The Bourne Supremacy (55 page)

He lunged, the rigid fingers of his left hand clamped vice-like over the man's face as he plunged the letter-opener into the soldier's neck, the blade rushing through sinew and fragile cartilage, severing the windpipe. In one motion, Bourne dropped his left hand, clutching the large weapon still in his enemy's grip, and swung the corpse around, dropping with it under the branches of the row of pine trees lined up along the right wall. He slid the body out of sight into the dark shadows between two large ceramic pots holding the roots of two trees. He crawled over the corpse, the weapon in front of his face, and made his way back against the wall towards the first hall, to where he could see without being seen.

A second uniformed man crossed through the shaft of light that lit up the darkness of the entrance to the second hall. He stood in front of Mao's crystal coffin, awash in the eerie beams, and looked around. He raised a hand-held radio to his face and spoke, listening; five seconds later his expression changed to one of concern. He began walking rapidly to his right, tracing the assigned path of the first man. Jason scrambled back towards the corpse, hands and knees silently pounding the marble floor, and moved out towards the edge of the low-slung branches.

The soldier approached, walking more slowly, studying the last people in the line up ahead. Now! Bourne sprang up as the man passed, hammer-locking his neck, choking off all sound as he pulled him back down under the branches, the gun pressed far up in the flesh of the soldier's stomach. He pulled the trigger; the muffled report was like a burst of air, no more. The man expunged a last violent breath and went limp.

He had to get out\ If he was trapped and killed in the awed silence of the mausoleum the assassin would roam free and Marie's death would be assured. His enemies were closing the reverse trap. He had to reverse the reversal and somehow survive! The cleanest escape is made in stages, using whatever confusion there is or can be created.

Stages One and Two were accomplished. A certain confusion already existed if other men were whispering into radios. What had to be brought about was a focal point of disruption so violent and unexpected that those hunting him in the shadows would themselves become the subjects of a sudden, hysterical search.

There was only one way and Jason felt no obscure heroic feelings of I-may-die-trying. He had to do it! He had to make it work. Survival was everything, for reasons beyond himself. The professional was at his apex, calm and deliberate.

Bourne stood up and walked through branches, crossing the open space to the pillar in front of him. He then ran to the one behind, and then the one behind that, the first pillar in the second hall, thirty feet from the dramatically-lit coffin. He edged his body around the marble and waited, his eyes on the entrance door.

It happened. They happened. The officer who was the assassin's 'captive' emerged with the short civilian carrying his government briefcase. The soldier held a radio at his side;

he brought it up to speak and listen, then shook his head, placing the radio in his right-hand pocket and removing the gun from his holster. The civilian nodded once, reached under his jacket and pulled out a short-barrelled revolver. Each walked forward towards the glass coffin containing the remains of Mao Zedong, then looked at each other and began to separate, one to the left, one to the right.

Now! Jason raised his weapon, took rapid aim and fired. Once! A hair to the right. Twice! The spits were like coughs in shadows as both men fell into the sarcophagus. Grabbing the edges of his coat, Bourne gripped the hot cylinder on the barrel of his pistol and spun it off. There were five shells left. He squeezed the trigger in rapid succession. The explosions filled the mausoleum, echoing off the marble walls, shattering the crystal glass of the coffin, the bullets embedding themselves in the spastically jerked corpse of Mao Zedong, one penetrating a bloodless forehead, another blowing out an eye.

Sirens erupted; clamouring bells split the air and deafened the ear, as soldiers, appearing at once from everywhere, raced in panic towards the scene of the horrible outrage. The two lines of tourists, feeling trapped in the eerie light of the house of death, exploded into hysteria. En masse, the crowds rushed towards the doors and the sunlight, trampling those in their paths. Jason Bourne joined them, crashing his way into the centre of an inside column. Reaching the blinding light of Tian an men Square, he raced down the steps.

D'Anjou! Jason ran to his right, rounding the stone corner, and ran down the side of the pillared structure until he reached the front. Guards were doing their best to calm the agitated crowds while trying to find out what had happened. A riot was in the making.

