The rain was torrential, pitting the sand, snapping into the floodlights that lit up the grotesque statuary of Repulse Bay—reproductions of enormous Chinese gods, angry myths of the Orient in furious poses, some rising as high as thirty feet. The dark beach was deserted, but there were crowds in the old hotel up by the road and the anachronistic hamburger shop across the way. They were strollers and drop-ins, tourists and islanders alike, who had come down to the bay for a late-night drink or something to eat and to look out at the forbidding statues repelling whatever malign spirits might at any moment emerge from the sea. The sudden downpour had forced the strollers inside; others waited for the storm to let up before heading home.
Drenched, Bourne crouched in the foliage twenty feet from the base of a fierce-looking idol halfway down on the beach. He wiped the rain from his face as he stared at the concrete steps that led to the entrance of the old Colonial Hotel. He was waiting for the third name on the taipan’s list.
The first man had tried to trap him on the Star Ferry, the agreed-upon meeting ground, but Jason, wearing the same clothes he had worn at the Walled City, had spotted the man’s two stalking patrols. It was not as easy as looking for men with radios, but it had not been difficult, either. By the third trip across the harbor, Bourne not having appeared at the appointed window on the starboard side, the same two men had passed by his contact twice, each speaking briefly, and each going to opposite positions, their eyes fixed on their superior. Jason had waited until the ferry approached the pier and the passengers started en masse toward the exit ramp in the bow. He had taken out the Chinese on the right with a blow to the kidneys as he passed him in the crowd, then struck the back of the man’s head with the heavy brass paperweight; the passengers rushed by in the dim light. Bourne then walked through the emptying benches to the other side; he faced the second man, jammed his gun into the patrol’s stomach and marched him to the stern. He arched the man above the railing and shoved him overboard as the ship’s whistle blew in the night and the ferry pulled into the Kowloon pier. He then returned to his contact by the deserted window at midship.
“You kept your word,” Jason said. “I’m afraid I’m late.”
“You are the one who called?” The contact’s eyes had roamed over Bourne’s shabby clothes.
“I’m the one.”
“You don’t look like a man with the money you spoke of on the telephone.”
“You’re entitled to that opinion.” Bourne withdrew a folded stack of American bills, $1,000 denominations visible when rolled open.
“You are the man.” The Chinese had glanced quickly over Jason’s shoulders. “What is it that you want?” the man asked anxiously.
“Information about someone for hire who calls himself Jason Bourne.”
“You have reached the wrong person.”
“I’ll pay generously.”
“I have nothing to sell.”
“I think you do.” Bourne had put away the money and pulled out his weapon, moving closer to the man as the Kowloon passengers streamed on board. “You’ll either tell me what I want to know for a fee, or you’ll be forced to tell me for your life.”
“I know only this,” the Chinese had protested. “My people will not touch him!”
“Why not?”
“He’s not the same man!”
“What did you say?” Jason held his breath, watching the man closely.
“He takes risks he would never have taken before.” The Chinese again looked beyond Bourne; sweat broke out on his hairline. “He comes back after two years. Who knows what happened? Drink, narcotics, disease from whores, who knows?”
“What do you mean, ‘risks’?”
“That is what I mean! He walks into a cabaret in the Tsim Sha Tsui—there was a riot, the police were on their way. Still, he enters and kills five men! He could have been caught, his clients traced! He would not have done such a thing two years ago.”
“You may have your sequence backward,” said Jason Bourne. “He may have gone in—as one man—and started the riot. He kills as that man, and leaves as another, escaping in the confusion.”
The Oriental stared briefly into Jason’s eyes, suddenly more frightened than before as he again looked at the shabby, ill-fitting clothes in front of him. “Yes, I imagine that is possible,” he said tremulously, now whipping his head first to one side, then the other.
“How can this Bourne be reached?”
“I don’t know, I swear on the spirits! Why do you ask me these questions?”
“How?” repeated Jason, leaning into the man, their foreheads touching, the gun shoved into the Oriental’s lower abdomen. “If you won’t touch him, you know where he can be touched, where he can be reached! Now, where?”
“Oh, Christian Jesus.”
“Goddamn it, not Him! Bourne!”
“Macao! It is whispered he works out of Macao, that is all I know, I swear it!” The man looked in panic to his right and left.
“If you’re trying to find your two men, don’t bother, I’ll tell you,” said Jason. “One’s in a clump over there, and I hope the other can swim.”
“Those men are—Who are you?”
“I think you know,” Bourne had answered. “Go to the back of the ferry and stay there. If you take one step forward before we dock, you’ll never take another.”
“Oh, God, you are—”
“I wouldn’t finish that if I were you.”
