by Tom Cain
‘Yes.’
‘And…?’
‘And you were right. Magda Sternberg and Celina Novak are one and the same person. And she was just as tricky then as she is now: manipulative, sadistic, totally cold-blooded. “Celina can make you do anything,” was the way Alix put it.’
Carver put a hand over the phone and mouthed ‘Grantham’ at Alix, who shook her head with a rueful sigh.
‘Don’t tell me you’re getting lovey-dovey with her again…’ Grantham asked, almost as if he’d seen Carver’s gesture.
‘Not with Ginger, that’s for sure.’
‘You know that’s not who I meant.’
‘No comment.’
‘Unbelievable. Some people never learn… Well, if you don’t mind me interrupting your true romance, I have details of tomorrow’s operations.’
‘Fire away.’
‘You’re on the list for this absurd publicity stunt, sorry, this vitally important meeting on energy security. You’ll be Andy Jenkins, a member of the Ministry of Defence support staff. There’ll be a few of them around.’
Carver was having a hard time paying attention to what Grantham was saying. Alix’s hand was making its way up his inner thigh. Grinning, he swatted it away, then did his best to focus on business.
‘Support staff? Sounds like another way of saying non-uniformed special forces.’
‘Your words, not mine,’ said Grantham. ‘But it shouldn’t be too far out of your comfort zone.’
‘So where do I have to be, and when?’
‘Cardiff Gate services on the M4. There’s a motel there called the Ibis. Go down tonight. Check in under any name you like. In the morning, all your Andy Jenkins documentation will be waiting at reception. Your contact will be called Tyrrell.’
‘Is that a first or second name?’
‘It’s the only name you’re getting. He’ll be waiting for you in the motel car park at 7.00 a.m. in a 58 Reg, metallic-grey Audi A4.’
‘And then what?’
‘Get in the car and go with friend Tyrrell to your destination.’
‘But what is my destination?’
‘An oil refinery.’
‘On Milford Haven, presumably,’ said Carver, thinking of the nearest major installations to Cardiff.
‘That’s one presumption, yes. But anyway, keep your eyes open. Check out as much as you can. See if it helps you in any way to find out what the hell Zorn’s up to. When you get back we can discuss what you plan to do about him. Assuming you know.’
‘Oh, I know what I’m doing,’ said Carver. ‘I just don’t know if it’ll work.’
He ended the call and looked at Alix.
‘Were you talking about me just then?’ she asked, with a spark of humour in her eyes. ‘When you said you didn’t know whether it would work?’
‘Of course,’ said Carver. ‘What else could I possibly be talking about?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ she murmured, leaning towards him and gently putting her hand back between his thighs.
32
Lambeth
‘ Sorry about this,’ Carver said as he opened the door to his flat. ‘It’s not exactly five-star.’
‘But you’re in it,’ Alix said, gazing at him.
‘Yes I am.’
‘Then I love it.’
He took her in his arms then, holding her body against him with the fierceness of a man who never wants to let go. He felt himself get hard, and the press of her hips as she responded to it. The scent of her — not just her perfume but her skin, her hair, even her breath — filled his senses as intoxicatingly as any drug. He covered her mouth with his, and kissed her with a decade of pent-up longing and frustrated desire.
Alix needed the strength of his arms around her. Without them she might not have been able to stand upright. After all this time she was still not immune to him, still failing to retain her self-control as sensations buried for years flooded back with all their old overwhelming power. She felt her body mould to his without any need to think what she was doing. There was no artifice, no tension, just the knowledge that she felt so close, so intimate and so absolutely known to this man that she could barely tell where she ended and he began. The softness of his lips, the rasp of his chin, the way his tongue entered her mouth, the taste of him, the smell of him… It was ecstatic and yet also destabilizing. All her resolution, her determination to remain strong, independent and separate, dissolved. They stumbled through the flat, their lips still locked together, their arms entwined as he led her into the bedroom.
