by Will Jordan
Somehow, through some combination of improvisation, determination and sheer good fortune, they had made it. Alex had imagined he’d be celebrating at this point, but he could no longer dig up such an emotion. After everything that had happened, after the struggles and hardships he’d endured, after the loss of Arran and Gregar and Mitchell, he simply felt exhausted.
Opening the van’s rear door, he stepped out onto the tarmac parking area, grateful to be outside. Grateful to be free. Grateful just to be alive.
Ahead of him stretched a white expanse of sand that seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon. A fresh breeze blew in from the sea, carrying with it the scent of salt and life, the roar and crash of breaking waves mingling with the shriek of gulls overhead.
Never had he seen a sight so splendid in all his life.
He smiled, struck by a thought that had popped into his head almost at random. Reaching into his pocket, he fished out the packet of cigarettes he’d kept with him since their arrival in the country. Still unopened.
‘You said you would celebrate once we had the Black List,’ Anya prompted, having stepped out to join him. ‘Now seems like the time.’
‘Yeah.’ He handed her the packet. ‘Here, take these.’
She frowned, looking down at the crumpled packet in her bandaged hand. ‘I don’t smoke.’
‘I know. I want you to do me a favour and get rid of them.’ He grinned sidelong at her. ‘These things will kill you.’
That was when he saw it. That smile. That small, almost grudging smile she gave when he’d said something she liked but wouldn’t admit to liking. Just another little thing he’d come to know, had come to appreciate, about her.
Another little thing he knew he’d miss when this was over.
‘Now I remember why I retired from field work,’ Halvorsen said, easing himself out of the driver’s seat and arching his back. ‘It’s a young man’s game.’
‘Don’t kid yourself, mate,’ Alex countered. He was a good thirty years younger than the Norwegian officer, yet he felt just as pained and weary. ‘Count me out of the next one.’
Halvorsen snorted in grim amusement.
‘What happens now?’ Anya asked.
‘We change vehicles here, and make our way to the airport.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Our new car should be along any time now.’
‘You did well, Kristian,’ she said, giving the older man a grateful nod. ‘I have a lot to thank you for.’
Halvorsen glanced at her, but instead of his usual wry smile, he seemed oddly troubled by her words.
However, before he could say anything, Anya’s posture tightened, her battered and weary muscles tensing as she stared off down the road.
‘A car is coming,’ she warned, her eyes suddenly wary.
Alex followed her gaze, and sure enough spotted a silver BMW heading in their direction. Not hurrying, but travelling at a fair speed nonetheless.
‘Our changeover,’ Halvorsen explained. ‘Be calm.’
And sure enough, the vehicle began to slow as it approached, then turned into the parking lot and came to a halt no more than fifteen yards away. The windows were tinted, making it difficult to see the occupant, but judging by the way it was sitting on its suspension, Anya guessed there was only a driver on board. Halvorsen watched the big BMW in silence as the driver shut down the engine, opened the door and stepped out.
The moment Alex caught sight of the tall, deceptively strong frame, the unruly blonde hair and the lean, chiselled features, his heart leapt and his stomach constricted in a tight knot of fear. His mouth seemed to open of its own accord as shock and disbelief overwhelmed him.
‘What’s the matter, mate?’ Arran Sinclair asked, flashing the same cocky grin that Alex had once known so well. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Alex felt like he was about to throw up.
It was a lie, he realized now. All of it. The crash, the disappearance, the desperate letter addressed to him. All faked. Arran; his friend, the man he trusted, had played him.
‘The car crash,’ Alex managed to say. ‘They said you’d been killed.’
Sinclair’s look was almost apologetic. ‘I had to do something to get her off my back,’ he said, nodding to Anya. ‘I knew she’d be following my every move once we’d made our deal. The only way to get rid of her was to die. Shame I had to write off a perfectly good car to do it.’
*
Stirlingshire, Scotland – seven days earlier
The narrow, unpredictable road would slow the vehicle following him, the steep river gorge to his right acting as a deterrent to all but the boldest of drivers. Sinclair almost smiled as he pressed harder on the accelerator, knowing there was a long straight coming up. He’d grown up around this area, had learned to drive here and knew every bend and corner of this road like the back of his hand.
He held the advantage over the car following him.
No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than he saw something on the bend up ahead, something that made his heart leap and adrenaline surge through his veins.
A single piece of coloured ribbon tied around one of the trees by the side of the road. He had marked it there several days earlier, and used it now as his point of reference. This was where he had to do it. This was where the slope on the other side of the crash barrier was steep enough and sufficiently free from trees to allow the car to tumble all the way down into the river below.
This was where he was about to die.
Straight away he slammed on his brakes and turned the wheel hard over. Tyres skidded on slick tarmac and the low metal crash barrier at the edge of the road swung into view as the car fishtailed.
Sinclair tensed up, bracing himself for what was coming, then opened his door and threw himself out.
