‘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!’
There are five vehicles between us, and we agreed -1 stay far behind.’
‘Until I said otherwise! It’s different now. I have money. I’m investing in China!’
‘We will be stopped at the gate. Telephone calls will be made.’
‘I’ve got the name of a banker in Shenzhen!’
‘Does he have your name, sir? And a list of the Chinese firms you are dealing with? If so, you may do the talking at the gate. But if this banker in Shenzhen does not know you, you will be detained for giving false information. Your stay in China would be for as long as it takes to thoroughly investigate you. Weeks, months.’
‘I have to reach that car!’
‘You approach that car, you will be shot.’
‘Goddamn it!’ shouted Jason in English, instantly reverting to Chinese. ‘Listen to me. I don’t have time to explain, but I’ve got to see him!’
‘This is not my business,’ said the driver coldly, warily.