I tried to smile, too. “Well, you would. But if meeting him will prove to you that he is who I say he is,and that you and Billman can trust him, then it’ll be worth it.”
“OK, I’ll meet him,” Christine conceded, getting up and heading toward the kitchen. “That’s all I want, Jason. When you tried to hide him away from me…” she let the sentence trail away. She was right; I hadn’t helped my situation at all.
“Just don’t let him charm you away from me,” I warned her. “He’s a bit of handsome devil.”
Christine laughed and looked as though she was about to say something, but she stopped herself before the words came out. What had she been about to say? That no one could tempt her away from me? I could only dream.
“I’ll phone him now,” I called after her, determined to show that I—and Warick—had nothing to hide. There was no response, but I could hear murmured French conversation from the kitchen. I could have used Christine and her knowledge of the local lingo when I bumped into that poor kitchen porter.
I used the secure line to call Warick, careful to make sure I didn’t break Billman’s rule about giving away the location of the safe house, and more careful than usual with my small talk, just in case I inadvertently gave away details I shouldn’t. I arranged to meet him the next day at 8am. There was no rush to meet tonight—we still had three days until the purported date of the next attack, and both Christine and I needed a good night’s sleep or we were going to be no use to the operation.
“Meet at my hotel again, old boy?” Warick offered. I paused. Was that the right move? Christine could see it as hostile territory.
“No, how about the main square?” I countered. I had come through that way on my route to the safe house, and I suggested a little bar in the corner that I had spotted. Warick agreed readily, which surprised me, and told me he was looking forward to meeting my pretty assistant.
“Not assistant, Adam,” I told him with a shake of my head. “She’s a fellow agent. Just like me.”
“Oh, of course. Promise I’ll be on my best behavior tomorrow, old boy.”
Christine came back into the room with a cup of coffee.
“It’s on for tomorrow,” I told her.
“Not tonight?” she asked quizzically
I shook my head. “I think we both need an early night.”
Christine took the back bedroom and made it very clear that she was sleeping alone. I trudged a little disconsolately into the smaller front bedroom. There was a new officer on duty downstairs, and he had spent an hour telling me about all the security measures the house had—motion sensors, pressure sensors, CCTV. I think he was trying to put my mind at rest so I could sleep well, but I was so exhausted I was sure I could sleep through a full armored assault. As soon as he let me go to my bed, of course.
About 2am, I heard the door to my room creak open and I sprang to attention, feeling under my pillow for my gun.
“It’s Christine,” a voice whispered, and I relaxed. “I can’t sleep.”
What did she want me to do? I was terrified of frightening her off, but, at the same time, I still wanted her just as much as I had on the plane, if not more.
“Do you want to get into bed with me?” I asked tentatively, and heard her come closer before she lifted the cover and slipped into the bed beside me. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt, but her legs were bare, and I felt myself break out into goosebumps every time our bare flesh touched.
“I just want a cuddle,” she told me sternly. It was the cutest thing I had ever heard in my life. I held her in my arms, spooning her gently from behind and planted a quiet kiss on her head. Once I heard her breathing slow and even the odd gentle snore, I knew she was safely asleep, and that I could allow myself to finally rest, too.
Chapter 13
Christine
I awoke alone, and heard the sound of voices downstairs. It must still be early, I thought, or Jason would have woken me for our meeting with Warick. I took a quick shower—hardly worth it, seeing as I was dressing in the same sweaty, dusty clothes as I had been wearing yesterday, but I felt better for it—and headed downstairs. The same officer who had been at the house the previous afternoon was there again, having brewed another pot of his excellent fresh coffee.
“Good morning,” Jason greeted me with a smile. He looked a little too pleased with himself. I hated myself for being weak last night and ending up in his bed, but at least I could be proud that I hadn’t weakened completely. It had been difficult to fight my urges when I was lying in his arms, and I couldn’t get what had happened on the plane off my mind until I had drifted off to sleep.
