' What? What are you saying?
'I'm not the Frenchman, remember?
'I do not understand.'
'I don't even want the instructions. I'm sure someone of your professional calibre can turn them to your advantage. A man pays well for information that can help him; he pays a hell of a lot more for his life.'
'Why would you do this?
'Because none of it concerns me. I have only one concern. I want the man who calls himself Bourne and I can't waste time. You've got what I just offered you plus a dividend - I'll get you out of here alive if I have to leave two corpses here in the Bay, I don't care. But you've got to give me what I asked for on the phone. You said your client told you the
Frenchman's assassin was going someplace else. Where? Where is Bourne?
'You talk so rapidly-'
'I told you, I haven't time! Tell me! If you refuse, I leave and your client kills you. Take your choice.'
'Shenzhen,' said the contact, as if frightened at the name.
'China? There's a target in Shenzhen?
'One can assume that. My wealthy client has sources in Queen's Road.'
'What's that?
The Consulate of the People's Republic. A very unusual visa was granted. Apparently it was cleared on the highest authority in Beijing. The source did not know why, and when he questioned the decision he was promptly removed from the section. He reported this to my client. For money, of course.'
'Why was the visa unusual?
'Because there was no waiting period and the applicant did not appear at the consulate. Both are unheard of.'
'Still, it was just a visa.'
'In the People's Republic there is no such thing as "just a visa". Especially not for a white male travelling alone under a questionable passport issued in Macao.'
'Macao?
'Yes.'
'What's the entry date?'
Tomorrow. The Lo Wu border.'
Jason studied the contact. 'You said your client has sources in the consulate. Do you?
'What you are thinking will cost a great deal of money, for the risk is very great.'
Bourne raised his head and looked through the sheets of rain at the floodlit idol beyond. There was movement; the scout was searching for his target. 'Wait here,' he said.
The early morning train from Kowloon to the Lo Wu border took barely over an hour. The realization that he was in China took less than ten seconds. Long Live the People's Republic*.
There was no need for the exclamation point, the border guards lived it. They were rigid, staring, and abusive, pummelling passports with their rubber stamps with the fury of hostile adolescents. There was, however, an ameliorating support system. Beyond the guards a phalanx of young women in uniform stood smiling behind several long tables stacked with pamphlets extolling the beauty and virtues of their land and its system. If there was hypocrisy in their postures, it did not show.
Bourne had paid the betrayed, marked contact the sum of $7,000 for the visa. It was good for 5 days. The purpose of the visit was listed as 'business investments in the Economic Zone', and was renewable at Shenzhen immigration with proof of investment along with the corroborating presence of a Chinese banker through whom the money was to be brokered. In gratitude, and for no additional charge, the contact had given him the name of a Shenzhen banker who could easily steer 'Mr Cruett' to investment possibilities, the said Mr Cruett being still registered at the Regent Hotel in Hong Kong. Finally, there was a bonus from the man whose life he had saved in Repulse Bay: the description of the man travelling under a Macao passport across the Lo Wu border. He was '6' 1" tall, 185 Ib, white skin, light brown hair.' Jason had stared at the information, unconsciously recalling the data on his own government ID card. It had read: 'HT: 6' 1" WT: 187 Ibs. White male. Hair: Lt Brn.' An odd sense of fear spread through him. Not the fear of confrontation; he wanted that, above all, for he wanted Marie back above everything. Instead, it was the horror that he had somehow created a monster: a stalker of death that came from a lethal virus he had perfected in the laboratory of his mind and body.
It had been the first train out of Kowloon, occupied in the main by skilled labour and the executive personnel permitted - enticed - into the Free Economic Zone of Shenzhen by the People's Republic in the hope of attracting foreign investments. At each stop on the way to the border, as more and more passengers boarded, Bourne had walked through the cars, his eyes resting for an intense instant on each of the white males of whom there was a total of only fourteen by the time they reached Lo Wu. None had even vaguely fitted the description of the man from Macao - the description of himself. The new 'Jason Bourne' would be taking a later train. The original would wait on the other side of the border. He waited now.
During the four hours that passed he explained 16 times to inquiring border personnel that he was waiting for a business associate; he had obviously misunderstood the schedule and had taken a far too early train. As with people in any foreign country, but especially in the Orient, the fact that a courteous American had gone to the trouble of making himself understood in their language was decidedly beneficial. He was offered four cups of coffee, seven hot teas, and two of the uniformed girls had giggled as they presented him with an overly sweet Chinese ice cream cone. He accepted all - to do otherwise would have been rude, and since most of the Gang of Four had lost not only their faces but their heads, rudeness was out, except for the border guards.
It was 11:10. The passengers emerged through the long, fenced open-air corridor after dealing with immigration, mostly tourists, mostly white, mostly bewildered and awed to be there. The majority were in small tour groups, accompanied by guides - one each from Hong Kong and the People's Republic - who spoke acceptable English, or German, or French or, reluctantly, Japanese for those particularly disliked visitors with more money than Marx or Confucius ever had. Jason studied each white male. The many that were over six feet in height were too young or too old or too portly or too slender or too obvious in their lime-green and lemon-yellow trousers to be the man from Macao.
