Ludlum, Robert - The Bourne Supremacy

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Bantam Books by Robert Ludlum

Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed

THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION

THE BOURNE IDENTITY

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM

THE CHANCELLOR MANUSCRIPT

THE GEMINI CONTENDERS

THE HOLCROFT COVENANT

THE ICARUS AGENDA

THE MATARESE CIRCLE

THE MATLOCK PAPER

THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND

THE PARSIFAL MOSAIC

THE RHINEMANN EXCHANGE

THE ROAD TO GANDOLFO

THE ROAD TO OMAHA

THE SCARLATTI INHERITANCE

TREVAYNE

THE

BOURNE

SUPREMACY

ROBERT LUDLUM

BANTAM BOOKS

NEW YORK ? TORONTO ? SYDNEY ? AUKLAND

This edition contains the complete text

of the original hardcover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY

A Bantam Book / published by

arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Marek Edition published March 1986

A Selection of Literary Guild, April 1986, and

a Doubleday Book Club Selection, June 1986

Serialized in Book Digest, Spring 1986

Bantam edition / March 1987

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information

storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the publisher.

For information address: Bantam Books.

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the

publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

ISBN 0-553-26011-1

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada.

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words

“Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam

Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

RAD 36 35 34 33 32

For Shannon Paige Ludlum

Welcome, my dear.

Have a great life.

Kowloon. The teeming final extension of China that is no part of the north except in spirit -

but the spirit runs deep and descends into the caverns of men's souls without regard for the harsh,

irrelevant practicalities of political borders. The land and the water are one, and it is the will of the

spirit that determines how man will use the land and the water - again without regard for such

abstractions as useless freedom or escapable confinement. The concern is only with empty

stomachs, with women's stomachs, children's stomachs. Survival. There is nothing else. All the rest

is dung to be spread over the infertile fields.

It was sundown, and both in Kowloon and across Victoria Harbour on the island of Hong

Kong an unseen blanket was gradually being lowered over the territory's daylight chaos. The

screeching Aiyas! of the street merchants were muted with the shadows, and quiet negotiations in

the upper regions of the cold, majestic structures of glass and steel that marked the colony's skyline

were ending with nods and shrugs and brief smiles of silent accommodation. Night was coming,

proclaimed by a blinding orange sun piercing an immense, jagged fragmented wall of clouds in the

west - sharply defined shafts of uncompromising energy about to plunge over the horizon,

unwilling to let this part of the world forget the light.

Soon darkness would spread across the sky, but not below.

Below, the blazing lights of human invention would garishly illuminate the earth - this part

of the earth where the land and the water were anxious avenues of access and conflict. And with the

never-ending, ever-strident nocturnal carnival, other games would begin, games the human race

should have abandoned with the first light of creation. But there was no human life then - so who

recorded it? Who knew? Who cared? Death was not a commodity.

A small motorboat, its powerful engine belying its shabby exterior, sped through the

Lamma Channel, heading around the coastline towards the harbour. To a disinterested observer it

was merely one more xiao wan ju, a legacy to a first son from a once unworthy fisherman who had

struck minor riches - a crazy night of mah-jong, hashish from the Triangle, smuggled jewels out of

Macao - who cared? The son could cast his nets or run his merchandise more efficiently by using a

fast propeller rather than the slow sail of a junk or the sluggish engine of a sampan. Even the

Chinese border guards and the marine patrols on and off the shores of the Shenzhen Wan did not

fire on such insignificant transgressors; they were unimportant and who knew what families beyond

the New Territories on the Mainland might benefit. It could be one of their own. The sweet herbs

from the hills still brought full stomachs - perhaps filling one of their own. Who cared? Let them

come. Let them go.

The small craft with its canvas cover enveloping both sides of the forward cockpit cut its

speed and cautiously zigzagged through the scattered flotilla of junks and sampans returning to

their crowded berths in Aberdeen. One after another the boat people shrieked angry curses at the

intruder, at its impudent engine and its more impudent wake. Then each became strangely silent as

the rude interloper passed; something under the canvas quieted their sudden bursts of fury.