The impact was harder than he’d expected, the rough tarmac rushing up to greet him with enough force to bruise flesh and tear clothes and skin. The car had lost much of its momentum by this point, just as he’d calculated, but the pain of his fall prompted an agonized groan as he rolled over and finally came to a stop. Mercifully, he didn’t seem to have broken any bones.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he looked up just in time to see the car barrel into the barrier, crash through it and plummet over the edge.
Pulling himself up, Sinclair limped over to the edge of the road and looked down, watching as the car flipped over onto its roof, rolling and crashing down the steep brush-covered slope to the fast-flowing river far below.
By the time it impacted the surface, the chassis had been reduced to a mass of twisted and buckled metal. With nothing buoyant enough to support it, the wreck quickly filled with icy cold water and disappeared beneath the surface within a matter of seconds, leaving only the wreckage-strewn slope behind as testimony to the violence of its final moments.
‘Perfect,’ he whispered.
*
‘Why?’ Alex implored his friend. ‘Why go through all this? What was the point?’
‘Why?’ Sinclair repeated, an edge of irritation in his voice now. ‘I wouldn’t have had to do any of it if you’d just taken my offer back in London.’
Anya was glaring at the tall young man with barely restrained hatred. ‘Why Alex?’ she demanded.
‘Because he needed me. He couldn’t do it by himself.’ Alex closed his eyes as the impact of his friend’s revelation sank in. ‘You needed my help, but I wouldn’t give it to you. So you did all of this to force my hand.’
Sinclair, the charismatic and visionary leader, had always been the driving force behind their group, but none of that could change the fact that Alex had always been the man who made it happen. His skills had been unmatched by any of the others, and without him, Sinclair had been unable to complete the ambitious task that Anya had handed him.
‘I meant what I said then, Alex. I would have made you rich if you’d helped me. It would have been just like the old days, but you were too much of a fucking coward to go for it.’ He sighed and
shook his head. ‘That was always your problem – you never had any vision. No imagination, no backbone. You just follow instructions, go along with anyone who looks like they know what they’re doing. Well, that being the case, I gave you some instructions to follow. And in the end, you did exactly what I wanted.’
‘I trusted you, Arran,’ Alex said, clenching his fists. ‘We were friends. Now I’m a wanted fugitive. How could you do this to me?’
Sinclair looked at him with something akin to pity. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’
And then, in a flash, Alex’s earlier confrontation with Landvik came rushing back to him.
He swallowed, searching for the right words. ‘I didn’t do it, Alex. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s the truth. For a while, I wished I had thought of it. I was so pissed at you and Arran for shutting me out, and I wanted to get back at you. But I’d never take it that far. We’re friends, Alex. Or… we were friends once. No matter how angry I was with you, I wouldn’t turn you in to the police.’
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he gasped, staring at Sinclair in disbelief. ‘You gave me up to the police three years ago. You told them where to find me.’
His former friend said nothing. There was no need to confirm what Alex plainly knew already.
His mind was in turmoil. Two years in jail. His life destroyed, his relationship in tatters, his future stolen from him. All because of Sinclair.
‘For Christ’s sake, why?’ Alex asked, almost pleading with him.
‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Sinclair taunted. ‘You were all about doing the right thing and going legitimate, as if we could all spend our lives wearing ties and working in some shitty office like the rest of the fucking losers in the world. I knew you didn’t have the balls to go after the big prize. It was a way of getting rid of you and Gregar at the same time. Once I blamed it all on him, he was out of the picture. And I could use the rest of our group for what they were meant to do. And little Alex did exactly what he was meant to do – stay quiet and do his time.’
That was it for Alex. Something snapped inside him at that moment, as all the pent-up emotions of the past week suddenly coalesced into a storm of pure rage. Balling his fists, Alex rushed at the man who had twice destroyed his life, fully intending to beat the skinny, arrogant bastard into the ground for what he’d done.
But suddenly he caught a movement to his right, and just like that everything changed. His pace slowed, his rage daunted by the barrel of an automatic now trained on him.
‘Don’t,’ Halvorsen warned, staring down the sights of the weapon at him. However rusty he might have been as a field operative, there were few ways for him to miss at this range.
Alex faltered and came to a halt, while Sinclair offered an apologetic shrug. ‘Like you said to me once, any system can be beaten. All you need is skill, planning and patience.’
*
Stirlingshire, Scotland – seven days earlier
Glancing up from the wrecked vehicle at the bottom of the gorge, Sinclair watched as a pair of headlights approached. The car that had been tailing him since he’d left his home about half an hour earlier. The car whose arrival he’d anticipated almost to the second.
Easing to a stop beside him, the driver opened his electric window and leaned out to survey him.
‘It worked as planned?’ Kristian Halvorsen asked.
Sinclair nodded. ‘This river leads all the way out to sea. The police will assume my body was swept away by the current.’
The Norwegian nodded, satisfied with that. ‘That should get Anya off your back, for now at least. Now get in before someone passes by.’
Sinclair wasn’t about to argue. Wincing a little as his bruised body protested, he slipped into the passenger seat.
‘What if she doesn’t believe it?’ he couldn’t help asking.
‘You worry about your friend Alex,’ Halvorsen said as he accelerated away from the scene. ‘I’ll take care of Anya.’