“Morning,” I replied, pouring myself a cup of coffee.
“Luc and I have been discussing the best route to the main square. The one that avoids the busiest and the quietest streets—we figure they’re going to be the most dangerous if whoever attacked us yesterday is still in town.
I nodded my agreement. “We’ll have to go soon, right?” I asked Luc, whose local knowledge we relied upon.
He checked his watch and gave a Gallic shrug, which I took to mean yes, unless we didn’t mind being late. I certainly didn’t want to be late; I didn’t want to give Warick any excuse to avoid meeting me.
I picked up my jacket and headed for the door, forcing Jason to trot after me.
“Au revoir!” he called to Luc and I cringed at his terrible accent.
Outside, I let Jason lead the way. To be fair, they did seem to have picked a good route. Mainly residential streets, with few high buildings that offered any kind of vantage point for snipers.
It became harder once we got into the older part of Antwerp, where the streets were packed closer together and where there was no shortage of dark alleyways where gunmen could lurk. We walked onto the main square and Jason had just turned to give me a smile as if to say, “we made it” when I heard the first gunshot.
His smile froze on his face, and the two of us automatically darted for cover into a nearby shop. I peered through the window and, with a sick twist of my stomach, saw that there were at least two people lying motionless on the ground. Those deaths were on us, I had time to think before I realized that Jason was calling my name.
As I turned to him, he threw me a handgun, which I caught awkwardly. I was trained in using weapons, of course, but I spent most of my time in intelligence and analysis. Public shootouts were not my forte.
“I got that for you from Luc,” Jason whispered. “Just in case.”
Just in case? Who wanders around with extra guns just in case? I began to wonder if he had suspected or even known that we were going to be attacked again. Warick maybe?
“Is this Warick?” I whispered as furiously as I dared. Jason’s response was to put his finger to his lips, which only infuriated me further, until I saw that he was pointing out into the square. The sniper had come down from his hiding place and was now standing in the middle of the abandoned square. He now held a handgun and was heading in our general direction, though it was clear from the way he was swinging his weapon from side to side that he wasn’t completely sure where we were hiding.
“Is this Warick?” I asked again more urgently. Jason looked at me, sadly.
“Christine, I know you don’t believe me, but this—” he gestured out of the window with his gun— “it can’t be him. I mean, I can believe he’d get secret information from contacts, but sending hitmen after CIA and MI5 agents? That’s the work of master criminals.”
“And he’s my friend,” Jason went on, keeping a cautious eye on the approaching gunman. “Why on earth would he put me in danger like this?”
“We need to split up,” I told him, putting the argument on the back burner temporarily.
Jason shook his head. “No way.”
“Yes, way,” I replied mockingly. “One gunman, two of us. We run out of here and head in separate directions, it’ll buy both of us time.” I paused. “And maybe he isn’t your friend? Have you thought of that?”
I was so angry I couldn’t even reply. We waited in silence as the gunman got closer.
“You go left, I’ll go right,” Jason said finally. “On my signal. And Warick is my friend.” He took a breath. “Now!”
Jason burst through the door and sprinted to the right, firing off a couple of rounds as he ran; I went left and did the same thing, though I was angry that he’d had to have the last word. There was the entrance to an alley just a few steps away that would get me into the back streets of the old town, and from there I could easily lose the gunman.
I suddenly felt a sting as a bullet grazed my arm, and I cried out in pain.
“Christine!” I heard Jason call.
“Flesh wound,” I managed to shout as I almost fell into the alley. “Keep going, Jason!”
I heard a few more gunshots, then everything went quiet. I crept down the alley I had entered and then back up another one which also opened onto the main square, so I could watch what was happening. There was no sign of Jason, but the gunman was still in the middle of the square, looking around hopelessly, like a toddler who had lost his mother.
We all heard the approach of sirens at the same time, and he darted off toward the far corner of the square. I checked my gun; Luc’s gun. Two bullets left. Enough for me to give chase to the gunman and find out once and for all who was behind all this? Absolutely.
