Black Widow (11 page)

The walls showed signs of repair. Ill-cut boards covered holes, and the holes were packed with mud. No windows broke the walls, but gun ports showed at regular intervals. The buildings wouldn't stand against much more than the wind and the winter, but no Russian forces could put a tank in those hills, and no Russian soldier had ever reached them.

"Come," Bislan said. "You will eat, then we will talk business."

Taburova followed the man. Bislan's limp had worsened. He didn't have many good years left. Taburova wondered if the Russians would take him or if the mountain might finally claim the old warrior.

A cold breeze climbed inside Taburova's coat and caused him to shiver.

Bislan noticed. "Oh, so you let a little gust of wind bother you?"

Taburova shrugged.

"Do you grow soft while you live down in those cities?" Bislan taunted.

"Not in my heart," Taburova replied.

The old man slapped Taburova on the shoulder and laughed. The sound echoed in the surrounding mountains and reminded Taburova of how far he'd come.

"Before we eat," Taburova said, "let me see the women." That was what he had come all this way for.

Panicked voices came from inside the small shed not far from the house Bislan had claimed. Taburova heard the fearful whispers from within as one of Bislan's men opened the locks on the door. Scars covered the wooden walls and the building canted drastically to one side.

A noxious stench filled Taburova's nostrils and he stepped back.

"It is a foul mess inside," Bislan warned. "Just last week one of them tried to escape."

"Did she escape?"

Bislan smiled grimly. "Not with my young wolves patrolling the mountain."

Several of the young warriors laughed at that.

"But they were told what the punishment would be if one of them tried something like that. They have been locked in this room for three weeks and not allowed to bathe or care for themselves." Bislan shrugged. "It would have been better if we had eaten before visiting them."

Taburova took out his flashlight and waited as the door swung open on creaking hinges. More scuttling came from within.

One of the young men stepped into the building. He carried a baton in one hand. "You will stay back if you know what's good for you." He shone the flashlight he held in his other hand around the room.

Taburova breathed through his mouth to avoid some of the stench. Waste buckets occupied corners of the room, but they obviously weren't emptied on a regular basis.

The women huddled in the back of the building. They held each other. In the darkness it was hard to make out any details.

"How many?" Taburova asked.

"Eleven," Bislan replied.

Eleven was less than Taburova was hoping for. Still, it was enough to make a difference. That was all he had to do.

He stepped forward and shone the light on his face. "My name is Mayrbek Taburova. I'm here to offer you a chance to save your doomed souls. Listen to me and I will give you a way to enter the gates of heaven."

Leicester

Ajza stood still and silent in the darkness a short distance from the MINI Cooper. Heat from an open thermos briefly fogged the driver's-side window. The smell of tea tainted the night air. She could hear the two men talking.

"I don't know where you're putting all that tea, mate," the man who'd introduced himself as Jason said.

"Keeps me awake and alert," the other man replied.

"Yeah, I could bloody well tell that from all the snoring you were doing a few minutes ago."

"Is it really bad?"

"Look at my ears. Am I bleeding from them."

The other man waved Jason away. "Piss off."

"I should be bleeding from the ears, I tell you." Jason kept his eyes on the shop. "Why do you think we're supposed to keep an eye on this woman?"

"We were told to protect her."

Ajza filed that away. She didn't know who would have told anyone to protect her. If she'd needed protection, her superiors at MI-6 would have told her she was in danger. So who were these two men and who had sent them?

"Did you see her take down those two robbers?" Jason asked. "There was no hesitation in her. She went straight at them. Like a bloody shark."

"They were kids. Don't make a big deal of it."

"I'm not."

"Got a case of hero worship going on, if you ask me."

Jason snarled, "I wasn't asking you."

"If you had a girlfriend, mate, maybe that would help take the edge off."

"I had a girlfriend not too long ago." Jason lifted tiny binoculars and trained them on the shop. "She cramped my style."