*
‘Now, Alex. Give me the Black List,’ Halvorsen said, his voice icy calm. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’
Alex stood his ground, staring at the older man. Only now did he realize the full magnitude of his failure. ‘You were working with Arran the whole time.’
‘Think bigger, mate,’ Sinclair said. ‘Kristian recruited me the day we broke into his company’s website. It was a test, and one that we passed.’ A faint, knowing smile. ‘Of course, there were a few conditions. We had to cut out some dead wood before he’d take us on full time.’
Alex felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Sinclair had given him up to the police all those years ago on Halvorsen’s orders, knowing Alex would never condone the idea of becoming his own personal cyber-terrorist.
‘Why, Kristian?’ Anya demanded, the anger and pain in her eyes plain to see. Sinclair’s betrayal was one thing, but she had known and trusted Halvorsen for the best part of two decades. ‘We had a deal. I was going to share it all with you.’
‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m not taking it, Anya. I’m returning it.’
Only then did his true intentions, or rather his true allegiance, at last become apparent.
‘You work for the Circle,’ Anya said, crushed by this final, shattering betrayal.
‘Like you said, they are powerful and dangerous men. Far more so than even you can imagine. How do you think they held on to that power for so long? They anticipated all of this, and they were ready for it. You should think yourself lucky they chose me for this operation, otherwise you would both be dead.’ His eyes focussed on Alex once more. ‘Now, give it to me.’
Alex did nothing. The memory stick in his pocket was his only means of salvation. Surrendering it now would mean a life on the run, a life with no future.
Lowering the weapon, Halvorsen squeezed off a single round. The crack of the gunshot, and the sudden explosion of sand and broken stones at Alex’s feet, made him jump with fright.
‘The next one’s in your stomach. Believe me, it’s a bad way to go,’ Halvorsen promised, raising the weapon so that it was pointed at his abdomen. ‘Give me the Black List, and we all walk away from this. You’re a smart man, so do the smart thing, Alex.’
Alex sighed and closed his eyes, knowing that further attempts to stall would be futile. Reaching into his pocket, he lifted out the little plastic memory stick, held it in his hand a moment as if to savour the victory that was almost his, then tossed it to the older man.
Halvorsen caught it out of the air, then deftly slipped it into his jacket pocket.
‘If you think you can trust the men who created that list, you’re making the biggest mistake of your life,’ Anya warned him. ‘I know you are doing this because you’re afraid of them, but you don’t have to be. I can protect you. I’m giving you a chance to help me stop them forever, Kristian. Give us back the list, and I promise we can do this together. Don’t let it end this way. Don’t let them use you like they use everyone else. Please.’
There was a moment of hesitation, of doubt that showed in his eyes as the force of her words sank in. Even he wasn’t immune to the sheer emotion and desperation in her voice.
But just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. Halvorsen smiled and shook his head, his mind made up. ‘You were a good operative, Anya. The best, but you’re short-sighted. That was always your downfall.’ He gestured to the road stretching off into the distance. ‘You’ll have a long time to think about that.’
Alex watched as he removed the keys from the van’s ignition, then used a small penknife to slash both front tyres, rendering the vehicle unusable. ‘You’re going to leave us out here?’
He shrugged. ‘My orders were to recover the list. The Circle want no part of your vendetta against Marcus Cain, so consider this a warning. I suggest you listen to it. And for what it’s worth, I hope your luck holds – both of you. But if you ever come looking for me, the Circle will make sure it doesn’t.’
With those parting words, he s
ettled himself into the driver’s seat of the BMW. Sinclair followed a moment later, pausing briefly to look at Alex one more time. He said nothing, though the look in his eyes conveyed far more than mere words.
For his own part, Alex regarded his former friend with absolute disgust. ‘If I were you, I’d hope we don’t meet again.’
‘We won’t.’ Giving Alex a mocking salute, Sinclair slipped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.
With that, the sleek saloon took off and roared back onto the main road, leaving only dust and tyre marks in its wake.
Alex and Anya were, once more, alone.
Chapter 49
The journey had passed more or less in silence. Neither Sinclair nor Halvorsen had much to say to one another. In truth, Kristian Halvorsen was racked with guilt over what he’d done to Anya. He had known the woman for more than twenty years, could still remember the day he’d sat down to debrief the tired, bedraggled teenager who had walked right into the central police station in Oslo to claim political asylum.
Never could he have imagined then that it would lead them to this.
But it was worth it, he told himself as he patted the memory stick in his pocket. Whether she hated him or not, he had saved her life by retrieving the Black List today. The Circle, who had remained largely neutral in this conflict so far, would not tolerate such a threat to their anonymity.
It was worth it, he told himself again. To protect Anya, it was worth it.
‘I need a piss,’ Sinclair said, breaking the silence. He was sitting with his seat tipped back, feet resting on the dashboard, his blonde hair streaming in the breeze from the open window.
‘The plane is only a few miles away. Hold it in,’ Halvorsen advised him. The same private jet that had delivered himself, Alex and Anya to this country was now waiting to take him back to Norway, parked at a small airfield near the Black Sea.
