My mouth dried instantly.
Five fucking months.
It had been five months since that guy had come, made his deal and left me. Mentally, I was broken. I’d suffered the physical beatings, rapes and general abuse I’d become accustomed to, but then I’d overheard some conversations that told me I would be kept here until I died, or until they killed me. My homeland had got into bed with these monsters just because they had a common enemy. That was what that suave mother fucker had meant with his taunting words at last month’s market.
Knowing I wasn’t here to fight the good fight I’d assumed I was fighting was a kicker, but knowing that I was a pawn in the games between different nations and being used however they saw fit was killing me. The animals I lived with were truly evil, but at least they played with me out in the open. The game they played didn’t have hidden agendas, and that made what my country had done to me so much crueler.
Unable to hide the hope in my voice, I squeaked, “Is that it?” I looked back at the man, who was definitely not from these parts but had worked well to craft his disguise. He smelled like he’d been herding goats, had stained teeth and unkempt hair, but whoever he was, he was skilled. He’d been to these parts before and understood the requirements and standards you had to aim for to blend in, to survive.
“They from the tulip?”
My heart quickened.
This. Was. It.
Contact.
I scanned my immediate surroundings, left and right, even up and fucking down, just to make sure no one in earshot could report back to any of my watching captors that I’d been approached. It was safe as could be. “Red and gray cart, brown and white horse. Be there in twelve minutes.”
The man bent down and rustled around the basket of fresh leaves at his feet. “Got it.”
I used all my surveillance training as I watched him go. He was good. He circled the market again, making sure he wasn’t being followed and I only spotted his actions because we’d been trained the same way, the exact same way. That worry niggled somewhere deep, that this might be another trap, another demoralizing kick to the ego. The people I’d thought were on the same side as me had now jumped over and switched, leaving me isolated and alone with no way out.
“Inaya?” I called softly, and the nodding girl appeared beside me instantly. “I need more stock.”
“I get it.”
“No. You stay here.”
Her eyes widened. I wasn’t allowed to leave the stall on my own and she knew this, but she also knew she was my house help and if I told her to do something, she would do it. Inaya would pay for this, too, later, but at least she’d see it as her duty and retribution for being disobedient.
I grabbed a plastic bag and a bunch of saffron leaves, and left out the back of the stall, doing exactly the same as my mystery contact man, concealing that I was looking everywhere possible to see if someone had spotted me, or noticed I’d left. There was also the risk that Inaya would send them after me.
Before I got back to my cart, he intercepted me. I expected it, though. It was exactly the same way I would have played this. “You have to get me out.” I couldn’t hold those words back any longer and I hoped they wouldn’t be the ones that killed me. If this was a trap, there was a fair chance my throat would be cut. At the last minute I remembered the bag in my hands and thrust it at him, “Here, you forgot your fucking saffron.”
“Where’s Iqbal?”
Fuck. My adrenaline-fuelled heart stuttered. If this guy was another one here to do a fucking deal, I would kill both us before I let that happen. They were not leaving me here again.
I had gone above and beyond already. I was done.
“Away for another six days, but you won’t get near him.”
“Why haven’t they extracted you?”
That was a good fucking question and one I didn’t know the answer to. “I don’t have too long.”
“Best fucking tell me what I want to know, or you’ll be here a whole lot longer.”
My bottom lip quivered and there was nothing I could do to stop it. “They came to get me out eight months ago, or so I thought, but then they made a deal instead, and I was part of that fucking deal.”
“What deal?” The guy looked around, scanning the medieval fucking parking lot full of horses and carts. I began to do the same, each of us looking at the other’s six to make sure we were still safe from discovery for the time being.
“Some fuck from the agency needed a bomb putting on a Saudi plane. Seems that’s common ground with my ‘husband,’ so they made a deal with Iqbal and he did it in exchange for weapons.” I watched his face as I delivered this news, looking for the shock that the system he was in the middle off was corrupt and fucked up, but nothing much happened. He either expected it or was part of it. He waited a few seconds, thinking through his options. He was either going to kill me, try to fight me to my death—and I would make sure it was a fight to the death for one of us—or he was going to leave me the fuck here.
“I can’t take you home.” My face fell before I braced for a fight. “They want you dead,” he continued.
That burned. Everything I’d done for them and I was still expendable. If I had to plead for my life, I would. Then I’d go back to my original plan, get myself out of here and die fucking trying. “I won’t go home. But if you leave me here, I’m worse than dead. I’m basically a female slave, a fucking sex toy. Lucky old me got a break the other night, which would have been great if it didn’t come at the expense of a nine-year-old girl.”
Something moved across his face, a look of disgust followed by the desire to kill and maim. “We have to take him out first, otherwise we’re both dead. But you still can’t go home. You have to die, too, you get me?”
“I’ll do it.”
Just then a hustle of voices I recognized sounded off to our right, a few carts down. Inaya had either sent them to me, or they’d discovered I’d gone. I needed to make this quick. The stranger looked in the direction of the voices before turning back to me. It was going to kill me to suggest this, but we needed to be safe about this. “It’ll have to be around the next market. He’ll definitely be here then.”
