Black List (9 page)

‘Get back in the car,’ she instructed, turning away without waiting for him. ‘We have a long night ahead of us.’

There it was – a lifeline. It was tenuous and unpredictable, but it was a chance. A chance to fix this, to put right his mistake. A chance to stay alive.

Alex scrambled to his feet even as she fired up the engine once more. Never in his life had he been so relieved to climb into a car.

I’m not proud of the fact that I was on my knees begging for mercy, but there you have it. No matter how bad you might feel about your life, no matter how hopeless it all seems, when someone’s waving a gun in your face you’ll say and do just about anything to stay alive. Including making promises you’ve got no idea if you can keep.

I was clutching at straws, and I knew it. My life was spiralling out of control so fast that I hadn’t even had time to realize how bad things were. Only a day earlier I’d been a nobody – just some anonymous sales assistant with a rubbish car, no girlfriend and no prospects. Now I was a wanted criminal, with some very dangerous people hunting me, and an even more dangerous woman by my side.

Talk about a rock and a hard place…

Alex couldn’t say how long he’d spent in that car with the woman who had saved his life, then very nearly ended it. Another man in his position might have been terrified, wondering whether she might change her mind and kill him anyway, yet strangely no such fear stirred in him. Perhaps he’d exhausted his quota of fear tonight.

And exhaustion was the word that best described his state of mind. After the panic of his capture and the ordeal of his interrogation, the elation of his escape and the sudden terror of his near-execution at the hands of his saviour, it was as if his mind simply couldn’t process anything more. The steady hum of the car’s engine, the vibration of its movement along the tarmac road and the occasional flash of oncoming headlights had all combined with sheer physical fatigue to induce an almost dreamlike state.

With a kind of absent-minded detachment, Alex watched signposts for Luton, Northampton and then Leicester drift by outside the window. They weren’t driving down any of the big motorways that crisscrossed the area, but were instead sticking to smaller country roads. The kind that saw less traffic and therefore had fewer, if any, surveillance cameras.

His companion had said nothing since the resumption of their journey; she just sat there, one hand on the wheel, the other on the weapon resting by her thigh. But there was a tension in the set of her shoulders that belied her lack of movement, an intensity in her beautiful but hard features that spoke of a highly focussed mind never wavering for a moment. Her eyes were constantly checking the rear-view mirror, and he could guess why.

He wasn’t sure whether she was his captor or his protector at that moment, yet somehow he felt safer with her than he would have with a dozen armed police officers. Who was this woman? This strange, dangerous, frightening and compelling woman who had come into his life like a force of nature, destroying everything in her path? What kind of life had turned her from a normal, unassuming person like himself into this… machine sitting opposite him?

Sensing his eyes on her, she glanced around. ‘You have something to say.’

As far as conversation-starters went, he’d heard better. Clearly she wasn’t one for small-talk; as if he needed further confirmation. ‘You saved my life tonight, then you almost killed me. I don’t even know your name.’

‘That’s right,’ she agreed. ‘You don’t.’

Alex sighed. ‘Well, it’s going to be an awkward journey if I don’t have 
something 
to call you.’

She said nothing to this for some time. Whether she was weighing up his words or simply choosing to ignore him, he couldn’t tell. But he was smart enough not to press the issue. Trying to cajole the information out of her seemed like a waste of time.

‘My name is Anya,’ she said at last.

‘Is that your real name?’

She looked at him, her eyes glimmering dangerously in the glow of the dashboard lights, but said nothing.

‘Fine, forget that one. Where are we going?’ he asked. He was aware that his own voice sounded leaden, as if it was an effort to form each syllable.

‘As soon as the Agency realize you escaped, they will lock down all airports, railway stations and shipping terminals nationwide. Once they have you contained, they’ll use every resource at their disposal to hunt you down. Your name will be on the Most Wanted lists of every major law-enforcement agency worldwide within a matter of hours. We have to get you out before that happens.’

So surreal did that statement sound to a man whose name had never even been mentioned in a local newspaper that Alex actually snorted in amusement. ‘And to think, my career advisor said I’d never achieve anything.’

The look on her face made it clear she wasn’t impressed by his attempt at humour. ‘I’d take this a little more seriously if I were you. We were lucky tonight – we caught them unprepared and off-guard, but they won’t make the same mistake again. You are a target now, Alex. Whatever life you once had, it’s over. Your friends and family, your home, possessions, bank accounts… they’re all gone. The people now hunting you have the resources of the world’s most powerful intelligence agency at their disposal, and believe me when I say they’ll use them. They will never stop looking for you, no matter how far you run and how well you cover your tracks. Whenever you think you’re safe, you’re not. Whenever you stay in one place too long, they will find you. And whenever you allow your guard to drop, it will be the last mistake you ever make.’

