by Will Jordan
‘So he wouldn’t have his own security detail?’ Stryker prompted.
‘No way.’
Stryker seemed to like that. ‘What do we know about his personal life? He have a wife, children?’
Quinn closed his eyes, trying to remember the details. ‘He’s unmarried, both parents dead. Nearest next of kin are two sisters in Sindh province.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Anything else? Any vices? Women, drink… kids?’
Quinn was struggling now. Being a low-level player, the Agency hadn’t devoted nearly as much time to researching a man like Reza as they had some of the bigger hitters in ISI. There was only one other thing that came to mind. ‘We haven’t confirmed it, but there was some suggestion that he’s a heroin user.’
Again he saw that smile. ‘Perfect.’ Returning the dossiers to his briefcase, Stryker snapped the locks shut and turned back to the station chief. ‘Okay, buddy, here’s what I’m going to need from you…’
Chapter 9
The first light of sunrise found Drake seated out on the patio at the back of the villa, staring out to sea without really seeing anything. The cup of coffee resting on the table beside him had long since grown cold, though he paid it no heed.
He’d slept little the night before, brooding on his encounter with Anya, the harsh words they’d exchanged, and most of all the grim proclamation she’d made.
So what do you intend to do, Ryan? Run and hide? Hope that it all goes away? We both know it doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t matter how far you run, or how well you hide. Sooner or later, our world always catches up.
Drake knew he needed to turn his mind elsewhere, to stop replaying her words. Seeking a distraction, he reached into his pocket and fished out the familiar object that he almost always kept on his person. An object that was as much a mystery to him now as the person who had given it to him.
It was a key, unusual in design and unknown in purpose, its length divided into four sets of teeth as an added security measure, making copying extremely difficult. Meanwhile its bow had been embossed with a set of precisely inscribed numbers, which again meant nothing to him. No discernable pattern came to mind.
It been left to him by his late mother, who had been brutally murdered just a few months ago. A parting gift for a son she’d dismissed as a child and barely known as an adult. The mysterious gift had been accompanied by a short missive expressing her regrets at how she’d treated him, and hinting at secrets she’d kept from him his whole life.
Presumably the key was central to uncovering those secrets, though her letter had neglected to mention its purpose or where it was to be used. Without it, Drake had been left frustratingly in the dark.
Attempts to glean some clues from the key itself had yielded little. Its metallic composition was unremarkable and failed to point to a specific place of manufacture, and there was nothing hidden within it. Its four-bladed shaft was unusual but not unknown, used in all kinds of high-security applications like weapons storage, safes, even banking. In short, it could be used for almost anything, anywhere.
And yet, his mother had chosen to impart it to him. If her letter was to be believed, it was vital to unravelling the truth about her own past, her involvement in the shadowy group known as the Circle and, most of all, the reason she had been murdered.
The dawn light glinted off the polished steel teeth, as if challenging him to decipher their purpose. He was missing something – he knew it. She wanted him to find the truth; she wouldn’t have given him a problem that was impossible to solve. Presumably she wanted to be sure that only he could solve it using some unique scrap of knowledge that he alone possessed.
But what?
‘I thought I’d find you out here,’ McKnight said, taking a seat beside him. ‘Couldn’t sleep, huh?’
‘A lot on my mind.’
Her eyes rested on the key. She knew what it meant to him, knew who had given it to him. But like him, she knew nothing of its purpose.
‘You still think about her?’ McKnight asked. ‘Your mom?’
‘Sometimes. But every time I do, I come away with more questions than answers.’ He shook his head, still mystified that she could have kept an entire life hidden away from him for so long. ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’
‘Maybe she was trying to protect you?’ Samantha suggested.
Turning the key over in his hand one more time, Drake reluctantly slipped it back into his pocket. ‘I don’t need protection. I need answers.’
McKnight looked ready to say more, but didn’t get a chance to respond; the buzz of Drake’s cell phone alerting him to an incoming call. Since only a handful of people knew his number, any calls that came through were worth taking.
