Savage steadied the ladder. He stared toward the gap below him-no flashlights, although he did hear shouts. He glanced behind him, toward where he and Rachel had used the ladder to climb the wall. No one appeared on the rim.
Rain gusted against his eyes. He squinted toward Rachel, managing to see her on the opposite roof. Flat, he pulled himself along the ladder, its moist rungs easing his way, helping him to slide.
On the other roof, he stood and swung the ladder toward him. They struggled with it toward a farther gap between buildings, moving lower into the village, closer to the harbor.
When he crossed the next gap after Rachel did, Savage stared behind him. A flash of lightning made him flinch as a head appeared on top of a wall. The head belonged to the Japanese. Savage recalled the glint of a sword! The…! Abruptly the Japanese scrambled upright.
Another man joined him, raising a pistol, aiming at Savage.
The Japanese lost his balance on the rain-slicked roof. But the Japanese had moved so gracefully at the mansion, it didn't seem likely he could ever lose his balance. Nonetheless he fell against the man with the pistol, deflecting his aim. The shot went wild. The man with the pistol toppled backward. With a wail, he plunged off the roof.
The Japanese stared down at him, then charged after Savage and Rachel, his movements once again graceful.
He'll have to stop! Savage thought. He can't get past the two gaps we crossed!
Don't kid yourself. If this is Akira, he'll find a way.
But you know he can't be Akira!
Frantic, Savage picked up the ladder. As Rachel assisted, Savage glanced again toward the Japanese, expecting him to halt when he reached a lane between roofs. Instead the Japanese increased speed and leapt, his nimble body arcing through the rain, his arms outstretched as if gliding. He landed on the opposite roof, bent his knees, rolled to absorb the impact, and in the same smooth motion, sprang to his feet, continuing to race.
Burdened with the ladder, Savage and Rachel struggled toward another lane. But this time, instead of bracing the ladder across the gap, Savage lowered it against a wall. As Rachel scurried down, Savage turned, dismayed to see the Japanese leap across another gap.
Guards shouted nearby. Savage scrambled down the ladder and tugged it away from the wall so the Japanese couldn't use it. The lane sloped down to the right. He and Rachel sprinted along it. Behind him, Savage heard frenzied footsteps, the Japanese charging toward the side of the roof.
He'll dangle from the rim and drop, Savage thought. Maybe he'll hurt himself.
Like hell. He's a cat.
The lane ended. Savage faced another horizontal street, so level he couldn't decide which direction would take them closer to the harbor.
A light from a window reflected off water on the street. Heart pounding, Savage noticed that the water flowed toward the left.
He ran with Rachel in that direction. Shouts echoed behind him. Footsteps charged closer. Flashlights blazed ahead.
An alley on the right led steeper downward, away from the flashlights. The closer he and Rachel came to the harbor, the more the village narrowed, forming a bottleneck toward the sea, Savage knew. He'd reach fewer tangents, fewer risks of making the wrong decision and heading inadvertently upward, away from his objective.
But he had to assume that his pursuers understood where he was going. They'll try to get in front of us.
He prayed that the guards were as baffled by the maze as he was. Amid the curses behind him and the blaze of flashlights on his flanks, he heard a single set of pursuing footsteps.
The Japanese.
As if a nightmare had been dispelled, Savage broke from the village, from its confines and confusion. His way now was clear, across the beach, along the dock. No enemy awaited him. Beside him, Rachel breathed hoarsely, stumbling, on the verge of exhaustion.
“Keep trying,” Savage urged. “It's almost over.”
“God, I hope,” she gasped.
“For what this is worth”-Savage breathed-“I'm proud of you. You did fine.”
His compliment wasn't cynical. She'd obeyed him with Style and strength. But his encouragement-no doubt the only positive words she'd been told in quite a while-did the trick. She mustered her deepest resources and ran so hard she almost passed him.
“I meant what I said,” she gasped. “I'll go with you to hell.”
16
The yacht, one of several, was moored near the end of the dock. Savage's final option. If the boats in various coves had been discovered, if the fishing trawler had been forced to retreat due to hazardous, weather, if the helicopter couldn't take off from nearby Delos and pick them up at the rendezvous site, the last possibility was a yacht that a member of his team had left in the Mykonos harbor.
Savage sprang aboard, released the ropes that secured it to posts, raised the hatch above the engine, and grabbed the ignition key taped beneath the deck. He slid the key into the switch on the vessel's controls, swelled with triumph when the engine rumbled, pushed the accelerator, and felt a satisfying surge as the yacht sped away from the dock.
“Thank you!” Rachel hugged him.
“Get down on the deck!”
She instantly complied.
As the yacht churned away from the dock, raising waves dwarfed by the greater waves of the storm, Savage scowled behind him. The force of the sea made the yacht thrust up and down, but despite his confused perspective, Savage saw a man rush along the dock.
The Japanese. Beneath a light at the end of the dock, his features remained as melancholy as Akira's.
He showed other emotions as well. Confusion. Desperation.
Anger.
Most of all, fear.
That didn't make sense. But there wasn't any doubt. The Oriental's strongest emotion was fear.
“Savage?” The voice was strained, obscured by the gusting storm.
“Akira?” Savage's yell broke, strangled by waves that splashed his face, filling his mouth, making him cough.
On the dock, other guards rushed beside the Japanese. They aimed pistols toward the yacht but didn't dare fire, aware of the risk of hitting their client's wife. Their faces were rainswept portraits of desperation.
The Japanese shouted, “But I saw you…!”
The storm erased his next frantic words.
“Saw me?” Savage yelled. “I saw you!”
Savage couldn't allow himself to be distracted. He had to complete his mission and urged the yacht from the harbor.
“… die!” the Japanese screamed.
Rachel peered up from the deck. “You know that man?”
Savage's hands cramped around the yacht's controls. His pounding heart made him sick.
He felt dizzy. In the village, he'd predicted that the Japanese would leap down from the wall like a cat.
Yes. Like a cat, Savage thought. With less than nine lives.
“Know him?” he told Rachel as the yacht fought stormy waves to escape the harbor. “God help me, yes.”
“The wind! I can't hear you!”
“I saw him die six months ago!”
EXECUTIVE PROTECTION
1
Six months ago, Savage had been working in the Bahamas, an uneventful babysitting job that involved making sure the nine-year-old son of a U.S. cosmetics manufacturer didn't get kidnapped while the family was on vacation. Savage's research had made him conclude that, since the family had never been threatened, his assignment was really to be a companion to the boy while the parents abandoned him in favor of the local casinos. In theory, anyone could have served that function, but it turned out the businessman made frequent racial slurs against the local population, so Savage assumed that the supposed potential kidnappers had a skin color darker than his employer's. In that case, why, he'd wondered, had the businessman chosen the Bahamas at all? Why not Las Vegas? Probably because the Bahamas sounded more impressive when you told your friends you'd spent two weeks there.