Ambassador Havilland confronted Conklin in the hospital corridor outside the police emergency room. The diplomat’s decision to speak with the CIA man in the busy white-walled hallway was predicated on the fact that it was busy—nurses and attendants, doctors and interns, roamed the halls conferring and answering phones that seemed to ring continuously. Under the circumstances Conklin would be unlikely to indulge in a loud, heated argument. Their discussion might be charged, but it would be quiet; the ambassador could make his case better under those conditions.
“Bourne’s made contact,” said Havilland.
“Let’s go outside,” said Conklin.
“We can’t,” replied the diplomat. “Lin may be about to die any minute or we may be able to see him any minute. We can’t miss that opportunity and the doctor knows we’re here.”
“Then let’s go back inside.”
“There are five other people in the emergency room. You don’t want them overhearing us any more than I do.”
“Christ, you cover your ass, don’t you?”
“I have to think of all of us. Not one or two or three of us, but all of us.”
“What do you want from me?”
“The woman, of course. You know that.”
“I know that—of course. What are you prepared to offer?”
“My God, Jason Bourne!”
“I want David Webb. I want Marie’s husband. I want to know that he’s alive and well in Hong Kong. I want to see him with my own eyes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Then you’d better tell me why.”
“Before he shows himself he expects to speak with his wife within thirty seconds of contact. That’s the agreement.”
“But you just said he made contact!”
“He did. We didn’t. We couldn’t afford to without having Marie Webb near the phone.”
“You’ve lost me!” said Conklin angrily.
“He had his own conditions, not unlike yours, which is certainly understandable. You were both—”
“What were they?” broke in the CIA man.
“If he made the call, it meant that he had the impostor—it was the bilateral agreement.”
“Jesus! ‘Bilateral’?”
“Both sides agreed to it.”
“I know what it means! You just send me into space, that’s all.”
“Keep your voice down.… His condition was that if we did not produce his wife within thirty seconds, whoever was on the phone would hear a gunshot, meaning that the assassin was dead, that Bourne had killed him.”
“Good old Delta.” Conklin’s lips formed a thin half-smile. “He never missed a trick. And I suspect he had a follow-up, right?”
“Yes,” said Havilland grimly. “A point of exchange is to be mutually agreed upon—”
“Not bilaterally?”
“Shut up!… He’ll be able to see his wife walking alone, under her own power. When he’s satisfied, he’ll come out with his prisoner—under a gun, we presume—and the exchange will be made. From the initial contact to the switch, everything is to take place in a matter of minutes, certainly no more than half an hour.”
“Double time with no one orchestrating any extraneous moves.” Conklin nodded. “But if you didn’t respond, how do you know he made contact?”
“Lin put a flag on the telephone number with a second relay to Victoria Peak. Bourne was told that the line was temporarily out of service, and when he tried to get a verification—which under the circumstances he had to do—he was relayed to the Peak. We kept him on the line long enough to trace the location of the pay phone he was using. We know where he is. Our people are on the way there now with orders to stay out of sight. If he smells or sees anything, he’ll kill our man.”
“A trace?” Alex studied the diplomat’s face, not kindly. “He let you keep him talking long enough for that?”
“He’s in a state of extreme anxiety, we counted on it.”
“Webb, maybe,” said Conklin. “Not Delta. Not when he thinks about it.”
“He’ll keep calling,” insisted Havilland. “He has no choice.”
“Maybe, maybe not. How long has it been since his last call?”
“Twelve minutes,” answered the ambassador, looking at his watch.
“And the first one?”
“About a half hour.”
“And every time he calls you know about it?”
“Yes. The information’s relayed to McAllister.”
“Phone him and see if Bourne’s tried again.”
“Why?”
“Because, as you put it, he’s in a state of extreme anxiety and will keep calling. He can’t help himself.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That you may have made a mistake.”
“Where? How?”
“I don’t know, but I do know Delta.”
“What could he do without reaching us?”
“Kill,” said Alex simply.
Havilland turned, looked down the busy hallway, and started walking toward the floor’s reception desk. He spoke briefly to a nurse; she nodded and he picked up a telephone. He talked for a moment and hung up. Frowning, he returned to Conklin. “It’s odd,” he remarked. “McAllister feels the way you do. Edward expected Bourne to call every five minutes, if he waited that long.”
