They were in the sterile house, in the white-walled communications center—in an antiseptic cell belonging to some futuristic laboratory complex. White-faced computers rose above the white counters on the left, dozens of thin, dark rectangular mouths sporadically indented, their teeth digital readouts forming luminescent green numbers that constantly changed with inviolate frequency alterations and less sophisticated, less secure means of sending and receiving information. On the right was a large white conference table above the white-tiled floor, the only deviation from color conformity and asepsis being several black ashtrays. The players were in place around the table. The technicians had been dismissed, all systems put on hold, only the ominous Red-Alert, a three-by ten-inch panel in the central computer remained active; an operator was outside the closed door should the alarming red lights appear. Beyond this sacrosanct, isolated room the Hong Kong fire fighters were hosing down the last of the smoldering embers as the Hong Kong police were calming the panicked residents from the nearby estates on Victoria Peak—many of whom were convinced that Armageddon had arrived in the form of a Mainland onslaught—telling everyone that the terrible events were the work of a deranged criminal killed by government emergency units. The skeptical Peakers were not satisfied. The times were not on their side; their world was not as it should be and they wanted proof. So the corpse of the dead assassin was paraded on a stretcher past the curious onlookers, the punctured, blood-drenched body partially uncovered for all to see. The stately residents returned to their stately homes, having by this time contemplated all manner of insurance claims.
The players sat in white plastic chairs, living, breathing robots waiting for a signal to commence, none really possessing the courage or the energy to open the proceedings. Exhaustion, mingled with the fear of violent death, marked their faces—marked all but one face. His possessed the deep lines and dark shadows of extreme fatigue, but there was no hollow fear in his eyes, only passive, bewildered acceptance of things still beyond his understanding. Minutes ago death had held no fear for him; it was preferable to living. Now, in his confusion, with his wife gripping his hand, he could feel the swelling of distant anger, distant in the sense that it was far back in the recesses of his mind, relentlessly pushing forward like the faraway thunder over a lake in an approaching summer storm.
“Who did this to us?” said David Webb, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I did,” answered Havilland, at the end of the rectangular white table. The ambassador leaned slowly forward, returning Webb’s deathlike stare. “If I were in a court of law seeking mercy for an ignominious act, I would have to plead extenuating circumstances.”
“Which were?” asked David in a monotone.
“First, there is the crisis,” said the diplomat. “Second, there was yourself.”
“Explain that,” interrupted Alex Conklin at the other end of the table, facing Havilland. Webb and Marie were on his left in front of the white wall, Morris Panov and Edward McAllister opposite them. “And don’t leave anything out,” added the rogue Intelligence officer.
“I don’t intend to,” said the ambassador, his eyes remaining on David. “The crisis is real, the catastrophe imminent. A cabal has been formed deep in Peking by a group of zealots led by a man so deeply entrenched in the hierarchy of his government, so revered as a philosopher-prince that he cannot be exposed. No one would believe it. Anyone who attempted to expose him would become a pariah. Worse, any attempt at exposure would risk a backlash so severe that Peking would cry insult and outrage, and revert to suspicion and intransigence. But if the conspiracy is not aborted, it will destroy the Hong Kong Accords and blow the colony apart. The result will be the immediate occupation by the People’s Republic. I don’t have to tell you what that would mean—economic chaos, violence, bloodshed and undoubtedly war in the Far East. How long could such hostilities be contained before other nations are forced to choose sides? The risk is unthinkable.”
Silence. Eyes locked with eyes.
“Fanatics from the Kuomintang,” said David, his voice flat and cold. “China against China. It’s been the war cry of maniacs for the past forty years.”
“But only a cry, Mr. Webb. Words, talk, but no movement, no strikes, no ultimate strategy.” Havilland cupped his hands on the table, breathing deeply. “There is now. The strategy’s in place, a strategy so oblique and devious, so long in the making, they believe it can’t fail. But of course it will, and when it does, the world will be faced with a crisis of intolerable proportions. It could well lead to the final crisis, the one we can’t survive. Certainly the Far East won’t.”
