Black List

by Will Jordan

  ‘It’s what she was trained to do.’

  ‘Trained by whom?’ Mitchell asked, though she had a feeling she knew the answer.

  ‘By us, of course,’ he replied, staring right at her. ‘She used to be an Agency operative. The kind we sent in to ... solve problems.’ His choice of words wasn’t lost on her. ‘And believe me, she was very good at what she did. Maybe a little too good. The thing is, it takes a certain kind of person to do work like that.’

  ‘You mean psychopathic killers,’ Argento interrupted.

  ‘That’s not quite how I’d put it.’ Hawkins’s voice was calm and even, but the look in his eyes told a different story. ‘But whatever issues she had, the job brought out the worst in her. She became paranoid, delusional, violent… Then five years ago she snapped, killed most of the men in her unit and disappeared. We’ve been hunting her ever since.’

  ‘You’ve been after her for five years?’ Mitchell asked, amazed that one person could evade the formidable resources of the gency for so long.

  ‘She’s been trained to blend in and disappear, plus she knows how we operate. She knows the Agency’s weaknesses and how to exploit them,’ Hawkins explained, glancing down at the photo again. ‘Fortunately for us, the door swings both ways. We created her, and with your help we’re going to destroy her. She took a hell of a risk coming here to recover Yates, which means he’s something she can’t afford to lose. He’s the key to bringing her down.’

  Argento looked dubious. ‘Great. So how do we find him?’

  ‘By thinking as she does.’ Hawkins folded his muscular arms. ‘This country has the highest number of CCTV cameras per head of population in the Western world, so you can bet she doesn’t come here too often. If it were me, I’d want to get the fuck out of Dodge as quickly as possible, which means she’ll try to get Yates out of the country.’

  The nature of the UK as an island with no land borders made their task a little easier in this regard. It wasn’t as if she and Yates could simply cut a hole in some fence and disappear.

  ‘Yates’s passport has been red flagged,’ Argento pointed out. ‘All airports, rail links and ferry terminals have been sent copies of his picture. If he tries to leave the UK, we’ll know about it.’

  Mitchell shook her head, saying nothing. If this woman was as smart and resourceful as Hawkins seemed to believe, she would never attempt anything so obvious.

  ‘There are other ways out,’ Hawkins remarked.

  ‘Private aircraft?’ another man suggested. ‘There are plenty of small strips around here. A Cessna could make it across the Channel easily enough.’

  At this, Hawkins shook his head. ‘Too easy to track. Any plane that takes off in UK airspace would be followed by radar. No matter where it landed, someone would be waiting for it.’

  If air and land weren’t possible, that left only one viable escape route in Mitchell’s mind. ‘So they took a boat,’ she concluded. ‘Something sturdy enough to get them across the Channel, but small enough to escape detection.’

  A look of grudging respect showed on Hawkins’s face. ‘Not bad. Check in with the coastguard, look for any reports of missing boats in the last twenty-four hours. Get on it.’

  One of the field agents was already reaching for his cell phone.

  ‘Everyone else, pack it up here,’ Hawkins went on. ‘If we get the call, we’ll need to move quickly.’

  As the rest of the field team began packing away their gear, Argento moved a little closer to Mitchell. ‘You believe that bullshit he just served up?’ he asked, nodding towards Hawkins.

  The man was already on his phone, making sure he was out of earshot of the others. Mitchell was willing to bet he was reporting in to his mysterious sponsor.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. A lot of things about this operation left a sour taste in her mouth, but like the rest of them she was under orders to cooperate to the fullest extent. ‘Whether he’s telling the truth or not, he knows a whole lot more than he’s saying.’

  ‘No shit.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Black operations, secret interrogations, murders, rogue agents... Sorry about the cliché, but I’ve got a fucking bad feeling about all this.’

  Mitchell said nothing to that, preferring to keep her thoughts to herself for now. However, that didn’t mean she disagreed with her colleague’s assessment.

