Deception Game (11 page)

‘Sorry, am I supposed to be the hammer or the screw?’

Faulkner chose to ignore the remark. ‘The second thing I know is that things haven’t been working out very well for you with our friends in Langley either. You’ve taken part in some rather...questionable ops lately, and made yourself some powerful enemies in the process. The kind of enemies that might soon be running America’s whole intelligence show.’

Drake had nothing to say to this. Thus far Faulkner’s assessment of his situation had been disconcertingly accurate.

It was time for Faulkner to play his trump card. ‘Lastly, I know all of this has happened on account of one woman. Someone dangerous and angry enough to topple the house of cards that so many people have devoted their lives to building. Someone who could turn our world upside down if she were left unchecked.’

‘You know a lot,’ Drake admitted tersely.

At this, Faulkner shrugged and leaned back in his seat. ‘We live in a big pond, but it’s a pond all the same. Throw a big enough stone in, and sooner or later the ripples will reach even the farthest shore. And you’ve been throwing some pretty large stones around these past couple of years, Ryan my boy. People are starting to take notice.’

‘Including you.’

‘Including me.’

‘So you’ve told me what you know. Now tell me what you want.’

The smile was back. ‘As strange as it might sound, I want to help you.’

‘While helping yourself, I assume?’

The smile broadened. ‘I see no harm in a bit of...mutual assistance. Do you?’

‘Depends on what you want assistance with.’ Drake cocked an eyebrow. ‘And more importantly, what you’re offering.’

‘We’ll talk about what I want in a moment,’ Faulkner promised. ‘As for what I’m offering, that comes in two parts. The first part is protection for you and your family, for the rest of your lives. No more looking over your shoulder, no more waiting for that sword to fall. I can guarantee their safety, and yours. For good.’

‘How?’

‘That brings me to the second part.’ Moving his drink aside, Faulkner folded his arms and leaned in close, staring Drake in the eyes. ‘I’m going to help you take down Marcus Cain.’

George Washington University Hospital, Virginia

Dan Franklin felt like he was submerged in the depths of a dark, murky pond, faintly able to discern sounds and movement on the surface yet unable to comprehend them. But he knew they were important somehow, knew he had to find a way to reach them.

Forcing his confused and muddled thoughts together behind a coherent purpose, he strove to move towards the sounds, to concentrate, to listen and feel again.

Open your eyes, Mr Franklin.

Open your eyes.

His eyes blinked open once, harsh light flooding his retinas for an instant before he closed them. But his mind was coming round now, his fragmented thoughts coalescing into a growing understanding of his situation.

Open your eyes.

This time he managed to raise his eyelids, though it took a great effort to keep them open. For a moment or two the world around him was a white, stark blur that he could make no sense of, but slowly the shapes resolved themselves into places and objects.

White walls, chairs, a table, a window. Beside him, the beeping of some machine. He inhaled, tasting dry conditioned air and the sharp odour of antiseptic.

‘Hello, Mr Franklin,’ a quiet, nasal voice said.

With great effort, Franklin turned his head towards the source of the voice.

A man was sitting beside his bed. An older man with a neatly trimmed beard and greying hair, his slender reading glasses perched on the bridge of a prominent nose as he made some notes on Franklin’s chart.

Lewis Engelmann, an expert in spinal surgery at Washington University. The man who had operated on him. How long? Hours? Days?

‘Can you hear me?’ Engelmann asked.

Franklin swallowed, his throat thick, his tongue seemingly unwilling to respond to the commands from his brain. Unable to form the words, he settled for nodding.

‘Good,’ Engelmann concluded, nodding to himself. ‘You’re still feeling the effects of the anaesthesia. It should wear off over the next couple of hours. But it’s a good sign that you came around so fast.’

‘How...?’ Franklin mumbled. ‘How...?’

‘How did it go?’ Engelmann finished for him. ‘Well, that’s something we’ll find out over the next few days. How do you feel right now? Any pain?’

Franklin frowned, concentrating hard. He was accustomed to the constant ache in his injured back, the pain of cramping muscles and damaged nerves. But now, at last, there was nothing. No pain, no sensation at all, in fact...

Oh God.

The beeping beside him was growing faster as his heart rate increased, fear charging through his confused mind. He could feel nothing below his chest, as if his body simply ended there. It was a curious, bizarre, terrifying notion.

