Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(16)

As he sat, she poured some Coke over ice, handed him the cooling glass. As he drank, she placed her hand on his meaty shoulder. “There’s room for both of us,” she said softly and felt the muscles beneath her fingers lose their tension.

He drained the rest of the Coke and set the glass down, leaned his head back, and sighed. “There are days,” he said, “when it doesn’t seem so bad being away from home.”

“Home is lonely, Gora.” She sat down beside him, maintaining physical contact. He’d never had that growing up. “I know you miss Dimitri.”

“It was that shit Karpov who gunned father down. In a barber shop!” His eyes flashed. “Let me tell you, Alyosha, all debts will be paid.”

She shook her head. “Karpov is dead, Gora.”

“Until his best friend, Jason Bourne, is dealt with, my debt to father will not be paid in full.”

Fran?oise had to laugh at that, but not to his face. “Is that what all your recent maneuvering is all about?”

“To that end, maybe you could help me. It would mean returning to Moscow.”

She shook her head. “I like it out here. I’m never coming home, Gora.”

“So you think that wise?”

“Wise?” She cocked her head to one side. “I can’t say. Perhaps I no longer know what wise is. But I know I have to stay here.”

“Why?” he asked. “Haven’t you killed enough people yet?”

She snorted. “What is that, a joke?”

“I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”

“No, you just order other people to do it,” she said acidly.

“There’s a difference.”

She looked at him as if he were insane. But what was she to say? There was no rational response to an irrational statement, so she returned to the previous topic. “The guise of a go-between is perfect for me, Gora. Which is why I’ve no intention of returning.”

“You disappoint me, Alyosha.”

She stood, preparatory to leaving. “What else is new?” She’d had enough of him.





6



The fog of death and destruction clamped them tight, kept them safe as Bourne and Mala, using the emergency oars clamped to the inside of the hull, rowed their way forward, away from the island of Skyros, toward the vessel holding the rest of the kill squad. The vessel had switched on its searchlight, which was aimed at the water. It was past time for “Smith” to have surfaced and swum back to his boat.

Reaching the outer perimeter of their cover of smoke, they shipped their oars momentarily, hauled Smith’s corpse over the side, guided him toward the bow, then sent him off into the black water ahead of them. Then they rowed backward just enough that they were hidden again, but not so far that they couldn’t see beyond the smoke field, which, in any event, was slowly but surely dissipating.

They could see “Smith” floating faceup, moving away from them on the currents. Bourne had been sure to keep him faceup, after he’d filled his lungs with air to keep him floating long enough for his comrades to spot him. Without his tanks, regulator, mouthpiece, and mask, he would keep afloat even longer.

“Will they find him?” Mala asked as she crouched beside Bourne in the bow.

“Wait for it.” He pointed to the spot where Smith’s bare feet, blue-white, veined as marble, drifted into the edge of the beam.

“There!”

The shout rushed at them across the water, and the beam swung wildly across “Smith,” then past him, before swinging back, correcting. Bobbing in the low waves, he became a kind of metronome, his rhythm in tune with the sea.

The boat moved toward an intercept course. Beyond the searchlight’s beam, it was lit up like an airport runway. They counted five men, including the driver. The hull struck the corpse, whirling it away for a moment before it was brought back alongside with a long-handled gaff.

“Christ,” they heard someone say as “Smith” was hauled on board. “What the hell happened to Stone?”

“Caught in the blast?” someone else opined.

“His suit isn’t shredded,” a third voice broke in. “And where the fuck’s his equipment?”

“Get ready,” Bourne said, handing Mala an oar, taking up the other one himself.

“It’s like he was stripped after he was killed,” the first voice said.

Bourne and Mala were already rowing backward when the searchlight’s beam extended outward, scanning the water between the vessel and the debris field. Reaching farther, the beam hit the smoke, reflecting backward as car headlights will in dense fog.

“The smoke won’t keep us hidden for much longer,” Mala whispered.

“With luck, it won’t have to.”

The searchlight beam kept reaching out, closer and closer toward them. But the closer it got, the more diffuse it became, the more the light was reflected back into the hit team’s faces. The vessel began to inch forward.

“Here they come,” Mala whispered.

“We hold our position.”

“But they’ll—”

The vessel came on, slowly but surely. They were close enough to make out one man straining to scan the debris field with night-vision goggles. But again the smoke refracted the spotlight’s beam into his eyes. He was, in effect, blind.