“This woman is a courier, one of those to whom we gave our trust,” went on the orator, gradually escalating his voice like a fundamentalist minister, preaching the gospel of love while his eye is on the work of the devil. “The trust was not earned but given in faith, for she is the wife of one of our own, a brave soldier, a first son of an illustrious family of the true China. A man who as I speak now risks his life infiltrating our enemies in the south. He, too, gave her his trust … and she betrayed that trust, she betrayed that gallant husband, she betrayed us all! She is no more than a whore who sleeps with the enemy! And while her lust is satiated how many secrets has she revealed, how much deeper is her betrayal? Is she the Occidental’s contact here in Beijing? Is she the one who informs on us, who tells our enemies what to look for, what to expect? How else could this terrible day have happened? Our most experienced, dedicated men set a trap for our enemies that would have cut them down, ridding ourselves of Western criminals who see only riches by groveling in front of China’s tormentors. It is related that she was at the airport this morning. The airport! Where the trap was in progress! Did she give her wanton body to a dedicated man, drugging him, perhaps? Did her lover tell her what to do, what to say to our enemies? What has this harlot done?”
The scene was set, thought Bourne. A case so flagrantly leapfrogging over facts and “related” facts that even a court in Moscow would send a puppet prosecutor back to the drawing board. The reign of terror within the warlord tribe continued. Weed out the misfits among the misfits. Find the traitor. Kill anyone who might be he or she.
A subdued but angry chorus of “Whore!” and “Traitor!” came from the audience, as the bound woman struggled with the two guards. The orator held up his hands for silence. It was immediate.
“Her lover was a despicable journalist for the Xinhua News Agency, that lying, discredited organ of the despicable regime. I say ‘was,’ for as of an hour ago the loathsome creature is dead, shot through the head, his throat cut, for all to know that he, too, was a traitor! I have spoken myself to this whore’s husband, for I accord him honor. He instructed me to do as our ancestral spirits demand. He wants nothing further to do with her—”
“Aiyaaa!” With extraordinary strength and fury the woman ripped the tightly bound cloth from her mouth. “Liar!” she screamed. “Killer of killers! You killed a decent man and I have betrayed no one! It is I who have been betrayed! I was not at the airport, and you know it! I have never seen this Occidental and you know that, too! I knew nothing of this trap for Western criminals and you can see the truth in my face! How could I?”
“By whoring with a dedicated servant of the cause and corrupting him, drugging him! By offering him your breasts and misused tunnel-of-corruption, withholding, withdrawing, until the herbs make him mad!”
“You’re mad! You say these things, these lies, because you sent my husband south and came to me for many days, first with promises and then with threats. I was to service you. It was my duty, you said! You lay with me and I learned things—”
“Woman, you are contemptible! I came to you pleading with you to leave honor to your husband, to the cause! To abandon your lover and seek forgiveness.”
“A lie! Men came to you, taipans from the south sent by my husband, men who could not be seen near your high offices. They came secretly to the shops below my flat, the flat of a so-called honorable widow—another lie you left for me and my child!”
“Whore!” shrieked the wild-eyed man with the sword.
“Liar to the depths of the northern lakes!” shouted the woman in reply. “Like you, my husband has many women and cares nothing for me! He beats me and you tell me it is his right, for he is a great son of the true China! I carry messages from one city to another, which if found on me would bring me torture and death, and I receive only scorn, never paid for my railroad fares, or the yuan withheld from my place of work, for you tell me it is my duty! How is my girl child to eat? The child your great son of China barely recognizes, for he wanted only sons!”
“The spirits would not grant you sons, for they would be women, disgracing a great house of China! You are the traitor! You went to the airport and reached our enemies permitting a great criminal to escape! You would enslave us for a thousand years—”
“You would make us your cattle for ten thousand!”
“You don’t know what freedom is, woman.”
“Freedom? From your mouth? You tell me—you tell us—you will give us back the freedoms our elders had in the true China but what freedoms, liar? The freedom that demands blind obedience, that takes the rice from my child, a child dismissed by a father who believes only in lords—warlords, landlords, lords of the earth! Aiya!” The woman turned to the crowd, rushing forward, away from the orator. “You!” she cried. “All of you! I have not betrayed you, nor our cause, but I have learned many things. All was not as this great liar says! There is much pain and restriction, which we all know, but there was pain before, restriction before!… My lover was no evil man, no blind follower of the regime, but a literate man, a gentle man, and a believer in eternal China! He wanted the things we want! He asked only for time to correct the evils that had infected the old men in the committees that lead us. There will be changes, he told me. Some are showing the way. Now!… Do not permit the liar to do this to me! Do not permit him to do it to you!”
“Whore! Traitor!” The blade came slashing through the air, decapitating the woman. Her headless body lurched to the left, her head to the right, both spouting geysers of blood. The messianic orator then swung the sword down, slicing into her remains, but the silence that had fallen on the crowd was heavy, awesome. He stopped; he had lost the moment. He regained it swiftly. “May the sacred ancestral spirits grant her peace and purification!” he shouted, his eyes roving, stopping, staring at each member of his congregation. “For it is not in hatred that I end her life, but in compassion for her weakness. She will find peace and forgiveness. The spirits will understand—but we must understand here in the motherland! We cannot deviate from our cause—we must be strong! We must—”
Bourne had had enough of this maniac. He was hatred incarnate. And he was dead. Sometime. Somewhere. Perhaps tonight—if possible, tonight!
