Black List (7 page)

‘Come on, you bastard!’ he yelled, booting it in frustration. ‘Why won’t you fucking move?’

The gritty rasp of corroded hinges provided its own answer. Years of exposure to wind and rain must have corroded its mechanism, rusting it firmly in place. Freeing it would take more time and strength than he had at his disposal.

‘Fuck!’

Breathing hard from his exertions and sweating despite the rain’s onslaught, Alex turned away and pulled the phone out of his pocket. The line was still active.

‘The ladder won’t move,’ he said, now struggling to keep the panic from his voice. He was acutely aware that every second he remained up here increased his chances of being caught. ‘It’s rusted solid. I can’t release it.’

He heard a muffled comment on the other end that he was sure was less than complimentary. To her credit, the woman quickly regained her composure.

‘Then you have to jump to the next building,’ she decided.

‘What!’

‘Another apartment block backs onto that one,’ she explained, her knowledge of his local area disconcertingly accurate. ‘The alley that runs between them can’t be more than seven or eight feet wide. Jump to the opposite roof, and use their stairwell to get down to the street.’

As she was speaking, Alex crept over to the edge of the roof, surveying the gap between his building and the next. As she had said, the distance between the two apartment blocks wasn’t much – probably not even wide enough to drive a car through – but at that moment it looked like a yawning chasm stretching out impossibly far before him. And leaning out, he caught a glimpse of rain-slicked brick walls stretching all the way down to a darkened litter-strewn alleyway far below.

For a moment, he saw an image of himself lying broken and dying in that dark alleyway, surrounded by rusted bins and trash, his body shattered by the crushing impact.

‘Fuck that!’ Alex hissed, backing away from the terrifying drop that awaited him if his leap of faith failed. ‘I’m a sales assistant, not Jason fucking Bourne!’

‘Alex, the police will have heard the alarm. They are probably on their way up to the roof as we speak.’ She was talking in the same calm yet commanding voice that had brought him this far, but now she was urging him to go one step further. ‘I know you’re afraid, but if you don’t act now, I can do nothing for you. Now trust me and jump!’

‘Shit!’ Shoving the phone in his pocket once more, Alex backed up several paces, his heart pounding and his breath now coming in shallow, rapid gasps.

Just one jump. One act of courage, one moment of danger, and he would be out of here. His guide, whoever she was, would find him and help him put this right. One day, years from now, he might even be able to look back on this night and laugh about it.

It was a fantasy and he knew it, but it was all he had at that moment.

‘Come on, Alex. Just get it done,’ he said, trying to psyche himself up, searching for some hidden reserve of courage and determination that he could draw on. ‘You can do this.’

One deep breath, and he started forward, running straight for the edge of the roof. The unforgiving brick walls of the opposite building loomed into view, the darkness, the horrific drop, the alleyway below...

It was over almost before it started. Skidding to a stop several feet short of the edge, Alex let out a cry of fear and dismay, and shrank away from the gap.

He couldn’t do it, and in some part of his mind he’d known even before he tried it. Whatever courage or madness was needed to make such a leap, he didn’t possess it. How could he? This wasn’t who he was; this wasn’t who he had ever been. He was a keyboard warrior, more used to employing his mind than his body. The prospect of physical injury or death had defeated him.

In any case, he was given little time to contemplate his failure. Before he could reach for his phone again, the door to the roof was thrown open and the two police officers spilled out. They weren’t armed, as few police officers in London were, but he did see them carrying riot batons and the distinctive yellow cylinders of pepper spray.

Caught in the open as he was, Alex was spotted by them immediately.

‘Police!’ the older of the two shouted. ‘Get down on the ground now!’

If Alex had any thoughts of resisting, they were quickly dispelled when the second officer moved around behind and shoved him roughly down onto the gravel-coated roof, applying plenty of pressure to make sure he couldn’t move. Alex groaned in pain as the sharp gravel cut his exposed skin.

‘Alex Yates, I’m arresting you on suspicion of conspiring to commit a terrorist act,’ the older of the two officers said as Alex’s hands were yanked roughly behind his back. A chill ran through him as a pair of handcuffs snapped over his wrists. ‘You do not have to say anything at this time, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court.’

Alex took his advice and said nothing, knowing it was futile to respond. He was well and truly in the shit now. The only question was where it was going to end for him.

On the other side of the Atlantic in Langley, news of the arrest came through less than a minute later, relayed from British intelligence via the US embassy in London.

‘They got him,’ Santiago said, relieved that his guesswork seemed to have paid off. ‘Apparently Yates tried to make a run for it, but local police cornered him on a rooftop not far from the scene.’

