Robert Ludlum - Bourne 2 - Bourne Supremecy

by The Bourne Supremacy [lit]

  An explosion followed, blowing the emissary's head away. Fragments of skull and tissue seared into the lily ponds. The army officer appeared in the archway as the corpse sprang

  back under the impact into the white gravel.

  'Dispose of him,' ordered Sheng. 'He heard too much, learned too much... presumed too much.'

  'Certainly, Minister.'

  'And reach the man in Macao. I have instructions for him and they are to be implemented immediately, while the fires in Kowloon still light up the sky. I want him here.'

  As the officer approached the dead courier, Sheng suddenly rose from the chair, then walked slowly to the edge of the nearest pond, his face illuminated by the lights beneath the water. He spoke once again,-his voice flat but filled with purpose.

  'Soon all of Hong Kong and the territories,' he said, staring at a lily pad. 'Soon thereafter, all of China.'

  'You lead, Minister,' said the officer, watching Sheng, his eyes glowing with devotion. 'We follow. The march you promised has begun. We return to our Mother and the land will be ours again.'

  'Yes, it will,' agreed Sheng Chou Yang. 'We cannot be denied. I cannot be denied.'

  20

  By noon of that paralysing day when Kai Tak was merely an airport and not an assassination field, Ambassador Havilland had described to a stunned Catherine Staples the broad outlines of the Sheng conspiracy with its roots in the Kuomintang. Objective: a consortium of taipans with a central leader, whose son Sheng was taking over Hong Kong and turning the colony into the conspirators' own financial empire. Inevitable result: the conspiracy would fail, and the raging giant that was the People's Republic would strike out, marching into Hong Kong, destroying the Accords and throwing the Far East into chaos. In utter disbelief Catherine had demanded substantiation and by 2:15 had twice read the State Department's lengthy and top-secret dossier on Sheng Chou Yang, but she continued to strenuously object as the accuracy could not be verified. At 3:30 she had been taken to the radio room and by satellite-scrambler transmission was presented with an array of 'facts' by a man named Reilly of the National Security Council in Washington.

  'You're only a voice, Mr Reilly,' Staples had said. 'How do I know you're not down at the bottom of the Peak in the Wanchai?'

  There was at that moment a pronounced click on the line and a voice Catherine and the world knew very well was speaking to her. 'This is the President of the United States, Mrs Staples. If you doubt that, I suggest you call your consulate. Ask them to reach the White House by diplomatic phone and request a confirmation of our transmission. I'll hang on. You'll receive it. At the moment I have nothing better to do - nothing more vital.'

  Shaking her head and briefly closing her eyes, Catherine had answered quietly. 'I believe you, Mr President.'

  'Forget about me, believe what you've heard. It's the truth.'

  'It's just so unbelievable - inconceivable.'

  'I'm no expert, Mrs Staples, and I never claimed to be, but then neither was the Trojan Horse very believable. Now, that may be legend and Menelaus' wife may have been a figment of a campfire storyteller's imagination, but the concept is valid - it's become a symbol of an enemy destroying his adversary from within.'

  'Menelaus...?'

  'Don't believe the media, I've read a book or two. But do believe our people, Mrs Staples. We need you. I'll call your Prime Minister if it will help, but in all honesty, I'd rather not. He might feel it necessary to confer with others.'

  'No, Mr President. Containment is everything. I'm beginning to understand Ambassador Havilland.'

  'You're one up on me. I don't always understand him.'

  'Perhaps it's better that way, sir.'

  At 3:58 there was an emergency call - highest priority - to the sterile house in Victoria Peak, but it was not for either the Ambassador or Undersecretary of State McAllister. It was for Major Lin Wenzu, and when it came a frightening vigil began that lasted four hours. The scant information was so electrifying that all concentration was riveted on the crisis, and Catherine Staples telephoned her consulate telling the High Commissioner that she was not well and would not attend the strategy conference with the Americans that afternoon. Her presence in the sterile house was welcome. Ambassador Havilland wanted the foreign service officer to see and understand for herself how close the Far East was to upheaval. How an inevitable error on either Sheng's or his assassin's part could bring about an explosion so drastic that troops from the People's Republic could move into Hong

  Kong within hours, bringing not only the colony's world trade to a halt, but with it widespread human suffering -savage rioting everywhere, death squads from the left and the right exploiting resentments going back forty years, racial and provincial factions pitted against one another and the military forces. Blood would flow in the streets and the harbour, and as nations everywhere must be affected, global war was a very real possibility. He said these things to her as Lin worked furiously on the telephone, giving commands, coordinating his people with the colony's police and the airport's security.

  It all had started with the major from MI6 cupping the phone and speaking in a quiet voice in that Victorian room in Victoria Peak.

  'Kai Tak tonight. The Sino-British delegations. Assassination. The target is the Governor. They believe it's Jason Bourne.'

  'I can't understand it!' protested McAllister, leaping from the couch. 'It's premature. Sheng isn't ready! We'd have got an inkling of it if he was - an official statement from his ministry alluding to a proposed commission of some sort. It's wrong!'

