Deception Game (30 page)

‘Also, you didn’t answer my question. What do you intend to do with us?’

Drake let out a breath. It wasn’t an easy question to answer, because what happened to them depended greatly on what Sowan was able to tell Drake and the others – if he lived that long.

‘I came here for answers,’ he said. ‘The kind only your husband can give me. But right now, I’m not the one you need to be worrying about.’

This prompted a raised eyebrow. ‘Your friends back at the airfield?’

He nodded. ‘Your survival depends on ours. If they find us, they’ll kill us. All of us.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What is Tarek’s life worth to them?’

Truly that was the question. ‘That’s what I’m hoping to find out.’

With her makeshift repairs completed, she reached over and slowly released the pressure on the pliers, allowing blood to flow through the damaged artery once more. Mercifully, the sutures appeared to hold. At least there was no sudden rush of arterial blood like before.

She nodded, satisfied with her work. ‘I think it should hold. For now, at least.’

With the artery stabilized, the hard part was over. It was a fairly simple task to stitch up and bandage the wound, which she again insisted on doing herself. Only when a clean field dressing was firmly bound around his leg did the woman at last allow herself to relax.

‘Keep a close eye on him,’ she advised. ‘If his blood pressure drops suddenly, it could be a sign the sutures have failed.’

Drake didn’t need to be told about keeping him under observation. He intended to have someone on permanent watch around Sowan until the man regained consciousness.

‘If you don’t mind, I would like to wash up.’ She was still wearing the surgical gloves, her arms and nightgown smeared with blood, her hair tangled and dishevelled.

‘Of course.’ Reaching up, Drake keyed his radio. ‘Monarch to Cameo. Any activity outside?’

‘Nothing here, Monarch. It’s all quiet.’

‘Good. Get in here and keep an eye on the target.’

It didn’t take long for Mason to return to the kitchen. With Sowan now under watch, Drake escorted his wife down the hallway to a wash room that apparently served all the residents of the house.

‘I need to keep the door open,’ he said apologetically. The chances of her clambering through the small ventilation window and making a break for it were slim, but it was a risk he wasn’t prepared to take at this point. ‘Take as long as you need.’

She didn’t seem to be paying attention now, her uncanny focus and stern composure having at last deserted her. Leaning over the sink, she started a tap running and fumbled to remove the surgical gloves, finally tearing them off and dropping them on the floor at her feet.

Holding her hands under the running water, she watched as the blood swirled around the sink, fading and dissipating yet never truly disappearing. She reached up and began to wipe it from her arms, slowly at first but soon growing faster and more agitated, as if the sight of it now disgusted her. It was then that Drake noticed her hands were shaking, her breath coming in short, frantic gasps.

Only now did he understand her apparent lack of emotion earlier. At the time he’d attributed it to a naturally cold and detached personality, or perhaps a marriage that had long since lost its intimacy. Now he saw her detachment for what it was – a facade, a professional defence-mechanism born out of necessity.

She had put aside her own feelings while she did what she had to do to save the man’s life. Only now that he was out of danger could she finally let those defences drop. Only now could she allow herself to feel the pain, the shock, the agony at what she had seen and done tonight, and what had been done to her.

Reaching into his webbing, Drake held something out to her. ‘Here. Take this.’

His words seemed to rouse her slightly from her shock, and she turned her head slowly to look at him, frowning in confusion at the hip flask in his hand.

‘It’ll help,’ he assured her. ‘Trust me.’

He was expecting an argument from her. She seemed like the sort to question and fight against everything, but not this time. This time she reached out, snatched the flask and held it to her lips, gulping down a mouthful of the potent liquor.

Like most staunchly Islamic countries, Libya’s official line was that the sale and consumption of alcohol were strictly forbidden. Then again, just because something was against the law didn’t mean it didn’t happen. Libya had had more exposure to Western culture than many countries in this part of the world in recent years, and Drake knew from experience that the degree of adherence to Islamic law varied from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, even house to house.

