The Geneva Decision Read Online Free PDF Page B

had five left. If she jumped, she might make it to the intake platform. It was lower, unlit, and would force him to turn his back to Jonelle and Marty if he wanted to shoot her. A risk he might not take. They’d arrive before he could kill her. Maybe. It was her best chance.
    She ran for the railing.
    From the car on the street, an Arabic voice shouted, “ Eyreh be afass seder emmak! ”
    She’d heard that phrase during games in the Middle East. The ugliest insult an Arab could muster.
    Al-Jabal.
    Pia vaulted the railing.
    In midair she realized her mistake: the platform was too far.
    She plunged into shocking cold water. Something tugged at her torso, pulling her down. The current of the Rhone flowed out of Lake Léman and into a narrow penstock, or inlet tube, that once fed the power plant’s turbines. She was in that current, slipping into that penstock. She had to swim out immediately or get sucked into a kilometer-long tube. Clawing at the water, she struggled upward, sinking as much as she rose. She shrugged off her jacket and kicked off her shoes. Graceful efficiency, a swim coach had once told her when describing underwater swimming form. She’d have to be less panicked to reach graceful.
    Her lungs burned. A land-athlete, she lived and breathed air without a second thought. The more she fought, the more air she wanted, which meant she needed to make better progress against the current. Otherwise, fatigue would force her lungs to do what they craved, to expand and fill regardless of the consequences. Already she had to exert even more energy to keep her mouth closed.
    She wondered why she’d even made the jump. She was no gymnast, no vaulter. She was tall and strong and fast, not light and lithe and fluid. The platform had been a mistake, possibly a deadly one.
    She clawed harder and kicked. She felt eddies of water behind the trailing edge of her skin, the sign of ineffective paddling. The exertion of swimming against infinite tons of water used up the remaining oxygen in her blood. She was exhausted. She had nothing left. She struggled to commit her arms to one more stroke.
    Dying in that freezing river because of al-Jabal was not an option. The bad guys were not going to win this game. Pia Sabel always won.
    It was time to fight. She willed herself to make it out alive. Recalling her instructor’s guidance to treat the water as a solid object, she pressed her fingers together, imagining them pushing against a rock wall, and pressed hard against it. Progress. Her knees locked, and her kicks gained traction. She fought back another overwhelming urge to gasp for air. Her arms moved upward with better form and downward with more power. Stroke by stroke, she made a little progress and got away from the strongest part of the current.
    The water lightened above her. City lights—the surface had to be close. Her body burned with an uncontrollable desire to breathe in anything. Just a little farther. Another stroke or two. Her muscles ached; her lungs were on fire. She pushed herself harder than she imagined possible.
    Kicking her way to the surface, she broke through and sucked in lungs full of air. For a minute that was all she could do—breathe.
    She looked around for a way out. Nothing but darkness. A wall separated her from the open river, while the current tried to tug her back into the deep. Exhausted, she swam along the wall until she reached her intended destination, the platform, and hauled herself onto it.
    Marty’s voice reached her ears. He and Jonelle found an access walkway and made their way toward her.
    Brushing the water off her tracksuit, she thought about the escalation. The assassin was trying to kill her. She stood up and met her agents halfway across the platform. Marty handed her his leather jacket.
    She slipped it on, shivering. “Did you get them?”
    “The darts don’t have much range,” Jonelle said. “They ran for it.”
    “Still think this is none of our business?”
    Jonelle’s