Deception Game (31 page)

‘Contact for what?’

‘Prisoner renditions.’

Drake was starting to get a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘Keep talking.’

‘Two years ago, Faulkner approached us with a deal. We give him a list of Libyan exiles and dissidents taking refuge in the West, and he would hand them over to us without question. In return, we would give him the location of Islamic State commanders in Libya and north Africa, and allow the CIA to set up black sites in our country where they could be interrogated.’

Drake closed his eyes and clenched his fists as the full magnitude of his own folly was at last revealed to him. Faulkner hadn’t just lied to him about Cain being the driving force behind this dirty international arrangement, he’d used it as a smokescreen to cover his own involvement.

‘So if you two have been in bed together for the past two years, why the fuck did Faulkner send us here to kidnap you?’ Mason demanded, visibly angry at the realization they had risked their lives tonight for nothing.

‘Because...’ He trailed off, unwilling to continue.

‘Now’s not the time to hold out on me, Tarek.’

Sowan glared at him. ‘Because we have not lived up to our end of the agreement.’

Drake frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

A sigh. ‘We have given them only scraps from our table. Snatches of information, rumours, perhaps a few low-level commanders that were expendable anyway. Our government has been trying to play both sides of the War on Terror – supporting Islamic State with one hand, and America with the other.’

‘Why?’ Mason challenged him.

Sowan looked at him with contempt. ‘Is it not obvious? Money, of course. The Americans have channelled billions of dollars in aid and development funds into Libya in the past few years, lifted sanctions, made it possible to start exporting oil again. We are prospering like never before. As for Islamic State, they believe we are still championing the Jihad against the West by giving them shelter here. Instead of invading like they did in Iraq, they hold back because they see us as allies. In some ways, the plan had merit.’

‘Except Faulkner realized what you were doing.’

Sowan chewed his lip, but nodded. ‘Since we have given them nothing useful, I suppose Faulkner decided to take matters into his own hands. Likely he wanted to interrogate one of our officers to find out how much we really knew.’

It didn’t take much imagination to guess what would have happened to Sowan if they’d handed him over. Faulkner would have made sure the man gave him every scrap of information the Mukhabarat possessed, right before he put a bullet in his head.

‘What about the man we lifted in Paris?’ Drake asked, still seeking to understand how that particular piece fitted into the puzzle. ‘Who was he really, and what did you want with him?’

At this, Sowan shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ Seeing Drake’s dubious look, he added, ‘And I mean that. He was not listed on any of our intelligence dossiers.’

Drake wasn’t buying that. ‘So why the hell were you there for the extraction?’

‘The orders came from my commanding officer. He said Fayed was a high-value target, that he had to be recovered at all costs along with any intel in his possession. So we made the arrangements, and you delivered him.’

Once more Drake remembered the laptop he’d tried to access on the journey to the airfield near Paris, and the encryption that had prevented its use. Somehow he sensed that Fayed played a bigger part in this than any of them realized. That man, and the intel they’d recovered from his apartment, were part of something.

‘So what did you learn from him?’

If Fayed was as important as he believed, the Libyans would have wasted no time interrogating him. Surely they must have learned something by now.

‘I don’t know,’ Sowan admitted.

‘We’re hearing that a lot from you,’ Mason said, bristling with anger. ‘I smell bullshit.’

Sowan glared at him. ‘It is the truth. I was not present for his debriefing; I was just there to make sure he arrived on schedule. If you or Faulkner kidnapped me because you believe I have some insight into this man, you’re very much mistaken.’

‘Faulkner wants to get his hands on you,’ Drake pointed out. ‘He won’t stop until that happens.’

‘And you?’ Sowan asked with a gleam of hope in his eye. ‘What do you want?’

His answer was blunt and honest. ‘To get out of this fucking mess alive.’

Sowan smiled in grim amusement. ‘Then it seems we are not so different, after all.’

‘Don’t compare us to yourself, you piece of shit,’ Frost said, eyes brimming with hatred as she surveyed the bloodied and injured man lying before her. ‘We’re nothing like you.’

‘Really? How so?’

‘For a start we don’t imprison and torture innocent people,’ Mason chipped in.

‘Neither do I. My job is to seek out and capture enemies of my state.’

‘There’s a party line if ever I heard one,’ Frost snorted derisively. ‘You mean people who have the guts to speak up against Gaddafi?’

‘I mean people who blow up hospitals and crowded marketplaces. People who kidnap and murder government ministers. People who want to incite a civil war that would cost thousands of lives and tear this country apart. Those are
my
enemies,’ he said, his dark eyes flashing with anger. ‘And Gaddafi is no more my friend than you are, but he is probably the only thing holding Libya together and keeping Islamic State from taking over. So I do what I must, and serve him.’

