Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(38)
And in the fifth place, and most damning for MacQuerrie, were a raft of files spewed out into cyberspace documenting the eye-opening amounts of money salted away by the aforementioned General Arthur MacQuerrie in a briar patch of shell companies in the Caymans, Panama, Argentina, Gibraltar, and Cyprus. As an adjunct to this perfidy visited upon the federal government and the American people was the treasonous way these shell companies appeared to rub shoulders with those known to belong to certain high-level officials and billionaire oligarchs of the Russian Federation.
The flurry of documents was released at three in the morning, Eastern Daylight Time. Before first light in D.C., emissaries of Homeland Security, accompanied by a contingent of heavily armed military personnel, confronted a sleep-bedazzled MacQuerrie on his front doorstep. Moments later, under the teary gaze of his wife, he was handcuffed, hustled down his McLean walkway, past prize azaleas and rhododendrons, ushered with only a modicum of courtesy into the back of one of three gleaming black Chevrolet SUVs. Four minutes after they had arrived, the modern-day caravan was gone, leaving only faint bluish exhaust fumes that dissipated even before the distraught Mrs. MacQuerrie closed the front door and dialed their lawyer’s home phone number.
Meanwhile, the ominous caravan made its next stop at the home of Lieutenant Francis Goode. Goode, having received advance warning of the intentions of the long arm of the federal government, had tried to do a runner, but too late. As the SUVs hurled themselves around the corner to his street, he sprinted back into his house and barricaded himself inside. A fierce firefight ensued, in the midst of which the good lieutenant, having determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no way out, put the muzzle of his pistol into his mouth and blew his brains out.
At around the same time as the LeakAGE barrage began, Fulmer, having deplaned at the VIP side of Dulles International, and true to his word, deployed the full flower of his influence, gaining Morgana her freedom from NSA custody. As dawn broke over D.C., she was aboard a military transport on her way to Stockholm and thence, via a far more comfortable commercial flight, to Kalmar, where Fran?oise was anxiously awaiting her arrival.
Not many things gave Fran?oise anxiety; doing nothing but waiting was one of them; meditation was not her thing. Of course, as recompense, she experienced the delightful diversion of watching the LeakAGE shit-bomb light up the Internet like a line of napalm detonations. The speed at which LeakAGE stories went viral still astonished her, but this one, as expected, flashed around the globe at what seemed light speed. And why not? Not only was an American general implicated in nefarious dealings, but the NSA itself—everyone’s favorite whipping boy since Snowden—was caught with its pants down. As she had foreseen, everyone wanted a piece of that action. And, not so incidentally, the pressure on Fulmer’s own not so very kosher interests domiciled in Panama was lifted. This story was so big it would defy the usual mayfly-short news cycle; it would build and build, and then linger for months. More than enough time for Fulmer to leave Musgrave-Stephens and reassign his interests to Fellingham, Bodeys.
Which reminded her. Hunched in front of a laptop shielded from ISP snooping, she began the long, laborious process that would ensure her another airtight get-out-of-jail-free card to play should the necessity arise.
—
The Angelmaker was reluctant to leave Bourne alone on the rocking powerboat, but there was no help for it. Slipping over the gunwale, she swam the short distance to where the shingle came up to meet her just before the creaming surf, if that’s what you could call these laughably small waves. But that’s what you got in what was essentially a landlocked sea.
Picking her way across the prickly shore as quickly as she could, she approached the area where she had been waiting for Bourne as he drove toward her in the Nym’s runabout. Down on her knees at the base of the cliff, she dug beneath the surface, extracting a neoprene waterproof bag, which she unzipped. Inside were a mobile and a sat phone, two different caliber handguns, extra ammo, a serrated knife in a thick rubber sheath, a coil of nylon rope, and a first aid kit in a long red plastic box. After assuring herself that it hadn’t been disturbed and that everything was there, she made an encrypted emergency call on the sat phone, not trusting to mobile service here. Then she put back the phone, zipped the bag, and returned with it to the powerboat.
Back on deck, she placed the bag next to Bourne, pressed her fingers against his carotid. Relief flooded through her: he was still alive. Then she opened the bag, took out the first aid kit. First, she applied tourniquets to stop the bleeding. Then she cut off the bloody field dressings and commenced to clean the wounds, first with an antiseptic solution and then with a powerful antibiotic powder. Lastly, she bound them with Elastoplast, sealing them temporarily. Still, there was nothing she could do about the blood he had lost, and that was a real worry.
She sat back on her haunches. Bourne’s blue-white face looked like a three-day-old mackerel. It made her sick in the pit of her stomach. Bending over from the waist, she placed her lips against his. They were cold as ice, as if he were already dead. She opened his mouth with hers, breathed warm air into him, as if this were a fairy tale, as if she had magical powers and she could breathe life into him. Why not? She had done everything else she could think of to save him.
Fuck those fucking Russian fucks, she thought. Their day will come, and when it does I’m going to use their guts for balalaika strings.
A moment later, she heard the deep, rumbling sound of the heavy diesels, and the ship came into view. On the elevated rear deck of the ship was a helo, which airlifted them to Skyros Island International Airport. There, a newly minted Bombardier 8000 long-haul private jet was ready and waiting for them. Customs and immigration had been arranged following her call, and they wasted no time in taking off. The Bombardier 8000, the company’s newest flagship jet, cost nearly $69 million, cruised at a speedy Mach 0.85, and was as comfortable as could be.