Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

Calm down, she told herself. Just bloody well calm those nerves, Chrissie. There’s no one there.

The noise came again, louder this time because she was closer to it, and she knew: Someone was inside the house.

Just after sunset, on the day Karpov had begun his long trek back to Moscow, Arkadin and El Heraldo set off in the cigarette. Arkadin maneuvered the slender powerboat beyond the slips without running lights, which was illegal, but necessary. Besides, as he had quickly learned, in Mexico the line between legal and illegal moved more times than the front lines of a war. Not to mention the fact that what was illegal and what was enforceable were often at odds.

The cigarette’s powerful GPS system was deeply hooded, so that no illumination leaked out into the blue velvet of dusk. Stars had gathered in the eastern sky, eager to display their splendor.

“Time,” Arkadin said.

“Eight minutes,” El Heraldo replied, consulting his watch.

Arkadin altered their course by a couple of degrees. They were already past the perimeter of the policía patrols, but still he did not turn on any lights. The GPS screen told him everything he needed to know. The multi-baffled mufflers El Heraldo had installed on the exhaust were working to perfection; the cigarette made scarcely any noise as it skimmed over the water at high speed.

“Five minutes,” El Heraldo intoned.

“We’ll be in visual range in a moment.”

That was El Heraldo’s cue to take the wheel while Arkadin peered through a pair of military high-power night-vision binoculars toward the south.

“Got ’em,” he said, after a moment.

At once El Heraldo cut their speed by half.

Arkadin, peering through the binoculars at the oncoming boat-a yacht that must have cost upward of fifty million dollars-saw the infrared flashes, two long, two short, visible only to him.

“All’s well,” he said. “Full stop.”

El Heraldo cut the engines, and the cigarette cut through the swells on its own momentum. Dead ahead the yacht loomed up out of the darkness. It, too, had all its lights extinguished. As Arkadin prepared himself, El Heraldo put on the night goggles and manned the infrared beacon. The yacht was equipped with an identical beacon, which was how the two boats drew alongside each other without lights and without incident.

A rope ladder was unfurled over the yacht’s port side, and El Heraldo made it fast to the cigarette. A man, dressed in black, handed down a small carton. El Heraldo received it on his shoulder, then placed it on the cigarette’s deck.

Using a pocketknife, Arkadin slit the carton open. Inside were cans of prepackaged organic corn tortillas. Arkadin opened one, pulled out the roll of tortillas. Inside the roll were stacked four plastic-wrapped packages of a white powder. He stuck the blade of his knife into a packet and tasted its contents. Satisfied, he waved a prearranged signal to the crew member on the yacht. Inserting the bag of cocaine back into the can, he returned it to the carton, and El Heraldo lifted it up to the crewman.

A short whistle came from the yacht as the crewman vanished up the ladder, and Arkadin waited. Moments later two rather large bundles were lowered via a portable winch. The bundles, lying horizontal, were each perhaps six feet in length. They were cradled in a net as if they were a pair of tuna.

When the bundles reached the cigarette’s deck, El Heraldo rolled them off the net, which was immediately winched back up to the yacht. Then El Heraldo detached the rope ladder, which was also withdrawn.

Another whistle, longer this time, came from the yacht. Behind the wheel, El Heraldo started the engines, put the cigarette into reverse, and began to back away from the yacht. When they had reached an adequate distance, the yacht began to move forward, continuing its journey northward, up the coast of Sonora.

As El Heraldo turned the cigarette around, heading them east, back toward shore, Arkadin took up a flashlight and, squatting down, slashed the coverings at one end of the bundles. Then he shone the flashlight on what was inside.

The faces of the two men appeared pale in the light, except where their beards had started to grow. They were still groggy with the anesthetic they had been given when they had been abducted in Moscow. Nevertheless their eyes, which hadn’t seen light for some days, screwed up, watering unstoppably.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Arkadin said, invisible behind the dazzle of the beam of light. “At last you have reached the end of your journey. For one of you, at least. Stepan, Pavel, you were two of my captains, two of my most trusted men. And yet one of you has betrayed me.”

He showed them how the light turned the blade of his knife into a white streak. “In the next hour or so one of you will confess and will tell me everything he knows about his betrayal. A quick, painless death will be his reward. If not… has either of you ever known anyone who has died of thirst? No? God help you, that’s not the way any human being should die.”

For an instant Chrissie froze, unsure what to do as her fight and flight responses warred with each other. Then she took a deep breath and thought about the situation rationally. Retreating wouldn’t help; she’d be trapped on the second floor, and whoever had invaded the cottage would be that much closer to Scarlett. Her only thought now was for her daughter. Whatever happened, she knew she had to keep her safe.

She took a tentative step down, then another. Five treads to go before she could flick the lights on. With her back to the wall, she slowly descended. The noise came again and she froze. It sounded as if someone had come in through the kitchen door and now moved into the living room. She raised the Glock, swinging it in a slow arc as she squinted into the gloom. But apart from the partial outline of the sofa and one wing of an armchair opposite the fireplace, she could make out nothing, certainly no movement, no matter how furtive.

Another step down, another step closer to the light switch. She was only one tread away from it now, her torso leaning forward, free hand outstretched when, with an indrawn gasp, she started back. Someone was close to her, at the bottom of the stairs. In a confused swirl she felt movement on the other side of the newel post, and she raised the Glock, aiming it.

“Who’s there?” Her voice startled her, as if it belonged to a dream or to someone else. “Stay where you are, I’ve got a gun.”

“Cookie, where in the bloody hell did you get a handgun?” her father said from out of the darkness. “I knew something was wrong. What’s going on?”

She flipped on the light and saw him standing there, his face pale and pinched with concern.

“Dad?” She blinked, as if she couldn’t believe it was really him. “What are you doing here?”

“Cookie, where’s Scarlett?”

“Upstairs. She’s sleeping.”

He nodded. “Good, let’s keep it that way.”

He gripped the barrel of the Glock and pushed it down to her side. “Now come on over here. I’ll light a fire, and you’ll tell me what sort of trouble you’re in.”

“I’m not in any trouble, Dad. Does Mum know you’re here?”

“Your mum is as worried about you as I am. Her way of dealing with things is to cook, which she’s doing right now. I’m meant to bring you and Scarlett back home with me.”

Like a sleepwalker, she came down off the stairs and into the living room. Her father was turning on lamps. “I can’t do that, Dad.”

“Why not?” He waved a hand. “Never mind, I didn’t think you would.” He stooped, putting some logs into the grate. Then he checked around. “Where are the matches?”