Shadow Conflict

by Shadow Conflict (epub)

  The office was, to Khalid’s credit, remarkably austere, and devoid of the usual trappings of power that executive directors indulged in, perhaps reflecting his military background. The carpets were clean but not expensive, the desk and other furniture simple and practical, the pictures that adorned the walls mostly just photographs from Khalid’s days in the Pakistani army, when he’d been noticeably younger and thinner.

  ‘Vizur, thank you for coming,’ Khalid said, slowly rising from his chair.

  Some men in positions of power indulged in alcohol to curb their restless minds, others turned to women or drugs, but Khalid’s weakness seemed to be food. His face was wide and deeply lined, his shoulders slumped, his legs thick with excess fat.

  Only his short, swept-back hairstyle was the same as in the photos of his fitter and more youthful self, even if the hair was thinner and greying now.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Qalat said, bracing himself for the worst. ‘How can I serve?’

  Khalid gestured to the centre of his office, where a pair of couches faced each other across a low coffee table. ‘Please, take a seat.’

  Qalat sensed the invitation was for Khalid’s comfort rather than his own.

  Qalat took the furthest couch, while Khalid heaved himself into the nearest, the springs and wooden frame creaking.

  He stared across the coffee table at Qalat, his expression difficult to read. Whatever his faults and vices, Khalid was a man adept at playing his cards close to his chest. Qalat for his part managed to paint on a look of patient attentiveness – just a loyal subordinate waiting for his commanding officer to speak.

  ‘We’ve received a message from the Americans,’ Khalid said at last. ‘An invitation.’

  Qalat’s fears vanished, replaced by a growing excitement for the opportunity that had just been created. Clever, Marcus, he thought. Very clever.

  He cocked his head slightly, pretending to be intrigued. ‘Invitation?’

  ‘Two days from now,’ the director went on. ‘At the US embassy building. They claim to have found information about the murder of one of our intelligence officers a week ago. They say it’s linked to the killing of two intelligence operatives, and a gun battle in this city three days ago. They want to meet with me personally and discuss intelligence-sharing across our two agencies.’

  ‘I see,’ Qalat said. ‘And what can I do, sir?’

  Khalid spread his hands. ‘You can give your opinion, Vizur. You have worked with the Americans many times, and I’d venture you understand their mindset as well as anyone in this agency. So I’d like to hear whether you think this offer is genuine, whether you believe the Americans can be trusted, and if I should agree to meet with them.’

  Qalat knew this was a crucial moment, and he had to answer carefully. To be too welcoming would invite suspicion and distrust from the conservative director, whereas being too lukewarm might confirm Khalid’s inherent prejudices.

  ‘If you’re asking whether the Americans can be trusted, I would say no,’ he replied cautiously. ‘To believe they have Pakistan’s best interests at heart would be foolish and naive, and I can’t imagine you feel that way anyway.’

  Khalid nodded at this, no doubt approving of Qalat’s assessment so far.

  ‘But whether or not their intentions are entirely good, they are not stupid,’ Qalat said. ‘They know all too well the cost of losing a war in Afghanistan, and that we’re their only ally in this region. That means they need us, and they have to win our cooperation by giving us something real. So if you’re asking whether I think this offer is genuine…’ He paused, making it seem like he was still weighing up the matter in his mind. ‘I think it is. At the very least, I think it’s worth hearing them out. If you don’t like what they have to say, then well… there’s no need to take it any further.’

  Khalid didn’t say anything for some time. He was digesting everything Qalat had said, perhaps trying to find a flaw in his reasoning. Qalat held his tongue, knowing it was unwise to disturb the director in the midst of making a decision.

  ‘All right, Vizur. Thank you,’ he finally said, nodding towards the door. ‘You’ve made your opinions clear on this.’

  ‘If there’s anything else you need, sir,’ Qalat said, rising from the couch.

  ‘You will be the first to know.’

  Chapter 29

  CIA headquarters, Langley – 25 September 1988

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Cain demanded, striding into the briefing room with no regard for protocol or the high-ranking personnel already assembled there. ‘Somebody give me a sitrep right now.’