The second name was accompanied by an unlikely address, a restaurant in Causeway Bay that specialized in classic French food. According to Yao Ming’s brief notes, the man acted as the manager, but was actually the owner, and a number of the waiters were as adept with guns as they were with trays. The contact’s home address was not known; all his business was done at the restaurant, and it was suspected that he had no permanent residence. Bourne had returned to the Peninsula, discarded his jacket and hat, and walked rapidly through the crowded lobby to the elevator; a well-dressed couple had tried not to show their shock at his appearance. He had smiled and muttered apologetically.
“A company treasure hunt. It’s kind of silly, isn’t it.”
In his room, he had permitted himself a few moments to be David Webb again. It was a mistake; he could not stand the suspension of Bourne’s train of thought. I’m him again. I have to be. He knows what to do. I don’t!… He had showered off the filth of the Walled City and the oppressive humidity of the Star Ferry, shaved away the shadow on his face, and dressed for a late French dinner.
I’ll find him, Marie! I swear to Christ I’ll find him! It was David Webb’s promise, but it was Jason Bourne who shouted in fury.
The restaurant looked more like an exquisite rococo dining palace on Paris’s Avenue Montaigne than a one-story structure in Hong Kong. Intricate chandeliers hung from the ceiling with the tiny bulbs dimmed; encased candles flickered on tables with the purest linen and the finest silver and crystal.
“I’m afraid we have no tables this evening, monsieur,” the maître d’ said. He was the only Frenchman in evidence.
“I was told to ask for Jiang Yu and say it was urgent,” Bourne had replied, showing a $100 bill, American. “Do you think he might find something, if this finds him?”
“I will find it, monsieur.” The maître d’ subtly shook Jason’s hand, receiving the money. “Jiang Yu is a fine member of our small community, but it is I who select. Comprenez-vous?”
“Absolument.”
“Bien! You have the face of an attractive, sophisticated man. This way, please, monsieur.”
The dinner was not to be had; events occurred too quickly. Within minutes after the arrival of his drink, a slender Chinese in a black suit had appeared at his table. If there was anything odd about him, thought David Webb, it was in the darker color of his skin and the larger slope of his eyes. Malaysian was in his bloodline. Stop it! commanded Bourne. That doesn’t do us any good!
“You asked for me?” said the manager, his eyes searching the face that looked up at him. “How can I be of service?”
“By first sitting down.”
“It is most irregular to sit with guests, sir.”
“Not really. Not if you own the place. Please. Sit down.”
“Is this another tiresome intrusion by the Bureau of Taxation? If so, I hope you enjoy your dinner, which you will pay for. My records are quite clear and quite accurate.”
“If you think I’m British, you haven’t listened to me. And if by ‘tiresome’ you mean that half a million dollars is boring, then you can get the hell out of my sight and I’ll enjoy my dinner.” Bourne leaned back in the booth and sipped his drink with his left hand. His right was hidden.
“Who sent you?” asked the Oriental of mixed blood, as he sat down.
“Move away from the edge. I want to talk very quietly.”
“Yes, of course.” Jiang Yu inched his way directly opposite Bourne. “I must ask. Who sent you?”
“I must ask,” said Jason, “do you like American movies? Especially our Westerns?”
“Of course. American films are beautiful, and I admire the movies of your old West most of all. So poetic in retribution, so righteously violent. Am I saying the correct words?”
“Yes, you are. Because right now you’re in one.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I have a very special gun under the table. It’s aimed between your legs.” Within the space of a second, Jason held back the cloth, pulled up the weapon so the barrel could be seen, and immediately shoved the gun back into place. “It has a silencer that reduces the sound of a forty-five to the pop of a champagne cork, but not the impact. Liao jie ma?”
“Liao jie …” said the Oriental, rigid, breathing deeply in fear. “You are with Special Branch?”
“I’m with no one but myself.”
“There is no half million dollars, then?”
“There’s whatever you consider your life is worth.”
“Why me?”
“You’re on a list,” Bourne answered truthfully.
“For execution?” whispered the Chinese, gasping, his face contorted.
“That depends on you.”
“I must pay you not to kill me?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“I don’t carry half a million dollars in my pockets! Nor here on the premises!”
“Then pay me something else.”
“What? How much? You confuse me!”
“Information instead of money.”
“What information?” asked the Chinese as his fear turned into panic. “What information would I have? Why come to me?”
“Because you’ve had dealings with a man I want to find. The one for hire who calls himself Jason Bourne.”
“No! Never did it happen!”
The Oriental’s hands began to tremble. The veins in his throat throbbed, and his eyes for the first time strayed from Jason’s face. The man had lied.
“You’re a liar,” said Bourne quietly, pushing his right arm further underneath the table as he leaned forward. “You made the connection in Macao.”
