Robert Ludlum - Bourne 2 - Bourne Supremecy

by The Bourne Supremacy [lit]

  'High Officer, I'm most embarrassed! I was so taken by the calligraphy on the People's Monument that I lost my group which passed through here only minutes ago.'

  'You speak our language very well,' said the astonished guard, apparently used to the strange accents of tongues he neither knew nor cared to know. 'You are most courteous.'

  'I'm simply an underpaid teacher from the West who has an enduring love of your great nation, High Officer.'

  The guard laughed. 'I'm not so high, but our nation is great. My daughter wears blue jeans in the street.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'It's nothing. Where is your tour-group identification?'

  'My what?'

  The name tag to be worn on all outer clothing.'

  'It kept falling off,' said Bourne, shaking his head helplessly. 'It wouldn't stay pinned. I must have lost it.'

  'When you catch up, see your guide and get another. Go ahead. Get to the back of the line on the steps. Something is going on. The next group may have to wait. You'll miss your tour.'

  'Oh? Is there a problem?'

  'I don't know. The official with the government briefcase gives us our orders. I believe he counts the yuan that could be made here, thinking this holy place should be like Beijing's underground train.'

  'You've been most kind.'

  'Hurry, sir.'

  Bourne rushed up the steps, bending down behind the crowd, once again tightening a secure shoelace, his head angled to watch the assassin's progress. The impostor talked quietly to the civilian with the soldier still in his grip - but something was odd. The short Chinese in the dark suit nodded, but his eyes were not on the impostor; they were focused beyond the commando. Or were they? Jason's angle of vision was not the best. No matter, the scenario was being followed, the client reached on the assassin's terms.

  He walked through the doors into the semi-darkness, as awed as everyone in front of him by the sudden appearance of the enormous white marble sculpture of a seated Mao, rising so high and so majestically that one nearly gasped in its presence. Theatricality helped. The shafts of light that played down on the exquisite apparently translucent marble evoked an ethereal effect that isolated the gigantic sitting figure from the velvet tapestry behind it and the outer darkness around. The massive statue with its searching eyes seemed in itself alive and aware.

  Jason pulled his own eyes away and looked for doorways and corridors. There were none. It was a mausoleum, a hall dedicated to a nation's saint. But there were pillars, wide high shafts of marble that provided areas of seclusion. In the shadows behind any one of them could be the meeting ground. He would wait. He would stay in other shadows and watch.

  His group entered the second great hall and it was, if anything, more electrifying than the first. Facing them was a crystal glass coffin encasing the body of Chairman Mao Zedong, draped in the Red flag, the waxen corpse in peaceful repose - the closed eyes, however, any second likely to open wide and glare in fiery disapproval. There were flowers surrounding the raised sarcophagus, and two rows of dark green pine trees in huge ceramic pots lined the opposing walls. Again shafts of light played a dramatic symphony of colour, pockets of darkness pierced by intersecting beams that washed over the brilliant yellows and reds and blues of the banks of flowers.

  A commotion somewhere in the first hall briefly intruded on the awed silence of the crowd, but was arrested as rapidly as it had begun. As the last tourist in line, Bourne broke away without being noticed by the others. He slipped behind a pillar, concealed in the shadows, and peered around the glistening white marble.

  What he saw paralysed him as a dozen thoughts clashed in his head, above all the single word trap! There was no group following his own! It was the last admitted - he was the last person admitted - before the heavy doors were closed. That was the sound he had heard - the shutting of the doors and the disappointed groans from those outside waiting to be admitted.

  Something is going on... The next group may have to wait... A kindly guard on the steps.

  My God, from the beginning it was a trap! Every move, every appearance had been calculated! From the beginning! The information paid for on a rain-soaked island, the nearly unobtainable airline tickets, the first sight of the assassin at the airport - a professional killer capable of a far better disguise, his hair too obvious, his clothes inadequate to cover his frame. Then the complication with an old man, a retired brigadier from the Royal Engineers - so illogically logical! So right, the scent of deception so accurate, so irresistible! A soldier in a truck's window, not looking for him but for them I The priestly black suit - a dark beacon in the sunlight, paid for by the impostor's creator - so easily spotted, so easily followed. Christ, from the beginning! Finally, the scenario played out in the immense square, a scenario that could have been written by Bourne himself - again irresistible to the pursuer. A reverse trap: Catch the hunter as he stalks his quarry!

  Frantically Jason looked around. Ahead in the distance was a steady shaft of sunlight. The exit doors were at the other end of the mausoleum; they would be watched, each tourist studied as he left.

  Footsteps. Over his right shoulder. Bourne spun to his left, pulling the brass letter-opener from his belt. A figure in a grey Mao suit, the cut military, cautiously passed by the wide pillar in the dim outer light of the pine trees. He was no more than five feet away. In his hand was a gun, the bulging cylinder on the barrel a guarantee that a detonation would be reduced to the sound of a spit. Jason made his lethal calculations in a way David Webb would never understand. The blade had to be inserted in such a way as to cause instant death. No noise could come from his enemy's mouth as the body was pulled back into darkness.

