“You will not, you cannot tell me this!” shouted Edward Newington McAllister, leaping out of his chair. “It’s unacceptable! I can’t handle it. I won’t hear of it!”
“You’d better, Edward,” said Major Lin Wenzu. “It happened.”
“It’s my fault,” added the English doctor, standing in front of the desk in the Victoria Peak, facing the American. “Every symptom she exhibited led to a prognosis of rapid, neurological deterioration. Loss of concentration and visual focus; no appetite and a commensurate drop in weight—most significantly, spasms when there was a complete lack of motor controls. I honestly thought the degenerative process had reached a negative crisis—”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“That she was dying. Oh, not in a matter of hours or even days or weeks, but that the course was irreversible.”
“Could you have been right?”
“I would like nothing better than to conclude that I was, that my diagnosis was at least reasonable, but I can’t. Simply put, I was dragooned.”
“You were hit?”
“Figuratively, yes. Where it hurts the most, Mr. Undersecretary. My professional pride. That bitch fooled me with a carnival act, and she probably doesn’t know the difference between a femur and a fever. Everything she did was calculated, from her appeals to the nurse to clubbing and disrobing the guard. All her moves were planned and the only disorder was mine.”
“Christ, I’ve got to reach Havilland!”
“Ambassador Havilland?” asked Lin, his eyebrows arched.
McAllister looked at him. “Forget you heard that.”
“I will not repeat it, but I can’t forget. Things are clearer, London’s clearer. You’re talking General Staff and Overlord and a large part of Olympus.”
“Don’t mention that name to anyone, Doctor,” said McAllister.
“I’ve quite forgotten it. I’m not sure I even know who he is.”
“What can I say? What are you doing?”
“Everything humanly possible,” answered the major. “We’ve divided Hong Kong and Kowloon up into sections. We’re questioning every hotel, thoroughly examining their registrations. We’ve alerted the police and the marine patrols; all personnel have copies of her description and have been instructed that finding her is the territory’s priority concern—”
“My God, what did you say? How did you explain?”
“I was able to help here,” said the doctor. “In light of my stupidity it was the least I could do. I issued a medical alert. By doing so, we were able to enlist the help of paramedic teams who’ve been sent out from all the hospitals, staying in radio contact for other emergencies, of course. They’re scouring the streets.”
“What kind of medical alert?” asked McAllister sharply.
“Minimum information, but the sort that creates a stir. The woman was known to have visited an unnamed island in the Luzon Strait that is off limits to international travelers for reasons of a rampant disease transmitted by unclean eating utensils.”
“Categorizing it as such,” interrupted Lin, “our good doctor removed any hesitation on the part of the teams to approach her and take her into custody. Not that they would, but every basket has its less than perfect fruit and we cannot afford any. I honestly believe we’ll find her, Edward. We all know she stands out in a crowd. Tall, attractive, that hair of hers—and over a thousand people looking for her.”
“I hope to God you’re right. But I worry. She received her first training from a chameleon,” said McAllister.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s nothing, Doctor,” said the major. “A technical term in our business.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve got to have the entire file, all of it!”
“What, Edward?”
“They were hunted together in Europe. Now they’re apart, but still hunted. What did they do then? What will they do now?”
“A thread? A pattern?”
“It’s always there,” said McAllister, rubbing his right temple. “Excuse me, gentlemen, I must ask you to leave. I have a dreadful call to make.”
Marie bartered clothes and paid a few dollars for others. The result was acceptable: with her hair pulled back under a floppy wide-brimmed sun hat, she was a plain-looking woman in a pleated skirt and a nondescript gray blouse that concealed any outline of a figure. The flat sandals lowered her height and the ersatz Gucci purse marked her as a gullible tourist in Hong Kong, exactly what she was not. She called the Canadian consulate and was told how to get there by bus. The offices were in the Asian House, fourteenth floor, Hong Kong. She took the bus from the Chinese University through Kowloon and the tunnel over to the island; she watched the streets carefully and got off at her stop. She rode up in the elevator, satisfied that none of the men riding with her gave her a second glance; that was not the usual reaction. She had learned in Paris—taught by a chameleon—how to use the simple things to change herself. The lessons were coming back to her.
