Exile

by James Swallow

  One of the dark-skinned men came over and made Neven put on a life jacket and a winch rig. Ramaas left him behind, and in short order Neven was being hauled off the deck of the tramp ship like a barrel of cargo, the churning black waves passing beneath his dangling feet as he rose toward the hull of the massive container ship. He screwed his eyes shut and waited for the nightmare to end.

  ELEVEN

  One moment there was warm air on his face and the next it was cool evening breeze. Marc had no proper sense of the transition between the two moments. He had gone out onto the high balcony of the Rubicon office and found a place under a veranda to take a break, and then suddenly Kara was kicking his leg and he was awake again.

  ‘I fell asleep?’ He blinked and rubbed his cheeks. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Lucy said to let you. Said you looked like you needed it.’ Kara was holding a digital tablet in both hands and she sat down across from him. She perched on the edge of one of the square wicker chairs that were part of the balcony’s modernist design ethic, as if she was afraid to settle more comfortably. Kara Wei was small and sparse of frame, and looked as if she might blow away in a strong wind.

  ‘I told her to give you more coffee,’ she went on, ‘but nobody liked that idea.’

  ‘Sleep is for the weak,’ he said, managing a wry smile. ‘You need me for something?’ Marc self-consciously reached for his backpack to make sure it was still by his side, still secure. He knew he was supposed to trust these people, but it was tough to let go of hard-learned instinct.

  Kara pretended not to notice and flipped the tablet around like it was a flash card, the display reorienting itself to him. ‘I found the guy making the cannoli. Say hello to Jalsa Sood. Indian ex-pat. Political activist. Revolutionary. Freelance bomb-builder.’

  ‘The Baker.’ Marc looked at the picture displayed on the screen. It was old and grainy, the colours bled by time, and it showed a man with shoulder-length black hair and a piercing look in his brown eyes. The rumpled shirt and jacket he wore had the Miami Vice look that had been popular in the eighties. ‘I’m guessing this isn’t a recent shot.’

  ‘He’s been very good about keeping his face out of the public eye,’ Kara explained. ‘This is a smart one,’ she said, with a hint of admiration in her voice. ‘I mean, most terrorists don’t make it out of their thirties, bomb-makers less so. It’s not exactly a low-lethality occupation.’

  ‘Ramaas wants Neven Kurjak to help him find this guy.’ Marc returned to the questions that had been bothering him ever since they had intercepted the call to Horvat. ‘What for? I can’t think of a single answer that isn’t deeply troubling.’

  ‘True that,’ said Kara. ‘Sood trained as a physicist and engineer, top of his class. Got into politics when he was in his teens. Like you said before, he was into violent activism all through the seventies. First with the Tamils, then he turned freelancer. The guy was your straight-up genius recluse, with a real taste for exotic weapons tech.’

  ‘How did you find him?’ Marc sat forward in his chair, taking the tablet from her and skimming through the files she had recovered. ‘The NSNS never got a sniff.’

  Kara brushed a length of her dyed hair back from her face and flashed a tight smile. ‘Not exactly so. They were looking in the wrong place, mistaking the work of other less talented “bakers” for his and confusing the take. I can’t blame them, though. On account of the fact the Jalsa Sood was killed in 2011.’

  Marc’s head jerked up. ‘That doesn’t track. Ramaas wants to meet a dead man?’

  Kara cocked her head, playing with her hair again. ‘Well, when I said was killed, I should add allegedly.’ She took the tablet back from him and flicked through a few pages, looking for something. ‘The intel I dug up is from Mossad. They say that Sood was assassinated by one of his clients after he botched a job for them. Word was, he’d lost his edge and become a liability.’

  ‘But you reckon that was a cover-up?’

  She showed him a picture of a burned-out vehicle. ‘Car bomb in Libya. The kind of thing that someone like Sood could build out of pixie sticks and drain cleaner in an afternoon. The body was too badly burned to identify and there’s evidence that a lot of Sood’s money disappeared right after.’

  Marc took a breath as the data snapped into place. ‘He wanted to retire. Drop out of the game for good.’ He considered what else he had seen in the file. ‘Except . . . Geniuses get bored easily, yeah? He must have kept in with the Serbs, dabbling a little now and then to keep his skills sharp. I bet if you dig some more, you’ll find a link between Sood and the Kurjaks. Money laundering, most likely – I reckon that’s how they knew each other first.’

