The Bourne Supremacy

This is a waste of time. '

'No, it's not,' corrected the diplomat . 'Explain to Mr McAllister. Believe me, he's valuable and we need him. He has to understand us. '

Conklin looked at the undersecretary of state, his expression without charity. 'He doesn't need any explanations from me, he's an analyst. He sees it all as clearly as we do, if not clearer. He knows what the hell is going on down in the tunnels, he just doesn't want to admit it, and the easiest way to remove himself is to pretend to be shocked. Beware the sanctimonious intellect in any phase of this business. What he gives in brains he takes away with phoney recriminations. He's the deacon in a whorehouse gathering material for a sermon he'll write when he goes home and plays with himself. '

'You were right before,' said McAllister, turning towards the doon This is a waste of time. '

'Edward? Havilland, clearly angry with the crippled CIA man, called out sympathetically to the undersecretary. 'We can't always choose the people we deal with, which is obviously the case now. ' 'I understand,' said McAllister coldly. 'Study everyone on Lin's staff,' went on the ambassador. There can't be more than ten or twelve who know anything about us. Help him. He's your friend. '

'Yes, he is,' said the undersecretary, going out the door. 'Was that necessary? snapped Havilland when he and Conklin were alone.

'Yes, it was. If you can convince me that what you've done was the only route you could take – which I doubt – or if I can't come up with an option that'll get Marie and David out with their lives, if not their sanity, then I'll have to work with you. The alternative of beyond-salvage is unacceptable on several grounds, basically personal but also because I owe the Webbs. Do we agree so far?'

'We work together, one way or another. Checkmate. ' 'Given the reality, I want that son of a bitch, McAllister, that rabbit, to know where I'm coming from. He's in as deep as any of us, and that intellect of his had better go down into the filth and come up with every plausibility and every possibility. I want to know whom we should kill – even those marginally arrived at – to cut our losses and get the Webbs out. I want him to know that the only way he can save his soul is to bury it with accomplishment. If we fail, he fails, and he can't go back teaching Sunday school any more. ' 'You're too harsh on him. He's an analyst not an executioner. ' 'Where do you think the executioners get their input?

Where do we get our input? From whom? The paladins of congressional oversight?

'Checkmate, again. You're as good as they say you were. He's come up with the breakthroughs. It's why he's here. '

Talk to me, sir' said Conklin, sitting in the chair, his back straight, his club foot awkwardly at an angle. 'I want to hear your story. '

'First the woman. Webb's wife. She's all right? She's safe?'

The answer to your first question is so obvious I wonder how you can ask it. No, she's not all right. Her husband's missing and she doesn't know whether he's alive or dead. As to the second, yes, she's safe. With me, not with you. I can move us around and I know my way around. You have to stay here. '

'We're desperate,' pleaded the diplomat . 'We need her!'

'You've also been penetrated, that doesn't seem to sink in. I won't expose her to that. '

This house is a fortress!'

'All it takes is one rotten cook in the kitchen. One lunatic on a staircase. '

'Conklin, listen to me! We picked up a passport check -everything fits. It's him, we know it. Webb's in Peking. Now! He wouldn't have gone in if he wasn't after the target – the only target. If somehow, God knows how, your Delta comes out with the merchandise and his wife isn't in place, he'll kill the one connection we must have! Without it we're lost. We're all lost. '

'So that was the scenario from the beginning. Reductio ad absurdum. Jason Bourne hunts Jason Bourne. '

'Yes. Painfully simple, but without the escalating complications he never would have agreed. He'd still be in that old house in Maine, poring over his scholarly papers. We wouldn't have our hunter. '

'You really are a bastard,' said Conklin slowly, softly, a certain admiration in his voice. 'And you were convinced he could still do it? Still handle this kind of Asia the way he did years ago as Delta?'

'He has physical checkups every three months, it's part of the government protection programme. He's in superb condition – something to do with his obsessive running, I understand. '

'Start at the beginning. ' The CIA man settled into the chair. 'I want to hear it step by step because I think the rumours are true. I'm in the presence of a master bastard. '

'Hardly, Mr Conklin,' said Havilland. 'We're all groping. I'll want your comments, of course. '

'You'll get them. Go ahead. '

'All right. I'll begin with a name I'm sure you'll recognize. Sheng Chou Yang. Any comment?'

'He's a tough negotiator, and I suspect that underneath his benevolent exterior there's a ramrod. Still, he's one of the most reasonable men in Peking. There should be a thousand like him. ' 'If there were, the chances of a Far East holocaust would be a thousand times greater. '

Lin Wenzu slammed his fist down on the desk, jarring the nine photographs in front of him and making the attached summaries of their dossiers leap off the surface. Which? Which one! Each had been certified by London, each background checked and rechecked and triple checked again; there was no room for error. These were not simply well-schooled Zhongguo ren selected by bureaucratic elimination but the products of an intensive search for the brightest minds in government – and in several cases outside government -who might be recruited into this most sensitive of services. It had been Lin's contention that the writing was on the wall -the Great Wall, perhaps – and that a superior special intelligence force manned by the colony's own could well be its first line of defence in the years leading up to 1997, and, in the event of a takeover, its first line of cohesive resistance afterwards. The British had to relinquish leadership in the area of secret intelligence operations for reasons that were as clear as they were' unpalatable to London: the Occidental could never fully understand the peculiar subtleties of the Oriental mind, and these were not the times to render misleading or poorly evaluated information. London had to know – the West had to know– exactly where things stood... for Hong Kong's sake, for the sake of the entire Far East.

Not that Lin believed that his growing task force of intelligence gatherers was pivotal to policy decisions, he did not. But he believed thoroughly, intensely, that if the colony was to have a Special Branch it should be staffed and run by those who could do the job best, and that did not include veterans, however brilliant, of the European-oriented British secret services. For a start, they all looked alike and were not compatible with either the environs or the language. And after years of work and proven-worth, Lin Wenzu had been summoned to London and for three days grilled by unsmiling Far East intelligence specialists. On the morning of the fourth day, however, the smiles had appeared along with the recommendation that the major be given command of the Hong Kong Branch with wide powers of authority. And for a number of years thereafter he had lived up to the commission's confidence, he knew that. He also knew that now, in the single most vital operation of his professional and personal life, he had failed. There were thirty-eight Special Branch officers in his command and he had selected nine -hand picked nine – to be part of this extraordinary, insane operation. Insane until he had heard the ambassador's extraordinary explanation. The nine were the most exceptional of the 38-man task force, each capable of assuming command if their leader was taken out; he had written as much in their evaluation reports. And he had failed. One of the handpicked nine was a traitor.