The boat raced into the harbour's corridor, a dark, watery path now bordered by the blazing

lights of the island of Hong Kong on the right, Kowloon on the left. Three minutes later the

outboard motor sank into its lowest register as the hull swerved slowly past two filthy barges

docked at the godown, and slid into an empty space on the west side of the Tsim Sha Tsui,

Kowloon's crowded, dollar-conscious waterfront. The strident hordes of merchants setting up their

nightly tourist traps on the wharf paid no attention; it was merely one more jigi coming in from the

catch. Who cared?

Then, like the boat people out in the channel, the stalls on the waterfront nearest the

insignificant intruder began to quiet down. Excited voices were silenced amid screeching

commands and counter-commands as eyes were drawn to a figure climbing up the black, oil-soaked

ladder to the pier.

He was a holy man. His shrouded figure was draped in a pure white caftan that accentuated

his tall slender body - very tall for a Zhongguo ren, nearly six feet in height, perhaps. Little could

be seen of his face, however, as the cloth was loose and the breezes kept pressing the white fabric

across his dark features, drawing out the whiteness of his eyes determined eyes, zealous eyes. This

was no ordinary priest, anyone could see that. He was a heshang, a chosen one selected by elders

steeped in wisdom who could perceive the inner spiritual knowledge of a young monk destined for

higher things. And it did not hurt that such a monk was tall and slender and had eyes of fire. Such

holy men drew attention to themselves, to their personages to their eyes and generous contributions

followed, both in fear and in awe; mostly fear. Perhaps this heshang came from one of the mystic

sects that wandered through the hills and forests of the Guangze, or from a religious brotherhood in

the mountains of far-off Qing Gaoyuan - descendants, it was said, of a people in the distant

Himalayas - they were always quite ostentatious and generally to be feared the most, for few

understood their obscure teachings. Teachings that were couched in gentleness, but with subtle

hints of indescribable agony should their lessons go unheeded. There was too much agony on the

land and the water. Who needed more? So give to the spirits, to the eyes of fire. Perhaps it would

be recorded somewhere.

The white-robed figure walked slowly through the parting crowds on the wharf, past the

congested Star Ferry pier, and disappeared into the growing pandemonium of the Tsim Sha

Tsui. The moment had passed; the stalls returned to their hysteria.

The priest headed east on Salisbury Road until he reached the Peninsula Hotel, whose

subdued elegance was losing the battle with its surroundings. He then turned north into Nathan

Road, to the base of the glittering Golden Mile, that strip of strips where opposing multitudes

shrieked for attention. Both natives and tourists alike took notice of the stately holy man as he

passed crowded shop fronts and alleys bulging with merchandise, three-story discos and topless

cafes where huge, amateurish billboards hawked Oriental charms above stalls offering the steamed

delicacies of the noonday dim sum. He walked for nearly ten minutes through the garish carnival,

now and then acknowledging glances with a slight bow of his head, and twice shaking it while

issuing commands to the same short muscular Zhongguo ren, who alternately followed him then

passed him with quick, dance-like steps, turning to search the intense eyes for a sign.

The sign came - two abrupt nods - as the priest turned and walked through the beaded

entrance of a raucous cabaret. The Zhongguo ren remained outside, his hand unobtrusively under

his loose tunic, his own eyes darting about the crazy street, a thoroughfare he could not understand.

It was insane! Such outrageousness! But he was the tudi; he would protect the holy man with his

life, no matter the assault on his own sensibilities.

Inside the cabaret the heavy layers of smoke were slashed by roving coloured lights, most

whirling in circles and directed towards a platform stage where a rock group ululated in deafening

frenzy, a frantic admixture of punk and Far East. Shiny black tight-fitting, ill-fitting trousers

quivered maniacally on spindly legs below black leather jackets over soiled white silk shirts open

to the waist, while each head was shaved around its skull at the temple line, each face grotesque,

heavily made up to accentuate its essentially passive Oriental character. And as if to emphasize the

conflict between East and West, the jarring music would occasionally, startlingly, come to a stop,

as the plaintive strains of a simple Chinese melody emerged from a single instrument, while the

figures remained rigid under the swirling bombardment of the spotlights.

