Betrayal (45 page)

Just as he’d thought, Anya had risked exposing herself in order to snatch Drake from the FSB’s custody, but she hadn’t reckoned on the hidden device. They were now able to follow her movements just as easily as if she was broadcasting them herself.

Kamarov clenched his fist. Anya had been one step ahead of them so far, but no longer. Now he had the edge.

‘Good. Keep us updated. We’re moving to intercept now.’

Drake grimaced as the burlap sack was pulled off his head, allowing harsh electric light to flood his eyes, blinding in its intensity next to the claustrophobic darkness he’d endured for the last twenty minutes or so.

He couldn’t move. He was seated on a cheap, uncomfortable wooden chair, his hands cuffed firmly behind his back and secured to the chair with either a rope or a plastic cable tie. Whatever it was, it was beyond his ability to break.

His head throbbed as if his brain was steadily expanding beyond the limits of his skull; a testament to the single powerful blow that had dropped him like a sack of rice. It was hard to know how bad the injury was. Certainly he’d experienced the pain and nausea that went hand in hand with a concussion, and just looking into the light was enough to make him want to throw up. Still, at least his hearing was returning to normal. The high-pitched whine that had plagued him earlier had receded to a faint ringing.

The congealed blood and throbbing pain in his right arm reminded him of the device recently removed by Anya with such brutal efficiency. He wondered if the woman had derived a grim sense of satisfaction from that act, perhaps feeling that she had repaid the favour after enduring a similar experience last year.

One person who hadn’t been there, however, was Miranova. He would have heard or felt her in the back of the van with him, which meant either that she’d been hauled off in a second vehicle, or …

He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw shut, refusing to let his thoughts stray down that path. Not now. Not until he knew more.

Just focus on the things you can do something about, he told himself.

He looked around, taking in as much of his surroundings as possible. It was hard to see with the light in his eyes, but he guessed he was seated in the centre of a room about 20 feet square. The walls were bare brick, the floor rough and uneven.

The place was in serious disrepair, with mortar starting to come away from the bricks and patches of mould inching their way up the walls. The floor was covered with damp cardboard boxes, lumps of broken concrete, cigarette ends and other pieces of discarded rubbish. If there was a door, it had to be behind him because he could see no other access points.

A table had been pushed up against the wall opposite, on which was resting the powerful work light that was the room’s only source of illumination. That told him pretty much everything he needed to know.

Drake had been in enough interrogation rooms to recognise the set-up here. This was a basic job; the sort of thing Agency field teams would cobble together to do an impromptu ‘debriefing’ of a high-value target. But like most things in life, simplicity was the key.

‘Ryan Drake,’ a voice said from behind. A man’s voice, Russian accented, neither high- nor low-pitched. It was smooth and clear, suggesting he was neither a smoker nor a big drinker.

Drake heard footsteps on the concrete floor, and glanced left as his captor walked into view, revealing himself for the first time.

Drake had encountered all kinds of men in his profession, from terrorist leaders to covert operatives, informants, soldiers, insurgents, criminals of every kind, even rogue Agency personnel. He knew the sort of people who moved in such circles, and this man wasn’t one of them.

Short, stoop-shouldered and overweight, he carried himself with the unprepossessing stature of one used to being ignored and overlooked. Wire-framed glasses sat on the bridge of his long nose, while his fleshy, amiable face was crowned by a receding patch of dark hair. He was dressed in a cheap, poorly fitting brown suit that somehow reminded Drake of a middle-aged taxi driver.

All in all, he was about as far from Drake’s expectation of the ruthless leader of this terrorist group as it was possible to be. To think that this man had somehow bent Anya to his will was even more inconceivable. Yet here they were, Drake handcuffed to a chair and his enigmatic captor circling around in front of him.

‘My name is Buran Atayev,’ he said, leaning back so that his hands were braced on the edge of the table. His frame was partially blocking the work light, allowing Drake to see a little better. ‘I have been looking forward to meeting you.’

