by Rob Sinclair
Winter threw down the papers he’d been holding onto the coffee table. Ryker leaned forward and glanced at them – photographs. He used his hand to sift through them. His heart pounded as he scanned the gory images. Butchered. Winter hadn’t been wrong. There was little left of the poor woman to identify what was what.
Although he didn’t outwardly react, Ryker was shocked by what he saw. He wasn’t unaccustomed to seeing dead bodies, or even to killing people, but such viciousness would never fail to trouble him. It brought closer to the surface his own painful memories.
‘We don’t know who did this,’ Winter said. ‘But we need to find out. And soon. There’s very possibly a leak within our own intelligence services.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The Red Cobra had a lot of enemies. Not just agencies like the JIA but all sorts of criminal gangs across the world who’d fallen foul of her... services.’
‘But why do you think this was a leak?’
‘We had a profile of the Red Cobra.’
Ryker raised an eyebrow. ‘And?’
‘For years, she carried out her work without leaving so much as a hint of tangible evidence. But we had a set of fingerprints linked to that profile – from way back, before she was an operative.’
‘And the dead woman matches those fingerprints.’
‘Exactly. She was going under an alias – Kim Walker. British, supposedly. When the local police in Spain brought the murder to the attention of the British authorities, there was no record of this woman in any databases. She had a passport, a driver’s licence, both fakes, but nothing else. No birth records, no employment records, or anything else that matched the identity. The Spanish police took her fingerprints, passed them over to the Met to help the police identify her.’
‘And when Scotland Yard ran those fingerprints in the system it alerted the JIA.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Do the police know that?’
‘No. The profile is heavily restricted. The police search would simply have shown no match. But the Met have assigned one of their detectives to help find out who this woman really was. He’s in Spain already, working with the police there.’
‘You still haven’t explained how you think there’s been a leak.’
‘When the alert came in, we did some checks in the metadata of our systems. There’s a record of her profile being accessed a little over a week ago. It wasn’t highlighted at the time because the access was from a legitimate user account on a terminal at MI5 headquarters. Or so it seemed.’
‘But the user had no idea what you were talking about when you questioned them.’ Ryker made speech marks with his fingers as he emphasised the word that significantly played down the lengths to which the JIA would go to get answers. He wondered what had happened to the poor sod whose ID had been compromised.
‘It’s not an inside job,’ Winter said. ‘At least not by that user. He’s clean. But someone somewhere found a way into the system.’
‘Sounds professional.’
‘Professional, yes. Official? We don't know. It’s possible the hack was the work of another agency but the nature of the death suggests otherwise. Like I said, this was a revenge attack. Personal. Regardless, someone accessed our system to find information on the Red Cobra. And now she’s dead.’
Ryker looked down at the photographs again. At what was left of the poor woman’s face. ‘Except she’s not.’
Winter raised an eyebrow. ‘Not what?’
‘The Red Cobra isn’t dead.’
Winter glanced down at the bloody images then back at Ryker, confusion on his face.
‘I know her,’ Ryker said. ‘I know her better than almost anyone else who’s alive. You had a profile on the Red Cobra? Your profile was wrong.’ Ryker tapped the pictures in front of him. The blood-stained face of a dead woman he’d never seen before. ‘I don’t know who that poor woman is, but I can tell you with certainty that she isn’t the Red Cobra.’
CHAPTER 6
When Winter left, Ryker locked the front door then double-checked the remaining doors and windows. Satisfied everything was secure, he walked over to the closed bedroom door. He let out a deep sigh and turned the handle.
Lisa was lying on the bed, facing away from him. Her hair was still wet but her bronzed skin was now dry and matte, and she was dressed – a pair of shorts and a loose fitting cotton top. Ryker guessed she’d showered following her saltwater swim – an almost-daily routine. He could see from the reflection in the mirror on the far side of the room that she was awake. Ryker moved over and lay down on the bed next to her. His body aligned with her curves, fitting into her naturally as it always did, and he couldn’t help but feel a fleeting moment of arousal before she spoke.
‘You agreed to help him.’ She wasn’t angry, more disappointed. But was it disappointment in him or just in the way that life works out?
‘I have to.’
‘No, you don’t. You could have said no.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then nothing. Winter would go away. He’s not going to have you killed, or give up your new identity, just because you refused to help him.’
‘Probably not,’ Ryker said, though he knew he could never rule out such a thing.
‘Then why did you say yes?’
‘Because this one really is my problem.’
Lisa shuffled, half-turning so that she was facing him.
‘You wanted this, didn’t you?’
Ryker took a couple of seconds too long to reply. His silence gave away his answer. ‘I need to do this. You can change my name, you can give me money, you can send me to any corner of the world to live as a free man. But a small part of who I once was will always remain inside of me. That’s the man you fell in love with.’
‘I know. It’s not that I don’t love him. It’s just that I’m... scared. Scared that if you go out there – even if it’s for the right reasons – you may not come back to me.’
‘I’ll always come back.’
‘Not if you’re in a coffin, you won’t.’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘Don’t you think we’ve been through enough troubles?’
