The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum

‘You’re a banker and I’m an economist. What do bankers know about the impacts on floating currencies caused by inflated interests, especially in the prime rates? Marie smiled for the first time in a very long time.

She had over an hour to think in the countryside quiet as she sat in the taxi that drove her down to Kowloon. It would be another forty-five minutes once they reached the less quiet outskirts, particularly a congested district called Mongkok. The contrite people of Tuen Mun had been not only generous and protective but inventive as well. The banker, Jitai, apparently had confirmed that the hoodlums’ victim was indeed a white woman in hiding and running for her life, and that therefore, as she was in the process of reaching people who might help her, perhaps her appearance might be altered. Western clothes were brought from several shops, clothes that struck Marie as odd; they seemed drab and utilitarian, neat but dreary. Not cheap, but the kind of clothes that would be selected by a woman who had either no sense of design or felt herself above it. Then after an hour in the back room of a beauty shop she understood why such a costume had been chosen. The women fussed over her; her hair was washed and blown dry, and when the process was over she had looked in the mirror, barely breathing as she did so. Her face – drawn, pale and tired – was framed by a shell of hair no longer a striking auburn but mouse-grey with subtle tinges of white. She had aged more than a decade; it was an extension of what she had attempted after escaping from the hospital but far bolder, far more complete. She was the Chinese image of the upper-middle-class, serious, no-nonsense tourist -probably a widow – who peremptorily issued instructions, counted her money, and never went anywhere without a guidebook which she continuously checked off against each site on her well-organized itinerary. The people of Tuen Mun knew such tourists well and their imposed portrait was accurate. Jason Bourne would approve.

There were other thoughts, however, that occupied her on the ride to Kowloon, desperate thoughts that she tried to control and keep in perspective, pushing away the panic that could so easily engulf her, causing her to do the wrong thing, make a wrong move that could harm David – kill David. Oh, God, where are you? How can I find you? Howl

She searched her memory for anyone who could help her, constantly rejecting every name and every face that came to her because in one way or another each had been a part of that horrible strategy so ominously termed beyond-salvage -the death of an individual the only acceptable solution. Except, of course, Morris Panov, but Mo was a pariah in the eyes of the government; he had called the official killers by their rightful names: incompetents and murderers. He would get nowhere, and conceivably bring about a second order for beyond-salvage.

Beyond-salvage… A face came to her, a face with tears running down his cheeks, muted cries of mercy in his tremulous voice, a once-close friend of a young foreign service officer and his wife and children in a remote outpost called Phnom Penh. Conklin! His name was Alexander Conklin*. Throughout David’s long convalescence he had tried repeatedly to see her husband but David would not permit it, saying that he would kill the CIA man if he walked through the door. The crippled Conklin had wrongfully, stupidly made accusations against David, not listening to the pleas of an amnesiac, instead assuming treachery and ‘turning’ to the point where he had tried to kill David himself outside of Paris. And, finally, he had mounted a last attempt on New York’s 71st Street, at a sterile house called Treadstone 71, that nearly succeeded. When the truth about David was known, Conklin had been consumed with guilt, shattered by what he had done. She had actually felt sorry for him; his anguish was so genuine, his guilt so devastating. She had talked with Alex over coffee on the porch, but David would never see him. He was the only one she could think of that made sense – any sense at all!

The hotel was called the Empress, on Chatham Road in Kowloon. It was a small hotel in the crowded Tsim Sha Tsui frequented by a mix of cultures, neither rich nor hardly poor, by and large salesmen from the East and West who had business to do without the largess of executive expense accounts. The banker, Jitai, had done his job; a single room had been reserved for a Mrs Austin, Penelope Austin. The ‘Penelope’ had been Jitai’s idea, for he had read many English novels and ‘Penelope’ seemed ‘so right’. So be it, as Jason Bourne would have said, thought Marie.

She sat on the edge of the bed and reached for the telephone, unsure of what to say but knowing she had to say it. ‘I need the number of a person in Washington, DC, in the United States,’ she said to the operator. ‘It’s an emergency.’

There is a charge for overseas information-‘

‘Charge it,’ broke in Marie. ‘It’s urgent. I’ll stay on the line

‘Yes?’ said the voice filled with sleep. ‘Hello!

‘Alex, it’s Marie Webb.’

‘Goddamn you, where are you? Where are both of you? He found you!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t found him and he hasn’t found me. You know about all this?

‘Who the hell do you think almost broke my neck last week when he flew into Washington? David] I’ve got relays on every phone that can reach me!’ Mo Panov’s got the same! Where are you?’

‘Hong Kong – Kowloon, I guess. The Empress Hotel, under the name of Austin. David reached you?’

‘And Mo! He and I have turned every trick in the deck to find out what the hell is going on and we’ve been stonewalled] No, I take it back – not stonewalled – no one else knows what’s going on either! I’d know if they did! Good Christ, Marie, I haven’t had a drink since last Thursday!’

‘I didn’t know you missed it.’

‘I miss it! What’s happening?’

Marie told him, including the unmistakable stamp of government bureaucracy on the part of her captors, and her escape, and the help given by Catherine Staples that turned into a trap, engineered by a man named McAllister whom she had seen on the street with Staples.

‘McAllister? You saw him?’

‘He’s here, Alex. He wants to take me back. With me he controls David, and he’ll kill him! They tried before!’

There was a pause on the line, a pause filled with anguish. ‘ We tried before,’ said Conklin softly. ‘But that was then, not now.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Stay where you are,’ ordered Alex. ‘I’ll be on the earliest plane to Hong Kong. Don’t go out of your room. Don’t make any more calls. They’re searching for you, they have to be.’

‘David’s out there, Alex! Whatever they’ve forced him to do because of me, I’m frightened to death!’

‘Delta was the best man ever developed in Medusa. No one better ever walked into that field. I know. I saw.’ That’s one aspect, and I’ve taught myself to live with it. But not the other, Alex! His mind! What will happen to his mind? Conklin paused again, and when he spoke his voice was pensive. ‘I’ll bring a friend with me, a friend to all of us. Mo won’t refuse. Stay put, Marie. It’s time for a showdown. And, by Christ, there’s going to be one!’

23

‘Who are you?’ screamed Bourne in a frenzy, gripping the old man by the throat and pressing him into the wall.

‘Delta, stop it? commanded d’Anjou. ‘Your voice! People will hear you. They’ll think you’re killing him. They’ll call the desk.’

‘I may kill him and the phones don’t work!’ Jason released the impostor’s impostor, released his throat but gripped the front of his shirt, ripping it as he swung the man down into a chair.

The door,’ continued d’Anjou steadily, angrily. ‘Put it in place as best you can, for God’s sake. I want to get out of Beijing alive, and every second with you diminishes my prospects. The door!

Half crazed, Bourne whipped around, picked up the shattered door and shoved it into the frame, adjusting the sides and kicking them into place. The old man massaged his throat and suddenly tried to spring out of the chair.

Won, mon ami!’ said the Frenchman, blocking him. ‘Stay where you are. Do not concern yourself with me, only with him. You see, he really might kill you. In his rage he has no respect for the golden years, but since I’m nearly there, I do.’

‘Rage? This is an outrage? sputtered the old man, coughing his words. ‘I fought at El Alamein and, by Christ, I’ll fight now!’ Again the old man struggled out of the chair, and again d’Anjou pushed him back as Jason returned.