Something to Die For

by Will Jordan

  ‘You have something to tell me,’ Anya prompted him, as if she could read his thoughts. ‘Don’t be afraid, Alex.’

  ‘You sure you want to hear it?’

  ‘Holding it back won’t change it. I would rather know.’

  He moved up beside her. ‘They’re pinning Cain’s death on you. The Agency, the FBI… they’re coming after you with everything they have.’

  ‘I expected as much,’ the woman said grimly. ‘Starke knows I’m a threat. He will mobilise every available resource to find me.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ Alex went on. ‘The Israelis have picked up on it, too. They’ve tied it to Russo’s murder. Not to mention the Pakistanis and the Russians…’

  Her list of enemies was growing by the day. Anya might well have carved a path of blood and death halfway across the world in her search for answers, but there were always repercussions.

  Anya flashed a thin, brittle smile. ‘It seems the whole world wants me dead.’

  There was a weary kind of resignation in her voice, as if she’d always known it would come to this. As if she’d accepted the price she would pay before her mission even began.

  ‘I could stall them,’ Alex offered weakly. ‘Create false leads, direct them away, but…’

  He couldn’t bring himself to say it. They both knew Alex’s efforts would only delay the inevitable. Even someone like Anya, who could appear and disappear like a ghost, couldn’t hope to escape all the world’s major intelligence agencies. Sooner or later they would find her.

  She was looking out across the waters of the bay now, her hair lifted by the breeze as she took it all in, contemplating the tumultuous past that had brought her here, and the future that lay ahead. Considering her position and coming to one unavoidable conclusion.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Anya said gently. ‘You’ve done enough. I can ask no more of you, Alex.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘You did everything I asked of you. There is nothing more to be done.’ She turned to look at him. ‘I release you from our agreement.’

  ‘But you need me,’ Alex argued, refusing to accept it. ‘There’s still—’

  Anya held up a hand. ‘It’s all right, Alex,’ she said, her voice calm and understanding. She knew why he was protesting, why he was fighting against it, but she also knew it would do no good. ‘You have done your part. The rest is up to me now.’

  She was saying goodbye, he realised. She had come here to bid him farewell. She was set on her course now. And seeing the sad, resolute look on her face, Alex knew he’d never see Anya again.

  He glanced away, unable to meet her eye. It was then that he felt her hand laid on his.

  ‘You know, you are probably the closest thing to a friend I have left, Alex,’ she admitted. ‘You are a good man. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad to have known you.’

  Alex couldn’t help himself. Though they had rarely shown much affection towards one another, he did so now. Reaching out, he pulled her close and hugged her. He couldn’t begin to explain how deeply she had changed him, how grateful he was to her, but perhaps it didn’t matter now. Perhaps she understood.

  ‘Live your life,’ she said, letting go of him. ‘Live it well. Don’t waste it like I did.’

  His throat was tight, his voice strained when he spoke. ‘Where will you go now?’

  Anya swallowed and looked out to sea again, her thoughts turned inward, her mind reflecting on a different time. A different life.

  ‘Home.’

  Part Five

  Something to Die For

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  Alfred Tennyson

  Chapter 64

  Havana, Cuba – May 3rd, 2011

  Situated on the northern coast of Cuba, the city of Havana was one of the most vibrantly unique settlements anywhere on earth. Even half a century of communist rule, poverty and economic strangulation had failed to dampen the character and culture of the place.

  And given that it was a non-extradition country barely a hundred miles from the southern tip of Florida, with a diverse population and a heavy reliance on tourism, it had seemed like a good location for Drake and his team to rest and regroup while they planned their next move.

  Not that there were many options left. Cain and the Circle might be gone now, but a new and equally ruthless enemy had arisen to replace them. Richard Starke was moving swiftly to turn the full weight of the world’s intelligence services against them, leaving them with few places to hide and even fewer ways of striking back.

  The man was untouchable, unreachable, unbeatable.

  As for Anya, she had vanished two days ago. Even now, Drake remained deeply conflicted about her. So much had changed in just one night, so many truths he’d clung to had been exposed as lies, he wondered if he would ever feel sure of anything again.

  These thoughts weighed heavily on Drake as he made his way back to the group’s low-rent apartment in one of Havana’s less affluent districts that night, making use of the network of small, narrow roads and side streets.

  Scooters and mopeds zipped past trailing dirty grey exhaust smoke. Occasionally a car would rattle by, some ancient machine older than Drake, painstakingly repaired and maintained. Trade embargoes meant that few modern cars made it onto the market, forcing locals to resort to ever more creative ways of keeping old vehicles running.

  He couldn’t say exactly when he realised he was being followed. Perhaps some intuition told him someone had been watching him a little longer than necessary. Perhaps he’d heard the sound of the same shoes on the cobbled street too many times.

  But whatever it was, Drake’s mind quickly switched gears, abandoning his gloomy introspection and flipping into survival mode. He gave little outward sign of this, walking with the same unhurried pace as before, but his eyes now darted back and forth, taking in every detail of his environment, looking for options and threats.