Delta unsheathed his knife and started to his right, crawling through the dense Medusan woods, his pulse strangely quiet, a furious core of certainty growing within him—David Webb had vanished. There were so many things he could not remember from those clouded, faraway days, but there was much, too, that came back to him. The specifics were unclear but not his instincts. Impulses directed him, and he was at one with the darkness of the forest. The jungle was not an adversary; instead it was his ally, for it had protected him before, saved him before in those distant, disordered memories. The trees and the vines and the underbrush were his friends; he moved through and around them like a wild cat, surefooted and silent.
He turned to his left above the ancient glen and began his descent while focusing on the tree where the assassin stood so casually. The orator had once again altered his strategy in dealing with his congregation. He was cutting his losses in place of cutting up another woman—a sight the sons of mothers found borderline madness, regardless of any earthly cause. The impassioned pleas of a dead, mutilated female prisoner had to be put out of mind. A master of his craft—his art—the orator knew when to revert to the gospel of love, momentarily omitting Lucifer. Aides had swiftly removed the evidence of violent death, and the remaining woman was summoned with a gesture of the ceremonial sword. She was no more than eighteen, if that, and a pretty girl, weeping and vomiting, as she was dragged forward.
“Your tears and your illness are not called for, child,” said the orator in his most paternal voice. “It was always our intent to spare you, for you were asked to perform duties beyond your competence at your age, privileged to learn secrets beyond your understanding. Youth frequently speaks when it should be silent.… You were seen in the company of two Hong Kong brothers—but not our brothers. Men who work for the disgraced English Crown, that enfeebled, decadent government that sold out the motherland to our tormentors. They gave you trinkets, pretty jewelry and lip rouge and French perfume from Kowloon. Now, child, what did you give them?”
The young girl, hysterically coughing vomit through her gag, shook her head furiously, the tears streaming down her face.
“Her hand was beneath a table, between a man’s legs, in a café on the Guangquem!” shouted an accuser.
“It was one of the pigs who work for the British!” added another.
“Youth is subject to arousal,” said the orator, looking up at those who had spoken, his eyes glaring, as if commanding silence. “There is forgiveness in our hearts for such young exuberance—as long as betrayal is no part of that arousal, that exuberance.”
“She was at the Qian Men Gate.…!”
“She was not in the Tian An Men. I, myself, have determined it!” shouted the man with the sword. “Your information is wrong. The only question that remains is a simple one. Child! Did you speak of us? Could your words have been conveyed to our enemies here or in the south?”
The girl writhed on the ground, her whole body swaying frantically back and forth, denying the implied accusation.
“I accept your innocence, as a father would, but not your foolishness, child. You are too free with your associations, your love of trinkets. When these do not serve us, they can be dangerous.”
The young woman was put in the custody of a smug, obese middle-aged member of the chorus for “instruction and reflective meditation.” From the expression on the man’s face it was clear that his mandate would be far more inclusive than that prescribed by the orator. And when he was finished with her, a child-siren who had elicited secrets from the Beijing hierarchy that demanded young girls—believing that such liaisons, as Mao had decreed, extended their life spans—would disappear.
Two of the three remaining Chinese men were literally put on trial. The initial charge was trafficking in drugs, their network the Shanghai-Beijing axis. Their crime, however, was not distributing narcotics, but constantly skimming off the profits, depositing huge sums of money into personal accounts in numerous Hong Kong banks. Several in the audience stepped forward to corroborate the damning evidence, stating that as subordinate distributors they had given the two “bosses” great sums of cash never recorded in the organization’s secret books. That was the initial charge, but not the major one. It came with the high-pitched singsong voice of the orator. “You travel south to Kowloon. Once, twice, often three times a month. The Kai-tak Airport.…You!” screamed the zealot with the sword, pointing to the prisoner on his left. “You flew back this afternoon. You were in Kowloon last night. Last night! The Kai-tak! We were betrayed last night at the Kai-tak!” The orator walked ominously out of the light of the torches to the two petrified men kneeling in front. “Your devotion to money transcends your devotion to our cause,” he intoned like a sorrowful but angry patriarch. “Brothers in blood and brothers in thievery. We’ve known for many weeks now, known because there was so much anxiety in your greed. Your money had to multiply like rodents in putrid sewers, so you went to the criminal triads in Hong Kong. How enterprising, industrious, and how grossly stupid! You think certain triads are unknown to us or we to them? You think there are not areas where our interests might converge? You think they have less loathing for traitors than we do?”
The two bound brothers groveled in the dirt, rising to their knees in supplication, shaking their heads in denial. Their muted cries were pleas to be heard, to be allowed to speak. The orator approached the prisoner on his left and yanked the gag downward, the rope scraping the man’s flesh.
