The Bourne Supremacy (85 page)

'Impossible,' said McAllister quietly, his eyes locked with Jason's.

'Well, maybe Secretary of State's a bit much-'

'What you have just suggested is impossible,' broke in the undersecretary.

'Are you telling me there aren't such men, because if you are you're lying again.'

'I'm sure there are. I might even know of several and I'm sure others are on that list of names Wenzu gave you when he was playing the role of the white-suited taipan in the Walled City. But I wouldn't touch them. Even if Havilland ordered me to I'd refuse.'

Then you don't want Sheng! Everything you said was just another lie. Liar!'

'You're wrong, I do want Sheng. But to use your words, not this way.'

'Why not?'

'Because I won't put my government, my country, in that kind of compromised position. Actually, I think Havilland would agree with me. Hiring killers is too traceable, the transferring of money too traceable. Someone gets angry or boastful or drunk; he talks and an assassination is laid at Washington's feet. I couldn't be a part of that. I refer you to the Kennedys' attempts on Castro's life using the Mafia. Insanity... No, Mr Bourne, I'm afraid you're stuck with me.'

'I'm not stuck with anyone! I can reach Sheng; you can't?

'Complicated issues can usually be reduced to simple equations if certain facts are remembered.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means I insist we do things my way.'

'Why?'

'Because Havilland has your wife.'

'She's with Conklin! With Mo Panov! He wouldn't dare-'

'You don't know him,' McAllister interrupted. 'You insult him but you don't know him. He's like Sheng Chou Yang. He'll stop at nothing. If I'm right - and I'm sure I am - Mrs Webb, Mr Conklin and Dr Panov are guests at the house in Victoria Peak for the duration.'

'Guests?'

That house arrest I mentioned a few minutes ago.'

'Son of a bitch' whispered Jason, the muscles in his face pulsating.

'Now, how do we reach Peking?

With his eyes closed, Bourne answered. 'A man at the Guangdong garrison named Soo Jiang. I speak to him in French and he leaves a message for us here in Macao. At a table in a casino.'

'Move!' said McAllister.

36

The telephone rang, startling the naked woman who quickly sat up in the bed. The man lying next to her was suddenly wide awake; he was wary of any intrusion, especially one in the middle of the night, or, more accurately, the early hours of the morning. The expression on his soft, round Oriental face, however, showed that such intrusions were not infrequent, only unnerving. He reached for the phone on the bedside table.

'Wei?' he said softly.

'Macao lai dianhua' replied the switchboard operator at Headquarters, Guangdong garrison.

'Connect me on scrambler and remove all recording devices.'

'It is done, Colonel Soo.'

'I will conduct my own study of that,' said Soo Jiang, sitting up and reaching for a small, flat, rectangular object with a raised circle at one end.

'It's not necessary, sir.'

'I would hope not for your sake.' Soo placed the circle over the mouthpiece and pressed a button. Had there been an intercept on the line, the piercing whistle that suddenly erupted for one second would have continued pulsating until the listening device was removed or a listener's eardrum was punctured. There was only silence, magnified by the moonlight streaming through the window. 'Go ahead, Macao,' said the colonel.

'Bonsoir, man ami,' said the voice from Macao. The French instantly accepted as being spoken by the impostor. ''Comment fa va?'

'Vous?' gasped Jiang, stunned, swinging his short fat legs from under the sheet and planting them on the floor. 'Attendez? The colonel turned to the woman. 'You. Out. Get out of here,' he ordered in Cantonese. Take your clothes and put them on in the front room. Keep the door open so I can see you leave.'

'You owe me money!' whispered the woman stridently. 'For two times you owe me money, and double for what I did for you below!'

'Your payment is in the fact that I may not have your husband fired. Now get out! You have thirty seconds or you have a penniless husband.'

'They call you the Pig,' said the woman, grabbing her clothes and rushing to the bedroom door, where she turned, glaring at Soo. 'Pig? 'Out:

Seconds later Soo returned to the phone, continuing in French. 'What happened?. The reports from Beijing are incredible! No less so the news from the airfield in Shenzhen. He took you prisoner!' 'He's dead,' said the voice from Macao.