“I realize this will sound ridiculous,” she said in a casual, humorously bewildered voice to the receptionist, “but a second cousin of mine on my mother’s side is posted here and I promised to look him up.”
“That doesn’t sound ridiculous to me.”
“It will when I tell you I’ve forgotten his name.” Both women laughed. “Of course, we’ve never met and he’d probably like to keep it that way, but then I’d have to answer to the family back home.”
“Do you know what section he’s in?”
“Something to do with economics, I believe.”
“That would be the Division of Trade most likely.” The receptionist opened a drawer and pulled out a narrow white booklet with the Canadian flag embossed on the cover. “Here’s our directory. Why don’t you sit down and look through it?”
“Thanks very much,” said Marie, going to a leather armchair and sitting down. “I have this terrible feeling of inadequacy,” she added, opening the directory. “I mean I should know his name. I’m sure you know the name of your second cousin on your mother’s side of the family.”
“Honey, I haven’t the vaguest.” The receptionist’s phone rang; she answered it.
Turning the pages, Marie read quickly, scanning down the columns looking for a name that would evoke a face. She found three, but the images were fuzzy, the features not clear. Then on the twelfth page, a face and a voice leaped up at her as she read the name. Catherine Staples.
“Cool” Catherine, “Ice-cold” Catherine, “Stick” Staples. The nicknames were unfair and did not give an accurate picture or appraisal of the woman. Marie had gotten to know Catherine Staples during her days with the Treasury Board in Ottawa when she and others in her section briefed the diplomatic corps prior to their overseas assignments. Staples had come through twice, once for a refresher course on the European Common Market … the second, of course, for Hong Kong! It was thirteen or fourteen months ago, and although their friendship could not be called deep—four or five lunches, a dinner that Catherine had prepared, and one reciprocated by Marie—she had learned quite a bit about the woman who did her job better than most men.
To begin with, her rapid advancement at the Department of External Affairs had cost her an early marriage. She had forsworn the marital state for the rest of her life, she declared, as the demands of travel and the insane hours of her job were unacceptable to any man worth having. In her mid-fifties, Staples was a slender, energetic woman of medium height, who dressed fashionably but simply. She was a no-nonsense professional with a sardonic wit that conveyed her dislike of cant, which she saw through swiftly, and self-serving excuses, which she would not tolerate. She could be kind, even gentle, with men and women unqualified for the work they were assigned through no fault of their own, but brutal with those who had issued such assignments, regardless of rank. If there was a phrase that summed up Senior Foreign Service Officer Catherine Staples, it was “tough but fair”; also, she was frequently very amusing in a self-deprecating way. Marie hoped she would be fair in Hong Kong.
“There’s nothing here that rings a bell,” said Marie, getting out of the chair and bringing the directory back to the receptionist. “I feel so stupid.”
“Do you have any idea what he looks like?”
“I never thought to ask.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorrier. I’ll have to place a very embarrassing call to Vancouver.… Oh, I did see one name. It has nothing to do with my cousin, but I think she’s a friend of a friend. A woman named Staples.”
“ ‘Catherine the Great’? She’s here, all right, although a few of the staff wouldn’t mind seeing her promoted to ambassador and sent to Eastern Europe. She makes them nervous. She’s topflight.”
“Oh, you mean she’s here now?”
“Not thirty feet away. You want to give me your friend’s name and see if she has time to say hello?”
Marie was tempted, but the onus of officialdom prohibited the shortcut. If things were as Marie thought they were and alarms had been sent out to friendly consulates, Staples might feel compelled to cooperate. She probably would not, but she had the integrity of her office to uphold. Embassies and consulates constantly sought favors from one another. She needed time with Catherine, and not in an official setting. “That’s very nice of you,” Marie said to the receptionist. “My friend would get a kick out of it.… Wait a minute. Did you say ‘Catherine’?”
“Yes. Catherine Staples. Believe me, there’s only one.”
