Deception Game (2 page)

Whatever reaction he’d expected, it wasn’t the fit of laughter that suddenly overcame the man seated beside him. ‘And I’m supposed to just take you at your word on all this, right? Some random field agent contacts me out of the blue with wild stories of secret conspiracies and an offer to resurrect my career, and I just leap in with both feet and hope for the best?’ Hunt shook his head in disbelief. ‘Mr Drake, you’re still a young man, so I can forgive a little naiveté on your part, but what you’re asking is ridiculous.’

And yet, Drake couldn’t help but notice that Hunt had made no effort to defend Cain, or to warn him of the treasonous nature of his proposal. Taking his lack of reprimand as tacit acknowledgement that his accusations had merit, Drake pressed on.

‘You said you were willing to show a little faith.’

‘Faith and blind faith are two different things, son. So far you’re not giving me a hell of a lot to put my faith in.’

Drake couldn’t blame him for that. ‘I’m here. We both know you could have me arrested after everything I’ve said to you. But I came anyway because I’m willing to risk my life to bring that fucker down. I want to do that, but I can’t do it alone. I need people in positions of influence. People who still have the power to hurt him. People I can rely on. People like you.’

‘Very touching, but what makes you think you could trust me even if – and this is a big if – I agreed to help you?’ Hunt asked.

Drake nodded to the watch on Hunt’s left wrist. ‘That’s a nice watch. You were with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Division in Vietnam. Did two tours. Wounded at Khe Sanh while trying to rescue a squad that was cut off and surrounded, even though you’d been ordered to wait for support. Before that, you petitioned to bring charges against a fellow Marine for terrorizing Vietnamese civilians, even if it meant betraying one of your own.’

If it was important to know your enemy, it was even more so to know a potential friend, as Drake had learned through bitter experience. When he’d first conceived of this plan, he’d spent weeks learning every aspect of Hunt’s life and career, probing as deep as he could without being flagged by the Agency. By now he felt as if he knew the man as well as Hunt knew himself.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, the divisional director produced a handkerchief and used it to wipe the perspiration from his brow. ‘You’ve done your homework. Bravo. What’s your point?’

‘My point is that everything I’ve learned about you so far tells me you’re a good man. You’re ready to stand up for what’s right, and you’re not afraid to risk your own arse to do it. And the fact you still wear that watch tells me you haven’t forgotten that. That’s why I took the risk to contact you. That’s why you haven’t walked away, and I think that’s why you want to believe in me now.’

‘A good man,’ Hunt repeated, snorting in derision. ‘That’s a real nice sentiment, but those things happened a long time ago. Things were different then. There were rules to follow, a code of conduct, a line between right and wrong. Sure, we might step over it on occasion, but it was always there, no matter what.’

He sighed then. A weary sigh of a man fighting an unwinnable battle for far too long. ‘Then you get into...this line of work. And you realize the line you put so much faith in never really existed. It only existed in your mind, because
you
wanted to believe in it. You
needed
to believe in it. But all the belief in the world doesn’t make something true. The truth is, people can do just about anything they want and get away with it. All they need are three things – the will, the brains, and the right friends. And believe me, Marcus Cain has plenty of all three.’ He flashed a grim smile. ‘How do you think he became Deputy Director in the first place?’

Drake clenched his fists as he regarded the man seated beside him. ‘So he gets away with everything he’s done? Is that what you’re saying?’

Hunt shot him a piercing look, as if to remind him of who was the more senior here. ‘No, that’s what
you
’
re
saying.
I
’
m
saying that you don’t take on a man like Cain by making a few half-assed accusations and expecting the world to fall in line behind you.’

‘I don’t need the world behind me,’ Drake insisted. ‘But I do need you.’

‘To do what, exactly?’Again that weary smile. ‘Call the President and have him fire Cain this afternoon? Or maybe haul him up in front of a Congressional hearing, air all the dirty laundry in public?’

‘That would work for starters.’

‘I’m sure it would, but we both know that’s not going to happen. If anything at all is going to come of this, I need to know what you know. First, tell me what actual evidence you’ve got against Cain.’