However, a quick check of the caller ID revealed a number that was unfamiliar to him. Frowning, Drake hit the receive call button and waited a moment while the line connected.
‘Yeah?’ he began, his tone guarded.
‘Ryan, it’s Cole.’
Drake’s suspicion abated a little. It was his old friend and comrade Cole Mason. Judging by the loud rumble of a car engine and the rush of wind in the background, he was on the move.
‘Cole, why did you ditch your phone? Something wrong?’
‘All kinds of things,’ the man responded with grim honesty. ‘Ran into some trouble at the safe house, had to bail in a hurry.’
Drake’s moment of cautious optimism vanished. ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘The Italian police kind. SWAT team, by the looks of it. They had grenades, automatic weapons, the whole deal. Barely made it out.’
‘Shit,’ Drake breathed. ‘You all right?’
‘Never better, but my cover’s blown in Italy,’ Mason said, his disappointment obvious. ‘I ditched pretty much everything I owned and stole a ride out of Milan. And a new phone in case they were tracking the old one.’
Drake closed his eyes, still shocked by this sudden turn of events. Six months of inactivity had lulled him into a sense of complacency and security that was, it seemed, quite unwarranted.
‘You want me to go to ground, wait it out?’ Mason pressed him, though with no money or ID they both knew he’d have a tough time of it.
‘No,’ Drake decided, realising he couldn’t just hang his friend out to dry. They had a contingency plan for just this sort of eventuality. ‘Get yourself to the Alamo. You know what to do.’
The Alamo was their fallback plan in case one or more of them were compromised and forced to go on the run. It was a place to regroup, to arm themselves and prepare to counter whatever move their enemy had made. It had been intended as a last resort, to be used only in time of great need.
Now was such a time.
‘Copy that. Mason out.’
Shutting down the phone, Drake let out a sigh and ran his hands through his hair, his mind racing with the implications of what he’d just heard.
‘What’s happened to him?’ Samantha asked, having only caught one side of the conversation but drawn her own conclusions. ‘Is he okay?’
Drake quickly relayed the gist of what Mason had told him, as well as his instructions for the man to head to the Alamo, watching as McKnight’s face paled visibly at the news.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she gasped. ‘If they can find Cole, we could all be compromised.’
But Drake didn’t reply. Instead he paused, his keen senses alerting him to a noise on the winding road leading up to their villa. The rattle of an engine, the crunch of wheels on rough unpaved ground.
Someone was coming.
Right away Drake was moving, heading indoors and straight for a drawer in the kitchen. Inside he found a Browning 9mm automatic; a memento of their last job in Libya that had turned out to be a handy companion in the months since.
Pushing the magazine home, Drake pulled back the slide to chamber the first round, checked the safety was engaged, then shoved the weapon down the back of his trousers. It was purely a precaution, of course. Even in a rural backwater like th
is, passers-by weren’t entirely unknown – usually lost tourists looking for directions, or the occasional delivery van gone astray.
Still, after his conversation with Mason, Drake was taking no chances.
‘Hang back, okay?’ he said to McKnight as he strode towards the front door. The engine noise outside was plainly audible now; whoever was coming must be moving at quite a speed. Then, abruptly, it stopped.
Approaching the door with one hand behind his back, gripping the weapon, Drake undid the big solid lock that held it shut, grasped the handle and, taking a breath to ready himself, yanked it open.
Straight away he felt the tension dissipate. It was no lost traveller or gun-toting terrorist that confronted him, but a short, petite young woman in dusty bike leathers. Her Suzuki bike was parked haphazardly on the gravel drive just a few yards away, the helmet still resting on the seat.
The young woman tried to flash one of her fierce, predatory grins, but it came off as a pained grimace instead. Drake noticed that her face was uncharacteristically pale and sallow, her eyes ringed by dark circles of fatigue, while the skin of her left cheek was grazed and cut. She was holding one hand against her side, leaning over as if favouring it.