“Oh?”
“He was led to believe that telephone service might be restored at any moment.” The ambassador shook his head, as if dismissing the improbable. “We’re all too tense. There could be a number of explanations starting with coins for a pay phone to unsettled bowels.”
The emergency-room door opened and the British doctor appeared. “Mr. Ambassador?”
“Lin?”
“A remarkable man. What he’s been through would kill a horse, but then they’re about the same size and a horse can’t manifest a will to live.”
“Can we see him?”
“There’d be no point, he’s still unconscious—stirring now and then but nowhere near coherent. Every minute he rests without a reversal is encouraging.”
“You understand how urgent it is that we talk to him, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mr. Havilland, I do. Perhaps more than you realize. You know that I was the one responsible for the woman’s escape—”
“I do know,” said the diplomat. “I was also told that if she could fool you she could probably fool the best internist at the Mayo Clinic.”
“That’s dubious, but I like to think I’m competent. Instead, I feel like an idiot. I’ll do everything in my power to help you and my good friend Major Lin. The judgment was medical and mine, the error mine, not his. If he makes it through the next hour or so, I believe he has a chance to live. If that happens, I’ll bring him to and you can question him as long as you keep your questions brief and simple. If I think a reversal is too severe and that he’s slipping away, I’ll also call you.”
“That’s fair, Doctor. Thank you.”
“I could do no less. It’s what Lin would want. I’ll go back to him now.”
The waiting began. Havilland and Alex Conklin reached their own bilateral agreement. When Bourne next tried to reach the number for Snake Lady, he was to be told that the line would be clear in twenty minutes. During that time Conklin would be driven to the sterile house on Victoria Peak, prepared to take the call. He would set up the exchange, telling David that Marie was safe and with Morris Panov. The two men returned to the police emergency room and sat in opposite chairs, each silent minute compounding the strain.
The minutes, however, stretched into quarter hours and these into over an hour. Three times the ambassador called the Peak to ask if there was any word from Jason Bourne. There was none. Twice the English doctor came out to report on Lin’s condition. It was unchanged, a fact that allowed for hope rather than diminishing it. Once the emergency-room telephone rang and both Havilland and Conklin snapped their heads toward it, their eyes riveted on the nurse who calmly answered. The call was not for the ambassador. The tension mounted between the two men as every now and then they would look at each other with the same message in their eyes. Something was wrong. Something had gone off the wire. A Chinese doctor came out and approached two people in the back of the room, a young woman and a priest; he spoke quietly. The woman screamed, then sobbed and fell into the enveloping arms of the priest. A new police widow had been created. She was led away to say a last good-bye to her husband.
Silence.
The telephone rang again, and again the diplomat and the CIA man stared at the counter.
“Mr. Ambassador,” said the nurse, “it’s for you. The gentleman says it’s most urgent.” Havilland got up and hurried to the desk, nodding his thanks, as he took the phone.
Whatever it was, it had happened. Conklin watched, never thinking he would see what he saw now. The consummate diplomat’s face became suddenly ashen; his thin, usually tight lips were now parted, his dark brows arched, his eyes wide and hollow. He turned and spoke to Alex, his voice barely audible; it was the whisper of fear.
“Bourne’s gone. The impostor’s gone. Two of the men were found bound and severely injured.” He returned to the phone, his eyes narrowing as he listened. “Oh, my God!” he cried, turning back to Conklin.
The CIA man was not there.
David Webb had disappeared, only Jason Bourne remained. Yet he was both more and less than the hunter of Carlos the Jackal. He was Delta the predator, the animal wanting only vengeance for a priceless part of his life that had been taken from him once again. And as an avenging predator, he went through the motions—the instinctive logistics—in a trancelike state, each decision precise, each movement deadly. His eye was on the kill, and his human brain had become animal.
He wandered the squalid streets of the Yau Ma Ti, his prisoner in tow, wrists still in traction, finding what he wanted to find, paying thousands of dollars for items worth a fraction of the amounts paid. Word spread up into the Mongkok about the strange man and his even stranger silent companion, who was bound and feared for his life. Other doors were opened to him, doors reserved for the runners of contraband—drugs, exported whores, jewels, gold, and materials of destruction, deception, death—and exaggerated warnings accompanied the word about this obsessed man carrying thousands on his person.
