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Back The Janson Directive Save as PDF
Chapters (54)
  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Prologue
  4. PART ONE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. PART TWO
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. PART THREE
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. PART FOUR
  39. Chapter Thirty-two
  40. Chapter Thirty-three
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Epilogue
  52. ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM
  53. Critical Praise for Robert Ludlum
  54. Copyright Page

“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 just happened? A victory, a defeat? Wrong yardstick, son. Here’s what happened. You almost died, and you learned what it was to live.”

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

A heavy white lorry carrying a load of semi-finished lumber swung off the busy M 11 highway and onto Queen’s Road, Cambridge. There it pulled up beside several parked trucks bearing construction equipment for a major renovation project. That was the way with a large and aging university like Cambridge—something was always being rebuilt or renovated.