Wai! Over there! An older man in a tan gabardine suit who appeared to be a medium-sized tourist with a limp was suddenly taller - and the limp was gone! He walked rapidly down the steps through the middle of the crowd and ran into the huge parking lot filled with buses and tour vans and a few taxis, each with a zhan - off-duty - posted in the front windows. Bourne raced after the man, dodging between the bodies in front of him, not caring whom he pushed aside. I was the man - the man from Macao!
'Hey, are you crazy? Ralph, he shoved me!'
'Shove back. What do you want from me?
'Do something!'
'He's gone.'
The man in the gabardine suit jumped into the open door of a van, a dark green van with tinted windows that according to the Chinese characters belonged to a department called the Chutang Bird Sanctuary. The door slid shut and the vehicle instantly broke away from its parking space and careened around the vehicles into the exit lane. Bourne was frantic; he could not let him go! An old taxi-was on his right, the motor idling. He pulled the door open, to be greeted by a shout.
'Zha!' screamed the driver.
'Shi ma? roared Jason, pulling enough American money from his pocket to ensure five years of luxury in the People's Republic.
'Aiyar
'Zou!' ordered Bourne, leaping into the front seat and pointing to the van which had swerved into the semicircle. 'Stay with him and you can start your own business in the Zone,' he said in Cantonese. 'I promise you!'
Marie, I'm so close! I know it's him! I'll take him! He's mine now! He's our deliverance!
The van sped out of the exit road, heading south at the first intersection, avoiding the large square jammed with tour buses and crowds of sightseers cautiously avoiding the endless stream of bicycles in the streets. The taxi driver picked up the van on a primitive highway paved more with hard clay than asphalt. The dark-windowed vehicle could be seen ahead entering a long curve in
front of an open truck carrying heavy farm machinery. A tour bus waited at the end of the curve, swinging into the road behind the truck.
Bourne looked beyond the van; there were hills up ahead and the road began to rise. Then another tour bus appeared, this one behind them.
'Shumchun,' said the driver.
'Bin do?' asked Jason.
The Shumchun water supply,' answered the driver in Chinese. 'A very beautiful reservoir, one of the finest lakes in all China. It sends its water south to Kowloon and Hong Kong. Very crowded with visitors this time of year. The autumn views are excellent.'
Suddenly the van accelerated, climbing the mountain road, pulling away from the truck and the tour bus. 'Can't you go faster? Get around the bus, that truck!'
'Many curves ahead.'
Try it!'
The driver pressed his foot to the floor and swerved around the bus, missing its bulging front by inches as he was forced back in line by an approaching army half-track with two soldiers in the cabin. Both the soldiers and the tour guides yelled at them through open windows. 'Sleep with your ugly mothers!' screamed the driver, filled with his moment of triumph, only to be faced with the wide truck filled with farm machinery blocking the way.
They were going into a sharp right curve. Bourne gripped the window and leaned out as far as he could for a clearer view. 'There's no one coming!' he yelled at the driver through the onrushing wind. 'Go ahead! You can get around. Now?
The driver did so, pushing the old taxi to its limits, the tyres spinning on a stretch of hard clay, which made the cab sideslip dangerously in front of the truck. Another curve, now sharply to the left, and rising steeper. Ahead the road was straight, ascending a high hill. The van was nowhere to be seen; it had disappeared over the crest of the hill.
'Kuai!' shouted Bourne. 'Can't you make this damn thing go faster?'
'It has never been this fast! I think the fuck-fuck spirits will explode the motor! Then what will I do? It took me five years to buy this unholy machine, and many unholy bribes to drive in the Zone!'
Jason threw a handful of bills on the floor of the cab by the driver's feet. 'There's ten times more if we catch that van! Now, go."
The taxi soared over the top of the hill, descending swiftly into an enormous glen at the edge of a vast lake that seemed to extend for miles. In the distance Bourne could see snowcapped mountains and green islands dotting the blue-green water as far as the eye could see. The taxi came to a halt beside a large red and gold pagoda reached by a long, polished concrete staircase. Its open balconies overlooked the lake. Refreshment stands and curio shops were scattered about on the borders of the parking lot, where four tour buses were standing with the dual guides shouting instructions and pleading with their charges not to get in the wrong vehicles at the end of their walks.
The dark-windowed van was nowhere to be seen. Bourne shifted his head swiftly, looking in all directions. Where was it? 'What's that road over there?' he asked the driver.
'Pump stations. No one is permitted down that road, it is patrolled by the army. Around the bend is a high fence and a guard house.'
