by Rob Sinclair
‘And what do you know about her true intentions?’ I said, agitated. Lena had hit a nerve. Because I struggled with the concept too. I just couldn’t believe that part of Angela hadn’t truly fallen for me, even though she’d undoubtedly used me.
‘My point is that revenge has been such a central part of your life,’ Lena said. ‘You’ve always sought vengeance before. But not with Grainger.’
‘Says who?’ I said, grimacing at not knowing just how much of my soul I’d spilled to Lena already.
‘Says you. You told me yourself.’
I gritted my teeth. As usual, Lena was toying with me – dropping into conversation revelations I’d already made. And I didn’t like the personal nature of the questioning. Talking about my life, the JIA, was one thing. But Angela was the sorest subject of them all. And I didn’t know what Lena had to gain from my answers, other than satisfaction at seeing me squirm.
‘I’m sorry to have to keep doing that to you,’ she said. ‘I don’t intend to offend you, but I find it odd that you still carry such feelings for a woman who betrayed your trust like that.’
‘That’s the thing I’ve learnt about feelings: as much as you try, you can’t always control them.’
‘What would you do if you were to see her again?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, entirely truthfully.
‘I’d love to see that. The lovers’ reunion. You know, maybe one day you’ll get the chance.’
I was done with this conversation. I stood up from the seat and walked towards the locked door where two uniformed men were standing guard.
‘Carl, where do you think you’re going?’ Lena said.
The men moved across the door, blocking my path.
I stayed on my feet, facing away from Lena. As much as I’d felt relaxed before, I couldn’t talk to her about Angela.
‘Sit back down,’ Lena shouted, her voice hard. ‘We’re not done yet.’
‘I’m done talking about her,’ I said, fully aware of what the consequences would be if I resisted too strongly. But I wanted to make a point. Some things were just too precious and too painful to open up about.
‘Okay, okay, I get it. Let’s talk about something else,’ Lena said, to my relief.
‘Like what?’ I said.
‘I want to get to the nub of what drives you. Tell me about Selim. Your life-changing experience.’
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to let my anger get the better of me. I wanted this conversation to be over. But I knew that I’d suffer if I resisted too hard.
‘Have you ever been close to death?’ I asked, composing myself and turning to face Lena. ‘So close that you could touch it?’
‘Yes. More than once,’ she said.
‘And did it affect you?’
‘Of course it did. I don’t want to die.’
‘But did it change you?’
‘It just made me more determined.’
‘Determined to do what?’
‘To survive. It made me stronger.’
Part of me admired her apparent strength. Maybe it was just bravado, but I admired it all the same. But at what price did all that strength and determination come? I knew only too well how it felt to be close to death. But my experience had only brought me back down to earth and made me question my life. Question whether my life was really a life at all.
I walked back to the chair and sat down.
‘You think my experience is different from yours?’ she said.
‘Yes, I think it is.’
‘So you’re not stronger now?’
‘No, I don’t believe I am.’
‘You’re talking about Selim, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
Youssef Selim had been a terrorist. One of the most wanted men in the world. I’d been sent to help bring down him and a terrorist cell that he was running. But it went wrong. I was caught. I was held captive.
I was tortured.
Sounding familiar? I was on a losing streak, that was for sure.
But my time being held by Selim had been very different from what had happened to me since being captured at RTK. The torture at the hands of Selim and his men had been much more aggressive, rushed, intense even. The difference was that Selim had let it get personal. He was angry and everything he’d done to me and others was tinged with that pent-up anger. He’d wanted to get his revenge, to inflict pain on me. And he hadn’t cared whether I lived or died.
My captivity with the Russians had been very different. Their torture had been deliberate. Very deliberate. Planned. Everything had happened for a reason. They’d never had any intention of killing me.
At the hands of Selim, I almost certainly would have died if I hadn’t been rescued. They didn’t want information from me, didn’t want anything from me other than to see me suffer. The sword was pressed against my neck when my rescuers swept through that place. I was alive, just, but Selim got away.
In the aftermath, I’d been a mess. Years of working and thinking like a robot came to an abrupt halt. I didn’t know whether I could go on. But Angela had helped me get there. Had helped me turn my life around.
Angela Grainger was a woman I’d been attracted to like no other person before or after. Lena was a beautiful person on the outside, but underneath I knew she was sinister and menacing and evil. I’d seen that side of her first-hand. And I knew it was the real Lena. My attraction to Angela couldn’t have been more different. It had been pure and instinctive. And at a point in my life when everything had come tumbling down around me, she’d helped me to pick up the pieces.
Not long after I’d met her, she helped me to track down Selim, and I’d killed him – thus ending what had seemed like the sorriest chapter of my life.
But then came Angela’s betrayal.
And I was back to square one again.
My life had never been the same since Selim first touched me. I wasn’t the man I used to be. I was weaker. My mind was rational and I thought too much. I wasn’t as strong mentally as when I was that machine, carrying out orders at will. The less you think about a job like mine, the better.