“Macao, yes! But no connection. I swear on the graves of my family for generations!”
“You’re very close to losing your stomach and your life. You were sent to Macao to reach him!”
“I was sent, but I did not reach him!”
“Prove it to me. How were you to make contact?”
“The Frenchman. I was to stand on the top steps of the burned-out Basilica of St. Paul on the Calcada. I was to wear a black kerchief around my neck and when a man came up to me—a Frenchman—and remarked about the beauty of the ruins, I was to say the following words: ‘Cain is for Delta.’ If he replied, ‘And Carlos is for Cain,’ I was to accept him as the link to Jason Bourne. But I swear to you, he never—”
Bourne did not hear the remainder of the man’s protestations. Staccato explosions erupted in his head; his mind was thrown back. Blinding white light filled his eyes, the crashing sounds were unbearable. Cain is for Delta and Carlos is for Cain.… Cain is for Delta! Delta One is Cain! Medusa moves; the snake sheds his skin. Cain is in Paris and Carlos will be his! They were the words, the codes, the challenges hurled at the Jackal. I am Cain and I am superior and I am here! Come find me, Jackal! I dare you to find Cain, for he kills better than you do. You’d better find me before I find you, Carlos. You’re no match for Cain!
Good God! Who halfway across the world would know those words—could know them? They were locked away in the deepest archives of covert operations! They were a direct connection to Medusa!
Bourne had nearly squeezed the trigger of the unseen automatic, so sudden was the shock of this incredible revelation. He removed his index finger, placing it around the trigger housing; he had come close to killing a man for revealing extraordinary information. But how could it have happened? Who was the conduit to the new “Jason Bourne” that knew such things?
He had to come down, he knew that. His silence was betraying him, betraying his astonishment. The Chinese was staring at him; the man was inching his hand beyond the edge of the booth. “Pull that back, or your balls and your stomach will be blown away.”
The Oriental’s shoulder yanked up and his hand appeared on the table. “What I have told you is true,” the man said. “The Frenchman never came to me. If he had, I would tell you everything. So would you if you were me. I protect only myself.”
“Who sent you to make the contact? Who gave you the words to use?”
“That is honestly beyond me, you must believe that. All is done by telephone through second and third parties who know only the information they carry. The proof of integrity is in the arrival of the funds I am paid.”
“How do they arrive? Someone has to give them to you.”
“Someone who is a no one, who is hired himself. An unfamiliar host of an expensive dinner party will ask to see the manager. I will accept his compliments and during our conversation an envelope will be slipped to me. I will have ten thousand American dollars for reaching the Frenchman.”
“Then what? How do you reach him?”
“One goes to Macao, to the Kam Pek casino in the downtown area. It is mostly for the Chinese, for the games of fan-tan and dai sui. One goes to Table Five and leaves the telephone number of a Macao hotel—not a private telephone—and a name, any name, not one’s own, naturally.”
“He calls you at that number?”
“He may or he may not. You stay twenty-four hours in Macao. If he has not called you by then, you have been turned down because the Frenchman has no time for you.”
“Those are the rules?”
“Yes. I was turned down twice, and the single time I was accepted he did not appear at the Calcada steps.”
“Why do you think you were turned down? Why do you think he didn’t show up?”
“I have no idea. Perhaps he has too much business for his master killer. Perhaps I said the wrong things to him on the first two occasions. Perhaps on the third he thought he saw suspicious men on the Calcada, men he believed were with me and meant him no good. There were no such people, naturally, but there is no appeal.”
“Table Five. The dealers,” said Bourne.
“The croupiers change constantly. His arrangement is with the table. A blanket fee, I imagine. To be divided. And certainly he does not go to the Kam Pek himself—he undoubtedly hires a whore from the streets. He is very cautious, very professional.”
“Do you know anyone else who’s tried to reach this Bourne?” asked Bourne. “I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“I think you would. You are obsessed—which is not my business—and you trapped me in my first denial. No, I do not, sir. That is the truth, for I do not care to have my intestines blown away with the sound of a champagne cork.”
“You can’t get much more basic than that. In the words of another man, I think I believe you.”
“Believe, sir. I am only a courier—an expensive one, perhaps—but a courier, nevertheless.”
“Your waiters are something else, I’m told.”
“They have not been noticeably observant.”
“You’ll still accompany me to the door,” he had said.
And now there was the third name, a third man, in the downpour at Repulse Bay.
The contact had responded to the code: “Écoutez, monsieur. ‘Cain is for Delta and Carlos is for Cain.’ ”
“We were to meet in Macao!” the man had shrieked over the telephone. “Where were you?”
“Busy,” said Jason.
