Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Supremacy

'I might never get there. The colour of my skin isn't welcome down there. '

'No one will harm you. However, I suggest you not wear garish clothing or display expensive jewellery. '

'Jewellery?

'If you own a high-priced watch, do not wear it . '

They'd cut your arm off for a watch. Medusa. So be it.

Thanks for the advice. '

'One last thing. Do not think of involving the authorities, or your consulate in a reckless attempt to compromise the taipan. If you do, your wife will die. '

That wasn't necessary. '

'With Jason Bourne everything is necessary. You will be watched. '

'Nine-thirty to nine-forty-five,' said Webb, replacing the phone and getting up from the bed. He went to the window and stared out at the harbour. What was it? What was Marie trying to tell him?

... you know how tired I get sometimes.

No, he did not know that. His wife was a strong Ontario ranch girl who never complained of being tired.

... you mustn't worry about me, darling.

A foolish plea, and she must have realized it. Marie did not waste precious moments being foolish. Unless... was she rambling incoherently?

... It'll be like Paris, David. We both knew where to go... that lovely street with the dark green trees.

No, not rambling, only the appearance of rambling; there was a message. But what? What lovely street with 'dark green trees'? Nothing came to him and it was driving him out of his mind! He was failing her. She was sending a signal and it eluded him.

... Think, David, and be careful!... don't worry, darling! That lovely street with the row of trees, my favourite tree-

What lovely street? What goddamned row of trees, what favourite tree? Nothing made sense to him and it should make sense! He should be able to respond, not stare out a window, his memory blank. Help me, help me! he cried silently to no one.

An inner voice told him not to dwell on what he could not understand. There were things to do; he could not willingly walk into the meeting ground of the enemy's choosing without some foreknowledge, some cards of his own to play... I suggest you do not wear garish clothing... It would not have been garish in any event, thought Webb, but now it would be something quite opposite – and unexpected.

During the months in which he had peeled away the layers of Jason Bourne one theme kept repeating itself. Change, change, change. Bourne was a practitioner of change; they called him 'the chameleon', a man who could melt into different surroundings with ease. Not as a grotesque, a cartoon with fright wigs and nose putty, but as one who could adapt the essentials of his appearance to his immediate environment so that those who had met the 'assassin' – rarely, however, in full light or standing close to him – gave widely varying descriptions of the man hunted throughout Asia and Europe. The details were always in conflict: the hair was dark or light; the eyes brown, blue or speckled; the skin pale, or tanned, or blotched; the clothes well made and subdued if the rendezvous took place in a dimly lit expensive cafe, or rumpled and ill-fitting if the meeting was held on the waterfront or in the lower depths of a given city. Change. Effortlessly, with the minimum of artifice. David Webb would trust the chameleon within him. Free fall. Go where Jason Bourne directed.

After leaving the Daimler he had gone to the Peninsula Hotel and taken a room, depositing his attache case in the hotel safe. He'd had the presence of mind to register under the name of Cactus's third false passport. If men were looking for him, they would flash the name he used at the Regent; it was all they had.

He packed what few clothes he needed in the flight bag and walked rapidly from his room, using the service elevator to the street. He did not check out of the Regent. If men were looking for him, he wanted them to look where he was not.

Once settled in the Peninsula, he had time for something to eat and to forage in several shops until nightfall. By the time darkness came he would be in the Walled City – before nine-thirty. Jason Bourne was giving the commands and David Webb obeyed them.

The Walled City of Kowloon has no visible wall around it, but it is as clearly defined as if there were one made of hard, high steel. It is instantly sensed by the congested open market that runs along the street in front of the row of dark run-down flats – shacks haphazardly perched on top of one another giving the impression that at any moment the entire blighted complex will collapse under its own weight, leaving nothing but rubble where elevated rubble had stood. But a deceptive strength is found as one walks down the short flight of steps into the interior of the sprawling slum. Below ground level, cobblestoned alleyways that' are in most cases tunnels traverse beneath the ramshackle structures. In squalid corridors crippled beggars vie with half-dressed prostitutes and drug peddlers in the eerie wash of naked bulbs that hang from exposed wires along the stone walls. A putrid dampness abounds; all is decay and rot, but there is the strength of time having hardened this decomposition, petrifying it.

Within the foul alleyways in no particular order or balance are narrow, barely lit staircases leading to the vertical series of broken-down flats, the average rising three storeys, two of which are above ground. Inside the small, dilapidated rooms the widest varieties of narcotics and sex are sold; all is beyond the reach of the police – silently agreed to by all parties – for few of the colony's authorities care to venture into the bowels of the Walled City. It is its own self-contained hell. Let it be.

Outside in the open market that fills the garbage-strewn street where no traffic is permitted, soiled tables piled high with rejected and/or stolen merchandise are sandwiched between grimy stalls where pockets of vapour rise from huge vats of boiling oil in which questionable pieces of meat, fowl, and snake are continuously plunged, then ladled out and placed on newspapers for immediate sale. The crowds move under the weak light of dull streetlamps from one vendor to the next, haggling in high-pitched voices, shrieking back and forth, buying and selling. Then there are the kerb people, bedraggled men and women without stalls or tables whose merchandise is spread out on the pavement. They squatted behind displays of trinkets and cheap jewellery, much of it stolen from the docks, and woven cages filled with crawling beetles and fluttering tiny birds.

Near the mouth of the strange, foetid bazaar a lone, muscular female sat on a low wooden stool, her thick legs parted, skinning snakes and removing their entrails, her dark eyes seemingly obsessed with each thrashing serpent in her hands. On either side were writhing burlap bags, every now and then convulsing as the doomed reptiles struck out in hissing fury at one another, enraged by their captivity. Clamped under the heavy-set woman's bare right foot was a king cobra, its jet black body immobile and erect, its head flat, its small eyes steady, hypnotized by the constantly moving crowds. The squalor of the open market was a fitting barricade for the wall-less Walled City beyond.

Rounding the corner at the opposite end of the long bazaar, a dishevelled figure turned into the overflowing avenue. The man was dressed in a cheap, loose-fitting brown suit, the trousers too bulky, the coat too large, yet tight around the hunched shoulders. A soft wide-brimmed hat, black and unmistakably Oriental, threw a constant shadow across his face. His gait was slow, as befitted a man pausing in front of various stalls and tables examining the merchandise, but only once did he reach tentatively into his pocket to make a single purchase. Then, too, there was a stooped quality in his posture, the frame of a man having been bent from years of hard labour in the field or on the waterfront, his diet never sufficient for a body from which so much was extracted. There was a sadness as well in this man, a futility born of too little, too late, and too costly for the mind and the body. It was the recognition of impotency, pride abandoned for there was nothing to be proud of; the price of survival had been too much. And this man, this stooped figure who haltingly bought a newspaper cone of fried, questionable fish, was not unlike many of the males in the marketplace – one could say he was indistinguishable from them. He approached the muscular woman who was tearing the intestines from a still-writhing snake.