The telephone rang. Marie spun around in the chair—stopped by Mo Panov’s raised hand. The doctor walked across the hotel room, picked up the bedside phone and spoke. “Yes?” he said quietly. He frowned as he listened, then as if he realized that his expression might alarm the patient, he looked over at Marie and shook his head, his hand now dismissing whatever urgency she might have attached to the call. “All right,” he continued after nearly a minute. “We’ll stay put until we hear from you, but I have to ask you, Alex, and forgive my directness. Did anyone feed you drinks?” Panov winced as he pulled the phone briefly away from his ear. “My only response is that I’m entirely too kind and experienced to speculate on your antecedents. Talk to you later.” He hung up.
“What’s happened?” asked Marie, half out of the chair.
“Far more than he could go into, but it was enough.” The psychiatrist paused, looking down at Marie. “Catherine Staples is dead. She was shot down in front of her apartment house several hours ago—”
“Oh, my God,” whispered Marie.
“That huge Intelligence officer,” continued Panov. “The one we saw in the Kowloon station whom you called the major and Staples identified as a man named Lin Wenzu—”
“What about him?”
“He’s severely wounded and in critical condition at the hospital. That’s where Conklin called from, a pay phone in the hospital.”
Marie studied Panov’s face. “There’s a connection between Catherine’s death and Lin Wenzu, isn’t there?”
“Yes. When Staples was killed, it was apparent that the operation had been penetrated—”
“What operation? By whom?”
“Alex said that’ll all come later. In any event, things are coming to a boil and this Lin may have given his life to rip out the penetration—‘neutralizing it,’ was the way Conklin put it.”
“Oh, God,” cried Marie, her eyes wide, her voice on the edge of hysteria. “Operations! Penetrations … neutralizing, Lin, even Catherine—a friend who turned on me—I don’t care about those things! What about David??”
“They say he went into China.”
“Good Christ, they’ve killed him!” screamed Marie, leaping out of the chair.
Panov rushed forward and grabbed her by the shoulders. He gripped her harder, forcing her spastically shaking head to stop its movement, insisting in silence that she look at him. “Let me tell you what Alex said to me.… Listen to me!”
Slowly, breathlessly, as if trying to find a moment of clarity in her confusion and exhaustion, Marie stood still, staring at her friend. “What?” she whispered.
“He said that in a way he was glad David was up there—or out there—because in his judgment he had a better chance to survive.”
“You believe that?” screamed David Webb’s wife, tears filling her eyes.
“Perhaps,” said Panov, nodding, and speaking softly. “Conklin pointed out that here in Hong Kong David could be shot or stabbed in a crowded street—crowds, he said, were both an enemy and a friend. Don’t ask me where these people find their metaphors, I don’t know.”
“What the hell are you trying to tell me?”
“What Alex told me. He said they made him go back, made him be someone he wanted to forget. Then he said there never was anyone like ‘Delta.’ ‘Delta’ was the best there ever was.… David Webb was ‘Delta,’ Marie. No matter what he wanted to put out of his mind, he was ‘Delta,’ Jason Bourne was an afterthought, an extension of the pain he had to inflict on himself, but his skills were honed as ‘Delta.’ … In some respects I know your husband as well as you do.”
“In those respects, far better, I’m sure,” said Marie, resting her head against the comforting chest of Morris Panov. “There were so many things he wouldn’t talk about. He was too frightened, or too ashamed.… Oh, God, Mo! Will he come back to me?”
“Alex thinks ‘Delta’ will come back.”
Marie leaned away from the psychiatrist and looked into his eyes; through the tears her stare was rigid. “What about David?” she asked in a plaintive whisper. “Will he come back?”
“I can’t answer that. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“I see.” Marie released Panov and walked to a window, and looked down at the crowds below in the congested, garishly lighted streets. “You asked Alex if he’d been drinking. Why did you do that, Mo?”
“The moment the words came out I regretted them.”
“Because you offended him?” asked Marie, turning back to the psychiatrist.
“No. Because I knew you’d heard them and you’d want an explanation. I couldn’t refuse you that.”
“Well?”
“It was the last thing he said to me—two things, actually. He said you were wrong about Staples—”
“Wrong? I was there. I saw. I heard her lies!”
“She was trying to protect you without sending you into panic.”
“More lies! What was the other?”
Panov held his place and spoke simply, his eyes locked with Marie’s. “Alex said that as crazy as things seemed, they weren’t really so crazy, after all.”
“My God, they’ve turned him!”