“We betrayed no one, great sir!” he shrieked. “I betrayed no one! I was at the Kai-tak, yes, but only in the crowds. To observe, sir! To be filled with joy!”
“To whom did you speak?”
“No one, great sir! Oh, yes, the clerk. To confirm my flight for the next morning, sir, that was all, I swear on the spirits of our ancestors. My young brother’s and mine, sir.”
“The money. What about the money you stole?”
“Not stole, great sir. I swear it! We believed in our proud hearts—hearts made proud by our cause—that we could use the money to advantage for the true China! Every yuan of profit was to be returned to the cause!”
The crowd thundered its response. Derisive catcalls were hurled at the prisoners; dual thematic fugues of treachery and theft filled the glen. The orator raised his arms for silence. The voices trailed off.
“Let the word be spread,” he said slowly with gathering force. “Those of our growing band who might harbor thoughts of betrayal be warned. There is no mercy in us, for none was shown us. Our cause is righteous and pure and even thoughts of treachery are an abomination. Spread the word. You don’t know who we are or where we are—whether a bureaucrat in a ministry or a member of the security police. We are nowhere and we are everywhere. Those who waver and doubt are dead.… The trial of these poisonous dogs is over. It’s up to you, my children.”
The verdict was swift and unanimous: guilty on the first count, probable on the second. The sentence: one brother would die, the other would live, to be escorted south to Hong Kong, where the money would be retrieved. The choice was to be decided by the age-old ritual of yi zang li, literally “one funeral.” Each man was given an identical knife with blades that were serrated and razor-sharp. The area of combat was a circle, the diameter ten paces. The two brothers faced each other and the savage ritual began as one made a desperate lunge and the other sidestepped away from the attack, his blade lacerating the attacker’s face.
The duel within the deadly circle, as well as the audience’s primitive reactions to it, covered whatever noise Bourne made in his decision to move quickly. He raced down through the underbrush, snapping branches and slashing away the webbed reeds of high grass, until he was twenty feet behind the tree where the assassin was standing. He would return and move closer, but first there was d’Anjou. Echo had to know he was there.
The Frenchman and the last male Chinese prisoner were off to the right of the circle, the guards flanking them. Jason crept forward as the crowd roared insults and encouragement at the gladiators. One of the combatants, both now covered with blood, had delivered a near-fatal blow with his knife, but the life he wanted to end would not surrender. Bourne was no more than eight or nine feet from d’Anjou; he felt around the ground and picked up a fallen branch. With another roar from the crazed audience he snapped it twice. From the three sections he held in his hand he stripped the foliage and reduced the bits of wood into manageable sticks. He took aim and hurled the first end over end, keeping the trajectory low. It fell short of the Frenchman’s legs. He threw the second; it struck the back of Echo’s knees! D’Anjou nodded his head twice to acknowledge Delta’s presence. Then the Frenchman did a strange thing. He began moving his head slowly back and forth. Echo was trying to tell him something. Suddenly, d’Anjou’s left leg collapsed and he fell to the ground. He was yanked up harshly by the guard on his right, but the man’s concentration was on the bloody battle taking place within the one-funeral circle.
Again Echo shook his head slowly, deliberately, finally holding it steady and staring to his left, his gaze on the assassin who had moved away from the tree to watch the deadly combat. And then he turned his head once more, now directing his stare at the maniac with the sword.
D’Anjou collapsed again, this time struggling to his feet before the guard could touch him. As he rose he moved his thin shoulders back and forth. And breathing deeply, Bourne closed his eyes in the only brief moment of grief he could permit himself. The message was clear. Echo was taking himself out, telling Delta to go after the assassin—and while doing so, to kill the evangelical butcher. D’Anjou knew he was too battered, too weak to be any part of an escape. He would only be an impediment, and the impostor came first … Marie came first. Echo’s life was over. But he would have his bonus in the maniacal butcher’s death, the zealot who would surely take his life.
A deafening scream filled the glen; the crowd was abruptly silent. Bourne snapped his head to the left, where he could see beyond the edge of the row of onlookers. What he saw was as sickening as what he had seen during the past violent minutes. The messianic orator had sunk his ceremonial sword in the neck of a combatant; he pulled it out as the bloodied corpse rattled in death and sprawled on the ground. The minister of killing raised his head and spoke. “Surgeon!”
“Yes, sir?” said a voice from the crowd.
“Tend to the survivor. Mend him as best you can for his imminent journey south. If I’d let this continue, both would be dead and our money gone. These close-knit families bring years of hostility to the yi zang li. Take his brother away and throw him into the swamps with the others. All will be sweet carrion for the more aggressive birds.”
“Yes, sir.” A man with a black medicine bag stepped forward into the dirt-ringed circle as the dead body was hauled away and a stretcher appeared out of the darkness from the far end of the crowd. Everything had been planned, everything considered. The doctor administered a hypodermic into the arm of the moaning, blood-covered brother, who was carried out of the circle of brotherly death. Wiping his sword with a fresh silk cloth, the orator nodded his head in the direction of the two remaining prisoners.