“You’re not telling me anything I haven’t seen for myself. They’ve gone down deep in high places, and they’re probably spreading, but they’re still fanatics, a lunatic fringe. And if the maniac I saw who was running the show is anything like the others, they’d all be hanged in Tian An Men Square. It’d be televised and approved by every group opposed to capital punishment. He was—is—a messianic sadist, a butcher. Butchers aren’t statesmen. They’re not taken seriously.”
“Herr Hitler was in 1933,” observed Havilland. “The Ayatollah Khomeini only a few years ago. But then you obviously don’t know who their true leader is. He’d never show himself under any circumstances where you might even remotely see him. However, I can assure you he’s a statesman and taken very seriously. However, again, his objective is not Peking. It’s Hong Kong.”
“I saw what I saw and heard what I heard, and it’ll all be with me for a long time.… You don’t need me, you never did! Isolate them, spread the word in the Central Committee, call in Taiwan to disown them—they will! Times change. They don’t want that war any more than Peking does.”
The ambassador studied the Medusan, obviously evaluating David’s information, realizing that Webb had seen enough in Peking to draw conclusions of his own, but not enough to understand the essence of the Hong Kong conspiracy. “It’s too late,” said the diplomat. “The forces have been set in motion. Treachery at the highest levels of China’s government, treachery by the hands of the despised Nationalists, assumed to be in collusion with Western financial interests. Even the devoted followers of Deng Xiaoping could not accept that blow to Peking’s pride, that loss of international face—the role of the duped cuckold. Neither would we if it was learned that General Motors, IBM, and the New York Stock Exchange were being run by American traitors, trained in the Soviet, diverting billions to projects not in our nation’s interests.”
“The analogy is accurate,” broke in McAllister, his fingers at his right temple. “Cumulatively, that’s what Hong Kong will be to the People’s Republic—that and a hundred thousand times more. But there’s another element, and it’s as alarming as anything else we’ve learned. I should like to bring it up now—in my position as an analyst, as someone who’s supposed to calculate the reactions of adversaries and potential adversaries—”
“Make it short,” interrupted Webb. “You talk too much and you keep rubbing your head too much and I don’t like your eyes. They belong on a dead fish. You talked too much in Maine. You’re a liar.”
“Yes. Yes, I understand what you’re saying and why you’re saying it. But I’m a decent man, Mr. Webb. I believe in decency.”
“I don’t. Not any longer. Go on. This is all very enlightening, and I don’t understand a goddamned thing because nobody’s said a goddamned thing that makes sense. What’s your contribution, liar?”
“The organized crime factor.” McAllister swallowed at David’s repeated insult, but still delivered the statement as if he expected everyone to understand. When faced with blank looks, he added. “The triads!”
“Mafia-structured groups, Oriental style,” said Marie, her eyes on the undersecretary of State. “Criminal brotherhoods.”
McAllister nodded. “Narcotics, illegal immigration, gambling, prostitution, loan-sharking—all the usual pursuits.”
“And some not so usual,” added Marie. “They’re deep into their own form of economics. They own banks—indirectly, of course—throughout California, Oregon, the State of Washington, and up into my country, in British Columbia. They launder money in the millions every day by way of international transfers.”
“Which only serves to compound the crisis,” said McAllister emphatically.
“Why?” asked David. “What’s your point?”
“Crime, Mr. Webb. The leaders of the People’s Republic are obsessed with crime. Reports indicate that over a hundred thousand executions have taken place during the last three years with little distinction made between misdemeanors and felonies. It’s consistent with the regime—the origins of the regime. All revolutions believe they are conceived in purity; the purity of the cause is everything. Peking will make ideological adjustments to benefit from the West’s marketplace, but there’ll be no accommodation for even the hint of organized crime.”
“You make them sound like a collection of paranoids,” interjected Panov.
“They are. They can’t afford to be anything else.”
“Ideologically?” asked the psychiatrist skeptically.
“Sheer numbers, Doctor. The purity of the revolution is the cover, but it’s the numbers that frighten them. A huge, immensely populated country with vast resources—my God, if organized crime moved in, and with a billion people inside its borders, don’t think for a minute the overlords aren’t champing at the bit—it could become a nation of triads. Villages, towns, whole cities could be divided into ‘family’ terrains, all profiting from the influx of Western capital and technology. There’d be an explosion of illegal exports flooding the contraband markets across the world. Narcotics from uncountable hills and fields that could not possibly be patrolled, weapons from subsidiary factories set up through graft, textiles from hundreds of underground plants using stolen machinery and peasant labor crippling those industries in the West. Crime.”
