Shafts of sunlight slanted down, showing the trees were just starting to sprout with spring growth, and birds sang as they flitted between the flowers. It rather reminded him of the half-hearted walking trips his parents used to drag him on as a kid, to ‘get him away from those bloody computer screens’.
If they’d tried a little harder, maybe he wouldn’t be where he was now.
‘How much longer?’ Alex asked, eager to get moving again.
‘Not long.’ Judging by the heavy breathing coming from the back of the car, Anya was hard at work. ‘Just keep watch.’
Alex folded his arms. ‘What do you think Cain will do when he finds out?’
Anya seemed to know him as well as anyone, and she wasn’t inclined to sugar-coat things. If anyone could tell him the extent of the shitstorm they had just unleashed, it was her.
‘What would you do, if it were your daughter?’
‘Hard to say. Don’t have any, at least as far as I know,’ he added. ‘Come on, give it to me straight. How deep are we?’
‘Deep,’ she admitted. ‘Cain will mobilize every resource at the Agency’s disposal to track us down. Our only chance is to stay ahead of him.’
‘And you can do that, right?’
‘No,’ she admitted frankly. ‘Not with the two of you slowing me down. Sooner or later he will catch up with us. All I can do for now is throw him off the scent, buy us time.’
‘How, exactly?’
He felt something hit him in the shoulder, before banging off the hood of the car. Frowning, he picked up what looked like a little circular piece of plastic no bigger than a penny. The back was partially transparent, allowing him to make out the miniature circuitry within.
‘Tracking device,’ Anya explained. ‘Sewn into the lining of her coat. There was another in her shoe.’ She tossed a second device to him, which he caught this time. ‘There is a toilet block on the other side of the parking lot. Take the trackers, and her clothes, and hide them in the trash can. Move.’
Sure enough, Lauren’s clothes now lay in a pile on the ground by Anya’s feet. Even the young woman’s underwear was amongst it.
‘Tell me you didn’t just strip her naked,’ he said in dismay.
‘Believe me, I take no pleasure in it. But it’s the only way to be sure Cain isn’t tracking her, and us.’ Anya slammed the tailgate closed. ‘There are spare clothes for her at the safe house. Now move.’
Shaking his head, Alex snatched up the bundle of clothes and jogged over to the toilet block. Choosing the women’s restroom, he found the trash can set flush into the wall beside the sink and stuffed the entire bundle into it.
As he did so, he wondered how many felonies his work today had added to what was already an extensive list, and how many more would be added before he was done.
Chapter 25
US embassy – Islamabad, Pakistan
CIA Station Chief Hayden Quinn was no stranger to bad days. He’d had many of them lately, beginning with the appearance of a man named Hawkins, who had virtually taken over his position as director of operations in Pakistan. It was soon followed by the murder of a Pakistani intelligence officer, which had enflamed tensions with their ISI, and culminated in an armed confrontation in a residential neighbourhood that had left numerous men dead.
Questions were being asked at all levels, and Quinn found himself increasingly unable to answer them. Marcus Cain, who had appeared so suddenly to conduct a clandestine meeting with the Pakistanis, had vanished just as quickly, with barely a word of explanation. All he had told Quinn was that neither his meeting nor the confrontation in Islamabad were to be investigated.
His only source of consolation was that Cain seemed to have no knowledge of Quinn’s involvement in the attempt on his life. It was he who had let it be known that Cain was coming to Pakistan, he who had allowed Ryan Drake and his group of rogue Shepherd operatives to know the location of Cain’s meeting. He who had betrayed the deputy director of the fucking CIA.
But Cain was still alive. Whatever plot Drake had concocted, it had achieved nothing except to get a lot of people killed.
Quinn rubbed his sore neck. The office air conditioning was running at full capacity, yet his back and underarms were damp with perspiration. Events were spiralling out of control, and he was becoming increasingly paranoid.
