by Rob Sinclair
I knew then that I had to leave. There was nothing there for me now. No Dmitri, no answers to the questions that remained about what had happened to him, to me, and why.
I had half-wondered whether Mackie might have been sitting in the apartment, waiting for me like a parent waits for a son or daughter to return home from war. In fact, in a way, I felt great disappointment when that had turned out not to be the case. In the end, all the apartment held was more questions. I walked out of the door, not even bothering to close it behind me, then headed down the winding staircase and back out into the cold street.
I walked across to the other side of the road and around the corner to a payphone. It gave me a good view of the apartment block but was also well placed for escape if needed, with a number of side streets nearby. I hadn’t yet seen anyone lurking. In fact, I was becoming more and more suspicious and uneasy that I was seemingly alone.
Regardless, it was time to check in. I’d been on the loose, away from the place that had been my prison, for something like three days. Maybe Mackie would have the answers that I was looking for.
Mackie, the father-figure boss who’d left me to torture and abuse.
I dialled the number for Mackie. I didn’t need any change for this call. I could call from anywhere in the world and get through. Every field agent like me had a telephone number that was effectively an ID. When I called this number, it would route to Mackie, because he was my commander. The caller ID that came up on his phone would tell him I was calling. It didn’t matter what phone I was using, or where I was in the world, as long as I dialled that number.
Mackie answered on the third ring. There was an awkward silence, neither of us willing to break it at first. But then Mackie spoke.
‘Logan? Is that you?’
His voice sent a rush of memories through my head. Most of them good. But the memories were tinged with betrayal. I wasn’t sure that feeling would ever go away.
‘It’s me,’ I said.
‘Thank God you’re all right! You are all right, aren’t you?’
‘What do you think?’
Another silence. I don’t know what I expected him to say. ‘Sorry’ would have been nice, but I knew that it would never come.
‘Where are you?’ he said.
I didn’t answer. If I was on the line long enough, he’d be able to trace the call anyway. And I wasn’t sure that I wanted to make it so easy for him. I didn’t know whether or not I could trust him any more. Whether I could trust anyone.
‘Logan,’ Mackie said, breaking the silence once again, ‘you need to come in. Where are you?’
‘That’s not important. I need to know, Mackie. I need to know: why?’
My question was vague. Why what? It could have meant anything. But it made sense to me. And I knew that it would to Mackie.
Why was I left to torture for months? Why did nobody come for me? Why did Mackie not come for me?
‘You need to come in,’ Mackie said again. ‘It’s not safe for you out there.’
‘Oh, so now you’re concerned with my personal safety? Isn’t it a bit late for that?’
Mackie sighed. ‘We can get you looked at. We can help you.’
‘Looked at? Why’s that, Mackie?’ I said through gritted teeth.
As ever, his choice of words had been telling. This wasn’t about me or my wellbeing. This was all about them.
‘Why? We need to make sure you’re okay. Because you’ve been gone for so long. We need to know what’s happened to you.’
Mackie didn’t need to be any more explicit than that. I knew what he meant. They thought I’d been turned. Or at the least that I’d talked.
‘And whose fault is that, Mackie? I was there, alone, for three months! Whose fault is that?’
‘This isn’t the time, Logan. What we’ve seen so far suggests you’re not exactly all there. You know, you didn’t have to leave poor Chris for dead.’
So Chris and Mary were working for Mackie. At least that was one answer I had. Too bad about Chris. It didn’t make me feel sorry for having split his head open, though. He and Mary had brought it on themselves with their underhand tactics.
‘Nice of you to send two goons after me.’
‘They’re not goons. They’re agents, just like you.’
‘They’re nothing like me,’ I snapped. ‘And orders to kill?’
‘Come on, man, don’t exaggerate. Their orders were to bring you in any way they could. Why would I want them to kill you?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘I’ll say it again: this isn’t the time. Look, where are you? We’ll send someone to get you right away. Wherever you are, it can’t be safe.’
‘Tell me about it. Held captive for three months and I get out only to find my own people are after me with orders to kill me.’
‘Logan, goddammit!’ Mackie blasted. I pulled the receiver away from my ear, expecting a torrent of abuse, but Mackie held it in. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in Omsk.’
Another pause. Even down the phone I could feel Mackie winding himself down from his near explosion.
‘You’re in Omsk now?’
‘Yeah. I’m at the apartment.’
I figured I didn’t have anything to lose in telling him. Where else was I going to go now? Who else could I turn to?
‘The safe house?’ Mackie’s voice had gone quieter, like he was being distracted.
‘Yes, I’m at the safe house. The trashed safe house, I should say.’
‘Trashed? What? Look, you’re at the safe house now?’
‘Yes, I’m at the bloody safe house. Why’s that so hard to understand?’
‘Just hold on a minute.’
I heard a clunk as Mackie put the phone down, then whispered voices, too far away from the receiver for me to make out any words. Mackie was gone for a good half-minute and I started to get impatient. I was about to shout down the phone to him to ask what was going on.
But then…
A deafening explosion came from behind me.