‘I...I can’t feel...’

Engelmann nodded in understanding. ‘It’s all right, there’s no need to panic. The swelling will have compressed your spinal column, probably pressing on the nerves. It’s common to feel no sensation after surgery like this, especially with the anaesthetic still in your system. That’s why I said we’ll find out over the next few days how successful the operation was. With luck, the sensation should gradually return as the swelling eases.’

‘What if...it doesn’t?’ Franklin managed to say.

The surgeon looked away, avoiding his desperate gaze.

‘Get some rest, Mr Franklin,’ he advised. ‘We’ll talk more later.’

Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales

Drake eyed up Faulkner across the table. As with most things in life, he made it all seem so easy, so convenient, as if bringing down one of the most powerful men in the Agency were as simple as ordering groceries.

Drake on the other hand knew all too well what a daunting, dangerous, perhaps insurmountable challenge Cain posed. Two years of toil and struggle had done much to educate him about just what sort of opponent he was up against.

Nonetheless, he knew Faulkner wouldn’t have made such a claim unless he had something to back it up with. That much, at least, he’d come to understand about the man – he wasn’t one for bluffing.

‘Keep talking,’ he prompted.

‘Yesterday you extracted a man from Paris on Agency orders. No doubt you’d been briefed that he was an intelligence source who had gone rogue and started selling secrets to the highest bidder. Don’t ask how I know this, because you know I won’t tell you. But suffice to say, that man wasn’t what he appeared to be.’

Drake was starting to get the same feeling he’d had during his tense debriefing with Breckenridge. ‘So what was he?’

‘A victim of a very secret and very dirty agreement between the CIA and Libyan intelligence. An agreement brokered by Marcus Cain, no less.’

‘What kind of agreement?’

‘An exchange. It’s simple, really. The Libyans have been harbouring al-Qaeda and Islamic State commanders for years, particularly since we pushed them out of Iraq. We know this, and they know that we know, but they also know we’re not going to do a damn thing about it, because those commanders are their bargaining chip. We want them, and we’re willing to pay for them. So, a deal was struck – they give us a few of our enemies, and in return we give them a few of theirs.’

Drake leaned forward. ‘Who, exactly?’

‘Enemies of the Libyan government. Well, enemies of Colonel Gaddafi, really,’ he amended. ‘And there are plenty of those nowadays, believe me, both real and imagined. Leaders of opposition groups, insurgents, revolutionaries, even journalists who speak out too loudly against the regime. Anyone who poses a threat to them. Anyone who might help start a popular uprising that could overthrow Gaddafi.’

Drake let out a breath, feeling like he’d been punched in the stomach. ‘You’re telling me we handed over an innocent man to be tortured and executed?’

Faulkner gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘Innocence is a matter of perspective. From the Libyan’s point of view, Fayed was an enemy trying to recruit foreign support for an armed insurgency. For the Americans, he was a commodity to be traded. For you, he was a mission-objective. As I say, perspective.’

Drake felt as if he was going to throw up. His career as a Shepherd team leader was supposed to have represented a fresh start; a change of direction in a life that had all too often been muddied by questionable decisions and disastrous outcomes. Certainly it was dangerous and at times exacted a high price, but their cause was still a righteous one – to find and recover people who needed help. Not now, it seemed.

‘Not such an easy thing to accept, is it?’ Faulkner asked, guessing his thoughts. ‘You’ve been used, Ryan. Deal with it.’

Drake glanced up at him, anger simmering behind his vivid eyes. ‘I’m still waiting to hear how my mother was involved in any of this.’

Faulkner regarded him for a long moment before going on. ‘Section 6 have an interesting case-file on her, which I reviewed before this meeting.’

‘MI6 was keeping tabs on her?’ Drake asked.

Faulkner gave him a knowing look. ‘We keep tabs on anyone with the brains and the will to hurt our interests overseas. As it turns out, Freya possessed plenty of both. From what I understand, she was politically active for most of her adult life, and particularly vocal in her opposition to Gaddafi’s rule in Libya. She wrote a good number of articles online about it, in fact. Human-rights abuses, state-sponsored terrorism – all the usual stuff.’

He mentioned it in such an offhand way, as if it were a long-accepted fact of life that the West dealt with dangerous and unpredictable dictatorships who enslaved their own people.