Carver kicked open the door, and only once they were standing right beside the bed did he let go of her. Alix stepped back from him, and in a single fluid movement reached behind her neck, pulled at the bow and let the dress fall to her feet. She stood there in her knickers and her heels, and the sight of her stopped him dead. All this time he’d been imagining what it would be like to see her again, and still he wasn’t prepared for the reality of it. He shook his head in disbelief, and with deep seriousness said, ‘My God, you’re so beautiful.’ And then he was kissing her again, and her fingers were prising open the buttons of his shirt, undoing his belt, unzipping him and slipping under the waistband of his underpants.
As she took hold of him she giggled and said, ‘Hello, old friend.’
Laughing, he wrapped his arms around her again, lifted her off her feet, and they tumbled together on to the waiting bed.
Alix gave a little gasp of pain the moment that Carver entered her, followed by a long, sighing moan of pleasure. The physical sensation of him filling her was matched by an overwhelming rush of emotion, a profound recognition of how different she felt making love with Carver than with any other man she had ever known. The intimacy between them was deeper, their connection more intense. He had always made her feel completely vulnerable, and yet totally safe from harm: she could feel anything, do anything, be anything with him. He could kiss or stroke her with gentleness, almost delicacy, one moment, then overpower her with raw strength the next. And to her amazement, nothing had changed. She knew, with absolute confidence, how wonderful it was going to be, and any intention she might have had of hiding her true feelings was swept away. She wanted him to know the effect he was having on her, and she felt a profound desire to give all of herself to him.
He was looking down at her now with intense concentration, as if he were reading and constantly responding to every one of her desires and emotions. Yet he seemed also to be toying with her longing for him. Sometimes he drove into her so hard and so deep that she wondered how she wasn’t torn apart, only for him to withdraw almost completely, teasing her and moving his hips away from hers as she struggled to get him back before he plunged into her again.
And all the time he was kissing her, stroking her and murmuring in her ear, his defences as abandoned as hers, telling her how he had longed for her, how incredible it felt to be with her and in her again.
She came with a sudden, hot burst of ecstasy that made her cry out. He had not taken his eyes off her face, and the half-smile that played around his lips told her of the pleasure he had taken in her orgasm. But she knew that he had held himself back. Now she needed Carver to come, too.
‘I know what you want,’ she said.
Carver didn’t need an explanation. Alix slid out from under him and knelt on the bed with her back to him. For a second he just looked at her perfectly rounded arse, her slim waist, the arch of her back, and the mane that tumbled around her shoulders. Then he leaned forward and wrapping his left hand around hers pushed it against the headboard.
‘Take my hair,’ she said. He heard the arousal in her voice, and his right hand took a firm hold of her hair, making her gasp. He nibbled at one of her earlobes, feeling her shudder of delight. His chest pressed against her back, and he felt the hot sweat between their skin. Then he took her again.
Up until now, he’d been taking his time with Alix, reading her responses as his cues until she came. As incredible as it had been to be making love t
o her again, part of him had remained detached, bringing the same cool precision to sex as he did to death. But this time his only concern was for his own pleasure. He was going to fuck her, and that was the beginning and end of the matter.
‘Do it,’ she said.
Now there was no teasing, no variation, no great subtlety. Now he just went at her in a hard, steady, driving rhythm. As he grew more excited he covered her neck and shoulders with kisses whose fierceness increased until he was biting at her skin with quick, sharp little stabs of his teeth. Her moans became louder and higher, and Carver gave a deep animal groan as he felt himself swell still more inside her. He knew she felt it, too, by the way she responded, pushing against him, wanting more and more of him.
Carver felt his orgasm build inside him, the feeling becoming stronger, surging through him, closer and closer to the edge, until at last, with an explosion that felt like someone had just fired a bullet of pure sensory euphoria through his head, blowing his brains out of the back of his skull, he came.