‘And collect a nice fat pay cheque for your troubles,’ Frost added. ‘We saw your house, dude. It’s enough to make Kim Kardashian jealous.’

‘Actually, the house belonged to my wife’s family,’ Sowan corrected her. ‘My pay cheque is not so fat as yours, I suspect. And while we are talking about arrest and torture, have you not imprisoned the innocent civilians who run this farm? Did you not abduct my wife and me from our own home? Did you not threaten to torture and kill her?’ He shook his head and chuckled in amusement. ‘Perhaps my mind is not clear, but remind me again what makes us so different?’

‘Our lives were at stake. We did what we had to do,’ Mason said, though his words lacked conviction. He was savvy enough to sense he’d been backed into a corner.

‘We all do what we must to survive,’ Sowan agreed. ‘Like learning to work with our enemies for the greater good.’

Frost however was unmoved by his sentiments. ‘Pass me the fucking Oscar, because you’re in the wrong business, pal.’ She shook her head and turned her eyes on Drake. ‘We’ll get nothing useful from this asshole. Cole was right – I say we cut him loose and take on Faulkner ourselves.’

‘Your foul-mouthed friend is wrong,’ Sowan promised. ‘I have spoken the truth.’

If he was hinting at some kind of alliance against Faulkner to save his own arse, Drake suspected he was in for a disappointment. The whole ‘enemy of my enemy’ philosophy didn’t hold up too well when you’d taken a man hostage and threatened to mutilate his wife. Sowan would kill him in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it.

‘Can you prove any of this?’ Drake asked, turning over possibilities in his head. ‘Your deal with Faulkner, the black sites, all of it.’

Sowan chewed his lip for a moment, finally shaking his head. ‘Not from here. All of the files and communications are in my office.’

‘Which is where, exactly?’

Sowan exhaled slowly, preparing to deliver bad news. ‘Mukhabarat headquarters in Tripoli.’

It took about ten minutes for Drake to consider everything he’d heard and decide on a course of action. Desperate and dangerous it might have been, but it was the only way he could think of getting them all out of this alive. However, convincing his teammates of the merits of his plan was far more difficult.

‘You can’t be fucking serious,’ Mason said, shaking his head vehemently at the mere thought of what Drake was proposing. ‘It’s insane. You might as well paint a target on our heads and ask the Libyans to pull the trigger.’

‘Sowan has enough evidence to put Faulkner away for life,’ Drake pointed out.

‘If he doesn’t kill us for fun first,’ his friend countered. He jerked a finger towards the kitchen where Sowan, still weak from loss of blood, was being cared for by his wife. Frost was keeping an eye on both of them. ‘You know how this game works. That man is a professional spook – he’ll say and do anything to gain our trust, then he’ll fuck us over, the first chance he gets. I know I would.’

‘I don’t think he’s like that,’ Drake countered. When Sowan had spoken of reluctantly doing his job out of duty and desire to hold his country together, he’d sensed the man was telling the truth. And as much as it pained him to admit it, he knew now he’d been wrong about Sowan ordering his mother’s death. ‘He knows we’re not the real enemy.’

Even if he was lying about the two groups having common cause against Faulkner, Drake now had leverage over him that they both knew he couldn’t ignore.

‘You broke into his house and abducted him in the middle of the night, almost got him killed, and threatened to mutilate his wife right in front of his eyes. Christ, if that’s not enough to earn a grudge, I don’t know what is.’ Mason sighed and shook his head once more. ‘This is suicide, Ryan. Let it go.’

Realizing he would get no support from Mason, Drake turned his attention to McKnight, who had remained largely silent until now. ‘Sam, what about you?’

Her troubled eyes turned to meet his. ‘It’s hard to say, Ryan. It depends on why you’re really going after Faulkner.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know exactly what I mean,’ she countered. ‘You never told any of us that you thought Sowan was behind your mother’s death. You told us this was about bringing down Cain and protecting your sister.’

‘It is.’

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Is it? Or is this really a revenge trip for you? Sure, you might have used Sowan for information, but tell me you didn’t plan on killing him once he’d served your purpose.’

If he were to tell her that, it would be a lie. So he said nothing.

‘That’s what I thought. You lied to us, Ryan,’ she hissed, keeping her voice down with difficulty. ‘You used us to get to him. Is that what we are to you?’

Drake was all too aware of the folly of his actions, his questionable decision not to make his companions aware of what he knew, but hearing it laid out like that in such blunt, accusatory terms made it even harder to bear.

‘Take it easy, Sam,’ Mason cautioned her.

Drake held up a hand. ‘It’s all right, Cole. She has a right to ask. You all do.’ He sighed and glanced away for a moment. ‘You’re right, Sam. I did know, and I chose to keep it from you. I wanted you all focussed on the mission, not on me. I thought we could get through this, and I’d...deal with him later. But I was wrong about that. I should have trusted you all, and I’m sorry I didn’t.’ He looked right at Samantha. ‘I won’t make that mistake again.’