'Dead?'

'Shot by his own people, at least fifty bullets in his body.'

'And you?

'They accepted my story. I was an innocent hostage picked up in the streets and used as a shield as well as a decoy. They treated me well and, in fact, kept me from the press at my insistence. Of course, they're trying to minimize everything but they won't have much success. The newspaper and television people were all over the place, so you'll read about it in the morning papers.'

'My God, where did it happen?

'An estate on Victoria Peak. It's part of the consulate and damned secret. That's why I have to reach your leader-one. I learned things that he should know about.'

Tell me.

The 'assassin' laughed derisively. 'I sell this kind of information. I don't give it away - especially not to pigs.'

'You'll be well taken care of,' insisted Soo.

Too well in my book.'

'What do you mean by "leader-one'? asked Colonel Soo Jiang, dismissing the remark.

'Your head man, the chief, the big rooster - whatever you want to call him. He was the man in that forest preserve who did all the talking, wasn't he? The one who used his sword with such efficiency, the wild-eyed corkscrew with the short hair, the one I tried to warn about the Frenchman's delaying tactics-'

'You dare...? You did that?'

'Ask him. I told him something was wrong, that the Frenchman was stalling him. Christ, I paid for his not listening to me! He should have hacked that French bastard when I told him to! Now you tell him I want to talk to him!'

'Even I do not talk to him,' said the colonel. 'I reach only subordinates by their code names. I don't know their real ones-'

'You mean the men who fly down to the hills in Guangdong to meet me and deliver the assignments?' interrupted Bourne.

'Yes.'

'I won't talk to any of them!' exploded Jason, now posing as his own impostor. 'I want to talk to the man. And he'd better want to talk to me.'

'You will speak with others first, but still, even for them, there must be very strong reasons. They do the summoning, others do not. You should know that by now.'

'All right, you can be the courier. I was with the Americans for almost three hours, mounting the best cover I ever mounted in my life. They questioned me at length and I answered them openly - I don't have to tell you that I have back-ups all over the territory, men and women who'll swear I'm a business associate, or that I was with them at a specific time, no matter who calls-'

'You don't have to tell me that,' Soo broke in. 'Please, just give me the message I'm to convey. You talked with the Americans. Then what?

'I listened, too. The colonials have a stupid habit of talking too freely among themselves in the presence of strangers.'

'I hear a British voice now. The voice of superiority. We've all heard it before.'

'You're damned right. The wogs don't do that, and God knows you slants don't either.'

'Please, sir, continue.'

'The one who took me prisoner, the man who was killed by the Americans, was an American himself.'

'So?

'I leave a signature with my kills. The name has a long history. It's Jason Bourne.'

'We know that. And?

'He was the original! He was an American and they've been hunting him for nearly two years.'

'And?

They think Beijing found him and hired him. Someone in Beijing who needed the most important kill of his life, who needed to kill a man in that house. Bourne's for sale to anybody, an equal-opportunity employee, as the Americans might say.'

'Your language is elusive. Please be clearer!'

There were several others in that room with the Americans. Chinese from Taiwan who said outright that they oppose most of the leaders of the secret societies in the Kuomintang. They were angry. Frightened too, I think.' Bourne stopped. Silence.

'Yes? pressed the colonel apprehensively.

They said a number of other things. They also kept mentioning the name of someone called Sheng.'

'Aiya?

That's the message you'll convey and I'll expect a response at the casino within three hours. I'll send someone to pick it up and don't try anything foolish. I have people there who can start a riot as easily as they can roll a seven. Any interference and your men are dead.'

'We remember the Tsim Sha Tsui a few weeks ago,' said

Soo Jiang. 'Five of our enemies killed in a back room while a cabaret erupts in violence. There'll be no interference; we're not fools where you are concerned. We often wondered if the original Jason Bourne was as proficient as his successor.'

'He wasn't.' Bring up the possibility of a riot at the casino in case Sheng's people try to trap you. Say their men will be killed. You don't have to elaborate. They'll understand ... The analyst knew whereof he spoke. 'A question,' said Jason, genuinely interested. 'When did you and the others decide I wasn't the original?

