The Bourne Supremacy

Then there's a disaster in the making,' said Senior Foreign Officer Staples quietly.

'And it revolves around my husband?'

'If you're right, yes. '

'It's possible, isn't it?'

'I don't even want to think about it. '

15

Forty miles southwest of Hong Kong, beyond the out islands in the South China Sea, is the peninsula of Macao, a Portuguese colony in ceremonial name only. Its historical origins are in Portugal, but its modern, free-wheeling appeal to the international set, with its a

Never! It must not be Macao! The order will be swift, the execution swifter! Your wife will die!

But the assassin was in Macao, and a chameleon had to enter another jungle.

Sca

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 stu

And then there was the startling discovery that this new assassin, this myth that was no "myth but a brutal killer, had a co

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 pla

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 spi

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 Landsma

'Heading back tomorrow?'

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