Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(26)

“You said you have a better idea than taking them out,” Mala whispered in his ear, mindful that their voices would carry over the rocky terrain. “What could possibly be better?” she asked again.

Bourne halted them. He pointed off to the right, where a break in the pines offered them a view inland down the slope. “There,” he said. “There they are.”

A fire had been lit, three tents surrounding it. Now and again they could discern in the glimmering starlight the movement of a human being, a quick, dull wink of an AR-15 assault rifle as light from the fire slithered down its barrel.

Bourne signaled silently to her, and they crept forward along the path, breaking off it when they were just above the bivouac. They were close enough to hear voices but were completely hidden from view behind a dense copse of pines.

“Have you made contact with MacQuerrie?” one said.

“Not yet.”

“Fuck, you’d better.”

There was a pause. “Frankly, I don’t want to be the one to tell him.”

“About Stone or Bourne?”

“Bourne. He won’t give a shit about Stone.”

“You’re right. He’s a fucker. Well, you’ll have to do it, and the sooner the better. There’s nothing to be done for the poor devil but to bring him back home. Bourne, on the other hand, we can do something about. He’s got to be somewhere nearby. The storm must have pinned him down just the way it did us.”

The first one made a call, reluctantly enough, on a military-grade sat phone. When he was finished, he wiped sweat off his brow.

“That bad?” the second one asked.

The first one shook off his question. “Break out the night-vision glasses. He won’t be able to see us, but we sure as hell will be able to see him.”

They heard the rustling as the kill team strapped on their night-vision goggles. The agent was right: the goggles would pick up their heat signatures. There would be nowhere to hide.

“Jason…”

Mala’s soft voice pulled him out of his silent session with himself. His short-term tactics were settled; it was the mid-term strategy that still had to be worked out.

The American kill team was coming, heading up the slope because they must figure Bourne had made landfall somewhere close by. This part of the coast was forbidding, and there were only a few places to come ashore safely.

Bourne moved them back to a more strategic position. Rocks and water were their only friends now, the only natural configurations that would block their heat signals. The soft pines, no matter how closely clustered, could not be counted upon to keep them hidden for long. Even the slightest move or alteration in their position would leak a signature and give them away. They’d be effectively pinned down.

“Come on,” he whispered. “There’s a lot of work to do and little time to do it in.”





9



Jason Bourne. Where the hell is he?”

Faced with his boss’s towering wrath, Igor Malachev trembled. “We don’t know, sir.”

Timur Savasin, First Minister of the Russian Federation, turned a withering look on him. “What do I have you for, Igor Ivanovich, except to keep an ear and eye out on spetsnaz?”

Malachev stiffened. “I do the best I can, sir. But Special Forces is a paranoid group.”

“Everyone in Russia is paranoid, Igor Ivanovich. It goes with the territory.” He raised a hand, fluttered it. “Find out where Bourne is, and don’t return until you have the answer.” Malachev was almost to the first minister’s office door when Savasin said, “And, Igor Ivanovich, while you’re at it, fetch Alecks Petrovich for me.”

Alecks Volodarsky. Savasin could have, of course, picked up the internal phone and summoned the new head of spetsnaz, the FSB Special Forces, himself, but his ire was such that he had decided to turn his second-in-command into a lowly gofer. He resisted an urge to order him to bark.

Alone in his vast office inside Moscow Center, Savasin stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets, fuming so hard it was a wonder smoke didn’t puff out of his ears. That boat, Boris Illyich’s fucking boat, he thought. The fucker might have been a traitor six ways from Sunday, but he had goddamn good taste. He stalked back and forth across the gray tweed carpet like a caged tiger. I wanted that boat. It was mine. The Sovereign said I could have it. And now we’ve blown it to kingdom come. I didn’t order the boat blown up. Who the fuck did? He went and stared out the window at Lubyanka Square. Directly across was the forbidding fa?ade of Detsky Mir, Children’s World department store, which reminded Savasin that one of his grandchildren was having his seventh birthday next week. He resolved, as further punishment, to send Malachev over there on his lunch hour to buy a suitable present.

“Come,” he muttered in response to a crisp knock on the door. And then louder, a second time, “Come!”

Malachev or Volodarsky? He watched an old man on the square, lost in a greatcoat that might have been manufactured during World War II, struggle with a recalcitrant dog. The dog was almost as big as the old man. Savasin felt a quick stab of compassion for the dog’s master. The visitor behind him cleared his throat. Savasin didn’t turn around.

“Igor Ivanovich said you wanted to see me, sir.”

For a moment Savasin said nothing. He was tempted to send one of his men outside to help the old man with his willful animal, but then reflected that would only shame the old man, who might very well be a war veteran, and that would never do.