  Kara’s head bobbed. ‘Agreed. And of course, if we could find out where this dead-not-dead guy hides out, we would know where Neven is taking Ramaas.’

  The brief rush of discovery faded against the cold challenge of the woman’s tone. ‘You don’t know where he retired to?’

  ‘Oh, there’s a nice long list of maybes, based on possible sightings and intel the Israelis had on Sood’s past financials. Greece. Morocco. The UAE. Canada. Myanmar. We can’t know for sure without a lot more legwork to chase down dead ends.’

  ‘Shit.’ Marc sat back in the chair and looked away, out across the darkening bay and the clusters of yachts bobbing on the water. ‘We don’t have time for that.’

  The expression on Kara’s face changed, worry etched across her brow. ‘The Kurjaks knew where Sood went to ground. And there is a good chance that at least one other person would have that information too.’

  ‘Who?’ Marc glanced back toward the office.

  ‘I think that the people who “killed” Jalsa Sood also know where he is.’

  Marc could see that as likely. If Sood’s faked death was ever revealed to the world, the reputation of his so-called assassins would be compromised. Having his real location in hand would make sure the bomb-maker kept out of sight, in fear that he would be killed for real if he ever broke cover.

  ‘What does Solomon say about this?’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone else yet,’ Kara admitted.

  An unpleasant sense of foreboding gathered in his thoughts. If Kara had kept all this from the rest of the Rubicon team, it could only be for the worst of reasons. She was trusting Marc with it because he was still technically an outsider. ‘I don’t want to ask the next question,’ he said, and then did it anyway. ‘Who claimed responsibility for Jalsa Sood’s death?’

  ‘Al Sayf,’ Kara said gently, and the air on the balcony turned hollow. ‘Who, of course, need no introduction.’

  Marc’s hands reflexively contracted into fists and he fought down a surge of sense-memory before it could rise. The extremist terror cell were the tool by which the power-brokers of the Combine had spread fear across Europe and the United States, leading brutal attacks in Barcelona and Dunkirk, and attempts to do the same in the American capital. Al Sayf meant the sword, and by the edge of their weapons Marc had lost a life that he would never be able to return to. A sudden, directionless surge of energy tightened in his legs and he wanted to get up from the chair, walk it off, damage something . . .

  He took a long breath, feeling the chill in his blood. ‘Did Mossad give you a name for the assassin?’

  Kara nodded again, but another voice spoke as she opened her mouth to reply. ‘It’s Amarah, isn’t it? Jadeed Amarah. That’s why you didn’t want to say anything.’ Lucy stepped out of the shadows around the door leading back into the office. She had approached them both in complete silence.

  Lucy’s face was a cold, impassive mask. She was the one who had ultimately brought Amarah down, stopping Omar Khadir’s ruthless lieutenant before he could take any more lives.

  ‘How much of that did you hear?’ said Kara.

  ‘Enough,’ Lucy replied. ‘As soon as you said it was Al Sayf, I knew what would come next.’ She glanced at Marc. ‘You know Amarah’s rep. He was designated executioner for the cell. He would have pushed
the button that blew up that car and whatever poor dumbass was doubling for Jalsa Sood.’

  ‘We know where Amarah is,’ said Kara, after a moment. ‘He was rendered to a CIA black site in Poland last year, after the whole Washington thing.’

  Marc frowned. ‘Given what happened there, I doubt very much that the Central Intelligence Agency would be willing to work with us on this.’ He glanced up at Lucy, trying to read her and failing. ‘Hey, look –’

  ‘Okay, then.’ She cut him off with a terse gesture. ‘Let’s go talk to the son-of-a-bitch.’

  ‘Putting aside the not-inconsiderable issue of how we get close to the man to start with . . .’ Kara shook her head. ‘He knows your face, Lucy. He’ll remember.’

  ‘He doesn’t know me.’ Marc said the words, and it was as though someone else had spoken for him. ‘I’ll do it.’

