state, each decision precise, each movement deadly. His eye was on the kill, and his human brain had become an animal. He wandered the squalid streets of the Yau Ma Ti, his prisoner in tow, wrists still in traction, finding what he wanted to find, paying thousands of dollars for items worth a fraction of the amounts paid. Word spread up into the Mongkok about the strange man and his even stranger silent companion, who was bound and feared for his life. Other doors were opened to him, doors reserved for the runners of contraband - drugs, exported whores, jewels, gold and materials of destruction, deception, death - and exaggerated warnings accompanied the word about this obsessed man carrying thousands on his person.
He is a maniac and he is white and he will kill quickly. It is said two throats were slit by those dishonest to him. It is heard that a Zhongguo ren was shot to death because he cheated on a delivery. He is mad. Give him what he wants. He pays hard cash. Who cares? It is not our problem. Let him come. Let him go. Just take his money.
By midnight Delta had the tools of his lethal trade. And success was uppermost in the Medusan's mind. He had to succeed. The kill was everything.
Where was Echo? He needed Echo. Old Echo was his good luck charm!
Echo was dead, slain by a madman with a ceremonial sword in a peaceful forest of birds. Memories.
Echo.
Marie.
I'll kill them for what they did to you!
He stopped a dilapidated taxi in the Mongkok and, showing money, asked the driver to step outside.
'Yes, what is, sir? asked the man in broken English.
'What's your car worth? said Delta.
'I not understand.'
'How much! Money! For your car!'
'Youfeng kuangl'
'Bul' shouted Delta, telling the driver he was not unbalanced. 'How much will you take for your car? he continued in Chinese. Tomorrow morning you can say it was stolen. The police will find it.'
'It's my only source of livelihood and I have a large family! You are crazy!'
'How's four thousand, American?'
'Aiya. Take it!'
''Kuair said Jason, telling the man to hurry. 'Help me with this diseased one. He has the shaking sickness and must be tied down so he can't hurt himself.'
The owner of the taxi, his eyes on the large bills in Bourne's hand, helped Jason throw the assassin into the back seat, holding the killer down as the man from Medusa whipped the nylon ropes around the commando's ankles, knees and elbows, once again gagging and blindfolding him with the strips of cloth ripped from the cheap hotel's pillowcase. Unable to understand what was being said - shouted in Chinese - the prisoner could only passively resist. It was not merely the punishment inflicted on his wrists with each protesting movement, it was something he saw as he stared at his captor. There was a change in the original Jason Bourne; he had gone into another world, a far darker world. The kill was in the Medusa's extended periods of silence. It was in his eyes.
As he drove through the congested tunnel from Kowloon to the island of Hong Kong, Delta primed himself for the assault, imagining the obstacles that would face him, conjuring up the counter measures he would employ. All were overstated and excessive, thus preparing himself for the worst.
He had done the same in the jungles of Tarn Quan. There was nothing he had not considered and he had brought them out - all of them but one. Apiece of garbage, a man who had no soul but the want of gold, a traitor who would sell the lives of his comrades for small advantage. It was where it had all begun. In the jungles of Tarn Quan. Delta had executed the piece of garbage, blown his temple out with a bullet, as this garbage was on a radio relaying their position to the Cong. The garbage was a man from Medusa named Jason Bourne, left to rot in the jungles of Tarn Quan. He was the beginning of the madness. Yet Delta had brought them all out, including a brother he could not remember. He had brought them out through two hundred miles of enemy territory because he had studied the probabilities and imagined the improbabilities - the latter far more important to their escape, for they had happened, and his mind was prepared for the unexpected. It was the same now. There was nothing a sterile house in Victoria Peak could