“I’m sure there is, but my friend’s friend is Christine. Oh, Lord, this isn’t my day. You’ve been very kind, so I’ll get out of your hair and leave you in peace.”
“You’ve been a pleasure, hon. You should see the ones who come in here thinking they bought a Cartier watch for a hell of a good price until it stops and a jeweler tells them the insides are two rubber bands and a miniature yoyo.” The receptionist’s eyes dropped to the Gucci purse with the inverted G’s. “Oh, oh,” she said softly.
“What?”
“Nothing. Good luck with your phone call.”
Marie waited in the lobby of the Asian House for as long as she felt comfortable, then went outside and walked back and forth in front of the entrance for nearly an hour in the crowded street. It was shortly past noon, and she wondered if Catherine even bothered to have lunch—lunch would be a very good idea. Also, there was another possibility, an impossibility perhaps, but one she could pray for, if she still knew how to pray. David might appear, but it would not be as David, it would be as Jason Bourne, and that could be anyone. Her husband in the guises of Bourne would be far more clever; she had seen his inventiveness in Paris and it was from another world, a lethal world where a misstep could cost a person his life. Every move was premeditated in three or four dimensions. What if I …? What if he …? The intellect played a far greater role in the violent world than the nonviolent intellectuals would ever admit—their brains would be blown away in a world they scorned as barbarian because they could not think fast enough or deeply enough. Cogito ergo nothing. Why was she thinking these things? She belonged to the latter and so did David! And then the answer was very clear. They had been thrown back; they had to survive and find each other.
There she was! Catherine Staples walked—marched—out of the Asian House and turned right. She was roughly forty feet away; Marie started running, pummeling off bodies in her path as she tried to catch up. Try never to run, it marks you. I don’t care! I must talk to her!
Staples cut across the pavement. There was a consulate car, with the maple-leaf insignia printed on the door, waiting for her at the curb. She was climbing inside.
“No! Wait!” shouted Marie, crashing through the crowd, grabbing the door as Catherine was about to close it.
“I beg your pardon?” cried Staples, as the chauffeur spun around in his seat, a gun appearing out of nowhere.
“Please! It’s me! Ottawa. The briefings.”
“Marie? Is that you?”
“Yes. I’m in trouble and I need your help.”
“Get in,” said Catherine Staples, moving over on the seat. “Put that silly thing away,” she ordered the driver.
“This is a friend of mine.”
Canceling her scheduled lunch on the pretext of a summons from the British delegation—a common occurrence during the round-robin conferences with the People’s Republic over the 1997 treaty—Foreign Service Officer Staples instructed the driver to drop them off at the beginning of Food Street in Causeway Bay. Food Street encompassed the crushing spectacle of some thirty restaurants within the stretch of two blocks. Traffic was prohibited on the street and even if it was not, there was no way motorized transport could make its way through the mass of humanity in search of some four thousand tables. Catherine led Marie to the service entrance of a restaurant. She rang the bell, and fifteen seconds later the door opened, followed by the wafting odors of a hundred Oriental dishes.
“Miss Staples, how good to see you,” said the Chinese dressed in the white apron of a chef—one of many chefs. “Please-please. As always, there is a table for you.”
As they walked through the chaos of the large kitchen, Catherine turned to Marie. “Thank God there are a few perks left in this miserably underpaid profession. The owner has relatives in Quebec—damn fine restaurant on St. John Street—and I make sure his visa gets processed, as they say, ‘damn-damn quick.’ ”
Catherine nodded at one of the few empty tables in the rear section; it was near the kitchen door. They were seated, literally concealed by the stream of waiters rushing in and out of the swinging doors, as well as by the continuous bustle taking place at the scores of tables throughout the crowded restaurant.
“Thank you for thinking of a place like this,” said Marie.
“My dear,” replied Staples in her throaty, adamant voice. “Anyone with your looks who dresses the way you’re dressed now, and makes up the way you’re made up, doesn’t care to draw attention to herself.”
“As they say, that’s putting it mildly. Will your lunch date accept the British delegation story?”
“Without a thought to the contrary. The mother country is marshaling its most persuasive forces. Beijing buys enormous quantities of much needed wheat from us—but then you know that as well as I do, and probably a lot more in terms of dollars and cents.”