The priest stood still for a moment surveying the huge crowded room. A number of

customers in varying stages of drunkenness looked up at him from the tables. Several rolled coins

in his direction as they turned away, while a few got out of their chairs, dropping Hong Kong

dollars beside their drinks and headed for the door. The heshang was having an effect, but not the

effect desired by the obese, tuxedoed man who approached him.

'May I be of assistance, Holy One? asked the cabaret's manager through the sustained

crescendos.

The priest leaned forward and spoke into the man's ear. The manager's eyes widened, then

he bowed and gestured towards a small table by the wall. The priest nodded back in appreciation

and walked behind the man to his chair as adjacent customers took uncomfortable notice.

The manager leaned down and spoke with a reverence he did not feel. 'Would you care for

refreshment, Holy One?'

'Goat's milk, if it is by chance available. If not, plain water will be more than sufficient. And

I thank you.'

'It is the privilege of the establishment,' said the tuxedoed man, bowing and moving away,

trying to place a dialect he could not recognize. It did not matter. This tall, white-robed priest had

business with the laoban, and that was all that mattered. He had actually used the laoban's name, a

name seldom spoken in the Golden Mile, and on this particular evening the powerful taipan was on

the premises - in a room he would not publicly acknowledge knowing. But it was not the province

of the manager to tell the laoban that the priest had arrived; the berobed one had made that clear.

All was privacy this night, he had insisted. When the august taipan wished to see him, a

man would come out to find him. So be it; it was the way of the secretive laoban, one of the

wealthiest and most illustrious taipans in Hong Kong.

'Send a kitchen boy down the street for some fuck-fuck mother goat's milk,' said the

manager harshly to a head boy on the floor. 'And tell him to be damn-damn quick. The existence of

his stinking offspring will depend upon it.'

The holy man sat passively at the table, his zealous eyes now gentler, observing the foolish

activity, apparently neither condemning nor accepting but merely taking it all in with the

compassion of a father watching errant yet precious children.

Abruptly through the whirling lights there was an intrusion. Several tables away a bright

camper's match was struck and quickly extinguished. Then another, and finally a third, this last held

under a long black cigarette. The brief series of flashes drew the attention of the priest. He moved

his shrouded head slowly towards the flame and the lone, unshaven, coarsely dressed Chinese

drawing in the smoke. Their eyes met; the holy man's nod was almost imperceptible, barely a

motion, and was acknowledged by an equally obscure movement as the match went out.

Seconds later the crudely dressed smoker's table was suddenly in flames. Fire shot up from

the surface, spreading quickly to all the articles of paper on the surface - napkins, menus, dim sum

baskets, isolated eruptions of potential disaster. The disheveled Chinese screamed and with a

shattering crash overturned the table as waiters raced, shrieking, towards the flames. Customers on

all sides leaped from their chairs as the fire on the floor - narrow strands of pulsing blue flame -

inexplicably spread in rivulets around excited, stamping feet. The pandemonium grew as people

rapidly slapped out the small fires with tablecloths and aprons. The manager and his head boys

gestured wildly, shouting that all was under control; the danger had passed. The rock group played

with even greater intensity, attempting to draw the crowd back into its frenzied orbit and away from

the area of diminishing panic.

Suddenly, there was a greater disturbance, a more violent eruption. Two head boys had

collided with the shabbily dressed Zhongguo ren whose carelessness and outsized matches had

caused the conflagration. He responded with rapid Wing Chun chops - rigid hands crashing into

shoulder blades and throats as his feet hammered up into abdomens, sending the two shi-ji reeling

back into the surrounding customers. The physical abuse compounded the panic, the chaos. The

heavy-set manager, now roaring, intervened and he, too, fell away, stunned by a well-placed kick to

his ribcage. The unshaven Zhongguo ren then picked up a chair and hurled it into screaming figures

near the fallen man, as three other waiters rushed into the melee in defense of their Zongguan. Men

and women who only seconds ago were merely screaming, now began thrashing their arms about,

pummeling anyone and everyone near by. The rock group gyrated to its outer limits, frantic

dissonance worthy of the scene. The riot had taken hold, and the burly peasant glanced across the

room at the single table next to the wall. The priest was gone.