Bourne studied the place where he had last seen d'Anjou, then moved his eyes over a gridlock area within which the Frenchman might logically be seen. Nothing, no one even vaguely resembling him.

Suddenly, there was the screeching of tyres far off on a thoroughfare to Jason's left. He whipped around and looked. A van with tinted windows had circled the stanchioned pavement and was speeding towards the south gate of Tian an men Square. They had taken d'Anjou. Echo was gone.

24

'Qu'est-il arrive?'

'Des coups defer! Les gardes sont paniques!"

Bourne heard the shouts and, running, joined the group of French tourists led by a guide whose concentration was riveted on the chaos taking place on the steps of the mausoleum. He buttoned his jacket, covering the gun in his belt, and slipped the perforated silencer into his pocket. Glancing around, he moved quickly back through the crowd next to a man taller than himself, a well-dressed man with a disdainful expression. Jason was grateful that there were several others of nearly equal height in front of them; with luck and in the excitement he might remain inconspicuous. Above, at the top of the mausoleum's stairs, the doors had been partially opened. Uniformed men were racing back and forth along the stairs. Obviously the leadership was a shambles, and Bourne knew why. It had fled, had simply disappeared, wanting no part of the terrible events. All that concerned Jason now was the assassin. Would he come out? Or had he found d'Anjou, capturing his creator himself and leaving with Echo in the van, convinced that the original Jason Bourne was trapped, a second unlikely corpse in the desecrated mausoleum.

'Qu'est-ce que c'est?' asked Jason, addressing the tall, well-dressed Frenchman beside him.

'Another ungodly delay, no doubt,' replied the man in a somewhat effeminate Parisian accent. This place is a madhouse, and my tolerance is at an end! I'm going back to the hotel.'

'Can you do that?' Bourne up-graded his French from middle-class to a decent university. It meant so much to a Parisian. 'I mean, are we permitted to leave our tour? We hear constantly that we must stay together.'

'I'm a businessman, not a tourist. This "tour", as you call it, was not on my agenda. Frankly, I had the afternoon off -these people linger endlessly over decisions - and thought I'd see a few sights but there wasn't a French-speaking driver available. The concierge assigned me - mind you assigned me - to this group. The guide, you know, is a student of French literature and speaks as though she was born in the seventeenth century. I haven't a clue what this so-called tour is all about.'

'It's the five-hour excursion,' explained Jason accurately, reading the Chinese characters printed on the identification tag affixed to the man's lapel. 'After Tian an men Square we visit the Ming tombs, then drive out to watch the sunset from the Great Wall.'

'Now, really, I've seen the Great Wall! My God, it was the first place all twelve of those bureaucrats from the Trade Commission took me, prattling incessantly through the interpreter that it was a sign of their permanence. Shirt If the labour weren't so unbelievably cheap and the profits so extraordinary-'

'I, too, am in business, but for a few days also a tourist. My line is wicker imports. What's yours, if I may ask?'

'Fabrics, what else? Unless you consider electronics, or oil, or coal, or perfume - even canework.' The businessman allowed himself a superior but knowing smile. 'I tell you these people are sitting on the wealth of the world and they haven't the vaguest idea what to do with it.'

Bourne looked closely at the tall Frenchman. He thought of Medusa's Echo and a Gallic aphorism that proclaimed that the more things changed the more they remained the same. Opportunities will present themselves. Recognize them, act on them. 'As I said,' continued Jason while staring up at the chaos on the staircase, 'I, too, am a businessman who is taking a short sabbatical - courtesy of our government's tax incentives for those of us who plough the foreign fields - but I've travelled a great deal here in China and have learned a good deal of the language.'

'Cane has come up in the world,' said the Parisian sardonically.

'Our best quality work is a staple line on the Cete d'Azur, as well as points north and south. The Grimaldi family has been a client for years.' Bourne kept his eyes on the staircase.

'I stand corrected, my business friend ... in the foreign fields.' For the first time the Frenchman actually looked at Jason.

'And I can tell you now,' said Bourne, 'that no more visitors will be permitted into Mao's tomb, and that everyone on every tour in the vicinity will be cordoned off and possibly detained.'