‘Eyewitness testimonies. Field operatives and Agency personnel that have been coerced into silence by him. All of them are prepared to testify against him.’

‘Which means jack shit in situations like this,’ Hunt countered. ‘Witnesses can be discredited, blackmailed or just made to disappear. I need something real.’

Drake said nothing for several seconds, weighing up how much he could reveal, how much to risk. There was one final card he could play, but it was the kind that could only be played once. There was no telling what reaction it might provoke, but he sensed this was a critical moment. Hunt’s faith in him was wavering, his initial interest giving way to scepticism and doubt.

He had to offer something meaningful, and there was only one way to do that.

‘I’ve got Anya,’ he said at last.

That was when Hunt’s demeanour changed. Like a lucky punch delivered in a losing fight, the tide seemed to turn at that moment. ‘She’s still alive?’ he asked, his voice hushed.

Drake nodded.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he breathed, letting out a long sigh. ‘Where is she?’

Drake gave him a look that made it plain he wasn’t going to give such information away to a man he’d just met, no matter how good his character appeared to be. In any case, he couldn’t tell Hunt even if he’d wanted to. Anya was a ghost, appearing where and when it served her purpose, and vanishing into the shadows when it didn’t. She might have been an ally, but only on her own terms.

‘Point taken,’ Hunt conceded. ‘But will she help?’

Drake glanced away, running a hand through his hair. ‘She wants to see Cain go down as much as we do.’

‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘She’ll help,’ Drake assured him.

Hunt regarded him in thoughtful silence for a few moments. ‘Let’s say you’re right; that everything you’ve told me is true and that I should trust your word. Even you must understand that it’s not about whether you’re right or wrong, it’s about who’s willing to
say
you’re right. Who’s willing to stand by you, and who's willing to stand by Cain. Who knows they stand to lose so much if he goes down that they’ll do everything in their power, take any risk, to stop it happening, because they know that if his lies and secrets are exposed to the world, theirs will be too.’

Drake had heard such dire warnings before. ‘I know Cain’s got friends in the Agency—’

‘I’m not talking about the Agency,’ Hunt cut in. ‘I’m not talking about Congress or the Pentagon or the White House, or any other building you care to mention.’

‘So what
are
you talking about?’

‘Wake up, Mr Drake. The real power in this country doesn’t lie in buildings that give guided tours, or men who have to answer to oversight committees or voter groups. The real decision makers are the ones you
can
’
t
see, that you don’t know about because that’s exactly how they choose to make it. They’re the ones who stand to lose the most if Cain goes down, and they’re the ones who’ll do anything it takes to stop it from happening.’

Drake was silent for a moment, searching for a diplomatic way of saying what was on his mind. He was rapidly tiring of the game Hunt seemed to be playing. He’d come here to enlist this man’s help, not to listen to riddles and innuendo.

‘So who are these people?’

‘One step at a time, Mr Drake,’ Hunt cautioned him. ‘Even I don’t know all of them, and I’m certainly not dumb enough to tell you the few I do know. But they’re the people who will fight hardest to stop Cain going down, and they’re the people we should both be extremely afraid of.’

Drake looked at him. ‘And yet, you’re still here.’

‘I am,’ he admitted. ‘Because despite everything, despite all the compromises and the little bits of myself I’ve had to give away over the years, I still remember that line in the sand. I believe...no, I
want
to believe it’s still there. And I think you do too.’ He rose to his feet with the deliberate effort that his age and build demanded. ‘Find me something I can use. Then we’ll talk, Mr Drake. For now, that’s the best I can offer you.’

Drake sighed and nodded, recognizing Hunt’s offer for what it was. He had an ally, a reluctant one who wasn’t ready to risk his own neck just yet, but an ally all the same. It certainly wasn’t everything he’d hoped for, but it was the best he was going to get.

For now, it would have to suffice.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Drake promised, slipping his sunglasses back on.

United Kingdom – 1 May

Freya Shaw blinked her eyes open, her mind returning to awareness.