The ground shook and swayed. A shockwave of air smacked into the side of me, almost taking me clean off my feet. Car alarms began to blare. People began to scream. Dust and grit clouded the air all around me, filling my mouth and eyes.
I was shaken. My ears were ringing with a high-pitched whine. My eyes were blurred from the grit. My head was dazed and confused.
I stood, shocked, wiping at my eyes to try to remove the grit whilst people around me screamed and moaned and ran or wandered aimlessly. The cloud of dust began to disperse, leaving behind a dirty haze. Still rubbing at my eyes I turned back to the apartment.
Half of the building was engulfed in a fireball; thick plumes of black smoke towered into the blue sky. Shards of wood and glass were hanging from the stricken structure. Some debris was still falling to the ground where a crumpled heap of bricks and what used to be the kitchen of the safe house lay.
‘Logan…Logan? Are you there?’
I’d forgotten that I still had the phone pressed to my ear. Mackie’s voice shook me back to reality. I quickly refocused.
‘I’m here,’ I said.
A pause. Then: ‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘The apartment just exploded.’
‘What?’
‘It just fucking exploded!’
‘The apartment? Are you okay?’
‘I think so. I mean…’
‘I thought you said you were in the apartment?’
‘No, I’m standing outside it. Wait a second…you thought I was in the apartment?’ I said, my voice raised, not just with growing anger but also so that I could be heard over the din around me.
‘You said you were in the apartment.’
‘What the hell is happening, Mackie? Why did the apartment just blow up seconds after I tell you that’s where I am!’
‘Logan, just cool it, okay? It’s pretty clear what’s happening here. There are obviously people still after you. You’re lu
cky you weren’t just killed. You’re not safe there. I tried to tell you that already.’
‘Lucky? I think I’ve been anything but lucky.’
‘Enough! Chris and Mary are on their way. They’ll be with you within a few hours. Wait with them, Logan. They can help you. I’m coming as well. You wait there until I come for you.’
‘You? Where are you?’
‘I’m in Moscow already. I’ll get to you as soon as I can.’
‘What are you doing in Moscow?’
‘I was on my way to Omsk to meet with you. I heard that was where you were heading.’
I was surprised he was so close. What was he doing in Moscow?
‘Where and when?’ I said.
‘I’ll let you know. Just wait for Chris and Mary. Meet them at the station. But keep your head down. You need to stay out of sight.’
‘Fine.’
I hung up, confusion sweeping over me. I didn’t know what has happening, or why. One thing I did know, though, was that Mackie had been right. There definitely were people after me.
The only question was: which people?
Chapter 20
Every night that I lay in my cell, I rummaged in my brain for any recollection of the lost time. But my mind was completely blank. Those memories had been locked away from me. I’d have put it down to an inner defensive mechanism, pushing away those difficult days, except the painful memories of those initial weeks of physical torture were still there, loud and clear.
The worst part was not the evident fact that during those lost days I had talked, but that I didn’t know what I had talked about. How much information had I given them about me? The mission that I was on? Previous missions? The agency?
I had no idea except for the snippets of information that would be slipped into conversation by the woman who called herself Lena.
She’d seen me each of the last eight days. It was becoming routine. Just an hour or so each time. More than once I’d refused to talk to her at all, not willing to play her games. But on other days I succumbed: the need for food – and, despite myself, my intrigue at what she had to say – was such that it was worth the co-operation.
Not that I was exactly feeling fully nourished from what I was eating. The food was better than what I’d been given back at the start of my ordeal, but it certainly wasn’t enough to maintain my full strength. I didn’t know how much weight I’d lost – a lot. My ribs were starting to show through for the first time in my entire life. My muscles were slowly being burned for fuel.
In a regular prison, inmates can keep themselves super-fit exercising in the confines of their own cells. The extreme boredom of up to twenty-three hours a day locked up gives them plenty of time to carry out insanely hard regimens using nothing more than their own body weight. Stories of press-ups a thousand at a time are common.
But those prisoners get three proper meals a day. On the basic foods that I was being given, push-ups would just burn the limited fuel I had and that I needed to survive. I had no choice but to just lie there and take it as my body wasted away before me. Or maybe I had another choice, but it was one I wouldn’t even contemplate.
‘Where does this sense of loyalty that you have come from?’ Lena said.
I’d already eaten the paltry food that had been put before me. Today I felt like talking. If for no other reason than it made me feel human.
‘I could ask you the same question,’ I said.
‘It’s simple for me: my country. It’s something else for you, though, I think.’
‘But you don’t do this for your country,’ I disagreed. ‘You do it for a group of people in the shadows that nobody knows about. Doing it for your country implies that what you do is for the good of all of its people. The people are what make a country.’
‘What I do is for the good of the people,’ she said, entirely convinced by her own answer.
‘According to who?’
‘I wouldn’t do it otherwise,’ she said.
‘Would you do anything for them? The people who give you your orders?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You’d kill for them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you kill anyone they asked you to kill? Anyone at all?’
She took a little longer in answering the question this time. I knew what she was thinking: friends, family, if she had any. Would she kill them if asked to?
