Betrayal (61 page)

All things considered it was a desolate, remote patch of wilderness, easily 10 miles from the nearest town. Anya had chosen it especially for what she’d planned.

Returning to the rear of the vehicle, she unlocked the trunk and swung the lid upwards. Surovsky lay within, bound and gagged, his knees drawn up to his chest. He looked up at her, his eyes glimmering with a mixture of fear and malice.

Saying nothing, Anya grabbed him by his arms and hauled him out, struggling a little with his weight. He wasn’t big or heavy – his body was withered and diminished by age – but his awkward shape made him difficult to move.

He groaned in pain as he landed on the hard frozen ground, his injured leg absorbing the impact. Reaching into her pocket, Anya produced a flick knife whose blade she had sharpened to a razor’s edge, and used it to slice through the ropes binding his wrists and ankles. Taking a step back, she folded the knife away and reached for the M1911 inside her jacket.

‘Get up, Viktor,’ she said, her voice low and commanding. ‘Get up.’

Slowly stretching out his stiff, aching limbs, Surovsky planted his feet on the snow-covered ground and with some effort managed to rise.

Anya gestured northwards. ‘Now walk.’

With a resigned sigh, Surovsky turned and started to walk slowly away from the vehicle, stumbling through depressions and clumps of snow-covered grass that would bloom with life again in a few months. Anya followed a few paces behind, keeping her weapon trained on him.

‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘I told you once that you were capable of great things, and you proved me right today. You exceeded all my expectations. You were always my favourite, Anya.’

She said nothing. She was immune to such feeble attempts at flattery.

‘I never had children of my own,’ he went on, keeping his back to her. ‘In our line of work … there was little room for family. But when I met you, I felt as if I’d found a daughter. I cared for you like you were my own flesh and blood. Did you ever feel that way about me?’

Still Anya said nothing, just as she had taught herself to do all those years ago in that interrogation room in Afghanistan. But a part of her, a very small part that she hadn’t consciously acknowledged for a long time, that she had buried beneath layers of hate and anger, knew the answer to his question.

‘I know you lost your parents when you were still a child. I know you had no family to call your own. That you were alone, scared, angry, and lost.’

He stopped walking then, turned to face her. Somehow he had changed, had cast aside the bitterness and avaricious lust for power that had consumed him all these years. Despite the quarter of a century that separated them, he looked now like the kindly, patient man who had walked into that assessment room and spoken to her with such disarming respect.

And despite herself, despite all the pain and loss he had inflicted on her, despite everything, a tiny part of Anya’s mind responded to it.

‘I tried to give some of that back to you. I tried to be what you needed me to be, and I thought in some way you understood that.’ He swallowed and looked away. ‘That was why it hurt so much when I caught you in Afghanistan. To see you working for the Americans, knowing you’d turned your back on your country, on me … It was more than I could bear. I’m … I’m sorry, Anya. About everything.’

He was good. She had to give it to him. Of all the men she had known in her life, Viktor Surovsky was the only one who could lie convincingly to her. Perhaps because he had spent so much of his life telling lies, even he no longer recognised the distinction between reality and the warped, perverted version of events he concocted to suit his own needs, to justify his own desires.

But Anya did. She knew a truth that she had never revealed to him.

‘I never told you why I turned, did I?’

He frowned, caught off guard by the question. ‘No, you didn’t.’

No, she didn’t. Not when he tortured her, when he ordered her beaten, starved, humiliated, raped. Not even then had she told him why.

She took a breath. And just like that, she let go of it; let go of that tiny part of her mind that still felt something for this man, that still held on to the hope that he was a guide, a light in the darkness of her life.

‘My parents never died in a car accident,’ she said, all trace of emotion purged from her. ‘They were executed for “crimes against the State”, because they dared to believe their country would one day be free. They were executed by
you
, Viktor. That was why you found me all those years later. It wasn’t just random chance – you knew who I was, and you knew where I came from because
you
made it happen. You took me under your wing for … what? To assuage a guilty conscience? Or just to tie up another loose end?’