He is a maniac and he is white and he will kill quickly. It is said two throats were slit by those dishonest to him. It is heard that a Zhongguo ren was shot to death because he cheated on a delivery. He is mad. Give him what he wants. He pays hard cash. Who cares? It is not our problem. Let him come. Let him go. Just take his money.
By midnight Delta had the tools of his lethal trade. And success was uppermost in the Medusan’s mind. He had to succeed. The kill was everything.
Where was Echo? He needed Echo. Old Echo was his good luck charm!
Echo was dead, slain by a madman with a ceremonial sword in a peaceful forest of birds. Memories.
Echo.
Marie.
I’ll kill them for what they did to you!
He stopped a dilapidated taxi in the Mongkok and, showing money, asked the driver to step outside.
“Yes, what is, sir?” asked the man in broken English.
“What’s your car worth?” said Delta.
“I do not understand.”
“How much? Money? For your car!”
“You feng kuang!”
“Bu!” shouted Delta, telling the driver he was not unbalanced. “How much will you take for your car?” he continued in Chinese. “Tomorrow morning you can say it was stolen. The police will find it.”
“It’s my only source of livelihood and I have a large family! You are crazy!”
“How’s four thousand, American?”
“Aiya. Take it!”
“Kuai!” said Jason, telling the man to hurry. “Help me with this diseased one. He has the shaking sickness and must be tied down so he can’t hurt himself.”
The owner of the taxi, his eyes on the large bills in Bourne’s hand, helped Jason throw the assassin into the back seat, holding the killer down as the man from Medusa whipped the nylon ropes around the commando’s ankles, knees and elbows, once again gagging and blindfolding him with the strips of cloth ripped from the cheap hotel’s pillowcase. Unable to understand what was being said—shouted in Chinese—the prisoner could only passively resist. It was not merely the punishment inflicted on his wrists with each protesting movement, it was something he saw as he stared at his captor. There was a change in the original Jason Bourne; he had gone into another world, a far darker world. The kill was in the Medusan’s extended periods of silence. It was in his eyes.
As he drove through the congested tunnel from Kowloon to the island of Hong Kong, Delta primed himself for the assault, imagining the obstacles that would face him, conjuring up the countermeasures he would employ. All were overdrawn and excessive, thus preparing himself for the worst.
He had done the same in the jungles of Tam Quan. There was nothing he had not considered, and he had brought them out—all but one. A piece of garbage, a man who had no soul but the want for gold, a traitor who would sell the lives of his comrades for small advantage. It was where it had all begun. In the jungles of Tam Quan. Delta had executed the piece of garbage, blown his temple out with a bullet, as this garbage was on a radio relaying their position to the Cong. The garbage was a man from Medusa named Jason Bourne, left to rot in the jungles of Tam Quan. He was the beginning of the madness. Yet Delta had brought out all the others, including a brother he could not remember. He had brought them out through two hundred miles of enemy territory because he had studied the probabilities and imagined the improbabilities—the latter far more important to their escape, for they had happened, and his mind was prepared for the unexpected. It was the same now. There was nothing a sterile house in Victoria Peak could mount that he could not surmount. Death would be answered with death.
He saw the high walls of the estate and drove casually past them—slowly, as a guest or a tourist might, unsure of his way down the stately road. He spotted the glass of the concealed searchlights, noted the barbed wire coiled above the wall. He zeroed in on the two guards in back of the enormous gate. They were in shadows, but the cloth of their marine field jackets reflected what light there was—a mistake, the cloth should have been dulled or replaced by less military apparel. The high wall ended in front; it was the corner; the stone stretched to the right as far as the eye could see. The sterile house was obvious to the trained eye. To the innocent it was clearly the residence of an important diplomat, an ambassador, perhaps, who required protection because of the dangerous times. Terrorism was everywhere; hostages were prized, deterrents the order of the day. Cocktails were served at sundown amid the quiet laughter of the elite who moved governments, but outside the guns were ready, cocked with the darkness, ready to fire. Delta understood. It was why he carried his bulging knapsack.