“That’s a ‘great leap forward’ no one over here’s been able to accomplish in the last forty years,” said Conklin.
“Who would dare try?” asked McAllister. “If a person can be executed for stealing fifty yuan, who’s going to go for a hundred thousand? It takes protection, organization, people in high places. This is what Peking fears, why it’s paranoid. The leaders are terrified of corrupters in high places. The political infrastructure could be eroded. The leaders would lose control, and that they will not risk. Again, their fears are paranoid, but for them they’re terribly real. Any hint that powerful criminal factions are in league with internal conspirators, all infiltrating their economy, would be enough for them to disown the Accords and send their troops down into Hong Kong.”
“Your conclusion’s obvious,” said Marie. “But where’s the logic? How could it happen?”
“It’s happening, Mrs. Webb,” answered Ambassador Havilland. “It’s why we needed Jason Bourne.”
“Somebody had better start at the beginning,” said David.
The diplomat did. “It began over thirty years ago when a brilliant young man was sent from Taiwan back to the land of his father’s birth and given a new name, a new family. It was a long-range plan; its roots were in zealotry and revenge …”
Webb listened as the incredible story of Sheng Chou Yang unfolded, each block in place, each fact convincingly the truth, for there was no reason any longer for lies. Twenty-seven minutes later, when he had finished, Havilland picked up a black-bordered file folder. He lifted the cover, revealing a clasped sheaf of some seventy-odd pages, closed it, and reached over, placing it in front of David. “This is everything we know, everything we’ve learned—the detailed specifics of everything I’ve told you. It can’t leave this house except as ashes, but you’re welcome to read it. If you have any doubts or questions, I swear to you I’ll move every source in the United States government—from the Oval Office to the National Security Council—to satisfy you. I could do no less.” The diplomat paused, his eyes fixed on Webb’s. “Perhaps we have no right to ask it, but we need your help. We need all the information you can give us.”
“So you can send someone in to take out this Sheng Chou Yang.”
“Essentially, yes. But it’s far more complex than that. Our hand must be invisible. It can’t be seen or even remotely suspected. Sheng’s covered himself brilliantly. Peking looks upon him as a visionary, a great patriot who works slavishly for Mother China—you might say, a saint. His security is absolute. The people around him, his aides, his guards, they’re his protective shock troops, their allegiance is solely to him.”
“Which is why you wanted the impostor,” interrupted Marie. “He was your link to Sheng.”
“We knew he had accepted contracts from him. Sheng had to—has to—eliminate his opposition, both those who oppose him ideologically and those he intends to exclude from his operations.”
“In this latter group,” McAllister broke in, “are the leaders of rival triads that Sheng doesn’t trust, that the fanatics of the Kuomintang don’t trust. He knows that if they’re around to see that they’re being squeezed out, a destabilizing gangland war would erupt, which Sheng couldn’t tolerate any more than the British can with Peking up the street. Within the past two months seven triad overlords have been killed, their organizations crippled.”
“The new Jason Bourne was Sheng’s perfect solution,” continued the ambassador. “The hired assassin with no political or national ties, for, above all, the killings could never be traced back to China.”
“But he went to Peking,” objected Webb. “It’s where I tracked him. Even if it started out as a trap for me, which it was—”
“A trap for you?” exclaimed Havilland. “They knew about you?”
“I came face-to-face with my successor two nights ago at the airport. We each knew who the other was—it was impossible not to know. He wasn’t going to keep it a secret and take the fall for a failed contract.”
“It was you,” interrupted McAllister. “I knew it!”
“So did Sheng and his people. I was the new gun in town and had to be stopped, killed on a priority-one basis. They couldn’t risk what I’d pieced together. The trap was conceived that night, set that night.”
“Jesus!” cried Conklin. “I read about Kai-tak in Washington. The papers said it was assumed to be right-wing lunatics. Keep the Commies out of capitalism. Instead, it was you?”