“Not all the way. He won’t tell them where you are—where we are. He told me we should be ready to move within minutes after his next call. He can’t take the chance of coming back here. He’s afraid he’ll be followed.”
“So we’re running again—with nowhere to go but back into hiding. And all of a sudden there’s a rotten growth in our collective armor. Our crippled St. George who slays dragons now wants to lie with them.”
“That’s not fair, Marie. That’s not what he said, not what I said.”
“Bullshit, Doctor! That’s my husband out there, or up there! They’re using him, killing him, without telling us why! Oh, he may—just may—survive because he’s so terribly good at what he does—did—which was everything he despised, but what’s going to be left of the man and his mind? You’re the expert, Doctor! What’s going to be left when all the memories come back? And they damn well better come back, or he won’t survive!”
“I told you, I can’t answer that.”
“Oh, you’re terrific, Mo! All you’ve got is carefully qualified positions and no answers, not even well-couched projections. You’re hiding! You should have been an economist! You missed your calling!”
“I miss a lot of things. Almost including the plane to Hong Kong.”
Marie stood motionless, as if struck. She burst into a new wave of tears as she ran to Panov, embracing him. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Mo! Forgive me, forgive me!”
“I’m the one who should apologize,” said the psychiatrist. “It was a cheap shot.” He tilted her head back, gently stroking the gray hair streaked with white. “Lord, I can’t stand that wig.”
“It’s not a wig, Doctor.”
“My degrees, by way of Sears Roebuck, never included cosmetology.”
“Only taking care of feet.”
“They’re easier than heads, take my word for it.”
The telephone rang. Marie gasped and Panov stopped breathing. He slowly turned his head toward the hateful ringing.
“You try that again or anything like it and you’re dead!” roared Bourne, gripping the back of his hand where the flesh was darkening from the force of the blow. The assassin, his wrists tied in front of him beneath the sleeves of his jacket, had lunged against the door of the cheap hotel, jamming Jason’s left hand into the doorframe.
“What the hell do you expect me to do?” the former British commando yelled. “Walk gently into that good night smiling at my own firing squad?”
“So you’re a closet reader, too,” said Bourne, watching the killer clutch his rib cage, where Jason’s right foot had landed an agonizing blow. “Maybe it’s time I asked you why you’re in the business I was never actually a part of. Why, Major?”
“Are you really interested, Mr. Original?” grunted the assassin, falling into a worn-out armchair against the wall. “Then it’s my turn to ask why.”
“Perhaps because I never understood myself,” said David Webb. “I’m quite rational about that.”
“Oh, I know all about you! It was part of the Frenchman’s training. The great Delta was bonkers! His wife and kiddies were blown up in the water in a place called Phnom Penh by a stray jet. This oh-so-civilized scholar went crazy, and it’s a fact nobody could control him and nobody gave a damn because he and the teams he led did more damage than most of the search-and-destroys put together. Saigon said you were suicidal, and from its point of view, the more so the better. They wanted you and the garbage you commanded to buy it. They never wanted you back. You were an embarrassment!”
Snake Lady, Snake Lady … this is a friend talking, you assholes. You don’t have many down here.… Abort! It’s a no-win!
“I know, or I think I know that part of it,” said Webb. “I asked about you.”
The assassin’s eyes grew wide as he stared at his bound wrists. When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper, the voice that emerged an echo of itself, and unreal. “Because I’m psycho, you son of a bitch! I’ve known it since I was a kid. The nasty dark thoughts, the knives into animals just to watch their eyes and their mouths. Raping a neighbor’s daughter, a vicar’s kid, because I knew she couldn’t say anything, and then catching up with her on the street afterwards and walking her to school. I was eleven years old. And later, at Oxford, during club hazing, holding a lad under water, just below the surface, until he drowned—to watch his eyes, his mouth. Then going back to classes and excelling in that nonsense any damn fool could do who had the wits to get out of a thundershower. There I was the right sort of fellow, as befitted the son of the father.”
“You never sought help?”
“Help? With a name like Allcott-Price?”
“Allcott—?” Stunned, Bourne stared at his prisoner. “General Allcott-Price? Montgomery’s boy genius in World War Two? ‘Slaughter Allcott,’ the man who led the flank attack on Tobruk, and later barreled through Italy and Germany? England’s Patton?”
“I wasn’t alive then, for Christ’s sake! I was a product of his third wife—perhaps his fourth, for all I know. He was very large in that department—women, I mean.”
“D’Anjou said you never told him your real name.”