She was lying on her side in the cargo compartment of a small van. There were no windows that she could see. The sides and floor were simple metal; thin outer panels bolted onto steel reinforcing ribs, interspersed with small holes for latching bungee cords or other devices to stop things rolling around. A single electric light burned overhead; harsh and bright and relentless.

It was obviously a well-used vehicle. The paintwork on the walls had been dented and scratched in countless places by heavy jostling cargo, exposing the dull gleam of bare metal beneath. The floor was covered with dried mud, discarded cigarette butts and pieces of paper that had long since decayed into dried, yellowed pulp. Rust was taking hold in places, slowly eating away at the vehicle’s frame like a cancer.

But for all the van’s unkempt condition, her captor had clearly taken care to leave nothing in the cargo compartment that could aid a possible escape attempt. No sharp pieces of metal that could slice through the plasticuffs, no tools that could be used as improvized weapons, nothing.

Another hard jolt, this one violent enough to slam her head painfully against the floor. Reluctant to take another pounding, she managed to get her feet beneath her and forced herself up into a sitting position, bracing her back against the side of the van. Each jolting movement seemed to reverberate down her spine, but it was better than being knocked unconscious again.

She flicked her tongue over her lower lip, tasting blood. The left side of her face was throbbing with the dull pain of bruising where she’d been struck by a heavy object. That was the last thing she remembered before darkness had engulfed her.

She closed her eyes for a moment, letting out a silent cry of frustration and fear and impotent anger. She could guess where all this was leading, could anticipate the end that was coming for her, and knew there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

With a final shuddering lurch, the van halted. The rough growl of the engine ceased a moment later, and the light went out, plunging the cabin into darkness.

Trying to still her wildly beating heart, Freya held her breath and strained to listen. She could hear footsteps outside, and the jangle of keys being removed from a pocket. With a click, a lock was disengaged and the rear doors swung open on creaking hinges. Cool night air rushed in, and she could feel moisture on her exposed skin.

A dark figure clambered up into the cabin and strong hands grabbed her under her armpits, hauling her to her feet. She could do little to resist as she was forced out of the van and into the waiting darkness beyond.

They had halted in a patch of waste ground; Freya knew that right away, from the towering walls of an old factory in the distance, broken concrete crumbling away to expose rusted steel reinforcing rods beneath. Gravel and loose stones crunched beneath her feet as she was led down a slope away from the van. The ground was treacherous, and she briefly lost her footing as the stones beneath her gave way, only for her captor to pull her upright.

‘It doesn’t have to be this way, you know. You don’t have to do this. I’m worth more to you alive,’ she said, knowing how futile and pathetic her words must have sounded. How many times had her captor heard those same words, uttered by desperate men and women in the final moments of their lives?

At the bottom of the slope, dark muddy water glimmered in the faint moonlight. Rainwater that had collected over time in the depression. A yank at her arm brought her to a halt about half way down.

‘Get on your knees,’ a cold, clinical voice instructed her.

Freya swallowed hard, knowing what was coming. She’d known the moment she’d awoken in that van. This was where she’d been brought to die.

For a moment she caught herself wondering who would eventually find her body out here. A labourer on his way to work? A kid out playing with friends? Some guy taking his dog for a walk?

She knew it was ludicrous to be thinking of such things, yet she couldn’t stop herself. She had faced danger more than once in what had been a long and eventful life, had even seen death up close and personal, yet for all those experiences she never could have imagined such an end for herself.

Dying out here in some muddy hole in the ground, unmarked, unknown, uncared for. It didn’t seem real. It was a dream, a nightmare, a feverish imagining conjured up by a restless mind.

‘No,’ she said, forcing the word out through gritted teeth even as her heart thundered in her chest. ‘I won’t.’

Yanking her arm free, Freya turned around to face her adversary, eyes gleaming with defiance. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of putting a bullet through her head from behind.

‘You look me in the eye, you coward,’ she said, staring right at them. ‘Look me in the eye when you pull the trigger.’