"Didn't know you had a style."

Listening to the dialogue, Ajza knew the men weren't MI-6 agents. Agents were trained not to talk, and they often didn't work together enough to develop that kind of rapport. Ajza was so used to working deep undercover on assignments that she'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a partner.

"You want any tea?" the other man asked.

"No, mate. I gotta go move what I've already taken on. Are you awake enough to take over?"

"Yes. There's a restaurant up the way. They're still open. Why don't you bring back some fish and chips?"

Jason sighed and got out of the car. "A babysitter and a bleeding waiter. That's all I am today. This bit better be over with by tomorrow."

"The walk will do you good."

"A bloody loo will do me good." Jason walked away from the car toward the end of the block.

Satisfied the other man in the car was focused on the shop, Ajza stepped from the shadows and settled into quiet pursuit of Jason.

Anger and fear twisted through her. She didn't think any of the nasty business from Mustafa had followed her from Istanbul. Nothing like that had ever happened before.

And it's not happening now, she told herself. Mustafa is dead.

She'd seen the story in the news and wondered if the team that was supposed to exfiltrate her had killed Mustafa. She'd also wondered about the other group that had been there. MI-6 hadn't had any answers.

Then what was this? What had brought these men to her? To her parents?

That was what bothered her the most. Somehow she'd managed to expose her mother and father. That was unacceptable. She didn't like feeling vulnerable, but she couldn't bear the thought of her parents being in harm's way.

The man ahead of her — Jason — was about to pay the price.

Ajza lengthened her stride and caught up with him just as he started to pass another alley. This one suited her purposes perfectly.

The man became aware of her as she stepped alongside him. He swiveled his head toward her, not thinking anything was amiss, just a peripheral read. He should have opened the space between them first.

Without warning, Ajza swung her right forearm around and struck her target in the throat. She caught his right wrist in her left hand and shoved it up behind his shoulder blades. At the same time, she kicked his right foot behind his left leg and caused him to trip.

Off balance and still fighting for breath, the man fell forward. Using his trapped arm as a lever, Ajza shoved him forward. He smashed face-first into the alley wall. As he slumped to the ground, dazed and hurting, Ajza put a knee in his back to pin his arm, then jerked his jacket up and pulled the semiautomatic pistol from the holster at his back.

She flipped the pistol's safety off and shoved the barrel into the man's jaw.

"So far," she said in an even voice that she had to work to achieve, "I haven't killed you."

The man gasped and wheezed and tried to push himself up. He lacked the strength.

"I will kill you if it becomes necessary. Do you believe me?"

The man swallowed hard, obviously trying to regain his breath. "Why are you doing this? I helped you earlier today."

"Yet you hang about and spy on me."

He didn't bother to reply.

"A good Samaritan would have vanished after his good deed." Ajza patted the man down and found his wallet inside his jacket. She took it out. "Seeing you out here all day, I had to start wondering what nefarious things you were up to."

"If I'd wanted to hurt you..."

Ajza pushed the pistol barrel harder into his jaw, making it difficult for him to speak. "Shh. Don't speak unless I speak to you."

"We were here to look out for you."

With a vicious twist, Ajza raised the man's arm. She felt it pop out of place, then settle back in.

He cried out in pain.

"Talk again and I'll break it. You have my promise on that." Ajza felt him cringing beneath her. She hated the way she felt, but all she had to do was think of her parents in the shop across the street and all thoughts of mercy vanished.

She went through his wallet and found his identification almost at once. His name — perhaps — was Warren Lesser. He was a field agent for MI-5, England's domestic intelligence agency.

"Your photograph is a good likeness," Ajza observed. She took it from the wallet and slid it into her pocket. A further check of the wallet turned up nothing else of interest, and she tossed it on the ground near Lesser's head.

Cars passed on the street. Even pedestrians walked by. No one came to investigate.

"I want you to pass a message along for me," Ajza said.

Lesser nodded but he didn't speak.