“You may be too late. My client has very little time and he is very knowledgeable. He hears that your man moves elsewhere. He is disturbed. You promised him, Frenchman!”
“Where does he think my man is going?”
“On another assignment, of course. He’s heard the details!”
“He’s wrong. The man is available if the price is met.”
“Call me back in several minutes. I will speak to my client and see if matters are to be pursued.”
Bourne had called five minutes later. Consent was given, the rendezvous set. Repulse Bay. One hour. The statue of the war god halfway down the beach on the left toward the pier. The contact would wear a black kerchief around his neck; the code was to remain the same.
Jason looked at his watch; it was twelve minutes past the hour. The contact was late, and the rain was not a problem—on the contrary, it was an advantage, a natural cover. Bourne had scouted every foot of the meeting ground, forty feet in every direction that had a sight line to the statue of the idol, and he had done so after the appointed time, using up minutes as he kept his eyes on the path to the statue. Nothing so far was irregular. There was no trap in the making.
The Zhongguo ren came into view, his shoulders hunched as he dashed down the steps in the downpour, as if the shape of his body would ward off the rain. He ran along the path toward the statue of the war god and stopped as he approached the huge, snarling idol. He skirted the wash of the floodlights, but what could briefly be seen of his face conveyed his anger at finding no one in sight.
“Frenchman, Frenchman!”
Bourne raced back through the foliage toward the steps, checking once more before rendezvous, reducing his vulnerability. He edged his way around the thick stone post that bordered the steps and peered through the rain at the upper path to the hotel. He saw what he hoped to God he would not see! A man in a raincoat and hat came out of the run-down Colonial Hotel and broke into a fast walk. Halfway to the steps he stopped, pulling something out of his pocket; he turned; there was a slight glow of light … returned instantly by a corresponding tiny flash at one of the windows of the crowded lobby. Penlights. Signals. A scout was on his way to a forward post, as his relay or his backup confirmed communications. Jason spun around and retraced the path he had made through the drenched foliage.
“Frenchman, where are you?”
“Over here!”
“Why did you not answer? Where?”
“Straight ahead. The bushes in front of you. Hurry up!”
The contact approached the foliage; he was an arm’s length away. Bourne sprang up and grabbed him, spinning him around and pushing him further into the wet bushes, as he did so clamping his left hand over the man’s mouth. “If you want to live, don’t make a sound!”
Thirty feet into the shoreline woods, Jason slammed the contact into the trunk of a tree. “Who’s with you?” he asked harshly, slowly removing his hand from the man’s mouth.
“Don’t lie!” Bourne pulled out his gun and placed it against the contact’s throat. The Chinese crashed his head back into the tree, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping. “I don’t have time for traps!” continued Jason. “I don’t have time!”
“And there is no one with me! My word in these matters is my livelihood! Without it I have no profession!”
Bourne stared at the man. He put the gun back in his belt, gripped the contact’s arm and propelled him to the right. “Be quiet. Come with me.”
Ninety seconds later Jason and the contact had crawled through the soaking wet underbrush toward an area of the path some twenty-odd feet to the west of the massive idol. The downpour covered whatever noises might have been picked up on a dry night. Suddenly, Bourne grabbed the Oriental’s shoulder, stopping him. Up ahead the scout could be seen, crouching, hugging the border of the path, a gun in his hand. For a moment he crossed through a wash of the statue’s floodlight before he disappeared; it was only for an instant, but it was enough. Bourne looked at the contact.
The Chinese was stunned. He could not take his eyes off the spot in the light where the scout had crossed through. His thoughts were coming to him rapidly, the terror in him building; it was in his stare. “Shi,” he whispered. “Jiagian!”
“In short English words,” said Jason, speaking through the rain. “That man’s an executioner?”
“Shi!… Yes.”
“Tell me, what have you brought me?”
“Everything,” answered the contact, still in shock. “The first money, the instructions … everything.”
“A client doesn’t send money if he’s going to kill the man he’s hiring.”
“I know,” said the contact softly, nodding his head and closing his eyes. “It is me they want to kill.”
His words to Liang on the harbor walk had been prophetic, thought Bourne. “It’s not a trap for me.… It’s for you.… You did your job and they can’t allow any traces.… They can’t afford you any longer.”
“There’s another up at the hotel. I saw them signalling each other with flashlights. It’s why I couldn’t answer you for several minutes.”
The Oriental turned and looked at Jason; there was no self-pity in his eyes. “The risks of my profession,” he said simply. “As my foolish people say, I will join my ancestors, and I hope they are not so foolish. Here.” The contact reached into his inside pocket and withdrew an envelope. “Here is everything.”
“Have you checked it out?”
