“Aiya!” roared Liang, diving to the side of the telephone shell as bullets ripped into the wall of the walkway and cracked in the air overhead. Webb lunged toward the Chinese, crawling beside the hotel man, his hunting knife out of its scabbard. “Do not! What are you doing?” Liang screamed as David, lying sideways, gripped him by the front of his shirt and shoved the blade up into the manager’s chin, breaking the skin, drawing blood. “Ahhee!” The hysterical cry was lost in the pandemonium of the walkway.
“Give me the number! Now!”
“Don’t do this to me! I swear to you I did not know it was a trap!”
“It’s not a trap for me, Liang,” said Webb breathlessly, the sweat rolling down his face. “It’s for you!”
“Me? You’re mad! Why me?”
“Because they know I’m here now, and you’ve seen me, you’ve talked to me. You made your phone call and they can’t afford you any longer.”
“But why?”
“You were given a telephone number. You did your job and they can’t allow any traces.”
“That explains nothing!”
“Maybe my name will. It’s Jason Bourne.”
“Oh, my God … !” whispered Liang, his face pale and lips parted, as he stared at David.
“You’re a trace,” said Webb. “You’re dead.”
“No, no!” The Chinese shook his head. “It can’t be! I don’t know anyone, only the number! It is a deserted office in the New World Centre, a temporary telephone installed. Please! The number is three-four, four, zero, one! Do not kill me, Mr. Bourne! For the love of our Christian God, do not do it!”
“If I thought the trap was for me, there’d be blood all over your throat, not your chin.… Three-four, four, zero, one?”
“Yes, exactly!”
The gunfire stopped as suddenly and as startlingly as it had begun.
“The New World Centre’s right above us, isn’t it? One of those windows up there.”
“Exactly!” Liang shuddered, unable to take his eyes off David’s face. Then he shut them tight, tears dripping beneath his lids as he shook his head violently. “I have never seen you! I swear on the cross of holy Jesus!”
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m in Hong Kong or the Vatican.” Webb raised his head and looked around. All along the walkway terrified people were hesitantly beginning to rise. Mothers clutched children; men held women, and men, women, and children got to their knees, then their feet, and suddenly formed a mass stampede toward the Salisbury arch. “You were told to make your call from here, weren’t you?” said David rapidly, turning to the frightened hotel man.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why? Did they give you a reason?”
“Yes, sir.”
“For Christ’s sake, open your eyes!”
“Yes, sir.” Liang did so, looking away as he spoke. “They said they did not trust the guest who asked for Suite six-nine-zero. He was a man who might force another to convey lies. Therefore they wanted to observe me when I spoke to them.… Mr. Bourne—no, I did not say that! Mr. Cruett—I tried all day to reach you, Mr. Cruett! I wanted you to know I was being pressed repeatedly, Mr. Cruett. They kept phoning me, wanting to know when I would place my call to them—from here. I kept saying you had not arrived! What else could I do? By trying to reach you so constantly, you can see I was trying to warn you, sir! It is obvious, is it not?”
“What’s obvious is that you’re a damn fool.”
“I am not equipped for this work.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Money, sir! I was with Chiang, with the Kuomintang. I have a wife and five children—two sons and three daughters. I have to get out! They search backgrounds; they give us incontestable labels with no appeals. I am a learned man, sir! Fudan University, second in my class—I owned my own hotel in Shanghai. But all that is meaningless now. When Beijing takes over, I am dead, my family is dead. And now you say I am dead as of this moment. What am I to do?”
“Peking—Beijing—won’t touch the colony, they won’t change anything,” said David, remembering the words Marie had said to him that terrible evening after McAllister had left their house. “Unless the crazies take over.”
“They are all crazy, sir. Believe nothing else. You don’t know them!”
“Maybe not. But I know a few of you. And, frankly, I’d rather not.”
“ ‘Let who is without sin among you cast the first stone,’ sir.”
“Stones, but not bags of silver from Chiang’s corruption, right?”
“Sir?”
“What are your three daughters’ names? Quickly!”
