by Rob Sinclair
‘I need to get to Lena Belenov,’ Evans said.
Medvedev stopped and turned to face Evans, who stopped too.
‘Impossible,’ he said.
‘Impossible for you or for me?’
‘Impossible for you.’
Medvedev began his slow walk again and Evans followed.
‘But surely someone’s spoken to her? I need to find out what happened to her.’
‘It’s too difficult right now. Even for me.’
‘Even for you? I’m not sure how that could be true for someone in your position.’
‘It’s hard to explain. I’ve never seen the FSB like this. There’s just so much confusion right now. Trust is a word that doesn’t really exist anymore. Every move, every conversation is being scrutinised. And the FSB … we’ve lost many agents over the last few days. All because of one man.’
‘Carl Logan.’
‘Yes. He’s still the focus, as I’m sure you can imagine. They’ll … we’ll do anything to capture him again.’
‘The FSB aren’t the only ones on his back, that’s for sure. So what’s happening now? What are your leads?’
‘The whole FSB is on lockdown,’ Medvedev said. ‘The SVR too,’ he added, referring to Russia’s external intelligence agency.
‘I’m not sure I understand why,’ Evans said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Why isn’t this just a simple manhunt?’
‘It seems Lena Belenov wasn’t entirely forthcoming about her dealings with your people. At the moment, nobody knows just what deals were struck by whom. Or what damage might have been done.’
‘They could ask her.’
‘They have. But everyone is keeping tight-lipped. At least with me. And whatever answers she’s given probably don’t carry much weight. Like I said, trust is a word that doesn’t exist anymore.’
Alarm bells were ringing in Evans’s mind at Medvedev’s unusually vague answers. Evans knew that Lena Belenov had been central in the dealings between the JIA and the FSB over Logan’s release. He also knew that somewhere along the line the CIA had become involved in those negotiations. From there had sprung the catalogue of events that had led to Mackie being executed and Logan going on a gung-ho rampage to rescue Angela Grainger from under the noses of the Russians.
So Evans could understand why the FSB and SVR would be on high alert. But there was clearly more at play than this simply being the Russians out to track down Carl Logan.
What worried Evans most was that Medvedev was being so cagey as to exactly what was happening, what information they’d got from Belenov, and the theories and leads the Russians were now working on. Evans couldn’t believe that such a senior agent as Medvedev would be so completely in the dark.
Just how much did Medvedev know that he wasn’t telling?
‘Who killed Charles McCabe?’ Evans asked.
‘I don’t know. Not the FSB. We had no reason to.’
‘And not Carl Logan?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Which doesn’t leave many other options.’
Medvedev’s clear response surprised Evans. The picture of exactly who had killed Mackie and why was certainly muddy. Although Logan had initially been the prime suspect, and officially, at least, still was, Evans had got the impression from his talks with Winter and now Medvedev that all sides were now coming to a different conclusion. And Evans knew Medvedev was, rightly or wrongly, pointing the finger at the Americans. The CIA.
‘But why?’ Evans said.
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’
‘And what about Carl Logan? Where is he now?’
‘You’re asking me? He’s your agent, isn’t he?’
‘At the moment, we’re not quite sure about that. And he’s in your country. He escaped your custody.’
Medvedev winced at Evans’s words and then sighed.
‘We were tracking him. Him and the girl, Angela Grainger. But they’ve gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘They were both chipped, but the last we saw of either of them was a few hundred miles from Volgograd.’
‘What happened?’
‘We had a car following them. But when our people took a chance and confronted them, Logan and Grainger attacked them. They got away.’
The situation was a complete mess. Logan was highly trained, sure, but was it really so hard to capture one man? Or were the FSB playing their own little game here? Maybe Logan really was an asset of the Russians now and they were simply protecting their man. There seemed so many possibilities and yet none of them made full sense.
‘You said they were chipped?’ Evans queried.
‘We had a second surveillance vehicle a few hours behind the first. When they eventually caught up with the signal from the chips, the team were following a flatbed truck past Volgograd. We found the tracking chips in the back of the lorry. There was no sign of Logan or Grainger.’
Evans shook his head at the cheap trick. He’d like to think the JIA wouldn’t have so easily let Logan get away. And yet, he supposed, if what Medvedev was saying were true, the Russians had at least been following them. The JIA had literally no clue as to Logan’s movements.
‘And since then?’
‘Nothing.’
Evans wasn’t sure what to believe. Medvedev definitely knew more than he was letting on. Which worried Evans. Because the Russian agent was supposed to be his asset.
‘He’s running,’ Evans said, more to himself than to Medvedev.
There were only a small number of possibilities of where Logan was running to, given his last known location and where he had started. One thing Evans knew with confidence: by now, Logan was no longer in Russia.
After walking in silence for a few strides, Evans looked down at his wristwatch. The time was seven minutes past eleven. They were nearly upon the next bridge along the riverfront – the Bogdan Khmelnitsky footbridge, a unique glass-covered walkway across the Moskva River.
‘I’ll carry on going,’ Medvedev said. ‘You can head off here.’