“Only the money. It’s all there. I would not meet with the Frenchman with less than his demands, and the rest I do not care to know.” Suddenly the man looked hard at Bourne, blinking his eyes in the downpour. “But you are not the Frenchman!”
“Easy,” said Jason. “Things have come pretty fast for you tonight.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone who just showed you where you stood. How much money did you bring?”
“Thirty thousand American dollars.”
“If that’s the first payment, the target must be someone impressive.”
“I assume he is.”
“Keep it.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“I’m not the Frenchman, remember?”
“I do not understand.”
“I don’t even want the instructions. I’m sure someone of your professional caliber can turn them to your advantage. A man pays well for information that can help him; he pays a hell of a lot more for his life.”
“Why would you do this?”
“Because none of it concerns me. I have only one concern. I want the man who calls himself Bourne and I can’t waste time. You’ve got what I just offered you plus a dividend—I’ll get you out of here alive if I have to leave two corpses here in the Bay, I don’t care. But you’ve got to give me what I asked for on the phone. You said your client told you the Frenchman’s assassin was going someplace else. Where? Where is Bourne?”
“You talk so rapidly—”
“I told you, I haven’t time! Tell me! If you refuse, I leave and your client kills you. Take your choice.”
“Shenzen,” said the contact, as if frightened at the name.
“China? There’s a target in Shenzen?”
“One can assume that. My wealthy client has sources in Queen’s Road.”
“What’s that?”
“The consulate of the People’s Republic. A very unusual visa was granted. Apparently it was cleared on the highest authority in Beijing. The source did not know why, and when he questioned the decision he was promptly removed from the section. He reported this to my client. For money, of course.”
“Why was the visa unusual?”
“Because there was no waiting period and the applicant did not appear at the consulate. Both are unheard of.”
“Still, it was just a visa.”
“In the People’s Republic there is no such thing as ‘just a visa.’ Especially not for a white male traveling alone under a questionable passport issued in Macao.”
“Macao?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the entry date?”
“Tomorrow. The Lo Wu border.”
Jason studied the contact. “You said your client has sources in the consulate. Do you?”
“What you are thinking will cost a great deal of money, for the risk is very great.”
Bourne raised his head and looked through the sheets of rain at the floodlit idol beyond. There was movement; the scout was searching for his target. “Wait here,” he said.
The early morning train from Kowloon to the Lo Wu border took barely over an hour. The realization that he was in China took less than ten seconds.
Long Live the People’s Republic!
There was no need for the exclamation point, the border guards lived it. They were rigid, staring, and abusive, pummeling passports with their rubber stamps with the fury of hostile adolescents. There was, however, an ameliorating support system. Beyond the guards a phalanx of young women in uniform stood smiling behind several long tables stacked with pamphlets extolling the beauty and virtues of their land and its system. If there was hypocrisy in their postures, it did not show.
Bourne had paid the betrayed, marked contact the sum of $7,000 for the visa. It was good for five days. The purpose of the visit was listed as “business investments in the Economic Zone,” and was renewable at Shenzen immigration with proof of investment along with the corroborating presence of a Chinese banker through whom the money was to be brokered. In gratitude, and for no additional charge, the contact had given him the name of a Shenzen banker who could easily steer “Mr. Cruett” to investment possibilities, the said Mr. Cruett being still registered at the Regent Hotel in Hong Kong. Finally, there was a bonus from the man whose life he had saved in Repulse Bay: the description of the man traveling under a Macao passport across the Lo Wu border. He was “6’ 1" tall, 185 lbs., white skin, light brown hair.” Jason had stared at the information, unconsciously recalling the data on his own government ID card. It had read: “HT: 6’ 1" WT: 187 lbs. White Male. Hair: Lt. Brn.” An odd sense of fear spread through him. Not the fear of confrontation; he wanted that, above all, for he wanted Marie back above everything. Instead, it was the horror that he was responsible for the creation of a monster. A stalker of death that came from a lethal virus he had perfected in the laboratory of his mind and body.
It had been the first train out of Kowloon, occupied in the main by skilled labor and the executive personnel permitted—enticed—into the Free Economic Zone of Shenzen by the People’s Republic in hopes of attracting foreign investments. At each stop on the way to the border, as more and more passengers boarded, Bourne had walked through the cars, his eyes resting for an intense instant on each of the white males, of whom there was a total of only fourteen by the time they reached Lo Wu. None had even vaguely fit the description of the man from Macao—the description of himself. The new “Jason Bourne” would be taking a later train. The original would wait on the other side of the border. He waited now.
