Dark Spies

by Matthew Dunn

  Within the first few weeks of training alongside other recruits, MI6 had singled him out as having attributes that were even greater than expected. He was removed from the course and put on the top-secret twelve-month Spartan Program. Only one person at a time was permitted to take the mentally and physically hellish selection and training course and, if successful, carry the code name Spartan. Despite the fact that all other applicants before him had either voluntarily withdrawn from the program, failed, received severe physical or mental injuries that prevented them from continuing, or died in selection and training, Will passed the program. He was awarded the distinction of carrying the code name, and the program was shut down and would remain closed all the time Will was operational and alive. He’d spent the subsequent eight years on near continuous deployment in hostile overseas missions, and was tasked on the West’s most important operations. Throughout that time, very few people knew he was an MI6 officer, let alone the nature of his work and his achievements.

  He sighed, concluding once again that today’s babysitting job should have been given to someone else. After slotting a magazine containing twelve rounds into the rifle, he trained the weapon on the track leading to the cluster of buildings. That was the route Herald would take to drive to the meeting. He checked his watch. Ellie Hallowes was a stickler for exact timing, and she’d told the Russian that he was not to arrive a minute before or after the allotted time. The Russian wasn’t due to arrive for another eight minutes.

  Will relaxed and thought about other things. A year ago, he’d moved into a new home in West Square, in the Borough of Southwark, south London. It was a two-hundred-year-old house that had been converted into four apartments. For the first time in his adult life, it was a place where he felt he was putting down roots. A sudden panicked thought hit him. Had he paid the latest council tax bill? He thought he had, though—shit—he couldn’t be sure. The local council was becoming a bastard with people who didn’t pay up on time. Well, there was nothing he could do about it until he got home tomorrow. He thought about his three single neighbors who lived in the converted house: stubborn Dickie Mountjoy, a former major in the Coldstream Guards and now a retiree; Phoebe, a thirty-something art dealer and lover of champagne, high heels, and middleweight boxing matches; and David, a recently divorced, slightly flabby mortician. They believed Will was a life insurance salesman. That false cover seemed apt, because today he was here as insurance that Ellie lived.

  He glanced at his watch again and put his eye back against the scope. A black sedan was driving along the coastal track, at exactly the right time, easily visible against the backdrop of the tranquil blue sea. Will moved his weapon millimeter by millimeter to keep the crosshairs of his sight in the center of the vehicle. It stopped, and a man got out and walked fast into the largest of the three buildings.

  “Our man’s arrived. He’s in the building.”

  “You’re sure it’s him?”

  “It’s him.”

  He flexed his toes and his muscles. Not for the first time this week, he tried to decide if he could afford the nineteenth-century sheet music for Bach’s Lute Suite No. 1 in E minor. It was for sale in a tiny basement store in London’s Soho district. He’d paid the elderly proprietor of the store a £50 deposit to take the music temporarily off the market, with the promise that he’d settle up the balance of £750 after his next paycheck had come through. Still, as desperate as he was to place the sheets on a stand, pick up his German antique lute, and expertly play what was in front of him, he had to reconcile the high cost with the fact that he was a man who was on government salary, could obtain the same music for free at a library or off the Internet, and in any case knew every note of Suite No. 1 by heart. But the score had been produced and edited by Hans Dagobert Bruger, meaning the papers were a rare and beautiful thing. That was decided then; he’d eat beans on toast for a month to ensure he had enough cash to pay for the sheets. Will had made many similar decisions in the past. His new home was crammed with antiques and rare items he’d picked up during his travels, including a Louis XV lacquer and ormolu commode, Venetian trespoli, a pair of Guangzhou imperial dress swords, a German chinoiserie clock, an Edwardian mahogany three-piece suite and chaise longue, woven silk rugs from exotic markets, and vintage vinyl records of Andrés Segovia guitar recitals. He shouldn’t have bought any of them, because every time he’d done so he’d nearly bankrupted himself, but he’d always done so because life was too short to ignore beauty in favor of financial well-being.