Surovsky stared at her, dumbfounded. He had no answers for her, no rehearsed lies or contingencies to fall back on. She didn’t care – she didn’t want to listen to whatever perverted justifications he might dream up.

‘You took everything from me, everything and everyone I ever cared about. You destroyed my life, killed the person I once was, and the person I could have been. You even tried to kill me. But you failed, Viktor. You couldn’t kill me.’

Surovsky’s mask of fatherly kindness had vanished, thrown aside now that he knew it could serve no purpose. There could be no coming back from this. He glared at her like the enemy she was, his face hard and grim in the moonlight, his grey eyes smouldering.

‘So what now, Anya?’ he asked. ‘You brought me all the way out here to take your revenge. Well, here I am.’ He raised his hands. ‘An unarmed old man – quite an opponent for someone like you. Take your shot. Kill me and get it over with. I’m not afraid to die.’

Anya let out a breath, watching as it misted in the frigid air around her.

‘You still don’t understand, do you? I’m not going to kill you,’ she said truthfully. ‘That’s your choice now.’

Raising the M1911, she levelled it at his right knee and pulled the trigger. There was a flash, a loud crack that echoed across the vast empty steppes, and Surovsky’s leg buckled beneath him. He went down, screaming in pain and clutching the shattered remains of his knee joint.

‘You bitch!’ he cried, flecks of saliva flying from his mouth. His eyes were wild with fear, pain and impotent fury. ‘You fucking bitch.’

Anya said nothing, instead cocking her head to listen as another sound drifted across the night air. A high-pitched, almost otherworldly howl, soon joined by others. A wolf pack, alerted by the sudden noise and the smell of blood on the air.

She smiled. She had chosen this spot carefully indeed, making sure it was well within the territory of a large pack. She had always found such predators fascinating, and had spent much time throughout her life observing their behaviour.

‘They sound hungry,’ she remarked. ‘Did you know that wolves can smell blood from nearly four kilometres away? I’d say you have five, maybe six minutes before they track you down. I wouldn’t want to be here when they arrive. But like I said, I came here to give you a choice.’

Reaching into her jacket, Anya withdrew a second pistol, a Makarov PPM, and tossed it on to the ground in front of him.

‘There’s one round in the chamber, Viktor. The rest is up to you.’

Teeth bared in hatred, the old man snatched up the weapon, levelled it at her and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger. His effort, however, was rewarded with nothing but a harmless click as the firing pin struck a dud round.

Anya sighed as if in disappointment. ‘Like I said, I gave you a choice. If you really had tried to take your own life, I would have given you a live round to finish the job.’ She looked at him a moment longer, no emotion in her eyes, not even disgust. She felt nothing for him now. ‘Goodbye, Viktor.’

With that, she turned and started back towards the jeep.

‘Anya, wait!’ he yelled after her, trying to crawl in pursuit. ‘You can’t leave me out here! You can’t do this!’

She no longer heard him. She kept her back straight, her chin up as she walked away, every step carrying her further from him. In the distance, but closer than before, she heard wolf song. A pack of hunters closing in on their prey.

‘Anya! You bitch!’ he screamed in desperation. ‘Anya!’

Clambering up into the driver’s seat, Anya calmly started the engine, eased off the clutch and swung the vehicle in a wide arc before driving away. She didn’t look back.

Washington, DC, 31 December 2008

‘I’ll have one more,’ Drake said, pushing his empty whisky glass across the bar, oblivious to the music and revelry going on all around him. With about twenty minutes left of 2008, the world was busy celebrating the start of a new year.

In DC in particular the excitement was palpable. They had a new president and a new administration to look forward to next year. Barack Obama, the first Democrat in nine years and the first black president in history, would be taking office in just a few weeks.

Drake, however, was in less of a celebratory mood as he reflected on the events of the past couple of weeks. Anya was gone, his own position within the Agency was more tenuous than ever, and Surovsky had mysteriously vanished after the fallout from the Beslan scandal, apparently never to answer for his crimes. He might have been stripped of his power and authority, and pursued by several international tribunals, but he’d still get to live out the remainder of his life as a free man. Everything they had risked their lives for had come to nothing.

