Robert Ludlum - Bourne 2 - Bourne Supremecy

by The Bourne Supremacy [lit]

  'Oh, Matt, poor Matt, you never were the best or the brightest. You just answered your own question. You can taste that pension just like me, and you don't want any waves. I'm listed as a pick-up, a tight surveillance, and you don't want to louse up a directive where you're concerned. Okay, pal, I'll wire back an evaluation report that'll get you transferred to Central American demolitions until your time's up - if you last that long.'

  'Cut it out!'

  'Imagine, being skunk-trapped behind a pillar in a crowded train station by a lousy cripple. They'll probably let you mine a few harbours all by yourself.'

  'I don't know anything!'

  'Who are the Chinese?'

  'I don't-'

  'They're not the police, so who are-they?

  'Government.'

  'What branch? They had to tell you that - the SC had to tell you. He couldn't expect you to work blind.'

  That's just it, we are! The only thing he told us was that they were cleared by DC on the top floors. He swore that was all he knew! What the hell were we supposed to do? Ask to see their drivers' licences?'

  'So no one's accountable because no one knows anything. It'd turn out nice if they were Chin-comms picking up a defector, wouldn't it?'

  'The SCs accountable. We lay it on him.'

  'Oh, the higher morality of it all. "We just follow orders, Hen General."' Conklin employed the hard German G for the rank. 'And, naturally, Hen General doesn't know anything either because he's following his orders.' Alex paused, squinting. 'There was one man, a big fellow who looked like a Chinese Paul Bunyan.' Conklin stopped. Richards's head suddenly twitched, as did his body. 'Who is he, Matt?'

  'I don't know... for sure.'

  'Who?'

  'I've seen him, that's all. He's hard to miss.'

  'That isn't all. Because he is hard to miss and considering the places where you've seen him, you asked questions. What did you learn?'

  'Come on, Alex! It's just gossip, nothing set in concrete.'

  'I love gossip. Tattle, Matt, or this ugly, heavy thing on my leg may just have to pound your face. You see, I can't control it; it's got a mind of its own and it doesn't like you. It can be very hostile, even to me.' With an effort, Conklin suddenly raised his club foot and pounded it down between Richards's shoulder blades.

  'Christ! You're breaking my back!'

  'No, I think it wants to break your face. Who is he, Matt? Again, grimacing, Alex raised his false foot and lowered it now on the base of the CIA man's skull.

  'All right! As I said, it's not gospel, but I've heard he's high up in Crown CI.'

  'Crown CI,' explained Conklin to Morris Panov, 'means British Counter Intelligence here in Hong Kong, which means a branch of MI6, which means they take their orders from London.'

  'Very enlightening,' said the psychiatrist, as bewildered as he was appalled.

  'Very' agreed Alex. 'May I have your necktie, Doctor?' asked Conklin as he began removing his own. 'I'll replace it out of contingency funds because we now have a new wrinkle. I'm officially at work. Langley is apparently funding - by way of Matthew's salary and time - something involving an ally's

  intelligence operation. As a civil servant under a like classification I should put my shoulder to the wheel. I need your necktie, too. Matt.'

  Two minutes later, Case Officer Richards lay behind the pillar, his feet and hands tied and his mouth drawn taut, all accomplished with three ties.

  'We're sterile,' said Alex, studying what remained of the crowd beyond the pillar. They've all gone after our decoy, who's probably halfway to Malaysia by now.'

  'Who was she - he! I mean, he certainly wasn't a woman.'

  'No sexism intended, but a woman probably couldn't have made it out of here. He did, taking the others with him - after him. He jumped over the escalator railing and worked his way up. Let's go. We're clear.'

  'But who is he? pressed Panov, as they walked around the pillar towards the escalator and the few stragglers forming a short line.

  'We've used him occasionally over here, mainly as a pair of eyes for out-of-the-way border installations, which he knows something about, since he has to get past them with his merchandise.'

