Lacing on hiking boots, donning a light windbreaker, he took Wan’s camera and headed down the wooden stairs to the seashore. An onshore wind ruffled his hair, scrubbed his face clean of the cares of civilization. A bird lifted off from the place where sea met sand, soaring across his vision, and all at once he understood with an immense clarity his son’s fierce love of birds. How free they were! Masters of sea, sky, and land, they went where they wanted, when they wanted.
The slanted light was coming from behind him, and he lifted the camera to his face, staring at reality through the view screen. Over the next hour, he took many photos of myriad birds, all of which, he was sure, would thrill Wan. By that time the light was falling into the sea and shadows lengthened across the shore, distorting its contours.
As he turned to retrace his steps he felt a heaviness in his chest, a difficulty breathing. He slowed his pace so that by the time he reached the wooden stairs that would take him back to his villa, he was walking very slowly, indeed.
He grasped the railing, almost pulling himself up. But a third of the way to the top, his right foot missed a tread, and he slipped backward. Arms pinwheeling, he fell into the sand.
Stunned and somewhat afraid, he lay, staring up into the rapidly darkening sky. He heard the surf rush toward him and then, as if fearful of touching him, retreat, sinking back into the black sand, leaving only a ruffle of dirty white foam speckled with minute sea life. A crab emerged from the damp sand, scuttled to feast on the foam. When it was done, it headed toward where Cho lay.
One leg was still on the lowest tread of the stairs, twisted but not broken. He felt no pain in his legs, but his chest seemed to be seized by a giant fist. All at once his stomach rebelled, he turned his head to the side and vomited.
He tried to pull himself to his feet, but he lacked the strength. In the last of the light, he saw Wan’s camera half buried in the sand where it had fallen. He turned on his side, one hand reaching out to scrabble for it. At that moment something let loose in his bowels and diarrhea spilled out of him, immersing him in a foul stench.
Tears came to his eyes. They were curiously heavy and, though he could not be certain, appeared to have the same consistency as mercury.
Ouyang’s mouth filled with the salty, coppery taste of his own blood. He wiped blood off his lips, as offended as if it were a gobbet of sputum. His head spun and he fought to think clearly. Bourne was free. All he had to do now was call his guards. They would find him, surround him, and shoot him dead. But maybe not. And in any event, that wasn’t what he wanted. The almost mystical victories Bourne had pulled off in the field were still vivid in Ouyang’s mind, not the least of which was the assassination of Brigadier General Wadi Khalid. Khalid had been the perfect mark for Ouyang—he was greedy and corrupt, but he had an insatiable appetite for underage boys, a commodity in short supply in his circles, though not in Ouyang’s. His relationship with Khalid had been a particularly fruitful one until Bourne had cut it short in the full flower of its success. The military secrets Ouyang had obtained from Khalid had, in good measure, been responsible for Ouyang’s election to the Politburo Standing Committee.
And then there was the time in Rome, when Bourne’s interference had not only snatched Rebeka away from him but also murdered three of his men, a loss of face difficult to overcome. Colonel Sun, who had run that mission, was dead, too, at the hands of Jason Bourne.
Now, as he grabbed his shining steel jian, he removed his mind from everyday considerations. He sank deeper and deeper into that state he had perfected within the precincts of Kunlun Mountain Fist; slowly, inexorably, he gathered the wushun magic around him until the layers of strength and victory made him invulnerable.
Then, crouched and barefoot, he went hunting for Bourne.
Bourne, aware the guards had been alerted by the table’s crash, had returned to the kitchen. Searching under the sink, he found bottles of ammonia and bleach. He poured one into an empty glass jar, then the other, and quickly screwed on the lid. The toxic chloramine gas swirled around the top half of the sealed jar.
Behind him, he heard the sound of boots running toward him. Voices shouted at him—he counted three—but he waited until the guards were all in the kitchen before he turned. Their automatic weapons were leveled at him. They were shouting at him, but two were speaking at once, and their orders weren’t clear.