‘Okay,’ Evans said, disappointed.
It felt strange to come away from a rendezvous with Medvedev with so little of value. He wanted more time. Wanted to ask more questions.
Just a few seconds later, as Evans was preparing himself to head onto and over the bridge, two men up ahead caught his eye. They were walking a few yards apart from one another. Nothing in particular was distinguishable about them – they wore plain clothes and were neither tall nor small, neither skinny nor fat. Just two very normal-looking guys. Yet something about the way they moved, ghosting along, almost without purpose, suggested they were in fact together. Trying just a bit too hard to blend in.
As soon as he laid his eyes on them, Evans had no doubt.
It was a surveillance team.
And Evans knew this would be the last meeting he ever had with Nikolai Medvedev.
Chapter 14
Glasgow, Scotland
The tracker team found Logan five days later. At first they believed he was dead. His body, lying in the snow, was lifeless, blue and frozen – like it had been in cold storage for weeks. But the small movements in his chest, his shallow breaths coming from his cracked lips, told them he was alive. Just.
By that point, Fleming and his men had already safely reached the rendezvous point. Knowing they’d lost the game, the trackers had been making their way back to camp to debrief when one of them spotted Logan’s unconscious form completely by chance, just four miles from the rendezvous point – he had somehow dragged his injured body across miles of barren land.
He was suffering from severe hypothermia, his core body temperature having dropped dangerously low to barely twenty Celsius. He remained unconscious for two days after rescue, by which point Fleming and Butler and the others had moved on to a different location and Logan had been flown to a private clinic near the centre of Glasgow to recover.
All this was explained to Logan by his boss, Mackie, who came to visit the day after Logan woke
up. By that point, Logan’s core temperature was almost within the healthy range, but he was still a groggy mess. His body was leaden and useless. His broken leg was heavily plastered and would be for weeks to come. Full rehabilitation would take many months, if he recovered at all.
‘You’re a lucky guy, Logan,’ Mackie said.
He was sitting on a chair next to Logan’s hospital bed. His facial expression was sympathetic but his tone was almost indifferent.
‘You think?’ Logan said.
‘Yes, I do. I don’t know how you managed to stay alive. Not with your leg like that.’
Logan closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened after Fleming and Butler had left him. His memory was a blur; he was only able to grasp snippets of his time out in the Highlands. But even those snippets were a jumble with no sense of the order in which the events had occurred.
‘The splint you made saved your leg. Probably saved your life.’
‘The doctor said he can’t be sure yet. About the leg.’
‘I’ve seen worse, Logan. That leg will be fine. Believe me. You’re a survivor. You’re a fighter. I knew my instinct about you was right.’
Logan wanted to take Mackie’s words as a compliment and yet it was hard to feel positive. He’d questioned many times during his short spell under Mackie’s wing why he was bothering with the charade at all. He wasn’t cut out for this. He didn’t care about the greater good. He’d been lured into the secretive world of the JIA by his own misconceptions of the glamour and reward to follow. There was no sign of any of that yet. All he’d seen so far was torment and misery. Was this life really any better than the shit he’d left behind?
And look at the mess he was in now. If he couldn’t even make it through the training, then how could he ever be the agent Mackie wanted him to be? He was surprised Mackie had bothered to show up at the hospital at all. Out in the wilds, Logan was sure that if he survived, then the least he could expect was for them to throw him back out onto the streets, to continue living the crappy life he’d been trying to run from.
‘I couldn’t die out there,’ Logan said, sounding more resolute than he really felt.
The truth was he had no idea how he had survived. Surely it was down to luck as much as anything else.
‘Tell me what happened,’ Mackie said, pulling his chair closer. ‘I mean, tell me what really happened. Not the bullshit that Fleming told his squad leader.’
On hearing Fleming’s name, Logan closed his eyes and clenched his fists as tightly as his weak body would allow. After a few moments, he found the strength and focus to recount to Mackie what had happened. At least what he could remember. He went from the hazing on his very first day with Fleming through to the fight in the Scottish Highlands that had left Logan on the brink of death. He stopped then, unsure which memory came next.
Mackie didn’t push for any more. Clearly the part of the story Logan had told was the part Mackie had wanted to hear.
‘I guessed as much,’ was all Mackie said.
No shock, no excuses, no apologies. No commitment to having Fleming reprimanded or court-martialled or discharged or whatever the hell it is that happens to SAS soldiers when they break someone’s leg on a training exercise and leave them for dead.
Not that Logan cared much for any of those trivial punishments. Whatever had happened to Fleming, Logan’s business with him was unfinished.
‘So what did Fleming say then?’ Logan asked.
Mackie shrugged. ‘That they lost you in a blizzard. That they searched for you but then deemed it safer to carry on to the extraction point to raise the alarm than risk all three of you dying out there.’
‘But you didn’t buy it?’
‘You with a broken leg, the bruises on the rest of you? Butler’s arm had been smashed – the bones were in pieces. He said he fell, but I’m not stupid. And I knew you lot wouldn’t be getting along like a house on fire. So no, I didn’t buy it.’