If she’d expected her words to strike a chord, to engender some kind of reaction, she was to be disappointed. A second came and went. A second broken only by the sigh of the evening breeze, and distant hoot of an owl, and the hammering of Freya’s heart.

‘You shouldn’t have come looking for me.’

She saw the barrel of a weapon raised, saw the long snout of a silencer gleaming in the thin sliver of moonlight.

Freya let out a breath. ‘Of all the people, I never—’

A 9mm slug passing through her chest silenced that sentence before she had a chance to complete it. She let out a strangled gasp, as if in surprise, then fell backward and collapsed to the ground, her body skidding down the rocky slope until it came to rest in the pool of stagnant water.

As darkness closed in around her, Freya’s last thought was one of simple, heartfelt regret.

Ryan, I’m sorry.

George Washington University Hospital, Virginia

Like most people, Drake had no great love of hospitals. He’d spent more than his share of time in them over the course of his career, having been wounded numerous times in the line of duty, and had few pleasant memories of those stays.

Today however he was here not for himself, but for a friend.

‘You know, it doesn’t matter how much plastic surgery you get,’ he said, pasting on some fake joviality as he entered the private room. ‘You’ll always be an ugly bastard.’

Dan Franklin, the current head of the Agency’s Special Activities Division, and a man Drake had long considered a close friend, was sitting upright in the bed, propped up by several pillows while he flicked idly through the channels of the wall-mounted TV opposite. He looked about as bored and listless as a man could be, and yet seemed to perk up immediately on Drake’s arrival.

‘Well, shit. And here was me thinking how much I’d kill for some intelligent conversation. Be sure to send someone in when you leave, okay?’

He was grinning at the playful banter, but Drake could see the pain etched into his features. It seemed to have become a constant companion of his in recent years, and the toll it was taking was becoming harder to ignore.

‘I’ll do that.’ Reaching into the plastic bag he’d brought with him, Drake laid some issues of
Time
and
Newsweek
on the bedside table. ‘Here, this should keep you going for a while. Now, there’s some big words in there, so if you get stuck, be sure to call one of the nurses to help you.’

Franklin made a face. ‘Wasn’t planning on being here that long.’

Pulling up a chair, Drake sat down opposite him.

‘Seriously, though, how are you doing, mate?’ he asked, surveying his friend honestly for the first time in a long time. He’d aged noticeably, Drake realized almost in surprise. Franklin was only a few years older than himself, but he looked at least a decade more. There were lines around the corners of his mouth and eyes that hadn’t been there a just a few short years ago, his dark blonde hair now had faint streaks of silver at the sides, and recent weight-loss had left his face looking sallow and gaunt.

He shrugged with grim resignation. ‘The consultants came in today. Apparently I have the vertebrae of a 90-year-old with arthritis. They’re recommending spinal-fusion surgery.’

Drake felt his heart sink. The two of them had once served together in Afghanistan. Both young, both strong and ambitious and competitive, until a roadside bomb had ended Franklin’s military career. Shrapnel embedded in his spine had required hours of surgery and months of difficult rehab, and left him in near-constant pain that had worsened noticeably in recent years.

Proud to the last and weary of rehabilitation, he’d refused further medical intervention until the bitter end. Only when he’d started experiencing numbness in his legs and difficulty walking had he finally ceded to the inevitable and sought treatment.

‘Will that fix it?’ he asked, knowing how stupid and simplistic such a question must have sounded, as if the human body were a car engine in which one could just swap out defective parts.

Franklin gave him a weary smile. ‘Maybe. That’s what they told me – maybe. Then again, it could also leave me paralysed from the chest down. Either way, I’d be out of action with the Agency for weeks, if not months.’

At this, Drake actually let out a laugh. ‘Dan, the free world will survive without you for a few weeks. If that’s what you’re worried about, put it out of your head right now.’

‘And where will that leave you?’ Franklin asked, lowering his voice. ‘We both know the deal here. If I’m laid up in a hospital bed, I can’t protect you.’