“I’m not very current these days.”
“Yes, I understand.” Staples nodded, looking sternly yet kindly at Marie, her eyes questioning. “I was over here by then, but we heard the rumors and read the European papers. To say we were in shock can’t describe the way those of us who knew you felt. In the weeks that followed we all tried to get answers, but we were told to let it alone, drop it—for your sake. ‘Don’t pursue it,’ they kept saying. ‘It’s in her best interests to stay away.’ … Of course, we finally heard that you were exonerated of all charges—Christ, what an insulting phrase after what you were put through! Then you just faded, and no one heard anything more about you.”
“They told you the truth, Catherine. It was in my interest—our interests—to stay away. For months we were kept hidden, and when we took up our civilized lives again it was in a fairly remote area and under a name few people knew. The guards, however, were still in place.”
“We?”
“I married the man you read about in the papers. Of course, he wasn’t the man described in the papers; he was in deep cover for the American government. He gave up a great deal of his life for that awfully strange commitment.”
“And now you’re in Hong Kong and you tell me you’re in trouble.”
“I’m in Hong Kong and I’m in serious trouble.”
“May I assume that the events of the past year are related to your current difficulties?”
“I believe they are.”
“What can you tell me?”
“Everything I know because I want your help. I have no right to ask it unless you know everything I know.”
“I like succinct language. Not only for its clarity but because it usually defines the person delivering it. You’re also saying that unless I know everything I probably can’t do anything.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re probably right.”
“Good. I was testing you. In the nouvelle diplomatie, overt simplicity has become both a cover and a tool. It’s frequently used to obscure duplicity, as well as to disarm an adversary. I refer you to the recent proclamations of your new country—new as a wife, of course.”
“I’m an economist, Catherine, not a diplomat.”
“Combine the talents that I know you have, and you could scale the heights in Washington as you would have in Ottawa. But then you wouldn’t have the obscurity you so desire in your regained civilized life.”
“We must have that. It’s all that matters. I don’t.”
“Testing again. You were not without ambition. You love that husband of yours.”
“Very much. I want to find him. I want him back.”
Staples’s head snapped as her eyes blinked. “He’s here?”
“Somewhere. It’s part of the story.”
“Is it complicated?”
“Very.”
“Can you hold back—and I mean that, Marie—until we go someplace where it’s quieter?”
“I was taught patience by a man whose life depended on it twenty-four hours a day for three years.”
“Good God. Are you hungry?”
“Famished. That’s also part of the story. As long as you’re here and listening to me, may we order?”
“Avoid the dim sum, it’s oversteamed and overfried. The duck, however, is the best in Hong Kong.… Can you wait, Marie? Would you rather leave?”
“I can wait, Catherine. My whole life’s on hold. A half hour won’t make any difference. And if I don’t eat I won’t be coherent.”
“I know. It’s part of the story.”
They sat opposite each other in Staples’s flat, a coffee table between them, sharing a pot of tea.
“I think,” said Catherine, “that I’ve just heard what amounts to the most blatant misuse of office in thirty years of foreign service—on our side, of course. Unless there’s a grave misinterpretation.”
“You’re saying you don’t believe me.”
“On the contrary, my dear, you couldn’t have made it up. You’re quite right. The whole damn thing’s full of illogical logic.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to, it’s there. Your husband is primed, the possibilities implanted, and then he’s shot up like a nuclear rocket. Why?”
“I told you. There’s a man killing people who claims he’s Jason Bourne—the role David played for three years.”
“A killer’s a killer, no matter the name he assumes, whether it’s Genghis Khan or Jack the Ripper, or, if you will, Carlos the Jackal—even the assassin Jason Bourne. Traps for such men are planned with the consent of the trappers.”
“I don’t understand you, Catherine.”
“Then listen to me, my dear. This is an old-time mind speaking. Remember when I went to you for the Common Market refresher with the emphasis on Eastern trade?”
“Yes. We cooked dinners for each other. Yours was better than mine.”
