The Bourne Supremacy (79 page)

The players sat in white, plastic chairs, living, breathing robots waiting for a signal to commence, none really possessing the courage or the energy to open the proceedings. Exhaustion, mingled with the fear of violent death, marked their faces - marked all but one face. His possessed the deep lines and dark shadows of extreme fatigue but there was no hollow fear in his eyes, only passive, bewildered acceptance of things still beyond his understanding. Minutes ago death had held no fear for him; it was preferable to living. Now, in his confusion, his wife gripping his hand, he could feel the swelling of distant anger, distant in the sense that it was far back in the recesses of his mind, relentlessly pushing forward like the faraway thunder over a lake in an approaching summer storm.

'Who did this to us? said David Webb, his voice barely above a whisper.

'I did,' answered Havilland, at the end of the rectangular white table. The ambassador leaned slowly forward, returning Webb's deathlike stare. 'If I were in a court of law seeking mercy for an ignominious act, I would have to plead extenuating circumstances.'

'Which were? asked David in a monotone.

'First there is the crisis,' said the diplomat. 'Second there was yourself.'

'Explain that,' interrupted Alex Conklin at the other end of the table, facing Havilland. Webb and Marie were on his left in front of the white wall, Morris Panov and Edward McAllister opposite them. 'And don't leave anything out,' added the rogue intelligence officer.

'I don't intend to,' said the ambassador, his eyes remaining on David. 'The crisis is real, the catastrophe imminent. A cabal has been formed deep in Peking by a group of zealots led by a man so deeply entrenched in the hierarchy of his government, so revered as a philosopher-prince that he cannot be exposed. No one would believe it. Anyone who attempted to expose him would become a pariah. Worse, any attempt at exposure would risk a backlash so severe that Peking would cry insult and outrage, and revert to suspicion and intransigence. But if the conspiracy is not aborted, it will destroy the Hong Kong Accords and blow the colony apart. The result will be the immediate occupation by the People's Republic. I don't have to tell you what that would mean -economic chaos, violence, bloodshed and undoubtedly war in the Far East. How long could such hostilities be contained before other nations are forced to choose sides? The risk is unthinkable.'

Silence. Eyes locked with eyes.

'Fanatics from the Kuomintang,' said David, his voice flat and cold. 'China against China. It's been the war cry of maniacs for the past forty years.'

'But only a cry, Mr Webb. Words, talk, but no movement, no strikes, no ultimate strategy.' Havilland cupped his hands on the table, breathing deeply. There is now. The strategy's in place, a strategy so oblique and devious, so long in the making, they believe it can't fail. But of course it will, and when it does the world will be faced with a crisis of intolerable proportions. It could well lead to the final crisis, the one we can't survive. Certainly the Far East won't.'

'You're not telling me anything I haven't seen for myself. They've gone down deep in high places, and they're probably spreading, but they're still fanatics, a lunatic fringe. And if the maniac I saw who was running the show is anything like the others they'd all be hanged in Tian an men Square. It'd be televised and approved by every group opposed to capital punishment. He was - is a messianic sadist, a butcher. Butchers aren't statesmen. They're not taken seriously.'

'Herr Hitler was in Nineteen-thirty-three,' observed Havilland. The Ayatollah Khomeini only a few years ago. But then you obviously don't know who their true leader is. He'd never show himself under any circumstances where you might even remotely see him. However, I can assure you he's a statesman and taken very seriously. However, again, his objective is not Peking. It's Hong Kong.'

'I saw what I saw and heard what I heard and it'll all be with me for a long time ... You don't need me, you never did] Isolate them, spread the word in the Central Committee, call in Taiwan to disown them - they will! Times change. They don't want that war any more than Peking does.'

The ambassador studied the Medusan, obviously evaluating David's information, realizing that Webb had seen enough in Peking to draw conclusions of his own, but not enough to understand the essence of the Hong Kong conspiracy. 'It's too late. The forces have been set in motion. Treachery at the highest levels of China's government, treachery at the hands of the despised Nationalists, assumed to be in collusion with Western financial interests. Even the devoted followers of Deng Xiao ping could not accept that blow to Peking's pride, that loss of international face - the role of the duped cuckold. Neither would we if it was learned that General Motors, IBM and the New York Stock Exchange were being run by American traitors, trained in the Soviet, diverting billions to projects not in our nation's interests.'