  'Miscalculation?' asked the ambassador coldly.

  'Possibly. Or something else. A strategy we haven't considered.'

  'Go to work, Major,' said Havilland.

  After issuing his last orders Lin received a final order himself from Havilland before heading to the airport. 'Stay out of sight, Major,' said the ambassador. 'I mean that.'

  'Impossible,' replied Lin. 'With respect, sir, I must be with my men on the scene. These are experienced eyes.'

  'With equal respect,' continued Havilland. 'I must make it a condition of your getting through the outside gate.'

  "Why, Mr Ambassador?

  'With your perspicacity, I'm surprised you ask.'

  'I have to! I don't understand.'

  Then perhaps it's my fault, Major. I thought I'd made it clear why we went to such extremes to bring our Jason Bourne over here. Accept the fact that he's extraordinary, his record proves it. He has his ears not only to the ground, but they're also locked into the four winds. We must presume, if the medical prognosis is accurate and portions of his memory continue to come back to him, that he has contacts all over this part of the world in nooks and crannies we know nothing about. Suppose - just suppose, Major - that one of those contacts inform him that an emergency-alert has been sent out for Kai Tak Airport tonight, that a large security force has been gathered to protect the Governor. What do you think he'd do?'

  'Be there,' answered Lin -Wenzu softly, reluctantly. 'Somewhere.'

  'And suppose again that our Bourne saw you! Forgive me, but you are not easily overlooked. The discipline of his logical mind - logic, discipline and imagination were always his means of survival - would force him to find out precisely who you are. Need I say more?'

  'I don't think so,' said the major.

  The connection is made,' said Havilland, overriding Wenzu's words. There is no taipan with a murdered young wife in Macao. Instead there is a highly regarded field officer of British Intelligence posing as a fictitious taipan, having fed him yet another lie that echoes a previous lie. He will know that once again he has been manipulated by government forces, manipulated in the most brutal fashion possible - the abduction of his wife. The mind, Major, is a delicate instrument, his more delicate than most. It can only take so much stress. I don't even want to think about what he might do - what we might be forced to do.'

  'It was always the weakest aspect of the scenario, and yet it was the core,' said Wenzu.

/>   '"An ingenious device",' interrupted McAllister, obviously quoting.' "Few acts of vengeance are as readily understood as an eye for an eye." Your words, Lin.'

  'If so, you should not have chosen me to play your taipan!' insisted the major. There's a crisis here in Hong Kong and you've crippled me!'

  'It's the same crisis facing all of us,' said Havilland gently. 'Only this time we have a warning. Also, Lin, who else could we have chosen? What other Chinese but the proven chief of Special Branch would have been cleared by London for what you were initially told, to say nothing of what you know now? Set up your command post inside the airport's tower. The glass is dark.'

  In silence, the huge major turned angrily and left the room. 'Is it wise to let him goT asked McAllister, as he, the ambassador and Catherine Staples watched Lin leave.

  'Certainly,' answered the diplomat of covert operations.

  'I spent several weeks here with MI6,' continued the undersecretary rapidly. 'He's been known to disobey in the past.'

  'Only when the orders were given by posturing British officers with less experience than himself. He was never reprimanded; he was right. Just as he knows I'm right.'

  'How can you be sure?'

  'Why do you think he said we've crippled him? He doesn't like it but he accepts it.' Havilland walked behind the desk and turned to Catherine. 'Please sit down, Mrs Staples. And Edward, I should like to ask a favour of you and it has nothing to do with confidentiality. You know as much as I do and you're probably more current, and I'll no doubt call for you if I need information. However, I'd like to talk with Mrs Staples alone.'

  'By all means,' said the undersecretary, gathering up papers on the desk, as Catherine sat down in a chair facing the diplomat. 'I've a great deal of thinking to do. If this Kai Tak thing isn't a hoax - if it's a direct order from Sheng - then he's conceived of a strategy we really haven't considered, and that's dangerous. From every avenue, every direction I've explored, he has to offer up his clearinghouse, his damned economic commission, under stable conditions, not unstable. He could blow everything apart - but he's not stupid, he's brilliant. What's he doing?

  'Consider, if you will,' broke in the ambassador, frowning as he sat down, 'the reverse of our approach, Edward. Instead of implanting his financial clearing house of assorted taipans during a period of stability, he does so in instability - but with sympathy, the point being to restore order quickly. No raging giant but rather a protective father, caring for his emotionally disturbed offspring, wanting to calm it down.'

  'To what advantage?'

  'It takes place rapidly, that's all. Who would so closely examine a group of respected financiers from the colony put in place during a crisis? After all, they represent stability. It's something to think about.'

  McAllister held the papers in his hands and looked at Havilland. 'It's too much of a gamble for him,' he said. 'Sheng risks losing control of the expansionists in the Central Committee, the old military revolutionaries who are looking for any excuse to move into the colony. A crisis based on violence would play right into their hands. That's the scenario we gave Webb, and it's a realistic one.'