“He was bloody well right! The general, swilling his brandy in his oh-so-superior club in St. James’s, has passed the word. ‘Kill him! Kill the rotten seed and never let the name out. He’s no part of me, the woman was a whore!’ But I am part of him and he knows it. He knows where I get my kicks from, the sadistic bastard, and we both have a slew of citations for doing what we like doing best.”
“He knew, then? About your sickness?”
“He knew … he knows. He kept me out of Sandhurst—our West Point, in case you don’t know—because he didn’t want me anywhere near his precious army. He figured they’d find me out and it’d dim his precious image. He damn near had apoplexy when I joined up. He won’t have a decent night’s sleep until he’s told quietly that I’m out—dead out with all the traces buried.”
“Why are you telling me who you are?”
“Simple,” replied the former commando, his eyes boring into Jason’s. “The way I read it, whichever way it goes, only one of us is going to make it through. I’ll do my damnedest to see that it’s me, I told you that. But it may not be—you’re no slouch—and if it isn’t, you’ll have a name you can shock the goddamn world with, probably make a bloody fortune in the bargain, what with literary and cinema rights, that sort of thing.”
“Then the general will spend the rest of his life sleeping peacefully.”
“Sleep? He’ll probably blow his brains out! You weren’t listening. I said he’d be told quietly, all the traces buried, no name surfacing. But this way nothing’s buried. It’s all hanging out like Maggie’s drawers, the whole sick sordid mess with no apologies on my part, chap. I know what I am, I accept it. Some of us are just plain different. Let’s say we’re antisocial, to put it one way; hard-core violent is another; rotten, still another. The only difference with my being different is that I’m bright enough to know it.”
“And accept it,” said Bourne quietly.
“Wallow in it! Positively intoxicated by the highs! And let’s look at it this way. If I lose and the story blows, how many practicing antisocials might be fired up by it? How many other different men are out there who’d be only too happy to take my place, as I took yours? This bloody world is crawling with Jason Bournes. Give them direction, give them an idea, and they’ll flock to the source and be off and running. That was the Frenchman’s essential genius, can’t you see?”
“I see garbage, that’s all I see.”
“Your eyesight’s not too shabby. That’s what the general will see—a reflection of himself—and he’ll have to live with the exposure, choke with it.”
“If he wouldn’t help you, you should have helped yourself, committed yourself. You’re bright enough to know that.”
“And cut off all the fun, all the highs? Unthinkable, sport! You go your way and find the most expendable outfit in the service, hoping the accident will happen that will put an end to it before they peg you for what you are. I found the outfit, but the accident never happened. Unfortunately, competition brings out the best in all of us, doesn’t it? We survive because somebody else doesn’t want us to.… And then, of course, there’s drink. It gives us confidence, even the courage to do the things we’re not sure we can do.”
“Not when you’re working.”
“Of course not, but the memories are there. The whisky bravado that tells you you can do it.”
“False,” said Jason Bourne.
“Not entirely,” countered the assassin. “You draw strength from what you can.”
“There are two people,” said Jason. “One you know, the other you don’t—or you don’t want to.”
“False!” repeated the commando. “He wouldn’t be there unless I wanted my kicks, don’t kid yourself. And don’t delude yourself, either, Mr. Original. You’d be better off putting a bullet in my head, because I’ll take you if I can. I’ll kill you if I can.”
“You’re asking me to destroy what you can’t live with.”
“Cut the crap, Bourne! I don’t know about you, but I get my kicks! I want them! I don’t want to live without them!”
“You just asked me again.”
“Stow it, you fucker!”
“And again.”
“Stop it!” The assassin lurched out of the chair. Jason took two steps forward, his right foot again lashing out, again pounding the killer’s ribs, sending him back into the chair. Allcott-Price screamed in pain.
“I won’t kill you, Major,” said Bourne quietly. “But I’ll make you wish you were dead.”
“Grant me a last wish,” coughed the killer, holding his chest with his bound hands. “Even I’ve done that for targets.… I can take the unexpected bullet, but I can’t take the Hong Kong garrison. They’d hang me late at night when no one’s around, just to make it official, according to the regs. They’d put a thick rope around my neck and make me stand on a platform. I can’t take that!”
Delta knew when to switch gears. “I told you before,” he said calmly. “That may not be in store for you. I’m not dealing with the British in Hong Kong.”
“You’re not what?”
“You assumed it, but I never said it.”
“You’re lying!”
“Then you’re less talented than I thought, which wasn’t much to begin with.”
“I know. I can’t think geometrically!”
“You certainly can’t.”
“Then you’re a premium man—what you Americans call a bounty hunter—but you’re working privately.”
“In a sense, yes. And I have an idea that the man who sent me after you may want to hire you, not kill you.”