The Zhongguo ren picked up a second chair and smashed it down across a nearby table,

splintering the wooden frame and swinging a broken leg into the crowd. Only moments to go, but

those moments were everything.

The priest stepped through the door far back in the wall near the entrance of the cabaret. He

closed it quickly, adjusting his eyes to the dim light of the long, narrow hallway. His right arm was

stiff beneath the folds of his white caftan, his left diagonally across his waist, also under the sheer

white fabric. Down the corridor, no more than twenty-five feet away, a startled man sprang from

the wall, his right hand plunging beneath his jacket to yank a large, heavy-caliber revolver from an

unseen shoulder holster. The holy man nodded slowly, impassively, repeatedly, as he moved

forward with graceful steps appropriate to a religious procession.

'Amita-fo, Amita-fo,' he said softly, over and over again as he approached the man.

'Everything is peaceful, all is in peace, the spirits will it.'

'Jou matyeh?' The guard was beside a door; he shoved the ugly weapon forward and

continued in a guttural Cantonese bred in the northern settlements. 'Are you lost, priest? What are

you doing here? Get out! This is no place for you!'

'Amita-fo, Amita-fo ...'

'Get out! Now!'

The guard had no chance. Swiftly the priest pulled a razor-thin, double-edged knife from the

folds at his waist. He slashed the man's wrist, half severing the hand with the gun from the guard's

arm, then arced the blade surgically across the man's throat; air and blood erupted as the head

snapped back in a mass of shining red; he fell to the floor, a corpse.

Without hesitation, the killer-priest slid the knife into the cloth of his caftan, where it held,

and from under the right side of his robe withdrew a thin-framed Uzi machine gun, its curved

magazine holding more ammunition than he would need. He raised his foot and crashed it into the

door with the strength of a mountain cat, racing inside to find what he knew he would find.

Five men - Zhongguo ren - were sitting around a table with pots of tea and short glasses of

potent whisky; there were no written papers anywhere in sight, no notes or memoranda, only ears

and watchful eyes. And as each pair of eyes looked up in shock, the faces were contorted with

panic. Two well-dressed negotiators plunged their hands inside their well-tailored jackets while

they spun out of the chairs; another lunged under the table, as the remaining two sprang up

screaming and raced futilely into silk-covered walls, spinning around in desperation, seeking

pardons yet knowing none would be forthcoming. A shattering fusillade of bullets ripped into the

Zhongguo ren. Blood gushed from fatal wounds as skulls were pierced and eyes were punctured,

mouths torn apart, bright red in muted screams of death. The walls and the floor and the polished

table glistened sickeningly with the bloody evidence of death. Everywhere. It was over.

The killer surveyed his work. Satisfied, he knelt down by a large, stagnant pool of blood

and moved his index finger through it. He then pulled out a square of dark cloth from his left sleeve

and spread it over his handiwork. He rose to his feet and rushed out of the room, unbuttoning the

white caftan as he ran down the dim hallway; the robe was open by the time he reached the door to

the cabaret. He removed the razor-like knife from the cloth and shoved it into a scabbard on his

belt. Then, holding the folds of cloth together, his hood in place, the lethal weapon secure at his

side, he pulled the door back and walked inside, into the brawling chaos that showed no sign of

lessening. But then why should it? He had left it barely thirty seconds ago and his man was well

trained.

'Faai di!' The shout came from the burly, unshaven peasant from Canton; he was ten feet

away, overturning another table and striking a match, dropping it on the floor. The police will be

here any moment! The bartender just reached a phone, I saw him!'

The killer-priest ripped the caftan away from his body and the hood from his head. In the

wild revolving lights his face looked as macabre as any in the frenzied rock group. Heavy make-up

outlined his eyes, white lines defining the shape of each, and his face was an unnatural brown. 'Go

in front of me!' he commanded the peasant. He dropped his costume and the Uzi on the floor next

to the door while removing a pair of thin surgical gloves; he shoved them into his flannel trousers.

