Robert Ludlum - Bourne 2 - Bourne Supremecy

by The Bourne Supremacy [lit]

  'Unofficially,' agreed the diplomat. 'So much is achieved that way. No confrontations, very smooth. Very cheap. No cost at all really.'

  'Except a man's lifer shouted Alex. 'He'll be killed. He has to be killed from everyone's point of view.'

  The price, Mr Conklin, if it must be paid.'

  Alex waited, as if he expected Havilland to finish his statement. Nothing was forthcoming, only the strong, sad eyes peering into his. That's all you've got to say? It's the price - if it has to be paid?

  The stakes are far higher than we imagined - far higher. You know that as well as I do, so don't look so shocked. 'The ambassador leaned back in his chair, somewhat stiffly. 'You've made such decisions before, such calculations.'

  'Not like this. Never like this! You send in your own and you know the risks, but you don't set up a field man sealing off his escape route! He was better off believing - believing -he was bringing in the assassin to get his wife back!'

  The objective is different. Infinitely more vital.'

  'I know that. Then you don't send him! You get the codes and send someone else! Someone who isn't half dead from exhaustion!'

  'Exhausted or not, he's the best man for the job and he insists on doing it.'

  'Because he doesn't know what you've done! How you've boxed him in, made him the messenger who has to be killed!'

  'I had no choice. As you say, he found me. I had to tell him the truth.'

  Then, I repeat, send in someone else! A hit team recruited on the outside by a blind, no connection to us, just payment for a professional kill, the target Sheng. Webb knows how to reach Sheng, he told you that. I'll convince him to give you the codes or the sequence or whatever the hell it is, and you buy a hit team!'

  'You'd put us on a level with the Qaddafis of this world?"

  That's so puerile I can't find words to-'

  'Forget it,' broke in Havilland. *If it was ever traced back to us - and it could be - we'd have to launch against China before they dropped something on us. Unthinkable.'

  'What you're doing here is unthinkable!'

  There are more important priorities than the survival of a single individual, Mr Conklin, and again you know that as well as I do. It's been your life's work - if you'll forgive me -but the present case is on a higher level than anything you ever experienced. Let's call it a geopolitical level.'

  'Son of a bitch!'

  'Your own guilt is showing now, Alex - if I may call you Alex - since you call in question my immediate family line. I never put Jason Bourne beyond-salvage. My most fervent hope is that he'll succeed, that the kill will take place. If that happens, he's free; the Far East is rid of a monster and the world will be spared an Oriental Sarajevo. That's my job, Alex.'

  'At least tell him! Warn him!'

  'I can't. Any more than you would in my position. You don't tell a tueur a gages-'

  'Come again, elegant ass?

  'A man sent in to kill must have the confidence of his convictions. He can't, for a second, reflect on his motives or his reasons. He must have no doubts at all. None. The obsession must be intact. It's his only chance to succeed.'

  'Suppose he doesn't succeed? Suppose he's killed?

  Then we start again as quickly as possible, putting someone else in place. McAllister will be with him in Macao

  and learn the sequence codes to reach Sheng. Bourne's agreed to that. If the worst happens, we might even try his conspirator-for-a-conspirator theory. He says it's too late but he could be wrong. You see, I'm not above learning, Alex.'

  'You're not above anything,' Conklin said angrily, getting out of the chair. 'But you forgot something - you forgot what you said to David.' There's a glaring flaw.'

  'What's that?'

  'I won't let you get away with it.' Alex limped towards the door. 'You can ask so much of a man but there comes a point when you don't ask any more. You're out, elegant ass. Webb's going to be told the truth. The whole truth.'

  Conklin opened the door. He faced the back of a tall marine, who upon hearing the sound of the door opening did a precise about-face, his rifle at port-arms.

  'Get out of my way, soldier,' said Alex.

  'Sorry, sir!' barked the marine, his eyes distant, staring straight ahead.

  Conklin turned back to the diplomat seated behind the desk. Havilland shrugged. 'Procedures,' he said.

  'I thought these people were out of here. I thought they were sequestered at the airport.'

  'The ones you saw are. These are a squad from the consulate contingent. Thanks to Downing Street's bending a few rules, this is officially US territory now. We are entitled to a military presence.'

  'I want to see Webb!'

  'You can't. He's leaving.'

  'Who the hell do you think you are?'

  'My name is Raymond Oliver Havilland. I am ambas-sador-at-large for the government of the United States of America. My decisions are to be carried out without debate during periods of crisis. This is a period of crisis. Fuck off, Alex.'

  Conklin closed the door and walked awkwardly back to his chair. 'What's next, Mr Ambassador! Do the three of us get bullets in our heads or are we given lobotomies?'

  'I'm sure we can all come to a mutual understanding.'

  They held each other, Marie knowing that he was only partly there, only partly himself. It was Paris all over again, when she knew a desperate man named Jason Bourne, who was trying to stay alive, but not sure he would, or even should, his self-doubts in some ways as lethal to him as those who wanted him killed. But it was not Paris. There were no self-doubts now, no tactics feverishly improvised to elude pursuers, no race to trap the hunters. What reminded her of Paris was the distance she felt between them. David was trying to reach her - generous David, compassionate David - but Jason Bourne would not let him go. Jason was now the hunter, not the hunted, and this strengthened his will. It was summed up in a word he used with staccato regularity. Move!

