Deception Game (32 page)

She’d been thoughtful enough to provide a second keffiyeh for Drake, who in turn wrapped it around his face. In truth, he’d worn garments like this many times before on desert operations during his time in the SAS, where they were usually referred to as
shemags
. They might look a little outlandish, but they were invaluable in hot, dry climates where sand and dust were constant problems. The Americans hadn’t been so keen on them, as he recalled, perhaps seeing them as clothing of the enemy, but they’d soon changed their attitude when heatstroke started afflicting their troops.

‘Ever get the feeling this day’s going from bad to worse?’ McKnight asked as he finished securing the head garment.

‘All the time,’ Drake said, starting the vehicle up.

A thirty-nine page dossier recovered in Tripoli in 2011 contained detailed questions prepared by British intelligence services for use on opponents of the Gaddafi regime.

Libya – 8 May

‘Who’s in charge here?’ Bishr Kubar demanded, sweeping into the farmhouse like a force of nature, and scattering police officers and forensics technicians before him. Even if he hadn’t already identified himself as an officer in Libya’s much-feared Mukhabarat, his bullish attitude and the dangerous glimmer in his eyes would have been enough to give even hardened field operatives pause for thought.

For the past few hours he’d been busy overseeing the fruitless manhunt, attempting to comb thousands of square miles of land for a trace of Sowan’s abductors. Until half an hour ago he’d turned up nothing but false alarms and dead ends. Then, not long after sunrise, the call had come through. A call from the local police reporting that the owner of a small fig orchard and his family had been taken prisoner by a group of armed attackers.

It was just the break he’d been waiting for.

Hearing the disturbance, one police officer dared to step forward. ‘I am, sir. Sergeant Maghur.’

Tall, skinny, and with the youthful, almost boyish face of one who hadn’t yet seen thirty years. Still a kid, Kubar thought derisively. He could scarcely remember being young.

‘What do you have to report, Sergeant Maghur?’

‘One of our patrols was sweeping the area when they found a four-wheel-drive Toyota matching the one reported stolen in Tripoli. When they moved inside to investigate, they found the house owner and his two sons bound and gagged. There was no sign of the people who did it to them.’

Kubar had seen the bullet-riddled vehicle still parked outside. ‘What can he tell us about the group who attacked him?’

‘According to his testimony, there were four of them, all armed and dressed in dark military-patterned clothes. Two men and two women. He says they were foreigners.’

Kubar arched an eyebrow. ‘Israeli? American?’

He knew the Israelis made use of women in some of their more exotic special-forces units, and they certainly had no love of the Libyan government after Gaddafi had openly called for the annihilation of Israel, but such connections meant little at this stage. What interested him were verifiable facts.

‘He couldn’t say for sure, but he thinks they spoke English amongst themselves. They also had two hostages with them – a man and a woman dressed in night clothes.’

Almost certainly Tarek Sowan and his wife Laila, he thought, awoken in the middle of the night and taken from their home. At least he knew they’d made it this far alive.

‘The man was injured, bleeding from a leg wound,’ Maghur went on. ‘He says they operated on him in the kitchen. He and his sons could hear the screaming, and we found blood and improvised medical equipment in there.’

Kubar was intrigued. It certainly tied in with the evidence of a firefight at the airfield, though the aggressors and the reasons for it remained a mystery. Presumably Sowan had been injured in the crossfire, and had required medical attention.

‘I want to speak to the owner,’ he decided, knowing he needed to know more beyond the bare facts. What he wanted were nuances, details, the things that dry police reports omitted.

The farmer, going by the name Umar Jalloud, was sitting in the centre of his threadbare couch, the old piece of furniture sagging visibly under his considerable weight. His back was hunched, his massive shoulders slumped as he stared down at the carpet, trying to ignore the police and security personnel tearing apart his home in search of clues.

‘Mr Jalloud,’ Kubar said, standing before him. ‘I’d like to ask you some questions about what happened.’

Jalloud looked up at him wearily. Approaching seventy years of age, he was possessed of the kind of robust good health that prosperous farmers tended to enjoy, yet the years seemed to weigh more heavily on him after last night.

‘I’ve already told your people everything I know,’ he protested. It was clear he was tired, pissed off and in no mood for answering more questions. ‘I don’t know what else you want from me.’

‘Only the truth,’ Kubar said, keeping his tone calm and even. ‘You can either give it to me here, or I can take you back to Mukhabarat headquarters for a more...thorough debriefing. Which would you prefer?’