"Tell your bosses to find whoever put you two onto me," Ajza said. "That person has until ten tomorrow morning to contact me. If he doesn't, then I'll find you and your partner and start making people uncomfortable. Understand?"

Lesser nodded again.

"Tell him he can reach me in a chat room for Annie's Dungeon." Ajza gave the web address and made him repeat it back. "They're to log in as anything with the word
cardinal
in it. Understand?"

Lesser nodded.

"Stay down and don't try anything. If you do, I will shoot you." Moving carefully, Ajza shifted her weight from Lesser's back.

The man moaned as she released his trapped arm. If he tried to do anything quickly, she knew the limb wouldn't hold up under him.

Ajza kept the pistol in her hand as she ran to the other end of the alley. Before she stepped out onto the street, she shoved the weapon into her coat pocket.

She didn't try to go back to her parents' apartment. It wasn't safe there. The only way she could protect them was to stay away. Until she knew how she'd become compromised, she could only hope whoever was looking for her would leave her parents alone.

New York

Kate stabbed a forefinger at the touch-screen monitor and picked up a call on speaker phone. "Sam?"

"I see you're still at work," Samantha stated.

"Guilty." Kate's eyes roved over the other files on her monitor. So many things were coming to fruition on a lot of fronts. Some days she didn't know if she was leading operations or struggling to trail after them. This was one of the latter.

"It appears that we've stirred up a proper hornets' nest with our newest possible protege," Samantha said.

"What happened?" Kate asked.

"She spotted the men I had watching her."

"That proves she's as good as we thought. She's going to have to be if she agrees to come on board."

"Evidently she has her own ax to grind. A short time ago, she approached those men. Took one of them down. Then threatened him."

"Who did you have on this?" Kate asked.

"MI-5. I called in a favor from a friend," Samantha answered. "This won't track back to me."

"What does Ms. Manaev want?"

"To meet whoever put the tail on her."

"That sounds reasonable. Did she give you a place to meet her?"

"No. The men watching her reported that she left her parents' home."

Kate nodded. "She knows she can't protect them."

"That's what I was thinking, too," Samantha replied. "She's setting herself up as a target."

"Or going to MI-6 for help."

"I don't think that has happened."

"MI-6 could provide a bodyguard or take her parents into protective custody," Kate said.

"You and I both know bodyguards only raise the cost of an action. They can't negate it over the long run. Taking her parents into protective custody would reveal what she does."

"Which her parents don't know."

"Correct."

Kate thought about that. "Obviously she's comfortable in her skills to protect herself."

"And she's convinced that whoever is after her is after her alone. She's curious."

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"True. But now we're curious. We knew she would eventually spot the tails we put on her, but we thought she might go to MI-6. She's quite confident in acting independently. That's a quality we value, given the nature of the assignment we're going to ask her to take on," Samantha said.

Kate leaned back in her chair. "She's used to keeping secrets. Her parents don't know what she does. They didn't know what her brother did."

"She's trying to keep it that way."

"Why?" Kate trusted Samantha's judgment when it came to understanding young women.

"She wants a home," Samantha said. "Someplace inviolate where her work doesn't overshadow everything."

Kate opened Ajza ManaeVs computer file and flipped through the images she had of the young woman. Most of them were around the family shop or at corporate functions where she maintained her cover. She looked happy and outgoing. Judging from the pictures, she and her brother were close to each other and to their parents.

"Keeping secrets makes for a hard life," Kate said.

"Especially when you're keeping them from those you love," Samantha agreed. "Ajza told the MI-5 operative that whoever sent him has until ten tomorrow morning my time to contact her."

"How are you supposed to contact her?" Kate asked.

"Through a chat room at an Internet porn site."

"Lovely."

"I thought so. But those sites are heavily protected. After all, most of their clients can't afford to be found out."

"And traffic will be high on those sites."

"Yes. With lots of linkers and people getting off and on — no pun intended."