He drove the battered car off the side of the road. There was no need to conceal it; he would not be coming back. He did not care to come back. Marie was gone and it was over. Whatever lives he had led were finished. David Webb. Delta. Jason Bourne. They were the past. He wanted only peace. The pain had exceeded the limits of his endurance. Peace. But first he must kill. His enemies, Marie’s enemies, all the enemies of the men and women everywhere who were driven by the nameless, faceless manipulators would be taught a lesson. A minor lesson, of course, for sanitized explanations would come from the experts, made plausible by complicated words and distorted half-truths. Lies. Stave off doubts, eliminate the questions, be as outraged as the people themselves and march to the drums of consensus. The objective is everything, the insignificant players nothing but necessary digits in the deadly equations. Use them, drain them, kill them if you must, just get the jobs done because we say so. We see things others cannot see. Do not question us. You have no access to our knowledge.
Jason climbed out of the car, opened the rear door, and with his knife sliced the ropes away from the assassin’s ankles and knees. He then removed the blindfold, keeping the gag in place. He grabbed his prisoner by the shoulder and—
The blow was paralyzing! The killer spun in place, crashing his right knee up into Bourne’s left kidney, swinging his clasped bound hands up into Jason’s throat as Delta buckled over. A second knee caught Bourne’s rib cage; he fell to the ground as the commando raced into the road. No. It can’t happen! I need his gun, his firepower. It’s part of the strategy!
Delta rose to his feet, his chest and side bursting with pain, and plunged after the running figure in the road. In seconds the killer would be enveloped in darkness! The man from Medusa ran faster, the pain forgotten, concentrating only on the assassin in the part of his mind that still functioned. Faster, faster! Suddenly headlights shot up from the bottom of the hill, catching the assassin in their beams. The commando lurched to the side of the road to avoid the light. Bourne stayed on the right side of the pavement until the last instant, knowing he was gaining precious yards as the car raced past. His arms useless, the killer stumbled on the soft shoulder of the road; he crawled quickly, awkwardly back to the asphalt, and, getting to his feet, began to run again. It was too late. Delta hurled his shoulder into the base of his prisoner’s spine; both men went down. The commando’s guttural roars were the sounds of an animal in fury. Jason turned the assassin over and jammed his knee brutally into his prisoner’s stomach.
“You listen to me, scum!” he said breathlessly, the sweat rolling down his face. “Whether you die or not makes no difference to me. A few minutes from now you won’t concern me any longer, but until then you’re part of the plan, my plan! And whether or not you die then will be up to you, not me. I’m giving you a chance, which is more than you ever did for a target. Now, get up! Do everything I tell you or your one chance will be blown away with your head—which is exactly what I promised them.”
They stopped back at the car. Delta picked up his knapsack and, removing a gun he had taken in Beijing, showed it to the commando. “You begged me for a weapon at the airport in Jinan, remember?” The assassin nodded, his eyes wide, his mouth stretched under the tension of the cloth gag. “It’s yours,” continued Jason Bourne, his voice flat, without emotion. “Once we’re over that wall up there—you in front of me—I’ll hand it to you.” The killer frowned, his eyes narrowing. “I forgot,” said Delta. “You couldn’t see it. There’s a sterile house about five hundred feet up the road. We’re going in. I’m staying, taking out everyone I can. You? You’ve got nine shells and I’ll give you a bonus. One ‘bubble.’ ” The Medusan lifted a packet of plastique from the Mongkok out of the knapsack and showed it to his prisoner. “As I read it, you’d never get back over the wall; they’d cut you down. So your only way out is through the gate; it’ll be somewhere diagonally to the right. To get there you’ll have to kill your way through. The timer on the plastic can be set as low as ten seconds. Handle it any way you like, I don’t care. Capisce?”
The assassin raised his bound hands, then gestured at the gag. The sounds from his throat indicated that Jason should free his arms and remove the cloth.
“At the wall,” said Delta. “When I’m ready, I’ll cut the ropes. But when I do, if you try to take the gag off before I tell you, there goes your chance.” The killer stared at him and nodded once.
Jason Bourne and the lethal pretender walked up the road on Victoria Peak toward the sterile house.
Conklin limped down the hospital steps as rapidly as he could, holding on to the center rail, looking frantically for a taxi in the drive below. There was none; instead a uniformed nurse stood alone reading the South China Times in the glow of the outdoor lights. Every now and then she glanced up toward the parking-lot entrance.
“Excuse me, miss,” said Alex, out of breath. “Do you speak English?”