He saw the muscles in the man’s fleshy neck move up and down as he swallowed, saw the sudden edge of fear in his eyes. Like every citizen in Libya, he knew of the Mukhabarat all too well. He’d heard the stories of men and women being hauled off to the infamous Abu Salim prison in the middle of the night, never to be seen or heard from again.

‘I’ll do my best,’ he said at last.

‘Good.’ Finding a nearby chair, Kubar pulled it across the room so that it was directly facing Jalloud, then settled himself down and took out his pen and notebook. He didn’t rush. He was slow and methodical about it, making it plain that he controlled the tempo of the conversation. He had long ago learned that one projected power by one’s actions and demeanour, not the badge one carried or the organization one represented.

‘You said there were four attackers,’ he began, once he was good and ready. ‘Two men and two women.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you get a look at any of them? Could you describe them to me?’

It was an obvious question, but perhaps worth a try anyway.

‘They were wearing masks. Only their eyes were visible.’

‘What about weapons? Did you see what they were carrying?’

‘Pistols of some kind. I don’t know the make, but they had silencers on the ends.’

‘I see. Nothing bigger? No rifles or other such weapons?’

He shook his head. ‘Not that I know of.’

That was good news as far as Kubar was concerned. The less firepower this group had at their disposal, the easier they would be to take down when he eventually caught them. And he
would
catch them; of that he was certain.

Kubar was nothing if not tenacious. The son of an impoverished Bedouin family, he’d been born into a life of hardship and grinding, ceaseless struggle amidst the endless dunes of the Sahara Desert. His parents, belonging to a generation that had grown up before the Libyan Revolution, were barely-literate nomads who had lacked the ambition, the education and most crucially the intelligence to strive for anything better. Their short and difficult lives had come to an abrupt end when a dispute with a neighbouring tribe had flared into violence, as such things inevitably did.

Only their 10-year-old son survived the attack, wandering alone in the desert until an army patrol had picked him up, dehydrated and close to death. That was when he’d resolved to put his former life behind him, to become an educated and intelligent man; part of the new generation helping to free Libya from the shackles of ignorance and primitive tribal bickering. That path had been neither short nor easy, but he’d stuck to it with the ferocious determination that would one day become his greatest asset.

‘When they made entry to your house, how were they acting?’

The farmer blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, were they angry and aggressive, or cold and under control?’

He thought about that for a moment. ‘Calm and controlled, I suppose, like professionals who had done such things before. At least to begin with. Later I heard a lot of shouting and arguments between them and their hostages.’

That certainly fit with his assessment of the situation so far. A team of professionals under pressure, trying to improvise a new escape plan after watching their old one literally go down in flames, and debating their next course of action.

‘Do you know what they were arguing about?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t speak English.’

‘Was there anything recognizable? Any place names or words that kept coming up?’

Even a man with no grasp of a language might still glean something from an overheard conversation, particularly among a group trying to secure another means of escape from the country. Even a reference to a town or landmark might provide invaluable clues to their intentions.

Jalloud was silent for some time, replaying the snatches of overheard conversation in his mind. Kubar made no further attempt to prompt him, knowing he needed to be given time to arrive at the information – or not – by himself.

‘There was one thing,’ he said at last. ‘A name, I think. I heard them say it several times. Faulkner.’ He shook his head, the meaning lost on him. ‘I can’t say for sure if it was a place, a man or just a thing, but they seemed very focussed on it.’

That was enough for Kubar. He’d already noted the name down.

‘Thank you for your cooperation,’ he said, his tone stiff and formal. He’d never been good at expressing gratitude to anyone, because he’d rarely had cause to do it in his life.

‘There is something else,’ Jalloud blurted out, just as Kubar was turning to leave. Reaching into his pocket, he produced a roll of Libyan dinars and tentatively held them out. Judging by the size of the roll, it represented a couple of months’ earnings for a man like Jalloud. ‘Before they left in my truck, the leader of the group laid this money on the floor. He apologized to me in Arabic, then he left..’

Kubar frowned, surprised by this bizarre revelation about the attackers. Nonetheless, it was something else to keep in mind. Nodding acknowledgement, he excused himself.

‘Wait. Do I have to hand these back?’ Jalloud called after him.

‘Keep them,’ Kubar said over his shoulder. He already had everything he needed from this man. ‘Put them to good use.’

Leaving the farmer to contemplate how he’d spend his newfound windfall, Kubar returned outside. His colleague Adnan Mousa was surveying the bullet-riddled Toyota that had been abandoned near the front door to the villa.