'Wait here.' Jason climbed out of the cab and started walking towards the prohibited road, wishing he had a camera or a guide book - something to mark him as a tourist. As it was, the best he could do was to assume the hesitant walk and wide-eyed expression of a sightseer. No object was too insignificant for his inspection. He approached the bend in the badly paved road; he saw the high fence and part of the guardhouse - then all of it. A long metal bar fell across the road; two soldiers were talking, their backs to him, looking the other way - looking at two vehicles parked side by side farther down by a square concrete structure painted brown. One of the vehicles was the dark-windowed van, the other the brown sedan. It began to move. It was heading back to the gate!
Bourne's thoughts came rapidly. He had no weapon; it was pointless even to consider carrying one across the border. If he tried to stop the van and drag the killer out, the commotion would bring the guards, their rifle fire swift and accurate. Therefore he had to draw the man from Macao out - of his own volition. The rest Jason was primed for; he would take the impostor one way or the other. Take him back to the border and over - one way or another. No man was a match for him; no eyes, no throat, no groin safe from an assault, swift and agonizing. David Webb had never come to grips with that reality. Bourne lived it.
There was a way!
Jason ran back to the beginning of the deserted bend in the road, beyond the view of the gate and the soldiers. He reassumed the pose of the mesmerized sightseer and listened. The van's engine fell to idle; the creaking meant the gate was being lifted. Only moments now. Bourne held his position in the brush by the side of the road. The van rounded the turn as he timed his moves.
He was suddenly there, in front of the large vehicle, his expression terrified as he spun to the side beneath the driver's window and slammed the flat of his hand into the door, uttering a cry of pain as if he had been struck, perhaps killed by the van. He lay supine on the ground as the vehicle came to a stop; the driver leaped out, an innocent about to protest his innocence. He had no chance to do so. Jason's arm was extended; he yanked the man by the ankle, pulling him off his feet, and sending his head crashing back into the side of the van. The driver fell unconscious, and Bourne dragged him back to the rear of the van beneath the clouded windows. He saw a bulge in the man's jacket; it was a gun, predictably, considering his cargo. Jason removed it and waited for the man from Macao.
He did not appear. It was not logical.
Bourne scrambled to the front of the van, gripped the rubberized ledge to the driver's seat, and lunged up, his weapon at the ready, sweeping the rear seats from side to side.
No one. It was empty.
He climbed back out and went to the driver, spat in his face and slapped him into consciousness.
'AW?' he whispered harshly. 'Where is the man who was in here?
'Back there!' replied the driver, in Cantonese, shaking his head. 'In the official car with a man nobody knows. Spare my terrible life! I have seven children!'
'Get up in the seat,' said Bourne, pulling the man to his feet and pushing him to the open door. 'Drive out of here as fast as you can.'
No other advice was necessary. The van shot out of the Shumchun reservoir, careening around the curve into the main exit at such speed that Jason thought it would go over the bank. A man nobody knows. What did that mean? No matter, the man from Macao was trapped. He was in a brown sedan inside the gate on the forbidden road. Bourne raced back to the taxi and climbed into the front seat; the scattered money had been removed from the floor.
'You are satisfied?' said the cabdriver. 'I will have ten times what you dropped on my unworthy feet?
'Cut it, Charlie Chan! A car's going to come out of that road to the pump station and you're going to do exactly what I tell you. Do you understand me?
'Do you understand ten times the amount you left in my ancient, undistinguished taxi?
'I understand. It could be fifteen times, if you do your job. Come on, move. Get over to the edge of the parking lot. I don't know how long we'll have to wait.'
'Time is money, sir.'
'Oh, shut up!'
The wait was roughly twenty minutes. The brown sedan appeared, and Bourne saw what he had not seen before. The windows were tinted darker than those of the van; whoever was inside was invisible. Then Jason heard the very last words he wanted to hear.
'Take your money back,' said the driver quietly. 'I will return you to Lo Wu. I have never seen you.'
' Why?'
'That is a government car - one of our government's official vehicles - and I will not be the one who follows it.'
'Wait a minute! Just... wait a minute. Twenty times what I gave you, with a bonus if it all comes out all right! Until I say otherwise you can stay way behind him. I'm just a tourist who wants to look around. No, wait! Here, I'll show you! My visa says I'm investing money. Investors are
permitted to look around!'
'Twenty times? said the driver, staring at Jason. 'What guarantee do I have that you will fulfill your promise?
'I'll put it on the seat between us. You're driving; you could do a lot of things with this car I wouldn't be prepared for. I won't try to take it back.'
''Good! But I stay far behind. I know these roads. There are only certain places one can travel.'
Thirty-five minutes later, with the brown sedan still in sight but far ahead, the driver spoke again. 'They go to the airfield.'
'What airfield?'
'It is used by government officials and men with money from the south.'
'People investing in factories, industry?'
'This is the Economic Zone.'
'I'm an investor,' said Bourne. 'My visa says so. Hurry up! Close in!'
Robert Ludlum - Bourne 2 - Bourne Supremecy Page 24