Bourne slowly lifted his right hand above his head, drawing their attention, then he swung the jar from behind his back, held his breath as he hurled it at the floor. The glass cracked and the thick vapor escaped its prison, rising up toward the soldiers’ faces. They reared back, but too late. They had already inhaled the toxic fumes.
Bourne sprinted forward, pushed past them, through the living room and down a short hall that led to the sleeping quarters. Behind him, the soldiers were dead or dying before they hit the floor. He would dearly have liked to grab one of their automatic weapons, but the chloramine gas was notorious for clinging to metal surfaces, especially oiled ones.
Ahead of him the hallway split into a T—left and right presumably led to separate en suite bedrooms on either side of the villa. Bourne turned right, went silently down the short hall. The bedroom door was open, and he could see a wide swath of it without entering. Pushing the door back until the inner knob struck the wall, he went in. Both the bedroom and the bath were empty, but he saw a small stand, lacquered black, which was also empty. He knew it held a kind of sword known as a jian. Maricruz had told him that Ouyang was a fifteenth-level master of Kunlun Mountain Fist wushun. In the bathroom, he found a straight razor, which he pocketed.
He went back down the hallway, past the base of the T, heading toward the second bedroom. Two doors on the left, one on the right were narrower than room doors and most likely opened onto closets. He tested his theory and found he was correct. One contained linens and towels. Grabbing a hand towel, he wrapped it around his left forearm.
Again, using the method he employed in the first bedroom, he pushed open the door all the way to make sure Ouyang wasn’t standing behind it. The bedroom, which looked like the mirror image of the first, stood empty, as did the closet. There was only the bathroom to check.
There he found a pebbled-glass window as tall as a man, a shower behind a glass door, a Western-style toilet beside a sink, a stack of large bath towels atop a small glass-and-metal table. That was it. Ouyang wasn’t in here, either.
Bourne waited a moment to see if he could discern movement behind the pebbled-glass window, but not even the shadow of a passing bird showed itself. This shower was contained in a bathtub, which was concealed by a vinyl curtain hanging from a metal rod.
Taking a step toward it, Bourne pulled it back from left to right. Ouyang, who had pressed himself back against the side wall of the shower, sprang at Bourne, the jian held before him in the Fire Mountain grip.
55
Bourne flexed his protected left forearm, but the strike by the jian was a feint. The edge of Ouyang’s hand slammed into his shoulder. He staggered back, expecting Ouyang to come after him, to allow him to break inside his defenses, but instead Ouyang hung back, his feet solidly on the floor. Sacred Stone Form.
For the space of several heartbeats, the two men faced off, still and silent, sizing each other up.
Then, as if he were made of air, Ouyang slid forward with such breathtaking speed he was inside the span of Bourne’s hands. The jian flashed out, carving an arc through Bourne’s uniform and into the flesh on the left side of his chest. Hot blood ran down Bourne’s front, darkening the tunic.
He fought off Ouyang, only to have Ouyang spring in again. This time the point of the jian flicked a circle of flesh from Bourne’s right shoulder.
“We can keep this up all evening,” Ouyang said. “Death by a thousand cuts. You’ll bleed out just like Rebeka.”
Bourne flicked open the straight razor, which only made Ouyang laugh.
“Please,” he said, “you’re making a mockery of
your demise.”
Ouyang’s jian was thirty inches long and double-bladed, far more deadly than Bourne’s straight razor.
Locking the blade in place, Bourne made a run at Ouyang. Ouyang flicked the jian, using the White Snake Straight Sword Form. This time Bourne was ready, lunging down and away on his front leg, stabbing diagonally upward toward Ouyang’s belly. The tip of the razor’s blade severed a piece of cloth from Ouyang’s jacket, forcing him to step back into the tub.
Bourne wasted no time, bringing a flurry of short sharp stabs to Ouyang, in the Seven Stars Form. Ouyang, momentarily startled, failed to block the fourth of the strikes, and the razor blade cut horizontally across his white shirt, immediately staining it with a crimson line that expanded outward on either side of the cut.