‘Anyway, it seems she’d built up quite a network of contacts within the Libyan expat community here in the UK, even became personally close to one or two of them.’ He let that hang for a few moments without further comment. ‘That was when things started to go wrong. One of her best sources was arrested and put on a rendition flight to Libya. You might say that put her on the warpath. She began actively working to expose the prisoner-exchange programme, trying to out the whole thing to anyone who would listen.’

Drake had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘You’re saying she was killed to keep her quiet.’

Faulkner sighed and nodded. ‘From what the chaps at GCHQ deduced from her phone records, she was supposed to be meeting with a new source who claimed to have information that could expose the entire programme. That was two days ago. She travelled to meet with him, and...well, you know the rest.’

Drake’s fists were clenched tight, the knuckles standing out hard and white against the skin. ‘So who ordered the hit?’

For a moment, the horrific thought occurred to him that perhaps the Agency or MI6 themselves had arranged her death, though he doubted Faulkner would be here telling him about it if that were the case.

Reaching for his cell phone, Faulkner powered it up and turned it towards Drake. ‘Do you recognize this man?’

Drake leaned in closer, studying the digital photograph displayed on screen. It was a long-range shot, clearly taken without the subject’s knowledge, but straightaway the image sent a chill of recognition through him. Mid thirties, slim face with prominent cheekbones, long straight nose, olive skin, receding hairline...

Oh Christ.

‘He was there,’ Drake whispered, feeling like he was about to be sick. ‘On the rendition flight from Paris. I saw him right there with the Agency retrieval team.’

It was almost unbelievable. Drake himself had unknowingly aided the very man who had ordered his mother’s death.

‘I’m not surprised,’ Faulkner acknowledged. ‘Apparently he likes to apply the personal touch when they hand over detainees.’

‘Who is he?’

‘His name’s Tarek Sowan; a colonel in the Libyan intelligence service, and one of the main players in the prisoner-exchange programme. He’s the one that Cain chose to reach out to when he first proposed the deal, he provides the list of names for rendition, he even helped the Agency choose locations for their black sites in Libya. There aren’t many people who know more about the entire setup than our friend Sowan here.’

Drake was staring at the image intently, wondering at the mind, the soul that lurked behind that lean, unassuming face. This was a man who made a business out of torture, who specialised in inflicting pain and suffering. There was no way of knowing whether it was out of duty, out of pleasure, or perhaps a little of both.

‘Whatever his qualities from an operational point of view, it seems patience and subtlety aren’t amongst them,’ Faulkner went on. ‘When Sowan learned of your mother’s efforts to expose the programme, he bypassed the Americans completely and ordered her assassination. Needless to say, we weren’t too impressed when we found out a British citizen had been murdered on British soil on the orders of a foreign government. And so here we find ourselves, at a bit of a crossroads.’

Not as far as Drake was concerned. There was only one path that lay ahead for him – the one that led directly to Tarek Sowan.

‘You can probably guess where this is going,’ Faulkner went on. ‘I’m prepared to give you information that can lead you to Sowan. If you were to find him and bring him to us for...debriefing –’ He put a certain emphasis on the word that left Drake in no doubt that Sowan would receive a little of what he’d been dishing out over the years – ‘then I’m quite sure he’d give us enough actionable intel to expose Cain to the world. Careers have ended for less than this, believe me.’

Two birds with one stone. A chance to take down Cain at a stroke, and more importantly to get his hands on the man who had ordered his mother’s death. He had no idea how legit this offer was, but he knew one thing with absolute certainty: once they’d finished ‘debriefing’ Sowan, he belonged to Drake.

‘You said information comes at a cost,’ he reminded the British intelligence officer, wary of things that seemed too good to be true. ‘What do you want in return?’

Faulkner couldn’t hide his smile if he’d wanted to. ‘You, Ryan – not to put too fine a point on it. Well, actually, you and your female friend.’

Drake’s brows rose at this. ‘Why?’

‘Come, now. Neither of us are stupid, so let’s not act like it,’ Faulkner chided him. ‘She used to be one of the Agency’s top operatives. Even if she’s been out in the cold for a few years, she probably knows more about their classified operations than we ever did. And from what I’ve read, she can still give most of our field operatives a run for their money.’ He smiled and reached for his orange juice with a well-manicured hand. ‘I’m not overly fond of football analogies, Ryan, but I know that if you want to play in the top division you’ve got to sign the best players. Well, that’s one player I want for
my
team.’

