The Scorpio Illusion by Robert Ludlum Read Free Book Online Page B

replaced you, just as it replaced me. Amsterdam taught me that, unless they all lied on their own, which they couldn’t have. They were programmed by the numbers, do and say what the machines tell you, that’s all you know!”
    “Not true,
mon ami
. Put simply, we are not equipped to deal with that technology. We are of the old school, and believe me when I tell you, it is coming back in ways you cannot imagine. The computers and their modems, the satellites and their high-altitude photographs, borders crossed by television and radio signals—all are
magnifique
, but they do not and cannot deal with the human condition. We did that … 
you
did that. We meet a man or a woman face-to-face, our eyes and our instincts tell us whether he or she is the enemy. Machines cannot do the same.”
    “Is that lecture by way of telling me our combined medieval practices can find this dragon lady, Bajaratt, quicker than faxing her photograph, description, and whatever else you’ve got to your secure sources on roughly fifty habitable islands? If so, I can only presume you should immediately be forced back into retirement.”
    “I believe what Jacques is suggesting,” broke in Cooke, “is that our expertise, combined with available technology, can be more effective than one without the other.”
    “Well said,
mon ami
. This psychopathic female, this killer, is not without brains or resources.”
    “According to Washington, she’s also not without a lot of hate rattling around in that brain of hers.”
    “Certainly no justification for what she’s done, or God help us, what she intends to do,” the man from MI-6 said emphatically.
    “No, it isn’t,” agreed Hawthorne. “But I wonder who and what she might be now if there’d been someone to help her years ago.… Christ almighty, the heads ofyour mother and father cut off in front of your eyes! I think if that had happened to my brother and me, we’d both be every bit the killer she is.”
    “You lost a wife you loved very much, Tyrell,” said Cooke. “You didn’t become a killer.”
    “No, I didn’t,” replied Hawthorne. “But I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell you I thought about killing a number of people—not only thought about it, but in several cases planned it.”
    “But you didn’t carry out those plans.”
    “Only because I had help … believe me,
only
because there was someone to stop me.” Tyrell glanced out the window at the sea, the constant movement briefly mesmerizing him. There had been someone, and, oh, God, how he missed her! In drunken moments he would tell her of his plans to take out
this
one and
that
one, even going so far as to open locked drawers on his boat and, in a stupor, show her his plans, diagrams of streets and buildings, his strategies for ending the lives that caused the death of his wife. Dominique would hold him as he swayed in an alcoholic daze, whispering into his ear that causing death would not bring back the dead, only create pain for many others who had no connection with Ingrid Johansen Hawthorne. In the mornings she would still be there beside him, dismissing his hung-over guilt with gentle laughter, yet reminding him how foolish and how dangerous were his fantasies; she wanted him alive. Christ, he loved her! And when she disappeared, the whiskey went with her. Perhaps it was another fantasy, but he often wondered: If he had stopped his heavy drinking before, might she have stayed?
    “I apologize for intruding,” said Ardisonne, both he and Cooke disturbed by Hawthorne’s sudden silence.
    “You didn’t intrude; it’s just private.”
    “So what is your answer, Commander? We’ve told you everything, even apologized for our actions last night, which at the time seemed appropriate. When abartender stares at you with great hostility and lowers his body below the counter at a deserted chickee at night, well, both Jacques and I know the islands.”
    “You have a point, but you used overkill. You said we had