  He tensed as he saw movement in the distance.

  A man walking awkwardly over rough ground, using a walking stick as an aid.

  Will trained the scope on him and watched him move toward the cabins, stop approximately two hundred yards away from them, and sit on a boulder on ground that overlooked the cluster of buildings and the sea beyond them. The man had his back to Will, so his face was not visible, though Will could see that he was wearing tweed and oilskin hiking gear. His walking stick also seemed to be from another age; it was nearly as long as the man and at its head was a curly ram’s horn. Judging by the way he’d been walking, it was clear that the man needed the stick, meaning he was either old, weak, disabled, or all of those things. The man rested his stick beside him on the rock, withdrew a metal thermos flask, poured liquid into a cup, and drank.

  Will relayed what he’d seen to Langley.

  “Suspicious?”

  “Impossible to know.” Will moved his face away from the scope. “I’m going to look at his face.”

  Carrying his rifle in one hand, Will ran while keeping his upper body low. Two minutes later, he threw himself onto the ground, then crawled until he reached the summit and could once again see the distant cabins in the valley. The man was still there, a tiny speck to the human eye. Will looked through the scope, moved the gun until he located the man, and saw that he was still sitting on the rock. From this angle, Will could easily see his face.

  He studied it, felt shock, and muttered, “Hell, no!”

  Antaeus dabbed a handkerchief against the corners of his mouth to absorb any traces of the coffee he’d now finished, rested his weaker leg over the stronger one, and rubbed the disfigured side of his face before realizing what he was doing and abruptly stopping. It was a habit he’d had for years and he was trying to break it, because no amount of massage would get the muscles on that side of his face to work properly. His carefully trimmed beard helped to hide the lower part of the disfigurement, and the thick rims of his glasses covered most of the area where his left eye drooped. From a distance, he looked normal. But up close there was no mistaking what he was: a man who was ugly on one side.

  He’d long ago gotten used to it and no longer cared. All that mattered to him was his mind. It was perfect and beautiful.

  He stared at the Norwegian log cabins and gripped his walking stick.

  The performance was about to begin.

  And he was going to be its conductor.

  Ellie Hallowes desperately wanted to cut to the chase and find out whether Herald had any useful intelligence for her, but knew that her Russian spy would consider it rude of her to do so. He was a showman, one who took pleasure in feeding her an hour or so of small talk before getting down to business. She was his audience, and he liked to keep her waiting for the good stuff.

  During the third meeting she’d had with him after the start of their case officer–asset relationship, she’d tried to circumvent the crap to get to business, but had received a sharp rebuke from the Russian together with threats that if she did this again he’d come to the subsequent five meetings with zero of interest and plenty of lessons about how to be civil and conduct meetings in a manner befitting their respective countries’ officer classes.

  As well as being a showman, Herald was a pompous ass.

  He was already thirty minutes into the meeting, sitting cross-legged in a chair facing her, occasionally glancing at his manicured fingernails or checking that his bow tie was horizonta
l.

  She moved to the sea-facing side of the cabin and gestured to a bench containing a half bottle of vodka and two tumblers, while trying not to yawn as Herald was telling her that he’d discovered a fine restaurant in Moscow where all the staff were only permitted to speak in French.

  Something caught her eye as she casually looked out of the window while unscrewing the bottle.

  Movement in the sea.

  Men.

  Seven of them expertly emerged from the sea in scuba gear, dumping some of their equipment on the thin beach, and moved silently on foot toward the log cabins while keeping their SIG Sauer handguns at eye level.

  Spinning around, she barked, “Shut up! We’re compromised!”

  Herald’s face went ashen. “What?”

  “Compromised! We’ve got seconds!”

  Herald jumped to his feet and looked around, confusion all over his face. He walked quickly to Ellie, glanced out the window, grabbed Ellie’s arms, and spoke fast and loud. “Listen to me! Trust no one. There’s a mole in the CIA. Works for the Russians. And he’s sitting at the very top!”