During the four hours that passed he explained sixteen times to inquiring border personnel that he was waiting for a business associate; he had obviously misunderstood the schedule and had taken a far too early train. As with people in any foreign country, but especially in the Orient, the fact that a courteous American had gone to the trouble of making himself understood in their language was decidedly beneficial. He was offered four cups of coffee, seven hot teas, and two of the uniformed girls had giggled as they presented him with an overly sweet Chinese ice cream cone. He accepted all—to do otherwise would have been rude, and since most of the Gang of Four had lost not only their faces but their heads, rudeness was out, except for the border guards.
It was 11:10. The passengers emerged through the long, fenced open-air corridor after dealing with immigration—mostly tourists, mostly white, mostly bewildered and awed to be there. The majority were in small tour groups, accompanied by guides—one each from Hong Kong and the People’s Republic—who spoke acceptable English, or German, or French and, reluctantly, Japanese for those particularly disliked visitors with more money than Marx or Confucius ever had. Jason studied each white male. The many that were over six feet in height were too young or too old or too portly or too slender or too obvious in their lime-green and lemon-yellow trousers to be the man from Macao.
Wait! Over there! An older man in a tan gabardine suit who appeared to be a medium-sized tourist with a limp was suddenly taller—and the limp was gone! He walked rapidly down the steps through the middle of the crowd and ran into the huge parking lot filled with buses and tour vans and a few taxis, each with a ZHAN—off-duty—posted in the front windows. Bourne raced after the man, dodging between the bodies in front of him, not caring whom he pushed aside. It was the man—the man from Macao!
“Hey, are you crazy? Ralph, he shoved me!”
“Shove back. What do you want from me?”
“Do something!”
“He’s gone.”
The man in the gabardine suit jumped into the open door of a van, a dark green van with tinted windows that according to the Chinese characters belonged to a department called the Chutang Bird Sanctuary. The door slid shut and the vehicle instantly broke away from its parking space and careened around the other vehicles into the exit lane. Bourne was frantic; he could not let him go! An old taxi was on his right, the motor idling. He pulled the door open, to be greeted by a shout.
“Zhan!” screamed the driver.
“Shi ma?” roared Jason, pulling enough American money from his pocket to insure five years of luxury in the People’s Republic.
“Aiya!”
“Zou!” ordered Bourne, leaping into the front seat and pointing to the van, which had swerved into the semicircle. “Stay with him and you can start your own business in the zone,” he said in Cantonese. “I promise you!”
Marie, I’m so close! I know it’s him! I’ll take him! He’s mine now! He’s our deliverance!
The van sped out of the exit road, heading south at the first intersection, avoiding the large square jammed with tour buses and crowds of sightseers cautiously avoiding the endless stream of bicycles in the streets. The taxi driver picked up the van on a primitive highway paved more with hard clay than asphalt. The dark-windowed vehicle could be seen up ahead entering a long curve in front of an open truck carrying heavy farm machinery. A tour bus waited at the end of the curve, swinging into the road behind the truck.
Bourne looked beyond the van; there were hills up ahead and the road began to rise. Then another tour bus appeared, this one behind them.
“Shumchun,” said the driver.
“Bin do?” asked Jason.
“The Shumchun water supply,” answered the driver in Chinese. “A very beautiful reservoir, one of the finest lakes in all China. It sends its water south to Kowloon and Hong Kong. Very crowded with visitors this time of year. The autumn views are excellent.”
Suddenly the van accelerated, climbing the mountain road, pulling away from the truck and the tour bus. “Can’t you go faster? Get around the bus, that truck!”
“Many curves ahead.”
“Try it!”
The driver pressed his foot to the floor and swerved around the bus, missing its bulging front by inches as he was forced back in line by an approaching army half-track with two soldiers in the cabin. Both the soldiers and the tour guides yelled at them through open windows. “Sleep with your ugly mothers!” screamed the driver, full of his moment of triumph, only to be faced with the wide truck filled with farm machinery blocking the way.
They were going into a sharp right curve. Bourne gripped the window and leaned out as far as he could for a clearer view. “There’s no one coming!” he yelled at the driver through the onrushing wind. “Go ahead! You can get around. Now!”
The driver did so, pushing the old taxi to its limits, the tires spinning on a stretch of hard clay, which made the cab sideslip dangerously in front of the truck. Another curve, now sharply to the left, and rising steeper. Ahead the road was straight, ascending a high hill. The van was nowhere to be seen; it had disappeared over the crest of the hill.
“Kuai!” shouted Bourne. “Can’t you make this damn thing go faster?”
“It has never been this fast! I think the fuck-fuck spirits will explode the motor! Then what will I do? It took me five years to buy this unholy machine, and many unholy bribes to drive in the Zone!”
Jason threw a handful of bills on the floor of the cab by the driver’s feet. “There’s ten times more if we catch that van! Now, go.”