McKnight stared back at him for a long moment, her thoughts hard to gauge. She was angry with him – that much was obvious – and she had a right to be. But beyond that, it he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

‘You asked for my opinion on your plan,’ she finally acknowledged. ‘My opinion is we’re pretty much screwed right now, Ryan.’

Drake said nothing. It was an honest, if blunt, answer.

Taking his silence as a prompt to elaborate, she obliged. ‘Either we run, try to get out of Libya and probably get caught in the process. And even if we do make it out, we’ll have Faulkner hunting us down. Or...we go with your plan, which also has a good potential to get us all captured and killed. But on the very slight chance that it works, it might just give us what we need to take the son of a bitch out.’ She shrugged, apparently resigned to their grim prospects. ‘Like I say, we’re screwed, and our chances of success either way are piss poor. But I’d rather go with the option that at least offers a way out of the shit we’re in.’

It was hard to argue with her assessment of the situation, or the merits of what he was proposing. At least he counted this as a vote in his favour.

‘Just say for a moment this plan actually works,’ Mason went on. ‘What do we do with your new best buddy in there when this is all over?’

Drake had been pondering the same question. ‘He has a story to tell, so let him tell it. I’m sure there are plenty of people who’ll listen.’

If they could get him out of the country, it wouldn’t be hard for a man of Sowan’s resourcefulness to find people in the Western media willing to hear what he had to say. And if nothing else, it might shed some light on the dirty deals being done between the Agency and the Libyans, and the innocent people suffering because of it.

Drake was under no illusions that this action would turn him into a saint or some kind of moral crusader. He’d seen and done things in his life that there was no coming back from, but perhaps just this once he could do something good. Perhaps he could undo some of the damage that had been done.

And deep down, the fact that at least one man had died because of Drake’s own actions weighed more heavily on him than he cared to admit.

‘And there are plenty of people who’ll kill to shut him up,’ Mason countered.

Drake shrugged. ‘Like you said, he’s a professional spook. He knows how to play the game, and survive it.’

‘Doesn’t he just,’ Mason said under his breath.

Sensing that his companions were onboard, albeit reluctantly, Drake glanced at McKnight. ‘All right. Sam, get yourself back outside and do a sweep of the perimeter. Cole, keep an eye on the civvies. I’m going to have a little chat with our friend.’

Returning to the kitchen that now resembled a bloody, chaotic field hospital, Drake found their prisoner sitting on a chair carried through from the living room, his injured leg propped up on a stool. He was clutching a cup of hot, sugary tea that Laila had ordered him to drink, knowing how urgently his body needed to replace the fluid it had lost. He was still pale and weak, but his eyes were clear and focussed when he looked up at Drake.

‘I would stand up to greet you, but...’ He gestured to his injured leg.

Ignoring his attempt at humour, Drake knelt down beside him and looked the man hard in the eye. ‘Listen to me now, Tarek. I’m going to ask some simple questions, and I want simple and honest answers. If I could get you inside your headquarters building, could you retrieve the intel we recovered in Paris?’

A flicker of a smile. Faint, but visible all the same. ‘Yes.’

‘And you could get it to us on the outside without being caught?’

‘It would not be easy, but it is possible.’

‘And you wouldn’t think about betraying us, would you? Because a man like you would be sensible enough to know we’d keep your wife as insurance while all this is going on. And if you were stupid enough to tell anyone the truth, you’d also know that we’d make good on our threat from earlier.’

Sowan’s grip on his cup tightened. ‘I would do nothing less in your situation,’ he said in terse acknowledgement. ‘In any case, who would I tell? My superiors could be involved in this cover-up as well. A lot depends on their relationship with the British and Americans.’

‘Fair enough,’ Drake conceded.

‘It does beg the question, of course, what becomes of me once this is over?’ Sowan went on. ‘If I make good on our agreement, what do I get in return?’

‘Firstly, you get Faulkner off your back,’ Drake pointed out. ‘He might have failed with us, but sooner or later he’ll send someone more reliable to kill you, and we won’t be able to stop him.’

‘And secondly?’

‘When this is over, we’ll get you to a country where you can disappear. The rest is up to you. It’s not much, but it’s the only deal I’m offering, and it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Time’s not on our side, so I need to know right now, are you in or out?’

As Drake had said, it was the only offer Sowan was likely to get, and the Libyan was smart enough to appreciate that fact. But that didn’t mean he would be easily swayed.

‘What guarantee do I have that you’ll keep your word?’

‘None. But I can guarantee that if you’re no use to us, we’ll leave you here for Faulkner to deal with.’ There was no sense in lying, since the man would easily see through any false assurances he might make. ‘In or out? Decide now.’

