What followed was a battle of animals, two trained executioners, each move made in intense premeditation, each blow lethal if it landed with full impact. One fought for his life, the other for survival and deliverance… and the woman he could not live without, would not live without. Finally, height and weight and a motive beyond life itself made the difference, giving victory to one and defeat to the other.
Entwined against the wall, both sweating and bruised, blood trickling from mouths and eyes, Bourne hammer-locked the contact’s neck from behind, his left knee jammed into the small of the man’s back, his right leg wrapped around the contact’s ankles, clamping them.
‘You know what happens next!’ he whispered, breathlessly spacing the Chinese words for final emphasis. ‘One snap and your spine goes. It’s not a pleasant way to die. And you don’t have to die. You can live with more money than the Frenchman would ever pay you. Take my word for it, the Frenchman and his killer won’t be around much longer. Take your choice. Now!’ Jason strained; the veins in the man’s throat were distended to the point of bursting.
‘ Yes-yes!’ cried the contact. ‘I live, not die!’
They sat in the dark alleyway, their backs against the wall, smoking cigarettes. It was established that the man spoke English fluently, which he had learned from the nuns in a Portuguese Catholic school.
‘You’re very good, you know,’ said Bourne, wiping the blood from his lips.
‘I am the champion of Macao. It is why the Frenchman pays me. But you bested me. I am dishonoured, no matter what happens.’
‘No you’re not. It’s just that I know a few more dirty tricks than you do. They’re not taught where you were trained, and they never should be. Besides, no one will ever know.’
‘But I am young! You are old.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. And I stay in pretty good shape, thanks to a crazy doctor who tells me what to do. How old do you think I am?’
‘You are over thirty?
‘Agreed.’
‘Old!’
Thanks.’
‘You are also very strong, very heavy – but it is more than that. I am a sane man. You are not]’
‘Perhaps.’ Jason crushed out his cigarette on the pavement. ‘Let’s talk sensibly,’ he said, pulling money from his pocket. ‘I meant what I said, I’ll pay you well… Where’s the Frenchman?’
‘Everything is not in balance.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Balance is important.’
‘I know that, but I don’t understand you.’
There is a lack of harmony, and the Frenchman is angry. How much will you pay me?’
‘How much can you tell me?’
‘Where the Frenchman and his assassin will be tomorrow night.’
Ten thousand American dollars.’
‘Aiya!’
‘But only if you take me there.’
‘It is across the border?
‘I have a visa for Shenzhen. It’s good for another three days.’
‘It may help, but it is not legal for the Guangdong border.’
Then you figure it out. Ten thousand dollars, American.’
‘I will figure it out.’ The contact paused, his eyes on the money held out by the American. ‘May I have what I believe you call an instalment?’
‘Five hundred dollars, that’s all.’
‘Negotiations at the border will cost much more.’
‘Call me. I’ll bring you the money.’
‘Call you where?’
‘Get me a hotel room here in Macao. I’ll put my money in its vault.’
The Lisboa.’
‘No, not the Lisboa. I can’t go there. Somewhere else.’
‘There is no problem. Help me to my feet… No! It would be better for my dignity if I did not need help.’
‘So be it,’ said Jason Bourne.
Catherine Staples sat at her desk, the disconnected telephone still in her hand; absently she looked at it and hung up. The conversation she had just concluded astonished her. As there was no Canadian Intelligence Force currently operating in Hong Kong, foreign service officers cultivated their own sources within the Hong Kong police for those times when accurate information was needed. These occasions were invariably in the interests of Canadian citizens residing in or travelling through the colony. The problems ranged from those arrested to those assaulted, from Canadians who were swindled to those doing the swindling. Then, too, there were deeper concerns, matters of security and espionage, the former covering visits of senior government officials, the latter involving means of protection against electronic surveillance and the gaining of sensitive information through acts of blackmail against consulate personnel. It was quiet but common knowledge that agents from the Eastern bloc and fanatically religious Middle East regimes used drugs and prostitutes of both sexes for whatever the preferences of both sexes in a never-ending pursuit of a hostile government’s classified data. Hong Kong was a needle and meat market. And it was in this area that Staples had done some of her best work in the territory. She had saved the careers of two attaches in her own consulate, as well as those of an American and three British. Photographs of personnel in compromising acts had been destroyed along with the corresponding negatives, the extortionists banished from the colony with threats not simply of exposure but of physical harm. In one instance, an Iranian consular official, yelling in high dudgeon, from his quarters at the Gammon House, accused her of meddling in affairs far above her station. She had listened to the ass for as long as she could tolerate the nasal twang, then terminated the call with a short statement. ‘Didn’t you know? Khomeini likes little boys.’
All of this had been made possible through her relationship with a late middle-aged English widower who after his retirement from Scotland Yard had opted to become chief of Crown Colonial Affairs in Hong Kong. At 65, Ian Ballantyne had accepted the fact that his tenure at the Yard was over, but not the use of his professional skills. He was willingly posted to the Far East, where he shook up the intelligence division of the colony’s police and in his quiet way shaped an aggressively efficient organization that knew more about Hong Kong’s shadow world than did any of the other agencies in the territory, including MI6, Special Branch. Catherine and Ian had met at one of those bureaucratically dull dinners demanded by consular protocol, and after prolonged conversation laced with wit and appraisal of his table partner, Ballantyne had leaned over and said simply: ‘Do you think we can still do it, old girl?’
‘Let’s try,’ she had replied.
They had. They enjoyed it, and Ian became a fixture in Staples’s life, no strings or commitments attached. They liked each other; that was enough.
And Ian Ballantyne had just given the lie to everything undersecretary of state Edward McAllister told Marie Webb and her husband in Maine. There was no taipan in Hong Kong named Yao Ming, and his impeccable sources – read very well paid – in Macao assured him there had been no double murder involving a taipan’s wife and a drug runner at the Lisboa Hotel. There had been no such killings since the departure of the Japanese occupation forces in 1945. There had been numerous stabbings and gunshot wounds around the tables in the casino, and quite a few deaths in the rooms attributed to overdoses of narcotics, but no such incident as described by Staples’s informer.
‘It’s a fabric of lies, Cathy old girl,’ Ian had said. ‘For what purpose, I can’t fathom.’
‘My source is legitimate, old darling. What do you smell?’
‘Rancid odours, my dear. Someone is taking a great risk for a sizeable objective. He’s covering himself, of course – one can buy anything over here, including silence – but the whole damn thing’s fiction. Do you want to tell me more?’
‘Suppose I told you it’s Washington-oriented, not UK?’
‘I’d have to contradict you. To go this far London has to be involved.’
‘It doesn’t make sense!’
‘From your viewpoint, Cathy. You don’t know theirs. And I can tell you this – that maniac, Bourne, has us all on a sticky wicket. One of his victims is a man nobody will talk about. I won’t even tell you, my girl.’
‘Will you if I bring you more information?’
‘Probably not, but do try.’
Staples sat at her desk filtering the words.
One of his victims is a man nobody will talk about.
What did Ballantyne mean? What was happening? And why was a former Canadian economist in the centre of the sudden storm?
Regardless, she was safe.
Ambassador Havilland, attaché case in hand, strode into the office in Victoria Peak as McAllister bounced out of the chair, prepared to vacate it for his superior.
‘Stay where you are, Edward. What news?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’
‘Christ, I don’t want to hear that!’
I’m sorry.’
‘Where’s the retarded son of a bitch who let this happen?’
McAllister blanched as Major Lin Wenzu, unseen by Havilland, rose from the couch against the back wall. ‘I am the retarded son of a bitch, the Chinaman who let it happen, Mr Ambassador.’