She stifled a cough as the whisky seared a blazing path down her throat, though she made no attempt to spit it out. In fact, she took another gulp almost immediately, a deeper one this time.

‘Take it easy,’ Drake said, reaching out and gently lowering the flask before she consumed too much. ‘It’s to settle your nerves, not knock you out.’

‘All things considered, I would settle for the latter tonight.’

You and me both, Drake thought.

She looked at the hipflask again and wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘What is that damn stuff, anyway?’

‘Sixteen-year-old single malt. Good for what ails you.’

‘It tastes awful.’

Drake couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment at that.

‘Well, it’s what we’ve got.’ Since he’d opened it, he saw no harm partaking in a little himself. It was a welcome relief after the night’s events. ‘And I’d say you’ve earned it.’

She said nothing to this, though when she went back to washing herself it was with somewhat more control and composure. In due course she had cleaned most of the blood off her exposed skin, run her fingers through her long raven black hair to work the worst of the tangles out, and finally splashed some water on her face.

‘We’ll find some clean clothes for you,’ Drake said. A bloodstained nightgown wasn’t going to serve her well from this point forward, though he didn’t hold out much hope of finding anything suitable in a farmhouse shared by three men.

‘Laila,’ she said at last, drying her face with a towel. ‘My name is Laila.’

Drake was about to say something in return, to offer some expression of thanks for everything she had done tonight, to apologize for what they’d been forced to put her through, but she cut him off immediately.

‘But if you think this changes anything, you’re mistaken. I told you simply so that you would know the person whose life you destroyed tonight.’ She looked at him, and he saw a light burning behind her eyes that was enough to put a chill through even him. ‘Personally, I hope you and your team die and go to hell before the sun rises on another day.’

Drake said nothing to that. Instead he took another gulp from the hipflask and led her back through to the kitchen. They had far bigger problems to deal with tonight.

‘Quite a mess,’ Adnan Mousa remarked, gesturing to the pile of smoking wreckage that had once been an aircraft. It had been a raging inferno when the first police units had arrived at the private airfield about twenty minutes earlier, and emergency crews were still working to damp it down in case it flared up once again. ‘I doubt we’ll get much out of the pilot.’

His comrade, a short and bull-like man named Bishr Kubar, didn’t smile at Mousa’s grim joke. Then again, he didn’t smile at much of anything.
Bishr
; now there was one of life’s little ironies. The name meant ‘joy’ in Arabic, though the man seemed to find little in this world that was joyful.

Then again neither he nor his comrades had much reason to smile tonight. Tarek Sowan, one of their organization’s high-level intelligence officers, had been abducted from his supposedly secure home just hours earlier. The guards, the cameras, the layers of security designed to protect him, had all counted for naught.

Understandably, alarm bells were ringing throughout the Mukhabarat. They wanted answers. They wanted their man back. They wanted to know how this had happened, who was responsible, and most of all they wanted the perpetrators caught and punished in the harshest way imaginable.

It had therefore come as little surprise to Bishr Kubar that he’d been chosen to head up the investigation, for he was well aware of his own reputation for ruthlessly pursuing objectives and brutally removing of any obstacle unwise enough to stand in his path. His was a reputation earned long before he joined the Mukhabarat.

‘We have the tail number,’ Kubar said impatiently. The aircraft might have been charred and burned in the crash, but the lettering on the tail section was still legible. ‘What do we know about this plane?’

Mousa consulted the notes he’d scribbled down after a phone call with Libyan air-traffic control only minutes earlier. ‘It’s registered to a private air cargo firm operating out of the United Kingdom, landed at Tripoli International earlier tonight for refuelling. According to the flight plan, they were heading onwards to Cairo, but about ten minutes after takeoff the pilot radioed in with control problems, said he was going to land to check it out. Then they lost contact.’

A faint breeze sighed across the runway, carrying the stench of aviation fuel and burned rubber. Grimacing in distaste, Kubar reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and lit one up.

‘It’s a fake,’ he decided after taking a deep pull on the cigarette. ‘This was no normal cargo run. It was their means of escape.’