Alex swallowed hard, staring right at her as if expecting her to erupt into laughter after such a speech. But she didn’t. Her eyes remained on the road ahead, her expression one of focussed concentration and, perhaps, a touch of grim acceptance.

‘You make it sound like I’m already dead,’ he said, hoping she would take that statement for what it was and offer a few consoling words. Some shred of hope that would at least keep him going.

Only then did her eyes meet his. Fleeting, momentary, as if he was worth only an instant of her time. ‘You might as well be, unless you learn fast. Learn how to run, to keep moving, to never trust anyone. Survival is what matters now. If you think I am your friend because I saved your life, you’re very wrong. I will do what I can to protect you, until you get what I need. After that, you’re on your own.’

And there it was. Never had Alex been brought back down to reality with such crushing, absolute force. She was no more his saviour than he was hers. He was a tool to be used until it had served its purpose. After that, why should she care?

‘Why did you rescue me?’ he asked, almost resentful now.

Anya was silent for a time, her eyes never leaving the road. He began to wonder if she was ignoring his question.

‘I believed you could help,’ she finally said. ‘For your sake, I hope I wasn’t wrong.’

It was by now early evening in Virginia, the sun drifting down through a warm, hazy sky and glistening off the waters of the Potomac. The day shift at Langley were mostly heading home for the night, finishing up after a long day while their night-shift comrades took over their stations.

Marcus Cain however had no intention of leaving. He was holed up in his expansive office on the top floor of the New Headquarters Building, staring absently out the windows without really seeing anything. His restless thoughts were turned inward, pondering events three thousand miles away in London, and what they meant for him.

A disavowed Agency ID had started all of this; an identity belonging to a woman Cain had once known all too well. A woman so well acquainted with the Agency’s inner workings, power struggles and dark secrets that she now represented a threat to its very foundations.

Anya.

Two years ago he’d arranged for her to escape the Russian prison she’d been languishing in, believing he could manipulate her into doing what she did best – killing the men he deemed to be enemies. Anya, always the faithful soldier, had once again exceeded his expectations and cut a bloody path through those who posed a threat to him.

But now the game had changed. Now she was coming after him. How and when it would happen, he didn’t know. All he knew was that sooner or later she would make her move, and it seemed it had started today.

Whatever involvement the young man called Alex Yates might have in this, Cain was quite certain that Anya was behind it. And he intended to learn everything Yates had to say about it.

Absently he reached for the glass of malt whisky on his desk, holding it up to the light of the setting sun. Glenlivet, thirty years old. Not easy to come by these days. The single bottle he kept in his office was worth nearly $700. At the rate he’d been getting through it lately, he didn’t imagine his investment would last much longer.

For a moment he caught himself wondering how many nights he’d stayed late in this gilded cage, the bottle his only companion. How many nights had he sat in this chair, endlessly replaying the decisions, the mistakes, the compromises and the betrayals that had led Anya and himself down this path? How had it come to this?

They had been friends once. More than friends, in fact. Much more.

Almost from the first moment he’d met her two decades earlier, he had sensed something special in the wild, beautiful, fearless young woman. He’d felt a bond, a kinship that he’d never experienced with anyone else on this earth before or since. With her, there had been no questions, no doubts, no fear. He had felt like he could do anything.

The two of them could have achieved incredible things together, could have defeated any enemy and overcome any obstacle, yet here they now were. Bitter enemies, locked in a battle that only one of them could emerge from.

The only question was who would prevail.

His dark thoughts were interrupted as his cell phone started ringing. His private cell phone whose number was known only to a select few. In this case Tom Holloway, the divisional director of all Agency resources in the United Kingdom. The man Cain had personally charged with organizing Yates’s clandestine interrogation.

Leaving the whisky, Cain hit the button to receive the call.

‘What do you have, Tom?’

There was a pause. The uncomfortable silence of a man preparing to deliver bad news. ‘Sir, I’m afraid we have a problem.’

Cain’s jaw tightened. ‘What kind of problem?’

‘The field team we sent to interrogate Yates…’ Holloway sighed. ‘They didn’t report in, sir. We sent in additional field teams, and…’

‘Go on.’

‘They’re dead, sir. All of them. And there’s no sign of the prisoner.’

Letting out a breath, Cain closed his eyes, mastering his temper with difficulty. Anya it seemed had made her next move with typical ruthless precision, and now they’d lost their only lead.