“Both governments had to come up with something for the world press,” added the undersecretary. “Just as we have to say something about tonight—”
“My point is,” said David, ignoring McAllister. “This Sheng called for the commando, used him to mount a trap for me, and by doing so made him part of the inner circle. That’s no way for a concealed client to keep his distance from a hired killer.”
“It is if he didn’t expect him to walk out of that circle alive,” replied Havilland, glancing at the undersecretary of State. “It’s Edward’s theory, and one to which I subscribe, that when the final contract was carried out, or when it was deemed that he knew too much and was therefore a liability, the impostor was to be killed collecting a payment—believing, of course, that he was being given another assignment. Everything untraceable, the slate clean. The events at Kai-tak no doubt sealed his death warrant.”
“He wasn’t smart enough to see it,” said Jason Bourne. “He couldn’t think geometrically.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked the ambassador.
“Nothing,” answered Webb, again staring at the diplomat. “So everything you told me was part truth, part lie. Hong Kong could blow apart, but not for the reasons you gave me.”
“The truth was our credibility; you had to accept that, accept our deep, frightening concerns. The lies were to recruit you.” Havilland leaned back in his chair. “And I can’t be any more honest than that.”
“Bastards,” said Webb, his voice low, ice-like.
“I’ll grant you that,” agreed Havilland. “But as I mentioned before, there were extenuating circumstances, specifically two. The crisis and yourself.”
“And?” said Marie.
“Let me ask you, Mr. Webb … Mrs. Webb. If we had come to you and stated our case, would you have joined forces with us? Would you willingly have become Jason Bourne again?”
Silence. All eyes were on David as his own strayed blankly over the surface of the table, then rested on the file folder. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t trust you.”
“We knew that,” agreed Havilland, again nodding his head. “But from our point of view we had to recruit you. You were able to do what no one else could do, and insofar as you did it, I submit that that judgment was correct. The cost was terrible, no one underestimates it, but we felt—I felt—that there was no other choice. Time and the consequences were against us—are against us.”
“As much as before,” said Webb. “The commando’s dead.”
“The commando?” McAllister leaned forward.
“Your assassin. The impostor. What you did to us was all for nothing.”
“Not necessarily,” objected Havilland. “It will depend on what you can tell us. News of a death up here will be in tomorrow’s headlines, we can’t stop it, but Sheng can’t know whose death. No photographs were taken, no press was here at the time, and those who’ve arrived since have been cordoned off several hundred yards away by the police. We can control the information by simply providing it.”
“What about the body?” asked Panov. “There are medical procedures—”
“Overruled by MI-Six,” said the ambassador. “This is still British territory, and communications between London, Washington, and Government House were swift. The impostor’s face was too shattered for anyone who saw it to give a description, and his remains are in custody, beyond scrutiny. It was Edward’s thinking, and he was damn quick about it.”
“There’s still David and Marie,” persisted the psychiatrist. “Too many people saw them, heard them.”
“Only several squads of marine guards were close enough to see and hear clearly,” said McAllister. “The entire contingent is being flown back to Hawaii in an hour, including two dead and seven wounded. They’ve left the premises and are sequestered at the airport. There was a great deal of confusion and panic. The police and the firemen were occupied elsewhere; none were in the gardens. We can say anything we like.”
“That seems to be a habit with you,” commented Webb.
“You heard the ambassador,” said the undersecretary, avoiding David’s gaze. “We didn’t feel we had a choice.”
“Be fair to yourself, Edward.” Again Havilland looked at Webb while addressing the undersecretary. “I didn’t feel we had a choice. You strenuously objected.”
“I was wrong,” said McAllister firmly as the diplomat snapped his eyes over at him. “But that’s irrelevant,” continued the undersecretary quickly. “We’ve got to decide what we’re going to say. The consulate’s been swamped by calls from the press—”
“The consulate?” broke in Conklin. “Some sterile house!”
“There wasn’t time for a proper leasing cover,” said the ambassador. “It was kept as quiet as possible and we prepared a plausible story. So far as we know, there were no questions, but the police report had to list the owner and the lessee. How’s Garden Road handling it, Edward?”
“Simply that the situation hasn’t been clarified. They’re waiting for us, but they can’t stall much longer. It’s better that we prepare something than leave the circumstances to speculation.”
