Betrayal (15 page)

Such a task was daunting at the best of times. There were no viable cameras within two blocks of the apartment building – she knew because she’d wasted an hour trying to find one – and nobody knew which direction Anya had gone after the attack. Thus Frost had been forced to randomly search through traffic and security footage in the general vicinity, hoping to get lucky.

Truly it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, only there were thousands of other needles mixed in with it, and the limited technology at her disposal only allowed her to view one at a time.

‘I know you’re out there somewhere,’ she said, reaching for the takeaway pizza box next to her workstation. Two empty cans of Red Bull sat crumpled next to it, pilfered from Drake’s fridge. ‘There’s no fucking way you’re getting the better of me.’

She was about to crack open her third when at last she spotted something.

A figure in a dark overcoat striding down a busy street north of the freeway, head down and partially covered by a black hat. A woman. Tall, athletically built. A woman who walked with the confident, ground-covering stride of a soldier, who didn’t even look up as a police car sped past on the main road with its lights flashing and sirens wailing.

Frost leaned closer, staring intently at the image as the woman raised her head, finally exposing her face to the camera. Straight away her hand shot out and hit the pause button, capturing a perfect shot of Anya getting into a car.

‘Goddamn, I’m good,’ she said, slumping back on the couch, flushed with success and relief. Technology, intuition and sheer hard work had triumphed over age and experience.

Now all she had to do was figure out where Anya was heading.

It was an hour or so before Drake returned to his house with Mason in tow, having delayed to give his friend time to pack some of his gear. He was feeling a mixture of relief and unease at the deal he’d just brokered with Mason. On the one hand he was a step closer to realising his plan of finding Anya, putting a stop to whatever scheme she was involved in, and perhaps saving her life to boot.

On the other hand, he was now all too aware of the consequences of failure.

Frost and McKnight were waiting for him when he entered; the latter having returned from her work at Langley. It was still a little strange to think of them taking over his home while he was away, but he had to admit it was preferable to returning to an empty house. He just hoped they had good news for him.

The younger of the two women recognised Drake’s companion immediately, having known her fellow specialist almost as long as Drake had.

‘Well, fuck me,’ she said, rising from her chair and throwing her arms around him. ‘If it isn’t the ghost of Christmas past.’

Mason looked almost nostalgic as he returned the gesture with equal enthusiasm. ‘It’s good to see you again, Keira. I heard you were still working with Ryan.’ He flashed a playful grin. ‘Can’t believe he kept you around this long.’

‘We’ve come close a few times,’ Drake said, glancing at her with the long-suffering patience of a schoolteacher eyeing up a troublesome student.

‘Ignore Mr Negativity over there,’ Frost advised. ‘So what the hell are you doing back here? You on the clock again?’

‘For now,’ Mason said, giving Drake a meaningful look. ‘Ryan needed my help. After this, we’ll see.’

‘How’s your shoulder these days?’

Mason’s relaxed confidence faltered for a moment, though he quickly recovered. ‘A few months of rehab was all I needed. Never felt better in my life.’

The young woman paused. She had seen the fleeting look of anger in his eyes, and seemed poised to question him further when Drake jumped in.

‘Cole, this is Samantha McKnight,’ he said, gesturing to the other woman who had hung back to let Frost greet her old friend. ‘She’s an explosives specialist who joined the team a few months ago. Sam, this is Cole Mason.’

Mason shook her hand, adopting a more formal approach for the new addition. ‘Looking forward to working with you, Specialist McKnight.’

‘Likewise. And do me a favour – call me Sam,’ she added, flashing one of her disarming smiles. She too had seen the friction between him and Frost when she mentioned his injury. ‘Never was one for formalities.’

Mason relaxed immediately, the brief moment of tension forgotten as his easier manner reasserted itself. ‘That makes two of us.’

Drake almost let out a sigh of relief. The last thing he needed was for his hastily assembled team to fall apart during their first meeting.

‘I’m afraid that’ll have to do as far as introductions go,’ he began. ‘Now that we have a team of sorts, our next priority is to contact Miranova and get her to cooperate with us.’