“They are … they are … Wang … Wang Sho—”
“Forget it!” yelled David, glancing down at the Salisbury arch. “Ni bushi ren! You’re not a man, you’re a pig! Stay well, Liang of the Kuomintang. Stay well as long as they let you. Frankly, I couldn’t care less.”
Webb got to his feet, prepared to throw himself down again at the first irregular flash of light from a window above on his left. The eyes of Jason Bourne were accurate: there was nothing. David joined the stampede at the arch and slithered his way through the crowds to Salisbury Road.
He placed the call from a phone in a congested, noisy arcade off Nathan Road. He put his index finger in his right ear to hear more clearly.
“Wei?” said a male voice.
“It’s Bourne, and I’ll speak English. Where is my wife?”
“Wode tian ah! It is said you speak our language in numerous dialects.”
“It’s been a long time and I want everything clearly understood. I asked you about my wife!”
“Liang gave you this number?”
“He didn’t have a choice.”
“He is also dead.”
“I don’t care what you do, but if I were you, I’d have second thoughts about killing him.”
“Why? He is lower than a worm.”
“Because you picked a damn fool—worse, an hysterical one. He talked to too many people. A switchboard operator told me he was calling me every few minutes—”
“Calling you?”
“I flew in this morning. Where is my wife—”
“Liang the liar!”
“You didn’t expect me to stay in that suite, did you? I had him switch me to another room. We were seen talking together—arguing—with half a dozen clerks watching us. You kill him, there’ll be more rumors than any of us want. The police will be looking for a rich American who disappeared.”
“His trousers are soiled,” said the Chinese. “Perhaps it is enough.”
“It’s enough. Now, what about my wife!”
“I heard you. I am not privileged with such information.”
“Then put on someone who is. Now!”
“You will meet with others more knowledgeable.”
“When?”
“We will get back to you. What room are you in?”
“I’ll call you. You’ve got fifteen minutes.”
“You are giving me orders?”
“I know where you are, which window, which office—you’re sloppy with your rifle. You should have corked the barrel; sunlight reflects off metal, that’s basic. In thirty seconds I’ll be a hundred feet from your door, but you won’t know where I am and you can’t leave that phone.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Try me. You’re not watching me now, I’m watching you. You’ve got fifteen minutes, and when I call you back I want to talk to my wife.”
“She’s not here!”
“If I thought she were, you’d be dead, your head knifed from the rest of you and thrown out the window to join the other garbage in the harbor. If you think I’m exaggerating, check around. Ask people who’ve dealt with me. Ask your taipan, the Yao Ming who doesn’t exist.”
“I cannot make your wife appear, Jason Bourne!” shouted the frightened minion.
“Get me a number where I can reach her. Either I hear her voice—talking to me—or there’s nothing. Except for your headless corpse and a black bandanna across your bleeding neck. Fifteen minutes!”
David hung up the phone and wiped the sweat from his face. He had done it. The mind and the words were Jason Bourne’s—he had gone back in only vaguely remembered time and instinctively knew what to do, what to say, what to threaten. There was a lesson somewhere. Appearance far outdistanced reality. Or was there a reality within him crying to come out, wanting control, telling David Webb to trust the man inside him?
He left the oppressively crowded arcade and turned right on the equally congested pavement. The Golden Mile of the Tsim Sha Tsui was preparing for its nightly games, and so would he. He could return to the hotel now; the assistant manager would be miles away, conceivably booking a flight to Taiwan, if there was any truth at all in his hysterical statements. Webb would use the freight elevator to reach his room in case others were awaiting him in the lobby, although he doubted it. The shooting gallery that was a deserted office in the New World Centre was not a command post, and the marksman was not a commander but a relay, now frightened for his life.
With each step David took down Nathan Road, the shorter his breath became, the louder his chest pounded. Twelve minutes from now he would hear Marie’s voice. Oh God, he wanted to hear it so! He had to! It was all that would keep him sane, all that mattered.
“Your fifteen minutes are over,” said Webb, sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to control his heartbeat, wondering if the rapid echo could be heard as he heard it, hoping it caused no tremor in his voice.