“Infinitely,” agreed Havilland. “I suspect that means you have something in mind.”
“It’s stop-gap, but it could serve, if I heard Mr. Webb correctly.”
“About what?”
“You’ve used the word ‘commando’ several times, I assume not as a figure of speech. The assassin was a commando?”
“Former. An officer and a mental case. Homicidal, to be accurate.”
“Did you get an identity, learn his name?”
David looked hard at the analyst, recalling Allcott-Price’s words, spoken in a warped sense of sick triumph.… If I lose and the story blows, how many practicing antisocials will 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, an idea—and they’ll be off and running.… “I never found out who he was,” said Webb simply.
“But nevertheless he was a commando.”
“That’s right.”
“Not a Ranger or a Green Beret or Special Forces—”
“No.”
“I assume therefore that you mean he was British.”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll put out a story that implicitly denies those specifics. Not an Englishman, no military record—go in the opposite direction.”
“A white male American,” said Conklin quietly, with even a measure of respect, as he looked at the undersecretary of State. “Give him a name and a history from a dead file. Preferably fourth-rate garbage, a psychopath with a hang-up so heavy he goes after someone up here.”
“Something like that, but perhaps not entirely,” said McAllister, awkwardly shifting his position in the chair, as if he did not care to disagree with the experienced CIA man. Or something else. “White male, yes. American, yes. Certainly a man with an obsession so compelling that he’s driven to wholesale slaughter, his fury directed at a target—as you say—up here.”
“Who?” asked David.
“Me,” replied McAllister, his eyes locked with Webb’s.
“Which means me,” said David. “I’m that man, that obsessed man.”
“Your name would not be used,” continued the undersecretary calmly, coldly. “We could invent an American expatriate who several years ago was hunted by the authorities throughout the Far East for crimes ranging from multiple murders to running narcotics. We’ll say I cooperated with the police in Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Sumatra, and the Philippines. Through my efforts his operations were effectively shut down and he lost millions. He learns I’ve returned and am posted here on Victoria Peak. He comes after me, the man who ruined him.” McAllister paused, turning to David. “Since I spent a number of years here in Hong Kong, I can’t imagine that Peking overlooked me. I’m sure there’s an extensive dossier on an analyst who made a number of enemies during his tour of duty here. I did make enemies, Mr. Webb. It was my job. We were trying to increase our influence in this part of the world, and wherever Americans were involved in criminal activities, I did my level best to help the authorities apprehend them, or, at the least, force them out of Asia. It was the best way to show our good intentions, going after our own. It was also the reason State recalled me to Washington. And by using my name we lend a certain authenticity for Sheng Chou Yang. You see, we knew each other. He’ll speculate on a dozen possibilities—I hope the right one, but none remotely connected to a British commando.”
“The right speculation,” interrupted Conklin quietly, “being the fact that no one over here has heard from the first Jason Bourne in a couple of years.”
“Exactly.”
“So I’m the corpse that’s in custody,” said Webb, “beyond scrutiny.”
“You could be, yes,” said McAllister. “You see, we don’t know what Sheng knows, how deep his penetration went. The only thing we want to establish is that the dead man is not his assassin.”
“Leaving the way open for another impostor to go back up and draw Sheng out for the kill,” added Conklin, respectfully. “You’re something, Mr. Analyst. A son of a bitch, but something.”
“You’d be exposing yourself, Edward,” said Havilland, his gaze leveled at the undersecretary. “I never asked that of you. You do have enemies.”
“I want to do it this way, Mr. Ambassador. You employ me to render the best judgments that I can, and in my judgment this is the most productive course. There’s got to be a convincing smoke screen. My name can provide it—for Sheng. The rest can be couched in ambiguous language, language that everyone we want to reach will understand.”
“So be it,” said Webb, suddenly closing his eyes, hearing the words Jason Bourne had spoken so often.
“David—” Marie touched his face.