For someone trying to evade detection by the authorities, the gunman made very little effort to keep himself hidden. He seemed to favor speed over secrecy, which suited me fine. Even with a bullet graze on my arm, I could outrun a guy in full sniper gear any time.
Once or twice, I had to duck into a doorway or the shade of a building when he looked around, but they were cursory checks, and it was clear that whoever this guy was, he hadn’t been trained in covert surveillance—or how to avoid it. That meant he wasn’t intelligence or former intelligence; unlikely even to be former military. The chances were, I was dealing with a common criminal who had somehow found himself going up in the world. I fancied my chances at outsmarting a bunch of street thugs. A few streets away from the square, he slowed to a walk and pulled off his balaclava. No wonder I had been able to keep up with him so easily; the guy was in his forties, maybe even his fifties. Glancing at the severe haircut, I wondered if he was ex-military after all, but he was certainly not in the kind of shape he had enjoyed in his youth.
With a last check around the street, which I avoided by hiding behind an advertising board, he ducked into the front door of a large but slightly ramshackle house. It had clearly once been something grand but had definitely seen better days. I began to doubt my own suspicions; did this look like the kind of place an elegant Brit like Adam Warick would choose for his hideaway?
Holding my gun in my uninjured, but weaker, arm, I slipped inside the same doorway and stood quietly, trying to get a feel for where I was in the house—and where he was. I could hear voices to the left, arguing. Probably the gunman and whoever was in charge. After all, things seemed to have gone a little pear shaped for this particular gang at the main square that morning.
I decided to try the other direction first. With all the police on the streets, they weren’t going anywhere for a while, but I wasn’t sure if I was in any fit state to take on two armed men.
I turned my phone onto silent and tried dialing Jason. Strength in numbers, I thought, and I was pretty sure I could direct him to the hideaway house. No answer. Had he been hurt? Or worse? I hung up, trying to slow my breathing. No time to think about that now.
There was a noise somewhere ahead. I lifted my gun cautiously. Not voices, though. Was that… was that someone crying? I moved a few steps closer. Yes, that was someone crying. Did they have someone held here?
I stepped into the room and saw possibly the most unlikely scene I could ever imagine. Ahmed Al-Farook, terrorist scourge of the western world, was lying alone on a stained and grimy mattress, tears rolling down his very unbearded face.
“Al-Farook?” I said softly. No response. I moved closer, and touched him gently on the arm. He jerked back from me as if my touch burned his skin.
This man was very sick, and now that I looked closer, and saw his dilated pupils and the waste around him, I realized just what was wrong.
Ahmed Al-Farook was out of his mind on heroin.
I couldn’t even begin to contemplate what was going on here. The only thing I did know for certain was that my hunch—all my hunches—had been correct. Al-Farook had been responsible for none of the atrocities that had been committed in his name. Ahmed Al-Farook probably wasn’t even was his real name. He had been used as a patsy; a convenient brown face to take the rap for a series of crimes. Crimes that we now had to look at all over again, given that Islamic extremism seemed to be a very unlikely motive.
I leant closer to him—the stench was horrendous. “Ahmed,” I said softly. “I’m here to get you out. Can you stand?”
He was trying to speak, but I couldn’t understand a word he said. I sat back on my heels, so that my eyes were level with his. “What are you saying?”
“Aquil,” he murmured. “My name’s Aquil.”
“OK, Aquil,” I said, as I tried to help him to his feet. “I’m Christine and I’m afraid I’ve got a bit of an injured arm, so it’d be great if you could try and help me out here so that I don’t have to pull you up by myself.”
Aquil stumbled to his feet. I tucked the gun in my pocket, and took out my phone instead, all the while moving him slowly and cautiously back the way I had come, and toward the exit. I could hear more voices now, and I had to check several doorways to make sure it was clear before we made it to the street. Jason was still not answering, but I didn’t have time to worry about him just yet. My priority had to be getting me and Aquil out of here safely, and figuring out what the hell had been going on.
