about Snake Lady !”
    “The only snakes I knew in Saigon were jerks like Alby who crawled around the city pretending to know all the answers when there weren’t any. ... Who the hell are you anyway?” In Vienna, Virginia, Alex Conklin replaced the telephone.
    Misfire Three .
    f f f
    Phillip Atkinson, ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, picked up his phone in London, assuming that the unnamed caller, code “courier D.C.” was bearing an exceptionally confidential instruction from the State Department and automatically; as was the order, Atkinson snapped the switch on his rarely used scrambler. It would create an eruption of static on British intelligence’s intercepts and later he would smile benignly at good friends in the Connaught bar who asked him if there was anything new out of Washington, knowing that this one or that one had “relatives” in MI-Five.
    “Yes, Courier District?”
    “Mr. Ambassador, I assume we can’t be picked up,” said the low, strained voice from Washington.
    “Your assumption’s correct unless they’ve come up with a new type of Enigma, which is unlikely.”
    “Good. ... I want to take you back to Saigon, to a certain operation no one talks about—”
    “Who is this?” broke in Atkinson, bolting forward