After being cleaned up by paramedics and given a short debriefing at Langley, the FSB agent had been returned to her own people, who were no doubt also anxious to hear her account of the attack. With luck, she would still be at the Russian embassy just a few miles away.

‘Before you do that, you might want to hear what I’ve found,’ Frost interrupted.

‘Hit me.’

‘Tempting,’ she acknowledged. ‘I’ve got a lead on Anya.’

Drake paused, stopping in his tracks. ‘Go on.’

She smiled, knowing she had him. ‘It’s a long and tedious story, believe me, but the short version is that I was able to find the rental car she escaped from DC in. I traced the licence plate, and found the fake ID she was travelling under. She crossed the border into Canada in the early hours of the morning, then ditched the car at Montreal International. I had to hack their security system—’

‘I didn’t hear that,’ Drake said.

She grinned. ‘And I didn’t say it. The point is, I had to do a little snooping to find out which flight she’d boarded.’

‘And?’

Her grin broadened. ‘She’s on a transatlantic flight to Moscow.’

Drake was stunned by how much she’d been able to uncover in just a few hours.

‘It gets better,’ she went on. ‘After Moscow, Ms Vorontsova is booked on a connecting flight to Grozny in Chechnya.’

Drake’s excitement evaporated.

Chechnya was a country well known to the Agency. A Russian republic that had tried to break away after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it had twice fought wars of independence against its far larger parent nation, achieving little except widespread destruction and suffering. These days it was a hotbed of racial tension, ethnic nationalism, sporadic fighting and terrorism.

There were an awful lot of Chechens who harboured deep hatred towards the Russian government, many of whom were capable of planning an attack like the one mounted last night.

‘Ryan, do you understand what I’ve just told you?’ Frost said. ‘I’ve got reliable intel that Anya is heading for Chechnya, and I’m pretty sure she’s not there for a fucking vacation. This could be the build-up to another attack.’

‘I hear you,’ Drake confirmed, his mind racing. ‘Does anyone else know about this?’

‘Nobody yet. I was careful to cover my tracks.’

McKnight was quick enough to see the implications. ‘Ryan, we know which flight Anya’s on, we know what she looks like and what ID she’s travelling under – we could have a team standing by in Georgia to intercept her. We could end this thing today.’

And get Anya killed in the process, he thought. He was quite certain she wouldn’t surrender willingly, and an armed confrontation in a busy airport wouldn’t end well for anyone. And even if they did somehow manage to take her in alive, it would be impossible to do so without Cain finding out.

There it was right in front of him – a simple choice. Give up Anya and perhaps prevent another attack like the one in DC, or do nothing, protect her anonymity and watch as more people died.

Drake could feel his heart beating faster as various possibilities whirled through his mind, none of them good. He knew the right thing, the logical thing, to do was to confess what they’d uncovered and give the FSB everything they had on Anya. Such a course of action might well save innocent lives.

He knew this was what he was supposed to do. Any case officer worth his salt would have considered Anya compromised by now, and would have burned her long before.

‘Ryan, I know this is a shitty position to put you in, but it’s your call,’ Frost said quietly, sensing his difficulty. ‘I’ll go with you either way, but if it comes out that we had intel that could have prevented a major terrorist attack, you don’t need me to tell you that we’re all fucked.’

‘Keira, I …’ He closed his eyes, trying to master the conflicting emotions now vying for dominance within him.

One word from him could put an end to this. Just one word.

It happened almost before he was aware of it.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head as if to reaffirm the decision. ‘No. I won’t do it.’

‘Ryan, are you sure this is what you want?’ McKnight pressed. ‘You make this choice, there’s no coming back from it. For any of us.’

Drake swallowed and raised his chin, facing up to the truth of what he was doing. ‘I understand. Keira, erase everything you’ve uncovered so far. No matter what happens, this doesn’t come back to you.’

‘Fuck off,’ she said, making a dismissive gesture. ‘If Sam’s going all the way with you, you really think I’m going to walk away now?’

Drake sighed, partly through vexation and partly through relief. He knew she wouldn’t bend on this one. Trying to change Keira Frost’s mind once it was made up was an exercise in futility. And if he was honest, part of him was glad to have her with him.

