Dark Spies (10 page)

Ulana agreed. “Your being here may compromise us. The rules are in place for a reason, and they’re your rules.”

They were. Will looked again at the man holding the gun and saw that his finger was now over the trigger. “I can assure you that no one knows I’m here.”

The smoker stubbed his cigarette out. “Good. Then we get rid of you and go back to business.”

“I’m hoping you might consider another option.” Will took a gulp of his tea. It was sickly sweet and made with cheap tea bags, but God, the hot liquid felt good as he swallowed it down. “I need transit to Canada.”

Ulana laughed.

Her men did not.

One of them said, “Not a bad idea. Bury his body there, away from us.”

Ulana moved to the table and leaned in close to Will. “Or just drop you out of the Islander midway across the strait.”

Will held eye contact with her.

She smiled before moving back to her mug of tea. “You been a naughty boy?”

Will didn’t answer.

“Of course you have, or you wouldn’t be here.” Ulana clicked her fingers at the smoker. Without taking his eyes off Will, he hand-rolled a cigarette, lit it, and gave it to his boss. She inhaled deep on the tobacco, blew out a stream of smoke, and asked, “You know why you’re not dead already?”

Will shook his head.

“Sir Tim Berners-Lee.”

Will frowned.

“Inventor of the World Wide Web.”

“I know who he is, but what’s he got to do with—”

Ulana gestured for him to shut up. “You remember the days before the Internet? Grubbing around in archives, or libraries, or speaking to assets just to try to find out some crappy piece of information?” She patted the laptop. “Now we’ve got Google.”

Will nodded toward the laptop. “You won’t find any trace of me on there.”

“Really?” Ulana typed on the laptop and placed it in front of Will. “Who’s that then?”

Will made no attempt to hide his shock. On the screen was a photo of his face. “What the—”

“Seems an SSCI guy called Senator Colby Jellicoe doesn’t like you very much, and to all intents and purposes he’s told the world as much. Actually, it’s worse than that. He’s put the feds and all their European pals onto you and thinks it’s best that you’re shot dead. Gave the media a photo of you. This one’s from the front page of the
New York Times,
but you’ll find the same one all over the Net and in a pile of other U.S. and non-U.S. papers.” She snapped the laptop shut. “Seems you
were
a naughty boy. And seems your real name is Will Cochrane.”

Will couldn’t believe what he was hearing and what he’d seen on the computer. “Did the senator say what I’d done?”

“No. Just you disobeyed Agency orders during a mission in Norway, and that the only reason U.S.-Norwegian relations hadn’t turned to rat shit was because the senator had promised the Norwegian government that you would be brought to justice.”

Will nodded slowly. Of course, no mention had been made of Ferryman or Antaeus. But that didn’t change the fact that he was now royally screwed. “I didn’t think they’d go . . . this far.” His mind was racing. Did this change everything? Should he turn around and vanish for good?

Ulana seemed to be reading his mind. “Still want to go to Canada?”

“I . . .” Will settled on one thought—Ferryman—and made a decision. “Yes. More than ever.” He looked at each person in the room, knowing that this could go either way, and that all it would take for him to be killed was for Ulana to snap her fingers as if she were requesting another cigarette. “Please. I’m on my own. In every sense.”

“You were set up in Norway?”

“No. But it appears that I came very close to severely pissing some people off.”

“People we might dislike?”

Will lifted his hand to rub his weary face.

The man with the gun cocked the hammer.

“Maybe.” Will lowered his hand. “I don’t know. How would I know?” He tried to smile. “You’d have to meet them first to see if your personalities jelled.”

Not his wisest comment. The man with the pistol was now standing next to him, looking at Ulana while holding the barrel against Will’s temple.

Will spoke quickly. “This is nothing to do with GRU. I promise you that.”

“You promise me it’s got nothing to do with Russia, full stop?”

Smart, Ulana.

Will responded, “Nothing to do with anything other than me wanting to get my hands around the throats of some bastard Agency people.”