Sowan stared back at him in silence; the tense, fraught seconds stretching out between them. Finally he gave a single, gruff nod of assent.

With the matter decided, Drake called through to the rest of his team. ‘All right, everyone. Get your shit together, we move out in five minutes. We’ll be travelling on open roads, so ditch the webbing and combat gear. Civilians clothes only, even if you have to use what’s here. Oh, and Cole?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Gather as much water as you can. We might need it.’

‘On it.’

Glancing at Laila, Drake added, ‘Get him ready to move.’

‘The wound must be stabilized. I would advise against it,’ she warned.

‘I’m sure you would.’ Reaching for his radio, he put a call through to McKnight outside. ‘Envoy, come in.’

‘Go, Monarch.’

‘There’s a pickup truck in the barn outside. Bring it round to the front door. We’re leaving in five Mikes.’

‘Wilco. Envoy’s en route.’

As the rest of the group set about packing up what little gear they had, Sowan spoke up once more. ‘How exactly do you plan to get me inside?

With a certain amount of skill, and a great deal of luck, he thought. ‘You do your part,’ he said instead. ‘Let us worry about the rest.’

Accustomed as they were to leaving places at short notice, it didn’t take the team long to get ready. Obeying Drake’s instruction, they removed their webbing and any articles of clothing that would identify them as soldiers or paramilitary operatives, replacing them with anything they could pilfer from the wardrobes of the house owners. In practice this mainly meant faded jeans, loose shirts and scuffed work boots.

They certainly wouldn’t win any fashion awards once they were finished, but on casual inspection they would at least pass muster as civilians. With this task accomplished, they gathered together what little gear and supplies they were taking with them, and piled it into the back of the pickup truck that McKnight had brought around to the front door.

An old-model Ford with a covered rear bed, its battered and sand-scoured bodywork looked like it had seen better days. Still, the engine sounded like it had been better cared for, and McKnight had confirmed that it drove well, so it would serve for now. In any case, it was a far better option than the bullet-riddled Toyota SUV they’d arrived in.

Before leaving it behind, McKnight had made sure to pull out and destroy all the fuses, rendering the engine inoperable in case the farmer and his sons thought to use it to drive to the nearest police station.

To this end, they had also disconnected the landline, scavenged up all the cell phones they could find and thoroughly smashed them. They didn’t imagine it would take long for the family to escape their bonds once they were left unguarded, but they did need at least some time to get clear of the area before the alarm was raised.

Standing in the living-room doorway looking at the three bound and gagged captives, Drake couldn’t help feeling bad for them. Not only had they been broken into, taken hostage and had their kitchen turned into an operating theatre, but they’d also had most of their valuables stolen or destroyed. A shit night by anyone’s standards.

With that thought fresh in his mind, he removed some of the emergency money they’d brought along for this operation and laid it on the floor by his feet. The farmer stared at him, his eyes holding a mixture of confusion and simmering hatred. Drake couldn’t blame him either way.

‘I apologize for this,’ he said in Arabic as he backed out of the room.

With their gear stowed and the vehicle waiting, the last task was to get their injured prisoner out of the house. With Mason and Drake supporting him on either side, Sowan gingerly limped down the hallway and out through the main door. He didn’t cry out or even moan in pain, but Drake could feel his muscles tense up every time he put weight on the injured leg.

Nonetheless, he made it to the rear of the pickup without incident, and with a final heave, Mason and Drake lifted him inside. Laila went in behind, now dressed in a pair of faded jeans, t-shirt and work jacket scavenged from the farmhouse, all of which were too big for her. Mason clambered in after her to keep watch on them both.

‘What the hell are you bringing that thing for?’ Drake asked as Frost approached with the farmer’s double-barrelled shotgun slung over one shoulder, as if she were about to indulge in a spot of duck hunting. ‘Skeet shooting isn’t exactly what we’ve got in mind.’

The young woman shrugged. ‘It’s a gun, isn’t it? And we’re short on firepower.’ She hefted the bulky weapon, testing the balance. ‘Anyway, I kinda like it. Might take it home when this is all over.’

Drake merely shook his head. If they found themselves in the midst of another firefight, he doubted an antique shotgun was going to tip the balance in their favour. Still, he was well aware how futile it was to argue with her in matters like this.

‘Just get your arse inside,’ he said, gesturing into the pickup’s rear bed.

With Frost in, he closed the tailgate and circled around to the front, where McKnight had moved over to the passenger seat and wrapped a length of patterned cloth around her face and head to form a keffiyeh, the traditional headdress usually worn by men and women in this part of the world. In this case, her decision was influenced less by fashion or local custom, and more by the need to disguise her ethnicity when they would almost certainly be seen by other drivers out on the road.