Betrayal (29 page)

‘Why do you think? I’m trying to stop you getting yourself killed,’ he hit back, shaking with barely suppressed anger now he was at last face to face with her. ‘Enough people have died already because of you. What the hell are you involved in, Anya?’

‘This has nothing to do with you.’

‘Like hell it doesn’t. You made this my business when you contacted me in Washington. Either you wanted me to find you, or you were trying to frame me for that sniper attack. For your sake, I hope it was the first option.’

At this, he caught a fleeting look of surprise and confusion in her eyes. The same look he’d noticed during their momentary encounter on that rooftop in DC before she had vanished. But Anya, always the master of her own emotions, quickly pushed it away.

She shook her head, a loose tendril of damp hair falling across her eyes. ‘Listen to me, Ryan. Listen well. I don’t need your help or your protection. If you were any other man, I would have killed you already for the problems you have caused me. But if you interfere with my work again, I won’t be so lenient. That’s all I have to say.’

Her brief but chilling message delivered, she turned and began to walk away, heading for the 4x4.

‘Stop!’

She halted, keeping her back to him. She didn’t have to turn around to know she now had an automatic pointed at her back.

‘I can’t let you leave,’ Drake said. ‘Not without answers.’

‘You’re making a mistake,’ she warned, her voice low and deceptively calm. ‘Walk away before you make another.’

Drake stood his ground. He wasn’t going anywhere. ‘Not this time.’

There was a moment of inaction, of silence broken only by the relentless hammering of the rain around them. Then he heard a faint sigh, as if she were disappointed with how things had turned out.

It happened fast. Reaching into the combat smock she was wearing, she turned and hurled something straight at him. A green metal cylinder no larger than a can of soda, with a simple time-delay fuse fixed to one end.

Drake’s instincts kicked in immediately. He started to turn aside, throwing up his arm in a vain attempt to shield himself from the imminent phosphorous detonation.

Then, just like that, he stopped. Even Anya would never be so reckless as to use a grenade like that at close quarters. The blast would just as likely injure or blind her, not to mention attract any FSB agents within 5 miles.

It was a bluff, a decoy designed to buy her time. Time to close the distance.

Recognising his mistake, he turned towards the woman who was now charging straight at him, and brought the weapon to bear on her.

His realisation had come a moment too late.

Reaching out, Anya clamped her hand around the barrel of the gun and twisted it upwards before he could get her in his sights. Her other hand shot out like a piston and delivered a hard strike just below his eye, stunning him. His grip on the weapon slackened, stars and flashes of light now blurring his vision.

Capitalising on his momentary weakness, Anya yanked the automatic out of his hand, drove a boot into the back of his left knee to buckle his legs, and finally delivered a second blow to the face that sent him sprawling in the mud.

Blinking and trying to refocus, Drake looked up at his opponent. Anya stood a few yards away, pacing around him in a slow circle, arms by her sides as if they were conducting a casual conversation instead of fighting. She had a knife sheathed in a harness at her left shoulder, though she had made no move to draw it, as if Drake wasn’t worthy of such attention.

She glanced down at the weapon she had taken from him with such ease. Then, turning aside for a moment, she drew back her arm and tossed it into the swirling waters of the nearby river, swollen by the recent rain. ‘Go home, Ryan,’ she said in a tone of mild irritation, like a mother dealing with a stubborn child. She was breathing a little harder from her exertions, but otherwise showed no sign of fatigue. ‘You’re not ready for this.’ Anger welled up inside him at the casual dismissal in her voice, as if he were a lackey to be summoned or discarded at her whim. As if everything he’d sacrificed to help her was for nothing. As if none of what they had been through over the past eighteen months meant anything to her.

‘Forget what you’re thinking and stay down,’ she warned, sensing the flame of defiance growing inside him. ‘You don’t have what it takes to stop me.’

She meant what she said. She had no interest in fighting him; she had already accomplished what she’d set out to do tonight. If he stayed down, she would likely leave without further trouble. All he had to do was stay down.