33
They lay in bed, their bodies still slick and glowing, grinning in postcoital smugness. Alix felt as though she had been defined anew by the experience of being with Carver again. ‘This is who I am,’ she thought, ‘and where I’m meant to be.’ No one else had ever been able to make her feel this way. And yet the fear still gnawed at her that they had not been able to make their relationship last before: why should this time be any different? She should be wise, and get out now, and yet she could not help wanting him more than anything she had ever wanted in her life. Having him next to her only reminded her of the emptiness of her life without him.
She began to say something, trying to express how she felt, but then stopped herself.
‘What is it?’ Carver asked.
‘Oh… nothing,’ she said.
He looked at her again, and then kissed her face with infinite tenderness. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know.’
They kissed again. He stroked her cheek, then ran his fingers through her hair. ‘I’ve got to go soon,’ he said.
‘More business?’ This time there was only understanding in her voice.
Carver gave a rueful grimace. ‘Afraid so… It’s nothing too serious. I have to go to some ridiculous anti-terrorism summit.’
‘Is this anything to do with that woman — the one you were asking me about?’
‘Not directly, but there is a connection.’
Alix propped herself up on one elbow, a serious look in her eyes. ‘What kind of connection?’
Carver wondered what he should tell her. He trusted her implicitly. Yet she was supposed to be living with one of Zorn’s investors. She might have divided loyalties. On the other hand, she might also know something about Zorn, something that would help unravel the mystery of the American’s true intentions.
‘She works for a guy called Ahmad Razzaq. He’s Malachi Zorn’s security chief, but it’s not clear where his real loyalties lie. There’s a lot that’s not clear about Zorn.’
‘I agree,’ she said, surprising him. ‘I assume you know I’ve been living with Dmytryk Azarov.’
‘Sure… but it really wasn’t any of my business-’
‘It’s OK, you don’t need to be defensive. That’s over, anyway. I don’t think I’d be here if it wasn’t.’
‘So what ended it?’
‘That’s what I was coming to. We argued about Zorn. And I agree with you. There’s something wrong about that guy. Did you know that none of his fancy offices have leases longer than three months?’
‘Maybe he’s worried his business won’t pan out?’
‘Ha! Have you met Malachi Zorn? That man isn’t worried about anything. Every cent he earned he got by backing his judgement against the world. So if he’s only got short leases-’
‘It’s because he’s not planning to stick around. He’s only renting his house here, too.’
Alix nodded, relieved that Carver had taken her point. His trust in her judgement was an affirmation of the bond between them.
‘You and me,’ he said, shaking his head in wonder as if reading her mind. And then again, ‘You and me.’
‘Mmm…’
‘You think it can work this time?’
She smiled, thrilled that he, too, was thinking about their future. ‘I don’t know, Sammy… maybe we can be smarter this time.’
‘You know I don’t let anyone call me Sammy.’
‘You let me.’
‘Yeah… I do… but then, you’re not just anyone, are you?’
He kissed her again, and then, before she could stop him, got up out of the bed.
‘I really do have to go,’ he said.
Waygal Valley, Afghanistan: two months earlier
Corporal Chico Morales, a section leader in C Company of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, did not claim to be any kind of expert on theology. But he knew one thing: if God had been on the side of the Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan, he would sure as shit have taught them to shoot straight. Since he’d begun his tour of duty in the Waygal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, Morales had lost count of the number of contacts with the enemy when the men of ‘the Deuce’, as the 502nd was known, had been outnumbered, outgunned and in serious danger of defeat. And in every case, the single biggest factor in his getting out alive had been the Afghans’ obsession with ‘spraying’n’praying’. They didn’t fight as coordinated units, concentrating their fire on specific targets. They just blasted away in every direction, each man for himself, and hoped to Allah that some of their bullets actually hit an enemy.
Even so, they could still make a damn nuisance of themselves. Give a handful of insurgents a bunch of AK-47s, throw in some rocket-propelled grenades or a. 50 calibre rifle, and give them a wall or a boulder to hide behind, or a gully to lie in, and they could, at the very least, pin you down for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Then the ‘Punisher’ arrived in Afghanistan. And that changed everything.