“Call five-two, six, five, three.”
“Five?” David recognized the exchange. “She’s over in Hong Kong, not Kowloon.”
“She will be moved immediately.”
“I’ll call you back after I’ve spoken to her.”
“There is no need, Jason Bourne. Knowledgeable men are there and they will speak with you. My business is finished and you have never seen me.”
“I don’t have to see you. A photograph will be taken when you leave that office, but you won’t know from where or by whom. You’ll probably see a number of people—in the hallway, or in an elevator or the lobby—but you won’t know which one has a camera with a lens that looks like a button on his jacket, or an emblem on her purse. Stay well, minion. Think nice thoughts.”
Webb depressed the telephone bar, disconnecting the line; he waited three seconds, released it, heard the dial tone, and touched the buttons. He could hear the ring. Christ, he couldn’t stand it!
“Wei?”
“This is Bourne. Put my wife on the line.”
“As you wish.”
“David?”
“Are you all right?” shouted Webb on the edge of hysteria.
“Yes, just tired, that’s all, my darling. Are you all right—”
“Have they hurt you—have they touched you?”
“No, David, they’ve been quite kind, actually. But you know how tired I get sometimes. Remember that week in Zurich when you wanted to see the Fraumünster and the museums and go out sailing on the Limmat, and I said I just wasn’t up to it?”
There’d been no week in Zurich. Only the nightmare of a single night when both of them nearly lost their lives. He running the gauntlet of his would-be executioners in the Steppdeckstrasse, she nearly raped, sentenced to death on a deserted riverfront in the Guisan Quai. What was she trying to tell him?
“Yes, I remember.”
“So you mustn’t worry about me, darling. Thank God you’re here! We’ll be together soon, they’ve promised me that. It’ll be like Paris, David. Remember Paris, when I thought I’d lost you? But you came to me and we both knew where to go. That lovely street with the dark green trees and the—”
“That will be all, Mrs. Webb,” broke in a male voice. “Or should I say Mrs. Bourne,” the man added, speaking directly into the phone.
“Think, David, and be careful!” yelled Marie in the background. “And don’t worry, darling! That lovely street with the row of green trees, my favorite tree—”
“Ting zhi!” cried the male voice, issuing an order in Chinese. “Take her away! She’s giving him information! Quickly. Don’t let her speak!”
“You harm her in any way, you’ll regret it for the rest of your short life,” said Webb icily. “I swear to Christ I’ll find you.”
“There has been no cause for unpleasantness up to this moment,” replied the man slowly, his tone sincere. “You heard your wife. She has been treated well. She has no complaints.”
“Something’s wrong with her! What the hell have you done that she can’t tell me?”
“It is only the tension, Mr. Bourne. And she was telling you something, no doubt in her anxiety trying to describe this location—erroneously, I should add—but even if it were accurate, it would be as useless to you as the telephone number. She is on her way to another apartment, one of millions in Hong Kong. Why would we harm her in any way? It would be counterproductive. A great taipan wants to meet with you.”
“Yao Ming?”
“Like you, he goes by several names. Perhaps you can reach an accommodation.”
“Either we do or he’s dead. And so are you.”
“I believe what you say, Jason Bourne. You killed a close blood relative of mine who was beyond your reach, in his own island fortress on Lantau. I’m sure you recall.”
“I don’t keep records. Yao Ming. When?”
“Tonight.”
“Where?”
“You must understand, he’s very recognizable, so it must be a most unusual place.”
“Suppose I choose it?”
“Unacceptable, of course. Do not insist. We have your wife.”
David tensed; he was losing the control he desperately needed. “Name it,” he said.
“The Walled City. We assume you know it.”
“Of it,” corrected Webb, trying to focus what memory he had. “The filthiest slum on the face of the earth, if I remember.”
“What else would it be? It is the only legal possession of the People’s Republic in all of the colony. Even the detestable Mao Zedong gave permission for our police to purge it. But civil servants are not paid that much. It remains essentially the same.”