I called Billman instead, who was thunderstruck by the garbled story I told her, but said she would arrange for Henri’s unit to get to me, if I could just manage to get a few streets away from the building. Of course, they would want to mount an assault on “Al-Farook’s” prison, but they didn’t want to alert whoever was inside by having armed police anywhere near the house until they needed to be there.
Aquil and I staggered like a couple of Saturday night drunks to the arranged pick-up point, and, within seconds, Henri himself had screeched to a halt and was helping to me to pull the most wanted man in the world into the back of his car.
Chapter 14
Jason
I woke to the sound of someone saying my name. Was it Christine? No, that wasn’t right. This was a male voice. Why was everything so hazy?
Finally, the clouds in front of my eyes began to clear and I saw Warick’s face looming out of the dark. Of course, it had been Warick’s voice! I must have been injured in the attack on the square, and then when Warick turned up for our meeting, he must have found me and brought me here to safety. Wherever we were. We seemed to be in some sort of castle—though it looked like it had seen much better days.
“Adam!” I gasped. “Thank God it’s you. Where am I? How did you find me? You didn’t get hurt by the gunman, did you?”
There was a brief look of confusion on Warick’s face before he started to laugh; a huge throaty guffaw which seemed entirely inappropriate in the circumstances. Now I was the one who was confused. What on earth was happening?
“It appears that our super spy still hasn’t worked things out, my boy,” he said to someone who stood to my left. I turned my head, and my spirits sank as I saw the gunman who had chased us from the square—minus his balaclava and his rifle, of course.
My blood ran cold. Had I really been so stupid? I hadn’t suspected for even a moment that Warick was anything other than my friend, and a useful contact. And how could I have defended this guy so vehemently to Christine? She had tried to tell me that there was something off abou
t Warick and I’d been blind. No, worse, I’d argued with her, told her she was wrong time and again. It was going to be difficult to ever look her in the eye again. Assuming I got out of here alive.
“It’s been you the whole time?” I asked quietly. He nodded, while lighting a cigarette, blowing the acrid smoke into my face. I tried to raise my hand to waft it away, quickly realizing that my hands were actually tied behind my back. I should have known.
“Yes, it’s been all my own work, dear boy,” Warick continued in his typical blustering and effusive manner, which I now suddenly realized wasn’t engaging and charming, but was actually arrogant and revolting. “Well, with a little help from my supporting cast,” he added, with a mock bow to the gunman, who replied with a laugh.
“And you Americans were only too happy to put the blame on some poor Muslim chap, weren’t you? I served up the story you expected to hear and you ate it all up—every last mouthful. You really are very easy to convince, you know. It’s almost as if you’re looking for terrorists on every street corner. I get the feeling you’d be disappointed if this ridiculous war on terror ever came to an end.”
My mind was racing. Not only had Christine been right about Warick; she had been right about Al-Farook, too. The guy had never been anything more than a scapegoat, and I had wasted years of my life chasing him. Chasing him while the real villain had been within my reach all this time. Jesus, he’d been in my home, drinking my coffee. Some agent I turned out to be.
“Who is he?” I asked. If I was going to be humiliated, I wanted to know every last detail about just how I’d been blindsided.
“Who?” Warick replied. “Oh, you mean your little nemesis, Al-Farook? Some actor chap from Morocco, believe it or not.” He laughed. “You know, I convinced him that first video we sent you was a screen test for a movie. Didn’t do a bad job either, did he? Pretty convincing, I thought. I told him I was going to fly him to the States and introduce him to some people, but he started getting fidgety, so, unfortunately, we had to abandon that little ruse. I decided to go for a plan that allowed me a bit more control in the end—heroin.” Warick winked at me.
Toxic Seduction (Romantic Secret Agents Series Book 3) Page 8