Ulana tapped ash from her cigarette. “Difficult situation, this, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because people like us lie for a living.”

“Correct. And did you just lie?”

“No.”

Ulana laughed. “You could have said yes.”

“And that could’ve been a lie.”

“So, round and round the mulberry bush we go.” She stared at him, her expression now cold. “But I don’t think I have time for any of that.”

She turned her attention to the colleague next to Will.

And clicked her fingers.

FOURTEEN

A
ntaeus raised his old rifle to eye level, focused on the moonlit area of woodland, and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed over the surrounding countryside, causing night wildlife to shriek as it made for cover. He ignited his oil lamp and limped toward the place where his bullet had struck flesh.

His breath steamed in the cold air as he stopped on an area of heathland beneath a tall birch tree and held the lamp low, scouring the ground around him. It took him only a few seconds to find the dead body. He moved to it, felt pain in his bad leg as he crouched, and smiled while smoothing a hand over the warm carcass. His shot had been precise—straight through the breastplate, no mess, instant death.

His rifle’s aim had been as true as it had been in the hands of a Boer, over a century ago during the siege of Mafikeng. After slinging it onto his back and putting the lamp’s handle on his forearm, he placed two hands under the body, lifted it to his chest, and walked to the large building that was positioned on stilts over a glistening and tranquil lake. The house was the only sign of human life for miles around in the countryside, and that’s why he liked living here. Plus, it was only fifty miles beyond the outskirts of Moscow and so gave him easy access to the SVR headquarters.

He entered the house, kicked the door shut behind him, and went to the kitchen. On the table was a copy of the
Washington Post
that was open on a center-page spread about Senator Jellicoe’s appearance at the Senate hearing. An SVR courier had delivered the paper to him one hour ago. As soon as the courier had left, Antaeus had read the article in silence, his vast intellect attempting to process hundreds of thoughts, before deciding that hunting his supper was the best way to focus his mind.

He placed the dead rabbit on top of the newspaper. Blood from the bullet’s entry and exit wounds dripped over the article’s photo of Will Cochrane’s face, quickly making the image saturated and crimson. Antaeus smiled and went to his study.

The room was small and cluttered with wall-mounted shelves, a set of drawers, leather chair and oak desk, books, a scorched wooden ashtray, pre-WWII metal coffee tin containing cheroots, gloves and scarves hanging from the ceiling, print photographs of Captain Scott and his ship
Discovery
during the Antarctic expedition in 1902, stationary and papers containing his ongoing research into a Stone Age settlement that was once located in his property’s expansive wild grounds, a reptile tank, and a blackboard that was fixed on the wall above his desk.

The spymaster sat at his desk, picked up a piece of chalk, and stared at the board.

Many times he’d used the board to make notes.

This evening was different, because the stakes were the very highest.

He reached with the chalk to the left side of the board, wrote four names, and studied them while deep in thought.

Senator Colby Jellicoe. Totally dedicated to Project Ferryman, but he’d blurt the truth if pain was inflicted on him.

Charles Sheridan. He hated his wife, Lindsay, after their last overseas posting. How much did she know? A weak link? Or could Sheridan keep her mouth firmly shut?

Gregori Shonin, Antaeus’s best SVR agent, who years earlier had spotted the Americans at the embassy function in Prague, and as a result had enabled the spymaster to commence Project Ferryman.

And Ed Parker. Loyal to his wife, the Agency, and Ferryman.

He drew a line from the names to the center of the board, where he wrote
PROJECT FERRYMAN
.

Above it he wrote
COBALT
. The code name of the financier who spent more money funding terrorism across the globe than all other terrorism-financing schemes put together. A ghost. A repulsive man driven solely by profits. An enemy of the motherland, America, and all others who loathed anarchism and dogma. A man who was the complete antithesis of professional operators like Antaeus or his opponents in the West. And yet one who was inextricably linked to Ferryman.