‘Keira, what the hell happened to you?’ Drake gasped, startled by her appearance.
‘Thought I’d drop in on an old friend,’ she managed to say, taking an unsteady step forward. ‘It’s been a while, Ryan…’
Releasing his grip on the weapon, Drake rushed forward as her legs gave way beneath her, and she fell into his arms.
Chapter 10
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
Majid Reza was sitting at the kitchen table in his small, cluttered apartment in central Rawalpindi, the twin city to nearby Islamabad. His shirt and jacket hung from the back of his chair as he bent forward, concentrating on his task. The drone of traffic and the occasional angry blast of a car horn filtering in through his open window, mingling with the thump of footsteps in the apartment above and the muffled shouts of an argument from his next-door neighbour. Petty irritations that regularly taxed his patience.
Like many in the ISI, he made a decent salary that should have afforded him a comfortable home in a respectable part of town, but it was not to be in his case. Circumstances had dictated that the bulk of his monthly pay check went to something less tangible than property.
Suspended over a flickering candle on the table, the soot-stained spoon in his hand had heated sufficiently to dissolve the crystalline material it contained, reducing it to a bubbling mass of dirty brown liquid. Soon the noise and the heat and the irritation of his dirty living space would be far behind him, he knew.
Laying the spoon carefully on the table lest he spill some of its precious contents, he unwrapped the hypodermic syringe from its protective packaging and screwed the needle into place. HIV and other blood-borne diseases were rife in this part of the world as users were forced to share needles, but that was one matter in which he took a kind of perverted pride. Every time, he made sure to use a fresh needle, straight out of its medical packaging.
It was his way of convincing himself he was better than the junkies living on the streets below. He still had a job, a career, a future. Certainly he enjoyed the occasional high, as did many in Pakistan, but that was all it was. A diversion, an entertainment little different from drinking or smoking. When it ceased to amuse or divert him, he would stop.
With the needle prepared, he held the tip of the needle in the brown sludge, slowly withdrawing the plunger and watching as the liquid transferred from the spoon to the syringe. One had to be precise and methodical about such things, he reflected, trying not to notice the slight tremor in his hands as he worked.
His task complete, he let out a sigh, savouring this moment before he shot up. He could feel the ache in his body, the desire for it, the anticipation at knowing his release was only moments away.
But before he could pick up the syringe, his thoughts were interrupted by a sudden banging at the front door.
‘Go away!’ he called out. ‘I’m busy.’
The banging was repeated, louder and more urgent now.
‘What do you want?’
‘Majid Reza?’ a voice echoed through the door.
‘Yes.’
‘We have a problem. I’ve been sent to collect you.’ The voice that spoke was deep, resonant, but carrying a faint hint of an accent that he couldn’t place. Nonetheless, the words they’d spoken were enough to send a chill through him.
Swearing under his breath, Reza laid the syringe down and blew out the candle. ‘What kind of problem?’ he asked as he hurriedly transferred the syringe and the associated paraphernalia into the old biscuit tin he kept it in.
‘The kind I’d rather not shout about from the hallway,’ the new arrival explained irritably. ‘Now open the door so we can talk.’
Stowing the tin away in a drawer, Reza pulled his shirt over his thin, spare frame and hurried towards the door, though not before drawing his service pistol from its holster on the bed. Whoever this man was, Reza was taking no chances.
Making sure the security chain was in place on the door, and that the automatic was hidden from view behind his back, he gingerly undid the lock and pulled the door open to meet this new arrival.
He barely noticed the sudden blur of movement, or the glint of the electric lights on the strange plastic-looking gun that had suddenly appeared, but he certainly felt what happened next. There was a loud pop, and he flinched as something embedded itself in his right shoulder.