‘Yes,’ she said after only a few moments’ hesitation.
‘Then we’re two very different people,’ I said.
‘No, I don’t think so. I just think our loyalties are in different places. For you, maybe you do love England. But you love Mackie more.’
I felt my face redden slightly at her words. She had touched a nerve there. I’d never thought about it like that, certainly never used that word to describe my feelings for Mackie. But he’d given me this life. No, he’d given me a life. I’d done everything he’d asked of me for more than half of my sorry existence – nearly twenty years. Of course I loved him. Like a dog loves its master.
When I’d first met Mackie I was still in my teens. He moulded me into the man that I’d become. Yes, he’d moulded me into the man he had needed; it hadn’t all been for my benefit. But he’d also shown incredible faith, dedication even, towards me. More than once he’d fought my corner when others had wanted to cast me aside.
Five years ago I’d led a bungled mission to Iran. The intention had been to get to the bottom of an illegal arms-trafficking ring, supplying weapons from Western Europe to militants all across the Middle East. We had a source from the Iranian Defence Ministry who’d been an asset for almost two years. I’d been working with him day in, day out for twelve months when I found out he’d been trying to sabotage the whole operation. Feeding us false information, taking information from us to pass back to the terrorist cells, even setting traps to try to ensnare other Western agents.
On finding out, my orders were to return home immediately. The mission had been aborted. But that wasn’t good enough for me. Before I left, I shot the asset in the face and dumped his body outside the hideout of one of the militant groups he’d been helping. He didn’t deserve anything more. And I wanted the message to get back to his allies.
But I’d underestimated the political machine that was still attached somewhere high up at the JIA – at least when it wanted to be. The Iranian government was outraged that one of their men had been killed by me, a foreign agent, on their own soil. It didn’t matter that he’d been working for terrorists; the powers that be were ready to give me up to win some diplomatic favours, expose me as a rogue agent. And I think it would have happened too, if it hadn’t been for Mackie. He fought for me. He fought for my life. And not for the first or last time.
My life had never been perfect. In fact, there had been a lot wrong with it. The scars that marked my body were testament to that. And it wasn’t just the physical scars, but the emotional ones too. From my horrific experience at the hands of Youssef Selim through to the betrayal of Angela Grainger. But despite those, I still believed my life would have been a whole lot worse without Mackie. It almost certainly would have been shorter.
‘I can see it in your eyes,’ Lena said. ‘The hurt. You can’t understand how he’s left you in here, can you?’
I wasn’t going to talk to her about that. I really didn’t want to think about it. As naive as it may have been, some tiny corner of my mind still held out hope that any second they would come for me. Come to my rescue. I was still waiting for the walls to explode and for armed troops to come storming in to take me away.
So far there had been no sign of that happening. But I didn’t want that hope taken away from me. Mackie had helped me out before. I had to believe that he would again.
‘It’s not just Mackie out there,’ I said. ‘He isn’t the boss of all bosses. If they can’t get to me, it’s not because of Mackie.’
‘But he’s the one you take your orders from.’
‘Ye
ah.’
‘And you trust every order that he gives you?’
‘I always have. But that doesn’t mean that I always would.’
‘And do you trust that Mackie always knows what it is that he asks of you?’
‘Of course.’
‘So what were you doing in Russia?’
‘Every time that question is asked it’s in the past tense,’ I said.
‘You don’t think you’re in Russia now?’
‘I don’t know where I am.’
‘And that’s the way it has to be,’ Lena said, shrugging.
It didn’t really make much difference to me where we were any more.
‘But you still didn’t answer my question,’ Lena said. ‘What were you doing in Russia? Why did Mackie send you there?’
I was pretty sure that she already knew the answer to the question. Even if I hadn’t already told her in previous conversations, my cover had been blown way back on that day at RTK. She wasn’t interested in the answer to her question, just with messing with my head.
She didn’t wait long before she continued.
‘Well, let me remind you. You were brought here from RTK Technologies. You broke into there, killed three people. So what were you doing there?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I can see we’re going to be doing this the hard way. Now, based on what you told me before – I know it’s a shame that you can’t remember it, but we really did have some very open discussions – based on what you told me, you were at RTK to recover files related to something called Project Ruby. Does that ring any bells?’
I remained silent, wondering, as I often did, just how much information I’d given her. She seemed able to read my mind from start to finish.
‘Do you even know what Project Ruby is?’ she asked.
My lack of response prompted her to carry on.
‘So you’re sent all the way to Russia, you spend months preparing yourself, and then you raid RTK to kill innocent people and steal information about something called Project Ruby when you don’t even know what it is? Why? Because Charles McCabe told you to?’
‘No. Not just because Mackie told me to,’ I said, not wanting to rise to the bait, but unable to stop myself. ‘I never do anything that I don’t want to do. I came to RTK because your scientists are developing chemical weapons like nothing we’ve ever seen before. They’re making millions of dollars of profit selling their heinous concoctions to God knows how many of the world’s terrorist states. To me, it was a no-brainer.’