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.
In the lower left-hand corner there was a column in small print
People's Printing Plant Number 72. Shanghai. Bourne wondered how many hundreds of thousands of such signs had been made by Printing Plant 72. Perhaps they took the place of a warranty, two with each vehicle.
He backed into the shadows and continued around the bend until he reached the open space in front of the floodlit gate. His eyes followed the line of the green fence. On the left it disappeared into the forest darkness. On the right it extended perhaps two hundred feet beyond the gatehouse, running the length of a parking lot with numbered areas for tour buses and taxis, where it angled sharply south. As he expected, a bird sanctuary in China would be enclosed, a deterrent to poachers. As d'Anjou had phrased it: 'Birds have been revered in China for centuries. They're considered delicacies for the eyes and the palate.' Echo. Echo was gone. He wondered if d'Anjou had suffered ... no time.
Voices! Bourne snapped his head back towards the gate, lurching into the nearest foliage. The Chinese army officer and a new, much younger watchman - no, now definitely a guard - walked out from behind the gatehouse. The guard was wheeling a bicycle while the officer held a small radio to
his ear.
They'll start arriving shortly after nine o'clock,' said the army man, lowering the radio and shoving down the antenna. 'Seven vehicles each three minutes apart.'
The truck?'
'It will be the last.'
The guard looked at his watch. 'Perhaps you should get the car then. If there's a telephone check, I know the routine.'
'A good thought,' agreed the officer clamping the radio to his belt and taking the bicycle's right handlebar. 'I have no patience with those bureaucratic females who bark like chows.'
'But you must have,' insisted the guard, laughing. 'And you must take out the lonely ones, the ugly ones, and perform at your best between their legs. Suppose you received a poor report? You could lose this heavenly job.' 'You mean that feeble-headed peasant you relieved-' 'No, no,' broke in the guard, releasing the bicycle. They seek out the younger ones, the handsome ones, like me. From our photographs, of course. He's different; he pays them
yuan from his sales of lost items. I sometimes wonder if he makes a profit.'
'I have trouble understanding you civilians.'
'Correction, if I may, Colonel. In the true China I am a captain in the Kuomintang.' Jason was stunned by the younger man's remark. What he had heard was incredible! In the true China I am a captain in the Kuomintang. The true China? Taiwan? Good God, had it started? The war of the two Chinas? Was that what these men were about? Madness! Wholesale slaughter! The Far East would be blown off the face of the earth! Christ! In his hunt for an assassin had he stumbled on the unthinkable"}
It was too much to absorb, too frightening, too cataclysmic. He had to move quickly, putting all thought on hold, concentrating only on movement. He read the radium dial of his watch. It was 8:54, and he had very little time to do what had to be done. He waited until the army officer bicycled past, then made his way cautiously, silently through the foliage until he saw the fence. He approached it, taking out the penlight from his pocket, flashing it twice to judge the dimensions. They were extraordinary. Its height was no less than 12 feet, and the top angled outwards like the inner barricade of