Stunned, Bourne watched as the Chinese beside d’Anjou calmly undid his bound wrists and reached up to the back of his neck, untying the supposedly strangling strip of cloth and rope that supposedly kept his gaping mouth incapable of any sound but throated moans. The man walked over to the orator and spoke in a raised voice, addressing both his leader and the crowd of followers. “He says nothing and he reveals nothing, yet his Chinese is fluent and he had every opportunity to speak to me before we boarded the truck and the gags were in place. Even then I communicated with him by loosening my own, offering to do the same for him. He refused. He is obstinate and corruptly brave, but I am sure he knows what he will not tell us.”
“Tong ku, tong ku!” Wild shouts came from the crowd, demanding torture. To these were added instructions narrowing the area for pain to be inflicted to the testicles of the Occidental.
“He is old and frail and will collapse into unconsciousness, as he has done before,” insisted the false prisoner. “Therefore I suggest the following, with our leader’s permission.”
“If there’s a chance of success, whatever you wish,” said the orator.
“We have offered him his freedom in exchange for the information, but he does not trust us. He’s been dealing with the Marxists too long. I propose taking our reluctant ally to the Beijing airport and using my position to secure him passage on the next plane to Kai-tak. I will clear him through immigration, and all he must do before boarding with his ticket is give me the information. Where is there a greater show of trust? We will be in the midst of our enemies, and if his conscience is so offended, all he has to do is raise his voice. He has seen and heard more than any person who ever walked away from us alive. We might in time become true allies, but first there must be trust.”
The orator studied the provocateur’s face, then shifted his gaze to d’Anjou, who stood erect, peering out of his swollen eyes, listening without expression. Then the man with the bloodstained sword turned and addressed the assassin by the tree, suddenly speaking in English. “We have offered to spare this insignificant manipulator if he tells us where his comrade can be found. Do you agree?”
“The Frenchman will lie to you!” said the killer in a clipped British accent, stepping forward.
“To what purpose?” asked the orator. “He has his life, his freedom. He has little or no regard for others, his entire dossier is proof of that.”
“I’m not sure,” said the Englishman. “They worked together in an outfit called Medusa. He talked about it all the time. There were rules—codes, you might call them. He’ll lie.”
“The infamous Medusa was made up of human refuse, men who would kill their brothers in the field if it could save their own lives.”
The assassin shrugged. “You asked for my opinion,” he said. “That’s it.”
“Let us ask the one to whom we are prepared to offer mercy.” The orator reverted to Mandarin, issuing orders, as the assassin returned to the tree and lit a cigarette. D’Anjou was brought forward. “Untie his hands; he’s not going anywhere. And remove the rope from his mouth. Let him be heard. Show him we can extend … trust, as well as less attractive aspects of our nature.”
D’Anjou shook his hands at his sides, then raised his right and massaged his mouth. “Your trust is as compassionate and convincing as your treatment of prisoners,” he said in English.
“I forgot.” The orator raised his eyebrows. “You understand us, don’t you?”
“Somewhat more than you think,” replied Echo.
“Good. I prefer speaking English. In a sense, this is between us, isn’t it?”
“There’s nothing between us. I try never to deal with madmen, they’re so unpredictable.” D’Anjou glanced over at the assassin by the tree. “I’ve made mistakes, of course. But somehow I think one will be rectified.”
“You can live,” said the orator.
“For how long?”
“Longer than tonight. The remainder is up to you, your health and your abilities.”
“No, it’s not. It’s all ended when I walk off that plane in Kai-tak. You won’t miss as you did last evening. There’ll be no security forces, no bulletproof limousines, just one man walking in or out of the terminal, and another with a silenced pistol or a knife. As your rather unconvincing fellow ‘prisoner’ of mine put it, I’ve been here tonight. I’ve seen, I’ve heard, and what I’ve seen and heard marks me for death.… Incidentally, if he wonders why I didn’t confide in him, tell him he was far too obvious, too anxious. And that suddenly loosened mouthpiece. Really! He could never become a pupil of mine. Like you, he has unctuous words, but he’s fundamentally stupid.”
“Like me?”
“Yes, and there’s no excuse for you. You’re a well-educated man, a world traveler—it’s in your speech. Where did you matriculate? Was it Oxford? Cambridge?”
“The London School of Economics,” said Sheng Chou Yang, unable to stop himself.
“Well put—the old school tie, as the English say. Yet for all of that you’re hollow. A clown. You’re not a scholar, not even a student, only a zealot with no sense of reality. You’re a fool.”
“You dare say this to me?”
“Fengzi,” said Echo, turning to the crowd. “Shenjing bing!” he added, laughing, explaining that he was conversing with a crazy corkscrew.
“Stop that!”
“Wei shemme?” continued the enfeebled Frenchman, asking Why?—including the crowd as he spoke in Chinese. “You’re taking these people to their oblivion because of your lunatic theories of changing lead into gold! Piss into wine! But as that unfortunate woman said—whose gold, whose wine? Yours or theirs?” D’Anjou swept his hand toward the crowd.