  'Why, David? Why?'

  'I told you. Because I can. Because I have to. Because it has to be done.'

  'That's not an answer, my darling.'

  'All right.' Webb gently released his wife and held her by the shoulders, looking into her eyes. 'For us then.'

  'Us?'

  'Yes. I'd see those images for the rest of my life. They'd keep coming back and they'd tear me apart because I'd know what 1 left behind and I wouldn't be able to handle it. I'd go into tailspins and take you with me because for all your brains you haven't the sense to bail out.'

  'I'd rather go into senseless tailspins with you than without you. Read that as seeing you alive.'

  'That's not an argument.'

  'I think it's considerable.'

  'I'll be calling the moves, not making them.'

  'What the hell does that mean?'

  'I want Sheng taken out, I mean that. He doesn't deserve to live, but I won't be doing the taking-'

  'The God image doesn't suit you!' interrupted Marie, sharply. 'Let others make that decision. Walk away from it. Stay safe.'

  'You're not listening to me. I was there and I saw him -heard him. He doesn't deserve to live. In one of his screeching diatribes he called life a precious gift. That may be debatable, depending on the life, but life doesn't mean a thing to him. He wants to kill - maybe he has to, I don't know; ask Panov - it's in his eyes. He's Hitler and Mengele and Genghis Khan... the chainsaw killer - whatever - but he has to go. And I have to make sure he goes.'

  'But why?' pleaded Marie. 'You haven't answered me!'

  'I did, but you didn't hear me. One way or another I'd see him every day, hear that voice. I'd be watching him toy with terrified people before killing them, butchering them. Try to understand. I've tried and I'm no expert but I've learned a few things about myself. Only an idiot wouldn't. It's the images, Marie, the goddamned pictures that keep coming back, opening doors - memories I don't want to know about, but have to. The clearest and simplest way I can put it is that I can't take any more. I can't add to that collection o
f bad surprises. You see, I want to get better - not entirely cured, I can accept that, live with it - but I can't slide back, either. I won't slide back. For both our sakes.'

  'And you think by engineering a man's death you'll get rid of those images?'

  'I think it'll help, yes. Everything's relative and I wouldn't be here if Echo hadn't thrown his life away so I could live. It's not always fashionable to say it, but like most people I have a conscience. Or maybe it's guilt because I survived. I simply have to do it because I can.'

  'You've convinced yourself?

  'Yes, I have. I'm best equipped.'

  'And you say you're calling the moves, not making them?

  'I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm coming back because I want a long life with you, lady.'

  'What's my guarantee? Who's going to make the moves?

  'The whore who got us into this.'

  'Havilland?'

  'No, he's the pimp. McAllister's the whore, he always was. The man who believes in decency, who wears it on his sleeve until the power boys ask him to put out. He'll probably call in the pimp and that's fine. Between them they can do it.'

  'But how?'

  'There are men - and women - who will kill if the price is high enough. They may not have the egos of the mythical Jason Bourne or the very real Carlos the Jackal, but they're everywhere in that goddamned filthy shadow world. Edward, the whore, told us he made enemies throughout the Far East, from Hong Kong to the Philippines, from Singapore to Tokyo, all in the name of Washington who wanted influence over here. If you make enemies you know who they are, know the signals to send out to reach them. That's what the whore and the pimp are going to do. I'll set up the kill, but someone else will do the killing, and I don't care how many millions it costs them. I'll watch from a distance to make sure that the butcher's killed, that Echo gets what's coming to him, that the Far East is rid of a monster who can plunge it into a terrible war - but that's all I'll do. Watch. McAllister doesn't know it but he's coming with me. We're extracting our pound of flesh.'

  'Who's talking now? asked Marie. 'David or Jason?'

  The husband paused, his silent thoughts deep. 'Bourne,' he said finally. 'It has to be Bourne until I'm back.'

  'You know that?'

  'I accept it. I don't have a choice.'

  There was a soft, rapid knocking at the bedroom door. 'Mr Webb. It's McAllister. It's time to leave.'

  35

  The Emergency Medical Service helicopter roared across Victoria Harbour past the out islands of the South China Sea towards Macao. The patrol boats of the People's Republic had been appraised by way of the naval station in Gongbei; there would be no firing at the low-flying aircraft on an errand of mercy. As McAllister's luck would have it, a visiting party official from Peking had been admitted to the Kiang Wu Hospital with a bleeding duodenal ulcer. He required RH-negative blood which was continuously in short supply. Let them come, let them go. If the official were a peasant from the hills of Zhuhai, he'd be given the blood of a goat and let him hope for the best.