Far from celebrating, however, Cain looked just as tense and unhappy as before. ‘Anyone else with him?’

‘No, sir. Just Yates, according to the report.’

The older man said nothing for a moment, the muscles in his jaw tightening. ‘Where is he now?’

‘En route to a local police station.’

‘I want him in 
our
 hands within the hour, no matter what shit the Brits try to give us. Get one of our field teams to that station right away, and make sure they have interrogation experience.’

Santiago hesitated, for a moment tempted to ask what this was all about, but immediately discounting the idea. Such things were far above his pay grade.

‘Do we have a problem, son?’ Cain asked, fixing him with that withering stare of his.

‘No, sir. No problem.’

In a darkened shop doorway about fifty yards down the street, Anya watched as Alex was led out to the waiting police car by the two arresting officers, his head down and his shoulders slumped in defeat.

People had drifted out of nearby residential buildings to find the source of the commotion and watch the drama unfold, including a group of drunken young men on their way home after a night out. A couple of them paused to shout jeering remarks at the prisoner as he was helped into the back seat of the car, before turning their attention back to their takeaway meals.

Anya clenched her fists, mastering her temper only with some difficulty. This man, weak and frightened though he might be, was her only link to the information she so desperately needed. Without him, everything she’d done so far would be for nothing.

He was sure to crack quickly under interrogation, and while she hadn’t told him anything that could compromise her, she also knew that his eventual confession would eliminate any chance of finding what she needed.

She hadn’t come this far to fail now.

Her only saving grace was that the Agency hadn’t yet become involved. The British police who had rushed to arrest Alex were certainly acting on their orders, no doubt under the guise of a joint operation against cyber terrorism, but it would take the Agency time to assemble a field team and a suitable place to interrogate him.

If she was going to do something, it would have to be soon.

I should have made that jump. That’s all I could think about in the hours following my arrest. I should have gone for it, taken my chance and for once in my shitty, pointless life shown a bit of courage.

Who knows what might have happened? Maybe I could have saved myself a lot of pain and trouble, or maybe the end result would have been the same. I suppose I’ll never know.

They say you regret most of all the things you could have done, but didn’t.

S
tory of my life.

This was the end of the line.

This was where it was going to happen.

Alex was sitting bolt upright with his hands cuffed tight behind his back, his wrists throbbing in time to his pulse as the metal dug into his flesh. The wooden chair beneath him was hard and uncomfortable, while the cloth sack over his head submerged him in total darkness, robbing him of all sense of orientation and clinging to his face with every inhalation. Though he wasn’t bound to the chair, he dared not stand up, dared not move a muscle in fact.

It had been just under three hours since his feeble attempt to escape via the roof of that apartment block. He knew this because, with little else to do, he had been patiently counting out the seconds and minutes since his capture, measuring the passage of time for no other reason than to keep him from contemplating the fate that awaited him. He’d always been good with numbers, and even better at remembering.

The ride to the police station had lasted sixteen minutes, after which he’d been escorted to a cell and left there for another fifty-two minutes. Fifty-two minutes of sitting there with nothing but four cream-coloured brick walls for company.

No officer had come to charge him or take his statement. No rights had been read, no identification confirmed, no phone calls or legal advice offered. It was as if he’d simply been forgotten about, and for a brief time he had almost convinced himself that that was exactly what had happened.

Perhaps it was all a mistake. Perhaps they had tried and failed to find evidence of wrongdoing and were now debating what to do with him.

Perhaps…

It had been a desperate hope, and finally dashed when the door to his cell was thrown open and a trio of men in civilian clothes moved in, tied a cloth sack over his head and marched him right out of the station. They hadn’t said a word despite his attempts to communicate with them, to reason with them, to plead with them.

He’d been bundled into the back of a waiting van, which had departed the police station at a brisk but measured pace. Observing the speed limit, not wanting to get pulled over. There had been at least two men with him in the van, acting like a human vice to keep him pinned in his seat, though again neither of his captors had said a word. Each smelled of cologne and cigarette smoke.

An hour and forty-one minutes of strained silence had thus passed; enough to get well clear of London with almost no traffic on the roads at such an early hour.

The last few minutes of the van ride had taken them down a rough, uneven road, each jolting movement rattling Alex’s bones and straining the vehicle’s suspension. An unpaved or seldom-used track with no ambient traffic sounds, suggesting a rural location.