  Will’s heart and brain were racing as he spoke into his throat mic. “I’m looking at a man who’s supposed to be dead.”

  “Who is he?”

  “High-ranking SVR officer. Code name Antaeus. I killed him three years ago.”

  “Means nothing to me.”

  Will kept the crosshairs of his scope on Antaeus’s head, placed his finger on the trigger, and made ready to put a bullet into the brain of a man who’d consistently outwitted the West’s attempts to counter his actions; a man Will had spent years hunting, an individual who’d thwarted every attempt to neutralize him, a brilliant spymaster who was one of Russia’s most influential and powerful men. Until Will had finally managed to track him down three years ago and detonated a bomb under the car that Antaeus was driving in a Moscow suburb.

  Will pulled back on the trigger.

  Then stopped as he heard the unmistakable sound of pistol fire near the log cabins.

  Antaeus smiled as he watched his Russian team approach the log cabins. He removed a small rectangular box from his jacket and withdrew from it a cheroot cigar, which he lit with a gold Zippo lighter. The doctors had told him that he mustn’t smoke anymore, and for the most part he followed their instructions. But there were moments when a smoke made complete sense. Doctors didn’t understand that; spies did, and now was one such moment. He inhaled the rich tobacco and blew out a long stream of smoke, the volume of which was accentuated by the icy air. As he did so, four of his men kicked in the doors to the two smaller buildings and entered; the remaining three operatives forced entry into the larger cabin.

  Then he heard two shots.

  Though he’d permitted his men to shoot to wound their targets if necessary, the SVR spymaster wondered if the CIA officer had made the shots the moment she’d seen men burst into the cabin, or whether her Russian agent had done so. Still, if two of his men were now dead, it wouldn’t change anything. His other men would easily overpower the American woman and her asset. They’d dispose of their colleagues’ bodies in the sea, but even if they were later discovered, that wouldn’t matter, as Antaeus had instructed his men to use CIA SOG equipment and carry documentation showing they were residents of Virginia.

  He tapped ash from his cigar, raised an old telescope to his good eye, and waited.

  Will pointed his sniper rifle at the cabins and the ground around them. Two shots had been fired, but there were no signs of any assailants. He knew there could be only one possible explanation: men had assaulted the cabins from the one blind spot he had—the sea. Had he been complacent? He had considered the possibility that an assault on the meeting could take place from the coast, though had decided that at this time of year it would be done so with boats that would be easily visible to him from his position on the mountainside. Plus, he thought that no one in their right mind would swim in the icy waters to the coastline where the cabins sat. And yet, he of all people knew that Special Forces could operate in Arctic waters all year round. Yes, he had been complacent.

  As a result, he’d probably failed a routine assignment that he’d believed was beneath someone of his capabilities. “Shots have been fired. Don’t know what’s going on. But I’ll make sure Antaeus and his men don’t leave here.”

  “Negative.” The analyst sounded unsettled.

  “What?”

  “Repeat, negative. You have no authority to proceed.”

  Will couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I can do what I like.”

  The analyst sounded on the verge of panic. “I’ve checked our system. Don’t know what it means but the instructions are clear. It says, Antaeus must not be touched. Further inquiries require Project Ferryman clearance. My search on the system must have been flagged, because I just had a call from the duty officer asking me what’s going on. I told him. He told me to pull the plug. You’re under orders to withdraw.”

  “No way.”

  “Your orders are clear. Get out of there.”

  “No fucking way!”

  “I . . .” The analyst was breathing fast. “I . . . the DO told me it would be a breach of category one Agency protocols if you proceed. Please . . .”

  Men emerged from the smaller cabins and a moment later the rest of them came out of the larger building. Two of them were dragging Herald, and it looked as though he’d been injured. The others were gripping Ellie’s arms and walking her to a clearing in front of the cabins. They stopped. The Russian was forced onto his knees and winced in pain as one of the men yanked his hair back to lift his head. Ellie was pushed to the ground next to her asset, and a man placed a boot on her back to keep her still. The men looked toward the distance. Will urgently swung his rifle toward Antaeus’s position. He was still there, calmly smoking his cigar.