“Sorry.” Webb fingered the file folder in front of him, then opened it. On the first page was a photograph with a name printed underneath. It was identified as the face of Sheng Chou Yang, but it was far more than that. It was the face. It was the face of the butcher! The madman who hacked women and men to death with his jeweled ceremonial sword, who forced brothers to fight with razor-sharp knives until one killed the other, who took a brave, tortured Echo’s life with a slash to the head. Bourne stopped breathing, enraged by the unimaginable cruelty, as bloody images overcame him. As he stared at the photograph the sight of Echo, throwing his life away to save Delta, brought him back to that clearing in the forest. Delta knew that it was Echo’s death that had made the assassin’s capture possible. Echo had died defiantly, accepting his unbearably painful execution, so that a fellow Medusan could not only make good his escape, but obey a final gesture telling him that the madman with the sword must be killed!
“This,” whispered Jason Bourne, “is the son of your unknown taipan?”
“Yes,” said Havilland.
“Your revered philosopher-prince? The Chinese saint no one can expose?”
“Again, yes.”
“You were wrong! He showed himself! Christ, did he show himself!”
Stunned, the ambassador shot forward. “You’re certain?”
“There’s no way I could be more certain.”
“The circumstances must have been extraordinary,” said the astonished McAllister. “And it certainly confirms that the impostor never would have gotten out of there alive. Still, the circumstances must have been earth-shaking for him!”
“Considering the fact that no one outside of China ever learned about them, they were. Mao’s tomb became a shooting gallery. It was part of the trap, and they lost. Echo lost.”
“Who?” asked Marie, still gripping his hand.
“A friend.”
“Mao’s tomb?” repeated Havilland. “Extraordinary!”
“Not at all,” said Bourne. “How bright. The last place in China a target would expect an attack. He goes in thinking he’s the pursuer following his quarry, expecting to pick him up outside, on the other side. The lights are dim, his guard down. And all the while he’s the quarry, hunted, isolated, set up for the kill. Very bright.”
“Very dangerous for the hunters,” said the ambassador. “For Sheng’s people. One misstep and they could have been taken. Insanity!”
“No missteps were possible. They would have killed their own if I hadn’t killed them. I understand that now. When everything went off the wire, they simply disappeared. With Echo.”
“Back to Sheng, please, Mr. Webb.” Havilland was himself obsessed, his eyes pleading. “Tell us what you saw, what you know.”
“He’s a monster,” said Jason quietly, his eyes glazed, staring at the photograph. “He comes from hell, a Savonarola who tortures and kills—men, women, kids—with a smile on his face. He gives sermons like a prophet talking to children, but underneath he’s a maniac who rules his gang of misfits by sheer terror. Those shock troops you mentioned aren’t troops, they’re goons, sadistic thugs who’ve learned their craft from a master. He’s Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen all rolled into one. God help us all if he runs anything over here.”
“He can, Mr. Webb,” said Havilland quietly, his terrified gaze fixed on Jason Bourne. “He will. You’ve just described a Sheng Chou Yang the world has never seen, and at this moment he is the most powerful man in China. As Adolf Hitler marched victoriously into the Reichstag, so Sheng will march into the Central Committee, making it his puppet. What you’ve told us is far more catastrophic than anything we’ve conceived of—China against China.… Armageddon to follow. Oh, my God!”
“He’s an animal,” whispered Jason hoarsely. “He has to kill like a predator, but his only hunger is for killing—not for food but for the kill.”
“You’re talking in generalities.” McAllister’s interruption was cold but intense. “We have to know more—I have to know more!”
“He called a conference.” Bourne spoke dreamily, his head swaying, his eyes again riveted on the photograph. “It was the start of—the nights of the great blade, he said. There was a traitor, he said. The conference was something only a madman could create, torches everywhere, held in the countryside, an hour out of Peking, in a bird sanctuary—can you believe it? A bird sanctuary—and he really did what I say he did. He killed a man suspended by ropes, hacking his sword into the screaming body. Then a woman who tried to argue her innocence, cutting her head off—her head! In front of everyone! And then two brothers—”
“A traitor?” whispered McAllister, ever the analyst. “Did he find one? Did anyone confess? Is there any kind of counterinsurgency?”
“Stop it!” cried Marie.
“No, Mrs. Webb! He’s going back. He’s reliving it. Look at him. Can’t you see? He’s there.”