'My God, why?

'Apparently something terrible happened inside and the guards are shouting about foreign gangsters ... Did you say you were assigned to this tour but not really a part of it?'

'Essentially, yes.'

'Grounds for at least speculation, no? Detention, almost certainly.'

'Inconceivable?

This is China-'

'It cannot be! Millions upon millions of francs are in the balance! I'm only here on this horrid tour because-'

'I suggest you leave, my business friend. Say you were out for a stroll. Give me your identification tag and I'll get rid of it for you-'

'Is that what it is?'

'Your country of origin and passport number are on it. It's how they control your movements while you're on a guided tour.'

'I'm for ever in your debt!' cried the businessman ripping the plastic tag off his lapel. 'If you're ever in Paris-'

'I spend most of the time with the prince and his family in-'

'But of course.' Again, my thanks!' The Frenchman, so different and yet so much like Echo, left in a hurry, his well-dressed figure conspicuous in the hazy, greyish yellow sunlight as he headed towards the Heavenly Gate - as obvious as the false quarry who had led a hunter into a trap.

Bourne pinned the plastic tag to his own lapel and now became part of an official tour; it was his way out through the gates of Tian an men Square. After the group had been hastily diverted from the mausoleum to the Great Hall, the bus passed through the northern gate and Jason saw through the window the apoplectic French businessman pleading with the Beijing police to let him pass. Fragments of reports of the outrage had been fitted together. The word was spreading. A white Occidental had horribly defiled the coffin and the hallowed body of Chairman Mao. A white terrorist from a tour without the proper identification on his outer clothing. A guard on the steps had reported such a man.

'I do recall,' the tour guide said in obsolete French. She was standing by the statue of an angry lion on that extraordinary Avenue of Animals where huge stone replicas of large cats, horses, elephants and ferocious mythical beasts lined the road, guarding the final way to the tombs of the Ming Dynasty. 'But my memory faileth concerning your knowledge of our language. And I do believe that I heard you employ our tongue but a moment ago.'

A student of French literature and speaks as though she were in the seventeenth century... an indignant businessman, now undoubtedly far more indignant.

'1 didn't before,' replied Bourne in Mandarin, 'because you were with others and I didn't wish to stand out. But let's speak your language now.'

'You do so very well.'

'I thank you. Then you do recall that I was added to your tour at the last minute?'

The manager of the Beijing Hotel actually spoke to my superior, but, yes, I do recall.' The woman smiled and shrugged. 'In truth, as it is such a large group, I recall only giving a tall man his tour-group emblem, and it is in front of my face now. You will have to pay additional yuan on your hotel bill. I am sorry but then you are not part of the tourist programme.'

'No, I'm not, because I'm a businessman negotiating with your government.'

'May you do well,' said the guide with her piquant smile. 'Some do, some do not.'

'My point is that I may not be able to do anything,' said Jason, smiling back. 'My Chinese speech is far better than my Chinese reading. A few minutes ago several words fell into place for me and I realized I'm t6 be at the Beijing Hotel in about half an hour from now for a meeting. How can I do that?

'It is a question of finding transportation. I will write out what you need and you can present it to the guards at the Da hong men-'

'The Great Red Gate?' interrupted Bourne. The one with the arches?

'Yes. There are bus-vehicles that will take you back to Beijing. You may be late, but then it is customary, I understand, for government people to be late also.' She took out a notebook from the pocket of her Mao jacket and then a reed-like ballpoint pen.

'I won't be stopped?

'If you are, ask those who stop you to call the government people,' said the guide, writing out instructions in Chinese and tearing off the page.

This is not your tour group!' barked the operator of the bus in lower-class Mandarin, shaking his head and stabbing his finger at Jason's lapel. The man obviously expected his words to have no effect whatsoever on the tourist, so he compensated with exaggerated gestures and a strident voice. It was also apparent that he hoped that one of his superiors under the arches of the Great Red Gate would take notice of his alertness. One did.

'What's the problem? asked a well-spoken soldier, walking rapidly up to the door of the bus, parting his way through the tourists behind Bourne.