“Jesus Christ—”
“And my price was heavy. Very heavy.”
“Then you are in the business.”
“Only this once. I couldn’t refuse the reward. Lie down on the bed.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I have to go to the loo.”
“Be my guest,” replied Jason, walking to the bathroom door and opening it. “It’s not one of my favorite sports, but I’ll be watching you.” The assassin relieved himself with Bourne’s gun trained on him. Finished, he walked out into the small, shabby room in the cheap hotel south of the Mongkok. “The bed,” said Bourne again, gesturing with his weapon. “Get prone and spread your legs.”
“That fairy behind the desk downstairs would love to hear this conversation.”
“You can phone him later on your own time. Down. Quickly!”
“You’re always in a hurry—”
“More than you’ll ever understand.” Jason lifted his knapsack from the floor and put it on the bed, pulling out the nylon cords, as the deranged killer crawled on top of the soiled spread. Ninety seconds later the commando’s ankles were lashed to the bed’s rear metal springs, his neck circled with the thin white line, the rope stretched and knotted to the springs in front. Finally, Bourne slipped off the pillowcase and tied it around the major’s head, covering his eyes and ears, leaving his mouth free to breathe. His wrists bound beneath him, the assassin was again immobilized. But now his head began to twitch in sudden jerks and his mouth stretched with each spasm. Extreme anxiety had overcome former Major Allcott-Price. Jason recognized the signs dispassionately.
The squalid hotel he had managed to find had no such conveniences as a telephone. The only communication with the outside world was a knock on the door, which meant either the police or a wary desk clerk informing the guest that if the room was to be occupied another hour, an additional day’s rent was required. Bourne crossed to the door, slipped silently out into the dingy corridor, and headed for the pay phone he had been told was at the far end of the hallway.
He had committed the telephone number to memory, waiting—praying, if it were possible—for the moment when he would dial it. He inserted a coin and did so now, his breath short, the blood racing to his head. “Snake Lady!” he said into the phone, drawing out the two words in harsh, flat emphasis. “Snake Lady, Snake—!”
“Qing, qing,” broke in an impersonal voice over the line, speaking rapidly in Chinese. “We are experiencing a temporary disruption of service for many telephones on this exchange. Service should be resumed shortly. This is a recording.… Qing, qing—”
Jason replaced the phone; a thousand fragmented thoughts, like broken mirrors, collided in his mind. He walked rapidly back down the dimly lit corridor, passing a whore in a doorway counting money. She smiled at him, raising her hands to her blouse; he shook his head and ran to the room. He waited fifteen minutes, standing quietly by the window, hearing the guttural sounds that emerged from his prisoner’s throat. He returned to the door and once more stepped outside noiselessly. He walked to the phone, again inserted money and dialed.
“Qing—” He slammed the telephone down, his hands trembling, the muscles of his jaw working furiously, as he thought about the prostrate “merchandise” he had brought back to exchange for his wife. He picked up the phone for a third time and, using his last coin, dialed O. “Operator,” he began in Chinese, “this is an emergency! It’s most urgent I reach the following number.” He gave it to her, his voice rising in barely controlled panic. “A recording explained that there was difficulty on the line, but this is an emergency—”
“One minute, please. I will attempt to be of assistance.” Silence followed, every second filled with a growing echo in his chest, reverberating like an accelerating kettledrum. His temples throbbed; his mouth was dry, his throat parched—burning, as a new fever spread through him.
“The line is temporarily in disuse, sir,” said a second female voice.
“The line? That line?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not ‘many telephones’ on the exchange?”
“You asked the operator about a specific number, sir. I would not know about other numbers. If you have them, I will gladly check for you.”
“The recording specifically said many telephones, yet you’re saying one line! Are you telling me you can’t confirm a … a multiple malfunction?”
“A what?”
“Whether a whole lot of phones aren’t working! You’ve got computers. They spell out trouble spots. I told the other operator this is an emergency!”
“If it is medical, I will gladly summon an ambulance. If you will give me your address—”
“I want to know whether a lot of phones are out or whether it’s just one! I have to know that!”
“It will take me some time to gather such information, sir. It’s past nine o’clock in the evening and the repair stations are on reduced crews—”
“But they can tell you if there’s an area problem, goddamn it!”
“Please, sir, I am not paid to be abused.”
“Sorry, I’m sorry!… Address? Yes, the address! What’s the address of the number I gave you?”
“It is unpublished, sir.”
“But you have it!”
“Actually, I do not, sir. The laws of confidentiality are most strict in Hong Kong. My screen shows only the word ‘unpublished.’ ”
“I repeat! This really is a matter of life and death!”