“I’m afraid our irritating colleague is right, Marie,” said Panov softly, watching Webb. “He’s in and out, trying to find his own reality. It’s okay. Let him ride it. It could save us all a lot of time.”
“Bullshit!”
“Forever accurate, my dear, and forever debatable. Shut up.”
“… There was no traitor, no one who spoke, only the woman with doubts. He killed her and there was silence, an awful silence. He was warning everyone, telling everyone that they, the true China, were everywhere and at the same time they were invisible. In the ministries, in the security police, everywhere.… And then he killed Echo, but Echo knew he had to die. He wanted to die quickly because he couldn’t live much longer anyway. After they tortured him, he was in awful shape. Still, if he could give me time—”
“Who is Echo, David?” asked Morris Panov. “Tell us, please.”
“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo … Foxtrot—”
“Medusa,” said the psychiatrist. “It’s Medusa, isn’t it? Echo was in Medusa.”
“He was in Paris. The Louvre. He tried to save my life, but I saved his. That was okay, it was right. He saved mine before, years ago. ‘Rest is a weapon,’ he said. He put the others around me and made me sleep. And then we got out of the jungle.”
“ ‘Rest is a weapon’ ….” Marie spoke quietly and closed her eyes, pressing her husband’s hand, the tears falling down her cheeks. “Oh, Christ!”
“… Echo saw me in the woods. We used the old signals we used before, years ago. He hadn’t forgotten. None of us ever forget.”
“Are we in the countryside, in the bird sanctuary, David?” asked Panov, gripping McAllister’s shoulder to stop him from intruding.
“Yes,” replied Jason Bourne, his eyes now floating, unfocused. “We both know. He’s going to die. So simple, so clear. Die. Death. No more. Just buy time, precious minutes. Then maybe I can do it.”
“Do what—Delta?” Panov drew out the name in quiet emphasis.
“Take out the son of a bitch. Take out the butcher. He doesn’t deserve to live, he has no right to live! He kills too easily—with a smile on his face. Echo saw it. I saw it. Now it’s happening—everything’s happening at once. The explosions in the forest, everybody running, shouting. I can do it now! He’s a clean kill.… He sees me! He’s staring at me! He knows I’m his enemy! I am your enemy, butcher! I’m the last face you’ll see!… What’s wrong? Something’s wrong! He’s shielding himself! He’s pulling someone in front of him. I have to get out! I can’t do it!”
“Can’t or won’t?” asked Panov, leaning forward. “Are you Jason Bourne or are you David Webb? Who are you?”
“Delta!” screamed the victim, stunning everyone at the table by his outburst. “I am Delta! I am Bourne! Cain is for Delta and Carlos is for Cain!” The victim, whoever he was, collapsed back in the chair, his head snapped down into his chest. He was silent. No one spoke.
It took several minutes—none knew how long, none counted—until the man who was unable to establish an identity for himself raised his head. His eyes were now half free, half prisoner of the agony he was experiencing. “I’m sorry,” said David Webb. “I don’t know what happened to me. I’m sorry.”
“No apologies, David,” said Panov. “You went back. It’s understandable. It’s okay.”
“Yes, I went back. Screwy, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” said the psychiatrist. “It’s perfectly natural.”
“I have to go back, that’s understandable, too, isn’t it, Mo?”
“David!” screamed Marie, reaching for him.
“I have to,” said Jason Bourne, gently holding her wrists. “No one else can do it, it’s as simple as that. I know the codes. I know the way.… Echo traded in his life for mine, believing I’d do it, that I’d kill the butcher. I failed then. I won’t fail now.”
“What about us?” Marie clutched him, her voice reverberating off the white walls. “Don’t we matter?”
“I’ll come back, I promise you,” said David, removing her arms and looking into her eyes. “But I have to go back, can’t you understand?”
“For these people? These liars!”
“No, not for them. For someone who wanted to live—above everything. You didn’t know him; he was a survivor. But he knew when his life wasn’t worth the price of my death. I had to live and do what I had to do. I had to live and come back to you, he knew that, too. He faced the equation and made his decision. Somewhere along the line we all have to make that decision.” Bourne turned to McAllister. “Is there anyone here who can take a picture of a corpse?”
“Whose?” asked the undersecretary of State.
“Mine,” said Jason Bourne.