Black List (8 page)

‘I forgot to introduce you to my buddy Larry,’ Frank said by way of apology. ‘Larry, meet Alex.’

‘How you doing, Alex?’ Larry replied, nodding acknowledgement. ‘I’m looking forward to working on you.’

That made two men at least that he could see. Three of them had escorted him out of the police station earlier, though he had no idea where the third man was. Perhaps he was waiting somewhere in the shadows, getting ready to spring another painful and terrifying surprise just as Larry had, or perhaps he was behind the wheel of the van, preparing to drive his companions out of here once they’d tortured him to death.

Either way, he had no desire to find out.

‘No more,’ Alex gasped, his voice rasping with the effort. ‘No more. Please.’

Frank took another sip of coffee. ‘Like I said, you’re smart, but you don’t strike me as the sort of guy who steals government secrets for fun. What I’m really interested in is the person who gave you this memory stick. So here’s my deal. Answer our questions, help us bring a dangerous terrorist to justice and maybe, just maybe, you get to walk away from this and go back to your old life. Considering the level of shit you’re in, that’s a pretty good deal right there, buddy. Or…’ He glanced down at the floor and tapped the steel bucket with his shoe. ‘We can carry on like this. Plenty of water out here, and we’ve got all night.’

The mere thought of going through that again made Alex want to gag. Unable to look at either man, he simply nodded.

He saw a hint of a smile. Compared to some of the men this pair had probably interrogated in their time, Alex must have been a complete walkover.

‘Now we’re getting somewhere. See, Larry? I told you he’d help us out. He’s a smart guy.’

Alex heard a grunt of acknowledgement from Larry, who was probably disappointed he wouldn’t get a chance to try another round of waterboarding.

‘Okay, Alex. Let’s get to it. How did you get the memory stick?’

‘It was posted to me.’

‘By who?’

Alex swallowed hard, hating what he was about to do. He’d gone to prison before rather than betray his friends, but this was different. He was fighting for his life now. And if he was right, Sinclair was no longer alive to betray.

‘Arran Sinclair. A friend of mine.’

‘Go on,’ Frank prompted, knowing there was a lot more to it than that.

‘A week ago he came to me, asked for my help. Some… project he was working on. I refused, then a few days later this letter turned up. When I did some searching, I found out he’d disappeared. I needed to know what was on the memory stick, so I took it to that internet cafe to open it.’

At this, the man in the leather apron glanced at his companion with a raised eyebrow, saying nothing. For his own part, Frank took a long, thoughtful drink before going on. ‘Tell me about the burner phone, Alex.’

‘I don’t know—’

His answer was cut short by a rock-hard fist driven into his exposed stomach. Unable to help himself, Alex doubled over, groaning and gasping for air. Both CIA operatives stood back, watching him in silence until he’d gotten his breath back.

‘I sure hope you’re not holding out on me, buddy,’ Frank warned, his voice betraying an edge of impatience for the first time. ‘Otherwise we’re all in for a long night, and I’m getting tired.’

‘I was only given it tonight,’ Alex gasped, spitting acrid-tasting phlegm on the floor. ‘Some woman. She paid someone to give it to me.’

The revelation of his mysterious contact’s gender prompted a look of interest. ‘So you didn’t see her in person?’

‘No. All I heard was her voice.’

‘What did she say to you?’

‘She… warned me the police were on their way, told me to leave the cafe if I wanted to live through the night. She said she could help me.’

Frank was getting interested now. ‘Describe her voice. Be specific.’

The memory of that conversation was still imprinted on his mind, as it would be for the rest of his life. However long that might be. ‘It was deep for a woman; she wasn’t young. And she spoke with an accent, maybe Russian. I-I’m not sure.’

Frank thought about it for a few moments. ‘Then it seems this is your lucky day, Alex. We’re going to take you back to that police station tonight, and in the morning they’ll release you without pressing any charges. Insufficient evidence. You’ll go back home, and sooner or later your new friend will contact you again. That’s when we’ll take her.’

Alex’s eyes opened wider. ‘She knew the police were on their way to arrest me. She’ll know I’ve been caught. If I try to meet her now she’ll—’

Suddenly Larry took a step forward, and Alex felt something jammed against his neck. The harsh clicking sound as the taser discharged was punctuated by Alex’s groans of agony as thousands of volts flooded his central nervous system. His body convulsed violently on the floor in a pathetic heap, his muscles jerking and twitching of their own volition.