Wherever he was, the building in which he now resided was substantial to say the least. The van had driven right inside it, and after disembarking he’d been marched a short distance across a solid concrete floor before being forced down onto the chair. Though he couldn’t see, the echoing interior and faint movement of air gave the impression of great space, as if he were in the centre of an empty warehouse or parking garage. The air was cool and damp, and smelled of oil and engine fumes.

Beyond those scraps of knowledge, however, Alex had no idea where he was. It made little difference anyway. Even if he knew the exact address, who could he tell?

He gasped at the metallic clang of a door opening behind him, rusty hinges grating, and felt his heart beat faster as boots clicked towards him across the vast echoing space. They were moving slowly, and apparently circling around from the left, though the acoustics of the room made it difficult to tell for sure.

It was at that moment that Alex caught a scent of something on the air. Something rich and strong and bitter. Coffee.

The footsteps had stopped somewhere in front of him, and no further sounds were heard. Seconds stretched out into minutes as Alex sat there, his back slowly seizing up on the uncomfortable chair, his hands throbbing, his pulse racing. Despite his best efforts to remain calm, he could feel his breath growing faster, the clammy fabric of the hood pressing against him every time he inhaled. It was a terrible sensation to feel so vulnerable, so unaware of one’s surroundings. His captor could be holding a knife inches from his face and he wouldn’t have a clue.

Finally he could take it no longer. He had to say something, had to break the tension.

‘H-hello?’ he said, afraid to raise his voice too much.

It certainly wasn’t the authoritative challenge of a man seeking to regain control of the situation, but it did get results.

Suddenly the footsteps were coming towards him. Alex tensed, bracing himself for the crushing impact of a fist driven straight into his unprotected face, stomach or any other part of his body that didn’t bear thinking about.

To his surprise, however, no such thing happened. Instead he felt a tug at his neck, and a moment later the hood was yanked off, at last permitting him to view his surroundings.

His first impression was one of intense light searing his retinas. A pair of powerful electric lamps were pointed right at him, no doubt intended to blind and disorient him. In his confused state, it took him a few seconds to realize they were headlights, probably belonging to the very van that had brought him here.

His eyes streaming, Alex blinked several times in the harsh electric light as he tried to focus on his surroundings.

The exact dimensions of the room were hard to determine, as he could see little beyond the glare of the powerful headlights. However, the floor provided a little more of a clue as to this room’s purpose. Concrete, rough-poured and cracked in places, as if there was no need to finish it properly. A warehouse or storage silo perhaps.

The only other items in view were resting on the ground a few yards away. The first was a simple steel bucket, its frame dented as if it had seen heavy use. It appeared to be filled with some kind of liquid, as he could see it shimmering in the electric lights.

And beside it, laid there as if it were a sacred artefact to be revered, was a sledge hammer. A big, serious-looking thing with a long wooden handle and a flat, uncompromisingly square head that must have weighed five or six pounds all by itself. Alex’s heart skipped a beat, and he had to forcibly swallow down the bile that threatened to rise up in his throat.

‘You want to know the secret to torturing people? I’ll give you a hint – it’s not cruelty,’ a voice remarked from somewhere close behind. American, smooth and deep, with a hint of a New England accent. Again Alex smelled coffee. ‘It’s restraint. Precision. Sure, we could break out the hacksaws and start slicing pieces off you, but what’s the point in that? It’s messy as shit. Chances are you’d pass out from the pain and blood loss before you could tell us anything useful, then we’d have to mess around with adrenaline shots and heart monitors. It’s just not worth the effort. No, you’d be amazed what a couple of good strikes with a sledge hammer can do.’

Alex shuddered in horror as he imagined the fragile bones of his hand shattering under the impact of several pounds of solid steel, no doubt wielded with expert precision. Then, suddenly, he heard perhaps the last thing he’d been expecting – laughter. Not sinister or mocking, but genuine amusement at what was apparently a funny joke.

A shadow passed in front of the electric light, and Alex looked up as an unlikely looking figure wandered into view.

He wasn’t sure if he’d been expecting a brutish thug dressed in paramilitary gear or some cold, sinister looking G-man in a pristine suit. Either way, the figure now standing before him was about as far from a professional interrogator as he could have imagined.

Dressed in a navy blue polo shirt open at the neck, beige cargo trousers and suede loafers, the man looked like he’d walked right out of some country club lunch meeting. He was even holding a takeaway cup of coffee that steamed in the cool air. His face was clean-shaven and youthful, his short dark hair neatly parted in a Harvard crew cut.

All things considered, he looked an awful lot better than Alex felt at that moment.