“A little,” replied the woman, obviously noticing his limp and his agitated voice. “You are with difficulty?”
“Much difficulty. I have to find a taxi. I have to reach someone right away and I can’t do it by phone.”
“They will call one for you at the desk. They call for me every night when I leave.”
“You’re waiting …?”
“Here it comes,” said the woman as approaching headlights shone through the parking-lot entrance.
“Miss!” cried Conklin. “This is urgent. A man is dying and another may die if I don’t reach him! Please. May I—”
“Bie zhaoji,” exclaimed the nurse, telling him to calm down. “You have urgency, I have none. Take my taxi. I will ask for another.”
“Thank you,” said Alex as the cab pulled up to the curb. “Thank you!” he added, opening the door and climbing inside. The woman nodded pleasantly and shrugged as she turned and started back up the steps. The glass doors above crashed open and Conklin watched through the rear window as the nurse nearly collided into two of Lin’s men. One stopped her and spoke; the other reached the curb and squinted, peering out of the light into the receding darkness beyond. “Hurry!” said Alex to the driver as they passed through the gate. “Kuai diar, if that’s right.”
“It will do,” answered the driver wearily in fluent English. “ ‘Hurry’ is better, however.”
The base of Nathan Road was the galactic entrance to the luminescent world of the Golden Mile. The blazing colored lights, the dancing, flickering, shimmering lights, were the walls of this congested, urban valley of humanity where seekers sought and sellers shrieked for attention. It was the bazaar of bazaars, a dozen tongues and dialects vying for the ears and the eyes of the ever-shifting crowds. It was here, in this gauntlet of freewheeling commercial chaos, that Alex Conklin got out of the cab. Walking painfully, his limp pronounced, the veins of his footless leg swelling, he hurried up the east side of the street, his eyes roving like those of an angry wildcat seeking its young in the territory of hyenas.
He reached the end of the fourth block, the last block. Where were they? Where was the slender, compact Panov and the tall, striking, auburn-haired Marie? His instructions had been clear, absolute. The first four blocks north on the right side, the east side. Mo Panov had recited them back to him.… Oh, Christ! He had been looking for two people, one whose physical appearance could belong to hundreds of men in those four crowded blocks. But his eyes had been searching for the tall, dark-redheaded woman—which she was no longer! Her hair had been dyed gray with streaks of white! Alex started back down toward Salisbury Road, his eyes now attuned to what he should look for, not what his painful memories told him he would find.
There they were! On the outskirts of a crowd surrounding a street vendor whose cart was piled high with silks of all descriptions and labels—the silks relatively genuine, the labels as ersatz as the distorted signatures.
“Come on with me!” said Conklin, his hands on both their elbows.
“Alex!” cried Marie.
“Are you all right?” asked Panov.
“No,” said the CIA man. “None of us is.”
“It’s David, isn’t it?” Marie grabbed Conklin’s arm, gripping it.
“Not now. Hurry up. We have to get out of here.”
“They’re here?” Marie gasped, her gray-haired head turning right and left, fear in her eyes.
“Who?”
“I don’t know!” she shouted over the din of the crowds.
“No, they’re not here,” said Conklin. “Come on. I’ve got a taxi holding down by the Pen.”
“What pen?” asked Panov.
“I told you. The Peninsula Hotel.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot.” All three started walking down Nathan Road, Alex—as was obvious to Marie and Morris Panov—with difficulty. “We can slow down, can’t we?” asked the psychiatrist.
“No, we can’t!”
“You’re in pain,” said Marie.
“Knock it off! Both of you. I don’t need your horse-shit.”
“Then tell us what’s happened!” yelled Marie as they crossed a street filled with carts they had to dodge, and buyers and sellers and tourist-voyeurs who made for the exotic congestion of the Golden Mile.
“There’s the taxi,” said Conklin as they approached Salisbury Road. “Hurry up. The driver knows where to go.”
Inside the cab, Panov between Marie and Alex, she once again reached out, clutching Conklin’s arm. “It is David, isn’t it?”
“Yes. He’s back. He’s here in Hong Kong.”
“Thank God!”
“What does that mean?” asked the psychiatrist sharply.
“Something’s gone wrong. The scenario’s off the wire.”