Pent up in the small box of the bathtub, Ouyang found himself at a disadvantage. White Snake Form required long, sweeping passes of the jian in order to be effective. The tile walls cut off his best attacks and parries.
Dropping his jian, Ouyang switched to the open-hand Red Phoenix Form: his forearms vertical, like a pair of columns protecting either side of his body. He stamped his left foot, his right hand blurred out, smashing into the inside of Bourne’s right wrist. The razor went flying. Ouyang struck Bourne in the solar plexus, forcing him back several paces. In a flash he had grasped the hilt of his jian and stepped out of the tub.
The long blade came whistling toward Bourne, and only a last-second move saved Bourne from having his throat slit. As it was, the blade passed so close to him the glare off its surface momentarily blinded him.
Ouyang took advantage, and struck at Bourne’s right arm. The blade bit in, blood bubbled up onto the blade’s surface, ran down the blade as Ouyang withdrew it. He had switched to the White Crane Form, normally employed with a saber. He was gripped by the same red haze that had washed over him in the Kunlun Mountain Fist sanctuary just before he killed his unwitting opponent. There was no possible future he could conceive of where he would not defeat Bourne and send him into the infinite void of death.
Bourne, under relentless attack, retreated from the bathroom. In the hallway he took a blow on his left forearm, and the towel he had wrapped around it, completely severed, fell to the floor in two neat sections. Blood spurted from the wound the blade had made.
The farther Bourne retreated, the faster Ouyang pressed his attack, so that by the time they reached the living room the two men were fairly sprinting. All at once, Bourne reversed himself, bulling his way toward Ouyang as if in one last desperate attempt to turn the tide.
Ouyang jabbed the jian outward, forcing Bourne to leap back. He hit the sideboard. Glasses slid along the top and something rolled toward him. Out of the corner of his eye, Bourne saw the vial that contained the polonium vibrating perilously close to the edge of the sideboard, and he whirled away, nearly being decapitated in the process.
Grinning, Ouyang once again swung the jian, this time in a shallow arc, but with such viciousness it used all his strength. The blade headed directly toward Bourne and would surely cut deep into flesh and bone, but at the last instant Bourne darted away, and the jian sliced off a section of the sideboard’s top. Bottles of liquor shattered, glasses disintegrated, and the teapot split apart. The vial of polonium jumped, shivering, then began to roll wildly toward Bourne.
Ouyang delivered a horizontal strike. Bourne ducked down, the blade passing just above his head. The vial was headed straight for him. Ouyang kicked out, pushing Bourne up against the sideboard with such force that what bottles remained standing split and spilled their contents.
The vial reached the edge of the sideboard and rolled off. But Bourne had pulled out a drawer into which it dropped. He slammed the drawer shut.
Enraged all the more, Ouyang swung a massive, two-handed blow. Bourne whirled away at the last instant and the singing blade of the jian struck one of the cypress pillars, burying itself so deeply in the dense wood that when Ouyang tried to pull it free it would not come. He yanked it again and again, until Bourne delivered a blow to his thorax that knocked him off his feet.
Bourne threw himself on Ouyang. The two men were locked in a grim struggle where inches and fractions of inches would tell the tale between life and death. Their muscles bulged, their sinews stretched, their bones cracked with the strength, energy, and sheer willpower each brought to the fight. Arms were twisted painfully back, punches delivered to ribs and kidney. Sweat and a terrible silence were the only manifestations of the road they took toward death. There could be no turning back, no deviation whatsoever.
At length, Bourne struck an unexpected horizontal blow that nearly took Ouyang’s nose apart. Ouyang slid backward, blood spurting from the center of his face. Fetching up near the opening to the kitchen, he felt the bulk of an assault rifle dropped by one of his dead guards.
He grabbed the weapon, but the moment his hands closed around the oiled metal he felt a searing pain so acute it paralyzed his arms. Rising, Bourne took hold of Ouyang’s jian, slammed a two-fisted blow that broke the blade in two. Taking control of the freed stub, he picked his way to where Ouyang was still struggling with the assault rifle.
