The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum

‘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,’ broke in McAllister, ‘are the leaders of rival triads 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 as 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?5

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 judgement 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 MI6,’ 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. 7 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 Hose and the story blows, how many practising anti-socials 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.’

T 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.’