“Then let me reach a hospital.… Oh, sir, please wait. You were correct, sir. My screen now shows that the last three digits of the number you gave me are electronically crossing over into one another, so the repair station is attempting to correct the problem.”
“What’s the geographical location?”
“The prefix is ‘five,’ therefore it is on the island of Hong Kong.”
“Narrower! Whereabouts on the island?”
“Digits on telephone numbers have nothing to do with specific streets or locations. I’m afraid I cannot help you any further, sir. Unless you care to give me your address so that I might send an ambulance.”
“My address …?” said Jason bewildered, exhausted, on the edge of panic. “No,” he continued, “I don’t think I’ll do that.”
Edward Newington McAllister bent over the desk as the woman replaced the phone. She was visibly shaken, her Oriental face pale from the strain of the call. The undersecretary of State hung up a separate phone on the other side of the desk, a pencil in his right hand, an address on a notepad before him. “You were absolutely wonderful,” he said, patting the woman’s arm. “We have it. We’ve got him. You kept him on long enough—longer than he would have permitted in the old days—the trace is confirmed. At least the building, and that’s enough. A hotel.”
“He speaks very fine Chinese. The dialect is rather Northern, but he adjusts to Guangdong hua. He also did not trust me.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll put people around the hotel. Every entrance and exit. It’s on a street called Shek Lung.”
“Below the Mongkok, in the Yau Ma Ti, actually,” said the woman interpreter. “There’s probably only one entrance, through which the garbage is taken every morning, no doubt.”
“I have to reach Havilland at the hospital. He shouldn’t have gone there!”
“He appeared to be most anxious,” offered the interpreter.
“Last statements,” said McAllister, dialing. “Vital information from a dying man. It’s permitted.”
“I don’t understand any of you.” The woman got up from the desk as the undersecretary moved around and sat in the chair. “I can follow instructions, but I don’t understand you.”
“Good Lord, I forgot. You have to leave now. What I’m discussing is highly classified.… We’re extremely appreciative and I can assure you you have our gratitude and, I’m quite certain, a bonus, but I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
“Gladly, sir,” said the interpreter. “And you may forget the gratitude, but please include the bonus. I learned that much in Economics Eight at the University of Arizona.” The woman left.
“Emergency, police facilities!” McAllister fairly shouted into the phone. “The ambassador, please. It’s urgent! No, no names are required, thank you, and bring him to a telephone where we can talk privately.” The undersecretary massaged his left temple, digging deeper and deeper into his scalp until Havilland got on the line.
“Yes, Edward?”
“He called. It worked. We know where he is! A hotel in the Yau Ma Ti.”
“Surround it, but don’t make any moves! Conklin has got to understand. If he smells what he thinks is rotten bait, he’ll pull back. And if we don’t have the wife, we don’t have our assassin. For God’s sake, don’t blow this, Edward! Everything must be tight—and very, very delicate! Beyond-salvage could well be the next order of business.”
“Those aren’t words I’m used to, Mr. Ambassador.”
There was a pause on the line; when Havilland spoke his voice was cold. “Oh, yes, they are, Edward. You protest too much. Conklin was right about that. You could have said no at the beginning, at Sangre de Cristo in Colorado. You could have walked away but you didn’t, you couldn’t. In some ways you’re like me—without my accidental advantages, of course. We think and outthink; we take sustenance from our manipulations. We swell with pride with every progressive move in the human chess game—where every move can have terrible consequences for someone—because we believe in something. It all becomes a narcotic, and the sirens’ songs are really an appeal to our egos. We have our minor powers because of our major intellects. Admit it, Edward—I have. And if it makes you feel any better, I’ll say what I said before. Someone has to do it.”
“Nor do I care for out-of-context lectures,” said McAllister.
“You’ll receive no more from me. Just do as I tell you. Cover all the exits at that hotel, but inform every man that no overt moves are to be made. If Bourne goes anywhere, he’s to be discreetly followed, not touched under any circumstances. We must have the woman before contact is made.”
Morris Panov picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“Something’s happened.” Conklin spoke rapidly, quietly. “Havilland left the waiting room to take an emergency call. Is anything going on over there?”
“No, nothing. We’ve just been talking.”
“I’m worried. Havilland’s men could have found you.”
“Good Lord, how?”
“Checking every hotel in the colony for a white man with a limp, that’s how.”
“You paid the clerk not to say anything to anyone. You said it was a confidential business conference—perfectly normal.”
“They can pay, too, and say it’s a confidential government matter that brings generous rewards or equally generous harassment. Guess who takes precedence?”
