Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Bourne Enigma by Eric Van Lustbader

Author:Eric Van Lustbader [Lustbader, Eric Van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-06-20T22:00:00+00:00

32

When Svetlana arrived at the dock in Amsterdam and took her first look at the cruise ship on which First Minister Savasin had booked her, she knew that if she sailed on it she would be killed. She knew this as surely as she knew she needed oxygen to breathe; it was something instinctual, buried deep in the most primitive part of her brain, the part connected irrevocably to survival. So she tore up her ticket, she turned on her heel, and strode away. With every step she took she felt freer, as if for the first time in her life.

The skies were a deep cerulean blue, the lights of the city had come on, glimmering in the waters of the canals. Bike riders flashed by her and, for a moment, she wished she were one of them. It took her some minutes to realize that she could be—that she could be anything she wanted to be. Surely Boris would have loved that; he was so un-Russian in his belief in her. He harbored a certainty that she would be successful in anything she put her mind to. Dear, dear Boris. To her dismay, she found herself brushing away tears again. And here she had been sure she had cried herself out during the flight from Moscow. Was it so very bad to cry? She knew she wasn’t a weak person; her tears were a kind of memorial to a man she had loved, betrayed, then loved all the more—loved with all her heart and soul, and now, in the aftermath of his death both were broken, perhaps beyond repair.

She passed a bike shop, its cycles glowing in window lights against the sapphire twilight, and she stopped, deciding whether or not to join the cliques of cyclists speeding past, to become one of them, to lose herself in their carefree midst. But she made no move to enter the shop. Her feet were glued to the sidewalk, and she knew why. She knew it wouldn’t matter if she bought a bike, sold or gave away the bulk of her clothes and possessions, went on the road, became a latter-day bohemian. There was no losing oneself, except in death. And there was certainly no losing her vertiginous sense of loss. Wherever she went, she knew it would be with her. You can’t outrun life; it was foolish and counterproductive to try.

So what would be productive? she wondered as she crossed to a bridge, stood leaning against its wrought-iron railing. She stared down into the greenish-black water, purling against the curved wooden side of a passing boat. A young man in a woolen cap waved to her smiling. Reflexively, she waved back, but she could not muster even the ghost of a smile.

Then, as she shifted from one leg to the other, she felt the tiny weight of the micro-card move against her thigh. Instinctively, she put her hand into her pocket, felt it there, warm between her finger and thumb. Boris’s operation, black as pitch, secret as a doge’s mistress, and she had it all.

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