“What time tonight?”
“After dark, but before the bazaar closes. Between nine-thirty and not later than fifteen minutes to ten.”
“How do I find this Yao Ming—who isn’t Yao Ming?”
“There is a woman in the first block of the open market who sells snake entrails as aphrodisiacs, predominantly cobra. Go up to her and ask her where a great one is. She will tell you the descending steps to use, which alley to take. You will be met.”
“I might never get there. The color of my skin isn’t welcome down there.”
“No one will harm you. However, I suggest you not wear garish clothing or display expensive jewelry.”
“Jewelry?”
“If you own a high-priced watch, do not wear it.”
They’d cut your arm off for a watch. Medusa. So be it.
“Thanks for the advice.”
“One last thing. Do not think of involving the authorities or your consulate in a reckless attempt to compromise the taipan. If you do, your wife will die.”
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“With Jason Bourne everything is necessary. You will be watched.”
“Nine-thirty to nine-forty-five,” said Webb, replacing the phone and getting up from the bed. He went to the window and stared out at the harbor. What was it? What was Marie trying to tell him?
… you know how tired I get sometimes.
No, he did not know that. His wife was a strong Ontario ranch girl who never complained of being tired.
… you mustn’t worry about me, darling.
A foolish plea, and she must have realized it. Marie did not waste precious moments being foolish. Unless … was she rambling incoherently?
… It’ll be like Paris, David.… we both knew where to go … that lovely street with the dark green trees.
No, not rambling, only the appearance of rambling; there was a message. But what? What lovely street with “dark green trees”? Nothing came to him and it was driving him out of his mind! He was failing her. She was sending a signal and it eluded him.
… Think, David, and be careful!… don’t worry, darling! That lovely street with the row of green trees, my favorite tree—
What lovely street? What goddamned row of trees, what favorite tree? Nothing made sense to him and it should make sense! He should be able to respond, not stare out a window, his memory blank. Help me, help me! he cried silently to no one.
An inner voice told him not to dwell on what he could not understand. There were things to do; he could not willingly walk into the meeting ground of the enemy’s choosing without some foreknowledge, some cards of his own to play.… I suggest you do not wear garish clothing.… It would not have been garish in any event, thought Webb, but now it would be something quite opposite—and unexpected.
During the months in which he had peeled away the layers of Jason Bourne one theme kept repeating itself. Change, change, change. Bourne was a practitioner of change; they called him “the chameleon,” a man who could melt into different surroundings with ease. Not as a grotesque, a cartoon with fright wigs and nose putty, but as one who could adapt the essentials of his appearance to his immediate environment so that those who had met the “assassin”—rarely, however, in full light or standing close to him—gave widely varying descriptions of the man hunted throughout Asia and Europe. The details were always in conflict: the hair was dark or light; the eyes brown, blue, or speckled; the skin pale, or tanned, or blotched; the clothes well made and subdued if the rendezvous took place in a dimly lit expensive café, or rumpled and ill-fitting if the meeting was held on the waterfront or in the lower depths of a city. Change. Effortlessly, with the minimum of artifice. David Webb would trust the chameleon within him. Free fall. Go where Jason Bourne directed.
After the harrowing phone call, he went over to the Peninsula Hotel and, with a large, unseen tip, got a room, depositing his attaché case in the hotel vault. He had the presence of mind to register under the name of Cactus’s third false passport. If men were looking for him, they would flash the name he used at the Regent; it was all they had.
He again went back across Salisbury Road, used the service elevator, walked rapidly to his room and packed what few clothes he needed in the flight bag. But he did not check out of the Regent. If men were looking for him, he wanted them to look where he was not.
Once settled in the Peninsula, he had time for something to eat, and to forage in several shops until nightfall. By the time darkness came he would be in the Walled City—before nine-thirty. Jason Bourne was giving the commands and David Webb obeyed them.