“I think you’re overreacting,” protested the psychiatrist.
“I don’t care what you think, Doctor, just get out of there. Now. Forget Marie’s luggage—if she has any. Leave as quickly as you can.”
“Where should we go?”
“Where it’s crowded, but where I can find you.”
“A restaurant?”
“It’s been too many years and they change names every twenty minutes over here. Hotels are out; they’re too easily covered.”
“If you’re right, Alex, you’re taking too much time—”
“I’m thinking!… All right. Take a cab to the foot of Nathan Road at Salisbury—have you got that? Nathan and Salisbury. You’ll see the Peninsula Hotel, but don’t go inside. The strip heading north is called the Golden Mile. Walk up and down on the right side, the east side, but stay within the first four blocks. I’ll find you, as soon as I can.”
“All right,” said Panov. “Nathan and Salisbury, the first four blocks north on the right.… Alex, you’re quite certain you’re right, aren’t you?”
“On two counts,” answered Conklin. “For starters, Havilland didn’t ask me to go with him to find out what the ‘emergency’ was—that’s not our arrangement. And if the emergency isn’t you and Marie, it means Webb’s made contact. If that’s the case, I’m not trading away my only bargaining chip, which is Marie. Not without onsight guarantees. Not with Ambassador Raymond Havilland. Now, get out of there!”
Something was wrong! What was it? Bourne had returned to the filthy hotel room and stood at the foot of the bed watching his prisoner, whose twitch was more pronounced now, his stretched body spastically reacting to each nervous movement. What was it? Why did the conversation with the Hong Kong operator bother him so? She was courteous and helpful; she even tolerated his abuse. Then what was it?… Suddenly, words from a long-forgotten past came to him. Words spoken years ago to an unknown operator without a face, with only an irritable voice.
I asked you for the number of the Iranian consulate.
It is in the telephone book. Our switchboards are full and we have no time for such inquiries. Click. Line dead.
That was it! The operators in Hong Kong—with justification—were among the most peremptory in the world. They wasted no time, no matter how persistent the customer. The workload in this congested, frenetic financial megalopolis would not permit it. Yet the second operator had been the soul of tolerance.… I would not know about other numbers. If you have them, I will gladly check for you.… If you will give me your address.… Unless you care to give me your address.… The address! And without really considering the question, he had instinctively answered. No, I don’t think I’ll do that. From deep within him an alarm had gone off.
A trace! They had bounced him around, keeping him on the line long enough to put an electronic trace on his call! Pay phones were the most difficult to track down. The vicinity was determined first; next the location or premises, and finally the specific instrument, but it was only a matter of minutes or fractions of minutes between the first step and the last. Had he stayed on long enough? And if so, to what degree of progress? The vicinity? The hotel? The pay phone itself? Jason tried to reconstruct his conversation with the operator—the second operator—when the trace would have begun. Maddeningly, frantically, but with all the precision he could summon, he tried to recapture the rhythm of their words, their voices, realizing that when he had accelerated she had slowed down. It will take me some time.… Actually, I do not, sir. The laws of confidentiality are most strict in Hong Kong—a lecture! Oh, sir, please wait. You were correct … my screen now shows—a mollifying explanation, taking up time. Time! How could he have allowed it? How long …?
Ninety seconds—two minutes at the outside. Timing was an instinct for him, rhythms remembered. Say two minutes. Enough to determine a vicinity, conceivably to pinpoint a location, but, given the hundreds of thousands of miles of trunk lines, probably inadequate to pick up a specific phone. For some elusive reason images of Paris came to him, then the blurred outlines of telephone booths as he and Marie raced from one to another through the blinding Paris streets, making blind, untraceable calls, hoping to unravel the enigma that was Jason Bourne. Four minutes. It takes that long, but we have to get out of the area! They’ve got that by now!
The taipan’s men—if there was a huge, obese taipan, to begin with—might have traced the hotel, but it was unlikely they would have tracked the pay phone or the floor. And there was another time span to be considered, one that could work for him if he in turn worked quickly. If the trace had been made and the hotel unearthed, it would take the hunters some time to reach the southern Mongkok, presuming they were in Hong Kong, which the telephone prefix indicated. The key at the moment was speed. Quickly.
“The blindfold stays, Major, but you’re moving,” he said to the assassin as he swiftly undid the gag and the knots on the mattress springs, coiling the three nylon ropes and stuffing them into the commando’s jacket.