Kicking him into a supine position, Bourne dropped to one knee.
“It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” Ouyang said.
Bourne drove the stub of the jian into Ouyang’s heart. Ouyang stared up at him. His hands were bleeding, red as raw meat, burned from the toxic mixture Bourne had brewed up. He convulsed as his system started to shut down.
“What was the point?” he whispered in a glottal voice.
Bourne stared down at him without an ounce of pity. “Retribution,” he said.
“But do you have her back?” Blood poured from between his lips, partially obscuring his words. “Does her father, her grandfather? The Yadins are without their child.”
Bourne bent down. “What?” he was fairly shouting. “What did you say?”
Ouyang regarded him or the image of him, which was all his fast-dimming eyesight allowed him to see. “Sara. That’s her name. Sara Yadin.” He tried for an expression, either to laugh or to cry, but he had nothing left. Blood bubbled out of every orifice, as if even his bones had turned to red liquid.
With one last effort, he grabbed Bourne’s shirtfront and pulled him closer. For just an instant, his entire body trembled and his eyes rolled in their sockets, as if looking for the way out. Then they refocused on his nemesis.
“You see how it is,” he whispered. “It’ll be the same for you.” He convulsed again, gritted his teeth to hang on just one more moment. “It’s just as well she’s dead. There is no happiness in this life. We’re shackled by loss…terrible losses…one after another. Until there’s nothing left…but tears…drowned…in a sea of blood.”
56
Leonid,” Bourne said into his mobile, “I’m on my way.”
“We’re rested and refueled and ready to go.”
Night, in the form of a stifling darkness, had enclosed Beidaihe like a swaddling cloth. Bourne could scarcely hear the Bohai Sea coming ashore down below the ragged lip of the cliff. A wind was picking up, cool and wet, and far out on the horizon jagged bolts of lightning could be seen threading their way through clouds the color of gunmetal.
Dressed in the suit Minister Ouyang had chosen for tomorrow’s Congress, Bourne was driving one of the jeeps through the compound, away from the sea and the opulent villas that clung to its edge.
The darkness interspersed with twinkling lights recalled to him the evening in Mexico City when he drove a commandeered taxi across town to try to save Rebeka from bleeding out from the knife wound in her side. He had done everything he could, applying a makeshift tourniquet, placing her hands over the wound and telling her to press down, to keep her life inside her, to keep safe until he could reach a hospital.
He came to the compound’s outer gate and was allowed through. The guards, bored, tired, at the end of their shift, were none too interested in who left the
compound. Their bickering over the latest ministerial sex scandal—more salacious than most—occupied the bulk of their attention.
Out onto the road, he took the left-hand fork, toward the tumbledown military airfield, where Ouyang’s private plane was waiting to take Leonid back to Moscow. He drove very fast, even though the terrain was rough, the road rutted and in ill repair. Once, he had to slow, take a detour around a wide crack in the tarmac that seemed to be many feet deep. A light rain began to fall.
Just then he thought he spotted a pair of headlights paralleling him on a narrow cut through the trees on the ridge above the road. He put on speed, and was soon within sight of the airfield. Its lights cut through the thickening darkness like diamonds, smeared by the rain.
He was nearing the gates when a shot plowed into the side of his vehicle. A moment later a second shot shattered the window on the passenger’s side. Bourne swerved off the road, threw the vehicle into neutral as it rumbled down a rocky embankment, coming to rest on sandy soil.
Bourne was out of the jeep in an instant. Keeping the vehicle between him and the origin of the shots, he moved to the rear of the jeep and, crouching down, vectored the immediate area in an attempt to ferret out the marksman’s place of concealment.
He was close enough to the airfield to hear the jet’s engines whining to life as it prepared to lift off. Scrambling obliquely up the embankment, he reached the lip of the road, hanging there for a moment, waiting to see if his presence would draw another shot. The jet’s engines roared louder, and he launched himself up onto the road. The gate was only a hundred yards away. He sprinted toward it.