‘Get anything interesting from him?’ he asked.

‘Possibly.’ Kubar reached for a pair of sunglasses in his suit jacket and slipped them on. The sun was just rising above the horizon, but it was already shaping up to be a hot day. ‘The leader of this team we’re hunting – he is a puzzle to me.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s willing to risk his life to abduct a man from a heavily secured building in the heart of our capital, yet he leaves the security guards alive when it would have been in his interests to execute them. He breaks into this farm, steals clothes and a vehicle, yet again spares the lives of potential witnesses. He even leaves money by way of compensation.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand this man.’

And that worried him most of all. Usually his adversary’s intentions were obvious enough to his keen mind; a logical objective giving rise to understandable, if ruthless and deadly, actions. But in this case, no consistent pattern of behaviour was emerging. All he saw were contradictions.

‘Perhaps he’s a pacifist,’ Mousa remarked with a wry smile.

Kubar didn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead he turned to more practical matters. ‘Do me a favour and run the name Faulkner through our records. Let me know if it turns up anything.’

‘Of course. What are you expecting?’

Kubar was deep in thought as his dark eyes surveyed the arid, scorched landscape that rolled off toward the horizon.

‘I don’t know yet, but it may be the key to understanding all of this.’

The mood in the truck’s rear cargo area was tense and brooding as the vehicle bumped and jolted across the rough, barren terrain far to the south of Tripoli, with Drake opting to avoid all but the most rudimentary of roads now that the sun was up. They had so far encountered no police or military checkpoints, and indeed hadn’t seen another vehicle of any sort for nearly an hour.

The temperature was rising quickly now that the sun was up. Even with wind gusting in through the open rear door, the air was hot and stifling, raising a sheen of perspiration on Frost and Mason, who were charged with guarding the two prisoners.

They were well and truly in the badlands now. The scattered farms and primitive settlements that had ringed the capital city had long since given way to wide open expanses of dusty basins, sand-scoured hills and ancient dried-up river channels. There were no trees, no grass, no bushes save for a few skeletal patches of scrub growing in some of the more sheltered valleys. Only the most hardy of life forms could scratch out an existence in such a bleak place.

‘Goddamn wasteland,’ Mason said, surveying the bleak landscape as he took a gulp of water. They had filled as many containers as they could before departing the farm, but even so it wouldn’t take long to exhaust their reserves.

This wasn’t like a normal escape-and-evasion situation, where the group could live off the land if necessary while they made good their escape. In this case, there was no land to live off. They wouldn’t last more than a couple of days out here.

As Mason was contemplating this, he noticed Sowan’s eyes on him. The Libyan was watching him from the other side of the truck’s flatbed.

‘I grew up in an area not unlike this,’ Sowan remarked. ‘A small town named Jalu near the border with Egypt. Not much except desert in all directions, and a small oasis to the north. My father worked the irrigation fields there, growing tomatoes and dates.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘As a boy, I used to grow so bored of his talk about tomato plantations, I promised myself I would leave Jalu as soon as I was old enough. I imagined myself living a life of adventure and excitement, as far away from tomato growing as possible.’ He glanced down sheepishly at his heavily bandaged leg stretched out across the deck. ‘Now I wonder if perhaps I made a mistake.’

Mason said nothing as he took another sip of water. His own father had served in the Marine Corps most of his adult life, so his particular apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

‘May I?’ Sowan asked, holding out his hands. They’d been secured together with cable ties in case he still harboured some mad desire to go for one of their weapons.

Sowan was no good to them if he died of thirst. Mason reluctantly passed the plastic water bottle over. Accepting it gratefully, Sowan handed it to his wife, who gulped down a few mouthfuls.

‘Thank you,’ he said, nodding.

‘Doesn’t mean we’re friends now,’ Frost reminded him. ‘We just don’t want you to die yet. Be inconvenient.’

He shrugged, unperturbed by her implied threat. ‘Even enemies may show each other respect and compassion. It is a lesson we Libyans learned centuries ago; the need to win the peace after you have won the war.’ He eyed Frost for a long moment. ‘Perhaps your country would do well to remember it.’

Far from rising to his barbed remark, the young woman merely smiled back at him, though there was no warmth in it. ‘I’ll keep that in mind at your war-crimes trial.’

‘Will you be taking the stand with me?’ he asked. ‘After all, you played a part in this when you delivered an innocent man into my custody.’

‘We didn’t know who you were.’