“Yes, it was. But I was really there to learn how to convince my contacts in the Eastern block that I could use the fluctuating rates of exchange so that purchases made from us would be infinitely more profitable for them. I did it. Moscow was furious.”
“Catherine, what the hell has that got to do with me?”
Staples looked at Marie, her gentle demeanor again underlined with firmness. “Let me be clearer. If you thought about it at all, you had to assume that I’d come to Ottawa to gain a firmer grasp of European economics so as to do my job better. In one sense that was true, but it wasn’t the real reason. I was actually there to learn how to use the fluctuating rates of the various currencies and offer contracts of the greatest advantage to our potential clients. When the deutsche mark rose, we sold on the franc or the guilder or whatever. It was built into the contracts.”
“That was hardly self-serving.”
“We weren’t looking for profits, we were opening markets that had been closed to us. The profits would come later. You were very clear about exchange rate speculation. You preached its evils, and I had to learn to be something of a devil—for a good cause, of course.”
“All right, you picked what brains I have for a purpose I didn’t know about—”
“It had to be kept totally secret, obviously.”
“But what’s it got to do with anything I’ve told you?”
“I smell a bad piece of meat, and this nose is experienced. Just as I had an ulterior motive to go to you in Ottawa, whoever is doing this to you has a deeper reason than the capture of your husband’s impostor.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your husband said it first. This is primarily and quite properly a police matter, even an international police matter for Interpol’s highly respected Intelligence network. They’re far more qualified for this sort of thing than State Departments or Foreign Offices, CIA’s or MI-Six’s. Overseas Intelligence branches don’t concern themselves with nonpolitical criminals—everyday murderers—they can’t afford to. My God, most of those asses would expose whatever covers they’d managed to build if they interfered with police work.”
“McAllister said otherwise. He claimed that the best people in U.S. and U.K. Intelligence were working on it. He said the reason was that if this killer who’s posing as my husband—what my husband was in people’s eyes—murdered a high political figure on either side, or started an underworld war, Hong Kong’s status would be in immediate jeopardy. Peking would move quickly and take over, using the pretext of the ’97 treaty. ‘The Oriental doesn’t tolerate a disobedient child’—those were his words.”
“Unacceptable and unbelievable!” retorted Catherine Staples. “Either your undersecretary is a liar or he has the IQ, of a fern! He gave you every reason for our Intelligence services to stay out of it, to stay absolutely clean! Even a hint of covert action would be disastrous. That could fire up the wild boys on the Central Committee. Regardless, I don’t believe a word he said. London would never permit it, not even the mention of Special Branch’s name.”
“Catherine, you’re wrong. You weren’t listening. The man who flew to Washington for the Treadstone file was British, and he was MI-Six. Good Lord, he was murdered for that file.”
“I heard you before. I simply don’t believe it. Above all else, the Foreign Office would insist that this whole mess remain with the police and only the police. They wouldn’t let MI-Six in the same restaurant with a detective third grade, even on Food Street. Believe me, my dear, I know what I’m talking about. These are very delicate times and no time for hanky-panky, especially the sort that has an official Intelligence organization messing around with an assassin. No, you were brought here and your husband was forced to follow for quite another reason.”
“For heaven’s sake, what?” cried Marie, shooting forward in her chair.
“I don’t know. There’s someone else perhaps.”
“Who?”
“It’s quite beyond me.”
Silence. Two highly intelligent minds were pondering the words each had spoken.
“Catherine,” said Marie finally. “I accept the logic of everything you say, but you also said everything was rife with illogical logic. Suppose I’m right, that the men who held me were not killers or criminals, but bureaucrats following orders they didn’t understand, that government was written all over their faces and in their evasive explanations, even in their concern for my comfort and well-being. I know you think that the McAllister I described to you is a liar or a fool, but suppose he’s a liar and not a fool? Assuming these things—and I believe them to be true—we’re talking about two governments acting in concert during these very delicate times. What then?”
“Then there’s a disaster in the making,” said Senior Foreign Officer Staples quietly.
“And it revolves around my husband?”
“If you’re right, yes.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“I don’t even want to think about it.”