As for Drake himself, he could at least feel good that he’d finally made peace with Samantha. More than that, in fact. She was a far better person than he deserved in his life, yet somehow in the midst of all this chaos and danger they had found each other. He couldn’t say where things were heading for the two of them, but right now that was all right with him. That was a question for the year ahead.

She had invited him to see in the New Year with her, and as much as he wanted to, he’d known he would be poor company tonight. For him, tonight was about remembering what had been rather than celebrating what was, and what might be.

In truth, he found it hard to see the way ahead now. He would carry on living as he had for the past eighteen months – with a sword balanced over his head, waiting for that day, that inevitable moment when his luck finally ran out.

The barman eyed him dubiously for a moment. Drake had already knocked back three whiskies in the past ten minutes and showed no signs of slowing down, but what the hell, they were busy and it was New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t going to waste time cautioning him to take it easy.

Drake was just handing over the money for drink number four when he felt someone bump into him from behind. He heard a giggling laugh and a slurred apology before his new friend shoved her way past.

Almost without thinking Drake reached into his back pocket, checking his wallet hadn’t been lifted. After everything that had happened over the past week or two, being pickpocketed would truly be a perfect way to cap it off.

His wallet was still there. And so was something else: a small folded slip of paper that hadn’t been there when he left his house. Frowning, he lifted it out and unfolded it.

Scrawled across it in bold, flowing handwriting was a simple message.

Jefferson Memorial, north side. 10 minutes.

Drake could feel his heart beating faster the moment he took in the message, and immediately whirled around, his eyes searching the crowded bar for the woman who had bumped into him. The place was heaving with men and women of all ages. None of them stood out.

Turning back to the bar, he caught the barman’s eye and beckoned him over.

‘Hey, you see a woman bump into me a few seconds ago?’

‘It’s New Year’s Eve, buddy. People come and go. You want something else?’ he asked impatiently, eyeing the dozen or so other customers vying for his attention.

Drake looked down at his drink, then at the note. He thought he recognised the handwriting from a similar incident in Kabul several months previously, yet his logical mind cautioned him that it couldn’t be who he thought it was. It just couldn’t.

Yet unaccountably, he found himself smiling.

‘No. Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘Thanks, mate.’

Abandoning the drink and the bar, he pushed his way through the crowds of revellers, ignoring the occasional irritated stare, and hurried outside.

The rendezvous was about half a mile away, on the other side of the Potomac. An easy five-minute run on any normal day, but not tonight. And he had a feeling his friend wouldn’t stick around if he was late.

Located on the south shore of the Tidal Basin and well away from the iconic monuments of the National Mall, the Jefferson Memorial building is one of the lesser-known landmarks of the nation’s capital. A neoclassical dome set on circular marble steps and supported by stone columns, it is nonetheless an impressive structure dedicated to the third president of the United States.

Drake had run past it many times during his morning exercise, though usually under more favourable circumstances. He arrived there nine minutes after leaving the bar, tired and breathless after the short run through the busy streets of DC.

In stark contrast to the crowds thronging the streets near the Capitol Building and Lincoln Memorial, there weren’t more than a couple of dozen people in the area, some within the open building but most walking through the stands of Japanese cherry trees that had been planted all around it.

Coming to a halt at the base of the steps on the north side of the building, he paused near the dark, shimmering waters of the Tidal Basin. The view of central DC was impressive to say the least, but he wasn’t here to sightsee.

He looked at the people nearby, his eyes flitting from face to face, desperately seeking the one he wanted. Most of them were couples, hoping to see in the New Year in a romantic setting. None of them looked familiar.

The seconds ticked by and still no obvious candidates presented themselves.

He began to feel a sickening moment of doubt, wondering if this was nothing but an elaborate prank made credible only by his imagination and desperate desire to believe it. Was he really that foolish?