‘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.