He couldn’t say for sure what it was that prompted him to get up. Perhaps it was a determination to make her explain her actions, perhaps it was because he didn’t fully trust that she wouldn’t attack him while he was down, or perhaps it was nothing more than wounded pride.

He’d been a boxer once upon a time. He’d fought dozens of opponents in his short career, taken plenty of hits along the way and even been knocked to the canvas a few times, but never had he failed to get up. He certainly didn’t intend to start today.

Whatever the motivation, the result was the same. Rolling over and placing his hands beneath him, he forced himself up from the muddy ground, placing himself between Anya and the 4x4 further down the road. His fists were clenched, arms up and ready to defend himself.

Saying nothing, he spat bloody phlegm on the ground at her feet.

Anya shook her head. ‘Suit yourself.’

Drake’s mind was racing, trying to predict her next move. Anya’s instincts would be telling her to finish this quickly, before the fight degenerated into a slugging match in which Drake’s superior size and strength would inevitably take their toll. And before the FSB agents back at the farm found their way here.

She was going to attack.

She came at him again, moving fast to get in close before he could strike her. He had the longer reach, and she wanted to cancel out that advantage as quickly as possible.

Drawing on the skills he’d earned through hard experience in the ring years earlier, Drake saw her next punch coming and twisted aside to avoid it. Realising he’d caught her off balance and that he had mere moments to take advantage of it, he reached up, grabbed the knife still sheathed to her webbing and yanked it free of the scabbard.

Drake had less than a second to act before she realised the danger and retaliated. He had to make her back off, had to make her understand that he wasn’t going to let her simply slip away.

He had to give her a sting.

Slashing downwards with the knife, he aimed for her flank. Experienced as she was with such close combat, she saw it coming and threw her weight to one side, but nonetheless the wickedly sharp blade sliced through fabric and skin.

That was it for her. She was done playing with him. Allowing her momentum to carry her, Anya twisted around to face him and lashed out with a vicious kick to the stomach. Drake grimaced in pain, feeling the bile rising to his throat. Coughing and gasping for air, he looked up just in time to see her knee rushing towards his face. He had no opportunity to block it, and could only close his eyes in preparation for the impact. White light exploded across his eyes, and his head was jerked sideways by the force of the blow. He could feel the warm slickness of blood flowing from the newly opened wound at his temple.

Before he knew it she had seized his left arm and twisted it behind his back. Her eyes flashed with anger as he began to buckle, trying to go with the movement. There would be no holding back this time, he knew.

Her other hand rose up, poised for a moment before the strike. Drake winced inwardly, knowing what was coming but powerless to prevent it. The blow landed right on the overtaxed shoulder joint. It was hard, clinical and precisely targeted for maximum effect. There was a crunch, an explosion of pain, and Drake let out an involuntary scream as his arm was dislocated from the socket. Knowing he was no longer a threat, Anya grabbed the radio microphone secured to his throat and yanked it off, taking the portable radio unit with it. This done, she released her hold and allowed him to collapse on the muddy ground.

The fight, such as it had been, was over.

Grimacing with pain, Drake rolled on to his back, his left arm limp and useless at his side. He looked up at her, half blinded by the deluge and the pain that blazed outwards from his dislocated joint.

Dropping the radio, Anya drove her boot heel into its plastic casing, crushing it into the ground and destroying the internal components. Her blue eyes held a mixture of anger and pity.

‘Consider this a warning,’ she said. ‘There won’t be another. If you stand in my way again, I’ll kill you, Ryan.’

Drake could do nothing but watch as she turned and strode off down the road. A few moments later, the 4x4’s engine rumbled into life and the vehicle took off in a spray of mud, leaving him alone.

Afghanistan, 28 September 1988

Breathing hard, gritting her teeth against the pain, Anya could do nothing but hang there, swaying slowly back and forth like a piece of meat in a slaughterhouse. Her bound hands were looped into a steel hook fixed to the ceiling, her feet dangling a clear foot above the dirty concrete floor. She was naked, as she always was for these sessions.