'The analogy is accurate,' broke in McAllister, his fingers at his right temple. 'Cumulatively that's what Hong Kong will be to the People's Republic - that and a hundred thousand times more. But there's another element and it's as alarming as anything else we've learned. I should like to bring it up now - in my position as an analyst, as someone who's supposed to calculate the reactions of adversaries and potential adversaries-'

'Make it short,' interrupted Webb. 'You talk too much and you keep rubbing your head too much and I don't like your eyes. They belong to a dead fish. You talked too much in Maine. You're a liar.'

'Yes. Yes, I understand what you're saying and why you're saying it. But I'm a decent man, Mr Webb. I believe in decency.'

'I don't. Not any longer. Go on. This is all very enlightening and I don't understand a goddamned thing because nobody's said a goddamned thing that makes sense. What's your contribution, liar?'

'The organized crime factor.' McAllister swallowed at David's repeated insult, but still delivered the statement as if he expected everyone to understand. When faced with blank looks, he added. 'The triads!'

'Mafia-structured groups, Oriental style,' said' Marie, her eyes on the undersecretary of state. 'Criminal brotherhoods.'

McAllister nodded. 'Narcotics, illegal immigration, gambling, prostitution, loan sharking - all the usual pursuits.'

'And some not so usual,' added Marie. 'They're deep into their own form of economics. They own banks- indirectly, of course - throughout California, Oregon, the state of Washington, and up into my country, in British Columbia. They launder money in the millions every day by way of international transfers.'

'Which only serves to compound the crisis,' said McAllister emphatically.

'Why?' asked David. 'What's your point?

'Crime, Mr Webb. The leaders of the People's Republic are obsessed with crime. Reports indicate that over a hundred thousand executions have taken place during the last three years with little distinction made between misdemeanors and felonies. It's consistent with the regime - the origins of the regime. All revolutions believe they are conceived in purity, the purity of the cause is everything. Peking will make ideological adjustments to benefit from the West's marketplace, but there'll be no accommodation for even the hint of organized crime.'

'You make them sound like a collection of paranoids,' interjected Panov.

They are. They can't afford to be anything else.'

'Ideologically?' asked the psychiatrist, skeptically.

'Sheer numbers, Doctor. The purity of the revolution is the cover but it's the numbers that frighten them. A huge, immensely populated country with vast resources - my God, if organized crime moved in, and with a billion people inside its borders, don't think for a minute the overlords aren't champing at the bit - it could become a nation of triads. Villages, towns, whole cities could be divided into "family" terrains, all profiting from the influx of Western capital and technology. There'd be an explosion of illegal exports flooding the contraband markets across the world. Narcotics from uncountable hills and fields that could not possibly be patrolled; weapons from subsidiary factories set up through graft; textiles from hundreds of underground plants using stolen machinery and peasant labour crippling those industries in the West. Crime.'

That's a great leap forward no one over here's been able to accomplish in the last forty years,' said Conklin.

'Who would dare try?' asked McAllister. 'If a person can be executed for stealing fifty yuan, who's going to go for a hundred thousand? It takes protection, organization, people in high places. This is what Peking fears, why it's paranoid. The leaders are terrified of corruptors in high places. The political infrastructure could be eroded. The leaders would lose control, and that they will not risk. Again, their fears are paranoid, but for them they're terribly real. Any hint that powerful criminal factions are in league with internal conspirators, infiltrating their economy, would be enough for them to disown the Accords and send their troops down into Hong Kong.'

'Your conclusion's obvious,' said Marie. 'But where's the logic? How could it happen?'

'It's happening, Mrs Webb,' answered Ambassador Havilland. 'It's why we needed Jason Bourne.'

'Somebody had better start at the beginning,' said David.

The diplomat did. 'It began over thirty years ago when a brilliant young man was sent from Taiwan back to the land of his father's birth and given a new name, a new family. It was a long-range plan, its roots in zealotry and revenge...'