‘I don’t think it’s made me stronger,’ I said, coming out of my thoughts. ‘It changed me, but it didn’t make me stronger.’
‘Well, I think you’re wrong,’ Lena said. ‘I think you’re stronger now. Stronger because of what Selim did to you.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Well, you’re here, aren’t you? You came close to death before, but you didn’t quit. You carried on. And it brought you here. And look at what you’ve done here. Still going strong, still surviving. That’s where we’re the same, you see. We do what we need to do to survive.’
I grimaced at her words. Because what I was doing, talking to her like this, was against everything I’d been trained for, against every loyalty I had. But she was right. When it came down to it, my choice had all been about my own survival. In the end, my own life had trumped everything else.
‘It’s not always our choice, though,’ I said. ‘You could’ve killed me whenever you wanted. I haven’t survived here because of my own strength and determination. I’ve survived because you’ve decided not to kill me.’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s not always our choice. But you don’t get anywhere without trying. You could have given up. You could have given up back then and you could have given up here. But you didn’t. Your body and mind have kept you going through all of this. Through everything that your life has thrown at you.’
I disagreed. My mind had left me plenty of times. And I could see clearly that the Russians had worked my capture exactly as they wanted to the whole way along. The abuse. The games. The questions. The way Lena was playing with me. Even the attraction to her that I was fighting was surely part of their ploy.
I was where I was because they wanted me to be.
The only real question left was: why?
Chapter 25
‘Fancy meeting you two here.’
‘No games this time, Logan,’ Mary said. ‘You’re staying with us until Mackie arrives.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says me,’ Chris said, anger evident in his voice.
‘How’s the head?’ I asked.
‘Screw you,’ Chris spat. ‘You’re lucky I’m not putting you down right here. Who the hell do you think you are? You could have killed me out there. And for what?’
I could understand Chris’s irritation. But I wasn’t going to apologise. I didn’t need these two helping me then and I didn’t need them now.
Mary walked up to me. She held her hand out. ‘Give me the gun,’ she said. ‘Slowly does it.’
‘If you want it, come and get it,’ I said.
The Glock was inside the waistband of my trousers. I was cursing myself for having put it in such a useless position. Less conspicuous, yes, but with my overcoat on much too hard to reach for quickly.
‘There’s no time for games,’ Mary said. ‘Where is it?’
I undid my coat and opened it out, indicating with my head down toward the butt of the gun. Mary reached over, cautiously, and took it out of my trousers. I smiled at her as she did so and was pleased to see the look of offence on her face.
‘Logan, you need to come with us,’ Mary said, stepping back and putting the Glock in her coat pocket. She placed her hand on Chris’s gun and pushed it down towards the ground. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’re on the same side here. Let’s get out of the cold.’
‘Where to?’ I asked.
‘We have a new safe house. We can go and wait there until Mackie arrives.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then the two of you can talk and get this sorted out, once and for all.’
‘Yeah? What about the full psych you were harping on about last time? You know, the one where they’ll make me do tests to make sure that I’m not some nut job who’s now working for the enemy.’
‘Jesus, Logan, listen to yourself, man!’ Chris said, his anger turning to exasperation. ‘It’s not a bloody lobotomy. Yes, they’re going to make you see a doctor, give you whatever help you need. But what’s so bad about that? What makes you so special that normal protocol doesn’t apply?’
He had me there. I didn’t see myself as special. The problem was the opposite: I saw myself as expendable. I still didn’t trust that I wasn’t now simply a target of my own country’s security service and that this was merely the ploy that would finally lead me to my end. But I wasn’t about to stand and debate that point with these two.
‘Enough, all right?’ Chris said. ‘It’s bloody freezing out here. We’re going to turn into human snowballs if we stand here any longer. Now come on.’
He turned around and trudged off, back the way he and Mary had just come, heading into the biting wind. I looked at Mary. She just shrugged.
I knew that meeting with Mackie was a necessary step. I didn’t entirely trust these two, just as I didn’t entirely trust anyone, but I was sure I could handle them if I had to. And I needed somewhere warm to stay.
I started off after Chris, aware that Mary was close by my side. We caught up with Chris within twenty paces or so. He didn’t react at all, didn’t acknowledge me or Mary, just carried on walking.
The three of us lumbered on in silence for about ten minutes, taking turns down streets that I’d never been down before, heading away from the more cosmopolitan areas I was used to and into the bowels of the city. Here the surroundings were all characterless concrete blocks, remnants of the communist era and the flawed ideology of social living that those times had brought. The grey walls of the vast buildings, many of them now derelict and decrepit, blended seamlessly into the overcast sky, creating an endless dull monotony. The heavy snow had passed for now, just wisps of white left in the blustery air. The temperature remained frighteningly low.
‘How did you find me?’ I asked neither one of them in particular.
‘The bank called through to us,’ Mary said. ‘We had them watching out for you.’
‘How did you even know about that place?’
‘We’re good at what we do.’