“I warn you!” cried Sheng in English.
“You see!” shouted Echo hoarsely, weakly in Mandarin. “He will not talk with me in your language! He hides from you! This spindly-legged little man with the big sword—is it to make up for what he lacks elsewhere? Does he hack women with his blade because he has no other equipment and can do nothing else with them? And look at that balloon head with the foolish flat top—”
“Enough!”
“—and the eyes of a screeching, disobedient, ugly child! As I say, he’s nothing more than a crazy corkscrew. Why give him your time? He’ll give you only piss in return, no wine at all!”
“I’d stop it if I were you,” said Sheng, stepping forward with his sword. “They’ll kill you before I do.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” answered d’Anjou in English. “Your anger clouds your hearing, Monsieur Windbag. Did you not detect a snicker or two? I did.”
“Gou le!” roared Sheng Chou Yang, ordering Echo to be silent. “You will give us the information we must have,” he continued, his shrill Chinese the bark of a man accustomed to being obeyed. “The games are finished and we will not tolerate you any longer! Where is the killer you brought from Macao?”
“Over there,” said d’Anjou casually, gesturing his head toward the assassin.
“Not him! The one who came before. This madman you called back from the grave to avenge you! Where is your rendezvous? Where do you meet? Your base here in Beijing, where is it?”
“There is no rendezvous,” answered Echo, reverting to English. “No base of operations, no plans to meet.”
“There were plans! You people always concern yourselves with contingencies, emergencies. It’s how you survive!”
“Survived. Past tense, I fear me.”
Sheng raised his sword. “You tell us or you die—unpleasantly, monsieur.”
“I’ll tell you this much. If he could hear my voice, I would explain to him that you are the one he must kill. For you are the man who will bring all Asia to its knees with millions drowning in oceans of their brothers’ blood. He must tend to his own business, I understand that, but I would tell him with my last breath that you must be part of that business! I would tell him to move. Quickly!”
Mesmerized by d’Anjou’s performance, Bourne winced as if struck. Echo was sending a final signal! Move! Now! Jason reached into his left front pocket and pulled out the contents as he crawled swiftly through the woods beyond the staging area of the savage rituals. He found a large rock rising several feet out of the ground. The air was still behind it and its size more than enough to conceal his work. As he started he could hear d’Anjou’s voice; it was weak and tremulous, but nevertheless defiant. Echo was finding resources within himself not only to face his final moments but also to buy Delta the precious few he needed.
“… Don’t be hasty, mon général Genghis Khan, or whoever you are. I am an old man and your minions have done their work. As you observed, I’m not going anywhere. On the other hand, I’m not sure I care for where you intend to send me.… We were not clever enough to perceive the trap you set for us. If we had been, we would never have walked into it, so why do you think we were clever enough to agree on a rendezvous?”
“Because you did walk into it,” said Sheng Chou Yang calmly. “You followed—he followed—the man from Macao into the mausoleum. The madman expected to come out. Your contingencies would include both chaos and a rendezvous.”
“On the surface your logic might appear unassailable—”
“Where?” shouted Sheng.
“My inducement?”
“Your life!”
“Oh, yes, you mentioned that.”
“Your time runs short.”
“I shall know my time, monsieur!” A last message. Delta understood.
Bourne struck a match, cupping the flame, and lit the thin wax candle, the fuse embedded an eighth of an inch below the top. He quickly crawled deeper into the woods, unraveling the string attached to the succeeding double rolls of fireworks. He reached the end and started back toward the tree.
“… What guarantee do I have for my life?” persisted Echo, perversely enjoying himself, a master of chess plotting his own inevitable death.
“The truth,” replied Sheng. “It’s all you need.”
“But my former pupil tells you that I’ll lie—as you have lied so consistently this evening.” D’Anjou paused and repeated his statement in Mandarin. “Liao jie?” he said to the onlookers, asking if they understood.
“Stop that!”
“You repeat yourself incessantly. You really must learn to control it. It’s such a tiresome habit.”
“And my patience is at an end! Where is your madman?”
“In your line of work, mon général, patience is not only a virtue but a necessity.”
“Hold it!” shouted the assassin, springing away from the tree, astonishing everyone. “He’s stalling you! He’s playing with you. I know him!”
“For what reason?” asked Sheng, his sword poised.
“I don’t know,” said the British commando. “I just don’t like it, and that’s reason enough for me!”
Ten feet behind the tree, Delta looked at the radium dial of his watch, concentrating on the second hand. He had timed the burning candle in the car, and the time was now. Closing his eyes, pleading with something he could not understand, he grabbed a handful of earth and hurled it high to the right of the tree, arcing it farther to the right of d’Anjou. When he heard the first drops of the shower, Echo raised his voice to the loudest roar he could command.
“Deal with you?” he screamed. “I would as soon deal with the archangel of darkness! I may yet have to, but then again I may not, for a merciful God will know that you have committed sins beyond any I have approached, and I leave this earth wanting only to take you with me! Your obscene brutality aside, mon général, you are a fatuous, hollow bore, a cruel joke on your people! Come die with me, General Dung!”