  What was happening?

  Antaeus was motionless for a moment. Then he lifted his stick high in the air.

  Of course.

  Antaeus had told his men that he needed to be sure the Russian was the man he was after.

  If he was, he’d give them a signal to proceed.

  By lifting his stick.

  “It’s an execution!” Will swung his weapon back at the man holding a pistol against the Russian. But he was too late. Two bullets were fired into the back of Herald’s head. His killer released his grip on the dead spy and let him slump face-first toward the ground.

  “Our asset’s dead.” Will gripped his gun tightly as he saw the man who was pinning Ellie to the ground lean forward, yank up her head, and look in the direction of Antaeus.

  Will darted a look at Antaeus.

  The spymaster was raising his stick.

  Will trained his gun back on the man who was now lifting his gun toward Ellie’s head.

  “You’re under orders to withdraw. If you don’t, you’ll be—”

  “Enough!” Will pulled his trigger, and his bullet sliced through the Russian operative’s eye and exited through the back of his head.

  The remaining six operatives immediately sprang into action, five of them dashing for cover while one of them coolly remained still and raised his gun to complete Antaeus’s orders to kill the CIA woman. Will’s chest shot made that man flip backward. When he was on the ground, a second round smashed through his skull.

  Ellie was crawling forward, staying low to give Will sight of her captors. But she was still an easy target for them. Will got onto one knee, fired five rounds at the areas of cover the Russians were using to remain hidden from his sniper rifle, ran fifty yards farther along the mountainside, got onto his knee again, and looked through his scope. The different angle put three of the men in his sightline. He took a deep breath, half exhaled, held his breath, and fired three shots in three seconds. Each bullet hit its target; the three men were dead.

  He ran again, desperately hoping that the remaining two operatives could no longer see Ellie, then stopped and examined the area around the cabins.
It was no good. The men were staying out of sight, and Will knew why: they stood no chance while Will was out of the limited range of their handguns; their best hope lay in forcing him to come nearer to them, to a distance where close-quarter pistols would be far more effective than a rifle.

  Ellie was still inching away from the clearing in front of the cabins. No doubt she was waiting for the moment one or both of the men broke cover and shot her in the back. Will had to get to her, and fast, but while the men were still hiding there was one thing he had to do first. Kill Antaeus.

  He pointed his gun at the area where Antaeus had been sitting.

  The spymaster was no longer there.

  Will urgently scoured the distant mountainside for signs of the Russian.

  Nothing.

  He silently cursed.

  After fixing a fresh magazine into his rifle, he ran down the escarpment toward the buildings, leaping over clumps of heath that were renowned for twisting or breaking hikers’ ankles, hearing the gentle whoosh of the sea grow louder as it eased back and forth over the seaweed-strewn coastline’s pebble-and-sand beach, the rich and salty air causing his nose to sting and his lungs to feel that they had acid inside them as he sucked in the brutal air to fuel his exertions.

  The cabins were now five hundred yards away, still too distant for the men to pose any threat to him. He slowed down as the incline lessened and he was confronted by round white rocks as high as his waist, haphazardly scattered on the heath as if dropped there from the heavens by playful child gods. Moving at a walking pace between them, he removed the weapon’s scope and raised his rifle to eye level, using the fore and rear sights to try to spot the men.

  Nothing.

  Then he sensed movement to his right, and he flinched, crouched, twisted, and readied his gun. But it was only a white-tailed eagle, launching itself off the ground with a small writhing rodent in its beak. As the bird rose higher, it was able to glide with only the occasional flap of its majestic wings. Will recalled watching a similar bird of prey circling high above him in a remote part of Russia, while he was putting a brave, dead colleague’s entrails back into his body.