For a cabaret in the Golden Mile to summon the police was not a decision easily arrived at.

There were heavy fines for poor management, stiff penalties for endangering tourists. The police

knew these risks and responded quickly when they were taken. The killer ran behind the peasant

from Canton who joined the panicked crowd at the entrance screaming to get out. The coarsely

dressed brawler was a bull; bodies in front of him fell away under the force of his blows. Guard and

killer burst through the door and into the street where another crowd had gathered shrieking

questions and epithets and cries of bad joss - misfortune for the establishment. They threaded their

way through the excited onlookers and were joined by the short, muscular Chinese who had waited

outside. He grabbed the arm of his defrocked charge and pulled him into the narrowest of alleys,

where he took two towels from under his tunic. One was soft and dry, the other encased in plastic;

it was warm and wet and perfumed.

The assassin gripped the wet towel and began rubbing it over his face, sinking it around and

into the sockets of his eyes and across the exposed flesh of his neck. He reversed the cloth and

repeated the process with even greater pressure, scrubbing his temples and his hairline until his

white skin was apparent. He then dried himself with the second towel, smoothed his dark hair and

straightened the regimental tie that fell on the cream-coloured shirt under his dark blue blazer. 'Jau!'

he ordered his two companions. They ran and disappeared in the crowds.

And a lone, well-dressed Occidental walked out into the strip of Oriental pleasures.

Inside the cabaret the excited manager was berating the bartender who had called the jing cha;

the fines would be on his fuck-fuck head! For the riot had inexplicably subsided, leaving the

customers bewildered. Head boys and waiters were mollifying the patrons, patting shoulders and

clearing away the debris while straightening tables and producing new chairs and dispensing free

glasses of whisky. The rock group concentrated on the current favorites, and as swiftly as the order

of the evening had been disrupted it was restored. With luck, thought the tuxedoed manager, the

explanation that an impetuous bartender had mistaken a belligerent drunk for something far more

serious would be acceptable to the police.

Suddenly, all thoughts of fines and official harassment were swept away as his eyes were

drawn to a clump of white fabric on the floor across the room - in front of the door to the inner

offices. White cloth, pure white - the priest? The door! The laoban! The conference!. His breath

short, his face drenched with sweat, the obese manager raced between the tables to the discarded

caftan. He knelt down, his eyes wide, his breathing now suspended, as he saw the dark barrel of a

strange weapon protruding from beneath the folds of white. And what made him choke on his

barely formed terror was the sight of tiny specks and thin streaks of shiny, undried blood soiling the

cloth.

'Go hai matyeh?" The question was asked by a second man in a tuxedo, but without the

status conferred by a cummerbund - in truth the manager's brother and first assistant. 'Oh, damn the

Christian Jesus!' he swore under his breath as his brother gathered up the odd-looking gun in the

spotted white caftan.

'Come!' ordered the manager, getting to his feet and heading for the door.

The police!' objected the brother. 'One of us should speak to them, calm them, do what we

can. '

'It may be that we can do nothing but give them our heads! Quickly?

Inside the dimly lit corridor the proof was there. The slain guard lay in a river of his own

blood, his weapon gripped by a hand barely attached to his wrist. Within the conference room

itself, the proof was complete. Five bloodied corpses were in spastic disarray, one specifically,

shockingly, the focus of the manager's horrified interest. He approached the body and the punctured

skull. With his handkerchief he wiped away the blood and stared at the face.

'We are dead,' he whispered. 'Kowloon is dead, Hong Kong dead. All is dead. '

'What?'

'This man is the Vice-Premier of the People's Republic, successor to the Chairman himself. '

'Here! Look!' The first assistant brother lunged towards the body of the dead laoban.

Alongside the riddled, bleeding corpse was a black bandanna. It was lying flat, the fabric with the

curlicues of white discoloured by blotches of red. The brother picked it up and gasped at the writing

in the circle of blood underneath: JASON BOURNE.

The manager sprang across the floor. 'Great Christian Jesus!' he cried, his whole body

trembling. 'He's come back. The assassin has come back to Asia! Jason Bourne! He's come back!'

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