Webb listened as the incredible story of Sheng Chou Yang unfolded, each block in place, each fact convincingly the truth for there was no reason any longer for lies. Twenty-seven minutes later, when he had finished, Havilland picked up a black-bordered file folder. He lifted the cover, revealing a clasped sheaf of some seventy-odd pages, closed it and reached over, placing it in front of David. This is everything we know, everything we've learned - the detailed specifics of everything I've told you. It can't leave this house except as ashes, but you're welcome to read it. If you have any doubts or questions, I swear to you I'll move every source in the United States government - from the Oval Office to the National Security Council - to satisfy you. I could do no less.' The diplomat paused, his eyes fixed on Webb's. 'Perhaps we have no right to ask it, but we need your help. We need all the information you can give us.'

'So you can send someone in to take out this Sheng Chou Yang.'

'Essentially, yes. But it's far more complex than that. Our hand must be invisible. It can't be seen or even remotely suspected. Sheng's covered himself brilliantly. Peking looks upon him as a visionary, a great patriot who works slavishly for Mother China, you might say a saint. His security is absolute. The people around him, his aides, his guards, they're his protective shock troops, their allegiance is solely to him.'

'Which is why you wanted the impostor,' interrupted Marie. 'He was your link to Sheng.'

'We knew he had accepted contracts from him. Sheng had to - has to - eliminate his opposition, both those who oppose him ideologically and those he intends to exclude from his operations.'

'In this latter group,' broke in McAllister, 'are the leaders of rival triads Sheng doesn't trust, that the fanatics of the Kuomintang don't trust. He knows that if they're around to see that they're being squeezed out, a destabilizing gangland war would erupt which Sheng couldn't tolerate any more than the British can with Peking up the street. Within the past two months seven triad overlords have been killed, their organizations crippled.'

The new Jason Bourne was Sheng's perfect solution,' continued the ambassador. The hired assassin with no political or national ties; for above all, the killings could never be traced back to China.'

'But he went to Peking,' objected Webb. 'It's where I tracked him. Even if it started out as a trap for me, which it was-'

'A trap for you?' exclaimed Havilland. They knew about you?'

'I came face to face with my successor two nights ago at the airport. We each knew who the other was - it was impossible not to know. He wasn't going to keep it a secret and take the fall for a failed contract.'

'It was you,' interrupted McAllister. 'I knew it!'

'So did Sheng and his people. I was the new gun in town and had to be stopped, killed on a priority-one basis. They couldn't risk what I'd pieced together. The trap was conceived that night, set that night.'

'Jesus' cried Conklin. 'I read about Kai Tak in Washington. The papers said it was assumed to be right-wing lunatics. Keep the commies out of capitalism. Instead, it was you?

'Both governments had to come up with something for the world press,' added the undersecretary. 'Just as we have to say something about tonight-'

'My point is,' said David, ignoring McAllister. 'This Sheng called for the commando, used him to mount a trap for me, and by doing so made him part of the inner circle. That's no way for a concealed client to keep his distance from a hired killer.'

'It is as if he didn't expect him to walk out of that circle alive,' replied Havilland, glancing at the undersecretary of state. 'It's Edward's theory, and one to which I subscribe, that when the final contract was carried out or when it was deemed that he knew too much and was therefore a liability, the impostor was to be killed collecting a payment -believing, of course, that he was being given another assignment. Everything untraceable, the slate clean. The events at Kai Tak no doubt sealed his death warrant.'

'He wasn't smart enough to see it,' said Jason Bourne. 'He couldn't think geometrically.'

'I beg your pardon?' asked the ambassador.

'Nothing,' answered Webb, again staring at the diplomat. 'So everything you told me was part truth, part lie. Hong

Kong could blow apart, but not for the reasons you gave me.'

'The truth was our credibility, you had to accept that, accept our deep, frightening concerns. The lies were to recruit you.' Havilland leaned back in his chair. 'And I can't be any more honest than that.'

'Bastards,' said Webb, his voice low, ice-like.