‘I thought I told you to secure the prisoner for interrogation, Mr Holloway. I was very specific about that,’ he said, his voice dangerously cold.

‘With respect, you also specified that it had to be done discreetly, sir,’ Holloway reminded him. ‘A small team, no witnesses, no records.’

Reaching out, Cain picked up his glass of whisky, watching as the sun glimmered through its amber-coloured contents, then tipped it back and swallowed a generous mouthful. He had made a mistake today, and he knew it. He’d underestimated Yates’s value, had entrusted an important task to men who were clearly not worthy of it. And as a result he’d allowed Anya to regain the initiative.

It was a mistake he couldn’t afford to make again.

‘We’re putting together a team now to hunt for Yates,’ Holloway said, as if such an effort had any chance of success. ‘We’ll find him, sir.’

Cain let out a breath as the whisky lit a fire in his stomach, his anger abating slightly as his mind rapidly assessed the situation. This might have been a setback, but it was one that presented its own advantages.

By risking so much to recover Yates, Anya had tipped her hand to him. Yates was important to her, which meant she couldn’t afford to lose him. He was a weakness that Cain might just be able to exploit.

But first he needed someone he could rely on. Someone to take charge of the situation. Someone who knew what Anya was capable of, and how to beat her.

‘Don’t trouble yourself, Holloway,’ he said, pouring himself another glass. ‘I’m sending someone to help you.’

In 1988, graduate student Robert T. Morris, Jr. of Cornell University launches a worm on the government's ARPANET system. The worm spreads to 6,000 networked computers, clogging government and university systems. Morris is dismissed from Cornell, sentenced to three years probation, and fined $10,000.

I dream.

The same dream I’ve had many times before. A lifetime of memories to pick from, and yet my subconscious chooses to relive this one particular moment again and again.

I’m ten years old. It’s a Saturday afternoon in April. It’s been raining all morning, as it often does at this time of year, leaving me and all the other kids stranded in homes full of washing machines and shopping bags and DIY projects that’ll never get finished. But finally around lunchtime the rain eased up, and now the sun’s shining through gaps in the cloud.

That’s good enough for me. I’m out the door before my father can set a curfew or my mother can give me errands to run. I’m free as only a 10-year-old boy without a care in the world can be, and I’m on my way to the park to see who fancies a game of football. Nobody bothers calling each other to organize such things; we all just instinctively head there like geese migrating south in winter. We can’t explain it because we don’t need to. Everyone just knows.

Sure enough, one of my friends is there already. Binyamin, or ‘Ben’ as he prefers people to call him. His parents are from Pakistan. I know, because he once showed me Pakistan on the globe at school. The 
old one where some of the countries have names that are different from today.

I like Ben. He’s smart, he can draw better than anyone I know, and he always seems to know the right thing to say to make people laugh. But there’s something else about him; a kind of sadness that I don’t understand. But I can feel it beneath the surface, like a stone at the bottom of a pond. I asked him once why his parents left Pakistan to come to Britain, and I think the sadness came up to the surface then. He said bad things happened there, and they didn’t like to talk about it. So I never did.

But Ben isn’t alone at the park. There are three others boys around him, closing around in a circle with him in the centre, trapping him. I know them well enough, especially the biggest of the three.

Richard Gilmore.

Every year, every class had to have a bad apple. It was inevitable. Some kid that started out a little angrier, a little more needy and domineering than the rest. Just a minor difference, a tiny divergence that got bigger and bigger as time passed. And Richard Gilmore was our bad apple.

He’d always disliked Ben. I can’t really say how or why it started. Maybe it was because Ben’s dark skin and hair marked him out as different, or maybe because he got attention by making people laugh and warm to him, whereas Richard had to do it through force and fear. But whatever the reason, that dislike had gradually turned into real hatred over the years, and lately he’d added a new word to the mix – Paki.

The very word sounded dirty and unpleasant, conjuring up all kinds of images of strange men glowering at you in dimly lit shops; the kind that could never be trusted, that your parents warned you never to speak to but wouldn’t say why.

He’s using it now, hurling it at Ben while his friends look on and laugh, enjoying the show. But Ben is standing his ground, refusing to rise to it, refusing to let Richard provoke him.

Richard senses it too, and it doesn’t take long for the verbal assault to turn physical as he shoves Ben backward, closing the gap before the smaller boy can regain his balance. He shoves him again, sending him staggering into one of his friends who quickly pushes him back toward Richard, wiping his hands on his jeans as if they’ve been tainted somehow.