With his final words, d’Anjou flung himself at Sheng Chou Yang, clawing at his face, spitting into the wide, astonished eyes. Sheng leaped back, swinging the ceremonial sword, slashing the blade into the Frenchman’s head. Mercifully quick, it was over for Echo.
It began! A staccato burst of fireworks filled the glen, resounding through the woods, swelling in intensity as the stunned crowd reacted in shock. Men threw themselves to the ground, others scrambled behind trees and into the underbrush, yelling in panic, frightened for their lives.
The assassin lurched behind the tree trunk, crouching, a weapon in his hand. Bourne, with the silencer affixed to his gun, strode up to the killer and stood over him. He took aim and fired, blowing the weapon out of the assassin’s hand, the flesh between the commando’s thumb and forefinger erupting in blood. The killer spun around, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping in shock. Jason fired again, now creasing the assassin’s cheekbone.
“Turn around!” ordered Bourne, shoving the barrel of his gun into the commando’s left eye. “Now, grab the tree! Grab it! Both arms, tight, tighter!” Jason rammed the weapon into the back of the killer’s neck as he peered around the trunk. Several of the torches that were stuck in the ground had been ripped up, their flames extinguished.
Another series of explosions came from deeper within the woods. Panicked men began to fire their guns in the direction of sounds. The assassin’s leg moved! Then his right hand! Bourne fired two shots directly into the tree; the bullets seared the wood, shattering the bark less than an inch from the commando’s skull. He gripped the trunk, his body still, rigid.
“Keep your head to the left!” said Jason harshly. “You move once more and it’s blown away!” Where was he? Where was the killer maniac with the sword? Delta owed that much to Echo. Where … there! The man with the fanatical eyes was rising from the ground, looking everywhere at once, shouting orders to those near him and demanding a weapon. Jason stepped away from the tree and raised his gun. The zealot’s head stopped moving. Their eyes met. Bourne fired just as Sheng pulled a guard in front of him. The soldier arched backward, his neck snapping under the impact of the bullets. Sheng held on to the body, using it as a shield, as Jason fired twice more, jolting the guard’s corpse. He could not do it! Whoever the maniac was, he was covered by a dead soldier’s body! Delta could not do what Echo had told him to do! General Dung would survive! I’m sorry, Echo! No time! Move! Echo was gone.… Marie!
The assassin shifted his head, trying to see. Bourne squeezed the trigger. Bark exploded in the killer’s face and he whipped his hands up to his eyes, then shook his head, blinking to regain his vision.
“Get up!” ordered Jason, gripping the assassin’s throat and pivoting the commando toward the path he had broken through the underbrush as he raced down into the glen. “You’re coming with me!”
A third series of fireworks, deeper still in the woods, exploded in rapid, overlapping bursts. Sheng Chou Yang screamed hysterically, commanding his followers to go in two directions—toward the vicinity of the tree and after the detonating sounds. The explosions stopped as Bourne propelled his prisoner into the brush, ordering the killer to lie prone, Jason’s foot on the back of his neck. Bourne crouched, feeling the ground; he picked up three rocks and threw them in the air one after another past the men searching the area around the tree, each rock thrown farther away. The diversion had its effect.
“Nali!”
“Shu ner!”
“Bu! Caodi ner!”
They began moving forward, weapons at the ready. Several rushed ahead, plunging into the overgrowth. Others joined them as the fourth and last cannonade of fireworks burst forth. In spite of the distance the reports were as loud or louder than the previous explosions. It was the final stage, the climax of the display, longer and more booming than the explosions preceding it.
Delta knew that time was now measured in minutes, and if ever a forest was a friend, this one had to be now. In moments, perhaps seconds, men would find the hollow shells of exploded fireworks strewn on the ground and the tactical distraction would be exposed. A massive, hysterical race for the gate would follow.
“Move!” ordered Bourne, grabbing the assassin’s hair, pulling him to his feet, and shoving him forward. “Remember, you bastard, there isn’t a trick you’ve learned I haven’t perfected, and that makes up for a certain difference in our ages! You look the wrong way, you’ve got two bullet holes for eye sockets. Move out!”
As they raced up the broken path through the wooded glen, Bourne reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of shells. While the assassin ran in front of him, breathlessly rubbing his eyes and wiping away the blood from his cheek, Jason removed the clip from his automatic, replaced his full complement of bullets, and cracked the magazine back into place. Hearing the sound of a weapon being dismantled, the commando whipped his head around but realized he was too late; the gun was already reassembled. Bourne fired, grazing the killer’s ear. “I warned you,” he said, breathing loud but steadily. “Where do you want it? In the center of your forehead?” He leveled the automatic in front of him.
“Good Christ, that butcher was right!” cried the British commando holding his ear. “You are a madman!”
“And you’re dead unless you move. Faster!”
They reached the corpse of the guard who had been posted on the narrow path leading down to the deep glen. “Go to the right!” ordered Jason.
“Where, for Christ’s sake? I can’t see!”
“There’s a path. You’ll feel the space. Move!”