Bourne raised his voice. “Get up. We’re going for a walk.” Jason grabbed his knapsack, opened the door and checked the hallway. A drunk staggered into a room on the left and slammed the door. The right corridor was clear, all the way up to the pay phone and the fire exit beyond it. “Move,” ordered Bourne, shoving his prisoner.
The fire escape would have been rejected by underwriters at a glance. The metal was corroded and the railings bent under pressure. If one was escaping a fire, a smoke-filled staircase might have been preferable. Still, if it descended in the darkness without collapsing, that was all that mattered. Jason grabbed the commando’s lapel, leading him down the creaking metal steps until they reached the first landing. Beneath there was a broken ladder extended in its track halfway to the alley below. The drop to the pavement was no more than six or seven feet, easily negotiated going down and—more important—coming back up.
“Sleep well,” said Bourne, taking aim in the dim light and crashing his knuckles into the base of the commando’s skull. The assassin collapsed on the staircase as Bourne whipped out the cords and secured the killer to the steps and the railing, at the last yanking down the pillowcase, covering the impostor’s mouth and tying the cloth tighter. The nocturnal sounds of Hong Kong’s Yau Ma Ti and the nearby Mongkok would easily cover whatever cries Allcott-Price might manage—if he awoke before Jason awakened him, which was doubtful.
Bourne climbed down the ladder, dropping into the narrow alleyway only seconds before three young men appeared, running around the corner from the busy street. Out of breath, they huddled in the shadows of a doorway as Jason remained on his knees—he hoped out of sight. Beyond the alley’s entrance another group of youths raced by in pursuit, shouting angrily. The three young men lurched from the darkened doorway and ran out, heading in the opposite direction, away from their pursuers. Bourne got up and walked quickly to the mouth of the alley, looking back up at the fire escape. The assassin could not be seen.
He collided simultaneously with two running bodies. Bouncing off them and into the wall, he could only assume that the young men were part of the crowd chasing the previous three who had hidden in the doorway. One of these, however, held a knife menacingly in his hand. Jason did not need this confrontation, he could not permit it! Before the youth realized what had happened, Bourne lashed out and gripped the young man’s wrist, twisting it clockwise until the blade fell from the youngster’s hand while he screamed in pain.
“Get out of here!” shouted Jason in harsh Cantonese. “Your gang is no match for your elders and betters! If we see any of you around here, your mothers will get corpses for their labors. Get out!”
“Aiya!”
“We look for thieves! For eye-eyes from the north! They steal, they—”
“Out!”
The young men fled from the alleyway, disappearing into the semicrowded street in the Yau Ma Ti. Bourne shook his hand, the hand the assassin had tried to crush in the hotel doorframe. In his anxiety he had forgotten about the pain; it was the best way to tolerate it.
He looked up at the sound—sounds. Two dark sedans came racing down Shek Lung Street and stopped in front of the hotel. Both vehicles had official written all over them. Jason watched in anguish as men climbed out of each car, two from the first, three from the one behind it.
Oh, God, Marie! We’re going to lose! I’ve killed us—oh, Christ, I’ve killed us!
He fully expected the five men to rush into the hotel, question the desk clerk, take up positions and make their moves. They would learn that the occupants of Room 301 had not been seen leaving the premises; therefore presumably they were still upstairs. The room would be broken into in less than a minute, the fire escape discovered seconds later! Could he do it? Could he climb back up, cut loose the killer, get him down into the alley and escape? He had to! He took a last look before racing back to the ladder.
Then he stopped. Something was wrong—something unexpected, totally unexpected. The first man from the lead car had removed his suit coat—his official dress coat—and loosened his tie. He ran his hand through his hair, disheveling it, and walked—unsteadily?—toward the entrance of the run-down hotel. His four companions were spreading out away from the cars, looking up at the windows, two over to the right, two to the left, toward the alleyway—toward him. What was happening? These men were not acting officially. They were behaving like criminals, like mafiosi closing in on a kill they could not be associated with—a trap laid for others, not themselves. Good God, had Alex Conklin been wrong back at Dulles Airport in Washington?
Play the scenario. It’s deep down and it’s there. Play it out. You can do it, Delta!
No time. There was no time to think any longer. There were no precious instants to lose thinking about the existence or the nonexistence of a huge, obese taipan, too operatic to be real. The two men heading toward him had spotted the alleyway. They began running—toward the alley, toward the “merchandise,” toward the destruction and death of everything Jason held dear in this rotten world he would gladly leave but for Marie.
The seconds were ticked off in milliseconds of premeditated violence, at once accepted and at once reviled. David Webb was silenced as Jason Bourne again assumed complete command. Get away from me! This is all we’ve got left!