It’s at this moment that Ben spots me. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t call to me or beckon me over. But I can see the look in his eyes as plain as day. Hope, relief, gratitude at seeing one of his friends. Someone who 
will come to his aid, who will wade into the fray without fear or hesitation, who 
will help him teach Richard Gilmore a lesson he won’t forget.

I’d love to say that’s exactly what happens, but it doesn’t.

What happens is that I stop, turn slowly around and walk away even as Richard throws the first punch and his friends cheer him on. Ben, outnumbered and frightened, stands his ground and refuses to go down, at least until he can’t stand any longer. He takes a good kicking that day – the first of many. And I walk away without a scratch.

I don’t even have the good grace to feel guilt or remorse. All I feel is relief.

Relief that it isn’t happening to me.

Relief that I’m safe.

Alex awoke with a start, his breath coming in gasps, his eyes streaming in the harsh light shining right at him. He made to sit up straight, but suddenly something jerked him backward, forcing him into his seat.

In a moment of wild panic, he was seized by the terrifying notion that he’d never escaped from the farm the night before, that everything that had happened over the past several hours was nothing but a feverish dream conjured up by his tortured, desperate mind as his captors went to work with that sledgehammer.

‘Calm down,’ a female voice said, and he felt a hand on his arm. Warm, firm and somehow reassuring. ‘You’re awake, Alex.’

Closing his eyes for a moment, Alex exhaled and drew in a deep breath, trying to calm his frantic mind that had jolted awake so suddenly.

Strangely, he could no longer hear the sound of the car’s engine, nor feel its movement. All he could hear was the distant sound of waves crashing against a shore and the occasional screech of a seagull overhead.

Opening his eyes, he looked around to find Anya sitting in the driver’s seat, silhouetted against a backdrop of scattered cloud and open sea. She had changed clothes at some point while he’d been asleep, discarding the military-patterned assault gear in favour of jeans, a dark blue jumper and a casual jacket. With her hair neatly combed and her gaze as alert as ever, she gave little outward sign that she’d been driving all night long.

‘You were talking in your sleep,’ she remarked, a hint of curiosity showing in her icy blue eyes. ‘Bad dreams?’

‘My whole life is a bad dream at the moment,’ he evaded, as he surveyed their surroundings.

They were parked at the edge of a wide harbour area, around which were moored vessels of all kinds; from small yachts and pleasure craft up to large commercial fishing trawlers, all bobbing on the undulating waves stirred up by a fair breeze. The sun was just rising above the horizon, its blinding rays reflecting off the whitecaps and making his eyes water.

The place was clearly still in use, yet the harbour itself appeared quite neglected. Grass and bushes grew uncontrolled along the boundary of the property, weeds trailed over rusted winches and cranes once used for lowering boats into the water, while many of the giant stone blocks that formed the harbour wall had begun to give way under the relentless assault of time and tide.

‘Where are we?’ Alex asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He was hungry and thirsty, his tongue felt like a carpet stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he was increasingly aware of the need to urinate.

‘An estuary on the east coast of Scotland,’ she replied, either unwilling or unable to elaborate. ‘Come on, follow me.’

Without waiting for him, she pushed open her door and stepped outside, tucking the gun down the back of her jeans. With little option, Alex followed a moment later.

Whatever vestiges of sleep still clung to him were quickly whipped away by the cool fresh breeze that blew across the exposed harbour area, carrying with it the distinctive tang of salt and seaweed. Clad only in a thin t-shirt and a hoodie that was still damp from the soaking last night, Alex suppressed a shiver as the chill breeze seemed to penetrate to his core. He might have been enjoying the sultry warmth of spring in London a few days ago, but this was like a different world.

Wrapping his arms around his chest, he followed Anya as she strode along the harbour wall, her keen eyes scanning the rows of docked craft.

He had to admit there was a certain logic to her plan. If the airports, railway stations and ferry terminals were indeed on the lookout for him, it made sense to use a private boat to make their escape. Then again, the last time he’d been out on the open sea was a ferry trip to the Isle of Wight as a teenager, and he’d spent half the journey throwing his guts up.

Up ahead, Anya came to a halt, apparently having found what she was looking for. Straight away Alex’s heart sank when he saw the object of her interest.

He’d been hoping for a high-powered luxury yacht to ferry him to safety. Instead he found himself looking down on an old, rusted and neglected fishing trawler, perhaps thirty-five feet in length, its deck cluttered with everything from old car tyres to spare planking and empty pots and pans. The paint on its high prow was peeling to such an extent that it was difficult to tell what colour the vessel had originally been.

The wheelhouse, resembling a squat garden shed, was positioned at the stern, with a large hatch in the centre of the deck leading down to what Alex presumed was the cargo hold.