  The road split in three up ahead, with a big apartment block jutting out into the intersection like the prow of a ship. One branch of the road veered right, climbing steeply uphill, while the other two went left, sloping gently downward towards the city’s harbour area.

  Drake took the right fork, ducking into a side alley the moment he was out of sight. Drawing his concealed Browning automatic, he waited, silent and unmoving, for his pursuer to come for him.

  Sure enough, a few seconds later he heard shoes on the sidewalk, coming up fast. Waiting until they were passing by the entrance to the alley, Drake leapt out, clamped a hand over his target’s mouth and pulled him into the waiting shadows.

  ‘Wait!’ a panicked voice cried as Drake pressed the automatic into his neck. ‘It’s me, Ryan!’

  Drake drew back a little, surprised by his unlikely pursuer. ‘Alex?’

  Yanking the man forward into the light, he stared at the young computer hacker recruited by Anya. Drake hadn’t seen the man since their mission in Afghanistan, and in truth, had never expected to lay eyes on him again.

  ‘This how you greet all your friends?’ Alex asked, recovering some of his composure.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Drake retorted. ‘How did you find me?’

  Alex shook his head. ‘I didn’t, I found Frost. She’s not all that hard to track. I’ve been wandering all over the fucking city looking for you. It was sheer bloody luck I spotted you tonight.’

  ‘That’s how you found us, not why,’ Drake reminded him.

  Straightening his already crumpled shirt, Alex glanced around at their less-than-auspicious surroundings. The smell of rotting garbage hung heavy in the air.

  ‘I came to talk to you,’ he explained. ‘Is there… somewhere else we can go?’

  Ten minutes later, the t
wo men had found a table at an outdoor bar – one of many in Old Havana – facing out onto a small courtyard ringed by palm trees. A weathered stone fountain stood in the centre of the square, just about managing to put out a trickle of water.

  The place was busy, the air filled with the strains of live music, laughter and excited chatter in half a dozen languages. But Drake’s focus was less on the nightlife than on the young man seated opposite.

  ‘We’re here. Talk,’ Drake instructed him.

  Alex took a gulp of his tequila, marshalling his thoughts. ‘After we left Afghanistan a few months ago, Anya reached out to me with a job offer; finding intel on people, hacking security systems, that sort of thing. The short version is that I was with her right up until a few days ago in Washington. She met up with me after… what happened that night.’

  ‘Go on,’ Drake pressed.

  Alex looked up from his drink, his expression bereft. ‘She did it to say goodbye, Ryan. She said there was nothing more I could do.’

  ‘Any idea where she went?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Alex took another drink. ‘She said she was going home.’

  Drake’s mind rushed back to a night several years earlier, when Anya had finally opened up to him, sharing some of the details of her early life; one of which was that she’d grown up in the Baltic state of Lithuania.

  ‘So why come to me with this?’

  Alex swallowed, his voice grave. ‘Because I think she’s going there to die.’

  Drake wasn’t a man who could be easily rattled, but the finality, the depth of feeling in Alex’s voice was enough to send a chill of foreboding through him.

  ‘Anya’s a survivor. She always has been,’ he countered. ‘She doesn’t need my help or anyone else’s. Maybe she never did.’

  Alex shook his head. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see the look in her eyes. She looked… beaten. Like she’d given up.’

  Drake said nothing to that. Anya possessed a near-indomitable spirit that had carried her through every challenge, hardship and adversity life could throw at her. And until now, he had firmly believed she would never surrender, no matter how dire her circumstances.

  Until now.

  ‘I want to help her, but I can’t do this alone. I wouldn’t know how to find her. And even if I did, I can’t protect her from what’s coming. But you can,’ Alex went on. ‘Look, I know you’ve had your… differences.’

  ‘That what you’d call it?’ Drake remarked scathingly. ‘She killed my mother, Alex. Three of my teammates are dead. Three people I’d have given my life for. That’s more than just a fucking “difference”.’

  Suddenly Alex slammed his fist down so hard on the table that it knocked over his glass, causing some of the nearby patrons to look their way in alarm, wondering if a fight was about to break out. Even Drake took notice.

  ‘Take it easy, son,’ he warned.

  ‘She never gave up on you,’ the young man said, forcing himself to calm. ‘Even after everything that happened, she couldn’t bring herself to let you go.’ Leaning over the table, he looked at Drake imploringly. ‘Please, Ryan… don’t let it end this way.’

  Drake leaned back in his chair, saying nothing.

  Chapter 65

  Frankfurt, Germany

  Anya was almost at the end of her long journey now. A journey that had taken her from Israel to Pakistan to America, and finally back to the land of her birth. The place where she would make her last stand.

  But there was one thing still to do. One last person she had to find. Not for revenge this time, not for information or assistance, but for something more personal.

  She found him on his customary route home, knowing that he often took a minor detour through Grüneburgpark to relax after a busy day, sometimes buying chocolate from one of the small cafes in the area.

  She could feel her heart beating faster as he approached at a leisurely pace. Anya kept to the shade of some trees and bushes that overhung the public footpath, blending into the natural cover as she’d been trained to do. He was just passing her when she at last found the courage to speak up.