Logan could feel anger bubbling up inside of him at Mackie’s words.
‘Why did you send me out there with them in the first place, if you thought something like this might happen?’
‘Because this is what your training entails. This is how we’re going to mould you into the agent we need. You’ve got to expect to be taken to the brink mentally and physically. It’s how you deal with it that counts. It’s how you move on and get stronger and more resilient that I’m interested in. I never said this would be easy for you.’
‘No. You didn’t.’
‘You’re a natural fighter, Logan. I can see it in you. You’re fierce and you’re unrelenting. That’s why I picked you for this. But you’re also naive and stupid.’
‘Thanks. That makes me feel much better.’
‘What I mean is, you’re not a smart fighter. You fight with emotion. Hatred. Anger more than anything. That thirst for revenge that I can see in your eyes now, that I saw in your eyes the day I met you, it clouds your judgement. You can have all the combat skills in the world, but when you’re up against a man like Fleming, you need more. You need to be able to control yourself. You can’t let emotions get in the way.’
‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’ Logan said, knowing full well that it was a concept his fiery temperament struggled with.
‘My point exactly. Everyone knows it but few can actually stick to it. Now, I want you to forget about Fleming altogether. He’s gone – a lesson learned and nothing more. Revenge is not what we’re about. It’s not what you’re about now. Emotion doesn’t come into what we do. It can’t. And that’s all revenge is. It’s a basic human reaction. Largely a mixture of anger and shame. It’s useless. You need to look past it. Forget you ever met Captain Fleming.’
‘And how do I do that?’
‘We’ll help you to do that. We’ll train you to fight like that – with no emotion. To live like that. You’ve already started down that road. There’s a way to go still, but we’ll help you. I’ll help you. When you can do that, this whole mess won’t even seem like a distant memory. It will be like it happened to someone else.’
Logan heard Mackie’s words and decided: he would have the training. They could mould him however they wanted. Despite his melancholic feelings as he lay in the hospital bed, deep down he knew that every step with the JIA was making him stronger, more able to handle what the world threw at him.
But he also knew he wouldn’t forget Fleming. For his entire life, Logan had kept true to a single principle: that people who wronged him got what they deserved.
It didn’t matter what the JIA did to Logan, Fleming was going on the list.
He’d get his comeuppance one day.
Chapter 15
Moscow, Russia
‘Two men up ahead,’ Evans said. ‘One with a black jacket, the other a parka.’
Medvedev didn’t respond. Evans gave him a few seconds to clock the men before he carried on.
‘Are they FSB?’ Evans asked.
‘If they are, they certainly weren’t invited by me.’
‘Come on. Follow me,’ Evans said.
He moved off to his left, toward the traffic, and without looking, dashed across the road to the buildings on the other side. The road was crowded, which meant the vehicles were slow moving, and Evans’s sudden traipse through the traffic drew nothing more than a solitary honk of a horn from a compact car.
Evans glanced quickly behind him and saw that Medvedev was still with him. He knew that to evade surveillance, the best course of action was to split up. But not today. There was very little left in him that trusted Medvedev. He wanted the Russian right where he could see him.
‘This way,’ Evans said, increasing his pace and taking a turn down the first side street he came to.
He looked behind again as he rounded the corner to see the two men from the river crossing the road. They were staring over in his direction now, moving with more purpose. Both had their hands in their pockets. Evans wondered whether they were
armed. He wasn’t.
‘Shit,’ Evans said, picking up his speed even more. ‘We need to lose these two.’
‘Just keep going,’ Medvedev said. ‘Once we get past the next junction, the streets are less open. It won’t be too difficult.’
‘Unless they’re not too concerned about making a scene.’
‘You’re suggesting they might attack us? Shoot us? Never. Not out in the open. Not two unarmed civilians.’
Evans wasn’t feeling quite as confident as Medvedev about that.
‘Do you know how to get away from here?’ Evans said.
‘Of course,’ Medvedev responded. ‘Once we lose them, I’ll circle back and head west, back across the river.’
His speech was becoming stilted as a result of the quickening pace of his breathing.
Evans didn’t respond. But he certainly wasn’t going to let Medvedev go anywhere without him. Evans looked behind again. They were putting distance between themselves and the two men, who were still trying hard to blend in. For just a fleeting second, Evans felt a little more confident again.
But then, as they neared the end of the street, a large four-by-four came careening around the corner. Evans guessed even before the vehicle came to a crunching halt just twenty yards in front that it was more heat. As the body of the car rocked back and forth on its high suspension, a man and woman whipped open their doors and jumped out. They immediately began walking toward Evans and Medvedev.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Evans said. ‘Who are they, Nikolai? Who was following you?’
‘They weren’t following me!’
‘This isn’t normal surveillance,’ Evans said. ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. They’re not just spying on us. They’re here to snatch us. What did you do?’
‘I don’t know who they are!’ Medvedev protested.
‘Come on, back this way,’ Evans said, spinning on his heel and heading back toward the river. The two men who had followed them from the riverfront were at least without a vehicle.