Once on the bird sanctuary’s series of dirt thoroughfares, Bourne kept jamming his automatic into the assassin’s spine, forcing the killer to run faster, faster! For a moment David Webb returned, and a grateful Delta acknowledged him. Webb was a runner, a ferocious runner, for reasons that went back in time and tortured memories past Jason Bourne to the infamous Medusa. Racing feet and sweat and the wind against his face made living each day easier for David, and at the moment Jason Bourne was breathing hard but nowhere near as breathlessly as the younger, stronger assassin.
Delta saw the glow of light in the sky—the gate was at the end of a field and past three dark, twisting paths. No more than half a mile! He fired a shot between the commando’s churning legs. “I want you to run faster!” he said, imposing control on his voice, making it seem that the strenuous movement had minor effect on him.
“Jesus, I can’t! I’ve got no wind left!”
“Find it,” commanded Jason.
Suddenly, in the distance behind them they heard the hysterical shouts of men ordered by their maniacal leader back to the gate, told to find and kill an intruder so dangerous that their very lives and fortunes were hanging in the balance. The jagged, paper remnants of fireworks had been found; a radio had been activated with no response from a gatehouse. Find him! Stop him! Kill him!
“If you have any ideas, Major, forget them!” yelled Bourne.
“Major?” said the commando, barely able to speak, as he kept running.
“You’re an open book to me, and what I’ve read makes me sick! You watched d’Anjou die like a slaughtered pig. You grinned, you bastard.”
“He wanted to die! He wanted to kill me!”
“I’ll kill you if you stop running. But before I do, I’ll slice you up from your balls to your throat so slowly you’ll wish you’d gone with the man who created you.”
“Where’s my choice? You’ll kill me anyway!”
“Maybe I won’t. Ponder it. Maybe I’m saving your life. Think about it!”
The assassin ran faster. They raced through the final dark path, running into the open space of the floodlit gate.
“The parking lot!” shouted Jason. “The far right end!” Bourne stopped. “Hold it!” The bewildered assassin stood still in his tracks. Jason took out his penlight, then aimed his automatic. As he walked up to the killer’s back he fired five shots, missing with one. The floodlights exploded; the gate fell into darkness and Bourne rammed the gun into the base of the commando’s skull. He turned on the penlight, shining it into the side of the assassin’s face. “The situation is in hand, Major,” he said. “The operation proceeds. Move, you son of a bitch!”
Racing across the darkened parking lot, the killer stumbled, sprawling prone on the gravel. Jason fired twice in the glow of the penlight; the bullets ricocheted away from the commando’s head. He got to his feet and continued running past the cars and the truck to the end of the lot.
“The fence!” cried Bourne in a loud whisper. “Head over to it.” At the edge of the gravel he gave another order. “Get on your hands and knees—look straight ahead! You turn around, I’m the last thing you’ll see. Now, crawl!” The assassin reached the broken opening in the fence. “Start through it,” said Jason, once more reaching into his pocket for shells and quietly removing the automatic’s magazine. “Stop!” he whispered when the psychotic former commando was halfway through. He replaced the expended bullets in the darkness and cracked the magazine into its chamber. “Just in case you were counting,” he said. “Now get through there and crawl two lengths away from the fence. Hurry up!”
As the assassin scrambled under the bent wire, Bourne crouched and surged through the opening inches behind him. Expecting otherwise, the commando whipped around, rising to his knees. He was met by the beam of the penlight, the glow illuminating the weapon leveled at his head. “I’d have done the same,” said Jason, getting to his feet. “I’d have thought the same. Now go back to the fence, reach under, and yank that section back into place. Quickly!”
The killer did as he was told, straining as he pulled the thick wire mesh down. At the three-quarter mark Bourne spoke. “That’s enough. Get up and walk past me with your hands behind your back. Go straight ahead, shouldering your way through the branches. My light’s on your hands. If you unclasp them I’ll kill you. Am I clear?”
“You think I’d snap a limb back in your face?”
“I would.”
“You’re clear.”
They reached the road in front of the eerily dark gate. The distant shouts were clearer now, the advance party was nearer. “Down the road,” said Jason. “Run!” Three minutes later he snapped on the penlight. “Stop!” he shouted. “That pile of green over there, can you see it?”
“Where?” asked the breathless assassin.
“My beam’s on it.”
“They’re branches, parts of the pine trees.”
“Pull them away. Hurry up!”
The commando began throwing the branches aside, in moments revealing the black Shanghai sedan. It was time for the knapsack. Bourne spoke. “Follow my light, to the left of the hood.”
“To what?”
“The tree with the white notch on the trunk. See it?”
“Yes.”
“Under it, about eighteen inches in front, there’s loose dirt. Beneath there’s a knapsack. Dig it out for me.”
“Fucking technician, aren’t you.”
“Aren’t you?”
Without replying, the sullen killer dug through the dirt and pulled the knapsack out of the ground. With the straps in his right hand, he stepped forward as if to hand the bag to his captor. Then suddenly he swung the knapsack, sweeping it diagonally up toward Jason’s weapon and the penlight as he lunged forward, the fingers of his hands spread like the extended claws of a furious cat.