  ‘You know, I could run our mystery woman’s picture through the facial-recognition database,’ Argento suggested. ‘Might turn up a lead.’

  Mitchell shook her head. Though their clearance as special investigators within the Agency theoretically gave them access to its entire personnel roster, both were savvy enough to know that there were levels of clearance over and above whatever they might have been granted. In any case, such searches were always logged within the system, and the last thing they needed was such clandestine activity making its way back to Hawkins.

  ‘Leave it for now,’ she said quietly. ‘Let’s wait until we know more.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘Bet you wish you’d stayed in bed today, huh?’

  Mitchell gave him a look that was enough to wipe the wry smile from his lips. ‘You have no idea.’

  Chapter 16

  If Alex had been tired when he trudged up the beach away from the shoreline, an hour later he was dying on his feet, as he struggled to follow Anya through the dense pine and spruce forest that blanketed the area inland.

  As always, the woman moved with the speed and grace of a natural predator stalking its prey, making no allowances for the fact that her companion was neither physically fit nor experienced at travelling through woodland at night. She would entertain no thought of stopping or resting, and as a result whatever reserves of strength that remained to Alex were rapidly dwindling. It was all he could do just to keep up with her.

  They were traversing a steep ridge that ran in a generally north-west direction. Below, perhaps fifty yards downhill on their left, lay a narrow paved road that paralleled their course. They had stumbled upon it shortly after leaving the beach, and despite Alex’s protests that they would make much quicker progress on tarmac than cluttered woodland, Anya had walked right across and into the steep wooded slopes beyond.

  The only time she had ventured close to the road again had been to study a sign, confirming they were roughly where she expected to be.

  ‘Do you ever get tired?’ Alex asked, sweating and out of breath, and more than a little irked by her seemingly limitless reserves of fitness. She was at least ten years his senior, yet he felt like an old man at that moment.

  If she’d sensed that he was hinting to slow down, she gave no sign of it. ‘Endurance was part of my training. So was learning to stay quiet.’

  It was his turn to ignore the hint. ‘So what are you? Some kind of super soldier?’

  He heard a faint snort of amusement. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Come on,’ he persisted. ‘You know my life story by now, but I know sweet FA about you.’

  ‘There isn’t much to tell.’

  ‘Well, that’s bollocks for a start,’ Alex countered. ‘You do things with a knife that make Rambo look like a pacifist, you hire people to steal top-secret files from the CIA, and you seem to know everything there is to know about staying alive when the whole world wants you dead. I’m guessing this sort of thing isn’t a weekend hobby for you. So how did you get caught up in all of this?’

  ‘Do you always talk so much, Alex?’ she asked tersely.

  ‘I don’t know. Are you always so evasive, Anya?’ he fired back.

  He heard a faint sigh of exasperation. ‘The less you know about me, the better.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘For both of us. If you’re captured again, it will only make things worse for you.’

  Alex sighed and looked up at the sky. Through the dense canopy overhead, he was able to make out a faint speckling of stars. ‘That’s really comforting, thanks.’

  Suddenly Anya stop
ped in her tracks, her head cocked to one side as she listened intently. ‘Down!’ she hissed.

  Alex dropped to the damp, cold ground beside her. He too strained to listen, but could detect nothing out of the ordinary. Just the creaking and groaning of the spruce trees swaying in the night breeze, and the faint roar of a river down the slope to his right.

  Moments later, though, a pair of headlight beams cruised by on the road below, the low hum of a vehicle engine carrying towards them. Anya kept her eyes on it the whole time, her hand on the automatic inside her jacket as she watched for any sign that it was anything other than a random civilian on his way home after a late night.

  To her relief, the car carried on its way, neither stopping nor slowing, and her grip on the weapon relaxed.

  Alex too was watching the car, though from an entirely different perspective. Crouched on the forest floor with cold and damp seeping into his legs, his mind was tormented by thoughts of comfortable leather seats, heaters turned up to maximum and perhaps even thermos mugs of coffee.