Normally the crash landing of a small aircraft at an isolated runway would have held little interest for Kubar – such things could and did happen from time to time – but coming as it had less than an hour after Sowan’s abduction, the connection was hard to miss.

Coincidences were for fools, as far as he was concerned. Every action was a reaction to something else, and in this case the crash was a reaction to the kidnapping. What he still needed to understand was the chain of events leading up to it.

‘But who exactly are “they”?’ Mousa asked rhetorically. (The man was irritatingly fond of stating the obvious when genuine insights failed him.)

Still, the question nonetheless remained unanswered. Certainly there were plenty of agencies capable of staging such an audacious raid. The Americans, the British, the Israelis, even the Russians had the expertise and the resources to make it happen.

The members of Sowan’s household security detail had been of little help, offering only fragmented and contradictory reports of large numbers of masked operatives storming the compound and overwhelming them with advanced weapons. Kubar knew bullshit when he heard it, and it was all over their self-serving testimonies. Doubtless they were wary of allegations of incompetence resulting from the loss of their charge, and were trying to protect themselves by exaggerating the size and strength of their enemies.

But despite their bluster and claims of defeat in the face of impossible odds, there was likely a grain of truth hidden away somewhere. Clearly Sowan’s abductors had sufficient technical expertise to bypass the building’s complex security system, as well as the training to take down three armed men without raising the alarm. Local police had even reported the use of smoke and stun grenades to cover their escape.

All of this led him to the irrefutable conclusion that this was far more than some petty revenge attack by rebel tribesmen or any kind of criminal undertaking. Instead, they were dealing with an elite, dangerous and highly organized special forces group who had come here with a specific objective, and a plan to achieve it. Indeed, the only thing that seemed to have gone wrong for them tonight was the loss of the aircraft intended to carry them and their captives to safety.

Ignoring his comrade’s remarks, Kubar took another pull on his cigarette as he weighed up what was at stake. They couldn’t afford to lose Sowan. Aside from his value as an asset and the damage he could do if forced to talk, his capture was a massive blow to the Mukhabarat’s prestige and integrity.

Kubar was no fool. He understood better than most that the winds of change were blowing in Libya. Its people were weary and resentful after four decades of Gaddafi’s rule, and growing increasingly vociferous in their opposition. Power and prestige were no longer effective tools of suppression – only fear mattered. And the Mukhabarat was the instrument of that fear; the all-seeing and all-knowing eyes and ears of the government. The terrifying men in blacked-out cars who came knocking in the middle of the night.

If word got out that one of their own had been taken from his very home, that they could be hurt just as they hurt others, that fear and power would vanish. Like blood in the water, it wouldn’t take long for the sharks to start circling.

‘I want military and police checkpoints on all major roads within fifty miles,’ he said. ‘Increased border patrols and searches of all ships leaving our ports. Any cars driven by Westerners are to be stopped and thoroughly searched.’

Mousa looked at him. ‘You know that will make a lot of rich men very unhappy.’

The look Kubar gave him in return made it plain that such concerns were the last thing on his mind. Taking a final draw on his cigarette, he flicked it to the ground and stamped it out with his shoe.

But as he did so, he felt his heel come down on something. Something hard and round, that rolled a little with the motion of his foot.

Frowning, Kubar knelt down and reached for it, grasping it delicately between his thumb and forefinger as he held it up for a closer look.

‘And get our ballistics teams on this,’ he added, staring intently at the brass shell casing in his hand. ‘I want to know where our friends came from.’

No matter what it took, he would get to the truth. He always did.

With Sowan and Laila under guard and no activity reported outside, a brief period of relative calm had descended on the farmhouse. It was a welcome reprieve from the near constant pressure the team had been under since making landfall on that rocky stretch of coastline near Tripoli. It felt like a lifetime ago now.

Venturing outside with a steaming cup of tea in his hands, Drake found himself surrounded by the chirp and click of night insects, punctuated by occasional birdsong as the world began to rouse itself for the start of a new day. With less than an hour until first light, they would have to decide on a course of action soon, he knew.