‘She’s got a lot of red cards against her name,’ Drake reminded him, sticking with the football analogy. ‘They won’t go away easily.’

‘All of which are down to Cain. He’s her enemy,’ Faulkner countered. ‘We remove one problem, and the other solves itself.’

He made it all seem ridiculously simple. Unfortunately the reality of Anya was anything but. Drake seriously doubted she would allow herself to be brought back into the fold after everything she’d endured, to go back to shovelling the same shit for different masters.

‘You said yourself that she’s dangerous and angry, and one of the best operatives they ever had. You really think you could control someone like her?’

Faulkner was looking right at him now. ‘Not me, Ryan. You.’

‘She doesn’t answer to me.’

She didn’t answer to anyone, for that matter.

‘But she
does
trust you, and I’d be willing to bet she cares for you.’ Faulkner was watching him intently as he said this. Drake said nothing in response to it, which told Faulkner what he needed to know. ‘In my experience, that’s more than enough to get people on side. So, picture this. She works with you, you work for me, and together we stop a lot of bad things from happening and make the world a nicer place. That’s not such a bad deal, is it?’

Apart from the fact he’d be indebted to a man he trusted only a little more than Cain himself. He had no idea if Faulkner was being on the level with him, but the prospect of giving Anya over to such a man didn’t sit well with him at all. Not to mention the fact that she’d likely never agree to it anyway.

However, Faulkner’s proposition had stirred a different possibility in his mind. The possibility of achieving the same aim without ending up in the pocket of another dangerous and unpredictable master. Such a plan could leave him with powerful enemies on both sides of the Atlantic if it failed, but the potential rewards were considerable.

‘I need some time to think about this,’ he said truthfully. As much as he wanted to get to the bottom of his mother’s death, making a rash decision based on emotion was a bad road to go down, particularly when David Faulkner was involved. One didn’t make a deal with the devil without reading the small print first.

Draining his pint, he rose from the table and reached for his wallet.

‘It’s on me,’ Faulkner said, standing up as well. Even drawn up to his full height, he was a couple of inches shorter than Drake, though he cared not a jot. Reaching into his pocket, he handed over a card with a phone number printed on it. ‘And by all means, consider it. Give me a call when you’ve made up your mind. But don’t take too long, Ryan. This window won’t stay open forever.’

Drake took his meaning well enough.

A short while later, Drake once again found himself in his rental car, the headlights illuminating the winding country road that lay ahead. He kept an eye on his rear-view mirror, wary of pursuit by his two friends from the pub earlier, though so far he’d seen nothing.

One advantage of being out in the countryside like this was that it was difficult to shadow someone unseen, the lack of traffic and narrow, darkened roads making it impossible to navigate without headlights.

After excusing himself from the bar, he had retired to his room upstairs at the Red Lion just long enough to collect his things, before leaving the area at high speed. He doubted Faulkner would attempt to have him abducted or killed, but the fact that the man knew where he was staying was enough to prompt Drake to bail out.

He was unlikely to find a hotel or guest house at such a late hour, and the prospect of spending the night in his mother's vacant house miles from the nearest settlement was less than appealing, leaving him with little choice but to make the long drive back to RAF Mildenhall. It wasn’t a prospect he relished after such a difficult day, but needs must. At least it was secure.

Swinging through a tight corner into a long straight section of road, he found his cell phone and dialled a number. It rang out for some time before it was finally answered.

‘Ryan? That you?’ Frost asked, having to practically shout to make herself heard. Loud music and voices blasted out through the car’s Bluetooth system.

‘Where the hell are you?’ It was pretty obvious from the background noise that she was no longer on the base.

‘A pub in...wait, where are we?’ he heard her ask someone in the background. ‘Cambridge. Yeah, that’s it. I gotta say, I’m disappointed. I expected this place to be more like Hogwarts.’

‘What the fuck are you doing in Cambridge?’ he demanded. He’d been allowed off base because of the family emergency he’d faced, but the rest of his team were another matter. In fact, the only reason they weren't already on a flight back to Langley was because they'd successfully bullshitted Breckenridge into believing they hadn't had a proper mission debriefing from Drake.