‘Fuck it,’ he decided, reaching for the bottle of Wild Turkey in his desk drawer. Hardly luxury stuff, but difficult enough to get hold of out here. And it did the job well enough.
Pouring a glass, he held it up and stared at the amber liquid, before knocking it back with a grimace. He was just pondering a second glass when his desk phone rang. A glance at the caller ID told him it was the secure hotline from Langley.
Setting his glass down, Quinn reached for the phone, took a deep breath and picked it up. ‘Station Chief.’
‘Hayden, good to speak again,’ Marcus Cain said, his tone upbeat, almost jovial. ‘How are things there?’
‘P-pretty good, sir,’ Quinn managed to stammer, not sure what else to say. Doubtless Cain knew more about events here than Quinn did.
‘That’s good. Listen, I want you to do something for me – it’s important,’ Cain went on. ‘Set up a meeting at the embassy with Husain Khalid, as soon as you can.’
‘The director general?’
Husain Khalid was the leader of Pakistan’s ISI. A vocal critic of US foreign policy, and a man with a track record for undermining CIA operations in this part of the world, he should be the last person Cain wanted to meet with.
‘The very one,’ Cain confirmed. ‘Tell him he can bring as many of his senior advisors and security personnel as he likes.’
‘Sir, he’ll never go for it,’ Quinn protested desperately. ‘Stepping onto US soil, being searched, giving up his weapons…’
‘Trust me, he’ll go for this. Tell him we have information on who murdered his operative last week, that it’s connected to the shootout in Islamabad,’ Cain interjected. ‘And tell him there will be no searches, no weapons confiscated, nothing. It’s a gesture of trust on our part, and he’ll be our honoured guest. Tell him we want to make things right.’
What the hell was Cain playing at? Kowtowing to the Pakistanis mere days after ordering the murder of one of their men? What did he hope to achieve?
‘Sir, even if the Pakistanis did agree to your terms, you understand this would be a huge breach of station protocol—’
‘I know the risks, Hayden,’ Cain assured him. ‘But considering what this meeting could achieve, it’s a risk worth taking. And for what it’s worth, this one’s on me. Make it happen, and I promise I’ll make things happen for you. Do you understand?’
Quinn wasn’t sure that he did. But Cain hadn’t ordered him brought back to Langley in chains, so that had to count for something. Could it be that there was actually a way out of this, despite everything he’d done?
‘I’ll do what I can, sir,’ he promised.
‘I know you will. Call me when you have an update.’
With that, the line went dead.
Chapter 26
New York, 24 June 1988
Anya let out a short breath as Cain entered her, pulling him close, her hands feeling the play of the taut muscles across his back. They moved in harmony as pleasure and desire mounted.
Anya rolled over so that she was on top. Her movements were slow and deliberate at first, trying to draw out the moment, but soon becoming faster and more urgent. His hands found her breasts as she continued to move.
Their breathing came faster and faster as they neared their peak. Finally, a moan of ecstasy escaped Anya’s lips as pleasure overwhelmed her. Cain finished a moment later, his body tensing up and suddenly relaxing as he released.
She collapsed on top of him, completely spent. It was several moments before she was able to think clearly, but she reluctantly disengaged and lay next to him, her chest rising and falling as her heart pounded.
She had often thoug
ht that the times she felt most alive were when she was about to go into battle, when her own life was in her hands, but now she knew there was another time. It was at moments like this, with Marcus.
Tonight had been particularly intense because she knew there wouldn’t be another like it for a long time. She was leaving tomorrow, rejoining Task Force Black for deployment to Afghanistan. There were preparations still to be made, work to be done, but for tonight neither she nor Cain cared.
They wanted, needed this night to themselves.
‘Jesus, I feel sorry for the poor bastards in the room next door,’ Cain said.
Anya giggled in amusement; neither of them had exactly been restrained, and the walls of this hotel weren’t thick. Still, she didn’t feel remotely self-conscious about it. The wine they’d had over dinner hadn’t hurt either.