‘Relax, bro. I was just fucking with you,’ he said, taking a sip of coffee as he chortled in amusement. ‘Some guys like to go for the Hannibal Lecter approach, really put the shits up people. Others like to go in screaming and swinging fists right off the bat. Me? Not my style. I just tell it like it is, let people make up their own minds.’

Alex frowned, feeling more out of his depth than ever. ‘What do you mean?’

His captor wasn’t laughing any more, but he was still wearing an amused smirk as he folded his arms and surveyed Alex for several seconds.

‘My name’s Frank,’ he began. ‘Yes, I work for the CIA. And yes, that’s my real name. I’m from Hartford, Connecticut and I’ve been with the Agency for seven years. I majored in Political Science at college and my favourite football team are the New York Jets.’

Either this was some bizarre new interrogation technique or Alex was seriously misunderstanding him. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I want us to be honest with each other, Alex. And I want us to get off on the right foot. First impressions count, you know? I don’t want you thinking of this relationship as “prisoner and interrogator”. It’s not like that. Believe it or not, I’m actually here to help you. But you have to help me out first, okay? Can you do that for me, buddy?’

Alex said nothing. He was so taken aback by the man’s unusual demeanour that he didn’t know quite how to respond. In any case, Frank clearly wasn’t one for hanging around.

‘So let me break this down. You’re deep in the shit, my friend,’ he went on. ‘Might as well be honest about that. You’ve been caught trying to use highly sensitive software belonging to the US government, stealing classified information… Hell, we’ve already got enough on you to put you in a deep dark hole for the rest of your natural life. In fact, the only reason you’re not on a flight to Guantanamo Bay right now is because I want to offer you a way out.’

Alex let out an involuntary gasp. ‘A way out?’

Frank took another sip of his drink. ‘I like you, Alex. You’re a smart motherfucker. Straight-A student, top marks at college… sorry, university. Shit, if you were working for the Agency you’d probably be 
my
 boss by now. Huh?’ He let out another laugh, amused by his own joke, then reached into his pocket and held up the memory stick that had apparently brought about this disastrous series of events. ‘Tell me, where did you get this, Alex?’

The lies came tumbling out before he could stop them. ‘I… I don’t even know what’s on it—’

The answer was swift and brutal, a backhanded strike against the side of his head that jolted him sideways and caused him to topple right off the chair, landing with bruising force on the unyielding concrete floor. It was all Alex could do to keep from crying out in pain and fear at the sudden and unexpected assault. A second man must have approached him while his attention was on Frank.

Alex was no fighter, and was unused to physical injury. He hadn’t been properly hit by anyone since he was a child, and that single blow was far stronger than any of the punches thrown in school-yard fights.

A moment later, his world went dark as a towel was placed over his face, held down hard on either side so that his head was pinned to the floor. A knee driven into his chest with crushing force prevented any movement of his body. With his hands cuffed, he could do nothing to fight his captor off.

He heard the metallic scrape of the bucket being lifted off the floor, followed by Frank’s distinctive voice. ‘Like I said, the secret is restraint.’

The moment Frank began to empty the bucket onto his head, Alex’s heartbeat skyrocketed and panic began to set in. The heavy cloth across his face acted to soak up the water, causing it to seep into his nose and down his throat, inducing an immediate gag reflex.

In desperation he tried to thrash his head from side to side, but his captor’s grip was unrelenting and he could manage barely an inch of movement either way. The cloth was held down even harder, forcing his head back, and all the while the steady deluge continued.

Alex bucked and kicked with desperate strength, the cuffs cutting into his wrists, but still he could find no escape. Letting out a cry of panic, his lungs greedily tried to suck in more air only to be met with a renewed influx of water.

Now there was no stopping it. Coughing and screaming into the gag, he thrashed wildly as his body desperately sought oxygen that he knew wouldn’t come. His pulse thundered in his ears, adrenaline surging in his veins as the ancient instinct for self-preservation kicked in. But it was all for nothing.

Only then did the realisation hit him – he was going to die. They would just keep on pouring the water into his lungs until it finally overcame him, until his struggles eased and consciousness faded, and there was nothing he could do to stop them.

He was going to die here.

It was at this moment, as darkness began to envelop his mind, that the flow of water suddenly stopped and the cloth was withdrawn. Freed from his captors’ remorseless grip, Alex doubled over, coughing and choking violently as his lungs tried to expel the water that had started to fill them.

Looking up through blurred eyes, he saw a second man move into view. This one was far less genial looking than Frank. Shorter, heavier, older and meaner-looking. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to reveal muscular forearms liberally coated with thick dark hair, while the rest of his sizeable torso was covered by a full length leather apron. The kind of thing worn by butchers and slaughterhouse workers.