‘Or you didn’t care,’ he shot back. ‘Plausible deniability is something your agency is quite fond of, I understand. Intentional ignorance is perhaps a more accurate term in this case. You knew nothing because you chose not to ask any questions. Do you think that absolves you of blame? Do you think a jury would see it that way?’

He was pressing her because he knew she was no threat to him. Drake was the one in charge of this group; none of his subordinates would act without his say-so. As much as she might ache to put another bullet in him, they all knew she wouldn’t.

Frost was wise enough to realize it as well. Rather than engage in further debate with a man who seemed quite proficient at twisting words to suit his needs, she merely stared back at him, saying nothing, but the hostility was tangible.

The uncomfortable deadlock was finally broken when the pickup eased to a stop on the lea side of a low hill. Shutting down the engine, Drake stepped out and circled around to the rear gate, the keffiyeh now hanging loose around his neck.

‘We’re here. Get her out,’ he instructed.

This was where the group had agreed to part ways, with Frost and Mason remaining behind to guard Laila, while Drake and McKnight continued on to their destination with Sowan. It went against their better judgement to split the team up, but it was necessary if their plan was to succeed.

Mason moved forward to help Laila up, but the woman batted his hand away. ‘I can manage myself,’ she warned, a dangerous glint in her eyes. ‘Just give us a moment, would you?’

Mason glanced at Drake, who nodded just a little.

Reaching up, Sowan gently ran a hand down his wife’s face, staring into her eyes. Those deep, compassionate, intelligent eyes so often filled with laughter and joy. But not now. Now he saw only fear and sadness reflected in their depths.

‘Be brave, but be careful,’ he said quietly in Arabic. ‘Don’t give them a reason to harm you.’

‘And you. Give them what they want, Tarek,’ she warned, perhaps sensing he was planning something else. She grasped his hand and squeezed hard. ‘I don’t care about the rest. You’re all that matters. Do you understand?’

Swallowing, the man nodded. ‘We’ll be together again. I promise.’

With these parting words, Laila turned away and leapt down from the truck, declining any offer of assistance.

She found that they were parked at the base of a low, gently rolling hill, its summit crowned by a tumble of ancient ruins now reduced to little more than sand-scoured walls and piles of crumbled bricks. She had no idea what period the structure belonged to, or even what shape it had originally taken, but its prominent position on the hill suggested it might once have had a military purpose.

With their hostage out of the vehicle, Mason turned his attention to the stockpile of water and other essential supplies they would need to survive in this world of relentless sun and searing heat, stacking their limited cache on the ground near the truck.

Frost also emerged from the truck’s bed, still clutching the shotgun she’d taken from the farm earlier in the day. Neither she nor Mason were happy about being left behind on babysitting duty while their companions risked their lives, but they knew further debate with Drake was futile. His mind was made up. All that remained was to see it through.

As Mason finished unloading the essential supplies, Drake surveyed the land around them. There wasn’t much to see. The terrain was hilly and uneven, wind-scoured slopes and sandy plains fading off into a dusty, indeterminate horizon, all bathed in the relentless glare of the fiery orb overhead. Just looking at this landscape was enough to make his eyes water.

According to the road map they’d stolen from the Toyota before abandoning it, they were at the western end of the Nafusa mountain range, not more than a dozen miles from the Tunisian border. This was pretty much the end of the line as far as civilization was concerned. To the south lay the vast, empty expanse of the Sahara Desert. Hundreds of miles of sand dunes and searing heat where almost nothing could survive.

‘The border’s not far from here,’ Drake said quietly, turning his attention back to his two companions as they prepared to part ways. ‘We’ll do everything we can to make this work, but if we’re not back by dawn, we’re not coming back. Get yourselves across into Tunisia.
Don
’
t
wait for us. Understand?’

Neither of them said a word.

‘I need to hear you say it,’ Drake pressed, well aware of the thoughts they were harbouring. The prospect of leaving teammates behind didn’t sit well with either of them.

‘We’ve got it,’ Mason reluctantly assured him. ‘We’ll do what we have to do.’

Drake nodded, satisfied that he’d impressed the importance of this matter on them. He needed to know they would follow through on what could very well prove to be his final order, as hard as it might be for them. He needed to know that if the mission failed, at least two of his friends would get out of Libya alive.

‘Just make sure it doesn’t come to that, okay?’ He offered a weak grin. ‘Keira will never let me hear the end of it otherwise.’

‘You can bet your ass I won’t,’ she promised.

Mason held out a hand to him. ‘Good luck, Ryan.’

Drake clasped his hand tight. It was a simple enough gesture, but it meant a lot to him at that moment.