“No, it needs to be before then.” Thank fuck for his impatience, but he didn’t get it.
“No. You can’t kill what isn’t here, and I don’t have enough time to plan for when he’s next back,” I insisted, before turning my head and shouting, “Coming, coming!” First in English and then in Arabic. I felt the man who was planning to rescue me step back into the shadows before I heard him shuffle under a cart beside mine. Doing the only thing I could, I rummaged around in the boxes and bags of spices.
Two of my ‘husband’s’ most vicious guards appeared beside me and I knew what was coming. I blanked my mind as the first guy took his turn, and when the second guy grabbed hold of me, the other one put his hand over my mouth to muffle my protests.
Fucking animals.
A man sharing a woman out in the open would get me stoned in the middle of the market. They’d receive some token punishment, but the fact that they didn’t care, and that my ‘husband’ would shake their hands over my raping made the bile rise in my throat. When they were done with me, they pushed me to the floor. “How this for English lessons? Know your place, American whore.” I didn’t dare answer them, and with my head on the floor I saw my rescuer under the cart beside mine. I tried not to focus on how pissed off he seemed. His fists were clenched tight in front of him as he lay flat on his chest, and he looked like he wanted to jump up and kill the brutes, who now towered over me, with his bare hands. After a few minutes of showing the appropriate submission, I was allowed to stand up, and with nothing else to do, I grabbed some baskets of random spices and leaves, and turned to go back to the market, the two men falling in line beside me, almost marching me back there.
I hated that the man had seen that, but if seeing that had pulled at his heart strings or conscience, then fine. Maybe he’d re
member that we’d just agreed to kill my fucking asshole of a ‘husband’ and then get out of here.
Surprisingly, even though I’d just been raped by two men, I still wanted to smile. I felt hope blossom and bloom inside me.
They all wanted to see my weakness and I couldn’t succumb to that mindset. Doing that would have overwritten the positivity that I desperately clung onto and needed to survive, but what I could give them each and every time was my false submission.
A controlled level of submission that hid the aggression I’d been trained to switch on and off accordingly.
It’s a game.
I repeated it inside my head. It’s. A. Fucking. Game.
And winning means life.
Mine.
The end was in sight. I was getting out of here, or I was going to die trying.
Chapter Three
Codename : Agent Poppy
“What’s your name?”
“Names are dangerous in our game.”
The stranger had done what he’d said he would. He’d kept his word and if I spent the rest of my life working my fingers to the bone to thank him for it, I would, but I doubted I’d get the chance. We weren’t destined to have a long-lasting friendship.
He’d got me out and sent in a fucking firework display of bombs to end the compound of misery that had been my prison. With a bit of luck, they’d all be burned and crispy, the women having a reprieve from their shit lives, ultimately a better ending than the one they were probably going to get, and the men just getting what they deserved—pain and fucking suffering. If anything I’d say the death they’d got was too fucking kind for them.
The stranger and I climbed in his beat-up truck and headed across country to Tajikistan. I’d heard him make calls confirming that he’d killed me, and while it burned that I was an expendable pawn in the fight against terror, I wasn’t going to look the kind-hearted nature of this particular assassin in the mouth and bitch about it.
I was out.
And I owed him for doing that.
He turned to me, and I wondered if he was going to tell me his name. “You been to Tajikistan before?”
“No. Never.”
“It’s mostly Muslim, so fit in that way. Some will speak Arabic, but most will speak a blend of mixed in Russian. Stay sharp.”
“You done any jobs there?”
Nothing. He gave me nothing, so I decided to change tactics. “A name would be good, though. I can’t keep calling you the stranger.”
“Shadow.”
“You have family?” The hours of silence that were once amazing because I was free and had only been allowed out of the compound to visit the market once a month, now grated. How could you spend so much time in the company of someone else and not get to know them?
“Talk is dangerous, too,” he mumbled, not turning his head to look at me.
“Humor me. I’ve not been exposed to anything close to normal for so long, I need to hear what normal is like. Help me readjust.”
Shadow looked at me and I understood everything his eyes were trying to tell me. There was nothing normal about either of us, and readjusting was just a notion that we dreamed about. Something we’d fake to fit back into the normality that society expected.
“You can’t go home. My contact will arrange safe passage for you somewhere. You need to head abroad, and never go home.”
“I know.” I didn’t hide the disillusionment. I knew I could live and start again anywhere. The agency had given me those skills, but I didn’t want that. What I desperately needed was familiar, the comforts of home and people who spoke like I did.
“I have a family, Poppy…” He used my agent codename. Clearly Shadow wasn’t his real name, but sense had to prevail. The less we knew about each other, the safer we both were.
“I love that you have a family. I want a family.”
This time he didn’t look at me and I still knew what he was thinking. He hoped I’d have one, too, but he also knew it was unrealistic.