“For Christ’s sake!” exploded Panov. “Will you speak English!”
“He means,” said Marie, staring at the CIA man, “that David either did something he wasn’t supposed to do, or didn’t do something he was expected to do.”
“That’s about it.” Conklin’s eyes drifted toward the lights of Victoria Harbor and the island of Hong Kong beyond. “I used to be able to read Delta’s moves, usually before he made them. Then later, when he was Bourne, I was able to track him when others couldn’t, because I understood his options and knew which ones he would take. That is, until things happened to him, and no one could predict anything because he’d lost touch with the Delta inside him. But Delta’s back now, and as happened so often so long ago, his enemies have underestimated him. I hope I’m wrong—Jesus, I hope I’m wrong!”
His gun against the back of the assassin’s neck, Delta moved silently through the underbrush in front of the high wall of the sterile house. The killer balked; they were within ten feet of the darkened entrance. Delta jammed the weapon into the commando’s flesh and whispered, “There aren’t any trip lights in the wall or on the ground. They’d be set off by tree rats every thirty seconds. Keep going! I’ll tell you when to stop.”
The order came four feet from the gate. Delta grabbed his prisoner by the collar and swung him around, the barrel of the gun still touching the assassin’s neck. The man from Medusa then reached into his pocket, pulled out a globule of plastique and stretched his arm out as far as he could toward the gate. He pressed the adhesive side of the packet against the wall; he had pre-set the small digital timer in the soft center of the explosive for seven minutes, the number chosen both for luck and to give him time to get the killer and himself in place several hundred feet away. “Move!” he whispered.
They rounded the corner of the wall and proceeded along the side to the midpoint, from where the end of the stone was visible in the moonlight. “Wait here,” said Delta, reaching into his knapsack, which was strapped across his chest like a bandolier, the bag on his right side. He pulled out a square black box, five inches wide, three high, and two deep. At its side was a coiled forty-foot line of thin, black plastic tubing. It was a battery-amplified speaker; he placed it on top of the wall and snapped a switch in the back; a red light glowed. He uncoiled the thin tubing as he shoved the killer forward. “Another twenty or thirty feet,” he said. They reached the spot acceptable to the Medusan. The branches of a cascading willow tree were spread out above the wall, arcing downward. Concealment. “Here!” he whispered harshly, and stopped the commando by gripping his shoulder. He removed the wire cutters from the knapsack and pushed the assassin against the wall; they faced each other. “I’m cutting you loose now, but not free. Do you understand that?” The commando nodded, and Delta snipped the ropes between his prisoner’s wrists and elbows while leveling his gun at the assassin’s head. He stepped back and bent his right leg forward in front of the killer as he handed him the wire cutters. “Stand on my leg and cut the coils. You can reach them if you jump a bit and slide your hand under for a grip. Don’t try anything. You haven’t got a gun yet, but I have, and as I’m sure you’ve gathered, I don’t care anymore.”
The prisoner did as he was told. The leap from Delta’s leg was minimal; the assassin’s left arm expertly slithered between the coils, his hand gripping the opposite side of the top of the wall. He severed the coiled wire noiselessly, holding the cutters against the metal on one side to reduce the sound of snapping tension. The open space above was now five feet wide. “Climb up there,” said Delta.
The killer did so, and as his left leg swung over the wall, Delta leaped up to grab the assassin’s trousers and pulled himself up against the stone, swinging his own left leg over the top. He straddled the wall simultaneously with the commando.
“Nicely done, Major Allcott-Price,” he said, a small circular microphone in his hand, his weapon again aimed at the assassin’s head. “Not much longer now. If I were you, I’d study the grounds.”
Under Conklin’s urgent pleas to the driver, the taxi sped up the road in Victoria Peak. They passed a broken-down car off the side of the road; it seemed out of place in the elegant surroundings, and Alex swallowed as he saw it, wondering in dread if it was really disabled. “There’s the house!” cried the CIA man. “For God’s sake, hurry! Go up to the—”
He did not—could not—finish. Up ahead a shattering explosion filled the road and the night. Fire and stone flew in all directions, as first a large part of the wall collapsed and then the huge iron gates fell forward in eerie slow motion beyond the flames.
“Oh, my God, I was right,” said Alexander Conklin softly to himself. “Delta’s come back. He wants to die. He will die.”