  All he had so far were sketchy reports coming out of Afghanistan that Task Force Black had been intercepted by Soviet forces over the border, and that they had sustained casualties.

  He wanted, needed, answers right now.

  ‘Calm down, Marcus,’ Simmons said, cool and aloof as always. A numbers man tallying up his accounts. ‘Ranting and raving isn’t going to help.’

  Cain rounded on him. ‘Sir, that’s my team out there—’

  ‘Our team,’ Carpenter corrected him, his expression one of entirely false concern. ‘Which is why we called you in.’

  He glanced at Simmons, as if awaiting permission to elaborate. When it was given with a curt nod, he took a deep breath before beginning his briefing.

  ‘What we know so far is that approximately 24 hours ago, Task Force Black was intercepted by Russian special forces units in the mountains north of Jalalabad, just as they were preparing to launch their operation. In an exchange lasting about 30 minutes, the task force was able to execute a fighting withdrawal to the east, before making a run for the border.’

  ‘And we’re only hearing about this now?’ Cain asked incredulously.

  Carpenter fixed him with a patronising look. ‘They were hardly in a position to make a detailed report, with Soviet gunships trying to hunt them down. Anyway they were forced to destroy their comms gear in case it was compromised. It wasn’t until the unit reached their forward operating base that they could call it in.’

  Cain had no interest in the logistics of their escape. ‘What about casualties?’

  Simmons cleared his throat.

  ‘They’ve reported two KIAs – Kurylenko and Melnik,’ Carpenter said, his voice devoid of emotion. It wasn’t the first time he’d read out casualty figures, and Cain doubted it would be the last.

  Cain winced. Andriy Kurylenko and Panas Melnik, both Ukrainians by birth, both excellent soldiers. From what he’d learned of the unit, the two men had become fast friends, their shared homeland helping to form a bond that was cemented by battle. He even remembered Panas boasting once that his name meant ‘immortal’.

  It seemed, today, his mortality had caught up with him.

  ‘They also report one missing in action,’ Carpenter went on, and Cain’s head snapped around to stare at him, his stomach twisting. ‘It’s Anya.’

  Cain’s world seemed to stop. The briefing room, the powerful men within it, the view of the new headquarters building under construction all faded as he struggled to process what he’d just heard.

  It didn’t make sense. Anya couldn’t be gone. She was unstoppable, she had survived countless battles in one of the deadliest war zones on earth. She could take anything that was thrown at her.

  She had promised to come back.

  ‘What happened to her?’ Cain heard himself ask.

  Carpenter swallowed and glanced at the papers spread out before him. ‘We’re still collating our reports from—’

  ‘What happened?’ Cain repeated, slower, putting emphasis on both words.

  The colonel looked him in the eye. ‘When the rest of the team was falling back, she refused to break cover. They couldn’t get to her, and she wouldn’t come to them. Our best guess is that she panicked when the team came under air attack, froze up. There was nothing they could do.’

  ‘No,’ Cain said, shaking his head. ‘No way. That’s not Anya.’

  ‘Ma
rcus, I’ve seen it happen to even the best soldiers.’ Carpenter was playing the part of the fatherly soldier now, the combat veteran who had seen it all and understood battle in a way that a desk jockey like Cain never would. ‘There’s no way to predict how people will—’

  ‘I said no!’ Cain shouted, rising to his feet and slamming his fist down on the table.

  In the silence that followed, Cain could feel every eye in the room on him. He didn’t care that they were doubting him, judging him. He didn’t care that he’d just lost his cool publicly for the first time in his career.

  His eyes were locked with Carpenter’s, simmering with barely restrained fury. The man who had blackmailed him into sending Anya back out there. The man he wanted to reach across the table and throttle with his bare hands.