He considered her words, which significantly downplayed the deadly situations they’d fought together. Through it all, he’d always felt an unwavering loyalty to her and a desire to keep her from harm – even though at times it seemed like his loyalty was misplaced.
Ryker remained silent and Lisa looked away from him again. In many ways he was surprised that she was being this amenable. There he was, on the brink of destroying the ever-so-frail life they had been building and her protest was mild to say the least. Either she was keeping her anger bottled up or she’d seen this moment coming. Was his going back to the JIA just an inevitable outcome?
‘What’s the job?’ she asked.
‘I can’t say.’
‘If you want me to support you on this maybe you should.’
‘I need to find someone. Someone else who doesn’t want to be found.’
‘How apt.’
‘Indeed.’
‘A woman?’
The question was double-edged but he wasn’t about to wait. ‘Yes.’
‘You know her?’
‘From a long time ago.’
‘Huh.’
Ryker knew what she was thinking but he didn’t try to defend himself. He saw no point. What had happened between him and the Red Cobra was in a different life. ‘You could come with me.’
Lisa smiled. ‘No. This, here, this is my life now. With you. Angela Grainger, FBI agent, is dead. She was killed in a shootout in a car park in Beijing. Remember?’
‘I remember. Carl Logan, English spy, was killed out there too.’
‘The fugitive lovers.’
‘That’s what the papers said. A real life Bonnie and Clyde.’
‘And when are the press ever wrong?’ Lisa smiled again.
‘But you’re not
dead,’ Ryker assured. ‘I still see Angela inside you every day. And I like her.’
‘You like her?’ Lisa teased.
‘I love her.’
‘Then come home to her.’
‘I will. I promise.’
CHAPTER 7
Before he’d left, Winter had passed to Ryker the profile, put together by MI5, MI6, and the JIA, on Anna Abayev, also known as the Red Cobra, plus some papers outlining the investigation so far into Kim Walker’s murder. Ryker perused the files as he sat in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport. He’d destroyed them and discarded the remnants by the time he boarded the plane that would take him to the mainland before he headed onward across the ocean to Barcelona and then Malaga.
The details Ryker had read were still flowing through his mind as he walked up the steps to enter the turboprop plane. The profile on the Red Cobra was sparse to say the least. Anna Abayev’s fingerprints had been on record from a double-murder that had taken place in Georgia in the mid-1990s. The young Anna – just sixteen at the time – had vanished from the scene and details of her movements and whereabouts in the following years were flimsy at best. In fact, Ryker reckoned he held more detailed knowledge of the Red Cobra’s methods and movements in his brain than the UK’s intelligence services had managed to gather on her in almost two decades. But then there weren’t many people who had come as close to her as Ryker.
He took his seat by the window and watched the other passengers clambering on board. Headspace and leg-space was limited in the cramped cabin and Ryker, with his height and bulk, willed the seat next to him to remain empty. The last passenger to board the plane however – a bearded and bespectacled man in his forties, Ryker guessed – bumped and squeezed into the seat next to Ryker, apologising as he did so.
Ryker murmured in acknowledgment before his busy mind took him back to the task at hand, and the conversation with Winter the previous day.
‘Who will I be working for?’ Ryker had asked.
‘You’ll be working for me,’ Winter said.
‘The JIA?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Who knows about this then? Me being involved, I mean.’
‘Only me and those who need to know.’ Winter paused.
Ryker remained tight-lipped, waiting for the Commander to add to his vague responses.
‘We’ve set up a full cover identity for you,’ Winter said eventually. ‘If that’s what you’re worried about. Birth records, university, electoral, taxes, it’s all there.’
Ryker raised an eyebrow as the words sunk in. Winter had gone to a lot of trouble already in setting up Ryker for the job. Which meant he’d always expected Ryker would agree to help. Ryker felt a little foolish about that.
‘What’s the story?’
‘You’re a freelance investigator. Appointed by the Home Office to assist the Metropolitan Police. You don’t have any legal jurisdiction in Spain, but then neither does the Met, and I’m not sending you out there to make an arrest. I need to know what’s happening. Who killed Kim Walker and why. And why that dead woman is linked to the Red Cobra’s profile.’
‘Name?’
‘James Ryker,’ Winter said with a wry smile.
Ryker glared at his ex-boss, bit his tongue.
‘It was easier that way. I’ve had to pull a lot of strings to get this far. Using an identity you’d already created made more sense.’
Ryker still said nothing, but he was angry. Winter had chosen to use Ryker’s now-real identity for an undercover operation. It felt like a kick in the teeth. As though Ryker’s new existence, his identity, was of no importance to Winter or the JIA. He still belonged to them.
‘James Ryker has been brought in because he has real-life experience of hunting the Red Cobra,’ Winter said. ‘So feel free to use details of your own experiences with her.’
‘I thought you said the Met doesn’t know about the Red Cobra? That they’re trying to figure out who Kim Walker really was?’