“I think I’ll head to—”
“Don’t fucking tell me,” he growled. “Do you not get that you should be dead? I’ve got plans to put in place to keep me and my family safe, but I can’t be responsible for you too. When you get over that border you fucking disappear and forget you know me.”
“Sorry.”
He breathed easy. He was clearly expecting a fight on this, but he was right. This shit was serious. I was supposed to be dead; he was supposed to have killed me and if that didn’t happen, the agency would burn the earth to right that wrong.
“What will you do when you’ve dropped me off?”
“Head back across the border, work back across the country and get an evac home.”
It was a good plan. He’d be able to explain his delay in getting back to base. He’d just wiped out one of their most prominent army generals, their master warlord. The country would go into lockdown trying to find anyone they could portray as the perpetrator. I’d bet my left arm on them finding the first foreigner, parading them on national TV and then beheading them via a live internet stream just for a show of force. The internal battles to replace Iqbal amongst the ranks would have already started but they’d be united in their need to continue business as usual. I’d also wager that our handlers would be hoping that Shadow got picked up somewhere along the line. The ease of having someone else deal with him would be appealing to my traitorous countrymen.
As soon as I was across the border, I felt sadness wash over me. We were going to have to split up and I didn’t want to. This was the safest I’d felt in years and although I could fend for myself, for the first time I’d liked not having to.
“Here, this is the contact.” He handed me a piece of paper. “Bolly works in the cotton souk. There’s only one worth visiting. You’ll find him in the shop in the back-left corner. The sign above his shop has a teddy bear on it.”
“Is that because he’s warm and cuddly?” I tried to inject some humor into the situation; my nerves at being alone were starting to kick in.
Shadow knew what I was doing and ignored it for the most part. “He doesn’t look like the others; that will be clear. Get him alone and tell him the Raiders beat Steelers by twenty points, and he’ll know you’re a friendly.”
“I—”
Shadow ignored me. “He’ll get you papers and a safe passage out of Asia. For fuck’s sake take it, and lay low.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t made it out. But you need to. You resurface on this fucking continent or back home and we’re both dead. And so will be my woman and kids.”
He had a family. He’d finally shared something personal.
“Goodbye, Shadow.”
He nodded at me and waited for me to get out. I adjusted the clothes I’d found in the back of his truck into a face veil and grabbed the backpack, then I watched as he pulled away from me, wondering if he was looking in his rearview mirror. Even if he was, he wouldn’t have seen anything apart from the dust his tires kicked up.
I was feeling sentimental, when really I should have been concentrating on staying alive. I was a woman alone travelling in a country where that wasn’t the norm. Even though Shadow was going back into the lion’s den of Afghanistan, my own challenge was no less deadly.
Tajikistan was mostly mountainous. Cold and fucking brutal. No wonder wars had been fought and lost in such a hostile environment. The Russians and Afghanis would definitely be at home here. I hiked miles and miles over days, sleeping under shelter where I could find it, sparingly using the supplies that Shadow had left me with, and by the time I got to the town Shadow had pointed out on the map, I stunk to high heaven. I looked like a feral local woman who had come down from a farm in the mountains for supplies.
The cotton souk was open daily, it was one of the treasures of the country, and as I watched and waited, I spotted American buyers doing deals over fabrics that would be constructed into garments by slave labor and
sold to rich bitches on 5th Avenue in New York. On every level possible, the place I’d loved and defended was corrupt and unjust. After three days, Bolly’s shop in the souk opened, and after three hours of circling the place, I knew he’d spotted me. Shadow was right; he was different. He was a big, burly guy who barked out orders to the many young Arab boys who worked for him. He wore outdated fatigues and was just missing a rifle and bandolier. The scar that cut from his temple to chin on one side of his face made him look angry. He also looked like Shadow’s twin. Deadly.
“Can I help you with something?” Bolly’s voice was heavily lilted with a Russian accent. One second his eyes swept me, the next he scanned behind me and consistently repeated the action. “Maybe you need cloth for teddy bear? Yes?”
Before I could answer, he shoved me to the back corner of the shop between two enormous rolls of material.
“Bolly?”
He looked around cautiously, “Is that all you got for me?” He produced a flick knife from a pocket with intent to harm.
“No… no. The Raiders beat the Steelers by twenty points.”
“Fucking Shadow,” he grumbled, raised a leg up beside me and kicked the wall between the two fabric rolls. It pivoted on a center pole of some kind and he shoved me through it into the darkness. “You wait there. No moving, no talking. I hear peep from you, I cut your fucking throat.” The panel spun back, extinguishing the light rapidly and as I panicked and went to push it back open, I heard something being stacked against the other side.
In the complete darkness, I could only hear my own breathing as the tempo of my heart matched its in and out rhythm. I shuffled forward, my feet scuffing the floor until I came up against a wall, feeling around it. I came up with nothing. No light switches, no furniture, just dark, damp and dust. With nothing else to do, I slumped down the wall and waited, deciding that preserving my energy was the best bet. If I needed to fight that animal for my freedom I would, but it would take all my strength.
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