  ‘All right, gentlemen. Obviously this is a difficult situation, but let’s stay professional,’ Simmons said, his tone making it clear that further outbursts would see Cain removed from the room – by force, if need be. ‘We all knew the risks involved, and so did they. Frankly, we ought to be thankful the bulk of the team made it out alive. It could have been a lot worse. Marcus, I think you should take some time to process this.’

  ‘I’m fine, sir,’ Cain lied, staring straight ahead.

  ‘You don’t look fine.’

  ‘It was a shock, that’s all.’ He raised his chin and looked at Simmons. ‘Right now I’d rather discuss extraction options.’

  He saw the look exchanged between Simmons and Carpenter.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘If the Soviets have her, it’s a safe bet they took her to the nearest military base for interrogation. There must be a way to get her back if we act quickly,’ Cain said, latching onto the wild hope that somehow they could rescue Anya. ‘Task Force Black have been staging extractions like this for years—’

  ‘Marcus, maybe we didn’t explain the situation clearly,’ Simmons interrupted. ‘There won’t be an extraction.’

  Cain stared at the man, unable to summon a response.

  ‘The whole point of this task force was that it’s a deniable operation,’ Carpenter reminded him. ‘In the event they’re captured or killed, we disavow all knowledge of their existence. That’s the plan – that was always the plan. We have full plausible deniability.’

  Cain was aghast. On some level he knew Simmons wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, but to hear it actually spoken about the woman he cared for, the woman he loved, was like a knife driven into his chest.

  ‘Anya fought and killed for us.’

  ‘And the United States government appreciates her sacrifice, even if its people will never learn of it,’ Simmons said, his tone dry and official. It was clear that in his mind, Anya was already dead. A minor subtraction in the great equation that determined the balance of power. ‘There’s nothing more we can do for her.’

  Cain zoned out as the briefing resumed. Already the talk had turned to bringing the remainder of the unit home, logistical arrangements that would be needed, mitigating actions for potential political fallout.

  Cain stared into space as his future with Anya vanished.

  * * *

  CIA headquarters, Langley – 31 March 2010

  ‘Give me a fucking update right now,’ Cain demanded, pacing across his office like a caged animal. He was holding his cell phone so tight that he could practically hear the plastic creaking. ‘I want to know what you’ve got.’

  ‘Sir, we recovered your daughter’s GPS tracking devices and her clothes at a rest stop ten miles south-west of the city,’ reported Patrick Kavanagh, the officer now coordinating the hunt for Cain’s daughter. ‘Clearly her attackers knew what to look for.’

  With Brooks hospitalized and in no condition to head up a search operation, it had fallen to the senior case officer in the region to take command.

  ‘No shit they knew what to look for,’ Cain shot back. ‘We gave her the full Agency relocation package, removed everything that should have led to her, and still they were able to find her. How the fuck did this happen?’

  ‘We’re working on that as we speak, sir.’ Kavanagh sounded nervous, as well he should. If Cain’s daughter turned up dead because he didn’t do his job, Cain would personally ensure it was the last mistake the man ever made.

  ‘Great. While you’re “working on it”, my daughter’s out there, someone’s hostage.’ Cain stopped pacing, forcing himself to calm down and think rationally. Now was not the time to let emotion cloud his judgement. ‘Tell me what active protocols you’ve got in play.’

  ‘We tried pulling surveillance footage of the attack, but everything from the university security system seems to be gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Erased, sir. Someone recalibrated the video buffers so they overwrote themselves every—’

  ‘All right, I don’t need the details,’ Cain interrupted. Clearly this attack had been orchestrated by people with a high level of technical, as well as physical, skill. ‘What else?’

  ‘External units seem unaffected, so we’re reviewing all traffic cameras in the area,’ Kavanagh explained, hoping to demonstrate that he was doing everything in his power to find her. ‘According to eye witnesses, your daughter was forced into a car outside the library. Once we get a hit on the licence plate, we can track them.’

  ‘Concentrate your search east of the city,’ Cain instructed. ‘Especially the border with Belgium, Germany and Austria.’

  ‘East? But sir, we found the—’

  ‘They’re backtracking, trying to throw us off the scent,’ he decided. ‘What else do you have?’