  He lunged, the rigid fingers of his left hand clamped vice-like over the man's face as he plunged the letter-opener into the soldier's neck, the blade rushing through sinew and fragile cartilage, severing the windpipe. In one motion, Bourne dropped his left hand, clutching the large weapon still in his enemy's grip, and swung the corpse around, dropping with it under the branches of the row of pine trees lined up along the right wall. He slid the body out of sight into the dark shadows between two large ceramic pots holding the roots of two trees. He crawled over the corpse, the weapon in front of his face, and made his way back against the wall towards the first hall, to where he could see without being seen.

  A second uniformed man crossed through the shaft of light that lit up the darkness of the entrance to the second hall. He stood in front of Mao's crystal coffin, awash in the eerie beams, and looked around. He raised a hand-held radio to his face and spoke, listening; five seconds later his expression changed to one of concern. He began walking rapidly to his right, tracing the assigned path of the first man. Jason scrambled back towards the corpse, hands and knees silently pounding the marble floor, and moved out towards the edge of the low-slung branches.

  The soldier approached, walking more slowly, studying the last people in the line up ahead. Now! Bourne sprang up as the man passed, hammer-locking his neck, choking off all sound as he pulled him back down under the branches, the gun pressed far up in the flesh of the soldier's stomach. He pulled the trigger; the muffled report was like a burst of air, no more. The man expunged a last violent breath and went limp.

  He had to get out If he was trapped and killed in the awed silence of the mausoleum the assassin would roam free and Marie's death would be assured. His enemies were closing the reverse trap. He had to reverse the reversal and somehow survive! The cleanest escape is made in stages, using whatever confusion there is or can be created.

  Stages One and Two were accomplished. A certain confusion already existed if other men were whispering into radios. What had to be brought about was a focal point of disruption so violent and unexpected that those hunting him in the shadows would themselves become the subjects of a sudden, hysterical search.

  There was only one way and Jason felt no obscure heroic feelings of I-may-die-trying. He had to do it! He had to make it work. Survival wa
s everything, for reasons beyond himself. The professional was at his apex, calm and deliberate.

  Bourne stood up and walked through branches, crossing the open space to the pillar in front of him. He then ran to the one behind, and then the one behind that, the first pillar in the second hall, thirty feet from the dramatically-lit coffin. He edged his body around the marble and waited, his eyes on the entrance door.

  It happened. They happened. The officer who was the assassin's 'captive' emerged with the short civilian carrying his government briefcase. The soldier held a radio at his side;

  he brought it up to speak and listen, then shook his head, placing the radio in his right-hand pocket and removing the gun from his holster. The civilian nodded once, reached under his jacket and pulled out a short-barrelled revolver. Each walked forward towards the glass coffin containing the remains of Mao Zedong, then looked at each other and began to separate, one to the left, one to the right.

  Now! Jason raised his weapon, took rapid aim and fired. Once! A hair to the right. Twice! The spits were like coughs in shadows as both men fell into the sarcophagus. Grabbing the edges of his coat, Bourne gripped the hot cylinder on the barrel of his pistol and spun it off. There were five shells left. He squeezed the trigger in rapid succession. The explosions filled the mausoleum, echoing off the marble walls, shattering the crystal glass of the coffin, the bullets embedding themselves in the spastically jerked corpse of Mao Zedong, one penetrating a bloodless forehead, another blowing out an eye.

  Sirens erupted; clamouring bells split the air and deafened the ear, as soldiers, appearing at once from everywhere, raced in panic towards the scene of the horrible outrage. The two lines of tourists, feeling trapped in the eerie light of the house of death, exploded into hysteria. En masse, the crowds rushed towards the doors and the sunlight, trampling those in their paths. Jason Bourne joined them, crashing his way into the centre of an inside column. Reaching the blinding light of Tian an men Square, he raced down the steps.

  D'Anjou! Jason ran to his right, rounding the stone corner, and ran down the side of the pillared structure until he reached the front. Guards were doing their best to calm the agitated crowds while trying to find out what had happened. A riot was in the making.

  Bourne studied the place where he had last seen d'Anjou, then moved his eyes over a gridlock area within which the Frenchman might logically be seen. Nothing, no one even vaguely resembling him.

  Suddenly, there was the screeching of tyres far off on a thoroughfare to Jason's left. He whipped around and looked. A van with tinted windows had circled the stanchioned pavement and was speeding towards the south gate of Tian an men Square. They had taken d'Anjou. Echo was gone.

  24

  'Qu'est-il arrive?'

  'Des coups defer! Les gardes sont paniques!"

  Bourne heard the shouts and, running, joined the group of French tourists led by a guide whose concentration was riveted on the chaos taking place on the steps of the mausoleum. He buttoned his jacket, covering the gun in his belt, and slipped the perforated silencer into his pocket. Glancing around, he moved quickly back through the crowd next to a man taller than himself, a well-dressed man with a disdainful expression. Jason was grateful that there were several others of nearly equal height in front of them; with luck and in the excitement he might remain inconspicuous. Above, at the top of the mausoleum's stairs, the doors had been partially opened. Uniformed men were racing back and forth along the stairs. Obviously the leadership was a shambles, and Bourne knew why. It had fled, had simply disappeared, wanting no part of the terrible events. All that concerned Jason now was the assassin. Would he come out? Or had he found d'Anjou, capturing his creator himself and leaving with Echo in the van, convinced that the original Jason Bourne was trapped, a second unlikely corpse in the desecrated mausoleum.