‘Try not to screw this up,’ Frost added, looking at Drake for a long moment as if considering her next move. Then, without warning she reached out and hugged him, gripping him tight in a fierce embrace that was quite at odds with her diminutive size. Her cheeks were flushed from more than just the heat when she finally let go and backed away. Despite himself, Drake couldn’t help but smile. It was as close to an emotional outpouring as he was likely to get from her.

‘I’ll do my best,’ he promised. Then, realizing that time was off the essence, he gestured to the nearby ruins. ‘Now get your arses up there and find cover.’

Frost hesitated a moment before shouldering the shotgun, hoisting a plastic container or water onto her back and starting the slow trek to the top of the hill. Mason and Laila followed not far behind, each carrying their own water supplies.

Drake lingered a few seconds longer, watching their progress in silence and trying to ignore the gloomy sense of finality that had settled on him, before returning to the pickup truck. McKnight had taken up position in the rear bed, keeping watch over Sowan.

‘Good to go?’ Drake asked.

The woman nodded, though her eyes were on the rest of their group as they made their way up the hill. She didn’t like this any more than he did.

Sensing her misgivings, Drake laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘We’ll see them again.’

She nodded again, saying nothing.

Knowing they could afford to wait no longer, Drake returned to the driver’s cab and fired up the engine. Never had he felt more alone as the bleached ruins receded into the distance behind them.

In the back, Samantha McKnight was harbouring similar thoughts, though for entirely different reasons. The more time she spent with this group, the more she saw and felt the bonds of trust, respect and friendship that bound them together, the more she felt like an outsider. The more she hated who and what she was, and what she would be called upon to do.

They might have trusted her, might have respected her and even considered her a friend, but they were wrong. She deserved none of those things from them.

Part of her actually wished they had found her out, that they might uncover her secret and exile her from the group forever. At least that would make it easier to bear. At least she wouldn’t have to stand by and watch while Cain tore them apart, while he destroyed everything Drake had fought so hard to protect. At least she wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that their pain and suffering was down to her betrayal.

‘He means something to you, yes?’

McKnight blinked, disturbed from her dark thoughts. Glancing over, she found Sowan observing her with a shrewd, knowing look.

‘What?’ she asked, taken aback by the question.

His gaze flicked to the driver’s cab in front. ‘I saw the way you looked at each other, the way you stand a little closer, the way his touch lingered on you just a moment too long. Small things, perhaps, but it is the small things that give us away.’

‘You see a lot,’ she evaded.

He smiled, sensing from the subtle tension in her body that he was right. ‘It is my job to learn things about people, and I have learned a lot about you, Samantha. That is your name, I assume? We weren’t introduced, but he called you Sam before.’

‘My name’s not important.’

‘Of course it is. How can we be expected to work together if we don’t even know each other’s names?’

‘We’re not working together,’ she corrected him. ‘We’re not friends, we’re not partners and we’re not allies. You’re cooperating to keep your wife alive, so don’t pretend this is about anything except survival for both of you. I know you’d kill us all if you had the chance.’

‘Would I?’ he repeated, tilting his head a little. ‘How much do you really know about me, beyond your own assumptions and what you have been told by others?’

‘I know enough.’

‘Enough to do what? Judge me? Condemn me?’ He leaned a little closer, his expression almost conspiratorial. ‘Kill me?’

There was no answer she could give to such a question, so she said nothing. Instead she glowered at him from the other side of the compartment, her grip slowly tightening on the haft of her knife.

‘It’s about giving,’ he went on. ‘This job, this world that you and I live in. Giving up parts of yourself. The parts that shrink away from hurting others, that tell you it is wrong to kill and maim, the parts that are weak.’

‘I don’t live in the same world as you,’ she countered, offended by the implication. ‘I’m nothing like you.’

‘And yet here we are together. Me the prisoner, and you the captor. Your role requires you to guard me, threaten my wife and me with harm if I don’t cooperate, perhaps even kill me if it comes to it. And I believe you would do it if you had to. Would you do it out of malice or spite? No, of course not. Our actions are dictated by something far more powerful – logic. It is what binds us, what drives us, and what frees us.’

He licked his thin lips, as if savouring the moment.

‘Logic allows me to torture a helpless man almost to death, to threaten his family with execution, and feel no shame in it. Logic lets me do this, because I know his suffering will save the lives of dozens, if not hundreds of innocent people who deserve life more than him. Giving up one life to save many more. It is a logical exchange; nothing more, nothing less.’