The first man fell, his rib cage shattered, his voice stilled by the force of a blow to his throat. The second man was accorded preferential treatment. It was vital that he be cognizant, even alert, for what followed. He dragged both men into the deepest shadows of the alley, ripping their clothes with his knife, binding their feet, their arms and their mouths with strips of their own clothing.
His arms pinned beneath Jason’s knees, the blade of the knife breaking the flesh around the socket of his left eye, Bourne gave his ultimatum to the second man. “My wife! Where is she? Tell me now! Or lose your eye, then the other one! I’ll carve you up, Zhongguo ren, believe me!” He ripped the gag from the man’s mouth.
“We are not your enemy, Zhangfu!” cried the Oriental in English, using the Cantonese word for husband. “We have been trying to find her! We hunt everywhere!”
Jason stared down at the man, the knife trembling in his hand, his temples throbbing, his personal galaxy about to explode, the heavens to rain down fire and pain beyond his imagination. “Marie!” he screamed in agony. “What have you done with her? I was given a guarantee! I bring out the merchandise and my wife is returned to me! I was to hear her voice on the phone but the phone doesn’t work! Instead, a trace is put on me and suddenly you’re here but my wife isn’t! Where is she?”
“If we knew, she would be here with us.”
“Liar!” cried Bourne, drawing out the word.
“I’m not lying to you, sir, nor should I be killed for not lying to you. She escaped from the hospital—”
“The hospital?”
“She was ill. The doctor insisted. I was there, outside her room, watching over her! She was weak, but she got away—”
“Oh, Christ! Sick? Weak? Alone in Hong Kong? My God, you’ve killed her.”
“No, sir! Our orders were to see to her comforts—”
“Your orders,” said Jason Bourne, his voice flat and cold. “But not your taipan’s. He followed other orders, orders given before in Zurich and Paris and on Seventy-first Street in New York. I’ve been there—we’ve been there. And now you’ve killed her. You used me, as you used me before, and when you thought it was over, you took her away from me. What’s the ‘death of one more daughter’? Silence is everything.” Jason suddenly gripped the man’s face with his left hand, the knife poised in his right. “Who’s the fat man? Tell me, or the blade goes in! Who’s the taipan?”
“He’s not a taipan! He is British-schooled and trained, an officer much respected in the territory. He works with your countrymen, the Americans. He’s with the Intelligence Service.”
“I’m sure he is.… From the beginning it was the same. Only this time it wasn’t the Jackal but me. I was moved around the chessboard until I had no choice but to hunt myself—an extension of myself, a man called Bourne. When he brings him in, kill him. Kill her. They know too much.”
“No!” cried the Oriental, perspiring, his eyes wide, staring at the blade pressing into his flesh. “We are told very little, but I have heard nothing like that!”
“What are you doing here, then?” asked Jason harshly.
“Surveillance, I swear it! That’s all!”
“Until the guns move in?” said Bourne icily. “So your three-piece suits can stay clean, no blood on your shirts, no traces back to those nameless, faceless people you work for.”
“You’re wrong! We are not like that, our superiors are not like that!”
“I told you, I’ve been there. You’re like that, believe me.… Now you’re going to tell me something. Whatever this is, it’s down and dirty and totally secure. Nobody runs an operation like that without a camouflaged base. Where is it?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Headquarters or Base Camp One, or a sterile house, or a coded Command Center—whatever the hell you want to call it. Where is it?”
“Please, I cannot—”
“You can. You will. If you don’t, you’re blind, your eyes cut out of your head. Now!”
“I have a wife, children!”
“So did I. Both counts. I’m losing patience.” Jason stopped, only slightly reducing the pressure of the blade. “Besides, if you’re so sure you’re right—that your superiors aren’t what I say they are, where’s the harm? Accommodations can be reached.”
“Yes!” yelled the frightened man. “Accommodations! They are good men. They won’t harm you!”
“They won’t have a chance,” whispered Bourne.
“What, sir?”
“Nothing. Where is it? Where’s this oh-so-quiet headquarters? Now!”
“Victoria Peak!” said the petrified Intelligence subordinate. “The twelfth house down on the right, with high walls …”
Bourne listened to the description of a sterile house, a quiet, patrolled estate among other estates in a wealthy district. He heard what he had to hear; there was nothing else he needed. He smashed the heavy bone handle of the knife into the man’s skull, replaced the gag, and rose to his feet. He looked up at the fire escape, at the barely discernible outline of the assassin’s body.
They wanted Jason Bourne and were willing to kill for him. They would get two Jason Bournes and die for their lies.