‘What do you want with me?’ Drake asked, still struggling to believe that this was the mastermind behind the deaths of two of the FSB’s top men.

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a faint smile. ‘To thank you, of course. You were a worthy opponent – smart enough to see the trail I left, and predictable enough to follow it here.’

Drake had already suspected as much by now, but to have it confirmed in such an offhand manner only served to underline his own failure.

‘When you realised Kalyuyev was the next target, you chose to use him as bait rather than protecting him.’ He raised a finger and wagged it from side to side as if to chide Drake for his error. ‘A risky strategy.’

‘He’s safe,’ Drake reminded him.

Again that flicker of a smile. ‘For now. You, however, are not.’

Drake could see the way this conversation was heading, and knew he had to do something now if he didn’t want to end up like Demochev and Masalsky. He had to give the man a reason not to kill him.

‘I know why you’re doing this.’

That seemed to intrigue Atayev. ‘Do you?’

‘You said yourself that I’d made the connection between your targets. It’s Beslan. Demochev, Masalsky and Kalyuyev – all three men were involved that day. They all fucked up, they all failed to stop it from happening. That’s what they’re guilty of, isn’t it?’

At this, Atayev shook his head, letting out a chuckle of grim amusement. ‘Like I said, you are smart enough to see the obvious, but the deeper meaning is lost on you. None of those men “fucked up” as you put it. They all played their parts to perfection.’

Drake frowned, failing to understand. ‘What do you mean?’

Atayev settled down on the edge of the table, making himself a little more comfortable. ‘Let me tell you a story, Mr Drake,’ he said with the exaggerated enthusiasm of a teacher addressing a reluctant classroom. ‘It begins twenty years ago, with an ambitious young KGB agent who made a name for himself during the Afghan War. He was, as you would put it, a firefighter – a man sent where the need was greatest, to deal with threats that others could not. His ambition was matched only by his complete disregard for human life, and he soon became one of the most feared KGB operatives in the country. But time was against him, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union he found himself cast adrift. Just another relic of the Cold War in a world that no longer needed him.’

In a flash, Drake’s earlier phone conversation with Frost leapt into his mind once more. A former KGB agent who operated in Afghanistan with brutal efficiency, who now had a vested interest in tracking down the men behind the attack in Washington. Instantly, the pieces assembled in his head like a puzzle whose solution suddenly became obvious.

‘Surovsky.’

Viktor Surovsky: the golden boy in Russia’s war against terrorism and organised crime, the hard-line but nonetheless brilliant leader who had brought order from chaos, who had remade the FSB into an intelligence organisation to rival the best in the world.

Another faint smile, this time one of grudging respect. ‘Indeed. But such a life did not suit our ambitious friend Viktor. He began looking for other ways to advance himself, until at last his attention came to rest on Chechnya. This was a place with many enemies to be overcome, just like Afghanistan. But how was a man to make a name for himself there? It is at this time in his life that a second man enters our story. A comrade of Viktor’s from the old days, a former Spetsnaz operative now working for the FSB’s counter-terrorist division.’

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Roman Kalyuyev.

‘It was Kalyuyev who suggested that it was fear, not accomplishments, that brought men to power. Like St George and the dragon, he needed only to create a monster, and then slay it. Viktor, blinded by his own ambition, agreed immediately with this idea. Three separate targets were chosen to maximise civilian casualties – an apartment complex in Moscow, a pair of airliners, and last of all … a school.’

Drake could hardly believe what he was hearing. Frost’s earlier summary of Surovsky’s career replayed in his mind.

‘Russia got hit by a bunch of terrorist attacks from Chechen separatists. They blew up an apartment complex in Moscow, downed a couple of airliners and shot up a school in Beslan.’

‘The first two attacks were merely opening moves, designed to draw attention – Beslan was his masterstroke,’ Atayev went on. ‘Only an attack of that scale would give him the springboard he needed to launch himself into power. Using undercover agents, Viktor and Kalyuyev were able to convince Chechen militants that a major hostage crisis would be enough to bring Russia to the negotiating table. Demochev and Masalsky were bribed into cooperating. Masalsky was ordered to cease FSB surveillance of known Chechen insurgents in the weeks leading up to the attack, while Demochev made sure that the armed group was able to reach the school unchallenged.’