  ‘Remind me again why we don’t just flag down a lift?’ he asked as Anya rose to her feet and resumed her march. ‘Is this some kind of punishment, like you’re still pissed off with me because I messed things up?’

  ‘I have no interest in making you suffer,’ she assured him without turning around. ‘And to answer your question, this is not a tourist area – two foreigners trying to hitchhike in the middle of the night will attract attention. And attention is the one thing we don’t want.’

  ‘So what are we supposed to do? Keep walking until we reach the fucking North Pole?’

  ‘If I’m right, the town of Egersund is only three or four miles from here,’ she explained with terse patience. ‘We’ll wait until dawn, then I will go into town and try to find us a car. Things will be easier after that.’

  ‘For you, maybe,’ he complained with bitter resentment. ‘I’ll be freezing my arse off in some godforsaken forest while you’re scoffing down eggs and bacon.’

  Stopping abruptly, she whirled around and took a step towards him. Instinctively he backed off a pace, alarmed by her sudden change in demeanour. ‘You whine like a mule, Alex,’ she said with cold, repressed anger. ‘If walking through the woods at night is the hardest thing you’ve had to do in your life, you should be very grateful for that. Now shut up and follow me.’

  As she turned away and resumed her walk, he stomped right past her, determined to take the lead. It was nothing more than petty resentment driving him on now, but he didn’t care. He was frustrated, as much with himself as with her, and it was blinding him to everything else.

  ‘I said follow, not run away,’ he heard her warning. ‘The ground is uneven here.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ Alex fired back over his shoulder, beyond caring now. ‘You’re right – I haven’t lived your life. I sell TVs for a living. I don’t murder people or jump between buildings or do any of that spy-game bullshit. I’m not like you. I’m normal! And you know what? That’s a good thing. Anything’s better than being... like you.’

  What happened next was as sudden as it was inevitable. Ducking down to avoid an overhanging branch, he failed to notice the patch of rocky scree ahead, didn’t veer left to avoid it like he should have done. Only when his foot slid out from under him did he snap back to awareness, but by then it was too late.

  Caught off balance, he slipped, pitched sideways and tumbled down the steep slope with a startled cry. There was nothing he could do to control his descent. Sharp rocks and barbed bushes tore at his clothes, while heavy impacts hammered his body with bruising force.

  Then suddenly the gnarled, twisted trunk of a pine tree rushed up to meet him. Alex let out a scream of pain as he hit hard, the collision feeling as if it had crushed his ribcage.

  Winded and stunned by the impact, he could only flail desperately at the trunk as he slid backward and tumbled down the last section of slope. Then something strange happened. The muddy, rock-strewn ground beneath him vanished, replaced by nothing at all. He was weightless, as if suspended in mid-air, his sense of orientation replaced by an odd feeling of confusion.

  It lasted only a second or so, before he tumbled right into the fast-flowing river at the base of the slope.

  The freezing water closed about his head in an instant of foam and confusion. All at once a million tiny pinpricks of ice drove themselves into every inch of his body, the sudden shock and agony of it unbearable.

  Instinctively his body recoiled against it, he opened his mouth to scream in pain and alarm, and instead inhaled a lungful of river water. Fighting with the wild strength of a dying man, he clawed his way upward and broke the surface, coughing and spluttering and trying desperately to draw air into his lungs.

  He went under again before he could get much air down. The flow of the current seemed to be rolling and spinning him around, turning him head over heels so that he was no longer even certain which way was up. When he eventually broke the surface again, he was feeling light-headed and dizzy. His limbs felt like lumps of lead and he was rapidly losing the feeling in his extremities, but in some part of his mind he realized he had to get to the shore. The river’s current was carrying him downstream, but it was also trying to pull him out into the main channel. If that happened, he knew that he’d quickly succumb to hypothermia.

  He looked around, trying to get his bearings in the darkness. The left bank of the river which he’d just tumbled down was too steep for him to climb. It seemed as if the watercourse was hemmed in by the ridge above, and had carved a deep channel against the stubborn landmass barring its path. That was probably why he’d fallen in, instead of coming to rest at the foot of the ridge.