  ‘We’ve also got the NSA monitoring all the usual websites, message boards and social media, looking for any unusual chatter.’

  Cain shook his head. ‘There won’t be any.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘This isn’t some terrorist group or political extremists we’re dealing with.’ Cain clenched his jaw. ‘It’s her.’

  Somehow Anya had gotten to her. He didn’t understand how, but she’d done it all the same. Every precaution he’d taken, every safeguard he’d put in place, every layer of protection had all come to naught. Short on time and options, Anya had struck at the one person he’d worked so hard to protect for the past 20 years.

  ‘Sir, I don’t—’

  Cain’s phone bleeped then, signalling that another caller was trying to get through. An unrecognized number.

  ‘Get to work, Kavanagh. I’ll call you back soon,’ he said, ending the call.

  Cain rolled his neck and exhaled, trying to calm his emotions and focus his mind. Then he hit receive call.

  ‘Cain.’

  ‘You know who this is,’ a female voice announced.

  Cain’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of Anya’s voice. After so many years of hunting her, pitting himself against her, wondering where she was and what she was planning next, he was at last speaking directly to her.

  ‘I had a feeling you’d call,’ he acknowledged. ‘Took longer than I’d expected.’

  He made no attempt to initiate a call trace, because he knew it would be a waste of time. Anya was too well prepared for that. She was almost certainly using an encrypted satellite phone that would take more time to locate than he had.

  And even if they could track her down, what then? The fact remained that Anya had his daughter, and was perhaps the most ruthless operative he’d ever come across. She could, and perhaps would, kill her before giving her up.

  ‘Then you know what I want.’

  ‘I can guess.’ There was no anger in his voice – just cold, hard resolve. ‘I have to hand it to you, Anya – you’re good. Even I didn’t think you’d stoop to this level.’

  ‘You left me no choice. You take something of mine, I take something of yours.’

  ‘You and your people came to Pakistan to kill me,’ he reminded her. ‘What was I supposed to do? Let you do it?’

  His question was met with a couple of seconds of ters
e silence. He knew his words had made an impact.

  ‘Be in Frankfurt, two days from now,’ she instructed. ‘I’ll call you at 10 a.m. on the morning of the exchange to give you more instructions. Have Drake there ready to speak on the phone, so I can confirm he is alive and unharmed.’

  Anya wanted him there in person for the exchange, and it wasn’t hard to surmise what she had in mind. She wanted him exposed and vulnerable, so she could finish what Drake had started in Pakistan.

  ‘You can’t win this,’ he warned her.

  ‘Just be there, Marcus.’

  ‘Even if you get Drake back, you’ll still lose.’

  He was expecting her to hang up abruptly without rising to the bait, but instead she offered a final parting remark. ‘You still don’t understand, do you?’ Anya asked, her voice laced with sadness. ‘We’ve both lost already.’

  Chapter 30

  ‘There’s got to be a hundred reasons I don’t blow you away right now,’ Alex growled as he stared down the sights of his automatic. ‘Right now I can’t think of a single one.’

  Holding the pose, he let out a sigh and laid the weapon down on the kitchen counter with an audible thunk, before regarding his reflection in the glass oven door. The face certainly didn’t look like it belonged to a ruthless kidnapper, or the sort of person who stood against the most powerful intelligence agency in the world. It was the face of a man out of his depth.

  A man charged with guarding a young woman who had no reason for being in her predicament, except the rotten luck of being born to the wrong father. A young woman he was going to have to speak to very soon.

  ‘Hi, my name’s Alex,’ he said, adopting a friendly, conversational tone as he imagined the encounter playing out. ‘I’m here to make your hostage experience as comfortable as possible, until we can figure out a way to give you back to your dad without getting murdered.’

  What the hell are you doing, Alex? he asked himself for what felt like the tenth time in the past 24 hours. He was neither a soldier nor a mercenary, not a spy or an assassin, and definitely not whatever the hell Anya was. And yet here he was.