  Bourne and the undersecretary of state wore the white, belted coveralls and caps of the Royal Medical Corps, with no rank of substance indicated on their sleeves; they were merely grousing subordinates ordered to carry blood to a Zhongguo ren belonging to a regime that was in the process of further dismantling the Empire. Everything was being done properly and efficiently in the new spirit of co-operation between the colony and its soon-to-be new masters. Let them come, let them go. It's all a lifetime away and for us without meaning. We will not benefit. We never benefit. Not from them, not from those above.

  The hospital's rear parking area had been cleared of vehicles. Four searchlights outlined the threshold. The pilot shuttered the aircraft into vertical-hold, then began his descent, clammering down towards the concrete landing zone. The sight of the lights and the sound of the roaring helicopter had drawn crowds on the street beyond the hospital's gates on the Rua Coelho Do Amaral. That was all to the good, thought Bourne, looking down from the open hatchway. He trusted that even more onlookers would be attracted for the chopper's departure in roughly five minutes as the slapping blades continued to rotate at slow speed, the searchlights remained on and the cordon of police stayed in place - all signs of this most unusual activity. Crowds were the best that he and McAllister could hope for; in the confusion they could become part of the curious onlookers as two other men in the white coveralls of paramedics took their places by rushing to the aircraft, their bodies bent beneath the rotors, for the return trip to Hong Kong.

  Grudgingly, Jason had to admire McAllister's ability to move his chess pieces. The analyst had the convictions of his connivance. He knew which buttons to press to shift his pawns. In the current crisis the pawn was a doctor at the Kiang Wu Hospital who several years ago had diverted IMF medical funds to his own clinic on the Almirante Sergio. Since Washington was a sponsor of the International Monetary Fund, and since McAllister had caught the doctor with his hands in the till, he was in a position to expose him and had threatened to do so. Yet the doctor had prevailed. The physician had asked McAllister how he expected to replace him - there was a dearth of competent doctors in Macao. Would it not be better for the American to overlook his indiscretion if his clinic serviced the indigent? With records of such service? The choirboy in McAllister had capitulated, but not without remembering the doctor's indiscretion - and his debt. It was being paid tonight.

  'Come on!' yelled Bourne, rising and gripping one of the two canisters of blood. 'Move!'

  McAllister clung to a wall bar on the opposite side of the aircraft as the helicopter thump-crashed on to the cement. He was pale, his face frozen into a mask of itself. These things are an abomination? he mumbled. 'Please wait till we're settled.'

  'We're settled. It's your schedule, analyst. Move."

  Directed by the police, they raced across the parking area to a pair of double doors held open by two nurses. Inside, a white-jacketed Oriental doctor, the eternal stethoscope hanging from a pocket, grabbed McAllister's arm.

  'Good to see you again, sir,' he said in fluent but heavily accented English. 'Although it is under curious circumstances-'

  'So were yours three years ago,' broke in the analyst sharply, breathlessly, peremptorily cutting off the once-errant doctor. 'Where do we go?'

  'Follow me to the blood laboratory. It is at the end of the corridor. The head nurse will check the seals and sign the receipts, after which you will also follow me into another room where the two men who will take your places are waiting. Give them the receipts, change clothes, and they will leave.'

  'Who are they?' asked Bourne. 'Where did you find them?' 'Portuguese interns,' replied the doctor. 'Unmonied young doctors sent out from Lisbon to complete their residencies here.' 'Explanations?' pressed Jason as they started down the hallway.

  'None, actually,' answered the Macaoan. 'What you call in English a "trade". Perfectly legitimate. Two British medics who wish to spend a night over here and two overworked young doctors who deserve a night in Hong Kong. They will return on the hydrofoil in the morning. Neither of them speaks English. They'll know nothing, suspect nothing. They will simply be pleased that an older doctor recognized their needs and deserts.'

  'You found the right man, analyst.'

  'He's a thief.'

  'You're a whore.'

  '1 beg your pardon?'

  'Nothing. Let's go.'

  Once the canisters were delivered, the seals inspected and the receipts signed, Bourne and McAllister followed the doctor into a locked adjacent office that held drug supplies and had its own door to the corridor, also locked. The two Portuguese interns were waiting in front of the glass cabinets; one was taller than the other and both were smiling. There were no introductions, just nods and a short statement by the doctor, addressing the undersecretary of state. v

  'On the basis of your descriptions - not that I needed yours - I'd say their sizes are about right, wouldn't you?'

  They'll d
o,' replied McAllister, as he and Jason began removing the white coveralls. These are outsize. If they run fast enough and keep their heads down, they'll be okay. Tell them to leave the garments and the receipts with the pilot. He's to sign us in once he gets to Hong Kong.' Bourne and the analyst changed into dark, rumpled trousers and loose-fitting jackets. Each handed his counterpart his coveralls and cap. McAllister said. Tell them to hurry. Departure's scheduled for less than two minutes.'

  The doctor spoke in broken Portuguese, then turned back to the undersecretary. The pilot can't go anywhere without them, sir.'

  'Everything's timed and officially cleared down to the minute,' the analyst snapped, fear now in his voice. There's no room for someone to become any more curious than necessary. Everything has to be clockwork. Hurry?