The taxi soared over the top of the hill, descending swiftly into an enormous glen at the edge of a vast lake that seemed to extend for miles. In the distance Bourne could see snow-capped mountains and green islands dotting the blue-green water as far as the eye could see. The taxi came to a halt beside a large red and gold pagoda reached by a long, polished concrete staircase. Its open balconies overlooked the lake. Refreshment stands and curio shops were scattered about on the borders of the parking lot, where four tour buses were standing with the dual guides shouting instructions and pleading with their charges not to get in the wrong vehicles at the end of their walks.
The dark-windowed van was nowhere to be seen. Bourne shifted his head swiftly, looking in all directions. Where was it? “What’s that road over there?” he asked the driver.
“Pump stations. No one is permitted down that road, it is patrolled by the army. Around the bend is a high fence and a guardhouse.”
“Wait here.” Jason climbed out of the cab and started walking toward the prohibited road, wishing he had a camera or a guidebook—something to mark him as a tourist. As it was, the best he could do was to assume the hesitant walk and wide-eyed expression of a sightseer. No object was too insignificant for his inspection. He approached the bend in the badly paved road; he saw the high fence and part of the guardhouse—then all of it. A long metal bar fell across the road, two soldiers were talking, their backs to him, looking the other way—looking at two vehicles parked side by side farther down by a square concrete structure painted brown. One of the vehicles was the dark-windowed van, the other the brown sedan. The van began to move. It was heading back to the gate!
Bourne’s thoughts came rapidly. He had no weapon; it was pointless even to consider carrying one across the border. If he tried to stop the van and drag the killer out, the commotion would bring the guards, their rifle fire swift and accurate. Therefore he had to draw the man from Macao out—of his own volition. The rest Jason was primed for; he would take the impostor one way or another. Take him back to the border and crossing over—one way or another. No man was a match for him; no eyes, no throat, no groin safe from an assault, swift and agonizing. David Webb had never come to grips with that reality. Bourne lived it.
There was a way!
Jason ran back to the beginning of the deserted bend in the road, beyond the view of the gate and the soldiers. He reassumed the pose of the mesmerized sightseer and listened. The van’s engine fell to idle; the creaking meant the gate was being lifted. Only moments now. Bourne held his position in the brush by the side of the road. The van rounded the turn as he timed his moves.
He was suddenly there, in front of the large vehicle, his expression terrified, as he spun to the side below the driver’s window and slammed the flat of his hand into the door, uttering a cry of pain as if he had been struck, perhaps killed, by the van. He lay supine on the ground as the vehicle came to a stop; the driver leaped out, an innocent about to protest his innocence. He had no chance to do so. Jason’s arm was extended; he yanked the man by the ankle, pulling him off his feet, and sending his head crashing back into the side of the van. The driver fell unconscious, and Bourne dragged him back to the rear of the van beneath the clouded windows. He saw a bulge in the man’s jacket; it was a gun, predictably, considering his cargo. Jason removed it and waited for the man from Macao.
He did not appear. It was not logical.
Bourne scrambled to the front of the van, gripped the rubberized ledge to the driver’s seat, and lunged up, his weapon at the ready, sweeping the rear seats from side to side.
No one. It was empty.
He climbed back out and went to the driver, spat in his face and slapped him into consciousness.
“Nali?” he whispered harshly. “Where is the man who was in here?”
“Back there!” replied the driver, in Cantonese, shaking his head. “In the official car with a man nobody knows. Spare my terrible life! I have seven children!”
“Get up in the seat,” said Bourne, pulling the man to his feet and pushing him to the open door. “Drive out of here as fast as you can.”
No other advice was necessary. The van shot out of the Shumchun reservoir area, careening around the curve into the main exit at such speed that Jason thought it would go over the bank. A man nobody knows. What did that mean? No matter, the man from Macao was trapped. He was in a brown sedan inside the gate on the forbidden road. Bourne raced back to the taxi and climbed into the front seat; the scattered money had been removed from the floor.
“You are satisfied?” said the cabdriver. “I will have ten times what you dropped on my unworthy feet?”
“Cut it, Charlie Chan! A car’s going to come out of that road to the pump station and you’re going to do exactly what I tell you. Do you understand me?”
“Do you understand ten times the amount you left in my ancient, undistinguished taxi?”
“I understand. It could be fifteen times if you do your job. Come on, move. Get over to the edge of the parking lot. I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait.”
“Time is money, sir.”
“Oh, shut up!”
The wait was roughly twenty minutes. The brown sedan appeared, and Bourne saw what he had not seen before. The windows were tinted darker than those of the van; whoever was inside was invisible. Then Jason heard the very last words he wanted to hear.
“Take your money back,” said the driver quietly. “I will return you to Lo Wu. I have never seen you.”