‘Maybe they will be jealous of us,’ she suggested.
‘I’m going to miss this, you know.’
Smiling, Anya rolled over and pressed her naked body against his, still warm with the tingling afterglow. ‘So will I. We’ll have to make up for lost time when I come back.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said quietly. ‘I worry every time you go out there, but this time it’s different. I’m afraid they’ll be putting another star on that wall at Langley. I’m afraid you won’t come back.’
That admission hit her hard. Harder than she’d expected, because Cain wasn’t a man to voice his fears. His words elicited a chill of foreboding, as if he were speaking of something already decided.
Anya sat up in the bed, looking down at him.
‘Marcus, look at me,’ she implored him. ‘Look at me.’
Reluctantly, he did.
Leaning over to the bedside table, she picked up the set of dog tags she’d been issued with when she passed selection and officially joined Task Force Black. None of the team members were allowed them in the field in case they were captured, but Carpenter had insisted they were given all the same. Soldiers deserved dog tags, and that was what they were.
‘Take these,’ she said, pressing them into his hand. ‘Take them, and keep them safe until I come back to claim them.’
Cain ran his fingers across the stamped metal surface, watching as they gleamed in the firelight. Slowly his fingers closed around them.
‘I will come home,’ Anya said, speaking with absolute conviction, banishing any thoughts of her fate being decided. ‘No matter what it takes. No matter what I have to do, I will come back to you. I promise.’
Cain reached out, pulling her to him, holding her so tight it was as if he never wanted to be apart from her. Anya in return pressed herself against him, and her lips found his as she sought to give him what he so desperately needed, if only for a while.
* * *
Half a world away in his office at Langley, Cain hung up the phone. Quinn would do as ordered, he knew. The man might have proven himself disloyal after events in Islamabad, but he was frightened now that his scheme had unravelled, and frightened men were the most compliant of all.
There was still the question of whether the Pakistanis would go for his deal, but he suspected they could be persuaded. After all, Cain now had a man on the inside. A man they trusted implicitly after his decades of loyal service, and with a vested interest of his own in seeing this meeting go ahead.
He swung his chair and stared out of his window. Just beyond the Agency’s campus lay the muddy curve of the Potomac river, flanked by dense woodland, and in the distance the soaring spire of the Washington Monument.
But Cain’s eyes were focussed on something closer at hand. Below him stood the courtyard garden, a hundred yards of no man’s land that lay between the Agency’s old and new headquarters buildings. And in the middle of this landscaped greenery, the pool he’d stood beside with Anya a lifetime ago. The day he’d told her she was being sent back to Afghanistan.
He was almost startled by the buzz of his phone. Not his desk phone or his official work cell, but the burner he kept locked away in a drawer.
Fishing the phone out, he was surprised to see that the call was coming from Morgan Brooks, the operative he’d assigned to his daughter’s protective detail.
‘Cain,’ he began, with a growing sense of unease.
‘Sir, it’s your daughter,’ Brooks said. ‘She’s been taken.’
Part Three – Provocation
‘Provoke the enemy’s power and force him to reveal himself.’ – Sun Tzu
Chapter 27
Grass, stretching away in front of her, the long stalks reaching past her waist, swaying and rippling like an undulating sea as the breeze sighed across it. Above, thin ribbons of cloud spanned a vast blue canvas of sky.
She crept forward, driven by the childish desire to explore. Ahead, near the crest of the gentle hill, lay a stand of trees.
Lauren Cain was floating in an endless sea of nothingness. A world without memory or feeling.
There!
A noise drifted in as if from a great distance. The noise was repeated, stronger and more forceful this time.
Not just a noise. A word, spoken to her. The flowing syllables seemed to grow more defined, resolving themselves into individual sounds.
Becoming a name.
Her name.
‘Lauren.’
Her mind groped towards the source, trying to regain control.
‘Lauren,’ the voice repeated. ‘Can you hear me?’