  *

  After the third day, Oleg Fedorin decided he was safe enough to chance spending some time on the balcony of the penthouse. He wore dark glasses and a panama hat, and stayed low around the whitewashed walls, unable to shake off the fear that one of the other nearby buildings might contain a surveillance team from the GRU. Vladimir tried to gently convince him that they were out of danger, but Oleg couldn’t let go of his paranoia. The Russian military intelligence agency had eyes everywhere, even here in Brazil, thousands of miles from Moscow.

  Eventually, the tension between them erupted into an argument and harsh words were exchanged. Things came out then, things that had been festering beneath the surface since the day they fled – or longer.

  Because Vladimir was so much younger than him, wasn’t he? And now they were in a place where their secrets could become freedoms, instead of embracing that opportunity, Oleg’s worst character traits had emerged. He could be cold, Vladimir often said. Callous. And always suspicious.

  That had been a day ago. A mirthless smile twisted Oleg’s lips as he looked out of the window, his gaze following the line of the Rua Santa Clara down to the Copacabana beach, visible as a slice of yellow sand between the white apartment blocks and green palm trees. In every sense, Rio de Janeiro was a world away from the restrictive, conservative life he had lived in Russia, where he had been forced to conceal his sexuality and his true self from everyone around him.

  Always suspicious? Of course he was! Back there, no other reality existed. In the corridors of power, even the slightest hint that he had a secret to be exploited would have been seized upon to destroy him. For decades, Oleg Fedorin had denied who he really was, and still in the end his enemies had learned the truth. All those years of hiding had become meaningless overnight.

  Oleg was afraid. He was rich now and he had escaped, but he was still afraid that his enemies would come for him, and that no amount of money would be enough of a shield. But more so he was afraid that he had driven Vladimir away with the choices he made.

  Cold and callous. True, he considered, but sometimes we must be. That was the price of their escape. A trade in horrors, to sell the Serbians such a terrible weapon in order to secure a new life. But what did Vladimir see in me when I made that deal? A frightened old fool ready to bargain away the future of thousands for his own hide?

  The door opened and Oleg jerked around, scrambling toward the Makarov pistol he had hidden beneath a magazine on the kitchen table. Then he heard Vladimir call out to him and the fear of death briefly went away.

  Vladimir came in, bearing gifts of Xingu beer and Brazilian cigarettes. It was like him to do that, to bring a peace offering after a disagreement. But his expression was downcast even as he came to Oleg and they embraced. Something was amiss.

  ‘Don’t be angry with me,’ Vladimir began.

  Oleg blinked. The statement seemed odd. After all, he had been the one to say the most hurtful things. He was the one who should have been apologising. But then his gratitude at his lover’s return turned to ashes. ‘What did you do?’ he said, his chest tightening.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Vladimir stepped back and folded his arms. ‘I couldn’t go on like this. After we left Moscow, I kept convincing myself you wouldn’t do it, but you did, you did . . .’

  ‘I had to!’ Oleg reached for him, but Vladimir drew away.

  ‘The guilt is eating me alive, Oleg. That you gave murderers and criminals a nuclear bomb in exchange for our lives? I can’t accept that!’ He shook his head. ‘What happens when it goes off and people die? How could we ever forgive ourselves?’

  ‘I did it for you! I did it to protect us, don’t you see?’

  ‘I do.’ At last Vladimir took his hands. ‘And I’ve done the same thing. For us.’

  Oleg shook him off. ‘No . . .’

  ‘I reached out to someone we can trust, a friend in the diplomatic corps in Kaliningrad. I told her we would give her information . . .’

  ‘No!’ Oleg shouted at him. ‘You stupid, stupid fool! Why would you do that?’

  Vladimir’s face flushed red. ‘Because I don’t want to live with this! And what does it matter, anyway? The Serbians paid you! Why do you care if they are arrested and the bomb is recovered? We win both ways!’ He gave a brittle smile. ‘We are still free and we make sure no-one gets hurt. Don’t you want that?’

  ‘Fool,’ Oleg repeated, striding back to the kitchen. ‘Do you know what you have done? You have served me up to my enemies!’ He grabbed the Makarov and pointed it toward the door. ‘Get your bag! We are leaving here now –’

  The window across the room cracked and there was a sound like the low, fast buzz of a hornet. Oleg’s hand was suddenly alight with pain as blood flowed from a new wound, and the pistol spun out of his grip. He cast about, finding the bullet hole in the glass, and across the way on another rooftop he saw the brief glitter of sunlight off a targeting scope.