From there, he drew another line to the other side of the board, his chalk screeching as he did so. He wrote one name.

WILL COCHRANE.

Antaeus looked at the reptile tank. Inside was a chameleon. Its markings had adapted to mimic the color of its surroundings. He imagined the chameleon was Ellie Hallowes. The creature was alive because Antaeus chose to let it live; Ellie Hallowes was alive because Will Cochrane had disobeyed orders by choosing to protect her.

Her Russian SVR agent had met her in Norway with knowledge that the CIA had been totally penetrated by Russia. Did he communicate that to her? Or was he gunned down by Antaeus’s men before he could do so? Time would tell. Plus, Ferryman was still in place.

He stared at Cochrane’s name. Thanks to Ferryman and what the man had said at the senatorial hearing, Antaeus now knew that Cochrane had had Antaeus in his sights in Norway. How galling it must have been for the MI6 operative when he was ordered not to shoot Antaeus.

But Cochrane wasn’t a man to back down from danger. He wouldn’t flee.

Antaeus nodded.

Will Cochrane would head to North America to ascertain why he’d been made to go on the run. And that meant there was a threat—just a potential that he could destroy Ferryman.

He picked up a photo of his wife and six-year-old daughter, and felt a moment of utter sadness. They were his beloved darlings, and to his unexpected delight had helped him discover and reveal a genuine kindness inside him. That had all ended on the evening when his daughter twisted her ankle while shopping with her mother. They were supposed to have caught the train home, but it was raining hard and his daughter’s injury made it impossible for them to reach the station. So his wife had called him on his cell when he was leaving work. Every day since then, he’d wished he’d ignored the call. But he hadn’t, and had made a quick detour to pick his family up. It was the only time they’d ever shared a car journey with him while he headed home after work. He remembered his daughter’s excitement overshadowing the pain in her leg. That had made him momentarily happy, an emotion that had been instantly replaced with dread when Ferryman called in a state of panic. Antaeus had stopped the car, rushed out, and moved to the rear passenger doors while screaming at his family. His hand was on the door handle when the bomb went off and threw him halfway across the Moscow street. Despite the severe burns and lacerations to his leg and half his face, he’d tried to crawl back to the vehicle, even though it was a mangled wreck of burning steel and corpses. But the flames were too fierce, and in any case there was nothing he could do. His wife and child had been blown to pieces.

Antaeus touched the photo, two tears running out of his eyes, one of which coursed erratically down the disfigured side of his face.

He’d never allowed anyone to travel in his car to or from work in case something like this happened. But on that day, his wife had implored him and in the background he’d heard his daughter crying. He just couldn’t bring himself to leave them stranded. So he’d taken a risk.

To this day Cochrane didn’t know they’d been in the car, because their presence and their deaths had been carefully covered up by the SVR. Had he known about Antaeus’s unplanned detour that evening, Cochrane would undoubtedly have done everything he could to get the spymaster’s family out of the car before the MI6 timer triggered the bomb.

But that made no difference to the fact that they were still goddamned killed by the bastard.

Antaeus wiped the tears away and now felt nothing but burning anger. He took out his cell, spoke to a man for eleven minutes, ended the call, and drew an arrow pointing at Will Cochrane’s name.

The anger receded and was replaced by fast thinking and a cold resolve. He held the chalk at the base of the arrow, wondering what he should write. Not their real names, of course; instead appropriate code names that only he knew. Looking around the room, his gaze settled on the framed print photographs of the Antarctic expedition.

He made a decision and wrote on the board.

SCOTT. SHACKLETON. OATES. AMUNDSEN.

Four early-twentieth-century Polar explorers.

The very toughest of men, who were able to withstand unimaginable hardships and could only be stopped by death.

Just like his four top assassins. And like the explorers, two of them were British, one of them Irish, and one Norwegian.

He’d just told the assassin code-named Scott that the team was to immediately deploy to the United States.

His instruction was as precise as his shot that hit the rabbit.

Kill Cochrane.