‘Once more, why did you turn against us?’

She couldn’t see the owner of that voice. She could never see him. He was always behind her, or standing in the shadows, or speaking to her through microphones.

He had ceased to be a physical person in her mind. He was just there, an omnipotent presence that permeated the very fabric of this room, all-seeing and all-knowing; existing both around her and within her. She couldn’t hide from him, couldn’t escape him, couldn’t fight him.

Perhaps it had all been an illusion. Perhaps he had always known what she was doing. She no longer trusted herself to make that judgement.

That was what she dreaded most about these interrogation sessions. Not the pain or the humiliation, but the doubt. No longer knowing what was real and what wasn’t, whose motives she understood and whose she didn’t.

He had been right. He’d played these games long before her.

She said nothing in response to his question. She never spoke, never gave anything.

She heard the faint hiss as the whip arced through the air, followed by the harsh crack as it connected with her flesh. Pain burned through her body as the coiled leather sliced through her skin. Already her back had been reduced to a raw mass of bloody welts and torn flesh – so many she could scarcely feel individual wounds. She knew she would carry the scars of this for the rest of her life, however long that might be.

She clenched her teeth so hard she felt they must surely break, managing to keep from crying out by sheer force of will. Only a strangled groan of agony escaped her lips.

They would come for her. Over and over she told herself this, willing it to be true. They would come for her. They wouldn’t forget the sacrifices she had made, the great things she had done for them. They looked after their own – that was what she had been told.

They would find her and they would rescue her and take her back to a safe place. She had only to hold out until then.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Anya,’ the voice said, sounding almost consoling, sympathetic. ‘You’re thinking you’ve been trained to resist interrogation, that you’re strong and determined and different from the others. You won’t break, no matter what we do to you.’

Cain will find me, she thought as she raised her chin a little. He’ll take me away from this place, away from you. I’ll heal and be whole and strong again. And one day I’ll come back for you.

‘Everyone who has ever been brought into this room has thought the same thing, and each of them eventually came to understand the truth,’ he went on. ‘The truth is, everyone breaks sooner or later. Everyone. It’s just … a matter of time. And time is something we have plenty of.’

Her stubborn silence elicited only a faint sigh of disappointment. She heard footsteps as the guard behind stepped closer, but there was no whistle of an incoming whip this time.

Instead she felt him smear something on her back. A liquid, cold and almost oily. A moment later, when she caught the scent of medical alcohol, she understood what they were doing.

Her body went rigid as the first wave of pain struck like a physical blow, reverberating around her body like echoes in a cave. This time there was no holding it inside. She threw her head back as an agonised scream tore from her.

Chechnya, 22 December 2008

The old Russian army jeep bumped its way down the muddy forest track at top speed, swerving and skidding dangerously as the road twisted and turned, headlight beams piercing the darkness to illuminate the dense ranks of fir trees that crowded close. Snow and hail blowing in fitful bursts pattered off the windscreen like shotgun pellets.

Far from slowing down in response to the appalling driving conditions, Anya stamped harder on the accelerator, prompting a throaty roar from the old engine and a renewed surge of speed.

The sturdy vehicle wallowed through dips and bumps, straining the suspension, but Anya didn’t care. She was gripping the wheel so hard it made her joints hurt.

Over and over she replayed her encounter with Drake, the harsh words they had exchanged, and the short but intense confrontation that had followed. She was angry with herself. She should have been able to overpower him easily, yet more than once he’d almost got the better of her.

Why couldn’t he have stayed down like she’d told him to? What had he meant about her contacting him in Washington, and why was he now pursuing her so relentlessly?

Yet even as she asked that last question, she already knew the answer. It was the same reason she’d tracked him down in Afghanistan, the same reason she’d kept watch over him since they’d parted ways in Iraq the previous year.