At last the nightmare ended and he curled into a foetal position, drawing in ragged, shuddering breaths.

‘Let me spell this out for you, bro. People like you can and have been made to disappear plenty of times without any problem at all. I could torture you to death out here and all it would take is a few signed forms delivered to my boss to make it all okay,’ Frank informed him, his former joviality gone now. ‘In fact, the only reason you’re still breathing is because you can be useful. That’s the only purpose to your life now. If you can’t help us, there’s no reason to waste any more of my valuable time on you.’

He heard a crisp metallic click, and realized with a kind of detached horror that it was the sound of a round being chambered. Looking up, he saw Larry standing over him, a black automatic gleaming in the harsh electric light.

Frank on the other hand just stood there watching the whole scene unfold with a faint smirk. Alex’s life meant nothing to him. He had watched plenty of men die before, and would no doubt see plenty more after today.

Before Alex could answer, the van’s headlights suddenly went out, plunging the room into darkness. Alex gasped, wondering what was going on.

‘What the—?’ he heard Frank say, before his voice was reduced to a strangled, gurgling groan.

‘Shit!’ the other man shouted, followed by the thundering crack of a gunshot that momentarily illuminated a blur of movement right in front of him. Alex flinched, expecting a round to tear through his flesh at any instant.

But no such thing happened. Instead he saw a shadowy figure leap towards the man in the leather apron, heard a sudden scuffle and a cry of pain. A heavy thump told Alex that a body had just landed on the ground.

A few seconds later, the lights came back on just as suddenly as they had gone out, revealing a scene so shocking that Alex had to blink and look again to believe it.

His two captors were sprawled on the dirty concrete floor, blood pooling around both of their lifeless bodies. Frank was lying on his back, his throat sliced open and his takeaway coffee steaming on the ground nearby, while Larry’s leather apron had been perforated with several well placed knife thrusts that left it glistening crimson in the harsh light.

But even more shocking than this gory spectacle was the assailant who had apparently brought it all about. To Alex’s disbelief, a woman was standing between the two dead men, a bloody knife clutched in her left hand.

Tall and athletic, with short blonde hair and striking features, he knew she was a woman he’d seen before. Straight away his mind flashed back to his meeting with Sinclair at Trafalgar Square a week earlier.

Wearing expensive jeans, a black fitted shirt and a stylish brown leather jacket, she was the epitome of effortless sophistication. Her features were strikingly good looking with a foreign air to them, yet there was a hardness about her that made him look a little closer.

Perhaps sensing his restless gaze on her, as attractive women often seemed to do, she glanced his way, and just for a moment their eyes met. Even from the other side of the square, Alex was caught off guard by the pair of icy blue eyes that seemed to bore right through him.

Looking at her now, it was difficult to believe this was the same woman. The fashionable leather jacket and jeans were gone now, replaced by black military fatigues and hiking boots. Her blonde hair was slicked back to keep her eyes clear, her face hard and set with cold, clinical resolve.

And yet it was her without a doubt. Her clothes might have changed, but her eyes hadn’t. Neither had what lay behind them. Cold blue and frightening in their intensity, they were focussed now on him as a predator might regard its helpless prey.

She approached him with that deadly blade still clutched in her gloved hand. A splash of her enemies’ blood was smeared across her face, the crimson stain highlighting the chilling depths of those merciless eyes.

At any moment he expected that blade to come scything down through the air, cleaving its way through skin, muscle and delicate internal organs.

Yet to his amazement no such thing happened.

‘Can you walk?’ the woman asked. Confirming what he already knew, her voice was the same one that had tried to guide him to safety back at the cafe.

Such was his shock at her sudden arrival, Alex couldn’t even muster a response.

‘Can you walk?’ she repeated, louder now. ‘If you can’t, I’ll leave you here.’

He blinked, coming back to himself. ‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ Kneeling down beside him, she gripped his wrists and quickly unlocked his cuffs.

Only then did the full impact of what had just happened settle on him. Even as the cuffs fell away from his wrists, Alex stared in horrified fascination at the blood steadily oozing from the severed arteries in Frank’s neck.

