Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Supremacy

He had left Shenzhen and taken the three o'clock train from Lo Wu to Kowloon. The ride was exhausting, his emotions drained, his reasoning stunned. The impostor-killer had been so close! If only he could have isolated the man from Macao for less than a minute, he could have got him out! There were ways. Both their visas were in order; a man doubled up in pain, his throat damaged to the point of speechlessness, could be passed off as a sick man, a diseased man perhaps, an unwelcome visitor whom they would gladly have let go. But it was not to be, not this time. If only he could have seen him!

And then there was the startling discovery that this new assassin, this myth that was no "myth but a brutal killer, had a connection in the People's Republic. It was profoundly disturbing, for Chinese officials who acknowledged such a man would do so only to use him. It was a complication David did not want. It had nothing to do with Marie and himself, and the two of them were all he cared about! All he cared about! Jason Bourne: Bring in the man from Macao!

He had gone back to the Peninsula, stopping at the New World Centre to buy a dark, waist-length nylon jacket and a pair of navy blue sneakers with heavy soles. David Webb's anxiety was overpowering. Jason Bourne planned without consciously having a plan. He ordered a light meal from room service and picked at it as he sat on the bed staring mindlessly at a television news programme. Then David lay back on the pillow, briefly closing his eyes, wondering where the words came from. Rest is a weapon. Don't forget it. Bourne woke up fifteen minutes later.

Jason had purchased a ticket for the 8:30 run at a booth in the Mass Transit concourse in the Tsim Sha Tsui during the rush hour. To be certain he was not being followed – and he had to be absolutely certain – he had taken three separate taxis to within a quarter of a mile of the Macao Ferry pier an hour before departure, walking the rest of the way. He had then begun a ritual he had been trained to perform. The memory of that training was clouded, but not the practice. He had melted into the crowds in front of the terminal, dodging, weaving, going from one pocket to another, then abruptly standing motionless on the sidelines, concentrating on the patterns of movement behind him, looking for someone he had seen moments before, a face or a pair of anxious eyes directed at him. There had been no one. Yet Marie's life depended on the certainty, so he had repeated the ritual twice again, ending up inside the dimly lit terminal filled with benches that fronted the dock and the open water. He kept looking for a frantic face, for a head that kept turning, a person spinning in place, intent on finding someone. Again, there had been no one. He was free to leave for Macao. He was on his way there now.

He sat in a rear seat by the window and watched the lights of Hong Kong and Kowloon fade into a glow in the Asian sky. New lights appeared and disappeared as the hydrofoil gathered speed and passed the out islands, islands belonging to China. He imagined uniformed men peering through infrared telescopes and binoculars, not sure what they were looking for but ordered to observe everything. The mountains of the New Territories rose ominously, the moonlight glancing off their peaks and accentuating their beauty, but also saying: This is where you stop. Beyond here, we are different. It was not really so. People hawked their goods in the squares of Shenzhen. Artisans prospered; farmers butchered their animals and lived as well as the educated classes in Beijing and Shanghai – usually with better housing. China was changing, not fast enough for the West, and certainly it was still a paranoid giant, but withal, thought David Webb, the distended stomachs of children, so prevalent in the China of years ago, were disappearing. Many at the top of the inscrutable political ladder were fat, but few in the fields were starving. There had been progress, he mused, whether much of the world approved of the methods or not.

The hydrofoil decelerated, its hull lowered into the water. It passed through a space between the boulders of a man-made reef illuminated by floodlights. They were in Macao, and Bourne knew what he had to do. He got up, excused himself past his seat companion and walked up the aisle to where a group of Americans, a few standing, the rest sitting, were huddled around their seats, singing an obviously rehearsed rendition of 'Mr Sandman'.

Boom boom boom boom... Mr Sandman, sing me a song Boom boom boom boom Oh, Mr Sandman...

They were high, but not drunk, not obstreperous. Another group of tourists, by the sound of their speech German, encouraged the Americans and at the end of the song applauded.

'Gut!'

'Sehr gut!'

'Wunderbar!'

'Danke, meine Herren. ' The American standing nearest Jason bowed. A brief, friendly conversation followed, the Germans speaking English and the American replying in German.

'That was a touch of home,' said Bourne to the American.

'Hey, a Landsman! That song also dates you, pal. Some of those oldies are goldies, right? Say, are you with the group?'

'Which group is that?'

'Honeywell-Porter,' answered the man, naming a New York advertising agency Jason recognized as having branches worldwide.

'No, I'm afraid not. '

'I didn't think so. There're only about thirty of us, counting the Aussies, and I thought I pretty much knew everybody. Where are you from? My name's Ted Mather. I'm from HP's LA office. '

'My name's Jim Cruett. No office, I teach, but I'm from Boston. '

'Beanburg! Let me show you your Landsmann, or is it Stadtsmannl Jim, meet "Beantown Bernie". ' Mather bowed again, this time to a man slumped back in the seat by the window, his mouth open, his eyes closed. He was obviously drunk and wore a Red Sox baseball cap. 'Don't bother to speak, he can't hear. Bernard the brain is from our Boston office. You should have seen him three hours ago. J. Press suit, striped tie, pointer in his hand and a dozen charts only he could understand. But I'll say this for him – he kept us awake. I think that's why we all had a few... him too many. What the hell, it's our last night. '

'Heading back tomorrow?'

'Late evening flight. Gives us time to recover. '

'Why Macao?'

'A mass itch for the tables. You, too?'

'I thought I'd give them a whirl. Christ, that cap makes me homesick! The Red Sox may take the pennant and until this trip I hadn't missed a game!'

'And Bernie won't miss his hat!' The advertising man laughed, leaning over and yanking the baseball cap off Bernard-the-Brain's head. 'Here, Jim, you wear it. You deserve it!'

The hydrofoil docked. Bourne got off and went through immigration with the boys from Honeywell-Porter as one of them. As they descended the steep cement staircase down into the poster-lined terminal, Jason with the visor of his Red Sox cap angled down and his walk unsteady, he spotted a man by the left wall studying the new arrivals. In the man's hand was a photograph, and Bourne knew the face on the photograph was his. He laughed at one of Ted Mather's remarks as he held on to the weaving Beantown Bernie's arm.

Opportunities will present themselves. Recognize them, act on them.

The streets of Macao are almost as garishly lit as those of Hong Kong; what is lacking is the sense of too much humanity in too little space. And what is different – different and anachronistic – are the many buildings on which are fixed blazing modern signs with pulsating Chinese characters. The architecture of these buildings is very old Spanish -Portuguese to be accurate – but textbook Spanish, Mediterranean in character. It is as if an initial culture had surrendered to the sweeping incursion of another but refused to yield its first imprimatur, proclaiming the strength of its stone over the gaudy impermanence of coloured tubes of glass. History is purposely denied; the empty churches and the ruins of a burnt-out cathedral exist in a strange harmony with overflowing casinos where the dealers and croupiers speak Cantonese and the descendants of the conquerors were rarely seen. It is all fascinating and not a little ominous. It is Macao.