  The apartment’s front door rattled open and three Hispanic men entered, all of them dressed in inconspicuous street clothes and baggy shirts to conceal the bulges of firearms. They silently deferred to a fourth man who came in last. Like them, he had the manner of a soldier rather than a spy, and Oleg knew immediately that whoever they were, they were not GRU agents. These were mercenaries, contractors.

  The fourth man was oriental, Japanese at a guess. Short-haired and round in the face, he was of below-average height, but his build was spare and dense. In one hand he had a silenced Glock semi-automatic, which he used to point with. ‘You should bandage that, General Fedorin,’ he said, in passable Russian. ‘We will wait.’

  With trembling hands, Vladimir helped him use the towel to staunch the bleeding. One of the other men recovered the Makarov and then set off to search the apartment. Oleg heard him call the Japanese ‘Saito’, but the name was unfamiliar.

  ‘We don’t have it here.’ He pushed Vladimir away and reached inside himself, dragging up the old persona he had worn as a soldier and a leader, and setting it back into place. He sat down on a chair. ‘If you’re looking for the weapon, you’re wasting your time.’

  ‘I know you do not have it.’ Saito’s head bobbed. ‘And that is causing some problems for my employers. What did you do with the unit?’

  ‘If I tell you that, you’ll kill us both.’

  Saito glanced at Vladimir, ignoring the statement. ‘Guilt seldom expresses itself in convenient fashion. Nor does fear, for that matter. You were not expected to vanish quite so quickly, or completely.’

  Oleg’s hand tightened around the makeshift dressing. ‘Who do you work for? Not Russia. Not the Americans. Someone else.’

  ‘Someone you can do business with,’ Saito offered. ‘If you are willing.’

  He had it then, the immediate understanding of exactly who he was dealing with. ‘You are Combine.’ Oleg couldn’t help but scowl. He was more than familiar with the group, and did not make any secret of his antipathy toward them. ‘That makes sense. So Glovkonin sent you, yes?’ When Saito didn’t respond, he went on. ‘I should have known. I assumed G-Kor’s failures would sink him, but he’s scheming, isn�
�t he? He and all his elitist cohorts, treating the world like it is their chessboard.’

  ‘You should know that you almost escaped us,’ Saito noted. ‘An unforeseen incident in Italy drew away much of our focus and in that time you slipped the net. You might have remained undiscovered if not for your companion’s laudable concern for your emotional well-being.’

  Oleg glanced at Vladimir, but he couldn’t find any blame for him. ‘This man, and the people who employ him . . . They’re here because I didn’t sell the bomb to them.’ He looked back at Saito. ‘That’s the truth, isn’t it? The Combine want the weapon. I wonder, were my troubles set into motion for exactly that reason?’

  ‘The Combine’s interest is in managing global stability.’ Saito’s tone chilled. ‘By selling the device to a rogue actor, you have jeopardised a delicate balance.’

  ‘If I sold you the device, we would be dead by now!’ Oleg retorted. ‘Your masters don’t want it to make the world safer! They want it so they can use it how they see fit . . .’ He paused. ‘Was that Glovkonin’s plan? Blackmail the Kremlin, sell the weapon back to Russia at an inflated price? Or something worse?’

  ‘Why do you care?’ Saito cocked his head, his attention drifting toward Vladimir, who hovered near the door to the balcony. ‘You did not think twice about what would happen after it left your hands.’ He put away the pistol and produced an entirely different weapon.

  The long, slender dagger was made of stainless steel. It resembled a kind of blade known as a misericorde, used in medieval times to deliver a killing blow to an unhorsed knight through the gaps in his plate armour.

  Saito advanced on Vladimir. ‘You see him as a father figure, in a way.’ For the first time, the Combine operative spoke directly to the other man. ‘Is it because you were abandoned by your own father as a boy?’ The blade glittered in the sunshine. ‘He can’t protect you. But you can protect him. I know you want to.’

  ‘Vlad, say nothing!’ Oleg tried to rise from his chair, but one of the other men pushed him back down.