‘Jesus Christ, they’re really dead, aren’t they?’ he said, vaguely aware of how idiotic such a statement must have sounded to her.

She paused only for a moment, surveying the two bodies without emotion. ‘More will be coming soon. We have to leave this place. Get up now and be ready to move.’

Without waiting for a reply, she rose to her feet, hurried over to the two dead men, searching through Frank’s pockets until she found the memory stick. With the stick safely in her possession, she turned her attention to Larry, snatching up the weapon he’d dropped during the brief confrontation.

Pulling back the slide just far enough to check that a round was chambered and that the firing mechanism wasn’t fouled, she glanced at Alex once more.

‘Follow me.’

Shell-shocked by everything that had just happened, Alex did the only thing that made any sense given the circumstances. He obeyed.

Alex’s curiosity about where he’d ended up after his long journey from London was answered as he slipped through a huge set of sliding doors into the cool darkness of the world beyond. As far as he could tell, the building was a corrugated iron barn set within a larger farm complex. There were two other structures of similar proportions nearby, their bulk visible only as immense black shapes against the general darkness of the night sky.

He had to admit there was a certain grim logic in the choice of location. Farms by their nature were about as isolated as a place could be in a country like the UK. And with miles of privately owned and unpopulated land all around, there was little chance of passing civilians overhearing something they shouldn’t.

‘What the fuck is this place?’ he asked, keeping his voice low as he followed the woman between the two barns. Unlike him, she moved through the shadows with uncanny speed and grace, her feet barely making a sound on the muddy earth.

‘A field interrogation site, set up in a hurry,’ she explained. ‘If they had had more time to prepare, you would have been harder to get to. It seems they didn’t want anyone else to know of this.’

‘All this trouble for me? I’m honoured,’ Alex said with a nervous laugh, trying to make light of it.

The gesture wasn’t reciprocated. Instead she pointed off into the distance, where a stand of trees broke up the night sky. ‘I have a car on the other side of those woods. Stay low and follow me.’

‘How did you—?’

‘Not now,’ she cut in, silencing him. ‘Stay close and don’t talk.’

And that was all she had to say on the matter. Doing his best to follow as she hurried onward, Alex stumbled through undergrowth and over exposed tree roots, swearing more than once as his legs caught on tangled patches of brambles that had burst into life once more with the onset of summer.

Adrenaline and sheer desperation were doing a reasonable job of keeping him going for now, but it wasn’t easy to keep up with her, and Alex was suddenly very conscious that this woman was his only remaining lifeline. If he lost her, he might as well turn himself in at the nearest police station.

By the time they emerged on the far side of the small wood, he was sweating and out of breath. Still, they’d made it through the rough terrain more or less unscathed.

The wood was skirted by a narrow, unpaved dirt road probably used by farmers to commute between their fields. Parked in a shallow depression and partially screened by bushes was a black Ford Focus, the conservative little hatchback looking decidedly out of place in such rural surroundings.

His female companion headed straight for the vehicle, and Alex wasted no time following her. He practically collapsed into the passenger seat as soon as the door was unlocked, and was still breathing hard as she fired up the engine and eased the car out of the shallow dip.

Within moments they were on their way, driving at a fair speed despite the rough and winding track. The headlights remained firmly switched off, and though Alex might have questioned the wisdom of driving on a rough farm track at night, he was too exhausted to raise the matter. In any case, he doubted the woman would take kindly to such questions.

He was trembling, he realized as he looked down at his hands. They were shaking almost uncontrollably now, and from more than just the chill night air outside. Over and over he kept seeing his former captors lying on that dirty concrete floor, over and over he replayed the feeling of water rushing into his mouth and nose, drowning him. He felt like he was going to throw up.

‘You’re experiencing a combat-stress reaction,’ the woman said, as if sensing his thoughts. ‘The adrenaline in your blood is thinning out, your body is going into shock. Breathe slow and deep, keep your mind focussed. I need you to think clearly now, Alex.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ he said, wrapping his arms around his chest in an effort to keep warm. The car’s heaters were cranked up to full, but the engine hadn’t warmed up enough to produce hot air yet. ‘How did you find me tonight? At the cafe, I mean. And how do you know my name?’