Bourne was prepared. It was the precise moment he would have used to gain the advantage, however transient, for it would have given him the seconds he needed to race away into the darkness. He stepped back, smashing the automatic into the assassin’s head as the lunging figure passed him.
He crashed his knee down into the back of the splayed-out commando, grabbing the assassin’s right arm while clenching the penlight between his teeth.
“I warned you,” said Jason, yanking the killer up by his right arm. “But I also need you. So instead of your life, we’ll do a little bullet surgery.” He put the barrel of his automatic laterally against the flesh of the assassin’s arm muscle and pulled the trigger.
“Jesus!” screamed the killer as the spit echoed and blood erupted.
“No bone was broken,” said Delta. “Only muscle tissue, and now you can forget about using your arm. You’re fortunate that I’m a merciful man. In that knapsack is gauze and tape and disinfectant. You can repair yourself, Major. Then you’re going to drive. You’ll be my chauffeur in the People’s Republic. You see, I’ll be in the backseat with my gun at your head, and I have a map. If I were you, I wouldn’t make a wrong turn.”
* * *
Twelve of Sheng Chou Yang’s men raced to the gate, with only four flashlights among them.
“Wei shemme? Cuo wu!”
“Mafan! Feng Kuang!”
“You mao bing!”
“Wei fan!”
A dozen screaming voices were raised against the unlit floodlights, blaming everything and everyone from inefficiency to treachery. The gatehouse was checked; the electric switches and the telephone were found to be inoperative, the guard was nowhere in evidence. Several studied the coiled chain around the gate’s lock and issued orders to the others. Since none could get out, they reasoned, the offenders had to be inside the sanctuary.
“Biao!” shouted the infiltrator who had been d’Anjou’s false prisoner. “Quan bu zai zheli!” he shrieked, telling the others to share the lights and search the parking lot, the surrounding woods, and the swamps beyond. The hunters spread out with guns extended, racing across the parking area in different directions. Seven additional men arrived, only one carrying a flashlight. The false prisoner demanded it and proceeded to explain the situation so as to form another search party. He was countered by objections that one light among them was insufficient for the darkness. In frustration the organizer roared a series of profanities, ascribing incredible stupidity to everyone but himself.
The dancing flames of torches grew brighter as the last of the conspirators arrived from the glen, led by the striding figure of Sheng Chou Yang, the ceremonial sword swinging at his side in its belted scabbard. He was shown the coiled chain and apprised of the circumstances by the infiltrator.
“You’re not thinking correctly,” said Sheng, exasperated. “Your approach is wrong! That chain was not placed there by one of our people to keep the criminal or criminals inside. Instead, it was put there by the offender or the offenders to delay us, to keep us inside!”
“But there are too many obstacles—”
“Studied and considered!” Shouted Sheng Chou Yang. “Must I repeat myself? These people are survivors. They stayed alive in that criminal battalion called Medusa because they considered everything! They climbed out!”
“Impossible,” protested the younger man. “The top pipe and the extended panel of barbed wire are electrified, sir. Any weight in excess of thirty pounds activates them. That way the birds and animals are not electrocuted.”
“Then they found the source of the current and shut it off!”
“The switches are inside, and at least seventy-five meters from the gate concealed in the ground. Even I’m not sure where they are.”
“Send someone up,” ordered Sheng.
The subordinate looked around. Twenty feet away two men were talking quietly, rapidly, to each other, and it was doubtful either had heard the heated conversation. “You!” said the young leader, pointing to the man on the left.
“Sir?”
“Scale the fence!”
“Yes, sir!” The lesser subordinate ran to the fence and leaped up, his hands gripping the open, crisscrossing squares of wire mesh, as his feet worked furiously below. He reached the top pipe and started over the angled panel of coiled barbed wire. “Aiyaaa!”
A shattering cascade of static was accompanied by blinding, blue-white bolts of fired electricity. His body rigid, his hair and eyebrows singed to their roots, the climber fell backward, hitting the earth with the impact of a heavy flat rock. Flashlight beams converged. The man was dead.
“The truck!” screamed Sheng. “This is idiocy! Bring out the truck and break through! Do as I say! Instantly!”
Two men raced into the parking lot and within seconds the roar of the truck’s powerful engine filled the night. The gears whined as the reverse was found. The heavy truck lurched backward, its whole chassis shaking violently until it came to a sudden, leaden stop. The deflated tires spun, smoke curling up from the burning rubber. Sheng Chou Yang stared in growing apprehension and fury.
“The others!” he shrieked. “Start the others! All of them!”
One by one the vehicles were started, and one after another each lurched in reverse only to rattle and groan, sinking into the gravel, unable to move. In a frenzy, Sheng ran up to the gate, pulled out a gun, and fired twice into the coiled chain. A man on his right screamed, holding his bleeding forehead, as he fell to the ground. Sheng raised his face to the dark sky and screamed a primeval roar of protest. He yanked out his ceremonial sword and began crashing it repeatedly down on the chained lock of the gate. It was an exercise in futility.
The blade broke.