  'Narcotics?"

  'He wouldn't touch them; he's a top notch jock. He runs stolen gold and jewels, operating between Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore. I think it has something to do with what happened to him a number of years ago. They took away his medals for conduct unbecoming just about everything. He posed for some raunchy photographs when he was in college and needed the money. Later, through the good offices of a sleazy publisher with the ethics of an alley cat, they surfaced and he was crucified, ruined.'

  That magazine I carried!' exclaimed Mo, as they both stepped on to the escalator.

  'Something like it, I guess.'

  'What medals?'

  'Nineteen seventy-six Olympics. Track and field. The high hurdles were his speciality.'

  Speechless, Panov stared at Alexander Conklin as they rose on the escalator, nearing the entrance to the terminal. A platoon of sweepers carrying wide brooms over their shoulders appeared on the opposite escalator heading down to the platform. Alex jerked his head towards them, snapped the fingers of his right hand, and with the thumb extended, jabbed the air in the direction of the terminal's exit doors above. The message was clear. Within moments a bound CIA agent would be found behind a pillar.

  That'd be the one they call the major,' said Marie, sitting in a chair opposite Conklin, while Morris Panov knelt beside her, examining her left foot. 'Ouch? she cried, pulling back her crossed leg. 'I'm sorry, Mo.'

  'Don't be,' said the doctor. 'It's a nasty bruise spread over the second and third metatarsals. You must have taken quite a spill.'

  'Several. You know about feet?

  'Right now I feel more secure with chiropody than psychiatry. You people live in a world that would drive my profession back to the Middle Ages - not that most of us aren't still there; the words are just cuter.' Panov looked up at Marie, his eyes straying to her severely styled grey-streaked hair. 'You had fine medical treatment, dark-redhead-that-was. Except the hair. It's atrocious.'

  'It's brilliant,' corrected Conklin.

  'What do you know? You were a patient of mine.' Mo returned to the foot. They're both healing nicely - the cuts and the blisters, that is, the bruise will take longer. I'll pick up some things later and change the dressings.' Panov got up and pulled a straight-backed chair away from the small writing table.

  'You're staying here then?' asked Marie.

  'Down the hall,' said Alex. 'I couldn't get either of the rooms next door.'

  'How did you even manage that?'

  'Money. This is Hong Kong, and reservations are always getting lost by somebody who isn't around... back to the major.'

  'His name is Lin Wenzu. Catherine Staples told me he was with British Intelligence, speaks English with a UK accent.'

  'She was sure!'

  'Very. She said he was considered the best intelligence officer in Hong Kong, and that included everyone from the KGB to the CIA.'

  'It's not hard to understand. His name is Lin Wenzu, not Ivanovitch or Joe Smith. A talented native is sent to England, educated and trained, and brought back to assume a responsible position in government. Standard colonial policy, especially in the area of law enforcement and territorial security.'

  'Certainly from a psychological viewpoint,' added Panov, sitting down. There are fewer resentments that way, and another bridge is built to the governed foreign community.'

  'I understand that,' said Alex, nodding, 'but something's missing; the pieces don't fit. It's one thing for London to give a green light for an undercover DC operation - which everything we've learned tells us this is, only more bizarre than most - but it's another for MI6 to lend us their local people in a colony the UK is still running.'

  'Why? asked Panov.

  'Several reasons. First, they don't trust us - oh, it's not that they mistrust our intentions, just our
brains. In some ways they're right, in others they're dead wrong, but that's their judgement. Second, why risk exposing their personnel for the sake of decisions made by an American bureaucrat with no expertise in on-the-scene deep cover administration. That's the sticking point, and London would reject it out of hand.'

  'I assume you're referring to McAllister,' said Marie.

  Till the cows come home from a field of new alfalfa.' Conklin shook his head, exhaling as he did so. 'I've done my research, and I can tell you he's either the strongest or the weakest factor in this whole damned scenario. I suspect the latter. He's pure, cold brains, like McNamara before his conversion to doubt.'