“Why?”
“That is a government car—one of our government’s official vehicles—and I will not be the one who follows it.”
“Wait a minute! Just—wait a minute. Twenty times what I gave you, with a bonus if it all comes out all right! Until I say otherwise you can stay way behind him. I’m just a tourist who wants to look around. No, wait! Here, I’ll show you! My visa says I’m investing money. Investors are permitted to look around!”
“Twenty times?” said the driver, staring at Jason. “What guarantee do I have that you will fulfill your promise?”
“I’ll put it on the seat between us. You’re driving; you could do a lot of things with this car I wouldn’t be prepared for. I won’t try to take it back.”
“Good! But I stay far behind. I know these roads. There are only certain places one can travel.”
Thirty-five minutes later, with the brown sedan still in sight but far ahead, the driver spoke again. “They go to the airfield.”
“What airfield?”
“It is used by government officials and men with money from the south.”
“People investing in factories, industry?”
“This is the Economic Zone.”
“I’m an investor,” said Bourne. “My visa says so. Hurry up! Close in!”
“There are five vehicles between us, and we agreed—I stay far behind.”
“Until I said otherwise! It’s different now. I have money. I’m investing in China!”
“We will be stopped at the gate. Telephone calls will be made.”
“I’ve got the name of a banker in Shenzen!”
“Does he have your name, sir? And a list of the Chinese firms you are dealing with? If so, you may do the talking at the gate. But if this banker in Shenzen does not know you, you will be detained for giving false information. Your stay in China would be for as long as it took to thoroughly investigate you. Weeks, months.”
“I have to reach that car!”
“You approach that car, you will be shot.”
“Goddamn it!” shouted Jason in English, then instantly reverting to Chinese: “Listen to me. I don’t have time to explain, but I’ve got to see him!”
“This is not my business,” said the driver coldly, warily.
“Get in line and drive up to the gate,” ordered Bourne. “I’m a fare you picked up in Lo Wu, that’s all. I’ll do the talking.”
“You ask too much! I will not be seen with someone like you.”
“Just do it,” said Jason, pulling the gun from his belt.
The pounding in his chest was unbearable as Bourne stood by a large window looking out on the airfield. The terminal was small and for privileged travelers. The incongruous sight of casual Western businessmen carrying attaché cases and tennis rackets unnerved Jason because of the stark contrast to the uniformed guards, standing about rigidly. Oil and water were apparently compatible.
Speaking English to the interpreter, who translated accurately for the officer of the guard, he had claimed to be a bewildered executive instructed by the consulate on Queen’s Road in Hong Kong to come to the airport to meet an official flying in from Beijing. He had misplaced the official’s name, but they had met briefly at the State Department in Washington and would recognize each other. He implied that the present meeting was looked upon with great favor by important men on the Central Committee. He was given a pass restricting him to the terminal, and lastly, he asked if the taxi could be permitted to remain in case transportation was needed later. The request was granted.
“If you want your money, you’ll stay,” he had said to the driver in Cantonese as he picked up the folded bills between them.
“You have a gun and angry eyes. You will kill.”
Jason had stared at the driver. “The last thing on earth I want to do is kill the man in that car. I would only kill to protect his life.”
The brown sedan with the dark, opaque windows was nowhere in the parking area. Bourne walked as rapidly as he thought acceptable into the terminal, to the window where he stood now, his temples exploding with anger and frustration, for outside on the field he saw the government car. It was parked on the tarmac not fifty feet away from him, but an impenetrable wall of glass separated him from it—and deliverance. Suddenly the sedan shot forward toward a medium-sized jet several hundred yards north on the runway. Bourne strained his eyes, wishing to Christ he had binoculars! Then he realized they would have been useless; the car swung around the tail of the plane and out of sight.
Goddamn it!
Within seconds the jet began rolling to the foot of the runway as the brown sedan swerved and raced back toward the parking area and the exit.
What could he do? I can’t be left this way! He’s there! He’s me and he’s there! He’s getting away! Bourne ran to the first counter and assumed the attitude of a terribly distraught man.
“The plane that’s about to take off! I’m supposed to be on it! It’s going to Shanghai and the people in Beijing said I was to be on it! Stop it!”
The clerk behind the counter picked up her telephone. She dialed quickly, then exhaled through her tight lips in relief. “That is not your plane, sir,” she said. “It flies to Guangdong.”
“Where?”
“The Macao border, sir.”
“Never! It must not be Macao!” the taipan had screamed.
… “The order will be swift, the execution swifter! Your wife will die!”
Macao. Table Five. The Kam Pek casino.
“If he heads for Macao,” McAllister had said quietly, “he could be a terrible liability.…”
“Termination?”
“I can’t use that word.”