  The grade on the other bank however looked much easier, with the rocky shore giving way to grass and low bushes stretching for some distance, probably part of an ancient flood plain. If he was to get out, it would have to be that way.

  Summoning up what strength remained to him, he began to kick for the shore. The river was resisting him, and no matter how hard he kicked, it seemed to make little difference. Still, gradually the shore began to creep closer, even as his stamina began to fail him. He was so cold. If only he could rest for a moment…

  No! He had to keep going. He wouldn’t give up without a fight; not now.

  Kicking with renewed effort, he clawed his way towards the shore with the last of his strength, every precious effort bringing him inches closer to his goal. And after what seemed like an eternity, he finally felt solid ground under his feet.

  Half-frozen and exhausted by his effort, he crawled up the small rocky beach until he was clear of the water, then collapsed face-down on the ground. Instinctively he curled into a ball, trying to generate a little warmth that would help revive him.

  It was a bad move. The effort of kicking and swimming, as draining as it had been on his stamina, had also kept his core body temperature up. Now that he’d stopped moving, the creeping cold began to seep in.

  He knew he had to get up, knew that if he stayed here he’d go down with hypothermia in mere minutes. With great effort, he managed to rise to his knees, then get one foot under him and force himself to stand.

  He wasn’t thinking clearly as he stumbled through the long grass and tangled bushes away from the river, heedless of the branches and thorns that tore at his clothes. He barely felt it now.

  He couldn’t see much. There was only a thin sliver of moon overhead to light the way, and his vision seemed to be growing dim as if his eyes were giving up.

  In the back of his clouded mind he was aware of something. A sound. A voice, faint and indistinct. Yet it was familiar somehow. He felt like it was calling out his name.

  Then a sudden thought leapt into his head. Anya! Where was she? Was she looking for him, trying to help him, or had she just carried on her way and dismissed him as more trouble than he was worth?

  With some effort, he drew a deep breath that made his bruised ribs ache. ‘Anya!’ he yelled out, hearing his own v
oice echo back to him from the steep slope nearby. ‘Anya! I’m down here…’

  His foot caught on something unseen and he landed in a bruised, exhausted heap, too weary to rise again, too weary to feel the pain in his chest. His last conscious act was to roll over onto his back, finding himself confronted with the vast darkened sky overhead. There were stars up there, millions of tiny points of light shimmering cold and hard in the darkness, and somehow it gave him comfort to know he was going to die with such a view laid out before him.

  He should have been afraid, knowing that this could very well be his last sight. But he wasn’t. He felt strangely light and free, as if none of it really mattered. His last thought as his vision blurred and his consciousness began to fade was that, on the whole, he was disappointed with how his life had panned out. Most of all he was disappointed in himself.

  Then his eyes fell shut and he knew no more.

  Chapter 17

  ‘We’ve got something!’ Argento said, striding into the centre of the barn with his cell phone in hand. ‘Scottish police just reported a fishing trawler stolen from its mooring this morning.’

  Hawkins, in the midst of a cup of coffee, was on it in an instant. ‘Where?’

  ‘A small village on the east coast, near Edinburgh. And get this – they found a rental car abandoned nearby. A late model Ford Focus.’

  Mitchell too was quick to see the importance of the discovery. ‘Have they run a trace on the rental company?’

  ‘Way ahead of you.’ Grinning, Argento held up his phone. Displayed across the screen was a scanned image of the driver’s license used to hire out the Focus. The driver in question was the spitting image of the woman Hawkins had shown them.

  Abandoning his coffee, Hawkins rose to his feet. ‘If she hauled ass four hundred miles north, I’ll bet she wasn’t planning on a cross-Channel trip. Anyway, there aren’t many places she could put ashore in France without being seen.’

  Argento could see his reasoning. ‘So that leaves Denmark, Germany or—’