'At first sight,' replied the colonel. The years leave their marks, don't they? The body may remain agile, even improve with care, but the face reflects time; it is inescapable. Your face could not possibly be the face of the man from Medusa, that was over fifteen years ago and you are, at best, a man in your early thirties. The Medusa did not recruit children. You were the Frenchman's reincarnation.'

The code word is "crisis" and you have three hours, said Bourne, hanging up the phone.

'This is crazy!' Jason stepped out of the open glass booth in the all-night telephone complex and looked angrily at McAllister.

'You did it very well,' said the analyst, writing on a small notepad. 'I'll pay the bill.' The undersecretary started towards the raised platform where the operators accepted payments for international calls.

'You're missing the point,' continued Bourne at McAllister's side, his voice low, harsh. 'It can't work. It's too unorthodox, too obvious for anyone to buy it.'

'If you were demanding a meeting I'd agree with you, but you're not. You're only asking for a telephone conversation.'

'I'm asking him to acknowledge the core of his whole goddamned scam! That he is the core!'

To quote you again,' said the analyst, picking up the bill on the counter and holding out money, 'he can't afford not to respond. He has to.'

'With preconditions that'll throw you out of the box.'

'I'll want your input in such matters, of course.' McAllister took his change, nodding thanks to the weary female operator, and started for the door, Jason beside him.

'I may not have any input to give.'

'Under the circumstances, you mean,' said the analyst, as they stepped out onto the crowded pavement.

'What?

'It's not the strategy that upsets you, Mr Bourne, because it's basically your strategy. What makes you furious is that I'm the one implementing it, not you. Like Havilland you don't think I'm capable.'

'I don't think this is the time or the occasion for you to prove you're Machine Gun Kelly! If you fail, your life's the last thing that concerns me. Somehow the Far East comes first, the world comes first.'

'There's no way I can fail. I told you, even if I fail, I don't. Sheng loses no matter whether he lives or not. In seventy-two hours the consulate in Hong Kong will make sure of it.'

'Premeditated self-sacrifice isn't something I approve of,' said Jason, as they started up the street. 'Self-deluding heroics always get in the way and screw things up. Besides, your so-called strategy reeks of a trap. They'll smell it!'

'They would if you negotiated with Sheng and not me. You tell me it's unorthodox, too obvious, the movements of an amateur. That's fine. When Sheng hears me on the phone, everything will fall into place for him. I am the embittered amateur, the man who's never been in the field, the first-rate bureaucrat who's been passed over by the system he's served so well. I know what I'm doing, Mr Bourne. You just get me a weapon.'

The request was not difficult to fulfil. Over in Macao's Porto Interior, on the Rua das Lorchas, was d'Anjou's flat which was a minor arsenal of weapons, the tools of the Frenchman's trade. It was simply a matter of getting inside and selecting those arms most easily dismantled so as to cross the relatively lax border at Guangdong with diplomatic passports. But it took something over two hours, the process of selection being the most time-consuming as Jason put gun after gun in McAllister's hand, with each watching the analyst's grip and the expression on his face. The weapon finally chosen was the smallest, lowest calibrated pistol in d'Anjou's arsenal, a Charter Arms .22 with a silencer.

'Aim for the head, at least three bullets in the skull. Anything else would be a bee-sting.'

McAllister swallowed, staring at the gun, as Jason studied the weapons, deciding which had the greatest firepower in the smallest package. He chose for himself three Interdynamic KG-9 machine pistols that used outsized clips holding thirty rounds of ammunition.

With their weapons concealed beneath their jackets, they entered the half-filled Kam Pek casino at 3:35 in the morning and walked to the end of the long mahogany bar. Bourne went to the seat he had occupied previously. The undersecretary sat four stools away. The bartender recognized the generous customer who had given him close to a week's salary less than a week ago. He greeted him like a patron with a long history of dispensing largess.

'Nei hou a!'

'Mchoh La. Mgoi,' said Bourne, saying that he was fine, in good health.

'The English whisky, isn't it?' asked the bartender, sure of his memory, hoping it would produce a reward.