The Walled City of Kowloon has no visible wall around it, but it is as clearly defined as if there were one made of hard, high steel. It is instantly sensed in the congested open market that runs along the street in front of the row of dark run-down flats—shacks haphazardly perched on top of one another giving the impression that at any moment the entire blighted complex would collapse under its own weight, leaving nothing but rubble where elevated rubble had stood. But there is deceptive strength found as one walks down the short flight of steps into the interior of the sprawling slum. Below ground level, cobblestoned alleyways that are in most cases tunnels traverse beneath the ramshackle structures. In squalid corridors crippled beggars vie with half-dressed prostitutes and drug peddlers in the eerie wash of naked bulbs that hang from exposed wires along the stone walls. A putrid dampness abounds; all is decay and rot, but the strength of time has hardened this decomposition, petrifying it.
Within the foul alleyways in no particular order or balance are narrow, barely lit staircases leading to the vertical series of broken-down flats, the average rising three stories, two of which are above ground. Inside the small, dilapidated rooms the widest varieties of narcotics and sex are sold; all is beyond the reach of the police—silently agreed to by all parties—for few of the colony’s authorities care to venture into the bowels of the Walled City. It is its own self-contained hell. Let it be.
Outside in the open market that fills the garbage-strewn street where no traffic is permitted, soiled tables piled high with rejected and/or stolen merchandise are sandwiched between grimy stalls where pockets of vapor rise from huge vats of boiling oil in which questionable pieces of meat, fowl, and snake are continuously plunged, then ladled out and placed on newspapers for immediate sale. The crowds move under the weak light of dull streetlamps from one vendor to the next, haggling in high-pitched voices, shrieking back and forth, buying and selling. Then there are the curb people, bedraggled men and women without stalls or tables, whose merchandise is spread out on the pavement. They squat behind displays of trinkets and cheap jewelry, much of it stolen from the docks, and woven cages filled with crawling beetles and fluttering tiny birds.
Near the mouth of the strange, fetid bazaar a lone, muscular female sat on a low wooden stool, her thick legs parted, skinning snakes and removing their entrails, her dark eyes seemingly obsessed with each thrashing serpent in her hands. On either side were writhing burlap bags, every now and then convulsing as the doomed reptiles struck out in hissing fury at one another, enraged by their captivity. Clamped under the heavyset woman’s bare right foot was a king cobra, its jet-black body immobile and erect, its head flat, its small eyes steady, hypnotized by the constantly moving crowds. The squalor of the open market was a fitting barricade for the wall-less Walled City beyond.
Rounding the corner at the opposite end of the long bazaar, a disheveled figure turned into the overflowing avenue. The man was dressed in a cheap, loose-fitting brown suit, the trousers too bulky, the coat too large, yet tight around the hunched shoulders. A soft, wide-brimmed hat, black and unmistakably Oriental, threw a constant shadow across his face. His gait was slow, as befitted a man pausing in front of various stalls and tables examining the merchandise, but only once did he reach tentatively into his pocket to make a single purchase. Then, too, there was a stooped quality in his posture, the frame of a man that had been bent from years of hard labor in the field or on the waterfront, his diet never sufficient for a body from which so much was extracted. There was a sadness as well in this man, a futility born of too little, too late, and too costly for the mind and the body. It was the recognition of impotence, of pride abandoned, for there was nothing to be proud of; the price of survival had been too much. And this man, this stooped figure who haltingly bought a newspaper cone of fried questionable fish, was not unlike many of the males in the marketplace—in fact, one could say he was indistinguishable from them. He approached the muscular woman who was tearing the intestines from a still-writhing snake.
“Where is the great one?” asked Jason Bourne in Chinese, his eyes fixed on the immobile cobra, the grease from the newspaper rolling over his left hand.
“You are early,” replied the woman without expression. “It is dark, but you are early.”
“I was summoned quickly. Do you question the taipan’s instructions?”
“He is fuck-fuck cheap for a taipan!” she spat out in guttural Cantonese. “What do I care? Go down the steps behind me and take the first alleyway to the left. A whore will be standing fifteen, twenty meters down. She waits for the white man and will lead him to the taipan.… Are you the white man? I cannot tell in this light and your Chinese is good—but you do not look like a white man, you do not wear a white man’s clothes.”