  'Unless Sheng's own position is now strong enough to suppress them. As you said yourself, Sheng Chou Yang has made China a great deal of money, and if there was ever a basically capitalistic people it's the Chinese. They have more than a healthy respect for money, it's an obsession.'

  They also have respect for the old men of the Long March and it, too, is obsessive. Without those early Maoists most of China's younger leadership would be illiterate peasants breaking their backs in the field. They revere those old soldiers. Sheng wouldn't risk a confrontation.'

  Then there's an alternative theory that could be a combination of what we're both saying. We did not tell Webb that a number of the more vocal leaders of Peking's old guard haven't been heard from in months. And in several instances, when the word was officially released, this one or that had died of natural causes, or a tragic accident, and in one case was removed in disgrace. Now if our assumption is right, that at least some of these silenced men are victims of Sheng's hired gun-'

  Then he's solidified his position by elimination,' broke in McAllister. 'Westerners are all over Peking; the hotels are filled to capacity. What's one more - especially an assassin who could be anyone - an attach‚, a business executive... a Chameleon.'

  'And who better than the manipulative Sheng to set up secret meetings between his Jason Bourne and selected victims. Any number of pretexts would do, but primarily military high-tech espionage. The targets would leap at it.'

  'If any of this is near the truth, Sheng's much further along than we thought.'

  Take your papers. Request anything you need from our intelligence people and MI6. Study everything, but find us a pattern, Edward. If we lose a Governor tonight we may be on our way to losing Hong Kong in a matter of days. For all the wrong reasons.'

  'He'll be protected,' muttered McAllister, heading for the door, his face troubled.

  'I'm counting on it,' said the ambassador as the undersecretary left the room. Havilland turned to Catherine Staples. 'Are you really beginning to understand me? he asked.

  The words and their implications, yes, but not certain specifics,' replied Catherine; looking oddly at the door the undersecretary of state had just closed. 'He's a strange man, isn't he?'

  'McAllister?'

  'Yes.'

  'Does he bother you?

  'On the contrary. He lends a certain credibility to everything that's been said to me. By you, by that man Reilly - even by your President, I'm afraid.' Staples turned back to the ambassador. 'I'm being honest.'

  'I want you to be. And I understand the wavelength you're on. McAllister's one of the best analytical minds in the State Department, a brilliant bureaucrat who will never rise to the level of his own worth.'

  'Why not?'

  'I think you know, but if you don't you sense it. He's a thoroughly moral man and that morality has stood in the way of his advancement. Had I been cursed with his sense of moral outrage I never would have become the man I am - and in my defense I never would have accomplished what I have. But I think you know that, too. You said as much when you came in here.'

  'Now you're the one being honest. I appreciate it.'

  'I'm glad. I want the air cleared between us because I want your help.'

  'Marie?'

  'And beyond,' said Havilland. 'What specifics disturb you? What can I clarify?'

  This clearing house, this commission of bankers and taipans Sheng will propose to oversee the colony's financial policies-'

  'Let me anticipate,' interrupted the diplomat. 'On the surface they will be disparate in character and position and eminently acceptable. As I said to McAllister when we first met, if we thought the whole insane scheme had a prayer, we'd look the other way and wish them great success, but it doesn't have a chance. All powerful men have enemies; there'll be skeptics here in Hong Kong and in Peking -jealous factions who've been excluded - and they'll dig deeper than Sheng expects. I think you know what they'll find.'

  That all roads, above and below ground, lead to Rome. Rome here being this taipan, Sheng's father, whose name your highly selective documents never mention. He's the spider whose webs reach out to every member of that clearing house. He controls them. For God's sake, who the hell is he?'

  'I wish we knew,' said Havilland, his voice flat.

  'You really don't?' asked Catherine Staples, astonished.

  'If we did, life would be far simpler and I would have told you. I'm not playing games with you; we've never learned who he is. How many taipans are there in Hong Kong? How many zealots wanting to strike back at Peking in any way they can in the cause of the Kuomintang? By their lights China was stolen from them. Their Motherland, the graves of their ancestors, their possessions - everything. Many were decent people, Mrs Staples, but many others were not. The political leaders, the warlords, the landlords, the immensely rich - they were a privileged
society that gorged themselves on the sweat and suppression of millions. And if that sounds like a crock of today's Communist propaganda, it was a classic case of yesterday's provocation that gave rise to such bilge. We're dealing with a handful of obsessed expatriats who want their own back. They forget the corruption that led to their own collapse.'

  'Have you thought of confronting Sheng himself? Privately!

  'Of course, and his reaction is all too predictable. He would feign outrage and tell us bluntly that if we pursue such despicable fantasies in an attempt to discredit him, he'll void the China Accords, claiming duplicity, and move Hong Kong into Peking's economic orbit immediately. He'd claim that many of the old line Marxists in the Central Committee would applaud such a move, and he'd be right. Then he would look at us and probably say, "Gentlemen, you have your choice. Good day."'