  'Qu'est-ce que c'est?' asked Jason, addressing the tall, well-dressed Frenchman beside him.

  'Another ungodly delay, no doubt,' replied the man in a somewhat effeminate Parisian accent. This place is a madhouse, and my tolerance is at an end! I'm going back to the hotel.'

  'Can you do that?' Bourne up-graded his French from middle-class to a decent university. It meant so much to a Parisian. 'I mean, are we permitted to leave our tour? We hear constantly that we must stay together.'

  'I'm a businessman, not a tourist. This "tour", as you call it, was not on my agenda. Frankly, I had the afternoon off -these people linger endlessly over decisions - and thought I'd see a few sights but there wasn't a French-speaking driver available. The concierge assigned me - mind you assigned me - to this group. The guide, you know, is a student of French literature and speaks as though she was born in the seventeenth century. I haven't a clue what this so-called tour is all about.'

  'It's the five-hour excursion,' explained Jason accurately, reading the Chinese characters printed on the identification tag affixed to the man's lapel. 'After Tian an men Square we visit the Ming tombs, then drive out to watch the sunset from the Great Wall.'

  'Now, really, I've seen the Great Wall! My God, it was the first place all twelve of those bureaucrats from the Trade Commission took me, prattling incessantly through the interpreter that it was a sign of their permanence. Shirt If the labour weren't so unbelievably cheap and the profits so extraordinary-'

  'I, too, am in business, but for a few days also a tourist. My line is wicker imports. What's yours, if I may ask?'

  'Fabrics, what else? Unless you consider electronics, or oil, or coal, or perfume - even canework.' The businessman allowed himself a superior but knowing smile. 'I tell you these people are sitting on the wealth of the world and they haven't the vaguest idea what to do with it.'

  Bourne looked closely at the tall Frenchman. He thought of Medusa's Echo and a Gallic aphorism that proclaimed that the more things changed the more they remained the same. Opportunities will present themselves. Recognize them, act on them. 'As I said,' continued Jason while staring up at the chaos on the staircase, 'I, too, am a businessman who is taking a short sabbatical - courtesy of our government's tax incentives for those of us who plough the foreign fields - but I've travelled a great deal here in China and have learned a good deal of the language.'

  'Cane has come up in the world,' said the Parisian sardonically.

  'Our best quality work is a staple line on the Cete d'Azur, as well as points north and south. The Grimaldi family has been a client for years.' Bourne kept his eyes on the staircase.

  'I stand corrected, my business friend... in the foreign fields.' For the first time the Frenchman actually looked at Jason.

  'And I can tell you now,' said Bourne, 'that no more visitors will be permitted into Mao's tomb, and that everyone on every tour in the vicinity will be cordoned off and possibly detained.'

  'My God, why?

  'Apparently something terrible happened inside and the guards are shouting about foreign gangsters... Did you say you were assigned to this tour but not really a part of it?'

  'Essentially, yes.'

  'Grounds for at least speculation, no? Detention, almost certainly.'

  'Inconceivable?

  This is China-'

  'It cannot be! Millions upon millions of francs are in the balance! I'm only here on this horrid tour because-'

  'I suggest you leave, my business friend. Say you were out for a stroll. Give me your identification tag and I'll get rid of it for you-'

  'Is that what it is?'

  'Your country of origin and passport number are on it. It's how they control your movements while you're on a guided tour.'

  'I'm for ever in your debt!' cried the businessman ripping the plastic tag off his lapel. 'If you're ever in Paris-'

  'I spend most of the time with the prince and his family in-'

  'But of course.' Again, my thanks!' The Frenchman, so different and yet so much like Echo, left in a hurry, his well-dressed figure conspicuous in the hazy, greyish yellow sunlight as he headed towards the Heavenly Gate - as obvious as the fals
e quarry who had led a hunter into a trap.

  Bourne pinned the plastic tag to his own lapel and now became part of an official tour; it was his way out through the gates of Tian an men Square. After the group had been hastily diverted from the mausoleum to the Great Hall, the bus passed through the northern gate and Jason saw through the window the apoplectic French businessman pleading with the Beijing police to let him pass. Fragments of reports of the outrage had been fitted together. The word was spreading. A white Occidental had horribly defiled the coffin and the hallowed body of Chairman Mao. A white terrorist from a tour without the proper identification on his outer clothing. A guard on the steps had reported such a man.

  'I do recall,' the tour guide said in obsolete French. She was standing by the statue of an angry lion on that extraordinary Avenue of Animals where huge stone replicas of large cats, horses, elephants and ferocious mythical beasts lined the road, guarding the final way to the tombs of the Ming Dynasty. 'But my memory faileth concerning your knowledge of our language. And I do believe that I heard you employ our tongue but a moment ago.'