“If you were me, would you make a heavenly point of looking like a white man, dressing like a white man, if you were told to come down here?”
“I would make the point of a thousand devils that I was from the Qing Gaoyan!” said the woman, laughing through half-gone teeth. “Especially if you carry money. Do you carry money … our Zhongguo ren?”
“You flatter me, but no.”
“You lie. White people lie with heavenly words about money.”
“Very well, I lie. I trust your snake will not attack me for it.”
“Fool! He is old and has no fangs, no poison. But he is the heavenly image of a man’s organ. He brings me money. Will you give me money?”
“For a service, yes.”
“Aiya! You want this old body, you must have an ax in your trousers! Chop up the whore, not me!”
“No ax, just words,” said Bourne, his right hand slipping into his trousers pocket. He withdrew a U.S. $100 bill and palmed it in front of the snake seller’s face, keeping it out of sight of the surrounding bargain hunters.
“Aiya—aiya!” whispered the woman as Jason pulled it away from her grasping fingers; the dead snake dropped between her thick legs.
“The service,” Bourne repeated. “Since you thought I was one of you, I expect others will think so, too. All I want you to do is to tell anyone who asks you that the white man never showed up. Is that fair?”
“Fair! Give me the money!”
“The service?”
“You bought snakes! Snakes! What do I know of a white man. He never appeared! Here. Here is your snake. Make love!” The woman took the bill, bunched the entrails in her hand and shoved them into a plastic bag on which there was a designer’s signature. It read Christian Dior.
Remaining stooped, Bourne bowed rapidly twice and backed his way out of the crowd, dropping the snake entrails in the curb far enough away from a streetlight so as not to be noticed. Holding the dripping cone of foul-smelling fish, he repeatedly mimed reaching for mouthfuls as he slowly made his way to the steps and descended into the steaming bowels of the Walled City. He looked at his watch, spilling fish as he did so. It was 9:15; the taipan’s patrols would be moving into place.
He had to know the extent of the banker’s security. He wanted the lie that he had told a marksman in a deserted office above the harbor walkway to be the truth. Instead of being watched, he wanted to be the one watching. He would memorize each face, each role in the command structure, the rapidity with which each guard made a decision under pressure, the communications equipment, and, above all, discover where the weaknesses were in the taipan’s security. David understood that Jason Bourne was taking over; there was a point in what he was doing. The banker’s note had started with the words: A wife for a wife … Only one word had to be changed. A taipan for a wife.
Bourne turned into the alleyway on his left and walked several hundred feet past sights he scrupulously ignored; a resident of the Walled City would do no less. On a darkened staircase a woman on her knees performed the act for which she was being paid, the man above her holding money in his hand over her head; a young couple, two obvious addicts in near frenzy, were pleading with a man in an expensive black leather jacket; a small boy, smoking a marijuana cigarette, urinated against the stone wall; a beggar without legs clattered on his wheeled board over the cobblestones chanting “Bong ngo, bong ngo!”—a plea for alms; and on another dimly lit staircase a well-dressed pimp was threatening one of his whores with facial disfigurement if she did not produce more money. David Webb mused that he was not in Disneyland. Jason Bourne studied the alley as if it were a combat zone behind enemy lines. 9:24. The soldiers would be going to their posts. The outer and the inner man turned around and started back.
The banker’s whore was walking into position, her bright red blouse unbuttoned, barely covering her small breasts; the traditional slit in her black skirt reached her thigh. She was a caricature. The “white man” was not to make a mistake. Point one: Accentuate the obvious. Something to remember; subtlety was not a strong suit. Several yards behind her a man spoke into a hand-held radio; he caught up with the woman, shook his head and rushed forward toward the end of the alley and the steps. Bourne stopped, his posture sagging, and turned into the wall. The footsteps were behind him, hurrying, emphatic, the pace quickening. A second Chinese approached and passed him, a small middle-aged man in a dark business suit, tie, and shoes polished to a high gloss. He was no citizen of the Walled City; his expression was a mixture of apprehension and disgust. Ignoring the whore, he glanced at his watch and raced ahead. He had the look and demeanor of an executive ordered to assume duties he found distasteful. A company man, precise, orderly, the bottom line his motive, for the figures did not lie. A banker?