McKnight was sitting on the stone porch, keeping an eye on the approach road. She was armed with a silenced Browning and had removed the magazine to count out the remaining rounds.

There weren’t many.

‘Here,’ he said quietly, holding the cup out to her.

The woman glanced up from her work, seemingly distracted by her own thoughts, then shook her head. ‘I don’t need it.’

‘You’ve been on the clock all night, Sam. I don’t need you passing out on me.’

Letting out a resigned sigh, she grabbed the cup and gulped down a mouthful before turning her attention back to reloading the magazine.

‘I never got the chance to say it before,’ Drake began, staring out into the darkness beyond the floodlit farm compound. ‘But thank you, for what you did back at the airfield. I doubt any of us would be here now if it wasn’t for you. You saved the entire team, Sam.’

Her eyes were turned downward, focussing on her task as she thumbed each round into the magazine, but to his surprise he saw a flicker of pain behind them, as if his words had touched a raw nerve.

‘When Chandra’s plane came down, I...’ Drake trailed off, replaying that terrible moment when he’d first seen the stricken aircraft plough into the ground, felt the heat of the fireball and the gut-wrenching realization that Samantha’s life could have been ended in that instant, the fear and anger and desperation that it had provoked in him. He’d known then that he would have torn Faulkner apart with his bare hands to protect her, would have traded places with her in a heartbeat if it would spare her life.

And that frightened him more than anything else that had happened tonight. To be a leader, to get his team through this, he had to be willing to put each of them in danger. They knew it, they accepted it. But what if he couldn’t? What if he was afraid to risk Samantha’s life, and his hesitation put the others at greater risk?

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he said at last. ‘I thought that was it. And right then, I didn’t care about Sowan or Cain or anything else. If I lost you, it would kill me, Sam.’

‘Maybe it would be better if you did,’ she said in a sad, forlorn voice.

Drake frowned, struck by the change that had come over her. ‘What do you mean?’

She sighed, her shoulders sagging. ‘I mean, doing what we do, maybe we shouldn’t get too close, trust each other too much. It’s safer...for both of us.’

Drake winced. McKnight had been sullen and withdrawn since Laila had taken over with the injured man, though he hadn’t understood why. He’d sensed this kind of sentiment might rise to the surface sooner or later. It often did when things went wrong and people were given time to reflect on their actions, to question their decisions and second guess themselves. But this was one line of thought that needed to be shut down right now.

Reaching out, Drake laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Sam, look at me. Look at me.’

Reluctantly she dragged her gaze upward, making eye contact.

‘You’re part of this team now, whether you want it or not. We need you.’ He lowered his voice, speaking in barely a whisper. ‘
I
need you.’

Suddenly she jumped to her feet and strode off several paces across the porch, arms folded across her chest. The tension in her muscles was obvious, her body filled with nervous energy that it couldn’t get rid of.

‘You don’t need me, Ryan. You make your own way – you always did. That’s why we’re here,’ she said, keeping her back to him. ‘And look where it got us. Chandra’s dead. Our way out’s gone, and we’re being hunted by the man who sent you here in the first place.’ She shook her head. ‘There are no happy endings for people like us. We both know that.’

Drake had heard enough of this. Rising to his feet, he walked right towards her, gripped her by the arm and spun her around to face him.

‘I didn’t come all this way to lose, Sam,’ he said, his tone hard and flat as he fixed her with a piercing stare.

‘And what are you prepared to give up to win?’ she asked. ‘I heard what you said to Faulkner at the airfield. You were ready to kill yourself rather than hand Sowan over. Victory at any cost. Where’s it going to end, Ryan?’

Before either of them could say anything further, they were interrupted by the sound of the main door opening behind them. Both of them turned to see Frost standing in the arched doorway. The young woman took in their troubled expressions, their sudden look of discomfort and embarrassment at her arrival.

‘I miss something?’ she asked.