Lauren’s eyes fluttered open, bright light flooding in. She blinked, squeezed them closed, then opened them a fraction and managed to tolerate it enough to take in her surroundings.
She was in a room. Sparsely furnished, very modern and clean, almost sterile in appearance. White walls, grey carpet, no decoration of any sort. But despite being spotlessly maintained, the air had the stale smell of a place that hadn’t been lived in for a while.
The light was coming from a set of big full-length windows off to her right. She could see a lake, trees, blue sky and, to her surprise, snow-capped mountains. The treetops were swaying, the sun was high in the sky.
She was thirsty. How long had she been out?
‘How do you feel?’
Lauren looked up as a figure moved into view. A woman, perhaps 40 years old. A woman she recognized.
A kaleidoscope of memories came rushing back. She heard the blare of fire alarms, saw a woman leading her outside, felt herself suddenly scared and running to escape, and then a pinprick in her neck.
That was enough to bring her fully awake. Seized by panic, Lauren tried to jump back, to flee, only to find herself unable to move. She looked down to see her wrists and ankles were bound by plastic cable ties to a metal chair. She also noticed that her clothes were gone, replaced by a plain white T-shirt and grey slacks.
She struggled even harder to break free. The cable ties bit painfully into her skin, but showed no signs of snapping.
‘I wouldn’t struggle, if I were you,’ the woman advised. The Midwestern American accent was gone now, replaced by something that sounded Russian or eastern European. ‘You will only hurt yourself.’
‘Help!’ she screamed, louder than she had ever cried out before. Her voice reverberated around the room. ‘Someone help me! Please!’
The woman made no attempt to silence her. Instead she waited for a break in the shouting. ‘You can scream as much as you want, Lauren. This house is soundproofed. No one will hear you, and no one is coming for you. Now, are you going to listen to me, or shall I leave you here until you’ve calmed down?’
Finally accepting the futility of her position, Lauren eased off, staring at the woman who had called herself Agent Forsyth.
The woman nodded, apparently satisfied that this represented some kind of cooperation. ‘Good. Maybe now we can talk a little.’
Lauren squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying to ignore a lingering headache, which was almost certainly a side effect of whatever she’d been injected with.
Noticing her
difficulty, the woman offered an explanation. ‘The headache and disorientation will pass.’ She held up her right hand with three fingers extended, slowly moving it back and forth. ‘Follow my hand. How many fingers am I holding up?’
‘Go screw yourself,’ Lauren yelled defiantly. ‘You can use as many fingers as you want for that.’
Her captor gave her a look of mild disapproval, as if she were some unruly child refusing to come in for dinner.
Pulling up another chair, the woman eased herself down, seemingly with some discomfort. Lauren was reminded of the bloodstain on her jacket, and wondered how badly she was hurt.
Hopefully very badly, she thought.
‘Before we go any further, there are some rules I want you to understand,’ she said, still staring at Lauren. ‘Rule one, you will not try to resist or escape. Failure to comply will be met with severe punishment. Rule two, you will answer any questions fully and truthfully. I will know if you lie to me,’ she promised. ‘Rule three, you will be released from your restraints to eat, wash and use the bathroom, but if you abuse this freedom it will be withdrawn permanently. And rule four, you will speak only when spoken to. Comply with these rules, and you’ll be treated fairly and returned to your family unharmed. Understand?’
‘Why should I trust you?’
‘You shouldn’t,’ was the honest answer. ‘But given that you are tied to a chair and I can think of a dozen ways to cause you unbearable pain with my bare hands, you should at least listen to me, Lauren.’
‘Who are you?’ Lauren asked, unable to keep a tremor from her voice. ‘What do you want with me?’
There was something eerily familiar about this woman, who had torn her away from safety and security. It was a familiarity that went deeper than their encounter earlier in the day.
‘Who I am is not important,’ she said. ‘But you are. You’re going to help save lives.’
Lauren frowned. ‘I… I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t expect you to. But your father will.’
Shadow Conflict Page 18