‘They don’t, yet. But it’s the easiest angle to get you – and keep you – in there. We’re not going to publicise it to the world, but we’ll make sure the right people know.’
‘The detective who’s out there, who is he?’
‘His name is Paul Green. Work with him as much or as little as you like. I’ve never met him, haven’t got a clue how good he is. I’ll leave that to you to figure out.’
‘And what about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘What’s your involvement going to be?’
‘You’re my involvement. I thought this was something you’d be able to handle on your own.’
‘Yeah. It is.’
‘But don’t for a second think that means this isn’t a big deal. Because it is. We don’t know how far this problem stretches. Our system contains details of thousands of highly confidential operations; names of agents, informants. Someone has breached that system. If that information gets into the wrong hands, then the lives of hundreds of people at MI5, MI6, the JIA could be on the line.’
‘Mine included?’
‘No. You’re already dead, remember?’
Winter smiled again. Ryker didn’t. The play seemed simple enough. A big deal? Ryker had seen bigger. The computer system had been hacked once, but according to Winter all that had been accessed was a limited profile of a wanted assassin. Gaining access to details of agents, informants and operations was surely another matter altogether.
Was the JIA really worried that could happen? Maybe they were. Either way, Ryker got the impression Winter hadn’t yet declared his full hand. If the threat were as big and as real as Winter was suggesting then something else must have tipped off the JIA. Another hacking attempt. Knowledge of other profiles being accessed. Agents already compromised. It was possible. But there was another, more worrying, possibility that Ryker saw.
Why was the JIA so concerned about the Red Cobra all of a sudden? Particularly if they’d thought she was the dead woman right up until Ryker had set the record straight. She was a wanted criminal, not an agent. So what was it about her that the JIA wanted to keep under wraps? It wouldn’t be the first time in his life that Ryker had been used as a pawn to hide the dirty secrets of the governments he worked for.
Ryker was brought out of his thoughts when the man sitting next to him knocked a bundle of papers into his lap. The man apologised profusely as he frantically collected up his belongings.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Ryker said as he handed the last of the papers back to the man.
Ryker looked over and saw he had a laptop computer laid out on his fold-down tray. The papers he'd dropped were full of printed type. Ryker, having glanced for a couple of seconds, deduced their context. ‘You’re a writer.’
‘Yes,’ the man said, looking surprised. ‘How did you know?’
Ryker nodded at the papers.
‘A nature writer,’ the man said, sounding enthused. ‘I’ve been out here for three months, keeping a diary. I’m hoping to turn it into a book. Did you know some of the rarest snakes in the world are found right here on this island? It’s a real hotbed. I’ve been searching for them, recording them.’
‘No. I didn’t know that.’ Ryker turned away from the man, hoping he could avoid entering into a lengthy discussion about searching for rare snakes. He’d never trusted writers. Never trusted anyone who took pleasure in writing everything down, recording it. Making it permanent. He wanted to leave as little evidence of his existence as he could.
‘So what do you do?’ the man asked.
‘Whatever it takes,’ Ryker said, staring straight ahead.
Then he shut his eyes, memories of the Red Cobra still sloshing in his mind as he drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 8
Nineteen years earlier
Anna Abayev was nearly fourteen the day she was introduced to Colonel Kankava, a beast of a man who changed her forever. She’d been living in Georgia for five years, a period of real stability for he
r family, if not for the country in which she was living.
Contrary to popular belief of those who knew of her, Anna wasn’t Russian by birth but was actually Serbian. Her Russian father had met a young local woman while working in the former Yugoslavia in the early eighties, a number of years before the country had torn itself apart in civil war. Anna had never known her mother, she’d died during childbirth. Anna had always felt guilt over that, even though her father never made any suggestion that he blamed his daughter for her mother’s passing.
Anna’s father had long despised his home country’s then communist regime. His dismissal of his own people was a move which had seen him gather many enemies in the country he called home. They’d spent time in countless countries during her early childhood, always on the move to stay safe and to allow her father to take on jobs to keep providing. It was to Georgia that Anna had the strongest affiliation.
The country, newly independent following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, had been going through a period of immense turmoil. The economy was in free-fall and rival factions vied for control of the country leading to various bloody coups and internal conflicts. Hardly the perfect environment for bringing up a young family.
Despite this, Georgia was the place – perhaps due to familiarity as much as anything else – that Anna thought of as home.
Although her father had amassed sufficient money for them to live securely during the preceding years, without his needing to work and travel as he had done during Anna’s earlier childhood, resources were running thin and it was becoming more and more difficult for him to turn down the offers for his specialist work. Plus, having been in one place for so long, he was becoming increasingly paranoid that the wolves from his past were closing in.
Anna had sensed for a number of weeks that something would have to give.
‘But I could come with you?’ she protested as her father led her by the hand up the tree-lined driveway on a snowy winter’s morning. The crooked branches on the leafless trees silhouetted against the moody sky made the entire scene sinister. With each step they took, Anna grew increasingly terrified of what lay beyond the walls of the crumbling blue-and-white-painted mansion, where her father was sending her to work as a domestic maid.