Punisher was the nickname that its first awestruck users had given to a device the US Army categorized as the XM-25 Individual Airburst Weapons System. Simply put, the XM-25 was a semi-automatic grenade launcher rifle. But that was like saying that, simply put, a Bugatti Veyron was a car. The truth was, the XM-25 was unlike any other hand-held weapon on earth. It simply removed the concept of cover from the battlefield. And as Morales and his buddies all agreed, it looked frigging cool while it did it, like some kind of mean, black sci-fi ray gun.
The way it worked was this: on top of the rifle there was what looked like a regular telescopic sight, but was actually a computerized fire-control system, accurate up to seven hundred metres. If the insurgents were hiding behind a wall, you just pointed the gun in that direction. The Punisher calculated precisely how far away the target was, and then transmitted that information down the barrel of the gun to a high-explosive 25 mm grenade. But of course, the wall wasn’t the actual target; the insurgents hiding behind it were. So you, the soldier, used a button by the trigger to add a metre or two to the range, and the grenade adjusted itself to that, too. Then you fired, aiming just above the wall, and the grenade shot away, went over the wall, and then exploded in the air behind it, blowing the enemy away. Use an armour-piercing round and you didn’t have to go over a wall or an enemy vehicle; you could go straight through it. Man, it was a beautiful thing to behold.
So far the Punisher was still in its field-trial phase of development. There hadn’t been more than a couple of dozen in the entire Afghanistan theatre of operations. But those guns had been game changers. There were four grenades in a Punisher’s magazine. Fire them all, and the fight just ended. Engagements that used to last twenty minutes were over in less than five. US casualties dropped to zero. Soldiers in the units that had been selected to test the XM-25 would beg to be allowed to use it, like kids fighting over a new toy. Today it was Morales’s turn and he hated to admit it, but damn he was excited.
Morales belonged to a platoon that had recently arr
ived at COP (Combat Outpost) Wanda, a brand-new installation near the village of Aranas. It was situated on a bluff, looking down the valley to the Waygal River. The only way in or out was by helicopter. All their supplies came in by air. The first day there, as Morales looked at the hills all around him, knowing that the insurgents were out there somewhere, just waiting to attack, he’d felt like he was living in a twenty-first-century version of Fort Apache. But today he had the Punisher. Today his motto was, ‘Bring it on.’
Morales woke shortly after 4.00 a.m. and took up his post at Observation Post Highpoint, a lookout a short way from the main body of the COP. Morales and the other men in his eight-man section had built Highpoint themselves. With their trenching tools they’d dug up what meagre quantities of dirt could be prised from the rocky terrain, and used them to fill, or in some cases part-fill, the collapsible steel and nylon HESCO containers that acted as their fortifications. The observation post’s location provided superb views across the Waygal Valley for miles around. But as Morales was about to discover, this long-range visibility came at a price. A ravine ran down the side of the hill and came within thirty metres of the HESCO barricades, passing so close that the HESCOs created a blind spot for the men behind them, who were unable to see down into the bottom of the ravine. Not that they were aware of that just yet.
Shortly after dawn, the observation post came under small-arms fire from an insurgent position behind an outcrop of boulders atop a ridge about three hundred metres away. This was no big deal. The insurgents always preferred to move at night and attack with the first light of day. Morales ordered his men to return suppressing fire. They didn’t have to take anyone out just yet. They just had to keep them in one place long enough for the Punisher to do its thing.
‘ Say hello to my leetle frien,’ Morales joked as he pressed the control that charged up the XM-25 and made it ready for use. Like his men, he had focused all his attention on the hostile position on the ridge. He had no idea that a dozen insurgents had made their way up the ravine during the night; not until the first grenade exploded inside the observation post, killing two of his men and wounding a third. Another grenade took out a fourth soldier. Morales himself was not targeted by the blasts. He and his remaining three troops were left for the Afghan fighters, inheritors of a guerrilla warfare tradition that dated back to the days of Alexander the Great and beyond, who scrambled over the HESCOs like pirates boarding a ship, armed with rifles, pistols and razor-sharp knives.
