@@@@@ “You’re a strange manCan we get some food
@@@@@
“You’re a strange manCan we get some food around here? And maybe a little bandage? I got hit a
while back, and after today my neck and shoulders are letting me know it Jason removed his
jacket; his shirt was drenched in blood
“Jesus Christ! I’ll call a doctor—”
“No, you won’tJust a medic, that’s allWe’re staying at the Visiting Commissars Suite; it’s on the top floorWe’ve
got room service and I’ll ring the infirmary for a nurse
“I said I’m hungry and uncomfortable, but they’re not my major concerns
“Not to worry,” said the Soviet Californian“The instant anything unusual happens anywhere,
we’ll be reachedI’ll roll up the maps
It happened at precisely 12:02 Adirectly after the universal changing of the guard, during the
darkest darkness of the nightThe telephone in the Commissars Suite screamed, propel ling
Benjamin off the couchHe raced across the room to the jangling, insistent instrument and yanked
it off its cradleGdye? Kogda? Shto eto znachit? Da!” He slammed the phone down and
turned to Bourne at the dinner table, the maps of Novgorod having replaced the room-service
dishesAt the Spanish tunnel—across the river two guards are dead, and on this
side the officer of the watch was found fifty yards away from his post, a bullet in his throatThey
ran the video tapes and all they saw was an unidentified man walking through carrying a duffel bag!
In a guard’s uniform!”
“There was something else, wasn’t there?” asked Delta coldly
“Yes, and you may be rightOn the other side was a dead farmhand clutching torn papers in his
handHe was lying between the two murdered guards, one of them stripped to his shorts and shoesHow did he do it?”
“He was the good guy, I can’t think of anything else,” mused Bourne, rising quickly, and
reaching, pouncing on the map of the Spanish compound“He must have sent in his paid impostor
with the rotten mocked-up papers, then ran in himself, the wounded Komitet officer at the last
moment exposing the fraud and speaking the foreign language which his impostor couldn’t do and
Robert Ludlum ?? THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
419
couldn’t understandProbe, test, agitate, confuse and find a way