‘Like I said, you’re not good at covering your tracks. I was there when you met with Loki a week ago, and I followed you home afterwards. Once I had your address it was easy to learn everything I needed to know about you.’

‘Why are you so interested?’

‘Loki was working for me, and I guessed you were working for him. I needed to know you could be trusted. But when Loki disappeared three days ago, you were my only lead.’

At last a big piece of the puzzle fell into place. Loki was Sinclair’s hacker alias. This woman was the mysterious client who had hired him to hack into the CIA’s secure network and steal classified information. She was the one willing to pay a great deal of money to get her hands on it, and she was the reason Sinclair might well be dead. Suddenly Alex’s mind was a maelstrom of confused thoughts and possibilities, none of which were good.

She paused a moment to swing the car through a tight bend, bracing herself as it rumbled over a deep pothole. ‘Now tell me, why did you try to use the CAM at a public terminal?’

‘CAM? I don’t understand. What the hell is a CAM?’ he asked, trying to sort through his increasingly cluttered and disjointed thoughts.

He heard a faint exhalation of breath, but didn’t trust himself to look round. The jolting, swaying movement of the car on the rough road was making him feel nauseous, reminding him of a taxi ride home after a drunken night out.

‘A conditional access module. A secure login system for field operatives to access the Agency’s servers,’ she explained tersely. ‘Loki gave you a copy when you met with him a week ago. You’ve been working on decrypting it for him.’

He most certainly had not. The closest he’d come to discerning the secrets held within the memory stick had been the brief glimpse he’d seen of the source code back at the internet cafe.

Growing tired of his reticence, the woman turned around, glaring right at him. ‘Alex, this is no time to hold back. Talk to me! How did the Agency find you?’

And just like that, everything that had happened over the past several hours – the revelation of his friend’s disappearance, the arrest, the torture, the interrogation – suddenly came to an explosive climax.

‘I don’t fucking know!’ he shouted, surprising even himself with the violence of his reaction. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t working to decrypt anything for anyone. I didn’t ask to be involved, and I told Arran I wanted no part in this. Whatever you think I am, I’m not. I’m a fucking nobody. I sell TVs for a living, for Christ’s sake. I can’t answer your questions because I don’t know what the hell he was mixed up in.’

Her reaction was as dramatic as it was immediate. Jamming her foot on the brake, she brought the Focus to a shuddering, skidding halt. Alex, having forgotten to put his seatbelt on, was thrown against the dashboard by the sudden deceleration.

‘Get out of the car,’ she ordered.

‘What are you—?’

He was silenced very effectively when she reached into her jacket, pulled out the automatic she’d taken from his dead captors, and levelled it squarely at his forehead.

‘Get out of the car,’ she repeated, her voice now as cold as her eyes.

One look at her expression was enough to convince him against further protest. Swallowing down the sickening feeling of nausea in his throat, Alex pulled open his door and stepped out into the chill night air. She was right behind, keeping him covered.

‘Get down on your knees,’ she ordered. ‘Put your hands behind your head.’

He felt strangely numb as he lowered himself onto the muddy ground and placed his hands behind his head, hardly able to comprehend how his fortunes had swung so drastically once more. It didn’t feel real. So different was tonight from the safe, monotonous predictability of his life that his mind simply couldn’t accept what was happening.

Was this how it was going to end? Had he really just been rescued only to be executed by his saviour?

‘Look, I didn’t mean to shout at you—’ he began, desperately groping for the right words.

‘Shut up,’ she fired back. ‘Everything that has happened tonight is of your own making. The moment you tried to run the CAM, it was red-flagged on the Agency’s systems. You’ve destroyed everything Loki and I were working for.’

Alex had no words. No counterargument, no plea for compassion. He understood now the full magnitude of his decision to open that file.

‘I didn’t know. I… I’m sorry.’

As far as pleas for one’s life went, it was woefully inadequate. It certainly wasn’t going to undo the damage he had unwittingly caused tonight, but he had never meant those two words more in his entire life.

‘So am I,’ the woman replied, raising the weapon.

‘P-please, don’t do it,’ he stammered, well aware that he was trembling now in abject fear. The numbness and disbelief had faded away now, and reality had hit him like a brick wall. ‘Please. I don’t want to die.’