  ‘Yasin,’ she said softly, emerging from her hiding place.

  The young man froze, startled by the voice. Even more startled by the owner. But he didn’t turn around. Instead she heard a faint exhalation, saw his shoulders drop a little, his head lower.

  ‘You found me,’ he said. His voice was deeper now, she realised. A young man’s voice; not the boy she’d once known.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I…’ Anya swallowed, searching for the right words. ‘I hoped we could talk.’

  At last he turned to face her, taking in her appearance for the first time in nearly a year. Anya did the same, marvelling at the change that had come over him in so short a time. When she’d first met him, Yasin had been a street thief, living homeless in the slums of Pakistan’s largest city. Barely twelve years old, skinny, malnourished and unwashed, he’d broken into their makeshift base of operations and tried to steal valuable equipment, forcing Anya to subdue him.

  However, he’d eventually proven to be an invaluable ally, saving her life when the team’s mission had gone horribly wrong. She’d taken him with her to Europe, where he had again demonstrated remarkable loyalty and resourcefulness.

  But hers was no life for a young boy, no matter how brave and cunning, and after successfully rescuing Drake and his team, she had forced Yasin to surrender himself to the German authorities, knowing they would give him the care and protection she couldn’t.

  That had been almost a year ago.

  Things had changed since then, she realised now. The skinny, underdeveloped frame had filled out. His once shaggy, unwashed hair was now neatly cut, his face assuming the more definite, masculine lines of maturity. She thought she even saw sparse hair along his jawline. The boy she’d known was becoming a man.

  And she had missed it all. She felt an odd sensation of loss at that.

  ‘Fine,’ he conceded gruffly. ‘Let’s talk.’

  A few minutes later, they were walking together through the pleasant parkland in uncomfortable silence, oblivious to the children playing and the families walking nearby. Anya could almost feel the resentment radiating from the youth at her side.

  ‘You look well,’ she began awkwardly. When he didn’t respond, she added, ‘Your new family. They… take care of you?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  That hurt more than she’d expected. ‘I care, Yasin.’

  ‘Is that why you left me, just like everyone else?’ Yasin shot back, bristling with hostility. ‘Threw me away when you had no more use for me?’

  Turning to face him, Anya gripped him firmly by the shoulder and looked him in the eye. He was almost as tall as her now, and she knew he would soon surpass her.

  ‘You know why I left you.’ There was a harder edge in her voice now. She had tried to be patient with him, but now she needed him to understand. ‘Where I was going… it was no place for you.’

  ‘I would have come anyway,’ he countered stoutly, but this time she could hear the hurt in his voice. The pain of being abandoned.

  Anya sighed. ‘I know. And if you had, you would have gotten hurt or killed. I couldn’t live with myself if that happened. And if not, eventually you would have ended up just like me.’ She shook her head. ‘That is no life worth living, believe me. You deserved better than that. You deserved a future. That is something I can’t give you.’

  He seemed to catch the deeper meaning behind her words. Anya saw the anger start to give way to something else – fear and dawning comprehension.

  ‘Why did you come here today? Why now, after all this time?’

  Anya glanced away, taking in their pleasant, peaceful surroundings. The people out walking without a care in the world. She had never known such a life. She never would.

  ‘Things haven’t worked out as I hoped,’ she admitted. ‘I have to go away now, and… I don�
�t know if I can come back. But I wanted to see you first.’

  ‘To say goodbye?’

  ‘To say thank you,’ she amended, turning to look at the young man again. ‘For helping me see what’s really important.’

  She saw his throat tighten as her meaning sank in, saw him struggling with his emotions. It was a good few seconds before he trusted himself to speak.

  ‘My foster family, they… they are good people,’ he managed to say. ‘Fair. Trusting. They have been kind to me.’

  That was enough for Anya. She pulled Yasin close and hugged him tight in a final embrace, squeezing her eyes shut to hide her tears.

  Chapter 66

  CIA Headquarters, Langley

  Resting his elbows on his desk, Dan Franklin lowered his head and rubbed his eyes, which were dry and red from fatigue. He hadn’t gone home in the past two days, had barely slept, and had certainly had no time to devote his mind to anything except the work.

  The hunt for Cain’s killers was still in full swing, now including not just the CIA and FBI, but foreign intelligence services as well. The Pakistanis, responding to the assassination of their own intelligence director just a few days prior, not to mention the unsanctioned raid on Bin Laden’s compound in their territory, were up in arms about it.

  The Israelis, too, were on the hunt for the killer of one of their high-ranking intelligence officers, and were convinced that Anya was responsible. Even the Russians now saw it as an excuse to take revenge for the murder of Viktor Surovsky three years ago, and were already making noises about possible retaliation.

  Everyone was clamouring for answers, but Franklin had none to give them. Both Drake and Anya had, for now at least, disappeared. And the constant demands of the job were taking their toll on him.

  He looked up at the sound of knocking on his door.

  ‘Come,’ he called, rallying what patience and stamina he had left.

  When the door opened, however, it wasn’t some divisional leader come to report in, or a government representative demanding something he couldn’t give.