  'Knock off the bullshit,' said Mo Panov. 'What do you mean in straight talk, not chicken soup? Leave that to me.'

  'I mean, Doctor, that Edward Newington McAllister is a rabbit. His ears spring up at the first sign of conflict or off-the-wire lapses and he scampers off. He's an analyst and one of the best, but he is not qualified to be a case officer, to say nothing of a station chief, and don't even consider his being the strategist behind a major covert operation. He'd be laughed off the scene, believe me.' 'He was terribly convincing with David and me,' broke in

  Marie.

  'He was given that script. "Prime the subject," he was told. Stick to the convoluted narrative that would become clearer to the subject in stages once he made his first moves, which he had to make because you were gone.' 'Who wrote the script?' asked Panov. '1 wish I knew. No one I reached in Washington knows, and that includes a number of people who should. They weren't lying; after all these years I can spot a swallow in a voice. It's so damn deep and filled with so many contradictions it makes Treadstone Seventy-one look like an amateur effort - which it wasn't.'

  'Catherine said something to me,' interrupted Marie. 'I don't know whether it will help or not, but it stuck in my mind. She said a man flew into Hong Kong, a "statesman", she called him, someone who was "far more than a diplomat", or something like that. She thought there might be a connection with everything that's happened.' 'What was his name?'

  'She never told me. Later when I saw McAllister down in the street with her, I assumed it was he. But maybe not. The analyst you just described and the nervous man who spoke to David and me is hardly a diplomat, much less a statesman. It must have been someone else.' 'When did she say this to you?" asked Conklin. Three days ago when she was hiding me in her apartment in Hong Kong.'

  'Before she drove you up to Tuen Mun?' Alex leaned forward in the chair. 'Yes.'

  'She never mentioned him again?' 'No, and when I asked her, she said there was no point in either of us getting our hopes up. She said she had more digging to do.'

  'You settled for that?

  'Yes, I did, because at the time I thought I understood. I had no reason to question her then. She was taking a personal and professional risk helping me - accepting my word on her own without asking for consular advice, which others might have done simply to protect themselves. You mentioned the word "bizarre", Alex. Well, let's face it, what I told her was so bizarre it was outrageous - including a fabric of lies from the US State Department, vanishing guards from the Central Intelligence Agency, suspicions that led to the higher levels of your government. A lesser person might have backed away and covered herself.'

  'Gratitude notwithstanding,' said Conklin gently. 'She was withholding information you had a right to know. Christ, after everything you and David have been through-'

  'You're wrong, Alex,' interrupted Marie softly. 'I told you I thought I understood her, but I didn't finish. The cruellest thing you can do to a person who's living every hour in panic is to offer him or her a hope that turns out false. When the crash comes it's intolerable. Believe me, I've spent over a year with a man desperately looking for answers. He's found quite a few, but those he followed only to find them wrong nearly broke him. Dashed hopes are no fun for the one hoping.'

  'She's right,' said Panov, nodding his head and looking at Conklin. 'And I think you know it, don't you?

  T happened,' replied Alex, shrugging and looking at his watch 'At any rate, it's time for Catherine Staples.'

  'She'll be watched, guarded? It was Marie who now sat forward in her chair, her expression concerned, her eyes questioning. 'They'll assume you both came over here because of me, and that you reached me and I told you about her. They'll expect you to go after her. They'll be waiting for you. If they could do what they've done so far, they could kill you!'

  'No they couldn't,' said Conklin, getting up and limping towards the bedside telephone. 'They're not good enough,' he added simply.

  'You're a goddamned basket case!' whispered Matthew

  Richards from behind the wheel of the small car parked across the street from Catherine Staples's apartment.

  'You're not very grateful, Matt,' said Alex, sitting in the shadows next to the CIA man. 'Not only did I not send in that evaluation report, but I also let you get me back under surveillance. Thank me, don't insult me.'

