bourne legacy | Page 9

of the river. America was at war with North Vietnam, but the war had
spilled over into Cambodia. One afternoon, while he was at work and his family had been swimming in
the river, a plane had strafed them, killing them.
Webb had almost gone mad with grief. Finally, fleeing his house and Phnom Penh, he'd arrived in
Saigon, a man with no past and no future. It had been Alex Conklin who had taken a heartsick, half-mad
David Webb off the streets of Saigon and forged him into a first-rate clandestine operative. In Saigon,
Webb had learned to kill, had turned his own self-hatred outward, inflicting his rage on others. When a
member of Conklin's group— an evil-tempered drifter named Jason Bourne—had been discovered to be
a spy, it was Webb who had executed him. Webb had come to loathe the Bourne identity, but the truth
was that it had often been his lifeline. Jason Bourne had saved Webb's life more times than he could
remember. An amusing thought if it hadn't been so literal.
Years later, when they had both returned to Washington, Conklin had given him a long-term assignment.
He had become what amounted to a sleeper agent, taking the name of Jason Bourne, a man long dead,
forgotten by everyone. For three years Webb was Bourne, turned himself into aninternational assassin of
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great repute in order to hunt down an elusive terrorist.
But in Marseilles, his mission had gone terribly wrong. He'd been shot, cast into the dark waters of the
Mediterranean, thought dead. Instead, he had been pulled from the water by members of a fishing boat,
nursed back to health by a drunkard doctor in the port they'd set him down in. The only problem was
that in the shock of almost dying he'd lost his memory. What had come slowly back were the Bourne
memories. It was only much later, with the help of Marie, his wife-to-be, that he had come to realize the
truth, that he was David Webb. But by that time the Jason Bourne personality was too well ingrained, too
powerful, too cunning to die.
In the aftermath, he'd become two people: David Webb, linguistics professor with a new wife and,
eventually, two children, and Jason Bourne, the agent trained by Alex Conklin to be a formidable spy.
Occasionally, in some crisis, Conklin called on Bourne's expertise and Webb reluctantly rose to duty. But
the truth was that Webb often had little control over his Bourne personality. What had just happened with
Rongsey and the three street thugs was evidence enough. Bourne had a way of asserting himself that was
beyond Webb's control, despite all the work he and Panov had done.
Khan, having watched David Webb and the Cambodian student talking from across the quad, ducked
into a building diagonally across from Healy Hall, mounted the stairs to the third floor. Khan was dressed
much like all the other students. He looked younger than his twenty-seven years and no one gave him a
second look. He was wearing khakis and a jeans jacket, over which was slung an outsize backpack. His
sneakers made no sound as he went down the hallway, past the doors to classrooms. In his mind's eye
was a clear picture of the view across the quad. He was again calculating angles, taking into account the
mature trees that might obscure his view of his intended target.
He paused in front of the sixth door, heard a professor's voice from inside. The talk about ethics brought
an ironic smile to his face. In his experience—and it was great and varied—ethics was as dead and
useless as Latin. He went on to the next classroom, which he had already determined was empty, and
went in.
Quickly now, he shut and locked the door behind him, crossed to the line of windows overlooking the
quad, opened one and got to work. From his backpack, he removed a 7.62-mm SVD Dragunov sniper
rifle with a collapsible stock. He fitted the optical sight onto it, leaned it on the sill. Peering through the
sight, he found David Webb, by this time standing alone across the quad in front of Healy Hall. There
were trees just to his left. Every once in a while, a passing student would obscure him. Khan took a deep
breath, let it out slowly. He sighted on Webb's head.
Webb shook his head, shaking off the effect his memories of the past had on him, and refocusing on his
immediate surroundings. The leaves rustled in a gathering breeze, their tips gilded with sunlight. Close by,
a girl, her books clutched to her chest, laughed at the punchline of a joke. A waft of pop music came
from an open window somewhere. Webb, still thinking of all the things he wanted to say to Rongsey, was
about to turn up the front steps of Healy Hall when a soft phutt! sounded in his ear. Reacting instinctively,
he