‘There’s nothing I can do for you. It will be quick.’

Oh Jesus, this was it. He was going to die here on this muddy farm track miles from anywhere, his body found tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. He’d be found with his brains blasted out across the grass.

He saw the police notifying his parents of his murder, saw his mother in tears and his father trying to be strong. He saw the people at his office gossiping about it, trying to figure out what had really happened to him, saw some of them drifting along to his funeral, more because it would get them the day off work than because they really cared for him. He saw it all in the blink of an eye.

I’m going to die wearing a fucking Metallica t-shirt, he thought, as he watched the barrel of the gun glinting in the wan moonlight.

Then, just like that, an idea came to him. An idea born from sheer desperation, and an intuition of why his friend had approached him a week ago.

‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘You said you wanted the CAM decrypted so you could hack into the Agency’s servers. That means you want to steal something from them. I can help you.’

That was enough to get her attention, if only briefly. Keeping it, however, would depend on what he said in the next few seconds. He had to make her believe in him.

‘Why do you think Arran came to me for help a week ago?’ he asked, speaking so quickly he was almost stumbling over the words. ‘It’s because he knew I was the only one who could do what he needed.’

‘You said you were a nobody,’ she reminded him. ‘A television salesman. What can you possibly do to help me?’

He looked up at her. ‘It wasn’t always like this. I used to be something, 
someone
, very different. I used to do things that mattered, as stupid as that might sound to you. Arran knew what I could do, what I was capable of; that’s why he came to me for help. But I turned him away, because I was afraid of what might happen.’ Alex swallowed, wondering if this whole mess might have played out differently had he accepted his friend’s offer. ‘Now I know, and that’s something I have to live with. And it seems like after everything that’s happened tonight, I’ve got nothing left to lose. So yes, I can help you. There’s nobody better at breaking encryption codes than me; not even Arran himself. I used to hack multinational banking servers for fun. If you’re serious about this, if you really want to get into the CIA’s systems, then for God’s sake don’t pull that trigger because I’m the only one left who can get you in.’

She said nothing for several seconds, her gaze searching and intense, looking for any sign of deception. But she didn’t pull the trigger. ‘Assuming you are telling the truth, what would you need to do this?’

‘I need a decent computer setup. Serious hardware that you can’t buy from any shop, and somewhere I can work undisturbed.’

‘And where would you suggest finding these things?’

A hacking attempt like this wasn’t something to be undertaken lightly, and certainly not with the kind of equipment he could buy commercially. Back in the day, it had taken him months to put together the kind of custom-built system he’d needed for such activities. Clearly he didn’t have time to build one now, which meant the only option left was to use someone else’s.

‘I know a man who has everything I need, but…’

‘But what?’

Alex swallowed. She wasn’t going to like what he had to say next, but it had to come out all the same. ‘He’s not in this country. He lives in Norway. He used to be part of Valhalla 7.’

‘If he was part of the group, then he may have been compromised like the others,’ she reasoned. ‘What makes you think we can use him?’

Alex shook his head. ‘Trust me, there’s no way Arran would have approached him this time around.’

‘Why?’

Alex gritted his teeth, swallowing down the years of festering anger that still arose whenever he thought of Gregar Landvik. ‘Because he’s the reason I ended up in jail,’ he managed to say. ‘It’s a long story that you probably don’t want to hear. The point is, he was thrown out of the group after that, but there’s a good chance he’s still active. If we can get to him, I can use his system and break this thing.’

She didn’t look convinced. In fact, she still looked all too ready to pull that trigger. No doubt she’d reached the same conclusion he had – his proposal was a long shot at best, with plenty of opportunities to fail.

The only question was how important the potential rewards were to her, how much she was willing to risk.

‘If you are lying to me…’

‘I’m not. I promise,’ he begged, staring right back at her and hoping his eyes betrayed nothing but desperate sincerity. ‘I know I fucked things up for you tonight, but I can make this right. I can fix this. Just give me a chance to prove it.’

She said nothing in response, merely kept him covered with the weapon. It was impossible to tell from her expression, but he desperately hoped she was weighing up what he’d said. Surely it had to be worth a try?

He could only pray she felt the same way.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she lowered the gun. Alex released a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.