Then, an instant later, white-hot pain engulfed his entire body, short-circuiting every nerve ending and muscle under his control. No longer obeying his command, his body went limp as a rag doll and flopped to the floor, the gun simply falling from his grasp as his fingers ceased to work.
Lying prone and helpless in a foetal position, Reza barely heard the distinctive ping as a pair of bolt cutters severed the security chain and the door swung open to reveal a dark, blurry figure. A figure that had come for one thing only – him.
Chapter 11
‘Clear me some space on the table!’ Drake called out, carrying the semi-conscious woman through to the villa’s kitchen.
McKnight was way ahead of him, one sweep of her arm sending the few cups and plates on the table clattering to the floor. Approaching close behind, Drake hoisted Frost up and laid her down gently on the flat surface.
She was hurt – that much was obvious – but he wouldn’t know how bad or what exactly was wrong until he had a chance to examine her. Unzipping her leather jacket, he pulled it aside to reveal what looked like the source of her pain.
The right side of her grey T-shirt was stained crimson with blood, some of it having dried and clotted already, but it was clear she’d lost a lot of it.
‘Jesus, Keira, what the hell happened to you?’ McKnight asked.
There was no time to ponder that right now. Answers could come later. For now, the priority was tending her wounds and stabilizing her.
‘I’ve got to get a look at it. Pass the scissors,’ Drake prompted, holding out his hand. Almost immediately he felt the requested implement thrust into his grip and went to work, cutting away the blood-soaked T-shirt so he could examine the wound properly.
‘Anyone tries to cop a feel, I’ll knock them out,’ Frost warned, though her words were vague and mumbled as if she were intoxicated. Blood loss coupled with pain and fatigue had taken a heavy toll.
Even a cursory glance was enough to tell him she’d been in the wars. Several large, heavy bruises marked her body, the flesh already badly discoloured beneath her skin. There were also various small lacerations to her arms and hands, one or two of which seemed to contain fragments of glass. Those he could deal with later. It was the big injury that concerned him the most.
Some attempt had been made to dress the wound, Drake realized. There was a cloth pressed against it and secured in place with duct tape, of all things, but the makeshift bandage had only sl
owed the bleeding.
‘Got some serious bleeding here. Doesn’t look arterial, but it’s a bad wound.’
‘Why didn’t she go to a hospital?’ McKnight asked.
‘People ask questions in hospitals.’ Especially when the patient harboured the kind of injury he suspected Frost had sustained. Leaning in close, he looked the young woman in the eye, hoping she was still lucid enough to understand him. ‘I’m going to take the dressing off, Keira. Might hurt a bit.’
He glanced at McKnight, who nodded and gripped the young woman by the shoulders, ready to hold her down if she struggled, which she was very likely to do.
‘Like it matters – Ow! Fuck!’ she cried out as he yanked the dressing off, duct tape and all. McKnight had to fight hard to keep her from falling right off the table as she bucked and thrashed.
‘Easy, Keira. Easy,’ the older woman whispered. ‘You’ll be okay.’
‘Not with this guy tearing pieces off me,’ Frost replied. ‘Shit, Ryan. I hope I get to do this to you one day.’ Her teeth were clenched tight, tears in her eyes.
Nonetheless, Drake was at last afforded a decent look at the injury. Sure enough, it was a gunshot wound; a snaking gash along her right side just below the rib cage. The positioning suggested she might have gotten lucky; any further to the left and it would likely have hit an internal organ. Then there would have been nothing he could do for her.
As it was, it was a messy but probably non-fatal flesh wound.
‘Clean shot, through and through.’ He looked into Frost’s eyes, trying to sound jovial and relaxed. ‘What are you complaining about, you wimp? This is a piece of piss.’
She tried for a defiant grin. ‘Remind me to tell you that next time you get shot.’
‘Don’t count on it.’ Looking at McKnight, Drake motioned to a cupboard at the far side of the kitchen. ‘Grab the first aid tin. I need a clean dressing, and a suture kit.’
Chapter 12
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