Mary’s words made me again question Dmitri’s fate: no-one other than Dmitri knew I’d been to that bank. But I didn’t push any further for an answer I knew I wouldn’t get.
‘So you took my things?’ I said, not sure whether I was pleased or angered at the prospect of it having been them rather than someone else.
‘Yes.’
How had they persuaded the bank to grant them access? I could see two links: the FSB and the Bratva. I couldn’t fathom how either of those was the answer.
The streets we were now walking down were desolate. It was hard to know whether that was due to the weather or because the giant buildings alongside us were sparsely inhabited.
‘Wow, this is really something special,’ I said. ‘You two lucked out getting to come to a place like this.’
‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ Chris said.
Unfortunately that was my thought exactly. If this was just a ruse then the area we were now in was an ideal spot for bumping me off, with countless empty buildings to dump a dead body in. Hardly anyone was around to see or hear anything untoward, and even if someone did, in these parts there was a fair chance that they’d just pass on by without a second thought.
I slowed my pace a little so that both Chris and Mary were just slightly edging ahead of me. I wanted to be able to see their hands. See any move. If there was one to be seen at all.
Eventually we turned and headed towards the outer stairwell of one of the concrete blocks. I spotted obvious signs of occupation, not least the fact that only a handful of the building’s windows were boarded up. We began climbing the stairs, Chris in front, Mary behind me, the stench of urine and rotting food coming and going as we went.
When we arrived at the third floor, Chris turned into the central corridor that ran the entire length of the building, down to the identical stairwell that lay at the opposite end. Doors for each of the flats were spread symmetrically on either side of the corridor, with just one small square window separating each door. Chris stopped at the fourth door on the left and his hand went to his pocket. I tensed just a little until I saw the key emerging with his hand.
Chris put the key into the lock and opened the door. He gave me an expressionless look and then stepped in. I hesitated for just a second.
‘After you,’ Mary said.
‘No, no. After you,’ I said, turning to her and smiling.
Mary looked nonplussed and stepped past me into the apartment. I felt my tension drop just a little as I followed her through the door. At least they were both in front of me now, where I could see them.
As I stepped over the threshold, I saw Mary, just a yard ahead of me, walking through into the room at the back of the apartment. Without turning, I reached behind and pushed the door to shut it. But I could tell from the bang it made that it hadn’t shut properly.
I turned. The catch on the door was up. I went to release it, but as I did so I felt movement behind me.
And I knew then that the move was coming.
After everything they had said, they were going to take me down when my back was turned.
But I hadn’t been so stupid as to not have been ready for it. I’d been expecting it from the moment we began our walk.
I ducked low, swivelling as I did so, my right arm recoiling, ready to unleash. In the split-second that it took me to turn, my brain half-recognised surprise at the empty space in front of me, where I’d expected Chris or Mary to be standing, ready to take me out. Unable to stop my momentum, my right arm arced through the air, connecting with nothing at all.
As my body reeled, my head turned and I caught a glimpse of the doorway immediately on my left and the shadow of a figure standing in it. Before I’d even fully processed what was happening, I felt a sharp stab in my neck and the strange feeling of cold liquid rushing into my warm veins.
Tha
t feeling was the only thing I was aware of as my legs gave way and I fell to the floor.
Chapter 26
It was strange to think it, but I was starting to feel more like myself again.
They had moved me to a larger cell. Still windowless, still a cell. But bigger at least. It had a mattress and a pillow, a stainless-steel basin and toilet. Luxuries after spending weeks on end sleeping on a cold, hard floor with nothing to keep me company other than a rusted metal bedpan.
The food was still bland but I was now receiving much more of it. I ate and ate and ate, and when I’d finished they’d give me another plateful and I’d eat that too. More than once I threw up because my body just wasn’t used to the volume. But that didn’t put me off. I just kept on going, eating as much as I could, feeling the renewed strength that each mouthful gave me.
‘You’re looking good, Carl. Fit and healthy. I’ve never seen someone regain themselves as quickly as you have.’
Lena’s words made it sound as though I wasn’t the first person she’d broken and then remodelled. And she seemed to take great enjoyment from it. It made me immensely uneasy to think that I was just another plaything to her. But she was right: I was recovering quickly, at least in body. A lot of the time my mind was still a blurred mess, not sure what to believe or whom. Furiously trying to distance myself from becoming close to Lena and her propositions, her propaganda, but at the same time aware that I inevitably was. Her allure was starting to overpower me and I faced a constant battle to remind myself of the snake that she really was.
She was standing in front of me, on the other side of the large wooden desk, her back toward me. She was looking over a map of the world that was pinned to the wall, proudly displayed like in a war room from a bygone era. The room we were in was some sort of office, brighter and nicer than the other rooms I’d become used to.
As usual Lena had on a tight-fitting suit that accentuated the curves of her tall, slender body. I squeezed my eyes shut for just a second, pushing out the thoughts that were forming in my head and annoyed at myself for gawking at her. However you described our bizarre relationship, I certainly didn’t want it to go to that.