Drake released his hold of McKnight’s arm. ‘What is it, Keira?’

‘You might want to get in here. Sowan’s awake.’

Drake let out a breath. The man he’d risked so much to get his hands on was conscious at last. Now perhaps he’d get some answers.

He glanced at McKnight, who gestured towards the house. ‘Go. I’ll keep watch.’

Nodding, Drake paused for a moment, wishing there was something else he could say to her, some reassurance he could give. There was nothing. Words counted for little now. All that mattered were results.

Reluctantly he followed Frost inside, leaving the woman alone with her thoughts.

Sowan was indeed awake, struggling to rise from the kitchen table, with Mason attempting to hold him down. Laila too was on hand, speaking in Arabic and trying to calm her husband.

The moment Drake entered the room, however, the man’s struggles eased. His dark eyes focussed on his captor, edged with pain but clear and alert once more.

‘I know you,’ he said after a long pause.

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I saw you at the airfield near Paris,’ Sowan countered. ‘You work for the Agency.’

Drake said nothing to that. Instead he allowed the image of Freya Shaw lying cold and dead on a mortuary table to linger in his mind. His grip on his weapon tightened until he could feel the wooden checkering press into his flesh.

Sowan tilted his head, his gaze shrewd and assessing. ‘I was going to ask if David Faulkner sent you to kill me, but since he apparently tried to kill you as well, that seems unlikely. So the question is what exactly you want with me.’

‘I want answers. Lots of them,’ Drake said at last. ‘And you’re going to give them to me. We’re going to talk about Faulkner. You’re going to tell me how you know him, and why he wants to get his hands on you. But first you’re going to tell me about Freya Louise Shaw. You’re going to tell me why you ordered her murder.’

‘I know nothing of the woman you mentioned.’ Sowan’s thin lips parted in a smile. ‘As for Faulkner, I could tell you a great deal, but I won’t. Not unless I have assurances that my wife and I will be released.’

Drake was well and truly finished with such games. Drawing his Browning, he allowed the silencer to rest on the edge of the table with a heavy
thunk
.

‘The only thing you need to be
assured
about is that your life – your
lives
– are entirely in my hands. I could kill both of you right now, burn this house to the ground and be out of the country before anyone figures out what happened. The only reason I didn’t let you bleed to death in the back of our car is because you know something that might be useful.’

‘That was my car, actually,’ Sowan pointed out.

Drake ignored his attempt to rile him. ‘You’re going to tell me what I want to know, Tarek. You’re going to tell me, and then I’m going to decide whether it’s worth keeping you alive.’

‘And if I don’t, what will you do? Shoot me?’ The lean, wiry man shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘If you think death frightens me, you are truly in the wrong business.’

‘Not your death.’ Drake allowed the barrel of his weapon to angle towards Laila. ‘Cole, put her arm on the table. Now.’

Moving forward, Mason grabbed Laila’s right arm and twisted it behind her back, eliciting a cry of pain and anger. Smaller, lighter and nowhere near his match in strength, she was powerless to resist as he forced her to turn around, pressing her hand down hard on the table.

‘What are you doing?’ Sowan demanded, some of his calm confidence deserting him as he watched Drake draw a knife from his webbing, drawing the blade slowly across the edge of the sheath so he could hear the distinctive metallic rasp.

‘You were unconscious while she was working to save your life, Tarek. Shame, really. What she was able to do, the skill and the control of those surgeon’s hands, it was impressive.’ Circling around behind her, he laid the edge of the blade against her wrist. ‘Be a shame to lose them.’

‘Ryan, don’t do this,’ Laila protested, trying in vain to break free of Mason’s grip. ‘God will not forgive you if you do this.’

Drake met her gaze without compassion. He had little left in him at that moment. ‘I’m already going to hell, remember?’

Laila was speaking now in Arabic, her words fast and urgent, but Sowan hushed her. He was keeping his cool, but it didn’t look quite as effortless as before. Drake had found a chink in his armour.