Jason studied the irregular row of staircases; the man had to come from one of them. The sound of the footsteps had been abrupt and recent, and judging by the pace, they had begun no more than sixty or seventy feet away. On the third staircase on the left or the fourth on the right. In one of the flats above either staircase a taipan was waiting for his visitor. Bourne had to find out which and on what level. The taipan had to be surprised, even shocked. He had to understand whom he was dealing with and what his actions would cost him.
Jason started up again, now assuming a drunken walk; the words of an old Mandarin folk tune came to him. “Me li hua cherng zhang liu yue,” he sang softly, bouncing gently off the wall as he approached the whore. “I have money,” he said pleasantly, his words in Chinese imprecise. “And you, beautiful woman, have what I need. Where do we go?”
“Nowhere, fancy drunk. Get away from here.”
“Bong ngo! Cheng bong ngo!” screeched the legless beggar clattering down the alley, careening into the wall as he screamed. “Cheng bong ngo!”
“Jau!” yelled the woman. “Get out of here before I kick your useless body off your board, Loo Mi! I’ve told you not to interfere with business!”
“This cheap drunk is business? I’ll get you something better!”
“He’s not my business, darling. He’s an annoyance. I’m waiting for someone.”
“Then I’ll chop his feet!” shouted the grotesque figure, pulling a cleaver from his board.
“What the hell are you doing?” roared Bourne in English, shoving his foot into the beggar’s chest, sending the half-man and his board into the opposite wall.
“There are laws!” shrieked the beggar. “You attacked a cripple! You are robbing a cripple!”
“Sue me,” said Jason, turning to the woman, as the beggar clattered away down the alley.
“You talk … English.” The whore stared at him.
“So do you,” said Bourne.
“You speak Chinese, but you are not Chinese.”
“In spirit, perhaps. I’ve been looking for you.”
“You are the man?”
“I am.”
“I will take you to the taipan.”
“No. Just tell me which staircase, which level.”
“Those are not my instructions.”
“They’re new instructions, given by the taipan. Do you question his new instructions?”
“They must be delivered by his head-head man.”
“The small Zhongguo ren in a dark suit?”
“He tells us everything. He pays us for the taipan.”
“Whom does he pay?”
“Ask him yourself.”
“The taipan wants to know.” Bourne reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of folded bills. “He told me to give you extra money if you cooperated with me. He thinks his head man may be cheating him.”
The woman backed into the wall looking alternately at the money and at Bourne’s face. “If you are lying—”
“Why would I lie? The taipan wants to see me, you know that. You’re to bring me to him. He told me to dress like this, to behave this way, to find you and watch his men. How would I know about you if he hadn’t told me?”
“Up in the market. You are to see someone.”
“I haven’t been there. I came directly down here.” Jason removed several bills. “We’re both working for the taipan. Here, he wants you to take this and leave, but you’re not to go up in the street.” He held out the money.
“The taipan is generous,” said the whore, reaching for the bills.
“Which staircase?” asked Bourne, pulling the money back. “Which level? The taipan didn’t know.”
“Over there,” replied the woman, pointing to the far wall. “The third steps, the second level. The money.”
“Who’s on the head man’s payroll? Quickly.”
“In the market there is the snake bitch, and the old thief selling bad gold chains from the north, and the wok man with his dirty fish and meat.”
“That’s all?”
“We talk. That is all.”
“The taipan’s right, he’s being cheated. He’ll thank you.” Bourne unfolded another bill. “But I want to be fair. Besides the one with the radio, how many others work for the head man?”
“Three others, also with radios,” said the whore, her eyes fixed on the money, her hand inching forward.
“Here, take it and leave. Head that way and don’t go up on the street.”
