‘A clerk at the Trade Council Office, sir. We’re doing a routine check on a French businessman who has you listed as a reference-‘
‘Great Christian Jesus, not that idiot Ardisson! What’s he done now?’
‘You know him, sir?’
‘I wish I didn’t! Special this, special that! He thinks that when he defecates the odour of lilacs fills the stalls.’
‘Were you to have dinner with him tonight, sir?’
‘Dinner? I might have said anything to keep him quiet this afternoon! Of course, he hears only what he wants to hear.
On the other hand, it’s perfectly possible that he would use my name to obtain a reservation when he didn’t have one. I told you, special this, special that! Give him whatever he wants. He’s a lunatic but harmless enough. We’d send him back to Paris on the next plane if the fools he represents weren’t paying so much for such third-rate material. He’s cleared for the best illegal whores in Beijing! Just don’t bother me, I’m entertaining.’ The minister abruptly hung up.
His mind at ease, the army officer replaced the phone and walked outside to the night watchman. ‘You were accurate,’ he said.
The foreigner was most agitated, sir. And very confused.’ ‘I’m told both conditions are normal for him.’ The army man paused for a moment, then added, ‘You may open the gate now.’
‘Certainly, sir.’ The guard reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. He stopped, looking over at the officer. ‘I see no automobile, sir. It is many kilometres to any transportation. The Summer Palace would be the first-‘
‘I’ve telephoned for a car. It should be here in ten or fifteen minutes.’
‘I’m afraid / will not be here then, sir. I can see the light of my relief’s bicycle down the road now. I am off duty in five minutes.’
‘Perhaps I’ll wait here,’ said the officer, dismissing the watchman’s words. ‘There are clouds drifting down from the north. If they bring rain, I could use the gatehouse for shelter until my car arrives.’ ‘I see no clouds, sir.’ ‘Your eyes are not what they once were.’ ‘Too true.’ The repeated ringing of a bicycle bell broke the outer silence. The relief guard approached the fence as the current watchman started to unlock the gate. These young ones announce themselves as though they were descending spirits from heaven.’
‘I should like to say something to you,’ said the officer sharply, stopping the watchman in his tracks. ‘Like the foreigner, I, too, do not wish to be embarrassed for catching an hour of much needed sleep in a beautiful resting place. Do you enjoy your job?
‘Very much, sir.’
‘And the opportunity to sell such things as Japanese binoculars turned over to you for safekeeping?’
‘Sir?’
‘My hearing’s acute and your shrill voice is loud.’
‘Sir?’
‘Say nothing about me and I will say nothing about your unethical activities, which would undoubtedly send you into a field with a pistol put to your head. Your behaviour is reprehensible.’
‘I have never seen you, sir! I swear on the spirits in my soul!’
‘We in the party reject such thoughts.’
Then on anything you like?
‘Open the gate and get out of here.’
‘First my bicycle, sir!’ The watchman ran to the far edge of the fence, wheeled out his bicycle and unlocked the gate. He swung it back, nodding with relief as he literally threw the new man the ring of keys. Mounting the saddle of his bicycle, he sped off down the road.
The second guard walked casually through the gate holding his bicycle by the handlebars. ‘Can you imagine?’ he said to the officer. The son of a Kuomintang warlord taking the place of a feeble-minded peasant who would have served us in the kitchens.’
Bourne spotted the white notch in the tree trunk and drove the sedan off the road between two pine trees. He turned off the lights and got out. Rapidly he broke numerous branches to camouflage the car in the darkness. Instinctively, he had worked quickly – he would have done so in any event – but to his alarm, within seconds after he finished concealing the sedan, headlights appeared far down on the road to Beijing. He bent down, kneeling in the underbrush, and watched the car pass by, fascinated by the sight of a bicycle strapped to its roof, then concerned when moments later the noise of the engine was abruptly cut off; the car had stopped around the r bend ahead. Wary that some part of his own car had been seen by an experienced field man who would park out of sight and return on foot, Jason raced across the road into the tangled brush beyond the trees. He ran in spurts to his right, from pine to pine to the mid-point of the curve, where again he knelt in the shadowed greenery, waiting, studying every foot of the thoroughfare’s borders, listening for any sound that did not belong to the hum of the deserted country road.
Nothing. Then finally something, and when he saw what it was, it simply did not make sense. Or did it? The man on the bicycle with a friction light on the front fender was pedalling up the road as if his life depended on a speed he could not possibly attain. As he drew closer Bourne saw that it was the watchman… on a bicycle … and a bicycle had been strapped to the roof of the car that had stopped around the bend. Had it been for the watchman? Of course not; the car would have proceeded to the gate … A second bicycle? A second watchman – arriving on a bicycle? Of course. If what he believed was true, the guard at the gate would be changed, a conspirator put in his place.
Jason had waited until the watchman’s light was barely a speck in the distant darkness, then ran in the road back to his car and the tree with the notch in the bark. He now dug up the knapsack and began sorting out the articles of his trade. He removed his jacket and white shirt and put on a black turtleneck sweater; he secured the sheath of the hunting knife to the belt of his dark trousers and shoved the automatic with a single shell in it on the other side. He picked up two spools connected by a three-foot strand of thin wire, and thought that the lethal instrument was far better than the one he had fashioned in Hong Kong. Why not? He was much closer to his objective, if anything he had learned in that distant Medusa had any value. He rolled the wire on to both spools equally, and carefully pushed them down inside his trousers right back pocket, then picked up a small penlight and clipped it to the lower edge of his right front pocket. He placed a long double strand of outsized Chinese firecrackers, which was folded and held in place by an elastic band, in his left front pocket along with three books of matches and a small wax candle. The most awkward item was a hand-held medium-gauge wirecutter, the size of a pair of pliers. He inserted it head down into his left back pocket, then sprang the release so that the two short handles were pressed against the cloth, thus locking the instrument in its shell. Finally, he reached for a wrapped pile of clothing that was coiled so tight its dimensions were no more than that of a rolling pin. He centred it on his spine, pulled the elastic band around his waist, and snapped the clips into place. He might never use the clothes but then he could leave nothing to chance – he was too close!
/’// take him, Marie! I swear ‘I’ll take him and we’ll have our life again. It’s David and I love you so! I need you so!
Stop it! There are no people, only objectives. No emotions, only targets and kills and men to be eliminated who stand in the way. I have no use for you, Webb. You’re soft and I despise you. Listen to Delta – listen to Jason Bourne!
The killer who was a killer by necessity buried the knapsack with his white shirt and tweed jacket and stood up between the pine trees. His lungs swelled at the thought of what was before him, one part of him frightened and uncertain, the other furious, ice-cold.
Jason started walking north into the curve, going from tree to tree as he had done before. He reached the car that had passed him with the bicycle strapped to its roof; parked on the side of the road, it had a large sign taped under the front window. He edged closer and read the Chinese characters, smiling to himself as he did so.
This is a disabled official vehicle of the government. Tampering with any part of the mechanism is a serious crime. Theft of this vehicle will result in the swift execution of the offender.