‘Demochev served as commander of a border security task force. He was in command of most of the military checkpoints in the area around the town.’

Miranova’s words from the briefing earlier seemed like a mockery of Drake’s own incompetence now.

‘Masalsky was part of the FSB’s anti-terrorism directorate in the province. He was responsible for monitoring and apprehending suspected militants.’

Demochev and Masalsky. Two men who had been mysteriously promoted to divisional leader positions instead of punished for their failures. Only now did Drake understand why. Only now did he perceive the pattern that had been in front of him the whole time.

‘When the crisis unfolded, Kalyuyev the anti-terrorist expert was flown in from Moscow to coordinate a rescue operation. But rescue was the last thing on his mind. His orders were to storm the school and make sure every one of the hostage-takers was killed – Viktor wanted no one left to speak out against him. And believe me, Kalyuyev executed his orders with great thoroughness.’

Drake was appalled. Hundreds of men, women and children had died in the attack, caught in the crossfire between the two opposing forces. Had Kalyuyev really been willing to go so far?

‘And so we come at last to the endgame, where the true nature of Viktor’s plan is revealed. As the dust settled and the scale of the disaster became clear, the Russian people demanded action, their anger fuelled by leaked reports of police incompetence and cover-ups. Leaked by none other than Viktor himself. The government was desperate to find a scapegoat for the disaster, and quickly settled on the FSB. The existing leadership were either forced to resign or relegated to token positions, while our friend Viktor, the firefighter from Afghanistan, found himself promoted to the position of acting director. Kalyuyev meanwhile took much of the blame for the failed rescue operation and retired, several million dollars richer, of course.’

Kalyuyev, the successful businessman living the high life in Moscow, who had left his FSB past behind with enough money to buy his way into virtually any company he chose.

‘Over the next few months, Viktor worked feverishly to consolidate his hold on power. Anyone who posed a threat was methodically hunted down and eliminated. Thousands were arrested and held without trial, while State control of the media was tightened, strangling the life out of Beslan. Foreign journalists and investigators who started asking too many questions were either assassinated or intimidated into silence. Just as Kalyuyev had said, fear became Viktor’s most powerful weapon. Fear of attack was what brought him to power, and fear of reprisal is what allows him to remain there unchallenged.’ He turned his head slowly look at Drake, his bespectacled eyes reflecting deep wells of grief and pain and years of pent-up fury. ‘And so ends our story, Mr Drake.’

Drake was quite simply stunned by everything he’d heard. He never could have imagined the depth of the conspiracy they were dealing with, or the scale of the tragedy that had been allowed to play out.

Only then did it finally occur to him that this man standing before him was no terrorist or freedom fighter, that he wasn’t driven by religious or political ideology, or a thirst for power or wealth. He had a far more personal connection to this.

‘If everything you’ve told me is true, then I’m not your enemy,’ Drake implored him. ‘I can help you. I can get you to America, give you protection, find a way to get your story out. You can make Surovsky answer for what he did.’

The older man folded his arms and regarded Drake with quizzical amusement. ‘Why would I need your help?’

‘Don’t you get it? They’re on to you now. You managed to kill Masalsky and Demochev because they didn’t understand what you were doing, but Surovsky will be ready for you. You can’t beat someone like that with bombs and guns. And even if you could get to him, killing him would only make him into a martyr. If you want to bring him down, you have to do it the right way. Get me out of here and I’ll help you destroy the fucker.’

At this, his captor merely shook his head. ‘You could be telling the truth. In which case you are a better man than I thought. But I already have all the help I need.’

Glancing over Drake’s shoulder, he nodded to someone who had apparently been standing there, silent and unnoticed, throughout the whole conversation.

Drake heard the soft thump of boots on the concrete floor and looked around as a woman walked into view. Tall, athletically built, with short blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.

Anya.