‘Wow, what a beast,’ he remarked sarcastically. ‘Yours?’

She glanced at him. ‘Not exactly.’

With that, she leapt down from the quayside and landed nimbly on the deck, heading straight for the wheelhouse. The door was secured with nothing more sophisticated than a small padlock, which she made short work of with a few good strikes from the butt of the handgun.

‘Jump down, Alex,’ she called, beckoning him to join her. ‘I need your help.’

Alex looked around. There were a few houses overlooking the harbour – mostly newer villas that had probably been sold at inflated prices on account on the sea views they commanded – but at such an early hour there were no obvious signs of activity. However, that didn’t mean nobody was watching.

‘The longer you stand there, the more suspicious you look,’ Anya prompted, sensing his hesitation.

‘Fuck it,’ Alex sighed, resigning himself to the inevitable.

Waiting until the boat’s rocking motion carried it as close to the harbour wall as possible, he took a deep breath and leapt down, landing harder than he’d intended on the unyielding deck. Ignoring the twinge of pain in his knees, he forced himself up and limped over to the wheelhouse.

The inside was little better than the deck area, the old-fashioned engine console cluttered with yellowed newspapers, tobacco tins, empty bottles, paintbrushes and a hundred other bits of assorted junk that Alex had no interest in examining further. The air smelled of damp and dust and wood varnish.

Beyond the grimy windows, the deck sloped upwards to what looked like a ridiculously high bow. There were no indicator lights on any of the machines, no power of any kind, for that matter. More than likely the vessel was semi-derelict, and would sit idle at its mooring until the hull planking finally gave way and it sank.

‘The engine start switch is here,’ Anya explained, pointing to simple red knob on the console. ‘When I call out to you, turn it clockwise and hold it down for at least five seconds. Understand?’

‘There must be a dozen boats here that are less likely to sink than this heap of shit,’ he felt compelled to point out. ‘If we really have to steal 
something
, why not one of them?’

‘Because this boat has not been used in a long time,’ she explained, speaking with the long-suffering patience of a school teacher dealing with a dim student. ‘It will be days or weeks before the owner reports it stolen. Now, be ready.’

Saying nothing further, she opened the hatch in the floor leading to what he assumed was the engine room, and clambered down. It was too dark for him to see what she was up to down there, but he heard several metallic clangs echoing from the depths.

‘The hull is still sound, and there’s some power left in the batteries,’ she called out. ‘Turn the switch!’

‘Aye aye, captain,’ he mumbled, turning the red knob.

Sure enough, an ancient starter motor turned over down below, sluggish and laboured at first but gradually gaining traction. The main engine coughed once, then twice, seemed to falter for a few moments, and then finally came to life with a rattling, gear-grating roar. It was rough and unrefined, and had no doubt seen far better days, but at least it sounded willing to go one more round.

Anya was back up in the wheelhouse within moments, her hands smeared with grease and dirt. Moving him aside, she took over at the wheel and quickly scanned the few gauges on the console, pushing a loose strand of blonde hair back from her face as she did so.

‘There should be enough fuel to make it.’ Satisfied that things were running as they should, she nodded to Alex. ‘Go outside and cast off the mooring lines. Quickly.’

And so it was back outside into the fitful breeze and chill morning air as he hurried across the deck, struggling to untie the heavy lines that kept the trawler moored in place. It was no easy task. The ropes were swollen with moisture and encrusted with salt, and his hands were more accustomed to dancing across a keyboard than heavy manual work like this. Still, after a lot of grunting and swearing, the first line slipped free. The second came more easily, partly because it wasn’t secured as tightly and partly because he was starting to get the hang of the awkward procedure.

As soon as the vessel was free, his companion wasted no time throttling up the engine. The old boat shuddered with increased power and grey smoke vented from the small funnel atop the wheelhouse, but sure enough they began to make headway through the choppy waters.

As the harbour walls slipped past and the prow swung out towards the main channel, a thoroughly chilled Alex hurried back into the wheelhouse and closed the door behind him, grateful to be out of the wind.

Anya was at the wheel, her eyes forward as she steered them through the harbour entrance into the open channel beyond. As she’d said, this was an open estuary of some kind, with the opposite shore visible about a mile distant; mostly trees and farmland interspersed with small coastal villages.

Ahead of them, a pair of massive road and railway bridges spanned the widening channel leading out to sea, and straight away Alex recognized the distinctive red cantilever structure of the Forth Rail Bridge. Now well over a century old, it was still the only rail link across the estuary, carrying commuters to and from the capital city, Edinburgh.