‘I have played this game many times myself,’ he said, staring Drake in the eye without flinching. ‘It takes a certain kind of man to do something like that, believe me. You’re not the sort.’

Outwardly he appeared unconcerned, as if he knew exactly what Drake was capable of and was happy to call his bluff on something the man would never do. But Drake saw it. He saw the tiny bead of sweat roll down the side of Sowan’s face, the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the slight movement of his Adam’s apple as he fought the urge to swallow.

Drake stared right back at him, but there was something in his eye now that none of the others had ever seen. A hardness, an edge of cruelty and malice that had long lain dormant within him. A shadow of the man he’d once been, now taking form once more.

‘Only one way to find out.’

‘You will
not
!’ Tarek said, raising his voice for the first time.

‘Tell me about Freya!’ Drake yelled back. ‘Why did you order her death?’

Frost, who had until now held her tongue, now glanced uncertainly at Mason. ‘Ryan, where's this coming from? What makes you think he knows anything?’

Drake wasn't listening to her. He was in his own world now. He hadn’t intended to let it out, hadn’t wanted to open that door in his mind, but it was there. It was open, and there was no closing it now.

‘Let her go!’ Sowan shouted.

‘Look at him, man. He doesn’t know anything,’ Mason protested, though he maintained his grip on the woman.

‘Fuck this,’ Drake decided. ‘You had your chance.’

With that, he pressed the blade in, slicing downward. Like carving up a roast.

Laila let out a scream. Not a cry of pain. The nerves in her arm wouldn’t have transferred the full import of what was happening to her brain yet. It was a scream of fear. She didn’t need to feel the pain of what was happening; she knew well enough as the knife bit in and blood welled up from severed flesh.

‘Stop!’ Sowan cried out. ‘Stop, please!’

Drake paused in his grisly work, glancing up at him. What he said in the next few seconds would decide Laila’s fate.

‘I’ll tell you everything I know,’ the man said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll talk.’

Slowly Drake withdrew the blade, the edge stained red with Laila’s blood. Fortunately he’d stopped before it had done any real damage. A minor skin-deep slice had been enough to get the reaction he’d wanted.

He let out a breath and clenched his fists, trying to keep them from trembling, trying to regain his composure.

‘Why did you kill her?’ he demanded once he trusted himself to speak.

Sowan shook his head, his shoulders slumped in defeat. The pain and weariness of his ordeal tonight seemed to weigh more heavily on him now.

‘I know nothing of this woman you mentioned,’ he said at last.

Drake drew his knife once more.

‘Wait!’ Sowan implored him, staring pleadingly into his eyes. ‘I swear to you, I have never heard the name Freya Shaw, and I have ordered no killings of women. If Faulkner has told you otherwise, then I suggest you ask him the same questions you asked me. But nothing you say or do can make me admit to her death, because I know nothing.’

Drake stared right back at him, trying to pierce the veil of those dark eyes, to discern what secrets lay hidden beneath. For his own part, much as he wished it were different, he could detect no hint of deception in them, no attempt to lie or conceal anything.

He was telling the truth. He hadn’t ordered Freya’s death.

Raising the knife in a sudden explosive outpouring of anger, Drake brought the weapon down with all the force he could command. There was a thump, the table shook beneath the impact, and Sowan found himself staring at the blade impaled in the wooden surface, still quivering from the force of the blow.

Drake closed his eyes for a moment and lowered his head, gripping the edge of the table for support. He could feel his breath coming in short, shuddering gasps, his heart pounding in his chest.

Faulkner had played him, killing his mother as bait to lure Drake out. To get him to agree to such a foolishly dangerous mission into Libya. To recover the man now seated just feet away from him.

Why?

Raising his head up, he looked at his prisoner once more, forcing back the grief and anger with difficulty. He’d made enough mistakes letting emotion rule over logic; he could afford no more. ‘Let’s start with what you
can
tell me. How do you know Faulkner?’

Sowan swallowed hard, looking genuinely frightened by the display of brute force and aggression. ‘He is one of our main contacts with British intelligence.’