‘Thanks, Keira. For all of this,’ he said quietly. ‘We wouldn’t even have made it this far without you.’

‘Stop it, you’re embarrassing me,’ she said sarcastically, flashing a crooked smile. However, it soon faded as she returned to the more serious matter at hand. ‘So what are you going to do now?’

That was a good question. It seemed to him they now had two avenues of investigation: the explosives in Norilsk, and Anya’s as-yet-unexplained journey towards Chechnya. The explosives might well yield clues to the group behind this and prevent further attacks, while the Chechen connection would offer a chance of intercepting Anya before she got herself into even more trouble.

Given the scale of the attack, it was clear to him now that Anya was merely one piece of a larger puzzle, and taking down her alone was unlikely to derail whatever plan she was part of. Even he wasn’t prepared to sit back and watch innocent people get killed.

Likewise, putting all their resources into finding the man who had supplied explosives to the group might ultimately help them track down those responsible for the attack, but would fail to achieve their main goal of finding Anya before things got even worse.

Two trails, neither of which they could afford to neglect, but which they didn’t have the resources to pursue equally.

‘I’ll follow up the Norilsk lead,’ McKnight said, sensing his dilemma. ‘I know what I’m looking for, and I think I know how to find it.’

Drake nodded. By her own admission McKnight was the logical choice to investigate the contaminated explosives, but he was relieved that she’d made the decision of her own free will. Norilsk was unlikely to be a picnic for her, but it was infinitely safer than the war-torn country he was planning to venture into. And the woman he was planning to take on.

‘Better pack your thermals,’ Frost cautioned her. ‘I checked the weather report for Norilsk earlier. Right now it’s a balmy twenty below zero.’

‘Then you’d better do the same,’ Drake added. ‘You’re going too.’

The young woman rounded on him. ‘Wait a second. I didn’t agree to that shit.’

‘We work as a team, remember? Sam needs someone to back her up, and you’re the logical choice.’

She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Is this a woman thing?’

‘It’s a common-sense thing. If these people were able to steal explosives from a secure warehouse, they might have falsified records to try to hide the theft, doctored computer inventories, whatever. That sort of thing is your speciality. Either way, I want you around to help out.’

He hadn’t said it out loud, but he was very aware of the fact that his own mission to intercept Anya was going to be more dangerous, and require a lot more muscle, than either of the two specialists could provide. Frost and McKnight, despite their obvious skills and expertise, were basically technicians. Drake needed a soldier to back him up.

‘So I guess you and I are going to sunny Chechnya,’ Mason remarked with a touch of grim humour. ‘Better pack the fashionable Kevlar. I hear tourism isn’t what it used to be.’

Drake was less concerned about the dangers on the ground. If things worked out as he hoped, they wouldn’t have to venture beyond the airport. How exactly he would intercept Anya without Miranova and the rest of the FSB finding out, he wasn’t sure. But as with many operations he’d taken part in, he would work out the details once he was there.

‘Our goal is to find Anya and put a stop to whatever she’s part of,’ Drake reminded his friend. ‘The rest of it can wait. What we need is to give Miranova a compelling reason to let us into Chechnya in the first place.’

‘It would kinda defeat the purpose if you told her about Anya,’ Mason remarked, echoing his thoughts.

Drake chewed his lip. Much as he disliked what he was contemplating, he could think of no other option than to add ‘falsifying evidence’ to the list of crimes he’d committed over the past twenty-four hours.

‘Keira, can you fake an image of our tattooed friend from the lock-up showing him boarding Anya’s flight?’

Frost’s brows rose at this, and she spent several moments weighing up what he was suggesting. ‘Possibly. Might not hold up to detailed scrutiny, but it should be enough to get us in.’

Drake rubbed a hand along his jaw. It was a gamble, but he couldn’t think of anything better at that moment. And in the cynical part of his mind, he figured they had already broken enough laws to land them in jail – one more transgression was unlikely to make much difference.

‘Do it,’ he said at last.

Frost sighed and nodded. ‘Normally I’d ask if you’re sure you know what you’re doing, but I think we both know the answer already.’