  'Shit!'

  'What did you tell them back at the office?'

  'What else? I was mugged, for Christ's sake.'

  'By how many?'

  'At least five teenaged punks. Zhongguo ren.'

  'And if you fought back, making a lot of ruckus, I might have spotted you.'

  'That's the story board,' agreed Richards quietly.

  'And when I called you, naturally it was one of the street people you've cultivated who saw a white man with a limp.'

  'Bingo.'

  'You might even get a promotion.'

  'I just want to get out.'

  'You'll make it.'

  'Not this way.'

  'So it was old Havilland himself who blew into town.'

  'You didn't get that from me! It was in the papers.'

  The sterile house in Victoria Peak wasn't in the papers,

  Matt.'

  'Hey, come on, that was a trade off! You're nice to me, I'm nice to you. No lousy report about me getting clobbered by a shoe with no foot in it and you get an address. Anyway, I'd deny it. You got it from Garden Road. It's all over the consulate, thanks to a pissed-off marine.'

  'Havilland,' mused Alex out loud. 'It fits. He's tight-ass with the British, even talks like them... My God, I should have recognized the voice!'

  The voice?' asked a perplexed Richards.

  'Over the phone. Another page in the scenario. It was Havilland! He wouldn't let anyone else do it! "We've lost her." Oh, Jesus, and I was sucked right in!'

  'Into what?'

  'Forget it.'

  'Gladly.'

  An automobile slowed down and stopped across the street in front of Staples's apartment house. A woman got out of the rear kerbside door, and seeing her in the wash of the streetlights, Conklin knew who it was. Catherine Staples. She nodded to the driver, turned around and walked across the pavement to the thick glass doors of the entrance.

  Suddenly, an engine roaring at high pitch filled the quiet street by the park. A long black sedan swerved out of a space somewhere behind them and screeched to a stop beside Staples's car. Staccato explosions thundered from the second vehicle. Glass was shattered both in the street and across the pavement as the windows of the parked automobile were blown away along with the driver's head and the doors of the apartment house riddled, collapsing in bloody fragments as the body of Catherine Staples was nailed into the frame under the fusillade of bullets.

  Tyres spinning, the black sedan raced away in the dark street, leaving the carnage behind, blood and torn flesh everywhere.

  'Jesus Christ!' roared the CIA man.

  'Get out of here,' ordered Conklin.

  'Where? For Christ's sake, where?"

  'Victoria Peak.'

  'Are you out of your mind?'

  'No, but somebody else is. One blue-blooded son of a bitch has been taken. He's been had. And he's going to hear it first from me. Move!

  26

  Bourne stopped the black Shanghai sedan on the dark, treelined, d
eserted stretch of road. According to the map he had passed the Eastern Gate of the Summer Palace - actually once a series of ancient royal villas set down on acres of sculptured countryside dominated by a lake known as Kunming. He had followed the shoreline north until the coloured lights of the vast pleasure ground of emperors past faded, giving way to the darkness of the country road. He extinguished the headlights, got out and carried his purchases, now in a waterproof knapsack, to the wall of trees lining the road, and dug his heel into the ground. The earth was soft, making his task easier, for the possibility that his rented car might be searched was real. He reached inside the knapsack, pulled out a pair of workman's gloves and a long-bladed hunting knife. He knelt down and dug a hole deep enough to conceal the sack; he left the top of it open, picked up the knife and cut a notch in the trunk of the nearest tree to expose the white wood beneath the bark. He replaced the knife and gloves in the knapsack, pressed it down into the earth and covered it with dirt. He returned to the car, checked the odometer, and started the engine. If the map was as accurate about distances as it was in detailing those areas in and around Beijing where it was prohibited to drive, the entrance to the Jing Shan Sanctuary was no more than three-quarters of a mile away around a long curve up ahead.