The woman grabbed the bills and ran down the alley, her high heels clicking, her figure disappearing in the dim light. Bourne watched until she was out of sight, then turned and walked rapidly out of the filthy passageway to the steps. He again assumed a stooped appearance and climbed up into the street. Three guards and a head-head man. He knew what he had to do, and it had to be done quickly. It was 9:36. A taipan for a wife.
He found the first guard talking to the fishmonger, talking anxiously with sharp, stabbing gestures. The noise of the crowd was an impediment. The vendor kept shaking his head. Bourne chose a heavyset man near the guard; he rushed forward shoving the unsuspecting onlooker into the guard and sidestepped as the taipan’s man recoiled. In the brief melee that erupted, Jason pulled the bewildered guard aside, hammered his knuckles into the base of the man’s throat, twisted him as he began to fall, and slashed his rigid hand across the back of the guard’s neck at the top of the spine. He dragged the unconscious man across the pavement, apologizing to the crowd in Chinese for his drunken friend. He dropped the guard in the remains of a storefront, took the radio and smashed it.
The taipan’s second man required no such tactics. He was off to the side of the crowd by himself, shouting into his radio. Bourne approached, his sorry figure presenting no threat, and he held out his hand, as if he were a beggar. The guard waved him away; it was the last gesture he would remember, for Bourne gripped his wrist, twisted it, and broke the man’s arm. Fourteen seconds later the taipan’s second guard lay in the shadows of a mound of garbage, his radio thrown into the debris.
The third guard was in conference with the “snake bitch.” To Bourne’s satisfaction, she, too, kept shaking her head as the fishmonger had done; there was a certain loyalty in the Walled City where bribes were concerned. The man pulled out his radio, but had no chance to use it. Jason ran up to him, grabbed the ancient, toothless cobra and thrust its flat head into the man’s face. The horrified gasp, followed by a scream, was all the reaction Jason Bourne needed. The nerves in the throat are a magnificent network of immobilizing, cordlike fibers connecting the body organs to the central nervous system. Bourne played upon them swiftly, and once again dragged his victim through the crowd, apologizing profusely, as he left the unconscious guard on a dark patch of concrete. He held the radio up to his ear; there was nothing on the receiver. It was 9:40. One head-head man remained.
The small, middle-aged Chinese in the expensive suit and polished shoes all but held his nose as he raced from one point to another trying to spot his men, reluctant to make the slightest physical contact with the hordes gathered around the vendors’ stalls and tables. His lack of height made it hard for him to see. Bourne watched where he was heading, ran ahead of him, then quickly turned around and sent his fist crashing into the executive’s lower abdomen. As the Chinese buckled over, Jason reached around the man’s waist with his left arm, picked him up and carried the limp figure to a section of the curb where two men sat, weaving, passing a bottle back and forth. He placed a Wushu chop across the banker’s neck and dropped him between the two men. Even through their haze the drunken men would make sure their new companion stayed unconscious for a considerable length of time. There were pockets to ransack, clothes and a pair of shoes to be removed. All would bring a price; whatever cash there was would be a bonus for their labors. 9:43.
Bourne no longer stooped, gone was the chameleon. He rushed across the street overflowing with humanity and raced down the steps and into the alley. He had done it! He had removed the Praetorian Guard. A taipan for a wife! He reached the staircase—the third staircase in the right wall—and yanked out the remarkable weapon he had purchased from an arms merchant in the Mongkok. As quietly as he could manage, testing each step with a foot, he climbed to the second level. He braced himself outside the door, balanced his weight, lifted his left leg and smashed it into the thin wood.
The door crashed open. He sprang through and crouched, the weapon extended.
Three men faced him, forming a semicircle, each with a gun aimed at his head. Behind them, dressed in a white silk suit, a huge Chinese sat in a chair. The man nodded to his guards.
He had lost. Bourne had miscalculated and David Webb would die. Far more excruciating, he knew Marie’s death would soon follow. Let them fire, thought David. Pull the triggers that would mercifully put him out of it! He had killed the only thing that mattered in his life.
“Shoot, goddamn you! Shoot!”