Drake was all too aware that the man sitting before him was about the only thing that had kept Cain from having him assassinated these past couple of years. The deal he had struck not to reveal Cain’s part in the hijacking of American drones and the subsequent murder of innocent civilians had maintained an uneasy status quo. But both parties were starting to realize that this truce couldn’t last forever.

And if something happened to Franklin, it wouldn’t take long for the sword to fall.

Leaning in closer, Drake looked his friend hard in the eye. ‘Mate, I want you to listen to me very carefully. This isn’t about me now. This isn’t about the Agency or Cain or any of that other stuff – this is about you. You’re hurting, I can see that, and you need help. You can’t go on like this. So get yourself sorted out before it’s too late, for God sake. We’ll deal with the rest later.’

Franklin swallowed and looked away for a moment. ‘That’s not the only reason, Ryan,’ he admitted. ‘Ever since this happened, I feel like I’ve been living on borrowed time, like there was a bomb ticking away inside me and every day I’ve been waiting for it to go off. Now we’re down to it, I’m...scared shitless. Not of dying, but living as a cripple, pissing into a bag for the rest of my life, having people pity me. I can’t live like that. I don’t...I don’t have what it takes to make it through that.’

Drake felt terrible for his friend. He shared some of the man’s apprehension of what lay ahead, felt his frustration at watching his physical abilities slowly dwindle. And beneath it all, he felt something else. Guilt. Guilt that it had happened to Franklin and not him. Guilt that it had been his friend’s Humvee that had triggered that roadside bomb. Guilt that Franklin had put off this surgery for so long out of loyalty and duty, when Drake had done so little for him in return.

What could he possibly say to the man? If it were him, would he have the courage to go through with surgery that could leave him paralysed for life? What reassurance could he offer?

‘You deserve your life back, mate,’ he said at last. ‘If this is your best – your only – chance to get it, then there’s no choice to make, is there?’

Franklin held his gaze for a long moment, as if still wrestling with the matter in his mind. Then, reluctantly, he reached for the magazines that Drake had brought him.

‘Let’s see what crap you brought,’ he conceded, his voice carrying an undertone of grim determination. ‘Might need it if I’m going to be here a while.’

Drake was in a less than jovial mood when he returned to his home in Fairfax just west of central DC later that evening, having stopped off to buy a crate of beer and enough burgers, steaks and sausages to feed a small army; which in reality was pretty much what he was about to do.

A busy day at Langley followed by his visit to Franklin’s hospital room had left him running late, and as he pulled into his driveway he let out a sigh of exasperation at the sight of two cars and a motorbike already parked up in front of his house.

‘Shit.’

There was no sign of the drivers, and for a moment he wondered if his teammates had decided to bin the whole thing and head to the nearest bar instead. However, as soon as he killed the engine and stepped out into the evening air, the sound of music blaring from the back yard told him they had decided to start the party of their own accord.

Grabbing the beers from the passenger seat and piling the pre-packed food awkwardly on top, Drake hurried around the side of the house, nudging open the side gate with his foot.

Sure enough, Cole Mason, Samantha McKnight and Keira Frost were already in the unkempt square of grass that he called a back yard, armed with drinks of their own. The rear door of the house was wide open, the hi-fi from his kitchen resting awkwardly on a chair with a power cord trailing back inside.

‘Well, look who decided to show up!’ Mason said when he spotted Drake. He held his beer up in a mock salute. ‘Good of you to arrive late for your own party, man. I was getting ready to order take-out.’

‘I was getting ready to raid your fridge,’ Frost chipped in.

‘Looks like you already started,’ Drake said, glancing at the beer she’d apparently helped herself to. ‘I don’t remember giving you a key.’

The young woman shrugged, entirely unconcerned. ‘It’s our job to break into places. As far as it goes, yours was pretty easy. You should get someone to look into that.’ She downed a mouthful of beer as if to emphasize her point. ‘By the way, your music collection sucks. Had to resort to the radio.’

Drake cocked his head, listening to the Black Eyed Peas blaring out. ‘This what the kids are listening to these days?’ he asked with a wry grin.